Hello and Welcome to Living Outside the
Matrix, the podcast where we challenge
assumptions and do a little bit of
independent thinking and try and step
outside the box a little bit.
Hi there, I'm your host Nigel, and
on the show today it's my very great
pleasure to be joined by Dr. Zach Bush, M. D.
from Virginia in the States. On the show
today, we're going to be taking a deep
dive into the whole paradigm shift that
I think many people are aware is
occurring within healthcare and and
people in pursuit of health in general.
So, Dr. Bush is a very qualified doctor
in the United States,
he's triple board-certified and he has
experience in internal medicine, enduro
chronology and metabolism as well as
palliative care. He is also an
internationally recognized educator on
the microbiome and nutrition. He and his
team have discovered some profound new
insights into human health and into gut
health and the interrelation between
the two and how they affect longevity
and such. So, Dr. Bush, a very warm welcome
to the show. -- Nigel, so glad to be here,
appreciate it! -- Great. So, um, Dr. Bush,
maybe you could kick us off with a
little bit about yourself just to start
off and then we'll try and get into the
story of this, you know, paradigm shift
that's going on. -- Sure, my background is
actually in allopathic medicine. it's
Western medicine training. I did my
training out in the University of
Colorado and then got interested in
neuro health, specifically the
relationship between the endocrine
system or the hormones and the way it
regulates our brain and what happens as
our brain shifts as we move into
depression and other mood disorders.
So that was my initial research
interest. I got involved with a
gentleman at the NIH, named Philip Gould,
back in the 1990s looking at these
topics, and then that kind of morphed
into my career at the University of
Virginia where I studied internal
medicine. I moved on to be chief
resident, do a teaching faculty year
after that three-year residency and
really delved into the educational realm
much more thoroughly that year. I
really got hooked on the joy of teaching
and the joy of watching med students get
excited about knowledge and residents as
well, and that experience really
accelerated me but by the time I was, you
know, practicing medicine after that I
was realizing that what I was teaching
was not really sticking: we were not
seeing the results and the patient
outcomes that we would expect from the
science that the pharmaceutical
companies had handed us to say, "Hey this
is how these drugs work, this is how it's
going to improve the the health of your
patients". Really didn't see that coming
to fruition. In fact, I saw my patients
really declining really steadily over
the years of my care and a lot of it
really ,you know, had horrible outcomes. I
had young people with mood disorders
that were committing suicide. I had, you
know, diabetics that were getting more
diabetic, more obese with every single
medication I started them on. It was just...
I felt like I was part of their slippery
slope towards decline as a doctor and I
was really flying obviously to the
opposite of what I had expected to be
able to achieve through that. and so I
dove back into training with
endocrinology and metabolism. It was
more study of the hormones and the
regulation of the human system
metabolism, looking at how we burn or
store calories, and obviously it was
right at the beginning of this huge
obesity epidemic of the 2000s that we
saw happen and all of that and so that
was kind of my clinical side. Then, as
my endocrinology progressed, I got
interested in tumors and specifically
under containers of the glands of the
endocrine system and that progressed to
the point where I was starting to
develop chemotherapy compounds for these
tumors and so that was kind of my march
through Western medicine and in that
time really realized boy nothing is
nothing is really getting at the root
cause of anything you know the the
startling realization is somebody who's
designing chemotherapy is there's not a
single cancer on earth that's ever been
caused by a lack of chemotherapy you're
right that sudden realization of Wow we
were just throwing
management or band-aids at diseases that
are rooted somewhere completely
different than where our tool box lies
and so that realization really it was a
major paradigm shift for me and I
started to realize that I was going to
have to really retrain myself and in the
sciences that I had knew and really
start to look for new tools to put into
my toolbox and we had an exciting kind
of burst of information coming out in
the late 2000s from UCSF University of
San Francisco in University of
California San Diego out in these
California programs we were starting to
see ripples or tremors of new
information saying that the microbiome
or the bacteria in our gut was
predicting what cancers people would get
and for a cancer researcher this is just
this was a complete disconnect this was
coming out of left field completely with
this realization that what if what if
cancers not even rooted in the human
cell what if it has something to do with
non human cells what that was just such
a huge confusing shift to this day if
you go to the American Cancer Institute
or something like that they define
cancer as the most common genetic
disease in humans well first of all it's
not genetic because you can't have an
epidemic of a genetic disease
second of all we now have ten years of
data that says that it's not the root
cause of cancer has nothing to do with
human cell at all so the stagnancy of
Western medicine in that pharmaceutical
environment continues to be quite
striking and it's the reason we aren't
seeing great advances in cancer
management right we we actually are
accelerating our rates of cancer death
not slowing them down
and so that paradigm like you said of
kind of this collapse of human health
that's happening around us is really
part and parcel to the fact that the
training of the physicians and nurse
practitioners and pas and all those
people that you would expect to be
equipped to help you achieve health
we're not we are equipped to actually
manage your disease and kind of slow
down perhaps or change the trajectory of
your disease but we're not there
equipped to actually tell you how to be
healthy or how you might actually
reverse that disease
and so that was kind of my journey in my
background if that gets you there
absolutely so yes we can start to see
that shift you mentioned around about
the early 2000s the sort of discovery of
a correlation between profiles of gut
bacteria and different diseases and and
I suppose before that there was also the
the concept of epigenetic epigenetics
wasn't there that sort of started to to
shift things away from from the the
allopathic model what was that was that
causative do you thinking that
absolutely in in the 1990s when I
started my pre-med training in medical
school there was these there was these
promises being put out there that look
we're just starting decode the entire
human genome by the time you're a
full-fledged doctor by the time we're in
2002 we're gonna have you know a simple
thing where you spit in a cup and we'll
run your entire genome will tell you
exactly what diseases you're gonna get
and we'll tell you exactly what
treatments are going to be there we had
this belief that the human genome was
this fixed predictor of your health and
what happened was a startling scientific
discovery that's really never gotten any
press time because it's so ridiculously
paradigm shifting that nobody really
wants you to know this in the sense that
it changes the whole worldview of who
you are you only have twenty thousand
human genes that might sound like a lot
but you have over two hundred thousand
proteins that are made by those twenty
thousand genes that was very confusing
but the scale of this genome at 20,000
genes was so tiny compared to what we
expected because we had already decoded
the genome of the flea that little
insect that can leap 40 times its height
and all that that flea has 30,000 genes
you're only 2/3 as complicated as a flea
genetically and this I used this kind of
my backup like if I'm having a rough day
and I can't find my keys and kids are
not in place they need to be or I miss
my airplane flight I just tell myself
you know I'm only 2/3 as complicated as
a flea and I'm doing pretty good so this
this field had to shift at that point we
had to say okay how is it possible that
a time
little genome of 20,000 human genes
could possibly predict or code for this
extraordinary complexity of the 70
trillion human cells that build a human
body sub specialized into all these
things communicating across these
systems and so that birthed the the
industry or the the science of
epigenetics that you mentioned but this
was really still falling short of
answering a lot of questions epigenetics
is the phenomenon where your environment
the air you breathe you know the food
you touch you know all these things can
methylate or change the promoter region
of a gene this can actually lead to a
situation where our gene can't turn on
or gene does turn on but we were falling
far short just by people just by the
simple methylation patterns of being
able to describe how does a single gene
turn into 200 different proteins what is
that level of a nuance from and that
story actually stayed unanswered in for
almost 18 years and it was really not
until the last three or four years where
the answers really started to come out
that it's actually the non-coding
sequences in your genome that are making
the on-off switches and the nuance
switches that determine the behavior of
your your mere 20,000 genes that field
is now called micro RNA and so micro RNA
are the are these tiny little peptides
or these proteins that are made from the
surface of from the non-coding regions
of your DNA which is the majority of
your DNA okay Andrew Carolyn can i just
adore you so that some that control over
our genetic expression that's that's
coming from this region of our DNA you
just said is it also coming from the
varmint it's cover a mixture of the two
is it stunningly you're exactly right
you're exactly right so it turns out
that these non-coding regions of DNA in
the human genome this is a huge
percentage 99% 99% of your genome does
not make a gene what that that's totally
bizarre yeah that was a completely
another unexpected finding is that 1%
may be one and a half percent of the
human genome all of the DNA in your body
