Holistic Gut Health

I'm talking with the Doctor of the Decade, Dr. Mark Stengler, about holistic gut health and his new book. It's time for the Line of Fire with your host, biblical scholar and cultural commentator, Dr. Michael Brown. Your voice for moral sanity and spiritual clarity.

Call 866-34-TRUTH to get on the Line of Fire. And now, here's your host, Dr. Michael Brown. Alright, I get to sit back and do an interview today. Dr. Mark Stengler, the book just released today, brand new, and we're just waiting to get him on the phone in the midst of his busy practice.

He's going to step out for the entire hour with us. Brand new book, writing number one in its category on Amazon. The Holistic Guide to Gut Health. Discover the truth about leaky gut, balancing your microbiome, and restoring whole body health. I'm interested in balancing my microbiome because I don't even know what a microbiome is.

Biome, we'll find out the right pronunciation and all of that. Dr. Stengler and I met when I was doing an apologetics conference that was hosted by his home church at that time in California. And each day, someone in the church was responsible for hosting you, and they provided all the healthy salads for me to sit on, someone else crazy enough to eat the way I eat.

We got to know each other. This is after God had transformed my lifestyle, so within the last 10 years, and he's become my personal physician. He is a naturopathic or naturopathic doctor, so well trained in Western medicine as well as in other aspects of medicine, and was recently voted not just Doctor of the Year, but Doctor of the Decade. So he loves the Lord. He spends one day a week, instead of going into his practice, he goes out to a park and shares the gospel. They put up signs and they share the gospel and answer questions and go back and forth with people.

It's really, really quite remarkable. So he's got a great heart for the Lord and a great heart to see God's people get healthy. William Sears, bestselling author of multiple books, says this, Wow, what a good health read. Dr. Mark, one of America's most trusted doctors, takes you on an easy reading journey through your gut. As an experienced and science-based author, Dr. Stangler uses memorable phrases and engaging infographics to show and tell you how to enjoy his life's teaching. Better gut health, better total body health. My wish for you, wise readers, learn it, do it, and feel it. I personally have followed his good gut health plan and am enjoying vibrant head, brain, and gut brain health.

Well, that is encouraging to hear. Okay, we've got Dr. Stangler on the line with us. Hey, Mark, welcome to the line of fire. Congratulations on your new book. Hey, Michael, thank you so much. Yeah, so I was just introducing things, reading one of the endorsements. So we've known for some time about the importance of diet and gut in terms of overall health.

What is it that is so new and striking about your book that seems to really be getting a lot of positive attention? Well, I think with my book, the main thing is, like you said, everyone knows that diet and digestion is important, but many people don't realize what's going on in the small intestine. The small intestine is the size of two tennis courts when you take into account the square footage, if you will.

Wow. And it's because of these projections we have called villi, which are involved in absorption. And we're supposed to absorb about 60 tons of food in our lifetime. So what we know in the science now is a lot of people, because of diet, because of stress, because of medications, and other reasons, they have issues in the small intestine where the absorption should take place, and they develop something called a leaky gut. And leaky gut basically refers to malabsorption that occurs in the small intestine when the lining is not healthy. And as a result, not only do people suffer from common digestive conditions such as irritable bowel syndrome, inflammatory bowel disease, all sorts of digestive issues, but we now know it affects the whole body. So the science has shown that when you have a leaky gut and you absorb particles, bacteria, toxins, other things you should not be absorbing through this gatekeeper-type area, it affects any organ in the body, from the brain to the skin to the eyes to the mouth to your bones, your muscles, your immune system, everything. So we have what's called this gut-body connection or gut-body access. And so you can have a healthy body if you have a healthy intestinal wall, or you can have unhealthy organs or chronic health problems if you have this leaky gut. So this is why it's so important for people to have not only a healthy diet, but a healthy digestive tract.

All right, so friends, this could be a lifesaver for you. This book, The Holistic Guide to Gut Health, we may, if we have time, we may take some health-related calls and especially some gut-health-related calls at 866-34-TRUTH, 866-348-7884. So let's go through this then and just kind of run through the contents. You've got two major parts of the book. Part one is all about the gut, and then part two, the holistic healthy gut protocol. So give us a summary. It's all about the gut.

What does that actually mean? Well, what we say in the book, what I say in the book is, we've always had this term, if you will, you are what you eat. And there's truth to that, obviously, because our cells require nutrition and our cells are constantly turning over. If you provide the right nutrition, people feel good and they can regenerate their cells properly with the right nutrients, but it's more than that.

