Brain, Hope, Reality: PTSI not PTSD | Hosted by Dr. Eugene Lipov

Dr. Eugene Lipov (00:01.288)
It doesn't have my social security. No. How's that? Now you're safe. All right. Off we go. Off we go. Well, be close to this. No, I think the mics work perfect. I don't have to lean in. No, no, no. I mean, yeah, this seems to work well. The camera is there. OK. Yeah, I see. Yeah. Yeah. So, well, welcome to Brain Hope Reality, PTSD, not PTSD.

Our next episode, we have a very special guest today. She's an amazing nutritionist and fitness guru. She also knows a lot about PTSD and ketones and all those things. So I'm looking forward to learning tons from that. We are going to be using this. I'll be starting to use this soon. Ketones, we can touch on that.

They need to sponsor me already. I rep them so much. perfect. I just like them. They should be sponsored. Well, it's good. Exactly. Anyway, with that, Rachel, you're on. Please tell us who you are and what you've been doing in the last five, 10 years. Five, 10 years. Or last year, whatever you like. Besides writing books and saving lives. Yeah. Well, thank you for inviting me to come on your podcast. And it's actually interesting how I ended up here and in this line of

working on the nervous system and everything that you do with PTSD because my background originally came from bodybuilding and fitness. That was really my first love. Excuse me. And I went to Baylor for Nutrition Science and Dietetics and my whole life was really revolving around helping people achieve incredible aesthetic outcomes. I competed in bodybuilding for three years back to back and

It was my first love because I grew up as a very insecure little girl, very, very shy. And fitness for me really gave me that sense of confidence that I found. So I got into bodybuilding, competed in it for three years, and I was really good at it. I was winning a lot of shows, but it was shortly after that that I started to struggle with a lot of my own health issues. I started to struggle with...

Dr. Eugene Lipov (02:21.252)
chronic gut issues where I'd look six months pregnant at the end of every single day. I was struggling with hormone issues. My thyroid completely plummeted, so I was put on thyroid medication and this was when I started to seek help from. How long ago was that, do think? This was 2015. So nine years ago. About nine years ago, yeah. So what was happening 10 years ago was me and fitness and...

starting to develop a lot of these health issues, right? And I had yet to do a lot of the healing work on myself yet. So, we'll dive into a little bit of the root cause, because that's really what my work revolves around, is helping people get to the root cause of their health issues. But to kind of shorten my story, I ended up going from physician to physician, doctor to doctor. I was passed around, I was put on five plus medications.

I was on an antidepressant that I was actually put on when I was 15 years old, struggling a lot with depressive symptoms. I was bullied a lot as a kid, but now was on five medications, third medication, birth control. I was on an antidepressant. I was on laxatives so I could just go to the restroom because the motility in my gut had completely come to a halt. And they even went to the Mayo Clinic. They did a bunch of...

scans, they did all of their testing and I was really just given a diagnosis of IBS and I was sent on my way and it was shortly after that they sent me to a colorectal surgeon where they suggested the removal of my entire large intestine because of the dysmotility that I was struggling with. like a lovely procedure. Lovely procedure, right? I used to do those as a general surgeon. You really did colorectomies? Yeah, and probably for a lot of people with

ulcerative colitis, right? And that and also cancer and cancer, polyps and also dirticulosis was the most common. Yeah. Which is interesting. We can talk about how that's connected. Yeah. Partial, partial, For me, my gut wasn't damaged at all. at it, it just was severe dysmotility that I was struggling with. Right. So you had a functional disorder, is.

Dr. Eugene Lipov (04:37.604)
Clinicians are not so good at that. Not so great at that. Yeah. Cancer, straightforward. Cardioid and melone. Yes. Functional disorder, fix the function. No, it comes to a lot of these. Plus being a young woman with IBS, doesn't everybody have that? Yes. Very common in women. And I'll tell you, I'll tell you my perspective. I'm curious to why you think it is in women more than men. I think definitely the psychotic nature of their hormones can play a bit of a role.

course. Yeah. I'll tell you my perspective. have a very odd perspective. So my particular expertise is sympathetic nervous system. So before I got into PTSD word, I was looking at half flesh treatments. So I was trying to understand, was trying to write an article or understand like my wife said, so Stella thing I do, which is reset sympathetic nervous system works for pain. True.

