EPISODE #982 How Butyrate Supports Gut, Cell & Brain Function - Jessica Kane Berman / BodyBio

You're listening to the Human Upgrade with Dave Asprey. Today we're going to talk about your gut. And you could say, good God, how much are you going to talk about guts, Dave? And the reality is that there's at least as many bacteria in your gut if your gut's working right, as there are cells in your body. And we know the least about the gut. So I'll probably keep talking about it for a while because it's one of the big areas of performance enhancement that you can have. You want to live longer, get better of the mouth, the gut, the whole GI tract. The definition of biohacking is change the environment around you and inside of you so you have full control of your own biology. The reality is that the stuff in your gut is talking directly to your mitochondria and your cells via chemical, even via light mechanisms, and probably some stuff we don't even understand. So if you get control of that, you're gaining control of your own biological functions, which is kind of cool. Now, our guest today is Jess Berman, who's chief marketing officer and owner of Body Bio, which is a supplement company that was founded by her grandfather, who was an early master, an inventor, health explorer named Ed Kane, who passed in 2021 at age 95. So this is a company with a long history of knowledge and information. Jess, welcome.

Thank you for having me.

All right. You were actually working in the arts and suddenly said, I'm going to run my grandfather's company. What's going on with that? Tell me about it.

My grandfather was a researcher. You know, he originally got into biohacking in the 1980s. He owned a steel company, and he was suffering from chronic fatigue and heavy metal poisoning and, you know, everything else. So this is a man who went from coast to coast looking for solutions to his own health issues and really got deep into the science of fatty acid research, cell membrane medicine, and really intensely researched, really, what. What goes on in the cell membrane. And there was a lack in the market of supplements for physicians looking to address brain injury, genetic disorders, neurodegeneration. And so the company actually originally started through blood testing. He was doing blood testing. And it was just very tricky with at the time. The FDA regulations obviously developed a lot more now. But he was really a biohacker that took his health into his own hands and said, I'm not gonna sit here and feel this way, and saw that there was a gap in the market and started a supplement company in the early 1990s from there.

That is incredible. This is the exact definition of a biohacker. So we didn't have a name for it in the 80s. And he probably felt a little bit lonely. They used to call them health nuts or weirdos, and there's all these 80s words for people like that. But what you'll find is he actually went out and said, well, I've got to hack myself. This kind of touches my heart because this is exactly what happened to me. I'm trashed biologically. The doctors aren't helping me. I will go do it. And he wrote a software program to figure out what nutritional deficiencies he had in the 80s, started a supplement company. Guys, I'm not the first. You understand what I'm saying here?

The difference is he didn't know how to market it. That's really the difference there. And that's how I got involved in the company. It's really what it came down to.

So you've got 30 years of history building these amazing products and now you're going out and talking about it, which is really cool. Now back to body bio. I would say you have some very high quality supplements. I take for instance, your sodium butyrate or calcium magnesium butyrate, I like a little bit better before bed because studies show that butyrate increases deep sleep. And I know having more butyric acid before you go to bed is terribly, terribly important. It also feeds your gut bacteria so they grow more. And this is something that's just in my normal stack. When I was traveling in Peru a little while ago, I took that stuff every night and I consider it to be a part of making my gut work better. But you make a bunch of other stuff and stuff that's relatively unusual, which is pretty cool. So tell me a bit more about what you've just done around gut health.

Yeah, so I mean, if you go back to the area that he focused on was really addressing the cell as the foundation and structure and function of a living human being. So using phospholipids, bioactive lipids, butyrate, electrolytes to really address and optimize neurometabolic and cellular health. So that's really the findings that he came through with in the 1990s, started manufacturing this stuff then. So we really stick to a very specific group of products. And most notably, the two that we're most known for are phospholipic complex of phosphatylcholine and then the ancillary phospholipids. And we could talk about that and arbuterate which has become something that's become very popular, but it was not known about, really. I mean, there was not a lot known about it 10, 15 years ago when physicians were using it from us. So it's an exciting time for us, but it's also just a different time to navigate all these popular supplements and everything that's going on, and everyone promising this panacea of health. When we're sitting here saying, it just says to start at cellular health. That's this foundation that's so important to all these other issues that you're looking at tackling. So if you don't take care of this part of your health, you're not going to see gains in the long run, especially from a longevity standpoint.

