Defiant Health Radio with Dr. William Davis

In this episode of Defiant Health, let’s talk about some new insights into a very serious issue that afflicts many females: repeated urinary tract infections, or UTIs. This can happen to a female at any age, but becomes an especially frequent problem as women get older. Of course, the conventional “solution” is to prescribe course after course of antibiotics that disrupt the entire body’s microbio...

For years, unpleasant symptoms such as abdominal pain, headache, joint pain, and skin rashes experienced with consumption of wheat and grains were dismissed as just being in our imagination, the product of a neurotic mind. If celiac disease was not diagnosed, then these sorts of abnormal symptoms were dismissed as inconsequential. Recent evidence tells us that this absolutely not true and that the...

Many people have been advised by their doctors or have decided on their own that adverse reactions to dairy products are due to an inability to digest lactose, the primary sugar in dairy products. While there are indeed people who have lost the ability to digest lactose, numerous people who have adverse reactions to dairy are not truly lactose intolerant, but have disruptions of the gastrointestin...

In previous episodes of Defiant Health, I've discussed many of the spectacular potential health effects of boosting oxytocin. Let's now discuss the emotional, social, maternal, and sexual effects of oxytocin that essentially define the human experience. Because modern people have lost much of their capacity to boost oxytocin to high levels, we have lost many of these beneficial effects....

Make no mistake: the low-fat dietary message of the last 50+ years has been a huge disaster. Coupled with predatory practices of Big Food companies, the result is the world's worst epidemics of obesity and overweight, type 2 diabetes, fatty liver, and Alzheimer's dementia in the history of humans on this planet. Yet there has been no attempt by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Ser...

Compared to human populations following hunter-gatherer lifestyles, we have lost hundreds of microbial species in our gastrointestinal microbiomes. Many of these species performed useful functions in human health that we have therefore lost. Loss of these species has also allowed unhealthy, potentially pathogenic species, to proliferate and dominate, even ascending up the small intestine. This sit...

While the world obsesses about this silly notion of cholesterol as a cause for heart disease, they ignore the many other--and more important--causes of heart disease, causes that you can manage effectively on your own. It does NOT require prescription drugs or procedures to have a major impact on the factors that lead to heart attack, need for heart procedures, or sudden cardiac death. The number...

Here are two nutrients and two microbes that play huge roles in material and infant health, yet almost no obstetrician or gynecologist is advising their patients about them--a major oversight! Because doctors are not doing their job in advising people on how to stack the odds in favor of not having premature labor, correcting vaginal dysbiosis, and markedly improving the health of their child, you...

If you've been following my programs, you are likely already supplementing around 3000-3600 mg per day of EPA+DHA for heart health benefits, as well as reduced potential for Alzheimer's dementia and to reduce triglycerides. But did you know that there are important benefits of omega-3 fatty acids for pregnancy, lactation, early neurodevelopment, and for reducing endotoxemia? Omega-3 fatt...

Here are a number of strategies that you can adopt on your own to substantially improve your immune response and thereby maximize protection against viral and bacterial infections, while also improving other aspects of the immune response that could otherwise lead to autoimmune disease and even cancers. I therefore provide actionable steps you can take to boost the immune response, methods that mo...

Tracking finger stick blood glucoses can be an extremely powerful tool for health--if used properly. Unfortunately, most conventional doctors have no idea how to do this and instead advise you that blood sugars of up to 200 mg/dl are acceptable. This is absolutely and completely wrong.  Tracking blood sugars prior to a meal, then 30-60 minutes after a meal, to identify peak blood glucose provides...

Lactobacillus reuteri is one of the most important bacterial species in the human microbiome. Yet it has been lost by the majority of Americans due to this microbe's susceptibility to common antibiotics like amoxicillin and ampicillin. One of the terrific benefits of L. reuteri  is its ability to provoke release of the hormone, oxytocin, from the brain. Until recently, there was no user-frien...

