Your Gut 101 : How to Support It, What's Ruining It and How to Rebuild It After Antibiotics with Microbiologist Kiran Krishnan

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
The standard American diet is absolutely atrocious. For the guy.

Speaker 2 (00:03):
Today's guest has spent over twenty years building health and
supplement companies. He's a microbiologist, a researcher, and the driving
force behind some of the most trusted gut health supplements
in the world, including just Thrive, where he is the
lead in scientific development.

Speaker 1 (00:16):
We look at people with IBS irritable bowel syndrome. If
you have IBS, somewhere around sixty percent of people with
IBS have diagnosed mood disorders right anxiety and depression.

Speaker 2 (00:27):
What would you say is the biggest lie that Big
Farmer has sold us about our health? We started thinking
about what protocol should someone go on when they're taking
antibiotics to help save their gut.

Speaker 1 (00:36):
I've discovered a compound. If you take enough of this compound,
it will reduce your risk of dying from anything by
forty five fifty percent.

Speaker 2 (00:44):
I'm radi WK and on my podcast A Really Good Cry.
We embrace the messy and the beautiful, providing a space
for raw, unfiltered conversations that celebrate vulnerability and allow you
to tune in to learn, connect and find comfort together.
Thank you so much for being here on a really
good cry. I am so excited to get into the conversation.

(01:05):
How are you feeling today? Are you feeling good?

Speaker 1 (01:07):
I'm feeling amazing, great.

Speaker 2 (01:09):
Great, Well, I have to say, just Thrive probiotics and
you do so many other supplements there, but just our
probiotics have been the best ones that I've ever tried
my gut. Thanks to you very much for that. And
I'm so excited to get into a conversation all about
how people can heal their gut. It's one of the
questions I get the most in the DMS, and I
think people really enjoy learning the details, and I know

(01:30):
you are the person for that.

Speaker 1 (01:31):
Yes, that's it. I'm the biggest gut nerd are you amazing?
You've had on the program so great. I'm excited.

Speaker 2 (01:38):
I would love to know why you decided to go
into gut health. I want to start there.

Speaker 1 (01:42):
Yeah, you know so. I'm trained as a microbiologist. My
parents are both scientists of sorts. My mom's a medical doctor.
My dad was a microelectronics engineer, and he was like
the innovation side, the systems engineering side. He's had you know,
over two hundred and fifty US patents, his name for
inventing stuff in microchips and all that, and then my

(02:04):
mom is the clinical science side, and I think I
got a little bit of mix of both. So I
love the clinical science, that's where my passion is, but
I bring kind of a systems thinking to it. And
so when I was in college, I was trying to
figure out what am I going to study. Like any
good Indian kid, I should be pretty mad. Of course
I was pretty mad already, but I didn't know exactly

(02:24):
what I was going to study. And so the first
week in college, I watched this movie called Outbreak, So
for those that aren't as old as me, that's an
old school movie with Morgan Freeman and Dustin Hoffman, and
it was about like a little epidemic that breaks out
in a small town and then the people that were
solving the problem were these microbiologists and virologists from the

(02:48):
CDC and other places, and they were trying to chase
these viruses down and figure out a cure of it
and all that. So I thought that was super exciting.
So I went into the world of microbiology and that
became a massive for me because what you start to
realize when you study the world of microbes is that
it's an invisible thing around you, but it affects every

(03:09):
aspect of your life. Yeah, right, It's like the quantum
mechanics of biology. And so then I started, actually, there
was a definitive moment. So in the world of microbiology,
you always you end up studying pathogens a lot, right.
And then I was interviewed for this program called US
News and World Report, and they had asked me the

(03:30):
question what percentage of microbes are actually harmful? Right? So
I said, you know what, I never really thought about that.
Let me dig into it a little bit, got into
the research on it, and started realizing that at best,
it's around point one percent, zero point one percent at best.
And that's like me being very generous with me. So,

(03:52):
ninety nine point nine percent of microbes ever discovered are
either benign or beneficial, but we put so much emphasis
on that point one percent that can cause illness or disease.
And then it started to click, like, wait a minute,
the best way to control the point one percent that
is problematic is to allow the ninety nine point nine
percent to flourish.

Speaker 2 (04:13):
Right, makes sense.

Speaker 1 (04:14):
They do a way better job of it than we can.
And so that was a gap in the clinical scientific
microbiology medicine world, and I was like, how do I
study that ninety nine point nine percent? How do I
build a career in that? Shortly after that, the Human
Microbiome Project kicked off, which is the project by the

(04:34):
NIH to study this complex ecosystem that we have within us.
Really it's the study of the ninety nine point nine percent,
and so I was like, that's it, That's what I'm doing, right.
So I dove head first in fifteen eighteen years ago
and haven't looked back since.

Speaker 2 (04:51):
It's so interesting how even in research it was end
up focusing on the things, which I was like, how
do we kill the bad things? And forgets to think
how do we actually support and nourish and help the
good things flourish, which is what you're focusing on. My
mum's a micropologist. Actually, Oh amazing, Yeah.

Speaker 1 (05:07):
Good.

Speaker 2 (05:07):
But in all the research that you've done, you said
you've been doing it for nearly fifteen years now, what
was the most surprising thing that you found out about
the gut?

Speaker 1 (05:14):
Number one? I think the big theme is how impactful
the gut is to everything that happens in our boin
We've always obviously understood that the gut is important for digestion,
and then maybe the assimilation of nutrients has an impact
on everything else. But now what we're really coming to
understand is that the gut is a central command center
for how the rest of the body works and functions,

(05:37):
and it's also the largest reservoir of our functionality. Right,
So let me elaborate on what that means. Right, So,
if we look at genetics, we've always known that genetics
codes for proteins and other functions, right, so we're like, okay,
everything that happens in our body is coded for by genetics.
We look at our own genome. We've got about twenty

(05:58):
two thousand functional genes and it may sound like a lot,
but an earthworm has thirty thousand functional genes. No way,
a cockroach has twenty one or twenty two thousand functional genes.
So we're not all that much more sophisticated than a cockroaches.
And that's crazy to think, because then you go, well,
how are we so complex? Right? How are we at

(06:20):
the top of the evolutionary ladder? How are we at
the top of the food chain. Well, as it turns out,
we have over two and a half microbial genes in
our system. Right, this is largely in the gut, where
the vast majority of microbes are, and we use so
much of that genetic capability to function as humans, which
means we have to reset how we think of ourselves.

(06:43):
We are no longer this collection of skin and bones
with organs that are connected through tubes and so on. Right,
we are a walking, talking rainforest. We are a beautiful,
elegant biological ecosystem that has been organized with painstaking, you know,
effort through nature to function in a particular way. And

(07:06):
we are and there's a term for that, it's called holobiome.
Holo biome is a super organism coore. So we're walking,
talking rainforest and we're made up of thousands of little
micro ecologies that have to work together to afford the
health and function of the whole. And as we keep
thinking about humans as an ecosystem, we become a little

(07:28):
more conscious about what we do to our ecosystem.

Speaker 2 (07:31):
What do you think like the top three things that
people are doing that are ruining their gut at the moment,
Because I find everyone has got issues, Like every other
person I meet is struggling with something that relates, Like
you said, back to the gut. So what do you
think are the main things that people are doing that
are really irritating or ruining people's gut health.

Speaker 1 (07:49):
Yeah, I would say if I could list probably ten
that are really significant. But if I would list to
top three or four, right, I would say Number one
is our really poor dye. We have a very low
diversity in our diet. The standard American diet is absolutely
atrocious for the gut for a few reasons. Number one

(08:09):
is that we eat very calorically dense, nutritionally poor foods.
Those nutritional elements in natural foods like polyphenols and carratenoids,
all the colored fruits and vegetables and all those right
are critically important as sources of food for the microbes
in our system. Fiber becomes such a critical component. So

(08:30):
the standard American diet has around eight grams of fiber
per day, which is really really low, and we should
talk about the impact of fiber, just something so simple
as that. So our diet is heavily processed and very
low in diversity. The second thing is our overuse of
medications antibiotics right for example, And antibiotics can save lives.

(08:52):
They're needed at times, but even the CDC estimated about
a decade ago that at least half of the antibiotic
prescriptions are necessary. They're written for viral infections and other things. Right,
those have a devastating effect on our ecosystem. And number three,
this may be surprising, is stress. So stress induces a
significant amount of dysfunction in our ecosystem through a number

(09:15):
of mechanisms. One mechanism, which I'll elaborate on is so
there are pathogens within our system. We talked about that
point one percent right now. They hang out and often
are functional when they're controlled by the ninety nine percent,
But many of them are what we call opportunistic, meaning
they sit there and they wait for the right opportunity
to really rear their ugly heads or the bad parts

(09:38):
about them. And so stress is a thing that they
sit and sense. When the hosts cortisol or epinephrine nor
epenefern is high, indicating the host is under stress. That's
when these microbes go aha, the host is compromise. This
is when we can proliferate. Right, So then they start
throwing off their toxins and they start multiplying, and they

(09:59):
start taking and over more real estate, and they increase
their percentage within the ecosystem, which then can cause more
disruption as well. So stress in itself can be a
really really big driver of dysfunction.

Speaker 2 (10:13):
And this biosis tell me more about antibiotics, because I
have avoided antibiotics like the plague for a while now
since I heard about it. Tell me what they do
to the gut. And then also if someone has to
go on antibiotics, if they feel like they have no
other choice of doctors, like you have to take this
otherwise you're going to get this, this, and this. What
protocol should someone go on when they're taking antibiotics to

(10:34):
help save their gut.

Speaker 1 (10:35):
Yeah, so here's what an antibiotic does. It's a little
bit like an atom bomb for your gut. Right, so
if you think about your gut is loaded with all
of these microbes, trillions of microbes. When the antibiotic goes in,
most antibiotics will stay in the small bowel for about
two and a half to three hours before it ends
up in your liver. The compounds are thin. The antibiotics
end up in the liver and then distributed throughout circulation.

(10:57):
That two and a half three hour period when it's
in the it's killing everything down. So that was one
study out of Stanford, and I can't remember it got
published not but I saw it during a research conference
they were presenting on it. What they showed is that
let's say you take all the microbes in your gut,
this this amazing population. You've thrown a high dose antibiotics.

(11:18):
It knocks everything down by ninety to ninety five percent
everything right, good and bad. Everything gets knocked down like
almost equally. Now, the thing about microbes is they're super resilient,
so they start coming back after a few hours. The
problem is what proportion they come back in, right, So
the good stuff is still there, but each dose of

(11:41):
antibiotics increases the propensity of the dysfunction of microbes come
back faster. Right. And here's why. So one of the
features of the gut is the pH control. Right. So
your gut is supposed to be more acidic than basic
or neutral. Right, So if you think about your small bowl,
the pH can go in anywhere from like two and
a half where it's close to the stomach, all the

(12:03):
way down to like four and a half five, which
is still acidic. Now that acidic environment is really important
because the acidic environment is what controls the dysfunctional bacteria
from overgrowing. It also controls the mold and fungus from
overgrowing because they don't like the acidic environment. Now, how
is the acidic environment maintained while there are microbes in

(12:24):
there that produce lactic acid? So now you've got this
lactic acid, a healthy gut, lots of lactic acid bacteria
keeping the pH low, meaning more acidic. Now everything gets
knocked down, including the lactic acid bacteria. They're no longer
producing lactic acid for that few hours, so then the
pH goes up. Now it becomes a little bit more

(12:44):
neutral or basic, which means in that environment, the dysfunctional
microbes grow back faster, and with every dose boom, everything
gets knocked down again. The dysfunctional microbes go back even faster.
So we are altering what the ecosystem looks like thereby
selecting for the more dysfunctional organisms to grow back faster.

