The School of Greatness
Doctor Explains: Healing Your Gut Won't Work Until You Heal This
19 Jan 2026
Chapter 1: What is the connection between gut health and the immune system?
70% of your immune system is in your gut mining. That gut barrier, that single layer of cells, it protects the immune system. But if it's weak, things can sneak across that are not supposed to be there. Your immune system gets activated and that's chronic low-grade inflammation. You can't have a war without total destruction, right? You're destroying everything around.
When you're activating your immune system to fight an enemy, like if you just repaired the gut barrier, the enemy would have never got in in the first place. board-certified gastroenterologist, internationally recognized gut health expert, and best-selling author of many books, Dr. Will Bolsiewicz.
There's absolutely 100% clear physiology that explains how our stress and our traumas ultimately will impact our gut. And when they impact our gut, they will impact our immune system and create inflammation. You could be eating all the right things and doing everything you can in your control to eat healthier.
But if you haven't healed the trauma of the past, you still might have a weaker gut microbiome, a weaker immune system because of that.
Chapter 2: How does chronic inflammation affect overall health?
You could sleep. You could meditate. You could try to do things. But if you don't heal the trauma, then you're not actually going to be well. A lot of people are sick. A lot of people are sick. And I think they're sick and tired of feeling sick. And the gut health is usually one of the main reasons why people are sick. And they're not even aware of it.
They might think there's some other symptoms that's causing them to be sick. But based on my conversation with you the last time, some of the stuff that you talk about in your book as well, that a lot of the root causes of inflammation come from the gut, from my understanding. Is that correct? A hundred percent. Really?
Yeah.
We could fully unpack that, but suffice it to say that in the three years that I spent preparing this book, and a big part of that was me diving into thousands of studies. The book has over 1400 citations that I will happily give to you. All you got to do is click and take a look and you'll see that I'm backing up my words.
So, but I reviewed thousands of papers to basically try to understand what I see as the biggest health-related issue of our time, which is in one word, inflammation, right? Because the problem is, Louis, you could go to five different doctors for five different medical problems. that you don't necessarily think they're connected. You see them as separate issues, right?
And they give you a symptoms-based approach, which is basically like, here's five different medicines. And what they don't do is they don't take a moment to step back and tell you like, hey, there's a story here. There's a story because all of these issues are originating actually from the same place, which is chronic low-grade inflammation.
So inflammation by itself, and we can dig into this, inflammation by itself, I don't wanna make it sound like inflammation is inherently bad.
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Chapter 3: What role does trauma play in gut health?
Inflammation is life-saving. when you actually need it. But what we don't need is a forever war inside of our body, which is what's happening with chronic low-grade inflammation, which is what's happening in America right now. So what is the difference between good inflammation and bad inflammation? Okay, so let me install some specific terms. So acute versus chronic.
So acute inflammation, you get sick, right? You get exposed to some sort of bacteria or some virus. Guess what? Your immune system is going to step up to defend your body. That is the entire purpose of having an immune system, which is basically that's your little military and they're going to take care of you and they're going to clear out that infection.
It might take them a couple of days, but they'll get the job done and you move on with your life and you're nice and safe. That's acute inflammation. That's acute inflammation. So you get your fever, right? You get your fever, you have extreme fatigue. You might have other symptoms. Sometimes people like you get the flu, you get joint issues, right? You get muscle aches, right?
You're experiencing acute inflammation. Or alternatively, another example is like you injure yourself. You're playing handball, right? You injure yourself. Well, guess what? The repair process... to restore function to your body is inflammation.
Chapter 4: What foods can help fortify the gut barrier?
You sprain your ankle, it swells up or something, right? And that's acute inflammation to protect that area, correct? Red, swollen, tender, right? These are classic symptoms of inflammation, but it's acute inflammation. It's time limited. The immune system will get the job done and then it will go back to basically being at rest, being at ease, not fighting, okay?
