Latest / The Everyday Awesome Project / 137: Microbiome 101: How Your Gut Shapes Hormones, Mood, and Health

Transcript

137: Microbiome 101: How Your Gut Shapes Hormones, Mood, and Health · The Everyday Awesome Project

• 0:27
  Samantha Pruitts: Hello there, beautiful humans.
• 0:29
  Samantha Pruitts: Coach Sam going solo today.
• 0:32
  Samantha Pruitts: And we're going to talk about something I'm super fired up about.
• 0:36
  Samantha Pruitts: We've talked about on the podcast before.
• 0:39
  Samantha Pruitts: We've talked about microbiome and your gut health and your gut brain connection many times on the podcast.
• 0:47
  Samantha Pruitts: Polly and I are super passionate about this, but currently I am deep in a book called The Menopause Gut.
• 0:55
  Samantha Pruitts: The menopause gut by Cynthia Thurlow, nurse practitioner.
• 1:00
  Samantha Pruitts: And what I stumbled across in research and then ultimately found her book and her podcast around the science specifically on what happens to your gut in menopause.
• 1:13
  Samantha Pruitts: And since I'm a post-menopausal woman and I coach women all the time in paramenopause and in the menopause transition and in postmenopause related to their health, their fitness, their mental, physical health, their fitness, and just their overall well-being and longevity.
• 1:31
  Samantha Pruitts: This book has really fired me up.
• 1:35
  Samantha Pruitts: So I'm going to share some of it with you today.
• 1:37
  Samantha Pruitts: You don't have to be a female identified human.
• 1:42
  Samantha Pruitts: You don't have to be in perimenopause or menopause.
• 1:46
  Samantha Pruitts: You do have to be a human and you do have to have a gut.
• 1:50
  Samantha Pruitts: And then you will learn all kinds of things about the microbiome in your gut and why it is imperative, critical, survival-level critical that you understand how this works, what they are, what they do.
• 2:07
  Samantha Pruitts: And it will definitely, definitely in the next 15 minutes or so, unlock some huge, I mean mind-blowing things for you to make some connections to your own health, how you're feeling, how you're functioning, how you're performing or not, related to your gut and your microbiome in particular.
• 2:28
  Samantha Pruitts: I'll share some anecdotes along the way.
• 2:31
  Samantha Pruitts: And I'm going to read some experts, excerpts from her book because, again, groundbreaking work here done by Cynthia Thurlow.
• 2:39
  Samantha Pruitts: I'm so appreciative of her work in the world.
• 2:42
  Samantha Pruitts: And I want to share this book with you because you should all buy it.
• 2:46
  Samantha Pruitts: Okay, so first let's start off with the basics, okay?
• 2:50
  Samantha Pruitts: So microbiome.
• 2:54
  Samantha Pruitts: Well, when your immune system is firing full speed, it quietly but gallantly fights off bad bacteria while giving good bacteria a pass.
• 3:05
  Samantha Pruitts: But at some times the immune system stops working efficiently, like mine did in my late 20s, when I was under extreme stress, extreme stress, and my lifestyle was shit.
• 3:21
  Samantha Pruitts: Okay, I was not doing exercise, I was not eating well, and I was completely stressed out, and that stress went on for a prolonged period of time.
• 3:30
  Samantha Pruitts: So many of you I know can relate to these circumstances.
• 3:34
  Samantha Pruitts: My immune system went totally haywire offline, and ultimately I developed an autoimmune disease.
• 3:41
  Samantha Pruitts: But when that immune system stops working efficiently, the cause often is a loss of equilibrium in your gut microbiome.
• 3:51
  Samantha Pruitts: And like I mentioned in perimenopause and menopause, it's a big factor of this equilibrium loss, or like in my case when I was younger, autoimmune disease development.
• 4:04
  Samantha Pruitts: So first things first, what the heck is the microbiome?
• 4:07
  Samantha Pruitts: Well, first of all, there's trillions of them.
• 4:10
  Samantha Pruitts: Trillions of microbiome in and on your body.
• 4:15
  Samantha Pruitts: The microbiome is really a catch-all of a fascinating world of bacteria, fungus, viruses, and archaea that live mostly in your gut, but also on your skin and in other parts of your body.
• 4:31
  Samantha Pruitts: We used to think that these pathogens were bad, but now we know science has proven that a lot of good comes out of these.
• 4:42
  Samantha Pruitts: We need them to survive as much as they need us.
• 4:46
  Samantha Pruitts: Over the years, the medical community's understanding for the role of these microbes has expanded enormously, leading to practitioners discovering profound impacts that the microbiome have on our digestion, our metabolism, but also our immunity, our mental health, our bone health, our hormonal balance, and more.
• 5:14
  Samantha Pruitts: They impact every system of the body and in fact our homeostasis.
• 5:20
  Samantha Pruitts: The most steady microbiome, of course, is the gut microbiome, all 25 meters of it.
• 5:26
  Samantha Pruitts: But the microbiomes exist in our skin, in our mouth, in our private parts.
• 5:35
  Samantha Pruitts: That's right.
• 5:37
  Samantha Pruitts: They're everywhere.
• 5:38
  Samantha Pruitts: Throughout the GI tract, specifically, there is an intestinal layer, the epithelium, which lines the surface of our intestines.
• 5:48
  Samantha Pruitts: In some places, it's literally only a cell thick.
