55: The Best and Worst Supplements For Your (Gut) Health - with Shawn Wells - ReversABLE

Episode Transcript
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Josh (03:20.266)Dr. Sean Wells, welcome to Reversible.

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Shawn Wells (04:16.27)Thank you for having me on. I appreciate it, Josh.
Josh (04:20.074)And it's a pleasure to have you here. You know, it is very rare that anybody is the world's greatest at anything, considering there is, you know, seven billion people. To be the best at anything in the world is pretty staggering. What does it mean, just before we get into the real nitty gritty of it, what does it mean to be the world's greatest formulator?
Shawn Wells (04:42.301)Well, I mean, so going back to the bio, by the way, I'm not a medical doctor. I do have a master's in nutrition and biochemistry. I'm a registered dietitian, certified sports nutritionist, fellow in the ISSN, all those things. But I did not give myself that title. That is a title that I've...
kind of earned in the industry after about a thousand supplements and 20 years in and patenting about 35 ingredients now and it's been a heck of a journey.
Josh (05:22.626)Hmm. And so you've patented several things. You're in charge. I mean, you were the chief scientific officer for a company doing like $125 million a year on revenue. You've really been all over the place. So when you are the formulator, you're the one then going in and creating these supplements and sort of formulating these for the best use in the body. Is it bioavailability? Like, what is it that you're formulating?
Shawn Wells (05:33.841)Yep.
Shawn Wells (05:48.057)You know, that's a great question. I always avoid proprietary blends. I am not a fan of anything along those lines. For people that don't know what a proprietary blend is, you know, it's these blends you'll see like the Muscle and Strength blend and it has something like creatine first, which is a great ingredient, but it's fairly cheap. And then it's got 16 other ingredients in the blend and it says that there's, you know,
and strength blend? Well, 2,999 milligrams might be the creatine, which is about $10 a kilo. And the other ingredients that could be hundreds, if not thousands of dollars a kilo are what we call fairy dusted in just tiny one milligram doses. And so you're not getting those. So it's a very deceptive practice.
Josh (06:34.021)Hmm.
Shawn Wells (06:43.505)you know, beyond that, I look at synergistic mechanisms of action. So that is meaning that instead of like some of these formulas, let's say for blood sugar might have 10 blood sugar ingredients so that someone looks at it and says, oh, I've heard of this one. I've heard of this one. That doesn't make sense. I'm going to choose the single best ingredient for that single mechanism of action. And if there's another complementary mechanism of action or synergistic mechanism of action.
that works on this holistic approach of blood sugar or increased muscular performance or whatever it is, then I'm going to stack those ingredients and that makes sense. But I'm trying to get the minimum amount of ingredients to get the most effect because I want the minimum effective dose and I want to have a dose that everyone takes.
Like a lot of these products, that's the other problem is, you know, maybe they contain...
you know, some of the ingredients you want, but it's not the efficacious dose. So if you go on PubMed, you go on examine.com, you're gonna find that you're getting, even if it's listed and not in a proprietary blend, you might be getting a quarter of, you know, what the efficacious dose was. So that doesn't make sense either. So I'm really trying to think through how do I get all the clinical doses? How do I get complimentary mechanisms of action? How do I put it in the best form in terms of
of bioavailability? Does that mean nanocarticles, liposomal, with a piperine? Does that mean...
Shawn Wells (08:27.233)some metabolite or something where I'm getting the maximum level of absorption and utilization. So those are the things that I'm looking at and of course I'm also looking that there's the purity, the potency, it doesn't have these toxins that could be in there, heavy metals. We're testing for all of that in any quality formula. So those are all the things that I'm looking at.
Josh (08:53.523)So in summary, most if not all supplements on the market are crap. Would that be fair?
Shawn Wells (09:00.777)I, it's frustrating to me to say that, like, uh, and I'm not trying to, I don't want to be in a situation where like, I'm the only guy that you think is out there doing good. That's by far not the truth.
but I'm definitely someone who wants to see the industry get better, not just benefit me, but benefit everyone. It really frustrates me when things are not being done right. And I would say that's that number. I mean, it's at least I've guessed around 80%. I mean, if you look at the data that Now Foods has been collecting on Amazon, it's about that number of products that are testing out.
that are below what's being listed on the label, about 80%, and about a third of the products have no active at all. None. And that's really disturbing. So that's something to watch out for when you're buying things on Amazon. I would only buy...
If you're going to go on Amazon, get it from like GNC, Vitamin Shop, the company that makes the product, or someone that's like a reputable seller where you can trust that it's legit. If it's, you know, Joe's Crap Shack and it's on Amazon, it probably is a counterfeit product. That is a huge market. So that is upsetting too.
Josh (10:30.826)So we're dealing with a lot of trash, a lot of junk, a lot of fakes, a lot of proprietary blends that have the language to make it look like it's really good for you, look really official when in reality, there's nothing to it. Like it's really just a bunch of junk that's made to look sellable. It's a marketing. And that sounds to me like the food industry too.

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Shawn Wells (10:51.521)Yeah, 100%. They're both FDA, right? So, yeah, but take that one step further where there's concern about not getting the things that are listed. That's what we've already talked about. The other concern is getting things that you didn't see listed. Now that's when you're getting into the heavy metals. That's when you're getting into toxins that might be in there. You might get...
Josh (11:03.842)Mm-hmm.
