How Humans Heal

#169 Getting Your Microbiome Back on Track 0

Weekly Wellness Wisdom Newsletter: HTTPS://DOCTORDONI.COM/WWW

Additional Resources:

If you want to work on your gut health and microbiome you may want to sign up for my Heal Leaky Gut Program (https://doctordoni.com/leaky-gut-program) where I teach you how to heal leaky gut with my proven protocol.

If you’re interested in learning more about my approach to healing HPV you can find my new HPV Recovery Guide here (https://doctordoni.com/ddpp/hpv-guide/).

If you are tired of this virus and are really committed to erasing it from your life forever, you can sign up for my Say Goodbye to HPV 12-Week Program here (https://drdoni.lpages.co/hpv-12-week-program/).

You can also sign up for my Stress Warrior Program here (https://doctordoni.com/stress-program).

Also, if you want to learn more about how to recover from stress so that you can get back to feeling your best, you may want to read my book Master Your Stress Reset Your Health (https://doctordoni.com/master-your-stress/). In the book, I also share the quiz I developed to help you identify how stress has affected you specifically by knowing your Stress Type. You can also take this Stress Type Quiz online (https://doctordoni.com/quiz/stress-quiz/)

Disclosure: Some of the links in this post are product links and affiliate links and if you go through them to make a purchase I will earn a commission at no cost to you. Keep in mind that I link these companies and their products because of their quality and not because of the commission I receive from your purchases. The decision is yours, and whether or not you decide to buy something is completely up to you.

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Jul 20, 2023

In today's episode we're going to be talking about the gut microbiome. Why it's important, how to know what's going on with your microbiome and how to optimize it.

The microbiome consists of microbes that are both helpful and potentially harmful for us and our bodies. Most of these organisms are symbiotic, meaning they and us benefit at the same time, but some are pathogenic, which are those that cause trouble, produce toxins, and increase inflammation.

When we are healthy, both symbiotic and pathogenic microorganisms coexist without problems in a perfect balance and without causing us to get sick. The problem comes when this perfect balance is disrupted, causing our metabolic and immune function to be negatively affected.

That’s why it is so important to identify and to get your microbiome back on track.

Today we will focus mainly on the gut biome, although it is now well known that it is important to have a healthy balance of microbes in all different areas of our bodies, including the skin and vagina. They all relate back to the gut, so let’s focus there.

What Is the Gut Microbiome?

I'm thinking that a lot of you probably have heard about the gut microbiome, also known as the biome or the gut microbiota. Essentially, it's referring to the microorganisms that are living in our digestive tract.

This group of microbes living inside of us fluctuate on a daily, weekly and monthly basis based on our diet, physical activity, medications we take, toxins exposure and stress exposure.

The important thing here is to try to have a healthy balance of this microbes as much as possible. When there's a healthy balance, the good bacteria counterbalance the potentially harmful bacteria. When our microbiome gets out of balance, it’s either that there are not enough good bacteria, or too much of the potentially harmful bacteria. And that’s when health issues start.

Research is showing that if the gut microbiome gets out of balance, it can increase the risk of many health issues including infections (bacterial, yeast, and viral), autoimmunity conditions, metabolic disorders, even weight gain, anxiety, depression, menstrual irregularities, PCOS, endometriosis, fertility issues, osteoporosis, kidney diseases, heart disease, diabetes, and dementia. Having a healthy balance of microbes in the gut is essential for our health.

What Is This Gut Microbiome Doing for Us?

As you might suspect from the various health issues that I just mentioned, the microbiome communicates and supports our immune system and help protect us from infections and autoimmunity (which is when our immune system gets confused and starts trying to protect us from our own self) so, by having a good balance of microbes in your gut, you're helping your immune system stay on track and protect you.

These microbes also communicate with our nervous system via the Vagus nerve and other mechanisms. These guys are sending messages to our brain and our nervous system, they're communicating about what's happening down in our gut, they can cause us to crave some kinds of foods in order to feed them. They can affect our mood, our memory and our focus.

They also make certain nutrients like B vitamins (including activating B12), vitamin K and short chain fatty acids (which are protective to the colon). Furthermore, they participate in making neurotransmitters such as GABA and can influence the production of serotonin and dopamine in our nervous system. What we're learning from research is that they help us recover from stress and toxin exposure!

As you know I specialize in how humans are affected by stress and what we can do to recover from stress, and so I would say that optimizing the microbiome has a huge impact on our stress recovery.

How Do We Maintain a Healthy Microbiome?

So, we now know they're important, but how do we take care of them? It’s like having a pet, you must know how to feed them and how to take care of them so that they can be healthy.