• 5:52
  Samantha Pruitts: It serves as a critical barrier between the gut contents, as in things we put in our mouth that move down and out and through the pooper.
• 6:01
  Samantha Pruitts: It's a critical barrier between the gut contents and the rest of the body, while also playing a critical role in absorbing nutrients and interacting with the gut microbiome.
• 6:12
  Samantha Pruitts: It produces mucus, which allows the absorption of nutrients and fluids while acting as an efficient and protective barrier for toxins and bad microorganisms.
• 6:24
  Samantha Pruitts: Research has shown that the composition of the gut microbiome can vary significantly from person to person, but generally there are six abundantly found types of bacteria inside all of us.
• 6:37
  Samantha Pruitts: Fermicutes, bacteriaidites, actinobites, actinobacteria, proteobacteria, fusobacteria, virocobacteria, among which fermacutes and bacrodites represent 90% of the gut microbiome.
• 7:04
  Samantha Pruitts: Sorry if I slaughtered them.
• 7:06
  Samantha Pruitts: It's a mouthful.
• 7:08
  Samantha Pruitts: So those are the big boys, and there's two of them in particular that represent 90% of the gut microbiota in particular.
• 7:17
  Samantha Pruitts: These two are known for their ability to break down complex carbohydrates, and they are involved in the production of short-chain fatty acids, and they help with the production of important digestive enzymes.
• 7:33
  Samantha Pruitts: All of these are critical for gut health and functioning.
• 7:39
  Samantha Pruitts: Why, why, why these things can go derail.
• 7:45
  Samantha Pruitts: We're going to get into that in just a minute.
• 7:47
  Samantha Pruitts: But first, what does a healthy microbiome even look like?
• 7:51
  Samantha Pruitts: Because that's the goal for all of us, right?
• 7:54
  Samantha Pruitts: If we know their critical function within our body systems for overall health, we need to understand what does it look like when they're healthy, what does it look like when they're not, and what the heck can we do about it?
• 8:05
  Samantha Pruitts: And I'm on this learning journey with you also.
• 8:08
  Samantha Pruitts: Even after all these years, and literally over 25, 26 years since my diagnosis from autoimmune, I'm still figuring this shit out because it's constantly changing based on things happening in my life.
• 8:24
  Samantha Pruitts: Everything I do in my life affects my bike, my gut microbiome and my whole body microbiome.
• 8:31
  Samantha Pruitts: So this symbiotic relationship between our gut specifically and its inhabitants, the microbiome, dates back to thousands of years as our ancestors developed, these microbes adapted to living within us harmoniously.
• 8:48
  Samantha Pruitts: Studies suggest that our microbiome has co-evolved with us, influencing various aspects of our biology, our immunity, and even our behavior over time.
• 9:00
  Samantha Pruitts: It's still happening.
• 9:03
  Samantha Pruitts: A healthy microbiome comprised with a wildly diverse microbial makeup is ideal, with bacteria being the most dominant.
• 9:12
  Samantha Pruitts: And the first time the body gets exposed to all of these wonderful flora microbiome is most likely when we are born.
• 9:20
  Samantha Pruitts: Before birth, the digestive tract is completely sterile, but then it is colonized immediately by the organisms we come in contact with.
• 9:30
  Samantha Pruitts: In fact, we actually acquire our first set of microbes from our mother during the birthing process.
• 9:39
  Samantha Pruitts: It's literally like getting your own private army of bacteria, protozoa, fungi, and viruses as you're born.
• 9:46
  Samantha Pruitts: And that in turn forms a protective barrier between the external environment and our own internal environment.
• 9:55
  Samantha Pruitts: Truly the groundbreaking science going on around what happens in utero.
• 10:02
  Samantha Pruitts: This is not a political conversation.
• 10:04
  Samantha Pruitts: What happens in utero is mind-blowing in our DNA, in our cells, in our gut, in our microbiome, and all of these things that are going on before we're even born or in transition into birth, into the world from our parents, and particularly in this case, microbiome, our mother, is wild.
• 10:26
  Samantha Pruitts: If you want to learn more about this, be a nerd and check it out.
• 10:30
  Samantha Pruitts: Study it.
• 10:31
  Samantha Pruitts: Okay, so digestion in the gut.
• 10:33
  Samantha Pruitts: Well, let's talk about the gut's main job.
• 10:35
  Samantha Pruitts: It's to break down what you eat, absorb all the nutrients, and get rid of all the bad stuff to ultimately provide energy throughout the body.
• 10:48
  Samantha Pruitts: That's what your gut's responsible for.
• 10:51
  Samantha Pruitts: We need to understand and have a relationship with our gut.
• 10:56
  Samantha Pruitts: And a majority of the population's guts are totally dysfunctional.
• 11:01
  Samantha Pruitts: I had no idea growing up how important it was what I put in my mouth and how I supported my gut health, including pooping and how it would actually impact my mental and physical health, and in fact, long-term health to this day.
• 11:18
  Samantha Pruitts: It's a tall order we're asking of the gut, but when everything is working smoothly, it gets the job done.
• 11:24
  Samantha Pruitts: Your microbiome helps to break down carbohydrates, proteins, fats, and other compounds that human enzymes cannot digest on their own.
• 11:35
  Samantha Pruitts: Well, how does it work?
• 11:36
  Samantha Pruitts: Well, in a few ways.
