Everything You Need To Know About Healing Your Gut, Mood, Energy, Libido & Sleep With A Little Known Bacterial Strain (& An Amazing DIY Yogurt Recipe!)

My name is Ben Greenfield and on this episode of the Ben Greenfield Life podcast.

And so when people do this, they restore this microbe, Lactobacillus rotori. You get this surge in oxytocin and people will say things like, I feel closer to my partner. I love my children even more than I did before. I like my co workers better, they are less annoying to me. And my favorite, I understand the opinions of other people even when I disagree. Isn't that something?

Faith, family, fitness, health, performance, nutrition, longevity, ancestral living, biohacking, and a whole lot more. Welcome to the show.

Well, folks, I first became familiar with today's podcast guest and his pretty impressive body of work and writing when I actually interviewed him several years ago for an episode about heart attacks. And then later he came back and joined me for a follow up podcast about a book that he wrote called Wheat Belly. And in that book we talked about why you might not be eating the same kind of wheat that your ancestors ate and whether wheat bread is really better than white bread or if wheat is ever okay to eat, good substitutes and alternatives for wheat. And that was a pretty fun episode and I'm going to link that one for you in the show notes if you want to go back and listen to it. But he actually just wrote a relatively new book called Super Gut. And Super Gut was just absolutely great because I get a lot of these gut books and digestion books and they seem to all just kind of be an echo chamber. This one was totally different and went into some really cool specific microbes in your gut. How to eliminate bad bacteria, how to bring back missing good bacteria, even includes this super simple four week plan that you can follow. I took a bunch of the stuff that I learned in that book because I would say if there's one kind of area in my life I struggle with, it's my gut. And it just absolutely transformed my digestion and I think my nutrient assimilation, but then also a lot of other things related to the gut brain axis like sleep and energy. And so that book was really, really great for me. I wanted to get the author of it on today's show to talk about it. But I should tell you, one other book this guy wrote that I think you would also really, really enjoy is a book called Undoctored, which as the name implied, kind of goes into how to navigate some of the failures and faults of our modern and how to undoctor yourself, so to speak, or at least connect yourself with the right kind of physician. So if you haven't guessed already, My guest is Dr. William Davis. Dr. William Davis, who is not only, as you may have already guessed, also a prolific author, but he practices what he preaches. I think on our last podcast he told me he hasn't had a bagel or ciabatta or a pretzel in years. And I also know that he consumes a lot of the yogurt that we're going to talk about on today's show and that I've been enjoying every day since I read his book. So the shownotes are going to be@BenGreen BenGreenfieldLife.com Supergut that's BenGreenfieldLife.com SuperGut which is also the name of Dr. Davis book, which is on Amazon now. And I'll link that in the show notes as well. Dr. Davis, welcome back to the show, man, for a three peat.

Thank you, Ben. Thanks for the invitation. Always glad to be back.

Yeah. So I mean, gosh, like I mentioned when I was introducing you, this book is a lot different than a lot of other digestion books that I've read and seems to be focused on specific key bacteria and strains that have a pretty significant impact not only on the gut, but also on things like oxygen, oxytocin and brain health and anti aging and mental clarity and weight loss and sleep. So this might be kind of an involved question that could go all over the place. But I'm curious, in terms of your methods for repairing and for nourishing the gut, they seem a bit different than the average gastroenterologist or nutritionist. I'm just curious if you would describe what your overall process is when you're dealing with somebody who's got gut issues. What you're actually looking at, as you.

Well know, Ben, the conventional world essentially ignores the microbiome, right? They throw these atom bombs called antibiotics into your microbiome and just tell you, oh, you have diarrhea for a couple of weeks, you'll get over it and say nothing about how to rebuild a microbiome which is, as you know, essential. It's critical for long term health. So I think if we believe the evidence that's come out of Stanford from the husband wife team of Justin and Erica Sonnenberg, they published a very important study about nine, ten months ago. And that was they showed that the one thing that really seems to restore a collection of healthy microbe is consumption of fermented foods. There's fermented vegetables, kefirs, kombucha, yogurts, just plain old fermented vegetables because these nicrobes curiously, have very important species like pediacoccus pentaceous and Leuconosthodoc mesenterides and a bunch of others. But interestingly, they're not the microbes that take up long term residence. They somehow set the stage to allow other healthy microbes to. To stay and persist. No one knows why or how that happens. In other words, if you plant tomato seeds in your garden, you don't get cucumbers, you get tomatoes. So how in the world can you implant these microbes from fermented foods, yet get a whole range of other microbes? So it's not quite clear if they're quiescent or latent or somehow the fermented microbes make you more receptive to the microbes you obtain from other people, contact with other people, or the environment. Nobody knows. But that's become this thing, Ben, that we've all forgotten because of the invention of home refrigeration in the 1920s, when Fritz Bear discovered the use of freon as a refrigerant and it made home refrigeration affordable. And we all forgot that allowing food to undergo this controlled rotting process called fermentation was actually a great thing for human health.

Obviously, a lot of people are kind of familiar with the idea that fermented foods are a really good way to restore bacterial balance to the gut. I think there might be some scenarios where it seems to actually cause a little bit more bloating and gas in people who have things like small intestine bacterial overgrowth, or might need to get rid of some of those foods for a short period of time. But I might want to talk with you about that a little bit later on. But there's one microbe in particular that I was actually, before I started doing the yogurt from your book, I was doing a lot of the sauerkraut that my wife makes, fermented cabbage, some of these fermented condiments, taking a probiotic, et cetera. And based on the recommendations from your book, I looked at my. In my case, it was viome. I know there's other gut tests out there, like gutzoomer or thrive. And I looked specifically at what you call the lost microbe, based on what I understand from your book, like the most important microbe, and that's L Ruderi R E U T E R I L rudai and my levels were super duper low, which concerned me. Based on everything I learned in your book about how beneficial this microbe is, I started doing the yogurt from your book. And within about eight weeks, my reuterie levels were fine. They were actually on the high end of the reference range. And so based on that, I would love to hear you describe a little bit more about what Rooter Eye is and why you focus on it so much in your book and in your practice.

