Know Thyself
E137 - Dr. Will Bulsiewicz: “Your Gut is Wiser Than Your Mind!” - Science of Intuition, Mood & Microbiome
Tue, 04 Mar 2025
Leading gastroenterologist, Dr. Will Bulsiewicz, delves into the fascinating world of the microbiome and its profound impact on our health. He discusses the gut-brain connection, and reveals how our intuition and gut feelings are intertwined with it. He shares insights into the best diets for gut health, the influence of the nervous system on it, and it's impact on our mental health. Ultimately, Dr. B emphasizes the power of human connection and spiritual health in fostering a thriving microbiome. Try MUDWTR & Get Up to 43% off + a free frother:https://mudwtr.com/knowthyselfAndrés Book Recs: https://www.knowthyself.one/books___________0:00 Intro 2:50 The Magic of the Microbiome9:30 You Have the Power to Change Your Biology10:46 Modern Living is at Odds with Health13:57 The Gut/Brain Connection18:15 Reality of Intuition & Gut Feelings26:10 Pregnancy & The Microbiome30:19 Human Connection and our Microbiome32:58 Ad: MUDWTR - Energy & focus without the jitters34:15 The Best Diet for Your Gut? 41:00 How the Nervous System Influences our Gut46:55 Link Between Unresolved Trauma and Gut Issues 50:52 Correlation of Mental Health & Digestion58:37 Fecal Transplants1:02:51 How Antibiotics Destroy the Gut1:07:35 Why Diet is Invaluable for Healing1:11:34 Vegan vs Carnivore Diets1:15:41 Importance of Fiber in Our Diets1:28:30 The Best Things You Can Do for Your Gut1:37:56 Danger of Glyphosate1:41:15 Fasting, Cleansing, and Parasites1:48:19 How Alcohol Ruins the Gut1:54:20 Skin Health Conditions 1:59:15 Power of Human Connection & Spiritual Health 2:03:45 Conclusion___________Episode Resources: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theguthealthmd/https://38tera.comhttps://www.instagram.com/andreduqum/https://www.instagram.com/knowthyself/https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJ4wglCWTJeWQC0exBalgKghttps://www.knowthyself.oneSpotify & Apple: https://open.spotify.com/show/4FSiemtvZrWesGtO2MqTZ4?si=d389c8dee8fa4026https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/know-thyself/id1633725927
Chapter 1: What is the microbiome and why is it important?
To me, if there's only one thing that I would want people to take away from this show, this is it right here. I think that nature is way smarter than we are as humans. The beauty of it, the intelligence of it, to me, this is better proof of a higher power than anything that I can see out there.
Hey everyone, welcome back to the podcast. Today we are joined by a leading health gut expert and gastroenterologist and New York Times bestselling author. So often on this podcast, we explore themes around what it means to be filled with knowledge and live a life of wisdom. And a huge part of that that's inextricable from being human is our gut.
our gut intuition, our gut feelings, our gut health, and how they're all enmeshed into one human being that is us. And our guest today, Dr. Will Bolzewicz, is going to be able to help us guide and give us information to make the most of our gut. And so our gut is so intertwined in our mind, our mood, our longevity, and life at large. And I'm excited to dive into all the nuance.
Thanks for being here, man. Oh, amazing. Thank you for having me. If somebody's just tuning into this episode, and as often people do when they listen to podcasts, they ask themselves, what can I ought to be expecting to gain from this episode in particular? What's the promise of tuning into this episode and why people should stick around?
The promise is that we're gonna be unpacking the newest frontier of science that is changing the way that we think about the human body. And I don't think that there's an element of human health, but also the human experience that isn't in some way connected back to this, our gut microbiome.
And so the value that a person gets is that by nurturing health within this part of our body, this part that's not even human, you can become superior, not only in terms of your health, not only in terms of how you feel, but also I think it makes you feel more aligned with your nature. This is who you are.
The more that I've been diving into researching, prepping for this podcast, getting into your work more, there are so many avenues to explore. And so I want to kind of segment a few out, first starting with the very simple question of what is the microbiome fundamentally?
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Chapter 2: How can we change our biology through gut health?
Yeah, so this world that we live in, it started with single cellular organisms that are so small that we can't see them with the naked eye. And we eventually evolved to being more complex, which is you and I. But these microbes, this entire time, have been everywhere, covering everything. And so from the very beginning of us as humans, we've always had our partners, which are these microbes.
The microbiome is basically a community of microorganisms, mostly bacteria, but it also includes things like yeasts, these things called archaea that we could talk about if you want to, potentially parasites, and then viruses. And you take the entirety of that and acknowledge that they're covering us from the top of our head to the tip of our toes, then our nose and our mouth.
