#28 Risks of Plastic and DEHP, Save Your Family

Eric Rieger
All right, here we are. It is gut check project, Episode Number 28. I am here with your host, Dr. Ken Brown. What’s up Doctor Brown.

Ken Brown
What’s going on Eric? Episode 28.

Eric Rieger
Episode 28.

Ken Brown
Lots of energy 2020. We’re just wow.

Eric Rieger
We’re so close to 30, it’s what, six more years. seven more years. We could run for president release the show.

Ken Brown
It’s so weird when I’m sitting there doing colonoscopy recalls. And I’m like, come back in 2030…gah! It’s weird.

Eric Rieger
Yeah, that’s good news for those. Everybody. One unique thing. everybody complains about the prep. So if you if you have to have a colonoscopy and you’re not looking forward to the prep, you are not alone. Nobody likes it.

Ken Brown
You know what, there’s a video that I have on my website, Kenneth Brown, MD. com. That’s more for my my clinical practice, but I’ve got a video that can actually talk you through how to get through that prep and a few little bio hacks to do that. I’ve been through a couple preps myself. I’ve taken them all. So when patients are like, you have no idea I’m like, No, I do know. I do know,

Eric Rieger
I’m fully aware.

Ken Brown
Yeah, you can actually go on the website and see it or you can go to YouTube and see my bare bottom there for the world. Because I mean, the one thing that you and I do do we do…

Eric Rieger
You just said, doo doo.

Ken Brown
Okay I did, yea you’re right. I am a gastroeneterologist but the one thing that we do is we live it. I mean, we We will last week I was fasting. I did a five day fast.

Eric Rieger
You did? And you did well.

Ken Brown
I did. I I liked it man, that erexin erexin is a hormone that kicks in that creates energy. I became euphoric again. I was just chatty Cathy run around loving it.

Eric Rieger
It’s a wild thing to see play out the erexin. Having done it myself, it’s it’s when you’re not expecting it especially.

Ken Brown
Yeah, totally. And this time I kind of did sort of the fasting mimicking diet where I kept the calories down. It was almost exclusively just water. But I did cheat a little bit, but not cheating. I kept my calories down. I allowed myself to choose some celery once in a while. And if you look at valter Longo’s data when he talks about the fasting, mimicking diet, they allow you to have up to, you know, whatever 800 calories and you can still trick the body into fasting. What I really enjoyed was my family’s getting more used to it so they weren’t like I like I was a little irritable at some times and you know Loyda was cool with it. She understood. She’s like, well, you’re fasting. And, you know, so it was there and so the kids were kind of making fun of it. But when we sit there and look at it, and you realize that I’m trying to turn on some stem cells and all these other things, I really felt like I’m gonna make this a regular part every three months. I’m gonna try and do a five day fast. Sounds really daunting. But when you look at the data, if you get a chance, there’s on amazon prime. If you’re an Amazon Prime member, there’s a documentary called fasting and they interview what I consider the fasting experts. They’ve got Jason Fung, they’ve got Sachin Panda. They’ve got Valter Longo and they all talk about the different types of fastings. And what you achieve with each one

Eric Rieger
Yeah, no, I totally worth it. Very low cost. It’s something you can do and there are tons of benefits. We probably should do a fasting reset episode, just specific to what we can find and then we’ve had nurses and different technicians that we’ve worked with who’ve decided to implement fasting as part of their own healthy regimen. who already seen lower blood pressure and different things like that? So it requires really no true investment. It just requires a little bit of discipline.

Ken Brown
Yeah, and it’s a it seems once and I remember what was the conference live it to lead it Conference. I was lecturing and I that that was the first conference where it was a fasting conference. And they purposely did not serve anything

Unknown Speaker
No.

Ken Brown
We went all day.

Eric Rieger
All day.

Ken Brown
Everyone in that conference about 400 people.

Eric Rieger
But you’re all in it together.

Ken Brown
Yeah. That that is Dr. Daniel Pompa. And he’s the one that really kind of got me thinking about fasting. And he’s, if you want to check him out, he’s he’s awesome. We know we know Angelo, his his. who’s the CEO right now? Anyways, we’re always doing business with these guys. They’re amazing people. Dr. Dan Pompa. Check it out. I did his podcast and we and he is somebody that is extremely knowledgeable about fasting realizing that that turns on cellular health.

Eric Rieger
Definitely. Well, let’s do a quick reset so we can get down because we have actually quite a few topics to get to today. So episode number 28. It is the gut check project. I’m Eric Rieger here with your host, Dr. Kenneth Brown. As always, still sponsored by Atrantil, Atrantil chock full of pro anthocyanin, polyphenols, polyphenols, you don’t have to have gut distress to benefit from Atrantil do you Dr. Brown?

Ken Brown
You do not. We’re learning a lot and I’m going to get into some literature today and get into some data explaining about how this is actually super important because what we’re going to talk about is something that is affecting your health, and it is screwing all of us up. So if you are a human living on planet Earth…

Eric Rieger
Most of us.

Ken Brown
You need to listen to the rest of the show. I’m gonna geek out a lot this is gonna be some serious science, but it’s super important because we got stuff going on in the world right now that is affecting you and I can tell you how the polyphenols actually help protect you against what I’m going to tell you about that’s everywhere.

Eric Rieger
Go to lovemytummy.com/kbmd lovemytummy.com/kbmd to learn more and get your own Atrantil

Ken Brown
Atrantil!

Eric Rieger
And then also go and visit our brand new website it KBmdhealth, KBMdhealth.com. You can get your hands on Atrantil there as well as Dr. Brown’s signature package which includes Atrantil as well as CBD. So why in the world would somebody want to combine Atrantil and CBD?

Ken Brown
Well, that is a great question, Mr. Eric. And one of the reasons why we learned through the science was as I was developing Atrantil I started talking to a lot of different scientists and contrary to what people think there’s tons of science on CBD cannabidiol tons of science on the endocannabinoid system. As it turns out the polyphenols in Atrantil, actually allow your body to produce and keep around more of your own. endogenous endocannabinoids, meaning you produce your own CBD like molecules called anandaminde and 2-ag. And I know you’re going to talk about that a little bit. We’ll get to that. Yeah. But basically, you can like it’s, it’s a exponential growth of your own endocannabinoid system. I started looking into this because when we were first treating people for their gut health, I couldn’t believe how many of my patients said, you know what I’m still taking Atrantil my gut feels better, but I just feel better. Everything’s better. And then I had to start looking into it. I went, Oh my gosh, the polyphenols, the post biotics the microbiome, and the endocannabinoid system is just one big Venn diagram and they all interact with each other.

Eric Rieger
They definitely do.

Ken Brown
And we’re going to talk about that a little bit later also.

Eric Rieger
We that’s something once again, you alluded to it earlier, we actually work in a clinic and do procedures. We see people all of the time that take those things combined also with a healthy diet that just simply are feeling and living better, which is great. So kBmdhealth.com. You can find the store, you just pan down the page and the brand new website, which soon will have some repository for CBD information research, we’re going to talk about Oh, here soon we will have the repository on rectal bleeding. So if you’ve ever worried about somebody who may have seen spotting in their underwear suddenly use the bathroom and look down and they saw a little bit of blood, we’re going to try to help people stave off the panic and yet find good solutions and answers for them so they can stay healthy.

Ken Brown
Yeah. So if you’re wondering why in the world, we just did the right turn towards rectal bleeding as it turns out, that is the most search term that people get super worried about.

Eric Rieger
Yeah, it is. And we get the most questions about rctal bleeding.

Ken Brown
We get the most questions about that. So if you’ve ever if you have a family member, if you ever seen blood in the toilet, it’s scary. And we’re going to take that head on and I’m going to tell you how that you should not ignore it. Never ignore it but we put together a really cool ebook that’s very informative. I think it’s very entertaining, I’m very happy with with Drew Parker helping us out with the graphics on that he’s a fantastic digital graphic designer, and I think it’s going to help a lot of people and if I can just get a few people in to get checked out so that they don’t worry. Much like we see with my colonoscopy video i get i get comments all the time, where people like thank you for doing that video. I went in and I had several large polyps. I never would have done it had it not seen that. That’s the same thing. We’re here to help everyone. I just want to see people get healthier. Everything that we talked about on the show is some way to augment your life. Sometimes it’s gut health. Sometimes it’s lighting discussions. Sometimes it’s just whatever we think you and I learned something we’re like, we’re going to share this with the world.

