Listen
Listen to this podcast or watch the video. CLICK HERE
Transcript
- 03:19 About Dietitian Cassie
- 09:40 What is Leaky Gut?
- 11:43 Causes of Leaky Gut
- 12:47 Food Sensitivities and Leaky Gut
- 14:19 How Leaky Gut Causes Inflammation
- 16:15 Health Issues that lead to Leaky Gut
- 17:26 Autoimmune Disease and Leaky Gut
- 19:26 Steps to Healing a Leaky Gut
- 33:24 Supplements to Heal Leaky Gut
- 39:52 The Most Pressing Health Issue in the World Today
- 44:57 Find Dietitian Cassie
Wendy Myers: Welcome to the Live to 110 Podcast. My name is Wendy Myers and you can find me on myersdetox.com. On my site, I teach you all about detoxification and how to heal your health conditions naturally and my version of Paleo, the Modern Paleo diet. You can also find this video podcast on the YouTube channel, Wendy Live to 110 and on the corresponding blog post on my website.
Today, we have Cassie Bjork on the podcast today. She’s also known as Dietitian Cassie and she just recently had me on her Low Carb Conversations Podcast with Jimmy Morris. It was so much fun. She wanted to come on the podcast today to talk about leaky gut and all the causes of it and the issues with leaky gut and the problems that it can cause, so everything you want to know about how to heal and seal a leaky gut.
Please keep in mind that this program is not intended to diagnose or treat any disease or health condition and is not a substitute for professional medical advice. The Live to 110 Podcast is solely informational in nature. So please consult your healthcare practitioner before engaging in any treatment that we suggest today on the show.
Wendy Myers: I’m so thrilled to announce. Finally, my BodyBioRehab.com online program is available. You can go sign up at BodyBioRehab.com. I designed this program so that I can resolve all the basic health questions that you and many of my clients have.
I get so many e-mails, hundreds of e-mails every single month and people just want to know these basic questions, “How to heal my body? How do I heal adrenal fatigue? How do I heal my thyroid?”, et cetera. And it’s actually a lot simpler than what people think.
So I designed this program to help to heal the body, how to increase the body’s vitality by employing five pillars. These are diet, following the proper diet, how to exercise, how to sleep, how to improve your sleep. That’s a big problem. You cannot heal your body unless you can sleep adequately.
Also, how to detox. You have to detox in order to be healthy. I have so many clients who eat a healthy diet, sleep eight hours a night, exercise a few times a week and they still don’t feel well or they have chronic diseases. It’s because they are not tending to detoxification. So I’ll tell you all the most effective detox techniques.
I also tend to the most important module, which is stress. You cannot have a healthy body if you have too much stress in your life. Stress is one of our number one killers. I talk about stress and the causes of it and how to reduce your stress. I’ll give you lots of techniques and a guided meditation in the program. There’s also a four-week meal plan, a kitchen clean up guide, goals and commitments worksheet. There are lots of tools and workbooks to help you on the program.
It’s a six-week program. So go sign up at BodyBioRehab.com and learn what it’s all about.
Wendy Myers: Our guest today is Dietitian Cassie. Dietitian Cassie is a registered licensed dietitian as well as a lead health coach and founder of Healthy Simple Life, a team of dietitians and personal trainers who provide real food and evidence-based nutrition and fitness coaching online or over the phone and in corporate or community classes. They help find freedom from diets and chronic health conditions through the power of real food so they can live their life to the fullest.
Dietitian Cassie and her team are passionate about debunking diet rumors, myths and fads while teaching people how to eat real foods and balance to help them feel their best. They specialize in meeting their clients where they’re at in their health journey and helping them to achieve their goals without having to count points or calories ever again.
She’s also the co-host of the weekly podcast Low Carb Conversations with Jimmy Moore, Dietitian Cassie and Friends and the featured dietitian for the TV program Twin Cities Live.
Cassie, thank you so much for coming on the show.
Cassie Bjork: Thanks, Wendy. It’s great to be here.
Wendy Myers: Why don’t you tell the listeners a little bit about yourself and how you got into health?
Cassie Bjork: Of course, my story as a healthcare professional goes back as far as I remember. I’ve been interested in nutrition and how the body works. I was a gymnast and I used to be a marathon runner. As an athlete, I was always intrigued by how what I ate affected my performance.
So I took both my passions and I graduated with college degrees in nutrition and fitness. And then I went on for some more rigorous schooling to become a registered dietitian.
Through all of my schooling, I was taught conventional nutrition approaches, which is the low fat diet is the healthiest diet and we need to count calories for weight loss and cheerios, oatmeal and margarine for heart disease and making sure diabetics are getting enough carbohydrates. All of these are very different from what I teach now. I didn’t really know any better throughout my schooling, although I did find it quite peculiar that I’d see patients count calories and they gain more weight or they eat more whole grains and come back after another heart attack.
I actually have a personal story. I saw this happened with my own father. When I was in school to be a dietitian, he had a double artery bypass graft, which is a major heart surgery. It just didn’t make any sense to me because he ate what I considered to be so healthy. He wasn’t overweight. He didn’t smoke and he was out running a race when he experienced the chest pain.
What was frustrating for me was seeing this happen with my own father when he was eating the whole grains and the oatmeal, drinking the orange juice at breakfast and doing all these things that he was supposed to be doing. When this happened to him, the dietitians in the hospital said, “Well, you got to just do more of what you’re already doing.” It didn’t make sense to me.
