February 20, 2023 • 33 mins
When Christopher Lowry told us there is correlation between the number of plants you eat and emotional well-being, we stopped. Lowry, who is an associate professor of integrative physiology at the University of Colorado Boulder, has spent his career digging into the manner microbiome diversity in the gut affects our mental health. On today’s episode of The Ampersand, you’ll hear about his research, the childhood experiences that set him on his academic journey and that his findings are more than just interesting knowledge—they change the way he chooses to live.
For information about Lowry research watch his 2020 TEDxMileHigh talk “Plants, the microbiome, and mental health.”
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Music by Nelson Walker.
Written and produced by Erika Randall and Tim Grassley.
Episodes recorded at Interplay Recording in Boulder, CO.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
(cash register scanner beeping)
- Thanks, guys.
- I imagine Christopher Lowrywalking the produce aisle
at Natural Grocers in Boulder, Colorado.
He's there early on a weekday
to pick the 30 different plants
that he will blend into a smoothie.
His research suggests that this concoction
could have antidepressant effects.
(00:22):
I imagine he picks up a fuzzy dragon fruit
and a fresh cactus ear thatthe staff ordered just for him.
The warmth he feels atdiscovering something so simple
and natural is incredible,
because he knows it couldhave been easily overlooked.
(water gurgling)
I can't imagine how this drink
(00:42):
would've disgusted himas a middle schooler
if he had looked at it under a microscope.
On today's episode of "The Ampersand",
Christopher discusses hisexperience drinking from
a natural spring as a kid,
and the horror he felt
at seeing the microbiomesthat lived there.
He regrets his initial response,
now having discovered thathe didn't need to fear
those tiny microbes.
(01:04):
(bright music)
On "The Ampersand",
we call this bringingtogether the impossible,
the alchemy of ANDing.
Together, we'll hear stories of humans
who imagine and create bycolliding their interests.
Rather than thinking of"and" as a simple conjunction
in that "conjunctionjunction" kind of way,
(01:26):
we will hear stories of peoplewho see "and" as a verb,
a way to speak the beautiful
when you intentionally let
the soft animal of yourbody love what it loves.
As St. Mary Oliver asks,"what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?"
Oh, I love this question.
When I'm mothering,creating and collaborating,
it reminds me to replace a singular idea
(01:47):
of what I think I should become
with a full sensoryverb about experiencing.
I'm Erika Randall,
and this is ChristopherLowry on "The Ampersand."
(bright music continuing)
- Basically what happenedwas my press office
(02:09):
at University of Bristol reached out to me
because they saw a grant was ending.
And we had interesting data,
but it wasn't ready to be published yet.
And so I said, "Well, we'renot ready to publish that,
but we are ready topublish this other story.
And we think that's of broad interest."
Of course, this was showingthat this mycobacterium vaccae
has antidepressant effects,
(02:30):
activates serotonin neurons in the brain.
- Huge, huge.- At that time,
I mean, keep in mind it was 2007,
we weren't thinkingabout the gut microbiome.
It just wasn't even on the radar.
And so the idea you couldlike inject a bacterium
and get antidepressant effects,
it's kind of,
people were like, "wait a minute."
- "Wait. No, no, it'sabsolutely SciFi future."
- Yeah, yeah.- Yeah.
(02:51):
- It was really kind of off the wall.
- While looking at oldtechnologies, actually.
Like earthy,- Yeah.
- old friends technologies,
- Darwinian Medicine.- Darwinian medicine.
- Yeah, exactly.- But it's future thinking.
- Yeah, exactly.
And so I think that capturedthe public's imagination,
that's what I like to say.
And the whole thing about thepress release was interesting,
'cause I wrote a pressrelease and they're like,
"No, no, no, no, no."
(03:12):
They're like, "This is far too technical.
Here's an example fromGraham Collingridge,"
who was head of the MRC unit
for synaptic plasticity in Bristol.
And so I thought about what Icould say that was not like,
that was, that was true,
maybe like captured people's imagination,
but, you know,
(03:32):
was a little bit on the edge.
And so I had a quote that said,
"It makes us all wonder
if we shouldn't be spendingmore time playing in the dirt."
- Yeah.
- And you know, scientistscan wonder, right,
(laughing) I mean.
And oh my gosh, it took off.
It was like-- Instant.
- Yeah, like with...
They said later
it was the most highlypublished press release
(03:57):
that they'd ever had.
- So do you have merch now?
Do you have t-shirts that say-
- Oh, I could.- You should.
We need merch.- I should, yeah.
- Especially after the podcast.
- I should think about it.
- We're getting merch.- Yeah.
We're gonna get some"Play In The Dirt" merch.
- Oh, I would love that.- Yeah.
And, and there's, I mean, I think,
when I listen to you,
I felt that same the first time,
before I got to meet your human self,
I thought, "I understand this."
(04:18):
And that's where,
when I was thinking about our questions
and thinking that you're like the Lorax
and that you speak for the plants,
you really had this,
both a kindness, a passion,
an old car salesman outfit,
but an earnestness that said,
"We've gotta,"- That's my Wyoming nature.
- That's your.
That, it comes fromWyoming, is the earnestness.
(04:39):
- Why, my family homesteadedin western Nebraska in 1886.
So we didn't live on the farm.
My dad grew up on the farm,
but we spent a lot of time there,
especially in the summer.
- And that starts-- Yes, very rural.
- Starts the,
did that start to shapethe questions about earth
and dirt and relationship to nature?
- Yeah.
That, growing up in Wyoming.
(05:00):
I mean, I, when we,
we lived in Jackson Hole, Wyoming,
and it was, it was,
it's just stunning, right?
I mean, what a place.
- How old were you when you were there?
- Junior high through high school.
- And what was your thing?
Did you have a thing?
- I mean, I just loved being in nature.
And so, I mean,
our house was on thehighway south of Jackson,
(05:21):
like five miles south,
so our back deck overlookedthe Snake River Valley,
toward Idaho and the mountains.
And my thing was just towalk off into the mountains
to the east, right.
And there's nothing there.
It's just, no one goes there.- But light.
- 'Cause it's not particularlyspectacular, right.
- There's so much light.
(05:41):
- But it's just, it was so peaceful, and-
- That's amazing.
And yourself, when you fallin love with your work,
does it have that senseof a resurge of a spark
when you start to track something new,
like when you started tothink about the relationship
to depression and to differentways of thinking about time?
- Yeah, very much so.
I love connecting dots.
(06:01):
I love, you know,looking at data and then,
you know, thinking aboutwhat does that mean,
and, you know, how do we interpret that.
And I think early on I realized that,
you know, that our job inscience is not really to,
it's not really to come,
you know, be the smart person in the room
(06:23):
and come up with the right answer
before we do the experiment.
My supervisor once told methe mark of a good scientist
is not someone who comes upwith the right hypothesis,
whatever that means,
but someone who can come up
with multiple alternative hypotheses,
because that's a measure of creativity.
In other words, you look ata set of data and you think,
"Well, how many differentways can I explain that?"
(06:44):
Or, you know,
and sometimes you have tothink really laterally,
in ways that you haven't thought before.
And I find that really,
really challenging, butalso really gratifying.
- Oh, I see so much merch in our future.
There's so much we're gonna doto get people excited about-
(laughing)- (laughing) That's great.
I love that.- the work.
And one of the easiest ways I felt
(07:06):
like you've communicatedeverything you've been learning
was this notion of 30 plants.
That to me was, it was really sexy.
Like, oh, I could just shop for color,
and I could shop for texture,
and I can go into a storeand I can have an experience,
and it can change mylife on multiple planes.
That, I mean, that's thebest t-shirt ever made.
(07:30):
So can you just tell me how,
well, I wanna know about the number 30,
'cause I wanna know about the detail,
'cause I'm certain that there'ssomething in the detail.
