Gut-Skin Connection: Dr. Jonathan Carp on Inflammation, Metabolism & Miracle Noodle

00:00 — Preview

your gut is an extension of your skin. is very similar to the skin. Your skin actually is much thicker than what’s happening in your gut, but it is directly connected. obviously everyone can imagine why it’s connected. It’s connected from your face to your mouth, to your throat, you know, to your stomach and it’s small intestine, etc.,

00:21 — Show Introduction

You are listening to the Dr. Haley Show, the podcast dedicated to helping you optimize your health. Each episode there will be an interview or a message to help you discover better health. We will be featuring health radicals on the show to bring new ideas to the table, as well as doubling down on key fundamentals to support you living your best life. Your host is no other than the founder of Haley Nutrition Dr. Michael Haley. This is the Dr. Haley Show podcast. I’m Dr Michael Haley, your show host. And today’s guest brings together two areas of medicine that are often treated separately. The health of our skin and the health of everything beneath it. Dr. Jonathan Carp is a board certified dermatologist. Lifestyle medicine expert and founder and CEO of Miracle Noodle. After seeing patients transform their health through changes in nutrition and lifestyle, he began looking beyond prescriptions to better understand how food inflammation, the microbiome, stress, sleep, and even the images we hold in our minds can influence healing.

That journey eventually took him to Japan, where he discovered noodles made from the konjac plant and saw an opportunity to give people a lower carbohydrate alternative to traditional pasta. He founded Miracle Noodle in 2006, and the company’s products are now sold in thousands of stores nationwide. Today, we’re going to explore the gut skin connection, what might be driving chronic inflammatory conditions, how to determine whether food is helping or hurting you, and whether changing what is on your plate can truly change what happens. to your skin. Dr. Jonathan Carp. Welcome to the Dr. Haley Show. Thank you so much for joining me today. I’m going to really enjoy this conversation. I think our guests are going to, too, because we love to talk about the gut and how it affects your skin. And true, you know, I’m wondering when you studied medicine and you decided you were going to be a dermatologist, did you foresee helping people from the inside out like this?

03:04 — Why Dermatology?

I did, because one of the things that actually attracted me to dermatology was something a lot of people don’t realize about dermatology, which is that the skin is often the first sign of many internal conditions. And one of the things during my rotation in medical school that interested me so much was just to take an example. You know, the first signs of diabetes. There are so many cutaneous signs that happen. There are various internal cancers that have a very unique expression on the skin. That was actually what made me really interested in dermatology from the get start, which was this sort of window into the body. And that’s that happens in conventional just even in just conventional dermatology. So it was something that was of interest to me, maybe more so than some of my colleagues, but was always was always that way. Yeah. And maybe I have the wrong impression about what dermatology is because, you know, I think you go to a dermatologist and they scrape and they burn and they get rid of stuff that’s not supposed to be there.

So that new, healthy stuff can grow back in its place. And when we see inflammatory things, we put creams on it and this and that. And it’s a very outside in approach. That’s what I always thought dermatology was. Yeah. Well, you know, the history of dermatology is actually kind of interesting. It started as dermatology and venereology That was its origin. So it was the study of skin and skin infections. And we still see STDs as a routine in our practices, even many years later. 30 to 40% of our practice is related to sort of the first part of what you spoke about, skin cancers and such. So it’s actually a minority of our visits, depending on where you end up practicing and then the rest is inflammatory skin diseases. Of course, in my case, you know, I’m looking at what I can do to correct the internal terrain to fix what’s on the outside. But as, as medicine has progressed, you know, there are a lot of external things that may quiet a lot of these conditions.

I’m thinking specifically of, of psoriasis, of the new medications and such. But ultimately, you know, I have sort of cultivated a practice where everyone who comes in is informed of what they can do from a diet and lifestyle perspective

05:34 — When Should a Skin Problem Make You Think About the Gut?

to improve all of these conditions. So, you know, there’s a gazillion names for inflammatory bowel disease from, you know, acid reflux and Gerd and gastritis, Crohn’s, celiac, IBD. You know, there’s all of these different names given to it. And it’s interesting. There’s a gazillion names for skin problems from eczema, psoriasis, lichen planus. You know, I forget what it’s called when they have the mask on their face. All of these different skin conditions. What are some of the skin conditions that people would see? What about acne? You know, when they see something in the mirror or they see it on their body? When should they be thinking internal gut problem?