For me personally, the things I learned in school, I tried to embrace the things I learned in school and I felt the worst I felt in my whole life. I was a sugar addict. I was always thinking where to get my next fix. I had compelling cravings. I found it difficult to focus. Yet, I was eating a diet rich in whole grains and soy milk and low in fat. And I didn’t eat meat because we thought that was bad for us and it was really low in calories.
As a young dietitian, none of this made sense to me. So then when I got my RD LD credentials and really dug deeper into the research, I found that what I was taught in school just wasn’t matching up with what I was finding to be true. And then when I applied these findings to my own life, I ditched the grains and artificial sweeteners, overcame my fear of fat and really embraced it, took high quality supplements, I felt amazing.
So there comes a point when you have to sit back and look at what makes sense and just evaluate what you believe in your own heart. It never made sense to me that when you’re on your quest to be healthier, you’re eating fake foods, processed, low in fat, high in sugar. It never made sense to me to put chemicals in your body that are made in a lab like artificial sweeteners or margarine.
That’s when I started my venture of spreading life-changing, research-based information that helps people feel amazing and reach their goals and really helping people just cut through all the confusing mixed information.
People are searching for real nutritional truth and they really exhausted all the fad diets where they lose weight and it all comes back. And they’ve switched from regular Pop to diet and they haven’t lost a pound. So they’re tired and frustrated and hungry and they’re just looking for a solution. I found that that solution is actually pretty simple and practical and it’s just about real food and looking at the right timing and the right amounts.
Wendy Myers: Aren’t you glad you spent all that money on the education?
Cassie Bjork: I learned a lot in the process. I think it was part of my journey. So that’s how my company started. It started as Dietitian Cassie where it was just me. It didn’t take long for it to grow into an entire team and that’s when Healthy Simple Life was born.
So we’re a team of dietitians and certified personal trainers and we do one-on-one nutrition and fitness coaching appointments mostly via Skype and phone and then also we see clients at our office in Minnesota. And we’re just proud of the fact that we help people live healthier lives and keep it simple. That’s our motto and it is different approach than many other healthcare practitioners.
We just don’t think that a healthy life has to be complicated. We don’t tell our clients to count calories or points or limit grams of fat. We’re not about quick fixes or detox plans that leave you feeling frustrated and further from your goals. So we really help our clients to heal their body and metabolism from the inside out and break all these complex, confusing information into understandable bite-sized pieces with action steps.
Wendy Myers: Yeah. Your site is so good. I highly recommend it. You have so many good articles on your site and they’re very simply laid out. It’s really, really good.
Cassie Bjork: Thank you. Thank you. I think we find that the way that we put the information out there really does resonate with people. It makes sense to them. So that’s what we try to do. We take all this research that we know and break it down into how we can apply this to our lives.
I go as far as saying about 90% of health concerns are related to nutrition. Every single day, we see the healing power of real food and watch our clients take these small steps towards these huge changes that last a lifetime that they weren’t able to do. And before, they were deprived. Now they’re feeling awesome eating real food and reaching their goals.
Wendy Myers: Yeah, yeah. Absolutely!
Wendy Myers: Let’s talk a little bit about leaky gut. That’s something that you definitely know a lot about and a lot of clients have big problems with leaky gut. It’s really sadly a growing problem and I’m glad that more, more people are having an awareness of it. Why don’t we talk a little bit about what is leaky gut for anyone who may not be aware of that?
Cassie Bjork: Yeah. To answer this question, I should probably just start with, “What’s a gut?” The gut is an essential and repeatedly overlooked starting point for achieving optimal health and for preventing disease. So your gut is oftentimes referred to as the missing link. And really, gut health is important for everyone, not just those of digestive issues.
We have clients that come to us, whether their goal is to lose weight or increase energy or support immune health, get rid of sugar cravings, resolve digestive issues, whatever it is, we always start with the gut because that’s really the cornerstone for optimal health. It’s just the avenue of which nutrients are incorporated in the body. I like to think of it like eating healthy is only half of the story. You have to be in the ideal state to digest your food too.
So your gut is this barrier between the inside of your body and the outside world. Its job is to let important nutrients inside the body while keeping everything else out.
Leaky gut is when the linings of your intestine, which is supposed to keep the contents of your digestive system separate from the rest of your body, it’s becoming compromised or leaky. This means that things can get across the gut barrier that really aren’t supposed to be there – not necessarily big chunks of food, but things like toxins and microbes and undigested proteins, bacteria fragments, waste products. When these escape through our intestines, they slip across the membrane and they travel throughout your body via your blood stream.
So you can think of it like there’s this net that has little holes to let good things through, but it keeps the bad things, the big things from passing through that would damage your system. When someone has leaky gut, this net is damaged and these big bad things are able to sneak through and it’s not good.
Wendy Myers: Yeah. What are some of the causes of leaky gut?
Cassie Bjork: There are a lot of causes of leaky gut that could be potential. It’s provoked by substances that can really damage that lining of that gut – toxins, bacterial imbalance, chronic stress, antibiotic use, food (especially food with anti-nutrients like grains, both refined and whole grains. I’m a dietitian saying that maybe I wouldn’t recommend eating whole grains).
That explains why the prevalence of leaky gut has increased so much over the years because we’ve been told these foods are healthy and grains can basically tear holes in your intestine lining because we can’t break the anti-nutrients down very well.
It could be because of how different everything is these days, so different than how they used to be and how ancestors lived. It could be a lifetime of doing things that weaken our digestive function like consuming the processed foods and taking rounds of antibiotics and being chronically stressed everyday and drinking alcohol. My guess is it’s a combination of all of the above that causes leaky gut to happen.