Speaker 2 (13:06):
So you just creating an environment where they thrive than
the good exactly. What about medications Like you know, something
that people get put on a lot is things for
anti acid Like I've got acid reflux and how does
that affect the gut because I imagine if you're trying
to reduce the acid in the body, does it have
the same effect as antibiotics, So it.

Speaker 1 (13:24):
Can have a longer term, even more deleterious effect. Okay, Right,
So there's this condition. So the antacids that people use
or reflux medication, they're called PPIs proton pump inhibitors. Right,
that's a category. There are now really good data showing
that PPIs dramatically increase your risk of cardiovascular disease for example, right, right,

(13:46):
because of this amazing amount of chronic, low grade inflammation
that they cause. Right, and I can I'll tie that
back to leaky gut, which is where everything starts to
fall apart, is when your gut becomes leaky. The other
issue with PPIs, so your stomach and your stomach acid
is considered a gastric barrier. That's a very important component

(14:07):
of your entire immune system and protective system. Right, because
we're constantly exposed to microbes that could potentially be harmful,
whether it's some food or the environment or even our
own mounts. Right, we're swallowing roughly fifty billion or so.
Back TOIA every single day right from our mouths, and
our mouths tend to be very contaminated. People have heard

(14:27):
the human mouth is dirty than a dog's mouth. All that, right.
So we've got a high density of microbes in our mouth,
and many of those microbes can be problematic if they're
allowed to live in our gi track. But the thing
that prevents them normally from living in the gi track
is the stomach acid. Because you're swallowing it, they're getting
killed in the stomach acid, so they end up in
the intestines, but they're dead and then you just poop

(14:49):
them out right several hours later. If you compromise stomach
acid by using these proton pump inhibitors or antacids and
all that, you're allowing these oral back to her to
surm and colonize in the small intestine, completely changing what
that environment looks like. The most common thing that that
leads to something I'm sure you've heard is CIBO small

(15:11):
intestinal bacterial overgrowth or bloating. So this is where all
of this ibs, like bloating, cramping, loose stool, indigestion feelings
come from. It comes from a change in the microbial
environment in the small intestine, and one of the drivers
of that is this reduction in stomach acid and swallowing

(15:32):
of all of these oral bacteria. The other thing that
reduces stomach acid is stress. Right, So going back to
just making small changes to how your digestive system is
supposed to function can create a whole deleterious cascade.

Speaker 2 (15:46):
And this is just I'm asking for personal reason for
family member. If someone is being told that they should
go on anti acids, or are there things that in
their dyet or in their lifestyle that people can do
to try and help that without having to go on
this medication.

Speaker 1 (16:02):
Yeah, if they're being recommended to go on it because
of reflux, for example, yeah, right. The big misnomer is
that reflux is a issue of having too much stomach acid.
It's actually the opposite. It's the reflux is an issue
that occurs because you have too little stomach acid and
you're getting fermentation and gas production in the stomach, which

(16:23):
is not supposed to happen. So the acid actually prevents that.
So there are some really amazing natural ingredients that can
help for people with reflux issues. A couple of things,
So one is so bitters digestive bitters are incredibly powerful
for allowing the gastri system to empty, for releasing adequate

(16:44):
hydrochloric acid, which is the stomach acid that we have,
and also controlling the movement of the food so that
it doesn't sit for too long in the stomach and ferment. Okay, right,
So digestive bitters are critically important. They in fact, they
bind these things called bitter receptors that we have all
throughout our stomach and our intestines. And when they bind
the bitter receptors, they send signals that tells the brain

(17:06):
to hey, release more stomach acid, or release more pink
creatic enzymes, which help us digest our food or move
the food along so that it can get digested and
broken down properly. Okay, right, So if you're dealing with
reflux and all that, I would look at digestive bitters.

Speaker 2 (17:21):
I've been taking really just drive once, oh pay. It
might be my favorite supplement that just Drive does, because
I mean, I've studied ird and it talks about Bitters
is such an important category in the food that you eat,
and it's probably some of the people avoid the most
because who's eating a whole lot of like kale and
dandelion rue and they're just not really having as much
bitter foods as you would need in your gut. And

(17:45):
so taking the digestive bitters has been such a game changer,
even how my gut feels on a daily basis of
just eating food.

Speaker 1 (17:51):
Yeah, yeah, digestibiites, it's going back to basics, right. So,
when we were thinking about the digestive bitters, and that
became a real passion area for me because I kept
look looking at like, what do we not like activating
in our digestive system? Right, So why do we have
so much floating and indigestion and all that, Like why
is that so prevalent nowadays? And there's a few different

(18:11):
reasons for it. But then when you look at basic
digestive functions. Remember I mentioned that we don't have enough
genetics to do all of the things we need to
do as humans. We take resources from microbes and plants
and all of that, right, So one of the things
that we've outsourced to the plant world was to provide
us stimulus in our digestive tract to tell our brain

(18:34):
that food is coming through, where the food is, what
kind of food it is, release the stomach acid, release
the digestive secretions, release the enzymes so that we can
properly digest and utilize our food. Right. The signals for
that come from binding bitter receptors. So yeah, and the
way we evolved is that if you think about our ancestors,

(18:54):
they were gatherers, they were forgers, they hunted some and
so on, but they ate a lot of different things, right,
They had seeds and nuts and roots and tubers and
flowers and things like that, so they got all these
bitter compounds into their diet. So over the course of
human evolution, we evolved to expect bitters to come in
as an indication that food is within the system. Right,

(19:19):
So you've got these switches in your digestive tract that
have to be turned on when food is in there.
And in fact, these switches account for upwards of fifty
percent of the digestive signaling to tell the body that
this food in there, you got to utilize the food
and break it down, right, The bitters account for fifty percent.
So then about fifty sixty years ago, we farmed all

(19:43):
of the bitterers out of our products, right, because people
don't like the taste, right, we've kind of moved more
towards savory and sweet and so on, so we have
no bidders in our diet and as a result of that,
we are not turning on upwards of half of the
digest switches when we eat food. Right, So we've got

(20:03):
this complex, beautiful digestive system and half of the signaling
is shut down.

Speaker 2 (20:08):
That's so interesting, And I love what you said, you know,
when you're talking about the body as of rainforest, and
I really talks about this so much. And since I
locked into that in my body of how nature literally
has everything that we need to sustain and optimize our health.
We just need to know what from nature we need
to be taking. And so I love how you touched
on that because it's to even growing up obviously in
an Indian house, there was a lot of bitter foods,

(20:29):
like my parents eat gerala, like what are they called
in English again, garrilla, but what's another word for it?
Is it bit? Yeah? They have that like a few
times a week at least. And there's like methy or
feno Greek seeds that are used in our It's such
a natural way of us eating is having bitter spices
or bitter foods. But when I ended up, you know,
when you come to America or the UK, those flavors,

(20:52):
that palate is just not there. It's not something that's
you that people are used to having. And so I
think having you know, someone like a supplement, if you're
not used to having bitter foods single day, then I
think it's really needed. Just like we take you know,
vimin c or whatever else is that we're taking in
the supplements, I think it's a really necessary part of it.

Speaker 1 (21:09):
Yeah, and not turning on those switches, those digestive switches, right,
So remember I said about fifty percent of the digestive
signaling comes from activating these bitter receptors, and so we're
not clicking on those switches as the food is moving.

Speaker 2 (21:22):
Through the mahygestions just lazy, it's lazy.

Speaker 1 (21:24):
It's not happening, right, it's not. We're literally in a
maldigestive state, meaning we're failing to digest the food appropriately.
Then what happens is you get this adverse response where
there's too much fermentation in the wrong place, your body
doesn't know how to deal with the nutrients coming in.
You can't release enough bile to deal with the fatty acids.

(21:47):
So then that creates runniness and gurgling in the tunnel.
The fermentation creates a lot of bloating, you know, just
everything starts to fall apart. And the problem with that
is that not only is it inconvenient to have digestive
issues and disrupt your quality of life, but it's also
the beginning of foundational disruption to how the rest of

(22:11):
your system works, because we talked about how the gut
is where all everything starts, and so digestive issues become
the precursor to much more complicated and serious issues.

Speaker 2 (22:24):
Before I ask my next question, I wanted to go
back to the acid question because you mentioned bitters. Was
there anything else that you think people should add into
their diet before? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (22:32):
So, and this might be counterintuitive, and maybe talk to
your doctor or nutritionist or somebody you can work with,
but you may actually want to add more acid to
your diet. So there's there's supplements like btaan etcl, which
is a hydrochloric acid that you can take as a supplement. Right,
because remember reflux is actually an issue of not enough, right,

(22:53):
you could take btaan eightcl. You use some bitters, and
you use a good probiotic that helps you break down
the food and move things along. That should typically take
care of the issue. Now a couple other simple things
you can do as well. You want to activate the
cephalic response. Sophalic response is the predigestive signaling that occurs

(23:14):
from smelling food seeing food. Right, you have mouth waters literally, right,
but it also is the first signal to your body
that hey, food is coming through. So let's prep the
system to deal with it. Right, So you start releasing
a little bit of hydrochloric acid, you start releasing some
digestive enzymes in your mouth, so salivary amylase, it's called. Right.

(23:36):
What we tend to do is we eat too fast
on the go, right, we don't appreciate the food and
so on. So you know, we all remember growing up.
But family, if it's a big meal like a festival
or something like a volley or something, right, you've got
this beautiful meal set up and you can smell it
cooking all day long, and you can't wait to sit
down and eat it, and you see it all laid

(23:58):
out there, it's beautiful, and all of that is triggering
the cephalic response. So we want to get a little
bit what I call it's food hygiene. It's not cleanliness,
it's about how do you approach eating right? Number one,
Slow it down. Number two. Sit for a moment. And
this might sound a little hokey, but it really really works.
Sit for a moment and appreciate the food, like appreciate

(24:21):
the texture, the color, the smell. Right. You don't have
to be too cuckoo about it, but just for a moment,
appreciate it because your brain is then telling your digestis system. Okay,
let's get ready. We're going to start digesting soon. Right. Then,
chew your food right like, chew it thoroughly, but chew
it slowly because if you don't chew it slowly, you

(24:42):
suck in a lot of air when you're chewing, and
your stomachs full of air and that air has to
escape somehow and it pushes things up like acid. Right,
So just that little bit of meal hygiene helps. Then
you add in the bidder as you add in some
digestive enzymes if you need to probiotic, and your system
should work exactly the way it's designed.

Speaker 2 (25:03):
I love that even the moment just before you eat
of just taking taking a beat. It also can just
reduce the small amount of stress that might be going
on in your body, or like if you're in anxiety
from like working, and then you suddenly take a break
to eat instead of receiving that food with anxiety, where
your gut is still like that and it's feeling the anxiousness,
you get to take a moment to just relax with

(25:24):
your gut and your digestive system, And it makes such
a difference. My granddad used to make like my mom
and her two brothers to their food thirty two times,
like get them into the practice of chewing their food
thirty two times, and the meals would take such a
long time. But I remember my mom saying, like my
granddad would constantly if they would quew too fast or
eat their meal too fast, he would say, no to

(25:45):
your food thirty two times before you swallow it, even
if it's something that's soft, and even if it's really
well cooked, you have to keep chewing it.