Sure, Ben. I'm shocked even today, after several years of dealing with this one microbe, what this thing is capable of doing. So it's a microbe. Microbe, along with many others that is uniquely susceptible to common antibiotics. So if you took, for instance, amoxicillin 20 years ago, say for an upper respiratory infection or for a urinary tract infection, those common antibiotics like penicillin, amoxicillin, ampicillin, and many others kill off these healthy microbes. Now, these healthy microbes were doing things for us. They were performing very vital functions for human health, but we've lost them. So if you and I went to, say, New guinea, the jungles of the interior of New guinea, and were to draw the blood of or examine the stool, I should say of people who've been living these indigenous populations that hunt, gather, don't bathe very much and kill animals and eat and gather tubers and roots. These people all have Lactobacillus reuteri. If we were to sequence the microbiome of wild animals like raccoons, squirrels, chipmunks, they all have Lactobacillus rotori. If we were to sequence the microbiome of modern people, almost nobody has it anymore because of this unique susceptibility to common antibiotics. So we've lost this microbe. But this microbe is responsible for one taking up residence in the entire GI tract, which is unique, by the way, Ben, not just colon, but the 24ft of small intestine and the stomach. And it sends a signal via the myotic enteric nervous system, the nervous system of the intestinal tract, via the vagus nerve to the brain, hypothalamus and pituitary to release the hormone oxytocin. So a lot of your listeners will recognize the hormone oxytocin because it's the hormone of love and empathy. People say things like, pet your dog or hug your spouse. You get a little surge in oxytocin.

Or don't go negotiate for a used car when you've got high levels of oxytocin because you trust everybody, right?

That's right. So. Well, this is a way to increase the endogenous, the internal production of oxytocin around the clock. Not just a moment when you hug somebody. So you get this surge in oxytocin. And so when people do this, they restore this microbe, Lactobacillus rotori. You get this surge in oxytocin and people will say things like, I feel closer to my partner. I love my children even more than I did before. I like my co workers better. They are less annoying to me. And my favorite, I understand the opinions of other people even when I disagree. Isn't that something? But beyond that, there's now a. It's clear that oxytocin is not just the hormone of love and empathy. It's important, but there's more to it. There's an increase in REM sleep, deeper sleep. There's a restoration of youthful muscle and strength because we lose muscle and strength as we age. There's preservation of bone density. There's an acceleration of healing. There's a suppression of appetite for snacking, for junk foods. There's an increase in libido. There's an increase in testosterone production in the testicles. The thing that cracks me up, Ben. So I tell people all this and they say, we don't really care about the empathy. We don't really care about the restoration of youthful muscle or deeper sleep. And ladies all say this with rare exceptions. We just want smoother skin. Because one of the effects of oxytocin is to boost the dermal production of collagen. So there's a marked increase in collagen, and people start to lose their skin wrinkles within a few weeks. It's quite a dramatic effect. So ladies will beat the door down. I tell ladies, do this, you'll start to lose your wrinkles in a few weeks. You'll have moister skin. But the little secret is they'll be better human beings. Also, they'll be better able to get along with people. They'll be physiologically healthier, deeper sleep, more restorative sleep, healing is accelerated, bone density, et cetera.

Sadly, humans are not motivated by issues like empathy, but they are motivated by issues like smooth skin.

Yeah. And what's interesting was I think that there was an anti cancer study. I believe in your book you talked about the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that was looking at the anti cancer effects of El Reuteri. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that's what initially kind of piqued your interest in El Reuteri. But somewhere in your book, I recall, you reached out to them and they told you that you can't. You can buy it it's not inexpensive. There's a company called Biogaia. You can get Amazon, but I mean, it's expensive bacterial strain to just buy and consume. But apparently when you contacted Biogaia, they told you that you couldn't make yogurt with it, that they tried and it doesn't work. Which of course, I mean, for me, anytime I hear something like that, it's a little bit of a challenge. Sounds like maybe the same thing for you. So what'd you do from there once you discovered El Rudai and they told you that you couldn't actually make yogurt out of it?

Yeah, Ben, it was an odd episode. I call these people who've done a very good job by the way of validating the effects of this microbe in infants. They have numerous studies showing, for instance, that by getting Lactobacillus reuterite, these two strains in a commercial product called Gastrus G A s T R U s that babies have less colic, less fussiness, less regurgitation of formula or breast milk. So some interesting effects in babies. When I told them, hey, were you aware of these extremely elegant studies from MIT published between 2013 and 2017, showing all these incredible effects? What surprised me, Ben, was the indifference I kept. So, so what? Wait a minute. Even the MIT people said, these are potentially life changing discoveries, do with it what you will, which surprised me. And so, but the biogaia people just weren't interested. And they even told me, as you said, you can't make yogurt. I said, I have made yogurt. I've made dozens of batches and it's rich and thick and you can. What they're talking about is if you were to make yogurt in a factory, when you're commercially producing things, production time is key, right? If it takes an hour to make a product or three days to make a product, you'll make more money if you make it in an hour. Well, commercial yogurt production is typically a four hour process. Now microbes, there's no, of course, male and female, there's no mommy and daddy microbes, they undergo something called asexual reproduction, where a microbe becomes.

Sounds like fun, right?

Two becomes four. So rotary requires about three hours to double itself. So if you ferment in a factory for four hours, you've got nothing. So I ferment using that simple logic, Ben.

Just.

Just nothing but simple logic. If you allow it to double 12 times, you get this huge increase. It's like that old kid's Riddle. Which would you rather have? A million dollars or penny that doubles every day for 30 days? Kids always say, I'll take the million dollars, not recognizing that the penny will become over five and a half million dollars. But if you look at the growth of that money, the big increases in money don't occur till about day 27, 28, 29. Same thing with microbial reproduction. You don't get when it's doubling every three hours, you don't get really big numbers till about hour 33. In other words, four hours is absurd, which is great.

And by the way, when I made yogurt in the past, before I learned your technique, I would go for about 12 hours. I thought I was doing myself a pretty good service because I'd see a lot of recipes for four hours. I'd go as long as 12 hours, keep going. But you went above and beyond that.

So we perform flow cytometry on the yogurts many times, and we get something like 250, 260 billion counts of bacteria per half cup serving. So we're essentially increasing the number of microbes from the starting probiotic about 1000 fold. That's probably part of the reason. Another thing I don't know, Ben, is I started with those Biogaia strains. And you know, these strains are just a pain in the ass. The DSM 17938?

Yeah, they're like C3PO R2D. Two names, right?

