Josh Dech on The Mold-Gut Health Connection: Rational Wellness Podcast 441

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Josh Dech discusses The Mold-Gut Health Connection with Dr. Ben Weitz.  

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Podcast Highlights

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Josh Dech of the Gut Health Solution is a holistic nutritionist, a Functional Medicine practitioner, and IBD specialist, who helps people with Crohn’s and Colitis reverse their symptoms and get their lives back using a root-cause approach that focuses on the immune system, microbiome, and the triggers most doctors miss. His website is The Gut Health Solution and his podcast is Reversing Crohn’s and Colitis Naturally.

Dr. Ben Weitz is available for Functional Nutrition consultations specializing in Functional Gastrointestinal Disorders like IBS/SIBO and Reflux and also Cardiometabolic Risk Factors like elevated lipids, high blood sugar, and high blood pressure.  Dr. Weitz has also successfully helped many patients with managing their weight and improving their athletic performance, as well as sports chiropractic work by calling his Santa Monica office 310-395-3111.

 

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Podcast Transcript

Dr. Weitz: Hey, this is Dr. Ben Weitz, host of the Rational Wellness Podcast. I talk to the leading health and nutrition experts and researchers in the field to bring you the latest in cutting edge health information. Subscribe to the Rational Wellness Podcast for weekly updates and to learn more, check out my website, dr weitz.com.  Thanks for joining me, and let’s jump into the podcast.

Welcome to the Rational Wellness Podcast. I’m Dr. Ben Weitz and today’s conversation, we’ll dive into the gut immune access. We’ll talk about how often overlooked triggers such as environmental, mold exposure, toxins, gut pathogens can contribute to gastrointestinal conditions like inflammatory bowel disease.  Our guest is Josh Dech. Who is a functional nutritionist, a medical herbalist, and co-founder of Gut Health Explained and the host of the Reversible podcast, Josh brings. Clinical clarity to complex interactions between the microbiome, mycotoxins, and our immune and metabolic systems. Josh, thank you so much for joining us, Ben. 

Josh:  Pleasure to be here.

Dr. Weitz:  Perhaps you could start by sharing your personal health journey and how you got to where you are professionally right now.

Josh: Yeah, my health journey is a bit of a doozy. Well start at the beginning. I’ve always had GI issues. I remember having, you know, “nervous belly” when I was a teenager, and even as early as grade school.  And my mom always had gut issues. My dad had gut issues, and my doctors of course said it’s just genetic without really understanding the underlying causes. So when I was probably 11 years old, my mom ended up going in for emergency surgery, almost died, and they had to remove 12 inches of her bowel. And over the last couple of years, she ended up removing a total of two feet.  She had perforations, she had her gallbladder removed, she had mesh put in, and on the saga went, and she still deals with the repercussions from those surgeries. Today, my dad’s always had GI issues, irritable bowel. And of course I did too. So when I was in my late teens, there was a point I realized it was all connected, but I couldn’t quite connect the dots.  I didn’t have the knowledge. I was at a point my whole back was covered in acne. There wasn’t an inch that didn’t have acne on it. It was up my neck, shoulders down my arms, and in my early twenties, early even mid twenties, my gut was so bad. I was having anxiety and panic attacks. I was having crippling depression where I planned my own suicide three times.  I remember having panic attacks like I used to be a paramedic. I loved chaos and going to the grocery store, throw me into a panic attack and things got that severe. Doctors threw me on Vyvanse and they threw me on Imodium to stop the diarrhea, but I was 15 bowel movements a day. I was dealing with blood and mucus and all kinds of stuff, and the doctor said, yep, it’s irritable bowel, and I never went to get diagnosed, but it probably would’ve classified as what’s called colitis or ulcerative colitis.  At the time it was so severe. And I had 10 minute transit times I’d eat and I’m in the bathroom with whole food in the toilet. Like I just, I lost 40 plus pounds, felt atrocious. And that was really the pinnacle of, I’d say my health, when things got really quite severe. And I thought the doctors haven’t helped.  They’ve never helped. They just want to give me more drugs. And at this stage I was working as a personal trainer. Having been a paramedic, I understood enough to see that a lot of things can be reversed. I’ve seen people with arthritis go away. I’ve seen people with chronic nerve pain go away through basic exercise.  I knew the body could heal. I just wasn’t sure to what capacity. I ended up getting some help, found some mentors, went back to school to become a nutritionist, and I started fixing my gut. And I realized very quickly that what seemed to be these quote, genetic random conditions were not they told me my body was breaking down.  It was an Imodium deficiency, is basically what they [00:04:00] said. And so by the time I got through this thing. My gut was so resilient, Ben, where there was a point at the peak of this, I would have a teaspoon of dairy ice cream and I’d be in the bathroom within 10, 15 minutes or less to the point where I could eat an entire leader and you won’t even hear me fart.  That’s how resilient my gut’s been, come over the years, and that’s the idea where we want to get people. And long and short, I started talking about this, working with people as a nutritionist. Someone came to me with colitis and I said, I don’t know if I can help. They tell me it’s genetic.

I dug into the research and realized it’s neither genetic, autoimmune, or random. And where we got her in three months was further than her functional doctor did. In three years he called me, said, what are you guys doing? Teach me everything. We started working with her academy. It’s been absolutely incredible. And now I work as a physician’s consultant. I lecture at the academy.  You know, I proposed, I actually had a proposal for a lecture on bowel disease accepted to university over in Spain that we wanted to go to, but couldn’t. It’s just, it’s a really cool message and the world I think is catching on. [00:05:00] Well, what was some of the keys to fixing your gut? Well, I had to realize that it wasn’t just.  Like I said, genetic, a lot of it, at the time I was a personal trainer. I was counting calories, not chemicals. That was number one. I was eating breakfast cereals because that was my carbs, right? I was eating whatever I wanted. I was eating dairy because who cares? Nobody taught me about the basics. But beyond that, once I took the edge off all the urgency and diarrhea and blood and mucus, it did reduce.  But what I had to realize, there was a lot of residual damage done. Right. The gas leak. And

Dr. Weitz: How did you get those things to reverse that?

