The Q&A Files
The Q&A Files drops A Wellness Explosion
💥 BOOM! Attention Wellness Warriors. The game changer you have been waiting for is finally here. Say hello to “The Q&A Files,” where wellness meets revolution and your questions lead to new discoveries. Spearheaded by Trisha Jamison, your host, a Board Certified Functional Nutritionist. Cohost Dr. Jeff Jamison, a Board Certified Family Physician, and featured guest, Tony Overbay, a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist. This podcast blends three diverse perspectives to tackle your questions on health, nutrition, medicine, mental wellness, and relationships. Dive into a world of expert insights and actionable advice, all sparked by your curiosity. Tune in, ignite your wellness journey, and join the Wellness Warrior community.
The Q&A Files
7. Getting In Tune with Your Gut Health, Mindful Mind Mending and Intro to Joint Healing
Witness the remarkable interplay of our body's systems as we embark on a journey through health and wellness with the Jamisons and Tony Overbay. This episode is a treasure trove, from sharing the wonders of stem cell rejuvenation and its profound effects on shoulder mobility to Tony's candid reflections on how mindfulness and meditation practices have grounded him during life's storms. Expect to be inspired by stories of small personal triumphs and medical milestones that emphasize the beauty of daily wins in nurturing a positive lifestyle.
Drift along with us as we navigate the tranquil waters of the vagus nerve and its role as the body's peacekeeper, and then anchor in the bustling metropolis of gut health, where trillions of microbes thrive. We dissect the complexities of digestive wellness, probiotics, and the symphony of nutrients that our bodies require. Our conversation paints a vivid picture of your gut as a thriving city, complete with construction crews (lean proteins) and power supplies (healthy fats), all playing their part in creating a harmonious environment for physical and emotional health.
Finally, join us as we unravel the threads connecting mental health to gut health, illuminating how hydration and nutrition are the unsung heroes of emotional stability. We explore the gut-brain axis with its neurotransmitter messengers and even peek into groundbreaking treatments like fecal transplants. This episode promises to enhance your understanding of health as a holistic tapestry, interwoven with the physical, mental, and emotional strands of our being, emphasizing the necessity of integrated care for the whole person.
Hello and welcome to the Q&A Files, the ultimate health and wellness playground. I'm your host, tricia Jamison, a board certified functional nutritionist and lifestyle practitioner, ready to lead you through a world of health discoveries. Here we dive into tapestry of disease prevention, to nutrition, exercise, mental health and building strong relationships, all spiced with diverse perspectives. It's not just a podcast, it's a celebration of health, packed with insights and a twist of fun. Welcome aboard the Q&A Files, where your questions ignite our vibrant discussions and lead to a brighter you.
Speaker 1:Hello everyone, and welcome back to the Q&A Files. I'm your host, tricia Jamison, excited to explore another intriguing topic and question with you today. Joining me are my co-host, dr Jeff Jamison, our family physician, and he has a great talent for dad jokes and Tony Overbay, a skilled marriage therapist with deep insights into entangling our emotional and mental landscapes. So before we dive into today's discussion, I want to start off with something new, something a little different. This is what I usually do with my coaching calls. When I first start my sessions, I start with celebrations, and the reason I like to start with our wins is because we do a really nice job of not focusing on the things that we do well.
Speaker 2:She just did air quotes, by the way.
Speaker 1:Yes, I did air quotes. When we can start to focus on more of the things that we're doing well in our celebrations, then it kind of changes our outlook on our life. So today I'd like to ask the two of you what are some celebrations that you have?
Speaker 2:Well, I'll go first on that. I have been doing in my career a little bit of changing in the direction of just standard family medicine and I've started doing joint rejuvenation for people that have knees and hips and shoulders that are just not working right but yet they don't want to do surgery. And I've been doing some of those and most recently I had a person that I did both his shoulders with a stem cell injection into those shoulders and he came back a month later and I asked him how he's doing and he said shoulder problems. I don't have any shoulder problems and he raised his arms above his head and he twisted him around like there was nothing and it was such a great and gratifying thing to see the results of his healing using his own cells. It was just awesome.
