The Real Reason Your Gut Won’t Heal (And How Bone Broth Fixes It) | Dr. Kellyann Petrucci

Your gut lining is thinner than you think — and that single fact may explain your skin issues, hormonal chaos, and stubborn inflammation. Dr. Kellyann Petrucci, known as the Queen of Bone Broth, joins Dr. Axe to walk through the food-based protocols she has used with patients for 30 years to heal the gut, support collagen, and ease menopause symptoms naturally. **In this episode:**- Why bone broth and collagen directly repair the gut lining — and which amino acids (glycine, proline, hydroxyproline) are doing the work- The counterintuitive reason raw vegetables can make gut problems worse, and what to eat instead when your digestion is already compromised- How the HPA axis drives hot flashes and what cortisol management actually looks like in a menopause protocol- Why blood sugar is almost always the upstream problem behind heart risk — and how metabolic flexibility through bone broth fasting addresses the root cause- The case for a “mono diet” during acute gut distress, drawn from Dr. Kellyann’s clinical experience and her time studying at a Swiss healing clinic- How spirituality, gratitude, and reducing chronic stress affect cellular healing — and why Dr. Kellyann considers this non-negotiable in practice Uncover what’s really going on in your body with advanced biomarker testing for hormones, thyroid, and metabolism— plus a 1-hour consultation with a Senior Health Advisor! → ⁠http://mybloodwork.com⁠ Thank you to our sponsors! Sunlighten Sauna: ⁠https://get.sunlighten.com/axepodcast⁠Manukora Manuka Honey: ⁠https://manukora.com/axe⁠ Watch The Dr. Josh Axe Show every Monday & Thursday on YouTube: ⁠ / @drjoshaxe ⁠ 🎧 Early Access! Our listeners enjoy every episode before anyone else! Tune in below and join our exclusive group of listeners → Spotify: ⁠https://bit.ly/DrJoshAxeSpotify⁠Apple Podcast: ⁠https://apple.co/3JDvWcS⁠ Pre-order my NEW BOOK, Heal Your Cells → ⁠http://healyourcellsbook.com/⁠ Watch my free training on how to naturally balance your blood sugar and reverse your symptoms → ⁠http://DrAxeDiabetesClass.com⁠ Discover practical steps you can take today to start healing your thyroid naturally → ⁠http://DrAxeThyroidClass.com⁠ If you’re ready to start feeling like yourself again and balance your hormones, take my free class → ⁠http://DrAxeHormoneClass.com⁠ CONNECT WITH DR. JOSH AXEInstagram → ⁠ / drjoshaxe ⁠Facebook → ⁠ / drjoshaxe ⁠TikTok → ⁠ / thedrjoshaxeshow ⁠X → ⁠https://x.com/drjoshaxe/⁠LinkedIn → ⁠ / joshaxe ⁠Website → ⁠http://thehealthinstitute.com⁠Sign up for my newsletter → ⁠https://bit.ly/4oE9Jf3⁠Ask Dr. Axe → ⁠http://speakpipe.com/drjoshaxe⁠ CONNECT WITH GUESTInstagram → ⁠ https://www.instagram.com/drkellyannofficial/⁠Website → ⁠https://drkellyann.com/ CHAPTERS:0:00 Pre-show conversation: peptides, blood work & personalized medicine1:45 Introduction — Dr. Kellyann Petrucci, the Queen of Bone Broth2:56 How bone broth became a category, not just a product7:24 What bone broth actually does inside the gut lining11:27 Glycine: the longevity amino acid hiding in your broth13:05 Collagen, gut lining, and bone health in perimenopause17:19 Why raw vegetables hurt a compromised gut22:29 The single biggest driver of gut dysfunction today28:36 Mono diet protocol: how to eat when you’re truly sick50:09 Hot flashes, the HPA axis & cortisol’s role in menopause57:17 Bone broth fasting, autophagy & metabolic flexibility58:52 Why heart disease almost always starts with blood sugar59:51 Spirituality, gratitude & healing at the cellular level DISCLAIMERThis content is strictly the opinion of Dr. Josh Axe and is for informational and educational purposes only. It is not intended to provide medical advice or to take the place of medical advice or treatment from a personal physician. All viewers of this content are advised to consult their doctors or qualified health professionals regarding specific health questions. Neither Dr. Axe nor the publisher of this content takes responsibility

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  One sip of alcohol for most women in perimenopause or menopause often sets the signaling off in the body where you're up all night, or you fall asleep for two hours and that's it. It's gotta go.

• 0:10Josh Axe?

  Today, when I see some of these influencers online, it's like, okay, let's start doing an hour cold plunge. We're gonna go and do a parasite cleanse. And I'm like, okay, well, that's a terrible idea. Strengthen the body first.

• 0:22Speaker 00

  If you think about the gut microbiome, there's as many microbes as there is blood cells, or maybe even more. Each individual could have 100 different diverse species in their gut. No two people have the same.

• 0:35Josh Axe?

  Everybody needs something uniquely catered towards them.

• 0:38Speaker 00

  They do.

• 0:39Josh Axe?

  Every nutrition plan, every supplement plan is totally different.

• 0:42Speaker 00

  People in general now have more digestive issues than I've ever seen. Why do you think that this is?

• 0:47Josh Axe?

  I think number one is chronic stress. And I think it's phones. If you're on your phone, you're more in a fight or flight state, especially if you're scrolling, your body is not resting. Part of what it takes to heal is rest.

• 0:56Speaker 00

  My son had a terrible acne problem, couldn't figure it out. He started letting go of tightness and started being much more faith-based. You want everything flowing like a river, not like a swamp, not tight. He started letting go of a lot. His acne went away.

• 1:11Josh Axe?

  When I first started, 99% of medical doctors thought that practicing nutrition was absolutely useless.

• 1:16Speaker 00

  The first half of my career, all I did was convincing. I was in the convincing business. Mother Teresa would bring bone broth into hospitals to open the gut to healing. How many proteins do you know that do so much? People talk about peptides. This is the ultimate peptide.

• 1:31Josh Axe?

  That's right.

• 1:45Josh Axe?

  If you're looking to improve your skin health, your hormonal health, and your gut health, today I've brought on, she's called the Queen of Bone Broth. Her name is Dr. Kelly Anne Petrucci. And I've known Kelly Anne for a really long time. So excited to have her on. We're gonna walk you through today, how to heal your body using food-based medicine. Dr. Kelly Anne, welcome to the show.

• 2:03Speaker 00

  Hey, I'm so glad to finally be sitting in this chair. It's about time we did this.

• 2:08Josh Axe?

  I know. Again, we were talking, I mean, I don't think I'd seen you for maybe eight, nine, 10 years.

• 2:13Speaker 00

  I mean, and it's so funny, because everybody goes through these cycles in life where you see everybody, you see everybody, you see everyone, and then people silo off, and then you see everyone again. It's kind of how the health people, we all cluster. We bob and weave.

• 2:26Josh Axe?

  Well, it's so funny, because I remember in a very similar fashion, this is probably back in 2016. I was writing articles and speaking about bone broth and collagen. You were doing that. And there are some other great people in the space. I know that we're also starting to talk about it, too. Everyone from Jordan Rubin, to Dave Asher, to Dan Poppa, a lot of people talking about it. But you and I were two of the people that just started using it with patients to help them heal from chronic digestive issues and a number of other problems. And so anyways, but that was probably the last time we talked was that long ago.

• 2:56Speaker 00

  But I think that the tentacles that you and I have is that, you know, when you're creating something new, you're creating a category, not a brand, a category, trying to educate people on something they never heard of before. Because remember, we started this how many years ago? Did anyone know what bone broth was? They didn't know. They had no idea. And when I was going to the publisher and I said, I want to call the book The Bone Broth Diet, it was so nuanced. They said, no one, listen, no one's going to buy anything called bone broth. And I said, well, what would you have me call something that's actually bone broth? And they said, well, call it soup. How about better soup? So, you know, that was where I decided.

