Dr. Jason Hawrelak joins me to discuss the role of microbes in our gastrointestinal system and what we can do to look after them. Our understanding about microbes is rapidly evolving, we are now able to apply these new learnings to improve a wide variety of health outcomes. Jason is a naturopathic physician who has done both honours and his PhD in the areas of intestinal dysfunction, microbiome manipulation and the clinical applications of both pre and probiotics. Jason specialises in the treatment of both acute and chronic gastrointestinal disorders, such as irritable bowel syndrome and irritable bowel diseases.

Selected Links from Episode

Dr. Jason Hawrelak website

Unstress episode with Dr. Robert Rountree on gut health

Bristol Stool Chart

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Dr. Ron Ehrlich: Hello and welcome to “Unstress”. I'm Dr. Ron Ehrlich. Our relationship with bacteria is changing. Well, our knowledge and understanding is anyway. It's been an adversarial relationship for over a hundred years and with the advent of antibiotics and antimicrobials, along with products that promise to make our surfaces and bodies 99.9 percent antimicrobial and clean. As well as you'll hear of a very symptom-based approach to common health issues. All of those things well they're kind of changing.

We're learning that the majority of microbes are actually our friends and we need to learn more about them and how to look after them.

My guest today is Dr. Jason Hawrelak. Jason is a naturopathic physician who has done both his honours and his PhD degrees in the area of intestinal dysfunction, microbiome manipulation and the clinical applications of pre and probiotics. He's also a herbalist. He has taught health professionals at both the undergraduate and postgraduate level for the past 16 years and is currently the senior lecturer and coordinator of the evidence-based complementary medicine program at the University of Tasmania's School of Medicine. Jason has written extensively in textbooks and journals and specialises in the treatment of gastrointestinal disorders both acute and chronic such as irritable bowel syndrome and irritable bowel diseases like ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease and much, much more. I hope you enjoyed this conversation I had with Dr. Jason Hawrelak.

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Welcome to the show Jason.

Dr. Jason Hawrelak: Hey, thanks Ron thanks for the invitation to come in and chat.

Dr. Ron Ehrlich: Now Jason I'm picking up a very, very slight accent there and I know you're based in Tasmania and you've done your PhD you've done a huge amount of writing. I wonder if you might just share with our listener a little bit of your journey to this point.

Dr. Jason Hawrelak: Yeah, sure I sometimes forget I have an accent because I sound normal to me, but I did grow up in Canada at a city called Calgary which is near the Rocky Mountains. So, I grew up with that as my sort of local background and thinking that beautiful turquoise coloured rivers were the norm everywhere, little did I know that they are actually quite the exception and I was one of those aspiring backpackers who was intent to travel around the world but didn't get that far, I got to Fiji, New Zealand and Australia and fell in love with Australia and subsequently never left and that was back in 1992. So, I'm somewhat surprised, I've been in Australia longer than I was ever in Canada, but I still have I think a Canadian accent strangely enough.

Dr. Ron Ehrlich: It's very soft, it's very soft I was being picky.

Dr. Jason Hawrelak: That's all right. It's good it's still there, I met someone from Canada today and it seemed I was Australian right off that. Yeah, but I essentially went to Northern New South Wales where I arrived few days into Australia and lived up there and was lucky enough to study up there so that's where I did my original undergrad training, which was a Bachelor of naturopathy up at the Southern Cr...