Wendy Myers: Can you explain how food sensitivities can result from leaky gut? So many of my clients have food sensitivities and some clients get to the point where there are so many foods that they can’t eat and they’re just miserable.
Cassie Bjork: Well, when the lining or when the integrity of the intestinal barrier has been compromised, nutrients can be absorbed before they’re fully digested. So partially digested protein and fat, which aren’t broken down all the way can seep through your intestinal lining, making their way to the bloodstream like I talked about.
Your body’s immune response to be specific antigen and antibody markers will take some of these foods as foreign irritants, which will trigger an allergic reaction. Your body can develop antibodies then to be specific strands which resemble the outer layer of bacteria and other pathogens.
Wendy Myers: Is that different from a histamine reaction where people are having histamine sensitivities?
Cassie Bjork: I’m actually not sure of the answer to that.
Wendy Myers: Okay, yeah. I have a lot of clients, when they have adrenal fatigue, their bodies just release more histamine and they develop histamine intolerance. They just have so many histamines swirling around. They also have to reduce the foods that contain histamines as well like fermented foods or meats than have been sitting around a long time because that will provoke a response. I think it’s different than leaky gut.
Cassie Bjork: I think it could be similar though. I think when you really think about the mechanism, it could be similar.
Wendy Myers: Yeah. If you eat foods like meats that have been sitting around a long time, they develop more histamines and those can leak into the body through the leaky gut and can cause more problems.
Cassie Bjork: Yeah.
Wendy Myers: How does leaky gut cause inflammation?
Cassie Bjork: I love talking about inflammation. So your body perceives these particles that make their way across the membrane as invaders. Like I said, that triggers that immune response and that can promote inflammation and can set the tone for a host of health issues.
I do want to talk for a second just about inflammation because I think a lot of times people think that inflammation is not that big of a deal. You stub your toe and you get inflammation and your body heals it. But inflammation is at the root cause of almost all weight gain and chronic disease and almost of us have it for some reason or another. Even if we don’t stub our toe or get a paper cut, it’s important for us to think about things like stress and sugar and food sensitivities, artificial sweeteners and food quality, poor food quality and lack of sleep.
So in a chronic inflammation, the symptoms aren’t obvious like they are with acute inflammation. When you stub your toe or you get that paper cut, it’s pretty obvious. With chronic inflammation, it’s a problem because it manifests itself in different ways from one person to another.
In one person, inflammation may show up as heart disease. And then in another person, it’s acne. In another person, it’s obesity. So it’s the kind of inflammation that festers deep inside your tissues and it is low grade and systemic and it’s constantly engaged. It silently damages your tissues and increases your risk of disease, which is why it’s so scary.
Your body sees it as a fire. It’s always going to prioritize taking care of inflammation before anything else. That means if you’re struggling with lack of energy, you’re having a tough time losing weights, digestive issues, it’s going to be nearly impossible to fix these without reducing inflammation first.
That’s actually why we focus on gut health with our clients right away because oftentimes we see that when it comes to weight loss, if they’ve been counting calories and exercising, they can do all of that if they want, but if they’re not focusing on the root cause and reducing that inflammation, nothing is going to fall into place.
Wendy Myers: What kind of health issues lead to leaky gut?
Cassie Bjork: I think the types of health issues that can lead to leaky gut – I was going to say autoimmune diseases. But it’s kind of like what came first, the chicken or the egg because autoimmune diseases are pretty much present in everyone who has tested for leaky gut. So it could be that leaky gut comes first.
I think that a host of health issues can lead to leaky gut because it just compromises your immune system and all the different reasons that we talked about – toxins, artificial sweeteners, processed foods, stress. A lot of what we’re doing in this day and age in our lifestyle is really setting the stage for leaky gut because these are compromised immune system or digestive functions. So I would say practically anything.
Wendy Myers: Yeah. And there are so many things that can lead up to that. I think when someone has a health condition, it can lead to so many other health conditions because the body is compromised. They have deficiencies, nutrient deficiencies and toxicities, et cetera. This is like a domino effect. You have one thing after the other. I think leaky gut is a big problem for a lot of people that have a chronic health condition.
Cassie Bjork: Yeah.
Wendy Myers: Let’s talk about autoimmune disease. How does an autoimmune disease result from leaky gut? Dr. Fasano, he’s an Italian researcher, has postulated that you can’t have an autoimmune disease unless you have a leaky gut. There’s really no other explanation for them.
Cassie Bjork: I think how it happens is a similar way to the way that food sensitivities can develop. It’s when that immune response is triggered, that formation of antibodies, these amino acid strands that slip through are activated, which just sets off inflammatory response to the protein particles and the gut lining itself as well as any other tissues that might share a similar appearance or a similar amino acid sequence. That can set the stage for autoimmune disease.
Eighty percent of your immune system is housed in the tissues and surrounding your gut. So the development of a leaky gut really can stimulate that immune system to go and to overdrive too.
Wendy Myers: Let’s talk about Hashimoto’s. Can you explain a little bit about how when you eat dairy or gluten, those proteins can be similar to the thyroid?
Cassie Bjork: Your body can confuse them because they have a similar structure. I think that would be why your body could trigger that response because it sees it as a foreign invader. That’s oftentimes why Hashimoto’s results from dairy or gluten because those particles look similar.
Wendy Myers: Yeah. That’s so interesting that the body mistakes. It sees this amino acid sequence in dairy and gluten and then it ends up attacking your thyroid. I believe Hashimoto’s is fairly simply resolved. You just got to remove dairy and gluten and nourish the body, heal leaky gut.
