The Epigenetic Reset, Gut Microbiome & How to Build Healthier Future Generations with Donna Gates

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The Epigenetic Reset, Gut Microbiome & How to Build Healthier Future Generations with Donna Gates

00:00 Introduction to Donna Gates and the gut microbiome

04:00 Donna’s Long COVID and chronic infection recovery journey

10:00 Epigenetic tags and the “epigenetic reset” after conception

15:00 Methylation explained

16:00 Pottinger’s Cats and generational health decline

19:00 Mindful preconception and preparing future parents

24:00 Seed oils, nutrition, and healthy pregnancy

26:00 Fermented vegetables and Lactobacillus plantarum

33:00 Yeast infections, oxalates, and gut imbalance

39:00 Sleep, recovery, and immune resilience

42:00 Vaccines, immune development, and “vaccinatable” children

54:00 The rise of preconception awareness and the “Zero Trimester”

57:00 Bifidobacteria and newborn gut development

1:03:00 C-section births and microbiome considerations

1:08:00 Mitochondrial health and nutrition

1:11:00 Methylation, MTHFR, and pregnancy preparation

1:17:00 Childhood vaccines and immune readiness discussion

Decode Your DNA for Better Health | Dr. Sam Shay on Functional Genetics & Personalized Wellness

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:05)

Hello and welcome to Unstress Health. My name is Dr. Ron Ehrlich.

Well, over the last 10 or 15 years, the gut microbiome has really attracted a great deal of attention. The importance of it not only to our immune system, but to mental health. So many neurotransmitters are produced in the gut. 95% of the body’s serotonin is produced in the gut. And serotonin, of course, is what is the focus of many antidepressants.

But immune function is also an important part. And this has been a revolution, if you like, in healthcare over the last 10 or 15 years. Well, my guest today is Donna Gates. And Donna is a pioneer in digestive health, nutrition, and the gut microbiome. And she has been a pioneer for over 30 years. She’s the creator of the body ecology diet, recovering your health and building your immunity.

Now it’s a groundbreaking approach approach that has helped people around the world restore gut balance and vitality. For decades, and I mean decades, Donna has been at the forefront of understanding how diet, stress, and the microbiome influence every stage of life, from conception to through adulthood. And today we’ll explore how the epigenetic reset. Now, this was a real aha moment for me.

As she talked about this epigenetic reset. The fact that you are not a victim to your genes, that your genes have epigenetic tags on them, which you’ve inherited from your mother and father and grandparents, epigenetic tags which cause your genes to express themselves in a certain way. Puts a whole new perspective on family history. 

But those epigenetic tags go through a reset early on in life, in the first few days or weeks of life or even from conception. Look, I’m not going to spoil it. Have a listen to the podcast. The other interesting point, and and by the way, that that reset at conception offers a powerful opportunity to rebuild a healthier future generation and why stress management is so important for parents to be, not just prior to conception, not just during pregnancy, but from the moment of birth we have an influence on that on that child and how it develops. 

So the other interesting point that Donna introduced me to today was the point of a person being vaccinatable. Vaccinatable. We’re not talking about anti vaxxing and you shouldn’t have a vaccine. The point that Donna raises is is your child vaccinatable? Should are they in good enough health to receive the vaccines that they are being given. And we talk about the difference between the American vaccine program and the Australian vaccine program. There is so much in this episode. I hope you enjoy this conversation I had with Donna Gates. Welcome to the show, Donna.

Donna Gates (03:23)

Thank you, Ron. We’ve actually had our past crossing for years now, so this is nice to reconnect.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (03:30)

We have, we have. And you were one of the first people ever to talk about microbiome in the gut and its effect on people’s health in general, but this is what we’re basically going to be talking about today. But you shared a very personal story about being a long hauler after multiple COVID infections and how that experienced led you to some new discoveries. Can you tell us a bit about what you found out during that time and why it’s such an urgent message, particularly for younger generations having children, planning to have children.

Donna Gates (04:05)

Yeah. What happened was I got COVID three times close together in a row and I was fine each time. But for some reason about three weeks after that I started getting really sick and every infection that I had, I had Debstein Barr and herpes virus and candida, everything that was in my body, these are residual residual infections and they live in different tissue in the body and they all came out.

So I was okay with that. I knew what to do with those problems. And I actually have a new book I just put up on Kendall. it’s called Caming the Dragon about how to get rid of viral infections that are residual. Like how to, you know, they they they’re living in your tissue. It’s difficult to measure for them because they are not out in the blood. And anyway, they when they come out, they cause more infection. And there’s a way to get them under control almost immediately with a diet. 

So I was teaching about that diet for years and then realized how valuable w it would be when COVID hit. So I actually wrote a book and put it out. But anyway, during this time, when I was trying to figure out what was wrong and what was everything was going wrong, with these infections and working on getting rid of I I literally went through two months of being brain my brain just didn’t work.

And I had no energy. I was shocked at how I had no energy. I could barely get out of bed. So I spent a couple of months in bed actually. And I was not able to do anything. My nervous system was so screwed up that I I got nervous real easily. I literally could only do one thing and that was watch this one TV show about this man who went into the animal shelters and he’d pick out a dog and he’d train it. He was an animal trainer and he’d train it and give it to a family that needed a special kind of dog.

And so for some reason that calmed me down and I made it I th I’m sure I watched every segment they’ve ever put out. But anyway, during I I was pretty depressed during this time because I figured, you know, well I am almost eighty. I’ll be eighty in a year. And then you know, people die at a certain point. Lots of people really hit the wall in their eighties and I thought maybe this is how I’m gonna end my life. So done you know, the things I came to do and then I started thinking

I don’t feel like going yet. And I really, really, really still want to make a difference in the world. I really was the first person to ever talk about the microbiome thirty years ago and I wrote about it in a book and explained how we need to eat fermented foods to, you know, keep it alive inside of us. And so that book was a bestseller for a long time. And then, you know, I felt and then a lot of things happened. Like I introduced Stevia to the country. 

We didn’t have any anything but aspartame at that point and coconut oil and a lot of things that are just part of our diet today were new at that time and so I I brought them in and explained why to eat them. But so, you know, I just felt like I I ha if there’s anything else I can still do before I leave this earth, I want to find it. And so I just sort of prayed and said, you know, is there something else I could bring into the world? learn something and teach others. 

So I started coming into this body of knowledge. It was just just kind of like I stumbled on the microbiome y years ago because there were microbiologists out there and they were studying th you know, bacteria. They weren’t sharing it with us, normal people, and they weren’t explaining how it had any value to us to have about the microbiome. They didn’t ever talk about the head. 

And so this body of information I came across that just kind of stumbled on it by asking Chad, I think is how I got it, is some questions. And basically in a nutshell I’ll explain what it is. When the egg and the sperm come together at conception, people don’t realize it’s ’cause just occurred. They just made love or whatever and they just conceived this baby. But a miracle starts happening. 

And that miracle is that gosh I really I don’t know, I’m really off today. Okay. Let me start that segment over if I could. Okay. So I’d like to explain what that is, this miracle that happens when conception takes place. So when the egg and sperm come together, the everybody knows that the father is bringing his genes into the picture and the mother has her genes that she brings to the baby.

What people don’t realize is that on those genes are something called tags, epigenetic tags. And what that means is that all the mother’s lifetime when with her bad diet and maybe the father also bad diet, drinking, smoking pot, mother on birth control pills, all these bad things we end up doing to our body, they end up putting these little blemishes or marks or tags on the gene.

And they affect how the gene works. They either turn the gene up or turn it down or won’t let it fire at all. So it’s so t and that’s one of the reasons we age, by the way, is because these tags that we keep adding to us to our genes as we age, you know, the the genes don’t work as well. So these tags are a problem and they’re put on by a bad diet, by infections that we get, by all the toxins that we’re exposed to.

Like anything that’s bad for us makes a tag. Now what happens on day one, right after the egg and sperm come together, is the tags start being erased. The tags that the babies inherited from her mother, from his father, they’re starting to come off. The father’s tags cough off v come will come off very quickly. And the mother’s tag tags come off sort of quickly, but they’re gone in within five days. Then what happens is this little fertilized egg is gonna implant into the uterus. 