• 11:38
  Samantha Pruitts: Most importantly, the gut bacteria breaks down the dietary fibers we eat.
• 11:42
  Samantha Pruitts: Hello, fiber.
• 11:44
  Samantha Pruitts: Fiber people, it breaks it down into short chain fatty acids.
• 11:50
  Samantha Pruitts: Acetate, propionate, and butyrate.
• 11:55
  Samantha Pruitts: These in turn provide energy to our body and especially for the cells in our gut.
• 12:01
  Samantha Pruitts: So short chain fatty acids are critical to energizing the human body.
• 12:08
  Samantha Pruitts: They also keep inflammation at bay, inhibiting the production of pro-inflammatory cytokines and promoting the production of regulatory T cells.
• 12:17
  Samantha Pruitts: T cells are what suppress overactive immune systems.
• 12:21
  Samantha Pruitts: So, for example, I developed an autoimmune.
• 12:24
  Samantha Pruitts: What the hell were my T cells doing?
• 12:27
  Samantha Pruitts: Okay.
• 12:27
  Samantha Pruitts: They were not able to counter all of the inflammation I had built up, all the cytokines, and they could not help me manage my immune system.
• 12:37
  Samantha Pruitts: It went awry.
• 12:38
  Samantha Pruitts: It turned against me.
• 12:39
  Samantha Pruitts: Autoimmune disease is exploding in our modern culture.
• 12:44
  Samantha Pruitts: Exploding.
• 12:45
  Samantha Pruitts: We need to understand these things so we can change them or stop them before they actually become a disease state.
• 12:52
  Samantha Pruitts: It's beneficial in preventing chronic inflammation conditions, like I said, including things like myrital bowel, inflammatory bowel, other gut-related disorders.
• 13:02
  Samantha Pruitts: Short chain fatty acids also stabilize our metabolism by enhancing insulin secretion and modulating the release of gut hormones such as GLP1, such as GLP1, regulating blood sugar levels by improving insulin, a hormone, if you don't know, that helps control our blood sugar, and reducing the risk of metabolic disorders like obesity, type 2 diabetes diabetes, insulin resistance.
• 13:34
  Samantha Pruitts: Man, I'm telling you again, another disease that is exploding in Western culture.
• 13:41
  Samantha Pruitts: Actually, globally, it really is.
• 13:43
  Samantha Pruitts: Metabolic disorders have gone through the roof.
• 13:48
  Samantha Pruitts: And this is one of the reasons.
• 13:50
  Samantha Pruitts: If you remember the names of any of these, you should remember the short chain fatty acid called butyrate.
• 13:56
  Samantha Pruitts: It is one of the most consequential, and it also makes up the lining of our gut stronger by tightening the spaces between the cells.
• 14:03
  Samantha Pruitts: So I'm working on that personally now because I do have, and I have had for a long time, dysbiosis and leaky gut.
• 14:11
  Samantha Pruitts: And I can get into that story in a bit when we get there.
• 14:14
  Samantha Pruitts: But this stops harmful stuff from leaking into the bloodstream.
• 14:19
  Samantha Pruitts: So the walls of the gut become permeable.
• 14:23
  Samantha Pruitts: And bad stuff or even food particles that could be utilized into good stuff if they have the time and were getting broke down properly, they get into the bloodstream, bloodstream itself and trigger inflammation.
• 14:39
  Samantha Pruitts: Okay, this is not good, people.
• 14:42
  Samantha Pruitts: A healthy microbiome does a lot more than help with digestion.
• 14:46
  Samantha Pruitts: Some gut bacteria produce critical vitamins like vitamin K, which we need to clot our blood.
• 14:53
  Samantha Pruitts: It helps us absorb minerals like calcium, which we need for our bones, magnesium, which is critical for our nerves and our muscles.
• 15:02
  Samantha Pruitts: They also help make B vitamins that give us energy.
• 15:06
  Samantha Pruitts: They help build our DNA.
• 15:09
  Samantha Pruitts: What?
• 15:10
  Samantha Pruitts: They keep our brains healthy.
• 15:12
  Samantha Pruitts: In addition, the gut microbiome helps to break down bile acids in the body, which are needed to digest fats.
• 15:21
  Samantha Pruitts: Lots of people are having food allergies, can't break down the food that they have they're putting in their mouth, all of these things.
• 15:30
  Samantha Pruitts: And so when that happens, that system is broken down because the gut microbiome is dysfunctional and the gut becomes permeable.
• 15:39
  Samantha Pruitts: You literally cannot digest the food that is going into your mouth, and ultimately it breaks through the walls and into the rest of the body where it does not belong.
• 15:51
  Samantha Pruitts: Your immune system is in your gut.
• 15:56
  Samantha Pruitts: The gut's second but not less important job is fortressing your immune system in both the development of your immune system, ongoing development.
• 16:08
  Samantha Pruitts: It's not a one and done, it's an ongoing development, your immune system over your lifetime, and your immune system's regulation.
• 16:15
  Samantha Pruitts: It's a big job after all.
• 16:17
  Samantha Pruitts: 70 to 80 percent of your body's immune system and cells are in the gut.
• 16:25
  Samantha Pruitts: Okay, let me say that again: 70 to 80 percent of your actual immune cells are in your gut.
• 16:33
  Samantha Pruitts: Doesn't that blow your mind?
• 16:35
  Samantha Pruitts: Gut microbiome help train the immune system to distinguish between good and bad substances.
