Salus June 4, 2025

Gay

Yes, all of this makes sense.  It reminds me of sitting on a metabolic ground round of folks that are in my field and around the US. This was probably a year or so ago. We had a poop expert doc. She collects and analyzes fecal matter. Before she is doing a brain scan or doing any of the questionnaires, she looks at the poop.

Jeremy

There have been some very remarkable and dramatic areas where fecal transplant is a very real thing. I have a sister who had that procedure and she sent me a link to the South Park. It is one of the most amazing stories about how healthcare gets looked at for what we’re doing. But the positive aspects were exaggerated, I will just say in the South Park piece about that. You became this amazingly beautiful creature when you got a poop transplant, and everybody in the community wanted to get a hold of somebody’s poop so that they could. There have been some very remarkable and dramatic areas where fecal transplant is a very real thing. It’s interesting that in healthcare, we have denigrated the end products of the gastrointestinal tract, and we’ve denigrated the bacteria. We turned them into enemies, and I’m sure, Gay, this is part of where you as a neurobiologist, neuroscientist, and psychologist have much to offer. So maybe, Gay, you could provide us with a little picture of the bacteria’s role in our neuro health. I think the neural system of healthcare may not be healthy because we haven’t been paying attention to the guts of healthcare

Gay

As Molly has pointed out, we’ve known for years that the gut is the second brain, although there’s been a lot of disconnect in terms of looking at what is the health of the gut. How do you determine the health of the gut, and what is leaking into the system? The gut lining is permeable, like it might be in healthcare. You know, we’ve got a lot of things seeping into the constitutional house that we live in, and what are those things? Are they toxic? Are they good? I think that all of this is true. Some things are serviceable, some things are helpful, and some things need to be excreted, but there’s also the other component from a neurological perspective. It is a shame that we have culturally overlaid on excrement, whether it has to do with coming out the end of your colon, or whether it has to do with coming out of your pores. As a culture, we are intent on shedding and ridding ourselves of toxins; however, there’s a mental health component that concerns shame. If we’ve got toxic innards, then how could our neurobiology not be toxic in some way? Meaning, it’s not working as it’s intended to work.

Bill B

So, you’re saying sweat and tears, as well as feces, are sources of shame.

Gay

That’s right.