Shawn Wells (11:18.377)E. coli or bacteria you may get you know things that you weren't bargaining for maybe Tested substances if you're an athlete or someone who just gets tested at work you might you know get tested for some metabolite of some you know recreational drug and if that contract manufacturer is doing shady stuff or The company that makes the raw material is doing shady stuff
Well then you're going to test positive. Or you could have things that are carcinogenic. Again, heavy metals. This is the scary part.
Josh (11:55.714)That is terrifying. In an industry where people are looking to go to more holistic. Really my audience, the people that I work with, those dealing with severe gut disease like Crohn's and colitis particularly, who have gone through the wringer, have tried the drugs, have tried the doctors, the pharmaceuticals, and aren't getting help, and they're looking for a holistic perspective or somebody who can look at the system as a whole and actually fix things from the root. And then practitioners.
will then go out and recommend certain products to help fill in gaps or deficiencies in nutrients or whatever they're trying to do. And they might be A, not getting those at all, B, actually adding something toxic like heavy metals or E. coli or something that obviously would harm their patient or their client. That great? Man.
Shawn Wells (12:39.617)Exactly. Yeah. And that is that is the concern. And of course, what's going to happen is every time those things do happen, we see the FDA often leverage that or big pharma leverage that. And what happens is we start losing these ingredients. There's really good ingredients that, by the way, keep getting pulled off the market that happen to be so effective that they're competing with big pharma. And magically, big pharma.
will fund something or get on some senator and all of a sudden we're losing these ingredients. Ingredients like NMN right now, which increases NAD levels, which is a really great ingredient. And before that, last year we were battling N-acetylcysteine. Why? I mean, it's been used for 30 plus years safely.
But, anacetylcysteine is very effective with certain viruses that are pretty well known. So, you know, these are the things that we're dealing with right now that are real.
Josh (13:37.464)Mm-hmm.
Josh (13:42.558)I've heard the same actually about other things. I know I'm up here in Canada, and there's been a push since the 90s to try to get natural health supplements. We're saying banned is an effective word, but really what they're doing is putting more regulations and levies and taxes and fees on them like pharmaceuticals to price them out of the market where people won't be able to import or afford them. And even that, we've seen that with natalkinase as talked about by Paul Merrick, Peter McCullough, the FLCCC has been highly effective in some of these new viruses coming around. And even that they're trying to ban now.
Shawn Wells (13:46.435)Mm-hmm.
Shawn Wells (13:59.537)Yeah.
Josh (14:13.528)It's wild. Okay. So we're sort of working an uphill battle against the worst levels of corruption that run up to the FDA. And I think your listeners, my listeners are pretty aware of that at this stage. So I want to segue this really quick, Sean, because I got a lot of questions about supplements in the gut and how it all works. And you're also known as an expert biohacker. So for the audience who might be hearing this term biohacking or biohacker for the first time, can you tell us what that means?
Shawn Wells (14:13.829)Yep. Yep, exactly.
Shawn Wells (14:42.661)Yeah, it literally means shortcuts, hacking with your biology. Like how do we elicit faster, better, enhanced with our biology? So how do we get more performance in shorter time? That's the idea of biohacking, is understanding and exploiting some of these pathways.
Josh (15:05.55)Hmm.
So one of the things that I run into as a gut specialist, if you give me a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail. You give me some kind of issue, oh, it's back to the gut, it's the gut. And I do have to be careful with that as a practitioner, but I wanna explore some of your stuff. I mean, your history, looking at this, you've had chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, depression, insomnia, obesity, things that can all be attributed to the gut or can be connected to the gut in some way or lifestyle and nutrition, even Epstein-Barr, which you dealt with, can affect the gut.
Josh (15:36.656)these connections you made in healing yourself, that it's a gut issue or is it rooted somewhere else? Like how did you biohack or how did you heal yourself from these ailments?
Shawn Wells (15:45.561)Yeah, that's a great question. At the time...

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Many of these things I did not connect to the gut microbiome that just wasn't as hot at the time Certainly, I felt like I was way ahead of the curve I've been doing keto for 20 25 years I've been doing paleo ish for 20 25 years and intermittent fasting so some of these things like I knew about and I did know about these ideas of metabolic dysfunction in terms of inflammation
Shawn Wells (16:20.311)and basically being in insufficient cellular energy states mitochondrally. And so I was looking to improve my immune system, reduce inflammation, improve blood sugar.
and just eat more whole food and move my body. At the time, I really couldn't work out or play athletics like I wanted to. I was just struggling for energy. So it was a win to just find ways to move my body, keep my body walking, those kinds of things. Find a way to move your body, it has a dramatic impact on inflammation and a number of these disease pathologies.
Josh (17:03.63)Hmm.
And so when we're looking at things like chronic fatigue, right? That's when I see all the time. Now, again, in the gut space, you go, well, it's a bacterial issue. Maybe you're not absorbing, maybe you're not producing vitamins properly. Maybe it's a digestive dysfunction issue. Maybe the assembly line is ill time. Maybe you're not eating nutrient rich foods, but you bring it back to mitochondria. So for our listeners who maybe aren't aware, just think of it like the battery, the powerhouse of your cell. What is the role between the gut and these nutrients and the mitochondria when it comes to energy production?
