Butyrate, Vagal Tone, Gut Health: The Critical Axis Behind Heart & Brain Resilience | Steven Wright

[00:00:00] Steven Wright: Oxygen in the brain. Great. Oxygen in the heart. Super important. Oxygen in the gut? Really bad. And that’s super confusing, but most of the good bugs are called anaerobic bacteria.

[00:00:12] Anaerobic means without oxygen. This is not a discussion. This is not a negotiation. This is like us walking on the moon and running out of air. When the environment is wrong, we’re dead.

[00:00:25] When the environment is wrong for them, they’re dead. And so if the butyrate production goes too low, the metabolism that’s happening in the gut and the colonocytes in the epithelial cells, it stops sucking the oxygen out. And so the oxygen starts rising.

[00:00:41] And when this happens, it causes more death and more destruction to the hippie community. And more bad bugs are growing than good bugs. And so you feed in the prebiotics and the fibers, hoping to restart that.

[00:00:52] But sometimes it doesn’t happen, because of that oxygen issue. And so sometimes you actually have to give both, you actually have to give butyric acid or butyrate, and some food for them to feast on so that you can make the environment. You know, give them their own space suits basically, and then feed ’em again.

[00:01:08] And that is the way to get rid of the microbiome dysbiosis. 

[00:01:15] Dr. Z new: Hey friends, this is Dr. Eric Zielinski. Most people just call me Dr. Z. Welcome to the Natural Living Family Podcast. 

[00:01:21] Together we’ll uncover biblical wisdom and practical tools to help you and your family escape the confusion of this toxic world and walk in the abundant life God has promised. This isn’t about chasing trends or doing it all. It’s about renewing your mind, rejecting broken systems, and embracing God’s design for healing and wholeness.

[00:01:42] The truth is God has a beautiful plan for your life, and yes, your health matters to Him. Are you ready to get started? Awesome. Let’s dive in.

[00:01:52] Beatriz: Where do you store Mama Z’s oil? In the fridge? Or in a dark place?

[00:02:01] Hi, Beatrice. Thanks so much for your question. And for those of you who don’t know what Mama Z’s oil is or what she’s referring to, we call it Mama Z’s oil base. And it’s a mixture of very nourishing and healing carrier oils like coconut oil, sweet almond, jojoba, and vitamin E oil. And we will put a link in the show notes, or you can check out the recipe at NaturalLivingFamily.com.

[00:02:24] And so what Mama Z did was, when she was pregnant 18 years ago with her first baby, she wanted to be proactive against stretch marks. And so she put her favorite carrier oils together that she’s used over the years, and then she just made a huge batch of this stuff and then found that because we had it readily available, Hey, let’s make our body care, our lotions, and our healing balms and some serums and other things.

[00:02:48] And it became just a wonderful staple. So we use it for most of our body care and a lot of our, again, healing remedies that we use, essential oils with. To answer the question, you wanna always store virtually all oil, in a cool, dry, dark place like your pantry or a closet. That’s pretty much the standard when it comes down to storage.

[00:03:10] We always recommend storing in glass. And if you’re going to make the carrier oils in batch, like we recommend in our website because you’ll have it available, on hand whenever you need it, you could put it in 16 or 32 ounce, mason jars or whatever you have available and make sure it’s glass and protected.

[00:03:29] And the thing is this, because coconut oil is one of the primary ingredients, in the colder months if you live in colder area, it will harden, so you’ll definitely have to thaw it out. And the simple way of doing that is putting the jar, whether it’s a small jar, big jar, whatever it might be in your sink. Fill up your sink with warm water and let it naturally melt.

[00:03:53] That’s what we do on a regular basis. When we lived in Michigan, we had to melt that stuff more often. Now that we live in Georgia, it’s pretty much at a liquid state for most of the year, beside maybe a couple weeks when it gets really, really cold.

[00:04:06] Other than that, that’s it. I wanna encourage y’all, if you’re not diluting your essential oils, you need to. You need to learn about that. You can go to our website and just type up dilution, type up essential oil 1 0 1, type up aromatherapy.

[00:04:18] Get the basics because you definitely wanna make sure you’re protecting your skin and getting the biggest bang for your buck. We cover a lot of that information in our blog because you want to use this stuff safely and effectively. And make healing remedies. Make body care that works for your skin in the right way.

[00:04:37] All right. I love that question. Thanks much Beatriz. And for any of you who wanted to get your questions answered, please go to NaturalLivingFamily.com/ask and we’ll try to fit this in in a future podcast episode.

[00:04:49] 

[00:04:51] In today’s conversation, we’re going to challenge the idea that heart attacks start in your arteries. Over the last few years, the research has been quietly pointing to something most cardiology visits never mentioned, gut dysbiosis. And a single compound known as butyrate may be one of the biggest missing links in protecting your heart and your brain.

[00:05:10] Today’s guest has been living at the front edge of that science for years. Steven Wright founded the Healthy Gut Company to help people finally get breakthrough results with stubborn digestive issues. He’s a health engineer and functional medicine expert whose products are used by more than 12,000 customers, and trusted by over 150 healthcare practitioners around the world.

[00:05:31] Behind the scenes, he’s created more than 30 educational programs and contributed over 700 research articles on gut health, short chain fatty acids, and the microbiome. In this conversation, we connect the dots between your microbiome, leaky gut, and real world risk for heart disease, stroke, brain fog, and neuro degeneration.

[00:05:51] Steven explains why almost every chronic disease that’s been studied today shows a pattern of gut dysbiosis and why probiotics and elimination diets don’t fix the root problems. You’re gonna learn why butyrate production in the colon is absolutely critical, as we age.

[00:06:08] You’ll discover hidden gut issues that you might not realize you have because you don’t have stomach problems. Simple tests that reveal whether or not your microbiome is protecting you, or quietly increasing your risk, and practical steps to support recovery after a heart or brain event.

[00:06:27] With that, let’s dive in and hear a discussion with my longtime friend, Steven Wright. Okay.

[00:06:33] Dr. Z: All right, Steven. Thanks buddy. Really appreciate you jumping on today. 

[00:06:37] Steven Wright: Thanks, Dr. Z. Yeah, I’m excited to be here and this topic is near and dear to my heart as I have a family history of heart disease and stroke. 

[00:06:45] Dr. Z: And this is a somewhat of a nostalgic moment. You were part of one of the first big events I did with Dr. Josh Ax and Donna Gates back in 2016 to Heal Your Gut Summit. And I just remember listening to that and being like, “Wow, this guy knows his stuff.” And that was you know what now? 8, 9, 10 years ago. And so it’s, I know this is something that you’ve devoted your life to.

