74: The Crucial Link Between Gut Health and Disease Management Part 1 | Linda Murphy

Have you ever considered the intricate dance between your gut health and your overall wellness? Linda Murphy, a registered holistic nutritionist, returns to our show to illuminate the significant, yet often unheralded, connection between gut health and various diseases. With a holistic lens sharpened by personal health battles, including a cancer diagnosis, Linda unpacks the cascade of issues that follow the use of protein pump inhibitors and the critical nature of maintaining a healthy gut for nutrient absorption. Her insights extend to her work with HealingStrong, where she aids others in navigating their health journeys with the support of this empowering community.

Feeling the weight of stress on your shoulders and your stomach? This episode shines a light on how stress isn't just a mental burden—it physically diverts blood flow from your digestive system, hindering your ability to absorb crucial nutrients like calcium, magnesium, and B12. We open up about the emotional facets of stress management and their direct impact on the success of healthy lifestyle habits. Linda Murphy also helps us unravel the common misconceptions about acid reflux, explaining that low stomach acid is frequently the true culprit, not the excess we often blame.

And when it comes to maintaining strong bones, it seems digestion plays a lead role in this bodily performance. We share personal tales and revelations regarding acid reflux, diet, and stress, while offering actionable advice to enhance digestion—like the simple but effective practice of diaphragm breathing before meals. Through thoughtful eating, mindful living, and aligning with supportive networks like Healing Strong, this episode is a treasure trove of strategies to improve not just digestive health, but our overall vitality. Join us for a deep exploration into how minor lifestyle changes can elicit major wellness wins.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

So you know what happens with a lot of people that are on these medications they become anemic and then require they require iron supplements, because iron is something that requires sufficient stomach acid.

Speaker 1: 0:15

So they go on these PPIs and all of a sudden they're anemic. We see it all the time, very, very common. So it's like everything right. It causes a chain reaction. All of a sudden you do one thing and then you're causing more deficiencies and more issues and it gets to the point that I've actually seen people that have been on PPIs protein pump inhibitors for a long time A lot of people that are on them never seem to get off of them.

Speaker 3: 0:39

You're listening to the I Am Healing Strong podcast, a part of the Healing Strong organization, the number one network of holistic cancer support groups in the world. Each week we bring you stories of hope, real stories that will encourage you as you navigate your way on your own journey to health. Now here's your host stage four cancer thriver, Jim Mann.

Speaker 2: 1:05

I got the privilege of talking again to nutritionist. I guess is the title Linda Murphy? How are you?

Speaker 1: 1:12

Excellent excellent.

Speaker 2: 1:14

Is that the right title?

Speaker 1: 1:15

Um registered holistic nutritionist.

Speaker 2: 1:18

I knew there was more to it.

Speaker 1: 1:21

RHN for short Okay.

Speaker 2: 1:23

I can do that Now. We spoke to you. You were on a podcast about a year and a half ago now and you told your story. You're still a group leader, right?

Speaker 1: 1:33

I am yes.

Speaker 2: 1:34

Way up there in Canada.

Speaker 1: 1:37

Right up in Canada, where there's now snow on the ground.

Speaker 2: 1:40

Oh man, I'm jealous.

Speaker 1: 1:42

Are you? Yes, I'm not going to go off. Where are you? I think you're somewhere warmer.

Speaker 2: 1:48

Well, I'm in South Carolina.

Speaker 1: 1:50

Oh, come on, you don't want snow and cold.

Speaker 2: 1:54

I do. I grew up in Maryland so I'm used to snow not quite like Canada, but I'm used to snow. Then I moved to Florida, where there was very little snow, like zero, so we went halfway in between and the weather was great. Every once in a while, every two years, they'll get a two inch blizzard which will shut down everything. They're not ready. They have one salt truck. Yeah, takes you a while to get around. Anyway, that's enough about that.

Speaker 2: 2:23

We were talking about a subject that is becoming more and more prevalent, at least in my world. I hear more about this as people realize that so many diseases and different situations stem from your gut health. I don't know when I was growing up. Of course I'm oblivious to a lot of stuff, but when I was growing up I never even heard about gut health.