Eric Rieger
Yep, definitely. So be sure Stay tuned. We will definitely make an announcement. If you are not a member of the KBMD community already, just go to KBMDhealth.com pan all the way to the bottom, just give us your name. It’ll allow us to have your email and then you’ll be looped in as soon as we have the rectal bleeding stuff that you can share with anyone, and anyone coast to coast. If they need help they could use this information, it would help them out.

Ken Brown
Yeah, and we’re trying to grow this. We’re getting some really good feedback. If you have any questions, if you want us to talk about anything, we have access to experts. That’s what I ultimately want to do, if we’re going to talk about so today’s show, let’s talk about the short term. Today’s show, we’re going to just kind of get caught up on a few things. And I really want to dive deep into this science about things that are hurting you that you can prevent one particular thing in the environment that I know that we can help people with. And then going forward. One of the exciting things that I want to do is I’m going to start bringing in some seriously geeky experts so that we can get to some of the science that’s out there, that most people don’t even understand that we have a community of PhDs surrounding us of the MD’s surrounding us. And they’re doing some crazy stuff, but they’re not out there promoting it. They’re not on Instagram or Facebook and other stuff. You gotta dig deep. You gotta bring them in. And oh my gosh, you’ll learn so much. That’s what we’re gonna do in 2020 this thing is going to be a home for if you have a question, we’re going to find the person to answer it.

Eric Rieger
Yeah. And we’re already starting to fill out that fill out that that schedule. So this this year should be quite exciting.

Ken Brown
Yeah. And if, if we can’t find an expert, and we don’t know the answer, Eric is gonna make it up.

Eric Rieger
Sounds so confident. that’s a really good selling point. Let’s get into it. This last weekend, I left I haven’t even told you the story. I left the clinic headed home wanting to go and make the boys basketball games that were up in Wichita Falls. I got about 20 miles from home and suddenly, torrential rain going sideways hail. My phone goes off tornado warning. What in the world and it couldn’t see couldn’t see anything. And then finally it all passes everything’s fine and to my knowledge no one was was hurt. There was some wind damage and a tornado spotted somewhere I didn’t see it. But then the next morning Saturday, I wake up snow three and a half inches everywhere

Ken Brown
But it was like 70 degrees when that tornado was happening.

Eric Rieger
No Joke.

Ken Brown
And the very next morning, it snowed.

Eric Rieger
It was 24 degrees. The very next morning beautiful too. I mean, it was snowed very, very hard. And then by the time the afternoon came all melted, pretty much gone. I mean, that’s amazing. Living in North Texas, especially. You just experienced a lots of different fluctuations in weather. There’s no health story here. But it is kind of a treat sometimes you just kind of see everything.

Ken Brown
It is I watched last night as a family we watched because Rafa Nadal was on 60 minutes. They were interviewing obviously, we always talk about tennis and we’ll get into the whole family thing but Rafa was on so the family wanted to watch the 30 minutes and I remember I used to watch 60 minutes with my dad growing up.

Eric Rieger
Yeah me too!

Ken Brown
Yeah. And I actually really enjoyed that. I didn’t A lot of it I didn’t understand. It was political and stuff like that. But I’d be like, 10 years old watching 60 minutes. So last night we were watching and they were looking at Florence, Italy. The canals. Dude. Up a lot. I mean, come on. We this weird climate change. We got Australia on fire. We got this going on. And they’re there they’re having hundred year floods, like every month.

Eric Rieger
Yeah, they’re not hundred years anymore.

Ken Brown
No.

Eric Rieger
yeah, it’s pretty wild.

Ken Brown
It’s crazy.

Eric Rieger
I can’t remember who it was. It said that they were there before the the water started. And like as they were leaving. And someone told me I thought it was some of you and I knew I’ve already forgotten. But anyhow, yeah, they were there and the last day of this day was was the first day that the water began to creep in towards the hotel. So that wasn’t that long ago. But really interesting.

Ken Brown
It’s It’s crazy. I just saw an article today, where if we actually tend to have this, this climate change continues in this this pathway. Where now people are pretty much open to it now. Now we realized that okay, things are happening, the level of violence. So some epidemiologists were looking at if with each degree of worldwide raise in temperature, violence goes up and due to a lot of different reasons, and they had all these different reasons as to how that happens. But basically, we can become a more violent society with global warming. It’s crazy.

Eric Rieger
Wow.

Ken Brown
I know. It’s nuts.

Eric Rieger
Man, I don’t even know how to answer that. That’s wild

Ken Brown
I don’t even want to get into it. Because I just kind of looked at that. And I said, I’m already a little bit scared of where we’re headed. I don’t need to know that all of a sudden, we’re going to become more violent due to it. That’s like the last thing that I needed

Eric Rieger
No, no. Yeah.

Ken Brown
I generally chill out when it gets warm. I like to you know, I mean, I like the heat. I sauna all the time so.

Eric Rieger
Yeah, we’ll usually see people on the beach and their just laying down. I don’t know. I’m not really getting it.

Ken Brown
This article described how we’re just going to go around and violence will increase so…

Eric Rieger
Yeah it’s unfortunate Well, do you have anything you want to hit on quick before we Oh, I’ve thought of something else but I’ll go ahead and let you go first.

Ken Brown
Well, I was just gonna give a quick update with the family. Because this never happens in my house. We were all here. We did a whole lot of nothing. We…

Eric Rieger
Did y’all all know each other?

Ken Brown
We did.

Eric Rieger
That’s good.

Ken Brown
Yeah. So the the kids at the last time that they’re at they had one of those big giant Connect fours and so they ended up playing like the boys would play these are like, like the nation’s best tennis players at that age and they’re all were gathered around to connect for like an old school Connect Four that was like, like five feet tall.

Eric Rieger
That’s awesome. I love Connect Four.

Ken Brown
So I ended up playing the kids a lot. In Connect Four on the on the computer. We ate out we found some new ramen places, and we chilled I slept 10 and a half hours last night.

Eric Rieger
That’s not bad.

Ken Brown
I loved it. Heck, yeah. That’s my weekend. How about you?

Unknown Speaker
All weekend boys had basketballs out is that talked about earlier Saturday night. I’m just getting older friend of mine, his daughter who I remember when she was really young. She got married. Really cool. Yeah. Whole family went and it was, it was a lot of fun. So shout out to Savannah and Rex. Just a great gathering of some folks, these these were really close friends of ours that he was transferred to Japan. And so he’d been there and I hadn’t seen him since he been transferred there and his daughter gets married. And my brother was there my brother’s close to this family also and it was it was a lot of fun.

Ken Brown
That’s awesome.

Unknown Speaker
Yeah, yeah, it’s really cool.

Ken Brown
You love seeing it maintaining friendships and relationships that far that you’re seeing your your friends kids…

Ken Brown
And he just got transferred again. You know where to? Aww poor guy…Hawaii.

Eric Rieger
No awful for him. He and his wife are just hating it.

Ken Brown
Yeah. I finished the book Traction by Gina Whitman.

Eric Rieger
Yes. Nice.

Ken Brown
I took notes. I think I even sent you a copy. My notes are 28 pages.

Eric Rieger
You did. I’m behind you and I can’t say that I know what all of your notes mean. But I think that they’ll be good cliffs for someone who’s gonna read it.

Ken Brown
What I love is every one of these people that in our entrepreneurial group baby bathwater every time I say Traction, they’ve all read it. They’re like, absolutely necessary. So if you’re a small business owner, try out the book Traction, the most updated one.

Eric Rieger
Sure, definitely, yeah.

Ken Brown
What were you gonna say?

Eric Rieger
So, I told you that I wanted to talk about 2-ag just briefly, but the reason is, and I, I can’t remember exactly what study was, but that’s not what’s important. What’s important is they were breaking down. Why do people smoke cigarettes whenever they become anxious?

Ken Brown
Cigarettes or marijuana?

Eric Rieger
Or was the marijuana?

Ken Brown
Marijuana I think. Yeah, because they’re looking at the endocannabinoid system.

Eric Rieger
Marijuana cigarettes is what I meant to say. But that’s what that’s what they’re talking about. But anyway, regardless, they’re smoking marijuana, and why would they do that if they become anxious, and it has more to do with the increased production of 2-ag than what they had realized. It’s not the only thing. It’s just that they noticed that you increase your endogenous 2-ag and of course, if you’re just tuning in anandamide and 2-ag are the probably the most prevalent endogenous cannabinoid we have.

Ken Brown
Certainly the most studied. Yeah so we make our own endocannabinoids and they’re called anandamide and 2-ag. 2-ag stands for 2-Arachidonoylglycerol acid so 2-ag is easier.

Eric Rieger
Correct. It is that’s why that’s all that I ever say but I just want to pointed it out to you right before we started you said yes I think I saw the same thing. So what are your thoughts on that?

