Hack Your Hunger: The Power of GLP-1 Probiotics | Colleen Cutcliffe, Ph.D. | Ep 1151 | Dave Asprey

The Harris Poll just came out with this. 80% of women are walking around with food guilt, and 70% of men are walking around with food guilt. And that food guilt is linked to these cravings and making bad food choices. And I think when we talk about the gut brain connection and we talk about, you know, your feelings driving bad food choices and then those bad food choices, then driving those bad feelings, there is this very interesting network connection between all these things that can put you on either a really bad cycle or on a positive one to pull your yourself out of it. And really what we're interested in is what are the microbiome interventions that you can provide to people to start, to get them jump started on that. Good track.

You're listening to the Human Upgrade with Dave Asprey. You're listening to the Human Upgrade with Dave Asprey. Today we're going to talk about GLP1. And you may say, what the heck is GLP1? Well, you've heard of a bunch of weight loss drugs that are sweeping the nation where people use these injections once a week and then magically they lose weight. If you go back in the history of the podcast, one of the lead researchers on the first trial for this type of medication called a GLP1 agonist, I had him on kind of before the trend happened because I'm good at spotting these longevity trends. And the conclusion there is that, yes, you can lose weight, that, yes, there are some risks with the pharmaceutical side of things, and that there are things that are really beneficial from a longevity perspective around, we'll say, manipulating the GLP1 system in the body. So I thought, what if there was a way you could do this naturally? And it turns out there is. So we're going to talk about probiotics and what they can do for the GLP1 system in your body. I think you're going to be pretty excited about this when you look at all the things that are happening, you know, with thousands of dollars a month and all of this, as you know, I'm not opposed to a pharmaceutical approach to anything as long as the risks are much, much lower than the rewards and you're informed of the risks and you make a decision. But usually the natural ways have a much better risk profile than the pharmaceutical ways. So I like to start there. And, and what do you know? There's a probiotic way to do this. And our guest today is Colleen Cutcliffe, a PhD who's been on the show before, and she's a scientist who's going to Walk us through how GLP1 works and how you can manipulate it with probiotics. In other words, lose weight, have less hunger, and get the other blood sugar regulating benefits that you'd like to have. Colleen, welcome back to the Human Upgrade.

Thanks so much for having me back. Great to be here.

Well, some of our audience doesn't know what GLP1 is because they haven't heard previous episodes or read my books and stuff like that. On it. Can you talk with me about what GLP1 is and why we should care?

GLP1 is a really important hormone that our body makes when we eat food. And so essentially I think about this like when your car gets low in gas, if you have a gas, a car that uses gas, your car gets low in gas, you go to the gas station, you put the nozz in, you set it, and then as the gas fills up, you, that nozzle will automatically click when it's full and stop adding fuel to the car. And that click is essentially what GLP1 is. So when you eat food, your body has a way to know when the tank is full and to have that click GLP1, which basically tells your brain, okay, we're done eating. We don't need to eat any more food. We don't have to have these cravings throughout the day because the tank is full and we're good to go. And so what we've discovered is that there are people who produce lots of GLP1 and so they tend to be less hungry, they tend to get, you know, satiety quicker. And there are people who produce less GLP1 and so they kind of are always hungry. They're thinking about food all the time, this so called food noise. And they get these cravings unlike other people. And it turns out that the people who are lower in GLP1 and have these cravings represent the vast majority of the population. And so the question is, why do we as a society make less of this GLP1 hormone?

Well, why do we?

One of the big reasons why people are low in GLP one that's been discovered is really linked to the microbiome. And the microbiome are all the bacteria, viruses and fungi that reside in and on our bodies that help us with a variety of different health and disease issues. And so what happens when you eat food is you have these hundred trillion microorganisms that are in your gut that are helping you to metabolize that food. And each of them has a different role and a different function and works with different kind of co workers in this factory setting. And there is one department in this factory that is responsible for that GLP one click. They are responsible when you are eating, to metabolize food and to know, okay, now it's time to stimulate GLP1 hormone. And that's going to tell us that we're full. And what's happened for a lot of people is they are low or entirely missing and this department of these specific microbes, and that's why their body isn't getting the appropriate amount of GLP1 produced when they're eating food.

Okay, so some people don't have the right bacteria, and because of that, they're craving all the time. Do you think 100 years ago more of us had that kind of bacteria?

Yeah, I mean, there have been a lot of studies showing that if you go to populations that have been, you know, less touched or untouched by western civilization, in particular, that they have vast abundance of these strains that. And some of these strains not, not the ones that we're going to talk about here today, but some of the strains that those folks have, you can't even find them, you know, anywhere in the, you know, U.S. population. So we really have lost diversity and therefore we have lost certain functions in our microbiome that we used to have. And it's not just kind of civilizations that have been untouched by western, you know, western culture and food and all of that. But even for us as individual, there is a time in our life when we have a super diverse microbiome. I mean, we all remember a time where we could eat or drink whatever we wanted to and we didn't have to worry about it. And as you age, you actually start to become depleted in certain microbes. And that is at the core of a lot of the functions that we feel like are just a natural part of aging. Oh, my metabolism slows down because I'm aging. I have less brain function because I'm aging. It turns out that a lot of that is related to this loss of diversity and depletion in the microbiome.