Speaker 3:Wow.
Speaker 1:I love that and that's becoming a really prominent piece of Jeff's work right now is doing stem cell rejuvenation and it's been helping so many people. My mom was the first one that he actually did her knee and she's still doing great, so that's pretty exciting, and that was six years ago, so that's pretty cool. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Anyway, so that's a celebration for me.
Speaker 1:All right, Tony.
Speaker 3:I know that this is not the direction we want to go in the podcast. I just want to ask Dr Jeff, how does that even work? You know that's it's pretty fascinating.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, it is very fascinating. Basically, it's taking your body's own normal healing cells that are produced in the bone marrow, extracting them from the bone marrow during a process that is a little bit uncomfortable, but not painful, because we do numbing medicine, et cetera and then using that to first you concentrate those stem cells so that you have a whole bunch of them in a small volume, and then you place them exactly where the person needs them their shoulder, their knee, what have you? And by doing that you've got two different types of healing. The first type is direct healing, done by those stem cells that can turn into any cell that the body needs it to turn into, which is amazing. So it could be bone, it can be cartilage, it could be tendon.
Speaker 3:That's also like a meniscus tear, for example. Is it, is it going to? What would it do there?
Speaker 2:It can fix a meniscus tear as long as it's not torn away, oh gotcha. But it can weld it back down and it can cover it over with a new layer of cells. The other thing that it does is it brings what's called chemotactic factors, which are chemical factors in the body's serum makeup or the clear part of the bloodstream that's also in concentration in the bone marrow, and it takes those chemical factors which, when they're placed in an area, it draws other healing cells to it. So you get direct healing and indirect healing with this and it usually works so well. So it's really fun. So good question. Thank you. Hope that wasn't too complicated but also made sense.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, we actually have two daughters that are working with them. One helps spin the cells and the other one takes a very prominent role in getting patients to Jeff.
Speaker 2:So it's been pretty cool to have the family involved. Yes, and she does a wonderful job of answering people's questions in a very good, easy to understand way, because it's kind of a complicated process and it's a complicated thing that the body does in order to heal the area. So she's got a really good handle on it. And then the other daughter, of course, is very involved in the actual production of the stem cells after we withdraw them from the bone marrow.
Speaker 1:Wow, that's impressive. Yeah, she's going to start in the OR here pretty soon as well. Wow, she's doing good things. Yeah, all right.
Speaker 3:Tony. So I have one that I think is just fascinating and it is the. I preach mindfulness and meditation on a regular basis. I thought I was this Zen master and then I then found a couple of different apps that I've been using and then I had a situation recently where I spilled all over my computer and keyboard and I was just noticing and I was just just checking that out, and it was so wild because I really felt like I almost couldn't get myself elevated and I just it was so interesting to see that that was just. It was my visceral or gut reaction was just to notice and just that is a thing that is happening.
Speaker 3:And I think that that's the part where, when people would say those things before I was entering this Zen hippie phase, I just thought I don't believe it and I just I talk so much in the mental health world of we don't know what we don't know, and it's really easy to say, well, yeah, but that probably wouldn't be my experience, but that's because we haven't tried it, and so so often we get really defensive of somebody suggesting something because we don't know that that would work for us or we that might mean that we're going to have to put in some effort, or and it's just the last probably year a whole different world has opened up, as, as you do start to just kind of be a little bit more present, not be as reactionary, try to be a little more emotionally consistent. So that was just a fascinating one. And I still do wonder, though, if my computer would have gone up in flames. I don't know if I would have noticed the crackle or of the fire and notice the smoke that billowing through my office, or you know. So maybe that would have still pushed a button or two, but but I, and I recorded.