[00:07:06] You’ve created unbelievable products with thousands and thousands of customers and testimonials, and you live this. I’ve seen you, I’ve hung out with you like you are the real deal.

[00:07:15] So, let’s start with a question that I don’t think a lot of people are asking. Like, what are people missing between preventing heart and brain problems right now? 

[00:07:26] Steven Wright: Yeah, I think that, people are drilling into very specific levels about your blood vessels or about your brain matter, and they’ll be diving into micronutrients and all these different things that are part of the equation of heart health and brain health and it’s really important stuff. I’m not saying that’s not important.

[00:07:48] But I do think that if that was the only thing that mattered, we would be seeing maybe finally, the numbers of people with heart problems, number of brain issues would start to decrease a little bit or slow down and I don’t see that in the data. I see us having more and more issues even though we’re not smoking as much, even though people are trying to exercise more. And I think there’s an awareness around food that’s happening that’s really helpful, but still, something’s missing.

[00:08:17] And what I think is missing is this other organ really. And what’s going on in that organ, which is the digestive track. The way that I would position it is just like the US government. You have the executive branch, you have the legislative branch and the judicial branch. And all three can make decisions that affect the entire country in a seismic way. And when they make decisions, it does affect the other branches.

[00:08:44] And there’s the same thing that’s happening inside of your gut. There is this really cool superhighway of nerves and signaling pathways that goes from your gut up to your brain and your heart called the vagal nerve. And this complex is literally from moment to moment can be telling your brain or heart what to do.

[00:09:04] We like to think that our brain and our heart are like these. I don’t know, top down puppet masters that they can kind of direct the show. But that’s not what the research says. The research has moved aggressively in the last five years, but definitely over the last 10 years to show that the gut and what’s happening inside of your microbiome, which are the bugs inside your gut, actually dictate a lot to the brain and to the heart.

[00:09:26] And you know, my hope is by the end of this chat today, I’m gonna show everybody why, if you’re not including the gut in your preventative practices or in your recovery practices, you’re probably missing a really important area. 

[00:09:42] Dr. Z: Well, let’s give people a little tip, like what are some signs and symptoms that I have a quote unquote gut problem and I wanna maybe gloss over or just assume, you know, gas, bloating, indigestion. Like obviously if there’s a problem in your tummy that could be related. But, go there maybe, but also what about those things that people aren’t thinking of?

[00:10:03] Like a lot of people are walking around with serious, serious gut disorders and they’re clueless. They have no idea, their doctor doesn’t know, they’re being misdiagnosed. They’re getting all kinds of different medications. So walk to us to a little bit of the signs and the symptoms and just the aha moment of, you know what, I gotta take this seriously. 

[00:10:23] Steven Wright: Yeah, I mean there’s the overt ones, like you said; the gut pain, the bloating, I would include heartburn. I would include excessive burping after you eat. If you feel like when you eat, it’s just like a brick in there and it takes like almost a whole day to digest your meal. It goes farther though. if you’re not looking into or tracking your bowel habits on a regular basis, you should be, whether you’re too constipated or you’re having loose stools, you’re on the diarrhea side. Those are both extraordinarily bad.

[00:10:52] The more confusing, and the stuff that people don’t associate with gut problems that are serious gut issues that, we’re gonna dive deep into today, are things like leaky gut syndrome. This is something you can’t really feel, but the following symptoms suggest it’s already happening for you. And so that’s why it becomes really confusing for folks. If you have a lot of food sensitivities. If you’re just picking ’em up one after another, that is probably the strongest indicator. Or you’ve done a food sensitivity test and you have a bunch, that’s the strongest indicator. But there’s these other ones like you have rashes, unexplained skin symptoms, you have an autoimmune diagnosis. Basically, to get that diagnosis, you’d need leaky gut to happen.

[00:11:38] Dr. Z: Mm-hmm.

[00:11:39] Steven Wright: You are having unexplained fatigue. And issues that suggest maybe there’s a histamine issue. And histamine issues are just like you’d think for like seasonal allergies. So you’re, you eat or you go outside and your nasal passageways swell up your eyes, water, you sneeze a lot. You can’t be without your Claritin or your Zyrtec or you have Benadryl in your purse everywhere you go.

[00:12:02] But for folks who start to have this after wine or beer or fish or some higher histamine foods, this is also extraordinarily bad sign that you have intestinal permeability and you also have this histamine related issue.

[00:12:18] Now there’s another one that it’s like undetectable basically. But if you have these conditions, I can almost guarantee you, you have something called gut dysbiosis. And that is the, this is the thing that matters. I mean, both intestinal permeability and gut dysbiosis matter. They’re very, very important.

[00:12:38] But if you don’t correct the gut dysbiosis that is linked to every single chronic disease that’s ever been studied. And intestinal permeability is as well. But I would say the root of the issue starts with the bugs inside of you.

[00:12:50] We are linked, we are symbiotic. So if they’re happy, we’re happy. And if they get sick, we get sick. And so it’s hard though to really know. Because there’s not just like a ring that you can track your gut microbiome with. 

[00:13:05] Dr. Z: So bring this connection to this gut dysbiosis, and heart disease, and brain disorders because it’s all connected. Like how do you connect it all? 

[00:13:15] Steven Wright: Yeah. So we have these nerves that I mentioned that run, the vagal nerve right This is the gut above and the brain below.

[00:13:23] And so we have this thing going on in our gut, which is our microbiome. It’s located in our lower small intestine, in our upper large intestine. And this, I call it a hippie community. It produces things we cannot make on our own. And when it’s producing these compounds and these molecules, we need them to live. And we need to feed our bugs so that they can make these compounds so they can live.

[00:13:46] But when things do not go correctly, and we can talk about what happens there. So you have healthiness, and then you have stroke or ill health. This is a stroke paper. You have dysbiosis right here. So LPS lipopolysaccharides, these are very dangerous toxins. You have bacterial debris and other toxins. These all go up. And then you have your intestinal barrier disruption.

[00:14:06] So basically you have a bunch of toxins and issues that go up here, and then it goes through the gut, down it, it cytokines are essentially like signaling molecules. There’s health promoting ones and there’s inflammatory ones. And in this state you send these inflammatory cytokines right into the brain and into the heart.

[00:14:25] Dr. Z: Mm-hmm.

[00:14:25] Steven Wright: And so, what you need to understand is that the compounds inside the gut, what keeps this gut healthy, is essentially the symbiosis between us. So when we feed them the right foods and we take care of them, they make these things called short chain fatty acids, of which butyrate is the most beneficial one. And it’s sort of the keeper of the gut. It’s the one that all the research is focusing on.