You are what you eat and what you absorb. So there are some people out there, they eat quite healthy, but because they have gut problems, they have absorption problems in their small intestine, most specifically, that leads to a whole host of whole-body problems. For example, in the book, I document in the scientific literature how a lot of people who have either weak immunity, you know, you get infections easily, or people who have autoimmune conditions, which now is over 100 million Americans, having problems with the absorption of small intestines directly linked to these conditions.

And so people may not make that connection. And so if you've got a chronic health problem with chronic health problems running in the family and you're the kind of person who maybe you've been on a lot of antibiotics, maybe you've taken pain medications, a lot of research has shown that people take these nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, you know, the classic ibuprofen, Tylenol, these pain medicines, they cause damage to the small intestine lining. People end up with leaky gut, which then can affect you systemically.

And so that's really the whole key. The key is not just a healthy diet, but having healthy gut function. And part of that, of course, is our microbiome. The microbiome actually contains over 100 trillion organisms that should be working synergistically with our body. But again, because of diet, stress, antibiotics, pain medications, toxins in the environment, this microbiome gets out of balance and it contributes greatly to disease. And so there's a lot of research, even by the pharmaceutical companies right now, trying to establish how to alter the gut flora to help things like autoimmune conditions, to help mood conditions like anxiety, depression, appetite, weight control, because this connection has been shown.

Now, obviously, we prefer to treat these things more naturally, but everyone is recognizing this gut, whole body connection, and it's critical to both preventing and treating chronic illness. All right, so let's just look at something broadly and then we'll look more specifically about what you get into in the book. Brand new, I'm holding a copy.

I got it in advance. Nancy's reading it right now. The Holistic Guide to Gut Health.

Dr. Mark Stengler just released today, April 16th. So you have studied the human body so much, but from the perspective of a believer as well as a doctor. So if anyone can say that we're fearfully, wonderfully made, you can lecture us on that. So if I'm eating something that's healthy, just the broader picture, and then we'll get more specific with your book, let's say I'm eating healthy, unprocessed whole foods. I'm eating vegetables, organic vegetables and things like that, and that's processing through my body versus I'm having Coca-Cola and peanut M&Ms. What's one doing versus the other to this amazing body that God gave us? Yeah.

Well, very good point. Well, so for example, if you're eating more of a whole foods diet, more of the foods like God designed them, that's going to do a few things. First of all, plant foods and as well other foods, like let's say wild salmon and things like that, they're anti-inflammatory, so they would reduce inflammation not only in your body in general, but in your gut itself. So if you have chronic inflammation in your gut from a poor diet, say high sugar diet, alcohol, eating too many of the bad fats, fast foods, fried foods, that creates inflammation in the gut, and in part that's going to damage the lining of the small intestine.

Now you start absorbing particles, which you shouldn't be, and that creates problems not just in your gut but throughout your whole body. If you're eating the healthy foods, the whole foods type of diet, then that's reducing inflammation, and we know the fiber in the plant foods, especially things called polyphenols, they feed the good bacteria. They're like food for your good bacteria. So if you want your good bacteria to thrive in your microbiome, you want a diet that's rich in plant foods, so that is super nutrition for your gut microbes. If you're eating a lot of sugar, processed foods, that feeds the unhealthy microbes in the gut, things like the yeast, which can overgrow, or other types of bacteria, funguses, things like that. And so you can imbalance in the microbiome, which by the way, the microbiome we now know is more than just bacteria. Our microbiome also includes naturally occurring yeast, naturally occurring viruses. And so again, with a healthy diet, you'll have a good balance, and these bacteria and these other organisms work in your favor. They produce nutrients in your gut, they help with absorption and breaking down food, they help with neurotransmitter balance, hormone balance, all these types of things. So this is why providing the right substrates through our diet for the microbiome is so important.

And we've just got about a minute before the next break, but will this affect our mental and emotional state as well? Yes, this has really been in the literature a lot the last few years. Even mainstream medicine is very much interested in how they are now showing by improving the gut microbiome balance, if you will, improves conditions such as anxiety, depression, cognitive function. So there's a gut brain access, which is definitive now in the medical literature.