You and I don't make this shit up. That's what people do, right? So these two strains from Bio Gaia. Now, I want to know, though, there's over 100 strains of Rotori. Are there strains better at this than other strains? So can I tell you a very embarrassing story? I made yogurt with another strain I got from a microbiologist. I call it the CRESH07. That's not the real name. I just call it that because the guy who gave it to me, his name is Suresh, he's an Indian guy, and he gives me this microbe that super high, counts like 600 billion per gram, which is extraordinary. I've never seen a microbe that kind of number potency. I made yogurt with it. It was nothing special. Tasted the same, smelled the same, et cetera. I had that yogurt that night, Ben. I had this very unusual dream. I dreamt that I met this woman and I saw her in exquisite detail. I saw her hair color, I saw her eye color, facial features. I felt overwhelming love and affection for this imaginary woman. She introduces herself to me. First and last name, which I've never had happen before. I wake up. And the most unusual thing of all was this intoxicating level of love and affection for this imaginary woman, a feeling I've not had for a real person in a long time, persisted well into the day. In other words, there's a way to, I think, turn on feelings of intense love and affection at will, even for a person who's not really there. I've not been able to recreate that, but I want to find a formula, because imagine you could do that. Turn on or turn off intense love and affection at will by some combination of rotori, oxytocin and something else. I've not been. I've done all kinds of things to find out what the missing piece was. I boosted serotonin, epinephrine and the cannabinoids. You name it, I've tried it. I've not been able. But it was such an intoxicating high of love and affection. Now, I did ask, by the way. So every Wednesday night I do this thing with some of my followers. About 80 of them show up. Every Wednesday night we talk for like two hours. We talk about rotary and other microbes and vitamin D and health and diet and that kind of stuff. Stuff I said to this group, I said, hey, guys, let me tell you about this dream I had. It's a little embarrassing, but has anybody else had this feeling? A bunch of people raised their hands and said, yes. Not quite like that, though. But I've had a marked increase in libido so much and erotic content of dreams so much that I've had to back down on consuming the yogurt every second or every third day.

I didn't back off. I swear by it for dessert. I actually have it for dessert. I put a little bit of stevia in to sweeten it up. I toss a few prunes in there. That's what I have in the evening instead of ice cream. I know that MIT did research and found that that strain does increase testosterone, especially in guys like the Leydig cells in the testes that produce testosterone and growth hormone, which could impact deep sleep. And then if you have high levels of oxytocin simultaneous to deep sleep and elevated testosterone, I could see the mechanism of action. But it's super interesting. I mean, literally, just to use the slang term, it's almost like wet dream type of content when you consume this stuff before you go to bed at night.

Right now, one of my interests, Ben, is to optimize this whole thing. And so we have a mouse trial, for instance, to assess whether there are differences among various strains. Are some strains better at this than other strains? I suspect there are differences because it's a very complex mechanism that the MIT people partially worked out, by which Rotori triggers the release of oxytocin, has all these varied effects on numerous organs. Well, how does this work? Well, they worked out a lot of the detail. Not all, but a lot of the details. But I want to know, can you. And I choose microbial strain of Rotori that is better at this and thereby optimize effects like love and empathy, smoothing of skin, increased muscle and strength, preservation of bone density, acceleration of healing. And of course, Ben, this is just one microbe. This is one stinking microbe that does all this crazy. So you got to wonder, are there other microbes like Rotori that we don't have and we've lost because of antibiotics and other factors that, when replaced, yield extraordinary effects? You know, I don't think, Ben, I wouldn't have said this even a few weeks ago, but I think the world of microbiome technology will eclipse the world of pharmaceuticals. And I'm talking about 10 or 20 years, not tomorrow, but in coming years. I think that's how powerful some of these microbiome strategies can be.

Yeah, it's pretty cool. I mean, you know, it kind of goes hand in hand with, I think, a lot of the research and the interest right now in the mycorrhizal network, like the largest living organism on the planet. And, you know, there's movies like fantastic fungi that have come out just about how integral these fungal networks are, these mycorrhizal networks are to the health of the planet and the health of the human beings living on them. You. You kind of say the same thing for the microbiome strains that are just threaded through each one of us human beings. The vast importance of them and the complexity of them, I think, has only begun to be studied. I'm sure that people, though, they're probably on their edge of their seats thinking about this yogurt, because it's amazing. And so you've probably done this a billion times before, but can you explain how you actually make it? What do you get and how do you make it?

So I started with those two biogaia strains, as you point out, but more recently, I've used other strains. Yogurt with eight different strains of Rotori. And my, forgive me, my gut sense, my anecdotal sense, is that the biogaia strains for this aspect. There may be differences in other ways, like for babies, but for this effect, the oxytocin effect, my anecdotal sense is that there are other strains that do this just as well, perhaps better. We'll find that out by fall of this year when we finish our first round of testing with mice. Likewise, are there ways to amplify the effect? Can we combine, say Reuteri with other factors in health and life and diet that amplify the effect and accelerate, say, restoration of muscle or deeper sleep or whatever? So I started with the biogaia strains, but you can start with other rotary strains. The only strain I would not use is the 30242. I'm sorry about these strain designate. They're not mine, but. But the 30242 strain, also called UAL RE16 that is made by the former UAS company in Madison, Wisconsin. You know, people told me years ago, oh, Wisconsin is the seat of probiotic manufacturer. I said, what? No way.

Really?

Yeah, they're right. I have several world class, some of the largest probiotic manufacturers within an hour of my house, which surprised the heck out of me. And I've gotten to know these people, these microbiologists and scientists, and it's becoming very, very interesting place to be. Surprisingly otherwise, a kind of boring place. But it's proven to be from a microbiome standpoint, very interesting. But you get a Rotori strain, just not the 30242. And the reason why I say don't use that one. One of the other aspects of Rotori is that because it takes up resins in the entire GI tract and it produces what are called bactericins, natural antibiotics effective against stool microbes, the species of Sibo, like E. Coli and Klebsiella. In other words, I speculate, it's hard to prove that the loss of rotter eye and some other microbes due to antibiotics and other factors is the reason why we now have what I think is the world's worst epidemic of disease ever in the history of man on this planet, which is sibo, as you point out, small intestinal bacterial overgrowth. Ben, I would have said to you three years ago if you said to me, hey, I think SIBO is epidemic. I said, ben, you're nuts. No way. No way. Yeah way. Because one of the things that really changed my mind was the availability of the air device, the AIRE device, it's a consumer device. You test it in the comfort of your kitchen or living room and you blow into it and it registers hydrogen gas.

It's almost like a home test for sibo. You were telling me about that. I write about it in your book. I never actually wound up getting one. But. But people who have tested for small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, they've no doubt done the long involved. I think the gold standard one out there right now is the tri test. But I don't think a lot of people realize about this aerofit that you can literally just get and test in the comfort of your own home. Again, I'm talking about it. I haven't used it yet. I made a note to myself, I have to write your book to get it. And I didn't yet. But it works pretty well for testing sibo.

