Your DNA Doesn't Matter - Your Gut Bacteria Does with Josh Dech

Dr. Tamar: 0:00

Have you, or perhaps your patients, been struggling with gut issues but can't seem to get to the root cause? They may be relying too heavily on medications to mask their symptoms instead of addressing underlying problems. Our DNA may seem like the ultimate puppet master, controlling everything from our physical traits to health susceptibilities. But guess what, my friends? Your gut bacteria can rewrite your health story. So grab your cuppa, cozy up and join us for this eye-opening episode. As we chat with holistic nutritionist Josh Dech, who helps patients reverse chronic gut diseases like Crohn's and Colitis through lifestyle and diet changes, we're ready to learn how DNA isn't the only player on the field of well-being. Welcome to Pivoting Pharmacy with Nutrigenomics. Part of the Pharmacy Podcast Network, a must-have resource for pharmacist entrepreneurs seeking to enhance patient care while enjoying career and life. Join us as we pivot into Nutrigenomics, using pharmacy and nutrition for true patient-focused care. Explore how to improve chronic conditions rather than just manage them. Celebrate entrepreneurial triumphs and receive priceless advice. Join your values with a career that profoundly impacts patients. Together, we'll raise the script on health and pivot into a brighter future. Before you listen in, I want to thank our listener of the week, who said thank you tomorrow for making Nutrigenomics easy to understand. You are very much welcome, because if you find it easy to understand, then I know I'm doing something right. Thank you for your review and remember, when you leave us a five-star review, you'll get the chance to be featured as our next listener of the week and I'll give you a shout out right here on the show. Hello, hello and welcome to episode 15 of Pivoting Pharmacy with Nutrigenomics. I'm Dr Laufel, your doctor of pharmacy and certified nutritional genomic specialist. Today's episode, we're talking about why your DNA doesn't matter. Yeah, I know it seems wrong. Right, because we're a podcast that's talking about Nutrigenomics and DNA and how it does matter. But hear me out. We're going to talk with Josh Dech, who's going to tell us why gut bacteria matters, more so than DNA, and, as bold as it sounds, it's wrapping up layers of illuminated truths on our path to healthier lives. Over the years, we have discovered that there's more to our health than previously thought. Right, we can make changes in our eating habits, change how we sleep, stress at work or home. All these elements weave into the fabric of our well-being and we know that the significant player involved all this is deep in ourselves, which is our DNA, because it's like a scaffold of our being influencing everything from our hair color and eye color right down to our predisposition to health issues, even factors affecting our digestive health, our gut health. They're coded deep within the gene sequences. But here's a twist your DNA does not have to define you, it does not have to limit you, and that's why joining us today is our good friend, josh Dech, a former paramedic turned holistic nutritionist specializing in gut health. Given his tremendous success in helping clients overcome complex digestive diseases using holistic approaches, conscious nutrition and solid determination, I know he's got a wealth of insights to share. Together, we're about to plunge into the world of gut health, exploring why your DNA doesn't matter, but your gut bacteria does. So let's listen in, josh. Welcome, welcome. Thanks for joining me on Pivoting Pharmacy with Nutrigenomics. Now you've made an interesting transition from being a paramedic to a holistic nutritionist. Could you share a defining moment that triggered this transformation?

Josh Dech: 3:48

It's interesting because there are actually two defining moments, like skipping stones from one to the next. So I used to be a paramedic and I realized pretty quickly it was sick care, not health care. You pick up the same people over and over, week after week. You take them to the hospital. You start to know your patients when you see them over and over and I pick them up for whatever issue it was a heart issue, or it was a respiratory issue, or my favorite is generally unwell and then we take them to the hospital and they either get an update on prescription, they get bigger dose of their prescriptions, or they get sent home told they're fine, right, and nobody was figuring out why these people were sick. And so I ended up leaving my career within a year or two and I started personal training full-time. It's something I've been passionate about for years and I've met with this woman named Lynn. She was 57 years old when she came to see me and she was on 17 pills and insulin for breakfast, nine pills and insulin with bedtime. She had a CPAP machine, high blood pressure, borderline CHF. She was on the disability list at work, so you name it Clearly her life was very steadily declining and, as a pharmacist, you know her future is more prescriptions and then more prescriptions to battle the contraindications or the complications of those prescriptions Exactly. And so we started working with her, went into the gut and nutrition and movement and exercise. Within two years she was off all but two medications, strictly because she had a rule on why surgery. So they pulled 76% and she had a medication for that. But she was off all her medications but two H59, she broke her first world record as a weightlifter in the raw power lifting division.

