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Transcript
- 02:24 About Jordan Reasoner and the SCD Lifestyle
- 05:39 What is the Specific Carbohydrate Diet or SCD?
- 08:14 Healing the Gut
- 13:02 Digestive Issues and Digestive Enzymes
- 16:56 Raw Vegetables versus Cooked Vegetables
- 20:35 What is IBS?
- 24:08 Testing for Celiac Disease
- 28:31 A Protocol for Healing the Gut
- 34:28 Probiotics
- 38:51 How to win a Poop Pageant
- 40:34 The most pressing health issue in the world today
- 41:55 More about Jordan Reasoner and the SCD lifestyle
Wendy Myers: Welcome to the Live to 110 Podcast. My name is Wendy Myers and you can find me on myersdetox.com.
Today, I am really excited. I have Jordan Reasoner from SCDLIfestyle.com and we’re going to be talking about poop. So for those of you guys that are a little squeamish out there, this might not be the show for you.
We’re going to be talking about how to have the perfect poop and how to get rid of IBS and heal your gut because digestive issues are a big problem with a lot of my clients and a lot of you listeners out there, it’s a big epidemic. People have so many digestive issues for various reasons. So we’re going to get down to the bottom of it today.
But first, we have to do the disclaimer if I can say that. Please keep in mind that this podcast is not intended to diagnose or treat any disease or health condition. The Live to 110 Podcast is solely informational in nature and for entertainment purposes. So please consult your healthcare practitioner before engaging in any diet or treatment that we suggest on this show.
If you guys want to sign up for my website on myersdetox.com, there’s a million little places you can sign up to get my free Live to 110 by Weighting Less e-guide and my free Modern Paleo Survival Guides. It has charts on fats and oils and foods that are on the modern paleo diet versus the paleo diet. It gives you a little taste, a little preview of coming attractions of my new upcoming book, The Modern Paleo Survival Guide.
Today, our guest is Jordan Reasoner. He is a mechanical engineer turned health engineer. Celiac Disease almost killed him in 2007, but he transformed his health using this specific carbohydrate diet, SCD carbohydrate diet and saved his life.
Since then, he’s known for starting SCDLifestyle.com with Steven Wright. You may know him. He hosts the Chris Kresser podcast. Together, they help others naturally overcome chronic digestive problems and enjoy perfect poops. He lives in Boseman, Montana with his two children.
So thank you for coming on the show, Jordan.
Jordan Reasoner: Thanks for having me, Wendy. I’m excited. I always like to put the word ‘poop’ in my bio, so that all the hosts have to say it right away and get it out of the way.
Wendy Myers: Yeah, I just got indoctrinated into poop.
Wendy Myers: So why don’t you tell the listeners a little bit about yourself and how you finally had perfect poops and how you discovered the SCD lifestyle?
Jordan Reasoner: Yeah, I’m always humbled to be on shows like this. I mean, I’m still just a regular dude. Back in 2007, I was literally having diarrhea like 10-15 times a day. My doctors just had no idea. They were just throwing their hands up and they put me on some prescriptions for IBS and things like that.
I had to really fight to get a colonoscopy. When I got a colonoscopy, again, they woke me up, I came out of the thing and they said, “You’re fine. There’s nothing wrong. No ulcerative colitis, no Krohn’s,” but yet I had low energy, I was having a hard time going to work every day, falling asleep at work. The diarrhea was just absurd.
I had all these other issues – depression, my hair was falling out, you know all those fun things. I had acne. I just felt like crap.
When they pulled me out of the colonoscopy, they said, “We’ll runs some biopsies and we’ll let you know.” Three weeks later, I get a packet in the mail that said, “Jordan, you have Celiac Disease. Just eat gluten-free and you’ll be fine” and inside were some like 1990s pamphlets on gluten and what it is. Not a phone call or anything, just a pamphlet in the mail. I thought, “Wow! Okay, I finally know what’s wrong with me. If I just eat gluten-free, I’m going to be fine.”
And I did that really strict for a long time and I didn’t get any better. It got so bad that – I always talk about this, this one night when things were so bad. I stayed up late. My Sonny was one at the time. It’s funny to be on a Live to 110 podcast because my body was just falling apart. I thought, “Live to 28…”
Wendy Myers: “…if I’m lucky.”
Jordan Reasoner: “That’d be great.” So that night, I stayed up late and literally, I was like 23 years old. I thought, “Okay, I’m not going to live very long” and I literally wrote my will. I didn’t have a will. I was 23 years old. I just graduated college a year before that.
So I wrote my will in a piece of notebook paper. And then in the morning, I gave it to my wife. This was like, “I don’t have a will, but I feel like I need this. I don’t think I’m going to be around that much longer.