Ken Brown
Well, I just think it’s so interesting because we always meet all these people are like, oh, there’s no science on CBD. Oh, there’s no whatever, no people we have an endocannabinoid system. We have been neglecting our endocannabinoid system and the articles that I’m going to bring up later probably show why in our endocannabinoid system we’re deficient. So what this article looked at, is the fact that people are self treating. Now we know the molecule that goes up, that helps them deal with their anxiety. You know, it isn’t like a it isn’t like, oh, you’re just running away from your problems? No, you’re balancing yourself out by doing that.

Eric Rieger
Yeah, another interesting part though I thought about that particular article that I was reading there was referencing the study is that it was almost as if they were talking about 2-ag as just a substance, and then later talked about it as that it is it is an endogenous cannabinoid. But it, they presented it as if it was a newfound compound. And just just because of what we do, and I didn’t really take it that way. I was like, well, you’re kind of behind the curve. This is

Ken Brown
Isn’t that funny?

Eric Rieger
It’s been a long time!

Ken Brown
Yeah. Because Yeah, I actually didn’t read the article you called and told me about that. I’m like, that’s funny, because they’re acting like they discovered something. We’ve been talking 2-ag and anandamide for years now.

Eric Rieger
Right, right. Maybe Maybe it’s just the way I interpret it. But that’s the way it felt it felt like that they’re talking like it’s something new that they were trying to show correlation of this, this increase of this mysterious 2-ag and in truth, I felt like it was really just kind of establishing the importance of a healthy endocannabinoid system, which is really what I felt was my takeaways like hey, look, this is just yet more proof on why a healthy ECS is a great balance for somebody who is suffering from anxiety or, or something like that. You want to get that in in you want you want to keep your ECS healthy.

Ken Brown
Yeah so the endocannabinoid system what’s interesting is that I’m I’d be curious to see if they did the exact same study with just pure CBD cannabidiol maybe you don’t even have to smoke the marijuana cigarette as you say. And you just take CBD and then your body will adapt to that as well. Whenever people say oh, I take CBD and it helps with XYZ Well, one of the things is, I mean, we got a lot going on and I looking back in my life I’ve always run very anxious. Well, ever since I started doing the KBMD, health CBD, my anxiety 100% has been much more manageable, much more in balanced and I realized that Oh, that’s probably one of those things as I’m running around anxious, my 2-ag is down possibly my ananadamide is down. All this is allowing me to do is just get back to my baseline.

Eric Rieger
Yeah, no, I agree. That it’s something I didn’t, I wasn’t able to ascertain. Excuse me. You said I wonder if CBD could do that more than likely so and I was also kind of curious is what the mix was, you know because there’s different strains out there for marijuana. And so I didn’t I didn’t know what they were referencing I highly doubt that it was probably one of those super efficient high level Maui Wowie things that everybody’s clamoring for when they go out of a state that doesn’t allow it to go and buy I really think that probably really like anything the more natural that something were to exist is probably where they’re getting the benefit from but I don’t know they didn’t really…

Ken Brown
Isn’t it so fascinating we just lump everything together. That’s like saying hey, Eric, tea is Good for you.

Eric Rieger
What kind of tea?

Ken Brown
Exactly? So are you gonna take Elong which is going to have different black teas in it? Are you going to take chamomile which is going to calm you down.

Eric Rieger
Is lipton light green?

Ken Brown
Exactly.

Eric Rieger
It’s not.

Ken Brown
It’s you know, are we are you going to put a little packets of peak tea? Which our good friends peak tea, which They have polyphenols in there also and they promote that a lot. So I don’t know why we discuss the marijuana plant like that because it could be that varied just like tea leaves. It could be so varied the cannabis plant and when we start lumping things together we just become ignorant to the whole process. If I say that to you will put you to sleep and you do a good solid green tea and you’re up for hours. You’re like, Well, that didn’t work. I’m like no, no, that’s not all tea puts you to sleep certain teas. Well, certain THC CBD combinations do certain things.

Eric Rieger
Definitely. Someone said I like apples. They may be a Washington Apple could a granny smith apple. It could be a Fuji. On and on and on. There’s just a bunch of different apples.

Ken Brown
Now. Let’s be I mean, let’s let everybody know. I mean, you did your thesis on apples. I mean, I think it’s I think you’ve been waiting forever. to unleash your knowledge of apples on everybody.

Eric Rieger
I can’t wait until we dig into apples. Granny Smith for the win. Or honey crisp, those are great.

Ken Brown
You’re just gonna give everybody all riled up? Let’s move on politics and apples we don’t talk about man.

Eric Rieger
Now we don’t.

Ken Brown
You know, last week we talked about cell phones.

Eric Rieger
Yeah.

Ken Brown
We talked about people using cell phones while they’re on the toilet.

Eric Rieger
We did we social toilets.

Ken Brown
Social toilets, how social is your toilet? Well, I just saw an article that just came out where a recent study looked at how people that take selfies, so they did a cohort study where they looked at people and they had them self evaluate. So it isn’t like a randomized placebo controlled trial, but it is kind of very interesting, because we were talking last week about how people will post Instagram pictures and things like that. This study was really interesting, only in the sense that it makes that it’s like, oh, duh. Because we always talk about how social media can actually lead to anxiety and depression. This study looked specifically At instagramers and selfies, and what they did is they interviewed It was 164 female students at a public college in the southeastern United States. And what they did is they surveyed a photo manipulation and selfie tapes. And what they realized is that these women were having this body surveillance issue where they wanted to have the best picture the best selfie that they put up there. And most of the participants reported taking between two to five selfies before publishing the one, many of them or I shouldn’t say many, but a large proportion that actually had depression would take up to 20 pictures before posting the one. And there’s so many filters that you can do now you can take out blemishes, you can augment certain body parts, you can do different things. And what they showed is those who took more selfies or manipulated he pictures had significantly higher levels of depression and anxiety.

Eric Rieger
It’s not that…

Ken Brown
Isn’t that interesting?

Eric Rieger
It’s interesting. But is it really that surprising?

Ken Brown
Well, that’s the thing. It’s not that surprising. And when you sit there and look at this, and when people go, oh my gosh, she’s so beautiful. Oh, she’s got all these likes or whatever. The reality is, you can’t run from yourself. There’s a certain disingenuous portion of you that knows you kind of manipulated it.

Eric Rieger
Yeah. Without question. And here’s a, just a quick side caveat here. Remember, before we had the digital availability of photos, and we just had film, there wasn’t the instant gratification of going over and making certain that the picture that was just taken was perfect. You just took it. And then you went to the photo mat at some point. And then it was exciting to go and get the envelope with the pictures and you could thumb through them. And you always wanted it before the girl who might also be in the pictures because she’s gonna discard the ones that she doesn’t like. Remember that? I mean like you would say, let’s go get the pictures. Oh, I’ll go with you. And then she grabs them and I can remember, you know, people grabbing the photos like, oh, and then keep that one. What is that? Oh, you don’t wanna see that? That’s the old way of discarding photos that you didn’t want seen. So now you can take them without with it doesn’t matter. Does it cost anything take more pictures. So interesting that technologies actually probably lent itself as a as a tool for someone who may have anxiety or depression to kind of make the situation worse.

Ken Brown
I mean, I challenge everybodythat if you’re gonna post a selfie,

Eric Rieger
just do it.

Ken Brown
Just do it. Make it real. Do the funny face everything because we spent so much time trying to show this curated life that I have. I want you to believe that my life is this. I mean, one of the fun things about doing this show is we don’t edit anything.

Eric Rieger
No!

Ken Brown
It just happens.

Eric Rieger
I just said cigarettes and I meant marijuana. So yeah, no, he did that. But that’s not really I promise you, your friends like you. And if you’re listening this your friends like you because you’re you not because you, you practice or rehearsed a line before you saw them, they just want to hang out with you. I mean, and you should be, you should be confident that that’s what people are after.

Ken Brown
So this, this particular study essentially just showed that even though so here’s what’s happening. You have people that are taking multiple selfies, they’re trying to find the perfect one. When they post it, then all they do is wait for that dopamine rush of a like, of a like of a like, and then if this one doesn’t get as many likes as the other one, then what do I do? Do I go back and do this? The bottom line is we want to be part of a community. We know that deep down when you want that like it’s because you want to connect with somebody. Unfortunately, when we have these social media platforms, it really waters it down so that you feel that you get a little dopamine release but you don’t get the serotonin which is your true happiness molecule. Dopamine is your pleasure molecule. So you cannot have both going on serotonin and dopamine, because that’s how come the whole rock star phenomenon you keep chasing that dopamine high. So what I want to offer to everybody here is take a selfie, don’t put a filter on it, send it to us. Connect with us at KBMDhealth on Instagram or on Facebook with a gut check project.