[00:14:50] When butyrate is high and short chain fatty acids are high. The gut stays healthy, the butyrate goes, these bacterial metabolites, that’s butyrate, it goes up the vagal nerve, into the brain, into the heart and it’s anti-inflammatory. It turns on a bunch of really good genes that keep us healthy. It’s just extraordinarily important.

[00:15:10] But when we lose that butyrate, when we lose that short chain fatty acid production and it turns into the stuff on the right, everything breaks down. And this is where you get into this situation where you can’t feel this usually.

[00:15:21] Now, if you have the symptoms I just talked about, this is likely happening, but I think there’s a lot of people walking around who are like, I mean, I have a, I have a this, I have a that, but I don’t have a gut problem. And that’s simply probably not true unless you’ve actually tested for it.

[00:15:37] Dr. Z: I’m looking at a study. Let me share this quick. I mean, this is powerful. It’s almost like, why aren’t we hearing more about this stuff? And I don’t know, man, it just boggles my mind that we’re in this situation and we keep on coming back to these discussions and it’s like, why haven’t my doctor told me about this?

[00:15:55] Why is this here? I mean, the literature is clear. It’s new literature as well. Like, this is, let me see here. 

[00:16:03] Steven Wright: Well, I think that’s, that’s part of the issue. 

[00:16:06] Dr. Z: I mean, look at this Gut Microbiota and Cardiovascular Disease: Evidence on the Metabolic, Inflammatory Background of Complex Relationship.

[00:16:12] And I’m gonna cue you up to talk about whatever you want to, because this is Candyland for people like you and I. This is from the International Journal of Molecular Sciences. Look, you mentioned dysbiosis, gut dysbiosis. So this is the quote y’all, and I’m gonna let Steven unpack this and just help you practically, like what do I do? Right?

[00:16:30] So “dysbiosis has not only been linked to well-known inflammatory diseases such as inflammatory bowel, rheumatoid arthritis, systemic lupus, but cardiovascular risk factors, atherosclerosis, hypertension, heart failure, kidney disease, obesity, type two diabetes.” You mentioned it, this is the proof. You mentioned something.

[00:16:48] Every chronic disease, we’re talking about the top, you know, seven of the top 10 causes of death here. The microbiota. Just talk about this. It’s involved, like this is so important. The microbiota is involved in modulating cardiovascular risk or multiple, and not only related to inflammatory mechanisms, and it goes on and on and on.

[00:17:08] Like this right here, this study should be at the forefront of every chronic disease, every cardiologist, every doctor who works in this space, and it’s like people aren’t considering it. And then they might recommend a junk probiotic or they might say, Hey, here’s a supplement, and go on your way. Here’s a drug to manage your symptoms.

[00:17:26] So I mean, this is right here: heart failure, edema, intestinal wall altered function, permeability of your intestinal barrier. Unpack this for us, Steven. Like why aren’t we hearing about this? What do people do? What are the steps?

[00:17:40] You mentioned butyrate, like I would love for you just kind of go on as long as you want.

[00:17:44] There’s a lot to unpack here. 

[00:17:46] Steven Wright: Yeah, there’s a ton to unpack. I mean, I would say the first thing is why have you never heard about this before? That study was from 2023.

[00:17:52] Dr. Z: Mm-hmm.

[00:17:53] Steven Wright: The study I showed before was from 2024. The other studies I have, I could show you, are 2022, 2023, 20… My point is, is that there’s been an explosion in gut research connected to all different types of diseases and issues in the last five years, and specifically in the last three years. And what I’m talking about today is not like necessarily Steven Wright’s like epiphany.

[00:18:17] Dr. Z: Mm-hmm.

[00:18:17] Steven Wright: I’m talking about what the researchers are doing and the fact that this is not trickling down to even integrative and functional medicine yet.

[00:18:24] Dr. Z: Mmmm.

[00:18:24] Steven Wright: They’re 10 to 15 years behind ’cause they’re, they’re still talking about probiotics, like you talked about, I’m not gonna mention a probiotic in my talk today.

[00:18:31] Dr. Z: Uh-Oh!

[00:18:31] Steven Wright: You will not hear a recommendation of a probiotic. 

[00:18:33] Dr. Z: Uh-Oh. Okay. 

[00:18:35] Steven Wright: Yeah. And if you’re asking your cardiologist, or your brain doctor to know about this stuff, they’re 20, 30 years out. They’re not gonna be into this stuff for another 20 or 30 years. And that’s just how research and modern medicine works right now.

[00:18:50] Is the researchers are at the forefront. There’s people like us who are trying to get the word out. We’re at the cutting edge with them trying to, simplify this stuff, turn it into actionable data, and then the integrative and functional people will follow us over the next five to 10 years. And then, in 20 years from now, maybe something like a supplemental butyrate will be common practice for anybody with a familial history.

[00:19:15] Or at least at a minimum, maybe they’ll be testing your gut microbiota to make sure it’s healthy on a regular basis. Like maybe instead of a colonoscopy. I’m not saying that colonoscopies are bad, but maybe in addition to a colonoscopy every five years after 50, you’ll get a microbiome analysis done.

[00:19:32] And if it’s low in the butyrate producers, maybe they’ll say, Hey, you have a family history. Your microbiome has dysbiosis. It’s low in this thing called butyrate, and that is probably the most protective thing from the gut to the brain and to the heart. And you should think about supplementing with it.

[00:19:49] That will be the future. Unfortunately, it’s gonna take 10, 15, 20 years to get there.

[00:19:54] Why is this, or what about this is confusing to people? It’s what I’m saying. I’m literally saying we are dependent upon bugs inside of us, to make a compound we cannot make ourselves, to keep us healthy. And that is not something we wanna easily accept as a human. Right?

[00:20:13] It’s basically saying if you don’t tend to your bugs, your bugs will get sick and die, and then you’ll probably suffer. And maybe get sick and die. 

[00:20:22] Dr. Z: The gut microbiome of patients with chronic heart failure is characterized by a decrease abundance of beneficial butyrate producing bacteria and an increase in pathogenic bacteria. Like you’re saying this.

[00:20:34] Again, this was 2023. What got you started on the butyrate train? Because again, this isn’t something that we’re hearing at functional medicine conferences, integrative medicine conferences.

[00:20:44] I mean, it’s sad, truly, that it’s not the forefront because it is at the core of what the research and what the body is telling us. So I’m curious about your history and where you’re taking this thing. 

[00:20:57] Steven Wright: Well, you know, I studied functional medicine with the Kalish Institute and I was a big believer in probiotics. I was a big believer in fermented foods. And I still think those things have their places.

[00:21:10] But I’ve been in this for 15 years now, focused on digestive health through diet supplements, even pharmaceutical options. By my actual college training, I’m an engineer. And from an engineering perspective, I don’t make a lot of determination around whether a pharmaceutical or a supplement is better or worse. I’m always looking at the risk profile.

