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News topic du jour:
CDC (quietly) removes a massive claim on vaccine safety
Podcast Questions:
1. Gut microbiome & antibiotics [36:36]
Alex says
Hi Robb!
I’ve heard you talk about the importance of a healthy gut microbiome and the impact it has on other areas of the body (mental health, etc). I wanted to get your opinion on potential solutions for promoting a healthy gut microbiome in less than ideal circumstances. I have ulcerative colitis and I’ve had my colon removed as well as some of my small intestine, I have been on antibiotics and steroids daily for about 1.5 years to deal with ongoing inflammation issues. I assume that the antibiotics wipe out any good gut bacteria I have on a daily basis, and I struggle to get any answers from my medical team on what I can do to maintain any sort of good gut bacteria. I’ve tried probiotics, but assume they’re counteracted by the antibiotics. Any suggestions or resources you think may help?
Thanks for all you do!
Alex
Prescribing an antibiotic? Pair it with probiotics
2. Queasy running [48:12]
Eric says:
Hi Robb – my wife and I are huge fans and she suggested I write to see if you had any thoughts on this. I’ve been an athlete my entire life and always a runner. Lately I’ve experienced nausea about a mile into my runs. I’m not running hard, in fact it’s really just as I’m getting warmed up. I’m breathing harder, but not like race-hard – if that makes sense.
We are huge LMNT fans and I consistently consume at least 6000mg of sodium daily. Particularly in the summer heat.
I don’t experience this any other time other than when I start to run. If I stop for a few min, the feeling generally passes and I can go on with my run. I’ve looked at what I’m eating prior to my runs and (1) nothing has really changed, even though this feeling is relatively recent and (2) I don’t see anything that I think would make me nauseous. I’m a pretty consistent and clean eater. Could this be an electrolyte issue??
For reference: I’m 5’9” 165lbs, lean/muscular.
We eat low carb (my wife follows Dr Bernstein) so I eat similarly but include dairy & berries
Would greatly appreciate any thoughts you might have on what could be causing this. Thanks for all you – and Nicki – do to keep us informed and entertained!
Sponsor:
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Transcript:
Nicki: It’s time to make your health an act of rebellion. We’re tackling personalized nutrition, metabolic flexibility, resilient aging, and answering your diet and lifestyle questions. This is the only show with the bold aim to help 1 million people liberate themselves from the sick care system. You’re listening to the healthy rebellion radio. The contents of this show are for entertainment and educational purposes only. Nothing in this podcast should be considered medical advice. Please consult your licensed and credentialed functional medicine practitioner before embarking on any health, dietary, or fitness change. Warning. When Robb gets passionate, he’s been known to use the occasional expletive. If foul language is not your thing, if it gets your britches in a bunch, well, there’s always Disney Plus.
Robb: Welcome back everybody.
Nicki: Good morning. Good afternoon. Good evening. Whatever time of day you’re listening. This is episode 121 of The Healthy Rebellion radio.
Robb: Good day.
Nicki: Good day. Howdy.
Robb: That’ll work too.
Nicki: I won’t do any Spanish or Italian.
Robb: You’re not going to do any cultural appropriation this morning?
Nicki: Not this morning.
Robb: Okay.
Nicki: Nope. Let’s see. How do we want to kick this one off?
Robb: I kicked it off.
Nicki: Okay.
Robb: I think you’re supposed to run through a little bit of what we have happening in the rebellion.
Nicki: Okay. I can do that. I just didn’t know if you had any other pre announcement chit chat.
Robb: Nope.
Nicki: None today?
Robb: Nope. No foreplay. Straight to the action.
Nicki: Action. Okay. Well, we do have our seven day mindset challenge with Coach Cinnamon Prime coming up here on August 22nd. That’s a week long mindset challenge. She’s amazing. She’s wonderful. Everybody who has experienced her coaching raves about her. If you haven’t experienced Coach Prime, you’re in for a big treat. That is free for members of the Healthy Rebellion community. So if you’re not yet a member, you can sign up at join.thehealthyrebellion.com and members also get to participate in our rebel resets. And the next one is kicking off on Friday, September 9th. And we will do a week of seven day carb testing, which is completely optional. And then Monday, September 19th will be the first day of the 30 day reset, etc. So that would be the last day to sign up for that. So if you’re interested in either or both of those, get your butt over to join.thehealthyrebellion.com.
Robb: I mean, it’s just your health and your life. So don’t take it seriously or anything.
Nicki: Don’t take it seriously. Actually, I’ll probably not be able to find it, but there was a great, Ray Dalio, he posts some of his principles to Twitter and the one this morning was, oh, I don’t have any internet connection right now.
Robb: You should.
Nicki: Nothing’s coming. Oh, I know why. Give me two shakes. I need to put it right here in the other search. Here we go. Yeah. So his tweet this morning was, “Choose your habits well. If you do just about anything frequently enough over time, you’ll form a habit that will control you. Good habits are those that get you to do what your ‘upper level’ you wants and bad habits are those that are controlled by your ‘lower level you’ and stand in the way of your getting what your upper level you wants. You can create a better set of habits if you understand how this part of your brain works.” So that’s part of what Cinnamon is going to be working on with her mindset challenge. And also those habits are what we help reinforce during our reset. So anyway, thought that was kind of appropriate.