What we eat is what feeds our gut bacteria. Of course, they're living in our gut so what we swallow is going to influence them and what's going to feed them potentially. Our gut bacteria can ferment foods what we as humans are unable to digest, like fiber or complex starches for example. They can ferment fruits, vegetables, grains, nuts, seeds.

Foods and fibers that feed our microbiome are called “prebiotics.”

Fructooligosaccharides in garlic, onions, leeks, asparagus, artichokes, kale, dandelion, as well as bananas, contain the highest amount of prebiotics, or super food, for our gut bacteria.

It’s important to know that it's possible to over feed your gut bacteria!

In fact, I would say that it is much more likely to overfeed your bacteria than to underfeed them. I see a higher percentage of patients with overgrowing bacteria rather than with too few bacteria. Going back to the pet analogy, we have to know how to feed our gut bacteria correctly.

Symptoms of overfeeding your gut bacteria include bloating, gas, cramping, bowel changes, weight gain, and burping. Consuming prebiotics in excess or eating too much fermented foods (yoghurt, sauerkraut, kimchi, miso, kombucha, etc.) can cause overgrowth.

We want that optimal amount and balance of good and bad gut bacteria, so just be aware and cautious and listen to your body. If you are consuming a lot of prebiotics, high fiber foods, fermented foods and you start to feel bloated or have bowel changes or gas, or even if you have infections (sinus, bladder, vaginal) or joint pain, inflammation, headaches, skin rashes, these are all symptoms that you may be overfeeding your gut bacteria.

How Can You Know if You’re Overfeeding Your Gut Microbiome?

What you can do is a stool analysis. For many years we have had stool cultures. The culture is when you send in a stool sample into the lab and they allow it to grow over several days. The problem with cultures is that some bacteria are anaerobic, so they don’t grow in a lab environment.

Then, about a decade ago, they came out with a DNA analysis of the gut bacteria. This is DNA sequencing so no matter whether the bacteria are alive or not, they can identify them based on their DNA. This is a much more accurate way of knowing which bacteria are thriving, or overgrowing, in your microbiome.

There are now consumer versions of these stool tests that you can order online and send in your stool sample. They may make suggestions in terms of how to change your diet to feed the bacteria that are too low, and not overfeed those that are too high.

It's important to consider that, while making certain diet changes can help, I have not found that decreasing or increasing specific foods is an effective solution to adjust your microbiome (and I have tried it with hundreds of patients). That is because many of the same foods that feed the good bacteria, also feed the bad bacteria. It doesn’t work to manipulate your diet, in terms of eating specific fruits or seeds, in order to make minor adjustments in your biome.

A much better approach is to choose a variety of foods in your diet.

If you’re eating the exact same foods every day, it is more likely to cause an overgrown of bacteria (or yeast). In that case, increasing the variety in your diet and eating other kinds of fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds each day, or alternating through the week, will help to improve the diversity of bacteria because you’ll be feeding a greater number of types overall.

When it comes to our gut microbiome, we want diversity. There are over 1,000 bacterial species that have been identified with about 160 species being found living in the gut of any individual so we don't want to just feed certain ones.

Now, if your gut microbiome is really needing more help and you have symptoms of overgrowing bacteria, or a health issue related to the gut biome, then some additional steps need to be taken. There is a clinical stool panel called the GI MAP that I find has helped so many of my patients by showing exactly which bacteria, yeast, protozoa and/or parasites are present, so we can tailor a specific protocol to address them.

I can order this test through my office for you and then we can see who's living there in your gut. It will also tell us if there is inflammation (calprotectin) or antigliadin antibodies, and how well are you digesting your food. We can see quite a lot about your digestive system in this type of clinical stool panel, and from there I can get way more specific and design a strategy for you so we can get your biome back on track.

What Can We Do to Rebalance Our Gut Bacteria?

When we're constantly under stress, we don't digest our food well, and this will cause an imbalance in the gut bacteria, let alone many potential health issues. If our food is not digested well, we're not going to be able to absorb the nutrients, so it's not going to feed us, and instead it's going to overfeed the bacteria and other microbes.

So, how do we support our digestion? Well, we can start by taking the time to slow down and consciously eat. Take your time and sit down, breathe, chew well, etc. This way you are sending signals to your Vagus nerve communicating that it's time to make enzymes and digest.

You can also take pancreatic enzymes if needed to help you digest food while your system is healing. This is something that will show on the stool panel. Also, if you're not making enough bile, we can support bile production for fat digestion. If you're not making enough stomach acid (hydrochloric acid) we can add that to help with protein digestion. We can support the digestion of your food in many different ways, including herbs that stimulate digestion or even just eating plants that are bitter (like arugula), which help with digestion.

