The New Probiotic Strain That Allows You To Eat Carbs Again, How GLP-1 Peptide Actually Works And Why It's Not Intended For Everyone

My name is Ben Greenfield, and on this episode of the Ben Greenfield Life podcast, you don't just have neurons in your brain, you actually also have neurons in your gut. And unlike the neurons in your brain, which is like you get what you get and when they die they're gone forever— we all know that you're not supposed to drink because once those neurons are gone you never get them back— unlike that, the neurons in your gut are constantly replenishing. So there's new neurons being generated all the time in your gut.

Faith, family, fitness, health, performance, nutrition, longevity, ancestral living, biohacking, and a whole lot more. Welcome to the show. Alright, folks. Well, my guest on today's show is Colleen Cutcliffe. Colleen Cutcliffe, say that 10 times fast. She has a ton of experience like over a couple decades managing and leading big teams in biotech, in pharma and academia. And she recently started this company called Pendulum Therapeutics. It's this, this probiotic and bacteria-based company that we're obviously going to talk a lot more about on today's show. She has a PhD in biochemistry and molecular biology from Johns Hopkins University, which means that she knows what she's talking about when it comes to all things biochemistry and biology. And this company Pendulum is a biotechnology company that she helped to found to kind of bring forth these really crazy new probiotics you've never heard of for things that go way beyond just say, I don't know, helping you to poop better or strengthening the immune system. So Colleen, I've been checking out your stuff lately. I'm intrigued. This whole concept of, I guess, what you might call the gut metabolism axis. So welcome to the show.

Thank you so much for having me.

I'm curious. I mean, I just want to jump right into some of the, some of the cool science on this. I think it was a few years ago. I was, um, reading a study, I believe it came out of Israel, and it was showing that people who ate— I think they were cookies and bananas— had varying responses in their blood sugar reaction to those arguably sweet and starchy foods based on what I understood was their gut microbiome, and they're even down to the, the probiotic balance in their gut. And I think some people had a big response, big blood sugar response. Some people had less of a blood sugar response, and they found out this was all due to their genetic diversity of the gut biome, I guess. And so I wanted to ask you if what you do kind of like stems from that study, or if you're aware of it, or your, your take on that whole thing.

Sure. Yeah, those studies coming out of the, the Weizmann Institute in Israel have been really foundational, and, and they continue to do amazing work in the field of the microbiome. And I think that, you know, at a high level, when we think about metabolism, we all sort of— it's been a little bit confounding. How does metabolism work? Why do some people appear to have faster metabolisms than other people? There's a genetic component we know about, you know, our human genetics. And I think what we haven't really— and there's certainly nutrition and exercise and all of these things that we've all kind of learned about and debated over the decades. But I think what was new that, you know, they were one of the first people to really come out with, and there have been several other groups also that have been really foundational in our understanding of the microbiome. What they realized was that there's this whole world of bacteria and viruses and fungi that live inside us in our guts, and they are literally digesting all the foods coming into our system, and they are a huge part of our metabolism. And this is a huge unlock. We didn't know as scientists or as people, we didn't even know that there was this whole real world of microbes there that we've co-evolved with over time. And what a huge role they're playing in our metabolism. So that's over the last 10 years been, you know, just a real awakening and opening of data and products that can really help us in metabolism.

So you said it was the Weizmann Institute, I think in Israel, that did this research. Did you start Pendulum before or after all that research was coming out?

I think that research was coming out relatively concurrently. Some of the research that really that sparked our interest was coming out of Lee Kaplan's lab over at Harvard. And they were doing some similar analyses of the gut microbiome, and particularly some of these strains that they thought were involved in metabolizing our foods and particularly helping us to metabolize sugars and carbs better. And so some of the work coming out of there, and then also some of the work coming out of University of Washington in St. Louis, Pete Turnbaugh was doing a bunch of work comparing obese and lean people and really doing all these preclinical animal studies showing that you could like transfer microbiomes and make mice skinny and fat all just by changing their microbiome. So all of that work was sort of happening, you know, around 2010, 2012. And so that's really, we started our company in 2012 and a lot of that stuff was really what made us believe there was an opportunity here in the microbiome.

Okay. So, this is a weird question maybe. I don't know if you've gotten this before, but I wear this continuous blood glucose monitor. I'm going to show it on the video. By the way, if you want the video version of this podcast, go to BenGreenfieldLife.com/PendulumPodcast. That's BenGreenfieldLife.com/PendulumPodcast. And, I've got this blood glucose monitor on. I can hold my phone up to it. It's a Freestyle Libre. It'll tell me my blood glucose in real time. And I was thinking about this, about the fact that, gosh, when I test this, this is measuring the sugar in my blood, but how the heck do you make the connection from a bacteria in my gut to the sugar in my blood? I think that it would be really helpful for me to wrap my head around this whole gut metabolism axis. If you could describe how this actually works, how, you know, what I eat, specifically the bacterial content in my food or the biome in my gut actually influences something like blood sugar?