Speaker 2: 2:44

I had stomach aches here and there, but I was a quiet little kid. They assumed it was just a little nervous stomach. Little Jimmy is nervous and I was a little shy kid. It was so cute. Now we're realizing that gut health has everything to do with it, because that's where your nutrition is broken down and sent to the rest of your body and through the blood system and everything. So it kind of makes sense now that we use our brains about our bodies, we need to really look at it and I have lots of questions and I'm going to learn. In fact, you should probably charge me for this podcast, because I'm going to be learning a lot of stuff. Just send me a bill and.

Speaker 2: 3:25

I'll send it on to Susie. I mentioned you're a group leader and are you still doing virtual group?

Speaker 1: 3:33

I am. I'm doing online. I'm taking a bit of a break. I'm going to start back up in January as I'm going to do a few different things. I'm actually talking to a couple of other group leaders to kind of change it up. I've got a lot going on right now, so I'm just going to take a bit of a break and then get back at it again. I've been doing it for oh my goodness, I think, seven years now.

Speaker 2: 3:56

Wow, you were just a kid when you started.

Speaker 1: 4:00

Ah, shucks.

Speaker 2: 4:03

Now speaking of a kid. When you were a kid, you were like a bookworm, if I remember correctly. When you had some issues, you would go to the library and try to figure things out.

Speaker 1: 4:15

I did. Yeah, I was kind of an odd duck. I was like 10 years old, going to the library getting books on, actually back then books on yoga and stuff like that. Since then I'm learning new things about not doing certain things. Self-taught yoga diagnosed my own allergies, stuff like that.

Speaker 1: 4:35

I had anaphylactic attack and of course the doctor wanted to just put me on a food elimination diet. I went oh, what's that? How do you do that to a teenager? I said, oh, this has got to be an alternative to this. I got a book and it just kind of showed me the main things, the most common food allergies. I stayed away from those things. That was kind of a little dripping on when I was younger For years. I really wasn't into. I was a typical teenager. I wasn't super, super healthy. My mom, we ate fairly healthy, we didn't get a lot of junk but wasn't really looking at ways to be healthy other than I do want to not have another anaphylactic attack. That was what I was trying to avoid at that time. I just don't want that happening again.

Speaker 2: 5:20

No, it doesn't sound like fun. You kind of did when you're a self-study. You kind of did like a process of elimination so you felt better right.

Speaker 1: 5:27

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 5:28

Which is probably what you do now.

Speaker 1: 5:31

It is yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2: 5:33

Just have a little bit more knowledge behind that. And of course, you had your own diagnosis of cancer, correct?

Speaker 1: 5:40

I did, yeah, yeah, I was 39. And so my daughter was nine at the time. My son was 12 and very scary. That's not something that anybody wants to hear, especially. And the thing with me I felt fairly healthy. I didn't have any real serious health issues, never overweight, exercised, did me a lot of junk, right. Just you know your average diet back then. But yeah, so that diagnosis was very alarming for me. But you know, what I said to myself was you know, I'm not going to be a doctor. I'm not going to be a doctor. Okay, you know I've got this diagnosis. But because I had been doing some reading in the past, I think that really did help me kind of think, okay, well, there's got to be a solution to this, right, I'm not going to freak out about it, there's got to be things that I can improve. So that was my mindset. I thought, okay, what can I do? So that's that's when I really started. So I went to the health food store, got some things, like I started drinking bar to grass green stuff.

Speaker 1: 6:39

I was like, oh, anything, greens, good, right, so I'm starting to do bar to grass and things like that. In the meantime, I started to also dig of you know, getting more information of you know what else I could do. So that that's what catapulted me was having that diagnosis and then starting to, you know, going back to the books again, going, okay, that you know, I did a little bit of that when I was younger but then diving into it and saying, okay, what, what do I, what do I seriously need to do to get through this?

Speaker 2: 7:08

Right, and you learned a lot from. I think you worked with the public schools, with nutrition. Do I remember that correctly?