It's really funny. We're by design supposed to see ourselves as a body. Like, oh, look, I have this whole body. But in reality, most of what's going on in your body is control by the cells, or even more specifically, inside the cells by mitochondria. So if you really want to improve how what you see as your body works, and keep in mind, at the end of this episode, your body will be different than it was at the beginning. You'll have shed some cells and added new cells. So you're constantly changing. The body isn't really a real thing. It's like a swirl or an eddy. Right. So you can change it because of that. It's not a concrete thing. Even though it feels concrete, it's not. And that's why, by changing the input stream of things, you can get crazy results. But if you focus on fixing cells, then the cells automatically and invisibly work together to do stuff better. So my approach to biohacking lines up totally with that. And I became familiar with butyrate first when I started looking at problems with my gut years ago. But then, in the realm of ketone research, it turns out that butyrate, which is named after butter, you guys notice I'm kind of a fan of butter. So butyrate has all these different things, including it's more ketogenic than C8MCT oil. It just doesn't taste that good. So you might not want to, you know, mix it with your coffee, but you can take it. And it has all sorts of other stuff that happens in the gut. So tell me a bit more about butyrate, but not just from the keto perspective.

Sure. I mean, butyrate is fascinating. So it's a metabolite that's produced. It's a byproduct when you have a balanced microbiome, a very healthy microbiome, which even at our healthiest, it's like a glyphosate exposure, right? You can eat all organic off your own backyard, you're still going to have glyphosate in your food. It's just an unfortunate occurrence. And the reality is, diets today and the food sources that we have, we are systemically low in butyrate production. This byproduct is made from the bacterial fermentation of resistant starch. We are systemically eating low levels of resistant starch. What's resistant starch? Cooled and cooked mashed potatoes or any type of potato cooled rice, plantains. We have all these great diets that are helpful in other ways, but we're losing sight of this important short chain fatty acid production in our gut. So the number one thing that butyrate does is it feeds the colonocytes. The colonocytes are the cells that line our gut wall, and it's the major energy source for those. The turnover is very fast. It's only one week, and they are the fuel source for that. And that's a really important part of our gut health. So in addition to that, it helps with the expression of tight junctions. So leaky gut helps to kind of seal up a leaky gut. You have all these very popular supplements these days. L, glutamine and aloe and marshmallow. You know, practitioners are using all these different ways to work on leaky gut. Butyrate is one of the most important players in this entire equation. And so it's interesting that so many people are missing out on that. From an intestinal permeability perspective, it influences the mucus layer. It creates a thicker mucus layer, which is so important in our gut lining. And that also will bring me to phosphatidylcholine, because 80% of our gut mucosa is actually made of phosphatidylcholine. It regulates T cells. Go ahead.

Back when I wrote the Bulletproof Diet, which is, I think she's 2012, I was writing it and I came across research that said collagen could be converted to butyrate in the gut by bacteria. Do you have any evidence about collagen versus resistant starch making butyrate?

I think there's a lot of different things that can increase the fermentable fibers that make it to your colon. Resistant starch is the number one source.

It works much better.

You know, we really suggest that people eat a very varied diet in very varied plants. You know, I think there's, it's a bit controversial to say that you can get enough in a carnivore diet. I'm going to argue that you cannot. But if you eat a diverse plant diet along with meat, I do not.