Dr. Tamar: 5:16

Awesome.

Josh Dech: 5:18

Oh, it was amazing and that started this whole journey. And then I got into nutrition more and more and I got deeper and realized every case that I would see whether it was PCOS or just severe PMS, asthma, anxiety, depression, eczema, diabetes it always came back to the gut and so I started diving in and I got closer and closer and then the worst and the worst gut cases. I began seeing severe IBS. I ended up specializing in IBD, so I see a lot of Crohn's and Colitis as my specialty and we are successfully reversing many, many cases. About 90% 95% who come to see me are between 50% to 100% reversed within the first 90 days, regardless of whether they've been at it for a year, 15, 16 years. They can all be reversed and that's sort of what led me to where I am today.

Dr. Tamar: 6:04

Wow, that is amazing. Josh, I definitely resonate with you when you talked about seeing the same patients in that ambulance for the same issues and then when you see them again now there are more medications than they were before, their situation is more complex and complicated, and it was the same thing that set me on the path to where I am today, seeing those frequent flyers I call them in the hospital always coming back within two weeks, 30 days, whatever it is, they're coming back and they're not getting any better. So I definitely resonate with you and that success that your patients have had with just making those changes in their lives and addressing those gut issues that is absolutely amazing. I can't even I've never even done a marathon.

Josh Dech: 6:48

You know what me either. I hate cardio. It's really hard to talk me into doing any sort of cardio, but it is amazing what the body is capable of. We have these diseases like, again, ibd. That's classically considered by both the Crohn's Colitis Foundation's the Mayo Clinic. It's considered to be autoimmune or idiopathic. But the reality is we have to look at these diseases as sort of a progressive wear and tear. Medicine has spent 30, 40 years plus really trying to separate IBS and IBD, to differentiate these conditions, to determine what sort of factors make them different, why they're different, how they onset, what the pathology is of these disease processes and my work. Now I'm actually blurring the lines again and saying nope, we've gone too far. We need to look at the disease wear and tear. Something as simple as like if someone comes in picture, you know, running a marathon, for example is that if you put on a brand new pair of shoes and you did not wear socks and you went for a run, what happens to your heel? It gets red, it gets a little raw, it gets blistered, it bleeds, and this is the progression that I've actually identified in the histories I take with these IBD patients. So they come in and it's a lot of the same stuff. It's one of two things. One it's a rapid onset due to an insult of some kind, be it mycotoxin poisoning, be it antibiotic usage, something that disrupted the biome, or it's this wear and tear process. And so to say it's either genetic or idiopathic is insane, and I'll tell you why. Number one the USA is less than 5% of the global population, but these are numbers from 2019, 63% of the world's cases of IBDs concentrated in less than 5%. So if it's genetic, it's a statistical anomaly, and the cases have risen from anywhere from 1.5 to 3 million give or take on the estimates in 1990 to 7 million today. So if it's idiopathic, we better figure out pretty freaking fast what's causing this problem, because the numbers are climbing like crazy, and that's my take on the gut.

Dr. Tamar: 8:48

Wow, that is phenomenal, those numbers. And, as we talked earlier about the genetic aspect of things, yes, there are some aspects of an individual's genetics that can predispose them or make them a higher risk for developing certain gut issues, but it's not the end all be all. There are some things in certain cases that can be done, as you're mentioning right. If it's idiopathic, we definitely have to find out what it is.