They're most concentrated inside of our large intestine, which is our colon. And they have basically inserted themselves into human physiology, where in order for our body to function appropriately the way that it's supposed to, we need them. And we need them to do their job. And they equally need us.
So this symbiotic relationship impacts our digestion, our metabolism, our immune system, our mood, our cognition, and even the way in which we express our genetic code. So if you take a step back and you think about what I just said, digestion, access to nutrients, that's life. and metabolism, immune system. I should add hormones, mood, and cognition.
Chapter 3: What is the gut-brain connection?
This is pretty much everything that matters in terms of human physiology.
Yeah, it's so fascinating how our sense of human agency is so directly affected by this. Can you give us a picture of how vast the microbiome is in and around us? When we say we're made up 95% from the genetic code, is made up of these, of this microbiome.
I'm curious what the first individuals who were discovering, even like, you know, at the microscopic level, the amount of quote unquote beings or life forms or whatever you want to call them exist in and within us. It really like, dissolves the idea of being a separate self.
Rather, we are an interdependent community that's always walking and we are a living ecosystem, which is so different in understanding. So how vast is this microbiome?
Ecosystem is absolutely the right way to describe this. Like it literally is an ecosystem. And the same rules that apply to the Amazon rainforest or the Great Barrier Reef apply to what's happening inside of your body right now and throughout the day. So the vastness of it, the numbers are staggering. And it's very hard for the human mind to sort of pull this together and comprehend it.
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Chapter 4: How does our gut influence our mood and feelings?
But let's, so let's break it down this way that there are in your colon, 38 trillion microorganisms, again, mostly bacteria, right? 38 trillion, you only have 30 trillion human cells. So at a minimum, you are less than 50% human. If we take away your red blood cells, right, and we take away your platelets.
These are things like, these are not the classic cells that nerds like me think about or learn about in biology. Like to me, a classic cell has a nucleus and Golgi complex and all these things, right? So if you take away the red blood cells in the platelets, you're about 10% human and about 90% microbial. And then when we get into your genetic code, it's actually even more profound.
So you started to allude to this, which is that the word microbiome is actually referring to this genetic code that's actually functional and active as a part of our body. And when we look at the entire landscape, if there were 200 pieces of DNA, 199 of them would come from your microbiome, and only one of them would come from your human DNA. So it's like so wildly outnumbering.
And to me, I actually, what I hear in this is actually a story of hope and opportunity because I feel like I grew up hearing about how genetics ruin everything, right? That like we're born a certain way, the code that you receive from your parents, there's nothing you can do about it. And in some way that's going to predict or determine the entirety of your life.
And the beauty of what I'm describing to the listeners right now is that actually that's not the dominant part of your body. Yes, that is a part, but that is not the dominant part of your body. And this other part, the microbiome, is constantly changing, constantly adapting to the choices that we make. So we actually have this profound control over our ability to change it, to shape it.
and to turn it into what we want it to be. So if you're not satisfied with where you're at in terms of your health, I'm here to say that there's an opportunity to change that.
It is an important reminder that we are an ever-changing process. And I heard you mention on another podcast that there's 100 billion stars in a galaxy. We have then over 100 galaxies worth of stars of these microbes in our gut, which is just unfathomable to think about how many there are within us. 380 complete galaxies.
Milky Way galaxies full of stars, take all of the stars, pull them, put them into a ball and do it 380 times into the colon. That's the number of microbes that you have living inside of you right now. So and everything that you put into your mouth is going to come into contact with with this ecosystem.
And the choices that you make today will start to shape the microbes that are dominating within your ecosystem by tomorrow. And that's not to make it sound like, hey, you can change your diet today and by tomorrow you've fixed all of your issues. It's more so to say, though, that the changes that you're looking to make, they will start to happen immediately.
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Chapter 5: What role do human connections play in our microbiome?
We just didn't know it. And that the way in which we lived and existed for 99.999% of human history was aligned with the needs of those microbes. Basically, we lived in nature. We were adapted to the rise of the sun in the morning, the fall of the sun in the evening. We ate a whole food diet because that's all that existed. We moved our bodies, which now we call exercise, because we had to.
There were no cars. All of these things, this is where we came from. And this is what we evolved with as humans. But I feel like we tend to think about evolution, human evolution, as being in isolation. It's not.
It's co-evolution.
I do often think about how at odds directly modern living is with how we ancestrally evolved to. And there's a lot to unpack there in the sterilization of our environment and from the isolation of community, like all these things that we've been programmed in many ways to kind of fear, which have all these deleterious,
Chapter 6: What is the best diet for gut health?
know health uh effects it's insane so i think there's some part of this is like a um there's cultural elements yeah in the western world it's not just america but like i think that we kind of take it to an extreme in the united states where you know basically like where we come from is we're tribal right and that explains our need for social connection And we have an appetite for that.