06:26 — Acne, Insulin, Diet, and Hormones

Well, we can start with acne. Acne is often a metabolic disease. So for my patients that come in with acne they get a fasting insulin test which often shows that their insulin level is high. But additionally, people with poor gut health also have issues with acne as well. So it’s a combination of things going on in the case of acne as an example. So it’s often a mixed bag of things. Of course, when someone has poor gut health, often have metabolic issues as well. But because there’s so many things going on, on the inside, but that’s sort of an example with acne, with the acne. Like you said, if it’s somehow related to insulin levels, does that mean that they might do better just by cutting out sugar? That’s for sure. Definitely. Going on a low glycemic diet that is, you know, good for the gut as well. So they’ll be eating, you know, a low glycemic diet with high vegetables. And of course, there are hormonal aspects.

And that’s why people who increase cruciferous vegetables as an example, which can balance out some estrogen metabolites, also can help improve acne. So there’s often a lot of different things that go into things that are happening in the skin. So if you have acne, you might not need those antibiotics. You might not, that’s for sure. You know, adult men, as an example, is if I have you know, it’s hard to get people to change their diet and lifestyle. And of course, people are coming in to see me as I have a conventional practice. But everyone who comes in gets, you know, they don’t leave without knowing that they have options on the table. Adult men, as an example, when they do a full diet re hall, their acne really goes away very predictably. Women are a little bit of a different factor because there are other factors involved. Sometimes it takes a little bit longer and a lot more diet and lifestyle intervention. but even in those cases, assuming you take into account some of the hormonal aspects.

you can definitely avoid antibiotics for sure. What specifically happened in your life that led you to really, really look inside to the cause of disease?

08:50 — What Changed Dr. Carp’s Medical Philosophy?

Well, I grew up the son of an incredible family practice doctor in a small farm town in new Jersey. I followed him on his house calls. He did house calls we would go to farmhouses and see grandma up on the second floor. And what that really instilled in me, the importance of listening to what’s happening in a person’s life and understanding the social connections of the family, making personal connections with the patients and the family, and understanding all the dynamics that are going on that art has pretty much been lost. But I grew up in it. I carried his black doctor’s bag into innumerable houses as a seven, eight, nine year old boy. That’s what was the ultimate foundation of really who I became. I’ve had around 2004. I started practice in 2000. In 2004, I had a patient by the name of Karen with really horrific lupus skin lupus, and I had her on multiple organ transplant medications trying to help her skin. Nothing was working. it was really awful.

In fact, it was so awful that and I had her on so many medications that I would think of her at red lights, you know, because I was so worried that the medications I had her on were going to we’re going to kill her. I really was really horrified. But we tried everything. She nothing worked. We stopped the medications. She unfortunately flared even more, but she disappeared. She came back around two and a half to 2 to 3 months later, around 95% clear with a stack of journal articles and books. And she handed them to me. I put on the shelf, eventually devoured them one weekend, but it took me took me a month or two to pull them down. And that really changed my view that I really needed to know that there were physicians out there that were implementing changes, that there was science behind these sorts of things. And I contacted some of these physicians. I started going to conferences and I started implementing it in my practice.

And of course, I always had an interest in, in natural healing and such, but I really needed that, I needed Karen and I needed to go to those conferences. And then I needed the you know, there is a little bit of hesitancy among all doctors when they start doing something that isn’t something that they trained in their in their long residency. So it took a little bit of time for me to feel comfort. And I slowly started to incorporate these and rapidly realized that the satisfaction that I got from these particular patients was, was really life changing for me, but in so many ways opened up so many different opportunities for me. and I never looked back. However, with the caveat that I still see conventional dermatology patients and I utilize all the tools at my disposal because, look, people, it’s not my place to judge someone’s health journey. In fact,

12:07 — Dr. Gerald Epstein and Mental Imagery

I can add one quick story into this journey, which is that in 2004, around the same time I met a mentor. His name was Dr. Gerald Epstein. He was a psychiatrist in New York who abandoned, I shouldn’t say, abandoned. He gave up his practice of basic, you know, general Freudian type deterministic psychology and met an incredible woman, holy woman in Jerusalem who taught him a technique of mental imagery to use for both healing and a whole host of other things. And I had an experience with him and I apprenticed with him, you know, from 2004 until his passing in 2017. And, and in addition to all the diet and lifestyle, I saw some incredible benefits to harnessing the power of imagination for healing and for goal setting, for spiritual growth, whatever you want to use it for. And so that’s sort of how I sort of came to be in my present, present practice.

