EPISODE #1004: How Gut Bacteria Can Change Your Weight & Metabolism – Colleen Cutcliffe, Ph.D.

Today we're going to talk about one of my favorite things of all. We talk about biohacking as the art and science of changing the environment around you and inside of you so you have full control of your own biology. But what's inside of you, we don't even know if it's really you, because when you think about it, there's a whole bunch of bacteria that's growing. And I've talked about that so many times on the show, but we keep learning more. And what I want to be able to share with you today and what our guest is going to do is talk about a specific species of bacteria that you can put in your gut that is called Akkermansia. And we're going to talk specifically about weight, metabolism, and immune system. What I'm proposing to you here is that you can add a specific species to the group of stuff in your gut, and by doing that, you can turn on the biological powers that you didn't have before. It's that big of a difference. What we're learning now is what different strains do. And Akkermansia is something that kind of got ignored until a company called Pendulum came out and said, hey, let's make this available as a probiotic, because it was actually very hard to do that. And you're going to learn in the episode today how you can boost Akkermansia in your gut with probiotics and with other things like that. And our guest is Colleen Cutcliffe, who's a PhD. This is our fourth time on the show because she's one of our resident gut experts who just teaches a lot every time we talk. I learned something that I didn't know and I'm pretty well read. And you guys always learn something new, so this ought to be a lot of new stuff for you. And as I mentioned, she's the CEO and she's co founder of Pendulum. Pendulum is a company that's looking specifically at Akkermansia and they've got new medical studies and medical approval on what they do. So we're going to take another look at this specific kind of bacteria. There's only 300 studies on it. Let's see what happens. Colleen, welcome to the show.

Hi, Dave. Thanks for having me. There's actually thousands of studies on Akkermansia, but there have been over 300 studies since the last time you and I spoke, which wasn't that long ago.

My bad. Only 300 new studies, new studies in.

The last few months.

Just by comparison, if you were to compare that to Like Lactobacillus, which is the. The Kim Kardashian of the microbiome.

No comments.

Is there just in terms of being super well known, is there? Or maybe, maybe more the Paris Hilton, but whatever. Like the famous one that everyone knows about. Right. And Akkermansia is like this unknown, but in terms of studies, there has to be what, 10,000 studies on lactobacillus, Right? Or is it maybe more than that?

Yeah, it's probably more than that, for sure. Lactobacillus has been around for, you know, 50 plus years. And so a lot of publications on it, a lot of republications on it and publications about the publications. And so there's a lot of that. Akkermansia just kind of got discovered in the last decade or so.

Okay. So it's new kid on the block up and coming. And because I love the Upgrade Collective, our live audience right in the middle of it, Todd's like, what does she think of Lactobacillus gasseri? BNR 17. Todd, I love you, brother. That's all I can say. All right, well, let's go there. I mean, that's kind of a nerdy question, but do you know that?

Yeah. Lactobacillus gg, this is the primary strain in a product called Culturel, which many people have probably heard of. It's pretty well known probiotic, and it's one of the most well probiotics out there. And you know, a lot of work around Lactobacillus role in kind of general gut health. And so I think it's a great strain. It's just not actually in the distal colon like your gut microbiome, where all the, like, new science and discovery is happening.

Got it. So it's like old school Fred Astaire kind of thing.

Like an oldie but a goodie. That's right. Yeah.

There we go. Okay. I've never actually tried to make bacteria into celebrities, but I think it's time. And Akkermansia should be like, right there.

Yeah, we're going to start doing that on our website. We're going to put pictures of celebrities next to each strain.

Yeah, that's meme worthy for sure. I get that. All right. Why is, why are people so excited about Akkermansia? 300 new studies and this is a pretty crazy amount.

Yeah. I think the rate at which people are studying Akkermansia is definitely logarithmic. And the reason is because Akkermansia is a strain that gives everyone the opportunity to optimize their Metabolism. And I think that we all do a lot of things. You try to eat certain way, live a certain way, exercise certain way. But understanding your gut microbiome and the role that it plays in your metabolism is something that I think is pretty early science. And so being able to optimize your gut microbiome means optimizing your metabolism. And so the reason people are so excited about Akkermansia is because it is the first strain that's been discovered that literally lives in the gut lining. And when you think about, like, a wooden fence in your backyard, you know, that holds all these planks together, has all these planks in it that get held together, that that fence is really important. But sometimes over time, through different weather and seasons, those planks can start to fall or get old or weathered. And that that means that you don't have your protective fence in your backyard anymore. And your gut lining is sort of like that fence. And Akkermansi is the guy standing at that fence making sure that all the planks are strong and that the junctions between the planks are kept strong. And so it has a very fundamental role in your gut lining and your gut health. And therefore, everything around metabolism, inflammatory response, immune response. It's really emerging as this keystone strain for health.