Speaker 1 (25:51):
You have to. And if you think about the evolutionary
significance of that, right, So here's here's one way to
think about it. For the most part, we know what
we're eating. Now, this little danger in terms of like
poisoning from what we ate. But back in the day
when people are like forging and all that, you don't
know what you're picking. Is that going to kill you?
Is it healthy for you or what? Right? And so

(26:13):
we have some defensive mechanisms in our system. That's actually
part of why you have bitter receptors in your mouth
as well, you know, And it's a misnomer that all
the bitter receptors are in your mouth, but they're not.
There's only there's some in there which are important. The
rest are in the digestptry. But the reason for the
bitter receptors in the mouth is because toxins or poisons

(26:34):
tend to be really astringent and very bitter. So you
have this reflux response where you put it in, you
chew it, and it's so bitter it triggers this response
where you spit it out. Right right now, let's say
you ate something and it's not triggering that response. You're
not spitting it out, but you need your immune system
to sample the food that's coming in because your immune
system will help decide is this something that I need

(26:56):
to attack, neutralize, or just tolerate? Right that chewing. You've
got a lot of immune tissue in your mouth. Your
saliva is full of antibodies, and so that is part
of coding the food with your own antibodies, your own
immune factors, to introduce the food you're eating to your
immune system. Wow, so your immune system has time to

(27:17):
really examine what you're putting in because it's your immune
system's job to defend you for it. Right, So your
immune system is confused and doesn't have enough time to
develop what we call oral tolerance. You start eating things,
it attacks it. Yeah, how does that feel? Bloating, cramping, indigestion,
and so on.

Speaker 2 (27:34):
When it reminds me of when I was in India
two years ago and I was on this pilgrimage thing.
So we were eating like those bulk bulk food being
made for thousands and thousands of people. I ate this
cassava curry and I was one of the first people
to take it, and suddenly my whole mouth started going numb.
I started feeling so sick. They hadn't taken out there's
a poisonous strands or something that you have to take

(27:55):
out when you cook cassava. I was one of the
first people eat it suddenly I felt so well. I
go to the site, I'm throwing up and I'd be like,
tell everyone not to eat. And it was, but it
was one of those exact experiences where my mouth started
feeling it. Luckily I was eating slowly, I had a
couple of bias, and I was like, this is not
something's going wrong. But it was exactly what you're describing.
The whole system happened, and luckily wasn't scuffing it down

(28:18):
for me to have had too much of it.

Speaker 1 (28:20):
But yeah, imagine if you just if you had the
practice of just barely chewing and eating too fast, exactly
consumed enough of it to probably make you sick. Yes,
on right, So we want to go back to the basics,
you know, like you said, nature has given us all
the tools that we need to be functional and healthy.
We just can't forget them and kind of go back
to the basics, which is where we developed the probiotics too.

(28:41):
The probiotics are really going back to foundations of how
we interact with micros.

Speaker 2 (28:46):
You mentioned your probiotics. I was going to ask you
a question later on about it, but let's hit it
now because I know that there are there are so
many probiotics supplements out there, people get really confused. Now,
I'm just going to read what I know that your
probiotics have sull based probiotics. Can you share what that
is and why spoll based probiotics are better than any
other type?

Speaker 1 (29:06):
Yeah, and you have to get the right spores too,
So let me tell you a little bit about how
we came about it, right. It's really going back to
this idea that anytime we try to outsmart or circumvent nature,
we tend to stumble and fall. But if we're just
smart enough to know what nature has already provided us
and then embrace it and study it and understand it,

(29:27):
then we can typically make significant progress. Right because everything
is here for us already. So when we started thinking
about probiotics, we said, okay, you see all the products
on the shelf, and it's like fifty billion, sixty.

Speaker 2 (29:38):
Billions and CFUs.

Speaker 1 (29:39):
Crazy amounts of doses, fifteen strains, twenty five strains, and
so on. And I remember thinking to myself about fifteen
years ago, and I wasn't using probiotics at all as
a microbiologist. It didn't quite make sense to me, and
I was like, Okay, let me dig into this a
little bit and see what is the what's like the
reasoning behind all this design. And so I started looking
in to it, and I go, okay, nowhere in nature

(30:03):
do we encounter these types of strains at these doses
in this way. So it's a very unnatural thing to
be taking fifty billion, sixty billion of these eighteen strings, right.
It doesn't happen in nature. And so I said, okay,
but clearly we have a very deep intimate relationship with microbes.
So what is the natural probiotic out there?

Speaker 2 (30:25):
Like?

Speaker 1 (30:25):
How do we naturally interact with microbes? So our first
encounter with microbes is actually in utero. When you're a
mom's womb. There are immune cells in her body called
dendritic cells that can actually reach across her gut lining
pull her bacteria from her gut and take it to
the baby in the womb.

Speaker 2 (30:43):
That's amazing, It's crazy. Yeah, it's incredible.

Speaker 1 (30:46):
But here's where it gets even more crazy. Why is
it taking it there? Right? There are microbes in your
gut that have certain carbohydrates on their outer cell membrane.
Those are called exo polysachrides. That's a technical term for them.
As it turns out, the placenta has receptor sites for
these bacterial exo polysacchrides. The baby's brain has receptor sites

(31:09):
of these exo polysacchrides. So when you're when you're when
the mom's immune cells take the exo polysachride lated bacteria
to the baby, it binds these receptors and it triggers
parts of the brain development. Wow, so we've outsourced probably
one of the most important aspects of developing a human
in the womb, which is developing its brain. We've outsourced

(31:31):
part of that signaling to bacterial components. Right. It goes
back to the what I was saying before. We don't
have enough genes to do everything we do. So so
nature has found a way to cooperate with micro organisms
to say, hey, microbes, we need the stimulus, the signal,
so we're gonna work together. I'm not gonna attack you, you're
gonna we're gonna live symbiotically. But your carbohydrate that you're making,

(31:54):
we're gonna use that as a trigger to develop my
baby's brain in utero. Right. So it's so foundationally, it's
that important from the beginning. Okay, so we said, okay,
in uter, you interact with all these microbes. Hopefully you're
a vaginal birth, which means you got amazing inoculum from
mom's vaginal bacteria. And then most women when they're pushing out,
they're going to defecate too, so you're going to get

(32:15):
in contact with mom's fecal bacteria. That becomes the initial
inoculum the baby's exposed to, right, which is really really important.
We know now if the baby's sea section, that it's
going to almost double the risk of allergies, asthma, food
sensitivities and all that. Right, it almost doubles the risk
of metabolic syndrome, diabetes, cardiovascular disease and so on, just

(32:36):
from being born through sea section, not through the vaginal canal.
Is not getting that initial inoculum. Now after birth, mom
hopefully has the opportion to feed, nurse the baby. Breast
milk has upwards of six hundred different types of microbes
in it, incredible, right, massive amounts of probiotic bacteria, and
about eighteen or so percent of the solids in breast

(32:59):
milk are biotics. The legosach rides that the baby can't digest,
but it's there purely to feed the bacteria so the
bacteric can establish itself, right. So that's the initial relationship
and intimate connection we have with microbes. And after you're
born and after the first couple of years and all
the skin to skin contact and the kissing and all that.

(33:19):
So that's all really important to develop the microbial environment.
The rest of your life. You're engaging with microbes in
the environment. Our ancestors, our relatives also still today they
live in within the dirt. They live. They don't live
in sterile environments, right. They eat foods that have dirt
on it. They pick things and they brush off the dirt,

(33:40):
and they eat things with microbes on it. So we
have this intimate relationship with microbes in the environment. So
when we started looking at probiotics, we said, okay, what
kind of microbes within the environment could potentially act as
a probiotic, right, which means that they have to be
able to get through the system, alive and function in
the testines in some way that's beneficial to the host.

(34:02):
So we honed in on these microbes that live ubiquitously
in natural environments are called basillis endospores. But what's unique
about them is they can live in the outside world
under UV radiation, with oxygen and all that, but they
can also live in the gut, which is a very
different environment. There's no light, that's dark in there, and
there's no oxygen in the gut, right, So they can

(34:24):
live in both of those unique environments, and they can
survive through the gastric system. Remember I mentioned the gastric
barrier is there to kill most microbes going in. But
these microbes have a natural capability of surviving through the
gastric system and getting to the intestines alive. So our
first clue was, okay, the fact that nature gave him

(34:44):
this unique capability of living in the outside environment and
living in the gut, which are very different environments, and
surviving through this gauntlet that we have to kill microbes,
maybe they're designed to do something effective in the gut.
So that's what we honed in on these Basillis endospores,
and we found a bunch of research done by brilliant
researchers at universities. Actually Royal Holloway University of London was

(35:06):
kind of the leading areas of this. They found that
these Bacillis endospores are normal commensals in the gut. We
are supposed to pick them up from the environment. They
go in, they do a lot of things to fix
the gut, and we'll talk about what they do. And
then they stay for about two to three weeks and
then we defecate them out. So they use the environment

(35:28):
as a vector to get from host to host.

Speaker 2 (35:31):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (35:31):
So the environment is a temporary place for them. The
gut is their actual home. And here's a fascinating thing.
When we look at the cellular building blocks of life
on Earth. So on Metea Rights and all that, scientists
have identified nucleic acids that make up our DNA, They've
identified proteins, have identified cellular machinery that come from meteorites

(35:52):
from outer space. Right. So then the question is like, okay,
what seeded the cellular components of life on Earth. They
started looking at what kind of bacteria on Earth could
survive interstellar travel on a meteorite for example, right, and
potentially seed the cellular building blocks of life. So these
same Bacillis endospores they studied could survive in the vacuus

(36:14):
space for seven years, wow, and can come in on
a meteorite and seed the cellular machinery of life on Earth.
It's the theories called panspermia, and there's a lot of
great research around it. So then they started looking at
really ancient versions of these bacteria. So actually in a

(36:34):
cave in southern California, they were looking and they were
going deeper into the deep recesses of the caves that
haven't been touched by man. They found in the salt
crystals that have been around for millions of years. They
were able to dissolve the salt crystals. They found bacteria
in there that were two hundred and fifty million years
old and they were still alive. They could still plate

(36:56):
them and grow them in an incubator. And these we're
spore based bacteria okay, that were there well before humans work, right,
So they are arguably one of the original foundations of
life on Earth. They play a critical role in our system.
Nature has had it here from the dawn of man.

(37:17):
We just have to be smart enough to identify and
know that they're there and figure out how to.

Speaker 2 (37:21):
Use use them. I love how you said that they come,
they do their job, and they leave. That we're not
permanent employees but contractors. We come, we make you better
and then we leave. Okay, but how does someone know
that people take supplements all the time. How do they
know these are actually working? Because sometimes you can keep
taking things because you know they're good for you. Should
you be feeling a difference? And what difference should you
be feeling from taking probiotics?

Speaker 1 (37:42):
Yeah, so if you have a primary digestive issue, So
let's say you have like IBS like symptoms. Right, your
bowels are irritated, you don't deal well with food. An
effective probiotic within the first thirty days or so should
make you feel something significantly improving within your DIGESTI. Okay,
if you get a lot of bloating, cramping, you eat

(38:03):
food that should start to alleviate It may not fix
it in that time, but you should start to feel
a relief from those symptoms. Now, what else do you
start to feel well? So then you should sleep better?

