We discuss how:
– There are a lot of different proteins in oats
– They’re technically gluten-free
– They feed beneficial gut bacteria
– Fermentation brings some additional properties
– Oats can act as a wonderful prebiotic
– They can positively interact with probiotics
– They can positively interact with brain’s neurotransmitters sensitivity
– Getting glutamine with food is more effective than taking capsules
– Fermented oats can prevent bacterial translocation
– They help protect from harmful effects of a high fat diet
Clint: Good day! I’ve got a great guest with me today for the episode and he is Dr. Richard Mathews who we’ve had on the show several times. He’s one of my favourite guests and he’s the author of the Symbiont Factor, Richard my friend how are you today?
Richard: Doing great. It’s good to see you.
Clint: Yes it is. Were on the same time zone now as I’m over here in Florida. So this makes a little bit easier and one of us don’t have to be under one sort of like weird looking fluorescent light to be able to chat.
Richard: We did this late night session.
Clint: Now you you’re a very very intelligent man who has published some incredible work on some complex things. You know to recap what I’ve told you on a number of occasions in the past when I was originally reading the Symbiont Factor I kept having these like Eureka moments where I was going no way, no way! And I’m reading it like that and one of the eureka moments I was having was how you referenced everything you said so that I could then go and grab that reference and incorporate it into a lot of the work that I was doing and so you really gave me these nuggets of joy when I was reading your book because of the work that I was the path that I was and still am.
Clint: So now the reason I’m recapping that is not just as part of the introduction but the audience might say well why did you bring on Dr. Richard Matthews to talk about oats but there’s a lot more to oats than what we might just glance over at the supermarket. Isn’t that the essence of what we can talk about?
Richard: Absolutely, there is. Oats are very old food they’re thought to be one of the first grains that people aren’t and not just things that people pick. There are a lot of different proteins in oats. They’re gluten free technically although the molecule that’s in oats that would be sort of analogous to the gluten wheat as we call them avinon or avenon. But it’s not nearly as reactive to the immune system. So they’re far far safer to eat even for people that are sensitive to gluten. There is occasionally a person who’s sensitive to oats but very often it’s because they’re not really reacting to the oats but they’ve bought oats that are not organic and they’re reacting to the chemicals on them. So that can happen also.
Clint: That’s a really interesting point. And in fact something that only came to my attention recently when I attended veggie fest in Chicago and I was there and I was actually at one point due to just through some coincidental circumstances sitting next to the creator and owner of Nature’s Path, the very very successful and large sort of grocery chain you would say let’s just say grocery cereals and groceries and yeah they make all sorts of yeah breakfast cereals and bars and all that sort of stuff. Now we had a discussion about his oats and I said to him so you know tell us about your gluten free oats and then you’ve got non gluten free oats and he said it’s all just the way they’re farmed because he said to me that the oats themselves are gluten free but if you only get a small amount of cross contamination from a wheat crop that’s next to it and then it’s natural that the wind blows and some of the the head of the grains fly across from the farm and into the oat crop and then when it gets harvested some of those grains end up mixed in with the oats then you cannot say that that box of cereal is gluten free and that was how he explained it to me is interesting.
Richard: It is interesting. And that type of presence of gluten likely defines the difference between a patient or a person who has true celiac disease and someone who is gluten-sensitive. People with celiac disease may have to avoid gluten down to the molecular level I’d say, whereas the rest of us that are merely gluten sensitive a molecule or two of gluten is not going to trigger the same level of response. Usually they do not notice it.
Richard: So gluten I mean oats have a lot of items like lipids, beta-glucans that one of the benefits of oats is that beta-glucans and oats will feed beneficial gut bacteria so that they’re actually somewhat of a superfood for your gut bacteria and much of the research on oats and their health benefit was conducted using fermented oats. So I thought it’s worth mentioning the difference between the two. Oats are good for you one way or the other. And if you eat oats that are not fermented they can certainly convey all of the benefits but it’s a bit more dependent on whether or not your gut has sufficient good bacteria to benefit from feeding. In other words if you eat the oats but the bacteria that really should thrive on oats and would be fermenting the oats if you don’t have any of those, you may not see the health benefit of the oats. They may actually not really work for you at that point till you build up enough of those bacteria. So sometimes over time the effect improves.