Robb: I agree. I’m shocked. It was germane to what we were talking to.
Nicki: Oh my gosh.
Robb: Kidding. Kidding.
Nicki: Constant abuse from this one here, folks. Yeah.
Robb: Well I’m slowly being choked out and squeezed like a life Anaconda boa constrictor bearing down on me with the shenanigans of all the females in my life.
Nicki: There’s only three.
Robb: There’s only three.
Nicki: And you have three additional males in our home between the cat and our two dogs.
Robb: The cat has become a liability. The dogs were always a liability. So I’m just swinging out there all alone.
Nicki: Oh, poor Robb.
Robb: Yeah. World’s smallest violin is playing for me or something like that. Okay. So news topic today. Title is CDC quietly removes a massive claim on vaccine safety. This is from our friend who we still don’t know yet.
Nicki: Boriquagato. Bad Cattitude. Many of you follow him on Substack. He has been very popular throughout the COVID mess.
Robb: He has. And the interesting thing is he was booted from Twitter, I think for other reasons, pre COVID.
Nicki: I believe so too. I don’t know for sure, but I believe it was pre COVID.
Robb: In a classic OB1, strike me down and I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine, he’s gone on to pretty significant influence and fame on his Substack, which is the link that I have here. And he has two screen captures, one from a current CDC page and then one from a former page, which you can still find on the way back machine. And the former had three points to it. mRNA COVID vaccines cannot give someone COVID-19 or other illnesses, they do not affect or interact with our DNA, and the mRNA and the spike protein do not last long in the body. That last part, the mRNA and the spike protein do not last long in the body, has now been removed from the position statement that the CDC has.
Robb: What are the implications for that? Well, early in this story, folks started asking questions about, and there was the ironic discovery that whether you have COVID or whether there might be complications associated with the vaccine, the spike protein appears to be possibly the worst piece of this whole thing. And as far as toxicity, immune ramp up, it seems like the bulk of the immune response has been targeted against the thing that actually causes the most problems.
Robb: So it was insisted upon, early, that the spike protein and the mRNA itself didn’t last long in the body, they stayed completely localized. And over time we’ve discovered that that is simply not the case at all. The mRNA appears to be longer lasting than what anybody thought in the beginning. And some of that, and interestingly, mRNA should be degraded remarkably quickly in the body, but God bless the folks who engineered this thing, they used some modified base pairs, which make them resistant to degradation within the body. Which is great engineering, if you know for sure that it’s not going to hurt people, which you don’t. You don’t know what the long term effects of this are. It does guarantee that the effects are going to be longer lasting and broader ranging.
Robb: And then we get back to the spike protein, which again is the toxic, arguably difficult to deal with, portion of COVID, happens to be the thing that we’re trying to code for with the mRNA vaccines or transfections or whatever you want to call them. And that appears to not be localized, in at least some circumstances. And this may be a problem of not performing the injection properly. There’s some back and forth on whether or not that is the sole cause of this. Or it may be that it just simply is not 100% localized to the deltoid muscle where they’re trying to inject this stuff.
Robb: But anyway, the long and short is that with literally no fanfare, the CDC modified this position piece. And I was even, God help me, but the claim that these mRNA vaccines don’t directly interact with the DNA, which is point number two that is still on here, I was reading a theory piece couple of days ago that made a spooky position that that may not be the case. We’ll see on that. Time will tell, as we’re finding with excess deaths and all kinds of other interesting things, you can only hide so many things under so many carpets, but you just can’t keep hiding everything everywhere all the time. And it’s remarkable that this major position piece, no explanation, no fanfare, it just changed.
Nicki: They just deleted the bottom section.
Robb: They just cut out that bottom section. It’s no longer a position piece for them, which ostensibly this would be because it is so contrary to the findings that we have now to lean upon that it is further eroding the credibility of these institutions and what not.
Nicki: Well we had the signal that this was the case agency early on. Because I remember Brett Weinstein had mention, I guess it was in his interview with Dr. Robert Malone and…
Robb: Maybe Pierre Corey.
Nicki: No, it was the other guy, but it was that paper out of Japan that had shown that the mRNA had traveled to the ovaries, the bone marrow, and a couple other places.
Robb: Was it the mRNA or the spike proteins?
Nicki: The spike protein. Yep. Sorry. Yeah. But I feel like that was 18 months ago.
Robb: Yeah. We’ve had signal to this effect, at least a question to this effect, for ages. We had signal to this effect ahead of hundreds of millions of people worldwide receiving this.
Nicki: Receiving this injection.
Robb: And with no counsel as to, “Hey, maybe there’s some concern her.”
Nicki: And children.
Robb: Children. On and on and on. I think we mentioned this last show. All of this stuff is kind of blurring together for me, but that excess deaths are really exploding within that 18 to under 50 age range. And again, I just say a hat tip to the dark horse team that they made this point early on that changes and alterations within children that could occur with this. Like the myocarditis that seems to be one of the primary signals that’s popping up, just because something doesn’t kill the kid that day doesn’t mean that they’re scot-free and they have a normal life ahead of Z.