I’ve had many clients that resolved Hashimoto’s. But unfortunately, the doctors say that there’s no cure for it. “Sorry. You have to be on thyroid medications for life.” I don’t buy that at all because I’ve seen it healed myself.
Wendy Myers: But let’s talk about how you heal a leaky gut. What are the steps you have to take to heal that?
Cassie Bjork: Yeah. Just leaky gut can develop fully over years or even decades, the healing process isn’t an overnight one. So there are clients – we can see that it usually takes I would say probably between three to six months, sometimes upward to a year. So the most important thing is to be really diligent, consistent about following the steps that I’m going to outline.
The good thing about healing a leaky gut is it’s really doing things that we should probably be doing anyway. So whether you think you have leaky gut or you’re not sure, you can be implementing these tips to heal leaky gut even if you’re not sure just because it’s healthy.
I would say the first step would be to stop eating foods that damage the lining of your gut. So even if you don’t have leaky gut, this is a good thing. So grains, legumes, processed or refined foods can be heard to digest and promote those perforations in your intestines that I talked about.
This means cookies and crackers and bread and pasta. Oh, it’s brown rice, those foods that we’ve been told to be healthy for so long. It’s really important to work at reducing consumption of those at least for the duration of the healing process.
In my opinion as a dietitian, there are not really a lot of good reasons to eat types of foods anyway because we can get all of our carbohydrates from real foods, vegetables and fruits. So I’d recommend keeping those out.
Wendy Myers: Can we talk about legumes a little bit? I wrote an article on legumes and I have gotten so much flap from all the vegans, the vegetarians that are chowing on beans night and day because Joel Fuhrman says eat a cup of beans a day. Can you talk about how legumes can damage your gut?
Cassie Bjork: It’s in a similar way. They have anti-nutrients that can promote perforations in your intestines. When it comes to legumes, I don’t think they’re a terrible thing to eat if you can tolerate them, but a lot of people don’t know if they can.
They do have anti-nutrients in them that can interfere with absorption of other foods that we’re eating. And a lot of people are counting them as a protein. But really beans usually have – legumes usually have three to four times the amount of carbohydrates as they do protein.
If you can tolerate them, if you want to include them every now and then – I mean even the reason why they produce gas in the body is because your body can’t break them down all the way. I don’t think they’re the best source of nutrition and they’re not something that I would recommend. But for some people, they can tolerate them better than grains or processed foods.
Maybe in moderation, but for people that are trying to heal a leaky gut, it’s not something I would recommend.
Wendy Myers: Yeah. What about brown rice? Can you talk about some of the issues with that when someone is having digestive issues or leaky gut?
Cassie Bjork: Yeah. It’s basically the same thing with those anti-nutrients in there. So I would actually recommend white rice over brown rice because of that. It’s easier to digest and you’re not going to be getting those anti-nutrients.
White rice would be a better alternative than having bread for example because bread has gluten in it and rice does not. So all of that said, I still would promote the real food carbohydrates, the vegetables and the fruits before I would recommend white rice or legumes.
Wendy Myers: I agree with you. I always tell clients to eat white rice and they’re like, “What?” But one thing that came out of the China study was that the white rice is the grain that’s the least correlated with disease.
Cassie Bjork: Yes.
Wendy Myers: So there’s a reason that the majority of the world is eating white rice everyday because it’s a fairly benign grain, not fabulously healthy for you.
Cassie Bjork: Yeah. I think it’s also important to keep in mind that it is sugar. It turns to sugar in your body. So it’s okay to have it. I acknowledge that and realize that portion control is important, especially when it comes to foods like rice and beans and bread because they do turn into a lot of sugar in your body – so for most people, having a half of cup, probably a cup at the most at their meals because that does turn into quite a bit of sugar in the body.
Wendy Myers: Yeah. I just did a food sensitivity test. It was MRT, Mediator Release Test. The only food I was sensitive to was rice.
Cassie Bjork: Oh, my goodness. [Inaudible 00:23:34]
Wendy Myers: It’s weird. I don’t need that much of it, but my body just doesn’t want it. So that’s out for me.
Cassie Bjork: That’s interesting.
Wendy Myers: Yeah, it is interesting. I’m sorry to keep interrupting you. It’s just a little food for thought.
Cassie Bjork: Thank you for sharing that. It’s interesting. Not many people are sensitive to rice, at least not in what I found working with our clients.
Wendy Myers: Yeah.
Cassie Bjork: So that would be my first step. It would be stop eating foods that are damaging the lining of your gut.
Then my second tip would be to start eating foods that reduce and heal inflammation and restore the healthy gut bacteria – so fermented foods, all those weird ones like Kombucha and sauerkraut and kimchi. If you can tolerate yogurt, although it’s not really the first thing I’d recommend since we’re trying to stay away from the dairy here. But those are important for replenishing your good gut bacteria.
And then also a healthy fat, which some people still have to overcome their fear of fat, that fat-phobia that’s been forced upon us ever since the 1970s. So healthy fats like butter and coconut oil and olives and avocado, fatty fish like salmon, healing bone broth. These are all important for calming that inflammation that I talked about. That really sets the stage for almost all health issues. Everyone can benefit from eating fermented foods and healing foods and healthy fats.
Wendy Myers: Can you talk a little bit about how bone broth heals the lining of your intestines?