Yeah, all right, friends, the new book, The Holistic Guide to Gut Health, just out today, so you can get it in paperback form, you can get it as an e-book, you can get it as an audiobook, it's already number one in its category on Amazon, and Dr. Stengler is widely trusted, again, voted doctor of the decade recently, which is a pretty high honor, and the endorsements from a wide range of medical specialists. And Mark, is this book written for your average reader? Do you have to be a medical doctor to understand it?

No, good question. It really is. It's written for the layperson. All right, so get a copy of the book today, The Holistic Guide to Gut Health. When we come back on the other side of the break, we're going to start going through the holistic healthy gut protocol. So we'll give you as much content as we can on the air to be a blessing to you as we want to see you healthy. That spiritually, emotionally, mentally, and physically, yeah, if your body breaks down, it's a lot harder to do a lot of other things in life. We want to see you thriving in health.

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Use the code BROWN25. Back with my friend, Dr. Mark Stengler, author of the literally brand new book, The Holistic Guide to Gut Health. Mark, in your practice in California, you've treated many, many thousands of patients. How many have you seen recover from serious illness just by major lifestyle change?

You know, a fair amount. I've seen over 25,000 patients in almost 30 years. And yeah, we've seen a lot of acute and chronic health conditions just through greatly improving diet, lifestyle, through exercise, stress reduction techniques, prayer, these types of things. We've seen some pretty remarkable turnarounds. And at least in part, we also see people, maybe they don't get full recovery, but we see significant improvement by addressing diet, lifestyle, stress, things like that. So it always plays a role in someone's recovery.

All right. And specifically, things relating to leaky gut. If we can get these things fixed, what kind of conditions can be taken care of? You mentioned a few things earlier on that can be the results of leaky gut. So let's flip it around. If we can get these things fixed, the holistic health, healthy gut protocol, what kind of diseases, conditions can be removed, relieved? What kind of emotional situations can be addressed?

Well, it's a very good question. I painstakingly went through the medical literature in my book. I've got hundreds of references. But here's what we know. By addressing leaky gut, studies show you can help people with hormone imbalance. Even things like thyroid disorders, which quite often have their root in autoimmunity, where the immune system is attacking their own thyroid, is related to leaky gut.

There's research showing that type 2 diabetes and prediabetes can be related to imbalances with leaky gut and the microbiome. There's been a lot of research lately on metabolism and weight, how the microbiome directly affects your metabolism, how you burn calories. So if you're struggling with weight, addressing the gut could help.

A lot of research and most of the research in recent years has been done on the brain and nervous system. So again, if you have problems with cognitive function, anxiety, depression, mood disorders, you could be helped by addressing the gut. A lot of good research on muscle and joint problems.

So I talk about in the book research they've done where people have arthritis. Both osteoarthritis, where joints are degenerating from wear and tear over the years, as well as autoimmune types of arthritis can be helped by addressing the gut. People are very interested to find out that there's been studies on the gut heart access. So by improving the microbiome in the gut, you actually can improve the functioning of your heart. You can reduce your risk of things like heart failure and plaque buildup in your arteries. Fatigue, we know that how you're absorbing your foods and nutrients obviously is going to affect how your energy is because you've got to get nutrients in there to create energy. But also we know the bacteria in the gut produce metabolites, which our cells use to produce energy. Skin health, eye health, and so it kind of goes on and on. Basically what I tell people is that your gut health affects every cell, every organ in your body. So basically someone buys a beautiful new car and they keep painting it and vacuuming it and detailing it. But instead of putting gas in, they're putting sludge and mud in.

That car's not going anywhere. And a lot of times we put so much emphasis on the outward stuff or we try to patch things up without dealing with the root cause issue when it has to do with what we're putting in our bodies. And Mark, you've only known me on this side of my life transformation, but you do my blood work every year. It's so detailed, you'll take up to 14 vials of blood or have them done at the clinic. And then we get dozens of pages of results that we'll go over by phone. Even my wife Nancy, who's so familiar with this, doesn't even know every category. And sometimes you're laughing on the phone saying you've got like optimum level here for a guy in his 20s. I wouldn't be here today.

I'm sure I would have been gone. I was 59 when God intervened in my life and made the transformation, but everything changed. Everything from energy to health to blood pressure to headaches to sleep apnea.

I mean everything changed and yet there's even more to it that you want to get into here. So let's start in part two, the holistic healthy gut protocol. You have a whole chapter, we are the foods we eat and absorb. And then a chapter, super supplements for leaky gut and dysbiosis. How do you pronounce that? Yeah, dysbiosis or the imbalance of the microbiome. Got it. Okay, so talk to us about that.

