IBS Explained: Infections, Deficiencies, and Nervous System Chaos

0:00Hello, welcome back to the podcast. I'm your host, Evan Brand. Here we are over a decade later still pumping out content I'm just glad that you're here and you're on the continuous journey to improve your health today We've got my buddy Dr. J We're gonna be chatting about the IBS root causes that doctors miss now. That was my diagnosis. So I have a personal personal personal love and passion for the subject of IBS I've seen over 7,000 cases in my one-on-one practice and another several thousand cases in my group program in most of these People have a gut component to their illness or we're gonna dive into that today I just want to lay this out clearly in case you're not 100% sure on how I work and how I can help improve your life So I have two main options two main veins if you will two main forks in the road that you can go down The first one is a one-on-one consult where I can use my decade plus a functional medicine Experience to look at you as a one-on-one client. We will run the GI map the organic acids and possibly some other test as well

1:02Depending on what symptoms you present with sometimes we have to dig a little bit deeper into hormones lime Co-infections mold toxicity and in that one-on-one practice We will review your labs together and I will build a protocol for you The other fork in the road is the group program which we have under the umbrella Fame functional academy of medicine and epigenetics. I've got a handful of courses in there including a chronic fatigue course a long-haul syndrome course But in the group setting you get the same labs you get the oat you get the GI map and Then you join either on the live calls or you just say hey I don't need to be on the live call just tell me what to do and I will build a protocol for you You do save a lot of money that way. It's just less intimate than the one-on-one So whatever you want to do you're still going to get better You're still going to get a customized protocol for me. I'm not doing any sort of cookie cutter stuff I'm building these protocols out based on your specific lab results and nothing more I'm not giving you stuff just because I find that most people that come to me from other providers especially

2:07They're taking way too many supplements and they're actually not getting better They actually get better on less so that's how I can help and then we've built out aura roots dot com as The professional supplement line. I also use a bunch of other brands too But my professional brand it does rock the microbiome support formulas in particular have been incredible For IBS now if you're listening to this and you're like, hey, I don't have the money to do that I just want to get better. What can I do not medical advice not creating a doctor patient relationship? However, the microbiome reset protocol Is available on my site and it will show you Exactly what you can do as a starting place This includes some adaptogens some binders some special probiotics some special antimicrobial anti-paracidic Anti-fungal so check it out microbiome reset bundles what it's called You'll be able to download the actual protocol sheet with some dosing instructions on there as well But check it out. I'd love to help you with this stuff now in the meantime

3:10What should you be doing? Well, you've got to get the nutrition dialed in if you have food allergens in your diet We're going to unpack all that today. So let's just get into it. All right without further ado. Here we go And we are live it's not the J in the house with Evan brand today We're going to be talking about IBS the shocking truth what your doctor is not telling you about we get these Issues coming into our clinics every single week and we're guys are going to we're going to give you some of the the nitty gritty That we see it kind of under the hood behind the scenes here Evan how you doing man? I'm doing good Let's dive into symptoms first people want to know what the heck. How do I know if something's wrong all of your typical IBS symptoms so bloating constipation gut pain floating Stools this is super easy to test for at home. You don't have to go into a doctor You don't have to go to a specialist. You don't need an x-ray. You don't need a barium swallow. You don't need a CT You don't need an MRI. You poop in the tube In the tray scoop it in the tube get it back to the lab in two weeks You're going to know what's under the hood and you and I were chatting pre show

4:10We rarely see one isolated infection In fact, what would you say 90 95% of cases? It's a combination three five seven 10 15 different bugs at one time Correct. We see patients that have multiple issues multiple stressors And then of course over time the more gut issues you have that can create malabsorption and nutrient deficiencies And that can impact the mitochondria the hormonal systems the brain system It can impact just raw material to be building your hormones building your neurological tissue all those things can be You know at play. So most people they get very hyper focused on like oh, I have this issue It's got to be HP lower. I have these things. It's got to be Candida or fungus. I have this I have to have mold stuff and that may be I mean how we look at it as functional medicine clinicians Is we look at it as you have this stress bucket and there could be lots of things in that stress bucket our job is to figure out what's in there And try to get those things out of the stress bucket as those stressors in that bucket lower the body's ability to adapt to stress Goes up So essentially the more stressors in that bucket the more mal adapted we become right our body cannot adapt