- There's a reason behind 30.- There's a reason behind 30.
Talk to me about the reason behind 30.
- The reason for 30 isbecause I was working
on the gut microbiomeproject with Rob Knight
and his amazing team,
and had early access to the data.
And they had this questionon the questionnaire.
(07:52):
So they send out this kit,
and they have this surveyonline that you fill out
when you collect yoursample and send it in.
And one of the questionson the survey was, I think,
a question no one had ever asked before.
And so, you know, wethink about nutrition,
and we think, "Oh, youneed so many cups of fruits
and so many cups of vegetables,
and that's a healthy diet," right?
(08:13):
"Stay away from this and,you know, focus on that."
And the question was different,
because the question was,
"In the last week,
how many different plants have you eaten?"
And like, that's different, you know.
- That's a different question.
- That is a different question.
- Yeah.
- And then they had a,
then they explained, "Well, what's it,
you know, what counts as a plant," right?
(08:33):
And they explained, "Well, you know,
if you have a soup thathas corn and white beans
or navy beans, you know, in it,
those are two different plants, right."
- But gummy bears andthe six flavors don't.
- Er, no. Gummy bears, definitely not.
- We tried to countthose last night at home.
- You can't count them!
- And my kid was like, "You can't.
I don't care how manycolors you got, Mama.
You can't count gummy bears."
- I mean, you could probably count peanuts
(08:54):
in a Snickers bar,
but that's really,
- That's as far as we're gonna go.
- We'll stay away from that, right.
- Okay. We're gonna-- I mean, that's a treat,
but that's not what we'retalking about. (laughing)
- (laughing) That's notwhat we're talking about.
- And so when the data came out,
what was clear is that thiswas one of the questions
that clearly differentiated
how much diversity individualshad in their gut microbiome.
(09:19):
And that was very interesting to us,
because we felt, andthere's now a consensus,
that more diversity is better.
And so what they saw was themore plants people reported
having eaten in the last week,
more different types of plants,
(09:39):
so not volume, not cups,not teaspoons, et cetera,
how many different plants,
the more plants they reported eating,
the more diverse their microbiome.
And there were increases allthe way up to 30 or more.
People that reportedhaving 30 or more plants
had the most diversity.
And I'm like, "That's the holy grail."
(09:59):
Because, I mean,
I come from a backgroundof something called
the hygiene hypothesis.
But the idea is, you know,
we are at risk in modern urban societies
for inflammatory diseasebecause we lack exposure
to a diversity of microorganismsthat we co-evolved with.
(10:22):
- We're not dirty enough.- We're not dirty enough.
And, you know, we,
that doesn't mean we should be,
you know, sanitizingeverything all the time.
So we have to distinguishhygiene, personal hygiene,
like washing hands.
That's important, right,
because as we all learnedduring the Covid-19 pandemic,
(10:42):
we need to wash our hands
so we don't get sick through pathogens.
But there's another kind ofavoidance of germs, right.
We don't need to avoid all microorganisms.
In fact, many of them are beneficial.
And so if you're eatinghealthy plants, healthy food,
(11:03):
and these plants havesomething called endophytes
inside the plant that you can't wash off,
And a great example that I like to use
is that a three to four leaf spinach plant
that you might have in a salad
has over 800 different speciesof bacteria inside the plant.
(11:24):
Now, that makes sensein retrospect, right.
That's not something I knew
before I started thinking about this.
Why more plants?
Why diversity of plants?
Why is 30 better?
But the thing is, everyplant has its own microbiome,
otherwise it wouldn't bea healthy plant, right?
Just like us, plantsneed healthy microbiomes
(11:44):
and diverse microbiomes to be healthy
and to fend off pathogens.
- And organic, non-organic,does it matter?
- It does matter, yeah.
Organic foods tend tohave higher diversity
than non-organic foods.- Okay.
- Is it binary, one-zero?
No, but there's certainly more diversity
(12:05):
in plants that are grownunder organic conditions.
That tends to be because organic foods
are grown in healthy soilsthat have higher diversity.
The soil has higher diversity, right.
- Yeah. Better dirt.
- And there's,
it's a bit unclear whether,
or how many of those800 species of bacteria
(12:26):
are coming from the soil,
because those bacteria can getfrom the soil into channels
that carry water throughthe plant, et cetera.
Or, you know, the wind can blow,
and it can blow some dust ontothe surface of the leaves,
and then the bacteriaget into the little pores
on the surface of the leaves.
We don't, we don't really know,
(12:46):
but clearly, the soil makes a difference,
whether it's being actually extracted
from the soil actively,
or it's just being exposedto the soil, right,
through the environmental.
- So when you go,
when you go to pick yourplants in your farming,
your local grocery store,
first thing, do youhave a favorite checker,
(13:07):
and do they have bets on whatit's gonna be each month?
Like, do they have like a list of 30,
like Chris's 30?
Like, "We haven't had beets in a minute."
Do they have like a pool?
There's a betting pool?
Is there a secret betting pool?
- No, what tends tohappen is people are like,
"Oh, I don't even knowwhat this is called."
- Ha, that's amazing.
The folks who are working atthe store don't even know.
Okay.
- And I'm like, "Okay,well that's, you know,
that's,"- I go to dragon fruit.
(13:29):
That's my first go-to.- Yeah.
Well, I bought a dragon fruit yesterday.
- See? this is all meant to be.
And did you blend it,
or did you eat it separately?
- No, it's because mydaughter loves dragon fruit.
- That's true.- And I'm like,
anytime one of my children asksfor like a plant, you know,
'cause they're expensive, right?
And I'm like, "Hmm, okay." (laughing)
- So, 30 became optimal.
(13:50):
- Yeah, 30.
Well, I mean it's just-
- I know, but it's a good-
- Fifty might be better.
- Yeah, but 30's good on a shirt.
Let's stick with the merch, okay?
So you, do you have charts in your house?
Do you track, or do you justgo, "I'm getting the 30.
I'm making a shake."
- Yeah, I, I mean, I have,
I have multiple lists oflike, batches I've made.
(14:10):
When I have time, I like,
record-- Data.
- you know, which 30. Yeah, I love data.
In Excel.
It's always in Excel.- Yeah, of course.
- But the key thing is that it doesn't,
it doesn't really matterwhat the plant is,
it just needs to be 30 different plants.
- So it's not what you're ANDing with,
it's just that you and,and, and, and, and.
- I mean, I think there'ssome subtleties to that.
What I do is I make probably 18 quart jars
(14:31):
when I make a batch, right,
'cause I'm blending it
and, you know, adding water and blending,
and then another round,
and probably 18 jars, 12 to 18 jars.
Maybe add some lemon or lime, right.
- Like, a drink.
Does the whole family sit around
and toast with the drink of the month?
- Occasionally we've donethat, but kids tend to,
still tend to have it,
like to have it strained,
(14:52):
'cause they don't like,
'cause I leave it really like,
there's a lot of roughage in my shake.
- Yeah. There's like twigs in there.
There's-- Twigs.
- like bugs and leaves.
There's a whole ecosystem.
- If there's oregano,there's like stems, you know-
- Just chewing on that too.
- I can chew on, right? (chuckling)
My kids don't like that.- No, I don't blame them.
- But you know, sometimes they'll say,
"Oh, can I have someof that shake tonight?"
And I'll strain it through a strainer
(15:12):
and add some ice cubes,
and they're like, "That's not bad,"
especially if it has somelemon juice or lime juice.
- Yeah, the lemon.
That's the fruit that's a lot-
- It's really,
Yeah, at the end, right,when you drink it that night.
But you know,
the fact it doesn't just last a month,
it lasts two months or three months,
sometimes four months.
And at first I'm like, "Why? Why is that?"
And that's not expected, right,
(15:33):
'cause anything else you put in the fridge
will go off, right.- New experiment.
Yes.- It'll ferment.