actually codes for a gene
rest of it was called junk DNA because
we couldn't figure out what the heck it
was doing what's the likelihood that
nature designed you with 99% junk and 1%
purpose it's just not possible right and
yet that's the mentality of the science
world as well we can't figure it out was
probably leftover junk from evolution
was that was literally the description
that remains today if you read a journal
on micro RNA and junk DNA it's thought
well that's just leftover you know junk
from you evolving from a single you know
bacteria to the human you are today well
it turns out that those micro RNA coding
from the 99% here at genome they're
there that nuanced adjustment and they
can travel and so this is much different
than the methylation process and the
epigenetics is controlled at the cell
level and so environment happens to the
cell and it changes its methylation
epigenetics pattern the micro no RNA in
contrast are moving all over the body
in fact they're leaving the body and
this is striking this is really
important for you if you're struggling
to make lots of health changes in your
life and you're not seeing the outcomes
think about who else is in your
immediate environment are they making
the same health adjustments that you are
if you're plateaued and stuck it's
possible that their genome that of your
spouse who is still sitting on the couch
and watching football or cricket on the
weekends
you're you're not making progress
because they won't change their
environment their micro RNA is still
coding for a stressed-out
poor health poor nutrition genome or
genetic decision-making and so you're
stuck but it goes beyond just their junk
DNA and your junk DNA talking through
the micro RNA it actually is the
bacteria and the fungi and the viruses
and the food itself because think about
a soybean or a piece of corn or more
terrifying a piece of beef that meat or
that vegetable has DNA just like any
other cellular organism that DNA also
has quote-unquote junk DNA that will
then make micro RNA and the micro RNA
can travel
and we now know and this is just the
very beginning of this field still but
already we have found that at least 35
to 40 percent of the micro RNA
circulating in your blood stream right
now is not human well it's from bacteria
it's from fungi it's from viruses it's
from the food you eat this is really an
interesting shift in our understanding
of our relationship to the environment
isn't it yeah wherever we've thought you
know here's nutrition here's milk or
here's a hamburger it has these
macronutrients it has b12 because it's
beef or whatever it is that's such a
tiny little piece of what food actually
is food I think is really not just a
nutrient delivery system it's a genomic
download from your environment that's
also know download that's programming
your DNA to make who you are today well
see so you've got you've got the food
impact as you say and you've also got
the impact of everybody else you live
with literally on their breath emanating
from their bodies the effect is the
environment you know in a really
holistic sense Anu yes yes yes it is in
you can see what's happening as a
society is we accelerate each other
stress right and so if as a society we
start to build structures and
environments that are stressful well one
stressed out organism putting out stress
micro RNA it's getting code for a bunch
of other stress in the environment so
picture how we raise our cattle or pork
or even worse the poultry and so the
chickens and the turkeys that are packed
into these you know feeding centers that
are you know a third of them are dead by
the time they're 6 weeks old and so we
are just it's so toxic the food
environment that we raised these animals
in can you imagine the micro RNA would
you imagine the genes that are turning
on a chicken or a pig that is such a
sentient being in a stuck in a
confinement of 4 feet for its entire
year of life and then it's slaughtered
in a stressed-out sick dirty environment
just filth all over it that animal is
screaming for help and desperation and
just panic at the DNA level and then you
go and put that piece of bacon in your
mouth and it's got DNA in it that's
screaming help
I'm desperate I'm stressed out I'm just
barely hanging on I need to store fat
Wow you just turned on all of your own
stress were stressed genes you're
responding to that stress environment
it's a disaster on a level that we could
have never really predicted I think just
how slippery is slope this was as we
created the the factory farming
environment and we did create that which
is good news on the sense that we can
also change it immediately right it's
easy to kind of throw rocks at Monsanto
or these chemical companies and say well
it's their fault for making roundup or
it's their fault for making chemical
fertilizers and antibiotics well not
really it's is we stop raising our own
animals we stop gardening in our
backyards we started going for
convenience lifestyles where we never
even touch the soil let alone the crop
that grows in the soil we're just
waiting for that you know clean washed
piece of corn or fruit or vegetable you
know certainly you guys historically in
Europe have been slower to adopt this
environment but you're way beyond
adoption at this point you know England
is is absolutely buried in GMO crops
just like we are now so while there was
a hesitancy if you look at just like the
antibiotic usage worldwide and animal
production Greece is number two behind
us a what like that's unexpected
Norway's up there like I think number
three is like at least recently the
Netherlands were number three and number
four and usage of antibiotics and feed
crops and so you just start to realize
wow there's really no country that's
clean anymore we're just buried in this
stress environment of food production
food sound so I'm there for a number of
reasons food it's not only is it not
nutritious anymore but the picture you
just painted with the antibiotics and
the stress of the animals just just you
know it's enough to put anybody up
certainly now tour
restaurant oven you know and a strong
motivation for growing one's own food
perhaps in it I think that's really the
answer Nigel I think that's the answer
is if we return to just where we were
just a generation back we don't have to
go back to the beat you know Paleo diet
or anything like that we just need to go
back to the 1950s and 1950s you know
right at the end of World War two the
Allied countries were growing 45% of
their food chain in their backyard
Victory Gardens forty five percent of
their food week were less than a
thousand one thousandth of a percent
like we are down to the one tenth of one
percent of the food chain being grown in
our own garden so we just disengaged
from that whole you know connection to
nature and we've had the consequences in
human health that we've seen you said
something interesting is that not only
you know so the antibiotics in and of
themselves are killing bacteria the
bacteria of course would be that that
life form that would feed the plants the
nutrients that we would then eat which
again aren't going to feed our body
they're gonna feed our bacteria and so
that our bacteria would take those
plants and turn them into useable
micronutrients macronutrients that the
human would want run on so now imagine
the scenario where you create a food
system where you're destroying bacteria
at every level so therefore you can
either get the nutrient into the plant
or you can get it there into the human
body but you're also spraying for that
sick plan so as they as the plant
becomes weakened from a lack of nutrient
the soil it becomes vulnerable to
disease right and so you get pest
infestations you get fungi you get all
these diseases moving in on on that
unbalanced unhealthy crop and so then we
start spraying for weeds and pests and
asides and all this the number one
herbicide on the planet right now
is is the famous one roundup from
Monsanto which went off patent in 2007
and now the majority of it is made in
China it's called glyphosate glyphosate
is the active ingredient in these weed
killers and it has actually never been
patented as a weed killer it's only been
patented as an antibiotic antifungal
antiparasite and so this thing kills
single-celled organisms
tuchas it's one of the most potent
antibiotics on the planet and it does
that by blocking an enzyme pathway
within the bacteria in the plants okay
that enzyme pathway it turns out which
is called the shikimate pathway if you
want to read more about it but the
shikimate pathway is responsible for
making three of the most essential amino
acids in your body the amino acids are
the 26 building blocks that take your
DNA and turn them into the proteins that
will build a human body which
specifically which three if opens to
associate that which 3 is its
phenylalanine tyrosine and tryptophan
okay and so those three amino acids are
the aromatic ring dimino acids and so
those three are within what we call the
essential amino acids with 26 letters in
the English alphabet there's eight and
eight of those that are vowels right and
so the valves are critical to to so many
words so if you subtract a Z from the
alphabet you'll screw up the spelling of
my name but not much else right but if
you subtract the a you not only screw up
my name you screw up you know the a huge
percentage of the words that could be
possibly spelled so the vowels within
the amino acid family are what we call
the essential amino acids these guys are
gonna used all over the place and they
can't be made by the human body and so
these are the ones that are essential to
our diet and yet we're spraying our food
and our soils with a chemical that
blocks the ability of those plants to
make those essential amino acids we're
literally birthing children that have in
embryos been short a few letters in the
alphabet because the food that mom is
eating no longer delivers an adequate
amount of these building blocks we are
building in incomplete bodies and then
once you're born you have to rebirth
every three to five days things like
your gut lining turns over every three
days your liver is constantly in massive
turnover and so your rebirthing your
body all the time and so if you're in an
environment where you don't have the
essential building blocks you're going
to keep building and an incomplete
function and incomplete biology around
your DNA deficiency yeah
so that goes deeper than that it turns
out that you know I'm not trying to
press the hell out of your audience here
