COVID-19 Files: Ep. 11

Eric Rieger  0:00  
All right, it is now time for the gut check project with the COVID file installment number 11. I'm Eric Rieger, with your co host, Dr. Kenneth Brown. Dr. Brown what's happening today?

Ken Brown  0:10  
What's going on Eric? I love you sticking to your roots and the hair just keeps getting bigger and bigger this COVID do that. Yeah going on it's starting to starting to really rock right now.

Eric Rieger  0:20  
You can you can see roots you can see some gray Kevin but yeah, roots. Whatever it takes. 

Ken Brown  0:27  
How have you been? What's going on with the family? let's get let's get caught up on that stuff. We're not doing enough personal stuff lately.

Eric Rieger  0:33  
Man family. It's funny. You mentioned that. Yeah, considering what we're going to talk about. But this weekend, I get to go and see my oldest he is in his first semester at Texas Tech. He's loving it, but I'm not seeing him in over a month can't wait till this weekend for us to say hello to each other and youngest Mac has got basketball this evening. They're doing tournaments. And of course, both of them are having to do this readjustment obviously around COVID. And Marie, I couldn't be more excited to to obviously go and watch the boys play. And then go watch or go catch up with gage this weekend. And she and I just remain busy. So it's a it's it's the world we live in now. It's prefaced by my COVID. What about yourself?

Ken Brown  1:23  
things are going really good with the family. We're trying to figure out how to get back at some of these tennis tournaments, as they put them on, and they cancel them and so on. So talking to mom a lot and trying to be very proactive about speak with mom trying to figure out how I can get my 79 year old, very Spry mom who's feeling better now than she did when she was 69. So and then 59. I think she's feeling better now than she has in 20 years. And so I started thinking about that I started thinking about family and how important that is. And this is what I want to kind of get into today today's I kind of threw you a curveball, I initially said we're going to talk about something and then I started going down these rabbit holes of research. And rather than rabbit holes, I'm gonna call them vole holes, the prairie vole holes. Alright, I'll explain how that ties in. But when we're looking at this, I'm sitting there talking to my mom, and she sounds great. And we're trying to do this. I've got, you know, we did some some zooms with some other friends around the country. And I'm like, wow, this is an interesting time. And I then started thinking about my practice. And I'm like, and my practice is really busy right now, like people are really struggling, and they're very desperate. So I started down this whole path. This is where it began. And this is going to end up being Angie Cooks podcast, because she's going to come on and I'm challenging her to be the expert in this, because I just got done doing Chris Kresser's podcast where he agreed, we need to bring this one thing out in the open. What we're seeing and what I'm seeing with patients is a consistent deal where if people have some sort of gastrointestinal problem, specifically CBOE, I can trace it back. And then you have these people that are showing up with dysautonomia, they've got pots. Ehlers Danlos and which comes first chicken of the egg did something cause that, if those terms don't mean anything to you, good. If they mean something to you, then you know what I'm talking about, because it's this. It's this constellation of symptoms that nobody has put together before, which is gut something happens to your gut, then suddenly, you're diagnosed as having Ehlers Danlos. And then it's postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome called pots. So for all those people that have this, and there's actually way more than we realize, that's what I started with this, I was like, Oh, I'm going to do a, I'm going to do the preface, the the sort of general 30,000 foot view of why we have this and then I started thinking, Wait a minute, why is this why are we seeing more of this now? Why are we having more gastrointestinal issues, which conceivably can lead to chronic long term stuff. And then I had a wake up in the middle of the night moment where I went COVID people are recovering from COVID. But then they're having chronic issues. And it's really all over the map. Now, cardiac issues, pulmonary issues, some some nerve issues, are we going to end up with a whole new wave of almost post Lyme, chronic infection type things that the immune system is turned on? So then that got me thinking, I'm like, Oh my gosh, we got to figure out this whole motility deal. And during this really busy time, I've got all these people and then I got a article was sent to me by the Journal of American Medical Association, this month, September 2020, that signs of depression have tripled in the US since COVID 19 pandemic So 28% of the people surveyed had at least one symptom of depression, you compare that to 8.5% pre pandemic. So it's not just the number, but the severity of depression is increasing tremendously also. And there's actually a significant number of people that have been diagnosed with serious depression. When you fall into that category, you start really worrying about suicide, you start really worrying about breakthrough of other problems. And it usually requires a ton of treatment and different things to try and get this under wraps. So there's very little research going on right now discussing this. So we've got this COVID problem, even if you don't get COVID. So if you get COVID, it's possible, you have to worry about a long term consequence. We know it can infect the gut. And then even if you don't, we're seeing the next wave of impending pandemic of depression that we're going to have to deal with. So

Eric Rieger  6:00  
No joke. I was just going to add that the I guess the the syndromes that you're describing Ehlers Danlos, and POTs, etc. It is reminiscent to the time when you were addressing IBS and bloating, okay, because those were somewhat seen as throwaway trashcan diagnoses. And that's really kind of stealing a lot from you. That's what people felt they're like, well, I don't know, it's IBS, I don't know. It almost feels like it, we're we're now sustaining a wave of POTs and Ehlers. And we're seeing these people come through and they don't really know who they can turn to. And little bit by little bit, it seems like maybe we're making a little bit of headway. So drawing this connection really pulls me in, and others who may actually have happened to suffer from this, or who have witnessed family members suffer from this kind of stuff, because there has to be a way out. And there's usually a cause and just kicking it under the rug and pretending like it's not there is not really going to work. And if we know that COVID is setting us up to experience syndromes similar to this, then more than likely, we can walk backwards and figure out what was it that COVID did to put these things in motion? And what can we do about it? If we become infected to hopefully either curve it or not experience it all together?

Ken Brown  7:23  
Well, I think one of the biggest things is that if you are in a situation, you cannot have a healthy immune system without a healthy gut. So what I'm saying is that we do have evidence now that when you have a something that affects your gastrointestinal system system, like an h2 receptor, where spike protein can bind to it, and then that's where the, the whole disease starts, that could lead to a domino effect of more chronic problems. And so I'm sitting, I'm just like, wow, okay, this is daunting, my practice is full, we're getting all these people showing up with these, I don't, I can't giv...