And now new tags, if the mother, you know, continue to eat a bad diet or she’s being exposed to toxins, you know, chemicals around the house, whatever, all these things that are now they’re new tags being put onto this baby who originally just had a clean slate. So it’s an incredible opportunity if parents understood that the clean slate that you’re giving your baby. 

You want to, you know, go on from there and build a healthy baby with a really bright brain and healthy body and all and you can do that now because all your tags are gone. There’s a few left remaining. They’re sort of survival tags and it’s okay to have those. But the bad things that we do and I think there’s probably no mother who gets pregnant that doesn’t wonder along the way. was all that crazy wild stuff I did in college

Was that diet that I grew up on, so and so, was that birth control pill? Are they is my baby gonna be okay? So this is a way to pro show you that your baby’s gonna be okay. So the so the thing is, by day f all these days, one, two, three, four and five, the mother doesn’t even know she’s pregnant yet. She just can see if she hasn’t mer missed a period. 

So what happens then is the they all well in other words, they take advantages advantage of this miracle, you have to do you have to come to that pregnancy, come to that conception, with your body as clean and pure as you can get it, as well fed as you can get it, well rested, ’cause stress also puts tags on the GN the methyl they’re called methylation tags, and they keep the methylations the the genes from methylating properly. 

So they are so it’s an i just an incredible opportunity to give your baby this clean slate and start over life and all you ha what you have to do to do that is months ahead of time, like for the father about three months, for the mother even longer, like six months or a year will make an enormous difference in everything about your child. 

The whole rest of their life has changed, the way they age, how they’re s how resilient their immune system is, how happy they are, because their brain is brighter and you know, you’re just happier like you we were talking at one point about the gut microbiome and the connection we know to to the mental disorders, like even things that kids have today like pans and pandas and autism and all are neurological disorders, but there’s always a gut imbalance.

So imagine if you’re one of these parents, couples, let’s say, and you’d like to have a baby, but you’re concerned because look at how many people you know have I mean, it’s like almost you can ask almost anybody and they will know someone with a child with autism. 

That’s how bad it’s become. So, you know, and at least if they don’t express it in the back of their mind, they really are concerned about how will they be the one that draws that unlucky straw and have that child with autism. So this is this is like an insurance policy. It’s like a miracle or a gift, I think a gift from nature. And the more I study this kind of stuff, it makes me realize how much nature really loves us.

It’s giving this b in love’s b babies like the most powerful force in all of nature is the is the force to reproduce that next generation in pl in the plant world and the animal world. Getting that next generation into the world is everything to nature. So nature’s got all these different ways of starting the baby’s life.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (13:53)

I’d like to come to them, but gee whiz, what a what a concept of epigenetic tags being present. dear, none of us have been perfect in our journey, particularly in the early years of our lives and then here we are faced with conception or the the opportunity to have a baby to make another human being, which is incredible and doesn’t matter how many times but to know that those epig I as you were speaking, 

I was thinking well, you know, we we’ve always liked to blame our parents, and this is the evidence for it, right there, epigenetic tags. But no, they’re lost and they give us a clean slate and we have an opportunity to do things. You mentioned also methylation in passing, and it is a really important process. Just give us methylation one one before we go into how wonderful nature is, etc. What’s methylation?

Donna Gates (14:50)

Well, it’s just probably the most critical process, genetic process in the body. It’s w how the genes are basically turned off and turned on. And it’s just that simple really. But do you Ron, have you heard about the Pottinger’s Cat story?

Dr Ron Ehrlich (15:08)

Now Donna, I am on the board of the Price Pottinger Ancestral Nutrition Foundation. So the answer to that question is most definitely yes, but my listener may not have. So please share it with us.

Donna Gates (15:22)

Okay, so Francis Pottinger, I think I’m not sure exactly when it do you know exactly when he started. I think it was in the

Dr Ron Ehrlich (15:29)

Twenty. Ninete twenties. Yeah.

Donna Gates (15:32)

So he had these two different groups of cats and one of the groups got raw meat and f raw milk and was a very healthy group, always fed healthy things. The other group though got what would be equivalent to cooked food and what would be equivalent to our jungfu diet basically. And so in the very first generation, the next first generation to come along, they weren’t so there were some problems, there were some allergies and a little bit of autoimmunity and everything, but not so bad.

The next generation got worse and when people start to study, you know, generational genetics. So that’s by that next generation, which we mean your grandchildren, more problems are gonna show up. So basically p what have ended up happening with the cats, and you can please add to my story, add to my explanation here, but the the poor group, the poor groups that got bad food and didn’t get the healthy raw milk and all today, they just couldn’t couldn’t conceive anymore. 

They were they couldn’t reproduce. That was the end of the line for them. Where the other ones were continuing to go on nice and healthy. So I think people maybe they know that story, but they’re not by tying it into where we are right now. We really are the genera we’re seeing the generation that’s not going to be able to have. Of course we came along with IVF so we can artificially help.

Parents, but that doesn’t it very often doesn’t work. It cost a fortune and it’s painful. It’s a difficult, painful emotionally and physically process. So it’s not really a good solution. An easier solution is to teach the young men and women coming up to think someday they want to be a parent and have a family that how to take care of the body before we get to that stage where we’re ready to conceive. So I

Dr Ron Ehrlich (17:23)

Yeah. Donna, I just I will just jump in there and add because people may be wondering, what does cats have to do with me? Well well, you know, he went through so many genera well, about five or six generations, and and progressively their skull’s shapes and their health deteriorated. Literally their skull s became smaller, their airways became smaller, they had more difficulty conceiving, and the and he has the skulls. 

In fact we as a foundation have those skulls and we are just about to put them all back together again in an animation to make that point. But the beauty of it was when he then fed the fourth or fifth generation healthy food, guess what? They they improved their health, they physically regenerated. And in case people are wondering, well what’s that got to do with me? 

Here’s a point that I would ask all of our listeners, we’ve evolved to have two hands, two feet, five fingers on every hand, two eyes, two ears. We’ve also evolved to have thirty-two teeth in our mouth. Now how many people listening to this have enough room for all thirty-two of their teeth, that means your wisdom teeth, through and in perfect order because the size and shape of your mouth literally determines the size and shape of your upper airway.

So if you think sleeping and breathing are important, all thirty two teeth will guarantee well not guarantee you, but predispose you to better sleeping and breathing. So a lot of our modern population is physically degenerated, to your point, in a similar way to Pottinger’s cats. Please proceed.

Donna Gates (19:11)

Well, I’m glad you added all that. It makes a better a much better point. But so the thing is is that you want to I call it mindful preconception. And if anybody wants to go to the webs my website, bodyecology.com, they can get a free checklist of the things you have to do to get your body ready. Or if you’re a mother of a child, a boy or a girl, you know, we need to have like a value in our culture where we want our young boys and girls to grow up realizing that they have they have the responsibility to make this next generation. 

And it’s an incredible responsibility. For some reason I knew that really early in life. I d I knew I w wanted a family. But I just always had this feeling that gosh, you know, I’d have a be able to create another human being. And I think people really realize that when they when they meet their baby for the first time. Like the baby comes out and all of a sudden it’s like, my God, I’ve been carrying this baby around for nine months, but it’s more than I ever could imagine. 

And so,  and then people you often get real concerned about the baby, you know, want to take perfect care of them. But you know, odds isn’t well, let me go back and exp add this to it too. My my grandmother was born in the early nineteen like n I think like tw nineteen hundreds, like nineteen seven or something, in the South and you know, in the South mothers got married ridiculously early, like sixteen and seventeen. 

So my grandmother had my mother when she was seventeen. And then my mother came along and had me, and then I had a generation do s daughter and two sons and then I have and then they have grandchildren. So we’re at that that point, you know. I mean, you might think, well, maybe we have long time to go, but we don’t. And what we’re seeing with the neurological disorders like autism they’re just warning signs that we’re there. 

We’re like n before you know it, we aren’t gonna be able to reproduce. But I’m glad you brought up the fact that the Pottinger found that by feeding the cats well, he could bring back again. I and I don’t think he could bring back a hundred percent right away in one generation, but he could start that trend. And that’s, you know, back I don’t know, during the War world the war with Hitler,  there was a big movement in this country called eugenics. 