Speaker 2 (38:16):
Right.

Speaker 1 (38:17):
Generally, your gut and your brain are connected. It's called
the gut brain access that people talk about, and dysfunction
in the gut drives sleep deprivation and sleep issues. Right,
so you should rest better. If you use devices like
the or ring and so on, you should be able
to see your sleep score improving without trying significantly your
afternoon energy, you should feel better, right, you shouldn't get

(38:39):
that drop and slump in the afternoon. You should be
more energetic. You'll actually start to see things like issues
on your skin. So there's something called the gut skin access.
Of course, what happens in the gut impacts the skin
quite a bit. So if you've got inflammatory issues on
the skin, you know, and your skin is sensitive and
all that, those things tend to improve just cognitive function

(39:00):
and alone. Right, So brain fog is very closely tied
to the gut.

Speaker 2 (39:04):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (39:05):
And so when your gut is improving, you'll just have
more clarity, your memory will be better, like, you'll start
to feel better functioning overall. Yeah, a better version of
yourself is a great way to put it. Because and
we can connect all of these through mechanisms, through biochemistry,
and I can talk about that stuff all day long, right,
but really what we're getting at is that the gut

(39:28):
is a central command center of how the rest of
your system works. If you're improving your gut with a probiotic,
if it's something that actually does something beneficial, you will
feel it in all different parts of your body.

Speaker 2 (39:39):
You know what's so interesting. One of my family members
recently went to see a holistic doctor and she was
saying how their gut is just really messed up to
take on some medications and things are just not great
right now. But the first thing that she said, she's
also like a bit of a healer, and she said,
your mood and just your vibrance seems low. And the

(40:01):
first thing that they said back was, yeah, I just
I've been feeling really now mood. Like my just I
feel more sad and I haven't be feeling happy in
life as much. So on a scale of like one
to ten, I've been feeling a four and I don't
usually feel like a four. Yeah, And so it reminded
me of how insane is that our gut literally can
affect our mood, our sadness, our emotions. Could you talk

(40:25):
a little bit more about why there's a connection.

Speaker 1 (40:27):
There, Yeah, And that's a really really important connection because
we are in a bit of an epidemic of depression,
anxiety and all that. Right, you just look at the
volatility of the world around us. People are not in
a good placement generally, and just to throw a stat
out there, right, So if you look at people with
IBS irritable bowel syndrome. If you have IBS, somewhere around

(40:49):
sixty percent of people with IBS have diagnosed mood disorders, right,
anxiety and depression. If you look at the same age
group of people who don't have IBS, it's less than
nineteen percent. So just having IBS means you are four
times three or four times more likely to have anxiety
and depression. Right. They go hand in hand because it's
a gut brain issue. So what's actually happening, Well, we

(41:12):
have something called the fight of flight response. Right. The
fight of flight response is a really important response to
keep us alive. It used to be this primitive thing
that only kicks on in situations that could be endangering
your life. We're walking down the grasslands. We hear wrestling
in the grass, right, and it could be a predator,
and maybe we have some memory of some learning about

(41:34):
that sound and that smell and so on, and so
your body goes into this fight of flight so to
get you out of this situation. So here's what's actually
happening in the fight of flight, right, So your hypothalamus
picks up the visual and auditory clues right, It senses
that it's something that's potentially harmful. So then you have
the hypothalamus, tuitory adrenal axis HPA axis, right, So the

(41:59):
hypotholamus and activates the porturitory tell us the peturitory, hey,
we got to move. Release some cortisol. Cortosol being the
stress hormone. So the peturitary goes, okay, yep, let's release
some cortisol. The adrenals go aha, we're coming in. We're
going to release adrenaline right, epinephrin nor pen effort. So
now this chemistry is working to get you ready to

(42:19):
fight or flee. So how is it doing that. It
wants to prioritize blood getting to your brain so that
you'll be visually and auditorially and cognitively accurate and really,
you know, on point. And then it wants to get
blood to your heart so that your heart can carry
you in the way you need to, and then blood
to your muscles right so you can fight or flee.

(42:40):
It's deprioritizing digestion. Forget the food that you just ate,
we're not digesting it right now. Forget your immune system,
we're not doing that. Forget all the repair that we
need to do, we're not doing that. You have to survive, right,
So it's an absolute survival instinct. So now cortisol's kicking up,
adrenaline's kicking up, and so on. Your body is going
into this inflammatory fight or flight response because the way

(43:03):
it gets inflammation to your brain, the way it gets
blood to your brain and your heart is by activating inflammation.

Speaker 2 (43:10):
Right.

Speaker 1 (43:10):
Inflammation is circulation. Right, So if you like rub your
skin really hard and gets red, it's irritated, but that
redness is circulation coming to there with inflammatory markers. So
now you're inflamed. Your brain is inflamed, your heart is inflamed,
your muscles are inflamed. They're perfused with blood just to
get you to be able to fight or flee. You

(43:30):
also can't repair anything, you can't digest anything, and nor
can you rest right, but it doesn't matter because you
are to fight or flee. So now let's say you
run away from whatever is that sound is, You make
your way up a tree and you get up in
the tree and you go, okay, that really it was
a bunny rabbit, right, So there's nothing dangerous there. Now
your system has to come off that big spike of

(43:52):
cortosol and epenefferin nor epenephyn you have to go back
to that parasympathetic rest, digests, relax phase. So how does
that happen? As it turns out, your gut microbiome plays
a very important role in that it's a checkpoint to
help you turn off the fight of flight and go
back to the rest and digests. So here's what happens

(44:14):
if you don't have the right microbes or high diversity
in the gut microbiome. The cortisol as it's going up
is making everything inflamed and all that, but some of
the cortisols also dumping in the gut. Some microbes metabolize
the cortisol sends part of those metabolic byproducts your kidneys.
Your kidneys use that as a signal to put in
more potassium and sodium into your circulation, so more water

(44:37):
follows into your circulation. What that does is increases your
blood pressure, right, And the reason you want to increase
your blood pressure in that situation is you want more perfusion.
You want the blood to rush to your muscles and
all that. This is why chronic stress creates hypertension. Because
of that process. Right, So we all know that chronic
stress increases blood pressure, but it's for that reason. So

(44:59):
all that is happening, you're trying to fight or flee.
Now your cortisol as you relax and you realize the
danger is not there anymore. Your cortisol is supposed to
be bound up by these glucocorticoid receptors that you have
throughout your body. But if your gut is dysfunctional, what
happens instead is the cortisol causes massive amounts of transient
leakiness in the gut and you get these inflammatory cytokines

(45:23):
that increase, like IL one in a luken one. When
those increase, what they do is they re trigger the
HPA access as if you're encountering another danger signal, Right,
and then the whole cycle starts up again, and by
the time you try to come back down, it retriggers
it again and again and again, and it keeps people

(45:45):
in a constant state of fight or flight without being
able to go to the rest, digest and repair. What
does that feel like. It feels like you have an
elevated basal level of anxiety. All the stress stimuli amplifies
you even more because you can't deal with it with
a sound mind, right, and a balanced mind. You also

(46:05):
cannot digest, so you're bloating your indigestion. You can't deal
with food very well. You can't rest, so you don't
sleep well, so you can't recover well. Your immune system
is tanking in that situation, so you get sick all
the time. That is the standard Westerner right, because we
are constantly in fight or flight and we can't come
down from it, and your gut is the checkpoint to

(46:28):
turn all that off, which is crazy.

Speaker 2 (46:31):
Give a lot of our like the serotonin and all
happy homones, is there a place where it's created in
our gut? Or is that not sure? Oh, that's true.

Speaker 1 (46:38):
The majority of serotonin is created in your gut. Okay,
but even and the serotonin in your gut is used
mostly in your gut and circulation for lots of things.
It's anti inflammatory and moves the bowels and all that.
Dopamine is also created largely in your gut. But what's
even more important than the serotonin itself that's created in
the gut is the precursor to serotonin called tryptophan. Yes, right,

(47:01):
so trip tofan is what serotonin and melatonin are made from.
Oh and the majority of your trip to fan is
made in the gut by microbes. So then your central
nervous system takes that trip to fan and is trying
to convert it to serotonin melotonin in your brain and
central nervous system, which is your happy hormone, your relaxing hormone,
and your ability to sleep. Yeah. Right, But here's the thing.

(47:21):
So remember I said the gut brain connection. If you're
in this simple if you're in this fight of flight
sympathetic state and you don't have a healthy gut to
turn that off and bring you back to parasympathetic state.
When that trip to fan goes into your central nervous system,
it's not being converted to serotonin melotonin. It's being converted
to something called quinolinic acid, which is neurotoxic. Oh right,

(47:46):
So now this compound that's supposed to make your happy
and sleep hormone is actually creating a neurotoxic compound all
because your gut is not in the right position. It's
it's not shutting off that fight of flight switch. You
are inflamed, and as a result of that, you're taking
something that should be calming, RESTful, reparative into something that's

(48:07):
more neurotoxic. Right. And you're constantly in a high frequency
brain wave. Right, And when you meet the world and
stressors in a high frequency brain wave, it amplifies everything. Right.
What you need to do is be able to switch
to a low frequency brain wave like a theta wave
to meet a stressor because then you can manage to

(48:29):
stressor better. And one of the really important practices that
does that is meditation. Right. That's one of the really
key benefits of meditation is that you can It allows
you to be focused on something working diligently in a
high frequency brain wave. But let's say there's a stress
signal here, you can turn to it and meet that
in a low frequency brainwave. Right. The gut also does that,

(48:52):
right when you have the right microbes in the gut,
when your gut is diverse and not leaky, microbes in
the gut can change your brain wave function. Wow for you.
Right Again, Nature is they're doing these things for you.
We just have to be smart enough to know how
to use it.

Speaker 2 (49:06):
Okay, So I just want to go back a little
bit to probiotics, because there's prebiotics and there's probiotics. Do
people need to be taking both?

Speaker 1 (49:13):
Yes, they really should be. And what is the difference
between the two, right, So, probiotics have to be live
microorganisms that when you take them, have to survive through
the gastic system, get into the intestines alive, and then
they have a beneficial effect on the host. So the
bacteria prebiotics are very specific types of carbohydrates that feed
certain classes bacteria. Now within your gut, there are these

(49:37):
microbes that are considered keystone species. Right, So microbiolgs around
the world that study the microbiome have created this designation
of keystone species. So then what are these keystone species?
Why they call that? Right? So, if you remember most
medieval architecture where you have arches, and these arches are
just amazing innovations because arches can hold up so much

(49:58):
weight above them, right. So, if you look at all
the old medieval bridges, they're all arch designs. The cathedrals
are all arches. But the key component of an arch
that makes it functional is the keystone that's at the
very top of that arch. Right. It's a stone that's
slanted on both sides that then dissipates the load throughout
the arch in a very uniform way. If you pull

(50:20):
that keystone out, the entire cathedral falls apart. Right. So
a keystone species in your gut is a species that
holds up the rest of the ecosystem. It's that important
for your system. These keystone species of we've identified eight, nine, tennish.
Some of them are arguable, whether the keystone or not,
but there's certainly some in there. They're all in the

(50:41):
large bowl. They're all anaerobic, meaning oxygen is toxic to them.
They all require fiber, polyphenols, plant based materials, and they're
all very susceptible to things like antibiotics and pesticides and
herbicides and all that. And when you start killing off
your keystone species and reducing their numbers, the rests of
the ecosystem starts to fall apart.