Shawn Wells (17:35.189)That's a great question. I mean, when we talk about 87% of the population in the United States is metabolically dysfunctional, that is a massive number. And that means that they are in this Syndrome X cluster of disease states, meaning...
insulin resistant slash type two diabetic, a renal dysfunction, hypertension, which is elevated blood pressure and renal dysfunction is kidneys. Um, you know, this is, uh,
the core of these symptoms that we often see that are the start of pretty much all disease states. I would say about 99% of disease is metabolic in nature and not genetic in nature. Like we were often told or taught certainly years ago, but to some degree even now. So, yeah, exactly. And that is certainly metabolic.
Josh (18:30.007)Even obesity they're blaming on genetics today.
Shawn Wells (18:36.517)And so if we look at mitochondrial dysfunction, it's a result of this metabolic dysfunction. We are getting into states of this insufficient cellular energy, meaning we're not making enough ATP, adenosine, triphosphate, the energy currency in the body.
And in the body it's called ice and sufficient cellular energy. And in the brain, it's called brain energy gap. And it's the same idea. There's a shortfall of energy. Now, most of your listeners were probably taught that there's a mitochondria, it's the powerhouse of the cell, the little factory, you know, the whole thing. Well, what you're probably not taught is there's up to 5,000 of those in a cell. And the more energy dependent that cell is,
the more mitochondria there are or should be. So think of like a cardiomyocyte, which would be the heart muscle, or a brain cell, neuron. These are very energy dependent. They use a lot of energy. Your brain uses a lot of energy. Your heart uses a lot of energy. And then there's actually like a tissue called brown adipose tissue, which we can talk about, that's actually brown because it's so mitochondrally dense. Really interesting. It's like a fat burning fat.
only about seven ounces of it on your body, but there's like, we can do a whole show on that. Um, but anyway, this mitochondria thing, so two things are happening. You're not having enough efficiency at the mitochondria level to make ATP and you don't have enough mitochondria. What we find is that the better you're eating, the more you're moving your body.
Josh (20:02.122)Yeah.
Shawn Wells (20:25.745)The more hormesis, meaning ideal stress that you're putting your body under, the more mitochondria you create. That's called mitochondrial biogenesis.
So when we do fasting, when we do high intensity interval training, when we do keto, when we do saunas or cold plunges, we actually create more mitochondria. So this is like a healthy stress and you increase the size of what's called your stress bucket or allostatic capacity.
meaning that you can take on more stress. You're more resilient. You increase your sirtuin genes, the sirt genes that are associated with longevity and resilience and being anti-fragile. And so that's ideal. And right now we're in a state of not making enough ATP. We have mitochondrial dysfunction and metabolic dysfunction. We don't have enough mitochondria. We're not getting enough sleep.
You know, all of these things start stacking up and we're in a massive shortfall. And so you're driving the car down the road and we're trying to fix it with supplements, with caffeine, with whatever it takes to give us a little bit more energy because we're feeling tired.
And then what's happening, we're starting to break down at all levels. You start seeing glycation, which is blood sugar damage happening. And, and that being a disease pathway, more inflammation, that being a disease pathway, more oxidation, that being a disease pathway, and you start adding all these up and you're trying to run on limited energy.
Shawn Wells (22:16.633)And of course, at some point the body crashes and that's what happens to a lot of us where we get these autoimmune conditions. We can just no longer run anymore.

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Josh (22:27.022)Hmm.
So we're looking at autoimmune diseases. I mean, there's so many out there, right? We could really go countless. You can look at everything on the spectrum from rheumatoid arthritis, they'll call autoimmune, to lupus, to Crohn's disease, right? It's just a huge spectrum. And all of those have their own spectrums of severity and autoimmunity. And in many cases, I actually am lecturing on this in like a week here, and I'm actually arguing that not all cases of inflammatory bowel disease are in fact autoimmune. Even outside of the spectrum where it's just a wear and tear of inflammation.
Josh (22:58.464)that's worn out tissues like wearing a pair of shoes without a sock, right? Where it wears that heel down and rubs raw. And so we're starting to branch into this a little bit more, but we talk about the roles and the causes and oftentimes we look at, okay, well, it's got bacteria, that's inflammation. Maybe it's an infectious pathogen bacteria like E. Coli or something that into the system to lead to inflammation. Maybe it was mold or heavy metals or Lyme disease, something that led to it. But something else we have to look at, of course, is the change.
the assembly line that goes from the mouth through the stomach, small large intestine, the way it comes out and how your body processes. If you mess up that assembly line at all things can become really dysfunctional. Is there a role, you mentioned a lot about mitochondrial dysfunction and low ATP, is there a role directly between the mitochondrial function and our assembly line in the gut?
Shawn Wells (23:51.609)Oh, absolutely. I mean, I mean, first off from like the most basic level of how you break down
proteins into amino acids, how you break down fats into the fatty acids and ultimately glycerol, how you break down carbohydrate into glucose ultimately. Absolutely, and then even ketones if you're in a, you know, fasting state or you're avoiding carbohydrates. All of those are potential fuels that can be used by the mitochondria
uh you know to create more energy on a cellular level and then that's not even getting to the idea of the micronutrients and minerals and phytonutrients things like polyphenols that have a pretty dramatic effect on our health if you look at the blue zones
Uh, polyphenols are, seem to be like one of the secret ingredients to a number of the blue zones, whether it's resveratrol and red wine, taro, still being blueberries, quercetin, onions and apples.