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14:13 — Karen and the Mind-Body Connection

does Karen know what influence. Oh, yeah. She has had on you. Yeah. Oh, yeah, I. I’m still in touch with her. She, you know, occasionally attends my Wednesday night classes and so yeah, she definitely does, does know. That’s great. When it comes to the mental imagery, I think of something that, you know, I’ve read that says something along the lines of whatever is excellent, whatever is beautiful, you know, think about such things. And there was something written in the Hebrew Scriptures that says something like, A joyful heart is like a good medicine, but a poor spirit is like rottenness to the bones. And clearly there is some kind of connection between what’s up here and how it affects our health. What does this mental imagery thing look like that you learned?

15:08 — What Does Mental Imagery Look Like?

Yeah. What’s valuable about. So the mental imagery from a technical perspective is very quick. It’s just it’s and what different. I guess the best way to describe is to explain why it’s different from like a guided visualization that most people, you know, where I tell you to imagine this and imagine that in this case, the image that I, I may place someone in a surrounding, but then they use their imagination to, come up with the images themselves. I can give you an example. Recently, I had a patient with neuro dermatitis where they’re picking their skin in sores all over, all over their arms, wherever they can reach, basically. And I ask the patient. I let her breathe out three times slowly. And I ask the patient, what does your condition look like? And she said, it looks to me like, you know, a barbed wire is being pulled across my skin. So in one of the techniques I learned is what’s called reversing. So I asked her, what’s the opposite? Give me an image for that.

And she immediately came up with, I see smooth glass tubes that are healing pulling across my skin. So I had her do that exercise where she sees these smooth tubes being pulled across her skin three times a day, and this was enough to help her to prevent herself from pulling at the skin. Now, the difference here is that the patient comes up with their own image and they come up. In a sense, they’re coming up with their own medicine because the imagination process is accessing something a lot deeper than something that I would give you if I asked you to imagine something that’s one particular technique. Another example was I have a patient, a young boy, eight, with chronic warts all over his hands. He’s been to multiple doctors and I let him through a similar process, except I asked him to use special tool to see the wards go away. Of course, I led him through the special breathing and such, and I asked him, what’s healing your wards? Oh, I see a blue. I see a laser. I said, oh, what color is a laser? Blue laser.

So again it’s getting the patient to come up with the images themselves. These are very simple examples just to give an idea of what it is but can’t be used. I’ve used it for people with metastatic cancer and a whole host of very serious conditions with what are really, you know, miraculous types of responses, not the exact same exercise, but in this vein of teaching, I guess you could say. Now, for someone listening and thinking of the problem they might have. Is there any danger in them saying, oh well, this is what I think of and let me follow that prescription and X times a day I’m going to visualize that. Nothing wrong with it. I would recommend my teacher has a book called Healing Visualizations. it’s been out for years and it breaks down by condition, the starting point for various different illnesses. And that would be the best resource. One, it teaches you how to do the sitting and the breathing and also to recognize The other distinguishing feature of this type of treatment is it’s quick.

And the reason it’s quick is because you want to get in and get out, because you want it to be a spontaneous process. You don’t want to be thinking, oh, now I’m thinking this. Now I’m thinking that you don’t the rational mind to take over. In a sense, you want it to be a spontaneous experience. And, you know, this book Healing visualizations, which ironically, I happen to have out because I was helping somebody with a specific condition a couple of days ago.

19:00 — Healing Visualizations and the Gut-Skin Axis

So that’s where I would recommend if someone has something specific to look into that book and then try those exercises first. Okay, for those listening, link to the book in the description Healing visualizations. Good, good. Thank you for that resource. Sure. You know, people hear of the gut skin access, what’s actually happening? What’s the communication between the gut and skin.

19:29 — Explaining the Gut-Skin Connection

How does that work? And what are some practical things to help make that healthy? I’d like to explain that by saying that your gut is an extension of your skin. It is basically, you know, connected to your skin. And in fact, is very similar to the skin. Your skin actually is much thicker than what’s happening in your gut, but it is directly connected. obviously everyone can imagine why it’s connected. It’s connected from your face to your mouth, to your throat, you know, to your stomach and it’s small intestine, etc., and your anus inward. And so therefore it is very similar to your skin. So it’s not necessarily although there are direct there are chemicals that are directly released that happen to be connected. I like for people to think of it as one, one contiguous system. And so it makes sense, as I always explain to patients for with, say, eczema as an example, that, you know, you may have a patch of dry skin, behind your knee. But there is a fundamental problem with the oil, barrier of your skin.