You pop.
You know, you take off thelid and it'll go, "Phoo!"
And then I started thinking about it.
And it's because if you,
you know, let's just say,for the ease of the math,
there's a thousand speciesof bacteria per plant,
which is probably the case,
and you have 30 plants.
That's 30,000 differentspecies of bacteria.
(15:55):
It's like an Amazonianrainforest in a jar, right?
I mean, it is so,
it's such a complex ecosystem.
One of the features of complex ecosystems
is that they're not vulnerableto pathogens, right.
They're not vulnerable toovergrowth of bad guys, right.
And so sometimes people get a condition,
(16:17):
a condition called C difficile infection,
and it's very hard to get rid of,
but it tends to occur when someone
has some kind of infection,so they take an antibiotic.
They don't get better,
so the doctor prescribesanother antibiotic,
and they still don't get better.
And then the doctorprescribes another antibiotic.
(16:38):
And so what happens is,
when you have multiplecourses of antibiotics,
that microbiome in your gut,
which is supposed to be really diverse
and robust and resilient,
like a rainforest, becomes decimated.
It's like someone came in and just like,
you know, chopped downhalf the forest, right,
and all of a sudden you don't have
(16:59):
a diverse ecosystem anymoreand you become vulnerable.
And the C difficile bacteria,
which is usually present in low abundance,
is like, "I am gonna have a heyday.
There's nobody to compete with," right.
So it proliferates.
And the problem is it's a pathogen,
and so if you have anovergrowth of a pathogen,
(17:20):
that's really bad,
'cause it causes destruction
of your small intestine, for example.
And the best way torestore normal function
is to get a fecal transplant,
a fecal microbiome transplant.
And I know people who've flown to London
(17:41):
to have this done.
- I've seen that happenon "Grey's Anatomy".
And you just don't thinkit's gonna be a thing.
And then here we are.- Because it's effective.
But what are you gonna do again?
Take another antibiotic?- No, not another one.
- Right? I mean-
- Slash and burning therainforest of the gut.
- That's what caused the problemin the first place, right?
- Yeah. We're not doing that.
- So let's take a healthymicrobiome and then start over,
- Yeah.- right.
And that gets rid of the pathogen.
(18:03):
But I think what's happenedover the decades is,
we'll come back to the hygiene hypothesis,
but as we've moved into citiesand we've lost exposures
to kind of microorganismson farms and, you know,
in nature as well,
the diversity of ourmicrobiomes has declined.
(18:24):
And we know that if you look at,
you know, modern western societies
and compare the gut microbiome to, say,
you know, hunter-gatherers thatare living in South America
in the Amazon Basin.
People living in the Amazon basin
have this amazing diversity.
It's like, "Oh my God, I wantthat diversity." (chuckling)
But yeah, they have amazing diversity.
(18:45):
We have terrible diversity.
I mean, people that live in Omaha,
sorry, people that live in Omaha,
have really low diversity.
- Did you have low diversityin Wyoming when you were a kid?
Did your plate look likethe rainbow that you,
the forest that you talked about?
- No, definitely not.
Are you kidding?
- So, no.- Yeah.
- Okay, that's a look.
- You know, you knew the answer to that.
- Well, not necessarily,
because of the way you saw the world.
(19:07):
- Well, I mean, there were, yeah.
- I just wondered if you already, if you,
if you poked at things andsaid, "Ah, meat and potatoes.
Maybe a little tree over here.
Maybe a little..."- Yeah.
You know, I had somereally defining moments
that I recall growing up,
where, when we used to go toour family farm in Nebraska.
Sometimes we'd stay therefor a month in the summer
and we'd just kind ofroam the range, you know,
(19:28):
and, just on our own all day.
And one of the features ofthe farm is a natural spring
that comes up from underground,
and then it flows intothe creek, Kiowa Creek.
And I used to go down to the spring
and just drink the water.
I'm like, "Ah, this isso good. It's so cold."
And it's coming right out of the ground.
And of course the spring is surrounded
(19:48):
by all this vegetation,
and you can see things swimming in it,
you know, little beetles and things.
And then, I don't know,
I must've been in third grade,
and I thought, "Ah, I can take,
I can take this into school and look at it
under a microscope."
And I always regrettedhaving done that, because-
- Oh, you regretted it?- Yeah,
because when I took some of this water
and I put it under a microscope,
you know, on a slide with a cover slip.
(20:11):
I was in third grade.
I was already a scientist, right?
- Yeah.
Clearly.
- And I looked at the microscope,
and all these things wereswimming in the water,
like paramesia, you know, with cilia.
And there were amoeba there,kind of crawling around.
I'm like, "Oh my gosh, Ishouldn't be drinking that."
- "I've been drinking that!"
But you just said thesame thing about spinach.
- I know.
I know, I know.
And I regret it,
(20:31):
because I realized later,
it's like, "Oh yeah, I shouldhave just kept drinking it,"
because I wasn't getting sick, right.
- Oh, you regretted at thattime when you quit drinking it?
- Yeah.
Because I thought, well, weshouldn't be drinking amoeba.
I mean, that's not good, right?
- That's not good.
And now you know.- Now I know.
I mean, as long-
- So if you could talk tothat seven year old self,
you just would say-- Yeah,
I'd say, "Go for it."
- "Stick your face in there."- Yeah.
"Just go for it."
- There are so many tinyworlds in my mind right now
(20:52):
after listening to you.
I could follow any of them.
And I know we don't have infinite time,
but when there's,
I have to ask you, becauseit's part of our t-shirt,
is about ANDing.
Do you see yourself assomeone who is ANDing,
or are you connecting?
How do you verb with thenotion that everything,
this idea, this tiny world,this huge possibility?
(21:17):
Are you looking from aperspective of ANDing
and bringing more in?
Or is it about watching tosee what connection lights up?
Or how does your brainwork with that concept?
- Can I say connecting and ANDing?
- Yeah, please, 'cause that's more ANDing.
That's like extra ampersand.
- So a really good example of that
is how we got interestedin an alternative approach
(21:39):
to treatment of depression, for example.
I'm not entirely surewhy I was even looking,
but I do have this very clear recollection
of being on the third floor
of the University of Bristol Library.
And this is back inthe day when we had to,
like, go to the library.- Yes.
The real, actual,
- And like pull a volume off-- and smell the books. Yes.
- the shelf, you know?
- Dewey decimal, and all of that.
- I remember it waslike on the sixth shelf,
(21:59):
so I had actually reachup and get this volume.
It was a brain research.
- You're tall.- Yeah. I'm a tall guy.
- And you're stretching for it.
- Yeah.
And it was like a brainresearch article, right,
from the 1970s or something.
And the reason I was looking
is because I had seen somecitation in another paper
that suggested that warm temperature
could activate serotoninneurons in the brain.
(22:21):
And of course, we had just shown
that this bacterium couldactivate serotonin neurons
in the brain.
And we found that some serotoninneurons promote anxiety,
and people don't often know that.
Some serotonin neurons can inhibit
the fight or flight response,
or panic-like responses.
And some serotonin neuronsseem to be antidepressant,
(22:43):
or we would predict they haveantidepressant properties.
And so this idea that serotonin neurons
are kind of monolithic and, you know,
they're just good for you,
and you know, they're always good.
That's not really true.- Not really true.
Not all of it.
- There is a group of serotonin neurons
that facilitates anxiety,
and that's through a veryspecific serotonin receptor,
(23:03):
the 5-HT2C receptor.
And it's a very specificpart of the brain,
and a very specific groupof serotonin neurons
that has that function.
But what we found withthe mycobacterium vaccae,
is only activated the serotonin neurons
that we thought would haveantidepressant properties
is extraordinarily rare.
(23:25):
And we're like, "Oh, my gosh.
If that's true,
we might've just stumbledon to like a biomarker
of things that should haveantidepressant properties."