If there's overgrowing pathogenic bacteria, referred to as “dysbiosis,” I would guide you through a protocol of using antimicrobial herbs that are effective at addressing the bacteria that are overgrowing, without wiping out all your good bacteria. That's a very specific protocol that I developed and tested over the years and one that works for the majority of patients.

In addition to antimicrobial herbs, I also recommend using probiotics that contain the bacillus species (such as Megaspore), which I consider to be the traffic directors of the microbiome. These bacteria are able to rebalance your gut biome by supporting the good guys and telling the overgrowing or pathogenic bacteria that they need to go.

Once we get the balance back then we can shift our strategy to maintaining the balance by eating a healthy, balanced, and diverse diet, along with potentially using a maintenance probiotic, which is going to contain lactobacillus and bifidobacterium in the range of 25 to 50 billion per day.

It’s important to consider that when trying to rebalance your gut microbiome, it’s better to do it slowly. An aggressive change can cause the pathogenic bacteria to release toxins as a defense mechanism, and this can make you feel worse. Starting with very low doses of bacillus and antimicrobial herbs and listening to your body in the process is key to a good outcome.

It's also important to think about the environment. If there’s leaky gut, unhealthy cells, and inflammation, then the good bacteria will not thrive, so we need to be paying attention to making it a happy, healthy environment for the healthy bacteria and microbes to live in.

What Are the Causes of a Disruption in the Microbiome?

One of the main causes of dysbiosis, and one that I have been helping a lot of patients with through the years, is leaky gut. With leaky gut, the foods we eat “leak” through the intestinal lining because the intestinal cells have become damaged and there is more space between the cells.

When undigested food leaks through the intestinal lining, the immune system responds in an effort to protect us, which leads to inflammation that can spread throughout the body. At the same time, the intestinal cells are not able to absorb nutrients from the foods we eat and, of course, our microbiome is disrupted.

A poor diet, overconsumption of alcohol, smoking, stress and exposure to environmental toxins are all factors in developing leaky gut. The best protection is a healthful diet high in natural fiber and low in added sugars and processed foods.

Another cause of dysbiosis is taking some types of medications like antibiotics, antacid medications, such as proton pump inhibitors, and many other medications. These meds will kill both good and bad bacteria, so we need to counteract this effect by taking the right probiotics. This is also why it is important to avoid the use of medications whenever possible.

Stress is a major factor in the disruption of our microbiome. Stress includes psycho-emotional stress, trauma, as well as physical stressed and injuries. If you know you've been under stress, you're going to want to be proactive to help your microbiome to recover.

We also know that gluten (in wheat, rye, barley, and spelt) disrupts the bacteria and decreases the levels of various kinds of healthy bacteria. If you're consuming gluten, and even if you don't have gluten sensitivity or celiac disease, there's a chance you're disrupting your gut bacteria.

Also sugar, refined carbs, processed foods, non-organic foods, a low-fiber diet, pesticides, artificial sweeteners, artificial flavors and colors added to foods, all cause gut biome disruption.

Exposure to toxins, such as toxins in our environment, our food, water, air, and exposure to mold toxins (such as if you’re living in a water damaged building), all affect our digestion and they affect our microbiome.

When it comes down to it, our gut biome is potentially being disrupted every day. It’s by raising our awareness, and being mindful about what we eat, and how we recover from stress, that we are able to keep our gut microbiome optimized.

What Are Some Products Out There That Can Help Rebalance the Microbiome?

There is another new stool panel that not only tells us about the balance of bacteria in your biome, but then also offer custom probiotic formulations based on your results. So if you're low in certain strains of bacteria, then that's what they're going to put in your individualized probiotics. That company is called Flore and I can help you with that through my office if you're interested in trying that out as a way to re-optimize your gut biome.

There's recent research that's identifying individual strains of bacteria and how they specifically help us with our health. I think we're going to see more and more products, such as supplements or beverage products, that contain these specific bacteria based on research that shows how they're potentially beneficial for our health.

For example, there's one type of bacteria called Bifidobacterium 1741, which is considered a “psychobiotic” because it’s been shown in research to help with stress recovery, specifically to bring cortisol down. So, in terms of the Stress Types I identified, this would be especially helpful for a Stress Magnet, or Night Owl, or Sluggish and Stressed type, who have elevated cortisol levels. If you want to find out your Stress Type, you can do my free online Stress Type Quiz here.