And then later that day, I kind of foot the mindset and I decided that wasn’t going to happen to me. I wasn’t going to die. I wasn’t going to be a victim of Celiac Disease and I just started googling.
Eventually, I found this specific carbohydrate diet. I decided to start it. Seven days later, my diarrhea finally stopped for the first time in years.
That was the first step in probably a thousand steps since then, but I feel like now, I potentially could live to be 110. It’s a profound thing for me to be sitting here on this podcast with you talking about this when back then, I had to handwrite my will because I didn’t think I’d live very long.
Wendy Myers: That’s a profound place to be in. I think there’s a lot of people out there that are really suffering and the doctors have no idea.
I have a girlfriend who has IBS. She’s constantly in and out of the doctor’s who wanted to give her all kinds of medications. It’s extremely frustrating. There’s so many answers out there.
Wendy Myers: And so why don’t you tell us a little bit about some of the answers you found. What exactly is the specific carbohydrate diet?
Jordan Reasoner: Yeah, the specific carbohydrate diet, we could kind of call it ‘little brother to paleo’. In general, it’s a really gut-healing specific diet similar to GAPS. GAPS was built off of the foundation of the specific carbohydrate diet. We’re talking about eating real food really when it comes down to it. Whatever the name is – GAPS, Weston A. Price, Paleo.
As we look at this, the specific carbohydrate diet, it pulls out all grains (just like Paleo and just like GAPS does), but it allows some 24-hour fermented yoghurts and things like that that are lactose-free dairy products.
It also allows legumes to some extent. And it pulls out safe starches. So it pulls out things like sweet potatoes and yams and really just tries to get you focused on eating – the only source of carbohydrates are monosaccharides, one sugar molecules (the natural sugars in fruit or the natural sugars in honey and things like that rather than the complex sugars that might be in a sweet potato or yam or something like that).
It really focuses on pulling those things out, the single sugars that are different to break down if you have a lot of damage in your gut like I did and really helps you begin to heal the gut.
We like to help people create a custom diet that’s going to work for them. I don’t think there’s any real diet that’s going to work for everybody. It really ended up being the Jordan diet and the Steve diet and there’s probably Wendy diet. Everybody has to create their own custom version of these types of things.
And so we like to see people create their custom version of whatever it might be, like SCD as a foundation, for example. And then graduating to maybe a Paleo type diet for long-term gut health (maybe a year or so and graduate up after that).
So it’s really a journey. It’s a journey. I would say that I was on SCD for maybe two years and then graduated up to Paleo. I brought safe starches back in because they’re very important for long-term gut health and that type of thing.
I really think that that gives you a little high-level overview of what SCD is with the caveat that we really want to encourage people to create their own custom diet that’s going to work for them.
Wendy Myers: And I love that you said you stayed on it for two years because I think a lot of people have unrealistic expectations, but when they have gut issues like this, it takes a long time to heal and to get rid of those food sensitivities that were being caused by leaky gut.
Wendy Myers: So why don’t you tell us a little bit about the healing process and why that take so long?
Jordan Reasoner: Oh, man! I pureed my fruits and vegetables for an entire year. So I would peel and de-seed fruits and vegetables. I cook them, so they’re really well-cooked. And then I make baby food basically.
It was really funny because my son was one at the time. He was just getting into real food and he’s still breastfeeding at the same time. I would make myself some pureed squash and dump some on his plate too, you know? And we’d eat together.
At the time, I could’ve cared less because I wasn’t having diarrhea anymore. It was like a miracle. So for me, I would’ve eaten whatever it would’ve taken at that point. But my gut was so damaged from full-blown Celiac that it really took a long time for me to just be able to eat like a raw piece of cucumber, for example. I mean, that took years.
So I think the healing process really, it’s almost three steps. Step one is you really have to remove the triggers, whatever those might be. So for example, there’s 19 really common triggers that we’ve looked at that can damage the gut and cause leaky gut and inflammation, things like that – grains being one of them, especially gluten for example.
Pulling out those triggers – chronic EnZed use, chronic alcohol consumptions, those types of things that are going to really continue to damage your gut as you’re trying to fix it. If you can pull out the most common triggers, if you can change your diet to a real food type of diet, that’s really step one.
And then step two is to rebuild it. Rebuilding it involves really anti-inflammatory nutrient-dense food like a paleo diet for example. I think it’s important for people to eat that way in order to heal their gut.
But it still goes beyond that even further and I think this is where a lot of people miss. I don’t think diet alone is enough to really rebuild a gut that’s damaged like mine was. The healing process really involves not only food, but some supplements.
