Dr Peter Osborne – No Grain, No Pain

Content by: Dr Peter Osborne

Watch the full interview below or listen to the full episode on your iPhone HERE.

Stu: This week we welcome Dr Peter Osborne to the show. Dr Osborne is the clinical director of Origins Health Care in Sugar Land, Texas. He is a Doctor of pastoral science, and a Board Certified Clinical Nutritionist.

Often times referred to as “The Gluten Free Warrior”, he is one of the most sought after alternative and nutritional experts in the world. His practice is centered on helping nutritionally support those with painful chronic degenerative and autoimmune problems using natural methods. He is one of the world’s leading authorities on gluten sensitivity, and lectures nationally to both the public as well as doctors on this and many other nutritionally related topics. He is the founder Gluten Free Society, the author of The Gluten Free Health Solution and The Glutenology Health Matrix, a series of digital videos and ebooks designed to help educate the world about gluten. In addition, he is the author of the best selling book, No Grain No Pain.

In this episode, we discuss the biggest contributing factors that compromise our immune system and the best areas to tackle to start the healing process, enjoy…

Audio Version

downloaditunesListen to Stitcher Questions we ask in this episode:

  • What are the tell-tale signs of gluten sensitivity?
  • If we eliminate grains, do we need to look to other foods to avoid deficiencies?
  • What everyday foods/practices do you believe can compromise the health of our gut?

Get More of Dr Peter Osborne

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Full Transcript

Stu 00:03 Hey, this is Stu from 180 Nutrition and welcome to another episode of the health sessions. It’s here that we connect with the world’s best experts in health, wellness and human performance in an attempt to cut through the confusion around what it actually takes to achieve a long lasting health. Now I’m sure that’s something that we all strive to have. I certainly do. Before we get into the show today, you might not know that we make products too. That’s right. We’re into whole food nutrition and have a range of super foods and natural supplements to help support your day. If you are curious, want to find out more, just jump over to our website. That is 180nutrition.com.au and take a look. Okay. Back to the show.

00:45 This week, I’m excited to welcome Dr. Peter Osborne. Dr. Osborne is one of the world’s leading authorities on gluten sensitivity. Amongst many other exploits, he’s the founder of the Gluten Free Society, the author of the Gluten Free Health Solution, and the Glutenology Health Matrix, and the best selling book, No Grain, No Pain. In this episode, we discuss the biggest contributing factors that compromise our immune system and the best areas to tackle to start the healing process. Having the opportunity to connect with world experts is a real honor for me and I always come away feeling empowered, and this episode was no exception as Dr. Osborne is a true wealth of knowledge. So I really hope you enjoy this as much as I did. Okay. Let’s get into the show. 01:34 Hey guys, this is Stu from 180 Nutrition and I am delighted to welcome Dr. Peter Osborne to the show. Dr Osborne. How are you?

Peter

01:42 I’m doing fantastic. Thanks for asking. How about yourself?

Stu

01:45 Yeah, really, really good at. It’s 8:00 on a Friday morning, so I should be a little bit dusty, but I’m feeling okay. I’ve had a good breakfast and I’m ready to go. First off for our audience that might not be familiar with your work, I would love it if you could just tell our listeners a little bit about what you do and perhaps why you do it as well.

Peter

02:07 Yeah, so I started out about 18 years ago clinical practice. I left the VA Hospital here in Houston, Texas after a very disgruntled stint in the rheumatology department, and I was very disgruntled with the way that people were being treated. They were being treated with high levels of immune suppressants and steroid medications and surgical joint procedure replacements. And to me it was not a solution, it wasn’t an answer, nobody got better. It just seemed like a system. And I’m a veteran myself. So having these veterans come through the hospital and not being treated properly, it really didn’t sit well with me. So when I started my own private practice, one of the things that I made it a point of was to implement diet, lifestyle and nutrition into people with chronic autoimmune problems, because that’s where I was. 02:57 At VA Hospital, rheumatology, it’s rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, Scleroderma, dermatomyositis. Diseases like psoriatic arthritis and spondyloarthritis. So joint pains, muscle pains, chronic autoimmune in nature. And there just wasn’t a real viable medical option outside of immune suppression, which to me was not a solution.

Stu

03:21 Got you. Fantastic. I’m intrigued as to … I don’t know whether, I mean in your opinion, are we getting more healthy? We’ve got access to a lot more technology these days, but from my perspective it seems like we’re not. Every second person is sensitive to something these days. What are your thoughts on that?

Peter

03:44 Well, I think we’re definitely seeing a rise in increase in hypoallergenicity. People becoming more and more allergic to their environment. And I think maybe even a better or more proper way to put it would be that it’s not that people are becoming more allergic to their environments, it’s that they’re becoming less tolerable to their environments. Their immune systems are so distraught and so confused that their body is basically rebelling back against the environment. And we’re exposed to so many different chemicals from the pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, to the food additives, the food dyes, the different preservatives that are put in our food products. And then when we couple that with our lifestyles and our choices and our behaviors, we’re fast paced society. People don’t rest adequately, don’t sleep adequately, they don’t get enough sunshine, they don’t get enough exercise and it really is a perfect storm. 04:33 And you couple all of that with each generation is sicker than the one prior. And one reason why is that this effect is accumulative meaning, as we have more detriment in our environment, there are heavy metals that we pass on in utero. When women are pregnant, they pass those heavy metals through the fetus to the babies. So children are being born with disadvantages over what their parents had because it’s a generational accumulative biotoxin effect, and here we are. This is the outcome. We are living that outcome. And so I don’t know that it’s necessarily all the people are more allergic as much as it is. 05:11 We just have a lot of education and a lot of lifestyle-changing to do in these people because it is reversible. It’s key to understand. A lot of people want to say, “Oh, my mom gave me lead when I was growing in the womb, and so there’s nothing I can do about it.” No, these things are reversible. There’s hope. There are things that you can do. You just have to get educated and you have to learn how to use this technology to your advantage, how to use science to your advantage so that you can isolate and identify what it is about your body that if you made changes, you could actually improve your outcome and your health.