Robb: We don’t know what the implications are. I was reading another theory piece on this, but looking at just myocarditis damage, damage to the heart, and what that would mean for a 12 year old, an 18 year old. That heart is supposed to last them the rest of their life. How many potentially hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands, up to potentially millions of people are going to be facing a heart transplant scenario in their twenties, thirties, forties? Points where we would’ve never thought about needing to deal with that. And the medical burden upon the system.
Nicki: It’s okay. We can just 3D print them now. Or will be able to.
Robb: I mean, that is the glass half full response to this.
Nicki: No, I was being kind of sarcastic.
Robb: I get it. But I could actually see some people whimsically quipping about that even though the kind of funny thing about that is that people lost jobs, lost livelihoods, which maybe this ties into the thing that you were wanting to put in here that the CDC has completely modified its position on what to do with regards to COVID, but people were forced into doing this. Either to put their own health at risk. And granted, I still acknowledge there’s a risk either way, whether you get the virus or the vaccine, there’s a risk. It’d just be nice if, that whole “my body, my choice” thing, and…
Nicki: People could assess that for themselves, for their own families and not be essentially held at near gunpoint whether they’re going to keep their job or not. We know multiple people who did not want to receive the injection and had to in order to keep their employment and feed their families. And there’s just nothing moral about that. Ethical about that.
Robb: Majid has made the case that this is a Nuremberg crime against humanity type thing, which I think is in part why the entrenchment has been so gnarly on this. Because the folks that have pushed this narrative, and again, I don’t know if happy is the right statement, but I feel good about, I again remember April of 2020 where our position was, there’s almost certainly people that will benefit from these experimental vaccines, which were then, we thought years potentially down the road. Little did we know that somehow…
Nicki: It got sequenced in like 24 hours or something.
Robb: Yeah. All this magic happened and that same magic has oddly not happened subsequent to that. Oh, I kind of lost my train of thought there. What were we discussing? I’m thinking six different things on this, but sequence.
Nicki: In March, April, we were very open to the…
Robb: There’s some people that will likely benefit from this. There’s some people that the risk/reward is going to be murky. And then there’s going to be some folks for whom it just really isn’t appropriate.
Nicki: And again, had it been presented as one potential tool in the toolbox, great. But it was like, “This is the only way.” And we’ve talked about this before so we don’t need to beat this horse.
Robb: Think it bears repeating though. Because there’s a guy that we both know, I won’t name his name here, but I’ve been giving him hell on the Facebook because I had posted one of Vinay Prasad’s pieces talking, and I don’t even remember what the discussion was there, but it was very similar to this risk/reward story. And this guy popped up and he was basically like, “Anybody not getting the vaccine at this point is a coward and they’re the problem, not the solution.” And this guy is an engineer by training. He’s not a dummy. He knows math. He doesn’t have formal training in say biomedical sciences, but he’s also, I just have to say, of a certain political ilk, which seems to go hand in hand with this worldview that you’re a bastard if you don’t throw yourself on the mercy of the mRNA vaccines.
Robb: And I posted something the other day about excess death and some of these other changes and called him out about it. And he was like, “I’ll respond after I’ve read this study and you’re not on my schedule.” And I just said, “Well, that’s great now that you get to take your time and be careful about this stuff because it certainly wasn’t reasonable for somebody else to take their time and think about, ‘Well, maybe this thing isn’t right for me.'”
Robb: And I remember, we may end up editing this next part out. We’ll decide. But it was not that long ago that I saw somebody that I really respect that they said, “I’ve always been a live and let live of person. And I’ve not been an activist,” was what this person said. “I’ve not been an activist,” with say their social political views. And this guy said, “I am now an activist. I am now activated and I am going to, with vigor, promote my worldview. And a bunch of people like me are going to be doing that.” And most of what this will boil down to is people being called domestic terrorists and stuff like that.
Robb: But I’m kind of in the same boat where I’ve usually, even people within the ancestral health scene, who I may not agree with, but I’ve never really gone after people. And sometimes folks are like, “Well, you should say something about this,” or, “You should say something about that.” And it’s like, “Well fuck you. Why don’t you do it?” I don’t need to be the one drug in being the police on this stuff. I’ve largely been of the opinion that maybe I’ll make a commentary about this or that, but I try to let my work stand for itself and that’s it. I’m definitely done with that. I have my Arya Stark list of people that I’m going to be calling out as time goes on.
Nicki: But you’re talking about verbally calling them out.
Robb: Verbally calling them out. Yes.
Nicki: We must be clear if we do keep this segment in here.
Robb: I’m not actually taking a obsidian knife to their rib cage like she did the white king. No, I’m probably not doing that. But there’s going to be years of me roasting some people over the spit for being dickheads about this stuff. And the main thing that they did is just virtue signaling around all of this stuff, making this horrible topic an opportunity for them to gain some momentary additional fame and influence. And these people have never been particularly good at science, have really not been good at history and political science. And I’m kind of done with that. So I don’t know what my point is to that other than just getting it off my chest to some degree.