And that was where they decided, let’s grow healthy, beautiful, strong, good looking people. And so there’s a lot of money  put, you know, Rockefellers and other huge people with huge money put a tremendous millions and millions of dollars into the research on how to do that. And it was a big mov movement in our country, but it was picked up by the Germans. 

And then they of course the problem with that whole theory, it’s nice to think of growing healthier generations, but but there was ch it was judgmental. Like some it wouldn’t it assumed that certain people were inferior. And that’s one of the ways we can make this happen is let’s get rid of all the inferior people. This is not I’m not talking about that at all. I’m saying that everybody, 

I don’t care, even if you were raised in a a terrible environment in a food desert or something you can change, you can start your family on a whole different trajectory toward really strong, healthy human beings. And I don’t I mean it just took a couple of generations to do that. But what we also have right now that we they wouldn’t have had in the past is really the opportunity to have access to really superior food. I mean, I know we have a lot of junk food. Too much junk food. some point I want to make too this will fit right in with your Western egg price thing too. But you know

The big, big thing at the moment is everybody’s talking about these bad seed oils. Well, you know, they need to be more specific and explain that the oils they’re talking about are oils that have been bleached, deodorized, refined, like canola oil in this country has been bleached, deodorized, refined. Otherwise, it’s it’s not it’s not an unhealthy oil. It’s just that it tastes horrible. So in order to be able to use it everywhere, they bleached, deodorize it, and refined it.

But there are people like here in in America here, there’s a man named I Andreas, and he makes seed oils and he presses them with a real fine press, old fashioned German style of press. And the way they used to press oil a long time ago, which was take a small amount and press it and get the oil out of it. 

That’s not what we have today. But if you go to someone like him, you can get pumpkin seed oil, for example, that’s really, really rich in zinc great way to get zinc, which is a great nutrient if you want to have a healthy baby. So, you know, the I I wish that whole conversation around seed oils would get corrected but

Dr Ron Ehrlich (24:07)

Donna, you’ll be very pleased to hear that we did a a programme on that very topic to say, you know, all seed oils are not created equally. And we’ll have links to that that in our in our notes. But yes, it’s an interesting point to make that you know categorizing all seed oils as bad is is easy, rolls off the tongue well, but what we’re talking about is highly processed seed oils, and there are other alternatives there, ’cause

Omega six and omega three, both important oils. I think we get far too much of processed omega six oils and not enough omega three, that’s true, but but ⁓ it’s not quite as simple as that we’ve done Exactly

Donna Gates (24:51)

Yeah. So that’s one of the things you want to do is when you’re changing your di ch changing your diet is the first step. If you want to be one of those fortunate parents that doesn’t have that really does have a beautiful child that’s super smart, healthy, you know, that which is what every parent wants really, there’s a way to do it. And so again, like I said, I have this pre preconception checklist on the website, but I also have something right here to remind me. So nutrition is the most important thing.

And let’s see. So off the top, you wanna just never eat any more processed foods. And you do want to eat a lot of vegetables, for example, they’re really great for the gut microbiome. And you also I I mean, I could this is what I could talk for a long time about is fermented vegetables. 

They’re the more I study health, the more I study the gut and the microbiome and everything, it always comes back to how the vegetables are just amazing for what they do. And they they really have to be in our diet. And so if a woman wants to get pregnant, even a man, because the sperm, you know, the sperm can be dysbiotic also. And if it is dysbiotic, there’s a good chance that the woman’s woman’s vaginal microbiome won’t even accept that sperm. So that could be definitely a reason why we have such an infertility problem today, is dads are drinking alcohol, maybe smoking whatever, eating really bad food, especially the men. 

I mean, women seem to be more conscientious about that, but men are sometimes terrible haters when they’re young. So anyway, so I think that, you know, diet’s the first most important step and I would

Dr Ron Ehrlich (26:35)

And Donna Donna, you you’ve mentioned there and I want to I think it does bear repeating, and that is that vegetables, yes, but fermented vegetables, particularly cultured vegetables. What are some I mean, sauerkraut’s an example of that, kimchi, things like that. Is that what we are talking about?

Donna Gates (26:53)

Well, so so years ago, you know, when I wrote the book, I had a whole chapter on these you know, I explained to how the we had this world in our gut and then how it gets there and then how to keep it there as we go through life so we can be healthy. So I had a whole chapter on fermented vegetables with r recipes on how to make them. But the the thing is is that sauerkraut is usually thought of to be just cabbage. And kimchi is very, very spicy. You have to really like spicy foods.

Which of course the Koreans do, but you can take other vegetables and shred up, pack in a jar. I like to put in a brine. And another thing I discovered is that a lot of people are histamine intolerant. And so right now there’s a big conversation going around about how you know, don’t eat fermented vegetables, anything fermented. But what I found is that I didn’t have that problem. I mean, when I had so what came out of my two years in bed and everything was I took a test and learned that I had Lyme disease. 

So then I had to start getting over that. So I’ve been slowly recovering from that and working on it. But the thing is is that, you know, I had histamine intolerance. So I really got to experience what that felt like. And then well, when I f started eating my own fermented vegetables because I’m just so used to them and the meal is so f it’s like to me, the meal’s not complete without the nice freshness of these v fermented vegetables.

And I make great, you know, really good tasting ones. Like a real popular recipe that I make is just cabbage, carrots, garlic and ginger. That’s a really good one to that I when I wanna introduce people to them and I want to like Everybody likes those. They always have a sweetness to them. But I so I was missing that and I thought, Well, I’m not supposed to eat if I’m gonna be itching. So anyway I decided to eat and I didn’t have any reaction. 

And then I realize that that’s because the way I make this I make our own cultured vegetables and the way I make them is I ⁓ I’m I shred up the vegetables and pack them in a jar. But before I put them in the jar, I create a brine. A brine is like just a liquid. In my brine I put about four cut up apples because I want to sweeten it. Because what I’m gonna do with that brine is I’m really feeding the bacteria and they like that little bit of sweetness.

And so and I also put our minerals. We have ancient earth minerals that they also love. And so I’ll put some of those in there, the liquids liquid minerals. And then the other thing I do that no I don’t think people think to do is I we saw a starter, a vegetable c starter, which is lactobacillus plantarum, which is the between plonterum and bifidus, those are the two most important bacteria they’re gonna have. The lactobacillus family and the bifidus family are the two most important.

Which means that other strains of bacteria are are important too, but those are s have special functions that we have to have in our gut. The bifidus bacteria is the first bacteria that inoculates a baby’s gut when we’re born. But anyway, back to making the vegetables. So I I take the brine, put in the apples and the minerals and some salt, and then I put in our starter. And the starter’s the lactobacillus. 

And I just put in one package and stir all that brine into the veggies and pack them in a jar and let them sit for a week. Well, I decided to have, you know, see what that did a couple years back. And I sent some jars of fermented vegetables with the starter. And some jars of fermented vegetables without using a starter, sent them up to c University of Nebraska, actually did her lab. And in a couple of weeks they came back and told me the difference and it was just I couldn’t believe it.

I could not believe that they would multiply such an incredibly large numbers in the ones that have the starter. But see, Lactopacillus is one of those keystone bacteria that that the b the it it’s a sort of a like a general in an army. People all the other bacteria pay attention to it and follow it. And so, you know, it th it just grew out this un wish I could remember the exact I was shocked anyway. So that was it for me. I decided I’m just gonna always add the starter and so I think

Dr Ron Ehrlich (31:15)

Starter and the Donna the starter contains the bifidus and the back.

Donna Gates (31:19)

No, no, that that starter is just Lactobacillus plantarum. So plantarum is naturally present on plants. Lactobacillus plantarum. But it’s a it is a special bacteria and it is lactobacillus you’ll find in reproduction, like in the the woman’s vagina, in the microbiome of a woman that’s healthy, there’s a huge amount of lactopacillus. 

