E15H8: Gut Health, The Microbiome, and What Functional Medicine Has Wrong.

Join us as we strip away the complexity surrounding gut health, with my co-host Justin Gaines, and spotlight the true heroes of your digestive system. Say goodbye to the quick-fix mentality of high-priced supplements and tests, and hello to the unsung virtues of a balanced, whole-foods diet. We're here to cut through the noise and guide you to a realistic, food-first approach that can lead to a more vibrant, energized you. 

Ever wondered why your grandmother's sauerkraut might trump a shelf of probiotic pills? We've got the scoop on why fermented foods could be your ticket to a happier gut, unpacking the science behind probiotics and prebiotics in a way that's easy to digest. Our conversation is seasoned with practical tips on food preparation – think of it as culinary alchemy – that can enhance the beneficial impact of your meals on your microbiome. Get ready to transform the way you think about the food on your plate and its journey through your gut.

Finally, we get personal, sharing stories from the trenches of our own gut health battles and the lifestyle changes that made all the difference. From recognizing the stress-diet-inflammation triangle to harnessing the healing powers of bone broth and digestive bitters, we lay out the groundwork for nurturing your gut back to health. We also set the stage for future discussions on herbal wellness, with a sneak peek at natural supplements that could be a game-changer for your well-being. Join us for this gut-centric voyage – your microbiome will thank you.

Transcript

John Proper: 0:00

Welcome to the Balance Blueprints podcast, where we discuss optimal techniques for health and finances and then break it down to create an individualized and balanced plan. I'm your host, john Proper, here with my co-host, justin Gaines. In this episode, justin and I talk about the popular topic of gut health. We go over what functional mess and doctors may have wronged about it and how to tell if you're experiencing gut issues yourself. Thanks so much for listening and we hope you enjoy. So today, a huge topic in the health world, I think we're getting more towards the tail end of it.

John Proper: 0:30

It kind of blew up a couple of years ago Gut health and functional medicine. So functional medicine was this huge wave of treating people's problems at the core, so not just addressing symptoms but the root cause and I think it had great intentions. People were really trying to shift of obviously not just do curative medicine you got a symptom, take this pill. We want to address the root cause. But functional medicine in itself. I think this may aggravate some people because everyone loves it. They see it as the holy grail. I think it's almost turned into conventional medicine, but we're just using supplements and we're using tons of tests, and so I think we're almost. Everything kind of keeps shifting and I want them to get back to it. But the point, the reason I bring up this, is they really put gut health on the map, which is huge and it's awesome. So we have a lot to talk about there.

Justin Gaines: 1:32

Yeah, no, I definitely, I definitely get what you're talking about there. Even like the biohacking community and a lot of that stuff has turned into. Here's a, here's a mushroom complex pill and here's a. You know, here's a multivitamin, but it's got all these special components to it and all these things that aren't normally in a multivitamin and, yes, definitely become the magic bullet. Take this pill, it'll solve your problems.

John Proper: 1:55

Right and like it's improvement. You know it's. We're looking for root causes, we're looking at lifestyle, so it's definitely improvement from the conventional, but at the same time, we don't want to spend all of our money on lab tests and supplements either. You know it's. It's like let's use the same ideology but try and go about it a little different. And and gut health is one of those topics that I think we can look at a little differently. That's they forget sometimes and it's always shifting, so I think it's moving in this direction.

John Proper: 2:28

The second brain, basically, is what a lot of these people in the space call it and, to break it down, even you know simpler, when people say well, what the heck are you talking about? Gut health? Our bodies are covered in bacteria, viruses Other bugs too, can't think of them but our body, from our skin to our oral microbiome, so it's called the microbiome, our gut microbiome. There's concentrations and spots in our body that have very large amounts, and the gut is one of the ones that has, you know, the biggest impact on our body, so that there's little bacteria kind of in our stomach running the show and telling us signals.

Justin Gaines: 3:04

Yeah, it's always fun to talk about that and be reminded of it, just because you don't want to think about yourself as being covered in bacteria and bugs and parasites and all this stuff. That's weird. That's what makes the world go around right Like it takes. It takes all of these things in order for it to balance out and work properly, but we don't want to think about it because it sounds like you're dirty, even though it's not necessary.

