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How Microbes Evade Our Defenses
15 Plays4 months ago
Ready to resolve your constipation, gas, bloating, and other digestive problems for good? Watch my free Gut Recovery Masterclass to learn more about how I help women in your situation: https://gutrecoverymethod.com/register
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Hosted by functional health practitioner and longevity author, Christian Yordanov, this podcast is dedicated to helping women struggling with gastrointestinal problems such as gas, bloating, constipation, and other digestive distress.
Whether you have a diagnosis such as IBS (irritable bowel syndrome), IBD (inflammatory bowel disease; Crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis), SIBO (small intestinal bacterial overgrowth), GERD (gastroesophageal reflux disease) or not, you will benefit from the insights we'll share.
Join us as we explore the intricate connections between gut health and overall well-being, addressing common issues like fatigue, poor sleep, hormonal imbalances, and anxiety.
Learn how stress impacts your digestive system and discover effective strategies to reduce inflammation, improve digestion, and enhance your quality of life.
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Transcript
Introduction to Gut Health and Biofilms
00:00:43
chrisyzen
Welcome back to the gut recovery method podcast. So today I'm going to talk to you about an issue that's seldom discussed. I mean, in functional circles, it's, it's fairly well known, but a lot of folks out there are not aware that you one of the reasons you may have sort of tried a lot of things to resolve your gut issues but they somehow seem to persist or you have some weird symptoms that are just very difficult you've tried various different practitioners allopathic functional integrative and so on and
00:01:21
chrisyzen
You just somehow cannot achieve that optimal digestion, great health, lots of energy that you so deserve and and and desire. And I just wanted to throw this discussion into the mix because it could be another one of those missing links. There's quite a few missing links that we've discussed already that for many people that many people are not aware of but this could be another missing link in or um another missing piece of the puzzle that may help you sort of andev elevate your understanding because again with information we can then make better decisions for ourselves, right? So the topic the topic is biofilms.
What are Biofilms and Their Impact?
00:02:06
chrisyzen
And basically biofilms are these little communities that microbes can create on various on various surfaces. Excuse me. um So for example, they can create ah biofilms in around the kitchen sink.
00:02:27
chrisyzen
around the bathroom, any kind of wet areas. ah you' you You've probably seen this slimy sort of goo. It's disgusting. that's that's that's There's a ton of different yeasts and bacteria and various other things that are living in there. They've basically made themselves a little shanty town and they are just chilling and they're safe. They feel safe in there. And similarly,
00:02:56
chrisyzen
especially if the gut environment is not in good shape, especially if the diet has not been very good. And a number of different important health measures have not been taken. these little These little slimy buggers can create biofilms in the gut, right? And once they've created this sort of protective environment for themselves, they can hide in there.
00:03:27
chrisyzen
but So you may even go to your doctor and get an antibiotic, but that antibiotic will not be effective or as effective, if the to at least to these bacteria that are are protected inside these biofilms. and What's interesting is that, to me at least, is that this sort of matrix, there they're building it with like proteins and various polysaccharides and polysaccharides with like fi fibers. um sure so I'm sure a lot of the the stuff that they're building it with is coming from our diet. Imagine like you're eating then you have these these guys are grabbing nutrients that are floating around in your gut and they're building stuff
00:04:17
chrisyzen
I mean it's they're incredibly sophisticated even though they're so tiny right and the fact that they can communicate with each other and sort of live together in this community is also pretty amazing. The not so amazing part is that that can cause us a lot of problems right so for example in some people
Biofilms and Chronic Infections
00:04:44
chrisyzen
for example those with the cystic fibrosis um these biofilms form in the lungs and apparently they're primarily caused by the bacteria pseudomonas aeruginosa
00:05:04
chrisyzen
excuse me pseudomonas aruginosa and we actually that the stool test that I use we actually can detect that particular bacteria and basically again yeah so these biofilms protect the bacteria from antibiotics and the immune response and this can lead to chronic lung infections that are very difficult to treat but then there's also also other very I don't want to say interesting but kind of terrifying examples. For example, endocarditis, there's a thing known as a condition called infective endocarditis, is an infection of the inner lining of the heart chambers and valves, often caused by bacteria forming biofilms on heart valves.