Okay, so it's because of this. This metabolic things. Why did it take us so long to discover it only 10 years ago? Is it like a secret agent going on here? We've talked about some of this before, but I never really got the story of why didn't we find it earlier.

Well, there's two. There's two reasons it hadn't been found before. The first reason is because the way that all the other strains, like Lactobacillus gastrite, were found is through culturing. So you would take stool and you would grow it. Grow the stool in, like, media in a lab or in a fermenter. And then the strains that happen to grow were the ones that got studied. Well, Akkermansia is in a part of the colon that doesn't have any oxygen in it. So when you ferment these stool samples and when you culture, you're never going to get Akkermansia, because the minute oxygen hits that test tube, the Akkermansia all dies. And so there was never an opportunity to see Akkermancy because the way we used to isolate strains was by growing them in culture. About 10 or 15 years ago, DNA sequencing technologies became affordable and usable enough that you could use DNA sequencing to look at your microbiome and now you can look at the things that are alive and dead and have just DNA fragments to them. And that's how Akkermansia and tens of thousands of new strains got discovered was because DNA sequencing became the new technology rather than culturing. And so now you could see these things that were in the oxygen free part of your gut.

You wouldn't believe this, but going back 10 years, let's see, at the first biohacking conference that I put on, the American Gut Project raised a bunch of funding and another company that's now defunct that was doing DNA sequencing of gut bacteria was there. So this has been a part of biohacking since day one. Because that curiosity, what all is in there? And we have this mistake in your blood. Hey, it's easy to detect cholesterol. So let's build a whole trillion dollar industry around something we can measure, even if it actually doesn't cause heart disease, but at least you can measure it. So I feel like we kind of did the same thing with the stuff you can culture. Oh, look, we're curious. We're going to focus on what we can find. The proverbial drunk guy looking for his car keys underneath the light because he can see even though he dropped them somewhere else. So we have some of that going on and Akkermansia was in the shadows and now it's out. And right now it seems like the people who can eat anything they want, who don't gain weight, have Akkermansia and the people who gain weight easily don't have it. Am I overstating the case?

There have definitely been a lot of studies showing that healthy people or people with a healthy metabolism or people that are younger and haven't gone through fully the aging process have a vast abundance of Akkermansia. And people who have a variety of illnesses, including metabolic syndrome, metabolic issues, as well as different inflammatory issues and immune issues, are low or entirely missing Akkermansia. And so there's a lot of correlative studies showing that if you're low on Akkermansia, it's correlated to these diseases. And really what we've set out to do is to understand, okay, how do you take that correlation and say, if I gave you back Akkermansia, would you now get those functions back? And that becomes kind of where Akkermansia is. Super interesting.

Okay. When you were starting the company, you and you saw some differences in your daughter's metabolism that I find kind of fascinating. Tell me about what you were seeing there.

Yeah, my daughter was born almost two months prematurely. She was four and a half pounds when she was born. She was in intensive care for the first month of her life. And she received multiple doses of antibiotics. That's just standard protocol for preemies. And not because they have an infection, but because they're so fragile, they don't want them to get an infection. And what happened to her as she started to enter elementary school is I realized that she had food sensitivities that nobody else in our family had and her metabolism was different from the rest of the family. And you know, I think many of us know people like this where they've just got these food sensitivities. They don't know where they came from. They don't, nobody else in their family has them. And she was one of these kids. And so this study came out around the time that we were thinking about the microbiome as a new target for health that showed that babies who were systematically on antibiotics were systematically more prone to obesity and diabetes as they got older into teenage years. The Mayo Clinic recently redid that study and they showed that kids who were under 2 years old, if they were systematically on antibiotics, they were also more systematically prone for not just obesity and diabetes, but also things like allergies, asthma, adhd, celiac disease. And so you start to understand that there is this early disruption to the microbiome through these antibiotic treatments. And these kids are not recovering from it. They're starting out with a depleted microbiome and they're not able to get back the microbes to help them develop into healthy adults. And then they're riddled with these chronic illnesses that kick in as they start to become elementary, high school, into their 20s.