Clint: OK so just to repeat back so we all understand is that we’ve got a couple of ways of eating the oats. We’ve got a fermented approach or we’ve got approach that probably nine out of 10 people take when they buy it from the store. They apply the hot water to just the regular oats out of the packet and eat it that way or boil it whatever. And then but you’re also saying that there’s an aspect here where if people don’t have any of their healthy gut bacteria that does the fermentation of the oats then they don’t digest it well at all because that oats really won’t be fermented or metabolized by those bacteria. Let’s talk about the first part of that first. Can you actually just go through the basics of what would fermented oats look like. How would we ferment our oats or get fermented oats?
Richard: Well generally the way that you ferment it is you take dry oats and you mix them with something that provides a bacterial culture that’s going to start the fermentation process starter culture if you will. The way that I do it is generally to mix in some Kiefer or Kefir with the oats and then some additional milk or coconut milk, I usually use coconut milk and then let it sit at room temperature or a tiny bit above for two or even three days. Usually with some cheese cloth or a dish towel or a plate over it to keep you know small insects and house dust out of it but two or three days of fermentation. And what you’re doing with that is you’re taking a known beneficial bacteria and just feeding the daylights out of it so that you get a big super culture that contains many many more of those beneficial bacteria. So the same process happens internally but it’s a bit harder to control internally because all the bacteria that live inside the gut can have a go at it. You may be feeding something you really don’t want to feed. Whereas when you do it in a bowl you can add exactly what you want or quite close to it. It’s fascinating also that you would think leaving food out for two or three days might make it spoil or something but the longer you leave it within reason the better it seems to be. The bacteria actually inhibits anything from coming in and trying to decompose it.
Clint: Which is one of the more old fashioned or original methods of preserving food isn’t it.
Richard: It is. It is either intentionally or unintentionally. Perhaps it might have been discovered by accident like oh, you left this out, you know. It is pretty good. I feel great when I eat it.
Richard: Yes I have quite a few patients that I’ve done a microbiome study. They send a stored specimen and a lab does a sequence on it to see what their gut bacteria consists of. They have no lactobacillus whatsoever zero point zero zero percent.
Richard: So generally something like oats is a wonderful prebiotics so if you have at least a little bit of the good guys in there you’ll feed them and they grow in the gut basically ferments. But if there aren’t any, you may not see that effect at all in which case it’s good to at least sometimes do some fermented oats. I for example I don’t have fermented oats on a daily basis but typically a few days a month, I like a couple of (inaudible) several months. So maybe every two weeks I’ll make a big bowl of it and it will last me two or three days or I’ll take a third of it. Mix it up with you know some cut up apple and a couple tablespoons of maple syrup and maybe cinnamon and just mix it up and eat it.
Clint: Wow. Wow. That is sensational. And when I reached out to you to help me with this research I actually didn’t know that you ate fermented oats or that you incorporate oats at all into your diet. You know we haven’t delved too much into that personal stuff but that’s fascinating. Then this was just the idea of you know compatibility there with having you helped me with this stuff.
Richard: Absolutely.
Clint: Now here’s a couple of questions. Before we get back to all the benefits of oats. And I’ll tell my story in just a second to really drive home the importance that I place on reintroducing oats at some point into your diet whether you’ve got rheumatoid arthritis or any other you know gut disorder that presents as some kind of external symptoms. I just wanted a little bit more detail around how people can create these fermented oats because can you easily buy a Kiefer starter culture from a health food store? Question number one. And question number two: Can it be done by taking regular probiotics out of a capsule and pouring it in and then mixing it up.
Richard: It definitely can be done with either yogurt or Kiefer. But Kiefer is easier to work with and it has more bacteria typically than yogurt does. Plus it’s liquid so it mixes better.