5:13We start to have symptoms the lower it comes the more we can become more adaptable more chameleon like and that's the goal And so it's not just one thing. I wish sometimes it's just one thing like if you have someone who is ciliac And they're incredibly gluten sensitive sometimes just that one thing can make a mountain of change But a lot of times it's it's deeper than that and maybe that but maybe a bunch of other things together That have synergistic increases. Yeah, yeah, and this all ties into nutrient deficiencies This ties into gut inflammation food reactions Histamine intolerance so if you're someone who is reacting to a lot of foods I had a question yesterday someone asking about a food sensitivity test and you and I are pretty much on the same page about this Which is that we don't really run them that much anymore because we found that when people have gut infections They're going to be more reaction has act fruitful than looking at a piece for that says XYZ and the people that have begged me to do food sensitivity panels when we do those After we clear their gut if we retest those same foods no longer get triggered. So I don't want people to get a food sensitivity test and then just treat it like the Bible where like this is it

6:14This is the way there's no other way because years ago. I couldn't do avocado. I'd get headaches But once I cleared the mold I was able to do avocados again with no reaction I used to get this head pressure in my head Avocado's high histamine dark chocolate could be a liberator tomatoes peppers spices So if you are having these food reactions We have to look into these gut microbes as you mentioned this bucket if that bucket is already full of histamine rich histamine producing bacteria It's not that the allergen is real. It's that your bucket's already so dang full. It can't handle anything else 100% it's all about being an detective and figuring out what those stressors are now conventional medicine How they view IBS they're trying to rule out irritable bowel disease right they're trying to rule out microscopic colitis ulcerative colitis maybe some kind of a gastritis or ulceration Crohn's disease, you know the big autoimmune kind of big picture stuff So once they rule out, you know, is there a significant amount of blood in the stool? Is there significant amount of inflammation? Maybe they do an endoscopy or a colonoscopy to look at the tissue to make sure it's not ulcerated or

7:19severely inflamed but once that's done for the most part it's going to be whatever the symptom is They're giving the drug to control that symptom if it's constipation IBS see then they're giving Laxidiver stool softeners right If it's IBSD, they're going to give things to help with the diarrhea right if you have any digestive upset There's Pepsi uploading gas. They're going to give things like Cool waste. They're going to give things like acid blockers. They're going to give things like anti spasmodics They're going to give things like pro kinetics And so there's going to be controlling the symptoms and managing that and of course over time those things have its own side effects I have someone who was on a um Motility stimulator right a pro kinetic to stimulate motility And this person had lots of side effects because they were on a for a very long time And so electrolytes are a poor digestion poor absorption and so that can create a lot of nutrient deficiencies over time And set that person up with for a lot more failures over time There's nothing wrong with medications But when you don't address the underlying cause and you compound it weeks months and years

8:24You're going to have more side effects because you're not fixing the underlying cause And so I'm fine with using something if you ate something bad and you want to Control the symptoms acutely while you get back on track. That's fine. But most medications become a long-term Symptomandager and again, there's a lot of natural things that we can do instead that also tend to have less side effects We can come in there and we can use ginger we can use bitters We can come in there and use more enzymes by knowing I'm eating some crummy food that may blow me up I may add in some activated charcoal that kind of bind some of that stuff prematurely prematurely I may add in more enzymes more DPP for enzyme. Maybe I'm going to add in more bile, right? Maybe I'm going to add in um Ginger tea or some natural Bitters to help with my motility says a lot of things that you can do that don't have the same amount of side if I pro Protocol or profile but still have a Improvement on helping to improve digestion as most of the Medications that are out there they don't actually improve digestion. They don't actually improve absorption They just kind of control the symptom while the food doesn't get broken down better