It works pretty well. It's a wonderful situation, Ben, where it's superior to the conventional test done in a clinical laboratory. Because when you do it in a clinical laboratory, they capture your breath in a vial, which is very imperfect, it's not uncommon. The vial sits on the counter before it's put through testing for hours to days. Hydrogen is a very small molecule and it escapes very readily. So you leave it on the counter, it's going to lead to false negatives. With the air device, it immediately detects hydrogen gas. Now, the problem with the device is the guy who invented it. Now, my friend, Dr. Angus Short, he's a PhD engineer in Dublin, Ireland. He invented it because his then fiance, now wife, had irritable bowel syndrome, IBS and was told to go on a low FODMAPS diet, I.e. low fiber, low sugar diet, to reduce her bloating and diarrhea. So she does it, but he sees how difficult it is and she's getting tripped up all the time. So he invents this device for his fiance to test for hydrogen gas when she makes a mistake in diet and eats something with fiber. Sure. So he releases the device in 2018 as a device for people with IBS on a low fodmaps diet. So I get a hold of it, I call him up, I say, angus, that's not what this is. I'm telling the inventor, Ben, this is. This is a mapping device. It's a mapping device to tell you where microbes are living in. The GI tract is brilliant. Even though he's not a doc, he's an engineer. So we can't blame the poor guy. And he's a good guy. And they're changing the course of the company because of this. It is a mapping device. So it all is based on how soon after consuming something that microbes can metabolize, how soon after you consume it, you yield hydrogen gas. And it tells you where microbes are living. What surprised me, Ben, was of the thousands of people I've persuaded to do this, how many test positive? In fact, it's the exception who tests negative. Now, you might say, well, maybe the test or the device is flawed. But I've seen this now happen many, many hundreds of times. People say, you know what? I hit a weight loss plateau. I went wheat and grain free and low carb. I lost 73 pounds, but I have 40 more to go and I'm stuck. Or I was a type 2 diabetic with hemoglobin A1C on insulin and drugs was 12.4%, which is terrible. You're heading quickly towards kidney failure, blindness and amputations. They go on this wheat, grain free, low carb lifestyle, nutrients that address insulin resistance like vitamin D and magnesium, and they drop their hemoglobin A1C, say to 6.1%. So dramatically off drugs, by the way, Ben, off drugs. But they're stuck at 6.1%. And as you know, ideal is about 5.0 or less. That's where all excess risk for such nasty things as cardiovascular death go away. They address their SIBO as evidenced by the positive H2 breath by the air and it finally drops to 4.9%. Something like that. In other words, I saw residual health problems finally resolve with the identification and then management of sibo. Big effects, Ben. Big effects.

This strain that you're starting off with, I think that biogaistrain specific, you can still get it on Amazon, right?

You can. By the end of this year, I'll know better. And I can say, hey, Ben, we're only testing five strains at a time because each round costs about $70,000. So we're going to do it in batches. But over time, we'll test strain after strain after strain. So in time I'll be able to say, ben, okay, here are the, whatever, three strains that are best at this, that they provoke the largest rise in oxytocin. And there's a parallel biomarker that also indicates effectiveness, which is interleukin 10il10. So I'll know better in coming months if there's a better way to do this. Until that happens, the biogaia strains are a good source. There's another small company called Cutting Edge Cultures. They have something they call LR Superfood. And that's when I've made lots of yogurts with that's the one that gave me that crazy dream, what I call the love dream. I think that may be. It may be as good, perhaps superior for this effect.

Yeah. Okay. Okay, got it. So you get this strain and what do you do with it? Once it comes in a box to your doorstep, you don't just eat it because obviously you're gonna burn through it pretty quick. If you just eat it. Then you make the yogurt out of it. So what do you do to make the yogurt?

You need roughly 2 billion counts to reliably generate a yogurt. So the biogai gastros for instance, comes as hard tap. And there's only 100 million microbes per tablet.

100 million, you said. How many do you actually want?

More like 2 billion.

Okay, so a lot more than what you're going to get in a tablet.

Uh huh. So there's two strains, 100 million each. So 200 million. So what I've done, and this is just trial and error, Ben, crush 10 tablets with a mortar and pestle or a heavy jar, glass or something in a bag each. So pulverize it down to close to a powder, put it in a bowl. I use organic half and half. So I think you and I reject this ridiculous notion of cutting fat and saturated fat. So I use organic half and half. And you can do this by the way with non dairy also.

Yeah, coconut milk, by the way works because I saw, I think I came across. There was a gal who wrote an article at Cultured Food Life. I think it was like culturedfoodlife.com she talked about coconut milk. Yeah, yeah. And she did a test on the bacterial count and it was still just like through the roof using coconut milk. So I've personally used goat milk just from our goats here at home. And I've used coconut milk. And I'm usually kind of a non dairy guy, but I can do fine with a fermented goat milk yogurt. I just go back and forth. I don't care whether it's coconut milk or goat milk. These days it's goat milk. Because as you might allude to as you're going through this yogurt making process, you'll use one batch to just start the next batch of yogurt. And so right now I'm just going through a batch that's been made for. With goat milk.

Exactly. You only have to buy the microbial source like the gastrous product once, never have to buy it again because you can make subsequent batches from Some of the prior batch. So the first batch crushed the tablets. I had a little bit of organic half and half. And the half and half can't have additives like xanthan gum or gel and gum because it screws up the process. So just plain old dairy. Add a little bit, couple tablespoons to make a slurry. Add some prebiotic fiber. I add some inulin or raw potato starch. It generates a thicker, richer end result because you're feeding the microbes, like even cow manure to your tomatoes.

Yeah, yeah. And the prebiotics, those are super easy to come by. Like you mentioned inulin, chicory root. There's companies like, there's one bio optimizers, they have like this gut guardian type of powder and that's got prebiotics in it. Sometimes I'll put a scoop of that. I'm not too picky on which fiber strain I use.

Yeah, it usually doesn't make a difference. Only occasionally with certain species do they make a difference. That is, some species prefer different prebiotic. But with Rotori, it's pretty. It'll pretty much eat anything. Give it. And then we ferment for 36 hours like we talked about. 12 doublings. And the first batch is typically curds and whey. It separates solids and liquids. It's the subsequent batches made from some of that first batch that gives you much more uniform. It's not the best tasting yogurt if you're doing this just for taste. We're not doing this for taste. Right. We're doing this for biological effects. But if you're doing it just for taste, Lactobacillus gasseri is a much more tasty yogurt. Lactobacillus brevis, very tasty yogurt. Some of the mixed microbes you get from commercial probiotics, like the Synbiotic365, makes a very delicious yogurt. Another commercial product called Sugar Shift makes. In other words, if this is just for aesthetics or for taste, you can do better than Rotor Eye. But the Rotor Eye stands apart for its biology.