Richard: I have taken a probiotic capsule and dumps the contents into the fermentation. All it seems to really do is make it ferment faster. But by the time you get a big bowl of it fermented, there’s actually quite a bit more bacteria than there is on capsule. So I think you’re just speeding up the process by doing that. If someone were concerned about just all of the different species and they wanted to restrict it to just a couple that might be one way to do it so that your probiotic capsule has really a short list of known species whereas what we call the wild fermentation when you, well, it’s not really wild because you’re adding Kiefer that’s somewhat known but fermentations of oats have been found to have over a thousand different species strains of lactobacillus and that diversity of adding lactobacillus is part of what gives it a lot more power because they each have, they each bring their own strengths to the team of the microbiome. That’s a bit of a recurrent theme with the microbiome is that diversity is good and improves the resilience of your gut bacteria. Whether that’s resilience to you know if you’re one of the people that becomes ill if you had some questionable buffet food or if you’re one of the people that’s unaffected by such things most of the time or if you catch the stomach bug that goes around in a group of people that work together or live together. There’s always somebody that doesn’t catch it. Generally the person that has a more robust and diverse microbiome within can inhibit infections far better. Same thing with antibiotics. Occasionally people get in a situation where they feel they have to take antibiotics. In this part of the world it’s very often Lyme disease because that’s quite prevalent.
Clint: Really. Really.
Richard: Yes. Just a few miles from here is considered one of the epicentres of Lyme disease. And when people take antibiotics some of them do quite well and don’t really see a lot of side effects and some people within a day or two will have uncontrollable diarrhoea and start to feel truly ill. Generally those are the people whose microbiome was really not very healthy at all and they lose a little bit because of the antibiotic. And they’re very dangerous.
Clint: Yeah yeah right. Kind of not enough backup.
Richard: Yes yes. There is no reserve capacity for it. Same thing happens when someone’s at a hospital and they acquire a hospital borne infection like C Diff, Clostridium Difficile which is well named, it’s very difficult to get rid of once you have that infection and people that have a weaker microbiome are probably much more prone to getting it. It’s not very common as far as the risk factor but the number of people that got those infections is quite high. So it’s always good to keep your microbiome healthy because you don’t know what surrounds you.
Clint: Exactly.It’s like insurance isn’t it. Every time I eat more salad, more oatmeal for instance, you know you do feel like you’re putting money in the insurance bank so you’re not going to run dry anytime soon.
Richard: That’s true. We could call that true health care because you’re actually taking care of your health before you get a disease.
Clint: Perfect. Perfect. That’s right. I love that.
Clint: So now can I just explore a little further because just for interest sake be, these patients that you have who you sometimes find have no lactobacillus range. Now do you also observe a greater degree of symptoms with those people that match off with the worst lactobacillus range of bacteria.
Richard: Yes actually I do. One of the things that I see often is anxiety. And one of the things that lactobacillus and the microbiome has been attributed with, that was actually one of the first findings that gut bacteria can influence brain function. It’s quite a hot topic now but 20 years ago it was sort of a back lab bumbling like, wow look at this.
Richard: But lactobacillus has been found to change the brain’s sensitivity to the neurotransmitter gaba, gamma butyric acid and gaba is your brain’s primary inhibitory neurotransmitter. So whether the thing you did to inhibit is a recurrent thought of doom and gloom and anxiety that once it’s in your mind it kind of ricochets around and burns up energy and drives you crazy and keeps you sleeping or if it’s the inability to attenuate sounds so that you’re just very easily distracted and overwhelmed and fatigued by high noise environments. Sometimes it’s the inability to attenuate other people’s voices. You can focus on one voice in a crowd something that humans are especially good at doing or should be. But sometimes when we lose that even hearing aids really don’t work.
Richard: Anyway, an example would be extreme example would be an autistic child because stimulations that normal or non autistic people don’t even perceive can be very very overwhelming. It to a child with autism. I’ve been told by some of them as they developed to the point of articulating it that even normal fluorescent lights at 60 hertz seem like more of a strobe light to that whereas someone else perceives it as just light. But if you were in a room with a constant strobe light like a party you know where you are.
Richard: So your brain’s inhibitory nerve transmitters gaba. And pain is also one of the things that is dampened by gaba. That’s why we see people that use drugs like Gabapentin Lyrica when they have their empathic (inaudible) perhaps diabetes because it mimics the effect of gaba although it doesn’t do a particularly good job of it. I think that it is how it works. Now lactobacillus changes the sensitivity of the brain neurotransmitter receptors to gaba so it makes your brain more sensitive to it. But it makes gaba work better in the parts of your brain that deal with emotions or sounds and it makes your frontal lobes less sensitive to gaba. Your frontal lobes or what you would use for self direction and conscious decision to block something out or to focus on task. So it makes your frontal lobes work better and it suppresses all of the things that would otherwise distract frontal lobe. So it’s a very differential effect that you don’t get with the drug. So you take the drug well it does so in a frontal lobe also. And that’s why sometimes we see a bit of a dulling effect where people just really don’t feel very very well. But they have too much gaba frontal lobes too.