Stu

05:43 Got it. So it must be really tricky for you. Where on earth would you start, given the fact that I could come to you tomorrow and say, “Oh, I’m experiencing lots of bloating and gas and I just don’t have any energy”? But I could be up on my smart phone till midnight, immersed in social media which wrecks my sleep. I could be showering in the morning in 101 crazy chemicals, eating gluten and sugar and corn oil and everything like that for breakfast, getting no exercise whatsoever, and then of course I get this magic symptom. Something’s not quite right. Where would you start on that? There’s so many things to address.

Peter

06:23 The way I work is I don’t go to people. People go to me. And that’s where it starts. It starts with recognizing that you as a unique person have a problem. It’s very, very important because there are a lot of people that are out there trying to help other people. It’s kind of like you go up to somebody who’s an alcoholic and you say, “You have a problem with alcohol, I’m going to help you.” How effective is that going to be? It’s going to be 0% effective. The person who’s sick and the person who’s experiencing those symptoms has to be willing to make a change. So to see somebody like me, I start with a 14 page questionnaire. So I’m going to know as much about that person, their life, their history, their lifestyle, what they’re doing, what they’re not doing, so that I can begin a relationship. 07:04 For doctors and patients it’s very important to establish a relationship, and in order to do that you have to kind of get to know each other. And so the first step is that appointment, it’s that follow up. It’s going through that information. The second step is, what else is missing? What if I could see inside that person’s body biochemically, what are some of the things that if I could see that I could help this person decide and choose how they could make better decisions? And so some of the things that we look for and in my office it’s all about autoimmunity. So that’s what I’m known for. My background is autoimmune disease. I’ve written a book called No Grain, No Pain, which is all about solving the autoimmune crisis. And so when people come to see me, as a minimum we’re looking at the four biochemical triggers of autoimmune disease. That is the first place that we start. 07:51 And it’s different for different people and so it’s important to understand that. For example, we look at the four categories, so what are they? Number one is nutritional deficiency. So for example, vitamin D deficiency is known to cause autoimmune disease. Okay? Vitamin D deficiency can actually trigger type one diabetes and rheumatoid arthritis. So we want to know obviously about that vitamin, but we want to know about the other vitamins and the other minerals. There are about 40 essential nutrients that we’re checking for because that’s what a person needs in order to heal and repair, and if a person is lacking those nutrients, it’s very hard to make the road back. The second thing that we want to understand is what they’re eating and how their bodies are reacting to what they’re eating. 08:32 So we test for food, we test their immune systems to food to see how that person’s immune system perceives food, as a friend or as an enemy. Now our immune systems are brand new every six to eight months. So what you could be reacting to today may not be what you’re going to react to in eight months, but we want a starting point. We want to place our premise to begin this process. And we also test … So food is a category, including gluten, right? And so we’re looking at glutens, we’re looking at grains, we’re looking at pretty much if you’ve eaten it or heard of it, we’re testing for it in terms of food. We’re also testing for environmental chemicals, things that might be in your hair care products, your soaps, your shampoos, your detergent, your toothpastes, your mouthwash, your laundry soap, those types of things because those are easy change factors, right? 09:17 If we know what to change, if we know to change the brand or to change the ingredients, then we can. We can become empowered to do that. And chemicals are a major trigger. Now, part of what we test for in chemicals is also heavy metals. Things like mycotoxins or mold toxins because these are very, very common, especially if you live in coastal regions where it’s very humid and the humidity factor is much higher. It’s easier for them all to proliferate in a humid environment. So we look at those chemical triggers, and then the fourth thing that we look at is infection. Infection; different types of bacteria, different types of viruses, different types of fungal infections or parasitic infections. We want to analyze to see whether that person has any of those types of things going on, because if they do that has to be addressed. 10:00 We’ve got to come out with some type of protocol that’s going to address that problem. So those four triggers, that’s where we begin the process of the road back from autoimmune disease. Now there are other things that contribute to autoimmune disease that are not biochemical triggers. For example, overburdened some stress. A person who’s in an abusive relationship, a person who goes to work every day at a meaningless job that they hate. These are factors in a person’s life that can also be triggers that are emotional. And so that part of our questionnaire, we’re asking those questions, we’re diving into that. That’s part of that relationship I was talking about earlier where we really want to form a relationship so that we understand where that person is in their life and where they’ve been in their life, and in that way we can guide them to where they want to go.

