Top 10 Most Harmful Foods That Wreck Your Gut!

You're not what you eat. You are what you're able to digest and what your gut bacteria do with what you eat. Many people believe the brain runs the body, but the real command center may actually be the gut. It directs your immune system, your hormones, and even your mood. And while we do our best to take care of our health, we may be unknowingly hurting it by destroying the delicate ecosystem inside our gut with the very foods that we eat. Hello, health champions. Today, we're going to talk about how incredibly important our gut is and the 10 worst foods that destroy it. And here's the countdown in no particular order. Number 10 is processed meats. And these are things like hot dogs and bacon and sausages. And one of the big problems is that they contain nitrates and nitrites, which can combine with proteins and turn into nitrocylamines, which is a carcinogen. And it's not the nitrates and nitrites in themselves. It's the fact that they can combine under high heat and under acidic conditions. They can make these nitrocymines. So either if you have really, really strong stomach acid, which you actually need to break down protein foods, or the very worst part is if you cook them under very high heat. Now you can form these carcinogenic compounds. So the way to avoid this is to cook them under lower heat. So one of the worst things, for example, would be to deep-fry bacon, to toss it into a container with really, really hot oil. That's not a good idea. If you cook it slower, you're not going to develop so many of these bad compounds. Now a lot of people have heard about this, but what most people don't realize is this is not unique to processed meats. Even plant food have these nitrates and nitrites, and they have some amount of protein. So they can also form nitrocymines, but they form much less, and they have other things in them. Plants have antioxidants and polyphenols and things that offset this effect. So if you're going to eat processed meats, and if you're going to be grilling or cooking on height, it's a really good idea to make it just a part of a larger meals where you get some healthy nutrients and some antioxidants in there as well. And cooking food in general with really high heat can also produce something called heterocyclic amines, or polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. There's a mouthful for you. But basically all it means is that these are chemicals that will severely irritate or damage the gut lining, which is of course what we're trying to protect. Another problem with these processed meats is that they often have other low quality ingredients in them. They might have MSG or chemicals or preservatives or fillers or sugar. So just be very selective. Process meats are not necessarily bad if they're processed at a high quality level. But we really have to understand how critically important the gut is, and we're just scraping the tip of the iceberg on this topic. So it's not about gut symptoms. A lot of people know that when my gut is upset, I feel really, really bad. We kind of get that. But it goes so far beyond symptoms. And we also all know that yes, the gut handles digestion and absorption. It's really important because everything we put down there has to end up in the body, and it's the gut that takes care of that. But it goes so much further. So you have some hardware, you have the tube, you can make some enzymes, you can break things down. But the ecosystem, the biome, the trillions of bacteria that live there, they digest the stuff that you can't digest. And they make a lot of those nutrients available to you. For example, few people realize that your gut bacteria actually makes vitamins for you, like vitamin B1, B2, B6, B12, and vitamin K2. If you have a healthy gut, they'll make those for you. And in many other ways, if you have a healthy gut, they can activate the nutrients. They will repackage them for you. They'll process them to something that becomes a usable form. And you might be eating all the right foods, but if you don't have the good balance of gut bacteria, you may not be able to utilize those nutrients. And another piece that's critical to our understanding of the gut is that 70% of your immune system lives in your gut. It's called the galt. The gut associated lymphoid tissue, that's for the vast majority of your blood cells, your white blood cells, your immune cells live. So if you imagine having the inside of your gut at the microscopic level, it has something called villi to increase the surface area, the area of absorption. And there's a few different layers here, and you have enzymes and different things in these little pockets. But then here, it's like the basement membrane. And then in here is where most of your immune system lives. Like I said, the vast majority of your immune cells in the body are living there. And why is that? Because everything that you put into your mouth, that you swallow that gets into this tube, it's a foreign substance. It's supposed to become the body, but it's not that yet. It has to be screened and tested and accounted for. And that's why you have this immune system here. So if anything gets true, that's not supposed to. Your white blood cells get the galt, gets the first