And so M vaccae was our kindof starting point, right?
But then when I saw that warm temperature
(23:46):
could activate serotonin neurons,
I went and got this brainresearch volume off the shelf,
and I opened it up to page386, or whatever it was.
- I'm sure it was exactly 386. (laughing)
- And I look at.
I look at the picture, and I'm like,
"Oh, my gosh, it's exact same cells
that are being activated by heat."
And I'm like, "What does that mean?"
You know, this first response is like,
(24:08):
"Oh my gosh, that's so exciting."
- Research.- Yeah.
And you know, connecting, right?
It's like, "Well, if M vaccaeactivates those neurons
and has antidepressant effect,
and then warm temperatureactivates those neurons
and has antidepressant effects,
then warm temperature shouldhave antidepressant effects."
So we started testing this in our models.
(24:30):
And in fact,
we saw that if we heatedup our rats, in this case,
just put them in kind of a sauna,
they're just like really comfortable,
and they sit in a cornerand kind of go to sleep.
And it activated these serotonin neurons.
And we're like, "Oh mygosh. It really does."
And so then I met thiskind of amazing person,
Chuck Raison from Universityof Wisconsin Medicine.
(24:52):
I saw him give a talk,
a bed to bedside talk at a meeting
of the PsychoneuroimmunologyResearch Society.
My son thinks it's so great
that I'm a psychoneuroimmunologist.
- Psychoneuroimmunologist.
That's better than some of thedinosaur names you can say.
- Oh, it's awesome.- Psychoneuroimmunologist.
- Being a psychoneuroimmunologist,
I can't think of anything better, right?
(25:12):
And so I went to the PNIRS meeting,
it was in Breckenridge,
and he was giving like the keynote speech.
And he was talking aboutthe use of internal heat
by Buddhist monks,
you know, the ones thatsit on glaciers and like,
you know, with just awrap around the waist,
and on the ice,
(25:33):
and sit there for hours and meditate.
And they can do this'cause they can generate
this internal heat and can reach
this kind of transcendentalstate during meditation.
And so he's coming at it froma very different perspective
than I was.
But I-- Had he seen your research?
- No.
- I cornered him at the meeting,
and like, "Hey, I loved your talk.
This is, you know, what we're finding."
(25:56):
And we kind of started this collaboration,
and that culminated indoing some clinical trials
using something calledinfrared whole body heating.
And the first trial wasan open label trial,
meaning that the investigators knew
who was getting whole body heating
and so did the participants.
They were depressed.
(26:17):
And in that trial,
the whole body heatingdecreased depressive symptoms.
- Hmm.
How would you do a placeboeffect of whole body heating?
Wouldn't you know if you were hot or not?
- We did that.- How?
- Yeah.- How did you,
how did you-- And in fact-
- How did people not know they were hot?
- The most important thing
is when we asked people atthe very end of the study,
we said, "Do you think you werein the active heating group
or the control group?"
(26:38):
The exact same,
not exact, but there was no difference
in the the number of people that thought
that they had the active heating,
regardless of whether they actually got
the active heating or not.
- Really?- Yeah.
So the placebo is very good.
What we found was it almost defied belief,
because, you know, we designed the study,
so we looked at depressivescores during the first week
(26:58):
using self-report.
And then we used aclinician-based diagnosis,
or symptom survey,
the Hamilton Depression Rating Scale,
at one week, two weeks,four weeks, and six weeks.
And we chose six weeks because we thought,
"Oh, by then, you know,
any effects are gonna be gone," right?
(27:21):
But what we found is that within one week,
the people that actually got heated
had far more improvementin depressive scores
than people that got theplacebo or sham condition.
And at two weeks and atfour weeks and at six weeks,
and even at six weeks,
they're still performing betterafter one heating session.
(27:45):
And we're like, "Oh my gosh!"
- You've said this.- We had no idea.
- You had no idea.
And you've said this aboutso many of these things
that feel like they could besimple but overlooked so simply
that they have defied belief.
Playing in the dirt,
eating more plants,
finding more diversity in your body,
and this notion of heat onthe brain, heat on the body,
(28:05):
heat in the system.
Simple and yet defying belief.
That's some serious ANDding, my friend.
- Yeah.
Connecting and ANDing. (chuckling)
And you know,
there's some evidence
that cold temperaturecan do the same thing.
The same group that we thinkhas antidepressant effect
is activated by M vaccae,
it's activated by heat,
(28:26):
and it's activated by cold.
And then you have to ask yourself,
well, why would all ofthese things activate that,
let's say it's an antidepressant pathway.
And one idea that we've come up with
is that these are all things that,
throughout human evolution,even before that,
mammalian evolution would've had
very important adaptive value.
(28:47):
And the state ofdepression is characterized
by over activities ofa circuit in the brain
called the default mode network,
and this tends to be active
when you're kind ofengaged in introspection,
and, you know, maybe experiencing feelings
of guilt and shame and, you know, despair,
and just dwelling onthose internal thoughts.
(29:09):
And during those activities,
this default modenetwork gets very active.
However, if you shift yourattention to something external,
like your environment or another person,
or knitting or reading abook or gratitude, right,
or sensations in your bodyduring meditation, for example,
(29:33):
you shift out of this default mode network
and you engage with the environment.
- We have to, we have to,
I wanna keep going, but we have to stop.
We have to,
we've made people curiousenough to ask more.
So before we stop though,
we're gonna do the quick and dirty.
And with you, this is aperfect, a perfect way in,
because we want dirty, the good dirty.
(29:55):
And we're gonna ask you fast questions,
and you have to go just first thing.
No perfect answer.- Whatever pops up.
- Whatever, okay?
So I'm gonna give you a topic
and you're gonna say the first word,
ideally containing "and"that comes to mind.
Are you ready?
- My response contains "and"?- Yes, please.
- Mm.- Okay.
Like the word, it's gonnahave either "this and",
(30:15):
or you'll see "and" inside the word.
Ready?
- Okay. I might get better with time.
- You're gonna get better with time.
The weirdest plant you've ingested.
- And cactus leaf.
- I like your style.
The two de-stressing activities
that you should always do together.
- Exercising.
(30:37):
And exercising outdoors.
- Exercising and being outdoors.
Okay, we love this.
A surprise place inWyoming worth visiting.
- Ooh.
And the Wind River Wilderness area.
Highly recommended.
- Wind River.- Wind River.
- Wilderness area.
The name of a foraging restaurant.
(31:00):
- Owamni.
- Owamni, but you gotta put and in it.
- And Owmani.
- Oh, you're so sneaky. (laughing)
Should you discover a new gut bacteria,
if you could,
and you can give it any name,'cause you're in charge,
but you have to have and in it.
So it's gonna be like "Da, da, da, and."
What are you gonna name it,
are you gonna name that gut bacteria?
It's your new one, and it's got "and".
(31:24):
- How about Mycobacterium Sana?
Is it sana?
Saner?
Like healthy or sane?
- Sane. Okay.
But is there an and in there?
- Oh, Mycobacterium and Sana.
- There for the win,
'cause there (laughing) for the win.
Okay.- This is challenging!
(31:45):
This is like being on a game show!
- It is.
My life is a game show.
Welcome.
Thanks for playing.
On each episode...
This is your final question,
and you can go behind doornumber one or door number two.
No, I'm kidding.
You get to say whatever you want.
We have every guest offer a blessing.
"And may the road rise tomeet you, and may, and will,"
(32:05):
as if you were at a graduationor at a special event,
what would your and sendoffbe for our listeners?
(bright music)
- And may you find health and happiness.
(bright music continuing)
(32:26):
- That was Christopher Lowry,
CU Boulder associate professorof Integrated Physiology.
"The Ampersand" is written and produced
by me, Erika Randall, and Tim Grassley.
