SIBO and Gut Health: The Power of Homemade Yogurt - Dr. William Davis

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Jack Heald: I'm thrilled to welcome Dr. William Davis to the Predictive Health Clinic today. I talked to Dr. Davis a couple of years ago on Philip Ovadia's podcast and took some information away from that, that I have used ever since. I make my own yogurt now. My wife and I make our own yogurt.

So Dr. Davis, welcome. What specific health issue do you want to address today on the Predictive Health Clinic? 

Dr. William Davis: Yeah. How about we talk about SIBO, Jack, that is small intestinal bacterial overgrowth that I was guilty of thinking was a rare thing. That it was only the exceptional person who had this, but having rethought this and now tested hundreds, perhaps thousands of people. It's now become clear. It's now become clear. It is everywhere. In fact, I would go so far as to say it is the biggest epidemic, the biggest health crisis our species has ever faced. 

Jack Heald: Small intestine bacterial overgrowth, SIBO. I've heard the word before, but I can't remember. I'm not sure I actually knew what it was. Ordinarily, at this point, I'd ask what got you interested in this particular issue, but I think you just stated why you're interested. And ordinarily, I wouldn't ask this question but I think we need some help. This is not something that's commonly talked about. What are the signs and symptoms? 

Dr. William Davis:  I look for this because I was looking for any advantage we can to further people's health and youthfulness. And it's become clear that dysbiosis, that is disruptions of the microbial populations in your colon, that is the terminal four to five feet of the gastrointestinal tract, that disruption of those species is everywhere. Because we've been wildly overexposed to antibiotics, to other things that disrupt microbes like Glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup herbicide used by millions of tons throughout the world now. Preservatives that have antimicrobial properties in food, but also in you. The bowel prep that is often used before you're... 

Jack Heald: Whoa. Preservatives have anti-micro, of course they do. I hadn't even thought about the fact that when you're consuming food that has preservatives in it, you're basically shoving antibiotics down your gut.

Dr. William Davis:  For instance, the potassium sorbate or sodium benzoate or BHT, BHA, a long list of effects. They inhibit mostly molds, but they also have broader antimicrobial properties in the human GI tract.

And then people are taking stomach acid-blocking drugs, which takes away the protection that stomach acid provided against oral microbes and the ascent of fecal microbes, non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, chlorinated drinking water, and emulsifying agents in ice cream and salad dressing. Jack, on and on.

We are battered by an onslaught of factors that have killed off, literally killed off, or at least suppressed hundreds of microbes, healthy microbes, in the colon. That allowed fecal microbes, very tough fecal microbes. These are microbes that many people would recognize, like E. coli, Salmonella, and Campylobacter.

They recognize them because they're also common causes of food poisoning. If you ingest, say, food prepared by some kid at a fast food restaurant who didn't wash his hands properly after going number two, and contaminated your food, those fecal microbes are not well tolerated in the small intestine when you ingest it.

Likewise, when fecal microbes ascend into the small intestine, it's not well tolerated. But you'll experience it because those microbes don't live very long. They live for a few hours. That's it. So trillions of microbes living and dying rapidly in the 24-feet of small intestine, release some of their toxic components.

Prrinciple among which is something called lipopolysaccharide endotoxin, or we say endotoxin. Endotoxin enters the bloodstream. How does someone experience it as depression, as anxiety, as suicidal thoughts, as dementia, cognitive impairment, or as muscle pains like fibromyalgia, or joint pains like rheumatoid arthritis, or metabolic diseases like type 2 diabetes, hypertension, fatty liver and heart disease, coronary disease, or atrial fibrillation.

So virtually all human diseases, outside of infection, Conventional infection like pneumococcal pneumonia outside of injury, but all those conditions we're all familiar with, gout, calcium oxalate, kidney stones, heart attack, all these things have a major role played by the gastrointestinal microbiome.

So the doctor who ignorantly prescribes, for instance, Lipitor to reduce cholesterol, reduce cardiovascular risk, or ibuprofen and naproxen, for your arthritis pain. Or an SSRI for your depression. They ignorantly ignore the dramatic contribution of the microbiome via endotoxemia. So hundreds of health conditions Jack have to be reexamined in light of this process.