Robb: But this CDC position piece, there are other things I’ve been looking at just talking about the absolute tatters that we find ourself in at this point with regards to trust in institutions. And I’ll shut up in a minute and we’ll shift into the actual meat of the show, but I’m just going to throw this out there. When Donald Trump was president, there was all this fanfare. “Oh, he’s a fascist, he’s a dictator. He’s this, he’s that.” He had an easy opportunity to seize power. That was to just lean into COVID-19 and everything about it. He could have suspended elections, he could have done this, he could have done that. He can’t be both an authoritarian tyrant and a COVID denier at the same time. It just doesn’t work. This was the easiest, lowest hanging fruit for tyranny that one could ever find. And you only need to look north of the border to Justin Trudeau to see a perfect example of how that topic was weaponized.
Robb: Okay. So in some section of people, the fact that I said anything slightly favorable towards Donald Trump, I’m dead to them and that’s fine. Whatever. If you can turn your brain off that easily, then this next piece will be a surprise to you when it happens. But we are at this point where people don’t trust science, don’t trust institutions, don’t trust the media. They don’t trust much of anything.
Nicki: And rightfully so.
Robb: Rightfully so.
Nicki: They have abused that trust and so people have…
Robb: That trust has been abused. And what is the danger that we now face with that? We could have a legit right wing fascist individual, someone who is softer spoken than Donald Trump, someone who is slicker than Donald Trump, someone who in their heart of heart is a horrible human being, but on the surface is able to navigate the social landscape much better. And we are in a situation now where that person can come in and dismiss all of the science. All of the flip side of what has been eroded from I would say the woke progressive abuse of the last couple of years that has gone on with this. And people aren’t going to be in a position to push back. And the flip side of what we’ve experienced this last couple of years will occur. The more right leaning people will hammer the folks that are like, “Hey, do we really want to take away those rights and privileges?” “Oh, you shut the fuck up and fall in line or we will cancel your business,” or do this or do that. And this is what has made me crazy.
Nicki: Does it have to be your right wing fascist?
Robb: Doesn’t have to be.
Nicki: Yeah. Because I feel like we’re kind of experiencing some of that right now.
Robb: We absolutely are. All I’m saying, and I’ve made this case before, is that it takes a long time to get the right wingers fired up and active on something. And people like Sebastian Junger have talked about this in such beautifully articulate ways that if you want creativity and innovation, then you want people from the left leaning progressive scene, and then if you want to get shit done, you need these more right wing people that are conservative. And it’s the combo. It’s the pushback. Like Jordan Peterson and the thing that we are listening to. If you want to move your hand as slowly as possible, you push back against it with the other hand and then you have control between those two things.
Robb: We’ve lost control of that stuff. We have no respect towards each other, we have no control towards these things. But I guess the funny thing is, in my head I still self-identify more as a progressive. That’s what I thought I was for the bulk of my life. I thought I was this left of center libertarian, and I tend to pester and bitch at the group that I actually identify with. If people notice, I don’t actually spend a ton of time shooting arrows across the fence at the folks that are on the other side. I will do that occasionally, but I actually critique the people that I think are on my team, that I kind of self-identify with.
Robb: And there’s a bunch of people out there that have driven this whole narrative to a spot that if you feared right wing totalitarianism, we are there. We’re primed. Now I’m not saying that that’s the way it’s going to happen. This current iteration of our left leaning totalitarianism is getting really impressive, like the 87,000 IRS agents.
Nicki: And the training that they’re undergoing to raid homes.
Robb: And that the IRS removed from their website that to apply for this job you need to be physically fit, okay with firearms, and willing to use deadly force to collect fucking taxes. We’re there. And yeah, I don’t know. I’ll shut up at this point. But this is a spot where we do need to be awake and aware of what’s going on, focus on our local infrastructure, and take care of our local communities, our families, the people that we care about locally. It’s going to be very difficult to right this ship at a federal level, at least straight out of the gate. We have a lot of leverage to be able to firewall, sandbag the effects of this activity at more of a local level. And this is stuff that we need to be aware of. Like the changing narrative.
Nicki: The disappearing.
Robb: The disappearing of the facts. And this changing of the current CDC guidelines, where it’s like we put it on the individual to largely determine what he or she should do.
Nicki: If you’ve been exposed, you don’t have to stay out of school anymore. Just a whole host of things that were.
Robb: And the numbers that we’re experiencing today, as far as cases and deaths and everything, are really no different than what they were a year ago. But yet a year ago, anyone suggesting what the CDC’s position is today was in a position of being deplatformed. And I will cynically say this is because we are racing towards midterms in the United States and these assholes are just hoping that people are dumb enough and gullible enough to forget what happened here. And again, I view myself as largely a centrist individual that the world has just shifted around me and now I find myself in this kind of odd spot. Do you have one more thought?