Like you saw a guy sitting on there, treat for pain. half lashes. It works for half lashes and then start, start using for PTSD, post -traumatic stress disorder. And my wife said, it can't work for everything. You're so foolish. And I was like, no, it does work. So she has a biochemistry degree. So I actually wrote an article explaining to her why it works. So I published in 2009. So the commonality is sympathetic nervous system. So then I was trying to understand.

So as I was doing more research, it turns out if a woman has the same trauma as a man, the chance of dealing with it because the women is twice as high. the question is, the hell, would that be? So it seems like women have a more sensitive sympathetic nervous system. That makes sense. So it's easier to induce, right? So if you look at that from that perspective, so you think about when you're scared, what happens to you? God goes to sleep, right? So if your sympathetic is more active,

So women are more sensitive to that and fibromyalgia and all those lovely things. And that actually makes sense based off of, we can think back to how women and men operate, women were meant to be more nurturers and men were meant to be more hunter and gatherers and have more of a state of resilience kind of built into them. Yeah, I do. I mean, it's interesting. So I looked up the definition of sympathetic nervous system. They were talking about the sympathy for other organs, which I didn't quite understand. It was the way...

Dr. Eugene Lipov (07:05.998)
that I was thinking, so men has to be able to chase antelope, right? Whatever. So that sympathetic nervous system needs to get going. So if you're always calm and collected, so nurturing you think is more part of sympathetic or vagal nerve, right? But if you look at the sympathetic nervous system in women, it's very interesting how it's evolved, what does it do? And then there was an interesting article in

Italy in 1972, they took women who had abnormal periods. They could not get pregnant. So they took a hundred of them. Fifty of them had stellar ganglion blocks, the other 50 didn't. The one who got the block, half of them got pregnant. That interesting? Yeah. It makes sense because of the connection between the HP axis and female hormones. Right. And the future cause. And even with my story, so that was the root of lot of my

really at the core. So right, I was put on all these medications and they wanted to cut out my large intestine. And that's what kind of catapulted me down this road of doing a lot of the deeper healing work, finding functional medicine, taking a root cause approach and doing microbiome testing. I found out that had SIBO, small intestinal bacterial overgrowth. And I did a lot of protocols for that. Right. We talked about this anarker, about the

the herbals, I did the leaky gum, it pierced up and I would get better, then would relapse, and I'd get better and I'd relapse. And I was one, just already excited that I was making progress, because here I was from the point of almost having my large intestine removed. And even when I tell that story, I share that like I was ready. I was so ready to get that surgery. Because I Then you should move on. Yeah, I was that desperate. So I get with other people who are really struggling emotionally and physically, you'll do whatever to try to feel better so you can move on with your life.

but I set a timeline for myself. like, all right, let me try all of these alternative methods first. And as I continued to relapse and I started to really get into the root cause, which for me it's what is the root cause of the root cause? The root cause isn't the SIBO. It isn't the bacteria overgrowth. It's part of the symptom. was what led to that in the first place. And for me, was a lot of my core trauma and a lot of my own...

Dr. Eugene Lipov (09:25.188)
Metabolic stressors that I was under. mean if one physician would have just looked at my lifestyle I mean, I was like 10 % body fat I was competing in all these competitions So there was the metabolic stress and how that has the impact on the body's nervous system, right? Cortisol is going to be chronically elevated Quite a bit. There's blood sugar imbalances. I remember at that time I would get so many blood sugar drops right because I didn't have that much fat. Well, you had no fat and you could Well, the fat is really not

where sugar came from, but glucagon, So, Correct. Yes. Glycine. What's interesting, so if you think of the thinking standard, like I was trained pretty standard. I finished medical school in 84 in Northwestern, so fine medical school. We had half an hour on nutrition. That was it. So was like nutrition. And then I had problems with my intestines 10 years. I found a guru in New York.

who he was particularly, I think, bad, but at least he was looking in that space. So he was the one who started me thinking about checking my gut and all this. And I had SIBO and I had leaky gut. had all that. So I'm happy to say my last GI map test is completely normal now. All right. Let's three months of antibiotics. Okay. Yeah. Like from a circle, from one month of biologicals.