The tools and insights into the human microbiome are exploding and everyday people--non-scientists, non-microbiologists--are able to generate new experiences and learn new lessons that provide important advantages in health. We, as microbiome citizen scientists, are learning new lessons virtually every day: how to increase energy, smooth skin wrinkles, reduce arthritis pain and perhaps even slow o...

Although I and others have discussed thyroid health issues many times over the years, I still see people struggling to understand how to best manage this important area of health. And getting thyroid right to optimal levels is really fairly straightforward, except that many doctors remain uninformed or disinterested in helping you achieve ideal thyroid status. Among the issues I address: How to re...

The intestinal microbiome, i.e., the collection of microbes in your gastrointestinal tract, are proving to be major players in the length, quality, and content of your sleep. The intestinal microbiome can make the difference between deep, restful, dream-filled sleep, to superficial, disrupted, dreamless sleep, and all the emotional and health consequences that accompany these crucial differences....

How did a cardiologist aborting heart attacks, putting in stents, and performing other heart procedures end up talking about the destructive effects of wheat? It was far from a straight line but a series of blunders and inadvertent discoveries that led me down this path. But it was a path that showed me how powerful going against conventional advice could be that led to spectacular weight loss in...

It's a basic requirement of life and health: vitamin D. Even after I and others have been broadcasting this message for over 10 years, many still ignore it, remain skeptical, or simply don't get it right. And, sadly, you cannot rely on your doctor to get it right, as they often say things like "You can get all the vitamin D you need from diet, or "Just get some sun," or &q...

Small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, or SIBO,  in which unhealthy bacterial species have proliferated and ascended up the 24-feet of small intestine, is now epidemic, an epidemic that underlies common health struggles that include weight gain, obesity, pre-diabetes and type 2 diabetes, autoimmune diseases, irritable bowel syndrome, fibromyalgia, and numerous other health conditions. Solutions fo...

Conventional "solutions" for depression are largely inadequate: often ineffective, with side-effects that include weight gain, sexual dysfunction, and suicide. Evidence is increasingly pointing towards the intestinal microbiome as a source for depressive symptoms. This tells us that prescription drugs such as the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs, that only address a step...

Over the past 30 years, I have made a number of blunders in health. But I always made it a point to learn from my mistakes. Doing so taught me a number of important lessons in health and nutrition, lessons that revealed just how little conventional ideas on health yielded and how doing things very differently yields enormous health advantages. In this episode of Defiant Health, I therefore recount...

Here I read an excerpt from my new book, Super Gut: A Four-Week Program to Reprogram Your Microbiome, Restore Health, and Lose Weight , specifically chapter 5, Mind Your Mucus. Before we get to the business of restoring lost microbes and pushing back unwanted species from the upper GI tract, we can also take action to strengthen the mucus barrier. Some strategies I advocate can bring relief from i...

If you suspect that you have small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, SIBO, have "telltale signs" of SIBO such as fat malabsorption or restless leg syndrome, or have tested positive for breath hydrogen gas, then what should your next steps be?  Let's consider your options so that you can choose the option that is best for you.  Xifaxin (rifaximin) Candibactin AR/BR FC Cidal with Dysbi...

Saccharomyces boulardii is a probiotic fungus, a relative of Saccharomyces cerevisiae used to ferment wine and beer, but better adapted to living in the human gastrointestinal (GI)  tract. Although it does not take up long-term residence, its passage through the GI tract has been associated with substantial health benefits. Making a sparkling cider with this microbial species is an easy  way to in...

Restoration of a microbe lost by the majority of people, Lactobacillus reuteri, causes the brain to release oxytocin, the hormone of love, affection, and empathy. It brings you closer to other people, helps you see another person's point of view--it makes you a better human being. It also brings on what can be regarded as age-reversing effects: smoother skin, restoration of lost muscle and st...

Widely-prescribed statin cholesterol drugs have been associated with muscle weakness and pain, as well as markedly increased potential for type 2 diabetes, while providing minimal reductions in cardiovascular risk. But there is also potential for a rarely discussed collection of side-effects not reported in the billions of dollars of clinical trials sponsored by the drug industry: anger, hate, and...