In my longevity book called Superhuman, I actually talked about how you could predict someone's age by the number of species and type of species in their gut. So if, like me, you're planning to live to at least 180, well, maybe you should have a young person's type of gut bacteria, the one that you're working with to raise GLP1 in humans. This is your GLP1 probiotic. Is that something you find more of in young people or in older People.

It'S a combination of three different strains that are in there. One of the strains which has sort of emerged as a keystone strain called Akkermansia mucinophila. You and I have talked about this strain previously, and its importance continues to, you know, gain more and more traction in publications and our knowledge about it. That strain is really interesting because it looks like as you age in general, you have less and less of that strain. Except if you start to do these studies where you look at people who are aging in a more healthy way, they tend to over index for that strain. And if you look at people who've reached 100 years plus, they have a ton of this strain. And so it starts to become a differentiator between healthy aging and, you know, actually getting into that 100 plus years. So if you have more of it, those people are over indexing for Akkermansia in their microbiome.

Akkermansia is a really interesting probiotic, as we talked about in the last episode when you're on, because it's missing from a lot of people entirely. And when you have more of it, you regulate your blood sugar better. And people live a long time have a lot of it. So it's one of those things that's a part of a good longevity strategy. And it's the only bacteria from its phylum that's in our gut normally. Is it Veru? Veruco microbia. Is that what it's called?

Nice. Yes.

Is it related to Veruca salt?

I have no idea. I don't even know what Veruco salt is.

It's a band. I'm pretty sure they're not related. I found a cultural reference you didn't know because you're a PhD and I'm just a biohacker.

Well, maybe it's something about our musical taste. We'll get into that at a different time.

Or lack thereof. All right, so it's interesting though, this is this one unusual species that when we have it, we're younger and we handle our hunger better and we handle our blood sugar better. And as I've talked about on with multiple Experts, manipulating your GLP1 system is a longevity strategy in and of itself. So doing it pharmaceutically is a way, but doing it with a probiotic seems like a more affordable and maybe a great place to start. And then if it doesn't work, sure, do whatever it takes. But I'm particularly impressed and you came up with three species, though, that are in your GLP one and Probiotic. What are the Other two species besides Akkermansia.

Well, so first of all, in the literature, There are only two strains kind of this department that we talk about turning on GLP1. There are only two strains that have ever been published to show that they can increase GLP1. They can stimulate this GLP1 release. One of them is Akkermansium mucinophila. The other is Clostridium butyricum. Both of those strains are in this formulation. And then there's a third strain we put in there, Bifidobacterium infantis. And that's because it works in conjunction with those other strains, because it produces these short chain fatty acids called acetate and lactate, which can then be converted to butyrate by Clostridium butyricum. So all of these strains really kind of work together. It's like passing a ball down a soccer field. So Bifidobacterium infantis takes the ball and passes it to Clostridium butyricum, which is then the guy who produces the thing that stimulates GLP1. So the formulation has three strains that all work together, two of which have been published to show they can directly stimulate GLP1.

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You, Dave, at some point we'll have you come visit our manufacturing plant. And when you walk through it does literally there are times when it smells like vomit or sweaty socks. And that's just the smell of getting healthier.

It's butyric acid. And this is also why when you eat yogurt, it tastes good. Like that kind of tangy thing it's in there. And if you enjoy like Manchego cheese, which is one of my favorites, because sheep cheese has very different probiotics and very different characteristics in it than cow's cheese cheese. And that also has that kind of cheesy smell. And so this is one thing that our nose doesn't necessarily like. But when you eat it, you're like, oh, actually that's kind of good. Or like some of the, the sharper cheeses would have more of that in it. And the, the third species you had in there, Bacillus infantalis, this is a really important strain. In fact, it's so important that, and this is in my very first book called the Better Baby Book on preconception and Fertility. Like what do you do before pregnancy to have healthier? My kids are super healthy. I'm really, really grateful for that. But when we, they first started nursing, we opened a capsule of Bacillus infantalis and put it on their mother's nipples so that when they would nurse, they would get this probiotic because it's so important, especially when we're young. But you also want to have it throughout your entire life, right? So this is a really powerful blend of, of things I've never taken other than in the GLP1 probiotic. I've never taken that form of Clostridium. I've taken a couple other probiotic forms, but this is a very, very unusual probiotic. So this is kind of cool. You're making a manufacturing plant in your stomach that throws the switch for GLP1. How long does it take for people to feel a difference from it?

Well, you know, this very unsatisfactory answer to that is it depends. It sort of depends on the individual. It depends on the state of affairs of their microbiome. And to be totally clear, I'm not a lunatic who thinks that every problem can be solved by the microbiome. And certainly this might not be the reason why someone is experiencing, you know, terrible cravings. But we did do, in a study, we use the Food Cravings Inventory, which is the diagnostic test for food cravings. It looks at cravings across the four major cravings types. So sugars, carbs, fast foods, and high fat foods. And what we found is that after six weeks of being on the probiotics, you basically take one a day. For six weeks, 91% of people had a statistically significant reduction in the Food Cravings Inventory. And it was across all four different food cravings types. The highest one was for sugars. And so it was sort of interesting because, you know, we knew that it would. We know that GLP1 helps reduce food cravings, but I think we hadn't realized to what extent that it would really help people. So in a six week study, 91% of people had a reduction in cravings.