• 3:37Josh Axe?

  Yeah, I don't know about that marketing advice. You know, I think bone broth, well, let me say this, too. So to your point, back then, I mean, when I thought about bone broth, the only thing I knew about it was, or the only thing a lot of people knew about it was many years ago, was it's used in soup. But to your point, bringing up the benefits of how it was used historically and traditionally, and all of the amino acids and

• 3:59Speaker 00

  All the cultures. I mean, when you study it from, you really study the history, and you study cultures, and you study tribes and bands. And that's what really pierced my attention. Because I said, this is actually part of the fabric of human history.

• 4:19Josh Axe?

  Yeah.

• 4:19Speaker 00

  I mean, it's so far beyond just something. I mean, just calling bone broth soup is like, you know, calling the Mona Lisa that girl. I mean, it has that much cachet to it, that when I started testing it in three different cities, and I started using it on patients and myself, I realized, and I didn't quite know why, it took many years to really figure it out, but I knew it pulled a lot of health levers, and I knew it was something that needed attention. And so I was very impassioned by helping reconnect the public to something that I knew was extraordinary. And so it was a full-blown obsession.

• 4:57Josh Axe?

  Yeah, yeah. And to your point, I mean, I remember one of the first articles I wrote on it, and really looking at the benefits of skin immunity. I mean, that's one of the things, right? Chicken soup has been consumed, which is chicken bone broth, which has been consumed for, I don't know, thousands of years for supporting the immune system. And I really got turned on to it as well, because I started, when I started writing about it, I started having people I worked with, patients, start doing a bone broth fast, where they would just drink bone broth and herbal tea.

• 5:25Speaker 00

  Now you're talking.

• 5:26Josh Axe?

  Yeah, and do a form of intermittent fasting with it. And the results people were seeing for overcoming inflammatory bowel disease, of course, weight loss, a number of things were just fantastic.

• 5:36Speaker 00

  That's my, one of my favorite uses for bone broth is fasting. And when we think about fasting, oftentimes, we think about a very different kind of fasting. But what everyone has to know about bone broth fasting is that it does turn on that intelligence, that central cellular intelligence, as does a water fast, which is autophagy. This is not, this will not promote what we call autophagy. Or at least, the studies aren't clear. Some studies say that bone broth fasting will maybe slow down autophagy, which, of course, is that's when all of those broken proteins, all of those dead cells, they're

• 6:19Speaker 00

  all recycled, and your body gets rid of what it needs to get rid of, and it refurbishes what it needs to refurbish. But there's something in the body, a protein signaling, mTOR. And so when we take in any amino acids, that mTOR signaling is turned on. And so what that means is, your body says, I'm going to build, I'm not going to recycle. There lies in the whole debate about, is bone broth really fasting? Everyone has to understand that longevity is not just one coordinate. There's many. So to look at fasting and the benefits, to only be something that promotes autophagy, we're not doing ourselves a service, because it does so much more.

• 6:59Josh Axe?

  Yeah, well, it's interesting. I think it really depends upon the person. Because like, when you look at, you know, one of the things I've really enjoyed studying is Chinese medicine, and looking at, they call this thing the yin and the yang. And the yang is really tied to being anabolic, tissue regeneration, increasing mTOR, to your point, where the yin is really tied to that cleansing, detoxification, you know, boosting those pathways that support getting rid of those senescent cells, and cleansing in that way. And so you're right, amino acids and protein, they are building. I mean, that's really what they tend to be doing. And what do they build, more than anything, collagen, right? Those sort of things in our body, hence it being so good for your skin, your gut lining's made of collagen, some of these areas. I am curious, what are some of the maybe more

• 7:41Josh Axe?

  surprising benefits you've seen, as you've put people on higher doses? And by the way, I'm curious, you know, when you get people on bone broth, what is the dosage that you tend to recommend for most people?

• 7:53Speaker 00

  So if somebody just says, you know, Dr. Kelly Anne, I just want to get some benefits, two cups a day, are where we kind of see that mark of greatness, we'll say. But when people do bone broth fasting, maybe two days a week, they fast with bone broth during the day, they have one light meal at night, very specific type of meal, then they have more. But just for a foundational dose, we say two cups a day. And that's what I've noticed from doing this for so many years. I start seeing that people have the improvements to get the benefits. And so the surprising benefit, I would say, for me, is when you're talking about the gut lining, we just talked about that, that's a barrier in the body.

• 8:36Speaker 00

  And we have these barriers in different parts of our body, but we often don't think of it as that. And this barrier is actually the thickness of one cell wall. Okay, that's how thin this is. So a lot of the health issues that we're seeing, or people are uncomfortable, and they can't seem to get the fix, it's because their gut lining has been traumatized in some way, some way. And it's so thin, that the thing is, Josh, it's easy to do. So what I love about bone broth, and I would say the highest good that I see, is that I noticed that over time, I see improvements in people that I know that their gut lining

• 9:17Speaker 00

  is starting to heal. So with bone broth fasting, and you're flooding your body with all those nutrients and all that goodness, specifically to really get that microbiome really in order. And one of the highest orders of the microbiome, we know it's digestion, but it's so much more, the other order is to repair the gut wall.

• 9:41Josh Axe?

  Yeah.

• 9:41Speaker 00

  So in a sense, by having bone broth, by improving the microbiome with all these other elements, like you said, immunity, 70% of your immunity, well, what does a healthy biome do? It says, I am going to give you the intelligence to know whether something is good or bad. That's what your, that's what your immunity does. It's an intelligence that says, this is healthy for you, or this is not good for your body. So you want all that turned on. So the benefit that I see from bone broth, or collagen, even collagen specifically, the benefit that I see is, my gosh, how many things do we know that can go in and really do the work for you, healing that gut wall that, again, is this thickness of a single cell?

• 10:26Josh Axe?

  Yeah.

• 10:27Speaker 00

  So that's what I love the most about it. I feel, it's one of those things where, when you're talking, you see a patient, and you're doing nutrition with them. Sometimes even in nutrition, when you're using the most natural, you're throwing a dart against a wall because you say, okay, well, this is almost like an algorithm. I know that I've seen this many patients and this, for this, this symptomology, this oftentimes is very beneficial. But the confidence that I feel with bone broth and collagen, the whole idea of collagen as we're speaking, is very different because I know what is going to go in there and do for you, which is get that microbiome signaling in the way it should,

• 11:09Speaker 00

  and start healing that very, very thin gut wall and really talking to your immune system. So your immune system has the force that it needs to say, yes, this belongs in the body. No, this doesn't. And then you have that, that gut wall, that barrier that will let things in and out as it should.

• 11:26Josh Axe?

  Yeah. Yeah. And when you look at the profile of, of bone broth, it's really unique. It's got this proline, hydroxyproline, a little bit of glutamine, also glycine. You know, this is one of the things where, you know, when you're talking about, does it count towards a fast sort of idea? I think that proline and hydroxyproline, these tend to be maybe a little bit more building. One of the unique things about glycine, though, is glycine actually is a natural detoxifier. It's a natural cleanser. I mean, it may have benefits at clearing senescent cells. Glycine's critical for creating glutathione, your body's master antioxidant.

• 11:59Speaker 00

  And boy, does glutathione make a difference.

• 12:02Josh Axe?

  Yeah. And I remember reading a study saying that when, there was a study done on numerous amino acids, and I want to say glycine, I don't know that was the only one, but it might've been the only one in the study that showed that it actually increased longevity.