[00:21:30] Does it get good results with low risk? And so I’m open to almost any idea that comes if results happen. And just what I’ve seen is that there was this revolution that I was a part of, around taking a lot of probiotics, around doing a lot of elimination diets, even diets like the FODMAP diet, and these things that are still quote unquote the number one option if you have a gut problem.

[00:21:53] Well, I had a bunch of stress happen to me about five years ago. And we don’t have to get into that, but basically when I went from like a place where I thought I had all my issues handled. Like I’ve had a lifelong laundry list of issues. Mostly starting the gut but then spreading throughout to my mind; depression, anxiety, acute exercise induced asthma, all these different things that stem from the gut and spread.

[00:22:17] Dr. Z: Mm-hmm.

[00:22:17] Steven Wright: And I thought I was past all that, but then life, kicked me and they came back. And so I tried to pull out all of my old stuff and it wasn’t working. And that’s when I was sent on this next rabbit hole to be like, wow, maybe elimination diets and maybe probiotics are not the answer. So that’s where just being willing to reexamine every belief I had around the gut is how I’ve gotten here today. I was searching for relief for myself, but also just integrity with the world.

[00:22:44] Dr. Z: Yeah

[00:22:44] Steven Wright: We’re taking more probiotics than ever, but we’re not getting the results.

[00:22:48] In fact, every doctor I ask, I don’t care what product they rep, like what brand they rep of probiotic. Even, and I love Microbiome Labs, but even Microbiome Labs, most of them say 30% of people love it and get results immediately. 30% of people don’t feel anything but we think it’s helping, and 30% of people are harmed by it.

[00:23:05] They actively want to stop taking it. And that’s across every, every debate you can have about probiotics. And so that to me alone is enough to say maybe probiotics are one tool, but not the most important tool. And so it had me dive deeper into, well, what are we trying to get the probiotics to do?

[00:23:23] Dr. Z: Exactly 

[00:23:24] Steven Wright: Like what is the function that we’re trying to drive here and the real issues or the root causes behind needing probiotics in the first place. Which drove me deeper into microbiome. Dysbiosis. Leaky Gut continues to be a focus of mine and has been for like the last 12 years. And that’s where I’ve really just centered in on these short chain fatty acids and butyrate, and it’s not just me.

[00:23:45] Again, this is hundreds of thousands of papers. Like this is a really cool paper right here that kind of blew my mind. I, I like saw it a few nights ago. So it says, Oral Supplementation with Butyrate Improves Myocardial Ischemia Reperfusion Injury Via the Gut Brain Neural Circuit.

[00:24:02] So this is a mice or a rat study. They have a sham group. A group that they gave the myocardial ischemia, so a heart attack basically. So they have a heart attack group. A sham group and they have heart attack plus butyrate, and then they have heart attack butyrate, and they cut the vagal nerve.

[00:24:18] Dr. Z: Mm-hmm.

[00:24:18] Steven Wright: Now, this is hardcore stuff. I feel sorry for the mice, but this is really amazing. Basically what they showed is that the butyrate treatment significantly reduced the infarct size, decreased the expression of creatine kinase. Creatine kinase, mitochondrial ISO enzyme, and lactate dehydrogenase.

[00:24:37] So these are all markers of how bad a heart attack happens and like how well you’ll recover if you do. So butyrate significantly impacted all of those.

[00:24:46] But then what they did is they cut the vagal nerve. And for those mice that were given the butyrate and they cut the vagal nerve, it didn’t work. They basically got barely any, basically butyrate treatment also suppressed the neuronal activity of the para ventricular nucleus, PVN, and the superior, i’m not even gonna try that. SCG.

[00:25:06] Both of these effects were lost after vagotomy. So what is being said here is that basically butyrate is going up your vagal nerve and it is actively supporting the health of your heart, of your brain. And without it; without the vagal nerve part, or without the butyrate part, we’re in bad shape here.

[00:25:26] And this study was 2021. So again, it’s just new research. And so I think that’s what’s happening is people are kind of complacent in their elimination diet, probiotic model. And I could talk about why those diets are harming us and they’re actually leading to this dysbiosis, if you want. Or we can keep going down the brain and heart data. 

[00:25:46] Dr. Z: I would love that. I’m asking why. I’m guessing many people are thinking right now is why.

[00:25:52] And I wanna get back to this by the way, the butyrate. We’re gonna discuss and I’m gonna make a note: what negatively affects the butyrate production, or decrease butyrate levels, what that means to the body and all that.

[00:26:03] Let’s unpack that. Like some things that people can do to naturally increase it, how to properly supplement so we’ll unpack that.

[00:26:10] But why don’t probiotics work the way that people think they do?

[00:26:13] Because I think people have been sold on the idea that you need to essentially inoculate yourself with a mass amount of billions upon billions of quote microorganism probiotics to have a healthy gut and that seems very untargeted to me. That seems very antibiotic approach. It seems very nuclear bomb approach, widespread, broad brush, however you wanna look at it.

[00:26:35] It’s like, if antibiotics are bad, then why would a broad spectrum probiotic be good? I can’t understand that logic. Like it’s just two wrongs don’t make it right. Am I misjudging that? Like what’s up with probiotics?

[00:26:48] Hey, friend, real quick, if you’ve been listening and thinking, I wanna live this way, but I need help, well, that’s exactly why we created the Bible Health Academy. It’s our monthly mentorship and training hub packed with Bible health solutions, non-toxic living strategies, and the like-minded community you need to walk in the abundant life God designed for you.

[00:27:08] Dr. Z new: Whether you’re brand new to natural living or ready to go deeper, this is where transformation happens from the inside out. Visit biblehealthacademy.com to learn more. We hope you’ll join us.

[00:27:20] Steven Wright: Yeah, so I’m not throwing, let’s not throw Baby out with the bath water.

[00:27:24] Dr. Z: Course.

[00:27:24] Steven Wright: There is some baby here with probiotics. The story that got transferred through the early researchers into people like us into functional, integrative, and then down to mainstream America has been that gut dysbiosis is bad.

[00:27:38] Like your gut gets disrupted from antibiotics, poor food choices, a bunch of alcohol, a bunch of stress, all these different things, maybe toxins. And so you should replenish, or get rid of the bad guys and get good guys in there. So probiotics, are those good guys.

[00:27:56] Unfortunately they don’t do that story. After that, the narrative falls apart. They don’t actually repopulate the gut and sort of like fix the population damage, which, that’s what dysbiosis is.

[00:28:08] Dysbiosis just basically means the bug community is sick and they don’t have enough levels, they’re very low growing. And then the amount of different species in the hippie community down there is not enough to get the job done.