but it's just our movement forward this
does get better in a few minutes right
but we're gonna give you some solutions
to the problem because nature always
knows I think it predicts the insanity
of humans also they wouldn't let us show
up at all but but the humans here are
really you know we're on a March so far
away from from nature's health for us
and glyphosate or this roundup chemical
that we're spraying all of our food with
by the way the amount is disgusting it's
four and a half billion pounds of this
chemical sprayed each year now and so
we're not billion pounds of anything
sounds ridiculous but a chemical that
blocks the nutrient and destroys the
bacteria within our soils and within our
gut that's just extraordinary I mean
what a mistake has a human species to
just decimate the very environment
you've you know don't bite the hand that
feeds you well we're killing the hand
that feeds us you know we're just
staggering slaughtering this environment
and so the the children that are running
around behind you there and the these
kids that are there I love having them
in our environment they're you know
desperately needing the unplugging the
fact that you're shooting this from a
yurt is so exciting for me like oh my
gosh if we can just all get off that
grid and plug back into breathing real
air that's conditioned by the fire that
you have behind you rather than you know
forced heating air through filter
systems and everything else the
environment in a typical building is so
unusual so abnormal we're talking about
this life it's a chemical being sprayed
in the ChiCom a pathway being blocked
the chicken made pathway doesn't only
make the amino acids it turns out that
it's also the pathway for something that
we call the alkaloids and the alkaloids
are the medicinal properties of the food
itself okay
so coming out of the cancer field that I
was in the chemo therapies that we made
and have been made for decades are
largely drawn from from alkaloids that
are made by plants okay and then in the
1970s we developed roundup and we start
spraying the world with roundup and of
course got out of control in the 1990s
1996 is when we developed a genetically
modified crop that was Roundup Ready so
we could actually spray our food with
that without killing the corn or the
soybean or the beet or whatever it is
that genetic modification allowed us to
start ingesting an enormous amount of
this well now with that ingestion natto
the bacteria in the soil that would feed
the plants in the back of the plants
themselves that have shaken a pathway
and the bacteria within our gut so at
three levels the Shikha made pathway
being blocked we can't make the
alkaloids and so now you take something
like the the natural alkaloids that
would be in your superfoods like kale
and brussel sprouts they have the
alkaloids that would function to kill
cancer instead we've just deleted those
from the food industry you remember the
age-old thing that's been you know kind
of attributed to Hippocrates which is
thy food be that I medicine
yeah that will four thousand years
before Hippocrates some six thousand
years ago the Chinese medicine doctors
were saying the same thing so unlink
Epocrates came up with that but it goes
to say that for 6,000 years of medicine
we've been recognizing that the food is
the source of the medicine and now we
know that's literally true the alkaloids
within the food are the things that
would would prevent and heal disease wow
so the alkaloids are prevented from
being made by this disruption of the
shikimate pathways all right that's
exactly right and so what are the
alkaloids do well there are alkaloids
that prevent diabetes there's alkaloids
that prevent hypertension there's
alkaloids that prevent major depression
there's alkaloids that prevent
attention-deficit in an autism there's
alkaloids that prevent seizure disorder
there's alkaloids that prevent heart
attacks and strokes there's alkaloids
that prevent the movement of vascular
disease what would happen to the
population if we subtracted out the
alkaloids by treating all of their food
with a chemical that would block the
shake of a pathway
well there would be an epidemic in
autism heart disease cancer disorders
dementia z' hypertension heart attacks
diabetes obesity oh that's actually
that's really that's what we did that's
what we did it's an amazing story of
chemical ization of of nature and so of
course you know interestingly a perfect
business model is that Monsanto is owned
by the pharmaceutical industry and so if
you now take out the pharmaceutical
property of food you take away that
medicinal quality that's existed since
the beginning of human time you develop
all this disease and then industry then
then the human like the farmer has to
turn to the chemical industry to say
we've got sickness what do we do and the
chemical industry says no problem we'll
give you back some chemical okay well it
turns out that within Christine is one
of the most common chemo therapies on
the market then Christine is MIT is an
alkaloid made by algae and other green
life forms okay
and so we've sprayed our crops so they
can't make the vincristine from the
alkaloid pathways through the Shikha
main enzyme pathway and then we then
produce it in these vats of liquid where
we grow the algae and all this as we
grow the plants and in concentration not
treated with with Roundup so that we can
make the the vincristine vincristine
currently is worth $28,000 per gram it's
many full greater in value than gold wow
that's amazing that's amazing we've
literally created wealth for the
pharmaceutical industry by just
subtracting those very building blocks
of health and Madam out of the food that
is shocking isn't it that is just so I
didn't realize that there's a few
factors tying their together in my own
mind there I Eider grasp the fact that
glyphosate being an antibiotic obviously
is doing a lot of problems it's doing a
lot of destruction they're not
in our gut killing bacteria but killing
the bacterium the soil but this should
make pathway and and and these alkaloids
that's that's just amazing an
extraordinary journey yeah so that
that's obviously contributed to this
epidemic in in all these diseases that
they've mentioned and how do we how do
we sort of tie in the the relevance of
gut health here because I know you've
done a lot of research as well and I'm
sure you probably coming on to tell us
anyway
about the fact that you studied
chemotherapy and then you noticed
something that looked like chemotherapy
in the soil I didn't wanna pick up pick
it up there or sure that's good yeah so
you know at that at this time now we're
talking pretty recent 2012 in 2012 I had
left academia had left my research
behind academia was really collapsing in
the United States at that time we had a
massive recession as you likely
recall in 2008 2010 the collapse of the
whole housing industry and everything
else and that that recession had a huge
impact on academic in academia our
university actually lost our funding
from the International Institutes of
Health that had been in place since 1969
so is the worst kind of loss of funding
in academia that we did see it in 50
years and so our our department of
endocrinology went from 70 some faculty
down to 20 some faculty in just a year
or two so we went from one of the
largest endocrine faculties in the world
to almost non-existent so quickly and it
was just this collapse of that funding
environment that forced the stress on
the system and that actually was the
greatest gift that's ever happened to my
career because and it forced me to jump
out of that academic environment I had
to have a lot of frustrations about
academia for sure since the beginning
even in medical school I was running
reform efforts to reform the curriculum
of teaching doctors and you know I was
really passionate about the reformation
of it and realized over the course of 17
years in academia that you can't
actually reform from within the system
like once the Titanic is sinking it's
too late like assemble the engineers to
fix the ship as it goes down you know so
I kind of had really good
up on that and then in the the death
nail is when I tried to start a
nutrition clinic at the University with
one other faculty member and our biggest
you know roadblocks to starting in a
nutrition clinic were the dietitians at
the hospital and so is like and once it
got to that level of like you know I'm
almost you know complete idiocy I
realized you know this I couldn't pursue
what I really was starting to feel like
was the truth which is nutrition's got
the answer so it jumped out in 2010 and
started a community health center where
we were teaching intense nutrition
programs to help heal chronic conditions
and at this point I didn't know any of
the story that I just shared with you
this is all I merged in the last five
seven years at that time I was starting
to really dive into literature that come
out of the 1970s and 80s around
nutrition and how it could help heal
things specifically plant-based foods
and how they could heal everything from
cancer to heart disease and everything
else and it was we didn't know it then
but it is of course because the
alkaloids that were in that food and so
I started to apply this incredible
science body from the 1970s to my
patient population and about twenty to
thirty percent of our patients were
getting a kick they would start to
improve they'd see their diabetes going
away or their cancer would health would
improve or whatever it was but then
there was a huge part that we're just
stuck they wouldn't respond at all and
then there was a significant chunk that
we're actually getting worse on health
food and it was that group that really
who started forcing us down this
question pathway of is the food
different has something happened to the
food and that's where this story that I
just shared with you started to unfold
but in that journey we were looking
through soil science starting to ask
well maybe the food isn't healthy
because the soil isn't healthy and on
page 40 of this huge white paper that
one of my colleagues brought in was a
picture of a molecule that like you
alluded to looked a lot like in its
three-dimensional structure some of the
chemotherapy compounds I've been working
with from vitamin A and was a sudden
realization of Wow in the pharmaceutical
industry and my academic mindset I had
been looking to the plants
for all kinds of secrets of chemotherapy
and it was a huge shift for me to think
oh my gosh maybe the soil is where the