If there are folks you'd like to hear from
on "The Ampersand",
do please email us at asinfo@colorado.edu.
(32:47):
Our theme music was composedand performed by Nelson Walker,
a CU Boulder alum,brilliant cellist, composer,
and a fantastic dancer.
Episodes are recorded at Interplay Studios
in Boulder, Colorado.
I'm Erika Randall,
and this is "The Ampersand".
(bright music)
(cash register scanner beeping)
- Thanks, guys.
- I imagine Christopher Lowrywalking the produce aisle
at Natural Grocers in Boulder, Colorado.
He's there early on a weekday
to pick the 30 different plants
that he will blend into a smoothie.
His research suggests that this concoction
could have antidepressant effects.
(00:22):
I imagine he picks up a fuzzy dragon fruit
and a fresh cactus ear thatthe staff ordered just for him.
The warmth he feels atdiscovering something so simple
and natural is incredible,
because he knows it couldhave been easily overlooked.
(water gurgling)
I can't imagine how this drink
(00:42):
would've disgusted himas a middle schooler
if he had looked at it under a microscope.
On today's episode of "The Ampersand",
Christopher discusses hisexperience drinking from
a natural spring as a kid,
and the horror he felt
at seeing the microbiomesthat lived there.
He regrets his initial response,
now having discovered thathe didn't need to fear
those tiny microbes.
(01:04):
(bright music)
On "The Ampersand",
we call this bringingtogether the impossible,
the alchemy of ANDing.
Together, we'll hear stories of humans
who imagine and create bycolliding their interests.
Rather than thinking of"and" as a simple conjunction
in that "conjunctionjunction" kind of way,
(01:26):
we will hear stories of peoplewho see "and" as a verb,
a way to speak the beautiful
when you intentionally let
the soft animal of yourbody love what it loves.
As St. Mary Oliver asks,"what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?"
Oh, I love this question.
When I'm mothering,creating and collaborating,
it reminds me to replace a singular idea
(01:47):
of what I think I should become
with a full sensoryverb about experiencing.
I'm Erika Randall,
and this is ChristopherLowry on "The Ampersand."
(bright music continuing)
- Basically what happenedwas my press office
(02:09):
at University of Bristol reached out to me
because they saw a grant was ending.
And we had interesting data,
but it wasn't ready to be published yet.
And so I said, "Well, we'renot ready to publish that,
but we are ready topublish this other story.
And we think that's of broad interest."
Of course, this was showingthat this mycobacterium vaccae
has antidepressant effects,
(02:30):
activates serotonin neurons in the brain.
- Huge, huge.- At that time,
I mean, keep in mind it was 2007,
we weren't thinkingabout the gut microbiome.
It just wasn't even on the radar.
And so the idea you couldlike inject a bacterium
and get antidepressant effects,
it's kind of,
people were like, "wait a minute."
- "Wait. No, no, it'sabsolutely SciFi future."
- Yeah, yeah.- Yeah.
(02:51):
- It was really kind of off the wall.
- While looking at oldtechnologies, actually.
Like earthy,- Yeah.
- old friends technologies,
- Darwinian Medicine.- Darwinian medicine.
- Yeah, exactly.- But it's future thinking.
- Yeah, exactly.
And so I think that capturedthe public's imagination,
that's what I like to say.
And the whole thing about thepress release was interesting,
'cause I wrote a pressrelease and they're like,
"No, no, no, no, no."
(03:12):
They're like, "This is far too technical.
Here's an example fromGraham Collingridge,"
who was head of the MRC unit
for synaptic plasticity in Bristol.
And so I thought about what Icould say that was not like,
that was, that was true,
maybe like captured people's imagination,
but, you know,
(03:32):
was a little bit on the edge.
And so I had a quote that said,
"It makes us all wonder
if we shouldn't be spendingmore time playing in the dirt."
- Yeah.
- And you know, scientistscan wonder, right,
(laughing) I mean.
And oh my gosh, it took off.
It was like-- Instant.
- Yeah, like with...
They said later
it was the most highlypublished press release
(03:57):
that they'd ever had.
- So do you have merch now?
Do you have t-shirts that say-
- Oh, I could.- You should.
We need merch.- I should, yeah.
- Especially after the podcast.
- I should think about it.
- We're getting merch.- Yeah.
We're gonna get some"Play In The Dirt" merch.
- Oh, I would love that.- Yeah.
And, and there's, I mean, I think,
when I listen to you,
I felt that same the first time,
before I got to meet your human self,
I thought, "I understand this."
(04:18):
And that's where,
when I was thinking about our questions
and thinking that you're like the Lorax
and that you speak for the plants,
you really had this,
both a kindness, a passion,
an old car salesman outfit,
but an earnestness that said,
"We've gotta,"- That's my Wyoming nature.
- That's your.
That, it comes fromWyoming, is the earnestness.
(04:39):
- Why, my family homesteadedin western Nebraska in 1886.
So we didn't live on the farm.
My dad grew up on the farm,
but we spent a lot of time there,
especially in the summer.
- And that starts-- Yes, very rural.
- Starts the,
did that start to shapethe questions about earth
and dirt and relationship to nature?
- Yeah.
That, growing up in Wyoming.
(05:00):
I mean, I, when we,
we lived in Jackson Hole, Wyoming,
and it was, it was,
it's just stunning, right?
I mean, what a place.
- How old were you when you were there?
- Junior high through high school.
- And what was your thing?
Did you have a thing?
- I mean, I just loved being in nature.
And so, I mean,
our house was on thehighway south of Jackson,
(05:21):
like five miles south,
so our back deck overlookedthe Snake River Valley,
toward Idaho and the mountains.
And my thing was just towalk off into the mountains
to the east, right.
And there's nothing there.
It's just, no one goes there.- But light.
- 'Cause it's not particularlyspectacular, right.
- There's so much light.
(05:41):
- But it's just, it was so peaceful, and-
- That's amazing.
And yourself, when you fallin love with your work,
does it have that senseof a resurge of a spark
when you start to track something new,
like when you started tothink about the relationship
to depression and to differentways of thinking about time?
- Yeah, very much so.
I love connecting dots.
(06:01):
I love, you know,looking at data and then,
you know, thinking aboutwhat does that mean,
and, you know, how do we interpret that.
And I think early on I realized that,
you know, that our job inscience is not really to,
it's not really to come,
you know, be the smart person in the room
(06:23):
and come up with the right answer
before we do the experiment.
My supervisor once told methe mark of a good scientist
is not someone who comes upwith the right hypothesis,
whatever that means,
but someone who can come up
with multiple alternative hypotheses,
because that's a measure of creativity.
In other words, you look ata set of data and you think,
"Well, how many differentways can I explain that?"
(06:44):
Or, you know,
and sometimes you have tothink really laterally,
in ways that you haven't thought before.
And I find that really,
really challenging, butalso really gratifying.
- Oh, I see so much merch in our future.
There's so much we're gonna doto get people excited about-
(laughing)- (laughing) That's great.
I love that.- the work.
And one of the easiest ways I felt
(07:06):
like you've communicatedeverything you've been learning
was this notion of 30 plants.
That to me was, it was really sexy.
Like, oh, I could just shop for color,
and I could shop for texture,
and I can go into a storeand I can have an experience,
and it can change mylife on multiple planes.
That, I mean, that's thebest t-shirt ever made.
(07:30):
So can you just tell me how,
well, I wanna know about the number 30,
'cause I wanna know about the detail,
'cause I'm certain that there'ssomething in the detail.
- There's a reason behind 30.- There's a reason behind 30.
Talk to me about the reason behind 30.
- The reason for 30 isbecause I was working
on the gut microbiomeproject with Rob Knight
and his amazing team,
and had early access to the data.
And they had this questionon the questionnaire.
(07:52):
So they send out this kit,
and they have this surveyonline that you fill out
when you collect yoursample and send it in.