antibiotics and all of that but now it's like normal. Crazy. Yeah. It's crazy. mean that's incredibly common, right? And if you actually look at the symptoms like if you were to pull up in symptoms of IBS, right? Chronic bloating, constipation, you pull up the symptoms of SIBO, they're literally identical and I think they've shown that even up to 80 % of people who have IBS actually have SIBO. Of course there's other reasons for IBS, right? Well, of course there are three different SIBOs. but SIBO.

the gut microbiome just plays such a huge role and that's where... yeah, overgrowth. The other thing is I found I had amoeba. you did? Yeah. I was like, what? Yeah. You think I... But my, like my, all my other factors were totally normal. Have you ever heard the term heart over death? you heard that term? Heart over death? Heart over death. Like Harvard University. Harvard death. It means when the patient's dead.

Dr. Eugene Lipov (11:52.568)
but all the numbers are normal. So all my lab numbers were perfect. But until you look in the gut, really don't know. So that this is actually great lead in. I mean, we can geek out about this forever. And what a board the audience. But one the things I think I'm very interested in developing is pre care and after care for PTSD. We're going to use them just so you know, my objection to term PTSD is going to be.

standing, but we'll just use it simplicity. So we, you and I was very intrigued of you talking about various probiotics or probiotic coli. It doesn't have to be biotic, it could be fungal, right? To have cognitive impact. So what have you learned, you think? What can you share with me and the audience? Yeah. There's a new area of research called psychobiotics, Biotics.

bacteria or different microbes that can really impact our mental health through the impact on the vagus nerve and the gut brain axis, which for everyone listening, the gut brain axis is really just the bidirectional communication between the brain and the gut. And they call it the third brain, right? Or second brain, Yeah. Third brain, actually. And each of these different probiotics, which

A lot of the research is done on strain specific probiotics. So if you go to CVS or the pharmacy and you pick up a general probiotic, you're probably not going to get a lot of the benefits of... Probably has nothing to do with that. It's pretty much short. Yeah. But the research is really astonishing. They've done research for depression, for stress response. They've done research on helping people who struggle with insomnia and sleep. And even some of it they've shown when...

somebody was on an SSRI and then paired even with a psychobiotic, their reduction in depressive symptoms was increased exponentially. And I'll even pull up a little bit of research here that I have. And if you can just take a picture of the screen, we'll post it out for people. Yeah. So, you're cleaning me. I'll be the one reading it too.

Dr. Eugene Lipov (14:11.1)
In the clinical definition, so psychobotics are a group of probiotics that affect the central nervous system, right? And why I think this is so astonishing is because it goes along with everything that you do. You're impacting the central nervous system through these different blocks and that's impacting everyone's mental health. But how these impact the gut -brain axis is through the immune system and then also through different metabolic pathways. And ultimately this can lead to antidepressant and antipsychotic.

effects and some of the strains that I've seen some research on is bifidobacterium longum. So they're very specific strains and this strain in particular has been shown to support cortisol levels and reduce perceived stress on people. So what they've done actually a few different studies, four -week studies on people and they measured and they had an increase in beta -2 brain wave activity at rest compared to the placebo group.

Beta two, I'm not unfamiliar with it. I know alpha and beta, but I don't know beta two. Okay. Yeah. ultimately their stress response or the impact on the HPA access was greatly reduced. So it helped a lot with sleep. It helped a lot with anxiety levels. Some of the other research is on the strains Lactobacillus planetarium. And that seems to have a lot of interesting You've seen that one before? I've seen it across the board, different things. The thing I found also interesting, there was a probiotic that's liquid.

It's from England. I don't remember the name of it. It helped Parkinson's, which is like, what? That's crazy because a lot of you think it's true that a lot of the brain transmitters generate in the gut and then they brought up. As you said, it's by directions. One of things that people might not realize that the reason people call the gut second brain or third brain is

That comes from research. My wife just shows how crazy our conversations can be sometimes. So it depends how many neurons you have. So the brain, like our brain, have multiple millions of neurons. Heart has 50, I think, million neurons. And the gut has 30 million neurons. So when you see danger and your gut goes on spasm,

Dr. Eugene Lipov (16:35.852)
It's not just the brain is doing it. The neurons are somehow connected to the other brain and goes, whoa, something bad is going on. So there's this whole connect to this nerves and the nerves can go back and forth, which is really crazy. Yeah. And also to a lot of these different, microbes in our guts, right? They are acting on the vagus nerve. And, that's a part of sympathetic system, which is the opposite of sympathetic, right? Yeah. So it's helping bring the body back into more of that rest of that digest state. So.