Stu

10:45 My word. Just imagine if your conventional medical doctor did exactly what you’ve just outlined there. What on earth would the world look like? It’s just insane. Peter: 10:57 Yeah, that’s for sure. I think if doctors would measure these things, I think industry would follow suit. Because if doctors were out there saying, “These are our problem”, then there would be more pressure on industry to say, “Look, if these are a problem, we’re going to have to scale back what we’re doing in terms of releasing this quantity of pollutant.” Or, “We’re going to have to change the nature of how we make our products or put ingredients in our foods, et cetera.” I think if we put a huge pressure on industry, I think everybody would be healthier as a result. 11:26 Yeah, I completely agree. You touched on gluten in there as well. I know that you’re an expert in that area. Is gluten the bad boy that we are led to believe because it really is a … It’s a term over here now that every man and his dog seems to be sensitive to, and tolerant of. I wonder what your thoughts are on that.

Peter

1:52 It is a bad boy. It is the bad boy that we believed that it is, but it isn’t the bad boy that we have been told that it is for absolutely everyone in the world. And so for clarity’s sake, the gluten is a family of proteins. So it’s not one term, it’s not one protein. There are about 1000 different forms of gluten that have been discovered, actually 400 were discovered in Australia by a … The lead scientist was Bob Anderson et al. His group discovered 400 new gluten proteins back, and I think it was 2010. So we know there’s this huge family of proteins and we know that people with gluten sensitivity have an immunological response to these proteins that can trigger an autoimmune disease. But not everybody in the world is gluten sensitive. Now that being said, gluten is very, very hard to digest. So understand that gluten sensitivity’s immune reaction and tolerance is a digestive problem. 12:47 So if a person has a problem in their guts, for example, they’ve taken poor care of themselves. Maybe they’ve been on several rounds of antibiotics and antacid medications and they’re trying to digest grain in their diet, then they’re going to get a lot of exposure to gluten. And maybe they’re not gluten sensitive, but because it’s hard to digest in their guts in a disarray, they’re reacting to it because they can’t process it. So it’s sitting in their gut, not digesting, creating chemical responses and bacterial changes, they can cause things like irritable bowel syndrome that can open up the gut and create leaky gut. So it’s important to understand, and this is why I’m a big fan of testing by the way, because testing allows us to understand, is that person gluten-sensitive or is that person just reacting to gluten because their digestive tract is not working properly? And if we corrected their digestion, would they be able to then tolerate some of those other grains. 13:38 Now there are other things in grains too that I want to touch on because you asked the question. Because it’s not just gluten. So gluten is the bad boy in the sense that everybody blames gluten, but understand what else grains contain. Grains also contain high levels of mold and mold toxins, and some people are allergic to mold and mold toxins are immune suppressants. Grain can contain heavy quantities of heavy metal. So for example, rice as a grain contains lead and cadmium and arsenic which are not good for you. And so if you’re eating a lot of rice substitute based foods, and you’re getting extra arsenic in your daily diet and extra cadmium and lead in your daily diet, over time, it’s going to deteriorate your health. 14:19 Grains also contain very, very high levels of Omega-6 fats and virtually no Omega-3 fats. So eating an abundance of grains skews our Omega-6, Omega-3 balance, and that creates an environment where it’s more easy to become inflamed. So it creates a pro-inflammatory environment in the body. Grain also contains a number of other proteins. They’re actually five different classes of proteins in grains. Some people have heard the term lectin before, and this is one family of proteins that can create problems for some people and that has nothing to do with gluten. There’s another group of a family of proteins and grain called ATIs, amylase-trypsin inhibitors, and they have nothing to do with gluten, but these proteins can shut down the pancreas. They can stop the pancreas from secreting enzymes to help you digest your food. So remember, at the end of the day, what is grain? If we look at grain … 15:12 I didn’t write a book, ‘No Gluten, No Pain’. I wrote a book, ‘No Grain, No Pain’, because if we look at grain, grain is the seed of grass. And seeds by design, Mother Nature’s design is that seeds are trying to survive. Their whole purpose and premise in life is to perpetuate their own species, not to be our food. So that being said, seeds are not animate objects that have legs and arms that can fight back or run away. They have chemicals inside of them that are designed to prevent predators from eating them into extinction. And what we’ve done is the human race is we’ve created an entire diet surrounded with 70 to 80% food that is compressed grain, right? 15:51 If you look at cereal and bread and cereal bars and pastas and things like donuts, and much of the alcohol that’s produced is from grains. So largely what most people eat is predominantly grain based and grain is designed again as an element, right? It’s designed to protect itself and in so doing can create gastric dysfunction if you overeat it, even if you are not gluten sensitive. So I think the message there is, gluten is a bad guy, but you should get tested for gluten sensitivity. The best way to do that is genetic testing, not blood testing. Blood testing is highly, highly inaccurate, leads to a lot of false negatives. But you should get tested so that you know, “Look, do I need to avoid gluten for the rest of my life, or do I need to avoid grain right now because my gut is in such a wreck that I can’t process these foods? Or do I need to avoid processed grain because certain process grains are containing high levels of carbohydrates and maybe I’m already too high in my blood sugar?” 16:52 There are a number of different factors within the grain spectrum of why eating grain could be a bad thing for you. But it’s just important to understand that it isn’t just gluten.

Stu

17:01 Right. That’s great advice.

Peter

17:00 That it isn’t just gluten.