[00:28:21] So. Probiotics were thought to expand the hippie community and rate like, make ’em thrive again. And that’s just not true.

[00:28:29] What they do do is; some of them help make your intestinal permeability go down. Some of them help with your mucus production. Some of them do support like one little bug here. Another bug here. Some help with the brain. They can go systemic. They can make you more muscle. They can make you have a better brain. They can make you feel better. There’s like mood probiotics, that’s all true.

[00:28:49] But what’s not true is they don’t fix dysbiosis. 

[00:28:52] Dr. Z: Hmm. 

[00:28:53] Steven Wright: And so that’s where the narrative kind of falls apart and why probiotics are not even in my top choices for gut issues.

[00:29:02] Is because they’re important, but not as important as getting that dysbiosis and that leaky gut gone. And in order to do that, you actually need other things. 

[00:29:12] Dr. Z: Like what? 

[00:29:14] Steven Wright: Well, let’s talk about how the hippie community works. So we need to feed them.

[00:29:19] We feed ourselves, but we’re also feeding them. And what they eat are fermentable matter. And so this is basically fruits, vegetables, and starches. The more colors in that, the better. And when we extract nutrients from those fruits, vegetables and starches, that’s great.

[00:29:38] But what’s left over is this fermentable mash. And the hippie community goes to work on that. And like the first guy or girl grabs it and does something to it, and then passes it off to the next, and off to the next.

[00:29:50] And near the end are the butyrate producers who will take some of those compounds and turn ’em into short chain fatty acids and butyrate. Then that is what kind of keeps the whole system healthy, we can talk about that in a second.

[00:30:04] But what we need is that feed, that food source. That is the fastest way if the atmosphere’s right down there, if it’s possible, that’s the fastest way to fix the community. The issue is, is if you’ve lost too much butyrate for too long, the oxygen inside your gut will get too high. Which it sounds like, What? I’m so confused, Steven. I get it.

[00:30:26] Oxygen in the brain. Great. Oxygen in the heart. Super important. Oxygen in the gut? Really bad. And that’s super confusing, but most of the good bugs are called anaerobic bacteria.

[00:30:38] Anaerobic means without oxygen. This is not a discussion. This is not a negotiation. This is like us walking on the moon and running out of air. When the environment is wrong, we’re dead.

[00:30:51] When the environment is wrong for them, they’re dead. And so if the butyrate production goes too low, the metabolism that’s happening in the gut and the colonocytes in the epithelial cells, it stops sucking the oxygen out. And so the oxygen starts rising.

[00:31:07] And when this happens, it causes more death and more destruction to the hippie community. And more bad bugs are growing than good bugs. And so you feed in the prebiotics and the fibers, hoping to restart that.

[00:31:19] But sometimes it doesn’t happen, because of that oxygen issue. And so sometimes you actually have to give both, you actually have to give butyric acid or butyrate, and some food for them to feast on so that you can make the environment. You know, give them their own space suits basically, and then feed ’em again.

[00:31:34] And that is the way to get rid of the microbiome dysbiosis. 

[00:31:40] Dr. Z: You mentioned fruits, veggies, starches. What about people that are on low carb diets and things like, are they at risk? 

[00:31:48] Steven Wright: A hundred percent. 

[00:31:49] Dr. Z: Hmm. So walk us through that a little bit.

[00:31:52] I mean, if people are on a high fat diet, that could reduce the formation of butyrate, right? 

[00:31:57] Steven Wright: So it’s, again, we are at the cutting edge of research.

[00:32:00] Dr. Z: Yeah.

[00:32:01] Steven Wright: But what I’ll tell you is that fats and the story about fats is extraordinarily complex.

[00:32:06] Dr. Z: Sure.

[00:32:07] Steven Wright: And on one end we have like the worst fats in the world, and the other ends we have this grass fed saturated butter. Right? The research really suggests that saturated fats, even if they’re from healthy sources, may potentially harm a gut that’s already kind of out of balance. 

[00:32:22] Dr. Z: Mm-hmm. 

[00:32:23] Steven Wright: And so people who are on a high keto, high carnivore, high fat, low carb diet. They could probably offset that through intense amounts of vegetables and fruits that were low in carbohydrates.

[00:32:36] Dr. Z: Mm-hmm.

[00:32:37] Steven Wright: Um, but they’re not eating enough, likely. I mean, we’re talking like eight to 12, 14 servings a day, and most people are not even close to that. So you’re gonna need to supplement because this is just like fire. Like honestly, if you have a campfire going, you have to feed it wood. At some point it’s gonna run down to just coals. And that’s literally what you’re doing to the microbiome.

[00:33:01] If you cut out FODMAPs, if you cut out low low carb for too long and you don’t keep your vegetables up, or if you go carnivore. Now people are gonna be like, well, what the heck, man? I feel better.

[00:33:15] Well, of course you feel better. You had dysbiosis. You just cut off the fuel source to the bad bugs, but that doesn’t mean the good bugs are coming back. That doesn’t mean you’re getting healthier. You just kind of stop the pain. You stop the bleeding, but you still have to repair the community. 

[00:33:30] Dr. Z: So, walk us through what you’re talking about. Prevention. Maximizing lifespan. There’s some really interesting studies that you’re pulling, walking people through how your body’s changing with butyrate production, as you age.

[00:33:42] What the risks of heart attack and stroke and heart disease. I mean, if you could unwrap that for a minute, that’d be great. 

[00:33:49] Steven Wright: Yeah, so I think most of us would prefer just to never have a heart problem or a brain problem. Like that would be the ideal thing that we age 90, a hundred, however long you wanna live.

[00:33:59] If that’s the case, we need to have an adult conversation. And I think most people don’t want to have this conversation.

[00:34:05] Most people are now like, okay, you’re right. Perimenopause starts in my forties, maybe early forties. Testicular function declines in your forties, maybe in your late thirties. “You’re right. Maybe I should have some bioidentical hormone replacement.”

[00:34:20] What they’re not willing to talk about yet is that the same thing’s happening all over your body. That’s why you get, to the point where you’re like, ah, I guess I’ll get some readers can’t really see anymore. Yeah, it’s ’cause your eyes are aging. They’re slowing down.

[00:34:33] The same thing is happening inside your gut. There are plenty of studies, again, this is not just one study or two studies, and this is not just in, in rats and mice, this is in humans, that show essentially every decade we go on, our microbiome starts to shift in a more negative way.

[00:34:50] And especially every decade from like 50 to 60, 60 to 70 and 70 to 80. It starts to escalate almost logarithmically. Which means, if you don’t know what that word means, just think about 10 x every decade. The problem gets 10 x worse every time you clip off a new milestone number in your age.