Well, I mean, this is awesome. You know, as a guy who's thinking about investing in a pharmaceutical company, I mean, think about it. All you have to do is get kids to take antibiotics and then they're customers for life. I mean, you're exciting me as a cold hearted investor, except I'm not a cold hearted investor. And I was on antibiotics for about 15 years starting when I was about 5. So I don't know if I was on and probably was when I was, before I was 2, but I did have a lot of that list of things including obesity, adhd, Asperger's and just OCD and odd and all those things. I think antibiotics played a major role in it. I don't think it was the only cause. And so I'm, I become obsessed with keeping my gut healthy because it was so bad so much of the time. Not just that I would get throat infections and strep throat and all that, but when you have just, just constant, just noxious gas, like, that's a sign that something is very wrong. And it just never stopped. And it's not a problem for me anymore. And I think my gut is, is very healthy again. I do take Pendulum and I take some other probiotics and I take, I mean, a bunch of things. I've written whole books about it, but it feels like collagen was part of it. Aside from taking Pendulum to help control blood sugar and to help auto repair the lining of the gut, what else would you take with Akkermansia to make it survive better, to make it perform even better? I have some thoughts, but I want to hear your thoughts. Let's hack this.

Well, I think, you know, we think of Akkermansia. Think of it as it's a probiotic strain and you have all these other probiotics, which are the bacteria that are living in your gut and they need food to survive. And the food that they survive off of are these prebiotics. And so there are a variety of prebiotics out there. You know, fibers. Inulin is a big one. But the prebiotic that has been shown to boost Akkermansia growth is polyphenols and polyphenols. There's a variety of different polyphenols and foods that you can get them from and you can buy polyphenols. They have been shown to, when you consume them, enable you to increase the amount of Akkermansia in your body. And it's not actually known exactly how that works because Akermancy doesn't feed off polyphenols. And so we can dig into that kind of ecosystem story. But that's a great way to boost your Ackermans. And actually we're going to be releasing a polyphenol product later this year. I think by the time this airs, it will actually be out because it's coming out very soon. And these are polyphenols that we specifically studied with our Akkermansia and showed that in a lab. They were. There are actually some polyphenols that were inhibiting our Akkermansia growth. And these three polyphenols are ones that didn't do that. And so grapeseed, pomegranate combination of polyphenols.

It's so interesting that you mentioned grapeseed. Way back when I was maybe 16 and I was dealing with this massive knee pain that culminated in three knee surgeries when I was 23, and they diagnosed me with arthritis then, which is tied to a leaky gut. I just noticed that if I took grape seed extract, I went to the store to try and figure it out, that I noticed improvements in my knees. And I was also getting chronic nosebleeds, just like really bad nosebleeds, like 10 times a day. This is a toxic mold thing that's very common. And when I would take that, I would stop getting nosebleeds. And do we know anything about thickness of blood or bleeding in Akkermansia? Because now you're making me wonder, did I feed my Akkermansia back then and I didn't know it, or was I just using the polyphenol antioxidant effect?

Yeah, I don't. You know, I haven't seen any studies around akkermancy and its role in. In blood flow. But that's. And that's a new, interesting thing to look into. I mean, the interesting thing about polyphenols in the microbiome is that polyphenols actually have a mild antibiotic effect. They. They actually kill off certain strains and enable the growth of other ones. And of course, one of the strains that's. That's not killed off by them is Akkermansia. And that's why taking polyphenols actually helps to bolster Akkermansia levels.