• 12:15Speaker 00

  This is why glycine, I can talk about it all, it's my favorite. It's what I call the great oxymoron, because not only does it help you restore and help you feel restful, but it also revitalizes you at the same time. And part of the reason why it can do that, I believe, is because there's studies that show that it helps you hold on to lean muscle tissue. That's why I think that it's such a big longevity hack. So glycine is beautiful. And glycine works better when it's in combination with other things. That's why it tends to work very well in bone broth. And by the way, everyone, this was not supposed to be a whole talk about bone broth, but see, we love it so much. We can go on and on and talk

• 12:57Speaker 00

  about bone broth and collagen, because again, speaking for myself, I was obsessed, obsessed since day one, and I still remain obsessed.

• 13:05Josh Axe?

  Yeah. And we'll continue to talk about it a little bit during the show. I do want to get into gut health and other things we can do here and, and hormones like menopause and some things here, too. So, so as we talk about gut health, well, and bringing this back to collagen one last time, you know, when you look at the gut lining, part of what it's made up of, that sort of lining of tissue is collagen. I mean, you know, and so, so it's important that this ancient Chinese principle of like supports like, if you want to support an organ, if you want to build muscle, what do you eat? You eat chicken breast, you eat the muscle of a chicken, you eat the muscle of a fish, you eat the muscle of a cow, right? That's what that is when you're getting that source of protein and that helps you build muscle, a very similar way. You want to build collagen, you want to build your gut, that's what you need to get there.

• 13:48Speaker 00

  And bone, too, and bone. People are talking all about, how do I build my bone? Talking about menopause, perimenopause, one of the things that we lose as estrogen declines, we certainly have issues with bone health. And we're learning more now than ever. Another reason I have to just give it another cred, we know that collagen, the type one, is the most abundant in the body. 90% of our, our protein is that, is of that, but also bones and, and being able to drink something that's simmered, bones, that helps bone health. And let me tell you what an issue it has been for women, especially when you track it through a DEXA, and you can really see what's happening to women now more than ever

• 14:30Speaker 00

  with some of the therapies that we're using, even more of a decline in, in bone health.

• 14:35Josh Axe?

  Yeah. To, to your point, I think, I think it's one third of all the protein in your body. Think about that, your entire body, one third of it is collagen and 90% of that is type one collagen. And there's more collagen in your bones than not only calcium, but all minerals combined. So to your point for menopause, it's incredibly important. We're going to get back to menopause, let's jump into gut health. When you're taking care of somebody coming in, and I continue to see gut health issues more and more, I'm starting to see, I think, part of what's actually causing more gut issues even today than ever before is chronic infections like parasites and a number of those problems, too. But when you have somebody come in with gut issues, along with something like bone broth, what are some of the other supplements, the food, some things that you do to help somebody

• 15:18Josh Axe?

  heal if they're coming in with IBS or bloating or SIBO, some type of gut, gut issue?

• 15:26Josh Axe?

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• 16:10Josh Axe?

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• 16:50Josh Axe?

  answers in hand. Again, that's healyourcellsbook.com. Just want to say thank you so much. I appreciate your support.

• 16:59Speaker 00

  You know, when some people come in and they really have a lot of issues with their gut, we can see this in many different ways, as you know. When somebody comes in and they have skin issues, or they come in and they have brittle nails, or they come in and they have a lot of malaise, and many, many different signs and symptoms. I see more symptomology from people with Crohn's and colitis and irritable bowel and all these other things. One of the, this is going to seem so simple, but one of the things that really helps these patients is when they stop eating raw things, like raw vegetables, when they start, and I know it seems very simplistic, but I'm telling you, it is a game changer. So one

• 17:42Speaker 00

  of the things that you can do is steam all vegetables. Another thing that we find very helpful are healthy fats. Why? Because it, one of the things about healthy fats, not only does it help that lining around the cells, it makes cells, you, you want to think about cells as being like a river and not like a swamp. And so when you have those healthy fats in your body, your cells do this instead of get stuck. And they make for healthier blood. They make for healthier organs. So one of the things that we do to keep those tentacles, to keep that gut really locked, locked and barreled, is those healthy

• 18:22Speaker 00

  fats. But I like things like tallow, you know, the beef fat, I like duck fat. Duck fat has a profile that's incredible. I mean, duck fat is beautiful for the body. And the fats that we already know about, things like grass-fed butter and, and olive oil, when, when the smoke point is right. All of these things make a very big difference in the patients that I've seen that have irritable bowel. There's also some probiotics. Probiotics are tricky. There's, and the thing about probiotics is it's very interesting because there's probiotics that are specific for specific things in your body.

• 19:02Josh Axe?

  Right. Yeah.

• 19:03Speaker 00

  So if somebody comes in and they've had a lot of antibiotics, there's actually probiotics that are very helpful and specific for that. If somebody comes in and they have a skin issue, there's probiotics that are actually specific for that, which is very interesting, I think. But I would say, one of the best things that you can do is when you get to the point where your gut's starting to heal and those, you're starting to get that, that microbe balance, because everyone thinks it's the bad not outrunning the good. No, it's about balance. Okay? So when you start getting more of that balance in there, fermented foods, I hope everyone watching, listening, that if there's one thing that

• 19:44Speaker 00

  they'll take from our conversation, is to put a really good fermented food into your diet, because that is the best food for your gut. It is incredible. I would say bone broth, collagen, fermented foods, really healthy, healthy fats, great proteins, and when you're ready, colorful vegetables, because colorful vegetables get to that diversity.

• 20:11Josh Axe?

  Yeah. Yeah, I love that. You know, I think, I remember when I first moved to Nashville and opened my practice, that was end of 2007, then 2008. I started working with a lot of children who had autistic spectrum disorders. And, and I was trying to figure out what is the best diet for them. And I came across a book, I came across the Weston A. Price Foundation. This is before, even while I was in school, I was reading up all on everything that they had. And then I started these kids on the GAPS diet. And that is so much probably in line, if I think about one diet very in line with what you're talking about, it's probably one of the closest, if not the closest, where the idea, and the idea is this, is that you want to do what's easiest on the body and what the body can most easily digest

• 20:53Josh Axe?

  and assimilate, because raw foods, to your point, are so hard on the body to digest versus if you're doing predominantly soups and certain other foods. Like, for example, like in Chinese medicine, they'll tell you, don't eat raw fruit, but like baked apple and pears and blueberries.

• 21:07Speaker 00

  Yes, I'm a firm believer in that. And I've seen that in person. So we try so hard. I had someone that came in and she had irritable bowel, and People come in with the very best intentions. She said, I went all raw. I'm only having, you know, raw vegetables. Do you see that a lot?

• 21:22Josh Axe?

  All the time.

• 21:23Speaker 00

  That's like the highest level of healing that they see.

• 21:26Josh Axe?

  Yes.

• 21:26Speaker 00

  Well, I'm only going to have fruits and vegetables and it's disappointing to them when I have to say that's probably the polar opposite.

• 21:35Josh Axe?

  Right.

• 21:35Speaker 00

  And again, it goes back to the yin and yang in Chinese medicine. Chinese medicine, I mean, they have it figured out. Thousands of years of diagnostics. Like, I don't, I mean, Chinese medicine to me is one of the foundational, I mean, they look at the tongue, they can see an organ, they can actually, like, how many places in your body can you actually look at an organ to hear, to feel a pulse and to know what's happening in your body with a pulse. So, a lot of what they do in Chinese medicine in terms of foods and that yin and that yang and that cold and that heat and all of that, it goes a long way in helping people with digestive issues. And unfortunately, I've seen more digestive issues now or hear

• 22:18Speaker 00

  about it more than ever. And I would love to know from you, not to flip the interview, but, but why do you think that this is?