Bifidobacterium 1741 has also been shown to help with mental health in terms of cognition, focus and memory. This type of bacteria can be found in products like Zenbiome - Zenbiome Cope and Zenbiome Sleep.

There's also Bifidobacterium 35642 which has been shown to modulate inflammation. This would be especially helpful for someone who is experiencing a lot of inflammation and pain. Zenbiome Dual contains both Bifidobacterium 1741 and 35642. https://doctordoni.com/product/zenbiome-dual-60-capsules/

There's also quite a lot of research on the bacteria related to the vaginal biome and how it is completely related to the health of the gut biome. This is so important because if you're having vaginal symptoms or recurrent vaginal infections, like yeast, BV, or HPV, we know it is important that we heal your gut biome in order to help heal the vaginal biome and prevent those infections from happening.

If you want to learn more about the vaginal biome related to the gut biome you can watch Episode #168 of How Humans Heal here. If you’re interested in a probiotic that is specifically formulated to support a healthy vulvovaginal microbiota you can find one here. And another here. https://doctordoni.com/product/ortho-biotic-womens-30-capsules/

More examples of specific oral probiotics to benefit areas of the body and for certain purposes are: * Bifidobacterium HU36 - shown to help with carotenoid and the skin. https://doctordoni.com/product/sereneskin-30-capsules/ * Lactobacillus rhamnosus DR7, which has been shown especially to be helpful for mood and stress recovery or bacteria that has been shown to help with our neurotransmitters like serotonin and dopamine.

*Bifidobacterium BPL1 which has been shown to help with weight gain around the waist.

One more approach that is being used, especially in cases where there is the need to control an infection called Clostridium difficile, or C. diff (which is a pathogenic bacteria that a lot of times is hard to treat and get rid of) is something called a “fecal transplant.”

A fecal transplant is a procedure to collect feces from a healthy donor and introduce them into a patient’s gastrointestinal tract. Research shows that a fecal transplant can restore healthy bacteria in the lower intestine, which can help control C. diff and keep it from coming back. In some cases this can be more effective than antibiotics for keeping C. diff in check.

Still, even after using a specific probiotic, or having a fecal transplant, we will need to come back to rebalancing and maintaining the overall population and diversity of bacteria based on what we eat and supporting healthy digestion.

How to Integrate Microbiome Optimization into Your Overall Health Plan?

No matter what, I think it's important to keep in mind that we need to take into account all of the root causes of our health issues.

Yes, we can take a bacteria-containing supplement, and we can learn to consume an optimal amount of prebiotics to feed our biome, and all that can help, but we also need to work on our recovery from stress and anything else that was thrown out of balance by stress.

We need to ensure optimal cortisol levels because cortisol determines the signals to our digestion. We need to optimize hormone levels such as insulin and blood sugar levels, thyroid, as well as leptin and the sex hormones. We need to address nutrient deficiencies and toxins.

We have to address all the underlying causes to really shift the imbalances permanently and achieve our best health and resilience to stress going forward.

If you really want to heal there needs to be a whole protocol put into action for your specific body. This is why I encourage you to refer to my overall stress recovery protocol because I'm addressing all the potential imbalances, not just the microbiome. Yes, the microbiome is hugely important, but we have to also think about all the other potential imbalances along with it because then everything can help maintain resilience together.

So, as you can see, there are many solutions - many ways to help you rebalance your microbiome. I've worked with some of the most challenging and complex cases - people who were put on the most strict diets and worked with many other practitioners - and I've helped guide them back out of it to heal their digestion, optimize their biome and help them feel better. That's where I get my confidence to say it's possible to get your microbiome back on track again.

If you want to work on your gut health and microbiome you may want to sign up for my Heal Leaky Gut Program where I teach you how to heal leaky gut with my proven protocol. Keep in mind that 50% of people with leaky gut, have zero symptoms, so the only way to know for sure is to do the food sensitivity panel I recommend.

If you’re interested in learning more about my approach to healing HPV you can find my new HPV Recovery Guide here. If you are tired of this virus and are really committed to erasing it from your life forever, you can sign up for my Say Goodbye to HPV 12-Week Program here.

If you want to feel better by rebalancing your cortisol and neurotransmitters, start with this home test kit. You can also sign up for my Stress Warrior Program here.

Also, if you want to learn more about how to recover from stress so that you can get back to feeling your best, you may want to read my book Master Your Stress Reset Your Health. In the book, I also share the quiz I developed to help you identify how stress has affected you specifically by knowing your Stress Type. You can also take this Stress Type Quiz online.

We're here to help you!