Now that is a totally different thing than basically an immune system that is being triggered
24 hours a day and it's not actually fighting anything real like it's not it's not fighting a virus it's not helping you to repair your body instead it's just feeling threatened it's a little bit like a dude who's so hammered and he's just swinging and he doesn't even know who he's swinging at right yeah like this is basically this is basically and then how does that manifest
So you manifest with these symptoms that you go to your doctor and you say these things and you don't necessarily get a clear answer or a clear response. So you're experiencing like number one is fatigue. Fatigue is clearly the number one symptom associated with inflammation. It always is there. And just to be clear, I'm not saying that the only cause of fatigue is inflammation.
I'm saying that when you ever inflamed, you will feel fatigue, right? So, but going top, you know, from like from your head to your toes could be a headache, could be migraines. When your nose gets congested, whether it's during a sickness or that seasonal allergies, or you go to bed at night and your nose gets clogged up, that's inflammation, right? It's pretty clear right now. That's good.
But we could talk about why that would be because there's actually a circadian rhythm element to why we get congested at night and why it clears up in the morning. Really? Why is that? Well, I don't want to fully divert the conversation into that, but basically it has to do with, here's a quick little teaser. Your immune system is nocturnal. Your immune system is nocturnal.
And then when you wake up in the morning and you get that glorious morning sunlight, right? You actually are triggering the release of cortisol. Cortisol is your body's prednisone. It's an anti-inflammatory. So you wake up in the morning. This is why also you go and you get a good workout. and you go to bed and you're not sore and you wake up and you are sore, you feel that. Why is that?
Because your immune system is active at night. So our body was actually very beautifully designed because if your immune system was doing its maintenance work during the day, it would cripple you. It would affect your energy levels, your focus, your ability to think. By the way, now I'm starting to describe some of the symptoms that I was going to get at.
Right, it would affect those things and you wouldn't be able to really be optimally functioning as a human So the way that our biology was designed which is like, you know to me like awe-inspiring beautiful is that when we're asleep
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Chapter 5: How does stress impact gut health and immune function?
So you're not necessarily causing that, but in a way there is an inflammatory element to a lot of the aspects of our life that we totally sit here and we say they're healthy, right? So exercise is clearly healthy. But it's creating inflammation. It's creating a healthy inflammation. And that's like hormesis, right?
So hormesis is when you sort of like take the step of pain for the purpose of future strength. Gain. Yeah. No pain, no gain. Exactly. But the acute inflammation, Or the other, what's the other inflammation? So the chronic low-grade inflammation. Yeah, yeah, so you could have a headache, you could have a stuffy nose, you could have a sore throat, you get that cough at night, right?
That's inflammation. You could have skin issues, so like you're breaking out Acne, eczema, psoriasis, rosacea, all inflammatory. For women, so hormones are important. So for women, female fertility, perimenopause. Menopause, 100% there is inflammation there.
Really?
Yes. For men, hormonal issues. So some of the statistics around men are wildly disturbing. the drop in testosterone levels over the last 40 years, the drop in sperm counts over the last 40 years, I mean, Viagra, Cialis, like all these things wouldn't exist if there wasn't a market because of erectile dysfunction, right? So not to mention energy drinks, right? So I'm not bashing them.
Sometimes I take them myself, but like I'm just saying that these things or like muscle soreness, joint issues, joint discomfort, difficulty recovering from exercise, difficulty performing exercise, right? Like when you're more inflamed, go and eat a fast food meal and then go try to work out and tell me that you can have a good workout. You can't. Wow. Okay.
So there's acute and low grade chronic inflammation, correct? Yeah. And the low grade chronic information mostly comes from the foods we eat, or is it also our environment or sleep patterns, you know, and other, and other things that we do.
Okay, so one of the core ideas that I present in this book, and I will defend this position, is that your gut and your immune system are completely intertwined and inseparable. So just to frame this, our first episode, if you haven't listened to it, go back and take a listen. But just to quickly frame, we have a gut microbiome.
mostly in our large intestine or colon with 38 trillion microorganisms. Okay. Microscopic. We can't see them, but they actually outnumber us. That's more than we have human cells. Wow.