Josh Dech: 9:13

Yeah, I mean, if we look at genes themselves, genetics are fascinating because obviously a lot of them can turn up and turn down, much like a dial, If you're into the work by Dr Ben Lynch, like his book Dirty Genes, cleaning those genes. We talk about a lot of this stuff and there are genes, of course, that are associated with IBD or Crohn's, your NOD2s, your inner leucans and I think it's IL23R, different things that are associated. But a lot of the stuff, even SIBO, can be considered in some cases as an autoimmune. But that comes from, say, food poisoning, where there's actual molecular mimicry. Looking at these toxins that came in that look like enzymes that your body already has. That sets this molecular mimicry, autoimmunity, and so those things can happen. But in my experience to say they're genetic, sure, you're predisposed, but so is arthritis, so is Hashimoto's. These are the weak links in your genes that when you have breakdown of your body's natural processes or you express inflammation, they will be expressed via these modalities, via asthma, via arthritis or gut issues. It's just where in those breaks it happens to be expressed and how quickly that disease process on sets.

Dr. Tamar: 10:19

Yeah, yeah, that's so true. And it makes me think also when you mentioned the connection, the extent to which the health of the gut has on the rest of our bodies, and I know for me allergies. I have sense food sensitivities to so many different healthy foods. Healthy, they are very healthy foods, but the struggle I had with my health early on was how can I get healthy if I can't tolerate these healthy foods", and I eventually realized it had to do with repair in my gut and once I was able to do that, I can now have these foods that before I just couldn't tolerate at all.

Josh Dech: 10:54

It's amazing how that happens. The gut leaky gut was actually coined, we'll say discovered, by Dr Lessio Fasano, and he has a paper out and it's called All Diseases Begin in the Leaky Gut, and it's something how they had the pretext of the subtext after the title about the role of zonulin-mediated leaky gut in these inflammatory conditions. And that's exactly it. It's just leaks in your gut where macromolecules have passed through, got to your bloodstream. Your body goes, hey, man, you shouldn't be here in chewed or alert. And now you have the sensitivity. But these are often we measure these IgGs and I'm sure you've talked about this and, as pharmacists listening, you guys know IgGs are these slow-onsets and so they're really not that accurate. Your body produces IgGs to every food, always anyways. It's just a matter of how severe the reaction is, how big the leaks are. There's so many different factors and it's important absolutely to avoid those foods, just like you did, to not make those leaks bigger. But you avoided those, healed your gut. Now you can eat them again because they're not passing through, stimulating that same immune pathway. It's sometimes so simple, isn't it?

Dr. Tamar: 11:59

So simple. But you know, the last thing you would think is oh, allergies are related to what's going on in my gut, right, Let me just have some Claretin and get these shots every week.

Josh Dech: 12:10

Yeah, you can look at like histamine digesters. I have clients who have a lot of histamine intolerances. They take whatever their antihistamines are. I just switch them over to DAO. That's Diaminoxidase, which is actually made in the small intestine which helps metabolize histamines. Being bang-boom, you're fine. So you're probably actually lacking in certain microbes that can metabolize these things properly, along with, of course, other factors. The body can be so simple, but so amazing, you know.

Dr. Tamar: 12:36

Right Now, josh, being a recognized medical lecturer at Priority Health Academy, you have a unique platform right. You're educating doctors about holistic approaches to gut health. Could you share memorable moments or encounter, maybe during one of those lectures where a doctor was skeptical and perhaps had an aha moment, anything like that?