[00:35:10] And what this is saying is that literally as we’re aging, it could be a number of factors and it likely is. It could be the fact that we stop eating the way we used to eat, we stop exercising the way we used to exercise.

[00:35:21] There’s a number of factors that make us capable of creating butyrate and short chain fatty acid production. But what it says is that as we age, our microbiome ages and it stops producing butyrate.

[00:35:31] Which is extraordinarily important if you want to even get rid of osteoporosis or fend it off. And so, I think one of the things that’s the highest correlated risk to having a heart attack or a stroke is your age. And again, we don’t wanna necessarily talk about that, but that’s like a super high risk parameter.

[00:35:49] Family history and your age are way up there, right along with smoking, and no activity or obesity. And so we could offset this. If we wanna think about healthy lifespan and healthy aging, we should start thinking about the bugs inside of us and how are they aging?

[00:36:05] And if we can do things like supplement with prebiotics, or tributyrine or other butyrates to keep them healthy longer, we’re likely to stay healthier longer and not have these associated symptoms and problems that spread throughout the body.

[00:36:20] Dr. Z: So walk us through how someone would best purchase a butyrate if they wanted a supplement. ’cause you can go on Amazon, there’s a bunch of different products out there, they can go type up it. I know in the supplement world, and this is where a lot of your expertise lies there are a lot of charlatans out there, unfortunately.

[00:36:37] And folks, I want a gentle reminder that the supplement, and as I know very well, the essential oil industry, is not monitored by the food and drug administration. Essentially any company can say whatever they want to on a label until someone gets hurt and they get sued and then the FDA starts to look under the hood.

[00:36:53] So there’s a lot of bad stuff out there. Yet, there is some good stuff. So walk people through maybe in general dysbiosis healing, dysbiosis recovery type of supplements, including butyrate. If you could give us a, a quick supplement masterclass, I’d appreciate that. ‘Cause we need some guidance on how to buy things and what to buy, right?

[00:37:14] Steven Wright: Yeah. Yep, a hundred percent. As you mentioned, the industry is fraught with issues, and if you don’t spend every day on this like we do, it’s so confusing. And it’s super frustrating for people like me. I would say the number one thing is that you should trust but verify.

[00:37:32] Dr. Z: Mmmm.

[00:37:32] Steven Wright: So it’s kind of on you. Like you said, no one’s really watching until someone gets hurt. So you need to verify, and I know this is cliche, but it’s true, trust your gut if you don’t verify and get the answer you want.

[00:37:45] So when I say verify, just email the company. Call the company. Do they pick up? Do they answer their emails? And whatever question you ask, such as? You know, where do you get your raw ingredients from or something like that. Just make sure that it feels good inside of your body, the answer. And the answer, unfortunately, just because they say it’s US made, that doesn’t mean anything frankly.

[00:38:09] Some of the best ingredients in the world are in China. Why? Because the US doesn’t grow curcumin here. It grows in Asia.

[00:38:17] Dr. Z: Yeah.

[00:38:17] Steven Wright: The herbs, a lot of the herbs we want to take don’t even, they could never grow in the US. So the idea that it’s like, oh, I’ll just get a US made company, Nope, that’s not gonna help you.

[00:38:27] Dr. Z: Mm-hmm.

[00:38:27] Steven Wright: Definitely if you’re in the gut world, probably the cheapest option is gonna not perform. That’s also a problem is that people can use really good raw ingredients, but they cannot put enough in the capsule to actually help you.

[00:38:40] And so that’s another issue. And so if I was you, since we live in this cool new world with this AI technology, I would ask an AI bot, whatever one you use for, what are the study dosages of whatever you’re looking for.

[00:38:53] Let’s say tributyrin, or butyric acid, and you can make the AI do the hard work. You don’t have to be a scientist anymore, and you don’t have to be like this crazy extensive journalist like I am. You can ask the AI to go search for you and just, you don’t need to know a lot.

[00:39:08] Like, oh, okay, so most of the dosages are, say 500 milligrams. So then you should be able to just look at the back of the bottle from that company and say, Does it have at least that much? How many capsules do I need?

[00:39:19] So those are some simple ways where if the company does not respond, if they don’t have US based help, that can like, speak really good English and you feel like you’re taken care of. And if a little quick use of chat GPT or something doesn’t result in some easy numbers that you can use, and then that’s backed up, that’s a lot of red flags right there for me. 

[00:39:42] Dr. Z: Um. That’s a really good point. The dosing is such a good point. ’cause you might have to take 10 capsules, 15 capsules to get a therapeutic dose of a supplement. And that is oftentimes not gonna be, most of every time., It’s not gonna be advertised by the manufacturer.

[00:39:58] And that is really, really key. I mean, AI is just level the playing here, brother. It is unbelievable. Which is great. What used to take you and I hours, sometimes days to surmise, it’s like you get within seconds.

[00:40:09] And you would be very wise to go to a chat GTP or bot, or I’m sorry, your AI app and go like, Hey, here’s what I got dealing with. I’m looking at this product. What’s a recommended dose? What does the research say? And maybe even look up what products have this dose. That’s great.

[00:40:26] Steven Wright: Yeah. That’s the unfortunate thing about when you’re working with a in the know integrative or functional medicine doctor, is that. Number one, they’re gonna choose a product that they know works really well and they’ve already vetted that for you.

[00:40:39] But number two, they know the actual therapeutic dosages. And what’s on the back of a label is legal language. It’s not health advice.

[00:40:47] Now, if you’re in, like a standup company, like we are in, like a lot of practitioner brands are, we’re gonna try to put a therapeutic dose on the back of the bottle. But we know that we’re just aiming for a window of therapeutic dosages. Because we’re not your health practitioner.

[00:41:02] We don’t know that you just had a heart attack or you just had a stroke, or we don’t really know anything about you. So we can’t say, Hey, you need six pills a day, and everybody else needs two. Because that’s not, that’s just not how the industry works. And so understanding the dosage and what’s possible is another question to ask the company.

[00:41:20] At Healthy Gut, we have free health coaching for that purpose. Because you can get the best product, but you can get the dosage wrong. It’s the number one mistake people make with curcumin. Almost all the research on curcumin is 1000 to 1500 milligrams a day for awesome results.

[00:41:34] And most companies are trying to sell you on taking something that’s like 300 or 400 milligrams because it’s more bioavailable, but they don’t have any research outcomes to support that bioavailability claim.

[00:41:45] There’s all these tricky things that happen in the industry that frustrate me. And that’s where if you have a guide or a coach or a practitioner, they can really steer you through the maze that is alternative health.