We're starving for that. And the problem is like we're suffering right now through an epidemic of loneliness because we have lost those natural connections that exist. And I think that a big part of the reason why is because we've, from a cultural perspective, promoted concepts of individualism. where you think about yourself, you don't think about your tribe, you think about yourself.
And we've also promoted the value of materialism.
So you and I, we grew up in a time where, at least to me, success was defined as me leaving my parents, becoming independent, buying a house, living in that house.
And if I'm really successful, that house is so big that every person that lives in that house could isolate themselves in a different corner and not have to come into contact with one another. And that is actually the complete antithesis from where we came from. Where, you know, as tribal creatures, it was never about money or goods and the accumulation of wealth. It was about your tribe.
You were only as good as your tribe in those connections. And that's what allowed you to survive, to thrive. And I think that's a big part of what we lost is like when we made the choice to stop focusing on each other and like our connections and service to one another. When we made the decision to stop focusing on those things, when we turned inward to what do I need? How can I serve myself?
We made a mistake.
The more that I've grown on my journey, the more I've really, in many ways, recognize the vastness of my own ignorance, like how complex we are as human beings and how dynamic of a process we are, like we spoke to, and how many elements really affect our conscious, waking, living experience. And I think...
What I try best with this podcast is to bring forth conversations that help people take a sense of responsibility for improving their own sense of agency in their life and being, in many ways, the change in which others can look at and be inspired by in their life. And so I would love to kind of zoom in a little bit more on the individual level now.
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Chapter 7: How does unresolved trauma affect gut health?
And your microbes are producing chemicals that will ultimately enter the bloodstream. And when they get into the bloodstream, within a matter of seconds, your heart will circulate that blood up to the brain. And those chemicals have influence. on the blood brain barrier. So the brain is encapsulated by this protective wall.
And that protective wall actually is made up with the exact same cellular architecture as your gut barrier. So things that can heal your gut barrier can also heal your blood brain barrier. And things that harm your gut barrier will also harm your brain barrier.
And this is a perfect example of how these things are interconnected because when something is harming your gut, it will also harm your brain. But also those chemicals, many of them, many of them will cross the blood brain barrier and have influence there. Your gut is the second most dominant location in terms of nerves in your body. So you have 500 million nerves within your gut.
That is, by the way, five times what you will find in your spinal cord. And that's why we refer to this as the enteric nervous system or the second brain. And all those 500 million nerves are feeling and sensing as we sit here and speak to one another constantly, not in the same way that my fingertip does, it's a little bit different, but they're feeling and they serve a purpose.
And that information gets basically brought together into the vagus nerve. And the vagus nerve, which is a pair of nerves that basically connect our brain down to our heart, our lungs, and dominantly our gut, The vagus nerve is the information superhighway. It's carrying that, all those 500 million nerves worth of info back up to the brain, which is influencing brain function.
And I think when we talk about things like, I would imagine you want to talk about gut feelings. This is where we need to start the conversation right there is the vagus nerve, which is feeling and sensing 500 million nerves. So there's this and this is, by the way, just the way in which the gut is communicating to the brain, you know, neurotransmitters.
There's over 30 neurotransmitters produced in the gut. We think about serotonin when it comes to our mood. 95% of serotonin is produced in the gut. We think about dopamine in terms of motivation. 50% of dopamine is produced in the gut. So it's this powerful organ in terms of communicating to the brain, and then there's ways in which the brain is communicating back.
We've become so heady as a culture. And I know a lot of ancient wisdom traditions, cultures, tribes view the gut as like almost the first intelligence or more of the first brain.
It absolutely is. It literally is. Yeah. So here's the thing. A tree can't grow without roots, right? The larger the tree, the more there needs to be roots down below the surface, right?
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Chapter 8: What is the role of serotonin in gut and mental health?
Whereas when people are struggling in their relationship, not the case. And now you could say, well, is this because of sexual intimacy? Are you sharing microbes during sexual intimacy? Well, I think that's at least part of it because when we kiss, we share millions of microbes.
What comes to mind is just how casual so many people are kissing other people.
Not realizing there's so many microbes being exchanged. I think that there's a selection that happens before you get to that point, right? So you mentioned earlier intuition.
Yeah.
So it's been a while, but because I've been married for some time now, but like I think back to when I was single and dating, sometimes you're on a date and they're a perfectly lovely person and there's just something about it. You're just like, not feeling it. And it's nothing against them. And is that pheromones?
Because if it is, pheromones are, because you may not actually be able to smell a difference. It's more so that you, but you're detecting it. Pheromones are produced by the gut microbes.
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