Josh Dech: 12:57

I could step this actually outside of the lectures themselves. I'm pretty new to Priority Health Academy. I just got recruited this year. I deal with GI specialists all the time. My bone to pick isn't with doctors. Like you know, medical professionals be it pharmacists or doctors you go to school to help people, you want to help people heal, until you realize a lot of them become some of the best pharmaceutical reps in the industry without realizing it, because your only toolbox is a medication to cover a symptom. And recently I was working with a 15-year-old boy just turned 16 with Crohn's. His 5'7 was down to 93 pounds, so very, very thin very frail, very sick, 15 bowel movements a day with blood, very, very sick. His GI specialist had him on all the drugs they wanted to push remiccate and intivio. They wanted to try the Jack inhibitors and different drugs that just time after time weren't working. We had him in the program for eight weeks, give or take, because with this holistic route, what was that stimulation of that inflammation? He gained 23 pounds inside of eight weeks, went back to his doctor and word for word was I'm so glad you're feeling better, but I don't love how you're going about it. And so, yeah, that face you just made, that's the same one I made. It's like what, what. And so my bone to pick isn't with the doctors themselves, unless there's a complete denial, and I see this every day. I got a client who's now completely symptom-free. We're 10 weeks in, 12 weeks in asymptomatic and her doctor still wants to put her on tibio because on their paper they still quote have this disease, but you're asymptomatic, why do you need the drugs? And so those are the silly stories that we battle. But the doctors are told same thing, like you were told, take the drugs. That covers the symptom. Well, why is the symptom there? Well, don't question the protocol. This is how it is just give the medication or your license is on the line, that's pretty tough, that's true, or insurance is not going to cover what you're treatment and what you're doing. Yeah, you're on your own, You're out of pocket.

Dr. Tamar: 14:54

It's just not part of that protocol. So if you had to pick because you talk about how you've helped your clients, your patients, right? So if you had to pick one practice or nutritional habit that most powerfully influences gut health, what would that be and why?

Josh Dech: 15:10

Oh boy. So that one is a bit of a loaded question, and I love it. In general, in my experience, I do advocate for animal-based diets. I really truly do, and that's a bit controversial right now especially, I'm actually supposed to be speaking on a plant-based podcast coming up here, and it's just very dependent. I'm a big fan of GI mapping and that's how I actually determine dietary protocols. So, as a general spectrum, if somebody has very poor flora, very poor imbalance, then going towards fermented vegetables and fermented foods can be nice. We can introduce these probiotics. On the other hand, if somebody comes back with bacterial overgrowth, I don't want to feed them fermentable vegetables and fibers because it will feed those bacteria, and so these opportunistic or pathogenic bacteria that are overgrown will create inflammatory byproducts leading to problems within the system. And so I split it to two main pathways overgrown or undergrown, and that's sort of the overarching umbrella, we'll say so my take on that one. I'm kind of the politician that no one votes for because my stance is right in the middle, I don't pick a side, but I think individualized medicine and investigative medicine is the best way to determine what diets are appropriate, and that's sort of my two cents on that one.

Dr. Tamar: 16:24

Yeah, I agree with that. I can definitely see how GI mapping what I do with Nutrigenomics can go in hand and hand with it, as GI mapping is very much more specific right. So you know exactly what's going on right now with the patient With Nutrigenomics. It's looking at the DNA and saying, oh, you have the risk of the potential of this happening, but it's not saying it's happening right now. So I can definitely see how those can go hand in hand and to get those results and get patient improvement.

Josh Dech: 16:52

Totally See, I love that and I love that you talk Nutrigenomics. I mean one of the more common genes that we see is, like the MTHFR SNPs, right, and like you know, inability to use folic acid. What is it? 44% of people have that particular SNP that can't use folic acid, so need like an L5, methylfolate or something else. But you specialize in this stuff. You know more than anyone. If your blood pressure is elevated, you have a family history of blood pressure. It could be as simple as that SNP. You don't have the methylfolate, therefore you have a thionine and homocysteine elevated. Therefore your blood pressure as the byproduct is up. You take the L5 and then you're good and it comes back down. It can be that simple. It's. Nutrigenomics is a fascinating field. It's not my expertise, but I absolutely respect those of like you who specialize in this stuff. It's fascinating.

Dr. Tamar: 17:40

Thank you. It's like it's precision health all around. Even with what you're doing, you know you're finding the root cause. You're being more precise. We're not guessing what we're doing, just prolonged things. It gives time for the disease states to get worse. There's no need to guess anymore.