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Chapter 6: What are effective techniques for activating the parasympathetic nervous system?
Yeah. So there's more gut microbiome than we have human cells. 100%. You are less, you're definitely less than 50% human. And if we were to line you up as your genetic code, like if we were to like basically have a football field, okay? And every single yard represented, like where does your genetic code come from?
All right, one yard would be the genetic code that you inherited from your parents. And 99 yards, actually 99 and a half yards, would be the genetic code that you have from your microbiome. Really? Yes. 99.5% of your genetic code comes from these microbes. And where do these microbes come from? Our environment. So our environment and they're manipulated by our choices.
So there's an entire story inside of you. We are getting to the point where we could take a snapshot of these microbes and start to basically say, hey, I know how Lewis has been living his life. Here's the food choices. Here's the sleep. Here's the circadian rhythm. Here's the exercise. Here is his connection to his partner.
Here is his trauma or history of things from the past that we discussed during the first episode. that like basically your life is a story and that story is actually reflected, it's told through your gut microbiome. So it's entirely unique to you.
So how do we, if we're feeling exhausted, if we're feeling inflamed, if we're feeling in fight or flight due to what's happening within our gut, how do we start to heal our gut to get rid of inflammation? Okay. So these two pieces, they're so interconnected. And I just want to add real quick that between the 38 trillion microbes and the fact that 70% of your immune system is in your gut lining.
Wow. Okay. So like the bone marrow is like basic training. They get trained up there and then they get deployed. and they go and take up and do their service in the lining of your intestines. Interesting. 70% of our immune system is in our gut lining? Is in our gut lining. Wow. Yes. So if our gut is unhealthy, we are unhealthy.
because basically what happens is that there's a cascade where these microbes and those immune cells, they're right next to each other. And the only thing that's separating them is a single layer of cells, which we call the gut barrier, right? And if that starts to break down, which happens when the gut microbes are weak and not able to do their job. So they are the stewards.
The gut microbes are the stewards of the gut barrier. They build it for us. They repair it for us. That gut barrier, that single layer of cells, it protects the immune system. So when it's fortified, the immune cells are at ease because there's no one to fight. But if it's weak. But if it's weak, which I call increased intestinal permeability, but you will hear it referred to as leaky gut.
And I have no problem with that terminology because it's actually correct. When that happens, it's a weak gut barrier. Things can sneak across that are not supposed to be there. And so then your immune system is like, yo, the bloodstream is right behind me. And I got my like literally age old, like, like this villain that I've been fighting since before humans existed, right?
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Chapter 7: How can spiritual healing influence gut health?
I got to take you out. You're not allowed to be here. But that process of I got to take you out is the activation process not in a strong, powerful, you're having a fever way, right? Like that's not acute. This is the 24 hours a day battle on the inside where your immune system gets activated and that's chronic low grade inflammation.
And the problem is that, you know, I mean, like to be totally honest with you, I don't love the war analogy, but I feel like I have to do it because it's like, it's the only thing that really makes so much sense. Right. But like when we look at images of war, in the modern world, you can't have a war without total destruction, right? You're destroying everything around, right?
So when you are activating your immune system to fight an enemy that just like, if you just repaired the gut barrier, the enemy would have never got in in the first place, right? If you were to address that, then we wouldn't need to like have these bodily, basically the immune system is causing bodily injury.