Stu

17:01 Right. That’s great advice. And the counter argument over here from the, I guess from the standard Australian, standard American diet would be, well, if we’re gonna pull grains out of our diet, you’re going to be deficient. You’re eliminating a food group. Where are we going to get our B vitamins, for argument’s sake? What are your thoughts on that?

Peter

17:28 That’s poppycock.

Stu

17:29 Right.

Peter

17:30 Yeah. I mean, grains do not have a greater degree of nutrition. I’d say if we’re missing anything when we pull grain out of the diet, it’s fiber. But if you’re actually eating vegetables, which most people don’t, right? This is really the argument. If you don’t eat grain, where are you going to get some of your vitamins, because you don’t eat vegetables. So all that leaves is meat, and that’s not really healthy to just eat meat. But the reality is, is you go grain free in a healthy manner, then you’re eating a variety. There are 300 different varieties of fruits and vegetables and nuts that you can consume that are rich in B vitamins. That are rich in vitamin E, that are rich in fibers. Soluble and insoluble fibers that help your microbiome. So there’s not an issue with becoming more nutritionally deficient. 18:14 To the contrary, when we study people with gluten sensitivity, the numbers are quite astonishing. Iron deficiency, anemia is present in up to 60% of those individuals. Even though grains are supposed to contain iron. Vitamin B12 deficiency, in my clinic, we have numbers that show that it’s about 50% prevalent. Meaning about 50% of the people that we see with gluten sensitivity have vitamin B12 deficiency. We see that about 35% of the people that come through are zinc deficient. We see about 10% of the people that come through are vitamin A deficient. So I would say the contrary is true, that a high grain, especially a highly processed grain based diet is very, very devoid of nutrients. And let me give you a history on this. And this is American history. In 1943, the United States government banned the sale of grain. Banned the sale of processed grain. Why? Because processed grain was killing 8,000 people a year through diseases like beriberi and pellagra. Now beriberi and pellagra are B vitamin deficiency diseases. Pellagra is a vitamin B3 deficiency. Beriberi is a vitamin B1 deficiency. 19:25 So 8,000 deaths a year, right? This is why in the United States we fortify the grain. If you look at a label over here, 100% of the time on a grain based product, it has to have added B1. It has to have added niacin. It has to have added folate. If it doesn’t have those things, it’s illegal [inaudible 00:19:51]. Such a healthy food, then why is it that it’s illegal in this country to sell it without adding synthetic vitamins to it to prevent deaths? Stu: 20:00 Boy oh boy. Yeah. You make a very good point. That is, yeah it’s intriguing as well. And I think people struggle as well when they pull the grains out from their diet. It’s like, well what on earth am I going to eat? How I am going to fill that void? And you mentioned your book No Grain, No Pain. Is that, would that be a reference guide to help us transition to a grain free lifestyle? 20:25 Absolutely. I mean, part of it is there’s 31 recipes. There’s seven day meal plans. There’s kind of what to expect. Side effects and the like, so it kind of, it’s designed to prepare a person in that first 30 days to experience the miracle of what going grain free can actually do to improve your health.

Stu

20:42 Great, fantastic. Well look, we will link to that in the show notes for sure. I know it’s a … People really do struggle with the whole processed food sort of grain, the conundrum. Because it fills so many of their everyday products. And their transitioning over there is just a real confusion. They don’t know what to eat. Outside of grains, what other food ingredients do you think are most commonly negatively affecting our health? Peter 21:12 I think one of the big ones, and it’s also in grain but it’s in other foods as well, is the weed killer and the pesticide. It’s Roundup or glyphosate. And I don’t know if you guys are watching the news here in the United States, there was just a lawsuit against the manufacturers of glyphosate. They won two, or the person who sued them proved that glyphosate created his cancer, his terminal cancer, and the jury awarded him 289 million dollars.

Stu

21:43 Wow.