Josh: Well, this is a process, so I go through a process called D and five. R five R sounds cute, but D five R makes more sense when you think about it. The first I had to do was had to cut, I had to do drainage. Now, when we talk about drainage, if you think about detoxing, it’s collecting the trash. Drainage is bringing it out to the curb. It’s how you get rid of stuff. And the really seven main pathways to look at in the human body. When we’re dealing with the gut, number one’s gonna be [00:06:00] liver.  Then you have your gallbladder and bile. Then we’re dealing with, of course, bowels, kidneys, skin, lymphatics. We have sinuses, and these are in skin, of course. I think I said that one. And this is how things get out or these are exit doors. So I had to support my liver and my bile flow. I had to support my bowels.  I had to support one drainage.

Dr. Weitz: How do you let’s go through those step by step. How do you support your liver and gallbladder and bile flow?

Josh: So a couple of things. Number one, we can look at plants and herbs. So a lot of digestive bitters, for example, gentian, fennel, dandelion, burdock, ginger

Dr. Weitz: herbal, herbal bitters.

Josh: Yeah. Okay. And like ginger is huge. They stimulate bile flow. They actually help clean and detox the liver. And the reason this is important. Because your bile recirculates about 95% of it. It’s expensive to make, so your body will filter it and reuse it. And if it’s full of toxins and it’s dirty and it’s not filtering properly, you’re reabsorbing those toxins.  So by detox. The liver in promoting healthier bile flow, you get a better flow of that congested bile. Your body makes [00:07:00] higher quality bile, so it’s able that after the liver’s been cleaned, it can now filter it so you’re not recirculating these toxins over and over again. That was the first, it was the bitters and then it was binders and had to bind up a lot of injunctions inside.

Dr. Weitz: So, do you have a favorite herbal bitters product or do you use different ones?

Josh:  There’s a lot of different ones. You gotta be careful. A lot of bitters will contain laxatives. And so St. Francis, for example, is a bitter blend that I’ve used that when I was at my peak, it did cause a lot of diarrhea when I overused it.  There are others like organic, Olivia there’s a lot of different brands. I wouldn’t say I have a favorite. It really depends on you. Like a client of mine is sensitive to hops, so she can’t use a lot of the bidders because they do contain hops. We had to find one without it. And I, the name is slipping my brain right now.  But the idea is. Any bitter blend that you don’t have an allergy to is probably going to be okay if you start it slowly and if you’re having trouble with that, have dandelion tea, right? It’s just getting it in low and slow enough that your body doesn’t [00:08:00] overreact.

Dr. Weitz: And then you mentioned supporting the liver.  Detoxing the liver. How do you do that?

Josh: Much of the same process is we think about what toxifies the liver. It’s your environment, number one. So there’s mold, there’s pesticides. All these chemicals, even the foods you eat, go through what’s called the first pass effect. Any food, supplements, medication, where your liver will actually process a lot of it, and that’s the first pass before your body gets the rest.  And so by detoxing the liver. There are supplements you can use. I use a lot of things. Again, milk thistle, different Bitters, a supplement called tca, T-U-D-C-A. It’s a an acronym. I still don’t, can’t Torah something, orella acid. But it’s a great supplement if you get quality and it’s phenomenal for promoting bile, helping the liver move and clean things out.  It’s really good for mitigating inflammation as well. So all those same bidders that promote bile flow also have a tendency to help clean the liver. But once you’ve cleaned your environment. You stopped

Dr. Weitz: adding. Do you use glutathione as part of that? [00:09:00]

Josh:  You can, glutathione being a really powerful antioxidant.  I’m careful not to add it if I can do something else, for example, NAC or n-acetylcysteine being, which is a

Dr. Weitz: precursor. 

Josh:  Yeah, you got it. So I’d rather give the body the tools. Or more tools to do the things on its own rather than just give it the thing exogenously like testosterone, your testosterone’s low.  Look at why your hormones are low, rather than go right to injections. Sure, glutathione production’s low. Give it NAC and see what it can do with that after you clean the system out.

Dr. Weitz: Okay.

Josh: So once you’ve gone through, we’ve taken care of the bile, we’ve taken care of the liver. Now by decreasing the external environmental toxic load, we can also work on binding.  Sweating is a number one way to get things out of your skin detox, but binders are also important for an internal perspective, right? So we’re getting rid of things internally, liver, bile, bowels, kidneys. We get rid of things externally through things like your skin and sinuses. It’s our internal, also lymphatic.  So movement. I had to be moving on.

Dr. Weitz: By the [00:10:00] way, when it comes to binders, does it matter what binders you use? Do you try to pair up do you test for toxins and then try to pair the toxin or the mycotoxin with specific binders? Or do you know, can you use most binders or do you use a combination binder product?

Josh:  Great question. That’s all really contextual. If I’m looking at mold, for example, right?  We know sweating detox is way more mold than binders can, but binders are important. So what I do is I’ll test and evaluate either through a urine test to check what specific types of mold and toxins there are because certain binders work for certain toxins, right?  And then I can also look at, again, whatever else that, wherever that’s coming from. But if I’m looking at taking a binder. Charcoal, for example, can be rough, it can be aggravating and it can be constipating, but it’s the broadest binder of them all. But it’s relatively weak on the spectrum. So do you want to go with something that has a higher risk of irritation but is a good binder, but also weak enough?  You’re [00:11:00] not gonna cause a problem? ’cause binding two strong causes problems. So depending on the toxins. But if I do want to go broad. Charcoal bentonite Clay zeolite tend to have the best coverage, but believe it or not, even probiotics like Saccharomyces Boulardii, certain lactobacillus probiotics can also have binding capacity and they can help us clean a lot of junk out of the system.  So if I am going with binders, generally I like to start low and slow. Humic and fulvic acid, zeolite tend to be gentle on the system, then maybe a charcoal or bentonite clay, and then we can work up to something a bit stronger. I’ll even use pharmaceuticals like cholestyramine and that one can be very beneficial as a binder in what’s called a bile acid sequestrant.  So you’re capturing and excreting forcing your bile to produce new, your liver to produce new bile rather than recycle the dirty stuff.