you know, down the line, like Apigenin and parsley, Fisetin and strawberries, like there's a number of these polyphenols, curcumin's another one, that have a dramatic impact on health that seem to affect blood sugar and blood pressure and a number of things with that, including the Sirtuin genes, the anti-aging genes that I was talking about. So polyphenols are pretty profound, but certainly, as you're saying, the vitamins,
Shawn Wells (25:36.505)Are they getting absorbed? Are they getting utilized? If your gut lumen is not in an ideal state, it's not going to be enzymatically breaking these things down. It's not going to be pulling these things across the intestine. It's not going to be getting them at optimal levels in plasma. And not only are some of these things substrates,
are signals. So we actually get a number of them especially when you look at peptides but this is true of certain fatty acids like the short chain fatty acids which are critical for gut health you know getting into butyrate and propionate and acetate like those are all really important for gut health but
A number of these things become signals when they hit the plasma at very small levels. And if that's not happening properly, then that signaling isn't taking place to...
you know, work optimally to go down this inflammasome pathway with inflammation or immunomodulatory pathways, or there's so many things that go on and what's called these like bioregulatory peptide pathways where they're signaling the body. And so, yeah, absolutely. If those things are not ideal in terms of your gut microbiome with the bacteria, the
bacteria versus dysbiotic bacteria, just the health of the intestine itself and going down to colonocytes and up and down. Are you having enough glutamine potentially? Are you having enough collagen potentially? Those can improve the intestinal health itself and then certainly the microbiome and then what's called the postbiotic.
Shawn Wells (27:43.715)again with that short chain fatty acids. And then prebiotics, right? Like some of these short chain fibers help feed these bacteria. There's a lot going on as you know, but most certainly another thing that I've found is that what often happens in someone who's not in an optimized state like myself, I was...
Josh (27:56.078)Mm-hmm.
Shawn Wells (28:12.593)dealing with trauma, anxiety, PTSD, depression. I was always in a hypervigilant state. I had imposter syndrome and all these kinds of things that I was dealing with. And so I wasn't in a healthy state mentally. And I believe when you're in a hypervigilant state that you are...
basically in what's called sympathetic nervous system and maybe like really ultra sympathetic nervous system where you're just in fight or flight all the time. And so your body's trying to create energy as best it can. And it's not in a place of rest and digest. It's not in a place of parasympathetic nervous system. It's not in a place to, um,
have some of these growth factors and autophagy and mitophagy, these things that detox the body. It's not in a place where all these kind of healing peptides like BPC157 that are naturally occurring in your body. It's not doing all these things.

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because it's constantly like in a, in this fight or flight state where it's like, I just need to create energy, energy. So people that are in these ultra sympathetic nervous system states are not able to break down, utilize, excrete these things like they should. So they're not getting the levels of nutrients they need and they're holding onto toxins more than they would like to. So it's that double wham.
me that I'm finding that is definitely the case, like as I've done a lot of work around psychedelics in particular, when I see that mental shift, when someone sheds the PTSD, the depression, the anxiety, the trauma, it can be very profound on that level that you're talking about. I've seen a number of gut issues clear up just because...
Shawn Wells (30:16.721)you know, it's associated with trauma. Like you have this gut feeling. So it's kind of like goes back to like Joe Dispenza and you know, the body holds a score or you know, some of the work that Dr. Bruce Lipton's done and these kinds of things. It's really interesting like where trauma is held throughout the body. So that's a whole other discussion.
Josh (30:21.134)Thanks for watching!
Josh (30:39.246)Well, it's fascinating stuff because in the Western medicine, it's like we talked about earlier, oftentimes it's attributed to being genetic or there's nothing you can do or, you know, it's family history. We're not ignoring all the other things that maybe make you prone through family history, but don't guarantee to pull the trigger. And so we have so many people dealing with gut issues. And I really want to address this because I mean, whether it's connected in some way or directly responsible, right? Studies suggest that, you know,
Shawn Wells (30:47.214)Mm-hmm. Right.
Josh (31:09.46)if not 99.9% are connected to the gut or the gut influences all these diseases and studies are showing that roughly 70% give or take of Americans, we'll use that as kind of our cornerstone here, have gut issues at least once a week. We're talking constipation, diarrhea, bloat pain, cramping or something else. Now you mentioned mitochondrial dysfunction or energy production, you mentioned these nutrients like phytonutrients and polyphenols, vitamins, minerals, amino
Josh (31:39.32)healthy 99% you assert of diseases that will be metabolically related and so all this is happening while 70% of people are dealing with these gut issues so we're opening the door to this world of diseases why are these gut issues happening what do you think is the main drivers it's a super loaded question
Shawn Wells (31:45.724)Yep.
Shawn Wells (31:52.576)Mmm.
Shawn Wells (31:58.937)Oh, geez, there's so many reasons. Uh, yeah, again, like, uh, I mean, trauma, uh, first off, but then like getting into like all kinds of things, like we're not eating whole foods or going back to that kind of, uh, paleo primal kind of thing. And do you, this also ties into the idea of allostatic capacity. So this is the size of your stress bucket. And we are not.
as healthy or as resilient or as anti-fragile as we once were. We had a much bigger stress bucket, right? So because we were exposed to the cold, we were exposed to the heat, we were doing more manual labor. You know, we had more physiologic stress that was healthy.
And we don't have those things as much now. And we're exposed to more toxins, which is a big one, like things like glyphosate that are throughout the food supply. That's a massive toxin. Phthalates that are throughout.
anything that has a smell associated with it, these deodorizers and detergents and perfumes and colognes and shampoos all have phthalates that are endocrine disruptors.