00:05:55
chrisyzen
So it kind of, we should ask ou ourselves, how are these bacteria able to get to the freaking heart valves? And a very plausible mechanism for them to get into the heart valves is if we have leak gut or intestinal permeability and they get into the bloodstream and then they somehow the immune system is not able to effectively neutralize and get them out of the body on time and then as they circulate through the blood they can get into the heart the freaking heart chambers like it's absolutely mind-boggling and it kind of
00:06:45
chrisyzen
And this is again going back to the old adage, old disease begins in the gut, isn't it? Because if you can develop a heart condition because of bacteria causing it, because they colonized and created biofilms in your heart valves, what else could we be developing? And ah actually a more common much more common issue is that of recurrent urinary tract infections.
00:07:15
chrisyzen
And we know that these are often associated with biofilms formed by various E. coli bacteria, right? That's another that's another um example of biofilms kind of wreaking havoc. And then we have chronic c sinusitis, that's long-term inflammation of the sinuses.
00:07:39
chrisyzen
that is often associated with biofilms formed by bacteria like staphylococcus aureus what's interesting about staphylococcus aureus is that i think it was nine out of ten people with eczema have that and that one is very implicated in eczema and here's another another example where a gut a bacteria potentially in balancing the gut or overgrowing in the gut can contribute to ah a condition that seemingly has nothing to do with the gut. It's on the skin, right? If you go to your doctor, what are they gonna do for eczema? They're gonna give you a corticosteroid.
Challenges of Using Steroids
00:08:24
chrisyzen
And what is a corticosteroid? It's a cortisone mimicking chemical.
00:08:29
chrisyzen
So it has similar um effect like the the stress hormone cortisol in the body and one of its primary effects is to suppress the immune system and that's why these quote-unquote anti-inflammatories which they they should be called immunosuppressives but that doesn't ring as nicely.
00:08:49
chrisyzen
they suppressed the immune system and that's that's how that that immune response that causes the skin condition subsides and the person gets a little bit of relief but there's a lot of side effects that come with them so it's not really it's not really a solution it's just a way to create a customer for life because if you don't help them resolve the issue you give them that and then the corticosteroid will cause a number of different things health problems which have been well documented in the scientific literature then that person will keep coming back to to the doctor with different health complaints and if you look at the list of corticosteroid or steroid induced conditions it it is truly terrifying i have
00:09:42
chrisyzen
in my in my book on longevity how to actually live longer volume one i actually have a big table with all of them so we have steroid induced diabetes steroid induced psychosis steroid induced panic disorder steroid induced osteoporosis glucocorticoid which is the same thing glucocorticoid induced muscle atrophy glucocorticoid induced hypertension which is high blood pressure steroid-induced cardiomyopathy, that's where the heart muscle deteriorates and functions steroid-induced glaucoma, which is an eye disease
00:10:27
chrisyzen
steroid induced pancreatitis and steroid induced myopathy, death disease of the muscles and cortic steroid induced
Complexities of Treating Biofilms
00:10:37
chrisyzen
lipodystrophy.
00:10:40
chrisyzen
Lipodystrophy is basically when the fat from your, just from your periphery tends to accumulate in your trunk and in your face. That is a straight up um recognized effect of corticosteroid drugs. Anyway, moving on, so chronic sinusitis, staphylococcus aureus, we covered that. Then you also have dental plaque. That's another, that's probably one of the most um common and easily understandable examples of a biofilm.