real root of of health and and medicinal
quality of our plants comes from and
then when we found out a couple weeks
later that that molecule that we had
found was being made by bacteria and
fungi it was this huge aha moment
because the chemotherapy I've been
working with was modifying the
mitochondria inside of our cells to
induce apoptosis or programmed cell
suicide within the cancer cells well
turns out that bacteria and fungi don't
have mitochondria single-celled
organisms don't have these little power
generation plants that make the
communication network for the human cell
suddenly realized of course bacteria and
fungi don't have the mitochondria so
they would have to develop their own
mechanisms of cell cell communication to
govern everything from programmed cell
death and suicide to prevent cancer or
to you know reactive oxygen
communications bring an immune system
for the plants all this stuff and so
what we kind of uncovered in that moment
was wow there's this massive
communication network being produced by
the plants the fungi the bacteria that
regulate biology outside of the human
environment and this started to
immediately answer these bizarre
questions of okay if UCLA and UCSF are
seeing that the bacteria and their
patterns are predicting human cancers we
hadn't figured out why well how is it
that some bacterial population could
shift and then the human gets cancer the
while we have made the correlation of
the causation had not been figured out
and so in this moment it kind of
completed the loop for me like oh my
gosh this is it so my chemotherapy was
actually just you know a piece of the
puzzle that was kind of inside the human
cell but outside that cell is this huge
governing system of the bacteria and
fungi that's producing the network of
information that will help coordinate
cell cell repair cells cell protection
cells cell death if needed if you've got
a cancer cell all of these different
mechanisms and so that was the
incredible home and now it's taking us
the last five years to even start to
scratch the surface of this incredible
truth I can share you know a few
those pieces of it but but first I want
to start maybe with the thought of even
at this point in my trajectory I didn't
know what gut health was like there if
you go to any textbook on
gastroenterology or whatever you can't
find a definition that says this is gut
health what is a healthy gut there's no
definition of it and so I was teaching
nutrition as if I knew something and
then suddenly realized I don't I don't
even know what this means I don't even
know what the fundamentals are so we've
been working on that to really define
what is the definition of gut health and
we've come down to a few really
important pieces of that number one is
you need diversity in the microbiome if
you have a narrow microbiome if you've
taken antibiotics or you've spent any
time in a hospital setting your
microbiome becomes very narrow very
quickly or if you eat in an environment
where your food is impregnated with
antibiotic all the time your microbiome
is shrinking constantly so now know that
that's disaster number one can I just
interrupt you that was just for a moment
what is what sort of percentage of the
microbiome is being destroyed if you do
a you know a lot of the time over here
in the UK you get them I get a course of
a week's antibiotics if you go in for
cold or something
I remember once having an ear infection
where I had four different antibiotics
that ran consecutively for a week what
sort of knockdown are we experiencing in
in the diversity of the gut and and you
know with with a course of antibiotics
can you shed any light on that as a
probably a frightening answer and I
would say that we don't even haven't
even begun to answer that entirely but I
would I would venture a guess that were
depending on which in a bike you go on
your an impact somewhere between 60 and
90 percent of your your population that
day and so you shrink that population
immediately and then you have to slowly
rebuild this this population and so this
is where the the philosophy or the kind
of pseudoscience of probiotics came in
is that okay bacteria are good we need
more bacteria and that was a huge
important leap forward for us to stop
thinking we just needed to kill all the
bacteria on the planet and so
this consumer figured this out in the
1970s and it took not until like 2000
2010 then that the doctor started really
embraced some use of the probiotics so
they were about 40 years late but we
take a look at the probiotic industry we
realized well that's not a solution to
got health I mean a probiotic has three
species or seven species at incredible
copies and so when you pick up a bottle
of probiotics and it says 35 billion
sweet and our bacteria what you're
looking at 35 billion colony forming
units of the same bacteria and so the
that's not diversity it's just number
its sheer number and so while that might
help you for a moment kind of get a step
up after an antibiotic course to say
okay well let me hammer my gut with some
good bacteria three species seven
species of good bacteria the typical
human gut should really be carrying
somewhere between forty thousand and a
hundred thousand different species and
that's just a bacteria we're probably up
in the millions of fungi the fungal
kingdom is massive there's five mmm the
five million species of fungi it's it's
unimaginative haven't even begun to
really tease out the complexity that
ecosystem so we know that we're supposed
to have you know tens of thousands of
bacterial species hundreds of thousands
if not millions of species of fungi all
living in this complex ecosystem that
would look something like a coral reef
or you know a jungle and in South
America is huge you know diversity and
so if you're taking probiotics every day
you're actually doing something very
akin to the antibiotic which is nearing
your species diversity by you know
adding billions of copies of the same
three species every day and so that's
not got health but got health is
definitely you know number one that
bacterial fungal ecosystem healthy
number two is then the barrier system
between the bacteria in your immune
system some 60 to 80 percent of the
immune system of the human body lies
just deep right behind this cellophane
like thin layer of membrane gut membrane
that runs from your sinuses all the way
to your rectum
that protection support system is
extremely vulnerable especially if the
bacteria and fungi are missing so if the
bacteria and fungi are not there to
Deacon decontaminate your food if you
start to lose the bacteria and fungi and
you lose their detoxification kind of
mechanisms you start to become very
vulnerable at this membrane the membrane
is made up of billions and billions of
tiny little cells but it's only one cell
layer thick the contrast that to the
skin the skin has you know 30 to 50
layers of cells that are piled up on top
of each other so there are a pretty good
defense mechanism there always sloughing
off and you're always making more but
you've got many many layers of skin in
contrast the gut membrane is one cell
layer thick which is half the width of a
human hair
so plucking human hair imagine slicing
that in half and you've got this tiny
thin cellophane layer that covers two
tennis courts and surface area massive
system and that's your vulnerable
membrane and right behind that is your
immune system and so gut health
definition number one is a diverse
microbiome gut health number two is how
tight is that membrane held together
those tiny little microscopic individual
cells are useless as a protection if
they're not all connected into a single
carpet and what connects them is these
little proteins called tight junctions
the tight junctions are then joined by
gap junctions that are like fiber optic
cables that run between the cells so the
tight junctions are watertight
structures that are like velcro that
hold the cells together and then the gap
junctions are the communications stream
behind those tight junctions so now if
you've got good tight junctions and good
gap junctions you have one organism
called the gut lining it's one system
all in communication now here's the
extraordinary third part is that the
immune system itself 60 to 70% lying
right behind that membrane makes 80% of
the antibodies in your system it's right
there to be your front line of defense
and so those are kind of your three
steps to get health profound microbiome
benefit and diversity profound integrity
or tightness of that membrane and then a
really robust anti inflammatory attack
system that makes all your antioxidant
reservoir with glutathione and all this
produced in that gut lining and the
immune system behind it so those are the
three categories that we've kind of
boiled down what is gut health good
bacteria good good protective membrane
and a great immune system behind it so
now let's go back to glyphosate this is
the chemical and round up this week
killer that is now four and a half
billion pounds dumped into the unit and
the soils of the planet that single
compound destroys all three in emissions
as an antibiotic as we've been talking
as an antifungal so it's decimating the
microbiome before you ever get that food
to the gut lining number two we were the
first lab to really tease out the
mechanism and by which that glyphosate
chemical is destroying the velcro of
between the cells that make up your gut
lining that tight junction membrane is
decimated by roundup directly and so
this is the first evidence that we've
had it's really different than what
Monsanto and the chemical companies have
been telling us they've literally been
saying this is so health healthy and
safe for humans because they don't have
the Shikha main pathway because humans
don't have that enzyme pathway which is
the target of the drug or the chemical
must be safe well they're right that
specific target within the human system
isn't present but what they weren't
looking at is this huge extracellular
matrix of the human system to find out
there's off-target damage being done
from that not that the Shikha main
pathway but down at the this tight
junction extracellular matrix that holds
ourselves into a cohesive body so so
you've actually proven then that the
impact of glyphosate in the gut is the
disintegration of the tight junctions
and that's a that's a fault now you know
so it's a conclusive proof is there I
mean and we have definitely demonstrated
that in spades
we published a couple papers on this in