Speaker 1: 7:16

Yeah, well, what happened was I was working as an educational system. Okay, I was working with special needs kids, and so I was. I was seeing and of course I'm observing what these kids are eating. I'd fed my kids fairly healthy, you know, not processed foods, but you know there was still. So you know, there was a lot of things that I we need to change. Right, they weren't eating processed foods, but we're eating a lot of meat, a lot of dairy. And then I was witnessing kids in the classroom and kids with autism.

Speaker 1: 7:43

I worked with a lot of kids with autism and just seeing their packaged foods and bear paws and Roy's crispy squares and all these things that aren't real food, yeah, and so you know that, seeing that day to day, and so that really I was kind of like, okay, I want to learn more. Like what else? My? So that was that's what catapulted me in taking my holistic nutrition course and that's that about five years after my cancer diagnosis that I found my hosting nutrition course that I took, and that's when it all started. That's, that's the beginning of all of this. So, just, you know, getting all that really amazing information and then applying it, helping clients, and so, yeah, so my diagnosis was just something that just was like oh, big eye opener. Obviously I need to learn more and I started digging.

Speaker 2: 8:29

Right? Well, of course, if anybody wants more details about your story and go back to that podcast, which is like about a year and a half ago, I believe it was. I think it's number 20, if you're looking it up there or just listen to all of them, you'll come across Linda Murphy, but we're going to talk about gut health today, so tell us to start from the beginning. What is gut health? What do you mean by gut health?

Speaker 1: 8:53

Got Okay. Well, that's where we absorb everything. That's foundational, right.

Speaker 1: 8:58

It's where everything begins, it's how we absorb. So it doesn't matter what we put in, like everybody's, like I saw I was. If people could see my hands, I mean you can see my hands but nobody else can see my hands. But anyway, having my hands up, we got going in on one side. You know, taking in food, taking supplements and stuff like this.

Speaker 1: 9:20

But if we don't have the gut health we don't have good, optimal, and I'll explain more about this. But if we don't have good hydrochloric acid and things are shut down and we're not absorbing properly. So I say to people, it's not so much what we're putting in, it's how we're absorbing. So we got to fix the leaky boat. Imagine being in a boat with a hole. You're bailing, bailing, bailing, but you're still going to sink. Well, that's the same with if you've got leaky gut and poor digestion, doesn't matter what you're putting in, it's not going in, right, it's not going in, you're not going to absorb. So so what things shut down our digestive system? Oh, my goodness, lots of the things that people are doing. So let's go through them. So, first and foremost, the number one thing that shuts down digestion is germ roll, stress, stress. So, oh, anybody out there not have any stress. Are we all stress free? We just whiz through COVID, no problem.

Speaker 2: 10:24

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 10:25

Right, so so, but what does stress do? So let me talk about what stress does. So our bombies. When we're in a state of stress, we're telling our body something right, like we're so, we've got things that are coming into our mind, into our eyes and into our thought process, and how we interpret that is sending a signal to our brain. If either that we're okay or we're fearful and we get a run from that danger, so we have to flee from something and we have to flee from danger, your body's like, oh, okay, well, let me help you out there. I can help you with fleeing from that tiger, fleeing from that enemy. I can help you with that. So even if you're sitting in front of the computer and you're super fearful and stressed, your body thinks you gotta run from danger. Right, still thinking you gotta run from danger. Even if you're sitting in front of the computer, it's like, oh, you're telling me that. Oh, you're in a state of anxiety and fear and panic and upset. I gotta help you flee.

Speaker 1: 11:26

So what does your body do? It's gonna pull blood from the digestive system and give it to your muscles to give you energy to flee from that danger. And so what happens? You can't be in a state of rest and digest and digest in a state of fight or flight. You can't be in both. So if you're in a state of fight or flight, you're not gonna be able to digest, cause you don't have blood in your digestive system to do that. And also, what it does is it shuts down our important hydrochloric acids, which are called gastric acids, and it shuts that down If you're not gonna need them. And so it's shutting it down and those hydrochloric acids that HCl is imperative for absorbing, absorbing what? Absorbing protein, protein metabolism. And if we're not absorbing our protein property, that creates a response in the body going uh-oh, it's gonna put your body in fight or flight cause you're not absorbing property, you're not getting the protein metabolized.