Some people really commonly need digestive enzymes, for example. That’s a common one that can really just light switch turn someone’s digestion around if they’re really struggling. And for me, overnight, the next day, enzymes helped me immediately with digesting food better, boosting my energy. I certainly have better, solid, form bowel movements, which is nice.
And then, a lot of people have a low stomach acid. So Betaine HCL is a really common supplement that a lot of people with gut problems have to have in order to digest meat well.
A lot of people who come to these real food types of diets, they don’t digest meat well, so sometimes they’ll feel worse on these types of diet, which really sucks because it’s like you came to a diet where you’re supposed to be eating really great food and you just feel worse or your GERD or your acid reflux gets worse. A lot of times, a low stomach acid is the culprit there. So those two supplements are really important.
And then I think that the third step is really what are the root causes, really addressing the root causes. There are so many, but I’ll share two of the root causes that were going on in my body that helped me finally begin to really heal my gut for the long-term.
Number one was gut infections. I had two. I ended finding I had a parasite called strongyloides and I also had h pylori and also, small intestinal bacterial overgrowth. So those three types of infections needed to be treated for me to really make some leaps and bounds and stop pureeing my food, for example and be able to go to restaurants again and that type of thing.
And then I also really struggle with adrenal fatigue, which is a common one that many people have chronic illness struggle with. I had really low cortisol like 30% of the cortisol level of a healthy person. So I’m working with a skilled practitioner in handling adrenal fatigue, which is part of the process.
So those are really the three steps – remove the triggers, start to rebuild with some good diet and supplement and lifestyle changes. And then the third really important thing is that you circle back in this journey and start to check off some root causes. How did you get there in the first place? What got you sick? Why are you even in this position? That’s one that a lot of people miss I think.
Wendy Myers: Yeah, that’s one thing I do on my program called Mineral Power. I use a hair mineral analysis to figure out the nutrients that people need. When they get on this supplement program, they’re doing detox and supplementation and diet, the Paleo diet.
It’s amazing! Their gut start healing and their food sensitivities start going away. It heals adrenal fatigue as well. I think it’s one of those things that you have to treat so many different factors. It’s not just about the gut and targeting the gut, so to speak. You have to heal your whole body.
Jordan Reasoner: Well said.
Wendy Myers: And so something you said struck me. You said that people with digestive issues need digestive enzymes. Is there a point of diminishing returns where they need to take those long-term where they could possibly not be producing enough of their own enzyme or is it a supplement you think is okay to take for a long time, for the long-term?
Jordan Reasoner: I’ve been asked that so many times over the years. I’ll tell you, there’s not a lot of research that I’ve personally been able to dig up on it.
I found one animal study where they found that after a couple of weeks of backing off of enzymes, the participants – I think they were actually swine – had normally restoration of enzyme production or natural enzyme production. But I haven’t found a lot of human-based studies that I rely on.
What I can say is that in my personal experience working with so many people over the years, I haven’t seen it become a problem. But I think it goes back to what’s the root cause.
Why are you insufficient in enzymes? Is it gallbladder insufficiency? Do you literally have brush border damage like I did from Celiac Disease where your brush border enzyme production is poor? Do you have a low stomach acid?
That stomach acid plays a critical role in the pH level being perfect when it hits your small intestine and bile salts get released. All of these things are kind of a cascading event, triggering the proper enzyme production. All those types of things happen when stomach acid is perfect.
So is it an up-line problem meaning maybe you have a low stomach acid and that’s why your enzyme productions is poor? Did you have your gallbladder removed?
There’s all these different types of root causes. There’s different enzymes we’re talking about? There’s different brush border enzymes versus what’s released from the gallbladder. Those types of things are very different.
So when we’re talking about enzyme production and taking digestive enzymes, some people have to be on for life. Some people have a root cause that is going to require them to supplement for the rest of their life.
Some people can take them for a while and maybe, for example, they get their stomach acid levels back to normal, maybe an h pylori infection is why their stomach acid was suppressed. So they treat that, stomach acid comes back to normal, natural levels. They’re digesting well. Everything down the line starts to work better and they don’t need enzymes anymore.
So for me, it’s really a thing where I encourage people to try enzymes. And for me, if I have to take enzymes for life to digest food well and feel great and live a long, healthy, happy life, I’m totally okay with that because of what I’ve been through.
Wendy Myers: Yeah.
Jordan Reasoner: So for me, to think twice about taking enzymes when a) it makes me feel great and b) I’m so much better off than I was before I took them, for me, it’s a no-brainer to take that choice. I really want people to look at what’s the root cause and why you need enzymes in the first place before you start to think about, “Is this going to impact my natural levels long-term?” because it’s like well, maybe, but if you have natural insufficiencies anyway, then what difference does it make?