sample and can process and act on it very quickly. And then of course, on the other side of this is where your gut bacteria are. And there'll be a lot of them in the pockets. And there'll be a lot of them out in the lumen, in the fecal matter. And when there is a good balance of these bacteria, when you have healthy bacteria, then these bacteria train the immune system to behave, to be calm and efficient. We create harmony. But if we get a lot of pathogenic bacteria, if we get dysbiosis, meaning an imbalance and overgrowth of the bad ones, now we create chaos. Because now this immune system is constantly reacting and overreacting to all the stuff that's going on out in the lumen. And the more chaos we have, the more inflammation and the more allergies and sensitivities we get. And another huge portion of your well-being and your health is the fact that 90% of the serotonin is made in the gut. And that's your feel-good neurotransmitter. So a lot of your mood, a lot of how you feel is actually determined by the amount of healthy, the amount of balance that you have in your gut flora. So this area down in your gut is often called your second brain because you have a lot of nervous tissue. You have, it's called the enteric nervous system. And so you have your enteric immune system, you have your gut microbiome. And in a sense, sometimes you can say that this second brain is actually controlling the first brain because the first brain is responding. It's a two-way communication and depending on what goes on down here, the first brain, your mood, your awareness will depend and respond a lot to what's going on down there. So you can also think of it as the fact that you share your brain with your bugs. And interestingly, it's really like you have two separate systems. It's in close in a separate compartment in your gut. And it contains about the same amount of bacteria, about 40 trillion as you have cells in your body. And it's like it's own little ecosystem, it's own little universe that's producing chemicals, that's processing things, and signaling your brain just like your body does. Food number nine that will destroy your gut is low fat, pasteurized dairy in all its forms. And one of the reasons is that it contains something called an A1 beta casing. That's a protein that most people handle quite poorly. It can turn in to something called beta, casomorphine seven, which is something that will dramatically increase the risk of food reactions and of inflammation and leaky gut. And the reason that low fat dairy is worse than full fat dairy is that when we remove the fat, we remove something that could offset that irritation a little bit. So we increase the ratio of A1 to fat, we're removing about 90% of the fat, which is a lot of the fat that we have. acted as a buffer. And now there is less of a buffer. So there's more of the milk that is this irritating protein, but also it can get to the tissues to irritate them much faster. Now here's the thing about pasteurization. A lot of people have troubled adjusting dairy. There's so many sensitivities and lactose and tolerances and so forth, but nature didn't totally mess up when it made milk. It is the primary food for all mammal babies. However, when we pasteurize it, we destroy a bunch of things that are naturally occurring in the milk. So in raw whole fresh milk, like in mother's milk, there is lipase and lactase. Those are enzymes. Those are live things that help us digest the fat and break down that lactose. And milk also has something called phosphatase. That's an enzyme that is necessary for us to absorb calcium and phosphorus. So you've all seen the commercials where they say milk does a body good. And they're referring to that if you drink a lot of milk, you will have strong bones. What they forget to tell you is that if you pasteurize the milk, you're destroying the phosphatase and you can only absorb a fraction of the calcium and the phosphorus that's actually going to become the bone. And then pasteurization also destroys the protease, the protein enzyme to break down protein that would help us actually break down this A1 casing. And furthermore, pasteurization destroys all the probiotics, the lactobacillus and the bifidobacteriums and all the stuff that would actually help support a healthy gut, the healthy gut flora if we didn't pasteurize it. So raw milk is kind of a health food. And if you didn't pasteurize it, if you take people who have a dairy allergy and you give them raw dairy, about 95% of them would do perfectly well, even if they have dairy allergies and lactose intolerance, etc. Now, there's still going to be some people who have extreme sensitivities that can't tolerate it. And of course, another problem is that in most states, it's illegal to distribute and sell raw milk, which is very unfortunate, but they do distribute and sell as pet milk sometimes. So if you can get a hold of that, then you can get some for your pet. And what you're looking for, obviously, is whole milk. They will never take the fat out, so it'll be whole milk. And you want it raw. And preferably, you want to get something from a cow that's called an A2 cow. And that makes, doesn't make. There are two types of this casing protein. So there's A1 and there's A2. And some cows