00:11:19
chrisyzen
which of course can lead to periodontitis and other stuff like that inflammation but that's just very simply biofilm and you can imagine if these these guys can adhere to the teeth to those surfaces which are you would think are quite smooth they're not really at the microscopic level but um just think of in the these little creases in our guts right because there's like the all these little folds and the villi and the micro villi they're these like finger like projections just imagine these kind of guys just getting in there getting nice and cozy together
00:11:59
chrisyzen
And then, ah you know, we should like make a tent and then like more more of them come and like, you know what? Let's just upgrade the tent to like a house, a shack, a shanty town. Then they have a whole village and then there's like megalo megalopolis, metropolis, um these mega freaking bio films.
00:12:17
chrisyzen
And then we wonder why, you know, we've we've tried so many things, you know, antibiotics, probiotics, herbs, ah cleanses, fasting, whatever, and nothing is not nothing seems to give us long term benefits because
00:12:35
chrisyzen
you know in these biofilms you can have parasites you can um they can you know evade evade your immune system and evade any other things you throw at them for a very long time and they just click key can kind of keep coming back all the time and I think that's a ah big reason again why people can sometimes not find relief for years because you need to figure out how to disrupt these biofilms and this takes a very systematic approach you have to be really careful as well because if you just start using biofilm disruptors
00:13:14
chrisyzen
and bits and pieces of this biofilm start breaking off if you're not careful about how you're mopping them up you may actually some of these bits and pieces especially if the gut is inflamed and leaky and there's intestinal permeability some of these can get absorbed back in or they can get absorbed into the bloodstream so you don't really want to mess with this stuff really nearly because that can then cause more immune system activation, but just imagine if there's microbes on a piece of biofilm that then gets absorbed into the bloodstream that they could potentially then um colonize some other part of the body.
00:13:57
chrisyzen
you I think this could be a pathway to things like urinary tract infections, bladder infections, stuff like that. So really it's just another one of those reasons why we cannot let this stuff slip it's not it's not about doing a two-week cleanse fixing your gut in a month or two even a two three month program and then okay i'm done i fixed my my gut issue on my merry way i'm i'm just gonna continue living like i used to and the problem is that the way a lot of us are living
00:14:33
chrisyzen
is what is causing these conditions in the gut to become such that these biofilms can form or inflammatory bacteria can thrive so it's it's there is no quick fix I wish there was but there isn't a not no No quick and dirty fix is going to really resolve this. You need to have a systematic approach and this is again a piece of a larger puzzle and for for I'm sure for many women out there this could be an important piece because again imagine if you have if you have these guys hiding out in there
00:15:14
chrisyzen
Nothing you do really is going to do much to to get get them out. You have to really break down the structure and then you have to mop it up, make sure that you know that stuff doesn't get into the bloodstream.
00:15:29
chrisyzen
And then, of course, you need to make sure that any inflammatory dysbiosis is addressed so that these conditions that allow these guys to proliferate don't allow, you know, don't ah remain and allow this problem to reappear. Because I think we can all agree is that we just want to be done with this once and for all right we want to address the issue and not have to deal with it again next year or the year after that and after that what i've noticed with my clients that stay diligent is they don't but what i've also noticed
Integrating Health Habits for Prevention
00:16:07
chrisyzen
is sometimes a client will be pretty rough at the start in a few months they they start feeling amazing and then they start running around and you know doing a lot of great fun stuff which is you know no issue there but the diet slips they don't you know they eat out more and that the choices they make are not optimal then maybe they don't take their supplements uh as diligently as they did when they were getting better and then you notice that they can sometimes start deteriorating it has to do with age of course absolutely with levels of stress there's a lot of factors out there but
00:16:45
chrisyzen
you Ideally, the whole point of the gut recovery method is not just to show you the way to resolving your your gut, hormonal, sleep, stress, all those things, all those issues, right but also how to integrate the tools and the teachings so that you just build the habits that then allow you to maintain your amazing results, right? Because I don't want repeat customers. I don't want repeat clients. I want you to be so happy with your results that you talk to your friends about me and my program, right? Not that you come back, oh, now I have this problem, help me with this. No, no, that's that's the doctor, the pharmaceutical industry model, which is,
00:17:35
chrisyzen
get as many clients and get them for as long as possible until they pop off at some point do as many procedures and prescribe as many drugs without killing them ideally so they can milk them for longer whereas our way and there's many of ah us out there helping people in many different ways with many different health problems our way is you personally my my sort of and mo modus operandius i want to be the last practitioner you need to see to resolve it sure you go to your doctor you get your physical your
00:18:19
chrisyzen
your yearly checkup and you go to your acupuncturist and your masseuse and you go to your chiropractor for your adjustments and whoever else you like to go to you continue to go with them I'm talking about the gut issue right this hormonal imbalance is all of these kind of things that because they're all connected right so the ideal way is to address them at the root address the contributors that cause them and then they will go away on their own. but You don't want to go to a specialist for the hormones and then a specialist for the gut and because all they're going to do is they're just going to try to help you suppress the symptoms happening in the gut, so suppress the other symptoms, let's say the headaches or whatever.