Jack Heald: That's interesting because the question that comes next is what's the biggest popular misconception about this issue? And it sounds like the answer is an awful lot of diverse diseases and health dysfunctions that we attribute to unique causes share a common, at least a common factor in this endotoxemia. Is that fair to summarize it? 

Dr. William Davis: Absolutely right. The turning point for me, Jack, was the invention of this device called the Aire device, AIRE. This is the original from a few years ago. This is the more recent one. It's now black AIRE, invented by an Irish PhD engineer, who wanted to assess gas production in the breath, because we've known even before the invention of the Aire device, that when you have microbes in your GI tract, they produce hydrogen gas.

We don't. Humans don't produce hydrogen gas. We produce other gases. We don't produce hydrogen gas. microbes do. And these devices can be used as a mapping device to tell you where microbes are living. You're supposed to have microbes in the colon producing hydrogen gas, but you don't, you should not have them in the small intestine, in the esophagus, stomach, duodenum, jejunum, ileum.

And you can use this device to map where microbes are. So I started doing this in hundreds, now thousands of people. And to my great surprise, it was the rare person who tested negative. Now you might say maybe the device, maybe the concept is flawed, but we'd have an abnormal reading. It's a zero to 10 reading, talks to your smartphone. Someone would have an abnormal reading, take steps to normalize the situation, push back fecal microbes in the small intestine, and then, good things happen. Their weight loss plateau finally broke. Their hemoglobin A1c finally dropped to below 5%. Their arthritis pain finally disappeared completely. Their skin rashes went away. Their depression lifted. In other words, we saw dramatic health benefits by pushing back the presence of fecal microbes in the small intestine. 

Jack Heald: Okay, it, would it be fair to postulate that if you're dealing with a stubborn health issue, consider the possibility that endotoxemia, yes, that's correct, endotoxemia- toxicity from inside that originates inside yourself, is at least playing a part in the whatever ill health you're experiencing?

Dr. William Davis: Absolutely. Now here's the problem. Okay. What if I said, Jack, the solution for your SIBO and endotoxin is to remove your small intestine surgically? You'd say hit the road, Buster. That's stupid. You better be damn confident that this is necessary. But what if the solution is something that looks and smells like yogurt?

So I invented a formulation that I call SIBO yogurt. And it's just three microbes. It's lactobacillus roteri that you're familiar with. It's lactobacillus gasseri and bacillus coagulans. I chose those three microbes for two reasons. One, they colonize the small intestine, where SIBO occurs, and they produce bacteriocins, natural antibiotics that kill fecal microbes. So far about 50 people who've done this, 90% have normalized their H2 breath testing.

Now, you don't need that device. The device is great. It's very clever, and it can be very helpful, but you don't need the device to prove it. If you have, for instance, food intolerances, An extremely common expression of SIBO, or if you have conditions that are virtually synonymous with SIBO, irritable bowel syndrome, fibromyalgia, sleep apnea, restless leg syndrome, obesity, type 2 diabetes, a neurodegenerative disorder, an autoimmune condition, you can be assured. You have SIBO, or at the very least, colonic dysbiosis.

We reintroduced these three microbes lost by nearly everybody, and so far it has exceeded far beyond my expectations. I formulated that combination in the hopes that people experience some reduction in bloating and diarrhea. No, it got rid of SIBO. Now we'll do a formal clinical trial to prove it. I'm trying to develop the funding. That's the problem outside of pharma. Pharma is loaded with billions and billions of dollars fund their BS research. 

Jack Heald:Yeah. 

Dr. William Davis: We don't, right? We don't have billions. I have hundreds of thousands of dollars. I blew my last $150,000 on a small mouse trial, a human clinical trial. We're accumulating our funding and we will do a clinical trial to prove this works, but I can tell you, if the solution check is something that looks and smells like yogurt that you make in your kitchen, what's the problem, right? 

Jack Heald: Okay. I love the way, I love how you're communicating here because you're anticipating most of the questions that I'm going to ask before I get there. One of the questions that I think the next question is what's the likely outcome of people don't take action. And I think you've laid that out pretty clearly. And then, so let's go ahead and go.

What specific actions should people take if they recognize themselves here? Sounds like it might be the yogurt, but you probably should go into more detail.