Speaker 3:It was on a podcast recording, where then I said I'll be right back, I think I'll clean this up, and it was just very fascinating. So that that was a, that was a personal victory. Mindfulness for the win. It's, it's wild when it gets to that point where it just is. See, I sound like a hippie right there.
Speaker 1:Oh, you definitely sound like a hippie.
Speaker 2:Thank you. I like that, though, because sometimes we get so caught up in the moment of issues that we forget to be okay with it. Just recognize that we're. You know it doesn't change our lives to have something spill or even a person that is really mean to us. It doesn't change our value and learning to respect ourselves and look at that more than looking at what other people think is a lifelong journey of doing, but it's very helpful.
Speaker 1:I mean, that's what great introspection that you just allowed yourself to just kind of zero in on being observant.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I'm feeling right now what's really happening as you're watching this spill. It's just your response and not overreacting and freaking out.
Speaker 3:I told somebody about it and then they were saying, oh man, well, I would never put my drink on the table. And I just thought, oh, that sounds great for you, that's awesome.
Speaker 2:Thank you for sharing that. Not judgmental at all.
Speaker 3:No, exactly right. Yeah, thank you for sharing that. Now I put three drinks on, so I guess I am a little more immature. So I'm like, oh, you won't. Well, I put a whole refrigerator full of drinks now on here. So I guess maybe I'm not quite as involved as I think I am.
Speaker 1:That kind of goes a little bit into what we're going to talk about Now a couple of weeks ago.
Speaker 2:Hold on, hold on. You didn't do a celebration. Oh, what's mine?
Speaker 1:Mine is that I actually slept pretty well last night. I struggle sleeping and I get hot, really hot, through the night, and so I actually slept pretty well last night and feel good. Now that's a huge celebration.
Speaker 2:We'll have another podcast on menopause someday in the future.
Speaker 3:Or is there a manopause?
Speaker 2:Is that a thing, I think, that starts at birth?
Speaker 1:Can you just say that.
Speaker 2:Yes, we call it mental pause, sometimes too.
Speaker 1:Right mental pause. Oh, I'm so sorry. A couple of weeks ago we had a question from Shelby that I wanted to address, and her question is she asks how does gut health impact overall wellness and what foods are best for maintaining a healthy gut? And so how?
Speaker 1:I'd like to break this up I think this could be really fascinating is I'm going to explore gut health and what that looks like, and I kind of have a fun way that I do this with my clients. That may be a little more helpful to remember how your gut works and all the different things that are going on inside there. But I'd like to have, Jeff, there's something called the vagus nerve that connects the brain and the gut together and it's like this super highway system and you've got one super highway that goes from the brain to the gut and you've got four super highways going up from the gut to the brain. We know that there's a huge connection and I'd like Tony to kind of go into, when you have either a healthy gut or a unhealthy gut, what happens to the brain and serotonin levels and that kind of thing, and what's what dynamics happen in our bodies in regards to that. How does that sound?
Speaker 2:Sounds interesting, good for that. So the one thing I want to make sure we remember to do is, if any of us, but probably me, especially if I get too detailed or too- hard to understand.
Speaker 2:Stop me and help me remind me to define it, because sometimes I don't know what other people don't know, and that doesn't mean they're stupid. It just means they've studied and done things differently than I have, and so I want to make sure that I maintain good communication throughout my part of this, and I have a tendency to kind of go overboard a little bit. So let's just, I want to stay on track.
Speaker 1:Sounds good, we'll keep you there.
Speaker 2:Thank you. So, first of all, the vagus nerve. What is the vagus nerve? The vagus nerve is a cranial nerve. We have 12 pairs of cranial nerves that come straight out of the brain.
Speaker 2:Now, that is different from the major spinal nerve that comes out of the brain, at the back of the brain, and goes down the spine and through the, you know, through the vertebrae and all the way down to the very end, down towards the sacrum, which is the basically the buttocks area. So there's this array of nerves that control things directly to the brain. You know, one of them is the olfactory nerve, which goes to the smell center, one is the optic nerve, goes to vision, and so on. So there's many, there's 12 of them, and number 10 is the vagus nerve. The vagus nerve goes all the way from the brain down into the gut and multiple branches in multiple different areas as it goes down.