It's funny, one of the half dozen or so reasons that I think bulletproof coffee works. And keep in mind, I noticed that it works and then kind of made it work better. But that doesn't mean I know the mechanisms. So then I went through, in my first book, and I really worked on why. And one of the leading candidates is that oil in general, specifically MCT oil, but just any droplets of fat, they kill microbes. Microbes don't like that. So you're kind of taking an antibiotic when you blend butter into coffee, just because it's a big load of that. But let's say you were to go into your yard and you were to cut down all of the weeds, and then you put fertilizer that only fed the grass that the weeds couldn't eat. The grass would get bigger. And what's happening when you do just the classical cup of bulletproof coffee, or frankly, butter and MCT in any. Any kind of coffee or tea, the way the Tibetans do, is that you're kind of mowing down some bacteria, the ones that are afraid of fat, and then you're feeding the Polyphenols from the coffee or tea to the bacteria that like the polyphenols. And I would bet you that if we ran the study that, that Akkermansia goes up when you do that, even if later in the day you have carbs. So you don't have to be full keto to do it. But do people who are full keto have a lot of Akkermansia or do they lose it as well?

There haven't been so many studies on full. First of all, there's not so many people who are able to adhere to that diet for a very long time. And so I think that, yeah, I'm.

Not a fan of unending keto. I think it's bad for you.

Yes, unending keto is bad for you, but it takes a while for your microbiome to totally respond to dietary changes. So there have been a couple of kind of pilot studies and small studies and it looks like on the keto diet you tend to have high levels of Akkermansia.

Okay, so, so doing a higher fat diet, what if you're a straight carnivore where you don't even touch a polyphenol, what happens there? Would you?

Well, I, I think that we're there. There are a lot of downsides to being just a pure carnivore. Hides this topic.

How dare you say that? The leading carnivores have started saying you can eat low inflammatory plants and plant parts. I'm like, yeah, I agree with that. I have that in my book too. And like, oh, and you can have a two dairy. Yep, yep. So that's sustainable, I think. But if you never eat a carb, I feel like you have a problem. But some carnivore people are against any kind of soluble fiber, which is the primary thing, like inulin. What would happen if someone only ate fruit sugars and fruit polyphenols and you know, meat and fat? Is that a pro Akkermansia diet or is it going to work better if they take some soluble fiber?

It's going to work better if they, if you have soluble fiber in there as well. Because, you know, again, this is an ecosystem. And so one of the things that Akkermansia does is it helps produce butyrate, but it needs the other strains in order for that kind of pathway to be complete. There's multiple strains involved in that metabolism and it starts fiber and so you need to have fiber if you want to fully capitalize on your Akkermansia and keep it well populated in your Gut.

Most people have heard that the lining of the gut replenishes itself quite often. So there's like the mucus layer that gets replenished, and Akkermansia lives in that. It helps to get maintain the mucus. So it's all shiny and slimy the way mucus is supposed to be. What about the layer of cells underneath that they turn over more quickly as well. Is that what's controlling how quickly the microbiome changes? Or can the microbiome change independent of the lining of the gut?

The microbiome kind of the most. The two easiest ways to change your microbiome are through antibiotic treatment and actually through dietary change. And those might change the gu gut as well. But you're changing really the constituents of your microbiome. The gut lining actually, you know, think about it. It's sort of the connector between what's happening on the inside of your microbiome and what's happening in your bloodstream. And so the repercussions of not having a strong gut lining, or so called leaky gut, is that relationship between you and your microbiome starts to become more porous than it should be. And so, you know, not having a strong gut lining certainly can impact the microbiome, but more importantly, it's impacting kind of how your body's responding to your microbiome.

Got it. So it's more what you're eating, not the lining of the gut. There's so many things that people are doing to lose weight. There's intermittent fasting. There's semaglutide, which is a new GLP agonist peptide that has had profound results. We just did an episode on that about six months ago. Now a bunch of celebrities are saying they're using it. People think Elon Musk went on it. Even though it makes you pretty nauseous, it's very easy to lose weight on it. I tried it for one injection. It was like, I want to barf all the time and I don't have weight too much. This is gross. I'm done. But if I weighed 300 pounds, I would have done that all day long if it made any difference. So it seems like all of these can't be affecting Akkermansia. So. So what percentage of weight loss do you think you can get? Or what percentage of people. Is Akkermansia a central factor versus all these other things you could do?

Well, actually, Akkermansia increases the production of GLP1, so they're actually functioning in the same pathway.

So Semaglutide actually have a relationship in how they're impacting biology. But one doesn't make you nauseous.