Dr. William Davis: Yeah, the yogurt is very helpful, very effective, far beyond my expectations, but there's other things people should do. Jack, I liken an effort to cultivate a healthy gastrointestinal microbiome to having a backyard vegetable garden. Let's say it's springtime, you lay out a 10 by 10 plot, you pick out the twigs and the stones, you then plant seeds, and then you water and fertilize it. The gastrointestinal microbe is very similar. So you prepare the soil by getting rid of things that disrupt it. So there's no deer or stones here, but there's things like chlorinated drinking water, stomach acid-blocking drugs, antibiotic exposure, take antibiotics if you must. But only an absolute minimum when it's truly necessary.

Preservatives, as the most fangy agents. There's a whole long list of things you can do. It's all in my super gut book. It's all in my blog, William Daves MD blog. So clean up your life. Prepare the soil. Plant the seeds. The seeds, the primary seed are fermented foods. These are things like kimchi and kefir, and yogurts, real yogurt, not the junk sold in grocery stores sauerkraut, and veggies you ferment on your kitchen counter. It should be easy and virtually free except for the cost of your veggies. Easy to do basic. You can find basic fermentation strategies all around the internet. Like my friend Donna, Sehwenk, or my websites and books, you'll find basic ways to ferment foods. The interesting thing about fermented foods, Jack, is the species of say sauerkraut or kimchi don't actually themselves take up residence in the GI tracts. So species like Luganostoc or Pediococcus don't take up residence. They just pass through. But in the passage through the 30 feet of gastrointestinal tract, they cultivate very powerfully healthy species that are beneficial to you. These are species like Fecalibacterium acromansiae, Lachnospiration, and many others. So fermented foods are the way to begin the seeding process of your gastrointestinal tract. Then we restore lost microbes, Lactobacillus gastrii, and Lactobacillus coagulans and Bacillus subtilis is another really important one. We restore those microbes. You can do it as yogurt. You can do it as a sparkling juice.

So some of these microbes like Bacillus subtilis and Bacillus coagulans and some other beneficial species like the fungal species Saccharomyces boulardii, make delicious sparkling juices. So I have some mango, passion fruit sparkling juice in my kitchen. It tastes like mango soda. It's delicious.

So that re-implants these beneficial species. All the recipes, by the way, in the Supergut book and my blog. And then we feed them. We water and fertilize them. We don't have to water them, of course, but we fertilize them with fibres. These are fibres from plant matter, for the most part, that is from legumes like black beans, white beans, chickpeas, hummus, onions, garlic, shallots other root vegetables, and you feed them and they proliferate.

So it's a very simple process. It is outside of the mainstream experience because, as most of my colleagues are completely ignorant on real issues of health, nutrition, nutritional supplements, and the microbiome. It's wrong. They should be experts in health, but they're not. They're experts in the business of health care, how to generate revenue from pharmaceuticals and procedures, and they're not experts in health. So sadly, and you know this, except for nice people like Dr. Philip Ovadia, who is the, is an expert in health, most of our colleagues are not. And so the last, if you went to your doctor and said, hey doc, I think I have SIBO because I have diarrhea and bloating. I'm intolerant to nuts and eggplant tomatoes and eggs and about 35 other foods that give me joint pains, asthma, and skin rashes. The doctor says, Oh, it's in your head or don't waste my time. Or did you consult Dr. Google again, Jack, or some other bullshit answer. And yet they don't even begin to address the real cause.

So this is but the great thing about this, if the solution is so easy, so safe. So if someone made that SIBO yogurt, for instance, and got rid of fibromyalgia, joint pain, or irritable bowel syndrome, depression or anxiety or suicidal tendencies or low testosterone or vaginal dryness. The range of benefits is astounding.

So you take this yogurt. The only side effect is that you might have an amplification of such things as depression, and anxiety in the first few days when those microbes you've restored are busy killing fecal microbes and there's a surge in that endotoxin. Get beyond that. And what kinds of other things happen?

Smoother skin, acceleration of healing. Older guys get a 50% rise in testosterone. Older ladies have restoration. 

Jack Heald: Oh whoa. This is, are you saying that at least partly to blame for decreasing testosterone in older men is endotoxemia? 

Dr. William Davis: The mechanism is not quite clear. It's probably a combination of reducing endotoxemia and the boost and oxytocin.