Yeah, I think, you know, at first it's sort of non-obvious how your, your gut bacteria might be influencing your blood glucose spikes. And I actually also wore a continuous glucose monitor to understand what impact the products were having on, on my own blood glucose spikes. But fundamentally, everything we eat first goes into your stomach. You have all these stomach acids and they kind of break down your food to some extent, but More importantly, as your food parts go down the digestive tract, they hit the gut microbiome. And this is where the real metabolism of all of your food is happening. And one of the things that we all know is that a high fiber diet is really good for us. We're supposed to eat lots of fruits and vegetables. And one of the reasons why a high fiber diet is good for us is because when it gets to, when those fibers get to the gut microbiome, they get metabolized into small molecules called short-chain fatty acids, One of the most important is called butyrate. Those small molecules that the microbiome creates after metabolizing our fibers actually stimulate GLP-1 production. A lot of people don't know this. GLP-1s are certainly starting to become more well-known, but a lot of people don't know that GLP-1 is actually triggered in the gut microbiome.

What's GLP-1 stand for?

GLP-1 stands for glucagon-like peptide. Essentially, it is a small molecule that stimulates insulin response. The— and, and it actually does more than that. So on the one hand, it stimulates insulin response to help clear out the, the sugar in your blood after you've eaten a meal, but it also appears to have a, um, very strong tie to our, our, our brains and our cravings and our food cravings. And so people who, uh, you know, take these GLP-1 drugs, which are designed for people with type 2 diabetes, not only see that their sugars are metabolized in their blood more effectively by releasing insulin, But they also find that they have increased satiety. So they just really don't crave foods as much. And so that combination leads to kind of a really nice positive cycle in which you are metabolizing sugars better. And then you're also craving less of the foods that, that kind of cause these high sugar spikes. And so GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic and things like that, that, that's how they function. And, um, they're, they're extremely effective, uh, in, in helping to lower blood glucose spikes and, and lower food cravings.

Would you ever take those, those, I think they call them semaglutide peptides? Because now, now I know why I've heard that term GLP-1 before, because everybody's dropping that as the way that these drugs, like, or peptides if you want to call them, like Ozempic actually work. What do you think of those?

I personally would not take them, um, and, and the reason is because, you know, first of all, they were designed for people with type 2 diabetes, um, who are people that are actually, um, unable to, uh, produce the right amount of GLP-1 in order to manage their blood glucose spikes. So you're talking about people that have a disease that a drug was designed for. And if you're a healthy person and you're able to make GLP-1, kind of adding a drug on top of that in general, there's gonna be side effects that you're gonna experience. But maybe more importantly is physiologically what GLP-1, how it's supposed to work. So how it's supposed to work is that, you know, you eat food, your microbiome digests that food, and it tells your body, we just ate a bunch of food, we need to clear the blood, we need to clear the glucose out of the blood. So it stimulates GLP-1, GLP-1 gets released, it tells your body to release insulin, you clear the, the sugar out of your bloodstream. So actually the levels of GLP-1 in your blood go like this, kind of similar to blood glucose spikes. When your body eats food, GLP-1 gets spiked in your bloodstream to tell your body to metabolize that sugar, and then it goes away. And then when you eat again, it does the same thing. And so you're supposed to have this cycle of GLP-1 What the GLP-1 drugs do is they increase GLP-1 consistently. So you no longer have this cycle that your body is supposed to have. It's just high levels of GLP-1 all the time. And while that can result in really nice immediate results, um, it's not the way your body is supposed to physiologically work. And so when you disrupt cycles like that in your physiology, and, and all kinds of other biochemical systems get disrupted. And so for me, um, since I don't have diabetes, uh, I, I wouldn't personally take them.

So if you had the GLP-1 constantly being stimulated by these semaglutide peptides, would you have constantly, uh, high insulin levels or low insulin levels?

You would be high. So basically you're, you're trying to, uh, your body is constantly trying to metabolize all the sugar in your bloodstream even when they're— even when you haven't eaten.

Huh. So you could almost like induce kind of like chronic hyperinsulinemia with these.

And not only that, but these beta cells, which are producing insulin, you're constantly stimulating them and having them going. And so eventually those beta— and this is actually quite well known for people with type 2 diabetes. When you keep stimulating those beta cells that produce insulin, over time the drugs become less effective because you're basically— it's like if someone were yelling in your ear all day long, in the beginning you might have a reaction. But after a while, you're gonna start to tune it out. And our cells have a similar feedback loop, which is to say that under constant stimulation, eventually they become less responsive. And so you're— that's what you're doing to your body. You're overstimulating a process all the time that's not supposed to be turned on all the time.

Huh. Well, I mean, even though, like, obviously being overweight or obese might have more risks than something like this peptide might present, Sounds to me like we would have to see a lot better long-term safety data on something like pancreatic function or insulin sensitivity before saying that the average, I don't know, fitness enthusiast who wants to lose a few pounds or one of these anti-aging enthusiasts who wants to keep blood sugar regulated effectively should use something like this.

100%. I mean, the long-term effects and safety of long-term use of the drugs in healthy people really hasn't been explored. They were developed for people with diabetes.

Yeah. And in contrast, it's my understanding that a lot of these so-called blood glucose disposal agents that a lot of people talk about, like berberine or bitter melon extract or apple cider vinegar, or I suppose like a pharmaceutical like metformin, those are acting differently, right? Those are triggering the— from what I understand, the cell surface receptor, the, the GLUT transporter that would allow for glucose to to be taken up into something like muscle rather than hanging around the bloodstream. It's a different mechanism of action, isn't it?