I can't even pronounce the words, so I'm just going to sit and listen. Well, no, it's true. I mean the number one thing we usually start with patients, unless they're stress holes or just off the charts, you've got to start with the diet because obviously those foods are going into your gut. And so if you're putting unhealthy foods like most people are consuming in the Western or standard American diet, full of genetically modified organisms, pesticides, harmful fats, low in fiber, high in sugar, this is all a recipe for damaging your gut and not getting good nutrition into your cells. But the good thing is they have shown in research, if you change your diet to a whole foods diet, even in mainstream medical journals like one called Gut Pathogens, they've done studies and they found just a slight change in the diet can quickly improve your gut flora, quickly improve how your lining of your small intestine health is.

So your body can respond very quickly. We are designed by our Creator to be able to continuously monitor our environment, take things in and adapt. God has set all the things within our body to be able to repair and heal, but we've got to do our part. We've got to eat foods in our natural state. So we want people to eat gut-healing foods. That starts with a lot of healthy plant-based foods. You know, Michael, in our book I talk about prebiotic foods. Again, these are foods which feed the friendly bacteria in your gut and help to heal up the lining.

So foods which have been studied which feed the good bacteria, foods like artichoke, asparagus, beans, beets, chicory, honey, onions, peas, root vegetables, like gluten sensitivity. Go ahead. I just lost you for a split second. Go ahead. We're with you. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. So these prebiotic foods you mainly get in plant foods, and then you have what are called the probiotic type foods, and these are where you're getting things like kefir, yogurt, miso, sauerkraut, sour pickles, things of this nature. They contain direct sources of the good bacteria, and we actually have meal planning how to incorporate these types of foods into the diet. So, yeah, we need to first start with the diet. That is number one what we see with patients. If you're doing that, you're on track to healing your gut and improving your whole body health. Now, some people have chronic digestive problems. They have chronic illnesses, and we have to go beyond that.

We have to get them on supplements which supply super nutrition to the gut lining so that it can heal up much more effectively. And, you know, of course, we can talk about that. All right. Yeah.

Let's do that on the other side of the break. The new book, The Holistic Guide to Gut Health. So this, this, friends, incorporates many, many, many years, the decades of active medical practice at a thriving clinic in California. And then Dr. Stengler is always studying the latest medical literature. And you stayed in school for advanced medical studies, haven't you? Yeah. I think I've had post college, I think I've been in school like 15 years. Got it.

Got it. So, of course, you do theology studies as well. What medical related degrees have you been working on? Well, I got advanced degrees in endocrinology. That's hormone balancing. I have a master's in human biology as well. And, yeah, so.

Right. That's in addition to all the medical training. So the nice thing is, though, it's all packed in here together in readable form and with steps to take, practical steps, even meal plans. This could literally doing some of these things could save your life, could improve the quality of your life, could massively extend your life. I'm speaking as an eyewitness, making radical dietary changes with Nancy's help, with God's grace has completely changed me. And friends, if I could do it, I was such a food wimp. I was a chocoholic. My whole diet, my whole life used to have Oreos for breakfast as a boy.

I have more fruit now in a day than I used to have in like a year. So God can help me can help anyone. But this book will lay out the science and give you practical steps to take the holistic guide to gut health. We'll be right back. Hey, friends, Michael Brown here, my delight to serve as your voice for moral sanity and spiritual clarity. We are living in such urgent times today, friends, that all of us are in the line of fire. There's a target on your back.

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Get on the line of fire by calling 866-34-TRUTH. Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. What a joy to speak with my friend and personal physician, personal doctor, Dr. Mark Stengler. His new book, The Holistic Guide to Gut Health, beautifully laid out. If you have a medically related question, this is not an official medical advice for which we're responsible. If you'd like to get some input, if it's digestive related or other, Dr. Stengler always loves to take live calls. So we may have time for that, but best to call now.

866-348-7884. And we won't charge you for the advice. All right, let's go back. There we go. So, Mark, you have a chapter, The Best Lifestyle for a Healthy Gut. Unpack it again to get everything.

You've got to get the book, but let's unpack some of that for our listeners. Yeah, well, in terms of lifestyle, people have to have, number one, a regular form of exercise. It has to be complicated, but your body cannot be balanced without regular exercise. We're designed for movement. So if you're not exercising, your stress hormones get out of balance.