And you’re not going to correct that unless you correct the oil barrier on the entire skin. And we see this in some studies that actually show that elderly patients who have dry skin actually have they have these figures all across their skin from the dry skin and it actually causes their inflammatory cytokines to go up, meaning they’re in a net inflammatory state just from dry skin. So the point is, is that you need to treat the entire organ well. If you’re treating the entire organ, you need to also recognize that you are putting a whole host of things inside your body that maybe you wouldn’t even rub onto your skin. Artificial ingredients and things that damage the gut barrier. All of these things are going to have an effect. And if you don’t think of it in a holistic perspective, the whole system is going to show errors. And that’s sort of the big point. Yeah. You know, like you said, I’ve always seen it too as one organ. And it’s kind of like those squish bags that you roll up and down your finger.

That’s kind of how the human body is. Only there’s bones in it that won’t let it actually roll on your finger on the inside, the skin on the inside. Well, it’s maybe a little more mucosal, maybe a little more digestive absorbing and excreting than the skin. But the skin also eats and drinks, and doctors can give you medications through your skin because it will actually consume what is on the patch or in the cream. And your skin excretes kind of like your gut does. It’s the same organ. And I guess, I guess when we’re developed, when we’re, you know, two cells come together and become one. And that starts those cells start dividing and into this, you know, eventual embryo. It’s kind of like it’s folded in on one side to the other and that becomes the, you know, digestive tube, so to speak, but really from similar tissue. Yeah. So I like the way you put that as in one and the same organ in a sense. And also, you know, well you can’t treat the outside without treating the inside. You know, you have to look to the whole the whole organ.

No, no question. We think of it as two different organs and that does not work.

23:10 — What Goes Wrong From the Inside Out?

So let’s talk about what goes wrong from the inside out. And we’re going to lead into, you know, what kinds of foods should we be consuming. And where does a miracle noodle tie in and all that other wonderful stuff. So what’s causing the problems to begin with? Well, I break things down a few different ways. I guess with that question, I guess I would say that I look at health through a couple of different pillars. So there’s the mental state pillar, there’s the environmental pillar, there’s the, mechanical, pillar. There are lots of different pillars to health. and then there’s of course the nutritional pillar. So I tend to try to look at things through all those perspectives. With that particular question though, I would say that the primary problem that we’re dealing with, with most of my patients is, is both metabolic and got related. and they both sort of feed into each other.

So from a metabolic perspective, again, in dermatology especially, there are an incredible amount of metabolic problems that make just about everything worse. Psoriasis is now definitely confirmed to be an inflammatory condition that is made significantly worse when people have metabolic problems, metabolic syndrome, as an example. and then the fact that the immune system is dysregulated or and that often is directly related to, to gut health. So between those two aspects, you really cover probably 80% of the problems that we see can be broken down. if you fix the metabolic problems and you fix the gut, generally you’re really on your way to making substantial improvements. You know, when you’re talking about the mind and how it affects things. I’ve always thought of that as kind of nutritional meaning. what if nutrition wasn’t what we ate? What if that was actually our diet and the chemistry, the blood chemistry? That’s what if that was considered your nutrition? Well, what affects that? Of course, the things you eat.

But you can change your chemistry by the way you think you know, happy thoughts can make certain chemistries and negative thoughts create certain chemistries. No question about it. When you sleep, your chemistry changes. And when you exercise, your chemistry changes. when you step back and you say no, there’s more to it than just diet, you know, it’s very true. I think that’s another thing to look at because you’re absolutely right. There’s no question that your ability to maintain and to foster a positive mental outlook has enormous benefits on probably every portion of your body.