Speaker 2:Now, the vagus nerve, though, is the major portion of what's called the parasympathetic nervous system. So many people have heard of the fight or flight response, which is a sympathetic nervous system response, and the vagus nerve is the major portion of the parasympathetic nervous system, which we also call the feed and breed system, and we're just going to concentrate on the portion of digestion, but the the couple of things that you should know when things get overwhelmed. If your vagus nerve is overwhelmed, that can cause increased heart rate. It can cause increased irritability and reflexes. It can make you sneeze, cough, vomit, things like that. When you have over simulation it can even make you pass out. So it's it has a lot of power.
Speaker 1:It also reduces inflammation, which is really important as well.
Speaker 2:Or it can if you allow it to be in good health. Exactly Right. So supplying sensation to the stomach, the digestive tract, all of that, the esophagus, et cetera. So anytime you feel anything that you swallow, anytime you feel a stomach ache, anytime you have acid reflux, all of those things are transmitted to the brain through the vagus nerve. It plays a small role in your taste. It also is important in stimulating the muscles of your swallowing mechanism. It increases heart rate, decreases your heart rate as well If you're nice and relaxed. It can stimulate involuntary contractions of the digestive tract, which means that you don't have to think about digesting and food moves through your system without any help from you to think about it.
Speaker 2:Sometimes we wish we could. There are times that I wish I could move things through slower. Sometimes I'd like to move things through faster, but we have no control and that is all done through the vagus nerve. Vagus nerve damage can cause problems in speaking, changing your voice, your gag reflex may be gone, slow or fast heart rate and of course, the most fun you can have is nausea and vomiting. So abdominal bloating and pain are other things that can happen with abnormal function of the vagus nerve. So there's a short synopsis of what the vagus nerve does through the parasympathetic nervous system.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so that was so far.
Speaker 2:Okay, good.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you did great. I think that everyone could understand that and if not, please ask more questions about that specifically and we would love to answer them. So now, focusing on gut health, a Lot of times people think that gut health is your stomach, but gut health actually starts from the esophagus and it goes from the esophagus. It's like this long tube goes to the esophagus, the stomach, the small intestine and the large intestine, so it just is like this long tube and then, along the way, all these amazing things are happening, and so I want you to kind of think about this as a bustling city like this little metropolis, and you know.
Speaker 2:It's also interesting to note that anything that's in the gut, from the mouth to the end of the gut, is still considered from a medical perspective as outside the body, right?
Speaker 1:Oh, I know this, it's just if you think of a donut, it's kind of like though there's a hole of the donut. It kind of goes all the way through. That is what they represent is the outside of the donut, is the body, and the inside is like that big long tube that just goes all the way through.
Speaker 3:Interesting.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thank you for sharing that. So I want you to think about how, in this little metropolis, you've got this long tube what we just kind of talked about, this like donut side thing it's bustling with trillions of microbial residents, just all these different pieces that we're going to talk about real quickly and how it Impacts our health and how each one has a crucial role in Digesting our food, in boosting our immune system and communicating with our brain, and which Tony's going to talk about here shortly. So the first one are probiotics. So I get a lot of questions about probiotics and the thing about probiotics. They're like the welcoming community and they are much like a robust neighborhoods. They are kind of on the watch, but they also are welcoming everyone to come into our city, and I get lots of questions about what's the best probiotic. Well, the thing is, every body is different and so there's not just one size fits all and so like if you have IBS or Something which means irritable bowel syndrome.
Speaker 1:You're double bowel syndrome. Correct, I was just gonna say that you would want to take a different probiotic for something like that, compared to if you were on a biotic and you're having diarrhea.