• 16:43
  Samantha Pruitts: You know, for example, like food we need for our bodies to function versus harmful viruses or other foreign invaders, keeping you safe and healthy.
• 16:52
  Samantha Pruitts: Again, disease is on the rise.
• 16:55
  Samantha Pruitts: So many diseases are exploding.
• 16:57
  Samantha Pruitts: And at the core of it, I believe, and based on science, not me just making things up, okay?
• 17:04
  Samantha Pruitts: And I literally read 1% of what is available with the latest scientific research in this area.
• 17:11
  Samantha Pruitts: Gut microbiome science has just exploded in the last 10 years, and you can spend a lifetime studying it.
• 17:17
  Samantha Pruitts: And I hope that you do.
• 17:18
  Samantha Pruitts: I hope that you do.
• 17:19
  Samantha Pruitts: A diverse microbiome helps prevent the overgrowth of bad bacteria.
• 17:24
  Samantha Pruitts: Basically, the more diverse your gut, the better your immune response.
• 17:28
  Samantha Pruitts: The strength of your immune system relies on the strength of the lining of the small intestine.
• 17:33
  Samantha Pruitts: Okay, recently I just had a test, literally two weeks ago.
• 17:37
  Samantha Pruitts: I'm looking at my small intestine.
• 17:40
  Samantha Pruitts: Again, because of my celiacs and autoimmune disease and years, literally a lifelong lifetime of gut challenges, that's my nemesis.
• 17:50
  Samantha Pruitts: Some things popped up recently, and my doctors and I decided we should take a look at the small intestine, since that's not one we had seen on any prior tests.
• 17:59
  Samantha Pruitts: And just try and rule out that I wasn't developing a secondary autoimmune related to the small intestine.
• 18:06
  Samantha Pruitts: So the lining of the small intestine is critical, which is structured to maximize nutrient absorption and is composed of several layers itself.
• 18:15
  Samantha Pruitts: So there's different parts of the gut, including your small intestine.
• 18:18
  Samantha Pruitts: It's important to understand how delicate this ecosystem is.
• 18:22
  Samantha Pruitts: It's so delicate and critical that these areas are not damaged or compromised.
• 18:28
  Samantha Pruitts: If they are, we will become susceptible, susceptible, susceptible to leaky gut.
• 18:36
  Samantha Pruitts: That's what I just was describing, where the food particles, the bad bacteria, and the other bad guys get into our blood system, leading to chronic inflammation.
• 18:46
  Samantha Pruitts: Chronic inflammation, which leads to disease.
• 18:51
  Samantha Pruitts: That breach can lead to, like I said, a leaky gut, which is permeability of the gut, where the lining becomes compromised, toxins, undigested food, microbe microbes all pass through into the blood stream.
• 19:07
  Samantha Pruitts: Normally these tight junctions between the intestinal cells regulate what can pass through the lining.
• 19:15
  Samantha Pruitts: But when these junctions are loose from stress, poor diet, infection, overuse of medications like antibiotics, oral contraceptives, anti-inflammatory drugs, and really just years and years of a crappy lifestyle, it is hugely problematic.
• 19:44
  Samantha Pruitts: This breach will activate the immune system, triggering chronic inflammation and contributing to autoimmune diseases, such as celiac's disease, which I developed in my twenties, Hashimoto's thyroiditis, rheumatoid arthritis, irritable bowel disease or syndrome, inflammatory bowel disease, and skin inflammation, brain inflammation, basically low-grade inflammation that actually ages you faster, accelerates the aging process, not anything any of us want.
• 20:23
  Samantha Pruitts: Research shows that there is a strong connection between the gut and the brain.
• 20:28
  Samantha Pruitts: This is another area of study that you just will blow your mind.
• 20:33
  Samantha Pruitts: And Polly and I have talked about the gut brain quite a bit and its communication pathway, the vagus nerve.
• 20:38
  Samantha Pruitts: But check this out, check this out.
• 20:40
  Samantha Pruitts: Between the gut and the brain, what is called the gut brain axis, it's a biodirectional communication system that includes the nervous system, like we've discussed, but also the immune system and hormones.
• 20:55
  Samantha Pruitts: Hello, hormones.
• 20:56
  Samantha Pruitts: We all make hormones.
• 20:58
  Samantha Pruitts: There's a variety of hormones.
• 21:00
  Samantha Pruitts: Your body needs hormones.
• 21:02
  Samantha Pruitts: Even somebody like me who has long passed perimenopause, the menopause transition is far out the other side.
• 21:10
  Samantha Pruitts: I need hormones.
• 21:13
  Samantha Pruitts: Every part of my body, all of the systems rely on hormones, and they are made and processed and distributed through the gut.
• 21:22
  Samantha Pruitts: You know that phrase, trust your gut.
• 21:24
  Samantha Pruitts: We just talked about that on a podcast really recently.
• 21:27
  Samantha Pruitts: There's a lot of truth in that because this complicated information highway is so vital for your health and your emotional well-being as well.
• 21:38
  Samantha Pruitts: The gut, in fact, produces 90% of the body's neurotransmitters.
• 21:45
  Samantha Pruitts: So we said it the immune system, 70 to 80 percent, 90% of your body's neurotransmitters.
• 21:53
  Samantha Pruitts: Okay, you're about to learn what those are.
• 21:55
  Samantha Pruitts: Number one, serotonin.