Well, to be honest with you, even though metformin has been out for a long time, I think there's still things being uncovered about it. And, and actually there's a pretty strong set of hypotheses around metformin impacting the gut microbiome. Yeah. And that being one of its mechanisms of action too. And, and, and actually a, a lot of people theorize about apple cider vinegar as having kind of a similar thing. So you're introducing something more acidic into the microbiome. You're potentially changing the composition composition of the microbes that are there. But ultimately, the microbiome is your natural way to metabolize these fibers and to help your body metabolize sugars and carbs by stimulating GLP-1. That, that's kind of the natural system. And so that's where the microbiome becomes really interesting, because what people found is that people with obesity and type 2 diabetes are low or entirely missing these microbes that stimulate GLP-1. And so that's where you start to have really interesting, you know, intervention opportunities.

So rather than taking GLP-1, you're actually allowing the bacteria in your gut to naturally produce GLP-1 all on its own. What, what kind of bacteria would actually do that?

Well, there's actually only one strain so far that's been known to do that. So, so as I mentioned, you know, there are these short-chain fatty acids like butyrate that get produced by the microbiome, and there's been evidence suggests that butyrate can stimulate GLP-1 production. There's actually only one bacterial strain that's ever been shown to directly be able to stimulate GLP-1. And it's a strain called Akkermansia muciniphila. And, um, this is a strain that you're really not going to see on labels, and certainly, uh, probably most people haven't heard of it, but it is emerging as a keystone strain in the, in the gut because it is the only strain that we know of right now that literally lives in your gut lining. And its job all day and all night is to keep that gut lining regulated. And it also is the only strain that is known to be able to stimulate GLP-1. And so It really is, is becoming clear that this strain is super important. And maybe I'd say moreover, the way Akkermansia started to make its way into this keystone strain status is because there are a wide variety of diseases in which people are low in Akkermansia. So there's obesity, type 2 diabetes, type 1 diabetes, actually bipolar disorder, inflammatory diseases, immune diseases. So you start to say like, well, gee, all these diseases, um, that people have and they're also low, they're correlatively low in akromancia, why would that be? And really what's starting to emerge is that akromancia is just playing a really core role in the gut lining as well as the production of GLP-1, and that's how it's having all these outsized effects when you don't have enough of it.

What was that word you said after akromancia, like muciphila?

Akromancia muciniphila. And, you know, what we can do— I can describe a little bit more about mucin if you want.

Yeah, the reason I ask is when you see probiotics named, like you'll see Lactobacillus, but then you'll see, I don't know, like Lactobacillus reuteri, for example. So maybe stepping back for a second, how, how are probiotics actually named? And are there different kinds of Akkermansia in addition to this, this one that I'm going to butcher the name of again, the Musophilum akkermansia?

Yeah, so like we, we all have to like go back to I think 7th grade biology when we learned about, you know, genus and family and that, that ordering of things. Things like Lactobacillus and Akkermansia are kind of the species name. So, you know, all different bacteria can be bucketed into one of these species. And so the first word is the species, and then the second word is more defining the strain. And so within Lactobacillus, you have Lactobacillus plantarum, Lactobacillus reuteri. These are different strains that fall in that Lactobacillus species. So they're more similar to each other than they are to say something outside of the Lactobacillus family, but they have some slight differences between them in terms of their functionality or maybe how much of them that people have or how they interact with other strains. When we talk about Akkermansia, that's the species, and then Akkermansia muciniphila is the strain. There's even deeper ways in which people think about strains too. There might be different methylation of these strains that might make people say, well, actually these two strains are not the same, and so that starts to get get into a lot of kind of very academic conversations on what is the definition of a strain, but Akkermansia muciniphila is the full name and Akkermansia is the name of the species. Does that help?

Yeah, it does. Where does Akkermansia muciniphila, if I said that correctly, actually come from?

Oh my gosh, that's the million-dollar question. So, uh, it's not exactly entirely known. Nobody has been able to, um, find Akkermansia in any of our foods or beverages. You can find acromancy actually in mother's breast milk. So it's believed that maybe some of the first acromancy we get comes from mom's breast milk, but it's pretty unclear actually where it comes from and how you get it. But what's known is that there are a lot of ways in which it can become depleted over time. So when you look at sort of healthy, if we all kind of think back to a time when we could eat or drink whatever we wanted to, and you look in those sort of healthy, you know, almost like teenagers, there's really large abundances of acromancia. And there's a lot of things that can cause us to lose acromancia. You know, one of them is simply aging. As we age, we start to lose acromancia. When we go through periods of intense stress, we start to lose acromancia. When women go through menopause, we lose acromancia. When you travel and your circadian rhythm gets messed up, night becomes day, day becomes night, you lose acromancia. So there are all these pressures that are happening around us in our environment that are causing us to lose this strain, and yet we don't know how to get it back because we don't know any foods or beverages in which it resides. The only thing that we've seen is that if you eat polyphenols, so you increase your polyphenol uptake, that can stimulate the growth of Akkermansia. And if you up your fiber intake, these are all prebiotics that feed into strains, feed Akkermansia. So if you increase fibers and polyphenols, you can increase Akkermansia levels. But really, up until very recently, you couldn't even get acromancy or take it directly.

Okay. And maybe I'm a little bit confused here because last week, somebody sent me this white bottle and it says acromancy on the label. Is that actually acromancy or is it a bunch of stuff that helps you make acromancy yourself?

Well, it was a white bottle. It didn't come from our company.

Okay. Well, I mean, if I was at Walgreens or CVS and the label says acromancy, Is it just a bunch of precursors? Kind of like if you see like the testosterone booster, it's not actually testosterone, it's tribulus or, you know, fenugreek or whatever.