Cassie Bjork: Yeah. So bone broth is just a healing food that has all sorts of nutrients in it. It’s a combination of the gelatin in it and the collagen. You’re getting all these nutrients from bones because most people aren’t just going to sit down and eat a bone. So when you make bone broth, you’re extracting the nutrients from the bone that we usually don’t get in any other ways and that can just help calm the inflammation.
Wendy Myers: Yeah, I think for a lot of the Americans, there’s not a big culture around bone broths. We eat soup here and there, but in other cultures, there are a lot of soups and broths and things being eaten. I think it’s important for people to revisit traditional cooking cuisines and incorporate more bone broths into their diet, whether they’re sautéing their vegetables in it or slow cooking in it or eating more soups, what have you.
Cassie Bjork: It’s also a great source of minerals, I mean your calcium, your phosphorous, magnesium, potassium. And they’re in forms that your body can easily absorb. This is what I tell people when they’re sick. It’s to have bone broth maybe instead of having [inaudible 00:25:56] and 7-Up or something that they might have used to have in their pre-real food days.
It’s rich in a lot of amino acids and stuff that aren’t really found in just regular muscle meat. I do think that bone broth is making a bigger appearance these days, which is exciting. I’ve seen people post that there are different coffee shops that are offering bone broth in coffee cups and things like that. So I’m hoping that that’s just not a fad and that it keeps up because there’s a reason.
Cassie Bjork: It’s the same with Kombucha. Kombucha is becoming a lot more popular these days than it used to and I’m just surprised that different people on Facebook are posting that they’re making their own Kombucha. It’s becoming more of a trend, which hopefully sticks around because it’s so good for us.
Wendy Myers: Yeah, my husband pursues drinking it like crazy and he gave me some. I was like, “Oh, it takes like vomit.” But I think the one that I’ve had was not very good. And then I tried the other ones with the ginger.
Cassie Bjork: Kombucha?
Wendy Myers: Yeah, I tried the ginger and then the grape wine. They’re really, really good. I love them. I’m addicted to them now.
Cassie Bjork: You have to experiment a little bit. When you first try it, a lot of people, when they first try it, they don’t love it because it does have a little bit of a vinegar taste to it maybe. I think maybe it’s a little bit of an acquired taste. But once you get used to it, it’s great for so many reasons.
I don’t encourage drinking alcohol, but for people that want to drink alcohol, I think it’s a great mixer for drinks instead of all the sugary alternatives. You can make your own mixed drinks and you’re healing your gut a little bit while the alcohol maybe causes little inflammation. Maybe it negates a little bit.
Wendy Myers: Yeah, I agree with you. Some of the Kombuchas – there’s a grape wine. There are so many flavors. There’s cranberry wine. They would make a great mixer rather than Red Bulls and some other carbohydrates. Some people just want that carbonation. So that’s a great idea.
Cassie Bjork: When you’re sick too. Like you mentioned, the ginger wine. Ginger berry is my favorite flavor of Kombucha. Ginger is known as the stomach settler too. I think that’s another great thing to have whatever your body needs to heal from, whether it’s leaky gut or maybe you’re just not feeling very well. Kombucha can be really beneficial for that.
Wendy Myers: Yeah. It’s definitely an acquired taste. I had to drink it a few times and find the flavor I like before I really hit the ground running with it so to speak.
Cassie Bjork: Now I think it tastes a lot like Hard Cider or maybe even a Mike’s Hard Lemonade if anyone’s ever had one of those. I think that after a while, it has that same – I don’t know. Maybe it’s just because I haven’t had any of those things for a while, but I think it’s pretty tasty.
I always tell people to give it a shot. Try it a few times. Try a couple of different flavors. The ones with chia seeds can be weird at first. So maybe try to stick with one of the basic flavors when you first start.
Wendy Myers: The chia seeds are the ones that are interesting. The chia seeds popped and they handle these alginates in them. They bind the heavy metals and take them out of your body, but they’re really slimy. So it’s a weird texture. I should drink that.
Cassie Bjork: And it does have a trace amounts of alcohol in it, which is also interesting. When I was in I think New York City, I’ve actually had that. You have to be 21 – it says that on the label – to buy it. I’ve never seen that before.
Wendy Myers: Yeah. That’s so funny. Some Kombuchas have white label and a black label.
Cassie Bjork: Yes.
Wendy Myers: The black label ones are just fermented longer. They have more alcohol. It’s just so funny. You have to be 21 to buy this health food.
Cassie Bjork: Exactly. Anyway, back to the tips for healing leaky gut. Probably the last thing that I would say is get stress and sleep under control. Some people put this aside because we’re all stressed out and we’re all busy and no one has time to sleep, but they’re really important.
If those are out of whack, it’s going to take a lot longer to heal leaky gut because you’ll be promoting more inflammation that your body has to focus on healing. So really do your body a favor and stay rested and practice stress management techniques so that your body can focus on healing.
Wendy Myers: I agree. I think people really need to focus first thing on their health is to focus on sleep because you can’t heal your body if you can’t regenerate. If you don’t spend seven to eight, even nine hours sleeping, you don’t have the energy to heal. You don’t have enough time for your brain to reset and recharge, et cetera.
Cassie Bjork: Yeah, with any kind of healing. Even with healing metabolism. It’s a new concept for clients of ours who are used to waking up at 4:00 in the morning and hitting the gym right when it opens just to burn those calories. But they found that none of that worked.