That's a really big number. And that was in six weeks time. One of our Upgrade collective members. And by the way, guys, you could be in the live studio audience. I'm actually looking at sue right now and she typed in this question and said, I've been using GLP1 probiotic, and this is from Pendulum, your company. She's been using it for about two weeks and hasn't noticed a change yet and wants to know how long does it take? And so you're saying in six weeks, 91% of people have a difference in. But they might not feel the difference because if you're using a standardized questionnaire, it helps you to tease out something. So the question is, do you have a little process running in your head that goes, how craving am I today? And so once you build awareness of the state of your biology, which is really useful, then you're, oh, yeah, today is different. But for me, a regular practice of writing down my cravings and times I had intense brain fog or was just really tired or really inflamed, I would just write it in the margins of a notebook, right? You can do it. Little notes on your phone. And once you build a practice and you write it down for a few months, you just realize, oh, I always had an awareness. I just had. Didn't know that I had an awareness. So you can build this for your Food cravings. And I'm to the point now where if I'm craving food, there's always a reason and it's always my fault. And there's nothing wrong with craving food. It's just like, oh, why do I want salt? It's because my blood pressure is a little bit low and my body's telling me I need more sodium so that I can increase my blood volume and I can hydrate better. So I put some salt or some electrolyte in my water. I'm like, there you go. I met that craving, which is actually, you know, just my body asking for something. But a craving gets to the point where, like, I just have to have it. If I don't have it, someone's gonna die. And I've certainly had that when I was obese. And those are really severe cravings. And that's the type of thing that the GLP1 probiotic is designed to help with.

Well, and even more subtle cravings. I mean, I'd be curious to hear from you and the team if we offered that test and that. That test, as many diagnostic tests, it takes a long time to get through all the questions. But if we offered that or maybe even an abridged version of that, is that something that you think people would like to take? Or is it better to just have people do what you're saying, which is kind of write it down or keep track of it in their minds?

You know, I think a small number of biohackers would probably be, you know, I'm really going to focus on cravings. I've been teaching people to track what you hack. In fact, I think that's the title of a chapter in one of my books where you could spend all of your time tracking all of your stuff, and then your morning routine is four and a half hours. And, like, if you're gonna live longer, but you spend eight hours a day living longer, you better live at least 33% longer. Cause you just spent a third of your life living longer. Right? So I would say the people who are saying, I know I have a problem with cravings. I know that's what's behind my eating. I'm gonna sort out if it's emotional eating versus something that's biological, and quite often it is biological, that then drives the emotion, right? So you can have trauma or loneliness, which I. I had when I overate. But if you have this intense feeling that comes by biologically and that triggers the emotion, and then you blame the emotion, if you have this type of Tool, you can really tease out how strong are the cravings. So I, my guess is that it would be helpful for people. What do you guys think from the Upgrade Collective? If you had to answer a lot of questions, it's like a 10 minute survey or like an hour survey.

I think it ends up taking people. I think it's a 10 to 20 minute depending.

I think you should put it up on the pendulum, right? Yeah, it'd be interesting. Okay. A couple of people are saying yes, they, they would like to do that.

Yeah, I mean, I think your point also about, you know, what is a craving versus, you know, your body telling you that you need something. We really are talking about cravings here. And so it's the. I got home late at night instead of just going to bed, which I knew I should have done, I threw a frozen pizza in the oven and I ate it. Or I grabbed a spoon to go have one spoonful of ice cream and I put the container back half empty. You know, it's these cravings, this satiation that we can't achieve. That's really what we're talking about here. And I saw this crazy stat, the Harris poll just came out with this 80% of women are walking around with food guilt and 70% of men are walking around with food guilt. And that food guilt is linked to these cravings and making bad food choices. And I think when we talk about the gut brain connection and we talk about, you know, your feelings driving bad food choices and then those bad food choices then driving those bad feelings, there is this very interesting network connection between all these things that can put you on either a really bad cycle or on a positive one to pull yourself out of it. And, and really what we're interested in is what are the microbiome interventions that you can provide to people to start to get them jump started on that good track, because it can feed itself in a really good way, in a positive way.

So rather than feeling ashamed of having food cravings, which it sounds like a lot of people are doing, you could just say, oh, my body is experiencing food cravings, by the way. That's different than you because you're not your body. And then you can say, that means I'll do something about it. And then you take GLP1, a probiotic, you change what you eat, you get enough animal protein, all those kinds of things.

Absolutely. And you know, we have this, I, we just heard from a customer who said, you know, I've always been a sweet tooth. My whole life I've been A, you know, I've had a sweet tooth and I've never. I'm just one of those people who could never resist, you know, cookies. If you put a cookie in the house, like, I'm eating that cookie, and that's just me. And after being on GLP1 and losing some of those sugar cravings, he started to detach his Persona who he was this person who's weak and can't avoid sugars to somebody who now his biology is working differently and that's not him. And I think for me, that's a really profound statement about your biology versus who you are. And sometimes we kind of confuse those two things.