Speaker 2 (51:01):
Right.

Speaker 1 (51:01):
It's a house of cards that starts to crumble, right.
And so one of the best things you can do
for your gut, one of the most powerful things, is
bring back the keystone species to the relevant amounts that
they need to be in your system. The spore based
probiotics do that. They help grow, regrow the Keystone species
actually published a paper with a couple of researchers about

(51:24):
four years ago showing that just three weeks of like
the just Thrive probiotic can increase the growth of the
keystone species by forty fifty percent, right, very significantly. Then
when you pair it with a prebiotic like an Ollego
sach ride their call, then you almost triple that effect. Okay, Right,
So that combination of prebiotic and probotic becomes really important

(51:45):
to support those keystone species.

Speaker 2 (51:47):
And so is that a great protocol for someone to
go onto if they are taking antibiotics, Like, should they
get onto pre and probiotics as soon as they get
onto antibiotics?

Speaker 1 (51:56):
Yes? So, and yeah, actually you asked that very important question.
So to go back to that, let's say you have
to take a course of antibiotics, and of course there's
many situations where it'll save your life, so do it
if your doctor is telling you to do it. But
here's what you want to do, all right, So most
antibiotics are going to be somewhere between seven to ten
days or twenty one days, depending on the issues. Right,

(52:18):
you want to be very diligent about repairing the gut
for at least three times as long as the course
of antibiotics work. So that's where you start baseline, right.
So for example, if your doctor says it's a seven
day course antibiotics, you want to go, I want to
be hyper vigilant about fixing my gut for at least
twenty one days. Okay, that's an easy place to start.

(52:38):
So then what do you do with that hypervigilance. Number One,
you take a probiotic that has been clinically shown to
be able to support the microbes in your gut, the
beneficial microbes, even in the presence of antibiotics. So the
spores do that because they have that stability and that resilience.
We actually publish a study showing that when you take
a course of antibiotics, it diminishes the keystone bacter and

(53:01):
the diversity really low and makes the gut leaky. But
if you use the spores with it, it actually starts
to negate all of those negative effects. Right. But then
try to separate the spores by a couple of hours
from the antibiotic, so the antibiotic is a morning evening
kind of dose. Then take the spores right in the
between and the afternoon, right with it, take prebiotics as well,

(53:24):
and then try to increase your fiber dosage by around
ten to fifteen grams per day, simple stuff like cilium
husk or something simple like that. Right, just increase your
fiber dosage, and that in itself, and doing that diligently
for twenty one days if it's a seven day course,
will really negate a lot of the damage. Amazing simplest

(53:45):
can do. And then for the rest of the time,
just go back to your normal maintenance of the probiotics,
probiotics and so on. I would even elevate it because
when I if I have to take a course of antibiotics,
I double everything I do. I double the dose of
the probiotic, double the door so the prebiotic, and I
double my fiber intake. Okay, great, and it just protects
your system.

Speaker 2 (54:06):
You mentioned, you know, we mentioned skin being one of
the things that the gut influences, and I think skin
is shoes is something that's also increased a lot recently. Eczema, acne,
whatever it is. There's people who are really suffering from
a lot of skinn shoes. Especially. What I'm noticing is exima,
whether it's an adulthood or as a child. Are there
certain foods that people should be avoiding when it comes

(54:28):
to their skin health link with their gut or is
it just as simple. They really need to fix what's
happening in their gut for them to improve their skin.

Speaker 1 (54:36):
Yeah, So that's a really really important question. So exzema
is a bit of an epidemic right now, but it
drives another problem that's also an epidemic. So exzema is
directly linked to asthma, food sensitivities, allergies, and food intolerances is.

Speaker 2 (54:53):
In general, and people tend to have all three of them. Yeah,
because I remember when I was growing up, my sister
had ecxima asthma and wind up having issues with foods now.

Speaker 1 (55:05):
Yeah, yeah, Okay, And here's why it's there's a process
it's called the atopic march. Okay. So here's what's happening there.
Ezima is a disruption of your skin barrier. You've got
an overgrowth of a type of bacteria called staff aureous. Okay.
It starts to break down the top layer of your skin.
The top layer of skin is called the stratum cornium.

(55:25):
You also will have an unhealthy inside, so you're not
rebuilding the skin effectively from the inside. And if your
gut is unhealthy, on top of that, your immune system
is not functioning properly. So anything that's happening on the
surface of your skin, your immune system continuously attacks.

Speaker 2 (55:40):
Yep.

Speaker 1 (55:40):
So you're disrupting the barrier of the skin. So what
happens in that case is food antigens environmental antigens actually
penetrate through your skin into circulation and your immune system
encounters it in your skin. Now, when your immune system
encounters any antigen in your skin and not through your gut,
it thinks that something's invading your system because the skin

(56:03):
is a barrier, right. If something penetrates to the barrier,
your immune system is literally going, holy crap, this is bad.
We got to attack this. So it attacks whatever is
coming in with a very strong inflammatory response. If it
happens to be a peanut antigen or ragweed or pollen
that's coming in, it's going to remember to attack that
every time it sees it anywhere in the body. So

(56:24):
when you eat it, it's going to attack it. When
you breathe it in, it's going to attack it. You
develop in the sensitivities, you develop food allergies, asthma, ezema,
and so on. Right, So that's called an atopic march.
So kids with egzema or dermatitis have eight times higher
risk of developing allergies, asthma and food sensitivities as a
result of that. Right. So then the question what should

(56:46):
you do from a gut perspective, because there is a
gut skin axis, and it's really important because the skin
is built from the inside out. Right, The topmost layer
of skin is kind of a dead skin CeON, but
all of the structural elements are underneath. Number One, From
a dietary perspective, try to reduce or avoid dairy, try
to or avoid gluten. Yes, right, those two things have

(57:09):
been shown in upwards of fifty clinical trials to be
inflammatory for certain types of people for the skin. Right,
So your skin is already inflammatory. You have acne, you
have ezema, you have dermatitis. You want to avoid those
or reduce them significantly until you can tolerate them again.
And you will be able to tolerate them again if
you follow a certain progress. So that's one thing. Number Two,

(57:32):
you really want to get your prebiotics, your probiotics and
your fiber in And the reason for that is when
you have the right bacteria in your gut, like the
spores for example, and then you take a prebiotic with it,
the probiotics are being converted to something called short chain
fatty acids, and one of the short chain fatty acids

(57:53):
is called acetate. Acetate is really important for reducing inflammation
in the skin and in using repair on the skin. Also,
when you eat food, then you also get these things
to fight called phyto nutrients. These are nutrients that come
in from plants. One of them is phytoseramides that are

(58:13):
found in like rice brand and things like that. These
are fatty acids that are then converted by the liver
and then sent to the skin to repair the skin
from the inside out. Okay, right. One of the barriers
that you have on your skin is called a seramide layer.
It acts as a sticky mortar that sticks all your
skin cells together and creates an impenetrable layer. Those seramides,

(58:36):
they'll come from the from the gut, So you need
to have a healthy gut and a healthy liver as
a result of that to form these seramides and feed
the skin, and you need the acetate also to do that.
In fact, I organized and ran one of the largest
probiotic acne studies ever and it was with these same
strains that are in the just thrived probiotic. And what

(58:58):
we saw was in that in a non cystic acne individual, right,
in a three month period, we were able to reduce
acne lesions by seventy five percent.

Speaker 2 (59:08):
And the only thing they changed was the probietic right.

Speaker 1 (59:12):
And actually got a US patent for the technology. And
the reason for that is we were able to figure
out that when you take the right probiotic like the spores,
it increases this acetate production in the gut. That acetate
plays a significant role in reducing inflammation in the skin
and modulating the immune response in the skin, thereby allowing

(59:33):
the skin to heal in the case of acne, allowing
the lesions to go away, in the case of other
inflammatory issues, allowing those to repair. Right, so simple, And
the reason I became passionate about that is because I
was saying, doctors are using three to six months of
antibiotics to cure pimples. Right, It's so crazy to think

(59:53):
that we're going to do these atom bombs to your
system that can have long term deleterious effect for a
cosmetic reason. Yes, there's got to be a better way
to do this. That's when we started looking at the
impact of the gutskin axis and the role of the probium.

Speaker 2 (01:00:09):
It's so great that you have studies that back this
up because the same as you could talk about, but
the fact that people get to see science it really
will help people to think, Okay, maybe I don't need
to do that for my skin. Maybe I can try
all these other roots before I turn to something like that.
You spoke about fiber. We've spoken about it quite a lot.
During this conversation. I read a stat that said only

(01:00:29):
five percent of Americans actually have the right amount of
fiber that they're supposed to. Yes, tell me why fiber
is so important and why are people not having enough
of it? And what should they be eating?

Speaker 1 (01:00:39):
Yeah, And I like to frame it this way with
fiber because I have this goal of making fiber sexy.

Speaker 2 (01:00:45):
Okay, I love it. Let's do it.

Speaker 1 (01:00:46):
Because fiber is so boring and it's people like fiber.
It's like eating a bark of a treat.

Speaker 2 (01:00:51):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:00:52):
Yeah, but let me let me frame it in a
different way. Okay, imagine rather I came to you and
I said, I've discovered a compound and get this. If
you take enough of this compound, it will reduce your
risk of dying from anything by forty five to fifty percent.

Speaker 2 (01:01:08):
I'll take it.

Speaker 1 (01:01:09):
Yeah, like cutting in a half your risk of dying
from anything. You would go, holy crap, how can I
get this? And by the way, that is a massive claim.
So extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. And you might say,
what is your proof that this thing does that? And
I'll go, well, there's about one hundred and eighty published studies,

(01:01:30):
are about one hundred and fifty three million person years
in clinical trials that have shown this. Studies, the meta
analysis studies with over a million subjects that have proven this.
And you go, okay, okay, fine, there's enough research. I
believe you. Right, this thing can reduce my risk of
dying from anything by forty five percent. What is this

(01:01:51):
miracle thing? Where did you get it? Is it from
outer space? Right? And I would say that thing is fiber.

Speaker 2 (01:01:56):
That's crazy.

Speaker 1 (01:01:57):
It's just plain all fiber. Right. For every ten grams
of fiber you add to your daily diet, you reduce
your risk of all cause mortality by ten percent, damn
right up to about forty five percent or so. And
then after that the line starts flattening out, meaning you
can't get to one hundred percent. But the average American

(01:02:18):
eats around eight grams of fiber. Eight grams, eight grams
of fiber. Come on, guys, incidentally, right, this is accidentally
just from stuff that they eat.

Speaker 2 (01:02:27):
Give me a like equivalent of what that is? Like,
is that an apple? Is that? Up? And on?

Speaker 1 (01:02:31):
And like?

Speaker 2 (01:02:32):
What is eight grams of fiber?

Speaker 1 (01:02:33):
Yeah, it's it's probably like a small bowl of broccoli. No, yeah,
like maybe maybe a handful of lentils.

Speaker 2 (01:02:41):
Okay, okay, like maybe four carrots, wowing, it's nothing.

Speaker 1 (01:02:45):
And here's the thing. If you take that eight grams
and you make it eighteen grams, you've reduced your risk
of mortality by ten percent. If you take that eighteen
grams and make it twenty eight grams, you reduce your
risk of mortality by another twenty percent.