So we’re giving them a new solution, something new to try. And usually our first priority is going to be sleep. It’s not going to be hitting the gym. And that’s different for people that come from that calorie counting mindset. So we’re actually telling them, “Don’t get up that early. Get that extra hours of sleep because your body needs that in order to heal inflammation that’s built up for so long, which is probably what’s standing in the way of your leaky gut or your stubborn weight loss.”
Wendy Myers: It’s a really interesting concept that you have to sleep to lose weight.
Cassie Bjork: Yeah, it is.
Wendy Myers: You just relax to lose weight.
Cassie Bjork: I’m blog posting that. Sleep to Shed Pounds: a Different Concept.
I would also say another step (maybe it should be the first step) is to work with a licensed health care professional who can guide you through this process. I feel a little biased because we see so many clients who try to tackle these issues on their own. They live under their potential for way too long.
You really aren’t expected to do this on your own. A dietitian or a health coach who’s educated in this area can really help you through the healing process and help you figure out which foods you should be eating and how much you should be supplementing and what other areas you might need to focus on to get you on track to being your healthier self.
I always tell people when you’re considering working with a healthcare professional, whether it’s my team or someone else, check them out. Read through their blogs. Follow them on Twitter and Facebook and just see if their views resonate with yours before scheduling an appointment because you want to really be comfortable with their approach and the person that you’re working with.
Wendy Myers: That’s a very good point. I think a lot of people that are trying to heal leaky gut on their own want quick results. They want to be healed in three months and I think that’s just not the reality for most people, especially with long standing digestive issues for a decade. I have some clients who have had issues for a decade or longer. It’s not going to happen in three months. People have to be patient, very patient.
Cassie Bjork: Yeah. That’s not something that we’re all very good at. I’m not either in this on-demand society. That’s why I mentioned that leaky gut develops slowly over years or even decades. So the healing process isn’t overnight.
A lot of the solutions that are offered to us for really any of our health conditions are quick fixes. It’s a quick detox or a quick prescription, whatever it is. We’re used to getting those things on demand. So it’s really healing from the inside out. You have to be patient with your body and it’s important to be consistent and diligent.
You don’t have to be perfect either. I think that is something that I also want to mention because sometimes people think, “Well, if I already had a slice of bread and I knew I wasn’t supposed to because it’s probably damaging my gut. I might as well have 10 more.” If you dropped your phone on the ground, would you smash it?
Wendy Myers: No.
Cassie Bjork: It’s the same thing. Pick yourself up. It’s okay. It should not be perfect. It’s also important to recognize that when you aren’t being diligent, it’s just going to take longer. So I think that’s what’s empowering is you get to make that choice.
If you want to have a slice of pizza and a cookie, just know that it’s going to take you a little bit longer to heal your gut and maybe you’re okay with that. That’s okay because I think there’s a balance in life and no one gets to decide that balance except for you.
Wendy Myers: Yeah, we make our choices every day, definitely our health choices. What are some of your favorite supplements to heal leaky gut? There are a lot of different kinds of supplements, but what are some of the most popular ones to heal your gut?
Cassie Bjork: I’m glad you mentioned that because gut healing supplements are an important part of the healing process and really shouldn’t be overlooked. My top three would be probiotic, l-glutamine and fish oil.
Probiotics might be the most important supplement to take because they replenish that good bacteria and they crowd out the bad like the fermented foods have healthy bacteria in them too. Those are important to eat. You can get way more in a form of a supplement. So I do recommend getting probiotics in both food and supplement form – so loading up on sauerkraut, Kombucha and taking a high quality probiotics supplement.
And then l-glutamine might be the most effective gut healer because it plays a vital role in rebuilding and healing and maintaining that structural lining of your digestive tract. It helps you to absorb nutrients and it also anti-inflammatory properties that protect your cell walls. It really promotes good digestion and nutrient absorption while at the same time reducing inflammation.
I would say those were both critical for any program designed to heal leaky gut.
And then fish oil provides omega-3 fatty acids which target inflammation, which has been a pretty common theme in our conversation today. We need to heal that inflammation in order to heal leaky gut.
Wendy Myers: Are you a fan of the slippery elm bark or other things that will coat the lining of the intestines?
Cassie Bjork: I think that they can be beneficial. We try to prioritize and I would say my top three would be the probiotic, l-glutamine and fish oil. For those who are willing to do more than that, there are a lot of other supplements like slippery elm that can be really beneficial to healing leaky gut.
At the same time, I think it’s important to know that not all supplements are created equal. So we see clients coming in, taking supplements that are actually bringing them further from their health goals because they’re not quality. So quality is really essential for getting the results you want when it comes to both food and supplements.
I actually started a company called Real Food Vitamins at RFVitamins.com. We only carry pharmaceutical grade brands of nutritional supplements because pharmaceutical grade means that it’s well-absorbed, they’re free of contaminants and additives and no artificial sweeteners. So they’re really high quality and will actually help people get closer to their goals.
So I always tell people if you’re not taking high quality supplement, don’t take any at all. All of the research studies out there that say supplements don’t work or fish oil is bad for you, they’re all using supplements that are just found on the shelves at stores and they’re not regulated by the FDA. I’m not a huge fan of FDA, so it’s not that I’m in support of that.
But pharmaceutical grade supplements actually have a research behind them. And really supplements on the shelves at stores, they can put whatever they want in there and no one is regulating it, which is really scary. So I would say unless they’re high quality, don’t take any supplements at all.
With that said, high quality supplements can be so beneficial to a healing regimen. We see clients reach their goals so much faster when they include high quality supplements.
Wendy Myers: Yeah. Some of these studies you read that say, “Oh, vitamins don’t work and vitamin E is not good for this or that,” they’re using the worst form, the synthetic supplement. So of course, they’re not really working that great.