Peter

21:45 And we have 8,000 more lawsuits that are slated now, you know, the lawyers now, it’s a feeding frenzy, right? But glyphosate is as a chemical agent, if we track when glyphosate started to be used heavily in the U.S., and the prevalence of autoimmune disease and autistic spectrum disorders and the prevalence of many other chronic degenerative diseases, we see this big spike. You know, around the time that Roundup was introduced into our food supply. So I think Roundup is a big one. If you can buy organic, and I don’t know what the ruling is in your country as to whether or not how much of that is actually being used. But that’s something I would avoid. In many countries also use pesticides like atrazine. 22:27 Atrazine is widely used globally, and it’s an artificial estrogen. And so what it does is as it mimics estrogen, for women it can create increased risks for cancers because many of the cancers are estrogen based types of cancers. For men it can also create the risk for prostrate cancer. But it can also cause hyper, or let me rephrase that. It can cause gynecomastia, which is hyperestrogenism, causes males to grow female breast tissue. Right, so it can create problems there. There’s actually some evidence now in animals that show that these types of pesticides can actually create sex changes in fish, frogs, and other amphibious creatures. So where it’s being dumped in the rivers, from farming, we’re actually seeing male frogs turning into females. We’re seeing male fish laying eggs as if they’re females. That’s actually happening. So if it’s happening in animals, we don’t really, nobody’s studying this in humans to any full extent. 23:28 I don’t think we’re going to see this studied. I think industry gets in the way of good, true research because obviously there’s money to be made by selling pesticides. There’s money for farmers to be made by the ease of the use of the pesticide. But the reality is, my advice is to buy organic as much as you possibly can. Because at least then you can avoid the exposures. And minimize the exposures to these things. And then beyond the pesticide family, I would say some of the bigger problems. One of the ingredients that’s used in most industrialized countries is something can’t microbial transglutaminase, or MTG. It’s also known as meat glue, but it’s used in more than just meat. It’s a microbial enzyme that they add to the foods, and it does a couple different things. One, it creates a sticky bond. So it binds food together. It texturizes food and it creates a stickiness. 24:16 And one of the other things that it does it is alters the protein in the foods that it’s added to. And for people with gluten sensitivity, there’s been a number of studies that show that people with gluten sensitivity who consumes foods that are processed with microbial transglutaminase or meat glue. Even if they are truly gluten free foods, they still react to them. Because it alters the protein in those foods to mimic or look more like gluten. So I would say that’s a big on as well. The meat glue. And it can be found in dairy products as a thickening agent. It can be found, look you can go to the restaurant and a lot of times the fast food places, the reconstituted chickens. And you know they call it a chicken breast. It’s actually chicken parts that are pieced together and glued together by microbial transglutaminase. So a lot of those things that people are doing with fast food, you know you’re getting a lot of exposure to that. And then you’ve got the dyes and the preservatives and the other things like MSG that are horrendous for us. 25:13 And then sugar. Sugar’s a big one too. Processed sugar, not natural sugars, but processed sugar. Fruit’s fine. But where we have processed cane sugar, beet sugar, and corn sugar. These are largely genetically modified crops. They have a lot of pesticides in them, but they’re just not good for us. Especially in relationship to the epidemic of obesity and diabetes and heart disease that we’re faced with.

Stu

25:35 Definitely a mine field out there for sure. And I guess the take home for this is eat whole foods where possible. Organic as you can. And you’re going to be doing far better I think than a huge amount of the population. But yeah, very, very, tricky ground I think. Especially when we’re in the supermarkets these days. We have no idea what’s actually in our foods or our products. Gut health. So 10 years ago, I mean I’ve been in this business for almost a decade now. And when we started, terms like leaky gut, SIBO, even adrenal fatigue, microbiome, mitochondria, those were terms that were largely labeled as quackery. But now we’re just seeing this emergence of the gut being the epicenter of health. Is our gut health as important as we’d like to believe?

Peter

26:39 Probably more so. So your gut is a tube, right? It runs from your mouth to your anus. And its entire design is it’s a quarantine zone. You think of it in terms of disease, it’s a quarantine zone. Your gut does not have direct access to your blood stream. It’s not supposed to. Your gut’s job is to go to war with whatever you put in your mouth. It’s to go to war with it. Break it down to its finest common denominators. Breaking down proteins to amino acids. Breaking down fats to smaller chain fatty acids. Breaking down carbohydrates to the smaller sugars like glucose and fructose. So that we can absorb those things as nutrition into our body while expelling all of the waste. So all the things our body was fighting to not let into the blood stream is quarantined by the gut. And so leaky gut, or intestinal hyperpermeability, which is a very, very common condition these days. 27:29 It’s becoming more and more rampant, is a major problem because it’s breaking and breaching the gut quarantine. And so imagine it’s like having poop and the byproducts, the bacterial poop and the viral poop and all the other byproducts of what we do eat. Because even if we eat the healthiest, most organic food in the world, there’s still the potential for bacteria to be in that food. There’s still the potential for viruses and other types of microorganisms to be on that food that are not good for us. But our gut is such a wonderful and amazing organ system that it has the ability to separate the two out. But when it loses its ability to do that, all that stuff gets simple, easy access to your blood stream. To your portal circulation, where it can go to your liver and just start damaging the liver. And then it can get into the central circulation. So you mentioned before, these terms were quackery 10 years ago. 28:19 I want to point something else out. Hand washing was quackery. And the doctor said wash your hands was laughed into an early grave. And he was not appreciated until decades afterwards. Doctors used to go to the morgue and do autopsy and then they would go deliver babies without washing hands. Right? And so hand washing was quackery at one point. So you know, history if anything, if history does anything, it teaches us lessons. Don’t be so quick to dismiss intelligent thought as quackery, because every major revolutionary idea in the history of mankind has at one point been quackery.

Stu

29:03 Yes, no that’s a great point. And what are the most common tell tale signs that there may be a problem in the gut? In that I’m seemingly healthy, and all of a sudden I’m starting to experience stuff. What might that stuff be that would lead us to believe that we need to come and see somebody like you?