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#168 MATURE CONTENT - Improving Your Pelvic and Vaginal Health with Dr. Betsy Greenleaf 0

Weekly Wellness Wisdom Newsletter: HTTPS://DOCTORDONI.COM/WWW

Additional Resources:

If you’re interested in learning more about my approach to healing HPV you can find my new HPV Recovery Guide here (https://doctordoni.com/ddpp/hpv-guide/).

You can also sign up for my Stress Warrior Program here (https://doctordoni.com/stress-program).

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Jul 13, 2023

In today’s episode I get to introduce you to my friend Dr. Betsy Greenleaf. She is the First Board Certified Female Urogynecologist in the United States. She is also a Distinguished Fellow of the American College of Osteopathic Obstetrics & Gynecology, a Premiere Women's Health Expert and a Motivational Speaker.

Dr. Betsy was in private practice for almost 20 years and now she's building online experiences for women to heal themselves in the urogynecological area.

Urogynecology is the area of medicine that covers the diagnosis and treatment of conditions that affect the bladder, reproductive system, and rectum, including pelvic floor disorders. Urogynecologists can be urologists or gynecologists trained in female pelvic medicine and reconstructive surgery.

Today we talk about urogynecology and general pelvic and vaginal health.

What is a Pelvic Organ Prolapse?

A uterine prolapse occurs when the muscles and tissue in your pelvis weaken. This allows your uterus to drop down into your vagina.

Our pelvic organs are open to gravity because we don’t have bone structures at the bottom of the pelvic floor. All we have is muscles and ligaments, and those ligaments are not even that strong, so anything that causes a lot of pressure, and the pelvis can rip and tear those ligaments.

Then the uterus may not stay up where it's supposed to be, or the bladder, or the rectum, and then those three organs that are very close to each other and lean on each other can end up pushing each other out.

Most commonly women who've had long and difficult pregnancies or have given birth to a large baby or multiple babies are at risk of a prolapse. Also, women who are chronically constipated, or do effort constantly like lifting heavy objects or gymnastics, or even people with asthma attacks or chronic bronchitis where they're hard coughing all the time, all these things are going to put a lot of pressure on the pelvic floor.

How is a Pelvic Prolapse Treated?

Surgery is an option that has been around for long, using the mesh as in hernia surgery, but they found out overtime that when you put mesh in the pelvic floor it doesn't work as well as it does when you put it in for hernia and there were some women who ended up developing problems over the years, so unfortunately there's not great surgery for this. Furthermore, these surgeries have shown to not be permanent so once you've had one surgery you're at higher risk

of it dropping again and having to get another surgery. Some non-surgical options that are available include a device called a pessary which folds up inside the vagina and they just wedge in place so they can hold all the organs.

Another option is prevention by strengthening the pelvic floor. Here is where Kegels which involve tightening and then releasing the muscles in your pelvic floor to strengthen them. We start losing 8 to 10% muscle mass every decade of our lives so if you don't start strengthening those muscles it's definitely going to be a factor of prolapse risk. Other exercises include sitting down and putting a ball or pillow between your legs and squeezing your knees together.

Physical therapy can help too. It is important to start this therapy as soon as possible. For example, in France when women give birth they automatically get put into a physical therapy program after birth and not surprisingly France has the lowest rate of incontinence and prolapse.

What About the Relationship Between the Pelvis and the Microbiome?

There’s now something called next generation sequencing where we can swap the vagina and we can see everything that's there and so we're getting a better understanding of what's going on with the microbiome of the vagina. With this advanced testing we're discovering other bacteria and so the exciting part about this is that women can now understand why some conventional treatments are not working for some issues. What they're finding out with these newer tests is that there's many more bacteria that are interacting in our bodies.

In Dr. Betsy’s case what happened was she was getting chronic yeast infections and the yeast medicines were not working. Then she started looking into the gut microbiome testing and finally found out that her gut was filled with yeast. So, a lot of times when you're someone getting vaginal symptoms it's really a symptom of a larger problem going on with the microbiome of the gut. So, in this case we need to balance the gut out to get the vagina healthy.

What’s even more interesting is that scientists are finding that there's this like microbiome connection between the vagina and the brain through the vagus nerve. So, if the bacteria in the vagina is off that is going to dampen our sex drive and a lot of women are going to their doctors thinking if they don’t have a sex drive it must be hormonal, but it may be a microbiome issue.

We have also seen evidence of more problems with infertility when the microbiome in the vagina is off.

It really is exciting because it gives more treatment possibilities, it helps us to see and so women don't have to be just struggling with infertility, low libido, or chronic infections, when we can actually be detectives and identify the imbalances both in the urovaginal area and the gut.