Speaker 1: 12:29

But listen, what else it's metabolizing? Calcium, magnesium, zinc, copper, iron, b12, selenium, all those valuable nutrients. So think about iron and B12, those are for energy. So it starts right at the gut. So if you're not metabolizing those minerals right, right off the bat, right off the hop, you're deficient, right? You're not metabolizing those properly, man. So that's so important for people to understand. Stress is the number one thing that is causing problems, cause what I see with people and so you know I'm sure there's a lot of people on here that you know maybe have a serious diagnosis of cancer and a kind of disease and they're doing what they think are all the right things. Right, they're eating healthy, maybe they're exercising, rebounding, coffee, enemas, all these things. Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick. They're ticking off the boxes but they're not dealing with the stress, the emotional part. So are they metabolizing all these beautiful things they're putting in? No, they're not.

Speaker 1: 13:37

So, I say to them and the thing is that what happens with people I see it all the because I'm talking to people all the time about this is that they're really wanting to do all the right things, but what happens is like they're in a state of stress, trying to incorporate it all, like, oh, I gotta do this, I gotta do it. Am I doing it perfect? Am I? You know? Am I getting this right, that right? And I'm like, oh, okay, first of all, let's just breathe. Let's just breathe Because you're like, you're in a state of panic and when you think about what God tells us right In scriptures, don't be anxious or worried about anything, don't be fearful, don't do this. And why? Because he knows what that's gonna do to your body. We can be trying to do all the right things, but if you're in that state of stress and you're putting those poor adrenals into a state of fight or flight, shutting down your digestive juices, and stress also kills your natural killer cells and shuts down and kills off your beneficial bacteria, boy oh boy.

Speaker 2: 14:39

I'm getting a stomach ache already.

Speaker 1: 14:41

That's just a start.

Speaker 2: 14:43

Wow, okay.

Speaker 1: 14:45

Yeah, so then of course there's all the other things. So next to stress. Then we have caffeinated beverages. That can they can be very irritating to the digestive tract. Caffeine, dairy gluten or I say to people, not necessarily always gluten, but glyphosates that are sprayed on our grains Artificial sweeteners, sugar, nitrates in processed foods, msg, partially-inherited hydrogenated oils, deep fried foods all of those are going to compromise our digestive system, cause inflammation. That's going to impede your ability to absorb nutrients as well.

Speaker 2: 15:29

Wow, how about mushroom coffee? I drink mushroom coffee.

Speaker 1: 15:34

Yeah, you know, I've heard a lot about mushroom coffee. Yeah, Good right, yeah, it should be good. I mean, the only thing too is that some people still can be very sensitive to caffeine, so just be aware of that, that there might be times, or if you're feeling a lot of stress, you might, you know. Just be careful with how much caffeine you take in. So, you don't want to be having too much because that's still going to put you into fight or flight. So just being careful with that.

Speaker 2: 16:02

I'm too old for flight anymore. I'll just sit here, so maybe that's good for me. I don't know. Okay, I'm writing these things down. You understand, I don't normally write notes down, but this is important.

Speaker 1: 16:17

Now the thing is that with a lot of people, so the symptoms of low stomach acid and digestive issues are, it's numerous. There's lots of different things that can cause symptoms for that people know that they have low stomach acidity and the biggest, the major one, is bloating. So bloating and gas is one of the biggest ones, but you know when people have. So this is interesting, a lot of people don't know this and that is that oftentimes when people have acid reflux, what are we automatically told? With acid reflux, you would think you would have what? Too much acid, Too much acid.

Speaker 2: 16:56

All right.

Speaker 1: 16:57

Not true. Not true, it's the opposite. So let me explain this, because what happens is we need sufficient stomach acid. We have a valve that's called LES lower esophageal sphincter. Say that five times faster, so this sphincter requires ample stomach acids to stay closed.