Dr. Weitz: How do you use prescription pharmaceuticals? You have a doctor you work with?

Josh: I don’t, I mean, I have a lot of doctors in my corner, but going through and referring out from one of my programs to a [00:12:00] doctor who might charge three to $500 for a 30 minute session doesn’t always make sense.  So my goal is then to go in and have a workaround. So I’ll talk to the client, say, let’s go to Amazon. Let’s say you have a mold issue. We’re gonna type in home mold test kit comes up with these little Petri dishes and you can just swab dust in your home and then swab the Petri dish. Give it three days, take a photo, bring it to your doctor and say, I think I’m sick ’cause of mold.  Can I try cholestyramine? They might tell you yes. And then we go through the shoemaker protocol, which is as little as or as much as say, four grams up to three times a day. For say 90 days is a good base if you can tolerate that much. And we can use that to capture the in bind the mold and excrete the bile.  But it really depends on the individual. So some people refuse to work with their doctors, we can’t get pharmaceuticals ’cause I’m not a medical doctor, so we really have to have a workaround. Okay.

Dr. Weitz: So, so then binders and then what’s the next step after that? And then how long, how do you know, how long to do the detox for?

Josh:  Awesome question. So going back to the original question of the steps, we said D in five Rs, so we’ve done our drainage, right? Liver, bile, skin, sinus, lymphatic bowels, kidneys, et cetera.

Dr. Weitz: By the way, are you doing some kind of testing first to see what you’re dealing with?

Josh: Sometimes. Okay. When I’m looking at a patient or looking at a client, what we have to understand is that testing is useful.  Absolutely. But finances aren’t always unlimited. So if I wanna run a full gamut, it’s probably gonna run anywhere from $700 to $1,500. As a base that’ll get me a full gut zoomer, mycotoxin panel, environmental toxin. I’ll get the works. It’s all very helpful. We can get organic acid testing and hair tissue minerals.  I can get a huge overview of what’s going on. I’ve even got clients that’ll run like a lymphocyte panel through Cyrex Labs and we’ll see all their immune cells and what’s reacting and what’s not. You can spend, you know, anywhere from one to $2,000.

Dr. Weitz: Yeah, I know Dr. Vojdani well.

Josh: Mm-hmm. It’s a great group. Hey, so here’s an example of somebody that I looked at recently, had a client come in and we went through a history. She got ulcerative colitis and she said, well, I got it after COVID. I got really sick. I was really stressed and I thought a lot of people go through that. They get really sick and really stressed, and they get COVID and don’t get colitis.  So why did you, right? What was the underlying weakness where this was the straw that broke the camel’s back. And so when it came down to testing, I said, let’s see if we need any at all. So went through her history, took us about 15 minutes, and when we got to the end, this was her story number one. She was born and raised in Columbia, 1984.  Grew up in a relatively poor home in her grandparents’ house. She remembers her bedroom at the back was full of mold. She would visually see it on the walls. So. Even if you can’t see visual mold, you may still have it, but long and short, it gave her tonsil infections. It gave her strep throat chronically, so she was several times a year on antibiotics from ages probably three to about nine.  And then she started getting urinary tract infections where they gave her more antibiotics, which led to fungal infections, gave her more medication. She had, you know, yeast infections, et cetera. Then if you [00:15:00] know anything about Columbia 1984, or for those of you who have seen Narcos, for example, on am on Netflix.

That was her life. That was Pablo Escobar feuding with the Cali cartel bombs going off, guns in the street. If mom didn’t come home by 6:00 PM she probably died in a bombing. That was her life. It’s wild. So now she’s got chronic stress and nervous system on top of microbes, on top of mold and all these things that she had these ongoing low grade GI issues till one day she got COVID.  That was the straw that broke camel’s back. So do I need to do testing on her? Not right now. I know she’s got a ton of dysbiosis. I know she’s gotten mold that was or may still be in her system from a current or past environment. I know her liver’s congested. I can see her symptoms. I know she’s dealing with histamine issues based on her symptoms she gave me.  Therefore, let’s not do any testing right now. Let’s just go through drainage, liver and bile and sweating and rest, and get your nervous system to calm down because you’re not sleeping. You’re grinding your teeth, you’re irritable your nervous system’s over overdrawn. Let’s [00:16:00] support your adrenals. Let’s support all the nutrients your body’s missing: B vitamins, vitamin C, electrolytes, basics are symptoms cut in half right away. And then,

Dr. Weitz: but yeah. What do you do when you brought, just brought in mast cell activation? Histamine. Mm-hmm. Some practitioners feel that you gotta deal with that first before you do anything else.  Other practitioners feel like that’s is caused by some of the other issues. What? What’s your take on the mast cell situation?

Josh: I look at the body like a hostage. If you got a hostage in your living room and they’re stressed out because there’s a man in the room with a gun. Do you go talk to the hostage and calm them down or shoot the, take the guy, take out the guy with the gun first.  Right? What is the aggravator? So I look at bowel disease, we go, okay, they’re overreacting, they’re the body is the hostage. Its scream is MAs is mast cell activation or MCAS. That’s what the symptom they’re exhibiting. So it’s my job to go in and say, no, no body. It’s okay. Here are some peptides. Let’s [00:17:00] get you sleep.  Let’s take care of you a little bit. Or is my job to go remove the thing that’s the man of the gun. So when I look at her, for example, she had mast cell issues, and in my experience, there are three major drivers of mast cells and then it leads to a fourth. Number one is chronic stress. Which she had. Two is going to be mold, which she had.  Three is parasites, which she likely has A, based on symptoms. B, because of the mold in her environments. So stress, mold and parasites drive mast cells. But then you get from this histamine sensitive reaction, so histamine, foods, et cetera. Two, a next step, which is truly MA cell activation. If you experience that, then once you get rid of these drivers.