Cassie Bjork: When you think about it, supplements like fish oil and probiotics, if you’re getting ones that maybe are on the shelf at the store that have been sitting there for years, the bacteria is probably dead in the probiotics and they could have used gross cheap dead fish in the fish oil.
So you really don’t want to mess around when it comes to supplements because you can’t always tell what’s in there. And they can actually bring you further from your health goals and promote more inflammation, which defeats the whole purpose of spending the time and money on supplements anyway.
I probably talked about that because supplement quality is really important just life food quality is important.
Wendy Myers: Yeah. You get what you pay for. I know I’ve spent thousands of dollars on supplements, but they’re important components for your health because you can’t get the nutrients you need from food. So you really need to do your research on supplements and put that in your budget to buy the highest quality. It’s really, really important for your health and for longevity as well.
Cassie Bjork: You do get what you pay for and high quality ones will be more because there is research behind them. They have to pass a lot of different tests because they’re actually being regulated.
At the same time, there are some really expensive supplements that don’t work that are expensive because they market them that way. I think another thing too is when you’re buying supplements at a store you’re paying for the middleman, the shelving fees and all those different kinds of things too.
Pharmaceutical grade supplements, you have to get through a licensed healthcare professional because they work so well and they want somebody making actual recommendations for you.
So those are just some things to keep in mind I think when it comes to buying supplements. You want to make sure you’re being just as diligent about those as you are about your food.
Wendy Myers: Is there anything else you want to add to our conversation about leaky gut? Are there any other tips and tricks, et cetera?
Cassie Bjork: I think we covered it all. Just being patient and not being afraid to ask for help. I think in this day and age, we all think that we need to do everything on our own because we have smart phones and we have the internet and we can look up how other people maybe healed their leaky gut and what works.
What it really comes down to is learning what works for you and your body. It might be different and it works for someone else. You might do a lot better if you take a lot more supplements than someone else or focus more on sleep and stress than someone else.
Try not to compare yourself to others. If you need help, make sure you’re asking the right places. I know a lot of people will turn to forums and things like that, which can be really, really helpful. At the same time, I think sometimes that can be confusing because there are a lot of mixed information out there. So listen to your body and get help when you know that you need it.
Wendy Myers: Everyone is different. Some people are born very, very healthy and other people are born in a slight disadvantage. I test babies that have adrenal fatigue. There are a lot of nutrient deficient babies being born today. So there are definitely vast differences in the stressors and nutrient deficiencies one person can handle compared to the next.
Cassie Bjork: Yeah, definitely.
Wendy Myers: I have a question I like to ask to all of my guests. What do you think is the most pressing health issue in the world today?
Cassie Bjork: We’ve been given wrong outdated nutrition information for so long. It’s confusing and it’s contradictory at best. It’s simply false at worst and it’s causing us to become sicker and fatter.
This is really what I believe to be the most pressing issue in the world today because dietitians are dishing out bad advice. The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, the biggest organization of nutrition professionals in the world, is sponsored by big food companies like Coca Cola, McDonald’s, Kellogg’s, [inaudible 00:40:32] and General Mills. Those are the companies that sponsored me getting my RD degree, which I’m not proud to say.
We live in a world where money governs pretty much everything and the junk food companies have a lot of money. So they put on the presentations that dietitians attend for their licensure requirements and they’re continuing education credits. They ensure us and comfort us and tell us that their junk food is innocent. It’s ridiculous. I believe it’s the reason for the highest prevalence of heart disease, obesity, cancer, type two diabetes ever. I think that’s the reason for it.
We can be educated over and over again on which changes to make. But if it is information that doesn’t work and doesn’t produce results, it’s not going to work.
So we see this all the time with our clients. They end up feeling like failures because they’ve already seen a dietitian before and they told them to restrict calories. They did and then they gained weight. When you restrict calories for too long, your metabolism slows down. When they gained weight, their dietitian whammed them and said, “You must not be doing what I told you to do.” It’s shameful. I think these are just shame tactics and it makes us feel like a failure, like there’s something fundamentally wrong with us.
That’s why I’m so passionate about spreading truthful research based information that makes people feel empowered and provides them with results because I think one of the biggest problems is we’ve been given the wrong information for so long.
Wendy Myers: I had one client. He had seen a dietitian and she’s just telling him to eat Jif peanut butter, Cheerios, Benecol – the horrifying industrial seed oil spread that causes heart disease. It’s amazing how the cardiac patients come to me and their doctors have told them to eat Benecol. It’s really shameful.
Cassie Bjork: They’re still being taught that. We get e-mails from clients all the time still that in the hospital, they had heart attack and they weren’t allowed to have anything but margarine and oatmeal and orange juice. I thought we were beyond that.
The research is very clear on that, but we’re still – change takes a long time. I think that’s the problem. We’re so being given this outdated information that just doesn’t work.
Wendy Myers: Yeah. Those food companies spend a lot of money to scream that message loud and clear to all the television. They pay the government officials to make the laws and scream when the food pie, the chart, the grains get a little bit smaller. They start freaking out.
Cassie Bjork: Yeah, the dairy. They get so nervous. When they’re providing the money, the sponsor, dietitian’s credentials – I mean I’m not necessarily blaming dietitians. I was taught this in school too and if I hadn’t really dug into the research – I have time to when you’re in school.