9:26And that's he always want to whatever we're putting in we want to be able to break it down better And this applies to kids too. So if you have kids Between Dr. J and I we have five kids total. I've got three. He's got two and this stuff applies to children as well It's actually quite scary and quite disappointing How many children I've seen that have been put on me relax by their pediatricians for constipation It's like okay. All we have to do is on the on the let's just say the Not necessarily root cause, but the low hanging functional medicine fruit tree Extra vitamin C extra magnesium. We can get these kids pooping very very well We don't need me relax and then ultimately we're going to look deeper into the gut of these children And we're going to find lots of dysbiosis We know that toxins get passed from mom to the baby via the placenta as well as breast milk In fact, I've tested I had a six-month-old baby that we tested last week And the levels of bacteria were off the chart this kid had tons of dysbiosis it only six months old gut symptoms

10:27It's harder for them to verbalize it obviously when obviously you're just looking for the typical collic But collic is not a mirror-lacks deficiency You got to look a little bit deeper and it's quite easy to fix kids They are so resilient and they bounce back so quickly So I just encourage you I'm not saying you need to fire your pediatrician. I I'm currently serving as my kids pediatrician. I do have one on standby if I need But I'm day-to-day In their face looking at exactly what's going. Oh, okay, this skin issue this tummy issue this ear rake This knows this cough and then we can bring in tools I just want you to know that it can be very very empowering to do this process of functional medicine So if you're working with Dr. J and I the the message is always the same What are the big triggers? What's the low-hanging fruit we can do right now? How do we tweak the diet and the lifestyle piece? How do we improve your environment? Because if you've got a bunch of issues in your home a bunch of fragrance combined with a bunch of food allergens

11:27Yeah, you're gonna feel like crap and there's not a magic probiotic that's gonna fix it There's not a magic air filter that's gonna fix it the sauna is not gonna fix it I just I feel like people are getting confused in 2026 because of marketing. I'm seeing this new trend now of Women talking about themselves on these vibration plates, which I'm not opposed to it But rather than like looking at root cause stuff. They're just like I'm on the vibration plate to keep my you know Bows healthy or whatever like pitch it is as like have you looked at your gut yet? rights Red lights. It's cool, but it's not going to clear gut infections sauna. It's awesome We like our sonas, but it's not going to kill parasites So ultimately you got to get the data It's just that cycle yeah, and we talked about managing some of the symptoms with natural things obviously Someone in the chat mentioned using prunes as a natural stool software that can be a great option to Pineapple right fresh raw pineapples wonderful stool softener and but sometimes if people's digestion isn't good, right?

12:27Enzymes and acids can be a great option or we'll just lean into more enzymes if it's a child Sometimes we'll add in acids for kids, but at least a nice enzyme or a chewable enzyme can be a great option And sometimes we'll just decrease some of the raw food We'll just really just go to more steam vegetables and work on cooking things a little bit more To address that component, but like Evan was talking about earlier a lot of times the microbial issues aren't addressed Right, is there a Candida is there is Cebo or a H. Pylori infection? Is there a parasite? Is there seed if those things could all potentially be at play and I'll tell you your conventional PD nutrition or even your gastro typically aren't going to see that at all I had a patient that had some issues got issues last week and they saw their gastro Rolled them out nothing, you know, so just an iBS diagnosis We saw cdif so you did talks and a and b and a bunch other microbes and like well how did that get missed? It's like well, you know They're not using the same level of testing and we're a lot more sensitive that what we're looking at And so you may pick up things that are more subtle or subclinical that aren't at a pathological level that would come back on a Conventional test and so because of the sensitivity we're going to pick up things before they become a big problem

13:30Yeah, and can you riff on blood work just for a minute, you know This is still happening. This will continue to happen until you and I have full heads of gray hair, but This idea of hey my doctor ran labs and I quote looked fine and You hit on the the stool piece, but also the blood work piece I mean, I find it disappointing that even I saw a blood panel last week from a client who had been to an Indochronologist and they didn't even run a full thyroid panel They had free t3, but they still didn't have the thyroid antibodies. It's like wow So maybe you could just riff on that for a minute about why people that are getting this blood work done They're getting dismissed and their symptoms are just going unchecked and unsolved So what happens is anytime you're dealing with your conventional doctor and you're working with some kind of insurance The insurance company kind of has the doctor, you know, in handcuffs where they do not want to run too much testing Because they are worried about the insurance either not covering or doing an audit and once they audit