My view is take those main drivers down, see what damages remaining. If the immune system is still way overreactive, yes, you in fact have MAS and your immune system is thrown too far in one direction. Now we bring it back with KPV, thymol and Thymosin, alpha one BPC. We can use peptides. We can use mast cell [00:18:00] stabilizers, quercetin, stinging nettle, NAC,  Vitamin C, Perilla oils, we can use a lot of things to stabilize those responses, and then as we start to heal and seal the gut, rebalance the gut lining, then we’ll see what’s left with the mast cells because it might fix itself. Interesting. Okay. So there is a method of the madness. What you can see here, we’ve talked about so far, to bring it full circle.  We talked about the D five R, we’ve gone through drainage, now we’ve removed, right? We’ve removed the mold, we’ve removed the parasites, we’ve removed the fungus, whatever it is. Now we have to go through the, 

Dr. Weitz:  So when it comes to parasites, are you somebody who feels that we need to. Find them and test for them, or do we just assume that they probably or might have pest parasites?

Josh:  I’d rather be assumptive, like a lot of parasitologists in the functional space will tell us that parasites are in every living, breathing [00:19:00] organism. And I agree. We know we have fungus, we have mold, we have parasites, symbiotically inside of our bodies to work together to create these microbiomes, these ecosystems within.  The problem is a stressed ecosystem is gonna have excessive fungus, excessive parasites, excessive bad bacteria bad because they’re opportunistic in nature. When your defenses come down, they take the opportunity to overgrow or bad guys sneak in, that your body would otherwise be able to keep out. And so I do make the assumption.  But I also look at symptoms. Not everybody needs parasite protocols because your body can get rid of them. If your immune system is primed a lot of the time and testing is very difficult.

Dr. Weitz: What’s a parasite protocol?

Josh: There’s a lot of them out there, but again, once you support a drainage, we just simply, if you’re ready to handle a parasite protocol, we’ve gone through and cleaned your environment.  We’ve gotten your immune system calmed down to the point where if we throw in these quote. Killers or these herbs or even pharmaceuticals, we’re not gonna cause [00:20:00] a Herxheimer reaction.

Dr. Weitz: So you want to deal with the toxins, the mycotoxins, make sure that’s. Out of your system first before you try to eradicate the parasites?

Josh: Much of the time, I’d say probably 70, 80% of the time we go after the environmental and internal toxins first, because they’re the ones creating the environment for the parasites to come in and they’re the ones congesting your immune system, your liver and bile and all these other exit doors, making it more difficult to get rid of those toxins.

Dr. Weitz: So in terms of a timeline on average and I’m sure it’s different for every patient, but how long do you find that you typically have to does it take, how many months of detox does it take to get rid of the toxins?  And it really these ongoing t mycotoxins.

Josh: Yeah. Let’s assume you have a sterile environment or near sterile, which nobody really has, but let’s just, let’s make the assumption.  So you move out of a moldy home and you go into a sterile environment. You’re detoxing and sweating and draining and supporting cellular health and [00:21:00] micro meaning you no

Dr. Weitz: longer getting more toxins in. You just have toxins from your previous environment.

Josh: Yeah. So they don’t have an environment currently inoculating with toxins.  Right. And you’ve now left the environment and your toxins are held like your toxic load is just residual damage. That’s right.

Dr. Weitz: Right.

Josh: So once we get you out of that environment, it can really depend on a couple genetic factors, environmental factors, et cetera, how well and foul fast your body responds.  But depending on what it is, you can expect anywhere from three months to two years. It just depends on you. But what I’ll often do, well, three

Dr. Weitz: months to two years of detox before you get rid of the parasites.

Josh: Well, that’s where, that’s what I was about to say. So what I often do is I’ll go through and do the drainage, which is promoting those exit doors so the toxins don’t just quote detox.  They actually. Get out ’cause your body will capture, neutralize and excrete. That drainage is the excretion. Okay? So we have to support that first. And then I usually spend anywhere from three to six weeks just [00:22:00] preparing the body before I go after say, a killer like parasites or fungus or something else.  That’s when I find typically in the Crohn’s colitis space or diverticulitis IBS where people tend to have better responses is after about three to six weeks of prep, if they do respond well at that stage. Bing, bang, boom. We keep pressing forward. The minute they either hit a threshold, they stop progressing or even relapse, we pivot back to those toxins again, and then we come back.  There’s always an underlying binder or sweating or some sort of drainage and capturing as we go. So we’re never leaving it. We’re just reducing it enough to be able to go after the other guys.

Dr. Weitz: Okay. So what kinds of things do you use for parasites?

Josh: There’s a few products out there where New Life makes a nice pair of product.  It’s called Para Smart, there’s Rogers Hood, there’s Cellcore products. There’s all kinds of things, but ultimately what we’re looking at is, a lot of, we, we’ll just call ’em antimicrobials, which cover a lot of bases, but they tend to be anti-parasitic. So your [00:23:00] black walnut, thyme, oregano, a lot of these different herbs that can go after paras.  Sure. But there’s a lot of pharmaceuticals. Dr. Lodi actually talks about a lot of these. He’s got a. Pharmaceutical protocol he’ll give, which goes broad. People go, I took para, I took Ivermectin. I’m good on parasites. Well, they deal with helmets primarily. So you’re getting the worms or the pin worms around worms or some of them.  But a full spectrum protocol covers different species. So you’re getting the helmets, you’re getting the protozoa or the single cell guys. You’re getting the flukes, which are under the helmet or worm brand. So they’ll go through with ProQual. Ivermectin Fol Ole, they’ll throw the whole suite of them at you for typically up to 90 days to make sure you’re getting full coverage.  So it really depends on what route you want to go, but it’s either herbal through again, your black walnuts times, oreganos, clove. Et cetera, or it’s pharmaceutical or both. But more is not always better because you can overkill. And keep in mind your black walnut, for example, it’s anti-parasitic. [00:24:00] Yes. It’s antibacterial.  Yes, it’s antifungal. Yes. So even with black walnut, you might kill too much too quickly, causing yourself a really nasty, toxic reaction. We call this herx or a Herxheimer reaction. Your body over accumulates with toxins. Your immune system goes way over the deep end and you get really quite sick. So we do have to ease into these no matter what.