Advocate for, I think if, if you do a carnivore diet the way the original carnivore people say just eating meat. No, if you do a carnivore with herbs, that provides a huge benefit. Dr. Gundry and I were just talking about that. A massive improvement. Herbs are the original supplements that people passed around. But I find that almost everyone does what I did when I was developing the bulletproof diet and recovering from being a vegan, recovering from toxic metals, kind of like your grandfather had from mold exposure from Lyme disease, all kinds of stuff. So I went through and I said, what am I going to do? I am going to try a three month of carnivore or very close to carnivore and they didn't have a name back then and it caused leaky gut and it caused a spike in cortisol and it was not a good thing. And I said, well, what would happen if you had meat and non inflammatory vegetables and some fruit but not too much. And it's really funny to me because what I'm seeing modern carnivore do is including with some friends, they're saying, well I have honey and I have fruit and I have a carnivore diet that doesn't appear to be the same thing. So where I am, I'm like herbs, some carbs, but not too many fruit after dinner. But not more than 25 grams of fructose has been the recommendation for a year. And I want you to poke holes in this based on your knowledge, by the way. That's why I'm telling all this. And then the final thing is you need to have lots of herbs and you can have less inflammatory plants. Does that work with what you know from your grandfather and from your own practice about cell membranes?

I think it does. I mean it would sound like a diet that even he ate. The man ate 12 eggs a day until he died. But you know, he was after a lifelong search of phospholipids and he knew what worked for him. He ate vegetables, he could eat raw dairy and tolerate it very well. And he knew exactly what worked for him in his gut. I think at the end of the day it's not about one or two individual fibers or whether this type of collagen feeds this bacteria. How do you know, if you have that bacteria in your gu about diversity and diversity has shown to really support the commensal bacteria growth in the microbiota. So I think that's really important.

I like it. And I do take polyphenols, a whole bunch of different ones that are signaling molecules for that. And also I think soluble fiber is important. And this is a big debate in the carnivore world. There is abundant evidence, like hundreds and hundreds of longevity studies that I went through when I was writing my anti aging book and and soluble fiber converts to butyrate in the gut. So there's an argument that says you ought to have some soluble fiber, a good amount of grass fed meat and grass fed animal fats specifically for their effect on cell membranes. And I love it that body bio makes phosphatidyl lipids or phospholipids. Can you talk more about what phospholipids do? Where would you get them nutritionally? What happens when you take them? What's the. Just kind of walk me through the story.

Sure. The membrane of every single cell in our body has a bilayer. It's a wall that encases your cells and that wall is constantly changing. And the majority of the outer layer is phosphatidylcholine. You have the ancillary phospholipids on the inside, pe PI ps, phosphatidic acid. And then you have cholesterol and your proteins and everything else that make up the rest of your cell membrane. And but what's so important is as we age we lose levels of all of the phospholipids and we're not necessarily getting enough from foods. One of the highest phospholipid containing foods is eggs. But then eggs are also high in sphingomyelin and you know, not everyone can necessarily tolerate a ton of eggs.

What is sphingomyelin? Walk people through that.

There's a ratio and my grandfather at the end of his life was doing some really interesting research on the ratio for which when you're born you have very high levels of PC, very low levels of sphingomyelin, and as you age it flips. And there's a direct correlation between high levels of sphingomyelin and heart disease as we age. So he was getting into that research and it's a shame he wasn't able to complete it. But it's a really interesting topic in terms of cellular health.

Myelin is that fatty choline based layer around your nerves. And when you use your Nerves more, you build more myelin. So sphingomyelin is basically a formed myelin molecule and it could be tied to heart disease. And there's all sorts of correlations that aren't causal in my understanding of heart disease is probably not. But I could be totally wrong too. Like we, I don't think we know enough to say, but it's probably not cholesterol caused because we see lots of people, like 50% of people with heart attacks don't have high cholesterol. It's so weird. But repeat after me, it's all about the cholesterol.

So if you're looking at phospholipids and there's, you'll see a lot of PCs on the market. What my grandfather figured out how to do is how to isolate and concentrate those specific phospholipids from soy lecithin. And so that's, you know, controversial. People say we stay away from soy, don't, you know, take the supplement. It's derived from soy. That's just the highest naturally occurring source of phospholipids. And it needs to go through a specific process in order for it to actually have liposomal phospholipids that are going to break through the intestinal wall to get through to your cells.