Eric Rieger
Gut Check Poject on Facebook

Ken Brown
Because I can tell you right now that if you are lonely and you are not connecting with people on a one to one level, it has been proven to be as dangerous as smoking. Smoking the cigarettes. Like you were saying earlier.

Eric Rieger
Yeah, I got things inverted there.

Ken Brown
The cigarettes…So it’s I just find it so fascinating that we have this so you just got done telling me a story about how people smoke or they they seek out marijuana and Now we realized that there is an Endocannabinoid that they’re trying to compensate with with 2-ag. Well, dude, any type of stress like that any type of thing. So now we know that by doing selfies, and waiting for that dopamine kick, you’re creating anxiety and depression, probably related to a depletion of 2-ag as well.

Eric Rieger
Interesting. It really is. I don’t, I wonder, I wonder what could be done for somebody to kind of wean themselves of, of hunting for the the digital likes, I really just ignore social media for the most part, certainly on a personal level, I don’t find it rewarding. In some instances, it’s kind of depressing. I like going to social media when I feel like I want to catch up with someone or that honestly, we need to find a new way to to make sure that our audience or our patients is are getting the right information for Atrantil etc. But I don’t, I don’t look for it to give me any type of gratification and but I think that I’m maybe the anomaly for someone who’s connected like that there’s maybe even my kids who don’t necessarily maintain their Instagram. I know that they keep up with their friends on it. And they see pictures, and people share them. So how would you wean yourself from that kind of that kind of environmen if you already didn’t have the biological systems in place to help you do that?

Ken Brown
Dude, that is a great question. I’m not much of a social media person. So I’m not really down with that. We’re gonna find a psychiatrist or a psychologist that specializes in this. There’s that great YouTube video, where I told you, you made your kids watch it. I made my kids watch it, where it’s a Harvard psychologist discussing the fact that when we give kids phones and they get into social media that that dopamine release…When somebody has a hard time at school, your seventh grader has a hard time at school. They come home And they’re upset about something and then you let them have their phone. That is exactly like giving them the keys to the liquor cabinet. You had a tough day. Why don’t you go cope with it by having a few vodka sodas or whatever. And we think that’s crazy. But we don’t think anything of let your kid go to the room, sit on their phone and go into a spiral, because they’re not part of the Snapchat group that that they were excluded from because X, Y and Z. It’s, it’s really from a parenting standpoint, it’s really hard to sit there and walk that fine line between I don’t want my children to be the weird kids that don’t have any social media involvement. But I don’t want to allow that giving them the keys to the liquor cabinet, where they’re just trying to supplement their dopamine kicks with how many likes they have because there’s a lot of science going on with this.

Eric Rieger
Yea and true confession I think that we screwed up its parents that I’m talking about me and my wife. Well, we, we gave the phone the phone breached in probably far too early. I mean, that’s just that’s just the truth. We’ve done a good job of monitoring how well I say we’re doing a good job. Maybe they’ll maybe they’ll hear this and they’ll laugh.

Ken Brown
I don’t think you guys. I don’t think he has waited too long when I saw gages…His,you know I went to his one year birthday party and you gave him the iPhone 2. That’s not early!

Eric Rieger
He’s not quite that young but yeah. But, I mean, looking back, I wish that we had had held off longer than we did. I don’t think that we did anybody any favors by doing that. Heck, I wish I had never gotten into a smartphone. It’s almost like a weird codependency issue now, like, I want to get to the point where I can just go back to a flip phone and no phone at all. But…

Ken Brown
There’s always Yeah,

Eric Rieger
Like most I mean, I don’t think that I’m alone. I mean, I know I’m not because we see it every day with the patients just before we take him back to let them go to sleep. They want to they want Want to take that last time before they go to sleep? And before they stow their phone? That’s it’s very common every single day.

Ken Brown
But we’re just keep seeing new and new data like this particular study. Everybody else that looks at those pictures probably goes Oh, she’s so pretty, she’s got an amazing thing.

Eric Rieger
And the person who’s in it probably hates the picture

Ken Brown
And the person who’s in it is just critiquing themselves and they’re becoming and having more anxiety and depression.

Eric Rieger
Oh, yeah, it’s and it’s it’s, it’s unfortunate. It’s not fair.

Ken Brown
I had a remember our guest with short path wealth. Tim Tim power. He he posted something where it was like the next time you’re having a bad day. Remember this is going on. And it was a picture of 250 Amish men carrying a barn

Eric Rieger
Yeah. Yeah,

Ken Brown
I’m like there’s easier ways to move that barn. But that’s cool.

Eric Rieger
There are and they’re not doing it, but they’re probably not nearly susceptible to depression.

Ken Brown
I looked at that and I was like, that’s community. That’s coming together that’s busting your ass that’s getting out there. There’s a certain amount of okay. Yeah, there’s easier ways to do it. But okay.

Eric Rieger
The initial reaction is to laugh. The truth is they’re probably pretty happy. You know, isn’t that wild, but it’s just true.

Ken Brown
Yeah. I thought that was interesting.

Eric Rieger
Yeah, it is. It is interesting. So what else you got?

Ken Brown
Nothin? Um, we can get into a few things. You got water?

Eric Rieger
I’m having a little austin texas Waterloo,

Ken Brown
Ah a little Waterloo. Would you like to sip from it from this cool, straw.

Eric Rieger
I mean, I traditionally don’t use…

Ken Brown
No don’t do that at all, because that’s what we’re going to get into right now.

Eric Rieger
That is rude as hell.

Ken Brown
That almost killed you.

Eric Rieger
I did not know that.

Ken Brown
Ah, well, let me tell you what. So we uh, we have the distinct advantage of course we have our little our secret weapon.

Eric Rieger
If you’re just listening. He just offered me a straw and threw it across the room just so you know.

Ken Brown
Well, here’s why. So You know, we have our, our amazing graduate student that always helps us out. She sent me some incredible articles. Two of them came together. It’s super geeky, hang in there with me, please. I’m going to get into what’s gonna sound like a lot of crazy words, but this will blow your mind. I cannot believe and she sent the email. She’s like, this will blow your mind. I cannot believe that. We have not talked about this yet. And I’m like, okay, two articles recently published that holy cow Hang in there, because it’s gonna sound like, well, pretty much you’re screwed. But I’m going to give you a solution at the variant.

Eric Rieger
I can’t wait.

Ken Brown
All right.

Eric Rieger
Yeah.

Ken Brown
And probably most relevant for you, Mr. Eric, Mr. crna. I’m telling you, you probably need to hear this more than anybody more than anybody, anybody more than anybody. More than anybody more than anybody.

Unknown Speaker
I’m all ears now.

Ken Brown
All right. So, all right now we’re getting into some serious science. You know, I love to geek out about this stuff, and hopefully I’ll be able to hopefully I interpret it well enough. And hopefully we’ll be able to make some sense of this. But what we’re going to talk about is a recent review on the toxic effects of Di-2-ethylhexyl phthalate.

Eric Rieger
Yeah, that usually doesn’t come up very often.

Ken Brown
Or DEHP. Which From now on I will refer to as DEHP. As inJohnny Depp, but it’s DEHP, so before you sit there and go, Oh, I’ve never you know, this doesn’t pertain to me. Oh It really does because as it turns out, DEHP DEHP is the most common member of phthalates. Now, phthalates are mainly used as plasticizers.

Eric Rieger
Here we go.

Ken Brown
There’s substances added to Plastic, specifically PVC to increase the flexibility so that death straw that I just tried to offer you filled with DEHP. Okay, what it does is it softens the PVC so that anything is flexible.

Eric Rieger
Okay.

Ken Brown
So you start thinking well, like due to the ubiquity of plastics everywhere. The majority of people are exposed to some level of phthalates. For example, the CDC actually took a large cohort of people, and they looked for the metabolites of ballots, and everyone had them in their urine.

Eric Rieger
I’m sure. I’m sure they do.

Ken Brown
It’s almost unavoidable over 2 million tons of this stuff is is produced worldwide. And I don’t know why. I don’t know how we’ve not discussed this already. Why this has not been talked about. Do you know anything about this?

Eric Rieger
No, I don’t know anything about specifically this particular compound. What I’m really thinking about right now is the abundance or ubiquity of all of the plastics that are are flexible now I mean, I’m just thinking if we’re going to panic, your water is certainly in a modern home is is usually channeled by PVC. And that would be I mean, it’s…

Ken Brown
well as long as it’s PVC until it becomes flexible. You’re not getting DEHP.