You have a lack of circulation to the digestive organs, so it's going to lead to digestive problems. Number two, a direct way of stress reduction beyond exercise, I think number one is prayer. Reading God's word in prayer, that's how I start my morning off, even before the exercise.

I think that has to be a priority. So the thing is, our whole body is interconnected. So if you're not balancing your lifestyle, your sleep, how you're handling stress, how your relationships are, how your spiritual life is, it will affect you physically, and that includes definitely your gut. At any one time, 40% of the circulation is going to our digestive organs. When you're under stress, your body responds by emphasizing blood flow to your brain and to your working muscles away from your gut.

As a result, you start getting a deterioration, a damage to the lining of the gut, that bone test and that leaky gut like we talked about, and then you're going to end up with absorption problems, digester problems, and whole body problems. Got it. So everything really works together the way God set it up, right? Spirit, mind, body, they work together. Is medical science in general recognizing that it's not just the physical, that there's more going on? Well, they've recognized for a long time definitely the effects of the mental, emotional.

In terms of the spiritual, they don't really get into it a whole lot. I think it's obvious that there's a component of humans where there's a non-material component. How else can you explain things like the conscience, for example, the mind? These things are immaterial, laws of logic and things like that. So there has to be an immaterial world, and the Bible is right.

We are a mixed combination of the material and immaterial. So if we look at science in different parts of the world, medical science, there are different approaches. And a lot of times we think of Chinese medicine or Eastern medicine and just superstition and odd stuff. But there are perspectives where they can be more holistic than we are in our Western thinking, correct?

Oh, absolutely. And they just kind of have a different language system. I mean, they explain things happening in the body in different ways. They do acknowledge, if you look around the world, of course, all the ancient healing systems, they all pretty much acknowledge the spiritual part of humanity now. I mean, they get it wrong in terms of who the Creator is and all that, but they do acknowledge that there's a spiritual component to humankind. So that is true. Yeah, absolutely. And again, the focus here in the Holistic Guide to Gut Health, the focus is on physical things that we're doing, but it's not only that.

It's not just that. So you have in the second half of the book, or the bulk of the book, part two, Holistic Healthy Gut Protocol. We are the foods we eat and absorb.

That's chapter four in the book. Chapter five, Super Supplements for Leaky Gut and Dysbiosis. Chapter six, The Best Lifestyle for a Healthy Gut.

And then chapter seven, Protocols for Targeting Digestive Issues. So is this something where a person can read this and figure out why I'm having ABC symptoms or issues, and that seems to tie in here? Is this the kind of thing where someone can read this and recognize what's happening in their body? Well, I think so. I think it reveals what very likely is going on with it.

I'm going to just give you a quick example. You know, irritable bowel syndrome, people experience gas, bloating, abdominal discomfort quite often. They might have diarrhea or constipation or alternation of the two. That's one of the most common conditions people go to the family doctor for and gastroenterologists. Now, most doctors who deal with this in the regular medical world, they may chalk it off to stress. They may say there's a dietary component.

But there's much more to it than that. We know, based on the research that's been done, 70% of these people have what's called small intestine bacterial overgrowth. And this is where you have bacteria in the small intestine that shouldn't be there. And that's causing the fermentation of foods, gas production, and everything that happens with that. So we talk about that in the book, the root causes, say, irritable bowel syndrome and all the common digestive problems, acid reflux and all that. And what causes them, what kind of symptoms they do, how you can test for them, and then how they can be treated naturally or pharmaceutically, but of course we focus more on the natural treatment.

Quick question. There's a colleague of mine recently hospitalized with perforated colon diverticulitis. How does that tie in with healthy lifestyle, with foods, et cetera? Yeah, studies show that people with diverticulitis, underlying that they have what's called diverticulosis, less out-pocketing in the colon. Pockets in the colon, if you will. And that's happened over time from chronic inflammation, again, usually from the person's diet. A low fiber diet, not having enough of the good bacteria in the colon, and you're getting this perforation or degradation in the colon.

So that's what has set them up for it. So, again, those people who want to work on the diet, heal up the lining, get them on things which have a regenerative effect on the small intestine and colon, like food-grade aloe vera extract, certain types of licorice root extract, slippery elm, things that we use every day with patients and have the studies behind them. All right. I mean, again, life-saving information that sometimes we just treat the symptom without looking at the cause. So you have protocols for targeting digestive issues, then protocols for targeting non-digestive conditions, and then recipes to heal leaky gut and balance your microbiome. And that's, wow, that's a whole bunch of pages of recipes in there.