• 21:58
  Samantha Pruitts: Okay, serotonin.
• 22:00
  Samantha Pruitts: It's widely known for its role in mood regulation, serotonin, but it also plays a critical role in regulating gut function, including bowel movements, intestinal muscle transactions that move food through your body.
• 22:16
  Samantha Pruitts: It also helps you speed up the Digestion to get rid of toxins when you need to, and it also can suppress your appetite.
• 22:24
  Samantha Pruitts: 90% of the body's serotonin is produced in the gut, particularly in the cells lining the gut.
• 22:32
  Samantha Pruitts: Low serotonin can contribute to mood changes, anxiety, depression, and can show up in your system as irritable bowel or as constipation.
• 22:45
  Samantha Pruitts: That's a serotonin disruption.
• 22:48
  Samantha Pruitts: GABA, here's another one, neurotransmitter.
• 22:52
  Samantha Pruitts: It aids our brain function and emotional states.
• 22:56
  Samantha Pruitts: Best known for its role in the central nervous system or the second brain, its function as a primary neurotransmitter is to regulate our mood and our stress level.
• 23:06
  Samantha Pruitts: However, GABA also plays an important role in the gut where it is contributing to gut motility, like we said, the movement of food passing through the digestive tract, being secreted, and sensation.
• 23:18
  Samantha Pruitts: Because GABA is involved in stress regulation, disruptions in its signal signaling can exasperate stress-induced GI issues.
• 23:30
  Samantha Pruitts: That's GABA.
• 23:32
  Samantha Pruitts: The next one is dopamine, a neurotransmitter best known for its role in the brain where it regulates mood, motivation.
• 23:41
  Samantha Pruitts: Oh my gosh, reward and motor control.
• 23:46
  Samantha Pruitts: However, dopamine also plays an important role in the gut, too.
• 23:51
  Samantha Pruitts: The gut microbiota can influence dopamine levels affecting mood and behavior.
• 23:57
  Samantha Pruitts: Conversely, dopamine signaling from the brain can influence the gut function as well.
• 24:03
  Samantha Pruitts: Dopamine dysregulation can trigger GI distress like IBS, and because dopamine is involved in regulating stress and reward pathways, reward pathways, changes in dopamine levels can exasperate stress-induced GI issues.
• 24:20
  Samantha Pruitts: So those are neurotransmitters.
• 24:23
  Samantha Pruitts: Your gut and your brain.
• 24:26
  Samantha Pruitts: The microbiome also affects the production of hormones, like we said, involved in appetite regulation, like leptin and grenolin, thereby influencing energy balance and metabolic health.
• 24:39
  Samantha Pruitts: These hormones are part of the gut brain access, and their signaling can be influenced or can influence by the state of the gut.
• 24:48
  Samantha Pruitts: The microbiome, its inflammation, and its overall digestive help influence these hormones or lack thereof or dysfunction of.
• 24:56
  Samantha Pruitts: In short, your microbiome is essential for digestion, immune function, metabolism, hormonal balance, mental health, and protection against disease.
• 25:13
  Samantha Pruitts: I'm gonna read that again.
• 25:15
  Samantha Pruitts: In short, your microbiome is essential, okay?
• 25:20
  Samantha Pruitts: Essential means not optional, but critical.
• 25:24
  Samantha Pruitts: Your microbiome is essential for digestion, immune function, metabolism, hormonal balance, mental health, and protection against disease.
• 25:38
  Samantha Pruitts: Additionally, your microbiome affects your circadian rhythms and your body clock, basically.
• 25:45
  Samantha Pruitts: Many people know what a body clock is.
• 25:46
  Samantha Pruitts: It, you know, basically operates on a 24-hour clock or a circadian rhythm, if you're not sure what that is.
• 25:52
  Samantha Pruitts: We all have this master clock inside of us.
• 25:54
  Samantha Pruitts: Um, and it's located in a small region of the hypothalamus.
• 25:58
  Samantha Pruitts: And what it does is it is regulated by exposure to light as well as meal times, stage of life, and physical activity.
• 26:08
  Samantha Pruitts: So your body clock is regulated, and again, helping you stay in homeostasis and healthy and functional.
• 26:16
  Samantha Pruitts: Light, mealtime, life stages, and physical activities all influence this body clock.
• 26:22
  Samantha Pruitts: There are clock cells, if you will, like tiny timers throughout the body that work to control your internal clock.
• 26:30
  Samantha Pruitts: It helps regulate your daily activity, like feeling sleepy or alert, feeling hungry, your body temperature, your hormonal production or lack thereof, your menstrual cycle, for example.
• 26:46
  Samantha Pruitts: In addition, every cell in our body has its own clock that works on a 24-hour schedule as well.
• 26:52
  Samantha Pruitts: Again, so people creating different schedules besides what you know humanity has evolved off of, which is sunrise and sunset, are not going to be helpful.
• 27:02
  Samantha Pruitts: This is going to be disruptive to this critical internal body clock.
• 27:06
  Samantha Pruitts: Your body, working like a clock, promotes health for your digestive system, your mood, your sleep, your bones, and even your hormones.
• 27:12
  Samantha Pruitts: Why is this important when talking about the gut?
• 27:14
  Samantha Pruitts: Because the microbiome is also heavily influenced by our nutritional choices and in turn can affect the clocks of the gut and thereby influence the gut lining and microbiota.