Eric Rieger
Okay…

Ken Brown
But this is why it’s really relevant to you.

Eric Rieger
Oh okay?

Ken Brown
And to me but more to you.

Eric Rieger
All right…

Ken Brown
Guess what? Tt’s especially used in medical devices.

Eric Rieger
Oo like endotracheal tubes?

Ken Brown
Oh way more than that endotracheal tubes, IV bags. Yeah, keep going. You’re getting it.

Eric Rieger
Goodness gracious IV tubing IV bags, you could the catheters that we start the IV. Man, the anything that would do seldinger technique with is going to utilize that right?

Ken Brown
100%

Eric Rieger
Holy crap.

Ken Brown
Holy crap. It’s everywhere in the medical industry.

Eric Rieger
Probably the non latex gloves that we have to substitute for people who have latex allergies.

Ken Brown
All of a sudden you start looking this you’re like, whoa, wait a minute…

Eric Rieger
Nasal canulas!

Ken Brown
Nasal canulas. There you go peritoneal catheters, you name it, you know, typical catheters, urinary catheters, anything, because everything we use on humans has to be flexible. It has to be able to be malleable and stuff. So as it turns out, you and I are exposed to tons of this.

Eric Rieger
Yeah, every single day, every single patient

Ken Brown
You more than me,

Eric Rieger
Yea probably so.

Ken Brown
And then we’re sitting there doing this with a patient. So.

Eric Rieger
Interesting.

Ken Brown
Yeah. But you know, what, if everybody’s listening, and they’re just like, well, I don’t work in the medical industry. Too bad as it turns out, packaged foods, those bags that are flexible, so it’s not a stif little thing. packaged foods, it’s in packaged foods, it’s in mattresses. It’s in cosmetics, personal care products, high concentrations in fatty meats, and even bread.

Eric Rieger
Why is that?

Ken Brown
It’s just it gets concentrated in fatty environments. And so when they when they had the plastic bags around the bread, the bread soaks it up. Now we’re eating it.

Eric Rieger
Hmm.

Ken Brown
So when we take in this DEHP, the only thing cool about it is that it gets converted into something that I’m going to start using as my stage name from now on, it gets converted into Di-n-octyl phthalate otherwise known as DNOP.

Eric Rieger
DNOP.

Ken Brown
DNOP now, DJ DNOP coming on.

Eric Rieger
Here on the Gut Check Project here’s your host DNOP.

Ken Brown
Yeah. So why do you care about DNOP? DNOP coming on! Well, as it turns out, look at what this little molecule actually does to our bodies.

Eric Rieger
Uh oh.

Ken Brown
Uh oh is right. I mean, when I was when I was reading this, I’m just like, What in the world? We are, and this is a worldwide thing. This is not US. This is not race dependent. This is not anything. Now. I’m going to spend little time here and I’m just gonna tell you what, well, I’m scared for you because you’re around IV catheters, you do this all the time.

Eric Rieger
A lot yeah.

Ken Brown
Yea. All right, DHEP. It’s best known as an endocrine disrupter. What’s the name of the mindshare? Jolene?

Eric Rieger
Oh Jolene Brighton?

Ken Brown
Yeah. And then yeah, so anyway, so that yet, I’m sure that she’s probably going, duh, we know about this. This is one of those things where you’re just like, I guess the bandwidth is only so big, but we can get. I bet you a lot of functional medicine doctors are just like going, Oh, my gosh, we’ve been talking about this forever. So all right. It’s an endocrine disrupter, what that means is it will alter the function of the endocrine system exposure in utero. So this is what’s really crazy. If you’re pregnant, and you expose your fetus to this, it does tremendous things. One of the things that it’s that it does is it actually decreases testosterone production and messes with the estrogen cycle. In fact, they have studies that have shown that exposure in utero leads to lifelong testosterone issues. They have taken adult rats, and they looked at them when they were exposed in utero. And they have shown that their testosterone is markedly lower, just from one exposure in utero, for their whole life.

Eric Rieger
I wonder if it blunts like teste development and that’s probably why interesting.

Eric Rieger
Interesting.

Ken Brown
They have all kinds of different reasons why like this, these articles are super sciencey. And they get into the molecular mechanism of it all. And I’ll get into a little bit more about this, but I’m going to show you this thing is going to blow your mind because what they did is they they looked at this and they showed persistent low testosterone in adult rats studies. Now rats fed a diet with DEHP also have serious lifelong thyroid issues. So the theory on this is it’s an epigenetic phenomenon. So in other words, if you expose a fetus in utero to DEHP, which is everywhere, then it can turn on an epigenetic phenomenon, meaning that there are certain genes that get turned on. And then that becomes the new norm. That’s how come they proved that you can sit there and have low testosterone for the rest of your life. That’s how come you can end up with thyroid issues when you become older, because that transcription of the genes has been turned on.

Ken Brown
You need to that’s the epigenetic phenomena. Epigenetics means that you have genes you’re predisposed but then if you have an environmental factor that comes in, then that actually turns that gene on. Well, as it turns out, DHEP does this to people significantly in utero. So they looked at elderly people and it suggests that insulin resistance is actually due to DEHP or DEHP sorry, so insulin resistance so diabetes. Chinese studies have looked at children and their BMI goes way up when they have higher levels of this metabolite in their urine. There’s all kinds of studies on this where it’s like, oh my gosh, you mean the incidence of diabetes incidence of thyroid, the incidence of hormonal issues is going up? So that’s one example, endocrine disrupter. So I thought about this when I read this. I thought about you when I read this.

Eric Rieger
Okay.

Ken Brown
What you think would happen if I give homage to do you remember the article we did about liver failure?

Eric Rieger
I do remember gavaging CBD Yes,

Ken Brown
Go back to our episode 26, go to Episode 26. And we talked about garaging which means that you’re going to stick a tube down a mouse and put in copious amounts of…

Eric Rieger
The title was CBD causes liver failure,

Ken Brown
So they gavaged some poor rats. And can you guess what happened to them?

Eric Rieger
With that?

Ken Brown
Yeah, with with basically DEHP. DEHP I’m I’m just going to call it DEHP from now on.

Eric Rieger
Well, I think that if you’re going to gavage DEHP and since nothing is sounded like it with the favorable I would imagine they exploded that they turned into robots, but maybe not as bad.

Ken Brown
No, it’s worse.

Eric Rieger
Oh, okay.

Ken Brown
It’s worse. What it did. Cause testicular atrophy just shrunk their testicles.

Eric Rieger
Wow.

Ken Brown
Basically made them not men. So I was. I mean, you and I’ve talked about this, but if you ever end up in a situation where your testicles are too big.

Eric Rieger
Oh yeah.

Ken Brown
And I find you chewing on some IV tubing, I’ll know why.

Eric Rieger
You’ll know why Yeah.

Ken Brown
I’ll know why. Because you’re trying to control the size.

Eric Rieger
You don’t want them too big. It’s craziness.

Ken Brown
You just sit there nawing on some IV tubes.

Eric Rieger
Yeah, yeah, it’s gonna get some some space in the pants.

Ken Brown
I mean, think about that you they can actually show that it causes such a disruption in the testosterone pathway and the hormonal access pathway that you will actually end up with testicular atrophy. You will not have testicles.

Eric Rieger
What’s interesting is I’m curious how, how prevalent is it beyond the those of us in the healthcare environment for people to be exposed to DEHP

Ken Brown
So glad that you asked that. We’re going to go through and now we’re going to talk about so so far I’ve kind of focused on the thing that that concern me Sure. testosterone and you know, the

Eric Rieger
Work environment?

Ken Brown
Yeah, work environment. But it also looks like it. It does all kinds of stuff. It’ll mess with ovaries. This is really interesting. It seems to increase endometriosis.

Eric Rieger
Oh, wow.

Ken Brown
Yeah.

Eric Rieger
That’s terrible.

Ken Brown
So I see a lot of patients that have a ton of pain. And they did a study where they looked at Indian women and that had endometriosis. And they checked their DEHP metabolites significantly higher than their non endometriosis counterparts.

Eric Rieger
Goodness gracious.

Ken Brown
Yeah. And it appears that the reason why that happens is due to our old friend oxidative stress.

Eric Rieger
Wow,

Ken Brown
Just park that one and let’s Let’s come back to that for a moment.

Eric Rieger
Okay.

Ken Brown
So it’s due to oxidative oxidative stress. Oh, this is this is really fun. This is neat. So as it turns out, it’s nephrotoxic.

Eric Rieger
None of this sounds good.