Wendy Myers: Yeah, I take digestive enzymes and I recommend them to all my clients because a few years ago, I was diagnosed with h pylori and after that, I started taking HCL with Betaine and I started taking digestive enzymes.
I was able to stop the HCL after about six months because I felt I had a low stomach acid. But yeah, I love the digestive enzymes. I take them. I go a week here and there, sometimes I don’t take them. I’m okay. It doesn’t really bother me. But I think for some people, it’s a really good idea to take them for life for sure.
Jordan Reasoner: Yeah, definitely.
Wendy Myers: And so another thing you said was that you couldn’t digest a cucumber, which is a raw food. So for people that are healing their guts, trying to heal their leaky gut, what is your take on raw vegetables versus cooked vegetables? What should they be eating?
Jordan Reasoner: Yeah, that’s a good question. Again, we have to create a custom diet. So there are some people that just cannot tolerate raw vegetables right now in their life. Why is that? That’s the first question I always ask, why. What’s the root cause here?
A lot of times, we’re dealing with small intestinal bacterial overgrowth. If you’ve been diagnosed with IBSD or IBSC, there’s a lot of different research out there, but anywhere from 30% to 60% of people with IBS is positive for small intestinal bacterial overgrowth. It depends on which study you read. But primarily, people who are having IBS diarrhea predominant are more likely to have small intestinal bacterial overgrowth.
In general, when you’re talking about dealing with small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, a lot of times when you feed raw vegetables, for example, it just makes the bacteria go nuts and aggravates your symptoms.
A lot of times it depends whether you are someone who’s dealing with hydrogen-releasing bacteria or methane releasing bacteria depends on whether you have constipation or diarrhea, but your symptoms will really aggravate when you eat raw vegetables, for example.
So a lot of times, people have to take their foundational diet, whether it’s Paleo or GAPS or Weston A. Price or SCD and then tweak it to be low FODMAP – and don’t make me say the definition of FODMAP on-the-air because I will [inaudible 00:18:43].
Wendy Myers: I won’t.
Jordan Reasoner: It’s Tuesday. I just can’t get it.
Wendy Myers: Just go look it up, people.
Jordan Reasoner: Yeah, yeah. So low FODMAP, fruits and vegetables can be really helpful and taken into the next level. Peeling and de-seeding removes a lot of the really fibrous materials that can aggravate symptoms. And then cooking also breaks down and makes it even more well-tolerated. And then pureeing, just to take it to the next level.
I don’t really recommend that unless you’re somebody like me who’s having extreme diarrhea and just really life-threatening stuff. If you’re just having some gas and bloating, you probably don’t need to go that extent.
But if you eat a lower FODMAP custom version of your diet, a lot of times that can really help. Just low FODMAP can be complicated for some people. If you look it up, you’ll find charts on any website about what is a high FODMAP fruit and vegetables. It’s really about, if you think about it, the things with more fibers. For example, cauliflower and broccoli are going to have way more of a FODMAP problem for people than a cucumber or a zucchini because they’re more fibrous in general.
And so first of all, one of the most important things you can do is any time you peel or de-seed, you’re going to make it lower FODMAP inherently. And then a lot of type of cooking can really help you.
So a low FODMAP tweak for people with IBS or small intestinal bacterial overgrowth can be really helpful, a really powerful customization.
And it can be really almost maddening to try to mix all of these different diets because there is a low FODMAP diet. And so if you’re trying to mix FODMAP with Paleo with SCD with GAPS, it can just drive you insane and I think the take home point is eat less fibrous stuff and peel and de-seed and cook stuff if you have to for a while. It’s going to make your symptoms improve a lot.
Wendy Myers: And so let’s talk a little bit about IBS and what it is exactly because I think when people go to their doctor, they’re having digestive issues, the doctor is just, “Oh, it’s IBS.” It’s just a garbage can term when they really don’t know what the hell is wrong with you. So what exactly is IBS?
Jordan Reasoner: Yeah, it’s a diagnosis of symptoms basically. As a comparison to Celiac Disease (that I was diagnosed with), there’s an overt immune response destroying the lining in my gut. That’s a specific condition that’s happening in my body. Irritable bowel syndrome is really a diagnosis of you have this checklist of symptoms, we’ve ruled out these other things, okay, you have, by default, IBS.”
So it could be a lot of different things. It doesn’t always mean small intestinal bacterial overgrowth. Like I said, depending on the population studies that you look at, sometimes, it’s 30% of the people test positive for SIBO. A lot of times in the IBS diarrhea predominant people, they’ll be up to 60% positive for SIBO.