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Dr. Weitz:  We get rid of parasites and then what’s the next step?

Josh: Well, parasites and mold. If we’re following down the, you had mold, we’re [00:26:00] binding it. And detoxing and draining. And we’ve had this underlying, then we’re taking care of,

Dr. Weitz: Let me just throw in a lot of practitioners that have patients with mold often find that those same patients have fungal overgrowth.

Josh: That’s right. And that’s where we’re headed now. So if we take that step and say we had mold, then we had parasites. They come hand in hand with two things, biofilms and fungus. So as we go through a lot of those anti-parasitic herbs that we just talked about, like black walnut is also antifungal. But the thing about fungus, like candida, they tend to be these double cell wall.  They’re extra thick and they’re extra resilient, so you have to go through and break them down. With eclinic acid or caprylic acid or loic acid from, say, coconut oil, other things that break down the yeast wall, and then you can use your antifungal therapy in addition to. So the question really becomes.

I will typically, it’ll mold parasites, fungus, biofilms, fungus, mold, parasites, biofilms, fungus, and then we [00:27:00] continue fungus after that. If you have a lot of candida overgrowth, you got a yellow colored nail or toenail, or you’re prone to yeast infections or oral thrush, or what’s called tinia versa color.  Where the fungus gets onto your skin and in the sun it blocks the uv. So it’s like a pale patch of skin that won’t tan, that’s often fungus. So if you have these deep seated, not just gut but fungal issues everywhere, then what we want to do is really spend some time, probably take you a year to two years to really get that fungus to a manageable level.

Dr. Weitz: Alright? Let’s see. What was I gonna say? What? What do you do about diet while you’re got patients on this program?

Josh: So it really depends. I mean, in the bowel disease space, a lot of people have already been through a lot of the diets. They’ve tried everything, so they know what works for them. But I have had people come in who are eating Chick-fil-A and they’re drinking on the weekends.  I’m like, look, dude, like if you’re gonna keep drinking, I’ve had a kid straight up, he was 21, 22, he’s in college. I said, are you willing to stop drinking? No. I said, okay, don’t bother. Like don’t waste my time. Don’t waste your [00:28:00] time or your money. Like go see somebody else. And I haven’t heard from him since because he didn’t wanna give up drinking with his friends.

And that’s your prerogative. So I really address, based on what you need, but something interesting in bowel diseases specifically, we talked about histamines or this MAs cell that’s a large driver. I see a lot of mold, a lot of parasites, a lot of histamine sensitivity. So in the diet, not only are we mitigating a lot of your junk foods, but also high histamine foods.  So we’re cutting bone. It’s good for the gut. Sure. It’s not good for your gut. We’re cutting out avocados and spinach. Are they full of great nutrients? Potentially. Are they good for you? No, they’re higher histamine foods. Kombucha. Good for the probiotics? Yes. Good for your gut? No, it’s a histamine based food, so it’s gonna drive your immune system, fill that cup and cause you a reaction.  And some people cut bone broth and they feel 50% better right away.

Dr. Weitz: So if you suspect that there’s histamine issues, you put them on a low histamine diet. Now, let’s say you have a patient who has constipation. What do you do about [00:29:00] putting ’em on binders, which tend to constipate ’em more?

Josh: Great question.  I’m actually dealing with one of these right now. So I’ve got a woman, it was mold and it’s full of mold, the whole home, her body, the works, and there’s parasites and we put her on a binder, but she’s leaning already, constipation, and sometimes she’ll do well with it, sometimes she won’t. So we have to look at it this way.  If we’re working on getting rid of the mold and you use a binder, which can literally bind up the bowels as well, is your priority binding the mold within the gut or getting them to poop? So I pulled her off the binders entirely. I said, okay, no binder. She’s on cholestyramine and she’s doing well with that.

But any charcoal, any bentonite clay, it does cause constipation in spite of drinking more water. So I pulled her off them because to me, the priority isn’t just binding with the binder. If it sits there long enough, you’ll reabsorb it anyway. So I gave her pro kinetics instead. So she is using digestive bitters and she’s using a lot of ginger, like spicy ginger tea, homemade, and that is promoting motility.  So we are still clearing our poop, which will contain a [00:30:00] lot of these toxins and bile, which is toxic as well, rather than binders for the sake of binding, even though we’re not getting it out.

Dr. Weitz: Interesting. Now you say that IBD is not an autoimmune condition. Why do you say that? Because a lot of functional medicine practitioners I talk to consider IBD with ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s an autoimmune condition, but that is very amenable to the functional medicine model.

Josh: Yeah, they’re wrong. I don’t care who they are, what they know they’re wrong. I’ll tell you why. I broke down the research piece by piece, and I looked at the top 10 most common antibodies. Now, for the listener, just to be clear, an antibody, it doesn’t mean autoimmune antibodies are protecting you from things.  If you have a castle. And you have a bad guy walking up to your castle, you create a specific antibody or defender against that thing. In this case, an archer that’s an antibody to defend against an outside invader. The [00:31:00] minute that archer turns around and shoots the king, that’s an auto antibody. And so what we’re seeing, I took the top 10 antibodies that we set that we find.

And they, I looked at the research. There is no conclusive evidence. They’re auto meaning, it’s self attacking at all. So let’s look at A SCA anti smis VISI antibody, for example, or OMPC. Their present probably 30 to 50% of the time in Crohn’s. These ones were actually found because Crohn’s and colitis at the time were already assumed to be autoimmune.