Ken Brown
It’s Nephrotoxic.

Eric Rieger
That’s bad for your kidneys.

Ken Brown
Holy cow. Now they decided to look at dialysis patients. Guess who gets exposed to all Kinds of medical tubing?

Eric Rieger
I mean, they’re getting they’re getting new tubing every time they go in.

Eric Rieger
Every single time and most dialysis patients are three times a week for four plus hours each visit.

Ken Brown
How did I not hear this? They’ve looked at this. dialysis patients have some of the highest DEHP levels metabolites.

Ken Brown
Think of that dialysis setup and all of the tubings that go into the cartridge. Remember the cartridge that goes on there with the new membrane, all of the flexible tubing that’s on there.

Ken Brown
It’s crazy my dad did peritoneal dialysis and I mean my gosh, it’s it’s tubing that’s in there. You’re bathing yourself in this And I’m just telling you that it can already mess with your endocrine system, it can already be nephrotoxic. So if you had any chance of recovering your kidneys, then you’re just you’re stacking the deck against yourself.

Eric Rieger
Okay? And maybe we’ll get to solution here in a moment. But at the moment, I’m curious, what are the alternatives outside of what we’re doing now, I guess.

Ken Brown
We will get there. Okay. And that’s something that we’re going to do. We’re going to develop the KBMD bubble to be like the bubble boy. Yeah, we’re gonna we’re gonna launch that. We’re not gonna do that. We’re gonna we’re gonna get into all those. All right, but let me if you’re not already scared enough. Yeah. And you’re just going, Okay, well, you know what? Screw that. I don’t really care about my testosterone. I don’t care about endometriosis. I’m not on dialysis. Not a big deal. Well, there’s one thing that we all have. There’s one thing that you and I talk about all the time, the gut brain access. Yeah. So as it turns out, we all have a gut brain. Yep, your brain takes a hit Also.

Eric Rieger
I’m sure.

Ken Brown
Your brain takes a hit also, essentially If it’s exposed now I’m going to keep saying the same thing over and over. The younger you are when you’re exposed, the more damage it does. And I’m going to get to this because spoiler alert autism. We’re going to get to that a little bit. But so your brain takes a hit. Also, it can disrupt the normal fetal brain development, it appears to mess with the hippocampus. So the hippocampus is the area of the brain that’s super important for memory and spatial recognition. Very important. And it’s, it’s for the spatial navigation. So if you can get through the fetal exposure of it, then throughout your life, the more exposure you have to it, so in other words, the more flexible plastics you’re exposed to it does something really interesting. It decreases your BDNF.

Eric Rieger
Oh, no.

Ken Brown
Yes. Do you remember what BDNF is?

Eric Rieger
The brain…goodness gracious I don’t remember exactly what it stands for but it’s exactly but that’s exactly what we talked about for brain plasticity.

Ken Brown
Correct.

Eric Rieger
Yeah.

Ken Brown
Its brain derived neurotrophic factor. That’s right.

Eric Rieger
Sorry about that.

Ken Brown
No, it’s but you and I have we’ve always talked about this because remember when we heard David Perlmutter give a talk at Helio Fx?

Eric Rieger
That’s exactly who I was thinking about.

Ken Brown
He was talking about how coffee fruit had a very small study where it showed it increased BDNF. Well, as it turns out, BDNF can be increased by a lot of different polyphenols. BDNF is the protein in your brain that allows new neural connections.

Eric Rieger
Yeah, all the DEHP I’ve been exposed to made me forget what BDNF actually stood for.

Ken Brown
And we also believe that one of the reasons why there’s a lot of dementia is because we lose our BDNF and we do not grow new cells, right. So as it turns out, BDNF decreases. Oh, it appears that it decreases because of reactive oxygen species developing in the brain leading to oxidative stress.

Eric Rieger
So it sounds to me like what DEHP is if I’m connecting the dots here is going to be catalysts for oxidative stress. And so what we’re going to need to do is if we can’t eliminate DEHP from our environment, what can we do to mitigate the oxidative stress? Correct?

Ken Brown
Correct. We’re going to get to that. All right. Yeah, you’re you. You’ve already you’ve already made the links. So if you’re, if you’re still listening, and you want to learn how to do that, what Eric just described is exactly what I want to tell you how we’re going to do that. We talked about depression and anxiety. They looked at a study, I mean, I just cannot believe how much data is on this stuff. They looked at a study at pubertal females they did some mouse models and then they correlated it with some human studies as it turns out, the more DEHP DEHP that you’re exposed to you have more anxiety and depression.

Eric Rieger
Golly Man, what a it’s a large manifest of a bunch of different things. And I don’t know that you can escape flexible plastics. We just you just said if PVC were flexible, then maybe would have it actually was reminded, as I thought about that in our last home. When we, when they ran the cold and hot when we built the home, they ran flexible tubing on off of a big spool blue for cold and red for hot because they don’t run pipe through foundations the same way anymore. No down here in Texas.

Ken Brown
oh, because it shifts.

Eric Rieger
Yeah, it can shift

Ken Brown
it can bust yeah

Eric Rieger
So many times they run it overhead through, you know, the whatever they call it the attic or whatever. But essentially, that’s flexible plastic. And if you’re drinking water from home, it’s going to I would imagine it’s leaching in there, correct? That’s how it’s happening.

Ken Brown
Well, once again, the CDC looked at people and almost everybody has the metabolites in the urine. It is and it’s not it’s worldwide. Um, alright, so we’ll finish up with I mean, clearly it’s already scary, right. So…

Eric Rieger
Yeah, definitely.

Ken Brown
There’s also the article goes on to a molecular reasons why how it messes with the liver and it messes with the heart. And, oh, it’s linked to autism. The autism and they Kind of briefly talked about it in this article and fortunately, our graduate student knew that I’d be more interested. So she sent me a follow up article recently published even, I mean, these things are all being published like a week ago, like we get them in, like pre transcript. She’s amazing. And so she sent me another article that actually talked about this specific thing. But now it’s right in our wheelhouse, right in our wheelhouse. So don’t be scared. Because now we know that we have this ubiquitous plasticizer that clearly is very toxic. We know it’s toxic, we know what’s there. And it’s used in healthcare all over the place.

Eric Rieger
Everywhere.

Ken Brown
So right now there is a movement currently going to try and get rid of this, we know that it’s bad. So over the past 10 years, people have been trying to do this, but since it’s everywhere, it’s gonna take some time to get out of there. And it’s sad because as you know, sometimes medicine is not the fastest to change for some of this stuff, because of contracts and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So we’re always trying to find so right now there is this movement to try and use PVC free alternative polymers like polyethylene. So there’s hope we’re moving away from it. So when you said, Well, what, what can we do, but while we’re here, I’m going to try and help you out with this. So I wanted to dig deeper in this because we know that autism is such a hot topic. If you’re a parent with a child with the autism spectrum disorder, ASD, then you’ll do anything to try and try and help…

Eric Rieger
It’s your kid.

Ken Brown
It happens to be a passion of mine, or at least a passion in the sense that my aha moments of seeing some of my autistic patients improve mentally when we went when we fixed our gut. Yeah, I mean, I see it and so I’m very passionate about this. Here’s what’s really neat, this article. I mean, I just, it’s almost like some of these. It’s, it’s like, I want to go and hug some of these scientists. So the whole article goes into how DEHP predisposes and leads to autism spectrum disorder related to drumroll. The microbiome.

Eric Rieger
Microbiome!

Ken Brown
Yea.

Eric Rieger
Nice!

Ken Brown
So we’ve we’ve these articles hit on everything that I love to talk about.

Eric Rieger
So heal or protect yourself and the damage DEHP by taking care of your gut.

Ken Brown
So this is so cool. So studies have shown that exposure in utero, in utero to toxic chemicals can lead to dysbiosis in the fetus. Dysbiosis by definition is basically a change in the microbiome, but not for the better. So you can have too much of one thing not enough of another, you don’t have enough diversity. dysbiosis by definition just means it’s not right. your microbiome your microbiome is super important. In fact, a recent study showed that children with autism spectrum disorder had higher concentrations of DEHP DEHP, but more importantly, they also looked at fecal samples of these kids with autism, and they had higher levels of a metabolite called P kressel.

Eric Rieger
P Kressel?