Unless it came from Pendulum, there is no other company in the world right now that is selling acromancia, live acromancia that you can take directly. So if they're saying acromancia on the label, it would be a prebiotic boosting acromancia unless it's from Pendulum.

Okay, got it. Those bastards. So how do you guys make it? Is it like in a lab or something?

Yeah, we actually had to create an entire manufacturing plant to figure out how to grow this strain. I mean, to be honest with you, to be totally candid, when we started this, we just realized this strain was really important. We actually had no idea how hard it was going to be to grow this strain. But basically, this strain lives in your gut lining, in what's a— in your gut microbiome, which is strictly anaerobic, meaning there's no— not a single molecule of oxygen in there. And so what we had to do was to understand how Akkermansia grows in our GI tract and then try to replicate that in a kind of outside the GI tract manufacturing setting. And so, um, figuring out how to grow Akkermansia was super hard, and then figuring out how to keep it alive and then get it into these pills and deliver to people and show that it actually took foothold in their microbiomes was also really hard. And so That's kind of— our company's been around for about 10 years. That's what we spent a good amount of that 10 years trying to figure out how to do.

So how do you do it?

So the key is that you have to create a manufacturing plant that end-to-end doesn't allow any oxygen into it. And so, I mean, oxygen is all around us in the air. And so that was actually one of the hardest things to do. And kind of the way that you do that is you're constantly pumping in other gases that will compete out the oxygen. So we have like tanks and tanks of nitrogen and CO2 and all these other, um, you know, gases that get pumped in to, to really pump the oxygen out. And then the second thing is figuring out what are the nutrients that Akkermansia can live off of, because it actually lives off of— it's called Akkermansia muciniphila because it munches on the mucin in your gut. So maybe I'll just take one second to explain these kind of how that kind of looks in the body. So yeah, The way the gut lining is structured is, is almost like a fence. So I actually have a wooden fence in my backyard. There are all these planks that are held together by glue. When I moved into the house, the wooden fence was super strong. Over time and through weather, you know, those planks can become weak and they can start to fall and the glue can start to get weak. And our gut lining is actually exactly the same way. We have literally these planks, these cells in the gut lining, and we have glue that holds those together. That's called mucin. And Akkermansia lives at that gut lining, and Akkermansia's job all day and all night is to strip that mucin, to strip that glue when it gets weak, and to put new glue up when, uh, it's doing that so that that gut lining and that fence can stay really strong. And the repercussions to not having a strong gut lining or a strong fence is that when one of those planks comes down or that glue gets weak, you now have these holes, or these, these leaks as some people call them, in which these molecules inside your microbiome can make their way into your bloodstream, and that's what leads to kind of these heightened inflammatory responses, sort of miscommunication in the immune response. And so Akkermansia muciniphila lives off of that glue, that mucin. And so figuring out how to replicate that, uh, in a lab was sort of the, the second challenge in figuring out how to grow these.

Your lab sounds like a giant, like, gut/farting factory with all the gases and the giant anaerobic tube. It's almost like it just replicated a human gut.

Totally. And I'll tell you something funny, which is that when we first started doing this, we literally were breathing in all of these— they're not noxious fumes, but they really did not smell good. And so we had to get all these air filtration systems just to like be able to, uh, come into work and not feel like you're going to pass out.

Yeah, my office sometimes also smells like a giant fart, but for different reasons, obviously. So when, when you look at the, the ability, like you said, for you guys to be able to take this Akkermansia that you're making, keep it alive, are you then putting other things in this Pendulum capsule like the polyphenols that you talked about or some sort of food for the Akkermansia to feed on?

Yes. So, we add inulin, which is a type of fiber in there, which we know that this Akkermansia can feed off of. We put a very small amount, which is really intended for the Akkermansia into the pill. We don't add polyphenols in with Akkermansia because, as you just heard, it's a kind of a finicky, sensitive strain. And so in a lot of ways, figuring out what you can pack in the pill with Akkermansia is important for— well, you want to make sure that you're maintaining the viability of the strain when you're packing other things in the pill. And so we actually did some studies looking across different types of polyphenols and how they interacted with our specific Akkermansia strain. And so, we do offer polyphenols that specifically interact with this strain of Akkermansia, but they're in a separate pill because when they're actually in the pill with Akkermansia, they can affect the viability of the Akkermansia strain itself.

Ben Greenfield: That's right. This is sounding familiar because you sent me, I think, 2 bottles and I think one was Pendulum, but then one was to be taken in combination with it. I tested it, by the way, because I experiment with this stuff all the time like the apple cider vinegar. I've experimented with metformin, with bitter melon, with berberine. I haven't tried out any of those Ozempic semaglutide peptides yet for kind of for some of the reasons we just discussed. But I did note that it seemed to very effectively keep my blood glucose low compared to a lot of these other blood glucose disposal agents that I was taking. But you would take both at the same time, right? The acromantia, then you'd take the polyphenol at the same time before a meal?

Yeah, you would take them together, um, because basically you're— it's, it's the double hit. You're giving yourself the actual Akkermansia strain and then the prebiotic that's going to help it grow.

What if you take it after a meal, or what if you forget? Like, like, how's the timing work?

Well, actually, I think, you know, unlike drugs, the timing of this is probably a lot more forgiving and, uh, complex. So what you're asking this pill to do is to get— make its way into your GI tract to open up after it gets to that GI tract. And we actually have special coating to make sure it doesn't just open up in your stomach. We sort of pay for this time-released capsule. So it gets to your gut microbiome, that capsule has to open up, the freeze-dried strain has to then get rehydrated and come to life, and then it has to start doing its activity. So there's a lot of steps in that. And taking it, you know, concurrently with a meal,— that, that may be really important, but it may be that you have to take it for a while for them to actually, um, take a foothold in your gut and then start to have that activity.