There are also natural ways to rebalance the microbiome in the vagina. We want the healthy bacteria to stay there and get the bad bacteria out. One way of doing this is balancing the PH in the vagina. The vagina is naturally very acidic and so in a very high acidic (3.5 to 4.5 acidity range) the healthy bacteria thrives, and the bad bacteria doesn't. One of the products that’s out there is Boric Acid. Boric Acid will balance out the vagina whether it's yeast or bacteria.

Are There Good and Bad Products to Use Vaginally?

When it comes to cleaning, plain water is the best option. If we want to use soaps or other products, we should definitely look at the ingredients and stay away from sodium lauryl sulfate which can be very irritating and polypropylene glycol that is in a lot of woman's products that is a mucosal irritant. And avoid fragrances, dyes and detergents. Also, it’s a good idea to avoid the use of lubricants because they can throw off the PH balance in the vagina.

There are also some products out there that promote acidity in the vagina like lactic acid products, the only thing is if you have a milk allergy you kind of want to stay away from lactic acid. Also, there are some vaginal probiotics that come in suppositories that are over the counter that promote healthy bacteria growth.

When it comes to vaginal douching we have to be careful because if you have a bacterial infection douching can spread that bacteria into the uterus, the fallopian tubes and into the abdominal cavity and that can make you really sick.

The best thing to do to promote vaginal health is to also address your gut health as there is evidence that these systems are connected. The more you improve your gut health, drop inflammation, and get your digestion working as well as your gut bacteria the more you’re going to see a positive impact in your vaginal microbiome and overall health.

We can also see how the gut health is related to HPV, when you have a persistent HPV case one of the first things to do is to get your gut health and gut bacteria on point, this will in turn improve your vaginal acidity and microbiome and make it harder for the HPV virus to thrive.

What About Regenerative Medicine for Pelvic Health?

This is something that's changing every day. We're coming up with new options and treatments that could be done at home or at practitioner’s offices.

There’s PRP which is when platelet-rich plasma is injected where stem cells multiply and grow new younger tissue. PRP can regenerate the vaginal tissue. This procedure works by stimulating stem cells to grow healthier vaginal tissue. There’s also laser or light therapy to rejuvenate tissue using devices in the vagina that work on light energy, penetrating the tissue and making a little hole. Then the body reacts to heal that hole and it floods it with growth factors. There’s radio frequency therapy using sound waves to generate heat to cause the tissue to regenerate. We're kind of entering this world where anything that's being done for rejuvenation purposes cosmetically is now being applied to the vagina and other areas of the pelvic floor too.

Doing all these things in combination can give people better results because they work on the tissue in different ways.

If you want to reach out to Dr. Betsy and learn more about how she can help you, please make sure to check out her website or her Instagram @drbetsygreenleaf_.

You can also check her upcoming Happy Vagina Rally which is an online women's summit where 40 speakers will be talking about vaginal health, general pelvic health, HPV, hormones, hair loss, gut health, bladder health, energy levels, etc.

If you’re interested in learning more about my approach to healing HPV you can find my new HPV Recovery Guide here.

If you are tired of this virus and are really committed to erasing it from your life forever, you can sign up for my Say Goodbye to HPV 12-Week Program here.

If you want to work on your gut health and microbiome you may want to sing up for my Heal Leaky Gut Program where I teach you how to heal leaky gut with my proven protocol. Keep in mind that 50% of people with leaky gut, have zero symptoms, so the only way to know for sure is to do the food sensitivity panel I recommend.

We're here to help you!

Connect with Dr. Doni:

HTTPS://DOCTORDONI.COM/STRESSWARRIOR

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7-day Stress Reset (FREE)

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If you’d like to meet with Dr. Doni one-on-one for your health, request a Health Breakthrough Session: HTTPS://DOCTORDONI.COM/BREAKTHROUGH

To get an idea of more comprehensive options, read about Dr. Doni’s Signature Consultation Programs: HTTPS://DOCTORDONI.COM/SERVICES

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#167 Breaking Myths About Folate and Folic Acid 0

Jul 7, 2023

In today's episode I'm going to be talking about the vitamin known as folate or vitamin B9. Like the seven other variations of vitamin B, vitamin B9 is used to convert food into fuel and support healthy skin, eyes, hair, and blood cells.

During pregnancy, some form of vitamin B9 is needed to ensure the baby's proper brain, skull, and spinal cord development to prevent birth defects.

Folate is also important for the detoxification process carried out in the liver as well as for protecting our DNA.

The reason I want to cover this vitamin is because I find that there's so much confusion about it and so many of you are trying to figure out whether you need more or less folate. Also, how to navigate gene variations related to folate to make sure that you can prevent health issues that are associated with those gene variations.