Jack Heald: Okay. But you see a rise as a result of it. We don't know the mechanism of why it works, but we do see it connection. Okay. Didn't need to interrupt you there but, that was personally interesting to me 

Dr. William Davis: In mice, the rise in testosterone is 300% in males, in older males, probably over about 50.

There's about a 50% right. So not as spectacular as in mice as is often true, right? When we translate things to humans, but a 50 percent rise. So a guy who starts with say 350. Can easily get to 500. So a much, much more healthy rise and doesn't have just implications for sexual health.

It also has implications for mood. One of the most common symptoms of low testosterone is depression and a feeling of powerlessness and having a rise in testosterone. Yeah, sure. You get maybe better actions and more sexual drive. But the real effect is lifting of mood and a feeling that you're back in control of your life. So that's part of the effect of doing this specifically restoring lactobacillus roteri. There's also an amplification of the immune response. Ladies get a return of vaginal moisture and libido. There's preservation of bone density. There are all the effects of oxytocin and intensification of the feelings of love and empathy for other people, and increased feelings of generosity. And my favorite, the increased acceptance of other people's opinions. Think about that, Jack. So we're talking about a restoration of a lost microbe that was responsible for provoking oxytocin, the hormone of love and empathy, at a time when almost everybody's lost this microbe and there's record-setting social isolation, suicide.

And the rise of narcissistic behavior. That's a fact, by the way, the psychological, the psychology committee has been tabulating formally measures of narcissistic behavior since 1963. And the curve is a sharp 45-degree incline since 1963. And so do we have now have a way not only to turn back SIBO and thereby have powerful consequences for reducing numerous diseases, or at least reducing their severity, we may also have a way to restore social connectedness and sociability and political like behavior. 

Jack Heald: Part of the reason we've got a sick culture is because we have sick people. 

Dr. William Davis: Humans have been bad to humans all throughout human history, it's not news, but has it gotten worse? I think it has. Not the level of tyrants or dictators, but at the street level, people are more, are worse to each other. And I think we've stumbled on a way to restore better behavior to humans, as well as turn back the clock 10 or 20 years. 

Jack Heald: Nobody doesn't want to feel better. So that, I love that. That makes a lot of sense. This is one of those that I would love to just talk and talk, but we try to keep this tight. Let's go to question number seven. What's one of the more common compliments that you get in your work? 

Dr. William Davis: I think it's that I say things because I believe them. I don't say them. People say, Oh, you're saying that to get attention. What? Really? No. In fact I was on Dr. Oz four times and every time I was in the prep area, I'm thinking to myself, I'd rather be walking my dog. I don't really care for the public attention, but you know what? There's so much wrong, Jack. There is and you know this, Dr.Phil Levati knows this. There's so much wrong with modern, especially American healthcare because of the profit motive. There's so much bad in modern healthcare that it takes people like you and me and Dr. Phil to help fix this, to tell people what your doctor is telling you is flat bullshit. It's nonsense. You do not need a GLP 1 agonist to lose weight. It destroys your health. You don't need a biologic to reduce the pain of rheumatoid arthritis or psoriatic arthritis. You don't need diabetes drugs to reduce your blood sugar. It's a simple formula of restoring things the way they used to be. And all these conditions, not all, but most conditions, most modern conditions we're familiar with go away. 

Jack Heald: Let's go the other direction. What's one of the more common complaints that you get in your practice? 

Dr. William Davis: I think it's a little bit too complicated, especially since I add the microbiome components, we've screwed up our microbiomes dramatically for a variety of reasons. At least, at the very least, overexposure to antibiotics, but there are probably many other factors like the ones I listed earlier. So rebuilding it is not just take a pill. It's certainly not. And of course, my colleagues say stupid things like, Oh, probiotics don't work. Or take a probiotic. What is that? 

Jack Heald: I'm just going to parenthetically insert here. If antibiotics do work, then it's. It's illogical to say that probiotics don't, that just makes no sense.

And if you say probiotics don't work, then neither do antibiotics. That's just, okay, sorry. I'm supposed to be the interviewer here rather than the expert, but it's one of those things that just drive, of course they work. 