26:56 — The 80/20 Concept and the Four Pillars

I always explain to people when I’m going through those four pillars that, you know, you may be aware of, like the 80/20 concept, you know, where sort of, you know, 20% of your inputs result in 80% of your outputs. Well, everyone is very different. And if you look at those four pillars that I spoke about, you know, in one person, the mental state might be that 20% that makes the 80% of the impact for another. You know, it might be nutrition. But the point is, is that they all have a direct role biochemically on the body. And I think it really is, you know, really perceptive of to see that and you probably see it in your patients. And of course, I see it in my patients that it’s often a snowball effect, that once you get some biochemical changes happening, we all know I mean science is clear that inflammation alone is going to impact your mood. It has a negative impact on your mood biochemically.

So anyway, any kind of improvement in mood, whether it’s willful, whether that’s your spiritual practice or whatever or it’s biochemically coming from a different way. Once, someone feels positive, optimistic, they become what I always tell, you know, my goal is for people to become their own authority in health when they start to feel that they have some, some type of authority over their health, they become so empowered that it’s a snowball effect. That is really, again, one of the most exciting things that I get to witness. You know, when I’m dealing with patients. Yeah, I find the people that will address one thing tend to address more than one thing. You know, it’s not a magic bullet. I’m not going to, you know, start eating this one thing and expect my cancer to go away. I’m going to make lots of changes in my life nutritionally. You know, the way I think technically could be one of them causing your cancer. It could be thoughts alone. But why not step back and say, what else can I improve?

And the people that tend to step back and say, I want to make some good changes in my life, let me get rid of the bad and replace those with good. They do better overall. Definitely. Yeah. I always think of, you know, this, there’s a great book called Radical Remission

29:19 — Radical Remission

by a nurse practitioner names Kelly Turner and she goes through her book explaining what it was about. You know, she reviews cases of spontaneous and medical literature be called spontaneous remission. And she goes through what are the factors that they all had in common. it’s really an incredible book. I recommend it frequently, especially to cancer patients so that they can see that one, that there is hope. There’s always hope. And two, that there are common features and the common features, of course, everything that we’re touching upon. But she goes a whole lot deeper into what, were the things that they’ve done. And of course, they were radical changes in diet and mental state and a whole host of different factors. It’s a really great book that sounds neat. So she interviewed people that got cured from their cancers and then said, this is what they did and kind of compared them and these are the things in common I like it, yeah, it’s a great book.

30:22 — What Does Dr. Carp Eat?

Well, let’s talk about the diet and the kind of foods we should be eating. What’s your diet look like? I am a vegetable. A heavy Mediterranean diet, I guess you could call it I. Eat. Yeah, that’s what I call it. Sort of a pescatarian high vegetable Mediterranean. I think the one thing that most people agree on when it comes to what’s the correct diet is real whole foods. You know, avoid the process stuff some people emphasize fruits and vegetables, some animal foods, some will eat lots of grains. And, you know, there’s different diet philosophies. I don’t know if any one of them is right for everyone. Probably not. Yeah, I like to always tell when I’m talking to my patients, I always tell them there is often a difference between a disease reversal diet and a long, term diet. And the reason is because sometimes you do need to make really significant dietary changes if you’re looking for certain disease reversals. And that doesn’t necessarily mean that, that is going to be your diet forever. It could be your diet forever.

But depending on the case, depending on the situation, you may be on particularly restrictive diet to get you into remission depending on the condition. So I like to make that distinction, and I think it’s helpful for the patient to feel that way as well. You know, for myself, I eat what I would consider maybe a survival of the fittest type diet for myself. And how do I measure that? Probably on how I perform on the pickleball court. That doesn’t compare with, you know, trying to fight off the line in the jungle, a true survival of the fittest. But physical performance is something I can kind of say, okay, this is how I feel. And when I eat these foods, I don’t feel that good because things hurt more. If I was fighting cancer, it would probably be a different, more cleansing, detoxifying diet, maybe less of a growth and strength type diet. So there is definitely a time and a place for different foods. Karen really changed your life.

The direction of your life, the trajectory that you were on, what happened in Japan that changed your course even more?

33:00 — The Birth of Miracle Noodle

Well, it was shortly after Karen and I was on a trip to Japan and I was visiting a friend in Japan, and her family took me to a Buddhist vegetarian restaurant out the side of the city of Kyoto, and they served me this bowl of noodles. And normally I wouldn’t be eating a big bowl of flour based or even rice based noodles. And they said, no, these noodles basically don’t have any carbs or calories. And I had them and I was. And in the process then of incorporating dietary advice into my practice, and I thought to myself, this would be incredible, as I sort of thought of it almost as a transitional food, a food someone could enjoy eating while they were learning how to get healthier on their own. And I’ve always been fairly entrepreneurial growing up. And when I came back, I set up a website to sell these noodles for people on special diets. They were gluten free, you know, again, there virtually no carbohydrates. I call them miracle noodles because when I was at that restaurant, I thought, My God, this is miraculous.