And one of the questionson the survey was, I think,
a question no one had ever asked before.
And so, you know, wethink about nutrition,
and we think, "Oh, youneed so many cups of fruits
and so many cups of vegetables,
and that's a healthy diet," right?
(08:13):
"Stay away from this and,you know, focus on that."
And the question was different,
because the question was,
"In the last week,
how many different plants have you eaten?"
And like, that's different, you know.
- That's a different question.
- That is a different question.
- Yeah.
- And then they had a,
then they explained, "Well, what's it,
you know, what counts as a plant," right?
(08:33):
And they explained, "Well, you know,
if you have a soup thathas corn and white beans
or navy beans, you know, in it,
those are two different plants, right."
- But gummy bears andthe six flavors don't.
- Er, no. Gummy bears, definitely not.
- We tried to countthose last night at home.
- You can't count them!
- And my kid was like, "You can't.
I don't care how manycolors you got, Mama.
You can't count gummy bears."
- I mean, you could probably count peanuts
(08:54):
in a Snickers bar,
but that's really,
- That's as far as we're gonna go.
- We'll stay away from that, right.
- Okay. We're gonna-- I mean, that's a treat,
but that's not what we'retalking about. (laughing)
- (laughing) That's notwhat we're talking about.
- And so when the data came out,
what was clear is that thiswas one of the questions
that clearly differentiated
how much diversity individualshad in their gut microbiome.
(09:19):
And that was very interesting to us,
because we felt, andthere's now a consensus,
that more diversity is better.
And so what they saw was themore plants people reported
having eaten in the last week,
more different types of plants,
(09:39):
so not volume, not cups,not teaspoons, et cetera,
how many different plants,
the more plants they reported eating,
the more diverse their microbiome.
And there were increases allthe way up to 30 or more.
People that reportedhaving 30 or more plants
had the most diversity.
And I'm like, "That's the holy grail."
(09:59):
Because, I mean,
I come from a backgroundof something called
the hygiene hypothesis.
But the idea is, you know,
we are at risk in modern urban societies
for inflammatory diseasebecause we lack exposure
to a diversity of microorganismsthat we co-evolved with.
(10:22):
- We're not dirty enough.- We're not dirty enough.
And, you know, we,
that doesn't mean we should be,
you know, sanitizingeverything all the time.
So we have to distinguishhygiene, personal hygiene,
like washing hands.
That's important, right,
because as we all learnedduring the Covid-19 pandemic,
(10:42):
we need to wash our hands
so we don't get sick through pathogens.
But there's another kind ofavoidance of germs, right.
We don't need to avoid all microorganisms.
In fact, many of them are beneficial.
And so if you're eatinghealthy plants, healthy food,
(11:03):
and these plants havesomething called endophytes
inside the plant that you can't wash off,
And a great example that I like to use
is that a three to four leaf spinach plant
that you might have in a salad
has over 800 different speciesof bacteria inside the plant.
(11:24):
Now, that makes sensein retrospect, right.
That's not something I knew
before I started thinking about this.
Why more plants?
Why diversity of plants?
Why is 30 better?
But the thing is, everyplant has its own microbiome,
otherwise it wouldn't bea healthy plant, right?
Just like us, plantsneed healthy microbiomes
(11:44):
and diverse microbiomes to be healthy
and to fend off pathogens.
- And organic, non-organic,does it matter?
- It does matter, yeah.
Organic foods tend tohave higher diversity
than non-organic foods.- Okay.
- Is it binary, one-zero?
No, but there's certainly more diversity
(12:05):
in plants that are grownunder organic conditions.
That tends to be because organic foods
are grown in healthy soilsthat have higher diversity.
The soil has higher diversity, right.
- Yeah. Better dirt.
- And there's,
it's a bit unclear whether,
or how many of those800 species of bacteria
(12:26):
are coming from the soil,
because those bacteria can getfrom the soil into channels
that carry water throughthe plant, et cetera.
Or, you know, the wind can blow,
and it can blow some dust ontothe surface of the leaves,
and then the bacteriaget into the little pores
on the surface of the leaves.
We don't, we don't really know,
(12:46):
but clearly, the soil makes a difference,
whether it's being actually extracted
from the soil actively,
or it's just being exposedto the soil, right,
through the environmental.
- So when you go,
when you go to pick yourplants in your farming,
your local grocery store,
first thing, do youhave a favorite checker,
(13:07):
and do they have bets on whatit's gonna be each month?
Like, do they have like a list of 30,
like Chris's 30?
Like, "We haven't had beets in a minute."
Do they have like a pool?
There's a betting pool?
Is there a secret betting pool?
- No, what tends tohappen is people are like,
"Oh, I don't even knowwhat this is called."
- Ha, that's amazing.
The folks who are working atthe store don't even know.
Okay.
- And I'm like, "Okay,well that's, you know,
that's,"- I go to dragon fruit.
(13:29):
That's my first go-to.- Yeah.
Well, I bought a dragon fruit yesterday.
- See? this is all meant to be.
And did you blend it,
or did you eat it separately?
- No, it's because mydaughter loves dragon fruit.
- That's true.- And I'm like,
anytime one of my children asksfor like a plant, you know,
'cause they're expensive, right?
And I'm like, "Hmm, okay." (laughing)
- So, 30 became optimal.
(13:50):
- Yeah, 30.
Well, I mean it's just-
- I know, but it's a good-
- Fifty might be better.
- Yeah, but 30's good on a shirt.
Let's stick with the merch, okay?
So you, do you have charts in your house?
Do you track, or do you justgo, "I'm getting the 30.
I'm making a shake."
- Yeah, I, I mean, I have,
I have multiple lists oflike, batches I've made.
(14:10):
When I have time, I like,
record-- Data.
- you know, which 30. Yeah, I love data.
In Excel.
It's always in Excel.- Yeah, of course.
- But the key thing is that it doesn't,
it doesn't really matterwhat the plant is,
it just needs to be 30 different plants.
- So it's not what you're ANDing with,
it's just that you and,and, and, and, and.
- I mean, I think there'ssome subtleties to that.
What I do is I make probably 18 quart jars
(14:31):
when I make a batch, right,
'cause I'm blending it
and, you know, adding water and blending,
and then another round,
and probably 18 jars, 12 to 18 jars.
Maybe add some lemon or lime, right.
- Like, a drink.
Does the whole family sit around
and toast with the drink of the month?
- Occasionally we've donethat, but kids tend to,
still tend to have it,
like to have it strained,
(14:52):
'cause they don't like,
'cause I leave it really like,
there's a lot of roughage in my shake.
- Yeah. There's like twigs in there.
There's-- Twigs.
- like bugs and leaves.
There's a whole ecosystem.
- If there's oregano,there's like stems, you know-
- Just chewing on that too.
- I can chew on, right? (chuckling)
My kids don't like that.- No, I don't blame them.
- But you know, sometimes they'll say,
"Oh, can I have someof that shake tonight?"
And I'll strain it through a strainer
(15:12):
and add some ice cubes,
and they're like, "That's not bad,"
especially if it has somelemon juice or lime juice.
- Yeah, the lemon.
That's the fruit that's a lot-
- It's really,
Yeah, at the end, right,when you drink it that night.
But you know,
the fact it doesn't just last a month,
it lasts two months or three months,
sometimes four months.
And at first I'm like, "Why? Why is that?"
And that's not expected, right,
(15:33):
'cause anything else you put in the fridge
will go off, right.- New experiment.
Yes.- It'll ferment.
You pop.
You know, you take off thelid and it'll go, "Phoo!"
And then I started thinking about it.
And it's because if you,
you know, let's just say,for the ease of the math,
there's a thousand speciesof bacteria per plant,
which is probably the case,
and you have 30 plants.
That's 30,000 differentspecies of bacteria.
(15:55):
It's like an Amazonianrainforest in a jar, right?