14:31They're going to pull back and reimbursement for all their other patients that are in that network Let's say united health care for example right hypothetical and so they are very careful of what they order and so the Imagine it's like you have you the doctor and then you and this third party is kind of hovering and creating all this pressure on the doctor And what they're going to cover and what they're going to do and if you go too far We're not only going to penalize you in this relationship We're going to impact a hundred other Relations over there that that's it's kind of a toxic relationship right and so because of that They're never going to look at the complete picture right and so Even if they did they wouldn't know what to do with it anyway because they're training typically doesn't involve doing deeper testing And so they're only going to look at TSH maybe T4 they're not going to look at T3 or antibodies Because they wouldn't know what to do with the information Also things like CBC we can look at subclinical anemias Based on red blood cells hemoglobin hematocrit MCV MCH MCHC your conventional normal range has two standard deviations to the left and to the right So here's the mean To the left to to the right and this is your normal range right this is called the bell curve in functional medicine world

15:37We're going to look one standard deviation to the left and right so we're going to look at that middle 40% versus the the outer 95% because we know what happens is the population gets sicker That rain it gets wider and wider and wider because it's based off of the bell curve And so we want that that first and first standard deviation left and right that gives a better window But we can look at things like protein and and subclinical anemias and we can look at um You know kidney function and liver function we can look at you know subclinical Functional ranges to assess that we can look at electrolytes too that can be a big sign And so we can still use some of these tests in a more sensitive way But your conventional doctor typically is not going to have that same lens and then you have that Paracetical relationship with the insurance company creating that pressure of what to order where we don't have that law Because we're not a network and we're going to be just ordering cash labs And so it's about what the patient needs is not any person to wedging themselves in their interfering Yeah, yeah, well said and it's always good to recap that for people because they ask Can I go down the street to my doctor and just get this stuff instead and they are not trained

16:38They don't even have accounts with the labs that we're using and speaking of blood It's a little bit off subject of the ibs conversation But if you do need to get blood work done dr. Jay and I can get discounted blood work done And it's super super easy We run it on our own families as well So if you need that if we need that as part of the picture then we can absolutely do it for you But the reality is if we're talking ibs which that was my diagnosis like 20 years ago now It was it was it was gut bugs and there was no blood test It was going to help me and in fact my blood looked perfect I have my blood labs from years ago It looked fine. There was no issues Correct, I agree And so it's good to be aware of that and it's good to have those labs so you can you can pick up some of these more subtle things But again, if you come and see us we'll be able to look at some of those labs and kind of roll some of these things out And then do the next steps to kind of look deeper at what else could be under the hood, right? Yeah, Barton, LMS dot my gut to lime can affect your gut So, you know, if you have a history of tick bites if you have a history of mold exposure

17:39These are all questions that we want to ask you to figure out what plays into this history It's very unlikely that you just had one exposure that created your current situation It happens the whole, you know, took the trip to Bali thing It happens but more commonly this is a Generally a year plus in the making these bugs that rob stomach acid Deplete nutrients. That's when the anxiety and the depression pick up It's not just like boom. It's generally just a domino effect 110% man. No, I think that's true And also with kids too the more processed your your diet is the more processed food Sugar grains extra glyphosate exposure the more that's an a negatively impact your gut And also too many kids have just gotten lots of antibiotics over the years Unnecessarily is all kinds of things we can do to potentially prevent that antibiotic usage But that takes a toll on the gut that definitely negatively impacts the microbiome Increases the chance to rebound overgrowth of fungus and yeast It lowers your beneficial probiotics again. You're 80% of your immune cells or in your gut

18:41So the more dysbiosis and inflammation you create That can set you up for a weakened immune system in the future Which then does what creates more antibiotics because you get sick and they're prescribed and then the cycle does continue And so that's a an important cycle. I see what parents and kids is this antibiotic loop. Oh, yeah I'm wrong with antibiotics. You just got to use it at the right time And I think 80 to 90% of the time you it could be mitigated with simple strategies like Sinus flushing or using a nebulizer or starting on protocols for the immune system the throat the sinus cavity before Things get bad most of the time people wait and they don't do anything until it gets bad if you're doing things out of the gate You're going to mitigate problems 80 to 90% of the time. Oh, yeah You just have to embrace that you're going to have somewhat of a small apothecary in your home I have lung formulas gut formulas. Yep empowered with this stuff That's the whole goal isn't or meant here So hands it's a very empowering thing now if I go out and get my leg bit off by a shark I'm probably going to go get some emergency care, but