And I initially started selling them to people with diabetes, people with celiac people on keto diets. This was back. You know, keto wasn’t really much of a thing except back in 2006, you know, but people who were on Who seizure disorder patients and such. And I realized pretty quickly that other people were buying it who just wanted a pasta alternative. So I started growing the business. And what really makes the noodle very, very special is obviously it’s great that it’s low, carb and you can enjoy the feeling, the comfort food experience of eating noodles. But it’s also made from what’s called glucomannan, which is this incredible prebiotic fiber. It’s like one of the most incredible prebiotic fibers. It’s been studied extensively, so it’s great for your gut health. And I just really fell in love with the product. And we slowly grew the business. And currently we’re, you know, in 25,000 stores nationwide under the brand Miracle Noodle. We sell a line of those noodles.

And it really still fits in with this concept that I have that people need to become their own authority in health. And the products that we make there are really focused in that vein. And then we also sell an egg white noodle, which is a high protein noodle just made from egg whites. So covering the sort of protein aspect and the gut health aspect with the soluble fiber. So it’s a nice combination. I just looked up glucomannan.

35:50 — Can You Eat Miracle Noodle on Keto?

And it’s a it’s definitely connects it with the konjac plant. Yeah. If I’m in if I’m in ketosis and I eat the miracle noodles am I going to stay in ketosis. Yes. it’s basically no carbs. I mean it’s got one net carb per serving five calories. So they’re very, very popular for people who want to stay in ketosis. I’m a big fan of a fasting mimicking diet, and it’s a five day sort of low calorie diet that mimics fasting. And the noodles are invaluable in that scenario, because they make you feel full because of the plant based fiber. And it’s it has so many uses, it tastes good. Again, the soluble fiber makes it incredibly healthy. And, you know, old cultures, you know, they’ve been eating this in Japan for over a thousand years, their cookbooks going back over a thousand years. It’s in the traditional Chinese medicine pharmacopeia. Going back over 2000 years. It was known as something good for the gut. Even back then, they might not have had the words that we have to describe it.

But old ancestral cultures had a way of finding things in a wisdom of their own that we in modern day are unfortunately not. Don’t have our ears open to enough. I can say, you know, it’s funny because I really didn’t know much about the miracle noodles and the konjac plant, and I’m doing a little research off to the side.

37:29 — Aloe Vera, Konjac, and Glucomannan

And if you’re seeing this on YouTube, you see me talking with a field of aloe vera behind me. I didn’t know how similar these internal nutrients are. People drink aloe vera for the Acemannan, which is a glucomannan. Yeah, it’s a different a similar chain of. Yeah, yeah. And it happens to be something people use to support gut health. What is the gut benefits of the miracle noodles from the contact plant. Well again

38:10 — Gut Benefits of Glucomannan

it’s glucomannan of course so what makes glucomannan special is more about the I can speak to the studies the studies basically show that it’s it can absorb cholesterol from your gut the fiber it’s a prebiotic fiber. So it’s feeding the natural bacteria in your gut. it has an incredible amount of satiety to it. So people who have just a couple grams of it per day, which you would get in a serving of, miracle noodles, have an average weight loss of, depending on the study, between 3 and 7, sometimes even higher pounds, just not even changing anything else about their diet because of the promotion of satiety. Of course. Now that was that was with adding how much of the miracle two grams two grams of fiber, which you seem like that doesn’t seem like anything. Exactly. Yeah, it’s hardly anything. That’s what makes it so. What I always say really, really potent as a soluble fiber. Am I going to overdo it having a big bowl of miracle noodles every day? Not. Yeah, you could overdo it for sure.

I mean, if you’re putting 3 or 4 bags in it, you know, you’re getting a lot of really potent fiber. So how much do you eat? I eat a bag a day, which is just two servings, but I’ll lead the whole bag. But, you know, we recommend that you. A serving size is half a bag. I eat a full bag. Of course. I’ve been eating it that way for forever, you know. And I like the rice. You know, we have a miracle rice, which is the noodle sort of put into the shape of rice. It’s very easy to add to salads and soups and stir fries and things like that. So it’s sounding too good to be true. I want to go get some miracle noodles right now. I want some for lunch. And it’s well, that might be, you know, if I was on a schedule, I’d be having it in 18 minutes at noontime. We’re just getting to that time of the day right now as we’re recording here. Yeah, but I’m getting hungry.