00:19:06
chrisyzen
so When you're just trying to suppress things, it's like that game whack-a-mole where you're just hitting the moles and they keep coming out of other holes. That's a really a futile a futile sort of strategy that will only allow the underlying issue to continue to fester. And it's it's it can be profitable, especially for the the companies that are their products are being pushed onto the people.
00:19:36
chrisyzen
but it's not optimal so and I know most people only know that way and there's a whole big piece of re-educating people and stuff like that and they have to take responsibility for their health take their health into their own hands I understand that but the fact is that the few that heed our advice that pay attention, that take a little bit of responsibility, that learn a little bit, they're going to be rewarded handsomely because they're going to resolve their issues and they will know how to maintain their good health for life. That's kind of that's the kind of program I'm offering, right? For those that are ready to put a little bit of work and again to take matters into their own hands, to not
00:20:24
chrisyzen
uh cede their power to some kind of authority figure that tells you you do this you do this you do this you know i know doctor knows best this kind of nonsense right because unfortunately the the fact is they don't know best if they did know best why are disease statistics the highest they have ever been why is the life expectancy of children being born today, lower than their parents in the United States.
Limitations of Mainstream Medicine
00:20:55
chrisyzen
That is true. Why are people
00:21:00
chrisyzen
but Why are so many people obese? Why are the many so many people have diabetes? Why do one in three people die of heart disease with this the first heart attack was recorded in 1912 You can go and chat GPT or Google Well Google will probably censor a chat GPT still kind of is not that good at the censoring But the first recorded heart attack was 1912
00:21:25
chrisyzen
Right? So we if' if we're at the pinnacle of medicine and science, why is everybody getting sicker and sicker and people have multiple health conditions and are on multiple drugs? Why? Why if they know everything and they're so smart? Why has nothing been cured? Nothing has been cured.
00:21:47
chrisyzen
not one thing has been cured, diabetes or heart disease or cancer any of the cancers, there is has not been one single cure. So if you see your power to that system, you're going to become just going to become it Something they milk and extract value from until it's no longer needed Until it no longer has anything to give that's the unfortunate truth, you know, so with really With self-responsibility comes a lot of power, you know, that is that is it and when I when I kind of Started on this path I
00:22:34
chrisyzen
it It just made sense. you know I learned a lot of things, things like just learning the fact that your symptom, this is so important to understand, the symptom, while it's causing you issues, you you you don't like it, like the headache or whatever, the gut issue, the gas, the bloating, the constipation, that's a symptom. But that's not the problem, it's a symptom of the problem.