make only A1, some make a mixture, and some cows only make A2, which does not create this beta caseomorphine. Seven, that's that irritant. So it doesn't guarantee that you will tolerate dairy, but it would increase the chances dramatically. And if there's a little bit of leftover after your pet has had their share, then maybe they'll let you have some. And food number eight are healthy processed foods that can destroy your gut. And these are things like granola bars with tons of sugar and grain in them. There'll be yogurt cups. They're a full of sugar and stabilizers and emulsifiers and flavorings. And also these seed and grain milks, the alternatives to dairy, like oatmeal, and soy milk, and almond milk, and the list goes on and on. And they may not be too terrible, but you have to look at what else do they put in there. Because very often, these are just marketed as healthy. They put millions of dollars behind them to make you feel like, hey, this is a healthier alternative. But they're often full of sugar and seed oils and emulsifiers. Things to improve the consistency and stability. And we'll talk about all these three later in the video here. And oftentimes plant-based is used like this trigger word that immediately people think that it's healthy as long as it's plant-based. Well, I'm not four or against plant-based. I think there's all sorts of good food. But you want to know that very often they're raised, they're grown with glyphosate and other pesticides, and then they're processed with chemicals, all things that will hurt your guts. And the worst thing about this category is that most people think of them as healthy. They think that, oh, let me get myself something really healthy. Like, let me really take care of myself. And then you get something that really isn't helping. Number seven is emulsifiers and additives, such as polysorbate, adi, caroginin, xanthin gum. And some of these are more synthetic and others are more natural. The problem is that they are emulsifiers. They act as a go-between between water and fat. And that's their purpose in food. So they stabilize food, but in these properties that they have, they also disrupt fat layers, membranes, and things in the body. So there's a protective layer in your gut that acts as a barrier in addition to the cell membrane. So you have the cell membrane, and then on the outside of that, there's a mucus layer that's like a slimy thing that's constantly renewed that protects the cell layer from the stuff in the gut. And a lot of these things that we eat that destroy the gut do that by actually disrupting that protective mucus layer. And polysorbate, adi, is one of those things that will weaken this mucus layer and that's kind of aligning. And in doing that, now it allows the bacteria to get much closer to the cell membranes. And if there's any gaps or any leaky gut at all, now these bacteria may be able to cross that barrier. And now what happens is they trigger the immune cells and they trigger inflammation. And then we look at carigena, which is supposedly a natural thing. Well, it doesn't make it that much better because it can also disrupt this mucus, but it also mimics bacteria. So now your immune system, remember all those immune cells in the galt system. Now they're going to think that these carigena is an actual infection, and it's going to start with a response. And of course, trigger immune cells and inflammation and so on. Number six is alcohol. And alcohol is a solvent. We use it as a solvent. So it's going to do all sorts of damage to the gut. It directly damages the enterocytes, which is the surface layer in your intestines. But it also interferes. It reduces the production of mucus or mucus. So now this protective layer that we talked about, it's going to get weaker. And one of the things that happen now, it's don't just with alcohol, but when this mucus layer gets thinner, now there is more endotoxin leakage of, especially something called LPS, lipopolisaccharides. And endotoxin is something that's, it's a toxin that's created within. It's created by your pathogenic bacteria. When they get too many of the bad guys, they're going to have nobody to keep them in check. And these endotoxins are going to be more abundant. And they're going to start leaking. And this is a big problem. This is going to trigger inflammation, but also very, very influential on our mood. So they did, they did a study where they injected people with this LPS, lipopolisaccharides. This, this tiny little injection straight into the bloodstream. So they bypass these protective mechanisms that we talk about. And within minutes, everyone who was injected showed clinical signs of depression. And that's just one more indication of how important our gut health is to our overall health. It's not just about breaking down food. It's about our well-being and our mood. Remember, we share this one brain with this ecosystem in our guts. Food number five, that destroy our gut is gluten, which we primarily find, not only, but in modern wheat, there's just an enormous amount of gluten. And it contains something called gliadin, which affects a protein called zonulin. And that increases leaky gut. And even though there are a lot of grains that have gluten, hybridized wheat, the modern form