Yeah. Identifying yourself as your body is. Is a dangerous thing to do because your body does all sorts of weird things and it changes all the time, and then it actually makes you helpless. But if you're saying, I'm riding around in this body and it does all sorts of stupid, maybe I could fix that. And I don't like it when it does that instead of when I do that. So then you can like yourself and not like something your body's doing and decide that you're going to change it. Right? Oh, I would like my body to be more muscular versus I want to be more muscular. So there's like a sense of shame and judgment and responsibility and the shift is really, really big. And. And so I'm very careful with my language. Even when I talk with my kids. It's like, oh, your body's doing this, not you. And changes a really. It changes a lot, I would just say. And it's when one of the biggest shifts in my mental awareness to become a biohacker.

Absolutely. It's so empowering to know that you can change your biological system and that that is not who you are, it's what your body is doing. And I think that's why the microbiome is so fascinating for so many people, because this is one of the things that is mutable. It changes. You can change it. There's things that you're doing that you don't know that are changing it. And you can change it back. And so unlike our genes, which are sort of, you get what you get, and we haven't gotten quite to gene therapy for the masses.

The.

The microbiome is shaping a lot of your biological systems. And you can modify it.

You can absolutely modify it. People will throw the word superfood around like it means something, and they'll apply it to almost anything. I'm waiting to see superfood kibble for humans. But there are real superfoods and there's one that I've been researching for years. With so many health benefits you almost wouldn't believe it. I first started using it for gut health and then I figured out that it supports metabolism, hair growth, healthy skin immunity, and even athletic performance. I'm talking about Colostrum. Colostrum is the first nutrition we receive in life and has all the essential nutrients that your body needs to thrive and grow. To get those nutrients, it's important to properly source your colostrum. And that's why I use Armra. Colostrum armor is a bovine colostrum concentrate that's natural, sustainable and third party tested for purity and efficacy. Armor's process preserves the integrity of 400 bioactive nutrients. Since I started taking armor Colostrum, I've noticed a difference in my energy, my fitness, my skin, my gut, especially when I travel. And I like it that I can take one or two or three scoops and I could just take it in my mouth or I can drink it with water and it tastes mild and it really does change the state of my body. It's a potent anti aging substance. Go to tryarmora.com T R Y A R M R A.com, use code Dave, they'll give you a 15% off your first order. People are talking about this a lot online. I have been a fan of Colostrum for years. I just couldn't find one that consistently worked. Armor really makes me happy because it does. All right, this is a question that I wasn't really planning to ask, but I got to ask you this.

Oh, no. Okay.

I've seen a number of people who have high TMAO forming species in their guts. And guys, if you eat eggs or fish, they can convert actually, or soy, soy, lecithin, soybeans, they can convert into tmao, which probably increases risk of, of cancer. And this is one of. And red meat does it as well. So the, the people trying to convince you to not eat one of the most nutritious substances on the earth called beef, they're like, oh, stop eating beef, right? But then, oh, keep eating fish. And you're like, hold on a second here. These all convert and they're all controlled by gut bacteria. I don't have any species in my gut that make TMAO out of beef because I eat grass fed beef, not antibiotic tainted beef. If I'm taking the GLP1 probiotic or anything else, is there something I can do to reduce the formation of tmao.

Oh, man. I don't think we've looked at. I would have to look more deeply at the literature around TMAO and these strains, but we certainly haven't looked directly at that. But, but I will just say this about the science of the microbiome, which is that in the end, this is an ecosystem of strains that all work together to create some final end products. And there's a lot of in between steps to getting to those final end products. And so the in between steps, if taken out of context, might look like there's detrimental happening, but that's a part to getting to the end thing. So, for example, if you imagine you're making a car, one of the pieces might be a screw that's really sharp. And if all you look at is like, oh man, my manufacturing plant is making all these screws that are really sharp and that's dangerous, you might be getting the wrong message. In the end, it's actually a necessary part to making that final product, which is the car. So I think it's just a word of caution about we're still early in understanding the microbiome, and the context of all of these readouts is super important.

Is there ever a case for just saying, screw it, My gut bacteria so screwed up. I'm just going to take a nice Z pack Zin, just wipe out my gut microbes for the most part, and then rebuild them by taking GLP1 and prebiotics and postbiotics and just saying, you know what, like, my compost pile got all rotted and gross, so I threw it away and I started a new one. It. It almost feels like a gut reset for some people has been really effective. Almost as effective as fecal matter transplants. What would you say if someone's like, you know, my gut's been so ruined, I'm just going to wipe it out and I'm going to start with really good probiotics. Is there a case for that?

I would not be against that, conceptually. I mean, really, if you feel like it's so far gone, that's not a terrible way to reset. You can. There's less dramatic ways to reset, too. So if you decided to go on kind of a liquid fasting water fast.

Or a coffee fast.

Exactly. A black coffee fast.

Yeah. No oat milk. Okay, no oat milk.

But essentially, you know, you go. You go fast. That's another way to kind of reset the starting point of your microbiome and then feed back the things that you really think are beneficial. And it's not just, you know, taking a GLP1 probiotic and giving these strains, but also it's an opportunity to refresh your nutrition. So eating foods that are high in fibers, high in polyphenols, you know, all of these things will help feed those bacteria which are stimulating GLP1 production.

What else can I do in my diet to increase GLP1 to cause, say I'm going to take GLP1 probiotic and I want to feed it. Well, I mean, should I be eating grains? Should I be eating meat? What's going to help?