So it is a rule-out diagnosis. It means, you are having either some really uncomfortable diarrhea predominant symptoms or some really uncomfortable constipation predominant symptoms. Dr. Allison Siebecker is one of our great friends and she does a great job putting together the website, SIBOinfo.com. It’s really one of the number one resources out there for SIBO.
I would say after knowing her for years and just talking to her for years, it’s one of those things. It’s not always SIBO. It’s not always gut infections. I think you really have to look at IBS as a root cause hunt.
So you’ve been diagnosed with this thing, it just means that you’re either having lots of GI discomfort that’s either diarrhea or constipation based. You need to kind of work with a skilled practitioner to go on a root cause hunt.
Is it SIBO? Now, I’ve seen a ton of people, I’ve worked with a ton of people who SIBO (small intestinal bacterial overgrowth) was the primary cause of their IBS symptoms. And so the root cause hunt was a positive breath test for SIBO. They did an herbal protocol that killed it. Re-tested, found it was gone and their symptoms are much improved. They were able to really open up their diet at that point. They’re able to bring safe starches in and graduate up to Paleo for example.
In some cases, they were negative for SIBO. They started doing some stool testing and found h pylori antigen, so they were positive for h pylori. That was contributing to it.
Sometimes, it’s seriously just a diet-based reaction, so you’ve got some inflamed conditions going on in the gut because you’re eating gluten or because you’re eating all-grains or because you’ve got a low stomach acid and enzyme insufficiency.
So I think any time people are diagnosed with IBS, it’s specifically prescribed medications like Bento like I was that just don’t work. It’s frustrating and it’s depressing.
What I would say is that, “Okay, that gives you the green light to start to root cause hunt” and try to figure out, “Okay, do SIBO test. Is it SIBO? Do stool test. Look for pathogens. Do some trials, some testing with supplements, low stomach acid. Look at enzyme insufficiency,” those types of things and try figuring out what are the root cause or more than root causes that are contributing to this group of symptoms, which has been called IBS in your case.
Wendy Myers: And what about testing for Celiac Disease? Aren’t there a lot of weaknesses in the typical tests you get at your doctor’s office?
Jordan Reasoner: Yeah.
Wendy Myers: Some of the tests, I’ve had a number of people go, “I go to the doctor” and they get this simple blood test and the doctor says, “Oh, you don’t have Celiac. You can eat gluten now.” And so what do you say to those people and what is the best Celiac test that you should get?
Jordan Reasoner: That’s a tough question.
Wendy Myers: Sorry.
Jordan Reasoner: I’ve been over this and over this over the years. I would say the big a-ha that I had is the gold standard Celiac test is an endoscopy biopsy of the small intestine. They come in through your mouth, they take a biopsy and they send it to the lab and they look for partial or full villous atrophy meaning the villi and the fingers in your small intestine have been destroyed. That’s what I had. I had full-blown villous atrophy.
And the scary thing about that, the thing that blew my mind is when I learned about the marsh ratings of Celiac Disease and really the science of what that means, that’s like full-blown end stage disease. That’s like when they find stage III cancer in your toes and you have a month to live.
Wendy Myers: Yeah, because a lot of the test, you have to have 80% villi atrophy before they diagnose you with Celiac. I’m like, “How sick do you have to be?”
Jordan Reasoner: And that’s the thing. That’s end-stage disease. So I was diagnosed in full-blown end-stage Celiac disease. And there’s some – I forgot the data off the top of my head on-the-spot, but there’s some pretty scary data about how many people die within five years of getting that diagnosis. It’s really alarming.
In general, the blood test, a lot of unreliability there. I think the most powerful test that I’ve seen is there’s some saliva testing that Cyrex Labs has that’s really powerful that can test for reactions to 33 different gluten peptides. That can be helpful.
The other thing they’ll do is they’ll look for intraepthilial inflammation, which is something that’s important. If you’ve got that level of inflammation going on, that’s like, “Let’s try and catch it in the beginning, the beginning stage of the disease before you’ve got a bunch of damage happening and those atrophy happening.”
So there’s some really cool stuff happening with Cyrex Labs and the direction they’re going with some of the testing that they can do now. I haven’t seen a lot of peer-reviewed research behind it other than some studies that they’ve done themselves, which could be totally legit. It’s just you always have to put on – you’re kind of skeptical how and it’s done by the company.
So I think there’s a lot of growth in this area that can happen still. I would say that I don’t like the gold standard being the biopsy that I had because that’s end stage disease. Sometimes, it takes up to ten years – and they’ve done studies on this – sometimes it takes up to ten years to get to that place. So you’ve had ten years of the disease developing before you finally got to positive Celiac Disease.