And it’s the it has special qualities. Like one of the qualities that it has is it degrades histamine. So then I realized, no wonder I’m not having a reaction because I’ve got so much lycopacillus in my cultured vegetables that I make at home that they degrade any histamine that I am eating. So anyway, that thank God for that.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (32:08)

Donna, that that recipe, which I love and I’m madly trying to write it all down, but that will be on your website, bodyecology.com, I’m guessing. Because you’re doing a fermented vegetable mix of cabbage, carrot, garlic, and ginger. That’s all in the one fermented group, but you’re using a brine which contains apples and minerals. Do you then strain the apple and start?

Donna Gates (32:18)

Definitely. yeah, for sure. Well no when you blend with

Dr Ron Ehrlich (32:38)

In the apples and minerals and you put it all in together.

Donna Gates (32:41)

Yeah, and it’s in a blender. So you turn the blender on and it just whips up into like a juice. And I just poured all that in. But so you reminded me of something else, Ron. when people have a yeast infection, and many, many millions and millions of people do, and unfortunately lots of women come to a pregnancy with an infection, like a yeast infection or other infections too. 

You won wanna definitely get rid of those. But during the pregnancy, the Hormones like estrogen and go up so much during their pregnancy that the the yeast will come back. And so you really have to stay off of sugar. You want a low carb, very healthy diet with a lot of vegetables. I guess could get more into diet, but see what I was gonna say. yeah. So so the thing about people that have had have yeast infections in their body, they yeast make oxolates in our body. 

And so mint years ago and I was working with groups of kids that had autism. One of the things so we had a we had a email group that the moms constantly wrote in. So it was a great way to learn a lot about the kids. And it was called Bedrock, Body Ecology Diet Recovering Our Kids and and you have it over there in Australia. 

But one of the things that was interesting that moms some moms would report on is that their kids get like funny red ears or they had other symptoms that weren’t kind of unexplainable. And then digging deeper into it, the it began to people trying to Susan Owen, she figured out it was oxolates. And then she really dug into what are oxolates. And it was in the autism community that the that oxolates first got kind of known about.

So those kids, every single one of the those kids that have autism have a yeast infection. Just like everybody that has cancer has a yeast infection. And then they open them up and autopsy them, they see, you know, this white sheet of fungus in the body. So, but the thing is my point I’m trying to make is that oxalids are in food also. And so if you’re eating foods which are very popular now, like nuts and seeds, for example.

People eat all the time. They don’t soak or anything, they just eat And then they, they’re they’re very high in lysine, so they’re gonna bring I mean arginine, so they’re gonna bring out herbes infections. But also they’re super high in oxalates. So you just have too many oxalates in your body today, and between the ones you’re making endogenously from the yeast and then the ones that are eating, a a low oxalant diet is really a better diet.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (35:26)

Now now Donna, you’ll also be very pleased to know that we’ve done a program with a very good friend of yours, Maria Hunt, who has body ecology in Australia about oxalates. And of course that is one of the challenges. You mentioned them being present in nuts, and I know personally from my knowledge, having met you twenty five or more twenty or twenty-five years ago,

that soaking of nuts and then dry roasting them reduces that and the phytates and because you mention a lot of people do mention vegetables as the bedrock of of a diet, but vegetables also carry their own challenges, don’t they? Phytates, oxalates, salicylates, lectins, you know. Vegetables are not without their challenges as well. What do you say to that?

Donna Gates (36:17)

Well, I say that’s why people, you know, do well so well in the carnivore diet, ’cause they’re not getting any of those plant toxins and so they feel do feel better. And you know, it’s not a bad idea to experiment with that diet, see if you do feel. Sometimes people only do it for several months, but they could get a benefit from it. So I I totally understand where that’s coming from. But so the thing is I I think ultimately it all these sensitivities that we have to food is that the gut’s messed up.

And so ultimately having a really healthy gut microbiome from the beginning of life, treasuring it, don’t take antibiotics if you can possibly, you know, do but if you you know, here’s another interesting thing about lactopsolus plantarum. If you do have to take an antibiotic, eat the co fermented vegetables because plantarum isn’t bothered by almost any of the other antibiotics out there. So it’s not destroyed. You won’t get that overgrowth of yeast in your gut. And they’re like I said, they’re kind of like leaders and the other ones come back faster with Pantarum present too. So but I

Dr Ron Ehrlich (37:26)

It’s interesting, Donna, you mentioned yeast because boy, how many people would have some form of yeast infection given A their use of an the y the common use of antibiotics and B the food pyramid putting carbs at the foundation which loves yeasts love carbs, particularly those that are not prepared properly. So we have a lot of yeast problems whether people know it or not.

Donna Gates (37:55)

And we do from the beginning of life. Like people when if your baby’s born with cradle cap, that’s a yeast infection. And a lot of women when I tell them that say, my gosh, I had no idea but their baby was born is common to do to have a cradle cap. And then another thing is d much of the causes of diaper rash and then as kids get a little bit older, like eczema, when there so many children by the age of two have eczema, that’s all yeast. In an adult dandruff is but but that

that means I mean, that can be helped if a mother takes biotin during the pregnancy, that’d be vitamin biotin. that’s actually ultimately why, that’s happening. You know, they the biotin is not necessary. So,

Dr Ron Ehrlich (38:39)

Now Donna, you you mentioned I know you’re kind of making a very strong case, that nature has great potential, nature vaccinates a child before it’s born, I think you’ve said. And and I think you’ve gone some way to explaining that. you know, how how how can parents well prepare for that ⁓ with this this whole you were talking about nutrition as being the first thing and and you know, with fermented foods and

Donna Gates (39:11)

Well I think that if they really want to get their you know, be ready to conceive a child, they want to detoxify, they want f it’s maybe the first easiest thing to do is change your diet. And then do cha lifestyle changes, like really prioritize sleep. Even though you’re starting to watch something on TV and and that it comes to an end and you’ve just gotta see what happens on the next episode. Next thing you know, another couple of hours have gone by and you think, Darn, I I’m not gonna get more than five hours of sleep, you can’t do that.

So it means breaking habits, sac making sacrifices, but it’s so important. Sleep is so important. I would say looking back over the struggle I’ve had for the last couple of years with these infections and especially once I I took the test and found out to my shock that I had Lyme disease. Really the thing and and being a long hauler and having that nervous system issue, the th thing that helped most of all was rest, being still and sleeping.

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Donna Gates (41:19)

I’m sure I wouldn’t be well if I hadn’t really prioritized sleep. So I wish people would it’s just not it’s hard to do ’cause it’s not in our culture to to go to bed early. I mean, we all know we should, but nobody they don’t really ’cause they think of let me just do a few more things here.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (41:34)

Well, Donna, my I’m c I’m almost certain that no one who is a regular listener to my podcast would dare do something like that. You know, they will have heard this message many times. Listen, the topic of vaccines is an interesting one too, and it’s clearly evolving. And given recent C D C statements and report what what does the report say and what’s driving the trend, the change that’s going on in the States?

Donna Gates (42:00)

Well, I think that the artisan community, the mothers, for many years well, twenty years is since I’ve been involved, they knew their children were damaged by vaccines. They will tell me I I so many of I always interview them and want to know their blood type, what’s your son’s son’s blood type and all these other questions. And most of them are blood type A, by the way. So, you know, and and I’d ask about vaccines and and except for two or three people.

Everybody told me I have videos of him running around. He was so normal. He was talking and then he was vaccinated. And then all he’ll do now is go back in the bedroom and watch videos games all day long. And isn’t social anymore. So so Bobby Kennedy has been involved with that community for a long time. And he knows that vaccines but he has to walk, you know, it’s like walking on eggshells. He’s gotta walk carefully. 

So here’s what I wanted to say. When I wish all parents were told this because somehow or other, back with like 17, 1726 or something, Jenner Vox vaccinated the first little boy. I think it was eight or nine years old. But he grew up in a farm. He had a super healthy immune system and microbiome, you know, he wouldn’t have had prost foods and everything. And so he got a little bit of cowpox put into him. He had a little fever, small mild fever, and he felt kind of off. But the next day he was fine. So that was the beginning of vaccinations. And somehow we’ve totally lost our way. 