of wheat that is basically everything that's sold today can have up to 50 times times more gluten than the ancient grains. We're talking about rye or spelt or barley. They all have a tiny amount, but not nearly as much as modern wheat. The other thing to understand about gluten is that it's not a single thing. There are dozens or even hundreds of types of gluten, and they all have different epitopes. They have little handles on them that your immune system grabs onto and identifies. They all look different. It's not like your immune system recognizes the whole gluten molecule. It recognizes just one of these little attachment sites. Therefore, there can be cross reactions. You could eat corn, and corn could have one little epitope, and once your immune system is activated now, your immune system attacks corn, and it thinks that it's gluten. Or even worse, there could even be a gluten cross reactivity to your own cells. Once it gets really riled up and overactive, now you could develop autoimmunity. This gluten response starts attacking your own tissues. The extreme version, the strongest version of that is called celiacs disease. These are people who basically start bleeding if they have even one bite of something with gluten in it. But we have to understand that these are very, very common reactions, even when they're not as extreme as celiacs. Number four is artificial sweeteners. There's three of them, especially. That's the aspartame, the sucralose, and the acysulfame potassium. What these all have in common is that they interfere. They damage the beneficial bacteria. And whenever you reduce the beneficial bacteria, you are reducing the competition for the bad guys. The main ones that are damaged are called lactobacillus and bifidobacterium. Those are also the ones that you find in raw milk, but there are absent in pasteurized milk. And part of this process, what also happens is that there's these group of species of bacteria, not individual strains, but these groups. They're called fromicutes and bactyroidities. And they're supposed to be maintained in a certain ratio. And when we disrupt, when we skew that ratio too much, now we start changing the metabolic signaling in the body. So we find that once we have increased the ratio of fromicutes to bactyroidities, we see an increase in obesity and insulin resistance. So it's really, really ironic. It's really sad that people started using these artificial sweeteners to get away from sugar and to help them lose weight. And now they're disrupting their bacterial balance. So they're actually making it worse. They're getting fewer calories, they're getting fewer sugar spikes by avoiding sugar, but in exchange, they're actually changing their metabolic signaling and they're more than making up for it by eating other things. And one may be even more troublesome than the others that's aspartane because it breaks down into something called phenylalanine. And there's some people who can't process that very well called phenyl ketoneurics and that's why they have to put warning labels on anything with aspartane. But what this does is it creates an imbalance in the body where we're reducing the amount of the neurotransmitter serotonin, the feel good neurotransmitter. And as a result, now you're starting to see mood changes and you're getting cravings and digestive problems. So stay away from artificial sweeteners, especially these three. I can't tell you enough bad things about these. This is just what they do to the guts. So I think you're starting to see how important the gut and the microbiome is. But where does it all start? Well, the very first start is when we're born. When we are supposed to exit the vaginal canal, we are getting the most important meal of our lives because we're basically swimming through a culture, a vaginal culture that becomes the first bacteria that we have. And today, so many kids are born with cesarean section and we're using disinfectants and alcohol and we wash everything down. So the kids even born vaginally are deprived of a lot of that first meal. But then from that point on, the mother is giving you the bacteria as you grow. There's some in mother's milk and there's some on her skin and so forth. But here's the problem. There is such widespread use today of antibiotics, of pesticides, of chemicals, of junk food, all the stuff that we're talking about in this video that your mother's biome, your mother's bacterial diversity is being chipped away at. It's getting worse and worse. So your mom has less to give you and because these antibiotics, because this process sort of is inherited, it's passed on, then each generation gets a little bit worse. The more we use these antibiotics and pesticides and the worse, someone gets the less they have to give to the next generation. So your mom had less than her mom who had less than her mom and so forth. And at this point, we're about five generations into antibiotics and chemicals and junk food. And it turns out that you also inherit your DNA and your epigenetics, the expression of your DNA. And that sort of works the same way that through poor lifestyles and through environment, interference and nutritional deficiencies and stress, each generation gets a little bit worse of that DNA passed on. So