Yeah, kind of like that. I interviewed Dr. William Davis. I don't know if you know, he has a great book, it's called The Gut Fix, and he's big on Lactobacillus, uh, the L. reuteri strain. And he has this yogurt, I still make it, I make that yogurt, or somebody in my house makes it like every couple of weeks ever since I've done that podcast like 2 years ago. And I mix it with a little bit of gelatin afterwards to make it nice and thick. But he said you have to take it for like a solid, I think it was 2 to 4 weeks before you actually start to notice some of the bowel regularity, the sleep enhancement, etc. I think it's for similar reasons. You have to build up these bacteria in your gut, right?

That's right. And for some people, their— whatever the ecosystem that they have in their microbiome allows these new strains to come in and like immediately take foothold. So for some people, they can see a difference in a matter of days, and for other people can take as long as, you know, 90 days, 3 months to really see a difference. Just depends on what your existing ecosystem looks like and how easy or hard it is for this particular strain to make its way into the system.

Well, I mean, this, this kind of reminds me of what I was talking about earlier, that study in Israel about different people's biomes and, you know, cookie responders and banana responders and non-responders. What about something like akkermansia? Like, could there be genetic variation in the microbiome that would be something that could predispose someone to be like an akkermansia non-responder?

Well, actually, one of the things that is, is in that study is they do show that different levels of acromancy are associated with your ability or inability to really metabolize these, you know, high sugar foods. So basically, people who are low in acromancy, um, not only are they not able to, uh, respond as well to these high sugar foods, um, there's actually been studies showing that if you're low in acromancy and somebody else is high on acromancy and you go on the same diet so same high-fiber, you know, low-fat diet, um, if you're low in Akromancia, you won't respond as well as that other person. So Akromancia is really a, a key strain that can even help you respond to dieting better. Um, and so I don't think we know whether, uh, there are people who are non-responsive to Akromancia, but we definitely know that when you start to give people back Akromancia, they start to get these functions back and their blood glucose response starts to improve. It's awesome to hear that you observed that too, because as you can imagine, the healthier you are, the harder it is to really see a response. And so it's pretty amazing that you were able to see something.

Yeah, you know, I don't know if you know the answer to this question, kind of related to diet variation, or if there, you know, of any research about this, but a lot of people eat a low-carb or ketogenic diet, and obviously most of those people are going to have more stable blood glucose. Arguably you could even theorize maybe they have less of a need for elevated levels of acromantia. Let's say somebody's been eating a diet like that and then they switch to a moderate to higher carb intake or start to introduce fruits or berries or honey or things like that. Do you think that those type of people would, based on their diet not needing as much acromantia, actually go through a period of time where they had higher blood glucose responses once they started to introduce more carbs? Until they got more Akkermansia in their gut?

Yeah, that's a great question. I don't think that's been specifically studied, but, um, it has been kind of shown that when you go on to a keto diet, um, you can actually increase your levels of Akkermansia.

So, um, I don't know, that's kind of, that's kind of like counterintuitive, isn't it?

Um, well, sort of, except that Akkermansia feeds off this glue, this mucin, and actually one of the biggest producers of mucin is is a meat byproduct. So, um, you know, that, that might be the way that that's happening.

Yeah, that makes sense. So you said the Acromantia— not the polyphenol product, that is your separate Pendulum product— but the Acromantia product, you said that has inulin and Acromantia in it. Does it have anything else in it?

No, the pure Acromantia product doesn't have anything else in it, but we also have some formulations. So Pendulum Glucose Control, which was designed to help people lower blood glucose spikes um, and lower A1C. That one has Akkermansia plus 4 other strains, um, which are involved in this metabolism of fiber into the short-chain fatty acids and help produce butyrate. And so that formulation has been clinically shown to lower A1C and lower blood glucose spikes, um, in people with diabetes. Lowered A1C by 0.6 and lower blood glucose spikes by 34%. So super effective as a formulation. Some people are really just low in Akkermansia, and so just adding Akkermansia can have an impact in and of itself. But if you're looking for like the full kitchen sink, uh, Pendulum Glucose Control and Metabolic Daily have Akkermansia plus these other strains.

Actually, that was the one that you sent me, was the Glucose Control, but I didn't realize it had 4 strains in addition to Akkermansia. And are these all strains that you came up with too?

3 of those 4 strains, yes. We are also the, the people who manufacture them and identify them. One of is a relatively common strain. It's called Bifidobacterium infantis. Um, that one you can, you can find in, in lots of different probiotics. It is one of the steps, one of the biochemical steps in creating butyrate. And so we have that strain in there, but we also have, um, Clostridium butyricum, uh, Clostridium beijerinckii, and Anaerobicum helii. You're not going to find those on any other labels. So those and Akkermansia muciniphila, those are strains that we identified, that we manufacture And they're all kind of these strict anaerobes where you can't have any oxygen in the manufacturing system.

Got it. No, no, it's my understanding that for people who are wanting to eat a low fermentation diet or who have maybe struggled with small intestine bacterial overgrowth, that they're supposed to be careful with fibers. And, and a lot of times they'll get a lot of bloating and gas with some of these prebiotic fiber blends and even inulin. Have you ever found any issues to arise in people who have this kind of like excess gas production in response to fiber? Intake when they're using something like the, the Akkermansia and inulin combination?