Folic Acid vs Folate

One of the first confusions is about the difference between folic acid and folate. A lot of times you'll find that the word folic acid and folate are used as if they're the same thing when they are not. Folic acid is a man-made or synthetic nutrient, so it's not found in nature naturally occurring, whereas folate (which is also in biochemistry referred to as methyl folate METHYL) is the form that's found in nature and in our bodies.

Methylfolate is active folate, which is the precise enzymatic form available for immediate cellular absorption and energy release. Although it has a similar end function to folic acid, choosing this efficient and ready-to-use form is a much more effective option for people who have difficulty converting food into fuel.

Our bodies know how to use and process folate naturally. We have a certain degree of ability to turn folic acid into folate within our bodies but it's our gene variations that determine how well we can do that. Depending on your genetics you may have a 10% to 80% decreased ability to turn folic acid into folate.

Folic acid is used to fortify different foods. It's a synthetic substance that's added to man-made foods. If you think of bread and cereal, you might see on the ingredient list folic acid as they're using the synthetic form. Sometimes multivitamins and B complex or prenatal vitamins or even protein shakes or other processed products might have folic acid as an ingredient. Using the synthetic form of these nutrients is oftentimes less expensive than using the natural form.

The natural form called folate or methylfolate is found in all green vegetables like spinach, broccoli, asparagus, Brussels sprouts, etc. Meat products also have this natural form of the nutrient, like liver and other forms of meat. You can also find it in sunflower seeds and some forms of beans and peanuts for example.

How To Measure Folate in Your Body

Depending on your genes, your body may have a better or worse ability to turn folate acid into folate. If you want to know your folate levels, blood work may be misleading because they show both the synthetic and the natural form under the name folate.

For a more accurate measurement of how much active folate you have in your body we need to either do a specialty test (there are labs that do specialty tests to identify your actual active folate levels) or do a test for something called homocysteine because homocysteine is a metabolite in our biochemistry that uses folate. So, if we measure the homocysteine, we can get a sense of if our bodies have enough folate, too much folate or not enough.

Another way to get a sense of this is to check your methylmalonic acid because methylmalonic acid tells us your B12 metabolism and B12 levels and how well your body is using the B12. I want you to know this because I want you to know that there’s people like me who have a lot of additional training to understand all this biochemistry and nutrients and can help guide you to optimize your homocysteine your methylmalonic acid and your folate and the use of folate in your body. So, I don't want you to feel like you're on your own with all of this.

Folate and MTHFR

MTHFR is a type of gene mutation that lowers the efficiency of the MTHFR enzyme. When you have MTHFR your body cannot properly convert folate into methylfolate. By disrupting the natural metabolic pathway, MTHFR blocks usable methylfolate from reaching the cells.

Inadequate methylfolate levels can have a wide variety of negative effects on the body, particularly those that affect the cardiovascular and nervous systems. During pregnancy, a lack of methylfolate can also have serious impacts on healthy fetal development.

Fortunately, there are several folate replacements available that can largely make up for deficiencies that are caused by MTHFR. Folic acid and folate can be cheap, but methylfolate tends to be the most effective option when it comes to treating the unique needs of MTHFR and giving the body an enzyme it can directly act upon.

It’s important to know that there are other factors affecting your body’s ability to turn folate into methylfolate whether you have MTHFR or not. This is what I refer to as your stress recovery. Depending on how well your taking care of your body and helping your body recover from various stress exposures determines the influence of your genes on your health. People with MTHFR might assume that there’s nothing they can do about their folate levels but there is. This depends on many factors that we will discuss today.

What Affects Our Ability to Use Folate Besides Genetics?

If you have a gene variation but if it's not expressing, then it is not affecting your health. But there's factors from our environment or what I refer to as stress that affect our ability to metabolize folate. Any kind of emotional or psycho-emotional stress in the present moment or even in the past or accumulated stress will influence your cortisol and adrenaline levels. When those levels get out of balance your ability to utilize folate gets hindered.

Also, any kind of physical stress (whether you have an injury, infection, nutrient depletion, etc) can affect your ability to use folate effectively and it also affects your genetic expression.

Those same stresses affect the enzymes that work with folate and our methylation or ability to use our B vitamins. Folate has to get together with B12 and all the all the other B vitamins and they do what's called the methylation cycle. If you want to learn more about methylation you can watch episode No 145 of How Humans Heal here.

So, our ability to use our B vitamins is affected by emotional and physical stress and that's why I talk about stress recovery because it really determines your ability to optimally use folate. Also, with stress recovery you can optimize your cortisol and adrenaline and you can optimize other functions in your body so that you can really get the most out of your folate from your diet.