They found these antibodies would look more auto antibodies. Labeled and for like a decade, it was in medical research and literature as autoantibodies, when they actually dug back and went, oops. We made an assumption. The A SCA is attacking the yeast. The OMPC is attacking a protein on the outside of e coli, not self.

Or if we see the P anca, for example, this perinuclear, anti neutrophil, they say, well, it’s attacking your own cells. It’s not, they’re present in stress. There’s evidence that even ibuprofen or Imuran drugs that they’ll like these [00:32:00] auto these immune suppressing drugs used for bowel disease, that these antibodies can become present anyway, there is zero conclusive.  That any of these to 10 antibodies attack self present five to 80. 

Dr. Weitz:  But isn’t it the case that these conditions IBD is treated primarily with immune modulating medications like Humira and Remicade and, you know, all these biologics all the time. Doesn’t that indicate that it’s an autoimmune condition?  How else could be? 

Josh:  I love your questions. Be helpful. I can tell you know what you’re talking about because you lead with the perfect questions. Yes. Let’s go back to the hostage. You have a hostage in your living room. They’re screaming for help because there’s a nail stuck in their foot. If you knock that hostage unconscious, does it take care of the nail?  No, it just stops ’em from screaming. So if your body is screaming at you, you’re inflamed and there’s ulcers and you’re bleeding and you use immune suppressing drugs, you just effectively knocked it unconscious or put numbing cream on it. At the very least, you [00:33:00] haven’t removed the nail. And so in the context of bowel disease, we say, well, your immune system, even the Crohn’s Colitis Foundation, Mayo Clinic, they downgraded it to immune mediated.

So it’s just an overreaction, so let’s calm it down. With these immune suppressing drugs, I’m not anti-drug. They can be very helpful, but the problem is we take a chronic inflammatory condition, which is only there because it’s reacting or protecting you from something. We take a chronic inflammatory condition and we take acute treat.

And apply them chronically. That is not the way to treat these diseases. We have to go through, support the drainage, remove the problem, the thing or things your body is reacting to, and then we have to replenish the nutrients we have to repair and rebuild the gut lining and the microbiome, and then rejuvenate or rebalance your gut micro your immune system, because these overactive responses need to learn that it’s safe to come down.  Once you’ve done that. You’re in quote, remission, but I even argue with that word. If you say it’s just [00:34:00] remission, you are still assuming it’s autoimmune genetic and you’ll never go away. You’ll have it forever. And a lot of people do relapse, but they don’t truly fix the issue or fix the residual damage.

Dr. Weitz: So if it’s not an autoimmune condition, where does the damage to the mucosal lining, you know, the inflammation, the bleeding that occurs inside patients with Crohn’s disease? Mm-hmm.

Josh: Have you ever known a nonverbal autistic kid?

Dr. Weitz: Yes.

Josh: If they’re nonverbal, a lot of them, they will hit, they’ll scream, they’ll bite.  They’ll yell, right? And a lot of them will headbutt. They’ll hit themselves. They’re stemming. So what’s happening? You have an overactive nervous system or a hypersensitive nervous system, and in the process of them overreacting, they accidentally hurt themselves. Your immune system does the same thing. We had the first stage being acute.  It’s like, ah, little food poisoning. You kick it out. Then it becomes chronic where you’re inflamed and it just won’t go away because you never remove the problem. So of course it’s gonna keep being inflamed. The third stage is this [00:35:00] overreactive flailing immune response where your body is now so overdone.

Its immune response has become overdriven, right? Like a stress response where you’re stressed and stress till one day you snap and like kick the neighbor’s cat and punch the mailman in the face. That’s an overreaction. So your immune system can overreact leading to way, again, way too many cytokines, way too many neutrophils, way too many things, which in the process of them trying to help you.  End up destroying the place instead. Not because they’re deliberately attacking you, but because it’s trying so hard to defend you, that the byproduct becomes excessive responses that become that, that degrade your tissues. And that’s where we get these over responses leading to ulcers and strictures and fistulas and excessive damage done, or these architectural changes in scarification because it’s been too much for too long and it went over the deep end.

Dr. Weitz: Okay, so, the damage to the lining of the intestines is coming from [00:36:00] reacting to foods that. Are irritating the system or mold or other things. Yeah, but isn’t that an immune mediated, isn’t its, you know, macrophages and cytokines and things from the immune system that create that damage.

Josh: That’s exactly it.  But they’re not clean. They’re overworking. Right? Think of it this way. If you’ve got, here’s another analogy. If I’m trying to clean your house, right, and I go in there with a freaking excavator, I damage your house. In the process of just trying to clean junk outta your living room, your body will keep bringing in the calvary.  It’s saying, we’re trying to clean. I can’t get this. It’s something stuck on the tile. Let’s get the new thing and you start chipping away, ah, I scraped the tile. Well, it’s too deep. Let’s keep going. They chip and chip to the whole floor is bloody gone. You got the excavator scooping stuff outta your house.

Yes, the host gets damaged, but the intention wasn’t to destroy the home. It was to clear the thing inside. And that’s really what’s happening. You have these toxins stuck inside cells. Or [00:37:00] like in Lyme disease, you have a fragment of a microbe or something that bound to your DNA, and it looks like you’re attacking your DNA.  But let’s go back to the king. The king is being held hostage. You shoot an arrow at the guy holding the king hostage and you nick the king. Is that autoimmune or is that an accidental damage? By proximity, right as you’re trying to attack the thing, you attack what’s nearby, or you try to, to react to it and you overreact because it just won’t get rid of it.  And that’s where we’re seeing these co autoimmune. I’m telling you, Ben, I’ve seen people who, they’re colonoscopies. I got one pin in the middle of my Instagram page right at the top and severe, I think it was just a male score of like six on her reports and. We’re talking, doctors have been asking her for years to remove her bowel in 16 weeks.  It was pink and perfect and healthy. Had one little speck left in four months, and she was diagnosed in 2013. But that’s what’s possible. Her gut was eroded. Once you remove the things her immune system was reacting to, that overreaction, calm to went away and her bowels began to heal. Okay,

Dr. Weitz: cool. So, how [00:38:00] do you complete your program?  How do you get to the fourth and fifth s?