So it's about delivery. It is in the context of choline or phosphatidylcholine. This is something that's been used for a very long time to detox from mold. You can do it intravenously. And part of my healing journey, the post vegan time after the vegan diet really wrecked me, as it will from depleting fatty acids and replacing them with the wrong ones. I used insane amounts of phosphatidylcholine and sometimes just straight up soy lecithin or sunflower lecithin. I'd put it with butter and sometimes coconut oil and I'd make ice cream from it and I'd put in smoothies. And this was to rebuild my cell membranes that were harmed by fat soluble toxins. And part of what happens in the world today is you got all these lipophoric toxins. So I was trying to increase my bile turnover. I wanted to make healthier cell membranes. And I found the data that showed it takes about two years to replace half the fat in the body. So if you go on a high phospholipid diet for about two years, you're probably gonna get rid of fatty liver. You're probably going to get rid of a lot of the toxins that are in your cell membranes. But it isn't an overnight thing. What do people feel when they first start taking phosphatidylcholine? The stuff that you guys make, which is a. A unique form, and it's.

It's two different things. So most PC is triple lecithin packed in oil, and that's going to give you choline and triglycerides. When it's digested, it's not liposomal, so it's great for increasing choline reserves, which is important for acetylcholine production. But true, liposomal phosphatidylcholine and phospholipids are very different. So they're going to get through to the cells to help rebuild that membrane. They're also going to help detoxify your nuclear and mitochondrial DNA from those toxic insults. So it's very different. And I think, you know, there's. There's a lot of confusion. And you people may see the, the. There was one study done, I think, at the Cleveland Clinic in 2011 that said PC increases TMAO. It doesn't. That's PC. That is choline and triglycerides. Pure phospholipids do not in any way.

Let's talk about this just a little bit. Dr. Gundry and I spoke about it on Instagram live. Dr. Gundry is a friend and a pioneer in robotic surgery and heart health who's now looking at lifestyle and nutrition later in his career. And TMAO is a compound about 10 years ago that said, look, people who eat red meat could have bacteria in their gut that converts it to tmao, therefore, red meat is bad for you. They ignore the fact that fish and soy protein convert to TMAO even more than red meat because it was an anti red meat article. And what Dr. Gundry and I just spoke about is that. That's so weird. Basic herbs taken with your meat block the TMAO degradation that's supposed to be a cause of heart disease. So it's completely nuts. I just, I don't think TMAO is an issue if you eat herbs or you have a healthy gut bacteria. And I have measured mine with viome. I do not have the TMAO formers. And if I did, I'd eat some fricking oregano and not worry about. Does that seem like they're being extreme?

Your food source, right? What type of animal protein are you eating? Where is it coming from? What has it been fed? And I think it's a lot More nuanced than that.

It is more nuanced than that. What's the comparison between the consumption of animal fat from healthy animals versus the body biophospholipids? Would you do both? Is there an overlap?

Yeah, you definitely want to do both. I think the studies show, and the work that we've been doing for over 30 years shows that you definitely need both. I think if people are dealing with, you know, any type of chronic illness like you dealt with, you need definitely higher doses, but a maintenance dose of. I mean, I take one tablespoon a day. That's about 12 capsules. When I was pregnant breastfeeding, two tablespoons a day.

This is of your phospholipids. Not of sodium butyrate or the.

This is PC.

This is PC. Just so we all know. So, guys, in my fridge, I have, I think, six bottles of body biophosphatidylcholine. And whenever I get a chance, I do liposomal or it's not liposomal. I do intravenous choline because it's so powerfully detoxing. And even if you're saying, but I'm performing really well, one of the reasons you're performing well is because your toxin levels aren't too high. And when you get more phospholipids, your brain's gonna work better and you'll be able to kind of flush out the crap that our bodies are accumulating because of what big industry is doing. I didn't realize that I could get your phospholipids in capsules. So I can get PC capsules from you guys.

You can. I mean, one of the benefits of the liquid is anything you mix with it will become liposomal. So if you want to increase anything to your cellular delivery, you can mix it with that, which is an added benefit. But if you're just on the go. Capsules.