Ken Brown
This is how dialed in, we’re getting into this. Now. Now we’re talking about something that they looked at these autistic kids. And they said you have more of this plasticizer in your body. In addition to that, we’re going to look at your microbial content, you’ve got dysbiosis, and you’ve got this one metabolite called p kressel. So as it turns out, when you have this dysbiosis, the bacterial composition can either be harmful or beneficial. So these scientists show that the link between bacterial metabolites and neuro developmental disorders are taking place. So they actually then use that knowledge, took it to mice, gave them DEHP, and then analyzed their microbiome. So the whole shift went from, oh, it does all this end organ damage. So I just told you that if you gavage yourself, you’re gonna end up with testicular atrophy, I just told you, you’re gonna have endocrine disruption, you’re going to end up with liver problems, heart problems. Now these guys are looking at it going well, wait a minute, we’re exposed to this all the time. Why do some people get it? Why do some people don’t?

Eric Rieger
Yeah, they’re controlling their inflammatory.

Ken Brown
They’re controlling their inflammatory process. Super cool. And so what they did is the most important thing, when they looked at these mice is that the older mice with a more diverse microbiome were completely protected from the effects of DEHP.

Eric Rieger
Interesting.

Ken Brown
The most important factor was that and they showed that there has been studies in autism spectrum disorder, where an overabundance of a Clostridium species was linked to autism. So possibly by not having the age protection where you developed a diverse microbiome your entire life, and not having a full microbial diversity to do the post biotic metabolism, of these in virus mental toxins. That may be why when we expose children to certain things that could turn on the epigenetic phenomenon, or more importantly, these bacteria are now producing this P kressel. Which then shows that they’re being exposed to DEHP, which could lead to autism spectrum disorder.

Eric Rieger
Wow.

Ken Brown
It’s the first time I’ve come across an article like that. I’m like, holy cow, how in the world that I just read this article on plasticizers. And she found this incredible article linking the microbiome to this. I mean, I mean, this is, I mean, it’s really hard to not geek out on this. We know that the bacteria your microbiome, actually does an incredible job of breaking down toxic metabolites of all kinds of things, including DEHP. Now we call these toxic metabolites and we call these different things. xeno biotics, that’s spelled with an x xeno biotics are molecules that get through your body and then your own microbial background, your mind microbiome breaks them down. And if you have an appropriate microbiome, then you can, your body can be exposed to some stuff and handle it, right. But when we start exposing kids in utero, you’re stacking the deck against them right off the bat. That’s what’s super scary. So one of the things is that you can show a dose dependent process where they even took these mice that were that were impervious to some of the effects of it. But at some point, the bacteria got overwhelmed. And then the DEHP cause dysbiosis and then they got sick. So once you took enough of it in, then you couldn’t keep up with it. It’s really I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s dose dependent. So you can’t just say, Oh, I’m gonna let my microbiome do everything. You still have to realize that at some point, you can overwhelm it. So just keep that in mind. So taking together DEHP can be neutralized in a mature diverse microbiome. So if p kressel is produced this has been linked to autism and they showed an overabundance of a particular Clostridium will actually convert and they even went so far as to show we’ve determined that the amino acid tyrosine will be converted by p Kressall by this Clostridium species. Whoa! Thik stuff. I’m sorry, I threw all this at you, but I just got super geeked out when I was reading it, and I just found it fascinating. So just to summarize, flexible plastic like that straw that I tried to kill you with has a compound in it called DEhp. DEHP gets converted to D NOP! D NOP. And that hurts you. And what we do know is that most of the end organ damage happens because of oxidative stress.

Eric Rieger
Wow. But you can control that.

Ken Brown
We can control that. Yeah. How would you control it?

Eric Rieger
Well, you you hit on a few things. You want to make certain that your microbiome is certainly well diverse.

Ken Brown
One!

Eric Rieger
You could do that with a reasonable diet, you can do that with making certain shift good exercise you could also do that by giving your body the appropriate level of polyphenols that it would help make that happen. Just so happens Atrantil I think, would be a great proanthocyanidin polyphenol to to assist in that. You also want to be able to handle the stress load. So handling the stress load the oxidative stress. Allowing your body to not be overstimulated from stress would be something that you could do to to do that. So polyphenols, by some level, handled that directly but not having your body overstressed to be something that you would want a healthy endocannabinoid system. And that way you could handle stress and oxidative stress wouldn’t play into more of a cascading effect that turns into an inflammatory process for your organs and tissues. So starting with those three things diet polyphenol intake exercise and actually four CBD, I think would be a good start.

Ken Brown
Yeah. You’re exactly right. So while we’re on it, one of the things I’m super proud of, is that

Eric Rieger
Oh, look at that.

Ken Brown
We have the KBMD health subscription box. We do. Let’s unbox it. This is this month box just arrived Sarah Jean sent this to me. I actually subscribe to my own box. And now you’re gonna fairlight I’m gonna let you just pick the ingredients out here. This is the box. Your health has arrived. We’ll start out with our main products here. So basically, the box comes like this. My kids were making fun of me because the writing is too small according to them, and I need to make bullet points but I really want to get my point across has

Eric Rieger
Oh yea there are a lot of words on there.

Ken Brown
There’s a lot of words but basically I explain why we have each item in this box. So I’ll let you hand me an item. First one, so every single month. So what happens is this particular box is well over $270 and you are almost $300, I think in this particular box, and you end up getting it $147. So we’re able to get, oh my gosh, speaking of real quick, there’s that 23 year old young woman that got a liver transplant from taking a supplement here in Dallas.

Eric Rieger
Yeah, but they’re trying to attribute it to that supplement.

Ken Brown
They’re trying to attribute it to a supplement. But the bottom line is if she got it off Amazon, you don’t even know if it’s actually coming from the actual supplier. Anybody can do that. So so basically the first ingredient here Atrantil my baby, we know that it’s good for gut health, but the polyphenols in it have actually multiple articles have shown about how it decreases reactive oxygen species leading to improved oxidative stress and we just got done talking about that. Here’s the beauty of it when you pair this with megaspore biotic I love megaspore because that’s the one probiotic which has been shown to be able to reach the colon. Well, as it turns out, the megaspore feeds on the polyphenols and they send signals out to increase the diversity. If you want to learn more about that we had Kiren Krishnin, Krishnin?,

Eric Rieger
Krishnin. Yeah,

Ken Brown
Krishnin on the show where he got into geeky detail about that. That’s fascinating. So we’re going to increase the microbial diversity. We’ve got some polyphenol intake, those two go together. I’m a huge fan. We just got done talking about tea right? Well, we’re gonna put some peak tea in this month and the reason why Peak tea is awesome is it can be hot or cold. But here, they actually show on the back, I love this, they show the caffeine, polyphenol and then any other ingredients. So in this case, this one is Jasmine, where they got some L theanine in there because of the jasmine tea. So the polyphenol content in here so once again, this is synergistic, polyphenol from the tea polyphenol from Atrantil, and I love this omocha turmeric and ginger. So turmeric has been shown to decrease the inflammatory process in almost all diseases

Eric Rieger
Correct.

Ken Brown
What I love about this is the amla and the Ginger that are in it. The amla works as a prebiotic to feed the microbiome so that now your megaspore biotic can proliferate, the prebiotic has been shown to help with insulin resistance. Ultimately d3. I told you I just got my blood checked and I’m low and D, vitamin D. That just tells me it’s crazy. I’m out in the sun.

Eric Rieger
Yes.

Ken Brown
I eat a good diet.

Eric Rieger
You should be converting.

Ken Brown
Well, one of the reasons why is look, we’re always inside we’re never being exposed to ourselves. So most all I would say almost all my patients when I checked their their vitamin D levels, they’re low. So vitamin D has been shown to mitigate the inflammatory process. It’s been really good in this in the field of IV. I’ll come back to this What else we got?

Eric Rieger
Let’s see here.

Ken Brown
Ah, the jigsaw Alaskan cod liver oil so cod liver has high levels of omega three and dha. We now know that a recent study just came out as a gastroenterologist that showed that high levels of omega three intake actually improve the chances of polyps developing into cancer. They looked at cancer markers. So from a gastrointestinal health that’s one of the reasons why we why I want to encourage that. I like it because the omega threes have been shown to be beneficial in a lot of different reasons. Most it always came back with cardiology, but now we’re seeing that it’s beneficial in the brain. Speaking of the brain, my Zen blend,

Eric Rieger
Yes, mushrooms,

Ken Brown
Mushrooms. So this has a series of mushrooms and we’re going to we’re going to end up having some more mushroom experts on the mushrooms here. Actually, if you listen to Joe Rogan’s podcast where he had what’s his name on?

Eric Rieger
Oh, my goodness, the mycologist

Ken Brown
The mycologist. Super smart dude.

Eric Rieger
Stone Star Wars no not Star Wars we’ll find it

Ken Brown
Yeah, I forgotten but he gets into these…

Eric Rieger
Paul Stamets!