Well, actually, Akkermansia mucinophila, There's been good clinical data showing that increasing your polyphenol intake will increase Akkermansia and is directly linked to blood sugar improvements. And we looked at a bunch of different polyhedras phenols with our Akkermansia, and we found three specific polyphenols that appeared to work with ours. And we actually put out a polyphenol product specifically designed to be a booster to this Akkermansia strain. And it was from pomegranates, green tea, and grape seeds. And so I think, you know, that is. That's one of the foods that definitely has clinical data behind it or human data behind it.

It's funny, green tea extracts and especially grapeseed extract have been some of the most important polyphenols in the longevity movement for 30 years.

Oh, really? I didn't know that.

I remember when I was a teenager, I would get, like explosive nosebleeds, sometimes ten times a day. Like, I walked around with a bottle of Afrin and a Kleenex because Afrin will stop on nosebleed. And it was related to toxic mold. And the fact that when toxic mold hits parts of the nose, it releases heparin and histamine, and heparin's a blood thinner. So I'd just be sitting in class and, you know, moldy classrooms and just. It's really good for dating. Let me tell you what I found, though, is that when I took grape seed extracts, that it went away like 90% of the time.

Wow.

So I've been on grape seed extract for a long time. In fact, that's like 70, 80% of my life. And it's cool because it helps to control weird reactions like that. And who knows, maybe it was even through the microbiome because I was on antibiotics for about 15 years for chronic strep throat, which probably led to some of the weird biological complexities. I still. Well, they're Mostly gone, but I still have a few weird things. So it's, it's just fascinating how all this ties together. So you have these three very, very well studied for longevity polyphenols and you're using them as food for the GLP1 probiotic. And that's, to me, that's just super fascinating.

That is fascinating. I have to think about that, that connection a little bit more. I mean, you've been working on your microbiome too. I mean, we've talked about Akkermansia mucinophila before. I'm curious, what's your take on how have you thought about the microbiome for your own health and these particular strains?

I'd say since the first studies on Akkermansia came out, I was looking for how do I raise it, and you couldn't buy Akkermansia. In fact, I think I even wrote about it in Super Human in my longevity book, if I remember right. And then you guys came out with the first and I think only strain of Akkermansia that's out there and you've been adding to it with these new innovations, which is super cool. So I've been on your product for a long time and full disclosure, I don't take it every single day. It used to have to be refrigerated, so I don't always open the fridge to get it out because my vitamins are in a hole. I have like a pantry that's just vitamins and it's kind of ridiculous actually. It's got like four shelves and they're eight feet long and they're just all full of supplements. You feel like you're at a gnc, but with, you know, super high end products. So I'm, so I've been on it for a while and I did quadruple my number of species in the gut with the recommendations from Superhuman, the Longevity Bug. And I measured them before and after I, I did the program using the VIOME test. So I'm, I'm, it's actually the largest investment I've made. I've been an Advisor for almost 10 years now in biomes. Really. They've got 600,000 people's gut bacteria on file now, which is kind of cool. So there's, there's interesting sample sizes. Um, so I, I tend to use that to look at my diversity and to look at the healthy balance of it. But I don't believe that it's calling out your species or if it is, it's very deep in the data. So I I believe that Pendulum products are working. I. I can't assign a single cause to them, but I am at 6% body fat. The Austin. Oh, geez, I just forgot. That's kind of lame. Sorry, Austin. Guys like Austin Local magazine just had a. An article they ran on, you know, the biohacker is now in Austin, and their photographer took, like, the shirts off pictures I didn't know were going to happen. And I'm like, dude, I am so lean. I've never looked like this in my entire life. I just look at that and shake my head. I'm like, I can't believe that that's a picture of me. Because some part of me still sees myself when I was £300 or when I was £220 or whatever. And I think that managing my blood sugar has been helpful. I've also worn a cgm, the continuous glucose monitor, for long periods of time. I haven't worn one in like a year because I'm lazy. I know it works. I just do what works. So it's probably time to slap one on again. But my blood sugar regulation is good, and it's to the point where I do eat meaningful amounts of carbs because if I don't, I just get even leaner. So, like, I finally got my metabolism working where it's. It's easy and I never have cravings. It's super cool.

Yeah. Amazing. Amazing. Well, I'm. I usually. Akkermansia is one of the strains that gets called out in these gut microbiome tests kind of near the top just because it's such an important strain. So maybe in their newer tests they'll start to highlight that. And butyrate producers, you can kind of lump them together. That's also, I think, an important function in the microbiome to be able to look at improvements on so. Well, it sounds like you are essentially tackling health from so many different angles that you can't simply point to these particular strains and the role that they're playing here. I'd love for you to do an.

Experiment, like, to stop taking them and get off.

I know it's terrible because that requires you to stop taking them for a second, but I'd love an experiment.