Speaker 2:Well, this is really interesting, because I tell people that really there's no difference between one or the other, so I don't give them a particular one. So this is interesting for me, thank you.
Speaker 1:There's different Microbials in each of the probiotics that are going to be beneficial in different instances. It's really important because there may be some that will increase your diarrhea and make things worse, and there's gonna be others that will improve it, and so it's gonna be really important to make sure that you check with your doctor to Focus on what Probiotic is gonna be best for your situation.
Speaker 1:Oh cuz, this doctor doesn't know which one it is so you're gonna have to help me out, yet Okay, well, we'll go into that in just a minute, but I want to have to tell you treasure too.
Speaker 3:What I like about this is I was not a probiotic guy and I've had tummy troubles as I've probably said since I was a kid Still calling it tummy troubles for a long time and I finally, yeah, I got on a probiotic and it really did an amazing job. And then I I wanted a cheaper one and it was a completely different strain and and I really did experience that where it was like wait a minute, okay, now what happened? And so now I mean I've got it my desk right now and I just googled it to see which you know, lactobactilius Raminosis or something right. And then the other ones had these other ones, you know, and so I'm with you on this.
Speaker 1:Well, and another part that's really important is you want to increase them gradually, because if you were to just take something like this, oh my gosh, it's like you just opened the Pandora's box to just go insane, and so you want to just gently take some of these things. But the really the best part about this is Focusing on foods. There's some great foods out there that are always going to. You know. There's supplements that could be really really helpful, but they're helpful when you're not incorporating the right kinds of foods in your diets. That's why that's important. So some of the probiotics that are going to be really welcoming are yogurts, kiefer, which is a sort of a yogurt, sauerkraut. All of these different kinds of probiotics are going to be essential for helping your body maintain and continue to grow that flora and and so now I'm going to go into prebiotics, because a prebiotic is like the city's infrastructure and it is what helps promote the healthy digestive system and it also influences the mood. We're going to kind of get into that a little bit with you, tony.
Speaker 2:I'm just starting to understand that a little bit better myself, because nutrition isn't one of the strong pieces of medical training. So is it true that a prebiotic feeds Probiotic bacteria?
Speaker 1:Yes, yes Okay.
Speaker 2:So it helps them proliferate better.
Speaker 1:Yes. So the key to with a prebiotic is it has to somehow make its way through the stomach acid. So a lot of times when you're taking, you know, prebiotic, even with Like a supplement, it's not going to get through the acid in your stomach and it will die. So there's something called inulin, which is it's actually a component that will withstand the pH in your stomach acid and when you take inulin, so if there's a supplement, you want to make sure it has inulin in it. So two things happen is the inulin feeds the and keeps the, the probiotic, alive, which you want. It's a live part of the microbials. Is the probiotics, the prebiotic. It's not alive. It's the food that is keeping the probiotic alive. So the prebiotic is that's the structure of your little city and You'll find those kind of things like garlic, onions, green bananas. Those are going to be really important to Incorporate into your foods as a prebiotic and that will help get believe it or not, that gets through that, that really strong acid in your stomach. When you have those two pieces in play and your gut flora is Thriving and doing well, then other foods that we're going to talk about is going to be really impactful. But if you've got a gut flora that is not doing well, so you've been on antibiotic and it's just really stripped out your near your gut flora. That's going to be really important to make sure you add and you really focus and continue to Put those antibiotics, once they've ended, to add those Probiotics into your diet, because that's going to be really important because every time you take an antibiotic, it kills it. It doesn't kill just a good bacteria, it kills everything, and so you want to make sure that you are Maintaining that little city and by incorporating those back into your diet. But, like I said, you have to have the gut flora nice and rich in order for you to continue to digest the good food.