Ken Brown
Paul Stamets. That’s right. He was talking about why you want to take certain mushrooms that increase BDNF

Eric Rieger
Yes they do.

Ken Brown
These actually increased BDNF which means that you have neuro cognitive healing. I take my Zen blend when I go to bed at night because it calms me down and I realized that those are micronutrients that are there. And then of course we have the KB MD health CBD. If you become a member of the box you get significant discounts on the KB MD health CBD go to KB MD health calm and

Eric Rieger
You can find the box and CBD.

Ken Brown
Yeah. So the reason why I say this last thing, what I love about member box, the company that we’ve teamed up with with Stephen Izel and Sarah Jean and Danny and everybody. So Sarah Jean said, I really want you to consider putting in some raw coconut oil. Like Like, I’m not much of a chef or I’m not like to cook but that’s not really our brand. I mean, my brand is really, I as you can see, I’m going to increase your microbiome diversity. I’m going to decrease your inflammatory process. I’m going to protect you from the evils of flexible plastics. She said well, we got caught contacted by this company called dignity raw coconut oil.

Eric Rieger
Okay.

Ken Brown
I went into their story and I was like Count me in. First of all, you cook a lot with coconut oil, right?

Eric Rieger
We do.

Ken Brown
Yeah. So this is a raw coconut oil. It’s their bottling source the way they get it, they don’t damage it at all. It’s like cold pressed. I don’t understand all the issues about it. This is this is what sold me This is so cool. The guys that started this company, they purposely built the plant in one of the poorest Filipino communities. And what they did is and they realized that they could probably make more money doing in other ways. They hire local people. And their main thing is they donate to their vision is that if they can give work to the local people, that it will stop the sex slave trade. They still donate money.

Eric Rieger
It’s awesome

Ken Brown
but they put the money where their mouth is?

Eric Rieger
Yeah.

Ken Brown
They built a manufacturing plant in the poorest part in some remote rural Filipino village. And they’re giving people jobs.

Eric Rieger
It’s very Robo Hendrickson of them

Ken Brown
Very, yes.

Eric Rieger
Non toxic charity, mobilization of liberation for the people that are working there. That’s awesome.

Ken Brown
Robo Hendrickson is one of our guests that came on and he was talking about a non toxic charity where basically you can’t just throw money at something because it can be more toxic to the people you’re trying to help.

Eric Rieger
Absolutely. So they came up with the full bucket health situation this sounds very similar

Ken Brown
Full bucket health so these guys shout out to dignity raw coconut oil company and and you know, thank you for member box for finding people like this because I initially was like, I don’t know about that. Then I’ll read their story. And I was like, Yeah, absolutely.

Eric Rieger
They’re making a difference, not just in your health…

Ken Brown
Sign up for the KBMD health box. You end up helping communities like this.

Eric Rieger
That’s awesome.

Ken Brown
And you can go on their marketplace at member box and you can add it to your box. Or you can, you know, do this. I think that’s so cool. So it’s I’m very, very proud and the reason why I wanted to show this one last, coconut oil has been shown to help with the microbiome coconut oil has medium chain triglycerides, which go up to your brain, and your brain can use it directly as fuel. So there’s a lot of beneficial reasons to do this. Mainly, yeah, yeah, I do want to help people and I don’t want the sex slave trafficking to go on. And if it’s creating jobs and doing that right on!

Eric Rieger
Yeah, man, that’s awesome.

Ken Brown
Isn’t that cool?

Eric Rieger
Fantastic. Man, what a….

Ken Brown
There’s a lot.

Eric Rieger
What a show today!

Ken Brown
I’m sorry. You know what, it’s, I always have all this stuff. And I want to talk about we’re going to get back to having some cool guests on I think next week, we got something really cool.

Eric Rieger
We do! If you like to eat food, but you want to eat healthy or without triggering something next week is going to be a treat, especially if you’re in the North Texas area, but really for anybody.

Ken Brown
Yeah, so next week show is going to be really cool. We’re gonna change it up. I have a couple wonderful guests on that are going to talk about well… How to

Eric Rieger
How To Cook without without any of the things that may be triggering like gluten and nut allergies different things like that they these two women have got it down it’s a mother and daughter.

Ken Brown
Oh really? Yeah.

Eric Rieger
And you can look them up if you want to before they get here unrefined bakery.

Ken Brown
They don’t grind up any flexible plastics and put it in their food do they?

Eric Rieger
Not on most. No, I don’t believe they do.

Ken Brown
So they have the testicular hypertrophy muffin.

Eric Rieger
To control your man. Have him have some of this muffin. No i don’t think that’s what they do. In fact I think that’s, that’s not at all what they do, but they do make some incredible desserts, foods, breads, etc. for people who don’t traditionally get an opportunity to eat foods and breads and and foods, but muffins, and treats and snacks. It’s really cool.

Ken Brown
So I want to encourage everyone please, we have a we have a great time finding a lot of literature. I get feedback all the time. From we’re getting some feedback from some really like remote places now it’s really cool. Yeah, hopefully we’ll get a Filipino following now that we’ve got I want to find some people that are actually working in that working in that manufacturing plant. But please share, tell you can look at us on all the typical platforms.

Eric Rieger
Yes you can but I will encourage everyone now that we have the new website up you can go to KBMDhealth.com or to get directly to the page that features the podcast like and share us from gutcheckproject.com. It will take you directly to the show all of our shows, you’ll see see all episodes underneath the picture of of Ken and I and under each episode, I’m trying to make certain that that they add show notes and links to everything that we’re talking about that’s pertinent so from today’s show, for instance, will feature the box probably features something specific about dignity coconut oil, as well as how to protect yourself from inflammatory processes from DEHP Atrantil links etc. You’ll be able to go straight to the show notes and find things from our guests how to find Connect. So gut check project.com like and share, like and share like and share. And wow that was…

Ken Brown
What can you can you give a quick summary of this podcast we covered a lot I feel like I did all I did way too much talking. I’m sick of hearing myself.

Eric Rieger
A quick summary of this podcast. Let’s see here. So smoking marijuana cigarettes may actually increase 2-A G. The weather in North Texas changes pretty quickly. The next thing is is flexible plastics may be causing you inflammatory processes, especially if you’re a kid. So the best thing that you can do for yourself since they’re everywhere, is make certain that your body is armed with the appropriate foods, exercise and polyphenols to protect yourself from the inflammatory processes from going out of control. Otherwise, you can get really sick and outside of that if you don’t like hard decisions on trying to find products that will supplement your diet to keep you healthy KBMD Box.

Ken Brown
Third party tested. Third party tested vetted. We get the science behind it that’s what’s really cool.

Eric Rieger
Yeah if you wish you had a doctor walking with you to help you pick out supplements and that didn’t waste your money. And that actually worked. And they were from reputable sources. kbMdbox.com kB Md box.com. You can also find the link at KBMdhealth.com. And you’ll see the iconic box down at the bottom right.

Ken Brown
That’s awesome. And we always want to thank our live in studio audience so everybody! Thank you from coming.

Eric Rieger
If you want to know why there’s a lot of a rumble and why. Why Brown just sound like is far away from the microphone. All he did was manipulate his microphone so he could pick up his computer speaker for his audience.

Ken Brown
I’ve been wanting to Do that for so long. Press that button.

Eric Rieger
All be it funny. It’s the worst reason ever.

Ken Brown
Do you like how I waved to the studio audience?

Eric Rieger
I do. There’s no one here.

Ken Brown
Oh my gosh, I forgot to say this. But Paul, make sure that you put this in in the show notes in the beginning. Remember, I am a real doctor Eric is a real crna. We do do real medicine. But this show is not intended to diagnose or treat. Please, if you have any issues like rectal bleeding, go to our website, KBMd health.com. Download the E book, learn about it, but make sure that you talk to your doctor about it. And also if you have that weird rash. Well, this is not what the shows about this shows for education and fun. And sometimes it’s fun. Sometimes it’s educational. Sometimes it’s just me rambling, which is what this one was.

Eric Rieger
Yeah, we just want to bring attention to things that you can investigate for yourself but not meant to treat or diagnose certainly go and seek out professional help if you have an ailment. So that’s Episode 28

Ken Brown
Episode 28 in the books, thank you so much, and when Once again, please hit us up. Tell us what you want to hear about. We will find the experts on it.

Eric Rieger
Yes. and tune in next week because we have a great show next week with some people who actually know a lot about what it is that they do.

Ken Brown
Right on .

Eric Rieger
All right on episode 28. Thank you, Gut Check Project like and share, we’ll talk to you soon.

Ken Brown
Bye.