• 27:31
  Samantha Pruitts: So these things, these circadian rhythm or body clock things that I'm talking about are going to affect greatly your microbiome.
• 27:41
  Samantha Pruitts: This biodirectional relationship between the inner clock and the gut microbiome means that disruptions in one can have a profound effect in the other.
• 27:52
  Samantha Pruitts: If it's working correctly, your digestion will be in sync, your sleeping habits will be in sync.
• 27:57
  Samantha Pruitts: You know, for example, your clock helps control certain gut bacteria when you're more active, when you're physically active.
• 28:05
  Samantha Pruitts: Some bacteria might help with digestion more in the day, and at night they shut off or they do other things while other gut microbiome follow the circadian pattern pattern, fluctuating in response to your feeding times, light and dark cycles, and your sleep-wake pattern.
• 28:23
  Samantha Pruitts: So basically, the gut microbiome has its own body clock, like the circadian rhythms.
• 28:31
  Samantha Pruitts: We think about sleep and our brain, our gut is working by the same clock.
• 28:37
  Samantha Pruitts: During the day, for example, the microbiome are helping you digest, metabolize food, become active, create fuel sources, etc.
• 28:47
  Samantha Pruitts: etc.
• 28:48
  Samantha Pruitts: Digest certain bacteria species may peak in activity during a feeding phase, like the daytime, while others during the fasting phase at night.
• 28:58
  Samantha Pruitts: So they have their own roles and responsibilities based on day and night.
• 29:04
  Samantha Pruitts: At night, when the body is fasting, the digestive system slows down, and the microbiome shifts towards bacteria to help repair the gut lining.
• 29:13
  Samantha Pruitts: Okay, so at night, your body and your brain are working so hard.
• 29:18
  Samantha Pruitts: Your gut is working so hard to do the work called rebuilding.
• 29:24
  Samantha Pruitts: So in this case, the microbiome is helping to repair the gut lining, modulate your immune response, and maintain metabolic balance.
• 29:33
  Samantha Pruitts: So when your gut is when your sleep is disrupted, your gut is disrupted, and vice versa.
• 29:39
  Samantha Pruitts: There are impacts.
• 29:40
  Samantha Pruitts: So circadium misalignment, which is basically disruptions in the natural circadian rhythm, can happen with changes in your schedule, shift work, jet lag, irregular sleep, stress, poor eating, all of these changes can and will disrupt the gut microbiome, potentially resulting in gut dysbiosis, which is associated with so many health, negative health outcomes now.
• 30:06
  Samantha Pruitts: Metabolic disorders like obesity, insulin resistance, type 2 diabetes, chronic diseases, cardiovascular disease, autoimmune disorders.
• 30:15
  Samantha Pruitts: We need to think about all of these things working in rhythm and how ultimately the gut microbiome plays such an important role for us.
• 30:24
  Samantha Pruitts: It really is an unsung hero, if you ask me.
• 30:29
  Samantha Pruitts: So we kind of know what it's like to look.
• 30:36
  Samantha Pruitts: I know this is a complicated subject and I'm going fast.
• 30:40
  Samantha Pruitts: But it's a fragile ecosystem.
• 30:45
  Samantha Pruitts: And when it's compromised, it reduces our ability to function, the body, to function.
• 30:51
  Samantha Pruitts: There are so many factors contributing to a healthy or an unhealthy gut microbiome.
• 30:58
  Samantha Pruitts: And you know, honestly, the Western culture, processed food, nutrient-deficient diets, high stress, disrupted sleep, etc., etc.
• 31:10
  Samantha Pruitts: You know, additives in our food, heavy metals, la la la, I could go on and on and on.
• 31:16
  Samantha Pruitts: There's so many things.
• 31:17
  Samantha Pruitts: Drug impacts, you know, a lot of people are on prescription drugs.
• 31:22
  Samantha Pruitts: I get it, those things have a time and a place, but realistically, we need to understand if we're doing those disruptive things for a moment, okay, like we have to take a medication or we have to be stressed out for a period of time, or we have to go sleep devived, or we have to eat crappy food for a minute.
• 31:40
  Samantha Pruitts: We need to immediately reassess afterwards and get back on track in order to rebuild the gut microbiome.
• 31:46
  Samantha Pruitts: So we can think of it like the weeds overgrown in your garden when it hasn't been tended to.
• 31:52
  Samantha Pruitts: You know, you had a beautiful garden, you were maintaining it, everything was going great, you were harvesting, and then you left on vacation for a while, and you came back and the weeds had taken over, and because of the lack of water and tender care towards the plants, the plants were dying, etc.
• 32:11
  Samantha Pruitts: You know, your gut is no different than that, it needs constant attention in order to really build the microbiome, uh microbiome community that is living there.
• 32:24
  Samantha Pruitts: And so let's kind of get into that.
• 32:27
  Samantha Pruitts: What are the things?
• 32:29
  Samantha Pruitts: Well, reduced microbiome diversity is problematic, and that is one thing that we need to work on is increasing the diversity of our microbiome.
• 32:40
  Samantha Pruitts: There's lots of different types, and what happens is some will die off, and some will be the good ones will die off because they're not getting fed, they're not getting managed, like that garden I just described, you know, where the healthy vegetables and fruits and plants and flowers are thriving.
• 33:00
  Samantha Pruitts: They'll die off, and then the weeds or the bad bacteria, fungus, etc., will take over.