John Proper: 3:29

I know, I think one of my yeah, one of my classes in college. My teacher said I gotta remember, but I think it's five. My teacher said if you got rid of all the bacteria on your body in and outside, you'd be five pounds lighter or something. Yeah, because there's more bacteria cells than human cells, I think, on in the human. So it's, it's an insane amount. That's wow. Yeah, that's, that's hard to wrap your head around.

John Proper: 3:57

I know, because that's why it's like obviously we're human. But it's funny because people bring up the question well, are we really, are we human, or are we because without them we wouldn't survive? You know, we need these little guys and we'll get into why and what they do and stuff. Justin, just did a little look. That's what it was probably when I was in class, but they've updated it. So I think they said you can correct me, but you said it's that's what they did, say it was one to 3% of body weight, but now it's 0.3%.

Justin Gaines: 4:26

Correct. Yes, used to be one to 3%, now it's 0.3%, about 0.3%.

John Proper: 4:32

But either way. So we were looking at that and Justin calculated it for 180 pound individual. It was still what a half a pound of bacteria?

Justin Gaines: 4:39

A little over half a pound of bacteria, which is still pretty significant. I mean you talk about bacteria. I mean that's, that's significant.

John Proper: 4:47

I know, when you talk you can't even see that. You know what I mean. So you can't even see them. And you have a half a pound of them.

Justin Gaines: 4:54

Well, I'm just thinking of like you take those probiotics. You know active live probiotics and you have those little tablets. They're tiny and they weigh, you know, less than a gram. A gram and you're talking about half a pound. I mean, that's that's significant, that's that's a lot.

John Proper: 5:14

Yeah. So, needless to say, these little bacteria, these bugs they call them, are very important and it is crazy, crazy to think about. And Justin, you actually brought up a good thing earlier too that it kind of gives you like the he heavies the thing about, like yeah, you're covered in that bacteria head to toe. And I think that's a great segue of because what I was talking about earlier a lot of people in the health space or functional medicine space really really focus on like the gut is the controller. But I've seen more data and kind of newer research showing that the environment might be a bigger control. So, like, what I mean by that is, I guess this isn't really the functional medicine space, but you'll see so many things pushed for like sterile environments Like we live in. You know really sterile houses. Antibacterial soap, antibacterial wipes, lice all kills 99.9% bacteria. You know all this crazy stuff that I'll get into it, but you kind of laugh at that stuff when I've seen some of this other research.

John Proper: 6:18

In some ways, these other people live like out in nature because you're doing a real disservice and a real harm To your body and the bacteria on your body, because these guys protect you. Like, don't get me wrong. You can get an Inbalance of bacteria. We want the right balances, the ones that help us. But sometimes those antibacterial products actually kill the good ones and then create and it's almost like they cleared out a house. Now you have an empty house and the bad ones can almost come in easier. You know so those good ones, you want them there because then there's less space for the bad ones to come in. They can fight off the bad ones. So it's just funny because, yeah, I think, especially in the Western world, we're so used to like bacteria is terrible and I box, we need them like oh, clean your hands, clean everything, clean.

Justin Gaines: 7:06

I mean especially marketing messages to get pushed to sell products.

John Proper: 7:09

Yeah, exactly, and it's. It sounds great, because who wants to be dirty? But it's not like these guys are dirty. But playing in the soil dirt you know, is actually probably way better than right, and that so well it's crazy is like growing up on a farm.

Justin Gaines: 7:22

We I mean we hardly ever, we being, you know, fellow farmers or also, just you know, family members hardly ever got sick. But then you'd go to school and you know people would be going through their normal cycles of like hacking off along in the Middle of the winter and all this sort of stuff of just you know, your normal normal sickness windows. And If I got sick once a year it was like crazy and like this. We always used to say it's like oh, we're outdoors, we're constantly.

Justin Gaines: 7:50

You know, we're constantly out there doing stuff and you know when you're working on a farm and you have a burger for lunch, you know you're not going to wash your hands Typically brushing them off on your pants and and just eating it. So you're definitely getting a lot more bacteria into your system by doing that. It's interesting that now the research is coming out and suggesting that that potentially has a large impact on your, your body as a whole, not just your immune system, but your body as a whole.