Dr. And honestly, I just put vanilla stevia in it afterwards. So I make it, I keep it plain. But if I'm going to make it up for dessert, for example, if I'll take a little bit and I'll put it in the freezer before dinner so I get more a frozen yogurt, I can put a little bit of vanilla stevia in there or stir some cacao powder into it. So you can obviously work with it. I Wouldn't do that before you do the fermentation, but after you do the fermentation, if you don't mess around with the flavor, it's not that hard. Same as you would do with ice cream or. Or yogurt. Now, one quick step on the fermentation. So you fermented for 36 hours. What do you like to use for your fermentation? Like a food dehydrator, an oven? Do you choose a specific temperature or how do you do it?

I've been using a sous vide. Sous vide? Slow meat cooker.

Oh, really?

You can use. Yeah.

Wait, how are you doing in a sous vide? Because that's like a water bath. Are you putting it in a container and then putting it into the water bath?

Yeah, and just like a glass bowl covered with some Saran Wrap.

That's a good idea.

So Rotori. And this is true for most lactobacilli, they prefer human body temperature. They're adapted to mammalian life, and so they like the temperature of most mammals, which is about 97 degrees, 98 degrees Fahrenheit. So you need a device that keeps it roughly in that temperature. It could be a sous vide. Could be, as you point out, a dehydrator. That's a great one. Could be a yogurt maker, could be an instant pot. But I used to do it in my oven, just by turning on the oven for a minute or so, let it warm up to a tropical temperature, and then do that every four hours or so. But it confused people. Ben. Even my sister calls me up. She says, bill, I made yogurt and I baked it for 30 minutes at 300 degrees, and it didn't turn out. I said, don't bake it.

Yeah.

So it confused a lot of people. So I stopped talking about using the oven.

So you could just put it in a sous vide water bath at like 96 to 99 degrees around in there, and then just let it sit for 36 hours in that. A glass container?

Yeah. Different microbes prefer different temperatures, but most lactobacilli and most bifidobacteria prefer human body temperature. And then there are some, like, the spore formers, like Bacillus coagulans, which, by the way, also makes a delicious yogurt. But that microbe likes 115 to 122 degrees Fahrenheit. To generate a yogurt, I like to make sparkling juices with Saccharomyces boulardii, which is a fungus. So I take a Commercial probiotic, it's called floristore in the U.S. take one capsule, empty it into any juice, any volume doesn't matter. Quart gallon doesn't make a difference. Thicker juices do better, like apple cider, say, or I use a mango passion fruit juice. Just make sure there's no preservatives like potassium sorbate or sodium benzoate, because those are antimicrobial nutrients. They're not good for it anyway. So juice that's pure juice, empty one capsule, fluorostor, agitate a little bit and then cover it very lightly because you'll see by 24 hours, the thing is bubbling like mad men like a cauldron. There's so much carbon dioxide being produced and let it go for another 20. So total of 48 hours. So it starts with a lot of sugar, of course, but the sugar content's cut by half by fermentation and it's filled with high counts of Saccharomyces boulardi, which is one of the most important things people can do to help rebuild a healthy microbiome and prevent a lot of the adverse effects of antibiotics. If you have to take an antibiotic for whatever reason, and it's delicious, you get sparkling apple cider or sparkling grape juice, or sparkling mango passion fruit juice. Whatever juice you use, it's delicious, it's fun as heck, and it's a vivid illustration just how vigorous this process of fermentation can be.

Yeah. The other thing I should note too, by the way, is as far as the texture back to the yogurt, as far as the texture of the yogurt goes, I don't know if you do this, but if you preheat the milk, if you get up to about 180 degrees Fahrenheit and then you preheat it and just hold that temperature for around 20 to 30 minutes on the stovetop and then let it cool back down. You let the milk cool back down and then you add your inulin powder or your fiber, and then you add your probiotic tablets. Put the lid on and then do your 36 hour fermentation, I think you get a little bit better texture, like a little bit thicker and creamier yogurt. If you preheat the milk and then you just got to make sure you let it cool down enough to where it's not going to kill off the bacteria once you put the bacteria in there. And then if you're using coconut milk, you can actually, when you're doing your fermentation, you can add a Little bit of gelatin to it or agar, agar or tapioca flour also works. And if you add that in before the yogurt making process, like before you heat it up, just stir all that in there along with your starter culture and everything. It actually thickens up the plant based milk a little bit better.

Yeah, great points. The coconut milk is a little fussier. You have to do things like add some kind of a thickener. I use guar gum.

Okay.

Yeah, a little bit like 2/3, 3/4 of a teaspoon. I also find it helps to. Once you've added the guar gum, as you point out, heat it, preheat, let it cool because high temperatures will kill your microbes. But add the guar gum, add your prebiotic fiber, maybe add some sugar because there's no lactose in coconut milk. And then I hit it with a blender, stick blender for about a minute and it really thickens up. Then add your microbes. You don't want to blend microbes because it kills the microbes. And then you get a very nice end result. That doesn't separate because if you don't use the guar gum or gelatin or other thickener and don't blend, it tends to separate into the oil.

I've had a little bit of clumpy before and I'll shake the jar when it finishes up. I'll have to have a guy who lives at my house during the day and makes me feel like less than a man. He does all my lawn mowing in my yard chores. His name's Steve. But I've actually started to have him start to make the yogurt for me. So I'll have to have him listen to this episode now. Hello Steve, if you're listening and implement a few of these little tips that we're going through. And also if you're listening to this podcast, if you go to the shownotes@bengreenfieldlife.com I'll put a link to some of the recipes and also some of the ingredients there if you want to start to make this stuff. So a few logistical questions here. Dr. Davis, we established that if you eat it before bed, it seems to cause some pretty cool things to happen. Not just deep sleep, but also erotic dreams. Just feeling really, really well rested when you wake up. Would you say there's other good times of day to consume this yogurt? Or is before bed kind of like the best time?