Dr. William Davis: We do need better science behind probiotics. So the majority of current probiotics, sorry, I don't know what this is about. The current crop of commercial probiotics are crafted haphazardly. So whoever formulated a product says something like this. Oh, there's some science to tell us that Bifidobacterium Long is good for people. Let's throw that in. Oh, here's some observation that tells us that Lactobacillus brevis is good for, let's throw that in too.

Lactobacillus acidophilus, they're haphazard collections, and often at low numbers, because it's very costly. I talk to manufacturers, and I'll say for instance, hey, I'd like some of your strain of Lactobacillus crispotus, because it's incredibly effective for vaginal health in females, reproductive age and onwards.

And they say you can have it for $1, 500 a kilo. And our minimum order is 100 kilos. So very few retailers can afford to do that. And so what they do is they put teensy weensy quantities in the probiotic. So that's why one of the reasons why this idea of yogurt is not yogurt, right? It's it looks and smells like yogurt, but that's why the yogurt has such powerful effects because we're increasing the counts typically a thousandfold.

We perform something called flow cytometry. It's a laser-assisted means of counting microbes and we get around 300 billion Billion with a 'B' per half cup serving. So when you buy a probiotic, it's typical to have a billion or maybe even 10 billion. We're going to increase it dramatically because the larger the numbers you have, the more you're likely to have a very beneficial effect.

Jack Heald: Okay. I know people are listening to this thing, wait, I can make this yogurt myself. So I want to speak to our listeners real quick, all the contact information for Dr. Davis will be available in the show notes. Check there. And let's move now to my favorite question in this show. If you could deliver just one message about health and you only had eight words to deliver it, what would those eight words be?

Dr. William Davis: No boy. I still think even though you and I have been talking about microbes, the power of restoring lost microbes, the diet you follow is still by far an overwhelmingly powerful thing. And ironically, the diet advocated by most agencies that is to cut your fat and cholesterol, eat more healthy whole grains causes hundreds of health conditions, including coronary disease.

So not cutting your fat and cholesterol. Never eating healthy whole grains is still hugely powerful. Now you can go further, of course. including restoring lost microbes. But the diet still matters. And by the way, when you do things like restore lactobacillus roteri or eradicate SIBO, do all those things, get our fermented juices do all those things in the context of a better diet.

Never cut fat. Never cut cholesterol. Never limit calories. Never eat whole grains or grains in any form. Don't eat sugar. Eat real food.

People say, oh, what's left? It's evidence of just how brainwashed people have been. Eat meat. Eat the fat. Eat some liver. Eat vegetables. Eat root vegetables. Eat avocados. Use olive oil. Real foods.

Just like great grandma did. If you're tough enough, add back some tripe. Add back some tongue. All the things that provided, for instance, collagen, and hyaluronic acid. So the diet still matters a lot. And the benefits of adding all those other things on will be even greater.

Jack Heald: That was way more than the eight words. I'm trying to think because what I like to do, I want to use those eight words as a title for the show. Diet stills, , that'd be three. Never cut fat, that's six. 

Dr. William Davis: How about no wheat, no grains, no sugar? 

Jack Heald: No grains, comma, sugar. We'll work it out. We'll make it work. Dr. William Davis, your most recent book is Supergut.

I can personally attest the yogurt, aside from the fact that I just like knowing what's in my yogurt is delicious. And I'm going to, we're going to have a PS here on this show just because I'm personally interested. One of the things we've noticed, we started making the yogurt based on your recipe a couple of years ago, and it seems like each, you take some yogurt from one batch to start the next batch. And what we've noticed is that over time the yogurt itself gets thicker and more like cottage cheese. The texture changes. Is that common? 

Dr. William Davis: It is. It takes humans eons to evolve. It takes microbes hours to days to evolve. So as you cultivate this microbe, it probably undergoes some changes. Now, if you, one of the things that keep to bear in mind, it helps if you have some effect of the yogurt. So for me, I'm a chronic insomniac, and if I get the yogurt, I'll sleep like a baby. But if there's a change in the yogurt, such that my sleep is now bad again, I'll know to start from scratch from the micro from a starter again.

Jack Heald: Oh, that's good news. I personally like the, I like the thicker stuff and my wife doesn't. And so we just, we've started over a couple of times.

All right. This has been the predictive health clinic. Dr. William Davis has been our guest. Check the show notes for the details. Thanks for joining us. And we will talk to y'all next time.

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