Speaker 2 (01:02:58):
Do you know how many grams of fiber is in
like a tablespoon of solium husk? Is it?

Speaker 1 (01:03:01):
Yeah? It's about six six grams or so. Oh right,
So what I do, which is the simplest thing, right,
So my goal is to reduce my risk of dying
from stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:03:11):
Yeah, I'm into it.

Speaker 1 (01:03:11):
Simple, Yeah, I prove resilient. And then we'll talk about
utilization of fiber. That's also important. So I try to
get about forty forty five grams a day. I know
that from a dietary perspective, it's hard to do that
because you have to be quite measured. So I try
to supplement about half of it. So how do I
supplement half of it? S good old solium husk, right,

(01:03:33):
this organic india simple, there's nothing in it.

Speaker 2 (01:03:37):
Yeah, I have that one.

Speaker 1 (01:03:38):
Yeah, it's not a great experience, you know, because it
doesn't taste like anything. You just mix it in the
and shug it down. But I do about two and
a half tablespoons before each of my two largest meals, okay,
and that gives me about ten grams each time.

Speaker 2 (01:03:51):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:03:51):
So right there, I'm knocking out twenty grams of fiber
for my daily diet. Then the rest of the time
I'm eating lentils and beans and fruits and vegetables and
all that, I'm easily getting another twenty grams. So I've
knocked out about forty grams of fiber each day pretty easily.
The other benefit of doing the cilium hust before the
meal is it acts as your natural GLP one, right,

(01:04:13):
That's what fiber does. So it slows down your gastric system,
It makes you feel more full, It blunts that post
meal glucose curve. It triggers fat burning in your system
by activating all these hormones, the satidy hormones, so does
wonderful things metabolically, but also it's saving your life down
the road right now. The beauty of fiber, and this

(01:04:36):
goes back to the importance of the microbiome. It's so powerful.
It can save your life. It can reduce your risk
of mortality by forty forty five percent. But we can't
utilize it. We don't break down fiber, we don't get
anything out of it. Right, So, how is this thing
that we can't even break down and digest. How is
this such a life saver? Because all of it goes

(01:04:57):
to feed the microbiome, all of it and your microbes
turn it into compounds that we need to survive, like
short chain fatty acids. We talk about the acidate for
the skin health, right, butyrate for metabolic health, for your
immune system, all of these things. And butyrate also helps
with your brain Approprionate helps with the gut, brain access
and stress response. And then euro lithans right, so within fiber,

(01:05:21):
I would also categorize polyphenols is really important, right, So polyphenols,
this is another goal for people. Polyphenols are the colored
parts of fruits and vegetables. Right. If you can get
a pound of berries of some sort a day, you're
meeting most of your needs of polyphenols. Right, And here's
what they do for you. And a pound is not hard.
So just think about cherries, blueberries, blackberries, and so on.

Speaker 2 (01:05:43):
I just throw them into my smedy in the morning, totally.

Speaker 1 (01:05:45):
Yeah, it's so easy. And I have like we always
have like a bowl of them sitting around the house, right,
And if I feel snacky during the day, I just
grab a handful of them and eat them.

Speaker 2 (01:05:54):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:05:55):
Right, And some of them are bitter, so it gives
you the bitters too. But here's what they're doing. We
all know that we have these engines within our cells
called mitochondria.

Speaker 2 (01:06:03):
Right.

Speaker 1 (01:06:04):
Some cells have a few hundred, some cells have a
few million depending on the cells. The only cells that
don't have them are your red blood cells because they're
just carrying oxygen around. So the mitochondria will dictate how
the cells function because they're the engines of the cell.
And in fact, one of the best the best views
of aging is something called the mitochondrial free radical theory
of aging. Doesn't really roll off the top, but what

(01:06:26):
that says effectively is that as the mitochondria is generating
energy atp is the energy form, it also creates an exhaust.
Just like your car creates an exhaust when it's burning fuel, right,
So when your mitochondra is burning fuel to create energy,
it creates an exhaust. The exhausts are called reactive oxygen
species and oxidation oxidative stress. That exhaust ends up killing

(01:06:50):
the cell and mitochondria if it's not quenched, right, And
so the mitochondria over time gets damaged, just like your
car engine gets damaged, and especially if you're not changing
oil and all that. Right, So, your mitochondria has like
a certain lifespan, and what your cells need to do
is number One, quench the exhaust as much as it can.
Number Two, As the mitochondria start to get damage. It

(01:07:11):
has to shut down that mitochondria and pull a new
one out, right, or your cells going to die, and
then the organs that your cell the cells makeup, will die.
So now you have to exhaust that. You have to
save the mitochondria. We have a compound in us that
circulates in our system called eurolithin A. One of its
roles is to rescue the dyeing mitochondria. And guess what,

(01:07:34):
it's so important. We can't make it. We don't make
this eurolithina. It doesn't come from our diet. Where do
we get it. It's from bacteria in your gut metabolizing
polyphenols and converting it and producing it for us. It's crazy, right,
So the engines of our cells, arguably the most important
part of the cell, right that allows us to function,

(01:07:56):
requires this compound to fix the broken engines. We can't
make this compound, nor do we get it from our diet.
We're counting on bacteria in our gut to do it
for us. Talk about outsourcing critical functions, right, Pair that
with the inuter or development of the brain I talked
about earlier, and we really depend on the microbes. Right,
So then you talk about fiber utilization. If you went

(01:08:19):
from eight grams of fiber per day and you did
forty tomorrow, you're going to be really pissed off at everyone, right,
because you're not going to be utilizing it properly. And
the reason for that is because the microbes that take
the fiber and convert it to beneficial things are at
such low levels because you haven't been eating enough fiber.

Speaker 2 (01:08:36):
Most people say when they start to eat healthy that
my god just can't take it, Like, I mean all
these foods, I mean all these vegetables, and my gud's unhappy,
like as more unhappy than it was before. And I'm
guessing is because of this.

Speaker 1 (01:08:47):
It's because of this. So what's happening is you're not
breaking down, your gut is not breaking down. Your microbes
are not breaking down the fiber propertly, right, So then
you might have some dysfunctional microbes that take over and
start trying to break it down, but they produces or
other inflammatory compounds instead of the beneficial stuff. So what
you really need to do is introduce the fiber YEP

(01:09:07):
with the right probiotic. This is where we've seen a
massive difference in fiber utilization so you take the spore
based probiotics, so just thrive probiotics and you add it
with a dose with every ten grams of fiber that
you add into your system. Right, So let's say today
your standard American diet, I'm eating eight grams of fiber. Incidentally,
I'm going to go, okay, tomorrow, I'm going to add

(01:09:29):
five to seven grams of additional fiber to my diet.
Make it a supplement, makes it easy, do cillium husk
a tablespoon or so, but make sure you take your
spore probiotics with it, because the probiotics will enhance the
utilization of the fiber by the right bacteria. And then
the next day you do the same thing. Do that
for a week, and then the following week add another

(01:09:51):
five to seven grams to that day.

Speaker 2 (01:09:53):
How many grams of fibers should we be having in
a day.

Speaker 1 (01:09:55):
So we should really everyone should be going for forty
to fifty grams minimums.

Speaker 2 (01:10:00):
Okay, yeah, minimum, everyone was setting your goals. Now, fifty
grams a fiber.

Speaker 1 (01:10:05):
And the average person is a fifth of the way there, right,
and remember this is such a powerful compound. You get
to forty or fifty, you're cutting your all cause mortality
by forty to fifty percent.

Speaker 2 (01:10:16):
The one thing you take away from this well few
bites fiber and probiotics for us, Yeah, exactly, probatics. You
spoke about leaky gut. I would love to touch on
that because I think there's so many things that are
just going up enough, aren't they, And it's all the
all the not great things. But leaky gut has become
a big thing. What is it and how can people

(01:10:37):
help to repair it? And if it's the same as
what you've been speaking about, you can refer back to it.
But what is leaky gut and how does it differ
from something like IBS? How does someone know that they've
got leaky gut versus something like IBS?

Speaker 1 (01:10:47):
Yeah, I would say, if you have any digestive issues
at all, your gut is leaky, right, So the leaky
gut actually comes first often and precedes the digestive symptoms, right,
if you have allergies and immune issues, If you have anxiety,
that's also tied to leaki gut. For example, the Netherlands
that a study called the Netherlands Study on Anxiety and Depression.

(01:11:08):
It was a nine year long study, a national study
because there's this epidemic of anxiety and depression going up,
they're trying to figure out what is driving this. Right.
What they identified is leaky gut was a number one
driver and number one predictor of anxiety and depression, right.
And the reason for that, And here's why leaki gut
actually causes all this problems and why it's leaky. So

(01:11:29):
your gut is a very dynamic barrier, right. So your
skin is a really firm barrier. It's like a brick wall,
nothing is supposed to get through, but your gut is
more complicated than that because stuff is supposed to get through, right,
So it's a selectively permeable barrier. You want nutrients to
come through, but you don't want microbes and toxins to
come through. So there's a few things that are that

(01:11:51):
manage that selective permeability. Number one is a mucus layer
that's sitting on your gut, right, that's supposed to trap stuff.
And then within that mucus layer are immunoglobulins or antibodies.
These antibodies are produced by immune cells, but the production
of them are stimulated by bacteria. So you want adequate
amount of antibodies in that mucous layer, so when things

(01:12:12):
are trapped, the antibodies can sit on them and neutralize
them so they don't cause a problem. In between the
cells the intestinal lining, there are these spaces called tight junctions,
and there are proteins that manage that space so that
they can open up when food's supposed to come through
a nutrients supposed to come through, and they can sinch
up when they don't want toxins and bacteria to come through.

(01:12:32):
The expression of those type junction proteins are also dependent
on bacteria. And then finally, about eighty five percent of
things that get through the lining of the gut end
up in the liver, so the liver has to deal
with the toxicity of those things. Now, liver is the
liver is protected by the microbes in the gut, and

(01:12:52):
so at the end of the day, the selective permeability
of your gut lining is dictated heavily by the microbes
in that space. And if the microbes become dismantled because
of antibiotics, bad choices, stress, and all that, then those
mechanisms that make the barrier selectively permeable fall apart. The
barrier then becomes completely permeable. Now not only are nutrients

(01:13:16):
coming through, but toxins and all that are leaking through
as well. And the most sinister of all the toxins
that leak through is something called LPs lipopolysachrie. It's actually
generated in the gut because it's made by microbes in
the gut. But in a healthy system, it gets sequestered
in that mucous lining, it gets neutralized by antibodies and

(01:13:37):
so on. In an unhealthy gut, it leaks through and
ends up in circulation. When it ends up in circulation,
it triggers massive amounts of inflammation throughout the body. It
can get to the joints, and in the joint trigger
inflammation that eats away at the cartilage. It can get
to the brain. In the deep recesses of the brain,
it triggers inflammatory processes that creates neuro degeneration, interfere with

(01:14:00):
serotonin and dopamine binding in the brain, so you end
up with anxiety and depression. It can create inflammation in
the skin so that you end up with dermatitis and acne.
So it's sinister, and when it's allowed to leak through,
it creates havoc in the body. It creates something called
chronic low grade inflammation. Right. There was a twenty fifteen

(01:14:22):
publication in Frontiers of Immunology which was like it was
almost like an opinion paper by a number of scientists
that reviewed all the science around this, and they basically
concluded that the leakiness of the gut and the migration
of this toxin LPs into circulation was the number one
cause of mortality and morbidity worldwide. It's a number one

(01:14:45):
cause of death, right Why because it triggers all of
these response negative responses in the body. And when we
did studies, for example, I published a paper on leaky
gut endotoxemia in twenty seventeen, we took healthy normal college
to if there is such a thing, it's a healthy
and normal college student. Right. But from a clinical definition,

(01:15:06):
they were healthy normals, meaning they had no chronic diseases,
they weren't on any medication, normal body weight, no symptoms
of anything. Fifty five percent of them had severe leaky
gut to the point where it took their body two
weeks to recover from the inflammation from a single meal. No,
that's how significant it can be. Now they don't feel

(01:15:28):
anything just yet it's still what we would call subclinical.
But that happening over and over again, meal after meal,
year after year your body. Then it leads to degeneration
that you start to feel in your early thirties and
so on.