In my opinion, I don’t think you can make a full educated decision just off of a blood test because of the unreliabilities that are there.
The other frustrating thing is they tell you to eat gluten to do this test. A lot of times, that makes people really sick. So for me, it’s one of those things like – you know, it’s tough.
If you pull gluten out and you feel great and then you eat gluten and you feel bad, why don’t you just assume you have Celiac for now? Stay off of it for a while, maybe do some genetic testing, maybe do some of the lab testing, see what comes up and do some exploration.
I don’t think there’s a good, solid gold standard answer for anybody right now other than what your body tells you when you eat it and when you don’t eat it and whether you’re having inflammatory-based response or an autoimmune response.
There’s a spectrum of gluten sensivity. Some respond in inflammation, some respond in a literal autoimmune response and they’re full-blown Celiacs. I think that that’s really a difficult thing to measure right now, to know for sure right now – maybe someday.
But in general, I think if you’re on the spectrum, whether it’s an autoimmune response or it’s an inflammatory response and you feel bad when you eat, I think there’s your answer. Don’t eat it.
Wendy Myers: And so, what is your protocol, your general protocol that you give clients to follow when you’re trying to heal their gut? Are there some specific no-foods that are just completely off-limits?
Jordan Reasoner: I think grains is number one. Everybody should pull grains out. Our general protocol is you have to create a custom diet that works for you.
We’ve all heard of elimination diets and probably tried elimination diets. I about went insane trying an elimination diet. I was like gluten-free, egg-free, dairy-free, soy-free, corn-free, sugar-free. I don’t even know what I’m eating anymore.
Wendy Myers: It’s hard to do. All that’s left is meat and vegetables.
Jordan Reasoner: Yeah. So I think in general, the best protocol is to almost do a reverse elimination diet. What we have people do is go down to a core group of safe foods – and a lot of times, we call it an intro diet – for three to five days.
Just focus on eating a bone broth or a chicken broth, soup, really well-tolerated fruits and vegetables like well-cooked apples, well-cooked cucumbers, squashes and those types of things. Just focus on those foods for the first three to five days. Just reset your gut. Do a little reset.
And eat those foods that are commonly part of most people’s ‘food safe zone’, we call it. And so you’ve got this core group of meats, fruits, vegetables and healthy fats that you know are going to help you feel good and then you build on it.
So what does the Jordan diet look like? Let me introduce this 24-hour yoghurt or let me introduce these eggs or let me introduce nuts. Let me see how I feel on these foods.
So you’ve got a core group of safe foods that make you feel really good. You’ve done this 5-day reset. As you’re going out from there, you can bring in different types of food. We have people bring them in for three to four days and really just try not to change too much else. Bring in eggs, for example, for three or four days and see how you feel.
If you notice you feel worse, then eggs probably aren’t good for you right now. And then as you’re building out, over the next 60 days, you’ll have a pretty wide swath of a diet by the end of the 60 days that makes you feel good.
And you know because you’ve tested the food. You brought it in and you know it didn’t make you feel worse. If it did, you pull it back out. I think in general safe starches are really important to bring in, things like sweet potatoes and yams.
We know from the research that it’s really important for long-term healthy gut microbiotic, gut flora. They need that food to be sustained.
In general, I think a lot of people end up on low carb diets like SCD or GAPS for way too long. Now I think it makes a lot of sense when you have something like SIBO because if you have SIBO and you eat a lot of say starches, a lot of times, that can really aggravate your symptoms. You’re feeding these complex sugars to the bacteria and you’re having a hard time breaking them down probably.
So I think it makes a lot of sense for people battling SIBO and things like that to leave those out for a while, be lower carb, heal your gut up a little bit, try to treat that infection if you have it. And then bring them in. Bring them in with the 3-day rule just like anything else. Bring them in for three days and see how you feel.
And so that’s really our ethos, create a custom diet that’s going to work for you and build it yourself by testing things. What I would say is the most problematic real food groups cause the most problems for people. Whether it’s Paleo, GAPS, Weston A. Price, SCD, people a lot of times eat these ‘four horsemen’, we call them. They seem like perfectly good, healthy foods, but a lot of times, they trigger a lot of problems.
Number one is eggs. If you have a leaky gut, for example, a lot of times, people have a lot of reaction to the protein in egg. So if you’re having a lot of problems and you’re not sure why, egg might be something to pull out for a couple of days and see how you feel.
Another one is dairy. If you’re eating fermented dairy or hard cheeses or things like that or even raw milk, a lot of times, dairy is really problematic. The casein protein is very reactive for people with leaky gut.