Clint: Well you know I got a lot of people get this thing called brain fog when we have these drugs. Yes. So well that’s fascinating which ties really nicely. Did you mention before up to 1000 different strains of lactobacillus is created by oats? I mean this is phenomenal so I hope people are enjoying this so far. Let me now just before we move on to the rest of the oats discussion.
Clint: Just to recap if people haven’t heard me tell this story before and I know that you haven’t, Richard. I was extremely good throughout my healing process to only change one thing at a time. And this enabled me to identify the cause every time of either an improvement or a setback.
Clint: Now there was one exception to this that I lament and it was when I was nine tenths of the way healed I’d been sort of plateaued at that point for a long time six or nine months.
Clint: I couldn’t get rid of what I call the smouldering of the inflammation in some of my joints so just a little bit there just wouldn’t go away. Just this little bit swat smouldering couple of the little finger joints a little bit in the right elbow and then I made it. I broke one of my own long term rules and I did three things at once. I started having oats for breakfast. And because I wasn’t having them I think with any sugar or something, I forget exactly why, but I decided that I would have orange juice fresh orange juice with my oats just to accompany the oats. And I started taking potassium supplementation. Now in the literature: Rheumatoid, Deep in the bowels of the Rheumatoid literature there’s a couple of studies that really show fabulous results for both mineral supplementation and also a separate study specifically potassium supplementation in relieving rheumatoid arthritis symptoms on a significant sample of people in a study. And so this ties into my whole people are becoming you know over acidified by their diets and this helps to lower the acid levels in the non blood parts of the fluids in the body. And also there seems to be as particularly with potassium a link between potassium and cortisol production. So people get natural pain relief.
Clint: However let’s just put that aside. The point of this story is that I did those three things at once and week to week I slowly watch that final bit of smoulder disappeared that had been with me for a good part of a year and it was the final frontier.
Clint: And if we look at what those three things are maybe the potassium helped but I think you know it’s always the food isn’t it. It’s always the food. When we come to. And I put, I’m confident that almost all of the outcome or the results that I got was from the oats. And then when I asked you to do this help me with this research it’s because anecdotally I kept seeing people once they would get onto oats in our support group they would then make faster progress. And so it dovetails perfectly with my experience. So you know it’s a fascinating food and I think I would say it’s probably the most important food to graduate onto after people who’ve been following the early stages of our program for a while when people can then find that they can tolerate oats without increasing their pain. The future looks so much brighter over the coming months. And the metaphor I gave you and I know that you’ve got lots to say and I’m doing a lot of talking but the metaphor that I used just before we started recording was that you know it feels like in the early stages you’re stuck out in the ocean and you’re swimming around in and you’re just trying to make progress. But then as you get closer to shore and you’ve become a stronger swimmer and you’ve made progress then when you catch a wave and the wave brings you to shore that is the effect that the oats can have. That’s what I feel. That’s what I’ve just said.
Richard: That’s just so fitting considering that you’re from Australia.
Clint: Yeah. You’ve got to get out of the water quick. So let’s just for people who are just wondering can we still get great effects if we’re not fermenting our oats, can we still get wonderful effects, let’s say we’ve got some lactobacillus strains in our gut we’re still going to do well, aren’t we?
Richard: Yes, certainly if the lactobacillus is in the gut or for that matter even if it isn’t, if you took a lactobacillus probiotic concluding that you know just before or after you eat the oats, that would almost certainly raise the chances that you’re going to get some of the prebiotic effects of the oats as it feeds the bacteria in the capsule. One of the issues with just taking a probiotic by itself is, if it’s a bit of a catch 22 where if the organism could survive in your current situation it would already be there. And if it isn’t surviving there’s a reason sometimes that reason is diet you’re not eating anything that it would feed on. So it doesn’t succeed. So when you take a probiotic and you also take a prebiotic along with it you’re sending in the troops and you’re also sending in enough supplies so they can actually do something. That works better. It’s also one of the keys to colonization. There’s been a lot of written and a lot of talk about whether probiotics actually result at gut colonization. Yeah. Some people feel quite strongly it does, some people feel quite strongly it doesn’t. And as often as the case it depends on the details, depends on the circumstances. If a person has a ridiculously stressful lifestyle their gut function may be so abnormal that it still may not really be as easy to achieve colonization.