John Proper: 8:18

Yeah, yeah, and so I guess so I can get specific into it. So there's a one there, one researcher, who does got health and We'll have to go into it a lot more in another episode, but the general you know information about his research is he followed tribes in Africa, a couple different ones. He lived with them for months and Some of the stuff when you watch it is insane that like they're doing, like you know their food, their dinner table is the ground. They wash their hand in the same water that monkeys pooped in and they drink from that water and you know they're eating a lot of like what did they when they freshly kill an animal? Some of the stuff was wild, so it's crazy people here, but I think they'll eat the intestine where some of the feces was and things that obviously I'm not not saying go do this. It's, it's insane.

John Proper: 9:11

But we would also get sick. Actually that's an important thing because we weren't born into that environment. We don't have that microbiome. They have, but they have one of the best quote-unquote on paper microbiomes because of the sheer, sheer variety and amount of bacteria they come in Contact with and that's actually what protects them. So and something that might normally make us sick and that's why I think it's even crazier to note like you don't want to eat undercooked raw meat. 24 setter. You know, if you eat a piece of undercooked meat by accident, you should be fine.

John Proper: 9:48

But I think that's one of the things where in today's Western world, where we don't have a lot of diverse microbiomes, diverse bacteria, things like oh, undercooked meat once really hurt us because we don't have the built-up nice bacteria that actually protect us from that.

John Proper: 10:05

And undercooked meat, just a simple example. There's a million I'm not promoting that are talking about it in any way, but that's something they did and you see them being protected because of their environment, the amount of animals they come in contact with. They actually showed that the drinking water, I think, was the area where they picked up the most bacteria because other animals came to drink from it. So bacteria from the animals went in the water and they put it's like a whole sharing environment. So you only get that by being outside. So I think the newer research is showing being in nature and being outside and exposed to more areas there's actually what's really causing a much stronger, more resilient microbiome than you know some of some of what's previously thought. We'll go into what's previously thought too Of, because those are the easy things to do day to day.

Justin Gaines: 10:51

Right right.

John Proper: 10:52

Well.

Justin Gaines: 10:52

I'm sanitizing the counters, constantly wiping everything down.

John Proper: 10:56

Yeah.

Justin Gaines: 10:56

Yeah, which not to say that you shouldn't do that, but it's just saying it too much of anything is a bad thing.

John Proper: 11:02

Definitely, definitely. So that's just a little bit of why I think there's some missing pieces in the microbiome talk and If you're interested in it, you can look more into that. But I think environment, your light, plays a bigger role in it. Like getting natural sunlight a lot more than previously thought. But we'll go into like the basics here too of okay, you know you're new to this, what's, what's it mean to me? So, like we talked to pull it into, like back to the holistic nutrition piece.

Justin Gaines: 11:30

I mean, I know I kind of briefly brought it up, but Are you suggesting that taking a probiotic or a prebiotic is Better than doing nothing, or should you just be other foods in your diet that you can do that? I know yogurt typically has a very high ability to populate that biome. You know what are some ways that, because we live in this hyper sanitized world, that we can adjust this and start to bring back that microbiome? Yeah, yeah great question.

John Proper: 11:57

Great question, starting with probiotics. So I'm always going to do a food first approach, no matter what, and we've gone over maybe we haven't, we'll probably do an episode on this Supplements I like to use them as tools, as supplements, what their name implies, but really you should be getting everything from food. Now. Probiotics, though, from the research I've seen, are really one of the last ones I would probably take. So I would really start with food first approach. Just because there's very few probiotics on the market that actually get the probiotics in the pill to the spot they need to go. They either get destroyed in the stomach acid because they're not encapsulated in a proper pill and they end up kind of just being an expensive, you know, waste of money versus starting with food first. Or, like we talked about nature. So going outside, kind of playing in the dirt, that's a good one. But then foods would be, you know, anything fermented. Yogurt is a great one, that's yogurt and kefir. Those usually are the ones that have great effects on people, help build the gut. Sauerkraut that's just the most common, but really they ferment any vegetables, any type of cabbage, carrots. You can find those in stores pretty easy. Kombucha is another, you know very kind of trendy one but that does have tons of probiotics in it. Fermented tea what else are we thinking here? I think those are the main ones that really come from the store and you know all those are doing like you said.

