About a year ago, a sixty-two-year-old woman who had been suffering from Parkinson’s disease for five years with no relief found her way to my clinic. By that point, she was desperate for help. Before developing symptoms of Parkinson’s, she was in excellent shape—a practiced marathon runner—but she now suffered from the severe tremors that are a hallmark of the disease.
The medications this woman had been given by her neurologists hadn’t helped, and her symptoms kept getting worse. By the time she came to see me, her balance was so off that she was barely able to walk. She remained seated throughout our appointment, with a flat affect and an expressionless face, also known as the “mask of Parkinson’s.” With her speech halting, the patient’s husband did most of the talking.
I ran my usual blood tests and put this patient on a food and supplement program based on my findings. My physician’s assistant did a follow-up phone consultation six months later, and the patient was seeing some improvements. Six months after that, a year after I first met her, I walked back into the same examination room I had first seen this patient in.
She was a completely different woman. At first, I thought it was literally a different patient. I assumed I had mistakenly entered the wrong room. But it was her. She had a big smile on her face and zero tremors. Her husband, who was sitting next to her, jumped up as soon as he saw me and gave me a huge hug.
“Thank you for giving me my wife back,” he said, his eyes misting. “This is the girl I married. She is back to running every day—I can’t keep up with her!”
Soon, all three of us were crying and hugging, with the grateful couple thanking me profusely. But I assured them: I’m no miracle worker. I provided an eating and supplement protocol—the rest of the healing work, she did herself. And my amazing patients do the same thing every single day.
Recently, another patient of mine saw an equally remarkable turnaround, this time a high schooler. She had been an impressive athlete before developing a movement disorder and postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS), which causes patients to get dizzy when standing up. When she came to see me, this young woman could only get around with the use of a walker. She had also been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder. She was a teenager and could no longer attend public school; she was really struggling physically and emotionally.
Like my patient with Parkinson’s, based on her blood test results, I put this young woman on my protocol. Within a month, she was walking with a cane, and her erratic behavior had normalized. After a year, she had ditched the cane, returned to her regular school, and was even playing on several sports teams. The change in her was dramatic. Sometimes, she still struggles with mild obsessive-compulsive behaviors, but even those are much improved. Most recently, she was on a major carrot kick—eating a large amount of carrots every day. I told her that this type of fixation was fine with me!
I also saw a young man in his thirties who had struggled with addiction to drugs and alcohol for decades. He had been in and out of literally a dozen different rehabilitation centers and treatment programs over the course of many years, but nothing had worked. He was struggling with his mental health and unable to hold a job. Of course, his family was beside themselves with worry that he would become another victim of addiction. But, like my other patients, he was able to turn his health and life around by following my protocol. He is now celebrating several years of sobriety.
What if I told you that I put these three patients on the exact same protocol, and it’s the one you are going to learn in this book? Would you believe that one protocol consisting simply of foods and supplements could successfully treat such vastly different conditions?
What if I also told you that this is not only true, but that these three patients were actually suffering from the exact same condition? It was simply manifesting in the form of different symptoms in each individual. My tests revealed that these patients (and nearly all of those that I treat) were suffering from intestinal permeability (aka “leaky gut”) and gut dysbiosis, a disruption to the microbiome leading to an imbalance of microbiota. This is what caused their symptoms. And if you are suffering from brain fog, mental fatigue, neurodegeneration, mental health issues, addiction, or other behavioral or cognitive problems, it is most likely being caused by the same underlying problem.
How is this possible? There is a vast, incredibly complex communication system between the microbes in your gut and your brain. It may be hard to believe at first, but all rapidly accumulating evidence points to the fact that your microbes are the ones in charge.
We’ll explore this system in great detail throughout this book, but in short, microbes send signals to your brain telling it (you) what to think, how to feel, and even how to behave. Through these systems, our microbiomes drive brain-related illnesses and even help shape our personalities and our emotional states. As you’ll learn, when your gut biome becomes imbalanced and pathogenic “bad bugs” take over, they hijack these communication systems and begin calling the shots—and you and your brain pay the price.
I have argued in my previous books that Hippocrates was right when he said that all disease begins in the gut. Yet, many of the things I learned while doing research for this book about how our microbiomes are controlling our brains truly surprised me. Not only was Hippocrates right that all disease begins in the gut, but I would also argue that nearly all mental health, cognitive, behavioral, personality, habit-based, and neurodegenerative issues also begin in the gut.
In fact, I will spend the rest of this book arguing that case. As just a small preview of the type of mind-blowing research I’ll share, it turns out that many of the factors influencing human behavior that we previously thought had nothing at all to do with the gut absolutely do. For instance, humans have believed for centuries that the phases of the moon impacted behavior, but we’ve never before connected this to the microbiome. While many have written these ideas about the moon as mere superstition, I can tell you that back when I was an ER doc, we always staffed heavily on nights when there was a full moon. There is a higher rate of traffic accidents during a full moon. Even patients with bipolar disorder experience mood cycles that mirror the phases of the moon.
However, we never understood the mechanism behind the moon’s impact on our behavior. Many chalked it up to the ways that sleep varies with the lunar cycle. Makes sense, right? Tired patients are more likely to have a traffic accident. Perhaps tired patients with bipolar disorder are more likely to have extreme mood swings.
But why exactly does the moon affect our ability to sleep? Lo and behold, our microbiomes have their own circadian rhythms! Certain bacteria are more plentiful at particular times of the day. Of course, bacteria cannot see the moon, but they (and their circadian rhythms), like ocean tides, are affected by its gravitational pull. And as you’ll see, changes to the microbiome—even those caused by the moon—directly lead to changes in mood, behavior, mental health, and so much more.
Unfortunately, our Western diets and toxic environments—not to mention our obsession with sterilization and killing off the very bacteria that we need to live—have destroyed our microbiomes. This is why nearly every patient I see has leaky gut and dysbiosis. It’s also why we are seeing such a stark uptick in neurodegenerative diseases, mental health issues, addictions, and so on.
The good news is that the mental and neurological problems that begin in the gut can also be halted, reversed, healed, and even prevented in the gut. Just like the patients I mentioned, you will see truly dramatic turnarounds in your own cognition and mental health once you balance your microbiome and begin experiencing what it’s like to have the right messages being sent from your gut to your brain. The result is a sharper mind, healthier habits, greater feelings of well-being, and the reversal of neurodegenerative symptoms.
Some of the information in this book may come as a shock. Truthfully, much of it came as a shock to me. It asks us to reconsider who we are as humans and why we act, feel, and think in the ways that we do. But I also believe that there is tremendous freedom and peace that comes with knowing that to a great extent, our brains are under the direction of our microbiomes. We need not feel guilt or shame because of an addiction or a brain alteration. None of these things are our fault.
It’s also not our fault that we’ve unwittingly killed off the microbes that are required for brain health. We have simply been given bad information. As Maya Angelou said, “Do the best you can until you know better. Then, when you know better, do better.” I trust that you have been doing the best you could until now. And by the end of this book, you will know better and have the ability to do better.
In this book, we will first explore the fascinating ways in which the microbiome controls the brain. Then, we’ll move on to take a close look at how dysbiosis and leaky gut can lead to common brain conditions such as addiction, mental health issues, and neurodegeneration. Finally, I’ll provide two food plans to choose from based on your personal goals that will teach you exactly how to eat for a balanced microbiome—and therefore a sharp, energetic, healthy, and thriving brain.
It’s time to do better! Let’s get started.