Richard: You have to look at what some of the gut bacteria do particularly in their effects on the immune system, and the brain’s HPI axis will get to it. Essentially whatever the dominant organisms are all through the host metabolism and activity to suit them. So lactobacillus tends to promote gaba function which is very colic and in fact that was one of the first studies. So this risk chair tellers gave pairs of women something to talk about and yogurt. And she gave them either the controlled yogurt which was sterile it had no bacteria and for the experiment group which had lactobacillus you know active cultures in it. And she documented that the tone of their conversation was significantly more calm when they had lactobacillus and the yogurt which is interesting also because it shows you how fast the effects can really happen.
Richard: So the the point of that is that lactobacillus tries to create a calm environment by affecting the brain. For example affecting neurotransmitter function because that changes gut function to suit it. Other bacteria may have an opposite effect so we consider them not quite so good.
Richard: So yeah it works also externally. So if a person is always in a very stressful environment that makes their body less hospitable to lactobacillus.
Clint: Right. Interesting. So you know it both serves and receives sort of thing.
Richard: That may also be why some people find they benefit quite a bit from not that much lactobacillus. And some people need like the mother lode of lactobacillus where they start to see any progress.
Clint: Well that probably applies to most of our audience that we’ve got right now. I don’t know. I never had a stool sample before and after. In fact I’ve never had an analysis done on my stool. But I’d love to, it’ll be a fun thing to do. We’ve talked about that in the past you recommended to go and do that. But no I don’t have a before case but I do encourage anyone who has a little bit of budget to be able to go and get that done as an analysis tool. And you’ve actually encouraged me to encourage others to do that with you by which you put us in contact with on one of our earlier conversation.
Richard: Yes yes absolutely.
Clint: Let’s talk I’ve got some notes next to some of the research compilation that you did. I’ve got highlights around some of the most important things in the gut healing process, mucosal lining restoration bacteria improvements and diversity and we’ve covered that. And then we’ve got leaky gut. Now so the study towards the top. When it talks about a good amino acid profile, high includamin which helps heal the intestinal mucosa. That’s really exciting.
Richard: It is. It is. The intestinal mucosa is the site of data interchange if you will between the immune system and the gut bacteria. It’s sort of where the immune system gets a lot of its programming if you will. Mission profile if it were a military force or something. And because of that the integrity of the mucus layer is quite important. So for anybody who’s fighting chronic inflammation healing the mucosa of the intestine is a good logical step to start getting a handle on it. It’s a bit surprising to know that the gut has that much to do with the immune system control and perhaps brings things back to, brings the topic back to the importance of food. When you say that gut associated lymphoid tissue or galt is such a huge part of the immune control. And yet is directly influenced by what we eat. So there you are.
Clint: Yeah. And so it’s like cannot be ignored. It’s right there isn’t it?
Richard: No, it is.
Richard: So yes, glutamine is very essential to that. I mean in acute cases I’ve used glutamine in capsule form. But actually if you’re getting it in your breakfast, you’re getting more and probably more bio available than what can be provided at a capsule. So it’s better if you get it from your food.
Clint: Absolutely. And I’ve had I’ve answered the question about whether or not someone should take glutamine as a supplement many many times, and my answer is the studies seem to support that it’s healthy for the gut.
Clint: And so I can’t a downside. And and yet I then follow that up by saying but I’ve actually never had a client add glutamine as a supplement without changing anything else and telling me that they significantly improved. I personally in my experience haven’t seen that yet but nor have I seen someone do worse. And so I say look again if you’ve got a little bit of a spare budget you know it might be worth adding. Would you agree with that?
Richard: Sure, that sounds good. Yeah absolutely.
Clint: Yeah. OK. Let’s talk about down the page a little more. It says in in this paragraph, down towards here you’ve got some great stuff here that you’ve pulled from the literature. Fermented oats also help in the absorption of iron which is wonderful. Whilst reducing intestinal permeability. And then how about what follows then which is that it prevents the bacterial translocation by potentially a huge amount. Now talk about this part of your findings.