You know, I can get into, you know, like the majority of the neurotransmitters and even like your hormonal function, this endocrine function is tied to the gut. About 70 to 90% of your neurotransmitters are in your gut. 70 to 90% of your immune functions in the gut. I mean, so there's just so much going on that...
Shawn Wells (33:48.117)Every I read some stat where there's 5,000 new chemicals introduced every year. Every year. Do you think we have an understanding of each of those? Do you think we know how they interact with other chemicals or certain?
Josh (33:55.202)heard that.
Josh (34:04.352)They're generally considered safe though, aren't they? Ha ha ha.
Shawn Wells (34:08.813)or certain genetics, even if we can change quite a bit through the idea of epigenetics, but there's a lot of bio-individuality.
And that's something like, you know, I've done a lot of work on an ingredient I've patented called paraxanthine that's a caffeine metabolite. Because I don't metabolize caffeine well. If you look at like the genetics of this, we all think, oh, we metabolize caffeine the same. No, it's very different. CYP1A2 gene. Some people the half life is an hour and a half. Some people it's 10 and a half. This is a 7X difference. And in one Chinese study, it was a 17X difference.

(01:46):
So think about like three, four, five days later, you could still have caffeine in your system, but then someone else is like, oh, I have caffeine and go straight to bed. We are experiencing a lot of these chemicals very differently. When you're seeing studies, you're seeing the median. You're seeing that statistical average and they're hyper.
responders or super responders and then there are hypo or non-responders in these studies and we're not necessarily looking at those very much we're looking at what's happening in the mean and then to be a supplement it has to be in the healthy human population and typically that's eighteen to twenty two year old males on a college campus
So we're not really seeing females. We're not really seeing an older population. We're not seeing a disease population. We're not seeing, you know, these nutrients or drugs mixed with each other. We don't know like if, you know, they're at this point in their menstrual cycle, what's happening, if they're eating more ultra processed food, what's happening. If they're a smoker, what's happening.
Shawn Wells (35:55.729)You know, with CYP1A2, the caffeine metabolizer gene, women on average, about 50% slower than men. And oral contraceptives change pretty dramatically that metabolism. And smoking actually increases that metabolism. So like, and different drugs affect your ability to...
work with these nutrient pathways quite often. So this is where it gets into like what's called polypharmacy where, you know, I was working in nursing homes where people were getting like 70 medications in one day, 70. And so do we know, we're lucky to know with like, let's say Tylenol and Metformin, maybe what their interaction, like some, like two drugs that have been around for forever.
Josh (36:51.939)Mm-hmm.
Shawn Wells (36:52.473)Maybe we might know their interaction, but we most certainly don't know newer drugs and very many nutrients or many drugs, certainly many drugs and you're on this type of diet or you're from this part of the world. It gets very confusing. This is all related to this idea of bio-individuality. And then going back even further, you're talking about the microbiome quite a bit. There's the idea of the hollow biote.
Right? That's, hollow means whole. Like that kind of like, there's like a, almost like a, if you remember like Pig Pen on Charlie Brown, if I'm dating myself, he kind of has this like brown cloud around him, right? So this is the idea of like being the hollow biome, is like, it's not just on your skin. It's not just in your vagina potentially. That is a really important place that gets into the whole like,
Josh (37:30.591)Yes.
Shawn Wells (37:51.217)reducing birth defects when they have a vaginal delivery. There's a great Ted talk on that. Or certainly in the gut, like all these different places that the bacteria live, but it's literally this cloud around you. And it outnumbers your human selves 10 to one. We're more bacteria than we are human.
which is an incredible thought. And the hollow biome gets into the idea of the exchange with the environment. You are not the island unto yourself. It gets involved with, like, if I'm hugging you, then we're exchanging microbiome.
And this microbiome diversity is going away, and we're seeing that we're becoming less resilient as a result of less diversity. And we see people on the farms that grow up on farms, they have 50% greater diversity. And people that just have a pet have 25% greater diversity.
And we're not traveling like we used to. We're not hugging like we used to. We're not having as great a difference in foods. We're not getting exposed to things like we used to.
And add to that, we're sterilizing everything and isolating ourselves and sitting inside and having recycled air. We're not grounding, we're not barefoot, we're not outside, we're not sunbathing and all those kinds of things out in the forest with that exchange. So what's happening, we're becoming very fragile and we don't have the diversity that we once had.
Shawn Wells (39:38.725)and that's leading to a number of these conditions and giving us less resilience. And so when we're immunocompromised, we get sick more often. We're weak. We don't go to the gym like we used to. This biological bacterial diversity is like us going to the gym. When you're healthy, you should want to get around other bacteria.
You should want to be around people that are not well. If you're not well, sure, take a break, step away. You know, it's just like if you're exhausted, don't go to the gym. But if you're healthy, go to the gym. Get the stress that you need to make yourself stronger.
Josh (40:26.464)Mm.
It's really interesting the more we look at modern society, it seems to be pulling us further and further away from our natural state of being. And I'm definitely like the type, I'll put on my tinfoil hat and shake my stick. You know, I'm known for doing that. I'm on that train already. Every rabbit hole, I'm interested. And it's just like everything we do, our food that's being made for us, the medicine that's being taught to us, what's being taught to our doctors is all FDA, it's all big pharma, it's all pre-regulated. And it just seems like we're sort of in this cage
Josh (40:57.716)be sick then made to purchase the cure but even that isn't really a cure it's kind of a band-aid to limp us along until we need the next one and the next one to her in a nursing home with 70 different medications you know when I was back in paramedics shit I was probably 14 years ago
Shawn Wells (41:09.053)Exactly.