Josh Dech: 17:57

And it's expensive. You know guessing. You get sent someone for $10,000 worth of different labs and functional labs and testing in your analysis and stool tests and virology reports and you can come back with nothing. And that really is the importance of, like you said, precision medicine really knowing what you're getting into and paying attention to the disease processes, taking a thorough history, getting into the symptomatology and figuring out your probability. Do I want test A, b, c or D and how likely is it? And it's an amazing science that it comes with practice and I love that that's what you're teaching here. It's critical for healthcare in the future.

Dr. Tamar: 18:31

I appreciate it. Now, josh, our listeners are very interested in the connection between gut health and brain health. Can you provide some antidotes from your practice demonstrating this nexus, or just give them some? Shine some light on this relationship between the gut and brain health?

Josh Dech: 18:49

Yeah, you know, it's really interesting because the stats are out there, they're everywhere, they're getting quite popular that 90% of your neurotransmitters are made in the gut and it's so true. I see clients who deal with depression and anxiety and after having their serotonin boosting bacteria back to normal, they feel better or their dopamine they can focus again. They don't have the ADHD, it's just building the gut biome so it can produce those byproducts. And I explain it to my clients very simply. I say you eat, you poop, your bacteria eat and they poop. Are they pooping good things or bad things? And that's all we want to know. It's that simple and so we can look at this and go okay. Well, there's vagal nerve communication. We know that it's a bi-directional pathway between the gut and the brain, like, again, neurotransmitter production. We see dopamine, we see GABA, serotonin. All these things are built into the system. You're immune, modifying. I look at anxiety. Yes, one it's a neurotransmitter, neurochemical imbalance, but two, it's an inflammatory condition, be it of the gut or the brain. The body's on high alert. We know there are hormone regulatory mechanisms that come from the gut and the gut biome and if your hormones are out of whack, every woman on earth understands PMS and hormone imbalances. And especially if the PMS is worse, or men going through like andropause, those burst, those outbursts. Or men coming off testosterone who have their estrogens really high and they have that big spread between hormone levels, they get these outbursts. So hormones make a big issue with the brain. There's neuroinflammation, there's a relation to the blood-brain barrier and leaky gut and what leaks through? A lot of things will leak through and actually get through the blood-brain barrier and so the gut-brain connection. It goes so so far, far, Much more than I think we could kind of see on the surface, and I even recently did an episode on how our gut is related to gut reactions or how our brain and gut connection influence that gut reaction, and so it's really fascinating stuff when we dive into the nitty-gritty of it.

Dr. Tamar: 20:45

It is very nitty-gritty right. There's years ago I didn't realize how intricate that was, how the gut really played a part in our entire body, and it's just absolutely amazing. That's where it is. And when you talked about you said something just now about serotonin producing bacteria it made me think of bacteria like medicine. Right, it's a natural. They're producing the natural substances that we need to help us and by making our gut healthy, we can have the abundance of that. We can have the amount that's needed so that we can be stabilized naturally right?