Nicki: Yeah, I’m just looking something up because I have no idea. I can’t remember how to pronounce this guy’s last name. But we’ve been listening to, we’re not done with it yet, but an interview with Balaji Srinivasin. And he just wrote a book called The Network State. And we haven’t read the book yet, it’s free online. It’s very, very popular right now. And he’s making a case for, and I’m just going to butcher it so maybe we can talk about this in our next episode after we’ve finished digging in a little bit more, but there’s actually a little bit of a shred of hope.
Nicki: He sees China and the US being these unsustainable, the direction that we’re both moving in, is just not a positive outcome for anyone, but he does put forward some positive potential future outcomes. Anyway, I just wanted to throw that in there because it was getting very dark. And I do think there are a lot of very brilliant minds out there seeing the same thing, seeing how we’re kind of at a breaking point with our current two party political structure and what’s going on globally.
Robb: And globalization.
Nicki: And globalization and all of this stuff. And I think it’s worth mentioning that it’s not all doom and gloom, that there could be some alternative outcomes that are actually positive and futures that we would want to live in and our children could have good lives.
Robb: Absolutely. And just to maybe wrap that up though. For that to happen, we need to be in a spot where my neighbor is cool with me doing something that they maybe do or don’t agree with. And that was a spot that, maybe not in this Walt Disney-ified 1950s view of the world. There’s always been racism, there’s always been bigotry, there’s always been problems and all this stuff, but I’d say by and large, and for sure if you travel abroad at all and you look at different places and different cultures, the United States is shockingly tolerant about like, “Oh, I’m going to live this way, you live that way.” And we’ve kind of fucked all that up.
Robb: And I remember having conversations. It’s like these online debate type things with some vegan folks, I’m like, “Hey, theoretical thing here. But if I could open a portal into an alternate reality. This reality was a brand new earth or an earth that had all the infrastructure, but no people in it. You pick however you want. Either you vegans can go there and live your world the way that you want and then leave me alone or I can go there. You pick. But would you leave me alone?” And you could see them just itching. And I was like, “You wouldn’t. You would come back through the portal and at gun point try to change and control me.
Nicki: Trying to control you over, ruin your new world.
Robb: Yeah. And it was this back and forth, but it was a baited trap because I know because people who are effectively religious zealots about stuff like that, of course you can’t do that. They have this mandate from whatever God it is that they follow that they need to do this so of course they couldn’t just leave me to live my life the way that it is. For this stuff to go forward, we need to reach a point where some places may not be that great actually. And this is some of the potential downside of state rights and this Balaji piece. The nation state is fascinating because he really get in and says, “What is a nation? What is a state? What is a nation state?” And the definitions actually matter and are really important and everything.
Robb: But it’s possible that going forward there may be places where folks make decisions where it’s not a particularly nice place to be. What would be great is that we have opportunities for the people who live in those places to leave if they want to. Under some rules and guidelines of where else they go. The flip side of that is there’s opportunities that there may be some really wonderful places to be.
Robb: The way that we ensure that there’s no place wonderful to be is that we insist upon a one size fits all homogenized worldview about everything that needs to go down. And this is basically this cultural Marxism. And what this Marxism type stuff has done is it guarantees that everything sucks for everybody except for a very tiny ruling elite, which is kind where we’re at now in this globalized push for our food systems, monetary systems, the whole ball of wax. And it is interesting what this guy suggests is hyper decentralization. And hypertribalism in that you can find and create a scenario in which you and your value systems are autonomous and protected within this potential new structure. So we will finish consuming this thing and maybe circle back and talk about it.
Nicki: Right. One of the really interesting things that he mentioned was how everybody thinks that we have to just keep moving forward, but if you’ve ever used the undo button on a Google doc or a Word doc, sometimes we need to go back to go forward again on a different track.
Robb: Because where we were previously might have been pretty good.
Nicki: Might have been okay. Sometimes you type a paragraph and it’s like, “Okay, that last sentence kind of sucked.” Or you’re writing code and you deploy it and you need to revert back to the previous state because there was a bug there and didn’t quite do what you wanted to do. So you revert and then you go again. And that was a really interesting way of thinking that I enjoyed. And again, we’re only partway through this podcast and I know he’s been a guest on every podcast over the sun. He was the former CTO of Coinbase so he’s very popular in the crypto world. But with this new book, I know he’s doing the podcast circuit and he is very wonderful to listen to. So if you have a chance to listen to any of his episodes or grab a copy of his book, again, I think it’s free as a PDF online, or you can buy a physical copy or whatever. So we’ll circle back on that because there’s been some really good stuff there.
Robb: Again, I probably should just be quiet now, but within this kind of charter of the Healthy Rebellion, I think we really do need to put some thought to self sufficiency, self sovereignty, taking care of the people around us. This is going to become a real and important thing to do. And I think also in a hyper changing world, it potentially provides a sense of agency that’s going to be critical. Because if you feel like you have no control over your life or the world around you, it’s literally the most stressful thing that you can experience. And so this is a way that we can wrest back some control, even if it’s in a man’s search for meaning kind of way where we’re just making the best of the bad decision pool presented to us. But at least we’re invested in that and mindful of it and doing what we can with it.