Another important factor in how your body is able to benefit from folate is your nutrient intake and nutrient deficiencies. If you have nutrient deficiencies because you are not eating healthy or do not take any supplements to help your body with nutrients, you could have a deficiency in folate.

Also, some medications like birth control pills or methotrexate (which is a medication used to treat autoimmunity), some antibiotics, metformin for blood sugar issues, anticonvulsant drugs, etc. can all cause a deficiency of folate even if you're eating enough folate. These block the metabolism of folate. If you're taking any of these medications it’s important that you talk to your practitioner so you make sure that you are taking the right tests and the right form of folate.

Your ability to use folate is also affected by inflammation in the body. The main determinant of inflammation in the body is your diet. If you're consuming foods that are more inflammatory to your body, then your ability to use folate could be affected. To know which foods are inflammatory for your body you can do a food sensitivity panel. With this home test you can see which foods you need to reduce or avoid to reduce inflammation in your body. Also, if the digestion system is inflamed or if leaky gut is present there will be an imbalance in gut bacteria and this influences your ability to use folate and absorb nutrients in general.

Also, exposure to toxins, toxins from our environment, food, water, home toxins like mold, heavy metals, etc. all affect our ability to adequately use folate. If you would like to know more about how to detoxify your body, you can check out my 14-Day Detox Program here.

How Much Folate Do I Need?

The common confusion is people will find out that they have high homocysteine levels and then they're thinking they need to take more folate. But then very often people will contact me and say but I felt worse when I took folate. Why? Well we have to dig in and figure out what's blocking your ability to use that folate effectively. When you feel worse in any way when you take folate it tells me there's a traffic jam in your stress recovery and your inflammation and your digestive health, your toxin levels, your nutrients, we got to go through systematically to figure that out and address whatever we see and as we address those factors then your body will start using folate again.

It's not that you need more or less, it’s about getting your body to work in the right way to absorb just the right amount from your food and your supplements. We need to break up the traffic jams that are preventing your ability to use it effectively.

There is a dietary recommendation, everyone needs a certain amount of folate. The standard dietetic recommendation is 600 to 800 IU of folic acid, I convert that to methyl folate and that's the bare minimum. That's not taking into account your individuality, your individual genes your individual stress exposure and your individual imbalances. So, we need to figure out what is the right amount for you.

This is why I would say it's such a high priority to fully understand your potential gene variations and understand where to get the right information so you can figure out what's the right amount of folate for you. Now, keep in mind the right amount of folate for you could change from year to year if your hormones change, if your environment changes, if your job changes, etc. That’s why I think everyone should have their homocysteine levels checked in their blood work at least once a year.

You may or may not know if you have a MTHFR gene variation. Either way, you can still get your blood work for homocysteine and methylmalonic acid and you can work on identifying the factors that might be decreasing your ability to use folate efficiently. You don't have to do an MTHFR gene test but if you do an MTHFR gene test what I think is important to know is that this is just one piece of information. It can be very validating to get your genes tested and to have that information but at the same time it can be overwhelming. What is more important is to identify the ways in which you can support your body to use folate efficiently like stress recovery, detoxification, reducing inflammation, food sensitivities, nutrient deficiencies, etc.

The thing is we're all unique humans, we're all going to have some genetic variations and these genetic variations are not life threatening and actually have the potential to benefit your health because once we see where the genetic variations are we can address them using nutrients, diet, stress recovery, hormone balancing, etc. We can use many tools to help address those gene variations and to even potentially influence genetic expression.

If you want to learn more about this you can listen to my FREE MTHFR Masterclass here.

If you want to run a test not just for MTHFR but for all your genes I can guide you on which test to do for that and then I would suggest meeting with me to help guide you through that.

If you're looking for products that contain methylfolate you can look in my website and online store because I have a multi vitamins and B complexes and prenatals and protein shakes that contain methylfolate so you can be sure you're getting a product that has the right form of folate in it.

If you want to feel better by rebalancing your neurotransmitters, you start by addressing your cortisol and adrenaline levels with this home test kit. You can also sign up for my Stress Warrior Program here. Also, if you want to learn more about how to recover from stress so that you can get back to feeling your best, you may want to read my book Master Your Stress Reset Your Health.

In the book, I also share the quiz I developed to help you identify how stress has affected you specifically by knowing your Stress Type. You can also take this Stress Type Quiz online.

If you want to go through your specific case with me and improve your health (mental or physical) you can set up a one-on-one appointment here.

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