Another one is nuts and nut flowers. This is a classic problem. When people transition to this type of real food diet, a lot of times, they’ll still make bread and muffins and almond milk. They’ll just be eating nuts and nut flowers even just for snacks all day long. You look at it and you’re like, “Wow! A healthy person with a perfectly good gut would have diarrhea if they ate this many nuts too.” That’s another really common pitfall.
And then the last one is too much fruit and honey. And so a lot of times, when people move to these types of diets, they’ll start to snack on lots of fruits, they’ll put honey on everything. It’s like fair game. And a lot of times, you look at it and you’re like, “Wow! You ate 17 apples today. That’s a little aggressive.” I’m exaggerated, but you get what I mean. It’s like the same thing with nuts.
So those are the four horsemen that we call them. I think a lot of people, if they’re listening to this right now and they’re feeling like crap on a healthy diet or a real food diet, those are the four horsemen to look at. Pull them out first. If you feel better when you pull them out, then you know what’s really going on and you can test them later. That’s a really common pattern that we see for people.
Wendy Myers: Yeah, I like what you said about how the SCD lifestyle diet or the GAPS diet, there’s a point of diminishing returns and that these aren’t diets you stay on long-term.
I think people will feel better initially on these types of diets for a few months (depending on how strict they’re doing them) and then at some point, they’re going backward because they’re not getting the nutrient that their body needs. At some point, they need to stop and introduce more foods.
Jordan Reasoner: Well said.
Wendy Myers: Yeah.
Wendy Myers: So why don’t you tell the listeners a little bit about probiotics? I think there’s a little bit of debate out there as to whether probiotics really help to heal the gut and if they’re transitory or not. So what’s the skinny on probiotics exactly?
Jordan Reasoner: I think the research that I trust at this point is starting to show that they have a bigger benefit on the immune system than actually replacing your gut flora. I use to think years ago like, “Oh, I have low bifidu bacteria. I need to take bifidu bacteria and it’s going to replace it or help replenish it” and that’s just not true.
The real way we can help nourish and change our gut flora a lot of times is through the diet that we eat, if we’re feeding it good food. Earlier, I mentioned safe starches for example. Soluble fibers and safe starches are a great way to nourish good, healthy gut flora, but if you can’t tolerate it, then it aggravates your system right now or you can’t digest it, those things are not going to help.
So when it comes to probiotics, I do think they’re important. What I would say is that I’ve seen them cause a lot of problems with people with gut problems. And that’s the sad thing. A lot of us think that if I have IBS or if I have SIBO or I have these gut problems, “I need to take probiotics, my gut flora is messed up” or they see test results to say their gut flora is messed and they’ll try to take sauerkraut fermented food or try to drink fermented drinks or they’ll just buy and spend tons of money on multi-strain probiotics and DSL3 and all these things.
I think there are a group of people out there that benefit a lot from these types of probiotics. I mean, there’s a lot of research out there that show that probiotics help some people with IBS.
But I don’t think that it’s a sweeping thing that works for everybody with IBS, for example or everybody with Celiac. I think one of the most important thing is if you have gut issues and you try probiotics and they make you feel worse, then you probably shouldn’t take them.
There’s a lot of different reasons as to why. Chris Kresser is often talking about the fact that some people don’t tolerate certain types of probiotics depending on the type of bacteria that’s overgrowing in the gut.
Any bacteria overgrowing in the small intestine is bad news. It could be good bacteria, it could be bad bacteria, it could be benign bacteria, if it’s overgrown there, it shouldn’t be there. It’s the wrong place.
So if you have certain types of overgrowing bacteria that don’t mix well with the probiotics you’re taking, a lot of times, it can really aggravate your symptoms. It’s just a crap shoot really.
I think fermented foods are great. I think long-term, I’d love to have everybody tolerating and eating fermented foods – things like sauerkraut, kimchi, those types of things. I think the best way to get probiotics is through food.
But what I will say is I didn’t tolerate sauerkraut for years and I had to start slow and eat like one strand and then two stands. It was a long process to tolerate fermented foods. And again, the goal being, the benefit is to your immune system. It just have that kind of logic.
Now, when it comes to probiotics in a bottle, again, I think it’s the same type of thing. And so what I would say is that if you take probiotics like lactobacillus acidophilus, for example and it does not go out, it makes your symptoms worse, then stop taking it. I found Prescript-Assist to be really helpful. It’s a soil-based bacteria. A lot of people tolerate that really good.
Wendy Myers: We have a visitor.
Jordan Reasoner: It’s all good. I have two kids too.
Wendy Myers: This is my daughter, Winter.
Jordan Reasoner: They’re at school right now. Hi, Winter.