• 33:07
  Samantha Pruitts: Bad ones will take over.
• 33:10
  Samantha Pruitts: That actually happens.
• 33:11
  Samantha Pruitts: It happened to me recently.
• 33:13
  Samantha Pruitts: I did Iron Man Arizona a year and a half, two years ago.
• 33:17
  Samantha Pruitts: Now I'm losing track of the calendar, but I did develop SIBO and SIFO after that.
• 33:24
  Samantha Pruitts: So small intestine bacterial overgrowth, small intestine fungal overgrowth, because of my exposure to the open water.
• 33:34
  Samantha Pruitts: So I swam in a water way that appeared to be clean and fine, but you know, being submerged for two and a half miles, you know, in that water, swimming for an hour and a half, I took in that water into my body.
• 33:52
  Samantha Pruitts: It's impossible not to, right?
• 33:54
  Samantha Pruitts: No matter what you're doing, it's going into your mouth and your other orfices.
• 33:58
  Samantha Pruitts: So unfortunately, it did.
• 34:00
  Samantha Pruitts: And I ended up developing SIBO and CIFO, and it took over a year to heal that.
• 34:06
  Samantha Pruitts: And even now, I am just now to a point where I have distinguished those bad bacteria and fungi that had taken over my small intestine and gut, and now I'm rebuilding the gut microbiome that we're speaking about today.
• 34:20
  Samantha Pruitts: Signs of a disrupted gut microbiome are digestive problems, bloating gas, constipation, diarrhea, indigestion, food intolerances or sensitivities.
• 34:30
  Samantha Pruitts: Well, for years I developed food allergy after food allergy after food allergy on top of my celiacs disease, which is a gluten intolerance, because the lack of diversity in my gut bacteria impaired the digestion of certain foods, leading to intolerances.
• 34:45
  Samantha Pruitts: It isn't that forever I need to avoid these foods, or these food sensitivities were going to be with me forever, but because I had a lack of diversity in my gut microbiome, I couldn't tolerate these foods.
• 34:58
  Samantha Pruitts: It leads to chronic fatigue.
• 35:00
  Samantha Pruitts: It really, really does impact your gut brain axis, as we discussed earlier, brain fog, fatigue, and whoo, yeah, the whole gut brain, that's a whole other subject, but it affects your brain function.
• 35:12
  Samantha Pruitts: It really does, including mood disorders, mental health, and unhealthy gut leads to anxiety, depression, and stress.
• 35:20
  Samantha Pruitts: So if you are experiencing these things, it is highly probable you need to look gut first.
• 35:28
  Samantha Pruitts: Am I eating well?
• 35:30
  Samantha Pruitts: Am I doing all the things that I'm about to tell you that can help me to build a better gut microbiome and help me regulate this gut brain access that's so important to how I feel.
• 35:41
  Samantha Pruitts: You'll develop skin allergies, which I've had those for years, and now it all makes sense.
• 35:45
  Samantha Pruitts: Again, that's the dysbiosis where these things are coming out into your bloodstream and they're showing up in your skin.
• 35:51
  Samantha Pruitts: And let me tell you, by the way, after 25 something years of this, how many times initially I went to the doctors with skin disorders before I was even diagnosed with autoimmune and said, I'm pretty sure what I'm putting in my mouth is causing this rash or this response.
• 36:09
  Samantha Pruitts: And I was told over and over and over, no, it has nothing to do with it.
• 36:14
  Samantha Pruitts: Put this topical steroid, put this topical cream, la la la.
• 36:19
  Samantha Pruitts: That is not reality.
• 36:21
  Samantha Pruitts: I quickly knew for myself that was not true, but now understanding the science after all these years and living with autoimmune for 26, 27 years and managing it, managing it pretty well up until this recent disruption with the SIBO and the SIFO, my skin, your skin, is a direct response.
• 36:43
  Samantha Pruitts: It takes a direct hit from disrupted gut microbiome.
• 36:46
  Samantha Pruitts: So rashes, Eskima, rosacea, uh frequent infections because your immune system's compromised.
• 36:52
  Samantha Pruitts: You're gonna get frequent infections.
• 36:54
  Samantha Pruitts: Your immune system, 80% is in the gut, if it's not functioning, you're gonna get sick.
• 36:59
  Samantha Pruitts: You'll get reoccurring infections and illnesses.
• 37:02
  Samantha Pruitts: And then tragically, ever so tragically, weight gain or weight loss resistance.
• 37:09
  Samantha Pruitts: So I've been studying weight loss resistance in particular because I know a lot of people are using the GLP1s, which is fine.
• 37:15
  Samantha Pruitts: But this weight loss resistance to exercise, dietary changes, stress reduction is also an indicator, either weight gain or weight loss resistance, that the gut microbiome is not able to do its work.
• 37:31
  Samantha Pruitts: It is disrupted and it needs your support in order to function because the metabolism is directly linked to its functionality.
• 37:39
  Samantha Pruitts: In addition to the gut microbiome playing a critical role in immune system regulation, helping to balance immune response and protect us against infections, an unhealthy microbiome can impair that function, leading to an overactive and weakened immune system, like we said, resulting in lots and lots of illnesses.
• 37:59
  Samantha Pruitts: So digestive problems, food intolerances and sensitivities, chronic fatigue, mood disorders, skin conditions, frequent infections, weight gain, or weight loss.
• 38:12
  Samantha Pruitts: Wow.
