#46 Improving Gut Health, Animals VS Plant Foods, and the Microbiome with Dr Natasha Campbell Mcbride

Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride (0:00)

90% of all cells in the human body live in our gut flora.

So that means your body is only 10%. It's a shell, a habitat for this muscle microbes that live inside your digestive system. What microbes are pathogenic now in your digestive system? When we reduce their numbers, or we start feeding them different foods, they mutate and evolve and suddenly become beneficial. And the more we are now researching the gut, the more the researchers, the physiologists, now telling us that the gut actually is the first brain. And this one is the second brain.

What's going on in the gut is far more important than what actually is going on up here.

Siim Land (0:43)

Body, mind, empowerment.

SPEAKER_3 (0:44)

Get stronger, faster, smarter, quicker, friendlier, more helpful, more driven.

Siim Land (0:50)

Everything the body needs.

SPEAKER_3 (0:52)

Control your mind.

Siim Land (0:56)

Welcome to the Body, Mind, Empowerment Podcast. I'm your host, Siim Land, and our guest today is Dr. Natasha Campbell Mcbride.

She has a degree in both neurology and human nutrition, and currently she specializes in nutrition for adults with digestive and immune system disorders, and her clinic is in Cambridge, UK. Her book, Gut and Psychology Syndrome, talks about the connection between the functions of the digestive system and the brain. Dr. Campbell-McBride, I'm glad that you could make it to the show, and welcome.

Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride (1:32)

Thank you. Thank you for inviting me.

Siim Land (1:35)

And if I understand it correctly, then you're born in Russia, but you're living and working in the UK at the moment. So can you tell us, like, how did you end up building a medical clinic in Cambridge?

Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride (1:47)

Yes, I live in Istanbul, in the UK, and I'm a medical doctor, and I've created the concept of GAPS, Gap and Psychology Syndrome and Gap and Physiology Syndrome. Both abbreviate in the English language to the same GAPS. GAPS has become a global phenomenon in the last years, because the kind of illnesses that it covers have all become epidemic. They all gained epidemic proportions around the world, and every year the situation is getting deeper, unfortunately. My first book called Gap and Psychology Syndrome was published in 2004 So the concept has been around for a while, around the world. And what it basically means, we have a person with abnormal gut flora. The majority of people today know that we have some microbes living inside our digestive system, right? Recent research has discovered the fact that 90% of all cells in the human body live in our gut flora, 90%. That means your body is only 10%. It's a shell, a habitat for this muscle microbes that live inside your digestive system. And we ignore them with our peril. It is a highly organized and balanced community of creatures that live inside you. And we have bacteria there and viruses and protozoa and archaea and fungi and worms and flukes and all kinds of creatures. And they all plant each other and harvest each other and eat each other and control each other. So it's a balanced community. And this community has been balanced for all of our existence on this planet until the last several decades when humanity has changed the environment on the planet. And the first and most important influence on our gut for our antibiotics. Since antibiotics were discovered and we started using them as a regular part of our lifestyle, starting from 50s and 60s, every time you take a course of antibiotics, it kills off beneficial bacteria in your gut. They die.

These bacteria were controlling a whole host of other microbes, fungi and viruses and other things they were controlling their proliferation. Suddenly, all those other microbes get out of control and of course, antibiotics didn't touch them. The bacteria do recover to a degree, but different species take between 2 weeks to 2 months to recover and that's a window of opportunity for all those fungi and viruses and protozoa and other creatures to get out of control and to grow large colonies and occupy new niches in the digestive system. So from a course of antibiotic to the next course of antibiotic and to the next course of antibiotic, there's less and less of good balance left in your digestive system and more and more of imbalance, more and more of disorder. And all these other species of microbes that overgrow, they become pathogens. Maybe they used to be beneficial, they used to be opportunistic, but when there's too many of them, they suddenly become a problem. They digest the food in their own way, converting it into a whole host of very toxic chemicals, very toxic substances, poisons. At the same time, they damage the integrity of the gut wall, making it porous and leaky. Holes develop in your gut wall. So all these toxins absorb into the bloodstream and alive microbes absorb into your bloodstream and get distributed all over the body. And wherever they get to, they cause trouble, they cause disease. So instead of being a source of nourishment, your body becomes a major source of toxicity. A river of toxins flows from your digestive system, your digestive system, and gets distributed around the body. My first book, Guttons Psychology Syndrome, focuses on the function of the brain in a person. So what happens there? I started working with autism and hyperactivity and dyslexia and dyspraxia and other learning disabilities in children, and then slowly my clinic transformed into treating other mental illnesses in adults, such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder and eating disorders and depression and epilepsy, and physical disorders as well.