Yeah. This is one of the problems. Anytime you're. You're following one person's protocol, it's probably not going to work for you. In fact, there's an almost certainty it won't. So I'm about to launch an AI tool that has all of my knowledge in it and a bunch of the studies that I've used as well in creating my knowledge so that you can actually log in and it'll recommend things to you based on where you are and based on specific goals. And that's going to be amazing. So instead of having to listen to 1200 hours of my podcast and read 3000 articles and eight books, I'll just tell you what to do in order to get results and how to track them, including all the lab tests. So then we'll recommend a gut test. So say, all right, so I want to control my blood sugar. Here's the things I could do. Maybe you should try some cinnamon extract and chromium, right? Those are pretty good for controlling blood sugar. Maybe you should take GLP1 probiotic. You would track the probiotic with a gut test, and you would track all of this with a glucose monitor. So I'm just helping people understand. Don't just throw a bunch of money at supplements. Know why you're taking them, for what goal, and then track the metrics that support the goal so you can stop spending money on stuff if it doesn't work. And if it does work, say, you know, I think I'm going to keep doing that because I like my life now. And then you're going to get a different goal. And, you know, the new goal may be, I'm going to live, not just 180. I'm going to kick Dave's ass. I'm live to 181. I'm like, guys, it's to at least 180. It's not just so we. We can race, right? So that's where it's going to end up. And I should be. I should be bringing this out within the next very short period of time. And that's a way I can guide people maybe who haven't even heard this episode to hear the episode or to just say, I don't need to hear the episode. I'm just gonna try GLP1 probiotic because, well, I was thinking of trying a pharmaceutical. This is more cost effective. And if in six weeks I have less cravings, maybe it'll work. But let me ask you this. When people inject the class of GLP1 agonists that are all over the news, a lot of them, in fact, I. I've warned about this. They can be longevity substances, but if you stop eating and you lose half your muscle mass and half your fat, you're going to be really, really unhappy with it. And I've seen it happen over and over, and I'VE got recommendations on the blog for what to do to stop that from happening. But you have to be militant about your animal protein consumption and about lifting weights and my experience injecting one of those for the show. I did it for one week. I felt like I had morning sickness the whole time. It was terrible. Like I could not eat 200 grams of protein to save my life. So when I take GLP1 probiotic from the, the stuff that you're specifically making, am I going to lose my appetite to the point that I start losing muscle mass the way the pharmaceuticals do?

I mean, that is one of the, you know, classic advantages of going the natural route and helping your body kind of learn to fish with the right tools that it used to have versus the pharmaceutical route. I mean, these GLP1 analogs are essentially, you know, fake GLP1. They're meant to mimic your GLP1 hormone, but they're chemical. And so you inject them directly into your bloodstream and they, they aren't recognized by your body in the same way. So instead of, you're supposed to have this cyclical pattern of GLP1 hormone in your, in your bloodstream. So when you eat, it goes up, that click, you know, is happening. And then it goes down over time so that you're hungry again and you're supposed to eat, you know, throughout the day. It's not that you're supposed to not eat. And so your body is normally supposed to have the cyclical pattern of GLP1. And what the drugs do is they get rid of that. So you just have these high levels of GLP1. And that's why many people similar to yourself, even like literally hours after taking their first dose, feel nausea. It's because their bodies really didn't need it quite at that level. And certainly, you know, the non cyclical pattern kind of messes with all the other parts of your body that need that hormone to be going up and down at different times. And so essentially you will not see when you take the GLP1 probiotic within hours of your first pill, a feeling of nausea. You will not see kind of the very immediate impact that people feel when they go onto the drugs. But conversely, when you go off of those drugs, because you haven't really taught your body anything, you've just given it this, this external chemical. When people go off of these drugs, there's this immediate rebound. Everything that they were feeling and doing beforehand comes right back in full force. So you won't feel that with the GLP1 probiotic because especially if you get these strains to colonize, you now have the ability to produce your own GLP1 at elevated levels. And so you won't have that kind of stark, I go on it, crazy things happen. I go off at crazy things happen kind of a response.

So, short answer. If you take GLP1 probiotic, you're unlikely to lose muscle like you would if you're using a pharmaceutical.

Yeah. And, you know, one of the things we've really been focusing on, and I think it's, it's super important for any of us who are kind of in health, is that it really is about the food cravings. We, we really don't want to focus on the weight loss. And, and the reason is this. If, if you could convert 5 pounds of fat to 5 pounds of muscle, you haven't lost any weight. But that is a win that is so much better for your body. And so what we're really talking about is how do you reduce the cravings for these things that are not beneficial for your body that you really don't need to be consuming so that you can live healthier as opposed to having the goal be weight loss, which I actually think is problematic for a lot of different reasons. The goal is really to reduce these cravings so that you are naturally going to be making better food choices.

Thank you for saying that weight loss is dumb.

Okay. You put it more succinctly than me.

At Upgrade Labs, we have something called the Cell health analysis, and this is the world's first biohacking center. Opened under Arnold Schwarzenegger's office in Santa Monica about nine years ago, it's now a franchise. We're opening 28 locations across the US and more every day. And every location has a clinical grade body composition system that we use to measure the strength of your cells. And we can measure visceral fat around the organs and total body fat on par with what a DEXA scan does. So my girlfriend is here and I, I've convinced her to make a few nutritional changes and it was of her own free will. Guys, you can, you can't make your girlfriend do anything. Just try it. You'll learn what happens. So she asked and she didn't lose any weight, but on the scale, five pounds, just like you said, five pounds of muscle went up and five pounds of fat went down. But if you look at weighing yourself, you don't get any of that data. And that's why when people come into Upgrade Labs to upgrade themselves, like, well, let's see how you're doing here. And it's interesting. You can even tell someone's age by the amount of visceral fat. This is the dangerous fat that kills you around your organs. So the, the curve, as you get older, you get more and more visceral fat unless you do something about it. I have low levels of visceral fat for an 18 year old. Right. And so that's one of the many ways you could measure aging. And if you have less liver fat and less organ fat, you are probably gonna live a lot longer. In fact, it's more important than cholesterol by a long shot in terms of longevity. So I would just double down on that. The number on the scale doesn't tell you anything. And if it, if it's something you want to drop, I highly recommend pee, poop, and don't drink any water and weigh yourself again and then you can feel better.