Nicki: You done?
Robb: I’m done.
Nicki: Sorry, folks. This turned into quite a different beginning.
Robb: Quite the monologue. Yeah.
Nicki: Beginning of the show than we anticipated, but sometimes you just kind of go with it. So we went with it. Let’s see here. The Healthy Rebellion radio is sponsored by our salty AF electrolyte company Element and friends don’t let friends drink sugary electrolytes, especially when there’s Element. My brother-in-law sent us a screenshot of a text from one of his coworkers that he had introduced Element a couple of months ago. And in part of the text thread it said, “I literally don’t know how I lived without Element before now.” So pretty cool. Element has a flavor for every taste bud so grab yours at drinklmnt.com/rob. That’s drinkLMNT.com/ROBB.
Nicki: And we have two questions for you all today. The first one from Alex on gut microbiome and antibiotics. Robb, I’ve heard you talk about the importance of a healthy gut microbiome and the impact it has on other areas of the body like mental health, et cetera. I wanted to get your opinion on potential solutions for promoting a healthy gut microbiome in less than ideal circumstances. I have ulcerative colitis and I’ve had my colon removed as well as some of my small intestine. I’ve been on antibiotics and steroids daily for about a year and a half to deal with ongoing inflammation issues. I assume that the antibiotics wipe out any good gut bacteria I have on a daily basis and I struggle to get any answers from my medical team on what I can do to maintain any sort of good gut bacteria. I’ve tried probiotics, but assume they’re counteracted by the antibiotics. Any suggestions or resources you think may help?
Robb: Man, pretty simple question, but there’s a lot to unpack with that. And, Alex, first, I don’t want to get nosy, but if we were having a phone conversation about this, I’d really be curious. What have you tinkered with regards to elimination diets? Carnivore? Those sorts of things just, has every stone been turned over in a process of trying to fully put this ulcerative colitis into remission? And carnivore isn’t a perfect cure all for everybody, but God damn, if it doesn’t work for a lot of people and even just keto and gluten free. There’s a whole spectrum of this stuff. So one, I’d be really curious what has been done in that regard. And lifestyle things. Sleep, circadian biology, photo period, sun exposure, on and on and on. All these other things. So I’d be really curious about that.
Robb: And those things are critically important in if this is still a scenario where, “Oh, I have a piece of regular bread once in a while,” and stuff like that, it’s like, okay, there’s all this low hanging fruit then. And again, maybe gluten isn’t the causative factor for this issue for this person, but God damn if I’m not stunned by the number of people that end up improving when they pull all the stuff out of the works. So I would really do some diligence first on figuring that out.
Robb: From there. And I’m maybe in a little bit of a minority on this, but what constitutes a healthy gut microbiota and microbiota in general is really kind of circumstance relevant. You could take probiotics with your antibiotics. And again, we would hopefully find a diet and lifestyle intervention such that you don’t need the antibiotics anymore. That’s part of the thing. I would be curious what currently you are experiencing as far as symptoms. Do you have diarrhea? Do you have loose stools? What is it that the probiotics are supposed to be addressing here?
Nicki: You mean the antibiotics?
Robb: Well, no. What is it that the probiotics, what do you want them to do?
Nicki: Got you.
Robb: So I have a link to a paper prescribing an antibiotic question mark, parrot with probiotics, and it’s actually a wonderful placebo, controlled, double blind, randomized, gold standard study looking at folks on antibiotic therapy, oral antibiotic therapy, and being given probiotics and rates of say diarrhea, which is one of the common side effects there. And it shows benefit for most people. Although not all people. Some people end up having a terrible response to the addition of probiotics.
Robb: And this is where it’s funny because I will pat myself on the back and say that I was one of the earliest people really talking about the importance of the gut microbiota. And there were people before me, like Mike and Mary Dan Eades who in their book, Protein Power Lifeplan, which was published in 2001, had a wonderful exploration of both sunlight, vitamin D and then also the importance of gut health. And so they were on top of this before I was. They are the ones that really put this significantly on my radar. And then the book Lights Out, Sleep, Sugar, and Survival. And then Sex Lies in Menopause also talked a lot about the gut microbiota. But this is like 2001, 2002 I started really talking to people about this stuff. So a long time.
Robb: But I also over time discovered that what is good for one person may be disastrous for somebody else. And so you could certainly tinker with probiotics in this scenario. What the paper suggests is taking the probiotics two hours before, two hours after oral antibiotic application and just rotating through that so that the probiotics… And then you get into prebiotics, which can help to grow whatever bacteria there.
Robb: Antibiotics don’t kill all the bacteria that we have. They do change the profile of bacteria. They kill some, not others. One of the ironic things is I’ve personally noticed, I might be having some longstanding gut issues, and I tend to be more on the loose side. I’ll go on a round of antibiotics for a sinus infection and all of a sudden my gut is better. I’m pooping better. My digestion is better. And a lot of people report that side of things. So this is where it really just needs to be played to from a clinical outcome perspective. How do you get to a spot where you look, feel, and perform your best? You’re pooing the best you can, you have the least inflammation, you’re feeling good.