Wendy Myers: She broke into the room.
Jordan Reasoner: That’s fine. My kids are almost six and almost four.
Wendy Myers: Oh, wow! Yeah, Winter is four.
Jordan Reasoner: Awesome.
Wendy Myers: Yeah, I love Prescript-Assist. I think that’s one of my favorite supplements that I recommend to clients for sure. It’s very powerful.
Jordan Reasoner: It is. And it is generally well-tolerated by the most people. That’s the thing. Most other probiotics are kind of like 50-50. Some people tolerate it and some people don’t. But Prescript-Assist tends to be well-tolerated by most people. I actually take it. I like it. It’s
Wendy Myers: Why don’t you tell the listeners a little bit about how they can win a poop pageant? How do they go about – as Diane Sanfilippo, she says in her book, Practical Paleo all about ‘poop pageant’, what your poop should look like?
Jordan Reasoner: Yeah, it’s a tricky business. I think it really starts with diet, what you’re eating. That’s critical. And then from there, we talked a lot about how to troubleshoot your diet. Use your poop as a guide.
If you’re having diarrhea, well listen to your body. If you’re having constipation, listen to your body. We can use it as a guide every single day if we keep troubleshooting and tweaking our diet. And once we feel like we’ve troubleshooted out, tweak our diet, start looking at how well you’re digesting the food that you’re eating.
So look at enzymes. Troubleshoot your supplements, troubleshoot your stomach acid. And once you’ve troubleshooted out of that, start looking at root causes. Do you have a parasite? Do you have a bacterial infection? Do you have h pylori? Do you have SIBO and all these things that need to be treated with a skilled practitioner?
So just keep troubleshooting, keep tweaking. As your bowel movements continue to change and evolve, they’re going to be telling you, “Hey, you’re on the right track. Hey, you’re still missing something.” You’re doing everything you can with diet. You’re digesting your food well, but you’re still having diarrhea? Look for parasites, look for things that could also be contributing.
So it’s really just walking through those three steps I’ve talked about earlier and just putting your health engineer hat on. Put your testing and tweaking hat on. I just can’t tell this enough times. Everybody has to customize and tweak and adjust things over and over and over again until they get it right and it just takes time. It’s one step at a time. It’s a process.
Wendy Myers: Well Jordan, I have a question I like to ask all of my guests. What do you think is the most pressing health issue in the world today?
Jordan Reasoner: Ooh, that’s a good question. Most pressing health issue in the world today? I would have to say that for the last hundred or so years, we’ve been eating – maybe less than that – we’ve been a recommended type of diet that is clearly not working for most people in western cultures and we’re not changing fast enough. We’re not saying, “We’re wrong” fast enough. We’re not going, “Oh, man! We need to change this fast enough.” I think that’s the biggest epidemic right now.
Wendy Myers: Yeah, I know the diet that most people are eating in the United States, it’s frightening – the fast food and all the grains and the sugar, et cetera and we’re infecting the rest of the world. We’re infecting the rest of the world where all our dietary habits are going to China and India and really unfortunately affecting the health of the world. It’s all our fault.
Jordan Reasoner: Yup, that’s how I grew up too.
Wendy Myers: Yeah. Yeah, me too.
Wendy Myers: So why don’t you tell the listeners a little bit about where they can find you and what kind of products you offer and your books and et cetera and do you do health coaching with people and what-not.
Jordan Reasoner: Thanks. Yeah, if you want to come visit us at SCDLifestyle.com, that’s the best place to join us. Hundreds of thousands of people come hang out in our community every month and we have a pretty big Facebook group of about 60,000. You can come and hang out with us. Join our community. We’re all about getting perfect poops. And our site, we have a free quick start guide. If you want to download that and jump on our email list, we can help you do that kind of 5-day intro diet. Yeah, I’d just love to have you support us.
Wendy Myers: Yeah, great! Listeners, definitely, I recommend going and checking that out. All my clients that have digestive issues, I send them over to your website because it’s so specialized – everything gut and everything poop, et cetera. Isn’t that right, Winter? Yes!
Jordan Reasoner: Yes.
Wendy Myers: Well everyone, thank you so much for tuning in. Thanks for joining us, Jordan. That was really, really informative. I really appreciate you coming on the show.
Jordan Reasoner: Thanks for having me. It’s always fun.
Wendy Myers: Yeah. And guys, if you want to check me out, you what to check out the modern paleo diet, the Mineral Power program that I do, you can go look at myersdetox.com. I thank you so much for tuning in. If you liked what you heard today, definitely go get me a review on iTunes. I would appreciate it so much. Thank you so much for listening to the Live to 110 podcast.