the last two years and so you can find
those on our website if you want to see
those peer-reviewed journal articles but
we're now publishing one that now shows
the mechanism by which that happens and
there's gonna be my next question I
suppose this is it is it something that
we you know just take a couple of senses
to to how how that actually happens is
it simple process is it you know how
does that how does it actually happen
they're breaking apart of the yeah so
there's two direct Americanisms one is
the induction of an injury with a
peptide called Sanyal and when the
chemicals are introduced that gut lining
Sanyal and is produced by the intestinal
lining and the intestinal lining that
produces too much of the Sanyal and in
reaction to the glyphosate and this
angle and then breaks down this pathway
but probably more importantly than the
Sanyal empath way it looks like there's
a hypoxic injury that happens so the
glyphosate chemicals destroying the
ability of oxygen to get into those gut
lining cells and you're getting a
response from lack of oxygen within the
cell so that hypoxia is probably a
bigger issue then even the design one
pathway interestingly this happens to be
the mechanism of gluten sensitivity
you've heard of gluten sensitivity
because now all of us are one degree of
separation of either ourselves or
somebody we know or love or in our
family has gluten sensitivity or the
autoimmune disease which is celiac
disease it turns out that when
glyphosate induces this hypoxic injury a
receptor is expressed that binds Glee
aidan which is the breakdown of gluten -
cause that Sanyal an induced leak of the
gut membrane okay so if you don't have
the glyphosate then you don't express
much of this the receptor for the gluten
at all but if you've got food that's
constantly you know inundated with the
glyphosate chemical then we're
sensitizing our gut to express these
receptors that will
turn gluten into a toxin for our gut
lining and cause leaky gut leaky brain
all of that and so through these
different mechanisms glyphosate first an
antibiotic destroying the microbiome and
second decimating that to Ted's court
surface area and third it looks like by
destroying the bacteria we're finding
out that the immune system can no longer
make glutathione which is the main
antioxidant that that supports the acute
inflammatory reaction acute inflammation
always makes us stronger not weaker
longevity I believe is really tied to
our ability to have an acute
inflammatory reaction but if you have
lots and lots of injuries happening so
fast that you can mount an antioxidant
balance in yang effect to that acute
inflammatory response you start to tip
into chronic inflammation and chronic
inflammation we know is the root of all
human chronic disease and so that it's
that shift from acute inflammation loss
of the production of antioxidant within
the system and suddenly you tumble into
acute inflammation and what we're
showing is that the bacteria the fungi
the micro RNA from them and their redox
signaling stuff is governing our ability
to make glutathione so all of that said
you've got three pieces of the puzzle
here that are regulated by our
environment in the bacteria and fungi in
it
number one the biodiversity of our
ecosystem around us and in us number two
the integrity of that gut membrane
number three the ability of the immune
system to make this antioxidant
reservoir so that's all in you know kind
of the backdrop of bad news of human
behavior over the last forty years the
good news and and it's just so humbling
is that mother nature and you know this
incredible earth that we live on had the
Grace and the foresight to plant in
ancient soil and antidote to this
problem that we've created with roundup
now antidote is these carbon-based
molecules that we found in 2012 that
looked like you know the medicines that
I was managing it's that medicinal
quality in the food that was made by a
microbiome that was
more complex than anything we can
imagine on the surface of the earth
today 50 million years ago when the
dinosaurs were kind of teeming on the
earth some 50 60 million years ago there
was a microbiome soil environment that
simply doesn't exist today if you go
back in the fossil record we can find
fossil layers of soil some eight feet
thick that that you know were massive
biomes of fungi and bacteria that
supported plant life that would support
something as large as a brontosaurus or
Allosaurus these huge plant eating
dinosaurs had heads that were about the
size of a horse's head and so they were
capable of eating about the same volume
a horse would eat and yet their plant
life that they were consuming was so
nutrient dense that they were able to
support bodies that were you know eight
ten twelve twenty times larger than a
horse and so you got these massive
biologies living on this rich plant life
that's growing out of soils that were so
deep and rich in microbiome fungi
bacteria that you know just were
thriving then the dinosaurs you remember
extincted when we had this some sort of
you know astrological event probably it
was probably a meteor that hit or
something like that that covered the
earth suddenly in this layer of dust and
that thick layer of dust killed much of
the top soil microbiome by extracting by
eliminating the Sun and the oxygenation
of the soil and so at that moment we
lost a huge amount of microbiome
intelligence and so as we we go back in
the fossil record we can find a
diversity these carbon molecules each
species of fungi and bacteria seem to
make their own subset of these little
molecules of communication and so what
we're doing now is we're extracting that
communication network out of 50 million
year old soil here in the United States
and then from that we're taking it into
our labs and we're putting it through
mineral baths to get the catalyst effect
to get these oxygen hydrogen binding
back alive again because the key to
these communication networks that are
made by mitochondria and bacteria is
hydrogen and oxygen exchange the
exchange of electrons through that those
two critical elements of oxygen hydrogen
so that electrical exchange or that
electron exchange is what we then
balance out our laps and then we put
that into our patients and so it started
in 2012 my son and I were making each
bottle and in it
it progressed from there but now we're
we have a busy pharmaceutical grade line
them and that makes it this stuff all
day long but but the journey has been so
fascinating to see that if you put this
50 million year old information network
into a human system it changes
everything we understand about biology
because everything that I ever studied
in cancer and I studied it I had a great
lab the lab I was in was studying
glioblastoma as the brain tumors and we
were working with breast cancer groups
and all this stuff all this millions and
millions and millions even in our small
group has hundreds of millions of
dollars of research being done and all
that was being done in sterile petri
dishes same thing with the
cardiovascular guys same thing with you
know the the Alzheimer studies everybody
is studying human disease in a sterile
petri dish not realizing that disease in
Health is not regulated within the human
cell it's regulated by the microbiome
outside that cell and so it's been so
fun to look under the microscope and the
cool thing about this product is it's
sterile which means that you're not
going to kill the the microphone or the
petri dish if you put bacteria into a
petri dish of breast cancer cells well
the bacteria just take over all the
cancer cells die this allows us to study
the relationship between the
communication network coming out of the
Shikha mate pathway of the back here in
the fungi and everything else what does
that do when you're you're you're in
that human cell environment what does it
do to the human cell and we just see
this eloquent story of regeneration
start in in cell cultures that have
never been thriving and healthy we can
grow renal tubular cells the kidney
cells that are most vulnerable in the
whole human body we can grow this in
this liquid of this communication
network and extends their life beyond
anything we've ever been able to do in a
petri dish but the most amazing thing is
it takes them from individual cells to
the point where they start making tight
junctions and gap junctions and they
start communicating
a whole organism in a petri dish Wow
that's the hallmark that's the opposite
of cancer cancer is the process of
loneliness at the cell level you can't
get a cancer cell unless it's been
completely isolated from all of the
other cells around it if it stays in
touch with the environment around it
it's not going to let itself become a
cancer that it's going to kill itself
realizing that it's a problem it's
damage needs to be replaced but if
you're totally isolate a cell it it just
knows that life is important and it
starts to replicate it's a very damaged
lonely cell now and it's only solution
now to survive is to keep replicating
and so then turns into a tumor they can
then depending on its aggressiveness can
turn into you know a fatal cancer so
it's a it's a lack of communication on a
cellular level that is resulting in
cancer is that were you saying that
precisely and not just cancer any
chronic inflammatory condition is
literally a loss of communication okay
and don't which can I just point back
just a little bit there you mentioned
that chronic inflammation you said we
know that chronic inflammation is the
root of all disease I'm not sure whether
those your words create from wrong how
do we know that
and does does this you know do all these
other allopathic doctors not yet know
that you know why why isn't the world
waking up to this or will be just at the
beginning of a process where it is how
do we know that inflammation is the root
of all disease actually and the
allopathic doctors do you know that one
they they understand that this chronic
inflammatory underpinning is really in
the mechanisms of it and I mean if you
walk into a doctor's office they may not
be able to like deliver that right off
the top of their head but if you if you
kind of push a little bit you'll find
out yes yes they understand that chronic
inflammation is really the cause of
diabetes or major depression or whatever
it is so if that's no I'm dispute then
no that's that's been around for twenty
or thirty years okay and that's frankly
why we have you know a 500 billion
dollar a year anti-inflammatory market
in the pharmaceutical industry or - we