John Proper: 13:42

You said pro and prebiotics. The probiotics are really just putting the bugs already in the food into your stomach, but the prebiotics are like more food for them. So starchy foods, they say one of the best prebiotics and these can give people problems. We'll go into that like it gives you bloating. But if you're in a good state, good prebiotics are like you cook potatoes, you cool them. It's kind of a weird thing, but you cook, cool them and then reheat them later. It actually builds resistance starch in foods. So that actually gives it more of a resistance starch is more food for your bacteria than it is for you. So when you cool the food, it builds it. I think green bananas have a lot to like plantains, but yeah, those are more prebiotic foods that feed the gut bacteria.

Justin Gaines: 14:26

I never want to thought that cooking a food, cooling it and then reheating it would have a you know, is that weird impact on it. You know, it's like you hear about food, you cook it and that could destroy the nutrients. You don't ever hear about food. You cook it, cool it and then reheat it and that actually does something else to it.

John Proper: 14:43

I know it goes on topic of our last episode, where we're talking about plant resamble foods, like cooking spinach and adding other nutrients to it, like it actually helps them, and it's so weird. I mean I don't even know how someone finds that out of. They test potatoes right after they cook and they test potatoes cool in the fridge for a week. But yeah, it builds those resistance starch that feeds your microbiome. The other thing that's important to note is, I think a lot of functional mess and practitioners or people in the space will also just say okay, we have gut problems.

John Proper: 15:15

Let's throw in this probiotic Now. The problem there, and I'll even lump them together. Let's throw in this probiotic pill or foods that have probiotics in them. The problem with that? You can't have good bacteria growing in your gut if your gut is in inflamed, stressful state. If you throw new beneficial things at it like probiotics, probiotic foods, it may help a little, but if you have bad bugs in there or viruses or other things, it's not going to do a lot. It's kind of like using a sprinkler if your house is on fire. It's going to do something, but you really need to fix the environment of your gut before you start introducing these beneficial foods, and that's kind of where we can get into things you need to take away or heal.

Justin Gaines: 16:01

I was going to say go down that path. What?

John Proper: 16:04

does that?

Justin Gaines: 16:05

look like, because I've always thought yeah, when I've been feeling off, irregular or whatever, I'll take a probiotic and a probiotic as a typically it's a pro and a free in the same capsule, same time. I'm definitely guilty of being that. You know this as being that supplement guy who's more than happy to take a supplement and take that easy road out. But that's interesting.

Justin Gaines: 16:30

So you're saying that if you're feeling that way, you feel like you have a gut issue, that's not the most effective way to do it, so what would be? What should I be doing instead?

John Proper: 16:40

Yeah, and I'll differentiate two people here because I'm talking from experience of I had a very inflamed gut where as soon as I ate a meal, like two bites in very bloated, two serious gut problems versus someone that may, like you said, you feel off. So I think this is helpful for both people. But for someone in my situation or anyone feeling extreme gut discomfort and just to go quickly over that tons of bloating you shouldn't be super bloated after eating, bloating after certain foods garlic, onions, vegetables, stomach pain, irregular bathroom schedule, things like that versus just someone off. So this is a lot more important for that. But what it looks like is a lot of things can throw off our gut we talked about earlier. I said it's the second brain, first biggest one in my opinion I think the one that gets probably overlooked stress. So the vagus nerve is a nerve that literally connects from your gut to your brain. Signals go both ways. It's not a one-way street. So if you're stressed in the head sounds funny to say, but if you're having mental stress, it talks to the gut and it creates inflammation in the gut and then you may hear this term a lot leaky gut. Leaky gut is just when there's little micro tears and things get into your system that shouldn't. So I know we're going off on a lot of tangents, but just to say the leaky gut that's just your gut has a lining. When you eat food it really doesn't actually ever enter your body. Technically there's a barrier that allows certain nutrients in and keeps other things out. But when you have leaky gut there's little tears in it, that kind of let things in that shouldn't. And that's when a lot of people have problems. So mental stress can do that.

John Proper: 18:32

A poor diet, standard American diet, a lot of bad junk food, a lot of sugar, and so what we want to do to get back on topic is we want to build a stronger, healthier environment for these bacteria to live in. So we want to get rid of junk food, we want to help our stress levels, we want to get sunshine, we want to go outside, we want to get adequate sleep, the normal things, that kind of cure everything, because they're hard to do, but they're not complicated things, they're just hard to do consistently. So those things, we want to prioritize those, and then we really want to cut out foods that might be irritating. So we went over a little bit of this last time. But certain vegetables, if people have SIBO, if they have other gut issues, whether it's bacteria or virus or fungal infections.