we've seen for people who have low diversity in their guts or they have bacteria dysbiosis or imbalance, they can have poor vehicle tone and this can greatly impact their mental health. then, so we look at the bacteria in the gut, right? And this area of research is really incredible. There's a lot of different strains of psychobiotics, think. Yeah. If you could send it, I'd like to review it. Yeah. There's a few different ones too that they've shown that act on GABA receptors quite a bit. So,

I'm still even diving into a little bit of the research myself on which strains to use in particular in which scenarios. we can combine our efforts. Well, GABA, just for those people who are not necessarily into the language. GABA is where alcohol works and volume works, all of that. So if you think about it, you drink alcohol, you're to be chilled out. So if you activate GABA, which we with the mechanism, is a volume or alcohol or probiotic, that's going to keep you calm.

Which is a nice thing without frying your liver like you always alcohol. Yes And even with women that we work with a bit of my practice to like hormonally looking at a lot of this if they're low in progesterone We also can see an increased impact in their mental health, right because progesterone also acts on gab receptors in the brain. I didn't know that Yeah, so progesterone we call nature Xanax

So for a lot of women who are dealing with That's fascinating. That's ...brushing and a lot of moods, trouble sleeping, right? Because that was important for that. Right, right, of They could actually be low in their progesterone levels. And this is also too where women during different phases of their cycle can have a lot of different impacts on their mood. Right. a bit. Yeah, the cycle to me is just a fascinating physiological change. It's incredible.

Dr. Eugene Lipov (18:59.606)
You know most of the research though they've done up until more recently has either been on men or post -menopausal women. They in a lot of the medical research. well that's true. They now are doing more on cycling women but they literally would look out women who are cycling and say this is too complicated because of the ebbs and the flows and the changes. they wouldn't do research physiological system.

Yeah, so even things like antidepressants, different medications, pressure hands. Women can be definitely impacted differently even when you look at some of the studies because they didn't take into account women who have hormones that are cycling. It's funny. So my wife used to tell me that for years and I was like, yeah, whatever. But I actually absolutely believe it. I looked at the studies and it's well, the technical logic would be that it is

that you want to have homogeneous group, whole man. And then the same thing goes actually, there is further breakdown. So there is white man, black man, Asian man, all of that. There are differences, there are significant amount of differences in tolerating alcohol, tolerating this, tolerating that. So hopefully we're getting there and research is starting to get there, but I think we'll be able to handle it.

But the whole concept of God is being still completely ignored, which is really interesting to watch for me. And the only reason I got into it is because I had problems. Yes, that's exactly what I got into it. I just hope people would not be as obsessed with gut health if it wasn't for like feeling like it literally saved my life. And as I healed my gut, you know, a lot of my depression, a lot of my mental health issues did improve to an extent, right, for a lot of my life.

I struggled with some of my own nervous system dysregulation and that's why I've been so passionate about the healing work in general. we'll help regulate today. Yes. That's part of the plan. Yeah. But I think in terms of helping people with PTSD, I think if you can really combine both of these things, we can work on the gut microbiome, right? If somebody has dysbiosis, overgrowth of bacteria,

Dr. Eugene Lipov (21:17.26)
parasites, fungal overgrowth, if they have leaky guts, getting that healed, using things like psychobiotics. And now you combine that with a lot of the work that you're doing, I feel like the results are going to be... be synergistic. Yeah, it really should be synergistic. You know what I find most interesting? Which is, it sounds woo -woo, but you know, hopefully I'm not saying... I like woo -woo. But you know, it's like, well, it's woo -woo now. It's like they say advanced science looks like magic. Yeah. Okay.

Whatever. I think this is like woo woo now is going to be advanced science in 10 years. But the whole concept of candid, candidiasis, all girls of Canada, know, much more common women, blah, But the final thing that it gives you is such a smart little beastie. It makes you want to eat more sugar, which if you think about it, how

Did they become such an amazing parasite? It sucks up all your sugar. It makes you feel dizzy. You have to eat more sugar and grow more candida. Which is amazing to me that that's a single cell organism, not like it has a brain and has a plan. It just does what it does. So the whole concept is even though it's small, I wouldn't underestimate it. Now, have you ever seen Netflix film Fantastic Fungi? Yes.