So you break this down. Someone read the book and see what's happening in their life and basically say, OK, if I make these adjustments, I have the potential of seeing certain changes, and you tell them exactly how to do it, correct? Well, that's true because when the average person goes into their doctor, I mean, they're getting little to no information on what to do for diet and lifestyle and supplements because the average doctor is not trained in that. And so I'm not saying don't use medical knowledge. You should go in there and make sure you don't have more serious things and do your tests. But when it comes to treatment and you're being monitored by your doctor, we pretty much guide you in what to do for the diet and the supplements, which have the science behind them and how they work and how to use them. Got it. All right.

So, friends, the holistic guide to gut health, discover the truth about leaky gut, balancing your microbiome and restoring whole body health. Dr. Mark Sander, we'll get into more, but let's let's grab a call. We will go over to Andrea in northeast Pennsylvania. Welcome to the line of fire. Hi, Dr. Brown. Hey. Go ahead. What's your question for Dr. Stangler?

Yes. So I recently got diagnosed with an esophageal motility issue. I've had a bunch of tests done. I actually recently had a motility study done and they said that the bottom of my esophagus wasn't contracting properly. I also have acid reflux. I have a hiatal hernia. They're sending me for an endo flip to see whether I have a connective tissue disease. And it's difficult for me to swallow all these great foods that, you know, God has given us.

So my question is, what is what supplements would be good for me to do, especially because I'm unable to swallow? I just go ahead. Yeah.

First of all, yeah. Complete the testing. See what's going on.

It's not finding real obvious. You might want to consider something like chiropractic or osteopathic in terms of making sure the nerve flow from the neck, the cervical region is proper going to your to your throat and neck region, number one. But I would definitely recommend you consider supplementing digestive enzymes so you can break that food down better.

That's one thing I would definitely consider doing. Number two, I think you said you did have a little bit of acid reflux or GERD. So we talk about that a lot in the book using things like aloe vera extract, DGL licorice, which has been studied for that problem.

And that soothes the lining of the esophagus. OK, yes, definitely. All right. Excellent. Well, thank you.

Thank you for the answer. Much appreciate it. And all right. Hang on. Just got to do this here. Give me one up. Oh, no. Oh, no, I did it. We.

So, guys, truth. Please reconnect with Dr. Stengler there. We have a new phone system. We've had it for some time now, but there's a different method of locking someone in. And we locked both callers in so they could talk back and forth to each other. And then I hung up on the good doctor. Yeah. Sorry about that. Let others handle that next time around.

Eight, six, six, three, four, eight, seven, eight, eight, four. But listen, don't panic. If you have a medically related question and Dr. Stengler is obviously quite the expert to ask.

This is unofficial. This is not official medical advice, but it's being offered to you free. But don't panic.

I will not. Dr. Brown will not answer your medical question. So my Ph.D., yes, my doctoral dissertation was on the Hebrew word for healing, but I am a doctor, a Ph.D. doctor in Near Eastern languages and literature is not a medical doctor. So I could give you great spiritual counsel to help you get closer to God and some biblical principles for healing and health. But nope, I am not the one to answer your medical questions. We'll get Dr. Stengler back on the air. My profound apologies for hanging up on the good doctor. And yeah, I brought the book home for Nancy immediately, actually was sent to my home and great, great cover.

Very, very appealing. But you can hear Dr. Stender communicates with real clarity and simplicity. And that's what you'll find in the book, which I had to bring from home. So pulled it away from Nancy who started reading it. She studies nutrition day and night.

Both of our lives radically transformed by healthy eating. So we'll be right back. We've got Dr. Stengler back on the other on the line there. We'll come back on the other side of the break. And I've got a spiritual question for him as well, because he's doing outreach every single week, going out in the park, talking to Muslims, talking to atheists, talking to Jehovah's Witnesses, talking to others. He'll often shoot me a note with latest question that came up and we'll brainstorm about the best ways to answer it. So he's got his priorities right.

But as someone who understands God, the creator, the one who designed these bodies in such intricate fashion beyond our wildest imaginations, that God set things up for life if we'll follow his pattern. OK, we'll be right back on the other side of the break. Are you experiencing fatigue, heart palpitations or tingling in your hands and feet? These may be signs that you are deficient in vitamin B12, which may increase your risk of serious cardiovascular conditions without you even knowing it. I'm Paul Burnett, a board certified doctor of holistic health and director of wellness services at Trivita.