Exactly.

One question. You have an Akkermansia product that I've mentioned taking for a long time. You have a butyricum product, and now you have GLP one that has those two plus another strain that are in it. Do I need to take all three, three pendulum products, or can I take GLP1 and just take a bigger dose?

You can just take GLP1 probiotic. I mean, the reason we offer those single strains is for, you know, we have the formulations, which, to your point, GLP1 Probiotic has these three strains in it designed to specifically increase your GLP1 levels and reduce your food cravings. And then we sell the single strains because for some people, like, if they do a gut test or they're really, you know, philosophically, they want to start with what's the minimum viable, you know, intervention. They have the choice to be able to take those single strains, but you can take the formulation and it's got actually the same amount of those two strains that are in the individual bottles you could take, rather than taking all three of them, you could take, to your point, two pills of the GLP1 probiotic if you wanted to. So there's not really, there's nothing different about those individual strains. It's just allowing people to mix and match how they'd like.

Okay, so my advice for you listening is if you're going to allocate your dollars and we all allocate our dollars on our longevity, you should take the polyphenol blend and the GLP1 probiotic from pendulum, because then you're taking the good guys and you're giving food for the good guys. So they'll proliferate in your gut more effectively. And from everything I know, it's going to work better that way than say, spending that extra money and taking GLP1 and then doubling down on butyricum or Akkermansia or something, something like that. So for the advanced biohackers out there, you can play around. For the rest of us, GLP1 probiotic plus the polyphenol from pendulum equals the most likely maximum reduction in cravings and better blood sugar control over six weeks, according to your study.

Exactly. And, and I do think you know your point earlier about wearing a continuous glucose monitor is, is really important. In fact, I did my own CGM test when I started taking pendulum glucose control, our first product. And then I recently did another one in order to determine could switch off of glucose control to the GLP1 probiotic because the, the three strains in the GLP1 probiotic are included in the larger formulation in pendulum glucose control. And I discovered something fascinating. I feel like every time I do a CGM experiment, I learned something new. Last time I learned that I should never eat grape, drink grapefruit juice. This time I learned I literally had a meal one evening and stayed kind of in range for, for my spike. Like two days later, I had leftovers from that meal. So it's.

I know what happened.

Exact same meal and I, and I spiked out and I was like, what the. And so it was. And, and I had them both at dinner time. So there's no thing about like time of day or, and my day before that was all more or less the same. And when I thought back on the day, I realized I had had one of those kind of crazy days. My, I hadn't drank enough. I, I drank a lot less water than I did on that, that day two days before. And I was just astounded at the difference in the spike just by being. And I wasn't like severely dehydrated or anything like that.

It wasn't the water. I'll bet you it was.

It wasn't the water. What is your theory?

Two day old leftovers, right?

Yeah.

Well, did they have. What kind of food was.

Was pasta with chicken and kale?

Well, it was a kale. No, it was the fact that you had protein from the chicken and it sat for two days and you get the beginnings of microbial decomposition in the bulletproof diet. I taught people, hey, don't, don't eat leftovers unless you're frozen right away. And people are just outraged. But I prepare my meals for the whole week. I'm like, yeah, and you're fat. Sorry. That's what happens. Because histamine grows in food and we all have a different level to degrade histamine in our food. Histamine is a microbial toxin. It can kill you. And if you've ever, say, had a pork coma where you eat either leftover pork or, you know, long cooked pork, and you eat it, it's so good, and then you're so tired, that's histamine acting as a neurotransmitter. And if you eat food like that and you get a dramatic histamine response, it can also drop your blood sugar precipitously, right? Because your body sort of panics, is like, I gotta deal with all this. So it starts firing emergency signals as mass cells get activated. It. So the difference here was it wasn't the same food. It was new food, vers versus old food. And losing weight on leftovers is sometimes a lot more difficult. Unless you freeze them after you eat them and then you defrost them to eat them again, and then you don't have the problem.

And I gotta rerun the experiment. I was, I, I think it was. I thought it was the water, but now I gotta rewrite it and make sure the water intake is the same. So. Okay, I'm gonna try that.

You could also sort of take a shortcut on this. The highest histamine food is fish sauce.

Okay.

Because it's fermented fish and fish makes a lot of histamine. So basically, take a shot glass full of fish sauce and see what your blood sugar does and you'll say, dave, you were right.

I'll bet you that sounds terrible. No, I'd rather eat the chicken and kale pasta leftover experiment.

I think so. And if you want to, like, make it stronger, pork and fish will make very strong histamine compared to beef or chicken.