Josh Dech: 21:20

Well, our gut's for everything. I think we need to think of it exactly like that. It's what's at the center of our health. I often will say that our gut bacteria are more important than our DNA and when we look at that byproduct of it, our human genome is made about 23,000 genes. As you know, working in genetics, 23,000 genes we have upwards of 3 million different genes, or genetic pieces of material, inside of our gut bacteria. So we have 130 times more genetic material inside of our gut bacteria than we do our actual DNA. And we dive into this a bit deeper. I mean, you have to consider we have one to 2,000 species that we know of 7 to 9,000 strains, which gives you about 18 million different bacteria on the high end. Multiply it out, we have over 100 trillion inside of our gut alone, not to mention rectally, vaginally, in the nasal fairings, in the mouth, in the hair, the skin, the nails are everywhere, and these gut bacteria do everything. They integrate with every aspect of our everything our health, our wellness, our mental health, our clarity, our emotions, our immune system, genetic expression. There's so much more to it and I think we really need to have a reverence for our gut bacteria and unfortunately still knowing what we're knowing and seeing this data start to come out. Over the last 20 years or so, antibiotic usage has gone up by 43% since the year 2000. And so, even understanding our gut microbes and how important they are, we're still seeing this rise of antibiotic use or rise of inflammatory foods. Looking at my specialty, crohn's Colitis, we can see rates depends on what data you look at. Estimates in 1990 were 1.5 to 3 million cases globally, now it's 7 million. And so again, if we're seeing it's idiopathic, we sure as hell figure out where it's coming from. And if it's genetic, that's a statistical improbability because you can't have 5% of the world's population, in the United States, having 63% of the global cases of IBD. How can it possibly be genetic or idiopathic? There has to be a cause, and so, looking into this data, it just gives us a whole different perspective on what's really causing these disease processes, and that's something that's my mission is to spread the knowledge on the gut and to create a greater reverence, I would say, for the gut biome and how it influences and ingrates with the rest of our lives.

Dr. Tamar: 23:37

And thank you for doing that, because, even as pharmacists, we don't know that there's a lot we don't know about the gut health because, as you mentioned earlier, we're taught one thing and that's to do the sick care. Someone comes with symptoms and this is a medication that we're going to dispense for them or even recommend to physicians for them to take. There's something's not right. It's so much more than our DNA. Now, you touched on foods that can be eaten, like you mentioned, depending on the GI mapping results, you would. Certain things would be recommended or not recommended. But what about lifestyle factors? What type of lifestyle changes can impact the health of the gut?

Josh Dech: 24:18

Oh jeez. I think a better question is what can't? It's a bi-directional relationship between our gut and the rest of our world. There's so much we can look at. We can see lifestyle be considered going to work, the job you have, family relationships, eating, drinking, smoking, recreational activities these all have a role to play. I mean your gut bacteria actually can influence how social you feel like being. It has a direct influence on the foods you crave, the things you want to do, your personality, and so that has a relationship with our lifestyle as well. So it is bi-directional. But if we look at the lifestyle things, I mean smoking. We know it's 31% of men in America smoke. 19% of females smoke. If we look at alcohol consumption 15, 16 liters a year for the average man out of 300, whatever million and some who don't drink at all. Sugar consumption right, 101 pounds of sugar is the average consumption per person in America and that's 126.4 grams per day. It's 101.44 pounds a year. So we're eating the weight of a medium-sized child to a small teenager every year in just pure sugar, and our opportunistic bacteria love sugar. Inflammatory pathogens, cancers love sugar. Looking at fast food, it's $160 billion a year in the US alone, $730 billion a year globally. And if we start looking at the consumption and even how we consume our food even if it wasn't fast food how many of us are eating at work or doing dashboard dining, running into the car, taking the kids to soccer and shoving food in our faces? We're not chewing, we're not interested in digesting, we're not producing stomach acid. How many people do you know that are on antacids and that's reeking havoc on their gut? And so lifestyle factors are a scary thing. But even looking at statistics that are influencing us environmentally number one pesticide usage, depending on where you're looking again for stats we're up two to four times in the last 30 years. Some arguments can be made that pesticide consumption is up 19 times. Looking at childbirth in 1990, the C-section rate was 7%. They're expecting 29% by 2030. And we know we need a vaginal birth to have this vaginal canal, that full inoculation of bacteria, breastfeeding as well. I mean 2013 to 2018, the stats there 43% of newborns get to initiate breastfeeding within one hour. Only 41% of infants under six months are exclusively breastfed, which means they're also fed formula containing hyaluronic sunflower oil and inflammatory things and artificial byproducts, and so we're not getting these things naturally. If we look at the environmental factors from the Red Cross. They had done a study that you're probably familiar with the Environmental Working Group. They took 10 fresh umbilical cords and found 287 chemicals, 180 known to cause cancer in humans and animals. 217 of these chemicals are toxic to the brain and nervous system, 208 cause birth defects. We're just full of toxins and this is a baby who is freshly born. They have nearly 300 chemicals in their body. So, as far as lifestyle is concerned, sometimes I wish I lived in the jungle.