sell anti-inflammatories for the very
understanding that that's kind of you
know getting at the root of some of the
symptoms that we see around us and so we
I burp Rauf in motrin you know all these
non-steroidal anti-inflammatories and
then you get into
steroidal you know prednisone and all
these things that are thrown on is kind
of if the doctor doesn't know what's
going on if you walk in with a mystery
diagnosis chances are they're gonna give
you a prednisone yeah if you've got some
kind of you know rheumatoid condition or
allergic condition they don't know what
the hell's going on they just know if
they they throw a blanket on
inflammation your system will have a
chance to recover a bit okay so how is
it then that these and these molecules
that come that you discovered in ancient
soil how is it what are they what how do
they deal with the information is that
is that what they're doing would you
would you say that's a yeah exactly so
they do it on three different levels
number one they're the communication
network of the ecosystem and so they
actually are the mechanism we believe by
which the bacteria and fungi are
communicating together and say oh I'm
deficient in these species over here
bring those in oh I've got way too many
of this species here bring that back
down let the biodiversity come back in
so the balance of the ecosystem itself
which is extraordinary how does five
million species of fungi live with
hundreds of thousands of species of
bacteria with million probably billions
of species of viruses we now know that
there's ten to the 31 a one with 31
zeros after it viruses on the planet
that's he that's ten million times more
viruses than our stars in the entire
universe there is so much microbiome
around you that it's amazing that you're
allowed to be here
you heard you are a speck in in this
vast ecosystem around you and so that's
the this environment so number one the
communication network that we're now
putting back into the human system is
that balancing act between the bacteria
the fungi and everything else it's not
an antibiotic it's not an antifungal
it's not any antiviral instead what we
see is you know you can put this into a
patient that's been struggling with you
know overgrowth of their bowel or
they'll get the weeds growing yeast and
other things growing in their system and
they're suffering all these health
consequences their doctor keeps telling
them oh you've just got eased overgrowth
you need an antifungal antifungal hantai
fungal or you've got small bowel
overgrowth you need antibiotic
antibiotic antibiotic
well that's just you know that's just
fueling the problem if there's
overgrowth of a few species that's
symptomatic to a lack of this
communication network to the lack of the
the coordination of the larger ecosystem
and so we've seen people with 20 40
years of problems of overgrowth go on a
sterile product that has no probiotic in
it has no bacteria fungi and within
three months they've got a gut that's
never been so balanced and so number one
it's the communication network within
the ecosystem number two we get to see
this magic of human regeneration so when
you put this stuff into a petri dish of
human cells everything goes into this
regenerative process we see a huge
operation of the production of proteins
from the DNA within the human cell and
one of those proteins is the tight
junctions of the gut lining and so we've
shown that within minutes of putting
this into a gut lining of small
intestine or colon you see an
upregulation of the production of zero
one or the protein that makes the the
tight Junction Wow and so it's so cool
to realize that the bacteria and fungi
can regulate within seconds and there's
no micro RNA in this either this is
actually just the raw redox
communication redox are the positive
negative charged compounds of oxygen
hydrogen exchange it's this liquid
circuit-board of information that is
inducing the human cells to hurry up and
make a stronger gut lining or we put it
into kidney tubules and we see them
coming together as single tubules rather
than single lonely isolated cells and so
we see this huge cooperative effect
happening as the communication network
goes back into play and so then we see
this resilience to that gut lining where
we can now expose that gut lining to
20,000 times the amount you would see in
your food and you continue to make such
tight junctions that there is no damage
to that membrane and so that that kind
of extraordinary regenerative effect of
the human system is being programmed by
this communication network that it's
non-human finally the immune system that
we talked about that third level of gut
health we've now shown that as soon as
this stuff goes and touches the gut
lining there's an 800 fold increase in
glutathione
the antioxidant production and so it's
regenerating the the antioxidant kind of
reservoir that's going to help you stay
in an acute inflammatory response system
instead of sliding into that chronic
inflammatory State so in each step of
gut health the microbiome the gut
membrane protection and the immune
system and it's acute inflammatory
antioxidant system behind it is all
being regulated by this non-human
communication network that were drawing
out of 50 million year old soil gosh so
here's mother earth we're spraying four
and a half billion pounds of a chemical
to kill the communication network in the
microbiome of her soils and she planted
50 million years ago an antidote that
would fix that that problem it's so
humbling I you look at that story of
Mother Earth predicting our insanity and
giving us the medicinal solutions and
then you think of the microbiome itself
that microbiome is letting you live
within it it's so diverse it's so out of
numbers you that there's no way that you
as a tough human being came into the
system you are so vulnerable as a human
being you are almost non-existent
genomically on this planet and so in
that moment we have to do which what's
your podcast is all about we have to
unplug from the matrix we have to get
out of the mentality that as humans we
have to kill all the germs around us you
have to kill the bacteria we have to be
on antibiotics we have to use the
antibiotic you know hand junk we have to
you know be afraid of viruses we need to
immunize our kids from viruses there are
so many viruses around your children if
the viruses wanted to kill the children
they would have never been here
the viruses want your children to thrive
else we wouldn't be here it's we need to
stop this kind of war mentality on the
ecosystem and we're gonna heal and of
course we have to do the same thing on
the macro level right we need to stop
thinking that we are an isolated country
of the United States or England or XYZ
or Russia we need to realize we're all a
part of a single organism called
humanity and we need to stop the war
like nine seven we need to start having
a numb
pundants mindset where the more bacteria
the more fungi the more life around us
that we support the more diversity we
have in the microbiome can support human
life so that we can actually reach
outside of ourselves then say well the
more diversity we can have in our
community with you know let's get them
you know people from every color and
race and Creed to come together and
share their micro RNA because we'll be
more intelligence at the micro level
which will make us more intelligent at
the macro level socially responsible
ethically you know morally true
politically you know all of them are
tied together better communication
always helps human interactions it's
exactly the same thing so I told you
that chronic inflammation is the loss of
communication of cell level
well isn't inflammatory rhetoric or
inflammatory politics also the breakdown
in communication absolutely and doctors
that could you do
could you just thrash out a little bit
more of that this loss of cellular
communication and the way the the immune
system normally combats disease people
are familiar with taking antioxidants
and you know they're they've been hyped
for decades as we know and and and the
this sort of positive accumulation of
charge how does how does the chronic
chronic inflammation how does that sort
of build up an and why does that block
us from from being healthy very good
yeah so the Yi the story of cell so
communication is so so early in its
progression but basically what it looks
like is that picture picture a house
here in some ways like on a house you've
got shingles on the roof you got tar
paper under that you got a plywood roof
you got studs and beams that hold up
that roof you've got walls with with
barrier systems around it of insulation
and then you've got boarding or siding
on the side of the house or break or
something and then you've got
landscaping around it you've got you
know a yard and got this whole thing so
that's that's the human body in a
nutshell is you've got all these
different parts and if you've got a well
built house
storms can come
rain can dump snow can dump everything
stays in this kind of regulatory state
and you can function because everything
is protected cell-cell communication
allows each of those things the shingles
the windows the doors to keep their
identity intact as you start to lose
cell cell communication the cells
literally start to lose their identity
they start to a forget that they're part
of a house and they start to think that
well the only thing that's important is
that I survived as a shingle you know
and that kind of mentality at the cell
level where it's shrinking down it's
worldview to become just one thing
instead of a cooperative massive thing
so cell-cell communication is happening
let me give you three levels of it
number one is this redox signaling
environment where it's oxygen and
hydrogen exchange of electrons this is
letter literally electrical energy
flowing over a surface this can happen
in a lot of different environments for
the microbiome in your gut it turns out
the microbiome produces these little
certain layers of liquid and we call
these biofilms and the biofilm that is
produced by the microbiome allows
electrical charge to be trafficked
across long distances across that so a
single bacteria is tiny even compared to
the to the end of epithelial cell of the
gut lining these tiny little
microorganisms they sense a problem
where they sense an opportunity they
need to send a signal to their
environment to say hey here's a nutrient
I need this nutrient addressed or here's
a toxin needs to be broken down I need
dpp-4 enzymes to come in and break this