Speaker 1: 17:25

So we have low stomach acid? It's not. It's maybe opening and not closing properly. And if it's staying open it's not able to close properly. Guess what can come up? Our stomach acids. Yeah, so it stemmed from low stomach acid that caused that sphincter to not be able to close properly. That now you're getting acid reflux, and right away. What does a doctor want to do? Or you want to get from the pharmacy or whatever is antacids, tums, rollades, pepto-bismos. Or doctors will recommend PPIs, protein Pump inhibitors. And guess what those do? They coat the stomach and prevent those valuable minerals from being absorbed, because we need strong stomach acid.

Speaker 1: 18:15

Remember I said we need strong stomach acid to absorb your magnesium and calcium and iron, all those things. So you know what happens with a lot of people that are on these medications they become anemic and then require they require iron supplements, Because iron is something that requires sufficient stomach acid.

Speaker 1: 18:38

So they go on these PPIs and all of a sudden they're anemic. We see it all the time, very, very common. So it's like everything right. It causes a chain reaction. All of a sudden you do one thing and then you're causing more deficiencies and more issues and it gets to the point that I've actually seen people that have been on PPIs Protein Pump inhibitors for a long time. A lot of people that are on them never seem to get off of them. They seem to be on them for years and years and years and it leads to because they're not getting these valuable minerals. Guess what else can happen Osteopenia, osteoporosis, stuff like that Because you're not absorbing your minerals for your bones If you're suppressing your stomach acids and not being able to absorb those, Right now.

Speaker 2: 19:25

Here's a question. I used to have acid reflux all the time and I was taking prolisac or whatever it was, and I took it for years and then, when I got my diagnosis, I cut sugar out and it left right away. I didn't have any acid reflux. But just recently, just this past year, I'm starting to get it again and I'm like, ok, I'm not taking in sugar, so what's the deal? I thought sugar took care of that, but I don't know what's going on.

Speaker 1: 19:55

Yeah, well, you might want to look. Sometimes I say to people back up and just look at those things that I was talking about Irritant. So if you look at dairy or caffeine, maybe it is the caffeine you might want to cut that. That's a common one. Some people love their coffee and when they take the coffee out it does make a difference.

Speaker 1: 20:12

So, you might want to try that. Or look at our lifestyle. Look at maybe something that's been going on with our lifestyle with a little bit more stress. So we can, and the things we can do. So there's things we can do to increase our stomach acid, to get it back up again, and that's just taking maybe a little bit of apple cider vinegar, a little lemon juice before we eat.

Speaker 1: 20:37

But the biggest thing, remember I talked about having to be you can't be in a state of fight or flight or rest and digest at the same time, the best thing we can do to help put our bodies in a state of rest and digest is to die from a wound and we take three good diaphragm brass before we eat and that can put your body in the state of rest and digest. Very, very important because much of most of us do. We go from an activity where we're racing around and doing things to trying to eat or eat on the eat too fast or Eating standing up or, you know, eating in the car race that you know not being mindful of our eating. It's very, very important. So the three top things that I recommend that people do all the time is Diaphragm breathing is one of the most important.

Speaker 1: 21:26

I was fine. That's really really important. Three big diaphragm Brasses sometimes enough if you feel any extra one, but three minimum is usually what I recommend. And diaphragm breathing is just breathing Into your nose, your belly goes out, you're getting oxygen right down to the bottom of your lungs, holding it for, like some people. Some people do box breathing. You kind of, you know, breathe in for four, hold for four, breathe out for four.

Speaker 1: 21:47

Or you can just breathe in, have the belly come out, just trying to get that oxygen down the bottom of the lungs, and then exhale as far out as you go, and doing that for three times before you eat, and you know what that does to. What I found is that, because that makes me more Mindful, I think, oh, I've got a diaphragm, breathe, okay. And then all of a sudden I'm mindful. Oftentimes I close my eyes when I'm doing it, and then what it gets me to do too is that it brings me down. Okay, that feels better, all right. And then it makes me mindful to pray over my food and Be mindful. And then, when you're mindful guess what you do? Then you can concentrate on Chewing better. Chew, chew, chew so you don't. Teeth in our stomach have to make sure we chew it well before it gets there, right, so chew to a paste. And Then another big thing that I tell people is don't dilute your stomach acids, don't be drinking with meals so.