Well, um, so we haven't— disclaimer— we haven't done a clinical trial in SIBO or anything like that, but we have a fair number of customers, um, with SIBO who started taking our products, you know, Pendulum Glucose Control or Akkermansia, and, um, reported benefit. And, and really what we think is happening for those folks is that there is a little bit of inulin in there. It's, it's an incredibly small amount, so it's not enough to sort of stimulate the, the response that these patients have. But what's actually happening for them is that, you know, when, when you have SIBO or when you have some of these, um, uh, kind of digestive issues, what people often end up doing is going on to a very, very, um, refined diet. And they're basically just trying to figure out like, what can I eat, what can't I eat? And so they end up starting with like, you know, bare minimum, bare bones. And so they actually reduce— one of the big things is to reduce your fiber intake because that's one of the things that can kind of stimulate these, these unwanted reactions. What these strains are doing is they help you metabolize fiber. And so our— the hypothesis for these people who have SIBO that are taking our products, um, of why it's helping them is that they aren't able to eat fiber because they don't have the microbes that help them metabolize the fiber. Now that they're giving themselves the microbes to metabolize the fiber, they can start to eat these foods that they hadn't been able to eat before and not have those reactions. And so We haven't done a clinical trial on it, but it's been super interesting to kind of follow these customers and their, their journeys with SIBO.

Okay, I gotta try an N=1 now that you've said that, because I didn't realize it could help you potentially to digest prebiotic fibers. There's this one company called Miracle Noodles that I love. They got like fettuccine and angel hair pasta and spaghetti and done-for-you keto meals, and it's all made out of this Japanese yam. And so It's like almost zero calorie, zero carbohydrate, and it's just fiber. And I got on like a Miracle Noodle kick where I was doing like a whole package with lunch every day. And after about a month of that, I actually started to get like pretty significant amounts of bloating and gas all the way up to and sometimes after dinner. So I told my wife, I'm like, gosh, I don't know what to do. Like these Miracle Noodles I love, they're making me bloating now. And about 2 weeks ago, I quit eating all of them except they have one version called the Content Pasta. Which is made out of a different form of fiber that my gut seems to agree with. But I'm thinking now maybe I should just pop a bunch of Akkermansia whenever I eat a high-fiber meal like that and see if it has any effect. You think something like that could work?

100%. I think you should totally run that experiment. I cannot wait to hear the results. But I would say be dosing yourself with Akkermansia. If you kind of went off of it for a second here, I would give myself 4 weeks on it, so 30 days on it, and then try the yam-based food again and see if it works. Because you want to give your body a chance to kind of actually colonize the strain.

Yeah. You're going to make a whole bunch of people with SIBO or SIBO tendencies who miss their salads and their fibers a lot happier with this information because this is actually something I haven't heard of before. And that's the number one complaint I get with people who see it. Like, I like to have my big salads and everything. I can't because I get so bloated. This is interesting. This is good information. Now, what if I were building up my Akromantia levels or using pendulum or something like that and I get an antibiotic? Is it just going to nuke everything and I got to start over?

Yeah. I mean, I used to think it made no sense to kind of take a probiotic alongside an antibiotic. Well, first of all, to answer your question, it's yes. So, an antibiotic is a nuke to your whole system. It really does kill almost every single bacterial strain. In your body. Um, and, and I used to think that it didn't make sense to take a probiotic while you're on an antibiotic because it's just going to be killing the strain off. But there was an interesting study that just came out that showed that people who kind of stayed on a pro— like, were taking probiotics proactively before going on antibiotics— for, for many people, you kind of know when you're going to go on an antibiotic, like if you're going to surgery or whatever. So they started taking probiotic before they went on antibiotics. Um, for those people who were on a probiotic before they started the antibiotic and they continued on the probiotic through the antibiotic treatment compared to people who were on no probiotic, on the other side of that antibiotic treatment, these people who had been on the probiotics were actually able to reconstitute their microbiome with these beneficial strains more easily than the people who weren't. So, so now I kind of changed my tune after seeing that study. I don't— we don't understand why that is, but, uh, I, I basically now tell people like, don't go off of them, just keep taking them. I don't know why, but there's this data out there suggesting it's helpful.

That must be a new study because so many functional medicine practitioners and nutritionists still tell you it's useless to keep taking probiotic when you're on an antibiotic because it's going to nuke it anyways. Is this a pretty new study?

Yeah, that's a new study. And, and I, and I, like I said, I would agree with that. I mean, you know, logically it doesn't make sense to kind of have these two things countering each other. But this, this new study really, and it was well run it really shows that there might be something more there than what we understand. There might be some— I don't want to call it like a memory, but there's something there to continue to take them.

That's interesting. Could you ever have too high of akromancia levels? Like, could you take too much? If so, what would happen?

Well, with the akromancia product that we have out, we basically did all of the safety studies. I mean, you could down a whole bottle and you'd be fine. And so, you know, no from that perspective, but I'll give the caveat, like, this is really still an early science. So, what we know today is nothing compared to what we're going to know 10 years from now. Acromancy was only just discovered actually in the early 2000s. So, we haven't really known about it for very long. So, there hasn't been anything to show that if you administer, you know, acromancy at really high levels, you can have some detrimental effect. But, you know, I'll give the caveat that, you know, we're still pretty early in it. So, you never really know.

