What if I told you that your gut microbiome may be the reason you are getting sick?

In this article, we will talk about how your gut microbiome:

• Makes up most of your immune system
• Trains your immune system
• Strengthens your gut barrier
• The top 3 things I wish avoided during my life that I believe would have prevented me from constantly getting sick for decades, having low energy and chronic pain, collecting a bunch of autoimmune diseases, and ultimately ending up with thyroid cancer in my early 30s before I finally started figuring it out and healing my body in my late 40s. If you want to skip the science, scroll to the bottom for my list of “3 Things I Wish I Avoided.”

Your gut microbiome is made up of microscopic powerhouses that may be what is stopping you from catching that cold that the person sitting next to you had at work. If your gut microbiome is not healthy, then it may be the reason you caught that cold.

Your Immunity Comes from Your Gut Microbiome

Your gut microbiome is critical for helping to regulate your immune system. Seventy to 80% of your body’s immune cells are located in the gut. So, you can imagine the deep connection between your gut health and your immune system function.

Immune System Training and Balance

Your gut microbiome acts as an immune system “trainer.” It teaches your immune cells to be able to tell the difference between harmful pathogens and non-harmful or even beneficial microbes. A healthy gut microbiome:

• Promotes immune tolerance.
• Prevents the immune system from overreacting to harmless substances.
• Has beneficial microbes that compete with harmful pathogens which reduces the risk for infections.
• Reduces your risk of autoimmune conditions.

Production of Immune-Regulating Compounds

Microbes in your gut also produce metabolites that directly influence immune function. Metabolites are the products created as a result of metabolic processes occurring in the body.  Small chain fatty acids (SCFA), like butyrate, have potent anti-inflammatory properties and help modulate the production of regulatory T cells (a.k.a. TRegs). TRegs:

• Are essential for maintaining immune balance.
• Help prevent excessive immune responses that ultimately can lead to chronic inflammation or autoimmune diseases.

Strengthening the Gut Barrier

Your gut microbiome supports the integrity of the intestinal barrier, preventing harmful pathogens and toxins from entering the bloodstream. This “gut barrier” is critical in your body’s immune defense. By producing SCFAs and other compounds, beneficial microbes can:

• Strengthen the epithelial lining of the gut (that is the internal lining of the gut that controls what enters the bloodstream)
• Reduce intestinal permeability, which is associated with immune dysfunction and systemic, or “whole body” inflammation.

Inflammation Control

When your gut microbiome is balanced and healthy, it helps regulate inflammatory responses. This lowers the risk of chronic diseases like:

• Inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD), like ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s Disease
• Rheumatoid arthritis
• Asthma
• Diabetes
• Certain cancers And more

Shameless Plug

Now it’s time for me to give a shameless plug. I am in the process of creating a course that will give people a guided process for restoring your gut microbiome and your cellular health. This is designed to get you pooping right, reduce inflammation, improve your energy, and optimize your health. This is the cumulation of decades of searching for answers, attending conferences and seminars, and paying for other experts to coach me on their best hacks to remove toxins, fix my gut, drain my lymphatic system, and clean out my cells.

I am taking the best parts of everything I have learned and creating a systemized process that anyone can follow at their own pace. If you want to keep updated about when the pilot program will be launching, then make sure you are on my email list. You can get on my email list by going to Jackpot Wellness and downloading the “Lucky 7 Daily Habits.” That will allow you to receive notifications for when we are launching that program. There are a bunch of perks for being in the pilot program like:

• Close and regular communication with me
• Opportunity to give feedback on the program so it can improve in the future for others
• Access to several bonuses at no additional cost (more on that later)
• Once you are on the mailing list, make sure to respond to one of my emails with the words “cellular health” to be added to the list of people interested in participating in the pilot program so you will be contacted early to see if you qualify to be in that pilot group.
• To see if you qualify, you will fill out a quick questionnaire and have a Zoom call with me, Dr. Krystal.

3 Things I Wish I Avoided

These are the 3 things that I wish I avoided during my life. I believe by doing even just these 3 things, then I would have prevented my autoimmune diseases, asthma and Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, and ultimately my thyroid cancer. I believe these changes would have also helped me avoid mood challenges and extreme fatigue in my 20s, 30s, and 40s.