Dr. Tamar: 27:35

Fresh air chemical free.

Josh Dech: 27:38

That's it. You're touching the grass and photobiomodulation, getting into the sun or discharging all the negative ions and actually balancing your pH, and all that by touching the earth and getting it to nature. There's so much we can be doing.

Dr. Tamar: 27:51

Yeah, yeah, definitely. There's so much Wow. It's more like what everything you can do when it comes to lifestyle will affect your gut, and I think it's interesting too, because you touched on I noticed that stress when I really started my program. It was mainly women in healthcare. They're stressful environments. They're also caretakers at home. They're not taking care of themselves or putting themselves on a back burner, and that alone being in a state of constant stress affects your health. Further studying for me, I realized the effect on your gut as well, how that impacted that. So it's every aspect of your life that is impacted, and knowing that your gut plays a vital role and that is absolutely amazing Our core, truly our core, our center it's vital that we take care of it.

Josh Dech: 28:41

Yeah, like I keep saying, it's more important than our DNA. It influences our DNA, influences gene expression, influences every aspect of our lives and there's so much that destroys it. And it's interesting if we look at stressors. If you go back 100,000 years classic story of running from a saber-toothed tiger and get your food and run back to your cave, those are acute stressors and then you're fine, minus the PTSD you might have from nearly having your head bitten off. But those are acute stressors. But looking at today, we're under chronic low-grade stress all the time, all the time, and with that we're chronically inflamed. Our guts are chronically inflamed. We're elevated cortisol. I mean cortisol is great, obviously it's a beneficial hormone, it's anti-inflammatory, but those are in natural levels, but it's super physiological levels. They're inflammatory, they can wear down the gut line in the mucosal layer. It will inhibit our stress responses, inhibit HCl production, which means we're going to be sink deficient, we're going to be iron deficient, we're going to be nutrient deficient. We're not inhibiting these microbes coming into the mouth from going through the gut, and so we can develop SIBO conditions or dysbiosis. These imbalances and so, in my opinion, antacids are probably one of the worst medications anyone can be given ever, and it's directly attributed for things like osteoporosis, gut disease and again, gut disease can open the door to every medical condition you can possibly think of under the sun. It's that window. So stress is a killer in more than one sense.

Dr. Tamar: 30:08

It certainly is Now, Josh, considering the non-traditional approach that you're taking and addressing these chronic.

Josh Dech: 30:16

It's not popular with everyone. I'll promise you that it's not popular?

Dr. Tamar: 30:20

Do you perceive that there could be a shift in attitude towards this non-traditional method and, ultimately, where do you see the future of gut health diagnosis and treatment headed?

Josh Dech: 30:30

Wow, that's a good one to break down. I think the attitude is changing and I think we're getting our eyes open more and more. As science starts to develop. It becomes more undeniable the more in the public eye it is. Unfortunately, there are some physicians or some clinicians who are unwilling to change, and it's like you went to medical school 40 years ago, dude. Things are going to change. My wife recently changed doctors for the same reason. She said hey, I'd like to see a blood panel. I just want to make sure everything's on par, like you're 37. Let's get a beat on things right now and we can keep an eye on things as you age. And wow, you don't need that, you don't have problems. I said, yeah, but what if? Well, I'm not feeling super great. Let's give you antidepressants, why? And so we're just prescribing drugs for things nonsensically and we're masking symptoms. And I am seeing the attitude change progressively, but I'd say it's more in the up and coming medical professionals who are willing to learn. As it's getting more popular on social media. We have doctors publishing books. You got all kinds of information out there and I'd like to see it being more root cause. Unfortunately, I am hopeful. I'm not optimistic because my lens. I'm very cynical. I'm like well, big pharma rules the world and they're too big to shut down. And even with their criminal fines looking at Pfizer and the billions of dollars in criminal fines they have shell companies and the amount of profit they make. They just consider it the cost of doing business. And these companies are paying for a large portion of medical school. They pay for the studies, these randomized, double blind, controlled studies that cost millions of dollars, which at the end have a informational bias to push certain information into textbooks which doctors learn. So I see that disparity getting greater and greater since the late 1800s when Ayurveda, cholistic and Herbal's really got scrubbed from the books. However, I think there are a lot of voices right now who are pushing for better. It's not as profitable, obviously. Protocols are fast, they're cheap, they're more profitable. You get somebody in and out in your office in seven to nine minutes so you can rotate 40 patients a day. For me, two to three is all I can see, because I spent hours going through histories. I got 40 to 60 pages of paperwork to take in before I create a gut program for someone to reverse these diseases, because we have to consider all angles. We have to consider the history, we have to look at root causes and contributing factors, and it takes time. I would like to see more clinicians learning this type of stuff, just to increase the availability of it. As availability increases, so will demand. But there is an uphill battle against big brother. That's my view. But I think the future can be bright if we give it to the right hands, for sure.