Speaker 1:So you've got fiber rich foods and the fiber rich foods I want you to think of, like the sanitation department. This really helps keep you know, the streets clean and clear and ensures that Efficient waste removal and it reduces the risk of constipation and that's going to be really important. So berries berries are so good and rich in fiber. You've got oranges and lentils things like that are going to be really important as well and even like goji berries I don't know if you've ever heard of goji berries really, really great in fiber and chia seeds. Chia seeds are excellent.
Speaker 1:Then we've gone to polyphenol rich foods. Now this is like the city's recreational areas. This is where you've got life and vibrancy that support your community and it brings kind of the heart into your your community and Makes people happy. So you've got people playing music and those kind of things. That's kind of how I like to think about that. But again you've got berries. Blueberries are really really high in polyphenols and almonds. Almonds are really good. This is like the, the city's green spaces. Also your green foods, salads and all those kind of nice healthy Lettuces are going to be really popular in this area as well. So then you go into fermented foods. This is kind of more like I think of, like the cultural hot spots these kind of foods. They enhance your digestion and they increase the city's microbial diversity. So you've got more things happening, more things going on, and it's really important to have more in fermented foods and I'm not really one for fermented foods, you know you've got yeah, what are they?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so kombucha is like a fermented green tea. You've got pickled vegetables.
Speaker 3:So, I'll tell you Sourcrout definitely. Yeah, I'm out so far and everything.
Speaker 1:Kimchi. Kimchi is also a sourcrout. So you've got some of these things that you know. We just don't really add more. I mean we don't. We need to do better job adding more into our, into our diet. We don't eat a lot of that, but we should, jeff, and then we go into the lean proteins.
Speaker 1:That's your city's construction crew and I love this cause. That's the repair and rebuild and that's ensuring the cityscape remains resilient and strong, and so those lean proteins are, of course. You know I always talk about grass fed, organic beef and chicken and fish is super good, but you want to stay away from. You want to have, like the open ocean seafood, not the farmed seafood. They don't take care of the fish like they need to, but when it's out in the open and the oceans, then they're going to be a lot more healthy. And then you've got your healthy fats. That's the city's power supply. They add in the nutrient absorption and it also helps reduce inflammation and it helps you. So fats and proteins help you stay whole or longer, and so those are really good. And I'm talking about the healthy fats. The healthy fats are-.
Speaker 3:Chocolate Carpacados. Carpacados, dark chocolate, bacon yes, dark chocolate is very good for health, but not a whole bag full.
Speaker 1:Yes, and olive oils, those are really good, but you got to be really careful with your olive oils, because olive oils aren't always what they say they are. And I'd love to do a whole segment on olive oils, because so you want to have your olive oil in a dark glass container because it is very sensitive to light and heat, and so that's going to help with making sure that it's not going to go as rancid. So you want to keep it not on top of your oven or in a warm place. You want to try to keep it in a cool place, and you want to also look on your bottle and find out what the heat is A lot of times for, like avocado oil, I think it's like 450 degrees. So anything above 450 degrees it will go into trans fat. The molecules break apart and all of a sudden it becomes a trans fat. So that's why-.
Speaker 3:So if you fry your French fries in olive oil and it's not above 450, it's healthy. Is that what I'm hearing?
Speaker 1:It is not going to go into trans fat Right.
Speaker 2:So it's above. 450 is too high for olive oil. Okay.
Speaker 1:If your oil starts to smoke, you've just destroyed your oil. So that's going to be really important. And even like olive oils I think it's like 113 degrees you don't want it over 113 degrees for lack of a lot of olive oils it will destroy that very complex, beautiful, those molecules in there that really are healthy for our bodies. But if we destroy it then it becomes a trans fat, and that is not what we want. So that's, when you like, drizzle your olive oil after you've cooked your vegetables, or put it on your salads or something like that, so you don't cook your foods in the olive oil in less, but you look at your heat point to find out what it is capable of. So that's kind of for that. And then hydration we have to have a lot of making sure that you're drinking plenty of water through the day. Water is vital for our transportation and our cleanliness, and it really ensures that everything runs smoothly. Everything in our body is running smoothly and operating in a way that it needs to, and it facilitates-.