[00:41:59] Dr. Z: So we’re painting this picture. Gut brain, heart connection, heart attack, stroke prevention, recovery. We’re really unpacking dysbiosis. We’ve done a great job. We’ve kind of opened up the lid on probiotics a little bit, discussed a lot of butyrate.

[00:42:12] If you could, we mentioned symptoms. You mentioned a variety of different symptoms, the overt ones, the hidden ones, but can you, transition into testing and even like determining Okay, now let’s kind of shift gears towards therapeutics and recovery.

[00:42:29] What are some good tests? I know there’s a one or two that you recommend and really go down that route. Does someone have to, this is a question we get a lot, do I have to work with a functional medicine practitioner to go on this route?

[00:42:41] Can I DIY? If so, how would you DIY this. 

[00:42:46] Steven Wright: I mean, look, I was DIYing for a long time.

[00:42:50] Dr. Z: I know.

[00:42:50] Steven Wright: So I have a lot of sympathy for those folks. And I think with the continual increase in AI, I think it’s gonna be easier and easier in the future. As long as they don’t get fed the wrong inputs. As long as they stay free to interpret the research.

[00:43:04] Yes. I would encourage people to get a microbiome test. Now, you could spend a lot of money on these things, like you could spend like $800,000 on a regular basis.

[00:43:14] And, what I’m gonna try to offer here is like a simple, I’m thinking about this almost like a colonoscopy. This is like a simple check. Do it once a year, do it once every three years. There’s a company called Biome Sight and it’s one of the most economical and just kind of straightforward reports about your microbiome.

[00:43:31] And what I’ve been talking about today, what I’m asking you to check on and look for, is your short chain fatty acid production. Now there are other short chain fatty acids besides butyrate. There’s propionate and acetate are the other two most important ones. And I would just do it this test and just verify that the test confirms that your butyrate production is in the middle, it’s in the green areas. It’s not too low, it’s not too high, and that the microbiome bugs that make butyrate are also in the beneficial range.

[00:44:02] The testing for microbiome, the testing for stool is still very medieval. I don’t care what the company says. I don’t, there’s companies that start with a Big V that have billions of dollars behind them. There’s other companies out there. They can claim whatever they want.

[00:44:18] But I can tell you ’cause I run tests on the regular basis where I send, like it’s the same stool sample, to multiple labs at the same time and they often disagree with each other. And so I think the best thing to be looking for at this point, and I would be skeptical of a lot of the…

[00:44:34] Even Biome Sight, I think sometimes makes some interesting recommendations around food and supplements that may be you know, not necessarily bad, but not necessarily the most important things. That’s true with all the companies.

[00:44:45] The most important thing is where are your butyrate producers? Like, are they high enough? And then do you have enough butyrate? And doing that check is probably the simplest way and the fastest way for I think around a hundred bucks.

[00:44:58] Dr. Z: Mm-hmm.

[00:44:59] Steven Wright: That you can, just identify is this a risk for me? And you should check it more than once because this changes literally based on your stress, based on how often you get outside based on what you’re eating, based on how old you are. So your  butyrate production fluctuates throughout the day, throughout the year, throughout your life, depending on what’s happening for you.

[00:45:19] So simple ways to increase butyrate that costs nothing are exercise. If you actually exercise, butyrate goes up. And going outside. The more time you spend outside, the more likely you’re gonna have higher butyrate production. Again, those are studies. It’s not just me making stuff up. It comes right from the research.

[00:45:36] Beyond that, if you had those like overt gut problems, right? There’s other testing you might want to consider because if you’re having heartburn on a regular basis. You’re likely suffering from this thing called low stomach acid.

[00:45:51] If you’re having food sensitivities and food problems on a regular basis, you probably have low digestive enzymes. And these upstream, so this is your stomach, your small intestine, and then your microbiome’s below that. So if something bad happens, like in your plumbing, it’s gonna affect what goes out to the sewer, right? It’s either not gonna all get there, like a lot of different things could go wrong.

[00:46:13] All I’m saying is that if you have an issue in a different digestive organ on the way down to the microbiome, it could be really difficult for you to ever fully get those numbers into the green on a test like that if you don’t address the other overt gut problems that you might be suffering from.

[00:46:28] And so that could look like doing further stool testing with a functional medicine provider or just buying really well-made supplements and seeing like it’s not really more complex than, does this make my poop better? Does this make my bloating less? Do I feel better on this product at the right dosage?

[00:46:46] And so I would also encourage people to take a look at their acid in their stomach, take a look at their enzyme function, both of those decline as we age as well. And you know, also take a look at, what are the test results saying? If you’re not willing to spend the hundred bucks on the test results, then I think if you’ve said yes to any of the risk factors I’m talking about today, just supplementing with something like tributyrin on a regular basis will also give you some level of insurance if you do enough of the dose. And the dose we’re looking at is like minimum, probably 1500 milligrams a day. 

[00:47:21] Dr. Z: So let me summarize this.

[00:47:22] We’ve talked in the context of prevention. We’re talking about prevention, heart attack, stroke heart disease, and then let’s end with recovery because that is really a topic that a lot of people aren’t talking about. It’s like, oh, you already had a stroke, or, oh, you already had a heart attack, and it’s just like there isn’t enough. My opinion, whether it’s cancer, whether it is any sort of incident that someone happens, especially post-surgery, post cardiac event.

[00:47:49] We’re not talking enough about how to get better and how not to prevent it from happening again. But I wanna summarize everything with this, for those geeks out there who want the science understanding of why and the summary of what everything Steven’s saying here.

[00:48:02] Going back to that 2023 study, the ways the microbiome is involved in modulating cardiovascular risk are multiple and not only related to inflammatory mechanisms.

[00:48:14] This goes beyond inflammation. I think that’s really important because a lot are focused on inflammation, which is important. I think you might have mentioned that word once, maybe twice. It hasn’t been the focal point of it, right? 

[00:48:25] The human and gut microbiome cooperate as a metabolically active superorganism, and this affects host physiology through metabolic pathways. In turn, and this is where it gets serious, congestion of the splanchnic circulation associated with heart failure, edema of the intestinal wall, and altered function and permeability of the intestinal barrier result in translocation of bacteria and their products into the systemic circulation, further enhancing the pro-inflammatory conditions, underlying heart disorders.

[00:48:55] I hope that makes sense. It makes sense to me and we need to take this seriously. So prevention, you’ve talked a lot about what if the unthinkable happens. What post heart attack or stroke recovery strategy would you recommend for people?

[00:49:13] Steven Wright: Well, yeah, I think most people don’t talk about it because they don’t wanna be liable for, setting people up. But I believe in treating people like adults. I’ve had a lot of scary and sad things happen to me and family members, and we’ve got a lot of terrible advice from, the Western, industrial medical system.