You’re focusing on getting your degree and soaking everything in. I’m just thankful and blessed that I was able to see the light through it all and just to critically think, “Gosh, this doesn’t really make sense to me. I don’t feel any better. My dad is sick over here. How come this isn’t working? Patients are coming in sicker when they restrict the calories and eat low fat.” I was able to put the pieces together so to speak.
I don’t think that it’s all the dietitian’s fault necessarily, that that’s what we are taught in school. It’s just the way the system works. So I think the more publicity we can give to the fact that these junk food companies are really the problem – and actually not even maybe necessarily to blame them. They’re in it for money. Their goal is to make money. So I think there are a lot of problems and there are a lot of cracks in the system that need to be fixed in order for optimal health to be promoted.
Wendy Myers: And it’s not dietitian’s fault. It’s not the physician’s fault, et cetera. They go out into health, become a doctor of practitioner, et cetera to help people. That’s what they want to do. They want to help people make them better and fight disease, et cetera, but there’s an establishment in place that’s in place to make money. And the education is controlled by the powers that be.
It takes a very intelligent, very curious person to ask questions and to push the envelope to go outside of their education. That’s why we have the very good health practitioners like yourself and doctors, et cetera that are practicing alternative means in addition to what they learned in school.
Cassie Bjork: Yeah, exactly. I’m just thankful for other holistic health practitioners like yourself to be spreading the truth about nutrition and health.
Wendy Myers: Yeah. Why don’t you tell the listeners a little bit more about yourself and where they can find you?
Cassie Bjork: Yeah. So there are three websites. The first is DietitianCassie.com. That’s my original site. It hasn’t changed since I started it. I still blog there.
I’m also on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram at Dietitian Cassie. No C in dietitian. It’s all T’s. And then HealthySimpleLife.com is where my team, my other dietitians on my team and I blog there too. So you can find information about our nutrition and fitness coaching services.
Like I said, you don’t have to be in Minnesota. We do most of our appointments over Skype and phone. And you can reap the result of one of my latest projects. It’s called our PFC Club Membership Program.
I just want to tell more about this program because it’s just been an absolute dream come true for me and I think for my clients and followers too. It’s our online community that we created in response to basically everyone else who desires for guidance and community and exclusive access to myself and my team outside of coaching appointments. It’s really the only way you can get access to me because I don’t see clients anymore.
It’s also a way to connect with other clients. We weren’t really able to give clients each other’s phone numbers and things like that. So this is a great community group where you can meet with other people that really do share the same desire to live a healthy simple life.
So in the club, we have weekly videos and recipes and special discounts and challenges. We just started out fitness challenge and we have a very active community group where you can ask questions and hold one another accountable and inspire each other.
And then our third website – so that’s DietitianCassie.com, HealthySimpleLife.com. I already mentioned, it’s RFVitamins.com. That’s the brand new storefront for our supplement company, Real Food Vitamins.
Like I said, I started that company because quality is essential for getting the results that you want when it comes to both food and supplements and just because we see a lot of clients taking supplements that aren’t helping. Especially for that last study that came out this year where recent reports called attention to certain retailers, the supplements at Target, Wal-Mart and Walgreens. When I tested them, four out of five contained none of the herbs listed on the label and they contain some scary ingredients.
Supplements can be really helpful and I think in this day and age, they are necessary. So at Real Food Vitamins, we’re just committed to carrying only the pharmaceutical grade brand of nutrition supplements, which means you’re getting the best absorbable supplements on the market today. And the ones that I mentioned for leaky gut are available in RF Vitamins store too.
Wendy Myers: That’s great. Thank you so much, Cassie. I really appreciated you coming on. That was fantastic.
Cassie Bjork: Thanks. It was so much fun. Thanks for all that you do too. I really appreciate you.
Wendy Myers: Thank you so much. Thanks for having me on the Low Carb Conversations.
Cassie Bjork: Oh, that was fun. That was a fun conversation.
Wendy Myers: Yeah. You and Jimmy Moore had me on the show and we talked about –the format is really interesting. You guys talk about the current events that were happening in health right now. It’s really, really interesting.
Cassie Bjork: I actually picked the article on leaky gut because I figured it was something that you’re passionate about if you ask me to talk about leaky gut today.
Wendy Myers: Yeah. I was wondering that, if you would think that.
Yeah, I think the format of that is really, really engaging because it talks about all the current events. How long have you guys been doing that?
Cassie Bjork: A few years. It is a unique podcast where every single week, it’s very current. We talk about the health headlines that just came out that week.
We get a lot of questions. Our inbox is filled every single day with questions about the latest research study on supplements or on heart disease or diabetes or whatever it is. There’s a lot of mixed information out there.
So we just cut to the chase and we try to cover six or seven health headlines each week. And then we also bring on two guests from the community. Sometimes they are fellow healthcare practitioners like yourself. Sometimes they’re just people that listen to the show that are really passionate about nutrition. It’s fun. We get a big variety of articles and guests and we can just shed some light on information that’s being pushed in the media today.
Wendy Myers: Yeah. It was a great show. I had a good time. So you guys can check that out, LowCarbConversations.com.
Cassie, thank you so much for being on the show.
Cassie Bjork: Thank you so much for having me.
Wendy Myers: Listeners, thank you so much for listening to the Live To 110 Podcast. You can find me on myersdetox.com. Learn all about detoxification and how to heal your health conditions naturally and my version of Paleo, the Modern Paleo diet.
Please be sure to go check out my new online health course called BodyBioRehab.com where I talk about the five pillars of health, the basics of health you need to live a long healthy life.
Thank you so much for listening to the Live to 110 Podcast.