00:23:01
chrisyzen
Very rarely is the symptom the problem. For example, if someone one punches me in the arm and I have a bruise and it hurts well, that's obviously you know an an injury and at the site where the You know, you've been punched. There's like a hematoma or whatever the hell you call it and it hurts and okay that that one we can make an exception but if you have a headache or if you um like ah like the the example earlier with people with eczema having this bacteria Staphylococcus aureus and then if you address the gut imbalances address the Staphylococcus aureus their eczema starts to improve or even go away by just by focusing on the gut doing nothing for the skin
00:23:49
chrisyzen
actually with eczema you also have to do a lot about stress it's such a big trigger and i i've kind of seen it with clients where when they get their stress under control things start to improve amazingly ah and not just with eczema with with a lot of other stuff but um the point is that the Skin stuff has nothing to do with the skin, per se, in terms of what caused it. but The skin stuff is a symptom. Same with psoriasis or anything where it's, you know, I mean like anything, anything, you know.
00:24:26
chrisyzen
Alzheimer's disease heart disease, you know and with heart disease. They're trying to blame cholesterol. It's not really cholesterol it's It's more in the inflammatory environment in the body that is predisposing a person to this for this to to occur, you know, so that's kind of that's kind of a little I Suppose
00:24:52
chrisyzen
ah little long-winded way to end the discussion on biofilms but you probably know by now that brevity is not my strong point but I always try to at least when I talk I'm trying to provide some sort of viewpoint that will help to you know give you a new new angle on on how you see yourself and health and and who is responsible for your health because another thing is the insurance industry you know like a lot of people were like Unfortunately, they believe, oh, I pay whatever $200. I don't know how much insurance is pretty expensive in the USA. So they're paying like hundreds of dollars for insurance, health insurance. And all that is providing is if you have an emergency or then, you know, you might get some free doctor visits, but what do they get you? They get you maybe free drugs, but do you want the free drugs?
00:25:42
chrisyzen
Do you want the gold bladder removal? Or do you want to not need those things at all? I think i think most same people would say, I don't want to need those things. I don't want to have the option of having those things. I'd rather just not get the things in in the first place. so And that that can happen as long as We begin to it's like what's what's a higher priority, you know, than your own health. So I know people like Netflix and they like to unwind after work and they're tired and stuff. um But look.
00:26:17
chrisyzen
ah hopefully you understand this I'm not talking to you specifically but I personally believe if you have any time to read or listen or watch anything I think until until you've sort of figured out the health stuff so you can remain as healthy as possible keep your family as healthy as possible until you kind of figure that stuff out a little bit I think there's There's no better use of your time, right? The problem, problem of course, is if you then have ah an actual serious, fairly serious health issue, you you do need to work with an expert, someone that knows what they're doing, because this trial and error, people get worse, they waste years or decades, they waste a lot of money and time, and they don't get any success, whereas a practitioner can help you in a few months, you know, just reach levels you didn't even think were possible anymore for you, you know?
00:27:13
chrisyzen
So, but the I'm talking about maintaining health, right? Reducing toxic exposure, ah basic detox stuff, you know, like the the stuff I teach my clients. What's the right foods to eat? What are the least inflammatory foods and what are what are the inflammatory things to not eat? how to How to eat clean when you're out? It's still possible, relatively speaking. Obviously, you most places don't sell organic food in terms of like in the restaurants, it won't be organic, but at least you can eat fairly clean and these are again things I teach my clients because we have to adapt to the modern world and the modern world is full of toxins and the thing is that we're not adapted to specifically so our body is working in overdrive to just to handle all that extra stress so the more we learn how to adapt to our environment the better off we will be you know this is the kind of stuff I teach my clients once again so
Masterclass for Health Management
00:28:10
chrisyzen
if you have decided that vibrant health is your birthright and it's possible for you and it's possible for you relatively quickly and you want to shortcut that process instead of meandering and fruitless trial and error and frustration and confusion because of all the conflicting advice out there if you want to accelerate your process ah progress and work with someone that knows how to get you there faster then you can always check out my masterclass link is in description and we can see if it resonates we can then see what the next steps are for you and we can make a winning plan for you but the first step is to watch the masterclass and see if it at all my message resonates
00:29:00
chrisyzen
So I think I'll stop there. Thank you so much for tuning in and I'll see you and hear you see you or hear you I don't think I'll see you or hear you but you know what I mean the next episode