• 38:14
  Samantha Pruitts: That's a lot, people.
• 38:16
  Samantha Pruitts: That's a lot.
• 38:17
  Samantha Pruitts: You might be getting a little overwhelmed by now.
• 38:20
  Samantha Pruitts: I don't want you to.
• 38:21
  Samantha Pruitts: I just want you to realize how intricate it all is.
• 38:25
  Samantha Pruitts: Hormones disruption.
• 38:28
  Samantha Pruitts: So again, my humans out there, male or female, we all have hormones, and how as we age our hormones shift.
• 38:39
  Samantha Pruitts: We can help these transitional periods by having healthy gut microbiome.
• 38:47
  Samantha Pruitts: Okay?
• 38:48
  Samantha Pruitts: We can help.
• 38:49
  Samantha Pruitts: We can reduce inflammation, digestive issues, metabolic dysfunction.
• 38:56
  Samantha Pruitts: We can help with all of that.
• 38:57
  Samantha Pruitts: You know, I guess just at the end, this one last thing I want to throw in before we wrap here, because this went much longer than I thought it would, is that hormonally, there has been something discovered called estroom.
• 39:14
  Samantha Pruitts: Estro balome.
• 39:16
  Samantha Pruitts: Estro bolome.
• 39:17
  Samantha Pruitts: Okay.
• 39:18
  Samantha Pruitts: And it is related to estrogen in the gut.
• 39:22
  Samantha Pruitts: So I think I'm going to have to do a whole separate podcast on the gut and paramenopause and menopause.
• 39:28
  Samantha Pruitts: But I just want my female identified out there to know that in your gut is some is a bacteria called estrobilome, estrovolome.
• 39:39
  Samantha Pruitts: And during menopause, it increases.
• 39:44
  Samantha Pruitts: It's a set of gut microbiome responsible for metabolizing, metabolizing estrogen.
• 39:51
  Samantha Pruitts: So for those estrogen-dominant people out there, and you know who you are, your gut microbiome is part of the problem.
• 40:02
  Samantha Pruitts: It is part of the problem handling that extra estrogen that's on board in your body.
• 40:08
  Samantha Pruitts: If you do not have estrobilone, it is going to be very difficult to metabolize the extra estrogen that comes in the transitional phase and helps to dysregulate.
• 40:22
  Samantha Pruitts: So, all right, enough of that.
• 40:25
  Samantha Pruitts: I just wanted to share this.
• 40:26
  Samantha Pruitts: I really needed to share this.
• 40:27
  Samantha Pruitts: It explains so much for me personally what has transpired over these last, well, my lifetime.
• 40:36
  Samantha Pruitts: Hello, my lifetime.
• 40:37
  Samantha Pruitts: You know, even as a younger person in my young preteen and teen ages, I mean, I ate horribly.
• 40:46
  Samantha Pruitts: And I had so much emotional and mental distress.
• 40:50
  Samantha Pruitts: Never mind, my body wasn't functioning.
• 40:52
  Samantha Pruitts: My brain was literally breaking.
• 40:55
  Samantha Pruitts: And then when I had my health, physical and health, mental and physical health break down in my late 20s when I discovered I developed this autoimmune disease.
• 41:07
  Samantha Pruitts: It just I have so much compassion for myself as a young person, as a young adult, as a human in the world.
• 41:16
  Samantha Pruitts: Now that I understand some of the reasons why, actually, all of the reasons why.
• 41:24
  Samantha Pruitts: What the hell do I do about it?
• 41:38
  Samantha Pruitts: And you know, I've already done a lot of them, but I there are so many more I'm still learning about.
• 41:43
  Samantha Pruitts: And I I'm so passionate about sharing them with you because we all deserve to feel better.
• 41:50
  Samantha Pruitts: We all deserve to feel mentally, physically, spiritually better every damn day.
• 41:56
  Samantha Pruitts: We need to feel good.
• 41:58
  Samantha Pruitts: We deserve to feel good.
• 41:59
  Samantha Pruitts: And in order for that to be the case, we must, must, must address our gut microbiome and basically make friends with it.
• 42:10
  Samantha Pruitts: That's what we need to do.
• 42:11
  Samantha Pruitts: So in the next episode, I'll talk about how to make friends with your gut microbiome, get rid of the bad uh actors, and how to generate more of the good ones and lifestyle choices and opportunities that you have to make that shift.
• 42:27
  Samantha Pruitts: But that's it for now.
• 42:29
  Samantha Pruitts: All right, my beautiful humans, remember how your life feels is more important than how it looks.
• 42:36
  Samantha Pruitts: And I can't say enough how excited I am to share this intel with you.
• 42:41
  Samantha Pruitts: You should get the book, The Menopause Gut, if you are a female identified human, The Menopause Gut, by Cynthia Thurlow, nurse practitioner.
• 42:50
  Samantha Pruitts: She also has a great podcast that talks about a lot of other things than the menopause gut.
• 42:55
  Samantha Pruitts: She's fantastic.
• 42:57
  Samantha Pruitts: I'm so grateful for her in the world and people like her.
• 43:00
  Samantha Pruitts: And I hope that you got a lot out of this today and you can start to really take on this new profound, empowering knowledge.
• 43:10
  Samantha Pruitts: And I'll see you next week.
• 43:12
  Samantha Pruitts: All right.
• 43:12
  Samantha Pruitts: You guys take care of