Well, right. One your body has natural amounts of and knows how to handle. The other, you're kind of like overloading this small molecule which is only supposed to be active for certain specific periods of time during your day. So the chief medical officer of our company was actually previously the chief medical officer of Amlin Pharmaceuticals. They developed the first four GLP1s that came onto the market as pharmaceutical drugs. When he and I started talking about the microbiome and realizing that there are these strains which are upstream of GLP1 production, he just, you know, was like, I want to get involved in this company because if we can increase GLP1 through some other mechanism, especially a natural one, that's going to be huge. Because we already know that GLP1 is able to help you with your glucose control, your insulin control. Weight loss gives you a feeling of satiety. But if you could do that all naturally and have it turned on when it's supposed to be turned on in your meal cycle, it could do that without all these negative side effects. And so, you know, the nausea and the, and the feeling sick. So that was why he decided to join. And in fact, you know, we have data showing that our Akkermansia is able to stimulate GLP1, increase GLP1 levels coming from these L cells. So it is all related to that small molecule.

Wow. Okay. This pendulum is substantially more affordable than Semaglutide, which is like $900 for a month supply, I think. So this might be a way more effective or this way more cost effective way to do it. What's a typical amount of weight loss that someone who's meaningfully obese experiences when they start getting better glucose control because they start taking the pendulum Akkermansia formula? I mean, is it. If it's like a pound a week without really changing much, or is there an appetite change, what's a typical response when you start having more Akkermansia?

I would say people come to Akkermansia for different indications. And some people are coming to us because they're trying to manage their weight. But there's a lot of other benefits people get when they're on Akkermansia related to the gut lining. And maybe the one that's been the most surprising to me, we have a small but growing number of people that are using it for their skin, so helping with their eczema and their acne and when you think about the inflammatory response and the fact that we tend to treat skin disorders with topical treatments when in fact there's an underlying inflammatory problem that's happening, that's one pretty interesting outcome to me. And of course, we have people that are experiencing weight loss and things like that, but we recently had a customer present at our board meeting, and she talked about how Akkermansia helped her lose weight, but the reason she kept taking it was because it was helping with her acne.

Interesting. So there's all kinds of systemic inflammation effects. A lot of people, though, are just trying to lose weight. So do you see, like, a rapid onset? Because the semaglutide, it's, you know, I believe the studies were 30% of the way they needed to lose in six months or something like. It was. It was.

Or 30.

Reduction in body weight. It was crazy. I don't. I don't think that Akkermans has that strong of an effect. At least I don't know that many people who are taking the other stuff, the semaglutide, to compare. But just what do you normally see? Like, is it rapid weight loss? Is it moderate and continuing weight loss? Does it vary greatly because it's such a big reason people might take Akkermansia?

Yeah, as with anything, it varies widely. So I should start by saying we have not run a clinical trial for weight loss and looked at different starting points and outcomes. So this is really data that we get from our customers. And so it does vary widely. I think it's pretty unusual to expect that you can take a new strain, get it into your gut microbiome, and immediately see an impact of it, because it's not a small molecule. So what you're trying to do is to get this strain integrated into an already existing ecosystem. So it's like, think about your garden. Let's go back to your yard analogy. You want to plant something new, but you don't want to, like, make a clearing ground for it. So if you look into your garden now and you just start sprinkling seeds, you know, what are the chances that those seeds start to turn into actual plants? You know, it takes a second for that to happen. And so if you start taking Akkermansia and you're not doing anything else to, like, clear out your microbiome? It usually takes. It's been shown that if you do a dietary change, it takes, you know, eight weeks to see your microbiome change. And so if you use that as kind of your proxy, it takes a while before you can get a strain to colonize. But once that happens, you know, what we see, what we hear from people is like the minute that they start to experience the weight loss, then it becomes like a continuous weight loss. The amount of time it takes you to get that first experience tends to vary from person to person.

I have to ask a personal question here. So I take the pendulum Akkermansia, but I'm moving and I am going to be on the road for probably three and a half weeks. So I know it says refrigerate, and I'm just wondering how serious you are about that. If I forget to take it, it's because I didn't want to open the fridge because my supplements are somewhere else. So tell me about refrigeration and Akkermansia.

Akkermansia. We've actually made a lot of headway in Akkermansia in production of it. And we actually just lowered our price. So this is a funny story. So. So we had these big manufacturing feats we made which made it less expensive for us to make the product. And we just passed those savings along to our customers. We lowered the price of the product, and so we let our customers know. We sent this email that said price change of Akkermansia and the subject line, and we got all of these calling us and saying, I thought when you told me there's going to be a price change, it was going to be in the direction of it going up, because everything is going up in price, as we all know these days. And so to have one product that's going down in price was, you know, kind of a nice surprise. And so we're excited about that. But one of the other things is that Akkermansia is room temperature stable. So if you refrigerate it, it can last longer. But you can take refrigerate on the.