Peter

29:27 Well I mean a normal, healthy gut, you’re going to have one to two bowel movements a day that are solid, well formed brown, and not hard, not pebble like, not mushy, not tan in color. Or not blood coming out. Like those are all things that, that should prompt you to seek out some professional opinion. But if you’re taking antibiotics, if you’re finding that you have a reflux and you need to suppress your stomach acid after meals, right? These are kind of early warning signs for a lot of people. The ones that run and jump toward the Tums or the Rolaids or the Mylanta or the Pepto Bismal, the pink stuff. And they’re saying, oh, I’m fine. I’m healthy. I just get a little heart burn sometimes. That’s the beginning of it. If you let it progress beyond that point, this is where the leaky gut becomes dangerous. Because when you allow that internal damage to go on and you medicate over it. 30:21 Because the medication doesn’t fix the problem. It fix the symptom. It gives a false sense of security. It allows you to continue to make the same mistake that’s creating the damage. And so as that progresses, for many people the autoimmune damage from leaky gut can take several decades to manifest. The average female, right now the average female will develop autoimmune disease in their 30s to 40s. So three to four decades of damage, okay. The average male won’t develop autoimmune disease until their 40s or 50s. So it takes even a little bit longer for the average man. And part of that is estrogen plays a role in autoimmune disease. But it takes time. And here’s why. Your body is a super duper machine that can adapt to most things. It can adapt to many, many things, very, very well. But the adaptation itself, if we don’t pay attention. So in my opinion, all disease is nothing more than the body’s adaptation to bad choices, right? 31:19 So unless we’re talking about genetic disease that you’re born with, if you’re developing chronic illness, it’s adaptation where your body can no longer put up with your bad choices, right? And so the symptoms become so great that they’re so obvious that you have to seek out medical attention. So look for the early warnings first because this is where it’s simple. If you’re having some heartburn, start looking at what you’re eating. Analyze what you’re eating. Analyze the ingredients in your food. Read the label. Take action and take responsibility for what it is that you’re doing. And never, ever, ever minimize that what you put in your mouth is not all that important as it impacts your health. Because you are what you eat in the truest sense. Everything that you put in your mouth, your body extrapolates that into nutrients and uses that to heal and repair and maintain. And if what you’re putting in is of poor quality, or of little quality, it will catch up with you. Your body will lose its ability to continue to adapt to that poor quality nutrition that’s coming in.

Stu

32:20 And in terms of the repair process. So, and again, it’s probably good to highlight that for the listeners out there that think, okay, gotta fix my food. A compromised gut doesn’t just come from the foods you eat, right? So stress, you could be exercising in the wrong way or not enough. You could be bathed in toxins, all of the above. But when it comes to the healing process, if we have made shifts in all of these areas. And we’re mindful of the way we sleep and stress. And we’re eating much better foods now. Are there any beneficial, key ingredients in terms of maybe supplements or any specific types of foods that are really, really beneficial for the healing process?

Peter

33:13 There are a number of different foods that you could naturally gravitate toward that can help the GI tract seal. Looking for, for gastrointestinal sealing, we’re looking for some critical nutrients. Some of them are amino acids. For example, glutamine. L glutamine is a free form amino acid. You get it in meats. You can get a lot of it in bone broth. A lot of people use bone broth as a healing food. And it can be, but you have to be careful with too much bone broth because we’re finding that it contains heavy metals. Bones tend to store heavy metals, so if cows are being exposed or the animals are being exposed in the bone, you’ll get that in the bone. So I like free form L glutamine myself as a supplement. That’s what I typically tend to use with my clientele because I want to minimize the risk of exposing them to heavy metals. So L glutamine is one of those- 34:00 … exposing them to heavy metals, so L-glutamine is one of those nutrients. Its primary job is it’s the fuel source, the primary fuel source for the enterocyte, which is the cells of the small intestine. In order for them to generate, make energy, and replicate new cells, they’ve gotta have adequate L-glutamine to do that.

Peter

34:17 A couple of other nutrients that are very critical in my opinion, one is zinc. Zinc helps form the tight junctions in the gut itself, so when we talk about leaky gut, the leaky gut is a breakdown of these little proteins in between our gut cells called tight junctions. You need zinc to repair those. You also need vitamin A to regenerate the epithelial lining of the GI tract. This is one of what I was saying earlier about people with gluten sensitivity. 10% of them are deficient in vitamin A, 30% of them are deficient in zinc. 34:49 Then you also need B vitamins like folate and vitamin B12, because their role is, one of their major jobs is to replicate new DNA and new RNA. In cellular turnover, they have to be there in high enough quantities to help the cells regenerate new cells. Of all the cells in the body, the gut has the fastest turnover time. It’s got a two-day turnover time, and if you don’t have adequate B12 or folate, then what ends up happening is those cells, instead of dying in two days and replacing themselves, they’re living for eight days, and they’re old. It’s like a 150-year old cell trying to do the job of a 25-year-old young vigorous cell, and it’s not the same. So those nutrients become very, very important for the healing components of the gut. 35:35 Those are really big ones that I see. What I would really recommend for a person to do, like if they’re really struggling to overcome illness, and they’re trying to move in the right direction, go see your doc. If you have a functional medicine doctor, or you have a functional medicine practitioner who’s willing to run a few labs, you can look. You can actually test for these nutritional deficiencies, and you can customize your supplementation based on what it is that your body needs versus what it is that research says could be helpful. Because if anything I’ve experienced in my 18 years of practice, it’s that if we give generic things, many people who are chronically sick will not recover, because it’s generic, and it’s not exactly what they needed. They’re not getting what they needed. 36:19 Now what you mentioned was there are some healthier people. They’re feeling pretty good. They’re feeling pretty well. They’re just trying to incorporate some things to ensure that their gut is healing, and those are good nutrients for that. Glutamine, zinc, vitamin A is good as well as the B vitamins, folate particularly as well as vitamin B12.

Stu

36:37 Great. Fantastic. In terms of timing, if I fall into the category of a reasonably healthy individual, and I’m doing all of these things, how long would it typically take to see a reversal in our gut health?