It's fantastic. right. It's fantastic. right. It's so interesting. they're amazing how they, what they do. But they overtake. definitely overtake. It's biology. mean, it's like, it's been successful. I think we live in such sterilized environments. We forgot what real environment does, but my honeymoon was in Kathmandu in Tibet.

So talk about being in nature. So at one point I was covered in leeches and all this like you go out in nature, nature reminds you, you're the man. It's like, you you ain't the man. It's like nature's the charge. And maybe that's where I got my amoeba. I don't know. Yeah. We see them all the time. Amoeba. just parasites, overgrown, all different types, right? And it definitely scares you a little bit. Like when I traveled to Europe and like under...

Dr. Eugene Lipov (23:40.374)
Me like I love sushi and then now I'm like I've seen way too much. I hope you got Do you have it had hepatitis a I get it. I can't remember definitely get it because like there was a breakouts number of time in New Orleans from clams you can get it from clams So if you like that kind of stuff

get that you should get a vaccine for sure. Yeah. Okay. So I think we need to go do some work like to help you should be lovely. So in summary, thank you for coming. We appreciate it. think maybe you can come back later and tell us how everything, what kind of effect you had like it'll be interesting to see tomorrow how you feel. Yeah. We just can see, I mean, hopefully you got us perfect now.

Maybe it'll be more perfect. I don't know. Yeah, I think there's normal things that can set it off, but it's not what it... But it's interesting. also use stellate like severe pain from periods. Yeah. Think about why that happens. For painful periods? Yeah, painful periods and mood swings. PMDD. Right. We've treated that. So it's interesting. So to me, when the sympathetic is out of whack, it's hard.

and anyone being goes through that, who needs that. Yeah. I think it's really powerful work for sure. The last point I'd even share on the gut microbiome, I don't know if you're familiar, Dr. Kenneth Brown, he was a physician in humide podcast a few years ago, but he was in the front end research on SIBO. He developed a product called Autranteel, which is a polyphenol blend, which polyphenols are really powerful for...

modulating the gut. work a bit like a prebiotic, but they're not fiber based. So there's things like resveratrol, corbaccio is a type of polyphenol that we've heard of, turmeric is a polyphenol, cacao. Of course I know turmeric. But they work incredible for increasing diversity in the gut. So his product is geared towards bringing down

Dr. Eugene Lipov (25:58.628)
Methane predominant SIBO by the use of polyphenols. But I share this because he talks quite a bit about also leaky guts and how a leaky gut actually leads to a leaky brain as well. Absolutely. That makes sense. Similar to the broad -bred barrier. You know, it's interesting. So just a cautionary tale. So I'm into longevity quite a bit. So I had my biological clock tested. So I'm 66 now.

chronologically. I need to get mine tested. I can get it done quick. Yeah. The best one is grim age. How young can you be? I wouldn't do it before 40. No, but how young can the age go down to like your chrono when they test it? I can ask my friends about it. Could you be like five? No. I you can do that. I don't think, I hope not. I don't know. Anyway, so I'm 53 chronologically, biologically.

But what's interesting is so reservatil. So, you know, I was following David Sinclair's work a lot of it. He talks about one gram per day. That's amazing. There's a lot of studies that high level of reservatil will cause Alzheimer's. It can lead to Alzheimer's. You think how scary that is? There's a lot of it there. I did everything. Yeah. But there's a lot there.

So I would say, is there a total? No, I just tossed all of it out. Really? I need to look into that research. don't take resveratrol currently, right now. But my point is, I'd be curious to see how much resveratrol is in those pills. Yeah. His... his doesn't have resveratrol in it. It's a Corbetcho. Good. But just sharing resveratrol as a type of polyphenol that they've done research on for the gut. Yeah. I got it. Because that was David Sinclair's work, but it was interesting it was done on mice.

And I have what happens in the liver is different than the mouse and the human. Very interesting. Yeah. Cause I was never told it's like the best thing for aging. Yeah. Don't take it. I've heard a lot about that. take it. Don't take it. No. All right. Anyway, off we go. Off we go. All right. Thanks. Hopefully it's easy for you. All right.