Bottle because I swear mine says that. Am I just an idiot for having it in the fridge all this time?

No, you're. No, you're not. I keep all of my. I keep my Akkermansia in my refrigerator because it just. It lasts longer. You know, it's a live strain. But you. It's room temperature stable. So you can take it with you on the road, you can take it with you on the plane. You don't have to worry about keeping it in your fridge.

I'm gonna go grab my bottle right now and check because I. I feel like I'm an idiot here. It may be that I'm taking glucose control that has Akkermansia in it because I had a couple bottles of straight Akkermansia semi. Just nuts here.

Oh, yeah. Glucose control has to be refrigerated, but not because of the Akkermansia.

That's what it was. I just thought the Akkermansia was the same because the labels are similar. All right, so I got a. I just took both bottles. Okay, So I took all my Akkermans here. That was pure. And glucose control has other stuff like clostridium in it. Clostridium, that's the good clostridium. A lot of people don't know that because you hear about that infection from Clostridium difficile in hospitals. But what stops that is the good ones that are out there. So I always want to have a Clostridium, which I like. If they have that in there, I want to have the good ones. So I never get that. I can go to hospitals and lick whatever surface I want. And I'm totally bulletproof. Okay, maybe not, but there you go. Keep in a cool, dry place for Akkermansia. And if I'm getting pendulum glucose control, what percentage of pendulum glucose control would you say comes from Akkermansia? So if someone wanted to just take Akkermansia from you guys instead of glucose control because it's shelf stable, would it work? Sort of, yeah.

I mean, glucose control had. Akkermansia is one of the five strains that's in there. And so if you want to just take the single ingredient, Akkermansia, and that's really the thing that you're trying to increase, it works just fine for those folks. Now, the formulation that's in glucose control is there to increase butyrate production as well as other short chain fatty acids. And Akkermansia is one of the players in there. So, I mean, I personally, I take. I'm like, what, you don't have any Akermans in your house? Do you take glucose control really?

Well, I think I ran out of Akkermansia and I'm taking glucose control. I still have three more bottles besides these two. So when I order my supplements, what I always do is I always order like six bottles at a time because usually you save a little bit of money. You don't have to pay shipping on each bottle. It's like you go to the ATM. You could withdraw 20 bucks and spend $3 on fees. You could withdraw $500 and spend $3 on fees. And if you have 500 bucks, you should take it all out. So I'm like that with my supplements. I just have a cabinet full of my multiple bottles of everything I take.

Yeah. So glucose control has to be refrigerated. That's the one that I take because I actually want those other strains in there. There's two clostridial strains, there's a Bifidobacterium infantis, and there's this Anaerobacterium halai. Like these other strains are doing other beneficial things for your microbiome.

We have these 300 new studies and you, you regularly share new info with me about this because I'm really interested in it. Tell me about the latest ones that have you the most excited.

Yeah, I think probably, you know, one of the things about Akkermansia is that people have a lot of theories about what it can be doing. And now there's, you know, more and more data coming out about what it actually is doing. And so, you know, I think first of all, understanding that these polyphenols can help increase Akkermansia production. Knowing that the Akkermansia is actually, you know, hanging out and this mucin layer in your gut lining and having there's actually images around that. And then this other kind of super interesting thing about akkermansia increasing your GLP1 production, there's now a few academics that have shown that, and you can literally see GLP1 going up when you add Akkermansia to these human L cells. L cells are the cells that produce the GLP1. And so I think that that's. All of that data is becoming clearer and clearer. And so I think that especially this link to GLP1 is super interesting. And as you pointed out, people are starting to understand. Well, GLP1 is a very powerful tool when it comes to weight.

What about the effect on TLRs or toll like receptors? Can you walk our listeners through what those are and why we should care and why it's kind of cool that Akkermansia does that.