Peter

36:57 Pretty quick. If you’re doing everything right, and you’re not missing something, where people miss something usually is if they have like a hidden food allergy, like a delayed food allergy. Like I had a gentleman one time, he had a leaky gut problem. His biggest problem was he had a massive skin rash, and it was because the food that he was allergic to was leaking through his gut, and it was coming out on his skin. It was detoxifying in his skin, and it developed a skin rash. He’d been to see 60 different dermatologists before we tested him. When we tested him, he was allergic to a few foods, and it was that simple change that within weeks, literally his rash started to dissipate and go away. To heal a leaky gut, it can be very quick if the body has what it needs and you’re doing the right things. 37:40 Remember, it has a cycle of two to five days, two to seven days, somewhere in that neighborhood, so it’s a pretty fast responder, a pretty fast healer.

Stu

37:48 Right. Fantastic. On the topic of autoimmune diseases, which appear to be on the rise, and as we’ve discussed today, the links between leaky gut and all of the things that we’re doing in our everyday lives can be potential triggers for that. I wanted to hone in, because you’ve got an online event, so an upcoming online event, Autoimmune Revolution, and it sounds like you guys are all over this. What could we expect from the event?

Peter

38:23 We’ve got 33 of the world’s leading experts in autoimmunity talking about their clinical pearls, their bits of wisdom, what people need to understand. If you’re struggling with autoimmunity, what you could expect is you could expect those experts talking about stories, talking about lab tests that are appropriate to order that can help you find what you need to do, talking about lifestyle changes, diet changes. What are the things that move the needle the furthest and the best with certain types of autoimmune disease? We’ve broken it down into different formats, because there are hormonal-based autoimmune diseases like Hashimoto’s hypothyroidism. There are hormonal autoimmune diseases such as endometriosis, and a lot of people don’t realize that. 39:07 So we have a day of people who are experts in hormone-based autoimmune disease. We have a day where people are experts in food-based or food-causative autoimmune disease. We have a day where we have experts who are basically talking about the pain, the physical, the skeletal, the musculoskeletal, the structural autoimmune diseases, and how they can impact and affect us. You can expect to walk away … By the way, this event is no charge. It’s free of charge. You just sign up, and you’re gonna get access. It’s a seven-day event. 39:37 You can expect to gather so much information probably that your head’s gonna be spinning at the end of it, but this is our second year. We did the event last year, and it did so well, and so many … We had over 70,000 people tune into the Autoimmune Revolution that we wanted to do it again this year. We just brought back some different clinicians to share some greater degree of a bigger umbrella of what happens. 40:01 Now at the end of the event, one of the things that I’m doing this year is I’m summarizing the entire event. So some of these summits, people get on there, and there’s so much information, they don’t know where to begin. I’ve actually created a two-hour presentation that takes a person step-by-step on how to begin, what to do, what to ask your doctor, how to have that conversation, what lab tests to order, what lifestyle changes that you can make, which foods that you should be eating, which foods that you should not be eating. I’ve really tried to make it extremely user-friendly and applicable so that people don’t walk away feeling overwhelmed.

Stu

40:33 Fantastic. Best place to go to register for that right now?

Peter

40:39 Right now, autoimmunerevolution.org, O-R-G.

Stu

40:42 Right, okay. Just to put a little perspective on this, this would be applicable to everyone, right, everybody that wants just to be on top of their health, and to shine from the inside out, not specifically just for those who are concerned about autoimmunity? Would I be right in thinking that?

Peter

41:00 You would be. Let me just leave your audience with something to think about. Heart disease, which is the number one killer … Cancer is the number two killer, right?

Stu

41:10 Yeah.

Peter

41:10 That’s what we’re told. Did you know heart disease is autoimmune?

Stu

41:14 No, I didn’t.

Peter

41:16 Yes. Heart disease is an autoimmune disease. There’s actually a condition called the leaky heart.

Stu

41:20 Oh, crikey.

Peter

41:21 One of my cardiologist friends, Doctor Jack Wilson, talks about that very thing. This applies to people with heart disease. This applies to people who have family histories of heart disease, and they’re gonna try to prevent that. But beyond that, cancer, which is again a top killer, cancer is in-stage autoimmune disease, most cancers. Now there are some cancers that are rare, that are different, but most cancers, chronic degenerative cancers, are in-stage autoimmune disease. 41:48 As a matter of fact, I just got back from Florida talking. I don’t know if you’re familiar with The Truth About Cancer and their global mission, but I just got done talking on their stage about this very topic, which is in-stage autoimmune disease is cancer, so you want to know about this, because the likelihood that you are going to develop cancer, heart disease or autoimmune disease if we look at statistics alone is in the 90% range. This summit is for everyone.

Stu

42:17 Yeah. Totally. No, that is great advice. Yeah, it’s very scary, I think. If the stats are correct, it’s either me or you, we’re gonna get it. I don’t know which one it’s gonna be. I’m guessing that it might be me, based upon what you’ve told me. But that’s excellent, and unbelievable in that it’s such an amazing resource, tapping into the best brains on the planet, and it’s free, so thank you so much for everything that you’ve done to be able to tackle this amazing collection of super minds. We’ll put the links out there in the show notes, and blast it out across our audience as well. 42:53 But just before we go, because we’re coming up on time, there’s a question that I like to ask every guest on this show, and it’s specific to you personally. I would like to know what your non-negotiables are, your personal non-negotiables that ensure that you crush each and every day. It could be: Well, I get up, and I meditate, or I get up, and I have a glass of water, or I always exercise, or I always eat this way. What do you do to maintain fantastic health?