And I’m I’m kind of ashamed of our scientists because one of the things I’ve said for years and years, decades actually, is that major nature vaccinates us. Nature knows, you know, watch nature. Let’s copy nature. Let’s do what nature does. Like that’s how I figured out all about the microbiome and and how it got started and everything. I just started finding out how nature does things. So here’s the thing about vaccinations. Nature does vaccinate us. 

And because that’s because nature cares more than anything in the world that that the next generation is healthy. Like it’s a powerful force, the most powerful force in nature is to bring out the next generation. So in the sperm and in the egg, there before they’ve even come together and a new person is starting to be formed, they they already have things like the the egg has mitochondria in it. That’s in a critical part of an immune system is the mitochondria. It gives energy that’s one thing everybody knows that. But what a lot of people don’t know it’s a sensor of danger.

So if a if s we or baby or anything is exposed to a bacteria or a virus, then the immune system, the mitochondria actually immediately detect that bacteria and they shut down the body. So all of a sudden people are very tired. my gosh, you know, I don’t know what happened to me. I was fine this morning, I’m so exhausted. That’s because the mitochondria are detected something in your a virus or something. And so it’s shut down so that the virus can’t have a lot of energy to take over.

Now that’s important, and that’s in the egg. And the mother passes her mitochondria on to her each generation. That’s how they originally can found mitochondrial eve, because they found one or a group of women, I guess, that had the this mitochondria, and so they know it’s only from with the woman. But over on the man’s side, there are something called microRNAs, and they’re signalers. 

So they and they they have a real important and they signal the brain. They don’t make the brain, but they send signals to the brain to for the micro microglia in the brain, which is the immune cell of the brain. So the sperm is doing that. It’s very involved in the immune system and the immune system in the brain. So already from the very beginning, nature’s doing something. 

So let’s say you’re a really smart young scientist and you want to think you you think, well that is s interesting. I’m gonna figure out, I’m gonna look at these two aspects. What’s in the egg, immune system, you know, what is in the sperm, so on. And let’s start seeing how that works and even to like enhance it, magnify it, and do it even better. But we’re copying nature, which is okay to copy it. But so we don’t we’re we’re not thinking that way. And and and parents unfortunately are so scared today.

They they read one thing and now they think, I’ve got to vaccinate, and then they read another thing and no, I’m not gonna vaccinate. It’s really a difficult time. But if if we had more confidence in nature, because nature’s working very hard to protect us. So the next thing is is once the little egg and sperm are together and starting to form a little baby, you’ve got this microbiome from the mother beginning to the b this baby is going inside the inside the womb.

The baby is getting exposed to bacteria, but it’s not worried about being killed by a bacteria or something, because there’s a wonderful organ called the placenta that’s already formed, formed by the genes of the mom and the dad. And that placenta is nourishing the baby, giving the nutrients to the baby so it will grow, but also the placenta is feeding oxygen to the baby.

And it’s protecting the baby from bugs, b bacteria and you know, viruses, for example. So, so that’s an immune system right there. The placenta is behaving in a way to protect the baby and let’s see what else and the mother’s got her her microbiome f you know, constantly teaching the baby’s immune system. But in that very, very first beginning when the conception occurs, there’s actually a microbiome in the baby. And it’s a it’s a microbiome that’s quiet and still. It’s not learning to kill. It’s not a warrior’s microbiome.

It’s a it’s a learning microbiome. It’s learning how to w be calm. Because, you know, a healthy immune system is calm when it’s supposed to be most of the time. And then only flare up and fight if it does have a but s but in this case the placenta in the mother’s

The mother’s immune system is teaching. The placenta is protecting. And so the baby is starting to have his first immune system in the very beginning. And it’s a calm one, not a w not a warrior’s immune system.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (48:58)

One thing I think is worth reminding our listener, because you’ve mentioned autism and you’ve mentioned vaccinations, and I think it’s sobering to learn the trends that have occurred over the last twenty or thirty years and the number, which is quite staggering. I mean, I know when my daughters, who are now in their late thirties, were were born, I think there were eleven vaccinations here in Australia.

Now there are twenty seven but in America it’s a whole it’s an even more than that. Tell us about the the trend of autism from twenty or thirty years ago to today in America and tell us the number of vaccinations that a child up until this latest C D C report was exposed to.

Donna Gates (49:46)

I’m not sure because it sort of changes what I think was up to fifty two, wasn’t it?

Dr Ron Ehrlich (49:51)

I think it was. I think it was fifty or sixty. In the first eighteen years of life it would be something

Donna Gates (49:57)

Sooner than that. 

Dr Ron Ehrlich (49:59)

Mm maybe in the first ten or twelve years of life.

Donna Gates (50:02)

What they started doing was they started dumping  putting a bunch in together, which is crazy. I mean so another question nobody’s asking is are our children vaccinatable? See, getting back to gender, the whole concept, the reason that worked was you had this healthy little eight or nine year old boy who grew up in a farm, had a great immune system, and you get a little bit of a pathogen in him and he feels kind of lousy and then he gets a Sorry, well done. That’s okay.

See, I would already start that again. So so going back to Jenner, he vaccinated a little boy who was eight or nine years, ten years old, maybe. He grew up on a farm, had a strong immune system, and Jenner put a little bit of a cowpax virus in him. And he got a little bit sick and he got over it the next day. So he was vaccinatable, I would say. But I I know from talking to my mom for years that a lot of times the child isn’t vaccinatable, but they had an appointment to go in on Tuesday.

But over the weekend, you know, my son was sick, had a little flu, we don’t know what’s wrong with him, he had runny nose and everything. But we have this appointment on Tuesday. So you take him in anyway. And that is another big mistake that we’re n making is we’re not asking that question, is my child vaccinatable? 

And then of course what I want people to do is to start thinking differently so that from the beginning of life from can you know, just know that there’s already forces at play vaccinating your child. Nature wants that too. Nature knows very well that the baby’s gonna live in a world with potential pathogens, you know, bacteria and viruses for example. but it is that’s why nature does that, why it’s all set up for that.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (51:58)

I mean, Donna, you know, sorry, that statistic let me just share because we did do a programme with Liz Mumper, who I’m sure you know. I know this. And Liz is really one of America’s top pediatricians, and she shared with me a rather staggering statistic that and she did research on this, ⁓ where I think twenty or thirty years ago the incidence was one in ten thousand or one in five thousand children who have autism. And now in parts of America that number is one in thirty or forty.

Donna Gates (52:34)

In California they say one in thirty nine, yeah.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (52:36)

One in thirty nine. So that is quite a statistical shocking stat statistic and it’s not described by any genetic thing or over diagnosis. It is just a reality and and we have to ask ourselves why is it so? and science is not a religion. Science is about challenging sci you know, facts and exploring them and and and making them but but you know, that that is I’m just really interested to know what gives you the most hope moving forward? 

I mean you’ve given us hope by telling us what’s possible, but what gives you the most hope about the future generation, given you’d have to say our health is not great. I mean, with knowledge comes power and that’s what this podcast is about. Tell us what gives you hope.

Donna Gates (53:31)

Well, my sister sent me an email last night and she said, Look at this issue of Wired magazine. So I don’t, you know, read that magazine, but I decided to look it up online and there was an amazing story about what’s called I forget the title of the the article, but it’s clear when you go go to their website and type in wired and look at their latest issue. 

There there’s a new thing forming all over the internet, young influencers that want to, you know, they’re they’re very concerned about how they look and how they dress and doing everything perfectly, but they want to have healthy children. So there’s a new concept. There, there’s a lot of them talking about preconception. I like to say mindful preconception because you want to be mindful about what you’re doing. But there’s a new term that pee somebody’s come up with called zero trimester.

So not the first trimester or the second one, but the third trimester is of course when the baby’s gonna come, but the zero trimester is before you even have your first trimester. So this new it’s in other words, evidently a sort of taking off on the internet for women to start taking better care of themselves and get ready for the conception. 

So women are doing everything. They’re they’re listening to different podcasts and they’re doing fitness and detoxing and eating and you know, ev trying everything and and that’s a great thing. And that’s really who I want to reach. If we could just create a movement by educating them, that and and they don’t the the people that are on the internet, these influencers, they don’t know what I just shared at the beginning. That we come the genes come with tags.