• 22:25Josh Axe?

  Well, you're saying in terms of why, why the cooked foods or?

• 22:28Speaker 00

  Well, why people in general now have more digestive issues than I've ever seen?

• 22:32Josh Axe?

  Well, I think number one is chronic stress. I just think we're so busy. And I think it's phones, to be quite honest.

• 22:37Speaker 00

  Ah.

• 22:38Josh Axe?

  Like, if you're, if you are, like, what used to be, hey, you were waiting in line at the supermarket or you were, I don't, I don't know, doing something, like, you, your brain wasn't on. You actually had time to reset, relax. If you're on your phone, you're more in a fight or flight state, especially if you're scrolling. I mean, there's studies on this. So, again, if you have this dopamine being released and these hormones being released at that time, your body is not resting. I mean, part of what, what, what it takes to heal is rest. Your mind being turned off, getting cortisol down. So, I really think it's, I really think it's technology and just using it too much, especially at night. So, I think that whole imbalance of the circadian rhythms and cortisol, you know, I mean, this all works like a domino effect, a cascade, where it's like, okay, well, now we knocked

• 23:20Josh Axe?

  over the cortisol domino, that's too high. Well, now insulin's high. Well, now estrogen can be high, progesterone now drops and then testosterone drops.

• 23:29Speaker 00

  Exactly how it works.

• 23:30Josh Axe?

  And then now your thyroid hormones are off. So, so, all that being said, I think that's the single biggest driver. And then I think just because of that, too, people become more susceptible to mold in homes and parasites. There's more travel. People are not, I mean, it used to be where people would be born in one place and they would eat the food from that region. And their gut microbiome would get used to breaking down those types of foods. So, if you go and eat a food you've never eaten, your microbiome does not have the bacteria to break down, it's much harder on the digestive tract. So, I think, I think there's numerous, and I could also say glyphosate. I mean, it's everywhere, golf courses and, and lawns and all over.

• 24:07Speaker 00

  It's the evolution of life and where, you know, because it's interesting that you said about culturally, you know, we have these indigenous foods that we're used to eating. And when we step outside of that, your, your body says, wait a minute, where's the bacteria? Wait, wait, I got to figure this out now. And it halts everything. And, and so when things are halted, that's when things get fermented or you have dysbiosis and all constipation and all of these things occur. But it's the same thing, when I studied primal nutrition and, and really that was my footing, my, my roots from the beginning, was writing five books on the paleo diet and, and really delving into the research. And this was before ChatGPT, all this stuff. I was literally in my basement figuring stuff

• 24:50Speaker 00

  out with, you know, really doing the hard research. And it was Wiley Publishing and you know, publishers, they were tough. They were very academic. So, I'm reading through and I'm pummeling through all of this, just like you said about how when we go to different places and we try to have our body adjust, it doesn't always, we are still adjusting from all of these new foods and this new information that your body's getting. And that's something that we deal with every day. And there's a lot of folks that say, you know, when things seem to go wiry in your body, you're actually, your body's doing exactly what it's supposed to. It's trying to struggle and navigate.

• 25:24Josh Axe?

  Well, here's something interesting. And you said something about this earlier about, it's, it's really not necessarily always about good and bad. It's about balance. You know, when I wrote my first published book, it was called Eat Dirt, quite a few years ago.

• 25:34Speaker 00

  It was a great book.

• 25:35Josh Axe?

  I came across this study and I thought, found it so fascinating that people in Japan, when they're comparing them to Europeans, I believe it was, that they have a, a better gut microbiome, more specific types of probiotics for digesting seaweed and raw fish, because they eat it all the time. Your body's always adapting, saying, oh, we're going to do more of this in the future. We see this as well. Like, if somebody goes from eating almost no fiber to a lot or no protein to a lot, they get gas.

• 25:59Speaker 00

  Oh, big time.

• 26:00Josh Axe?

  And it, and it happens. Now, listen, two months later, it'll be gone. And so, that's why you kind of want to creep it up a little bit at a time and not just go from, you know, just overnight doing 50 grams of fiber. That's way too much. But, all that being said, your body gets accustomed to this. I also wrote a study about a year ago on pomegranates. And, you know, there's only about, I want to say, when somebody eats a pomegranate, around 50% of people take allicic acid from pomegranates and they can turn it into urolithin A, this amazing compound for mitochondrial health.

• 26:31Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 26:31Josh Axe?

  But 50% of people can't do it very well. Well, in the other study, it said, well, one of the best ways to increase your conversion is just keep eating pomegranates, because it might start at 40%, but if you keep eating it, your body will start to, and, and if your gut microbiome is just relatively healthy, it will get to the point where you eventually, two months from then, have the right bacteria where you can make the conversion.

• 26:54Speaker 00

  We always go back to these homeopathic laws.

• 26:56Josh Axe?

  Yeah.

• 26:57Speaker 00

  We really do. It comes back to that. You know, living in London, they had homeopathic hospitals everywhere. And it was so interesting to me to learn about it. But this whole thing that you brought up at the beginning about like versus like and adaptation, really, so to speak, and your body needing this adaptation. So, it's interesting. And a lot of people also have this kind of get well hack where they say, eating a lot of the same foods is, is something that's very healing. So, here's, you know, there's always this cross reaction I have to that. And I know we're going to get to the microbiome, but, you know, really understanding that diversity is the most key element and having this internal terrain that's firing off for you and doing what it needs to do. It needs diversity, but

• 27:42Speaker 00

  yet there's other elements of the body that when you stick to static, more static, your body seems to respond really well to things like weight loss or to things like inflammation or to things like energy.

• 27:56Josh Axe?

  Well, I think, so here's the principle, and it's very much like working out. When somebody, I'll share this for myself. So, when I had, I had a spinal infection a few years ago, didn't walk for a year. And when I started coming back, there's almost no exercises I could do. And so, like, one exercise was, like, I laid on my back, pressed my heels into a bench and pressed up with a, with a light weight to activate my posterior chain, my hamstrings and other areas. And that was the one exercise that started getting me out of pain. But it was one total exercise. I couldn't, bench press, I couldn't, I couldn't do anything.

• 28:27Speaker 00

  Torture.

• 28:27Josh Axe?

  But then over time, I started doing more and more and more and more, because I think our, our gut microbiome works the same way. There's a, Jordan Rubin and I talked about this a lot. If somebody's really sick, putting them on a more of a mono diet, for instance, for one meal, you only eat a pear. And then you only eat an avocado. Then you only eat a salmon filet. Then you only drink a cup of bone broth, because it's the easiest thing for your body to do. And so, same thing for kids. Honestly, it really goes back to this. Eat like you're a baby, act like you're one years old, and then start to build out your palate over time. But when somebody's sick, the first thing you got to do is protect and rest and allow it to just get back to sort of out of, out of acute pain or dysfunction. And then I think you start to add those little elements over time, you know, like,

• 29:11Josh Axe?

  you start with the green beans and avocado and egg yolk, and then you kind of work.

• 29:14Speaker 00

  I like think like a baby. That's your next book. I like that. You got it. Yeah. So, you know, but think about it, again, akin to how our genetics are kind of formulated or formed, if you will, it's that whole, you have abundance, then you have scarcity, and then you have restoration.

• 29:31Josh Axe?

  Yeah.

• 29:31Speaker 00

  Then you start to restore.

• 29:33Josh Axe?

  Yeah.

• 29:33Speaker 00

  So, I think when we just pummel, pummel, pummel, pummel, where, you know, there's some kind of evolutionary need that I feel like, which is why I advocate for bone broth, fasting or fasting, if your body is ready for it.

• 29:46Josh Axe?

  Well, to your point, one of the great things about bone broth that you brought up is like, well, it's, it's, it's in a peptide form.