I didn't have the capsules with me when I was traveling. I was thinking about that. Do you. Is it heat stable? Can I put it in hot liquids?

I wouldn't put it in boiling, but, you know, slightly cooled. Yes.

Oh, man. So in Peru, I was having mate de coca, which is coca leaf tea for altitude. And if I could have made that liposomal by adding some of your.

Would have been fun.

The body bio PC, that would have been a really interesting experience. Interesting. I'm going to have to go back to Peru and try this. But I would have preferred to take a bottle of phospholipids with me because when you travel, you're exposed to the crap they do on airplanes. They did this strange sweet smell right before you land. That's actually pesticides. Good thing I can do breath holding. It's insane. So they did that to us on at least one flight. And then there's all the hotel fragrances and whatever the heck else. You're doing your best. But what I think is one of the most protective things you can do is to take PC. So, okay, I'm going to get a few bottles from my travel schedule, which is insane going up here. I've got another trip to Dubai coming up and of course for the biohacking conference. So that's cool.

Yeah, it really assists in that everyday detoxification that we need. It's a very gentle detoxifier. It's not like taking a binder, but it's, it's really going to work on a much deeper level at cellular replenishment. I think that's a really important everyday supplement for longevity.

I would agree. And it's interesting that two of the things that you make are butyrate and the various butyrates and phosphatidylcholine. These are really powerful, kind of, I guess they're both technically fat, but they're such unusual forms of fat that they do something different. So protein doesn't matter and fat doesn't matter because if you're eating 2 tablespoons of phosphatidylcholine in a liposomal form the way you make it at Body Bio, or you're doing 2 tablespoons of soybean oil from commercial soybeans full of glyphosate. Gross. Not even in the same universe yet the macro people are going to think they're exactly the same. But that leads to a question. So soybeans are almost universally contaminated with glyphosate and glyphosate loves fat. It's a fat loving molecule. In fact, it would accumulate in soybean oil. You're using soy lecithin.

I got it. Tell me what we test. We test for glyphosate all the time.

And you're not using industrial soy, are you?

In addition? No. But in addition to that, there's no soy protein in the end product of Body biopc. It's the soy protein that is estrogenic, allergenic. It's the soy protein that is the problem. There is none of that. So you're left with phospholipids. That's it that we then test for.

Test the phospholipids so they're glyphosate free. They are lovely. That's really important. How would I know how much of the body biopc I should take right now? I'm 200, maybe £204. I'm 11% body fat and I'm a walking wall of muscle. You know, my age, you know my sex. So do I take like half a bottle? Do I take a teaspoon? How would I know?

Half a bottle would get a little intense.

Yeah.

There'S no upper limit for it. But there's also, you know, you don't need that much. You eat healthy, you get a lot of choline from your diet added is going to just help with the synthesis of phospholipids that decreases. We're just unable to do that as we age. I would say for someone like yourself, one tablespoon a day would be great. One teaspoon is totally fine. You, when you were dealing with mold toxicity, would have started at a very, very small dose and built up. So you would started with like a dot and then built up after a week to half a teaspoon and increased from there even up to about. I think most physicians are working with, you know, people who are dealing with specific toxic exposures like that, about two to three tablespoons a day in split doses. But it definitely will cause a Herxheimer, so you need to take that slowly. The interesting thing that you found when you took the IVPC is that IVPC is just phosphatidylcholine. The benefit of the liquid is that it is all the phospholipids in one, which is great.

Okay, I like that idea a lot. And I'm going to be getting the capsules for travel because when you're traveling is when you're most susceptible to things because of all sorts of air, airplane problems and whatever else. Now I want to switch gears a little bit. From phosphatidylcholine going back to butyric acid. And people who are longtime listeners by now have already learned, okay, you can raise ketones by eating some protein and lots of fat and no carbs. That's the old Atkins diet, the dirty keto kind of thing. You can just fast and raise ketones, or you can use street grade mct, which will raise them a little bit, or you can take C8MCT, which will get you up into the beginnings of ketosis. This is the stuff that I've recommended in bulletproof coffee. The brain octane oil from. From bulletproof and then there's two other ways of raising ketones. One of them is BHB salts or ketone salts, which I think have their issues with. And then there's ketone esters, which are the higher end stuff that also maybe put a load on the liver but are certainly effective. I just don't know if they're a daily practice or not. I'm still figuring that one out. But I know for high altitude they could be really helpful or for airplane travel and all. I interviewed Dr. Veach about it. But what's not in that list that belongs in that list is butyric acid by itself. So beta hydroxybutyrate salts or BHB salts or ketone salts. What isn't the second B, beta hydroxybutyrate, that is butyric acid. Talk to me about the difference between taking your butyrate versus the beta hydroxybutyric salts.