Richard: Well bacterial translocation is when bacteria or bacterial proteins typically LPS or lypo polysaccharides pass through the intestinal membrane and those are such potent inflammatory agents LPS it’s so potently pro inflammation that it’s actually used as an injectable inflammatory in research to see how well an organism can deal with inflammation. Do you want to make something inflamed pretty quickly, you inject it was lypo polysaccharides.
Clint: Which is bacteria, right?
Richard: Well it’s bacteria or pieces of bacterial outer shells. Typically it’s broken pieces of bacteria not entire bacteria.
Clint: Wow. Right.It’s the lining around is containing the proteins.
Richard: Yes. And the problem really is the intestinal permeability and the intestinal wall is designed to selectively let some molecules in and keep others out. And it’s a very highly regulated process. But when the intestinal wall becomes damaged from inflammation, from eating bad food, from being too stressed usually a combination of those. An altered bad microbiome. Then it becomes quite porous and things pass through it that really should not have, lypo polysaccharide is a good example of that. But it can also happen with molecules of food. And that is thought to be the mechanism behind acquiring food sensitivities or food allergies even.
Richard: So even after liver resection surgery the study that I quoted there which is a very major surgery fermented oats still prevented bacterial translocation by 90 percent which is amazing. Honestly it bags the question of why people that are going to have surgery are told to beef up on their fermented foods. But I think the medical profession is perhaps a bit behind the curve as far as applying any of the microbiome concepts so it doesn’t go through the normal chain of command if you will, product supply line. And some of these concepts are relatively new compared to how long some of the core concepts of medicine have been. So who knows how long it will be before doctors routinely tell you to eat your fermented oats because you got a surgery scheduled next year. A researcher whose done most of the research on that is named Stick Benmark and he is a liver surgeon or was, I’m not sure if he’s still alive or not I hope he is. I believe if I remember correctly he was practicing in Argentina as a liver surgeon and he was one of the first to document the differences in hospital acquired infections or reinfection after surgery. In fact an infection as a complication after surgery in people that did not get probiotics versus people who did. He notes that the enteral feeding that patients were given in their feeding tubes was typically mostly sugar. Uninclude any fibre to feed bacteria, didn’t include any probiotics.
Richard: And he actually I guess they don’t have a lot of liability attorneys in Argentina who just went ahead and altered the substance and added the prebiotics fibre and the probiotics to the feeding tube. It’s better. But from what I read in the studies, none of the other surgeons followed suit. He documented that he had like one third the rate of complications, as they are surgeons. I guess, they did not think very much, better stuck to what they had always done.
Clint: It’s interesting. Maybe it was a supply chain issue. And where did I recently have this discussion?
Richard: Well it’s basically doing research on a live patient.
Clint: That’s right. That’s right.
Richard: It’s just limited in sense. I’m sure there are (inaudible) boundaries that have to be crossed to do that that probably plays a role in why the others said..
Clint: But also and on top of that I think what happens is these hospital organizations which are just businesses have long term supply contracts with them, right. And so it’s logistics right. They might have a 10 year supply with the sugar that goes into the sugar packets that get hung up in feed you with your glucose or whatever.
Clint: And you know it might be hard to terminate those kind of contracts with this untested you know clearly beneficial but untested approach.
Richard: It’s also a huge difference in shelf life I imagine because one is not live and the other is a live product.
Clint: We’re getting closer to that now. We’re starting to talk financial.
Richard: But you know if it were me having the surgery I would find a way because of who I am. So yeah.
Clint: Have we left anything out? Do you think that we perpetuately…
Richard: It’s only a couple of things. And the oats even help protect from harmful effects of a high fat diet, fermentation increases the polyphenols and anti-oxidants that are available. And those also have been found to reduce the effects of RA.
Richard: I should note a correction, this happens from time to time. One of those paragraphs that I wrote said incorrectly that interleukin 10 is reduced but in fact I misstated that because and I’ll send you the correction not just because…
Clint: I see the point.
Richard: There was a study by Will Sack and I actually looked at the entire study and interleukin 10 is anti- inflammatory. I knew that but it got (inaudible) with the others.