• 29:51Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 29:51Josh Axe?

  And that just means that, okay, it's not even a protein. There's your shorter chains of amino acids. It's easier to digest. Your body has to do almost no work to break down and utilize peptides versus it. There is more work with protein. There's actually way more work with vegetables, which is surprising to some people versus, versus me, but.

• 30:08Speaker 00

  Well, one of the things that sparked my interest was that I, when I was reading these books, in the, in the beginning days, it talked about Mother Teresa bringing the bone broth to hospitals. And here was the key phrase, to open the gut to healing. Now, had I not studied in Europe, which was way ahead, like, you're young, you were young to catch on and really understand this, I would never have known anything about the power of what it could do had I not been a student of Dr. Thomas Ryle, this parasitosis clinic in Switzerland, when he talked about gut health, friend or foe. He talked about all, and that's, that one paragraph clicked. I said, wait, what was that? What was that? And I read it again. Mother Teresa would bring, bring bone broth into hospitals to

• 30:53Speaker 00

  open the gut to healing.

• 30:56Josh Axe?

  Wow.

• 30:56Speaker 00

  And so, the power, the power of bone broth, again, and not to beat this to death, but the power of it is, how many proteins do you know that do so much? Like you said, peptide. It's like people talk about peptides. This is the ultimate peptide.

• 31:11Josh Axe?

  That's right.

• 31:12Speaker 00

  That you, how, that you, that goes in there and is easy on the body. And that's where the restoration comes in, because it's just easy on the body. You know, some things, Josh, just don't have to be hard.

• 31:25Josh Axe?

  Well, I'll tell you, I think, and this is something I see even more today than I think in the past, if there's been a shift in mentality. I think when I look at some of the more seasoned and wise practitioners, they treat the body with just a level of kindness and care and trying to get it to rest and sort of just lightly nourish it and strengthen it a little bit every day. Today, when I see some of these influencers online, it's like, okay, let's start doing an hour cold plunge. And I'm exaggerating. Okay, but it's like,

• 31:56Speaker 00

  But no, they do.

• 31:56Josh Axe?

  It's very hard. It's like, we're gonna go and do a parasite cleanse while cold plunging.

• 32:02Speaker 00

  You look at that the same way.

• 32:03Josh Axe?

  And I'm like, okay, well, that's a terrible idea. I mean, the biggest principle, if you want to, this is the biggest step I see people skipping when it comes to doing all of these cleanses, including parasite and mold, strengthen the body first.

• 32:15Speaker 00

  Yes, the pathways have got to be open. You have detoxification pathways. And even with GLP-1, you have to understand, a lot of these people on GLP-1s, they have, they're shrinking fat cells. They're shrinking fat cells, which harbors all of this detoxification necessities. So you gotta always think about these pathways. And I know, when you hear this, it sounds so like painful and laborious, you're thinking, oh, my God, what are they telling me? Like, the people watching, like, I have to go through all of that. But you do have these pathways. And they have to be honored, because you can try to do everything right, everything right. Again, the best intentions. But if these pathways, your circulation, your lymphatics, these pathways, if they are not flowing, and I mean, that's vibrance.

• 33:00Speaker 00

  That's real vibrance in a human. When you're around somebody that's, you know, setting off electric, like, she's just electrical, he's just electric, it's really having all these pathways open, and being able to open yourself to the wisdom that's before you, whatever it is that you want to accomplish, or you, whatever you want to do, whatever messages that you want to listen to and hear, it's really about having all these channels and gates open, and healthy, and being in a restorative place to do so.

• 33:27Josh Axe?

  Yeah. And just as an example, just really practically for people, let's say, again, we've used parasites as an example here. Let's say, you know, you know, that you've got these GI issues, and it might be a parasite. Rather than going really hard for the wormwood and black walnut, you're probably better off at first, drinking bone broth and doing more of a GAPS diet, drinking some ginger tea every single day. And bone broth and ginger tea. I mean, talk about just the ultimate combo for healing your, and like, strengthening your body, you know, getting some rest, do a little infrared sauna. And then, hey, once your body feels strong enough, that might be in four weeks, it might be in eight weeks. Hey, then do the two-week cleanse with the clove and the black walnut and the, you know,

• 34:07Speaker 00

  The chelating, the binders, and the this and the that.

• 34:10Josh Axe?

  Binders and all of that, you know, cleanse, open the pathways, buy, you know, use magnesium, do all of that. And then get back to nourishing your body again, to recover from the detox, because most detoxes are challenging your body, and in a way, eating up a lot of your energy. And you need to have energy to start with before you, you know, walk into that. If you're taking handfuls of supplements, but still feeling exhausted, it means your nutrients aren't getting where they need to go. And unfortunately, conventional blood work will never catch this issue. This new test completely changes things. And my team knows exactly what to look for. I'm currently offering a simple at-home blood test that

• 34:54Josh Axe?

  actually tests for the right things, targeted biomarkers that reveal how well you're absorbing and utilizing nutrients, along with the key markers for hormones, thyroid, inflammation, and metabolism. You also get a full hour with one of my senior health advisors to review your results, and discover how you can work with the Health Institute to finally feel like yourself again. If you want to check it out and grab one before they're gone, just go to mybloodwork.com now. Hey, I would love to hear, I did not know that you were, you spent time in that clinic in Switzerland. What was that like?

• 35:32Speaker 00

  This was probably the pinnacle of my career, and it really taught me more than I've ever learned anywhere, anywhere in my career. So Dr. Thomas Raoul, who is a profoundly unbelievable, holistic medical doctor, who gets how the body works, and uses German technologies, and a lot of Chinese medicine diagnostics, you know, like having a Moore machine there, like all these, like, it's nothing to them. Okay, they understand the pulse and the beat of the body, to get the energetics back of the cellular system, to heal things like cancer. And I saw it with my own two eyes. Okay, they, you know, you have to

• 36:14Josh Axe?

  What were some of the treatments, what were some of the things you guys were doing there?

• 36:16Speaker 00

  Okay, so let, let me describe that. So first of all, I was working with Dr. Thomas Raoul with a group, a very small group. I was so lucky, because Josh, I had just had a baby, and I knew that Dr. Raoul was going to do this program for two years. And the whole idea was, there was this woman in Kentucky, her husband was healed. And she was a very wealthy woman, and she said, you know, I am going to support having Dr. Raoul come here and teach these American doctors, in addition to paying for visits to go, but I'm gonna have, have him teach these doctors, because American doctors need to know this. So I just had a baby, and I thought, gosh, do I do this? Do I do this? This is gonna be a push. I did it. You know, it was that inner voice, that was that instinct that said,

• 37:01Speaker 00

  you gotta do this. I am so glad that I did. So one of the things that Dr. Raoul would do, and by the way, he never did that again. He thought it was too, too much time away from his family, flipping back and forth. So he decided never to do this two years again. So when we go into the clinic, he would do things like stick up a panoramic x-ray of the mouth. And he'd say, tell me what's wrong with this patient. He would talk about how, how dental, and dental hygiene, and your teeth, and how it was so linked to the body. He would talk about things like different seasons, and the behavior of your body during different seasons, and the different needs of that body during different seasons. He would talk about things like, that would get, actually help people, things like art

• 37:45Speaker 00

  therapy, things like sound therapy. He would talk a lot about lower, so you have to understand when this was. Okay, this was a long time ago. I mean, my son, I was pregnant with my son, he's 24 now. So this was a long time ago. And he, he would talk about things that we were not talking about. A whole premise was a lot about gut health. So I was talking about gut health, or learning about it, and understanding it. In the early 90s, no one was talking about it. He was talking about inflammation, the way it impacts your body, anti-inflammatory foods, and walking towards that life of being in that state where you don't have high inflammation, and what it can do for your life. He talked just a lot

• 38:27Speaker 00

  of different things. And it was very nuanced, and it was very real, and it was very new at that time. But I know that you are a lover of Chinese medicine, and that's where I learned to really love it, and how he used it for diagnostics. And he would do a lot with the energetic, energetics, and this is hard for people to understand, that aren't, have never heard it before, the energetics of the cells. So the pulse, the cadence of the cells, and what that means to the body, looking at blood under a microscope and saying, okay, where's the pleomorphism here? You know, how are the cells changing? Or how's the blood changing? What does it look like? What should it look like? What are the interferences?