Because it's not a drug, of course, or supplements, it's a Microbe that takes up residence. So timing is not that important. But some people do report excessive slee sleepiness if they consume it during the day. So there must be some kind of a upfront surge in oxytocin. So some people do prefer like to eat it as a dessert after dinner or something like that. But one thing to know is that if you eat the yogurt, regardless of time, it does take up presence, not for a long time, but for a few days. And so if you eat yogurt on Monday, you're still having some of that boost in oxytocin, even by Wednesday or even Thursday. Now, now this hints at a very fundamental area of ignorance about microbes and the microbiome. If your mom gave you Rotori and provided you're not exposed to antibiotics, you'd have ROTORI for a lifetime. But we get it this way, it only persists for days, maybe weeks at most. Why would that be? I think the best theory is that microbes just like humans, so you and I don't live in isolation. We live with our partners, our children, our families, our communities, et cetera. Microbes are the same way. They live in communities, collaborative communities. And if you only restore one, it's unlikely to persist long term. So I think in future, Ben, we won't say get Rotori yogurt, we'll say something like this, get Rotori and these seven other or whatever microbes and they'll take up long term residence. Maybe we can get the yogurt once in a great while.

One of your recipes, I think is like a SIBO recipe modification for the yogurt. Don't you add extra strains into the SIBO version?

Yeah, as you know, SIBO management1 is being ignored by most gastroenterologists. Or they say things like, did you consult Dr. Google again, Ben? Or there's nothing wrong with you. I didn't see anything with your colonoscopy or some other BS answer. And so I'm a big fan, as you know, of giving people tools to manage health on their own. Because healthcare, you know, this healthcare is a $3 trillion disaster. It's ridiculous. It doesn't help people. There are times and places where healthcare is necessary. But if you just want to be healthy, I mean, just take the ROTORI issue and go to your doctors. Hey, Doc, I'm going to restore Lactobacillus rotori because I believe it boosts oxytocin and thereby yields a whole myriad range of effects. What do you think? I don't know. They'll have no idea, because their specialty, the doctor's specialty, is not health. It's the business of health care.

Yeah.

And so one of the things I did so you can take an antibiotic for sibo. So just for your listeners who are unfamiliar. So sibo, small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, a situation in which mostly stool species that are supposed to stay in the colon have instead ascended up into the small bowel, the 24ft of small bowel. So it adds up to 30ft. Trillions of microbes. Microbes only live for a few hours, so there's huge turnover. Trillions of microbes. When they die, some of their breakdown products of their cell walls enter the bloodstream, the very important process called endotoxemia. But this is the process, by the way, finally validated by a Belgian group in 2007, that now tells us how microbes in the GI tract, especially in the small bowel, can be exported and experienced as skin rashes like rosacea or psoriasis, or as brain effects like depression or anxiety or Parkinson's disease, or as joint muscle effects like fibromyalgia, rheumatoid arthritis. So been a huge shift in the way we think about disease in light of what's been discovered in the microbiome. But if you want to get rid of sibo, you could take an antibiotic. Well, you know, antibiotics got us here, right. Caused a lot of the sibo. So I'm reluctant to advise antibiotics.

Although admittedly, small amounts of rifaximin, like short course rifaximin, seems to work a little bit.

It.

Like, I had sibo and I did rifaximin, but then I started into this yogurt, like, right away, and that 1, 2 combo seemed to help. I think rifaximin, that's the one I've seen that seems to have decent evidence behind it. But you obviously know way more about this than I do.

Well, I asked a different question. I asked, what if you or I had sibo, your listeners had sibo, and you took a commercial probiotic? Would the SIBO go away? No, you might have less bloating, but you still have 30ft of microbes inhabit an entire GI tract. So I asked different questions. I asked these questions. What if we chose microbes that colonize the upper GI tract? That's where SIBO occurs. And what if we chose microbes that produce bactericums, that is natural antibiotics effective against the species of sibo? So I chose three. I chose our friend Lactobacillus gasseri, which colonized the upper GI tract produces up to four bacterias. And it's so effective bench, that my microbiologist friends say they sometimes use Rotorite to clean their fermentation vats of contaminants. I chose a strain of lactobacillus gasseri, the BNR17 strain, which likewise colonizes the upper GI tract and produces up to seven bactericums. And then I chose a strain of bacillus coagulans, the GBI36086 strain, the so called Gnedin strain. And I co ferment them as yogurt. So extended fermentation to get hundreds of billions of bacteria. Ben, I've only done this about 35 people, but so far 90% have converted to negative H2 hydrogen breath testing. So we will do, in collaboration with Angus Short, a small clinical trial to validate this and see if this is really true. So it's just anecdote. But Ben, if I said the treatment is to remove your colon.

Or exploratory laparotomy, well, you better be damn certain you need it. But what if the solution is something as benign and familiar as yogurt? Why not do it? Right? Yeah, so far it's working.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, maybe you should have named the book Super Butt.

Sorry.

So anyways, the sibo version of it is kind of like the version we just described.

Thanks.

You just add the. In addition to Lactobacillus reuteri, you're then adding the Lactobacillus gasseri and the Bacillus coagulans. So you're getting these bacteriosomes that help to kill off the sibo and then also colonize the upper GI tract. And by the way, I know that recipe is around somewhere, certainly in your book. And I'll link to everything on kind of like the sibo version of the yogurt as well. And similar to the other yogurt, I mean this does not have to be a chore. You can put chocolate in it and stevia and freeze it and have chocolate frozen yogurt after dinner. Or you can put a little bit. It goes great with obviously because it's creamy like Indian foods and curries and things like that as well. I really like to put it on top of chicken and steak. I do a ton of stuff with the yogurt. And like you mentioned, you could do it with sous vide one. You could do it in the food dehydrator, you could do it in the oven. If you get the oven temp low enough and you can even get one of those fancy yogurt makers. I actually have one of those. My problem with it though is all the little glass containers that come with it, they're so small. It's just easier to use a bigger glass jar and do it all at once rather than doing it in all the tiny little yogurt jars from the standard yogurt maker. In terms of something I mentioned, using one yogurt batch from a batch you've already made to seed the next batch. Can you explain briefly how you actually go about doing that?