Speaker 2:My Uralgist friend said that if people would drink enough water, he'd be out of business.
Speaker 1:Oh, there you go. Yeah, it is facilitating the nutrient transport and also helps with the waste disposal and removal of our waste products. And then the last is the herbs and spices. So that's like our city's botanical gardens, so important. There's so many phenomenal herbs and spices that really give great properties to our bodies. Ginger turmeric really enhances the city's health and it makes our bodies more resilient and just really helps with diseases as well. So there's so many other foods that we can talk about another time, but that just may give you an idea of how important your gut health is and really how complex it is, because there's a lot of different things that feed into one another and really helps each other, facilitates. That segue into. Now we're going to talk to Tony.
Speaker 2:So literally there's a lot of moving parts.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:I have to tell you, trisha, I've known you for a little while now and I saw your passion there and I know you're a nutritional, fitness and wellness coach. So I got to see that there because I was trying to crack my good French fry joke. I think Jeff got it, but you were like, oh no, let me tell you more about all of it.
Speaker 1:Let me tell you more about this. Yeah.
Speaker 3:I'm just trying to crack a French fry joke, but it was awesome because I felt guilt of. I heard of these vegetables that you speak of, and so I really do. I felt that I felt like, okay, I could do better on this. So I do appreciate that I haven't seen you talk with that kind of passion.
Speaker 2:And that's really true. She isn't very passionate about this and sometimes it's so fun to learn the things that she's learning and it helps me help my patients, literally. Okay.
Speaker 3:Yeah, okay, I love it. I've been on my therapist's bookshelf a while back and it's called you're not sick, you're thirsty. And I know we haven't necessarily gotten into a lot of our backstories, but I'm an ultra marathon runner then a hundred plus marathons and a dozen over a hundred miles and so I'm just fascinated by the way the body does move through fuel. But I'm also terrified of things like kidney stones, and so I heard a long time ago just this is one of those things I think is so funny the way the brain works A person said if you stay hydrated, you won't have them, and so I drink water like nobody's business, and then I was sent that book I forget how long ago, but it's a doctor that spent 20 years of his life saying that everything is about hydration. So when you're saying that, dr Jeff, I thought that was fascinating, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and stay away from soda. That will help.
Speaker 3:Unless you have it in a gold.
Speaker 1:In slated mug yeah.
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 2:So what do you think, tony, I'll make?
Speaker 3:my brief because this is a little bit of what I love about this topic is it's this it would fit back into that things that I don't necessarily know. What I don't know about Because I think in the mental health world we're talking about the gut biome and I think we're trailing a little bit behind, you know, in the nutrition and medical aspect, because we know that the connection between your gut biome and mental health is a thing, and Dr Jeff talked about that vagus nerve that carries the signals back and forth between this. Gut brain access, I think, is what that is. That's correct, and so I know that in the mental health world we just talk about that. Gut brain access is where the conversation is going down. You know both sides are sending and receiving messages and you know those micro organisms that are in the digestive system. That it's funny because I love how you guys went first and it really makes sense where. Then, if you are eating right and if you're doing the things that you need to do to make sure that those systems are functioning correctly, then people do often just feel a lot better when they eat well and they are hydrated and they're taking care of that Because one of the main chemicals there moving back and forth, is serotonin, and I still remember the first time I heard that I think it's believed that it could be up to 90% of the body's serotonin is actually produced in the gut, and that was mind blowing, right.
Speaker 3:And so then my understanding is that then serotonin is one of those feel good neurotransmitters in the brain and it's involved in regulating mood and emotions and even sleep.