• 39:09Speaker 00

  It had a lot to do with what we call miasms, or interferences in the body, and where things are dropping in the body. So if you feel a pain, or you have something going on, where is it dropping in the body? Where did it start? Very, very fascinating. And the thing is, is I learned in that study, that two-year study, that we're not just skin and bones, that we are atoms and molecules.

• 39:31Josh Axe?

  Yeah, wow.

• 39:32Speaker 00

  And we have an internal sensory system, that's constantly communicating, that we need to listen to, that we need to listen to. And then that's the system that really gets us well. It's that wisdom, it's spirituality. Spirituality is essential. And I, if I can just go off on a spin here, my son had a terrible acne problem, couldn't figure it out, breastfed, you know, all this stuff. I couldn't figure it out. But he was always that kid. He's, he's working in Washington DC now with the Admiral, and he's always been like a high achiever. Okay, this, this type of kid, did really well in the academy, went to an academy, like stellar kid. But I didn't realize that he was holding in a

• 40:12Speaker 00

  lot of anxiety, and trying to achieve all this. He ended up getting very involved in spirituality, and I'm not pushing anything on anyone, other than to say that you need it in some way. He started letting go of tightness, holding on because everything constricts. We have to remember that all of these vascular systems, all these systems in our body that we need to flow. Remember I said, you want everything flowing like a river, not like a swamp, not tight. He started letting go of a lot and started being much more faith-based, believing, believing, having a whole different mindset, having a whole different belief system and the internal

• 40:53Speaker 00

  intelligence of the body and your ability to understand that, you know, it's already there. You're just grabbing the crown, understanding all of this. His acne went away.

• 41:02Josh Axe?

  Wow.

• 41:03Speaker 00

  Okay, this is a real, true story. His acne went away. So that is how powerful all of these things are. So when Dr. Rao talks about things like, you know, doing music therapy, when he talks about doing art therapy, when there is a reason for that, and he understood that, he understood that. He talked a lot about having life force in the, in the home, like pets, and you know, how profoundly good they were for a family. Just all these kinds of things. So it's not thinking about health, wellness, longevity, gut health, perimenopause, menopause, blah, blah, blah, all this stuff. It's not one singular thing. It's like the moat is not one thing.

• 41:42Josh Axe?

  Yeah.

• 41:42Speaker 00

  This is, there's a vertical to it.

• 41:45Josh Axe?

  Yeah.

• 41:45Speaker 00

  There's a vertical to it, and it's beautiful. And once, you know, you and I are so lucky that we have been in this business for as long as we have.

• 41:52Josh Axe?

  Yeah.

• 41:52Speaker 00

  I feel like now, everywhere I go, it's all anyone talks about. Health, wellness, longevity, like 12-year-old guys at the, at the gym, at the, at the protein bar, that, that smoothie bar, talking about, oh, did you do your last sound of my vibration play? Never in a million years did I think I'd see this.

• 42:11Josh Axe?

  Yeah. It's crazy. You know, I go back to, you know, almost 20 years ago when I started practice, and it is just radically different. It's in terms of how far we've come, in terms of, I mean, when I first started doing nutrition, I mean, I'll say this, 99% of medical doctors thought that practicing nutrition was absolutely useless. I mean, now it's probably 50%. So I mean, it's like,

• 42:33Speaker 00

  Absolutely. Okay.

• 42:34Josh Axe?

  Yeah.

• 42:35Speaker 00

  So I had one patient, another funny patient story. I had one patient who came in, and this was a patient who definitely needed nutrition. And you have to really be able to evaluate this in, in someone. That's why I love that. I always say boots on the ground docs are the best. You have sat, you, Josh, myself have sat in front of people, heard their stories, put the algorithms together to know what works, what doesn't work to the best of your ability. It's a very different thing than just coming up with a product. It's so entirely different. And, you know, I had a patient come in and she definitely needed some nutrition. She's trying to get pregnant. She needed some nutrition. And so I put her on a protocol. And one of the things I learned when

• 43:18Speaker 00

  living in London is there were these places in London that they had set up that women would go before they wanted to conceive. And, and, and I learned a lot from studying that. And so I put her on this protocol. She came back, her next visit, and she had a bag with her. I went, it's never good when they have a bag with them. It's never good.

• 43:38Josh Axe?

  Yeah.

• 43:38Speaker 00

  Because you're gonna have to go through all this event, like something's going on. So she pulls, she goes, my doctor, she said, I laid them out, medical doctor, her, her GP, and kicked them off the table, like flung them off the table with his hand and said, this is absolutely ridiculous. You can't possibly think this is going to help you conceive a child. So that was the state of mind, which was pretty rampant at that time. It's changing though. It's definitely better than it was because my first, I don't know about you, the first half of my career, all I did was convincing. I was in the convincing business. I like to think of myself in the problem solving visit, business, but I wasn't. I was the first half of my career, I've been in this 30 years, as I

• 44:21Speaker 00

  said, for 15 years, Josh, all I did was convince.

• 44:24Josh Axe?

  So listen, when I had, so my first practice, I, to your point, there was such a, like, my, my number one goal was help people heal. My mom had beat cancer naturally. I started seeing people see healing miracles in their body. And the biggest thing I came across was, yep, people believing that changing their diet, or getting a chiropractic adjustment, or doing a detoxification would help. So, so I did with everybody an hour orientation before they could become a patient, and they had to bring their spouse.

• 44:54Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 44:55Josh Axe?

  And that was the thing, because the other thing that would happen is,

• 44:58Speaker 00

  So true.

• 44:58Josh Axe?

  You know how many women came in? You know, I'm thinking like the average, like a woman in their 40s, bringing, you know, she wants to get her family healthy, and then she comes, and I talk, and then her husband's like, you know, from home.

• 45:08Speaker 00

  Hogwash.

• 45:09Josh Axe?

  Hogwash, yeah, exactly. But then they would come, and I would explain, here's our current medical system, here's how it works, here's how, like, I would just educate them for an hour. And typically, the majority of the time, the husband then was on board, the wife was on board, they would start getting care together as a family, and we'd see healing miracles of the mom getting off of their thyroid medication, the dad getting off the cholesterol drug, the kids getting off the ADHD drugs, and they were able to heal. But it took convincing and really strong education. So it became like the whole mandate for my clinic. It was like educate, educate, educate, because most people didn't, I mean, it's just, it was such a battle.

• 45:43Speaker 00

  It, that is such a good mandate to put into place. But now, need not, because all of these platforms, like I said, I cannot believe it. Everywhere I go, it is the most, I mean, if you just realized, like at my age, to see this, it is profoundly interesting. And knowing, Josh, that TikTok is now the new doctor. You, you're getting that, right?

• 46:08Josh Axe?

  Yeah.