No one knows that. They just think, I’m passing my genes on to my baby. But the genes come with tags and the tags are going to be erase over the first five days and then six and seven, the baby implants and starts adding new tags. So so do the pre mindful preconception and get when those when it’s time for the new tags to be added on, you know, just there aren’t any bad tags to add, you know, you’re not washing your clothes in horrible dish terrible detergent and wearing chemical clothes and all that stuff. 

You know, you don’t you don’t gonna put that on your baby. So, you know, we we wanna just be mindful in in conceiving a child. It’s not, you know, if somebody gets raped there’s no mindfulness there, but a whole lot of people, you know, they they aren’t getting pregnant today. And so they’re starting to, you know, kind of talk it over like what if we can’t get pregnant or we’ve tried her three or four times and it still hasn’t happened. 

You know, there’s a lot more conscious, aware people that are concerned. And then if they realize this there’s literally gift from nature to get rid of the tags that you inherited from your mom and dad and everything and yourself, it that it’s it’s an extraordinary finding, I think, and a a it should inspire everybody to get ready for the conception.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (56:45)

We’ve covered so many topics in this discussion, Donna. I wanted to dive a little bit deeper into one question, and that was can you explain why bifidous bacteria are the first to colonize the newborn gut?

Donna Gates (57:01)

You know, that’s something I’ve wondered for thirty years. And a a long time ago nobody knew very much about the bifidus bacteria, but now it’s a very you know, it’s one of those bacteria that a lot of researchers are on top of. And one of the things we know that it does is it calms inflammation. And babies, believe it or not, are born with an inflamed gut. And I was wondering why. But I think it’s ’cause the whole process of, you know

We think of the mother but we don’t think that the baby is under stress. Stress will cause the gut to be inflamed. So the baby could you mu the mom could be in labor for hours, you know, the half a day or longer. And that’s a very stressful thing for the little baby. But anyway, they are born with an inflamed gut, and bifidus helps calm that inflammation down. It amazes me how nature

just understands the whole process so well and has so much support for us. But anyway, the other special thing that bifidus does is it helps seal the gut lining. Now babies are born with a an open gut lining, but just this is important because there’s colostrum first when the baby’s born for the first couple of days, colostrum is produced and that’s a really, really important substance. 

It’s hugely important for the baby’s immune system it’s got these immunoglobulins and th things from the mother, you know, that are being passed to the baby. And it’s also feeding the bacteria, the bifidus bacteria, and helping them grow. But the gut’s open and permeable, that’s good because you want that colostrum to get in. And something I learned from vets is that all animals are born with a open permeable gut because they have to get colostrum too. 

If they don’t get colostrum within the first week, these baby animals will die. So the farmers make sure their goats or whatever cows whatever get that clostrum. If not from the mom, from another cow or goat. But anyway, so first is clostrum and then the breast milk comes in. And the bifidus is very, very the the breast milk feeds that bifidus and helps it grow. But the other thing about about the the bifidus is it educates the immune system because we don’t have an immune system yet. 

It’s just I mean, we have one. It’s quiet. I would do wanna mention that. I want to talk about how the immune system develops because it will surprise people. Most people think that when the baby’s born, that’s the beginning of their immune system. They get the bacteria the in their gut, the bacteria start to grow and that’s their immune system. 

But actually that’s not true. But still, the bifidous bacteria is gonna once the those bacteria get into the gut, Bifid is gonna start educating that those microbes. They have to be taught and trained. They’re they they’re kind of like babies and infants and they need to be taught, you know, this is a dangerous microbe. So if you see that, you’re gonna try to kill it. This one is harmful and beneficial. 

And so you wanna don’t don’t attack that one. So really, really important. Now in breast milk there are human milk sugars that are gonna feed the bifidus and make it grow. The neat thing about these human milk sugars is they don’t feed pathogens. So that’s another thing going on in the baby’s gut. Keeping protecting the baby, you know, so those path pathogens can’t get in his body.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (1:00:40)

It’s interesting, Donna, you mention that there’s stress response ’cause I’m it’s something we don’t often think about. The baby, from conception, right through those first four well, let’s say forty weeks or thirty nine and a half weeks, and then there start to be contractions. And this would be the first, hopefully, the first really stressful situation a human faces, you know, this warm, comfortable environment inside the mother. And suddenly stuff’s going on and things are changing really quickly. And what the hell is going on here? Exactly. and this Yeah, it’s gotta be

Donna Gates (1:01:19)

That’s interesting.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (1:01:25)

Yeah, that’s kind of been distressed. Sorry, the I’m just wanna say this is

Donna Gates (1:01:28)

For me, that’s the only thing I can find figure out. Why would a baby be born with an inflamed gut? Well, stress will inflame the gut for all of us. But what I was just thinking about when you mentioned that is that the microbiome of the mother changes throughout the pregnancy. And in the very beginning, the first trimester, that microbiome, the the microbes stay the same. They just get assigned different duties. Now they’re gonna start that process of making a baby.

But in the second trimester, the baby’s gonna grow a whole lot. So the microbes that come aboard, they are they’re gonna be really, really good at extracting nutrients from the mother’s gut. You know, she’s eating those they they will extract a lot of nutrients and help that baby grow bigger. And then that last trust trimester actually is preparing for that big moment when the baby’s born.

And so those the for one thing that happens, the their bifidus is of course there, that’s very important. But so more lactobacillus increase in the last trimester and especially in the vagina, because as the baby passes through that birth canal, that lactobacillus is really critical for making the vag birth canal vagina birth canal more acidic so pathogens can’t grow. ‘Cause

you know, the whole process is just get the baby into the world, give him a chance to get a really healthy microbiome with good bacteria, bifidus and lectobacillus, and not you know, not the bad ones.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (1:03:08)

How does because cesarean births are a lot more common as as in our in our modern world and with older mothers, you know, cesarean births a lot more common and and yet this passage through the birth canal is clearly very important. How can women who have had a cesarean compensate for that?

Donna Gates (1:03:31)

You know, a lot of people are recommending to take like a gauze or something from them and take the bacteria out of the mother’s breath canal and actually put it all over the baby in his mouth, in his nose. So he’s breathing that just all over him. And then but to just remind me of something else about that’s right. It’ll come back to me in a minute, but there’s I know No,

I was gonna say that a lot of reason that those women, you know, have C-sections is because the doctor w doesn’t it’s more convenient. It’s hard to be a OBGYN and get up in the middle of the night and deliver babies and wait around for hours. So a lot of them, you know, really prefer a scheduled delivery time and they’ll say, let’s set you up for two o’clock.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (1:03:59)

Yeah, go on.

Donna Gates (1:04:23)

Tuesday and come on in and we’ll get the baby out. And a lot of mothers think, well, that sounds good because, you know, they just cut it out and pull the baby out and and we’re good to go. But that’s a huge mistake. If you don’t have to have one, don’t have one because the whole beginning of life is is completely different. And what happens in the very beginning literally sets the baby up for their entire life

Their immune system, their brain development, everything is going to be different if they don’t follow nature’s way. And I’m a huge believer, as I said before, in following nature. What does nature do? Well, what nature does is it puts bifidus in in the beginning. There are lactobacillus there. Those two make oxytocin, by the way. And right now there’s a big thing all over. A lot of people are doing it. Dr. William Davis, he’s promoting this la what’s it’s called?

Lactobacillus routeri bacteria and and he says, you know, that lactobacillus routeri, it makes ⁓ oxytocin. Well a whole bunch of them have both bifidus and lactobacillus, many of them have the genes to make oxytocin, but that’s important because, you know, first of all, one of the things it does is it helps calm down the mother and she’s not you know, she’s not maybe in pain as much, more endorphins and everything. 

Make like within a day or so she’s completely forgotten about the whole process of the delivery if it was complicated or painful because of those endorphins and because of the oxytocin. And most of all, they’re bonding with each other. The oxytocin that in the baby’s body, the oxytocin in the mother, make them love and bond with each other. So another beautiful arrangement. 