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40:46 — How to Prepare Miracle Noodle

do you how do you eat these? You prepare them. And just like making possible. Well, there are 97% water. Okay. So you need to their packed in water, you drain the bag and then you rinse it off a little bit, and then you throw it into a pan with your sauce. And you heat it in the sauce, like, say you like Rao’s sauce or one of these to just, you know, marinara sauce. and you heat it in the source for five minutes and eat it like spaghetti. It works really well. And stir fries and soups. As I mentioned, big I’m a big Instant Pot soup guy, so I’ll often throw the rice or the noodles into the Instant Pot with my whatever, you know, beans and vegetables and whatever else I’m throwing in there so it really can be added to whatever your favorite recipe is.

41:44 — Egg-White Noodles

It’s very, very versatile. The egg white noodles, which are just made from egg whites and water, of course, are high in protein ten grams of protein per serving. And it’s a nice way of getting a really high bioavailable protein in a easy way. And same thing. In that case, I’m getting my mouth is watering just thinking about that, because yesterday I had a jar of Rao’s at home and I just mixed the egg white spaghetti with the Rao’s. And heated it up and it was, you know, it was amazing. And it’s, you know, no starch, just ten grams of protein. So just it’s giving people a way of enjoying foods that they like and still having the health benefits. Because everyone loves pasta, everyone loves noodles. And now you don’t really have to give it up because you have a high protein version and you have a gut friendly version. Depending on what your health goals are. Okay. Are there any other ingredients? What’s in it? Water. Well for the konjac it’s water, glucomannan you know the konjac flour and then a little bit of citric acid.

And with the egg white it’s basically water egg white and a little bit of an algae extract as a binder. So three ingredients in both okay.

43:11 — Fiber, Bowel Regularity, and the Microbiome

Gotcha. You know, I’m kind of having flashbacks of well, a previous podcast and it was a it was a product that I absolutely loved. And unfortunately they went out of business. It was a certain bread that was it had flaxseed, I think it was psyllium husk and two other ingredients. I forget what they were, but it was a very high fiber bread and it was delicious, very low calorie, and I was eating a lot of it. And, you know, ball functions became like I would say it was kind of like an Amtrak leaving the station, you know, on and then off and everything done. And, you know, less than a minute kind of thing because this is high fiber. Is it going to have that same effect? No, because unless you’re overeating it, but no, because you’re not actually getting the amazing thing is you’re not getting a huge amount of fiber, but you’re getting the right amount, a small amount that we have scientific data to show at that amount is doing a whole lot. So you don’t actually need a lot. You’re not going to you’re not going to.

In other words, are you saying, is it going to make you more regular or. Well, yeah, yeah, it was for me when I the freight train was actually a good experience. It was kind of unique of course. Yeah, yeah. Oh do you want that? Yes. I mean overall your, gut health is going to improve. And part of gut health of course is having regular periodic elimination. So in that case yes, of course it’s going to be a contributing factor. But it’s not necessarily adding the it’s hard to say if your elimination was because there was so much bulk that needed to I think. So it was probably all the bulk and the flax fiber and the psyllium husk and all the and whatever else was in there. Yeah, it’s not going to provide the bulk aspect, but it is going to improve your gut health because of just because of the prebiotic fiber feeding the microbiome. Yeah, exactly. Now, how big is Miracle Noodle?

45:21 — How Big Is Miracle Noodle?

I read that you were in over 20,000 stores. Are you nationwide? Are you worldwide? Yeah, we’re at this point. We’re in around 25,000 stores. You know, we’re in Walmart, Whole Foods, sprouts, pretty much all the main stores. So it’s a we’re a growing business. So yeah I have a Walmart near me. Will I find it in that Walmart. Is it like Walmart. Wow. Yeah its in the gluten free section. We’re a always gluten free company. So all the products that we come out with and forever will be gluten free, just part of our ethos. And so we’re in the gluten free section of Walmart at Whole Foods. We’re in the pasta aisle. In Sprouts were in the pasta aisle. Some whole foods were in the international aisle. Depends on the store but for Walmart were in the gluten free aisle. I’m looking forward to having a miracle noodle experience.