[00:49:30] It’s great if you break a bone, but not so great if you have a sick and chronic disease. Especially if you have an event related to that sick and chronic disease. And so I would say your gut, the studies are absolutely critically clear on this. In humans and mice and rats, they all line up, boom, boom, boom.

[00:49:46] That doesn’t always happen. And that’s one of the reasons why I haven’t been like. Super. I’m not saying that the gut alone will protect you from a heart attack or from a stroke. I’m not saying that. I’m saying it’s one piece of the three parts of the puzzle, that most people are overlooking. What I’m about to say is absolutely clear because we do have this data.

[00:50:06] When you have a heart attack or a stroke immediately, and this is in patients admitted to hospitals, you have intestinal permeability and you have gut dysbiosis. That’s beyond everything else we already talked about. It gets really bad, and in fact, one of the reasons why you die in the hospital is because a leaky gut gets so bad and you get sepsis.

[00:50:27] Sepsis is LPS or the toxins inside your gut, leaking across the gut barrier, overwhelming the body, and then you die. So. Hopefully that doesn’t happen. And for the most part, you know, most people it won’t happen to, but I’m just saying that this process kicks off extreme damage to the gut.

[00:50:44] It happened up here, but it also happened in your gut. It happened in your heart, but it also happened in your gut. So just adopting an anti-inflammatory routine, or just adopting some sort of cardiac specific drug or supplement, or brain specific drug or supplement, is not gonna be an optimal path for recovery. Whether you use my products or any other thing I’ve talked about today, you should also treat it as if your gut just had a major event, a bad event.

[00:51:11] And so what the research in mice and rats says. So we don’t have this in humans yet. There is not I couldn’t find one. I tried so hard to find any sort of intervention trial after a stroke or after a heart attack for butyrate or for prebiotics specifically. I really couldn’t find one. There’s some probiotic stuff and it’s not that exciting, frankly.

[00:51:32] Again, another thing around, probiotics are probably not the only thing you should be focused on. But the rat and the mouse stuff all suggests that butyrate, taking it, will help lessen the symptoms, improve the outcomes, meaning you’ll have less re-injury, ’cause there’s all these like secondary injuries that you can have happen.

[00:51:51] You can also get infections from the hospital. There’s all these just bam, bam, bam. There’s this thing that takes us out as humans. And it’s oftentimes not the first event, it’s the events that are coming next. And so if you have recovery on your mind, and I’m really sorry if that’s where you’re at.

[00:52:06] But I would say the mice and the rat studies may not translate to humans. We won’t know for another five or 10 years, but I would immediately be taking tributyrin. I would immediately start taking probiotics and prebiotics and I would do everything you can to stimulate your vagal nerve.

[00:52:25] And so there’s devices now you can buy like these little shockers for your neck. I use the Pulsetto, there’s a number of them. I would be doing that often all day long. And then I would also be supplementing with these things.

[00:52:38] It may not be the answer for your recovery. But I don’t think it’s gonna hurt at all. And literally it’s only gonna be helpful for the recovery process. It may not be like the silver bullet, but like nothing I’m saying right now, in my opinion is gonna harm you. Of course, speak with your medical professional.

[00:52:56] And I just want you to know that like when you go into the hospital, you’re gonna get antibiotics. Like, you have to have them. It’s gonna be part of the process. And pretty much all the research has failed on probiotic recovery from antibiotic dysbiosis.

[00:53:11] Dr. Z: Really?

[00:53:11] Steven Wright: It just didn’t work. Yeah, it didn’t work. But tributyrin, which is the best form of butyric acid, the best butyrate supplement is tributyrin. We could talk about that at a different day, but this right here, 2023 paper shows how that in mice, by taking the tributyrin, they prevent the collapse of the microbiome and it helps recover way faster. So if you’re given an antibiotic in the hospital, again, just another reason to take 

[00:53:37] Dr. Z: Wow 

[00:53:37] Steven Wright: Tributyrin. Whether or not it’s actually going to contribute to improvement in motor function right away, or improvement in brain outcomes right away, we’ll have to figure that out in the future.

[00:53:47] But what happens in the gut happens in the brain. What happens in the gut happens in the heart, and the same is true. So I would put a significant amount of your focus there, like 50 50 for recovery.

[00:53:58] Dr. Z: Wow. I mean, you can’t recover without getting a good night’s sleep. That’s your body’s regenerative process.

[00:54:04] You can’t recover properly without having a healthy microbiome. I mean, if there’s dysbiosis, you have to fix it. And so to your point, you might not necessarily feel different, but it is necessary. It is one of those things.

[00:54:17] You need to sleep, you need to be hydrating properly. You need to be focused on positive I mean really positive thinking. We don’t talk enough about that. And you need to work on the gut, it’s so vital that. It’s not considered, and I didn’t know that and I am kind of wowed that the research has fallen flat on its face. Because we’ve heard for a decade now whenever you take a antibiotic, you better boost up your probiotics. That will fix it.

[00:54:43] But again, like I mentioned earlier, it’s like two extremes. Don’t fix it. And you’re basically offering this targeted solution. I’m so grateful. Don’t throw the probiotics away, but it’s not the end all. It’s part of the solution and it seems like the missing link.

[00:54:58] Wow. Maybe that’s the title of this talk, the missing link to your gut health. Right? It’s butyrate. So. Wow. Brother, this has been awesome. This has been a masterclass and I really appreciate it. I’m good. I got no other questions other than you have anything you wanna lead people with?

[00:55:14] Steven Wright: I think you summarized it well. There’s a book called Radical Remission. If you do find yourself in that recovery phase, it’s mostly around cancer, which happens to be, a feature in my life, unfortunately. But it, I think all the principles apply. And I think what you just said there is extraordinarily important around just don’t stop.

[00:55:31] Just don’t give up. Wow. 

[00:55:34] Dr. Z: I love it. I love it. Folks, check out Steven and look up his products. Please dig deep. Go to healthy get.com and I hope you’ve enjoyed this talk as I have a lot of light bulbs going on right now, so this is awesome connecting a lot of dots. Brother, my folks as always is Dr. Eric Zielinski. My hope and prayer is that you and your family truly experience the abundant life and look forward to talking to you soon. God bless. Bye.

[00:55:58] Thanks for listening to the Natural Living Family Podcast. Hope today’s conversation encouraged and challenged you to live a healthier, more abundant life. Tune in next week for another life transforming discussion. 

[00:56:09] If today’s episode blessed you, please share it with a friend and leave a review. This helps more families discover the hope and healing found in God’s word. For show notes, transcripts and resources from today’s episode, visit natural living family podcast.com. And as always, this is Dr. Z. My hope and prayer is that you and your family truly experience the abundant life.

[00:56:30] God bless. Talk to you soon.