Josh: So you have to go through, it’s not always super linear when we go through, let’s do drainage and remove the toxins, et cetera. It’s not always that linear. Sometimes we have to bounce between them. If I’m, let’s go back to the conversation from earlier. We go through mold and parasites, so we’re attacking the mold.  Great. But if you stop having a response, I added a woman in. She was doing really well. She was on Remicade, Entyvio. I had skin cancer from it, the works. And we put her on a mold protocol. We did the drainage. Her symptoms were reducing. Finally, the medication she was on had more room to act. So she was feeling incredible, but she started getting hives and rashes on her chest.  Well, that’s a histamine response as her body’s immune system pivoted from mold to the parasites. Well after parasites that went away. Had to go back to the mold. We had to go back and forth and back and forth. Parasites, mold, parasites, mold until we finally and successfully removed them all. And then her body and her gut needed time to then heal, rejuvenate, rebalance and fix itself for the long term.

Dr. Weitz: And then how do you [00:39:00] get to those fourth and fifth steps? Do you add probiotics? Do you add gut healing nutrients? How do you finish things off

Josh: at that stage? I tend to test, I don’t often test right away. For example, like let’s look at a GI map. We’ll test your whole gut microbiome, get an idea of the ecosystem.  But then we go through drainage and mold and all. Killer protocols and fungal things. We take care of all of it. Your microbiome has shifted so much. There’s no point.  We’ll see what your body needs and what’s deficient in. We can replace that. Well, we can see what probiotics might be missing. We can look to inoculate those. Right. We have to go back at the end. That’s really fine.

Dr. Weitz: Let’s say the GI map comes back and you’re low on akkermansia and fecal. Bacterium prensky, some of the keystone species but yet you still have some dysbiosis.  You still have some strep and staph overgrowth. What do you do then?

Josh: Those are typically a [00:40:00] byproduct of a couple things. Number one, antibiotics of course, because once you throw this finely tuned ecosystem out of balance, the bad guys overgrow, which create inflammation, which makes it hard for the good guys to live.  And then of course it’s a byproduct of all your inflammation. So mold is antibacterial by nature. We’ve removed that. Things can heal, we can regrow. Sometimes it’s just a matter of what’s called rewilding, getting outside, hugging friends, eating organic foods, and just giving your body microbes to re inoculate itself as nature intended.

But if there are keytones and basics, like Akkermansia, you can get a supplement, pop that in until you’re good, provided they culture inside of your body. But a lot of it. It is really just calming down. Once you remove the toxins, you’ve calmed the immune system. Now there’s no more inflammation. Then you can support that gut lining.  Providing a good quality home for good guys to thrive. So your butyrates, your glutamines, your zinc, carnes, allos, and slippery elms, and all these wonderful things create a strong, robust house for the healthy guys [00:41:00] to grow. And oftentimes we’ll just fix themselves in a matter of years as long as we rewild it.

Dr. Weitz: When you do your GI map, do you look at the bile acids and the short chain fatty acids?

Josh: All the time, and not all GI maps are created equally. My favorite is Vibrant wellness. They do a gut zoomer, which gives you everything. You get all your immune system reactions, you get all your lactoferrin and inflammatory byproducts.  You get an idea of the immune system like secretory iga inside. You can look at all the fatty acids specifically. Oh, so

Dr. Weitz: you tend to do the gut zoomer instead of the GI map.

Josh: I prefer the zoomer because it gives us a broader picture. Okay. And it’s only a hundred bucks more than like Diagnostic Solutions.  It’s a nice GI map. Yeah. But it’s relatively basic compared to something like this where I can see instead of lactobacillus, SPP, so it’s like a non-special specific umbrella of all lactose measured as a whole. The zoomer will show me each individual strain in what you might be low on and where we can get them.  In those cases, I may supplement. If they have a [00:42:00] benefit, but at the end of the day, we still know so little about the microbiome. So if I’m gonna go in and add a probiotic or two toward the end, and I might do that, it really can be like throwing a grain of sand on the beach. So what I prefer to do is fill in the obvious gaps with things that we know are studied and tested to give your body some balance, but let nie do its thing.  Again, we call it rewilding, organic foods, raw foods, getting outside, touching the dirt, go gardening and bite your fingernails and. Don’t wash your hands, you know what I mean? Like take the carrots out of the garden and rub them on your shirt. Don’t run them under bleach, right? So we want to rewild all these microbes because that’s how nature intended for you to get them.  And that’s the best way you can get all the probiotics you want, but you’ll never do as good as nature.

Dr. Weitz: So, do you use fermented foods?

Josh: Some of the time at that stage, if somebody, especially in the bowel disease space, their immune system is calm or their histamines are no longer a reaction. Yeah, I’ll use ferments because it’s a high [00:43:00] histamine food, so we have to be careful, but not all ferments are made the same. If you go and buy them at the grocery store and you see an additive like lactic acid, then for example, that lactic acid was added to give it the tangy taste, but it wasn’t a natural byproduct of say a lacto bacteria fermenting the food, producing the byproducts. It was added to give the taste of ferment without being a real ferment.

So I’m very careful they come from too. So we

Dr. Weitz: do. Are there products on the market that are fermented? Foods that are good?

Josh: Oh, I’m sure there are. And truthfully, I don’t know off the top of my head what they are. Okay. I know Paleo Valley I’ve worked with actually in the past and no, not affiliated by any means, but they do a nice fermented beef jerky stick.  I really like those. It is done with proper bacterial fermentation, not a lactic acid additive. So there are products out there you can buy all over the place.