Nicki: It’s almost like you need to get a notebook and track things pretty specifically. The date, what you ate, if you’re trying probiotics, when you’re taking them. Just so that you can do this for a period of time and if you notice any change or things get worse, make all those notes so that you actually have some journal record of what you’ve done and how things are progressing or degrading.
Robb: Yep. Absolutely. I did include another paper in the show notes, Saccharomyces Boulardii to Prevent Antibiotics Associated Diarrhea, a randomized double mask, placebo controlled trial. And what this thing suggested is that the S. boulardii provided no significant benefit over baseline for preventing diarrhea associated with antibiotic application. There are lots of other papers that suggest, like I suggested in my first book, the saccharomyces boulardii being beneficial. If you were traveling or your gut is otherwise kind of off that it’s a beneficial yeast, which seems to help a lot of people in a lot of different circumstances. But in this one trial, which again was seemingly very well done, it didn’t demonstrate significant overall benefit. But when you dig into the details of the paper, some people seem to benefit significantly and other people seem to get worse significantly. And I think that’s where when you aggregate this stuff, then there appears to be no benefit to it when you look at the population level, but at an individual level, it might be just the thing you need or just the thing you don’t need. Trying to think of what else to mention on that.
Nicki: I think step one, really scrutinize your food.
Robb: Current food, current lifestyle.
Nicki: Anything that could be causing general inflammation in the body and specifically in the gut. And then if you’re going to try any pairing with probiotics of any kind, tracking the type, how you feel, the day, time, timing with food, all that stuff. And just run with it for… How long would you say to? I guess if you notice it significantly worsening, cease.
Robb: So we had a solid discussion in the group chat in the Rebellion yesterday, and Beth has been doing a little bit of an elimination thing. And I forget who it was, but they’re like, “Just do the lion diet.” And this is of what McKayla Peterson put together. It’s just ruminant meats and salt and water. And it’s pretty well thought out as far as just a way to do a version of carnivore. Doesn’t have eggs, doesn’t have dairy. It starts off with very, I think, super low potential immunogenic foods. And start there. I would probably start there and I would do it 30 days, unless everything goes to hell in a hand basket along the way.
Robb: I will say that Joe Rogan did, I don’t know specifically what iteration of carnivore he was doing, but he had loose stools for three weeks going into it. And then by week three, everything tightened up, normalized, and then he was good to go. And he was like, “Oh, I feel great.” And so it can take a little while with that. But I’m sure that Alex is aware of the symptoms of gut pain and irritation. When I had ulcerative colitis, the pain was crushing. And that visceral pain just seems to be everywhere, refers everywhere.
Robb: So I would find some iteration of a reset diet and by hook or by crook, try to figure out how to get this situation into remission or markedly improved. I think 30 days is a pretty good period of time to kick the tires on that. And then we start iterating from there. And if you’re 100% in remission, then you’re not taking antibiotics.
Nicki: Or steroids.
Robb: Or steroids. Then I don’t even know that this probiotic thing becomes a topic. Maybe you play with it, maybe you don’t. I don’t know. That’s where I’m firmly on the side of cater to the clinical outcome piece of this and if you’re looking good, feeling good, performing well, you’re pooping like a champion, then things are probably pretty good. And then if you want to tinker with adding some pre or probiotics and stuff like that, and just see if things improve, then that’s fine. But I suspect that there’s still some low hanging fruit that can be had by addressing that other piece, the front end piece.
Nicki: Cool. All right. Our last question today is from Eric on queasy running. Hi, Robb, my wife and I are huge fans and she suggested I write to see if you had any thoughts on this. I’ve been an athlete my entire life and always a runner. Lately I’ve experienced nausea about a mile into my runs. I’m not running hard. In fact, it’s really just as I’m getting warmed up. I’m breathing harder, but not race hard, if that makes sense. We’re huge Element fans and I consistently consume at least 6,000 milligrams of sodium daily, particularly in the summer heat. I don’t experience this any other time other than when I start to run. If I stop for a few minutes, the feeling generally passes and I can go on with my run. I’ve looked at what I’m eating prior to my runs. And one, nothing has really changed even though this feeling is relatively recent. And two, I don’t see anything that I think would make me nauseous. I’m a pretty consistent and clean eater. Could this be an electrolyte issue? For reference I’m five foot nine, 165 pounds, lean, muscular. We eat low carb. My wife follows Dr. Bernstein so I eat similarly, but include dairy and berries. We greatly appreciate your thoughts you might have on what could be causing this. Thanks for all you and Nicki do to keep us informed and entertained.
Robb: I almost had Nicki drop this one because I really have no idea what could be happening here. And this is probably a case to maybe go get some stuff checked out. Although the funny thing with that is you go to the doc in the box and they’re not going to be any help either.
Nicki: They’re not going to know. Well, it only happens one mile into his run. That’s kind of strange too.
Robb: This is reaching. I’m becoming the medical medium here.
Nicki: Where’s your crystal ball?