19:42I'm not going to go to the emergency room for ibs Maybe appendicitis, but you know usually you can save your appendix There's new literature showing now that and to my crowbeels can actually help save the appendix and conventional antibiotics Can even save it so even in a quote. Oh, you showed that out. Yeah, yeah That was a great there was a paper saying that about 80% of appendicitis surgeries could be Mitigated with antibiotics if they just hit it, you know quick enough hard enough And I would even argue on the herbal side I mean we've had people that have had pain in that quadrant that's magically disappeared with what we're doing So I think there's a lot of a lot of good things that can happen before you resort to Getting surgery when it comes to Diberticulitis, you know getting that under control my dad dealt with that Getting your gallbladder removed getting your appendix removed I mean you see how barbaric some of these procedures are compared to what we're doing and we're trying to save your organ So please don't just like willy-nilly give up intestines or gallbladders like it's not good Sure, I fully agree with that man. That makes a lot of sense

20:45Well outside of that make sure we're getting good bacteria looked at make sure we're getting infections looked at These are key things make sure the diet's good nutrient dense Make sure we're dialed in if we need enzymes or acids or bile support We're going to put links down below to recommend it if you need something from motility Even natural things those are fine in the short run again. It's still not fixing the underlying cause So it's still easy even with natural things to be alopathic meaning we're just treating symptoms But at least the side effect profile is better and we understand that this is for a season for a reason and we're Focusing on getting to the root cause while we're using palliative things And so that's how I can justify using them as palliative because we're trying to bridge the gap to fix the underlying cause I love it if you need help reach out worldwide consultor available. We have international distribution You can reach out to drj at justinhealth.com The labibly hadn't had enough experience to really look and build a protocol and that's no judgment It's just the reality of the stories we hear every day Yeah, my doctor agreed to run this out

21:45But they didn't know what to do with it or they agreed to run this GI But they didn't know what to do with it. We're used to hearing that. It's not judgment It's just a reality We're doing our best to get this out to more practitioners more providers We teach and train other practitioners to try and get them up to speed on this stuff But we've got over 10,000 cases under our belt So you're in good hands with either one of us drj at justinhealth.com or me Evan brand at Evan brand.com Let us know how we can help just reach out You can book intro consult as well if you have questions You want to get to know us a little better than that's on the table as well Yep, absolutely Well nice chat with you Evan again Evan brand.com The reach out to Evan worldwide drj myself at justinhealth.com We're here for you. We'll put a link for all the recommended products And if you guys enjoy the content, please share with family and friends and love to see your comments down below All right, Evan nice chat with you man. We'll be back soon All right, see you all someday bye bye y'all All right, thanks so much for tuning in as I mentioned in the beginning There's two main ways that I can help you either in the one-on-one practice through Evan brand.com or

22:46At Evan brand.com. You'll also see in the courses Menu bar. You'll see the ability to enroll in what we call better Belly premium Which includes an organic assets test a GM app and me reviewing and building a protocol based on your labs I'd love the opportunity to help you in one way or another So please reach out if you have questions also on my instagram page YouTube page Facebook page wherever you are on the internet. I'm there So just interact with the videos have some fun with me there. We're approaching Before too long going to be 200,000 followers We're well over a quarter million across everything But at least on instagram alone we're going to be coming up to the 200,000 pretty soon So that's great join me there. I'd love to just share this health content. There's just so much Like young 20 somethings that are just showing what they eat in a day and That's great But there's people that need this deeper stuff Like if diet fixed everybody you wouldn't be listening to this right now So I'm just trying to be the voice of reason on a platform that is primarily focused on vanity and

23:53Who's got the best abs and who's got the coolest car I'm trying to bring functional medicine into that group and show people. Hey, this is actually the cool stuff Like dialing in your gut. This is actually the cool stuff So help me win that fight and I look forward to talking with you more soon This is Evan brand signing out Evan brand.com has everything you need will be in touch soon. Thanks