Yeah, yeah, this is interesting. I have a friend who has Parkinson's. And, I think 6 or 7 months ago, I was listening to a podcast, I think it was, with somebody who had, I think it's a probiotic compound called Sugar Shift, some kind of bacterial strain that can lower blood glucose. I don't know if it's working on the same mechanism of action as Akkermansia, if you know of it, but they were alluding to the idea that some of these gut metabolism strains may have an impact on Parkinson's. And so I'm curious if you're aware of that, if this is any strain, if Akkermansia plays a role, or is there any link that you know of between gut metabolism and Parkinson's?

Yeah, this is super interesting. So first of all, on a personal note, I started my career working in pharma and we were trying to develop drugs for Parkinson's disease. So I, we, we, when we were studying Parkinson's disease, was all about the brain. So one of the hallmarks of Parkinson's is that you start to get these plaques in your brain. They show up, they're these dark plaques in your brain. And the biggest way in which people were trying to develop drugs for Parkinson's was to try to get rid of those plaques. And so the hope was that if you could get rid of those plaques, you could clear the brain back out and you could kind of, you know, at least elongate the progression of Parkinson's so that you could you know, help people. But one of the most interesting things that's come out is that you don't just have neurons in your brain, you actually also have neurons in your gut. And unlike the neurons in your brain, which is like, you get what you get, and when they die, they're gone forever— we all know that you're not supposed to drink because once those neurons are gone, you never get them back— unlike that, the neurons in your gut are constantly replenishing. So there's new neurons being generated all the time in your gut. And moreover, those neurons in your gut talk to the neurons in your brain. There's this thing called the vagus nerve, and these neurotransmitters can go directly from your gut to your brain. And, and basically your brain— your gut produces things like serotonin, GABA, all these neurotransmitters in really high doses. And, and we now know that those neurotransmitters can get sent to the neurons in your brain. And then the third thing is, so first of all, you have neurons in your gut Second of all, they're communicating with the neurons in your brain. And the third, like, super fascinating thing is that these plaques that show up in the neurons in your brain that are associated with Parkinson's and Alzheimer's, those plaques show up in your gut neurons first. So you can actually see them show up in the gut first. And so now the theory is it actually starts in the gut, then you get this misfiring of signals, and then it goes to the brain. And then once it's in the brain, you're kind of hosed. And so really, the right target to go after is not the brain— stop focusing on that— is to go after those neurons in the gut. How can you accelerate the regeneration of them? How can you get rid of the guys who are misfiring signals? It's like a huge new opportunity to go after these brain diseases through the gut.

Oh, this is super interesting. Have you guys actually done any studies on Pendulum as far as like clinical relevance? I mean, you've shown it's decreased blood sugar, but have you ever taken people with diabetes or overweight or obesity or MS or Parkinson's or Alzheimer's, anything like that, and actually been able to do trials with Pendulum?

It is on our roadmap. So we are in a deep collaboration with a professor at the Mayo Clinic really investigating this. I mean, it's super interesting and it could be potentially a huge unlock.

Yeah, yeah, that would be really interesting. Okay, so talk to me about the dosage. You mentioned that building it up is a good idea, but how many times a day am I taking this stuff? Is it 3 times a day, just a couple in the morning, with food, without food, or what's the best way to do this if people are listening and they get their hands on a bottle?

Well, we recommend— on the bottle you'll see it says take one in the morning, one in the evening. Um, and the reason we recommend that is because— and we say to take it with food. Um, and the reason we say that is because everybody's kind of lifestyle is pretty different when people eat, when they're fasting, all of these things. And so what we're trying to do is to hit you at the 2 points in the day that maybe give it the best chance of colonization. The name of the game is colonization. So we tell people take it in the morning, evening, because we don't really know people's lifestyles. And then we recommend that people take it with food because some people are just sort of sensitive to taking supplements in general, like the capsules or whatever, you know, some of the stuff that's the components in it can cause people to, to feel sensitive. And when you eat a meal, the acidity of your stomach, it basically becomes more basic. And so that allows them the capsule to have a better chance of making it through the acid. Whereas if you're taking it on an empty stomach, it's kind of the highest acid stomach moment. And so we tell people, take it in the morning, the evening, and with food. Now, that being said, I take 2 in the morning with coffee. And so— and I saw my blood glucose spikes go down when I was doing my own placebo-controlled trial with a continuous glucose monitor. So it really does vary from person to person. I'd say the most important thing, again, the name of the game is colonization. When can you remember to take it? Where does it fit into your lifestyle? That's the time to be able to fit it in.

Ben Greenfield: Well, don't laugh because a lot of biohackers are doing probiotic enemas, putting stuff up the butt and hanging upside down and using butyric acid. And, this is in addition to something like coffee enemas. Have you ever had anybody put akkermansia up their butt or you seen any evidence besides that? You remember that Jeff Leach guy who went to visit the Hasda hunter-gatherers, I think it was? He hung himself upside down in the middle of the village and did a fecal transplant. And, I think Akkermansia was one bacteria that he saw elevated. But, besides that, any benefits to going up the other side?

Well, again, we pay extra for these capsules that help people get it through the stomach acid and to the gut microbiome. And so, there shouldn't be a need to go up the other side, but I can't say that I have investigated. We've certainly not done a trial as in going the enema route. I don't know how effective that would be. Ben Greenfield: Okay.