Yeah. So once you've made it from the microbial source, typically a probiotic, you can make future batches. I just use a couple tablespoons of either the curds, the solid or the whey, the liquid or some mix. I've actually gram stained, stained the whey and there's lots of microbes in the whey. So you can use the whey also. And some people just, they pour off the whey because whey has some issues despite its popularity as a, as a protein supplement. Whey also stimulates insulin and so it's got some issues. So a lot of people like to pour off the whey, the liquid part, or freeze it in an ice cube tray and use that as the start of your next batch of yogurt. So sometimes people make a is tougher than it is. It really should be stupid simple. It's really very, very easy. There's only a few hurdles that people should know about. One, choose a dairy. As you point out, you get a better result when you preheat. If it's not half and half or cream. If it's milk, whole milk you want to preheat, you get a better end result, thicker mouthfeel. But if you use like I do, organic half and half, it's got such great mouthfeel. You don't have to heat. You can doesn't hurt, but you don't have to. But you want to make sure there's nothing in it but dairy product. No carrageenan, no gel and gum, none of that business. If you've got a device that is preset, has a preset temperature, a lot of yogurt makers have preset temperatures, for instance, or instant pots. You want to run it for a couple hours with a water bath and see and put a thermometer in and validate the temperature. So one of the most common tripping points, people say, I use my yogurt maker and it didn't turn out, but they put a, thermometer in it, let it run and it shows like 100.

I thought of that. I always just kind of trusted it was at the right temperature. Okay, that's good to know.

You'd think so, right? But unfortunately not always true. And reuterite tends to die at about 108, 109 degrees Fahrenheit. So if your yogurt maker is running at 112, you're killing it off and you won't get it. So that's among the more common tripping points.

Okay, got it. There's obviously, as you alluded to, like this Saccharomyces boulardii, cultured juice that you make make. And that's almost like a sparkling kombucha type of beverage. It kind of makes me wonder. I'm just curious. Let's say I were your patient or some of your patient. They had gut issues and they had sibo and you've got them eating this yogurt and maybe doing some other things. I'm just curious what a sample day of eating or supplementation would look like. And I realize everybody's a little bit different, but for you, gold standard scenario for someone who really wanted to repair their gut, what kind of things would you have them doing besides eating the yogurt? Doing or avoiding?

I look at it like a garden, like a backyard garden. So if you're going to plant your little 10 by 10 plot, how do you do that? Well, you start by cleaning up the area. You pick out the weeds and stones and sticks. So you prepare the soil. Then you plant seeds like for cucumbers and zucchini. And then you water and fertilize it through growing season. The microbiome then is almost exactly the same. You prepare the soil, that is, you remove things that disrupt the microbiome, such as chlorinate drinking water, buy organic foods whenever possible so they don't have glyphosate and other herbicides and pesticides. Glyphosate is an antibiotic. It's an herbicide, yes, but it's also an antibiotic. Try to get off all prescription drugs like stomach acid blocking drugs, statin cholesterol drugs, which do nothing anyway. They're stupid nonsteroidal anti inflammatory drugs. Try to get off all the drugs you can because they have massive effects on disrupting your microbiome. And then plant seeds. Those seeds can be the best. Seeds are fermented foods, not commercial probiotics. People think that probiotics are a one stop shop for all solutions. They're not the Current crop of probiotics are very crude because they're haphazard collections. It's getting better, Ben. There are some companies who are smartening up, but there's still a lot of gimmickry in probiotics, like soil based organisms, the spore formers, there's double encapsulation, there's a bunch of gimmickry in probiotics, unfortunately, because the commercial market has become so overcrowded. But there are some good products out there that have science built into them. Like one of my friends is Dr. Raul Kenno. He's a microbiologist with a 40 year academic history and he created something I had no relationship with this company. It's a good guy, good product, good science. He made something called Sugar Shift. And it's a collection of microbes that collaborate. In other words, microbes talk to each other via metabolites. And this Sugar Shift collection of microbes that includes Leuconostoc mesenterides and strain of lactobisous plantarum and a bunch of other bifidobacteria acetylactoside, you put these things together and they consume glucose, sucrose and fructose in your gastrointestinal tract and thereby we did this in 20 people informal trial reduced blood sugar by about 10 milligrams per deciliter in non diabetics, which is huge in non diabetics by the way. The co founder of that company is called BiotaQuest, a woman named Martha Carlin. I love Ben, people with skin in the game. Her husband has Parkinson's disease and she's been on this quest to identify microbial solutions for Parkinson's disease. They had not yet performed the clinical trial trial but this collection of microbes that Raoul Kennel validated in an in vitro system to show that it collaborates well when it consumes those sugars in your GI tract. Not only does it reduce blood sugar, it also produces a sugar called mannitol which humans can consume but you can't digest. And mannitol has the unique capacity to cross the brain where experimental evidence not yet human shows that it dissolves the alpha synuclein. That's the stuff that accumulates in the brains of Parkinsonism. So anecdotally Martha is convinced that it has caused partial remission of her husband and several other people with Parkinson's disease with this curious mixture called Sugar Shift. But I think that's where the probiotic world is going, Ben. That is not just a haphazard collection of slap dash Microbes, by the way.

Just a quick interruption. I have a friend who I try to pass on interesting advice about Parkinson's to Do you recall the name of that probiotic strain that's helping to produce mannitol?

So it's a collection of strains. Okay, so it's got Leukonostoc mesenterides and Lactobacillus plantarum.

Is it marketed under a specific name?

Sugar shift.

Sugar shift. Okay, that's interesting because there's another one called Pendulum that I know is a probiotic that's being marketed right now. Now as based on a lot of the research on the microbiome relationship with glycemic variability as something to support blood sugar levels. But I was looking into it and apparently it helps to modulate dopamine levels via the microbiome in the gut and was suggested also as something that might be helpful for Parkinson's. This is the second time in the last month I've heard about this strategy. So I'll find this Sugar shift stuff and link to it in the show notes for people who want to check it out. I don't know if you have any opinions on this, but the one I, I currently use, the probiotic I currently use is the seed. It's the DSO1 daily symbiotic. I take about three of those a day and it seems pretty well formulated. I don't know if you've looked into that one at all, have you?

Yeah, but the thing I would do is break the outer capsule.

Oh really? Because I thought the outer capsule is what allows it to kind of reach through the end of the small intestine. Are you saying if you want to populate the upper GI tract though.

Yes, exactly. Okay, so the world's worst epidemic ever in the history of mankind. Sibo, you want microbes to populate the small bowel and so to double encapsulate to release in the colon. You've missed 24ft of small bowel and you won't get colonization by you might long term as bacteria ascend, but a much faster solution. So that's why I say I love the world bent of probiotics and microbes. But there's a lot of gimmickry and imprecise thinking. So the seed is one where they, I think they goofed. And Akkermansia, that's the active component of the pendulum product, they're charging a lot. When they first came out, they were charging I think $185 for a 30 day supply, which is extraordinary. But they were targeting the type 2 diabetes market. What they're not telling you is that 95% of us already have Akkermansia. And you can cause a bloom, a substantial bloom in Akkermansia, just by doing something like getting inulin fos, fructooligosaccharide, and the oleic acid of olive oil and other prebiotic fibers, and you cause Akkermansia to bloom. So to take Akkermansia, and by the way, I called the chief scientist at Pendulum. I said, how many Akkermansia are actually in the capsule? Oddly, it's not listed on the label. He says anywhere between 1 and 100 billion. In other words, they have not fully worked out the process. They coat it with a polysaccharide to prevent it from dying upon exposure to oxygen. But I'm a little bothered, Ben, when people do things just for profit and don't tell you the full story in that case, where they're charging people a ton of money for something that you really don't. That 95% of people. Now there are 5% of people who don't have Ackermann, and they may benefit by taking a supplemental Akkermansia source.