• 46:09Speaker 00

  You're getting that. So, so all of the, you know, with everyone being on all of these platforms, the mom's on there, the dad's on there, the kids are on there, and, you know, they're all making their, I think the recipes and things, there's of a lot of value. And I used to do a lot of television debunking with these TikTok trends, and whether they had value or not, and whether there's something good for us to learn. But I do think there are some basic things that people are learning, you know, some castor oil packs, they're, they're into that, they're into red light, they're, they're into, you know, higher protein, they're, and, and when I started out, and people talked about not having gluten, or not having dairy, or what kind of dairy, like

• 46:48Speaker 00

  a lot of Weston Price type of strategy, so to speak, nobody understood it, but they do now.

• 46:56Josh Axe?

  Yeah, you know, I think the biggest challenge today is, there's so much information out there, and the problem is, that may be great for one person, bad for another. I mean, I think this is really where personalized medicine comes in, and personalized nutrition, because everybody needs something uniquely catered towards them.

• 47:12Speaker 00

  They do.

• 47:12Josh Axe?

  They need a specific nutrition plan, specific supplement plan. And I can tell you, because we have my clinic in Nashville, the longevity clinic that we, I have here, where I go through patient files, create their blood work reports, do all of that. Like, I have not had a single person with the identical, the same blood work as another person, you know? And so every nutrition plan, every supplement plan is totally different.

• 47:33Speaker 00

  See, I love that. And, you know, again, to your point, I don't think, I always use how we're wired, how our genetics are, as a starting point. Like you talked about, you know, culturally, and, and, and foods that are to our region, or to our genetics, in a sense, like Italians, maybe, or, or Asian people, or, that's a starting point. But if you think about the gut microbiome, and what's so fascinating is there's so many microbes in there. There's as many microbes as there is, depending on the research you look at, as many as, as we have blood cells, or maybe even more.

• 48:15Josh Axe?

  Yeah.

• 48:15Speaker 00

  Right? So if you look at that, and out of that, those trillions of cells, those microbes, trillions of microbes, we have hundreds of different diversities. And each individual could have a hundred different diverse species in their gut. But here's the fascinating part. No two people have the same.

• 48:35Josh Axe?

  Right.

• 48:36Speaker 00

  No two people have the same. So if you think about that internal fertilizer, kind of the, the command center, which mandates so many parts of our body, and so many things, even our, you know, our brain health, we're finding more and more about the link to GABA, and to serotonin, and to dopamine, and the magnif, all of this. Think about that. If we're not even the same here, you have to understand so much. It's not what we eat, it's what we absorb, the nutrients we take in, that's individual. So think about that. There has to be a connection there to need more personalization.

• 49:12Josh Axe?

  Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I, I, I totally agree. You know, I think too, listen, I do think there are good things, like, for instance, another thing we, I've, I've done with people is I think that, you know, I've created protocols for this for a lot of people. And I know we do this at the Health Institute too, is we'll create like, okay, a program for Hashimoto's thyroiditis. Because everybody that has Hashimoto's thyroiditis, there tends to be a lot of overlap, like almost all, most of them, all, all are deficient selenium, deficient vitamin D.

• 49:40Speaker 00

  Yes, the algorithm.

• 49:41Josh Axe?

  Yeah. To your point, the algorithm. So there are ways you can do this more simply in terms of saying, okay, I've got Hashimoto's, or I've got a parasite, or I've got these menopausal symptoms, and there are key herbs, key supplements, key foods that'll help those people. I, I do want to dive into menopause hormones.

• 49:57Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 49:57Josh Axe?

  For a little bit for women. What have you seen in terms of foods and supplements, and just generally, even, even other treatments, most help women going through perimenopause and menopause?

• 50:09Speaker 00

  Here's the fascinating, I'll just give you like the overriding fruit here, and then we'll go into it. But there are some women, so if you're, if you are somebody that's suffering with hot flashes, one of the most perplexing and interesting discoveries I've had in women, and even in myself, and looking and monitoring differences, because I've been through all of the, the, the marks, the markers of perimenopause and menopause. Some women have hot flashes, and some women don't. So let's just stop there and think about that. So that means that we're not genetically wired to have hot flashes, if some do and some don't, which is a very interesting point. So the correlation, because I'm, I'm bringing this up because I think that's where

• 50:53Speaker 00

  the most suffering comes from. Women are very uncomfortable. The two patterns that I find that women most uncomfortable with are sleep patterns and hot flashes.

• 51:03Josh Axe?

  Yeah.

• 51:03Speaker 00

  So, hot flashes, there is such a link to the HPA axis. So what does that mean? That means that your stress control system, we call it the HPA axis.

• 51:19Speaker 00

  And when that axis is thrown out of whack, you have more intense hot flashes. And so to put it in easier terms, cortisol. So cortisol is a big strike point for women. And so what we can do is anything that modifies your stress, that's possible. I'll tell you a supplement that's very helpful, or I should say remedy, saffron. Saffron is monster good. If you are someone that's listening that suffers from hot flashes, hear me and hear me now. Saffron is exquisite. It does such a good job of calming and quelling all of the points in your body,

• 52:03Speaker 00

  which exacerbate hot flashes. The other thing that exacerbates it, like I don't drink any alcohol. I wouldn't. And I think that there's a certain time, and I had my fun. I just want you to know that I have my fun. Okay. Okay. So I don't have angel wings. Okay. I've had my fun. But a woman who reaches the precipice of having her estrogen start to drop and start to notice these different digestive functionalities, because when we start getting older, as does your estrogen drop, so does your digestion slow. This is a natural metabolic function, natural metabolic function. So alcohol will pummel that. And I hate to say this.

• 52:46Speaker 00

  This was like me putting people on an anti-inflammatory protocol, the 21 day bone broth diet. This was like me trying to reset people's metabolism and telling them no wine. And it was when I started doing that with patients, I had no idea how many people drank wine at night. And I, I get the self-medication. I get how life beat you down. Let's not act like it doesn't. Life is not a straight line. Life is very, all over the map. And sometimes people reach to wine or other alcohol, not because they're out partying, but they're using it as self-medication. Please understand I have a heart for that. I truly, truly do. But if you are someone who is suffering with menopause, perimenopause,

• 53:30Speaker 00

  it's gotta go. And one sip of alcohol for most women in perimenopause or menopause, and I hate to say it because it's so, it's like such a boring truth. But even one sip often sets the signaling off in the body where you're up all night, or you fall asleep for two hours and that's it. That's all she wrote. So one of the things for the uncomfortable symptom of hot flash is that HPA axis, which is the control center of your body, the stress control center. We've got to do something to get that center where your levels are low. You've got, that cortisol is not whacked out. I promise you, it will make such a difference. And one of the things that you might want to study for anyone watching, listening,

• 54:13Speaker 00

  is Japanese culture, they don't have hot flashes. Did you know that?

• 54:16Josh Axe?

  Yeah.

• 54:17Speaker 00

  What?

• 54:18Josh Axe?

  Yeah.

• 54:18Speaker 00

  Okay. So how do you make sense of that? So I know I like best practices. So if I was somebody that didn't, that had hot flashes, I'd be saying, what does the Japanese doing? I mean, fermented foods is something that they abide by on a big, big, big level. So if I were a woman with hot flashes, I probably would listen to Dr. Kellyanne and just do a test and see alcohol versus no alcohol, see what it does. I would start looking at calming down my stress control center, my HPA axis, maybe have a little bit of saffron. You know, saffron's extremely expensive, but it's very efficacious. It works really well. And you know, all these things, they play in.

• 54:56Josh Axe?

  Yeah. Well, I think Japanese culture too, it's just, it's just, it's more relaxed. I mean, I think, well, and by the way, that's not true across the board. That's true in Okinawa. That may not be true. That may not be true in some of the bigger cities there. But I do think that, you know, when I look at their diet, I just read this, I think it's somewhere like 68% of people in Japan drink green tea every day.

• 55:20Speaker 00

  Every day.

• 55:21Josh Axe?