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These statements are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. This is how we rise up. It's the Line of Fire with your host, Dr. Michael Brown. Get on the Line of Fire by calling 866-34-TRUTH.

Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. Welcome back to the Line of Fire. I've been really looking forward to today. In fact, I wrongly announced it last week. I got a week ahead of myself. Dr. Mark Stanley's brand new book just came out today.

We timed it for the release. It's already number one in this category on Amazon, The Holistic Guide to Gut Health. We'll take another call from a caller in a moment. But first, Mark, you do regular outreach.

Instead of being in the medical practice one day a week, you go out to a local park, set up your table with a colleague, charts, different things, talk to non-believers. Are you seeing any more openness? Are you seeing people asking more questions?

What are you running into? Honestly, we see a mixture. I know in our evangelism, we certainly use a lot of biological evidence that there has to be a creator. I mean, as time goes on, what are we finding in biology? We're finding in medicine, we find that the body is more and more, far more complex than we thought 10 years ago. So whenever you have something with complex design and function, there is always an intelligence behind it. So when we're talking to atheists, we usually, honestly, we start off with the human body, whether it be DNA or all the sophistication of the human body, demonstrating there's no way you can explain this by randomness.

It just wouldn't be coherent. From that, actually, it's a very good stepping stone. Then we get into scripture in terms of like predictive prophecy, you know, just focusing on the coming of Jesus the Messiah and the prophecies hundreds of years before he came and how that cannot be accounted for by randomness. That just does not work with probabilities.

And so it's a nice stepping stone to get into the Bible and then into the gospel, actually. Yeah, so just take a minute. I mean, we could do this for hours, but how many cells are there roughly in the human body? It's estimated for an adult male about 30 to 40 trillion. All right, so short circuiting of the brain, inheriting that right now, 30 to 40 trillion. But remember, 30 to 40 trillion, now remember, in each of those 30 to 40 trillion cells, we have DNA or genetic code in there. If you stretch it out, it's six feet long, but it fits inside the cell, in the cell nucleus, which is, you know, smaller than, you know, one ten thousandth the size, you know, of a hair. So, you know, all this, you know, six billion letters of information. So when you start getting through data like this and considering all 30 trillion cells have to work in synchrony and there are systems within, different systems of the body, I mean, this is not something that can be explained by any kind of evolutionary process. It really ends up being a joke. Yeah, really, just even to wrap your mind around what's in, so DNA coding is in each and every cell?

Yes, sir. Every cell except red blood cells, but that's part of design. Actually, when our red blood cells are produced by our bone marrow, then before they go into circulation, the DNA is ejected out because our red blood cells have to go through capillaries and that DNA probably would be damaged by doing so. So it's actually another design feature and our red blood cells replace themselves every 90 days. So it's all part of God's design.

Amazing, just extraordinary. And what about atoms? Oh, in terms of? Within a cell or human body, how does that work? Well, here's a fascinating thing about, you know, a human cell. A human cell, just one of them, any given second there's about 100,000 chemical reactions occurring and it's always fighting against what we call entropy, breakdown, you know, in our world.

So to maintain balance, homeostasis, and so there's all this fine-tuned activity going on. Matter of fact, you know, in the Journal of Theoretical Biology, which is very mainstream, they made the point that the body, biological systems are more fine-tuned than what you see in our whole universe, you know, with all the planetary motion, the systems and gravity and all that. Biology is a great way to demonstrate the Creator. Just like we read about in Romans, chapter 1, verse 20.

While we can't see God, we can see the effects of God in His creation and that definitely would include, you know, life, all different kinds of life forms. Extraordinary, yeah. And again, when we cooperate with our Creator, we thrive on every level, spiritually, mentally, emotionally, physically. The new book, The Holistic Guide to Gut Health. All right, let's go over to Rebecca in Prince George, Virginia. Welcome to The Line of Fire. Hi, Dr. Brown, how are you? Doing great. What's your question for Dr. Stengler?

I have a couple quick questions. First of all, just thank you so much for being a Christian doctor and someone who's so brilliant and knowledgeable in nutrition. I am an RN and have struggled a long time with dealing with doctors that don't really know anything about nutrition. And trying to, you know, talk to your patients about, you know, alternatives to prescriptions when, you know, you don't have the doctor's support can be challenging.