Yes. So these toll like receptors are actually receptors that live in the gut lining. And maybe I'll take one step back, which is to say that one of the interesting things about having a strong versus a weak gut lining is actually these receptors and their localization. So when you think about this mucin layer and you think about any kind of the epithelial layer, these receptors kind of live in these, you know, at the surface of these cells. And so in order to have them properly there, you have to have all the cell structure has to be intact. And the minute the cell Structure is out of tact. Then all of a sudden your receptors are kind of not quite there. It's like having a house and you have a doorway and you've got a door frame and that's what keeps that door there working. And then all of a sudden you lose parts of your house, your door frame falls down, your door isn't in the right place, and the door is really the receptor, because the receptor is what takes something from the inside and signals to the outside or something from the outside and signals to the inside. And so when Akkermansia is properly situated, these, when Akkermansia you have abundance of it, these receptors are properly situated. And so one of the things that's been really interesting is people have learned that one of the proteins on the surface of Akkermansia called AMUC 1100 actually binds to these toll like receptors, specifically TLR2. And that is a trigger for not only your gut barrier integrity, but also immune homeostasis. And so it starts to create the relationship between your gut bacteria and your immune response. And this is fresh data. It's part of these new studies that have come out.

Okay, that's pretty cool. So immune function and possibly improving with allergies because of some allergies or lack of Tregs, Right?

Well, and interestingly, yes, that's right. And interestingly, one of the other things that has started to be observed is that it's potentially, well, your body, your microbiome influences your body, but also that your body influences your microbiome. And so when people start to have these immune things that are triggering their immune response, that, that can actually trigger Akkermansia production in order to get more of your immune response done.

No way. So you could have a famous but unidentified infection and then the body goes, oh, I have an inflammatory response. And the body turns on your own Akkermansia production in some mystical way, which helps with inflammation. That's really interesting. Like, there's so much we don't understand about our guts.

There's so much we don't understand. And these feedback loops are a very common part of all of our other systems in our body. And it turns out that we're starting to learn that the microbiome is part of that feedback system too.

Okay, that's, that's pretty interesting, actually. I had no idea. I'm wondering, is there a time you might not want to answer this, but I have to ask this on behalf of our listeners after I've been on the pendulum Akkermansia for say, three months If I take it every other day, sometimes if I'm economizing, so I can take it for longer. Is that good or does it work? You know, after you're fully populated and you went hard for a while, is it okay to skip a day? How often can I skip so that I can take all the other things like the polyphenols that you guys are making and everything else? I know people are economizing, so what's the minimum frequency of taking pendulum Akkermansia after I'm fully populated?

We haven't done any studies on that. One of the studies we did do was people were on glucose control for three months, and then we asked them stop taking it, you know, for a month. And then we looked at their microbiomes, and for most people, they didn't. Their strains kind of weren't. Weren't there anymore. However, about 15 to 20% of the people, the strains were still there. And so, of course, the big question is why? What is it about those people that allowed them to have this colonization without having to keep taking the strains? And so, and unfortunately, the answer was not as easy as we thought it was going to be like, oh, it's just your starting microbiome. And so that wasn't obvious. And so, you know, I do think that in theory, if you were able to, let's say, bolster the Akkermansia in your gut by taking straight Akkermansia, and then you move from taking Akkermansia to the prebiotics, that can help bolster Akkermans. So polyphenols and fibers, I think, in theory, you may never have to take another Akkermansia pill again, which is one of the reasons we are releasing polyphenols.

You're going to be on a flight and they're going to spray insecticide in the air, or you're going to eat industrial meat. Like, I. It feels to me like you'd want to take it at least a couple times a week if you like the results you're getting.

Just like, yeah, I mean, I, you know, look as an, you know, experimentalist and looking at data, you know, going off of something is one of the clearest ways to know. You know, you take something, you experience an effect, and you go off of it and that effect reverses. I'm all for people experimenting, and I think one of the most. The most powerful stories we get and the most dedicated fans that we have of the products are exactly these people who went off of it and were like, oh, my God, And I gained like 15 pounds. So I went back on it. And so I think that that's a, a fair way to test whether something is actually working for you. I personally, even though I am a scientist, have never been off of them. And I will say that over these last couple of years, I did not get, nor did anybody in my family get any unnamed infections. I'm curious for you, you know, have you, you've been taking glucose control and it sounds like you took Akkermansia as well. Have you done the experiment of going off and seeing. And I'm not gonna get mad at you if you did, but have you done the experiment, going off?