Good to know. With these titanium super bulletproof time-release capsules you're talking about, who knows, you might just cough up your capsule a few hours later and comes out the other end. You might have the opposite problem. So, all things to theorize about. Well, Colleen, this is super interesting. I'm going to put a link to this Pendulum stuff. If you go to bengreenfieldlife.com/pendulum-podcast, P-E-N-D-U-L-U-M, Pendulum Podcast, I think we have a discount code for you guys if you want to try the polyphenol, the kind of done-for-you blend with the 5 different strains in it. And, anything else you want to share with people about the formula, Colleen?

Well, actually, I'm, I'm really curious to hear your story. So, so you were on product— were you, were you wearing a continuous glucose monitor when you were looking at your glucose response?

I was, yep, I was. So I've been taking blood glucose disposal agents, kind of cycling between everything, like I mentioned, from apple cider vinegar to berberine to bitter melon extract. I generally see a restoration of my blood glucose levels to normal pre-meal levels within a couple hours after a meal. And when I'm using these agents, I generally don't see a rise anything more than 120 post-meal, even if that's a starchy meal. When I started taking the Pendulum, I quit taking these others. I didn't do a washout period first, but what I saw when I started taking Pendulum and I quit taking the other blood glucose disposal agents to compare was my results were similar. And then, when I quit taking the Pendulum, my blood glucose excursions would go north of 120. I would also get post-meal hypoglycemia, but I only took it for a very short period of time. I think I took consistently for 2 or 3 weeks. So, I don't even think I've given it a fair trial yet. I didn't understand the point about having the Akkermansia build up in the gut. So, I'm going to do a little bit more testing with this stuff and also test it with the fiber.

Yeah, that's, that's, um, that's awesome. I mean, I, uh, I also— I did a placebo-controlled trial on myself, and I wore a continuous glucose monitor. I either took placebo or the, the glucose control product, and I actually did it blinded. So I told the team, like, don't make them look the same, like, I don't want to know which one I'm on. And, um, I could tell when I was on the formulation because actually my workouts were stronger. Um, but then when I got the glucose the, the, the glucose monitor data back, I could see all my spikes and crashes were minimized. And so the area under the curve for both of those was, was less. And I was only on it for 14 days. You know, I think a lot of us try to eat healthy, we think that we're metabolically healthy, but the microbiome is such a black box on how do you even get these strains back. Sort of going back to one of your first questions, how do you get akkermansia, that many of us who are doing the best that we can to be as healthy as possible could be depleted, and that could be why you had a really rapid response. I also did too. It was only, you know, 2 weeks into it that I saw those changes. So that's pretty cool.

Yeah. And by the way, that's interesting what you say about the performance. Are there any exercise performance studies on, on acromantia, whether it's lactate or reduced rating of perceived exertion or strength or power or anything like that?

We haven't done those yet, but that's definitely on our radar and our list to do. And as you probably know, when you can get your blood glucose spikes under control, for a lot of people, it shows up in different ways. You know, it's more energy, better sleep, better workouts, you don't have that post-lunch crash. And so I think, you know, for, for me, that was how it showed up. But we haven't done any of those kind of studies to really, you know, any clinical trials to really show those changes. Yeah.

But you've no doubt seen a few that have come out over the past few years showing that certain elite athletes have have a markedly different biome than their non-athletic or their peers who aren't able to perform quite as well. It is a question which came first, the chicken or the egg, right? Does intense training or competition change the biome, or does a certain biome predispose you to being better at certain sports or at certain performance metrics? But it is interesting, and it'd be interesting to see that repeated with something like Akkermansia.

Yeah, and Akkermansia is one of those strains that those athletes are higher in, and, and it is interesting because, um, uh, but, but knowing whether actually giving yourself more acromancy helps improve your athletic performance, that, that's still yet to be done. Yeah. So thanks for sharing your story. And I guess the only thing is that I think we do have a special code Greenfield for people who want to come try the product to get like a 20% off their first bottle of membership so they can try all the products.

Cool. Well, I'm flattered you named your code after me. That's very nice of you. So, so BenGreenfieldLife.com/Pendulum podcast. Sounds like the code is Greenfield, but I'll put it in the show notes as well. And you can also at the show notes leave your questions, your comments, your feedback for me or Colleen. We check them all out, and I love to see some interaction and be able to keep the conversation going over at bengreenfieldlife.com. So Colleen, thanks so much for coming on the show.

Thank you for having me.

Yeah, I'm gonna go have me some Miracle Noodles. It's an acromantia. All right folks, well have an amazing week. I'm Ben Greenfield. Along with Colleen Cutcliffe from Pendulum Therapeutics. Signing out from BenGreenfieldLife.com. 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 discovering the health and happiness and hope that we all crave. So, I hope I've been able to do that 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. It means a lot. In compliance with the FTC guidelines, please assume the following about links and posts on this site. Most of the links going to products are often affiliate links of which I receive a small commission from sales of certain items, but the price is the same for you, and sometimes I even get to share a unique and somewhat significant discount with you. In some cases, I might also be an investor in a company I mention. I'm the founder, for example, of Kion LLC, the makers of Kion-branded supplements and products, which I talk about quite a bit. Regardless of the relationship, if I post or talk about an affiliate link to a product, it is indeed something I personally use, support, and with full authenticity and transparency recommend in good conscience. I personally vet each and every product that I talk about. My first priority is providing valuable information and resources to you that help you positively optimize your mind, body, and spirit. And I'll only ever link to products or resources, affiliate or otherwise, that fit within this purpose. So there's your fancy legal disclaimer.