I can't eat leftover fish. I actually, generally speaking, don't like eating leftovers just because of, like, food variety. I like eating different foods, but I can't even fish leftovers. For me, like, there's so many changes that happen. It's like smells and tastes terrible.

You shouldn't eat fish leftovers unless you, like, froze it right away. And I, I can handle beef that's up to 24 hours old if it was refrigerated properly. Otherwise, I feel it in my brain right away. You see it in your blood sugar. You see it in your heart rate. Like, it's a very noticeable thing. I am histamine sensitive, though, and that is in part because of my gut microbe system. It's also because I was sensitized to histamine by living in toxic mold for many years as a child.

Yeah.

So my system's like, what, you have histamine for me? And then it creates what's essentially a panic response.

Yeah.

It's also, if you do infrared sauna or you do a heavy workout, you're going to see a spike in blood sugar as your body releases blood sugar to deal with the additional stress. So who would have thought that leftovers are the same type of stress? But it turns out they can be amazing.

Okay, I can't wait to do that one again.

I love being a biohacker. It's so fun to, like, figure out, why did it happen? There's always a reason. All right, I want to ask you about other toxins, because when you were on episode eight, 81, you've been on. That was a while ago. That was a couple years ago. You talked about how your gut lining guards your gut from bad bacteria and from toxins. GLP1 probiotic. What role does it play in protecting the lining of your gut?

Well, this is sort of the reason why that this strain, you know, why Akkermansi muciniphila has become so popular and well studied and invested in by. By lots of academics around the world, is because it really appears to have these two incredibly important roles in the body. So one is what we just talked about, which is its ability to stimulate your L cells to release GLP1. And then we all know blood sugar management is a vital part of good health. But the second role appears to be actually distinct from that, which is that your gut lining is sort of. And I think we might talk about this last time, too. It's sort of like a wooden fence, where, you know, your wooden fence has these planks and they're held together by glue. And essentially, when that glue starts to get old, your. Your planks can start to fall. And your gut lining is exactly the same way. You have these planks. They're held together by glue, which is called mucin. Akkermansia muciniphilla is the only strain that we know of to date that literally lives at that gut wall and strips away the old glue when it gets old. It consumes that mucin and it stimulates the production of new mucin. And so it effectively keeps that glue, that mucin layer, regulated all the time. And that keeps your gut lining really strong. And why is it Important to have an important. Why is it important to have a strong gut lining? It's because you don't want to get gaps or holes in your planks, because this is what leads to, you know, what some people call leaky gut. You get. You can get infiltration of pathogenic bacteria. You can get all the small molecules inside your gut that are supposed to stay there leaking into your gut, your. Your bloodstream. And so you get the. This heightened inflammatory response, these undesired immune responses. And so essentially, your gut lining becomes a really important part, physiologically, of your health. And a lot of people who don't have that strengthened gut lining feel it in, you know, GI distress. So very sensitive to certain foods, but they also feel it in terms of inflammation. We actually have dermatologists who are using Akkermansia for things like atopic dermatitis and eczema, because what they're finding is that when you have this heightened inflammatory response, because your gut lining, you know, at the core, is actually not the way it should be, it shows up on your skin as, you know, a skin disorder. And, you know, a lot of the treatments for skin are what I like to think of, like in your car, when your check engine light comes on, it's like if you were to put a piece of tape on that check engine light and be like, all right, I solved that. So a lot of the skin remedies are just topicals that go on the skin, when in fact, actually you should be checking your engine, which in this case is your microbiome, which is causing these heightened inflammatory responses. So because the gut lining is so important, and because sugar regulation is so important, agromansia is super important. It plays these two different roles.

Makes a lot of sense. I'm looking through all the different pendulum products that I've tried, and I want to make sure that I have a full hierarchy for guests. Earlier, we said, okay, take the polyphenol blend and then take GLP1. But you also have pendulum glucose control, which is a probiotic that I've taken for a while. If I take glucose control, am I getting the GLP1 stuff, or do I need to take both?

So the hierarchy is pendulum glucose control was designed for people with type 2 diabetes, kind of like some of these other things that we've been talking about. So glucose control was designed for people with type 2 diabetes. It has five strains in it which are intended to stimulate GLP1 production. Also work on your gut lining, also optimized for generating short chain fatty acids, so that is kind of your highest dose, contains all the strains, product formulation. We also sell Metabolic Daily, which is that same five strain formulation, but at a lower dose really for anybody who wants to help metabolize their sugars and carbs. The GLP1 probiotic is a formulation that has just the strains that are focused on generating on, on increasing GLP1 and focus on these food cravings. And when you think about the dosing here, Glucose control has the highest dose of all five strains. The GLP1 probiotic has the same dose, but of those three strains. And then Metabolic Daily is sort of the lowest dose one. So allows you to kind of step in if you want to. I've been on pendulum glucose control even though I don't have diabetes. I wore a continuous glucose monitor, did a placebo test on myself and saw that it reduced all my spikes and also all my crashes. So it minimized both of those. And. And I knew that I was on the formulation versus the placebo because actually my workouts were stronger. So I did a blinded cgm. So I didn't see the results into the very end, but I knew my workouts were just, I mean, quantitatively better.

Yeah.

And then we saw the individual strains and then to your point about the polyphenol booster that works for all of these things that contain, they all contain akkermancy.