Speaker 3:And so I heard it put this way once, where it's like the little microbiomes or like these little little chemists, and so they need all the right ingredients to then mix up the right chemicals to produce the serotonin, to then send it on this gut brain access, and so then it's sending enough to. Then it influences the gut movement, but also it sends signals to the brain saying hey, we're good, we're doing okay, our immune system's in check, we're feeling pretty good here. Because then if your gut biomes out of balance, then it impacts the production of the serotonin and then if serotonin works with the other neurotransmitters of the brain is my understanding and then they kind of stay in homeostasis. So if the brain's not getting it serotonin, then it's going to start saying okay, we got to throw the fire alarms off and say something's wrong and that something's wrong can start to feel a little bit like anxiety or depression, which can lead to sleep issues, and so it changes in mood and it can even lead to more. And that's where I have to ask that. I know we're almost out of time, but so we talk about diet and probiotics, and then I even hear about things like in the world of and we can edit this out like fecal transplants, I mean, and I went to a oh we can talk about that for a while, that's a weird thing that yesterday
Speaker 3:you said it is super weird, yeah, and I could have had a but it works Okay and I've had a client go there and that was when I first started learning about the impact of the gut biome and I think this is so interesting. So I'll just say something really quick. As we talk about serotonin today, but dopamine gets all the PR I think serotonin needs a new public relations department, because serotonin and dopamine, they're big time players on the mental health team, and so here we're talking about serotonin, serotonin.
Speaker 3:Yeah, exactly Right, and yeah, and so, yeah that one needs a lot of work to get the word out. But if you look at serotonin as the mood stabilizer and it's made in the gut and it's known for its role in handling mood and emotions and things like appetite and digestion, serotonin is that calming, stabilizing force, and we were talking earlier about my mindfulness. Some believe serotonin is the Zen master of neurotransmitters, because it does help you feel content and emotionally stable. And then so you have to have even that in balance so that our friend dopamine can come in and now we can really understand and feel that reward. You know that dopamine is that height man of the brain and it's associated with pleasure and motivation. And so for dopamine to do its thing as my understanding is about the reward and motivation and pleasure then you need your serotonin kind of working as well as it can too, because those things are all trying to work together. So it's like this balancing act.
Speaker 3:So I just I think we're still just trying to figure things out in the mental health world and I think one of the things that I need to sharpen my skills with is when somebody is feeling down or they are coming in and they're talking about things anxiety, depression, mental health issues. We're supposed to say have you gotten your medical checkup, and that sort of thing, like we say it in grad school, or you're going to fail the class. But in real life, I think sometimes you're so anxious to get to the tell me about your story. You know, here here are some tools that you can have, but we forget that a lot of it could be in the food you eat and the hydration and the and. So I think that that's I dig this episode because you know I will. I'll make sure that my the rest of the clients for the rest of the whole day. I'm asking them about this.
Speaker 1:That's a good plan, I think too. I mean, we just don't realize how complex our bodies are, but our bodies work so hard for us. I mean, if you think about how perfect the pH has to stay in our blood and how it will withdraw nutrients from, and resources from our bones and muscles to make sure that it stays completely balanced, it's really amazing. It works so hard to be anti-cancer, to take care of the inflammation, but the more that we abuse it, it just can only do so much, and that's when our body starts to break down.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I learned a lot. I appreciate this. I mean too this is awesome. I really appreciate it, you got to talk about fecal transplants. I mean a french fry joke, I learned about all the biome Metropolis. Yeah, it was really good.
Speaker 1:It was awesome. Well, thank you too, so much for being here. I really appreciate your insights and all that you bring to this podcast, and I can't wait for next week.
Speaker 2:Thank, you guys Bye, everybody, bye-bye.
Speaker 1:Thanks everybody. Thanks for tuning in to the Q&A Files, delighted to share today's gems of wisdom with you. Your questions light up our show, fueling the engaging dialogues that make our community extra special. Keep sending your questions to trishajamisoncoaching at gmailcom. Your curiosity is our compass. Please hit, subscribe, spread the word and let's grow the circle of insight and community together. I'm Trisha Jamison. Sign in off, stay curious, keep thriving and keep smiling, and I'll catch you on the next episode.