Speaker 2 (01:15:42):
Oh my gosh, it's like such good information that everyone
needs to know, and there's so much of it. I've
got so many more questions for you, but I won't
going to all of them.

Speaker 1 (01:15:49):
Well, you did ask how do you fix that? Right?

Speaker 2 (01:15:52):
Fix it?

Speaker 1 (01:15:52):
It goes back to all the same things we've been
talking out. Good the fiber, the probiotics, the prebiotics, like
that is the core actually so simple?

Speaker 2 (01:16:01):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:16:01):
We actually we published a study just on the probiotic
alone in twenty seventeen. That was the first studay I
talked about. We're just taking the probiotic without adjusting anything
else in diet or stress and all that we were
able to reduce endotoximy or leaky gut by seventy five percent.

Speaker 2 (01:16:16):
That's amazing. Seventy three pers kind of hill by itself.
By doing these things, you don't necessarily okay, okay.

Speaker 1 (01:16:22):
Because it's the microbes that actually repair the space. You
have to bring the microbes back and provide them the
right tools.

Speaker 2 (01:16:28):
Perfect. I wanted to move on to something that I
noticed when I moved to the US, A significant difference
in my gut when I moved from the UK to
the US. And you know a big part of that
is the food systems and the regulations that exist here.
But if someone can't move to Europe, what are they
supposed to do and how can they help protect themselves
from the things that are on their fruits, their vegetables

(01:16:50):
that they don't even realize.

Speaker 1 (01:16:51):
Yeah, that one's really hard and every little bit you
minimize your exposure is very helpful. Okay, So I want
to give that to people because I don't want want
them to feel super anxious that they can't like become
completely holistic. So Number one, I would try to get
as much as your produced as you can from like
farmers markets. Right Like every city around here and even

(01:17:12):
small towns on the weekends will have farmer's markets. So
as much as you can pick up your fruits, vegetables
and all that from farmers markets, the better because they
have less of the pesticide residue and all that. We
actually did a study with King's College in London on
the impact of the pesticides that are regularly used here
in the US. It's funny enough that we were trying
to test this, you know, the pesticides around up versions

(01:17:35):
of the pesticides on what happens to a child's microbiome
when they're exposed to what the US EPA designates as
like safe levels. Right. And it was a three week
long study in a microbiome modeling system that used an
actual child's microbiome. What we saw is that that's quote
unquote safe level of exposure for three weeks. That child's microbiome,

(01:17:57):
which was pristine, looked healthy, turned to the microbiome of
someone that has inflammatory bowel disease in just that three
week period. Right. And yes, it's an in vitro system,
so it's probably accelerated, but you can just imagine day
after day exposure to it. So as much as we
can minimize our exposure, I would do that. Now, the

(01:18:17):
counterbalance to that is the fiber, the prebiotics, and the
sport based probiotics. So if you cannot completely eliminate your
exposure to those things, which most people can't, then you
want to make sure you're taking these things that counterbalance
the negative effect you know, just.

Speaker 2 (01:18:33):
Washing, you know, obviously washing the fruits in the vegetables
and even like ruining the skins. Do they just penetrate
deeply into the vegetable though, it's.

Speaker 1 (01:18:40):
Some of the vegetables in like things like tomatoes and all,
they can penetrate a little bit deeper, which is actually
a great reason to grow your own tomatoes, like a
little tomato right now. Actually yeah, yeah, tomatoes, cucumbers, right,
just grow some of that, like the leafy greens. Spinach
is easy to grow organic. You know. So organic also
uses pesticides, right, Unfortunately, yes, they may not be the

(01:19:04):
same pesticides, but they do, and maybe there's for some people.
I would say it's probably a slightly better type of
pesticide that's used, but they do. So I don't want
people to feel like, oh, I eat all organic, so
I'm fine, right, Yes, yes, you're still eating food that
has contamination in it, and you still want to try

(01:19:24):
to wash your food. You still want to go from
to farmers' markets as much as you can. And in fact,
you know, some frozen fruits and vegetables are actually really beneficial, right,
so you can get I've actually found and I can't
think of where we found this, but we found frozen
fruits and vegetables that come frozen from overseas in places

(01:19:45):
that they're grown where they don't use pesticides. Right now,
the frozen aspect of it is important because it actually
locks in the nutrition in the fruits and vegetables. So
as much as you can try to do these things,
they should try, but also know that you're system can
be resilient, like you can fight back at it. Yeah,
you still want to eat your fruits and vegetables even if.

Speaker 2 (01:20:06):
You're going to end up that's non excuse.

Speaker 1 (01:20:07):
Guys, Exactly, like you don't want to be like, well,
I might as well eat my cheeries because I can't.

Speaker 2 (01:20:13):
Get pa instead.

Speaker 1 (01:20:15):
Exactly, you still want to eat those. They still have
nutritional value and benefit. But you want to just fight
back against it by doing things that are deliberate like
your your probiotics, probiotics and fiber okay, right, and manage stress.

Speaker 2 (01:20:26):
Yes, you know, I'm sure you've seen that the this
is the era of the extreme amount of protein in
our diets at the moment. Wanted to touch on that
and get your opinion on whether extreme amounts of protein
message your gut up and also what sources of protein,
because I'll speak for myself as a vegan, I a
lot of the protein powders are made from pea protein,

(01:20:48):
and I find a lot of people when they're trying
to switch or go from being someone who does take
way to come into taking vegan protein powders, they struggle
a little bit with with how it affects their gut.
So I'd love to hear your take on it.

Speaker 1 (01:21:02):
Yeah, so you know, we're kind of we overcorrect all
the time right on trends, and then we overcorrect. The
protein thing is like, it's generally okay. I would rather
people are focused on trying to get protein into their
diet than eating other nonsense. So that's fine, But here's
a really really important piece of the message. We already

(01:21:25):
talked about. The average American eats like eight grams of
fiber a day, right, which is like nothing, and then
the average American, incidentally is getting around twenty grams of protein,
so they're already a three to one ratio. Then if
you take that average person and they're like, oh my god,
I heard on this thing that I need to get
one gram per pound, and they're like one hundred and
fifty pound person. Now they're pushing to try to get

(01:21:48):
one hundred and fifty grams a day, right, but they're
still at eight grams of protein. Yeah, fiber. Sorry, So
now there are like a twenty to one ration, which
is even worse. So what happened in that case? So
in your gut, you've got two big types of fermentation
that occur. One is called protealytic and the other one

(01:22:08):
is called sacraltic. Right. Protalytic fermentation is often done when
you have a lot of protein coming in and you
can only break down and assimilate a certain amount of
that protein. A lot of it will end up going
to your gut microbes and they will break it down
and ferment it. Now, that can be okay, but if
you have too much protalytic fermentation, they also create inflammatory

(01:22:29):
byproducts like compounds called p crussol for example, or ammonia
becomes a negative byproduct of protalytic fermentation. So what you
don't want is you don't want too much protalytic fermentation.
You want sacroltic fermentation, which is where you convert plant
based materials, fibers and all that to short chain fatty acids, eurolithins,

(01:22:50):
all these things we talked about. So then if you
go really crazy in the protein and you're not balancing
it out with fiber, then you're going to drive your
gut towards protein fermentation. And although you might get some
benefit from the protein, you're still going to produce those
inflammatory compounds that will wreck your gut over time. And
then keep in mind the keystone species we talked about,

(01:23:12):
they don't eat protein. They need fiber, they need polyphenols,
they need based materials. So you're not feeding your keystone
species over time. So to me, if you want to
build muscle, which is great, you want to get your
resistance training in all fantastic, you want to get enough protein,
you've got to balance it out with fiber. If you're
doing one hundred grams of protein, you better be doing

(01:23:34):
fifty grams of fiber with it, right, So do them together,
have some balance, Try not to go too much further
than a two to one ratio.

Speaker 2 (01:23:42):
Okay, that makes sense. I have some specific questions. I
asked some of my community about questions I had about
the gut, and so these might be fast answers that
you have for them, but someone else. Why does animal
protein upset my gut so much?

Speaker 1 (01:23:53):
Yeah, so it has a completely different type of amino
acid profile, and for a lot of people it's less accessible,
right because you have to chop it down. So, if
you think about a muscle, a chicken breast, right, chicken
breast is a muscle. It's similar to the muscle in
your arm, for example. In that form, it is a

(01:24:13):
very complicated tertiary, which is a three dimensional folding of
protein chains. So in order for us to actually utilize
that chicken breast, it has to go into the gut.
We have to first chew it, so we break it
down a little bit goes into the gut, and then
stomach acid and enzymes have to attack it and unfold
a three dimensional structure into a two dimensional structure and

(01:24:35):
then string it out like a string of pearls, and
then chop up that string of pearls to individual pearls.

Speaker 2 (01:24:40):
You gun needs to be real strong to be doing that.

Speaker 1 (01:24:42):
It has to be real strying to do that. So
what happens if you don't do that adequately? You get
undigested components of protein and then it ferments, and in
fact protein fermentation is actually called putrification.

Speaker 2 (01:24:55):
Yeah, it's really gross when people have.

Speaker 1 (01:24:57):
You can smell it.

Speaker 2 (01:24:58):
Yeah, I was gonna say, yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:25:00):
And so, in order to properly utilize animal based proteins
in the form of chicken and steak and so on,
you have to have a healthy digestive system. You have
to be able to break it down and assimilate it.
It's less accessible that way, so you want to make
sure your digestive system is healthy to handle it.

Speaker 2 (01:25:17):
Why does coffee up at the stomach and what's a
better option, especially if I'm having it early in the morning.

Speaker 1 (01:25:22):
Yeah, you know, so coffee triggers something called parastalsis. That's
the bowel movements, similar to how magnesium would do that. Right.
So for some people, like for me, coffee is like
an amazing regulatory switch. Right, I wake up in the morning,
I have a sip of coffee. I know within minutes
I'm going to the bathroom. Yeah, and I'm having my
morning amazing definitiation.

Speaker 2 (01:25:41):
My friend, every time it comes to stay here is like, please,
can you make sure you've got coffee because I need
that to make sure I'm regular. So yeah, Now.