Robb: The spirits are talking to me. And I wonder about neck alignment and if it happened all of a sudden, you get this queasiness. Every once in a while, I will sleep weird. I very rarely get a headache. I very rarely am nauseous. And if my neck is out in a particular way, I guess it’s maybe a little bit migraine-like where I am nauseous, I kind get room spins, some vertigo.
Nicki: It’s an interesting thought, but I feel like if your neck is out, you would be feeling that. When I sleep weird, I feel that all day long. I don’t even want to exercise.
Robb: I get that, but when you start running, you have a certain postural thing and you have a certain movement and shock absorption.
Nicki: Right. That’s a good point.
Robb: And all this stuff. And because this is…
Nicki: A relatively recent thing.
Robb: It’s a recent thing and because we are more nutrition oriented, of course everything needs to be a nutrition problem. But physical structure is a big deal with this stuff. And the fact that it’s this isolated deal and an isolated circumstance, it makes me wonder if there’s not some sort of neck alignment issue that gets caused when he gets running. And then once he gets warmed up and maybe he stops and wiggles around and everything, unbeknownst to him, he works through this thing such that neck alignment issue isn’t really a problem. But I guarantee you, if you’ve got something out in your neck, your spine, tight muscle pulling on that occipital area of your skull and everything, it’ll make you nauseous. Or it certainly has the potential there.
Robb: And honestly, above and beyond that, I have no idea. Nothing’s changed dietarily. One of the things that isn’t, if you’re low electrolytes, ironically is not really nausea. And I think that’s in part because the body, if you’re already low in electrolytes, the body really isn’t wanting to dump more electrolytes and whatnot because it’s just going to further exacerbate the problem. So when you look at the list of symptoms associated with low electrolytes, nausea is not at the top of the list. And they’re already addressing that reasonably well. So my medical medium guess is some sort of a neck issue. And I don’t know if you see a chiropractor, you have a physical therapist, or somebody that could assess that, or maybe adjust it or do some work on you and see if that improves things. And that’s what I’ve got. That’s my absolute flinging a lawn dart over my back shoulder, not watching where I’m going, guess on this thing.
Nicki: Okay. Well, Eric, let us know if you figure out what’s going on.
Robb: Yeah, would like to know if you tinker with that or it just resolved spontaneously. Okay. Great.
Nicki: Right. Cool. Well, that’s a wrap.
Robb: That was a lot more than I was thinking it was going to be.
Nicki: That was a doozy, hubs. You took us down the path.
Robb: I thought that CDC unpacking thing was going to be quick.
Nicki: It got you fired up.
Robb: It is. But I have a sense of urgency around this stuff. I do have in some ways more of a sense of optimism than maybe what I did six months ago, oddly. Even though things have gotten worse. I’ve seen a couple of things where I’m like, “Oh, we might thread the needle on this.” Civilization thus far has been pretty lucky and we avoided the Cuban missile crisis and stuff like that. But that said, if we are going to thread this needle, a lot of the folks that are usually live and let live are going to have to get in and get involved in the way that these knuckle headed activists have. And we need to do it in a way that hopefully isn’t knuckle headed and off putting and facilitating of…
Nicki: More knuckle headed-ness.
Robb: More knuckle headed-ness. Maybe just from the other side of the political aisle. But we do need to do something. We do need to be in a position to help each other and to stand up against this stuff. We need to rebuild our institutions. And I don’t know how long that takes or how you go about doing it. We probably do need some centers for disease control and we probably do need some sort of public health interface, but these assholes just so ruined the trust in them.
Nicki: This is part of the rewind or the undo and then go forward again. Because as Balaji mentioned, we’ve had these octogenarian presidents or septuagenarian, or whatever you call them, all of our Congress is in their eighties. It’s time to rethink how stuff is structured. I think there’s a lot of great foundation, speaking specifically for the United States. We have a good foundation, but it’s not currently working for our current geopolitical.
Robb: It’s working for a very few people.
Nicki: Yeah. And so let’s maybe keep some of that foundation, rewind, and venture forth on a new track because this current one is just unfixable potentially.
Robb: Right. Yeah. Okay. We’ll leave there. We’ll have some more thoughts on his book, The Nation State.
Nicki: Network State.
Robb: Or Network State. It is available for free online. You can also buy it if you want a printed version or audible or what have you. But he’s using the freemium model that has been an underpinning of crypto and the internet and whatnot.
Nicki: All right. Thanks, everyone, for joining us again. Please check out our show sponsor Element drink, LMNT.com/Robb and we’ll see you all next week.
Robb: Bye, everybody.
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In regards to that first question. If Alex no longer has a colon, then presumably, they no longer have UC. If there is a remaining rectal stump that is inflamed or the doctors suspect that it could be Crohn’s and not UC, then that would explain why they continue them on some medication, but even then, there are likely better treatments for these autoimmune situations than persistent antibiotics. I would seek out a second opinion from a different GI Doc and see what they think. Just a thought.
Dark – a very dark episode today.
It’s funny I heard you mention the Network State book again in your latest podcast (today is Christmas) and the first group of people I thought of when I considered a Network State (a couple of months ago) that I would want to be a part of it was you all and the Healthy Rebellion.