46:24 — Becoming Your Own Authority

What would be a call to action for someone that wanted to find out more about you? Maybe, you know, seen by you for their gut or skin conditions. Where should they go? For more information, I would say that, you know, my goal is for everyone to become their own authority in health. And so our company is arranged such that as I said, create products that hopefully allow people to become more empowered in their diet. So the easiest way is to go to miraclenoodle.com Try one of our products. You’ll get an invite to my Wednesday night class every Wednesday night I have a live class where we go through health topics with the goal of people becoming more empowered for their health. It’s not something we publish on YouTube, or sometimes we’ll send some of the clips there, but I’m cultivating an audience of people interested in spending an hour together every Wednesday night to explore different topics. Last.

Just as an example, last week we did the eight labs that everyone should know on their own and how to order their own labs, because that’s an incredibly empowering step for people when they do that. And tomorrow night we’ll talk about the perfect metabolic day. What would a day look like when your metabolism and gut are balanced in terms of activities and diet? So every week we cover these things with a lot of interaction in the class. And it’s the most valuable part of my life, I would say in terms of personal satisfaction and, and doing what I was put on this earth to do, which is again, creating and inspiring people to become their own authority and So in short, go to miraclenoodle.com and try one of our products. See how you feel. And hopefully I would love to be you know educator to help you become that your own authority. Now is that Wednesday night thing. Is that kind of like a zoom setting? Yeah, it’s a zoom. Okay, great.

48:22 — The Words That Shaped Dr. Carp

Now this is off topic. Unrelated, and I like to ask people that have done real cool things where some of the inspiration came from. And for me, I’ll call them power words. I’m wondering, has anyone said anything so unique to you at some point in your life? Maybe just a phrase or an answer to a simple question, that it had such impact on you that it kind of makes you who you are today? For me, I think of a couple things. You know, when I was probably 6 or 7 years old, one of my father’s coworkers looked at me and said, remember, kid, persistence will get you anything you want. And when I had gotten out of school, I was asking someone a question. He didn’t let me finish the question. He just commanded stop struggling and went on to the next person. And those phrases had a lot of impact on who I am and how I handle things in my life. What were some of the power words spoken into your life?

Three come to mind the first that my father said to me once, which was, it’s better to be smart than right and meaning, you know, ultimately that a lot of people get caught up in trying to prove how right they are when the circumstance really, really sometimes just demands you to be quiet and not to push it. That’s probably the first thing. And I often think about that any time I’m in any kind of argument, whether is it me trying to assert my rightness, or is there a better way to serve this argument without insisting that I need to be right? The second is a word we’ve already phrase we’ve already come to, which was after I met my mentor, Doctor Epstein in New York, after he led me through an extended imagery session, which felt like an initiation to me of sorts. It was an extended. I spoke about the short imagery. There’s, of course, another process that’s an extended one.

But afterwards he invited me to a class which was called Becoming Your Own Authority, and it was filled with clinicians of various stripes, where the goal was to make sure that in our patients, we’re not robbing them of any of their own. We’re empowering them to make sure that they understand it’s their birthright to become their own authority. Because otherwise you are a slave to something or other. And so that has become a mantra for my teaching and for myself. And then the third that came to mind when you asked me that was, was Zig Ziglar quote, which is, you can have everything you want in life if you help enough other people get what they want. And I think that that to me is really what we ought to be focused on. Which is it? Everything in your life tends to get better when you are helping other people. the universe was structured in that way miraculously, and we often forget about that point. Yeah, that’s a whole podcast in itself. Yeah.

51:41 — Closing Thoughts

Well, is there anything you wish I had asked? No, I think it was a pleasure meeting you, and I certainly hope we can maintain contact. Dr. Jonathan Carp, thank you so much. Thank you.

51:55 — Show Outro

I hope you enjoyed that episode today on the Dr. Haley Show. Make sure to hit subscribe on whichever platform you are listening to this. If this episode made you think of someone, go ahead, take a screenshot and share this exact episode with them. You can catch the show notes for this episode on drhaley.com. If you want to geek out with Dr. Michael Haley on other radical health topics. Be sure to check out his YouTube channel where he posts exclusive video content. All the details are at drhaley.com and we can’t wait to hang out with you on the next episode.