Dr. Weitz: That’s great. So I think we’ve gone through most of your protocol. You said you you test for a nutrient [00:44:00] sometimes as well to see what’s lacking.

Josh: That’s right. And most of us are gonna be lacking, I mean. There was a neat study done, I don’t know if it was oh two or oh four, university of Texas, and it comes up from time to time where they actually studied oranges and they figured you need eight oranges today back in oh four to get what your great-grandmother would’ve had in one.  And now here we are 20 plus years later, it seems to be our soil and our nutrients in our food are getting more and more depleted, so most of us will be deficient. I’m never against a high quality multivitamin, basic B vitamins, things like that. It’s just a maintenance dose I think is always gonna be beneficial.

Now, not everybody needs them, but a lot of us are deficient regardless. So if you wanna cover your bases, grab a nice bio available, look at the back of B vitamins. If it says methyl something, that’s a methylated good version. If it’s like a Sano or something else, it’s probably gonna be cheap and you get what you pay for.

So those are the basics I might look at toward the end if we need them. And sometimes I add them right away. I have clients in severe adrenal issues, they get B [00:45:00] vitamins and cortisol support right away because that might be the underlying issue for them. It just depends on their history and that’s the most important factor.

Dr. Weitz: Do you do a micronutrient test?

Josh: You know what? I don’t. Okay. Between the HTMA, and it’s not saying we shouldn’t, I just for the length of time, people come to see us 4, 6, 7 months, sometimes at the most, a lot of like the organic acid will run through basic B vitamins. Their HTMA will show us a lot of the electrolytes and base minerals and things that we need that tends to cover as far as micronutrients.  That is really a fine tuning. But let’s go back to cell core products. They do a lot of great para products, but they do have something called core nutrients. That’s a great one. If you get Biomatrix makes another Trace mineral supplement, that’s a great one. It’s really available. There’s a lot of options out there, and I’m not so fussed about spending the money to test for the labs themselves as much as let’s just spend the 50 bucks giving your body what it needs.  It’ll pee out what it doesn’t. If your system is working properly and you’ll be fine. It’ll kind of sort itself, [00:46:00] and I find that tends to be a better option than spending hundreds on labs where you can spend a fraction of it on the supplements and see if your body uses it or not. Okay.

Dr. Weitz: Sounds good. Anything we haven’t covered that you want to talk about?

Josh: I don’t I think we talked about, did we mention the three reasons humans get sick? No, that, I think that’s the last thing I’d like to put on this because that sounds great. Whether it’s bowel disease or any condition, there’s only three reasons human beings get sick ever, and getting hit by a bus doesn’t count.

It’s toxins, microbes, deficiencies, toxins are chronically high stress or chronically high blood sugar. Toxins can be environmental, it can be mold, can be alcohol, food, a additives, whatever. It’s like there’s a lot of things. Toxic EMS, right? They’re toxic to your system. The second is deficiencies. And these are going to be deficiencies of love and connection, deficiencies of the gut brain connection, deficiencies of vitamins and minerals, exercise, fresh air, sunlight, things our body needs to thrive.

The third is microbes, and these are gonna be your bacteria, viruses, [00:47:00] parasites, and fungi. These are the reasons we get sick. And once you can identify your history and identify the combination of these three toxins, microbes, deficiencies, and where your body is lacking or has excess of, we can begin to remove those rebalance and go through that D five R.

Process you drain, you remove the problem, you replenish what it’s lacking in all senses. You rebuild and repair the gut lining and microbiome and rejuvenate the immune system. This is the way forward to healing the body in pretty well all diseases. But again, I talk to it more in the bowel disease space because I see a ton of Crohn’s colitis, diverticulitis, I diverticulitis and IBS, but you can really apply the framework to any condition ever and see yourself getting healthy.

Dr. Weitz: I think when I was starting out learning about functional medicine, one of the founding fathers of functional medicine said, really, health comes down to a few simple things. What do you have too much of that you need to reduce? What? What do? Don’t you have enough of that you need to add?

Josh: That’s [00:48:00] exactly it.  And was that who was that?

Dr. Weitz: Was that Jeffrey Bland or it, no, it wasn’t Jeffrey Bland. It was somebody else. I’m I just can’t recall, but one, one of the founding members of the functional medicine movement.

Josh: Yeah, I know. Like David Perlmutter and Jeffrey Bland. Those guys are, they’re just wonderful, brilliant men.  And this is, yeah, it is the running theory, right? It’s what do you have too much of? What do you have? Not enough of. But your body will do the rest. We’re not wizards. We just give your body the tools and the resources. It will heal itself.

Dr. Weitz: Right. So how do listeners and viewers find out more about you, get in touch with you and what you have to offer?

Josh: Easiest place, you can just head over to Google, type in gut solution.ca and everything’s there. All my. Doc, you can find information, you can find my podcast. You can reach out, get contacts, send me an email. But all that can be found there. You can find me on social Josh Deck, that’s DECH, so Josh dech.health.  But again, you can find all my socials, all my podcasts, bunch of free info, YouTubes all link [00:49:00] there@gutsolution.ca.

Dr. Weitz: Thanks for sharing some some good clinical insights and strategies for helping patients with healing from gut problems.

Josh: It’s been a pleasure to be here. Thanks so much for having me, Ben.

Dr. Weitz: Thank you for making it all the way through this episode of the Rational Wellness Podcast. For those of you who enjoy listening to the Rational Wellness Podcast, I would very much appreciate it if you could go to Apple Podcast or Spotify and give us a five star readings and review.

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As you may know, I continue to accept a limited number of new patients per month for functional medicine.  If you would like help overcoming a gut or other chronic health condition and want to prevent chronic problems and want to promote longevity, please call my Santa Monica Weitz Sports Chiropractic and Nutrition office at 310-395-3111 and we can set you up for a consultation for functional medicine and I will talk to everybody next week.