Yeah, it's interesting, too. I actually did. Gosh, I had, like, four hours of podcasting with Joel Green, the author of the book the Immunity Code, about certain human milk oligosaccharides and some different green and red fiber strains to naturally boost Akkermansia. So if people really want to geek out on Akkermansia, you and I probably don't have time now to get into everything, but go listen to that podcast with Joel Green, because we get deep into it. And then for the seed probiotic, what I might start doing with that then is I'll just maybe break open a couple capsules, but then keep a couple capsules intact. So I'm getting the best of both worlds. I might try out that sugar shift product you talked about as well. Back to that question about caring for someone with a compromised gut. Basically, you're saying, eliminate a lot of the antibiotics. Of course, introduce the fermented foods, particularly yogurt, and some of these other ferments that we talked about. Add in a good probiotic strain or a couple of good probiotic strains, and I know you've got an article on your website and you also talk to your book about. About how to navigate the world of probiotics. Anything else specifically that you would find to be big wins.

So, like we talked about, probiotics are helpful, but the Current crop are mostly not all that helpful. They do help a little bit. Probiotics, even of the worst sort, do increase mucus production for protection of your intestinal cells. They do compete with pathogens. They do produce metabolites like vitamin B12. So there are some benefits even to the poorest conceived probiotics.

I can't emphasize just how important fermented foods are. Those are extremely important. Probably the primary strategy, if we believe the evidence of Justin and Erica Sonnenberg from Stanford, it means consuming them several times per day. So I make it a habit and I tell people to do this, to consume a fermented food at every meal at least. And that seems to be really, really helpful. Now, one thing also note is this is not something you do for a week and you're done. This is something you do for a lifetime. One of the things we don't know, you know, this, that nobody really knows what a genuinely healthy microbiome should look like. Should it look like the microbiome of somebody living in the jungles of New guinea or the Yanomami in the Brazilian rainforest, or the people living in Eastern Africa, the Malawi or the Hadza or the Masa? Nobody knows because they're microbiomes, by the way, that is untainted by antibiotics and other factors. Modern factors are very different from ours, though oddly similar. Even though these populations are in different continents and separated by thousands of miles in oceans. So should we mimic them? But they're so different and so probably not. But what does it mean? What is a healthy micro? So that has not been sorted out. So we're kind of trending towards what we think is a healthy microbiome. You know, I remind myself that if you had Clostridium difficile enterocolitis, after a course of antibiotics, which is a terrible infection, pain, bleeding, diarrhea, you can die of it. Well, if you get the poop of somebody else and put it in your colon, it goes away.

You don't even have to put it in your colon. They make like oral fecal transplant pills now as well. Yeah, I know some people that use them. And then of course there's like the Taymount Clinic in Britain and some other places like in the Bahamas, you can go and get some, get the full on transplant. But yeah, I mean, that's kind of like taking out the big guns, so to speak. But man, I've seen some really good results with that as well, particularly for Clostridium. But I would say start with the yogurt, not with Putting somebody else's poop up your butt or down your mouth. And you'll probably be off to a pretty good start. And then of course, we'd be remiss. Not to mention the little things that I know you're aware of, Dr. Davis, like stress control, the gut brain connection, not exercising in the heat with a lot of food in your stomach, eating slowly and mindfully and in a parasympathetic state. There's a lot of things in terms of kind of sleep hygiene, gut and food hygiene that are important as well. But I think one of my main goals for doing this podcast with you was I basically wanted to make people hyper aware of this freaking fantastic yogurt and this little known strain, El Reuteri, and how important it is. So I would say that if you're listening in right now, definitely grab the book and definitely visit the shownotes@bengreenfieldlife.com Supergut where I'll link to more ingredients and different recipes like Chocolate Frozen yogurt and the Sibo yogurt. And then some best tips for making this yogurt at home, which will save you a lot of money because correct me If I'm wrong, Dr. Davis, nobody's making this commercial that you can buy, right?

No, it'd be tough thing to do because you're up against the Fayets, Stony Fields and Chobanis of the world, essentially make them as fast as possible with a shorter fermentation time. You can't compete with that.

Yeah, yeah. The kind of yogurt we all grew up on with the rotten fruit in the bottom. So I'll link to all that stuff in the show notes@bengreenfieldlife.com supergut and then just so you guys know, Dr. Davis has these other fantastic books like Wheat Belly and Undoctored. Whenever his publishing company sends me one of his books, I have a stack of books that typically just get shelved without reading. And then there's stack of books that get read and Dr. Davis's books always get read. So I can give those a thumbs up. And then the last thing is he has a podcast, if you guys want to check it out, called Defiant Health. You're still doing your podcast, right?

I am, Ben. Okay, yes.

All right, cool. So folks can check that out too. Kind of like a short easy podcast on a lot of the type of topics around the gut and beyond. So, Dr. Davis, once again, it's been a pleasure talking to you, your wealth and knowledge. I love your passion, I love what you bring to the world. So keep up the good work, man.

You too. Ben, Let me just add that I'm very grateful for what you do because we live in a world where you may have noticed that people like you and me are no longer welcome in major media because of the dominance of direct to consumer drug advertising. So you and I no longer have the freedom to speak our minds about health. So what you're doing is so critical, so important.

Well, thanks man. Man, thanks. I'm blushing. Or maybe it's just a yogurt. I don't know. Anyways though. So folks, until next time, I'm Ben Greenfield along with Dr. William Davis shownotes again are at BenGreenfieldLife.com supergut have an amazing week.

More than ever these days, people like you and me need a fresh, entertaining, well informed and often outside the box approach to discovery, discovering the health and happiness and hope that we all crave. So I hope I've been able to do that for you on this episode today. And if you liked it, or if you love what I'm up to, then please leave me a review on your preferred podcast listening channel, wherever that might be, and just find the Ben Greenfield Life episode. Say something nice. Thanks so much. Means a lot.