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Josh (41:16.03)Sean, I've never felt this old in my life. That's fine. So back when I was going through school to be a paramedic, one of the things they taught us was that if somebody is on three or more medications, this is 15 years ago, three or more medications, there's a 100% chance of some kind of cross interaction, be it positive or negative. So we know these things are happening, but they could mostly be prevented if we really went back to nature. We went back to hugging, we went back to traveling, went back to eating food, you know, getting into the dirt, going outside.
Shawn Wells (41:18.931)Hehehe
Josh (41:45.964)is a lot of us don't have access to or a lot of us just won't right maybe you live in New York City and you know you're in a high-rise apartment building or you've got you know 50 stories above you and below you don't have access to these proper things maybe you don't have access to outside or dirt quite the same maybe you can't you know there's something preventing you or we're just lazy whatever the reality is what can we do I mean even our food there's no
Josh (42:16.024)falls off the tree, it gets to the ground, it decomposes, it grows grass, cow eats grass, I eat cow. And that is a biogeochemical cycle for our listeners. So we're lacking all of these natural things, plus we're lacking nutrients in our food. So many of us are just working in the red, like we're constantly in debt. So what can we be doing? I know you're like the supplement guy, is it growing our own food? Is it supplementing? Like what's what would be your advice on something like this?
Shawn Wells (42:37.693)Hehehe
Shawn Wells (42:43.289)I would say yes and, but I really believe as the mind goes, so the body goes, and it's really important to start from a place of, you know, going back to what I was talking about before, having grace for yourself, having a certain sovereignty over yourself, like knowing that
You are the cure. You are the cause. Uh, having a mentality of the obstacle is the way like a stoic mindset is a resilient, hormetic kind of mindset. Um, so changing your mindset, uh, I think is, is pretty powerful, a powerful place to start. There's a, uh, old adage or proverb in, in Africa that the African doctor would, would come by. And if you were sick,
say, how long has it been since you danced or laughed?
And that's something to really think about. The correlation certainly with where our mindset is and our health. I know like when I was very sick, I was also very abusive to myself. I literally hated my body, I hated myself. I was biohacking more out of like self-loathing or ways to push the limits because
I didn't know what it was like to relax. I didn't know what it was like to love myself, to take care of myself. Those are things that I think I'm not alone on and is something that I think is really underdiagnosed. So I could get into diet and supplements. Like I said, I believe eating whole food and I was gonna get into the idea that you probably have more resilience to eat.
Shawn Wells (44:41.705)some foods that maybe not are as healthy or maybe that have some allergenic triggers that you are triggered by now, but if you were healthier would not be. So those things are very real. So it's something to think about that certainly eating a whole food diet
potentially keto if you're metabolically dysfunctional. I don't necessarily think you need to be on that for the rest of your life, but it is a faster track if you're metabolically dysfunctional to get you to reduce blood sugar, reduce inflammation more quickly.
And then from there, I believe in metabolic flexibility and having a kind of a variety from there and not necessarily just being keto all the time, but fasting, uh, can be a powerful tool as well to elevate ketones and give you that metabolic flexibility and do that mitophagy, autophagy where you're detoxing on that cellular level. Uh, that can be profound as well. And then supplementally, like I'm a huge fan.
of, I mean, we can get into some of the gut supplements as well as mitochondrial supplements if you want to.
Josh (45:59.954)I'd be very interested in that. You know, being a gut health podcast, we want to make sure we're supporting people's gut. But a lot of things, maybe they're highly stressed and they're anxious, which is putting them into fight or flight, which is inhibiting their digestion. So we need to work on stress and B vitamins and omegas, and then the gut kind of corrects itself. Or maybe they're lacking certain bacteria, and that's causing a lot of this negative feedback. They're lacking these neurotransmitters. So I know it's all varied. And so with that understanding, then, let's talk about that a bit. What would some supplementation look like?
Josh (46:30.068)for someone who's dealing with some general gut. We'll leave major diseases off the table, but let's say general gut dysfunction.
Shawn Wells (46:37.509)Yeah, probably my favorite prebiotic. I'm a little reluctant with prebiotics because I've found that certain of these short chain fibers, GOS, FOS, all these kinds of things, inulin, can lead to...
kind of an exacerbation of whatever state you're in at the time. So if you're dysbiotic, it's going to like augment that if you're probiotic, it's going to augment that it's going to just lead to growth of whatever bacteria is currently there. So it's something to be mindful of. I think if you get a healthier gut, they can be great.
But a phage like Pre4 Pro, which is made by Dearland Enzymes, it's in a number of products, if you look at Pre4 Pro, these phages will literally break down dysbiotic bacteria and use them to make probiotic bacteria. So this is definitely like kind of several levels beyond like the usual prebiotic. So a phage like Pre4 Pro.

(02:28):
Next, you can take probiotics. I have kind of mixed feelings on this. There's certainly good data with probiotics and I think if you're in a very dysbiotic state, it makes sense, like after you've had antibiotics, if you're dealing with a number of the conditions that you're very familiar with, it might make sense. At some point, I think taking that phage and also
using what I'm going to get into in a second, a postbiotic like tributerine, which is the triglyceride form of the short chain fatty acid butyrate. I would allow the body to use its own intelligence.