John Proper: 19:31

We want to cut out foods that are giving problems. It's only going to be temporary. But if you eat onions and they bloat you and you hear well, onions and garlic, they're the healthiest food for me in the world and you keep forcing them. They're not at the moment because they're fermenting in your gut and causing problems. So you want to cut out those foods. So be conscious of when you eat. How does my gut feel? And then we want to incorporate things like bone broth. So bone broth is, I think, the simplest healer. That is described to me that when you drink bone broth, the glycine in it, the amino acid, kind of coats the stomach. That's what the gut lining is made out of, so it kind of repairs it. And if you drink real bone broth it's sticky, liquidy, so that's going to help. Collagen Digestive bitters are kind of an aid. So if you acidic things like vinegars, if you eat those with certain vegetables and foods, so, yeah, what I'm hearing there is stress management all the way around.

Justin Gaines: 20:31

So, mental stress, sleep stress. Make sure you're on a good sleep pattern. Food, you know? Do an elimination diet, things that are bothering you.

John Proper: 20:39

Don't consume those for now, even if they are superfood.

Justin Gaines: 20:43

They're really good for you on paper right now. If they're bothering you, stay away from them until you can slowly start to introduce them back in. But the one thing that I guess I get caught up on is so you say eliminate junk food. But like what do you mean by that? Do you mean high carb foods? Do you mean you know bad fats? Are you talking like empty calories? Like what when?

John Proper: 21:03

you say junk food.

Justin Gaines: 21:04

I feel like it's a relative term, right? So? There's you know, if you're constantly eating McDonald's, you know some TV dinners might not be as junky as constantly eating McDonald's.

John Proper: 21:18

You're like there's a slagger.

Justin Gaines: 21:19

there's this junk food here, so, like, what should be pulling at? Well, what is when you say junk food, what are you thinking of? What are you picturing in your mind, and what should we be staying away from? Like, give me three or four that like we should just definitely not be consuming if we're trying to refill our gut.

John Proper: 21:35

Yeah, these days I think of junk food as anything made in a lab which sounds crazy but like if it wasn't made outside it's junk food. So but to kind of really narrow it down, number one would be any packaged really high sugary food Like that's going to harm the gut and that's going to feed bad bacteria. You know I don't like to say all sugars bad. A lot of people do that. I eat plenty of carbs, but the processed sugar that comes from zebra cakes, fudge brownies, anything in a box out, like if you want to heal, get rid of it.

John Proper: 22:11

Number two would be probably foods that cause inflammation. So, like inflammatory oils, I would just try and opt for better oils. We know the seed oils are usually what cause problems for people canola, rapeseed, safflower, all that. So just make the easy switch to an olive oil. And actually something that I really like to push that helps me is coconut oil is a great oil if you're having gut problems, because it's obviously a healthy oil to eat but it has antibacterial and antiviral properties. So it's good to consume that because it helps the gut.

Justin Gaines: 22:48

So that's kind of an easy thing If you're having gut problems, like, just use that oil, because it's kind of a double whammy, and being that it's antibacterial, that's not going to kill the good bacteria or it's not going to work, because, obviously, when we've already talked about how there's good and bad, does antibacterial mean anti all bacteria or does it just somehow work really well with the good bacteria and eliminate the bad?

John Proper: 23:10

Right, so we'll have to look into it more by. Imagine it's the type of bacteria, just like how sugar feeds certain bacteria. Like sugar is known to feed the bad bacteria in your gut. I imagine the coconut oil is known to not create a great environment for those bad bacteria Because obviously all bacteria are different. There's different strands. You'll see that in probiotics. So I imagine that that oil affects the bacteria.

Justin Gaines: 23:37

It'll probably work similar to like our saliva, because our saliva is antibacterial as well.

John Proper: 23:40

Right.

Justin Gaines: 23:41

You have that disgusting feeling in your mouth when you wake up, and that's because you haven't been producing saliva, because otherwise you choke on it. Obviously, your saliva is not the bacteria in your stomach either, so it's got to be antibacterial in that capacity, but for a sake of time.

Justin Gaines: 23:57

One other question to drive us home, I think, is obviously I brought up the fact that when I'm feeling it regular, we've talked in our personal lives about we know when we're feeling it regular. I've heard that acne on your back is one of the ways that you can tell.

John Proper: 24:14

But what are?