Dr Ron Ehrlich (1:06:15)

Donna but Donna, yeah, I accept that the nature’s way is the best way. That’s you know, that’s understandable. But the reality is that probably half I don’t even know what the statistics are, but it’s a significant number. A third. About a third. Significant number. So for those third, I mean surely life isn’t you know, I mean we’ve got to be able to compensate in some way. What would you say to those mothers? Use you mentioned the swab from the vagina to around the  face and to inhale, but beyond that there must be more that one can do.

Donna Gates (1:06:28)

It’s supposed to be about a third. Well well one thing that’s important to do that I guide my mothers to do is to take bifidus throughout the entire pregnancy. So she’s gonna pass that on in her colostum in her milk. And and then and that’s really important because that that’s something that may not get established well in the if the baby’s born by a C section. So you’ve got to get that bifidus in there. It’s again nature’s way. There’s a whole a bunch of important you know, you don’t want it it seals the gut.

And it gets rid of the inflammation and it’s off to a really great start. I made a bunch of notes about bifidus. So it’s also calming, by the way. It it produces GABA. A lot of lactobacillus produce GABA as well, so it’s calming. The GABA’s the neurotransmitter that’s calming.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (1:07:37)

That’s the G A B A GABA or GABA. GABA GABA GABA. Tomatoes, tomatoes. But anyway, GABA. Yep.

Donna Gates (1:07:45)

Listen to you in Australia, I’m in America.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (1:07:49)

One of the other things I wanted to ask you about, ’cause  the woman she transfers mitochondria to the fetus and and there’s certain things you mentioned take bifidus through the pregnancy that needs to do certain things to strengthen those mitochondria even before the baby’s born. I’m really intrigued by that. I mean, we’ve covered a bit of that in that part of our discussion, but let’s flesh that out a bit more.

Donna Gates (1:08:16)

Yeah. Okay, so the egg and the sperm, both of them have mitochondria. Those little energy factories. For the sperm it’s important ’cause the energy you want the sperm to have a lot of mitochondria ’cause it will help them swim up and find an egg. And ⁓ so that’s important. But in the mother, actually when his sperm penetrates the egg and conception occurs, his mitochondria is kind of washed away.

He he doesn’t the egg doesn’t get his mitochondria, but it does but then the egg, the mitochondria at conception is from the mother and that’s critical. So the whole process process of living really and having enough energy and then even birthing, it’s all driven by mitochondria. So energy, mitochondria are energy, and the mother’s the one who gives the baby the mitochondria.

So I assume I know I sound like a broken record all the time, but you how you eat builds strong mitochondria. So certain things, certain foods they found that are very good for the mitochondria are blueberries, pomegranate, and juice from those. But fatty fish like salmon, which I usually have a couple of times a week, and then sardines. Sardines are excellent.

If you don’t want to take fish all cabinets, just open a can or two of sardines a couple times a week and get fantastic fat fatty acid. That’s really, really good. Those kind of fats are real good for the mitochondria. They they they are really pumped up by dark chocolate. So you can make a salad actually with put in some walnuts. Walnuts are good too. Put in some arugla or and then during the nighttime eat some dark green leafy vegetables.

Have some salmon, have a salmon in your salad even. Open up some some s once a day. I do this a lot. I’ll open up a can of sardines because I’m really busy during the day and I’ll just get hungry and I’ll just go get a can of sardines and olive oil and eat that. It’s very nourishing, but you know, it’s nourishing my mitochondria. They need magnesium, they need carnitine, they need vitamin C, ALA, cocu chin. If you want to take supplements.

Definitely they need B vitamins. So you can take those as supplements and that’ll feed your mitochondria. But you know, you have to strengthen the gut microbione if you’re gonna have strong mitochondria. And where I sound like a broken record is I always come back to the fact is you need bifidus, you need lactobacillus, and a fantastic way to get lactobacillus, particularly plantarum, which is a superstar, is actually by eating fermented foods. 

So if your life is busy and you find yourself pregnant and you wanna, you know, simp you know, have a healthy pregnancy, have a healthy baby, if you just I think take bifidus and eat fermented vegetables, you’re gonna satisfy so many things that the body needs by doing those two simple things. And and I’d say take those supplements like B vitamins are especially important.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (1:11:30)

Yeah. Now another thing that we touched on, we may have mentioned just briefly, but I’d love to flesh this out because because methylation is a word that we hear sometimes about, we don’t, but it’s actually a really important process that goes on in the body. And I wondered if we might just flesh out, give us kind of a methylation one one so people are at least at least familiar with that term and how important it is.

Donna Gates (1:11:57)

It’s extremely important. If you wanna get pregnant, you gotta have this gene working. It is it’s a s pr cycle in the body that goes around billions of times in a second. And what it’s doing is it’s turning genes off and on. That’s critical, especially in the beginning. And it is making neurotransmitters, it’s detoxifying.

All the things it does are absolutely essential to a healthy baby. And usually you can get your genes tested. As a matter of fact, I think if you go to an OBGYN or just do it on your own, you wanna check the MTHFR and all the other genes, the V twelve genes, T R, T R, they’re also in that cycle and they produce methylcobolamine. So you wanna see if those genes are working and even if you know, they’re not so great, or even if they look like they’re great, you can take B vitamins with methylfolate, methyl B twelve, and you can support that cycle. So it goes around and detox detoxifies. 

It and and about maybe some populations, more than half of the people, have SNPs or variations in this b gene. People from Italy, about eighty percent my father was from Italy, so I thought that was interesting. I definitely have two copies of that, two SNPs in the MGHFR gene. And that didn’t surprise me since I had the Italian genes, but also the the Hispanic, you know, South all of South America, eighty-five percent of them. But it was interesting because we’re working with autistic children, about eighty eighty-five percent of them have a problem with methylation. They they have a problem with those genes.

So they don’t detoxify, you know, for example. They don’t produce the neurotram transmitters. And it’s such a simple thing. And then, you know, like I don’t know the new term today, but when you have that split lip and your gun what is that called today? Clefella, yeah. I know they used to call it something else, but anyway, it’s that not having enough of methylfolate will cause that. Smina bifida.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (1:14:03)

Cliff Cliff Pellet.

Donna Gates (1:14:16)

So you wanna check your food and you wanna check your supplements and make sure they don’t say folic acid, especially those prenatal vitamins. You need to have methylfolate and methyl B twelve to get this support this cycle. Now, another thing that’s kind of popular right now is people are taking creatine or they’re putting it in something hot like coffee. That’s a really good thing to do because one of the genes in that cycle produces most of the creatine in your body. And so you’re supporting that by taking creatine in your coffee or whatever. So I like to that

Dr Ron Ehrlich (1:14:53)

Yeah. So that gene that you mentioned, T H F R and I I I do know what it stands for, but I can’t remember. But but I know I know I have I know I have that s that gene in that I have trouble methylating. And interestingly, although I’m not a big drinker of alcohol, I’m I’m what I describe as a social drinker and at times in my life I’ve been too social.

But I realized that methylate I I really cannot methylate alcohol and it’s really not good for me. Interestingly, just recently stopped drinking alcohol and the chronic cough that I’d had for forty years that had been thought to be asthma; I’d been on all these different other things, or it had been reflux, been on all these other things. You know, none of that worked. Getting off alcohol.

Because I couldn’t methylate alcohol, because I have the MTHFR, you know, has made a huge difference to my health. And that’s just one example.

Donna Gates (1:15:55)

Interesting. Well you might check another gene, A L D H. That also tells you how you handle alcohol. Actually, I think getting your g when you’re before you get pregnant, the mother and the father, it’s a really good idea and it’s really easy to do today. Get your genes, test your genes, see which one you’re like, is the methylation genes, are they going to be an issue? Because it’s so easy to fix. But other genes, 

Like a lot of people, most all the kids with the vi autism have what’s called the vitamin D receptor gene. I have that gene. It’s real common. And what and then you go get tested for vitamin D and they’ll say, your vitamin D is really high. You shouldn’t take any more. It isn’t that. It’s that the receptor isn’t working effectively. And so the vitamin D is not getting in. So you actually have to take more of it. But anyway, it’s there’s so much that you can learn about what you best for you.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (1:16:53)

Yeah. Look, I I know that we’re gonna we’re gonna obviously have the links in our show notes to your website and there’s some great great resources there as there have been for very long this is something that you’ve been working on for a very long time. Listen, one other one other one other person one other thing we mentioned, we touched on vaccines and you introduced me to this you you used the term vaccinatable. That that is the child actually vaccinatable? You know, I love I kinda like that.