Shawn Wells (48:29.989)to create the probiotic milieu that it needs to because the more you travel, the more you hug, like that's about the diversity, right? So like I'm allowing the body to figure out what it needs.
And again, I think that just involves intuition or working with a practitioner to kind of know where you're at in that process. But I do think the phage and the postbiotic, which is what probiotics make is these short chain fatty acids are probably more powerful and allow for that kind of intelligent discernment by the body.
Josh (49:07.874)Hmm. Well, there's a lot of things that we can talk about and a lot of rabbit holes here to sort of go out down to if we want. But I want to ask one big umbrella question. Do you think that in modern day 2023 going into 2024 that all people should be supplementing something of some kind? Other general deficiencies that are that bad or is it really person dependent whether they take anything or nothing?
Shawn Wells (49:33.165)I do. I do think supplementation, and I know I'm a supplement guy, but when you look at vitamin D, for example, I mean, we're just, you can argue like, hey, if I get all the nutrients, if I'm outside, if I'm working out, if I'm doing all these things, yes, and the degree to which you're getting exposed to EMFs, glyphosate, phthalates, and a hundred other like...
endocrine disruptors, things like, you know, these xenoestrogens and metalloestrogens and phytoestrogens and there's so many things that we're getting exposed to right now that are putting so much stress on our bodies. And all these medications, most certainly that we're taking, are putting stress on our bodies that it's hard to imagine that you could do it all correctly.
when we look at vitamin D or magnesium, the deficiency rates are pandemic levels. That is a real pandemic. Like 75 to 80% of the population is not getting enough vitamin D, which is not just a vitamin, it is a hormone and involved in all those endocrine pathways. It's critical, way more than bone, way more than immune function.
It's involved in blood sugar and obesity and mood and stress, just so many levels. Same with magnesium. This is like a massively critical mineral. And again, you know, and what do we see like when we went through this pandemic over the last three years? Well...
those two nutrients just by themselves are absolutely critical to immune function. And 80% of the population is not getting enough. Now, did the government when they were sending out these checks or telling us to stay home, were they sending out magnesium and vitamin D? I don't remember that.
Josh (51:26.678)Yes they are.
Josh (51:40.654)sterilize and stay indoors and don't go in the sun.
Shawn Wells (51:43.673)Yep, fear and isolation and sterilization, killing that microbiome on you, killing your reliance on other people, creating fear and wearing masks and you know, all these things. I mean, I don't want to go down that whole rabbit hole, but I mean, think about. So by the way, going back to the hollow biomes, do you know like this level of interaction in terms of pheromones of your bacteria?
of all these kinds of things that are kind of circling around you. Do you know like how far that stretches? They say it's about four to five feet.
Josh (52:24.546)Hmm, interesting. Ha ha ha.
Shawn Wells (52:26.109)Do you know what the social distancing distance was? Six feet. So we're not able to, and certainly when we cover our face, like we can't see these micro expressions and gestures. We're not getting the interaction of the pheromones, of the bacteria, which is like an ancient way of communicating.
This isn't just bacteria. Like these bacteria are sending signals to the other bacteria, which is sending signals to your body. And this is how we interact. Like before we even speak, our bodies are interacting. And so that's getting taken away from us.
Josh (53:07.758)Hmm. Now, it sounds like we're really in this sort of uphill battle.
Just circling back to supplements here a little bit, we're in this uphill battle against, you mentioned glyphosate and phthalates and all these things and EMFs, all these things in our modern world that are really effectively very insidious and really destroying our bodies and our health and our wellbeing over time, over years and years creating deficiencies which end up leading to dysfunction, which leads to disease, which leads to effectively a lifetime supply of medication that nobody's really addressing the roots of. And so we're in this uphill battle in our modern world. Now you mentioned vitamin D,

(02:49):
Josh (53:43.352)So two follow-up questions to that one, Sean. Are there A, any other supplements that you would recommend most people take? B, what forms? I know magnesium by itself can be very confusing for people.
Shawn Wells (53:56.157)So any other supplements? So my top list of supplements, so probably dihydroberberine, which by the way, like berberine, great supplement, but it can have GI effects, speaking of which, in about a third of the population, it can have GI issues, same with metformin.
I love dihydroberberine because it's anti-glycation, which ages or anti-glycation end products, which literally do age you. But also because 87% of the population is metabolically dysfunctional, and that's correlated to insulin resistance, that this supplement has a profound effect on that.
Shawn Wells (54:46.547)form dihydroberberine from berberine. Berberine converts at the gut level to dihydroberberine. So this kind of solves that, especially for your population that may have gut issues. This could be a really big win on that front, especially if they're dealing with metabolic dysfunction, which most of us are. So I love that herb, that nutrient. Magnesium, yeah,
Shawn Wells (55:16.427)The trusted form for me is magnesium glycinate. It's solid, I love it, it works. You don't really need to spend a whole lot more than that.
Vitamin D, make sure you're getting Vitamin D3 in the oil form. And even better is if you're delivering it with other oil. So whether it's fish oil, cod liver oil, like whatever it is, eating it with a fatty meal, that's going to enhance its uptake. I also like getting K2 with it. That's smart to co-administer those two nutrients together. So D3, K2, oil form.