Speaker 1: 22:43

So important because you want those stumps strong stomach acids. So don't dilute them, don't be drinking. You can do little sips of water. But what I tell people is you know what happens.

Speaker 1: 22:54

A lot of people are busy and I used to be guilty of this before I knew this stuff. I'd be so busy that I would basically hardly drink anything all morning. And then lunchtime comes around and I'm so thirsty. You start eating your lunch, or get that, you start eating, you're so thirsty. It's like all of a sudden you want to drink. It's like you know, oh my god, I'm so thirsty and I was doing that, gulping my water with my lunch. And then in the afternoon I'd be getting these severe pains and right away I'm like oh, what did I eat? What did I eat? Oh, my goodness, I always thought it was something I eat. As soon as I stopped drinking all that water, I started drinking in the morning. Like drinking all morning and usually a half a cup every half hour is a great way, because you Don't want to be just gulping like try to get all that water at the end of the day.

Speaker 2: 23:37

Try to get your one or two liters in at the end of the day.

Speaker 1: 23:39

You want to be doing it during the day, and so I would drink all morning and then when lunchtime came around, I didn't have that desire to have to drink with my meals, and you know that that that bloating and gas and pains completely went away. So here I was trying to figure out what I was eating. So it wasn't. What I was eating is how I was digesting, and so I've even had some. My students I teach this at the college I've had some.

Speaker 1: 24:06

My students say, yeah, oh, I didn't think I could eat raw salads. I thought, no, I couldn't digest my salads, I couldn't digest, couldn't digest that. And once they stopped drinking with their meals, I said all that all went away. It was nothing to do with what I was eating, it was how I was digesting. So that's so important for people to remember. It's how we're digesting. Okay, so before we start pulling out all these healthy foods, thinking maybe you're sensitive, look at how you're thinking about being mindful and and getting your stuff in a state of rest and digest, preparing the body to eat in the simulate. That makes sense, right.

Speaker 2: 24:41

Yeah, it makes me feel like I'm smarter than my friends because I Never drink at a meal. But it's not. I mean, it wasn't because I thought it was the right thing. I'm just, I just never drink during a meal. I that my mom always said, oh, you got a drink because it washes it down. I think it went down by itself, I'm not sure. Yeah, so now I feel smarter, I can. I can throw this out at people when they're drinking like crazy while they're eating.

Speaker 1: 25:08

Yeah, I'm a man, I'm amazing. There you go.

Speaker 2: 25:13

Yeah, I'm patting myself on the back. I'm sorry. All right, now what's next?

Speaker 1: 25:18

Okay, so part of the digestive tract is the intestinal tract, right, our testines right. So what we do with the stomach. So, so well, let me just let me just Add a little bit more to that. First, let me just talk about so I talked about removing irritants, right? So we talk about, so what you're gonna basically do. So what, what I talk about with people is reset removing the irritating foods, right?

Speaker 1: 25:42

so we can go through and go okay, alcohol, a caffeine, dairy, you know, artificial sweetener, sugar, all that stuff. So taking all those out first, right. So that automatically is gonna make a big difference. And then we're going to rebuild, replace the nutrient poor foods, non foods, with Better quality foods, foods that are gonna be nutrient dense. They're gonna give you vitamins and minerals and gonna help support the cells and do a digestive, better You're not gonna be having those artificial, the trans fats and all that nasty stuff, right.