Peter

43:24 Well, it’s always a balancing act, and it’s always a, it’s a juggle, because life throws curve balls. So for the sake of lack of perfection, which no one is perfect, some of my non-negotiables in my life that have always been there have been exercise. Exercise is non-negotiable. I might go days, or I might even go a week or two where I don’t because of things happening, but I always go back to it, always 100% of the time. The human body is 70% water. Stagnant water breeds infection, so we want to move our water sac. That’s what we are. We’re a water sac with carbon and hydrogen and other elements within us, but movement is super critical. 44:04 One of my other non-negotiables is I do not eat grain. I do not negotiate on that. I do not eat grain. It is non-negotiable, and partly because of my bias and the work that I’ve done for the past 18 years in clinic, and what I’ve seen, and how it can make people sick. Even if it’s not gluten, there are so many other things about it that for me are just not negotiable. 44:25 Now, one of the other things that to me is not negotiable is sunshine. This is a factor that so many people get away from, depending on where you live. I’m in Texas, so we have lots of sunshiny days here, which I’m very fortunate to do, but every morning, I make time. I actually drive up. Where my office is, we have a parking garage. I drive up to the top floor of the parking garage. I open the windows in the sunroof, and I bask in the sun for at least 30 minutes before I come into the office. That is a daily routine that I have, because when winter comes, it’s dark when you leave the office, so I want to make sure that I’m getting that in on a daily, regular daily basis.

Stu

45:07 Fantastic. No, that is great advice, and I do like the idea of moving a water sac. I’ve never even thought about it that way, but of course it makes perfect sense. Excellent. What’s next? Obviously you’ve got the online event coming up. Outside of that, what have you got in the pipeline? You’re clearly busy.

Peter

45:29 We’ve got several things. I mean, our mission at Gluten Free Society and dr peterosborne.com is to help 100 million people with chronic illness find real answers to their problems. Part of that is through educating about gluten. One of the things that we have coming in up in our pipeline is something called the Glutenology Health Matrix, which is a very extensive video tutorial series on the person who knows nothing about gluten, taking them through, and teaching them everything they need to know to be successful on the diet from recipes to social engagement, to how to go to parties, to how to travel, etc. 46:03 That’s one of the things that we have coming up in our pipeline. One of the other things, and we’re not solid, it’s not solidified yet, but I’m looking at producing a documentary series about how to change healthcare in the United States, and not so much about how healthcare is a problem, but more specifically focused on what is the solution? Because a lot of people talk about: this is a problem, this is a problem, this is a problem, but problems without solutions are just problems that sit on the shelf and get dusty. I really want to create something that offers a viable solution that people can implement, and that doctors and professionals can implement, so that we can literally change the paradigm of the way that the world thinks, the way this United States thinks, about how healthcare is given and delivered.

Stu

46:55 Wow. Crikey. You are clearly a busy man. How on earth do you get to sleep at night with all that stuff buzzing around in your head? I’m sure you’ve got strategies to sleep.

Peter

47:04 Well I do, but that’s … You mentioned non-negotiable. Sleep is a non-negotiable too. I get in bed every night, try to be in bed, and be asleep by 10:00 p.m., but I get in bed around 9:00, sometimes at 8:30, depending on whether we’re not in the winter months, but yeah balance. It’s part of balance. The reason I have so much energy and can do so much is because I have the balance in my life to be able to have that energy. That’s where a lot of people go wrong in their thought process, is they say, “There’s no way I can do that. I’m just too tired all the time.” Well, if you change the way you behave, you won’t be tired all the time, and you’ll be able to accomplish so much more in so much less time, and that actually can create a sense of freedom.

Stu

47:41 That’s absolutely right. When you have a crappy night sleep, boy do you feel it. I like jet lag. You’re just so nonproductive. You can’t do a thing, so no, you’re absolutely right. Best place to go to get more of Peter Osborne? Where can we point our audience?

Peter

47:57 You can point them to glutenfreesociety. org. That’s our foundation, and a big part of our mission. You can also point them to drpeterosborne.com, and that’s D-R Peter, O-S-B-O-R-N-E dot com, drpeterosborne.com.

Stu

48:13 Fantastic. Okay, we will share all of the links that we’ve spoken about today in the show notes as well. But from me, thank you so much for sharing your wisdom. It has been an eyeopener. We’ve got some real pearls of wisdom in there as well that I cannot wait to share with our audience. Thank you again, and enjoy the rest of your day.

Peter

48:31 Well, thank you, Stuart. Thank you so much for having me on your show, I appreciate it.

Stu

48:34 Thank you. We’ll speak soon. Bye-bye.

Peter

48:37 Bye-bye.

Dr Peter Osborne

This podcast features Dr. Peter Osborne who is the clinical director of Origins Health Care in Sugar Land, Texas. He is a Doctor of pastoral science, and a Board Certified Clinical Nutritionist. Often times referred to as “The Gluten Free Warrior”, he is one of the most sought after alternative and... Read More
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