But can you confirm for us, because I do think in America they have a hell of a lot more vaccines in the first two years of life than we do in Australia. I remember when my kids were born, and that’s over thirty years ago, they’re thirty-nine and thirty-six kids, they’re not kids. But they had about eleven vaccines in the first eighteen years of life or something like that. Now there’s something like twenty

Donna Gates (1:17:50)

It’s twenty five in the first eighteen months over here. It’s really criminal because it’s not necessary.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (1:17:57)

Hang on, Donna, Donna, Donna, Donna, stop. Twenty do say that again. Twenty-five vaccinations.

Donna Gates (1:18:04)

18 months, there are 25 given to a baby. A lot of them, a lot of the vaccinations that are given, there’s three of them together. The really so all the years I worked with families, at one point I had a group called a Gene Group. And so we had over two thousand parents in that group and we got tons of feedback and I asked would ask questions all the time when I did consultations with our mothers, you know, I just would say, you know, tell me why you think your child is is autistic. 

And they would tell me over and over again, he was fine until he got the MTHFR gene at 18 months. And so that was so commonplace. There’s even they even have videos showing how normal the child was until that vaccine. And then at that point they regressed. And, you know, they went back in the room and wouldn’t come out and weren’t weren’t social and didn’t make eye contact. And it was that was a gene. But but then they felt that there were other signs even earlier on too that were you know, like one mother, I remember her telling me that she just could she hated herself. There’s so much guilt in the moms, unfortunately.

They feel like they’re real responsible. It’s a hard thing to do with. But she felt terrible because her son over the weekend had some kind of you know, something was wrong with him, a stomach bug and a cold or something. But they had an appointment on Tuesday to get this vax vaccine. And of course she wasn’t gonna, you know, not go. So she took him in and then that he he got, you know, started regressing. So you want a healthy child, that’s the whole secret.

Back in like the late seventeen hundreds, I guess, when Jenner, who gets credit for the first vaccine, he vaccinated he by the way, that’s wrong. They were using vaccinations long, long, long hundreds of years before that. Mummies, I mean, back in Europe and all over, they were already vaccinating.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (1:20:13)

Donna, Donna, Donna, Donna, Donna, you’re talking about Jenner who invented, developed the smallpox vaccine by getting cowpox and he did that in the seventeen hundreds. Go on, tell us the story about that incident again. I think you mentioned

Donna Gates (1:20:29)

Yeah, this is important because he he really didn’t invent it. It was he got the idea because people in Europe were doing it very successfully, even members of the royal family were having their kids vaccinated. They didn’t call it that then. But he changed the term to vaccination and he worked very hard to get the concept out into the world. And and and it did work. But you have to think about this. 

The child that he immunized grew up in a farm. He was eight years old at the time. He would have already had a very strong immune system. So if you put a little virus into them, they’ve got an immune system that’s gonna fight it. And that’s exactly what happened. This little this James, his name was, he was sick for about a day and then he quickly rec you know, he didn’t feel good and little fever.

But the next day he was fine because he had an immune system. That’s the whole thing. The concept of vaccines is you put in something like one virus, say, you know, something very simple. And but in a body of someone of a child who’s got an immune system. And that’s what is really wrong. And I don’t understand why people don’t bring that up, but I want to explain this.

We our scientists, our thought leaders in the microbiome, there’s a million of them today, they think that the microbiome starts when we’re born, we get that bacteria in our gut, but actually our microbiome, our our immune system starts way before that. As soon as the egg and the sperm come together, there are signals in the egg and and in the sperm also. 

That start the formation of the thymus gland, bone marrow, spleen, they’re all critical organs for immunity. They start developing immediately. And then ⁓ another thing that happens is the the as the pregnancy develops, all the things that are part of the immune system are there. The T cells and cytokines, everything is in that baby.

The only thing is the gut the body, the baby’s body is keeping it quiet because they don’t it would be a bad thing if the if the baby had an immune system that was inf causing inflammation, for example. And so it’s kept very quiet. It’s even sort of educated to be quiet and to learn what to react to and what not to react to, because if there was inflammation, it would d damage the baby during different developmental stages.

So that’s really important to know. It doesn’t we don’t come out of the womb without any immune system. We come out with an immune system. What our scientists need to do is study that and then real you know, and then build on that. Like what is nature already doing? And then we should help nature, you know, support nature and make it enhance what nature’s doing, I guess you could say. But we don’t we start off with an immune system.

Yeah, it’s just not developed. So when the baby’s born and the microbes start, you know but by the way, another part of what’s happening in them with the baby in the womb, the placenta is an extremely important organ that’s developed immediately. And the placenta, by the way, the you know, this is where you’re a specialist, the oral microbiome is very, very involved in forming the placenta. So if there’s infections in the mother’s mouth.

The placenta is supposed to protect the baby. Anyway, that’s the Ms. placenta’s job. It protects the baby through the whole entire time. So we don’t need to have a real active immune system in a baby’s body with the placenta there doing its job. And gosh, I have so much I could say about

Dr Ron Ehrlich (1:24:36)

Well Donna Donna, we’ve covered so much territory here and and actually this idea that my God, twenty seven or twenty five vaccines in the first eighteen months of life and and you know, a child should be vaccinatable, being meaning a healthy child, feeling good with a healthy immune system. Now that’s a challenge given the health of the community in general. 

You mentioned the oral microbiome and my god, we could well we have done a whole series, but oral diseases are the biggest by far health noncommunicable disease in in man, woman and child. It’s a big it’s a big issue. But listen, w we’re gonna have we’re gonna have links to your website and where there are some wonderful resources. 

Donna Gates (1:25:26)

Well I would like to let people know that we have a couple of free, you know, handouts. One of them is, you know, what do you have to do to have a healthy microbiome when you’re pregnant? The whole thing really gets back to you just can’t have a baby. You have to prepare for it. And this is actually how we’re gonna reverse, like we talked about the Pottinger caps. Our kids are getting weaker and weaker and weaker. 

It’s wouldn’t take long, a generation or certainly two, if all the women and men in the world who want to have a baby prepared for that baby. So we have a preconception checklist that people can download for free. And what do you have to do to get your body ready to conceive this child? So you get to take advantage of all the thing nature’s set up to do for us. It’s it’s extraordinary,

The whole process of having a baby is just beyond belief. And I think parents realize that when the baby comes out and they look at this child that they created by basically doing nothing except having making love or whatever. And it’s just an extraordinary process. But so many other things are happening before you have that baby in your arms. And now you want to, he’s out. You want to get that inner ecosystem that his immune system protecting him. Because what you do in the very, very beginning sets up his metabolic health. 

In other words, will he have obesity? Will he be diabetes? Will he have heart disease later on? Later? And and what about brain development so and the immune system? That’s all set up in the very, very beginning. So give your child a chance, you know, a great chance, but more than that, it’s almost time, I mean it’s very much time for people to become conscious and have mindful preconception.

Get their body ready to conceive that child and turn around this illness that we’re seeing in our children. It’s very doable.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (1:27:22)

Donna, what a note to finish on, and of course we’re gonna have links in our show notes for that. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Donna Gates (1:27:29)

Thank you very much, Ron. I think it’s an important message to get out. I appreciate this. Thank you.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (1:27:35)

Well, there’s a lot there, isn’t there? We all agree, I think every practitioner would agree that the gut microbiome, which incidentally includes the oral microbiome as part of the gut, the oral microbiome, the gut microbiome are critically important to whole body health, both physical and mental, and what a wonderful concept the epigenetic research reset is and what an interesting question about whether your child or a child is a vaccinatable or not. 

Look, we’ll have links to Donna’s site, Body Ecology Diet and her site. There are so many wonderful resources on that, as there are on our Unstress Health platform, which I invite you to join. Until next time though, this is Dr. Ron Ehrlich. Be well. 

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