I mean, it is so,
it's such a complex ecosystem.
One of the features of complex ecosystems
is that they're not vulnerableto pathogens, right.
They're not vulnerable toovergrowth of bad guys, right.
And so sometimes people get a condition,
(16:17):
a condition called C difficile infection,
and it's very hard to get rid of,
but it tends to occur when someone
has some kind of infection,so they take an antibiotic.
They don't get better,
so the doctor prescribesanother antibiotic,
and they still don't get better.
And then the doctorprescribes another antibiotic.
(16:38):
And so what happens is,
when you have multiplecourses of antibiotics,
that microbiome in your gut,
which is supposed to be really diverse
and robust and resilient,
like a rainforest, becomes decimated.
It's like someone came in and just like,
you know, chopped downhalf the forest, right,
and all of a sudden you don't have
(16:59):
a diverse ecosystem anymoreand you become vulnerable.
And the C difficile bacteria,
which is usually present in low abundance,
is like, "I am gonna have a heyday.
There's nobody to compete with," right.
So it proliferates.
And the problem is it's a pathogen,
and so if you have anovergrowth of a pathogen,
(17:20):
that's really bad,
'cause it causes destruction
of your small intestine, for example.
And the best way torestore normal function
is to get a fecal transplant,
a fecal microbiome transplant.
And I know people who've flown to London
(17:41):
to have this done.
- I've seen that happenon "Grey's Anatomy".
And you just don't thinkit's gonna be a thing.
And then here we are.- Because it's effective.
But what are you gonna do again?
Take another antibiotic?- No, not another one.
- Right? I mean-
- Slash and burning therainforest of the gut.
- That's what caused the problemin the first place, right?
- Yeah. We're not doing that.
- So let's take a healthymicrobiome and then start over,
- Yeah.- right.
And that gets rid of the pathogen.
(18:03):
But I think what's happenedover the decades is,
we'll come back to the hygiene hypothesis,
but as we've moved into citiesand we've lost exposures
to kind of microorganismson farms and, you know,
in nature as well,
the diversity of ourmicrobiomes has declined.
(18:24):
And we know that if you look at,
you know, modern western societies
and compare the gut microbiome to, say,
you know, hunter-gatherers thatare living in South America
in the Amazon Basin.
People living in the Amazon basin
have this amazing diversity.
It's like, "Oh my God, I wantthat diversity." (chuckling)
But yeah, they have amazing diversity.
(18:45):
We have terrible diversity.
I mean, people that live in Omaha,
sorry, people that live in Omaha,
have really low diversity.
- Did you have low diversityin Wyoming when you were a kid?
Did your plate look likethe rainbow that you,
the forest that you talked about?
- No, definitely not.
Are you kidding?
- So, no.- Yeah.
- Okay, that's a look.
- You know, you knew the answer to that.
- Well, not necessarily,
because of the way you saw the world.
(19:07):
- Well, I mean, there were, yeah.
- I just wondered if you already, if you,
if you poked at things andsaid, "Ah, meat and potatoes.
Maybe a little tree over here.
Maybe a little..."- Yeah.
You know, I had somereally defining moments
that I recall growing up,
where, when we used to go toour family farm in Nebraska.
Sometimes we'd stay therefor a month in the summer
and we'd just kind ofroam the range, you know,
(19:28):
and, just on our own all day.
And one of the features ofthe farm is a natural spring
that comes up from underground,
and then it flows intothe creek, Kiowa Creek.
And I used to go down to the spring
and just drink the water.
I'm like, "Ah, this isso good. It's so cold."
And it's coming right out of the ground.
And of course the spring is surrounded
(19:48):
by all this vegetation,
and you can see things swimming in it,
you know, little beetles and things.
And then, I don't know,
I must've been in third grade,
and I thought, "Ah, I can take,
I can take this into school and look at it
under a microscope."
And I always regrettedhaving done that, because-
- Oh, you regretted it?- Yeah,
because when I took some of this water
and I put it under a microscope,
you know, on a slide with a cover slip.
(20:11):
I was in third grade.
I was already a scientist, right?
- Yeah.
Clearly.
- And I looked at the microscope,
and all these things wereswimming in the water,
like paramesia, you know, with cilia.
And there were amoeba there,kind of crawling around.
I'm like, "Oh my gosh, Ishouldn't be drinking that."
- "I've been drinking that!"
But you just said thesame thing about spinach.
- I know.
I know, I know.
And I regret it,
(20:31):
because I realized later,
it's like, "Oh yeah, I shouldhave just kept drinking it,"
because I wasn't getting sick, right.
- Oh, you regretted at thattime when you quit drinking it?
- Yeah.
Because I thought, well, weshouldn't be drinking amoeba.
I mean, that's not good, right?
- That's not good.
And now you know.- Now I know.
I mean, as long-
- So if you could talk tothat seven year old self,
you just would say-- Yeah,
I'd say, "Go for it."
- "Stick your face in there."- Yeah.
"Just go for it."
- There are so many tinyworlds in my mind right now
(20:52):
after listening to you.
I could follow any of them.
And I know we don't have infinite time,
but when there's,
I have to ask you, becauseit's part of our t-shirt,
is about ANDing.
Do you see yourself assomeone who is ANDing,
or are you connecting?
How do you verb with thenotion that everything,
this idea, this tiny world,this huge possibility?
(21:17):
Are you looking from aperspective of ANDing
and bringing more in?
Or is it about watching tosee what connection lights up?
Or how does your brainwork with that concept?
- Can I say connecting and ANDing?
- Yeah, please, 'cause that's more ANDing.
That's like extra ampersand.
- So a really good example of that
is how we got interestedin an alternative approach
(21:39):
to treatment of depression, for example.
I'm not entirely surewhy I was even looking,
but I do have this very clear recollection
of being on the third floor
of the University of Bristol Library.
And this is back inthe day when we had to,
like, go to the library.- Yes.
The real, actual,
- And like pull a volume off-- and smell the books. Yes.
- the shelf, you know?
- Dewey decimal, and all of that.
- I remember it waslike on the sixth shelf,
(21:59):
so I had actually reachup and get this volume.
It was a brain research.
- You're tall.- Yeah. I'm a tall guy.
- And you're stretching for it.
- Yeah.
And it was like a brainresearch article, right,
from the 1970s or something.
And the reason I was looking
is because I had seen somecitation in another paper
that suggested that warm temperature
could activate serotoninneurons in the brain.
(22:21):
And of course, we had just shown
that this bacterium couldactivate serotonin neurons
in the brain.
And we found that some serotoninneurons promote anxiety,
and people don't often know that.
Some serotonin neurons can inhibit
the fight or flight response,
or panic-like responses.
And some serotonin neuronsseem to be antidepressant,
(22:43):
or we would predict they haveantidepressant properties.
And so this idea that serotonin neurons
are kind of monolithic and, you know,
they're just good for you,
and you know, they're always good.
That's not really true.- Not really true.
Not all of it.
- There is a group of serotonin neurons
that facilitates anxiety,
and that's through a veryspecific serotonin receptor,
(23:03):
the 5-HT2C receptor.
And it's a very specificpart of the brain,
and a very specific groupof serotonin neurons
that has that function.
But what we found withthe mycobacterium vaccae,
is only activated the serotonin neurons
that we thought would haveantidepressant properties
is extraordinarily rare.
(23:25):
And we're like, "Oh, my gosh.
If that's true,
we might've just stumbledon to like a biomarker
of things that should haveantidepressant properties."
And so M vaccae was our kindof starting point, right?
But then when I saw that warm temperature
(23:46):
could activate serotonin neurons,
I went and got this brainresearch volume off the shelf,
and I opened it up to page386, or whatever it was.
- I'm sure it was exactly 386. (laughing)
- And I look at.