Justin Gaines: 24:14

other ways that people can self-identify if they've never thought about it or haven't gone down this health pass of like oh, my gut actually doesn't feel well, because for some people and even myself, before I went down heavily down the health pass, I didn't realize how bad my gut felt because that was normal. So what are some key indicators or leading indicators of improper gut balance and just feeling? It off, or how do you know that you're off?

John Proper: 24:45

Yeah, yeah, that's a good one because they can be a little sneakier. So we'll start with the one you brought up. There's like we talked about the microbiome in our gut. There's a microbiome on our skin, so our skin's covered in bacteria. If we have an imbalance of the wrong bacteria on our skin, that's going to cause issues and this can be looked up. There's like Chinese medicine. There's charts that show where bacteria on the body means, maybe where the problem is in the body. Not saying that's foolproof, but it's usually pretty accurate and you'll see that bacteria usually like on the chin, is SIBO related, so small intestinal bacteria, overgrowth Bacteria. In other areas will be yeast related, so like yeast and overgrowth or yeast infections. So that's kind of a cool way to see if I'm having a lot of acne. I don't think you just hit the unlucky lottery, or it's genetic or it's this. There's something off that the gut is causing problems. Your bacteria on your body is not proper Tons of acne. That's the first one. Definitely you can look up again Chinese medicine acne diagram.

Justin Gaines: 26:02

I'm going to look that up because I'm thinking of the acupressure foot massage, a Thai foot massage where they know different pressure points in your foot. I'm thinking they probably have. Based on what you're saying, it sounds like it's something similar to that.

John Proper: 26:16

Very, very. The Chinese medicine is pretty spot on with a lot of things. It's awesome that's a good chart to see different spots in the face, on the back, on the body, acne being a big one of my bacteria, my microbiomes. They're off on my skin and my gut, in my mouth. It's not usually just off in one spot because everything is connected. That being one, then there's a lot of sneaky ones.

John Proper: 26:42

Like you said, brain fog is a big one. A lot of people don't realize I'm feeling cloudy, I'm not able to focus. Well. We talked about the guts of the second brain. If you're eating junk food, if you're stressed, if your gut's inflamed, your brain's going to be inflamed. You're going to feel it Brain fog. Another big thing is if your system's moving really well, if you're dialed in, your bowel movement really should be in the morning time. Usually your body detoxifies at night, does a lot of those things. You get rid of a lot of that in the morning. Now it depends on a lot of people's eating schedule too If they eat at different times. If someone eats really only late into the night, it might throw it off If you're eating. If you're a normal human being eating three meals a day. Generally, we can make it even simpler. You should be going to the bathroom around the same time each day. That's important.

Justin Gaines: 27:37

Consistency, consistency there, those signs, I think those are the big ones that I had the back knee, the brain fog. The brain fog was a big one. I've done some stuff I know we talked about when I did that diatomaceous earth gut cleanse that I felt like we tried researching it. There's hardly any scientific research that suggests that it would work. It's very small sample sizes. It's not something that you need to really hang your hat on.

Justin Gaines: 28:13

One I had huge that first day I took way too much. In that I remember telling you that I took way too much.

John Proper: 28:20

I was so bloated, everything that I read that when I was going into.

Justin Gaines: 28:24

It was that that's diol. It's not bacterial, it was viral. No, it was saying that there was parasite, parasitic diol, parasitic diol, increase in the nitrogen in your bloodstream and all this stuff that would cause you to bloat like that.

Justin Gaines: 28:39

I didn't think it was going to work. I was like, oh, I can take the maximum amount that they say to take. Oh my gosh, I didn't sleep that first night and the second night into the first week, my brain fog was completely lifted Again. I didn't realize that I even had the brain fog. I thought I was dioled in most of the time. Then when it was gone, it was crazy, absolutely.

John Proper: 29:00

Right, you don't realize how bad you feel until you feel good. This whole episode was a super brief overview because, like you said, that supplement, there's oil of oregano, there's tons of herbs We'll go into, I'm sure, in future episodes, exact protocols and a lot easier ways of like okay, you have this issue, this is how we can tackle it. There's actually way more than I thought we'd have. We'll have a lot more to go into, for sure. Thanks for listening to our podcast.

Justin Gaines: 29:29

We hope this helps you on your balance freedom journey.

John Proper: 29:31

Please share your thoughts in the comments section below. Until next time, stay balanced.