down and so the human cell starts making
dpp-4 excreted into the gut and all this
all of that coordination is being done
through electrical charge from potassium
sodium and it's exchange of chloride and
hydrogen that will then interact with
oxygen differently and so you can
imagine like this electrical circuit
board running across the surface of
everything and so this wiring system
that says okay here's something
happening over here sends signal over
there and get some information back
the the dietary supplement that we make
from this stuff is called restore and
and I think the best you know kind of
description of her store is a wireless
communication network think of your cell
phone for example these cell phones are
have complex computers in them that have
the village to receive and transmit
information to make me communicate with
you however if I'm more than seven miles
from the closest cell phone tower this
thing is rendered completely useless as
a communication device I can't reach
anybody and so this cell phone the cell
becomes isolated and in that moment
you've maybe experienced this with your
phone in that moment of isolation the
phone starts to degenerate my phone for
example this week I was traveling a ton
I was on planes it was off most the week
well the software started to fragment
and my camera stopped working and a lot
of different little funky things started
happening the thing is I was not in
communication with the master program it
wasn't getting its information so it had
lost its wireless communication network
God isolated and its function
immediately started decline so that's
you know what the this communication
molecule environment from the bacteria
fungi and everything else these redox
molecules that were now you know putting
into these liquid supplements that is
that wireless communication that's going
to do this network of communication
across so that's step one of cell-cell
communication step two then is once that
communication network hits to the DNA it
starts making not only proteins it's
making micro RNA in response to your
environment so your micro RNA I would
say is not probably number two most
important kind of distribution of
information and communication across
large systems and that's one genome
talking to another gene genome or one
strand of DNA in one cell say in your
liver for example talking to a DNA
strand in your brain to say okay at the
liver we just saw this compound
I want to transport that to the brain in
a few minutes of the brain you need to
start turning on the enzymes that will
take advantage of that neuropeptide that
can be integrated into brain chemistry
whatever it is so that you second
coordination
from micro RNA then the third level is I
would say the hormones and so many of
the things that we make from the genes
are the hormones and those hormones then
can move across the body systems
cortisol from your adrenal glands or
testosterone from the testes or estrogen
from the ovary or you know something
like you know the neurotransmitter /
hormones that are made in the brain and
pituitary gland these things regulate
function all over distant targets within
the body then you are familiar with the
pheromones that actually exit the body
and they can communicate through the air
and so we excrete more airborne
pheromones or hormones in the air and so
these are you know three of the major
mechanisms of cell cell communication
number one I would say is redox
signaling number two is the micro RNA
and the genomics there number three
would be this and ERK and coordination
of everything all of those are going to
come back and regulate one really
important structure within the human
body which again happens to be non-human
and that's the mitochondria the
mitochondria look like bacteria and they
live inside of ourselves there many
times smaller than bacteria and their
genome is different than the human
genome completely but the genome of the
mitochondria actually looks like viral
DNA it's a ring rather than the double
helix that we have and so that ring DNA
or viral looking DNA within the
mitochondria predicts about 37 genes and
so it's a relatively tiny little genome
of the mitochondria but they are
extremely critical to human cell life
they produce the energy within our cells
and so when you eat food the big
macronutrients that turn into fuel are
going to be sugar and fat right so the
glucose and fatty acids ultimately are
again useless to the human cell and they
have to be digested by the mitochondria
and so your bacteria are gonna eat the
food on your plate they're going to
transport glucose and fatty acids back
in your system you're they also deliver
protein which will then be converted to
sugar by your liver and so your protein
and your sugar go to sugar and your fat
goes to fatty acids and they go and move
into
human circulation and ultimately get
into a human cell and then they have to
be digested by the mitochondria into the
into the ATP which is the fuel that your
cell runs on and it turns out those
mitochondria are some tenfold more
abundant than the bacterial ecosystem
there's probably 1.4 quadrillion
bacteria but there's 14 quadrillion
mitochondria in that human system and so
that's the last piece I guess if the
communication network you're asking
about so we have the redox signaling
we've got the micro RNA and we have
hormones that are all feeding back onto
the mitochondria to tell the
mitochondria to do something with our
fuel and so my field of endocrinology is
hormones and metabolism is mitochondria
and so endocrinology metabolism as a
field is the study of how that hormonal
environment regulates the the
mitochondria the mitochondria then are
really the the gatekeeper of life and I
mean that at the literal level you
cannot have life start at a eukaryotic
multicellular organism without the
mitochondria making energy they are
extremely productive in energy one cubic
centimeter and volume of mitochondria
produces 10,000 times more energy that
one cubic centimeter of the surface of
the Sun Wow it's it's more reactive it's
more fuel producing than the nuclear
reactor of the Sun itself and so the
energy that's coming out of these
mitochondria is boggles the human mind
without that level of energy you don't
have human life to begin with but then
it turns out that the redox singling of
oxygen hydrogen done by the mitochondria
that's governed by the redox signaling
of the bacteria and fungi is really the
story of cell repair inside now on my
hospice and palliative care practice I
routinely work with patients that are
you know 105 years old these patients
are interesting to be around because
they don't usually have any disease
they're simply quote unquote dying of
old age well it's interesting to think
for a moment that a patient had 105
years old is still a 70 trillion celled
organism and every single one of those
cells is equipped with all of the
machinery for cell repair and if the
cell is too damaged to repair itself it
can kill itself calling the stems
and replace itself yeah the only reason
we age is because we are losing
communication and all of the machinery
like yourself own all of the machinery
is sitting stagnant and it's not doing
its work and so you get this loss of
communication you get this loss of
function and you start to just decline
and deteriorate because you're not
repairing yourself all the time
that's the magic of taking this
communication network back into play in
the human system we suddenly see human
cells and petri dishes healing
themselves producing proteins kicking in
stem cell activation all kinds of
different things kicking in because the
communication network is back and play
again Wow
is it possible to measure this direct
effect of this communication network
upon the functioning of mitochondria
again
yeah absolutely okay can you see the I
mean I I heard I know no it's correct
but mitochondrial biogenesis is that is
that stimulated by this network and I
mean that must have a profound effect
because that suggests that that you know
the goal of longevity is obviously and
and good health it sounds like that's
very much you know it's the Commerce
know when it's the cornerstone of it is
the health of the mitochondria and the
speed at which this communication
happens again kind of boggles our
previous models of human biology now we
can do this through something called
real-time PCR it's an assay that allows
us in real time to watch the activity of
a single protein or a single target
within the human cell we can show
production from the mitochondria change
within three minutes of exposure to the
bacteria communication network and the
interesting thing is for the very first
time in biology we're seeing a
communication network induced the
opposite response and a damaged cell
versus a healthy cell and so it looks
like the bacteria and fungi are making a
communication network that before it
even penetrates the human cell can
figure out is this cell too damaged to
live or is this cell need just repair
where does this cell need to kill itself
it's doing the opposite thing in those
two two cell populations at
mitochondrial level the mitochondria
within those cells are responding
differently to the buyer to the
bacterial communication network go
spending on the health or lack of health
within the cell that's awesome we
targeted isn't it but that's that sounds
I mean you couldn't do any targeting
better than that could you you can't
target like this you can't micromanage a
system that's this complicated and
that's our excitement about restore this
is the first supplement in your grocery
store or at your doctor's office that
doesn't try to micromanage something if
you take vitamin D it's trying to
micromanage this one cell pathway that
has these receptors that will glue onto
the vitamin D and activate over 2,000
different genes
well you're micromanaging now the system
saying tons of vitamin D but tons of
vitamin D tons of vitamin D well that's
actually very abnormal for the human
body you know the human body makes
vitamin D from our skin when we see the
sunshine obviously the Sun is going to
do many many other things other than
just trigger vitamin D receptors and so
when we go to micromanage our bodies
with supplements
we're often missing the boat because
we're just doing the one thing the one
thing here Co Q 10 vitamin D these one
things are just supporting or
micromanaging is you know one trillionth
of one percent of all the stuff that
should be happening and it's why we're