So just thank you for what you do and especially the evangelical component of that is just the icing on the cake. My question is the previous caller mentioned something about her esophagus. I have what's called Barrett's esophagus and I also have non-alcoholic fatty liver disease I was recently diagnosed with.

There's a lot of hype nowadays about the castor oil and putting these pads on your stomach with the castor oil. Is that something that's legitimate and would the aloe also help Barrett's esophagus? Yeah, so of course I'm familiar with Barrett's esophagus.

It normally occurs when people have had long-term acid reflux or GERD causing some damage, precancerous cells in the esophagus. So yes, I have had patients, you know, where we have greatly improved their diet. We get them on things like the aloe vera extract DGL for about four to six months. And I have had patients where they get another endoscopy done and it has cleared.

Now as you know, it's something you've got to be monitored with because you can go from precancerous to cancerous so you've got to be monitored. In terms of the castor oil, yes, it has a long reach of use in European medicine, naturopathic medicine here in the United States. It seems to have anti-inflammatory properties when used topically.

I haven't really seen any studies, but it has a rich, you know, history, traditional use. But I would say this, in terms of fatty liver, in America the most common causes are being overweight, having prediabetes or diabetes, but in the book I also talk about the gut connection to fatty liver. So there is a connection between the small intestine health and the liver, so we talk about how that can help as well. Well, I'll definitely be getting your book for my husband and myself and hopefully using it as a witnessing tool as well as a medical help to what I'm doing for myself and for my patients. So thank you so very much.

I wish you lived in Virginia. Well, thank you. And I do talk in the book about the design of the gut in detail, the small intestine.

I do use those specific terms, you know, how it's designed, so yes. All right, great. Thank you so much. Well, thank you so much, sir, and thank you, Dr. Brown. You are very welcome. God bless you.

You too. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. And let's see, still there. There we go. Just, there we go. Oh, no.

No. I, oh, sorry, Dr. Stangler. How'd that happen? I thought, locked in, hit the lock button. All right, team, you're going to have to go over this with me.

Phil, only hung up on Dr. Stangler twice in the interview. We were short on time. Okay.

I did want to say this. On yesterday's broadcast and in my article about Israel retaliating against Iran, I suggested two things. One, an immediate symbolic action by Israel saying, you don't cross this line.

And then a long-term plan to do something more major. Well, it looks like the immediate symbolic action is taking place. Israel has assassinated a couple of senior Hezbollah commanders in Lebanon, Lebanon, Syria. So Israel immediately has taken action and said, no, you don't cross the line that you cross. You do not do that. So that's the first thing. I was expecting something like that. We shall see what follows. Hey, Mark, any last words after only hung up on you twice during the show?

But it was unintentional. Any last words to readers what you're hoping they'll get out of this book, how it can help them, the holistic guide to gut health just released today, any closing words to our readers? Yeah, I think the closing words would be if you want to prevent disease or if you have chronic health problems, it's imperative to eat healthy and have a healthy digestive system because both affect every cell in your body. Secondly, we want to be healthy because we want to be good ambassadors for the Lord Jesus. And so for healthy and vital, we're able to get to the work of God more effectively.

Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, for me, I love being healthy. I love at 69 being able to do whatever I want to do.

Same with Nancy. There's something we want to do that we can't do because of health restrictions, energy restrictions by God's grace. So I love being healthy as opposed to being sick and run down.

I love being here for Nancy and kids and grandkids. But ultimately, it's a stewardship thing. And God gave us this one body and this one life. And if we steward it well, it can be so full.

And I know some struggle and things beyond their control, but what is in our control, we can make a difference with. So again, the Holistic Guide to Gut Health, Dr. Mark Stengler. Mark, may the Lord use this book to literally save many lives. Thanks for being our guest today. Hey, thank you. All right.

That was Mark Stengler. And now this time, OK, I can actually hang up. And I did at the right moment. OK, I hope you're helped by the content. I hope you've got some ideas to inspire you that change can come.

And you'd be amazed how many things disappear. You know, my lower back pain disappeared when I lost 100 pounds. Having about three headaches a week, now going on almost 10 years, virtually without a headache. I had sleep apnea.

That's gone. I had high blood pressure. Went from a high of 149 over 103 to maybe 105 over 67 average now. Cholesterol was out of whack now. That's just in wonderful order. One thing after another, I've watched health, vitality, life come through a lifestyle change.

So this book could be a lifesaver for you as well. THEME SONG