  I mean, that's crazy. They said over 80% drink it every week. I mean, they have somewhere like, it's like 99,000 Centurions. So there are 100,000 Centurions in Japan. They eat a lot of sweet potato, a lot of fish, a lot of fish broth, a lot of seaweed.

• 55:39Speaker 00

  These are all prebiotics though. You get in the picture? Like a lot of this, so it goes back to that basic premise that we were talking about. It's these healthy fats that make a huge difference. Everything that you're talking about, you're getting the right kind of fats. You're getting that fermentation. It's all very, very clear to me. Yeah. It's all very clear. So, you know, look at that best practice and see how that can make a difference. And also, one of the supplements that I really stand by is magnesium at night.

• 56:06Josh Axe?

  Yeah.

• 56:07Speaker 00

  I think magnesium at night really does make a difference. And again, test it on yourself, you know, do your own test and get a high quality magnesium and see what that can do for you. I think that it's good to have those levels proper anyway. You want to have a good magnesium level. It's because it's, again, it's controls so many different things that taking it at night is a good idea.

• 56:30Josh Axe?

  Yeah. So something I think I picked up from you today is when you're talking about people seeing results in their health overall, there's really two main systems you want to look at. Again, this is me summarizing what I'm picking up from you. The first brain and the second brain, your brain really tied to cortisol release is HPA axis, really where it starts, keeping that, you've talked about spiritual health and balance there. Saffron, of course, that impacts mood positively. Magnesium really does both. It is a gut tonic for constipation and it supports relaxation. So there's brain. And then gut health, right? We've talked a lot about bone broth. You've talked about fermented foods. You've talked about ginger. You've talked about all of these different things collectively. And I really think that if you can focus on, and two hormones to be conscious of cortisol and insulin.

• 57:13Josh Axe?

  I mean, if you can fix cortisol and insulin.

• 57:16Speaker 00

  Bravo, bravo, bravo. Okay. These are two, I mean, and insulin, that's the only reason why when I talk about fasting, and I want to make this clear, it's not for everyone. And I understand that it's not for everyone. But when you're talking about, again, a water fast, you're talking about going to that deep state of autophagy, as we call it, which is like hitting the compost button in your body. You have to be ready. One has to be ready for that. But if you do something like bone broth fasting, and it's almost like an intermittent fast with bone broth, and you do that cadence, that timing where, you know what? I'm going to eat eight hours or six hours, whatever it is that works for you.

• 57:57Speaker 00

  And that's the only time I'm going to eat. What happens is you become metabolically flexible. That insulin that we talk about, that hormone, you gotta fix it. Because if you go to nursing homes, I'm sorry, I gotta bring it down a little bit. But if you go to nursing homes, what you see are a lot of stroke patients and there's a lot of stroke wards. And you want to go somewhere sad? You want to, you want to get a real lesson on humanity and how you need to do your part in humanity? Go to, go to a nursing home. Okay. And when you start observing why they're there and how the world, a lot of the practices that we have unfortunately are setting us up to end there. That's why listening to people like you, myself, the other health people that we have out there

• 58:41Speaker 00

  that has dedicated their life to helping keep you out of there. Most of them are strokes from blood sugar problems, from diabetes.

• 58:49Josh Axe?

  Yeah.

• 58:49Speaker 00

  So fix it.

• 58:51Josh Axe?

  You know, as I've looked at, I mean, now, just this year alone, hundreds of different blood work reports. I have almost never seen a high ApoB, high LDL, one of those without an issue with fasting glucose or A1C levels, without blood sugar being high. I mean, almost every time, I mean, I think it's well over 90% of the time, probably more like 98. If somebody is having an issue with their heart, it started from blood sugar.

• 59:16Speaker 00

  ApoB is something to really pay attention to. And I'm glad that we are having discussions about that now. And I hear a lot more longevity doctors talking about that because that inverse, you're right. It's very true. So I feel like we get so indoctrinated by watching all these videos and all these things on all of these platforms. And I love how you broke it down. So let's just like step back and let's, you know, make this easy. The first thing that you have to fix is your metabolic system. And the easiest way in which to do that is to pay attention to cortisol and pay attention to insulin.

• 59:49Josh Axe?

  Yeah. Yeah. And these come from daily health practices. You're, you know, waking up in the morning, spending time in prayer and gratitude, or just going on a walk, but doing some things, having some margin in your day and week to where you're not doing something every moment. You have time for you, time for relaxation, and just time to have fun, you know? So I think that's important.

• 1:00:08Speaker 00

  I actually think that's incredibly important, what you said about starting with some kind of faith. I don't care what that faith is, if you're listening to, you know, if you're listening to certain music that puts you in a faith space, but your cells do resonate accordingly. Let me just say that. So one of the best places that you can put your body is in a grateful state. And it's not always easy just to be there. And people just say, what are you? You have to, you have to work at it. You, to be grateful when life can beat you down, you actually, it has to be a practicum. You actually have to make this a foundational, an intentional, foundational point of your day.

• 1:00:51Speaker 00

  So as soon as your feet hit the floor, it's what I tell my boys, let's just get it done right away. So make it a practice that that stimuli of your feet hitting the floor is when you say, I'm grateful, here are three things.

• 1:01:03Josh Axe?

  Yeah. That's so good. That's so good. Yeah. I just try, I try and do this very similar thing, like go on a walk in the morning and then, I mean, music can change this for you, probably faster than anything, if you put on a positive Christian song or some sort of song that's very uplifting and didn't have that gratitude practice on a 10, 15 minute walk in the morning. I mean, that's a, but it's important. You know, when I think about when my days are going the best and I'm being the best dad I can and the best husband I can, and the best leader I can, and the best doctor I can, I am starting with that practice in the morning. And then to your point as well, it's eating clean, it's eating more protein, more fiber, more probiotic rich foods, more healthy fats. These things that really help set insulin, you know, the right course for insulin for the rest of the day.

• 1:01:43Speaker 00

  And you just have to learn it. And once you get the system down, you get the patterning down, then it's not hard. You're just doing it. It's who you are. And then that's when the joy starts to come in. Then you can start opening yourself up because your body is starting to heal and starting to restore. And then that's when the joy comes in. Cause we want to be in that, you know, more of a flow state. It ain't always easy. You and I have built big things and we know what it's like. You're not always going to be in a joyful state, but setting your body up to be in that place where things become more rote, they become easier, allows you to start getting into that joyful place.

• 1:02:20Josh Axe?

  Yeah. So good. So good. Well, Dr. Kellyanne, thanks so much for coming on today. It was a beautiful conversation. I'm so grateful for you and all the great things you've done for helping pioneer and bring things like collagen and bone broth, you know, greater awareness there in natural medicine. So, so grateful for you. And hey, let people know where they can find more about your books and follow you online.

• 1:02:38Speaker 00

  Yeah. So you can find me on Instagram, Dr. Kellyanne Official, just building that. And drkellyann.com. And you'll see me in grocery stores, QVC, online. You can't escape Dr. Kellyanne.

• 1:02:54Josh Axe?

  So good. Well, everybody, thanks so much for tuning in here to the Dr. Axe Show. Remember each and every week, we're diving deep into the science and principles of how you can heal physically, mentally, spiritually, and take your health and your life to the next level. If you're watching on YouTube, let me know, what is the biggest thing that you took away from this conversation today? Maybe it's a piece of wisdom that Dr. Kellyanne shared. Let us know here and let us know, hey, are you drinking bone broth? Are you doing collagen? We'd love to hear from you on that as well. Also, don't forget to subscribe. It's the number one thing you can do to support the show and allow me to bring on more high profile guests like Dr. Kellyanne. And also then you won't miss a thing. Also, thank you so much for sharing this. All of you that are on mission with me, I can't wait to see you on the next episode.