Richard: The beta-glucans from the oats raised the level of interleukin 10 and that’s part of how it reduces inflammation because interleukin 10 is actually anti-inflammatory. And other aspects of microbiome will boost the production of interleukin 10. It’s something that I’ve exploited sometimes with the Lyme disease patients. Because Lyme disease is characterized by lots of inflammation similar to rheumatoid arthritis. And in fact sometimes it looks very similar.
Clint: Yes. I confront that from time to time. People say the doctor wasn’t sure whether it was that or that.
Richard: Yes. I’m sure you do.
Richard: So really there are several different levels of benefit. Just to summarize that. And makes oats really a very accessible convenient food. There’s not much to fermenting it but certainly just making sure that the needed bacteria are there in one form or another. Yes that would be the critical factor there to reap the most benefits from the oats.
Clint: And you know what that’s just gave me like a sudden light bulb moment. Maybe that’s why it takes a while for people to be able to graduate to be able to eat the oats because I’d load them up on greens like crazy for a while. And foods that are really simple to digest like buckwheat and quinoa which are also alkalizing and just you know non sort of reactive cause they’re just seeds so they’re not they’re not grains. And then maybe as the gut bacteria reach threshold, then they have the fermentation capacity to be able to then handle the oats. What are your thoughts on that?
Richard: That’s perfectly logical. That’s exactly what I was thinking would be the mechanism. There’s a point where the right things are eating the oats mostly lactobacillus. And lactobacillus is a bit of a gate keeper and the gut also and that it inhibits the growth of a great number of harmful or not very good bacteria. And as soon as you can get the lactobacillus levels up to where they should be it is very often a reduction in various symptoms because now the lactobacillus is inhibiting the growth of a lot of organisms that might otherwise promote inflammation.
Clint: Right. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. This is a great way to close on a high. That’s what you’re meant to do in stand up. You meant to open with your best joke and end with your second best joke.
Clint: And I think we’ve done that. Yeah.
Clint: So. Wow. That’s an insight for me that’s been interesting because I thought it may have had to do. We know that oats are slightly acidifying nothing compared to like meat dairy products particularly the shellfish end of the acidification spectrum. But they’re slightly more acidifying than say you know your potatoes, sweet potatoes, buckwheat and quinoa and things. And I thought that it might have had to do in my earlier conclusions on the acid forming effects of oats because we do notice that some people when they start to take them they take a little while and then after maybe a week or two they find they drop them again for a day or two. Reset back to baseline then reintroduce them again. And I’ve described that as a bit of a creep almost like as though the acidity levels in the body is just creeping a little bit. But I think that that might not necessarily be as accurate as just the what we just described a moment ago. I actually starting to feel that that’s more of an accurate description of what’s happening.
Richard: It’s help people to improve their health and get their lactobacillus going. It’s good to test to know what you’re doing if that’s possible. I have a coupon on my website that reduces the cost of one of those ubiome kits.
Clint: OK, awesome! Yeah. We’ll pass that across. And what’s your web address. And also are you still doing the Skype consultations because I know that that was popular last time we spoke. How do people contact you.
Richard: My website is neurodoc4u.com. Yeah. And the best email to reach me is doc@neurodoc4u.com.
Clint: Okay well I’ll post those on to the transcription that I put on to the page where we host this podcast episode. I hope everyone’s been inspired to want to get to a point where they can eat oats again because I feel that it’s so so clear. The evidence behind eating oats I do too. To recap again what I said at the top of this conversation feel that it is one of the most important milestones in our diet that we should be trying to reach and be able to eat oats. And even if it means having to after a few weeks of eating them reset occasionally back to the baseline foods eliminate the oats for a day or two if they are causing you a little more pain, and then resume exactly where you’re at at the beginning of that reset and just see if we can get them back into your diet because once they are back in the diet I mean you have just gone through a couple of pages of reasons for gut health that will translate to symptom relief for people with rheumatoid.
Clint: So thank you so much Richard! It has been fun as always.
Richard: It’s fun as always for me too. It’s nice to have you in the US of A.
Clint: We didn’t get taken out by hurricane So I’m still doing what I’m doing.
Richard: Excellent!
Clint: So thank you and we’ll talk again. We’ve got you and I have worked behind the scenes on some other research projects and I look forward to having you back on to talk about those.
Richard: Thank you Clint! I look forward to it as well. Best of luck to everybody that follows you for their health.