1. Avoid ultra-processed foods: What are ultra-processed foods? Well, if you simply cut, cook, or blend food, then you are processing it to some degree. However, ultra-processed foods are these frankenfoods we are consuming like the potato chips and candy bars. It is not just that though, it is also the “Impossible Burger” which is being marketed as “health food.”
   • An easy way to know if you are eating ultra-processed foods: Read the ingredients. If you do not recognize it, do not know how to pronounce it, or it is not a food item, then it is an ultra-processed food.
   • A simple way to avoid ultra-processed food: Eat whole, organic food with ingredients you recognize. Fresh fruits and veggies, legumes, healthy fats, and meats are a great way to know you are eating unprocessed or minimally processed foods.
2. Avoid city or even well water. Of course you should filter your water, and many of us do. However, the cleanest water you can drink is distilled water. There are so many toxins in our water, whether you get your water from the city or from a well, distilling that water is the only way to be sure it is truly free of things that can harm you. In our water, there is more in it than just the neurotoxin fluoride, if that isn’t bad enough. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, these are commonly found in even well water (which most people think is clean and safe):
   • Microorganisms like parasites, bacteria, and viruses
   • Nitrate and nitrite which come from chemical fertilizers, human sewage, and animal waste and fertilizers
   • Heavy metals like arsenic, cadmium, copper, lead, and more
   • Radionuclides, which are radioactive forms of elements like uranium and radium.
   • Organic chemicals like inks, dyes, pesticides, pharmaceuticals, disinfectants, and so on.
   • Here is a link if you want to contact a lab to test your water in your area.
   • There are expensive water distillers, but my family got this affordable water distiller on Amazon, and it has worked great for us. I have no affiliation to this.
3. Avoid toxins in your house and on your body. I am careful about what kind of products I put on my body and use in my house. Am I perfect about this? No! I don’t think anyone can be perfect about this. However, I am always searching to improve what I am using to avoid toxins like:
   • Phthalates
   • Parabens
   • Metals
   • Formaldehyde
   • Fragrance…the list is endless
   • The Environmental Working Group is a great site to find information on how to score your products for toxins. Instead of being overwhelmed with this, I recommend just doing research on one product at a time when it is time to buy a new product. This helps to avoid overwhelm while still making regular progress in the right direction.

Take Care of Your Gut Microbiome, and it Will Take Care of You

Your gut microbiome is a critical part of your immune system. When your gut microbiome is healthy, your immune system is robust and healthy. It is able to fight off pathogens, like viruses, bacteria, and fungus. It is even able to identify wayward cells that are no longer serving their purpose and starting to morph into cancer cells.

When your microbiome is unhealthy, then your immune system can go to sleep or start attacking healthy cells. When your immune system goes haywire, then it doesn’t just stop working or start being overly active. It really does both at the same time.

It starts allowing infections and cancer cells to multiply and wreak havoc on your health while it lets infections like bacteria, viruses, and fungi go unchecked. Simultaneously, it starts to attack your healthy cells. For some, this shows up as Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, for others it shows up as Crohn’s disease, rheumatoid arthritis, or any other autoimmune disease.

It is because it becomes overactive in some ways and underactive in other ways that you will see people with one autoimmune disease more likely to have another autoimmune disease. It is also why people with an autoimmune disease are sick with infections more often and are more likely to develop cancers.

By getting your microbiome healthy, you create a robust immune system that knows what to kill and what to leave alone, allowing you to be sick less often and reduce your risk for chronic diseases like autoimmune diseases.

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Belkaid, Y., & Hand, T. W. (2014). Role of the microbiota in immunity and inflammation. Cell, 157(1), 121-141. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2014.03.011

Environmental Working Group. (2019). EWG. EWG. https://www.ewg.org/

Peng, L., Li, Z. R., Green, R. S., Holzman, I. R., & Lin, J. (2009). Butyrate enhances the intestinal barrier by facilitating tight junction assembly via activation of AMP-activated protein kinase in Caco-2 cell monolayers. Journal of Nutrition, 139(9)

US EPA. (2019, February 19). Potential Well Water Contaminants and Their Impacts | US EPA. US EPA. https://www.epa.gov/privatewells/potential-well-water-contaminants-and-their-impacts

US EPA. (2018, March 23). Basic Information about Lead in Drinking Water | US EPA. United States Environmental Protection Agency. https://www.epa.gov/ground-water-and-drinking-water/basic-information-about-lead-drinking-water

Wang, Juanjuan, et al. “Gut-Microbiota-Derived Metabolites Maintain Gut and Systemic Immune Homeostasis.” Cells, vol. 12, no. 5, 2 Mar. 2023, pp. 793–793, https://doi.org/10.3390/cells12050793

Wiertsema, S. P., van Bergenhenegouwen, J., Garssen, J., & Knippels, L. M. J. (2021). The Interplay between the Gut Microbiome and the Immune System in the Context of Infectious Diseases throughout Life and the Role of Nutrition in Optimizing Treatment Strategies. Nutrients, 13(3), 886. https://doi.org/10.3390/nu13030886