Speaker 1 (01:25:49):
For some people who have an overreactive neurological system in
the gut. So the gut is covered with this system.
It's the your neurological system that covers the entire digester track. Right,
it's the second most dense nerve endings compared next to
your brain. You have even more nerve endings in your
gut than you do in your spinal cord. So people

(01:26:12):
with IBS or irritable bowel or tendency for IBS have
overactive nerve spasms, and so then their guts that compress
and spasm all the time. That's why they feel urgency, cramping,
bloating and all that. Right, it's actually got brain issue.
So when they have coffee, it just amplifies that nervous
twitching of their neurological system. So for them, they have

(01:26:34):
to be really careful. For those individuals. What I would
actually do is, if you want to have coffee still
because you need the energy alert to it wakes you up,
I would wake up in the morning before having coffee.
I would have some fiber. I would have some soluble
fiber like a cilium hust that actually slows down all
of those nerve signals, right, and then you can have

(01:26:55):
coffee and that should alleviate some of that kind of
spasmatic effect.

Speaker 2 (01:27:00):
That's a really good tip rather than saying don't drink coffee,
you've got another option. Yeah, you've been inside of the
health industry for decades now, and what would you say
is the biggest lie that big farmer has sold us
about our health?

Speaker 1 (01:27:12):
Ah? The biggest lie is.

Speaker 2 (01:27:14):
That one of them.

Speaker 1 (01:27:17):
Well, yeah, I'm just trying to think, like what, there's
so many Yeah, the biggest lie is to me this
idea that your system when you have disease, right, when
you have a chronic condition, whatever it may be, that
there's a default within your system that has to be
corrected with certain interventions and medical interventions. Right, Like your

(01:27:40):
body has all the ability needs to heal, Yeah, you
have to put it in the right state tort right,
it cannot heal in the wrong state. And so and
there's plenty of need for interventional medicine. If I get
in a car, WRECT take me to the er so
they can put me back together. Right, it's an acute

(01:28:01):
medicine is really advanced and fantastic in many ways. But
when we think about chronic disease, we're thinking about your
system is dysfunctional in a way that we need to
intervene with compounds that disrupt pathways and all that. That's
a wrong way of looking at it. Right, the question
should be what is not happening in your body that's

(01:28:22):
leading to this dysfunction, And in so many ways it
could be a simplest answer. We talked about anxiety for example, Right,
we have an epidemic of anxiety. And you look at
somebody that's really anxious and has a really hard time
getting through the day, right, and you go, well, that's
imbalancing their brain chemistry. That was the old thinking, and
so let's give them an SSRI so it unusually increases

(01:28:45):
serotonin in their brain and so on. That is a
meddling with a normal system that doesn't actually work. What
they really have is likely something like leaky gut. They
probably just need some fiber, They need to adjust their diet,
they need to do some meditation, They need to bring
their body back to a state in which it can
heal itself.

Speaker 2 (01:29:04):
Yeah. I was just speaking to a friend actually recently
who she's been struggling a lot with you know, depression
and mood disorders, and she got put on a depression medication,
and she said, they told me they were going to
be some side effects, but it's so sad that you
have to battle these. And then she tried it for
a couple of days and the side effects were everything
from like taste loss, like memory, brain fog stuff only

(01:29:26):
within literally a couple of days, sleep issues, And it's
just sad when you have to balance something with something else.
You know, it's like, Okay, I'm getting rid of this,
but then I feel numb, and then I get all
this other stuff, So which one is the less It's
so hard for people to be in that position where
they're saying, Okay, well, I guess I have to compromise
on my sleep because this medication affects that, but then
it's going to make me feel a little bit better

(01:29:47):
in mood. It's just it's a really sad balance that
people have to It works.

Speaker 1 (01:29:52):
And I would say I would refine my message even
a little bit more.

Speaker 2 (01:29:55):
Right.

Speaker 1 (01:29:55):
So, I think one of the biggest downsides of how
the pharmaceutical industry and say let's say conventional medicine has
approached this idea of health is it is it's stripped
hope from people right by making you feel that there's
an inherent dysfunction in your system that needs like intervention. Yes, right,

(01:30:20):
And this whole issue of evidence based medicine, we're conflating
evidence based medicine with regular natural practices and you cannot
do that, right. So, yes, if you develop a small
molecular drug that's supposed to fix something or change something,
you need a lot of evidence that that small molecule

(01:30:40):
is going to do that thing, because that's the first
time you're introducing that molecule into the human system. You
have no idea where else it's going to do things,
how else it's going to affect the system. So you
need what we call evidence based medicine. You need all
the randomized control trials, safety studies and all that. But
you don't need that for walking. You don't need evidence

(01:31:00):
for meditation, you don't need evidence for sleep. You don't
need evidence or healthy diet. Right, But we've conflated the
two because, like you know, you'll talk to a cardiologist
and they'll say, okay, your best way of reducing your
heart disease risk if you have family history and elevated
cholesterol and all that is you take a drug, a
static or a number of drugs. But then what do

(01:31:22):
you say, Well, what if I just exercise and ate
healthy and lost some weight and all that. They'll be like, well,
this has trials on it. This one doesn't have as
many trials. I'm like, well, but you don't need trials
for those practices because those are just regular ol you know,
traditional practices with lots of empirical evidence. Right. So I
think the big issue is empirical evidence versus clinical evidence. Right,

(01:31:46):
we shouldn't conflate the two. They have two different spaces
in our world, right, food practices, all of that is.

Speaker 2 (01:31:53):
Yeah, they don't have to conflict, they can work together.

Speaker 1 (01:31:56):
They can work together, right, Like, do I need to
have a study to know that if I drink water
it's going to alleviate my dehydration. No, it's pretty simple.
It's pretty understood and humans have been doing it for millennia. Right.
Do I need really good clinical evidence to think that
this compound is going to alleviate some process? Like? Yeah,
well I've never had this compound. It's never been in

(01:32:17):
our system. Right, So that's the part I think that really,
And the problem with that is that doctors are at
that intersection, right, because people the vast majority of people
still count on their doctors for their health and their wellness, right,
and the wellness part of it is even just kind
of a misnomer in that case, but they count on
them for their health. And doctors are trained on this

(01:32:40):
evidence based medicine approach. They're not trained on the empirical
evidence approach, right, And because they're not trained on the
empirical side, they don't know anything about how the empirical
side affects their patients. All they know is the small
molecular evidence based approach, and so it creates this push
pull complication right where it's like, well, my doctor said this,

(01:33:03):
they don't really know about this, and then I'm hearing
this online.

Speaker 2 (01:33:06):
It's like it's too hard for people.

Speaker 1 (01:33:08):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:33:09):
One of the funniest things is slightly off topic. One
of the funniest things is when you watch those ads
for medications on TV and then at the end it's like,
and then it will also cause this is this blindness
and stomach issues and you might die in a year,
and it's like, yeah, really quickly. I wanted to touch on
supplements because I think what people get used to doing
and I was a culprit of this. You kind of

(01:33:30):
end up taking supplements like multivitamin, is this, this, this,
and you just stay on them for long periods of
time and you don't think about whether you have to
switch them out or change them or anything. What is
your view on supplements cycling? And you know, should people
be really figuring out what their needs are before they
just start popping supplements?

Speaker 1 (01:33:48):
One hundred percent? Yeah, So so to me, supplements are
exactly that they should be supplemental to a healthy lifestyle.
Right where you can't get enough of a natural thing, yea,
be taking it as a supplement. That's why I said fiber,
I supplement about half of it and I get the
rest of it from my diet because I want to
make sure I'm hitting my forty to fifty grams right. Probiotics,

(01:34:11):
So the spores are a great example. Now, if we
all left our modern lifestyles and went live on the
side of the mountain, eat dirt and all that, we
wouldn't need the probiotic anymore, right, But since we don't
have exposure to them anymore, and we know exposure to
them is critical, I say supplement with that right, prebiotics
because we're not eating the rind of fruits. We're not

(01:34:33):
eating the fiber within the fruit, we're eating the skin,
which is where you find a lot of these prebiotics.
Then you have to supplement with it, right, because we're
not getting enough of it. And so generally my view
is you have to create the right foundation of the
right of a diverse diet, a whole food diet, exercise, meditation, mindfulness,

(01:34:54):
work all of those things, cleaning up your environment a
little bit, reducing the toxicity of your personal care product
and the environment around you, and then find foundational things
to add to your supplementation. Yeah. Right, probiotics, probiotics, fiber,
certain vitamins if you're not getting enough of it, like
vitamin K two, for example, is critical for your overall health,

(01:35:14):
but we get almost none of it because most of
it comes from certain types of fermented foods. Right. It's
critical for bone health, for nerve health, for brain health,
for your cardiovascular health, but we get very little of
it because we don't eat organs, we don't eat brains,
we don't eat really awful fermented foods like NATO, right,
fermented soybeans. So that is a supplement. So what I

(01:35:36):
would always encourage people is don't look at supplementation as
a crutch right to the proper healthy foundation. Set up
the healthy foundation first, and then supplement in certain foundational
things that you just need and cannot get through the
natural process.

Speaker 2 (01:35:53):
Thank you so much. You were not lying when you
said that this is going to be the best gut
health and got health podcast that I was ever going
to hear. Honestly, phenomenal. I'm such a geek for this stuff,
and I feel like you've answered literally every question. But
I'm sure we could do another podcast episode and I
have so much more to talk to you about.

Speaker 1 (01:36:09):
I would welcome coming back. It's beautiful out here, and
thank you so much for having me. And I want
one last message for people is that they have a
lot more control over their outcomes than they think. Yes,
basic like lots of small decisions throughout the day, what
you put in your body, what you put on your body,
how who you surround yourself with, it's all you, and

(01:36:31):
all of those add up to really powerful outcomes. You're
so right, And so I want people to not feel hopeless.
I want them to feel not feel lost, and I
also don't want them to feel like completely confused by
every biohacking thing and all that that they see that
they think they need to do right, it's really just
the fountain this just keep it simple.

Speaker 2 (01:36:52):
Yeah, I agree. I think a big part of this
podcast is to help people to take their health back
into their own hands. And I really believe that from
the moment I felt in power of my health and
being able to say no to things even if people
recommended it. By being able to say no, I believe
my body can fight this. I believe my body has
everything that it needs and nature has everything that it
needs around me to help heal my body. It fully transform.

(01:37:13):
My immunity got better, and my digestion got better, like
every part of my physical and mental health change. When
I felt like I was in power of my own body,
and I think that's something all people need is the
right information, which I feel like you've really shared today.
And it's so simple, but we should all just do
a little thirty day trial of trying all these things
and see how much better you feel. And it takes
such a short period of time of doing the wrong

(01:37:36):
things our whole life. All you need to do is
commit to something for a short period to really see
the benefit and then you just want to keep going
with it anyway.

Speaker 1 (01:37:42):
Yep, yeah, because you'll feel that resilience, you'll feel that reward.
And like you said, I challenge people for thirty days,
increase your fiber intake by four to five grams each week.
Let's go the daily diet, get some prebiotics in and
get your spores in. Yes, and you'll see how you
may change in thirty days.

Speaker 2 (01:37:59):
I'm doing it.

Speaker 1 (01:38:00):
Change yourself.

Speaker 2 (01:38:00):
Yeah, you were doing it. You better be. Thanks again,
Thank you.

Speaker 1 (01:38:07):
M m hmmmmmm mmm

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Host

Radhi Devlukia

Popular Podcasts

Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang

The Joe Rogan Experience

Stuff You Should Know

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Your Gut 101 : How to Support It, What's Ruining It and How to Rebuild It After Antibiotics with Microbiologist Kiran Krishnan