Dr. Tamar: 33:09

Thank you for sharing that, josh. I 100% agree with you on that, and my final question for you is for those pharmacists out there that are ready to step outside that box and stop doing sick care, how would you recommend they start to perhaps pursue something towards the gut health specialty?

Josh Dech: 33:32

Well, I'd be a little biased, I'd say, for sure, if you want to learn about the gut, I got a podcast about it. It's called Reversible, the ultimate gut health podcast. That's reverse able and it really is. It's all about the gut, how our world interacts and how our gut interacts with our world. That's a great one. Just to learn the basics. And once you start to understand the importance of the gut, to really consider in your practice the medications you're giving or prescribing or are filling for people. Can there be some coaching or consulting that you do inside of that and talk to your patients, say, hey, I know your doctor recommended these antacids that we have, whatever it may be, but here's my thoughts on this this acid reflux. The primary cause for acid reflux is actually low stomach acid. So do we really want to suppress it further? And really diving into these things and educating your patients as you're learning, because realistically, you got to be one hour of education ahead of them to be able to help them take the next steps. That's it and your medical background. I do nothing related to paramedics now, but my education has been a huge branch. I wanted to credibility, people actually listening, because I have a formal education. But two it's allowed me to make connections on a different level. I can identify the pathologies, just like you guys can. You can identify the root causes rather than just the symptom treatment, and to educate your patients that, hey, these medications are symptom management. That's all it is. But if you're interested in the root cause, maybe I can help you. And then you get to guide them through that process and talk about these diseases where they are on set, what they're doing, what their lifestyle is like the smoking and drinking. If they don't care, fine, but at least they're educated and can make that choice themselves, rather than being robbed of the choice by being given medications without question.

Dr. Tamar: 35:14

Thank you. Thank you for sharing that, josh, and I'd like to also thank you for being my guest on the Pivoting Pharmacy of Nutrigenomics podcast. It was a pleasure to talk with you.

Josh Dech: 35:24

It's been a pleasure to be here tomorrow. Thank you so much for having me.

Dr. Tamar: 35:27

You're welcome as we draw close to the end of this enlightening journey through the intricate worlds of DNA, gut bacteria and personal health of Josh Jack. I want you to remember this your DNA may play a role in your gut health, but it does not define you or your patients. That's all I have for you today. If any part of this conversation about gut health sparked interest or resonated with you, I'd love to hear your thoughts. Your five star review and comments can guide others on a similar journey. Subscribe, rate and download this episode to ensure you're always in the loop. Now coming up next week on the show, we're talking about the potential to revolutionize the future of pharmacy with genomics and cannabis. This deep dive will allow you to reimagine the impact you can make on healthcare, empowering your patients and thriving in your practice without being confined by traditional pharmacy. So tune in next Friday. Until then, always remember in your journey as a healthcare professional, always raise the script on health, because together we can bring healthcare to higher levels.