Probably not in a structured enough way that I could tell you. One of the problems is like, I'll take it. And like I said, it's in the fridge.

Fridge.

And so most of my supplements aren't in the fridge. So my take rate is probably not as good as it should be, but, oh, well, you know, live and learn. So I would say I've been a sporadic user, but probably sporadic enough to. To get it in. But you just don't really know. How would I test my levels of Akkermansia? Like, is there a specific test that you can get?

Yeah, there are gut microbiome tests that you can get. And most gut microbiome tests actually now specifically highlight your Akkermansia levels because it's emerging as a keystone strain. So the one that I like the best is one that you can actually only get through your practitioner. It's called gi map and it uses, rather than DNA sequencing, it uses qpcr. So it's very sensitive to and specific for Akkermansia. And that test is a great one for measuring your Akkermansia levels. And many of the doctors that we work with, that's the one that they use to measure for their patients.

It's called gi. What?

Map.

GI map. Okay. And then I know that there's. It's in my biome results as well, which is really cost effective. You can order it at home.

Yeah. Viome, you know, Thorne's gut microbiome test. Most of these gut microbiome tests at this point, Genova Diagnostics does one too. They all, they all kind of show akkermancy levels. So it's great. Any of them is going to show them for you.

One of the other things you mentioned that you just cut the price and. Thank you. That's awesome. I like it when companies do that. It's so tempting. Like, well, I established a market at this price, I learned how to produce it. But if you're making a fair amount on it and you cut the price, more people can buy it. And this is something that is probably cheaper than getting diabetes anyway. But making it more affordable is a great thing. And of course, because you're talking about a company that you started on the show, use code Dave VIP on pendulumlife.com get another 20% off your first month. So big price discount and another discount for listening to the show. So, Dave VIP on Pendulum Life.

Well, and there's. I'll give you another one. You have two. So you have another one, which is Asprey Vip. And it works not just at Pendulum Life, but also we're now on Amazon. So we got on Amazon about three or four, four months ago. So if you prefer to buy off their Asprey, Vip also works there.

Well, thanks for setting that up so you can go to Amazon, order Pendulum, but honestly, if you're a good person, spend an extra one minute to go to pendulumlife.com the reason for that is that when you buy direct from a small company, you help the small company stay in business, because Amazon will suck small companies dry whenever they can. And they say this as a guy who spent more than 400,000amonth on Amazon distribution and ads and things like that. So, like, we like small businesses. And so it's worth your time to have your browser automatically enter your address and all that. And just, I would just say order it directly from Colleen because she runs the company she started and she's sharing your time with you. Or buy it on Amazon because you're lazy. I buy a lot of stuff on Amazon too, and either one's fine. But Dave VIP on pendulumlife.com and Asprey VIP on Amazon.

Yeah, And Aspiri VIP also works on Pendulum Life.

Yeah, Also maybe that's better for everything. But, oh, we got all this Aspree Vip. Just use it everywhere. Okay, that's beautiful. And Colleen, thank you for sharing all this knowledge. You know, PhD background. And you clearly care a lot about this, the way you just think about your answers. I appreciate that you're a true microbiome nerd. And there are a lot of people who are saying, I'm an expert, I'm an expert, but. But you can tell what you're talking about. The strain does this and the strain does this. So you kind of have this friendship with all these little bacteria and you know exactly what they're doing. And I really admire and respect that. So thanks again for being our resident GI expert.

Yeah, happy to talk about the microbiome anytime.

I can tell. And I will have you back on in another six months or so and we'll talk about some new research and you'll probably tell us about some other cool new strains.

Sounds great. Thank you.

Thanks. All right, guys, if you enjoyed this episode, well, maybe take some polyphenols, maybe take the right ones and try and get your Akkermansia test and see what happens. If you are trying to lose weight or dealing with energy or inflammation like allergies, this ought to be in your toolbox as a biohacker. And now it is. And now it's cheaper than it's ever been. So there you go. See you all on the next episode. If you are not following the Ship show on Instagram, you're probably missing out. It's at the Human Upgrade podcast and following that account. In addition to following me, just Dave. Those are my Dave Ask on Instagram. That would be the right thing to do so that you get to learn stuff like you just learned from Colleen and you get all the discount codes. See you all soon. You're listening to the Human Upgrade with Dave Asprey.