I look at the picture, and I'm like,
"Oh, my gosh, it's exact same cells
that are being activated by heat."
And I'm like, "What does that mean?"
You know, this first response is like,
(24:08):
"Oh my gosh, that's so exciting."
- Research.- Yeah.
And you know, connecting, right?
It's like, "Well, if M vaccaeactivates those neurons
and has antidepressant effect,
and then warm temperatureactivates those neurons
and has antidepressant effects,
then warm temperature shouldhave antidepressant effects."
So we started testing this in our models.
(24:30):
And in fact,
we saw that if we heatedup our rats, in this case,
just put them in kind of a sauna,
they're just like really comfortable,
and they sit in a cornerand kind of go to sleep.
And it activated these serotonin neurons.
And we're like, "Oh mygosh. It really does."
And so then I met thiskind of amazing person,
Chuck Raison from Universityof Wisconsin Medicine.
(24:52):
I saw him give a talk,
a bed to bedside talk at a meeting
of the PsychoneuroimmunologyResearch Society.
My son thinks it's so great
that I'm a psychoneuroimmunologist.
- Psychoneuroimmunologist.
That's better than some of thedinosaur names you can say.
- Oh, it's awesome.- Psychoneuroimmunologist.
- Being a psychoneuroimmunologist,
I can't think of anything better, right?
(25:12):
And so I went to the PNIRS meeting,
it was in Breckenridge,
and he was giving like the keynote speech.
And he was talking aboutthe use of internal heat
by Buddhist monks,
you know, the ones thatsit on glaciers and like,
you know, with just awrap around the waist,
and on the ice,
(25:33):
and sit there for hours and meditate.
And they can do this'cause they can generate
this internal heat and can reach
this kind of transcendentalstate during meditation.
And so he's coming at it froma very different perspective
than I was.
But I-- Had he seen your research?
- No.
- I cornered him at the meeting,
and like, "Hey, I loved your talk.
This is, you know, what we're finding."
(25:56):
And we kind of started this collaboration,
and that culminated indoing some clinical trials
using something calledinfrared whole body heating.
And the first trial wasan open label trial,
meaning that the investigators knew
who was getting whole body heating
and so did the participants.
They were depressed.
(26:17):
And in that trial,
the whole body heatingdecreased depressive symptoms.
- Hmm.
How would you do a placeboeffect of whole body heating?
Wouldn't you know if you were hot or not?
- We did that.- How?
- Yeah.- How did you,
how did you-- And in fact-
- How did people not know they were hot?
- The most important thing
is when we asked people atthe very end of the study,
we said, "Do you think you werein the active heating group
or the control group?"
(26:38):
The exact same,
not exact, but there was no difference
in the the number of people that thought
that they had the active heating,
regardless of whether they actually got
the active heating or not.
- Really?- Yeah.
So the placebo is very good.
What we found was it almost defied belief,
because, you know, we designed the study,
so we looked at depressivescores during the first week
(26:58):
using self-report.
And then we used aclinician-based diagnosis,
or symptom survey,
the Hamilton Depression Rating Scale,
at one week, two weeks,four weeks, and six weeks.
And we chose six weeks because we thought,
"Oh, by then, you know,
any effects are gonna be gone," right?
(27:21):
But what we found is that within one week,
the people that actually got heated
had far more improvementin depressive scores
than people that got theplacebo or sham condition.
And at two weeks and atfour weeks and at six weeks,
and even at six weeks,
they're still performing betterafter one heating session.
(27:45):
And we're like, "Oh my gosh!"
- You've said this.- We had no idea.
- You had no idea.
And you've said this aboutso many of these things
that feel like they could besimple but overlooked so simply
that they have defied belief.
Playing in the dirt,
eating more plants,
finding more diversity in your body,
and this notion of heat onthe brain, heat on the body,
(28:05):
heat in the system.
Simple and yet defying belief.
That's some serious ANDding, my friend.
- Yeah.
Connecting and ANDing. (chuckling)
And you know,
there's some evidence
that cold temperaturecan do the same thing.
The same group that we thinkhas antidepressant effect
is activated by M vaccae,
it's activated by heat,
(28:26):
and it's activated by cold.
And then you have to ask yourself,
well, why would all ofthese things activate that,
let's say it's an antidepressant pathway.
And one idea that we've come up with
is that these are all things that,
throughout human evolution,even before that,
mammalian evolution would've had
very important adaptive value.
(28:47):
And the state ofdepression is characterized
by over activities ofa circuit in the brain
called the default mode network,
and this tends to be active
when you're kind ofengaged in introspection,
and, you know, maybe experiencing feelings
of guilt and shame and, you know, despair,
and just dwelling onthose internal thoughts.
(29:09):
And during those activities,
this default modenetwork gets very active.
However, if you shift yourattention to something external,
like your environment or another person,
or knitting or reading abook or gratitude, right,
or sensations in your bodyduring meditation, for example,
(29:33):
you shift out of this default mode network
and you engage with the environment.
- We have to, we have to,
I wanna keep going, but we have to stop.
We have to,
we've made people curiousenough to ask more.
So before we stop though,
we're gonna do the quick and dirty.
And with you, this is aperfect, a perfect way in,
because we want dirty, the good dirty.
(29:55):
And we're gonna ask you fast questions,
and you have to go just first thing.
No perfect answer.- Whatever pops up.
- Whatever, okay?
So I'm gonna give you a topic
and you're gonna say the first word,
ideally containing "and"that comes to mind.
Are you ready?
- My response contains "and"?- Yes, please.
- Mm.- Okay.
Like the word, it's gonnahave either "this and",
(30:15):
or you'll see "and" inside the word.
Ready?
- Okay. I might get better with time.
- You're gonna get better with time.
The weirdest plant you've ingested.
- And cactus leaf.
- I like your style.
The two de-stressing activities
that you should always do together.
- Exercising.
(30:37):
And exercising outdoors.
- Exercising and being outdoors.
Okay, we love this.
A surprise place inWyoming worth visiting.
- Ooh.
And the Wind River Wilderness area.
Highly recommended.
- Wind River.- Wind River.
- Wilderness area.
The name of a foraging restaurant.
(31:00):
- Owamni.
- Owamni, but you gotta put and in it.
- And Owmani.
- Oh, you're so sneaky. (laughing)
Should you discover a new gut bacteria,
if you could,
and you can give it any name,'cause you're in charge,
but you have to have and in it.
So it's gonna be like "Da, da, da, and."
What are you gonna name it,
are you gonna name that gut bacteria?
It's your new one, and it's got "and".
(31:24):
- How about Mycobacterium Sana?
Is it sana?
Saner?
Like healthy or sane?
- Sane. Okay.
But is there an and in there?
- Oh, Mycobacterium and Sana.
- There for the win,
'cause there (laughing) for the win.
Okay.- This is challenging!
(31:45):
This is like being on a game show!
- It is.
My life is a game show.
Welcome.
Thanks for playing.
On each episode...
This is your final question,
and you can go behind doornumber one or door number two.
No, I'm kidding.
You get to say whatever you want.
We have every guest offer a blessing.
"And may the road rise tomeet you, and may, and will,"
(32:05):
as if you were at a graduationor at a special event,
what would your and sendoffbe for our listeners?
(bright music)
- And may you find health and happiness.
(bright music continuing)
(32:26):
- That was Christopher Lowry,
CU Boulder associate professorof Integrated Physiology.
"The Ampersand" is written and produced
by me, Erika Randall, and Tim Grassley.
If there are folks you'd like to hear from
on "The Ampersand",
do please email us at asinfo@colorado.edu.
(32:47):
Our theme music was composedand performed by Nelson Walker,
a CU Boulder alum,brilliant cellist, composer,
and a fantastic dancer.
Episodes are recorded at Interplay Studios
in Boulder, Colorado.
I'm Erika Randall,
and this is "The Ampersand".
(bright music)
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