I do like the postbiotic, prebiotic that I mentioned before, the pre-4 pro and tributerine. And by the way, collectively if you take the pre, the pro and the post, they're called synbiotics for anyone that's listening that's part of your population.
Let me think, methylcobalamin and essentially all the B vitamins that are in their methylated forms, their co-enzymated forms, they don't require enzymatic conversion. So like methylcobalamin is the active form of B12.
There's folate, which requires several enzymatic steps to get to the active form. And people have the MTHFR gene, where they may not convert from folic acid or folate to five-methyltetrahydrofolate. And so they could be taking plenty of a supplement. They could be taking plenty of foods that are high in folate, but not having enough of the active in their cells.
Shawn Wells (57:03.335)be anemic. So this is where it's good to know about your genes and it's good to just simply kind of proactively preemptively getting these methylated forms of B vitamins.
Josh (57:17.302)I think it's funny when the doctors will recommend pregnant women take folic acid when 44% of the population Has that mthfr sniff that you're talking about where they can't convert anyways So you're just really buying expensive pee from the grocery store or these trash like Jameson grocery store brand vitamins We're not really getting it Are there any others that are key on your list?
Shawn Wells (57:38.649)Yeah, so mitochondrial supplements, you know, I'm a big fan of anything Mito. I've talked about Mito as kind of the next keto.
CoQ10 and PQQ are part of that electron transport chain. These are going to be really important, not just for anti-aging in general, but again, anywhere there's mitochondrial and metabolic dysfunction, these are all going to help. The ubiquinol form of CoQ10 is better than ubiquinone, and maybe this mito-Q form could be the best. Really need more research there, but it's an interesting one.
Beyond that, some of these NAD precursors, things that can enhance and increase the amount of NAD, which can help with that mitochondrial dysfunction, help with ATP production, help protect DNA. So that's going to be things like NR, NMN, and various forms of niacin, niacinamide, nicotinic acid, are all going to help with
NAD levels and then on the other side I was talking about polyphenols earlier. Most of the polyphenols inhibit NADA's also called CD38 the enzyme that breaks down NAD. So as we age we make less NAD we break it down faster and things like exposure to toxins not getting enough sleep
alcohol, all those kinds of things actually lead to less production of NAD as well. So this is where...
Shawn Wells (59:29.017)and I guess a state of living that is not ideal can lead to some of these states where you're not having enough energy. Certainly NAD is correlated to that. So these polyphenols could be really good stacked with some of these NAD enhancers. It's kind of the double whammy there. So those would be ones that I'd recommend in terms of mitochondrial function. I'm trying to think if there's anything else
excited about from a mitochondrial level. Oh, ergothionine. It could be the next new vitamin. It's really exciting. It's protecting the mitochondria, not just the cell as an antioxidant, but the mitochondria. There's a unique storage system for it in your body, unique transport system for it in your body, and we're kind of just learning about it. Tons of data coming out on it. And this is something that...
really is a whole new frontier in terms of protecting the mitochondria and Literally, maybe the newest vitamin after whatever it's been 80 or 100 years Maybe the last one would be spermidine Which is another anti-aging nutrient that's associated with autophagy and mitophagy Cleaning out the cell and the mitochondria like we talked about
Josh (01:00:51.294)Amazing. Well, Sean, I know we're wrapping up our time here together. I want to respect your time. I know you're a very busy guy and I want to thank you for just taking all this time to share your expertise. I have two quick questions for you before we wrap things up. One, is there anything else you'd like to say to the audience before we wrap things up officially, maybe tie a bow around or any last words of advice? And two, where can they reach you if they want to learn more?
Shawn Wells (01:01:17.857)I think the most important thing to me that I've learned along the way and you're probably catching some of this is Just being kind to yourself granting yourself grace That's kind of one part of the equation and then the other part is You are sovereign over you are responsible for you You are the cure you are the cause like take that responsibility So be kind

(03:10):
Don't blame yourself, but also take responsibility over yourself. Don't give away your power to the clinician, to these gurus, to this influencer, whatever, like take the power back and take responsibility for your life, but also be kind to yourself in the process. Yeah. And, and you can reach me on
Josh (01:02:06.326)It's very powerful.
Shawn Wells (01:02:11.421)Instagram at Sean Wells, S-H-A-W-N. I have a website, S-H-A-W-N-W-E-L-L-S, seanwells.com, where I have a weekly newsletter with all kinds of stuff going over studies and some of my cool social media graphics and.
I don't know, I do like these guides on immune stacks, on nootropic stacks, all that kind of stuff. Everything's free, there's nothing I sell, so yeah, that's it.
Josh (01:02:43.842)Brilliant. We're looking forward to that. I know your assistant had actually sent me a ton of links here. We're going to drop in the chats. There's a YouTube stuff and there's a website and all your socials. And I just think you are a fascinating guy who people really should be looking out for a lot more often. I know you've been around. Um, you're very well known all around the world for what you do. And we're just so glad to have you here. So guys, make sure to check out Sean's links at Sean S H A W N and make sure you check out his links inside the show notes. There's some pretty cool stuff down there. Sean, thank you again, man. It's been a pleasure.
Shawn Wells (01:02:49.595)Okay.
Shawn Wells (01:03:14.211)Thank you, Josh. I enjoyed it.

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55: The Best and Worst Supplements For Your (Gut) Health - with Shawn Wells

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}55: The Best and Worst Supplements For Your (Gut) Health - with Shawn Wells