seeing poor outcomes I don't know if you
saw the Women's Health Initiative study
about five years ago I don't know more
than that now I'm seven or eight years
ago coming out of the u.s. this study
showed that women who were taking
multivitamins and these were just USP
you know kind of your synthetic
multivitamins that you would find on the
typical shelf of a grocery store had a
nine percent increase in death from
taking multivitamins 5000 women in that
study it was a massive study 9% increase
in death from taking a multivitamin it's
because we're trying to micromanage
these human bodies through these tiny
pathways in contrast where store doesn't
do anything it's literally the most
passive thing on the Shelf and yet it
supports everything and that's the
really exciting thing about a dietary
supplement that it's safety is
unparalleled because it's not trying to
do anything to the cell it's just
letting the cell hear its own messaging
it's letting a neighbor cell hear what
the other guys are
mmm and that's an exciting world
absolutely so so this this communication
upgrade effectively can that compensate
for deficiencies in in Co Q 10 you know
when when our human bodies don't make it
so much over the age of 30 or whatever
it is and things like being in northern
latitudes where you know here in England
I'm not making much vitamin D at the
moment and I won't be until around about
May next year right so should it should
I be um you know it will rather is there
less of a need as long as the the
microbiome and the communication system
is in place are you you seem to be
hinting that there's maybe less need for
things like you know supplementing with
vitamin D and ubiquinol and things like
that I think you're exactly right I
think you're exactly right we're you
know we already know that you know some
90 percent of the enzyme work done in
the body is done not by the human cells
but by bacteria the enzymes are what
makes stuff right there's a big
machinery that makes cool stuff in the
body and and so these enzymes you know
you think of an enzyme that can produce
you know via active vitamin D from your
reservoir of vitamin D and things like
that
we're gonna find out that the vast
majority of those here's a good example
as vitamin B and so vitamin b12 is
famous and beef right the beef industry
has been telling us well you can't get
b12 from from vegetables so you have to
eat meat we were obviously - no no not
at all
so it turns out the beef the the cow
doesn't make b12 the bacteria in the
cow's gut makes b12 so the reason beef
has a lot of b12 is because they have a
Roman gut that has four pouches and the
bacteria they're in makes a ton of b12
and so the human gut it turns out can
make vitamin b12 just like the cow got
Kent and so I have patients that have
been vegans for since they were born the
seventh-day Adventist Church is the
first church that really kind of in the
late 1800s started to decide that a
vegan lifestyle was the right way to
live and so for a hundred years that
church has been raising children in a
vegan environment and I've gotten a
seventh-day Adventist in my clinic cuz I
run a plant-based kind of vegan clinic
and in that setting I'll check a b12
level and somebody who's never taken a
b12 supplement has never eaten
Eve and has b12 levels that are at the
highest normal end of the spectrum and
so they're bacteria their gut microbiome
is making their nutrients is making
their vitamins it's making all of the
building blocks that you would get off
of some supplement shelf
now do we take supplements I said I do
sometimes so like vitamin D if for
example I'll take that intermittently so
I'll take 10,000 units of vitamin D when
I get off an airplane you know when I
know my body just went under stress and
it's wintertime and I haven't seen
enough Sun I'll take a big load of
vitamin D but in a non active form and
so non active vitamin D is your vitamin
d3 now that you can see that's that's
actually a non active form of the
hormone it has to then go into the human
system and it will get turned into
active vitamin D through methylation on
a couple of different points and so
that's done by enzymes again so enzymes
within the bacteria or the human
environment can turn that into an active
vitamin D and so if you're taking
supplements you don't necessarily thing
but it certainly probiotics are a good
example you don't want to be taking 35
billion copies the same bacteria every
day so if you feel like you really want
a probiotic in your life which I don't
take any but if you're if you feel like
you want to take them intermittently so
maybe once a week take and take your
probiotic or a couple times a week at
the most but give your gut the chance to
start recuperating ecosystem for much
more cool systems the air around you
rather than a probiotic pill the air
around you is should be filled with good
bacteria and fungi and you should be
able to repopulate your sinuses and
therefore your gut from just breathing
the air around you and so wild
fermentation is done through just you
know keeping cabbage or whatever
vegetable you've got chopped up in your
salt water brine let that absorb the
bacteria and fungi from the environment
you're good to go hmm obviously whatever
we're pushing time a little bit I so
would make sure to wrap it up quite soon
but it's just wanting to ask you one
quick question alludes the causes of
information you know we've seen we've
seen how this communication system can
deal with it you know beyond things like
you know that the gut permeability and
and dietary measures you know is that
other things that we can do to avoid in
Meishan perhaps you could could delude
to that just a little as well as
obviously reinforcing the the health of
our gut the diversity and the integrity
of that gut lining is what would you say
about that of avoiding the the causes of
chronic inflammation it's such a good
play endpoint it turns out that it's the
whole secret to human health as far as I
can tell after these years of study and
practice is that it's entirely about
your connection to nature if you want to
be healthy you have got to get out of
your house you've got to get out of your
plastic infused car you've got to get
out of the chemical environment that you
live in you've got to plug back into
nature and that will fix all of the
communication pieces and it will
absolutely be your most important
antioxidant anti-inflammatory process
mother earth itself is covered in a
blanket of electrons there's electrical
sheath all over the planet Earth and if
you with bare feet step on that earth
immediate antioxidant effect immediate
anti-inflammatory effect but if you go
out there and rubber soled shoes you're
insulated from that electrical current
and you are not getting that
anti-inflammatory effect that the earth
itself before you even breathe before
you eat before you do anything if you're
not touching mother earth you are
getting inflamed and so touch from other
earth weed your garden stand outside
barefoot touch the running stream the
water in a stream flowing past as
extraordinary electrical movement
potential and so the ions from your
environment can be absorbed by the human
body right through the skin and then you
breathe healthy air you breathe
microbiome and you've got that in touch
with your garden and you get your
children outside and you teach them how
to grow their food again we can heal
everything we're only 20 years into this
complete collapse of human health we can
just back up some decades or want to be
cool for you I back up a couple million
years to say what if the whole ecosystem
is constantly in communication what if
we start thriving with our earth where
we produce more clean water than we
consume we produce more healthy oxygen
we we clean more carbon dioxide than we
produce all of that is totally within
reach we can do that within one
generation if we just changed weather
the way we live our lives fantastic
so when the the the product restorer
obviously Connect can help us with our
gut Diversity and integrity and
therefore you know build the foundation
of health and am i right on in
understanding though that once you've
got a broad enough diversity once you're
up and running if you like and you're in
touch with your environment and our we
we're in it we could get to a situation
where we we probably don't need any more
extra communication network we would you
say that can we can we get to a sort of
self sustaining point that's my home
yeah yeah I totally hope so I think that
the steps we're going to need to take to
get there is going to stop spraying
roundup because as long as we've got
this much roundup in our environment
we've got a problem so in the u.s. right
now 75% of our rainfall is contaminated
with roundup seventy five percent of air
we breathe is contaminated up and so we
are so inundated with this single
chemical that we are killing bacteria
all the time so in the foreseeable
future the next few years and you know
if we stop spraying roundup today we've
got about 50 years for that to start to
come out of the environment at one point
where it's non-toxic so I think we have
some decades of cleanup to do but my
hope is absolutely that you know through
the science behind restore that that we
make the product itself obsolete by
getting the science out there and
telling people look we got to stop this
chemical farming we need to start
growing our own food whether it's your
local farmer your CSA or your own
backyard get re-engaged with your food
system get re-engaged with your nature
and we will fix it to the point where
all right you don't need supplements
you'll just live in nature and you'll
you'll be back in touch fantastic well
okay I think we should wrap it up there
it's been a fantastic discussion dr.
Bush thank you so much for such a
wonderfully broad education and helping
us to get a, you know, the big picture of
this sort of shift in the health
paradigm, you know, hopefully people will
start to appreciate that we need to
think outside a little bit of the Box, just
a little bit get in touch with our
natural environment as well as eating
right, and because some things are there.
If we want health we've got to, you know,
look outside the box a little bit there.
-- I love it.
-- Great, great pleasure,. And thank you
very much, to all of you, for listening
and, indeed, watching; and if if you got
some value out of this
discussion, please leave a Comment below
the podcast, and I do hope you'll
join me again for another episode of
Living Outside the Matrix. Thank you.
 