Speaker 1: 26:15

So we're gonna replace with what I call also we call it a neg diet natural, live, good quality, right. So replacing with good quality food and as much Raw or lately steamed as we can, right it's, and it's very difficult. So the unassigned note to. So. We talk about poor protein metabolism when people eat meat. Meat requires strong stomach acids. So that's another reason why we wanna make sure that hydrochloric acid is strong enough to metabolize meat. And if sometimes people say, you know and I'm not a big you know, in healing strong people have cancer we kinda say, take meat and dairy out completely. But for those of you that still eat meat meat grass, bed meat, pasture, raised chicken, good quality meat you wanna make sure that you are really making sure you have good, strong stomach acids. And so we can. If we think they're low, like gassing and bloating, gassing and bloating. And if you feel like you eat meat and it just sits there, some people say, I just feel like it just sits there and I say, well, probably it is because it's not being broken down. You can tell it feels very heavy. You feel heavy after you eat it, it's because you're not breaking it down properly. So that's where you wanna make sure that you can maybe add some apple cider vinegar or you can buy hydrochloric acid pills to help increase the stomach acids as well. So that would be good. And then don't dilute those stomach acids and then we're gonna move on to we do. We recovered pear section where you're taking good quality supplements. You can add the HCL, digestive enzymes and probiotics and things like that to really help with absorption and the probiotics. So that'll lead me into the intestinal part. So probiotics are a lot of people know about probiotics and about.

Speaker 1: 27:59

When we talk about good gut bacteria, right away people start talking about oh yes, I eat lots of yogurt. I like, oh, just back up the bus here for a minute. Number one we have to think about where that yogurt, where that milk's coming from. You know what the source is. So a lot of cows are fed grains, they're fed GMO grains, they're fed antibiotics, stuff like that, so that oftentimes can get into the milk and it can be not a good quality source. Bacteria is very sensitive. So the thing with yogurt is most yogurt's on the store shelf. That bacteria is basically gone. It doesn't hold, it doesn't last very long. So when people eat a lot of yogurt I say well, you know what Like and according to a gut expert, brenda Watson, she's got a really good book on gut health she said most store bought yogurt. You'd have to eat a salad bowl full of yogurt to get any benefit from it.

Speaker 2: 29:02

Well, that's a lot.

Speaker 1: 29:04

Yeah. So basically, what I recommend for people is like, take a good quality probiotic and then, of course, the best thing to do is eat fermented foods, right? So what fermented foods? What fermented foods have or that beneficial bacteria? And so an example of fermented foods is something like sauerkraut. But when people see sauerkraut it's there's sauerkrauts out there. I guess what they have in it? White vinegar. That's not fermentation. That's not a fermented sauerkraut. Fermentation is just taking that vegetable salt and water and let the bacteria grow. So adding vinegar is not going to be a fermented food. It's not gonna be. It kills bacteria, actually white vinegar. So if people are looking for sauerkraut, you'll look for one without white vinegar. You can buy pickles without white vinegar that are fermented, so we and you can ferment yourself.

Speaker 1: 29:58

It's not that hard to ferment your own food. I've done my own sauerkraut. It's just cabbage and salt and water, right? You let it sit on the counter and let it do its thing, just does its thing. I make my own kombucha, which is super easy to make. It costs a lot less. I was actually. I was in the health center last week and I was looking at a bottle of kombucha on the shelf 750 mils, 12.99. I was like 12.99. Oh, my goodness, I make it for pennies.

Speaker 1: 30:28

Right you can make kombucha for pennies. I make eight liters at a time, so I have two big things going all the time and my kids come over and they bring their containers and they just fill it up, just leave the house with their kombucha.

Speaker 2: 30:40

We're gonna end it right there for now, with part two of being released next week. Linda has a lot of information to give us and we just wanna give you some time to digest it. Get it, digest it, yeah, never mind.

Speaker 3: 30:53

You've been listening to the I am Healing Strong podcast. A part of the Healing Strong organization. We hope you found encouragement in this episode, as well as the confidence to take control of your healing journey, knowing that God will guide you on this path. Healing Strong is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to connect, support and educate individuals facing cancer and other diseases through strategies that help to rebuild the body, renew the soul and refresh the spirit.

Speaker 3: 31:26

It costs nothing to be a part of a local or online group. You can do that by going to our website at healingstrongorg and finding a group near you or an online group, or start your own, your choice. While you're there, take a look around at all the free resources. Though the resources and groups are free, we encourage you to join our membership program at 25 or $75 a month. This helps us to be able to reach more people with hope and encouragement, and that also comes with some extra perks as well. So check it out. If you enjoyed this podcast, please give us a five star rating, leave an encouraging comment and help us spread the word. We'll see you next week with another story on the I Am Healing Strong podcast.