there's a reason that we see this incredible uptick in autism and allergies and ADHD and so forth. But it's not a single thing. It's a lot of different things. Yes, I don't think that we should have 79 vaccines injected into us in our first few years of life. I'm not opposed to the idea of vaccines. I'm sure there is an appropriate place for it somewhere, but the way that we overuse it. And by the way, when you inject someone with a vaccine, you bypass the galt, the gut-associated lymphoid tissue. It's supposed to sample everything and build an immune system based on what comes into the body, but with vaccines, you're bypassing that. So that is one part in addition to what we talked about, the gut biome and the DNA and the nutritional status. So we have to start understanding that it's never one thing, but there is a lot of things. We have come so far away from nature's way. But we have to start understanding. We have to start learning about our bodies so that we can turn it around. And that's why I make these videos that are a little bit more than five minutes because you can't learn with just tidbits. Foo number three is seed oils. So processed vegetable oils made from canola, soybean, corn, sunflower, safflower. The problem with these oils, there are many problems, but the biggest is how they're made. When they make them, they process them with very high heat, very high pressure, and they even use chemical solvents like acetone to get that last bit of oil out of the grain or the seed. So what that means is that oil that looks so clean and sits there so tasteless and doesn't change even after years on the shelf, it's already bad when you buy it. It's already been damaged and destroyed. But then in addition to that, it has a lot of omega-6 fatty acids. So it's going to shift that omega-6 to omega-3 ratio in the body, which acts as a signaling mechanism. It turns your body more pro-inflammatory. It shifts that natural balance. But also because it's so high in omega-6 fatty acids, and omega-6s are poorly unsaturated. They're unsaturated in two places. That means that they're very sensitive. They're sensitive to heat, but they're also sensitive to light and oxygen. So when something becomes very easily oxidized, it's going to contribute more to oxidative stress, create more free radicals, and contribute more to inflammation that way. But then it's also going to contribute to something called lipid peroxides. And that's like a corrosive molecule that just grabs things as it runs around. And it's going to damage that gut lining pretty hard. And number two is fried food. And a lot of the reasons you want to avoid that, we went over on the previous slide. We talked about the omega-6s and how it's already damaged. But now when you fry food, you're going to hyperheat it, you're going to superheat it, and you're going to keep it sort of boiling and exposed to oxygen. So now it's going to be very, very high in oxidized oils and in ages, advanced glycation and products. And all of this is basically corrosive. It is going to be very damaging to those intestinal microvilli that I drew for you. And it's going to increase bile acid imbalances. So there's a certain type of fat and cholesterol that the body uses to make bile. And we have a lot of these damaged oils. Now we're going to reduce the quality of the bile. And we're going to increase the amount of gallbladder stress. And furthermore, most of the fried food is going to be coated in flour. That's how you get that crispy surface. And flour, of course, is modern wheat, which contains the gliadine that causes all these immune reactions. And food, number one, the damage you got is sugar and processed foods, processed carbs and starches. And it's not that it's necessarily worse than all the other things we talked about, but it's so abundant, it's so prevalent, it's in everything. In most western countries now, processed foods and the white trash, white sugar, white flour and seed oils account for 50 to 60% of all the food that we eat, all the calories. So there are some bacteria and they're typically pathogenic, meaning they're evil, that love sugar. They love simple sugars. And all of this processed foods quickly breaks down into simple sugars, the monosaccharides and the disaccharides. So you're going to selectively feed these pathogens, these sugar loving bacteria. And you're going to feed yeast, which just loves sugar. And some of these bacteria, some examples would be Candida, causing yeast overgrowth, Candida albicans and also Clostridium difficile, C-diff. But these foods, of course, are going to drag metabolic problems. They're going to cause insulin resistance, which leads to a low grade chronic inflammation, which will increase intestinal permeability or leaky gut. And because we're going to jack up the blood sugar, the blood glucose, we're going to increase advanced glycation and products, which are corrosive damaging chemicals that cause tissue damage. And also what sugar does is it drives fermentation. So with yeast and fermentation and sugar, you basically have a little brewery down in your gut, and you're just constantly driving inflammation and decay. If you enjoyed this video, you're going to love that one. 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