right and so then this inflammation in the writing of my book there's a specific table that i tell the reader yo go to this page you got to check this out because i asked this a basic question how many health conditions are there that are associated with inflammation where i could come on your show and tell you this but i could also talk to a colleague who's a medical doctor and pull the paper
and I found over 130. And then I turned to the secondary question, Louis, which is, okay, so if I believe that the gut and the immune system are rising and falling together, then there should be 130 studies that also show that the gut is unwell within the context of these diseases. And the answer is yes, categorically. Categorically. So if someone is inflamed in their gut,
and they have a weakened immune system what are the main symptoms that they will have or or they'll feel or their experience on their body with this weakened immune system and leaky gut yeah well so it goes back to in you know again like what i'm describing are common symptoms and sometimes we take those common symptoms and we turn them into a diagnosis and that's completely appropriate that's the way i practice medicine right but um but what i'm saying is like
that the place that it's coming from is inflammation. And so it goes back to what we had discussed a moment ago, where it's like, it could be headaches, it could be brain fog, difficulty focusing, lack of cognitive endurance. Like you can't get a lot done. Easily distracted, like sort of ADD. It can affect your mood. So like with clarity, depression, major depression,
is inflammation in the brain. Total clarity, right? By the way, so is Alzheimer's, so is Parkinson's disease. So these are ways in which the inflammation can affect your brain, but like we discussed, you could have a congested nose, you could have a sore throat, you could have a cough. You could have skin outbreaks. You could have joint issues. You could have muscle issues.
You could have difficulty recovering. But of course, in the gut. Of course, in the gut, there's symptoms, right? So bloating was the number one gut symptom that you could experience. Could be abdominal discomfort. Could be a change in your bowels, diarrhea, constipation, both, right? The manifestation of your bowel syndrome. This is inflammation. Wow.
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Chapter 8: What are the four essential nutrients for gut health?
It may be controversial by the way. So my apologies, but I'm going, I'm going straight to beans, beans, any type of beans, basically any type of beans. I will accept any of them. Okay. Because to me, beans, these are microbiome foods. They're microbiome foods. The reason that people feel like they don't tolerate beans is not because there's something crazy that's happening inside of their body.
What's happening is that their gut microbiome can't handle the beans. Really? Yeah. Why can't they handle it? Can't handle the truth. Why can't they handle it? Yeah. If it's good for you, why can't your gut handle it? Okay, so this brings us to like a basic concept within gut health. And it's like very slightly nuanced, not crazy, but there's a little nuance. It's like exercise, right?
So think of your gut as being a muscle, right? That muscle can be trained. It can be made stronger. but it also has a quite specific capacity for work. So you can't take a muscle, go to the gym and just like, of course I want to go and bench press 450 pounds and be literally the strongest person in the gym, but I'm sorry. You can't handle it. I can't handle that. You haven't trained to get there.
No, I'm working on it. I'm actually quite, I'm quite happy with where I am at 45 years old. Like I'm lifting the heaviest weight of my life. That's great. Right. But to get to that level, it's going to take some time. Right. So the same is true with your gut. If your gut is impaired, because it's not doing so hot, right?
If your gut is impaired, that's conceptually similar to going to the gym with some sort of injury, right? Like you hurt your shoulder, okay. You're not gonna go to the gym and lift the heaviest weight. You're gonna go to the gym and honestly, it might be the 2.5 pound dumbbell. Or it might be just body weight. And you're just trying to like basically restore function to that shoulder.
And then once you restore function, you're back on track. And now you're growing and building, right? So this is what's happening in the gut is like you take basically microbiome food, right? So let me break that down real quick. So beans, they have fiber, they have polyphenols, they have resistant starches. These three things, none of them are digested by the human body.
They are the most clear evidence of a shared, lifelong, symbiotic relationship that we have with our microbiome. We have third-party sourced it. We have basically said, look, we as humans, we're not able to evolve fast enough to keep up with the food supply across the globe. You move from one place to the other. your evolution is not able to keep up with that.
So we basically said, well, if we could get the microbes from the environment, that know how to break down the foods that are here locally, then we would actually be able to process and digest those foods. So what happens is the microbiome breaks down the fiber, the resistant starches and the polyphenols for us. Interesting. So our body and our stomach can't break down the nutrients in beans.
So beans are not just these three things, but what I'm saying is I'm calling beans microbiome foods because they're the most densely packed of these things. Like go look at the fiber content of beans, right?
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