Butyrate is not just for your gut, it has systemic benefits. A lot of butyrate that you either take or make in the body goes throughout your body. BHB is made in the liver from sodium butyrate in the body. And so taking sodium butyrate is going to increase your BHB levels. It's just not as trendy necessarily as ketone esters, which the research is still out on those as well.

Well, it's really interesting because if you take a BHB salt that's different than sodium butyrate. Right. Like I am opposed in in principle to the ketone salts, I don't think they're a great idea for long term because of the load on the kidneys. I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure I'm right. I don't use them regularly and I have odd results when I try. So I'm will say I'm a little skeptical of those given that MCT oil works so well and it's much more affordable. But when you take a few sodium butyrate capsules, you feel it, you get the BHB boost. But it does a bunch of other stuff in addition to giving you the ketone boost. In fact, it's twice as ketogenic as C8MCT oil. You just can't blend it in your coffee. So what else does butyrate do besides making bhb?

It's fascinating. I mean it's the effects that it has on the gut brain axis are really just being studied and they're fascinating. I think one of the most important things it does is it alters Our gene expression, it's known as a histone deacetylase inhibitor. It helps your DNA to express how it should as opposed to be altered through the toxins that we're exposed to on an everyday basis. It's protective against many forms. I can't say the word, but you know, the big C word, especially for those that are related to the gastrointestinal region. It has a myriad of brain supporting benefits. It supports the blood brain barrier. It inhibits inflammatory pathways like NF kappa B. It's, I mean, it's really an awesome supplement that I think they're just finding out about. I think through Covid we found out so much about its role in immune system and cytokine function. It really is extremely important for regulating the immune cells not only from the gut, but all over the body and telling those immune cells what type of cell to be.

Wow. So you can have the same benefits as taking a BHB salt and a whole bunch of other benefits to support your gut and to reduce inflammation. And do we know if it's directly reducing inflammation or is it just reducing inflammation? Because ketones reduce inflammation directly in reducing.

Not only systemic inflammation, but mostly colonic inflammation.

So there you go, guys. I think there's a clear argument for taking good old fashioned butyrate instead of BHB salts.

And I think we talk about, I mean, I've listened to the company Pendulum and they've been on your podcast before and they make a bacteria probiotic strain that increases butyrate production. You can have foods that increase butyrate production. You have different forms of butyrate. There's tri buterin, there's butyrate salts. The research as to which is best, it doesn't matter. It's not. I wouldn't say the research is there. I think that there's over 5,000 studies using butyrate. Most use sodium butyrate. It's the type naturally produced in the body. And I think that they all work. It's all about raising your butyrate levels. Try one, try all. I don't think it matters.

Wow. Okay, that's cool. I, I take well. Okay. I have your sodium, sodium butyrate. I have your calcium magnesium butyrate. I think calcium magnesium works better, but it smells like socks. And sodium, by the way. I eat all sorts of stuff. I swallow them. It just doesn't bother me. Um, but it's probably better than spermidine. That stuff is, you know, if I used to take the lab grade spermidine out of a vial and that stuff was horrible. But I would do it before I could buy supplements that did that. But the sodium butyrate seems to work. But I feel like the calcium magnesium works better for me. Do you have any idea why that would work?

No. And I think it's. It depends on the person. Sodium butyrate works really well for me, and it really depends. There is a version of butyrate that doesn't smell that we are coming out with a supplement that launches on September.