How to Balance the Bacteria in Your Gut Microbiome

Hi, and welcome to how humans heal. I'm Dr. Donnie Wilson, and in today's episode, we're going to be talking about the microbiome, why it's important, and how to know what's going on with your microbiome and how to optimize it. I'm thinking that a lot of you probably have heard about the gut microbiome, and it's also known in research as the biomes for short. Sometimes it's referred to as the gut microbiota, or essentially it's referring to the microorganisms that are living in the environment together, in the digestive tract together. Now, of course, we have microbiome all over our bodies, on our skin. And now we're learning we have a microbiome in all different organ systems of our bodies. But we especially have research available, mostly about the gut microbiome. And what's really interesting is the connections they're making in the research between the gut microbiome and all different areas of our bodies. And they're making these connections also in terms of risk of different health issues. So what we definitely know from research is that if the gut microbiome or the balance of microorganisms or microbes living in the digestive tract gets out of balance, that it can increase our risk of infections of various types, from respiratory and bacterial infections to viral infections of different types. It also increases our risk of autoimmunity, metabolic issues, even weight gain, anxiety, depression, menstrual irregularities, including pcos and endometriosis, fertility issues. It affects bone health and it can affect kidneys. It can predispose us to heart disease, diabetes, and dementia. So essentially, these microbes living in our gut are essential paying, playing a big role in our health all over our bodies. And that's why we're realizing it's so important. I mean, for so long, we were thinking that all bacteria were bad and all germs were bad. And now we know that it's important to have a healthy balance of microbes, especially in our gut, let alone all the rest of our body, in order to maintain health. And so that's been a really big realization in itself, and we started to get a lot more comfortable with the concept of even swallowing bacteria in the form of probiotics, for example. So I'll be talking about that more in this episode.

So, again, the microbiome is this group of microbes, and it can actually fluctuate even on a daily, weekly, monthly basis, based on your diet, your, any medications you're taking, your exercise and any environmental exposures, stress exposures, toxin exposures, all of these things influence who is living and thriving in your digestion at any one point in time.

So essentially we're going for this healthy balance. We want mostly the guys that are helpful to us. So we're going to talk about how they're helpful to us. And always there's some of them that are potentially harmful. But the thing is, when there's a healthy balance, then the healthy, helpful bacteria and microbes balance out any of the potentially harmful ones. So the issue is, if it gets out of balance and we have more of the pathogenic or harmful microbes, then that's when issues start to arise. Or if we have not enough of the good guys, right. If things get out of balance. So it's this finding the right balance and optimizing the healthy. It doesn't mean we have only healthy, helpful bacteria. There's always going to be a little bit of potentially harmful bacteria and microbes, but that's okay as long as they're in a balance with the rest of the ecosystem. So what are these, what are these microbes doing for us? I mean, as you might suspect from the various health issues that I just mentioned, they communicate with our immune system. They directly communicate and support our immune system and help protect us from infections and from autoimmunity, which is autoimmunity is when our immune system gets confused and starts trying to protect us from our own self. So by having a good balance of micro microbes in your gut, you're helping your immune system stay on track. Instead of the immune system even going, if it's out of balance, the immune system can go toward infections, allergies, autoimmunity. So if you're having any of those symptoms, we need to be paying attention to your gut bacteria also. We know that these microbes are communicating with our nervous system via the vagus nerve and other mechanisms. These guys are sending messages to our, our brain and our nervous system. They're communicating about what's happening down in our gut there. They can even communicate and cause cravings, causes to crave certain foods in order to feed them. And it can affect our mood, our memory, our focus. So that's a whole other area now that we're learning about called psychobiotics, which has to do with understanding these microbes that influence our psychology, our, our mood and our mental state. They also make certain nutrients. The most well known nutrients that we know that they make are many of the B vitamins, including activating B12. They also make A vitamin K. They also make what are called short chain fatty acids, which are protective to the colon and helpful to our bodies overall. And they participate in making neurotransmitters such as GABA.

And again, communicating with our nervous system. Even now, studies are showing how some of these microbes can influence the production of serotonin and dopamine in our nervous system. So they are definitely making nutrients that affect us and making and affecting our neurotransmitters that also influence our nervous system. Essentially, what we're really learning is that they help us recover from stress and toxin exposure. As you know, any of you who've known me or read my books or read or listen to others of my podcasts, I really am interested in looking at how humans are affected by stress and toxin and exposure of various types and what we can do to help us recover from stress. And so I would say that optimizing the microbiome help is a huge, significant, influential way to help us recover from stress. And I'm going to be telling you more about the specifics of that in this episode, so I hope that gives you a sense of the. The function of the microbiome, the importance of the microbiome. And there's so much more that they do, but that's some of the main factors that we know from research at this point in time.

So how do we maintain these healthy bacteria? Right? We know they're important. How do we take care of them? Sometimes I think about it, it's almost like a gold. Having a goldfish, right? When you have a goldfish, or any pet for that matter, you have to know how to feed them and how to take care of them so that they can be healthy, right? And so that just helps us to realize that what we eat is what feeds our gut bacteria. Of course, they're living in our gut, so what we swallow is going to influence them and what's going to feed them potentially. And so we want to think about it that way. They especially can digest undigested food. So anything we eat that we might not digest well, like fiber that we don't digest well as humans, and complex starch. They can digest, they can ferment. They're fermenting these fiber and resistant starches. Now, this could be in a lot of different food types, even everything from. If you think of fruits and vegetables, grains and nuts and seeds, you know, this starts to give you a sense of where is the fiber coming from to feed these bacteria. If you look for foods that are particularly high in the type of starches that these bacteria and microbes like to consume or ferment. It's going to be things like garlic, onions, leeks, asparagus, artichokes, greens, you know, especially like kale, dandelion greens, as well as like bananas and seaweed. These have a specifically higher amount of what would be considered a prebiotic. So prebiotic is called pre because it's feeding the good bacteria. I know they, maybe they could have come up with a better name for that. But anyway, if you see prebiotic, think about this is feeding the microbes in your gut. And we can get prebiotics through our food, especially those ones I just named that are high in something called fructo oligosaccharides. Fructo oligosaccharides are the, basically a super duper food for these microbes. And it's those foods I was mentioning, like the garlic, onion and so on that is high in fructoolingosaccharides. Also things that contain inulin gums and pectins. So even if it's a protein shake, if it's a, a beverage, and I think we're going to see more and more beverages and supplements that contain these fibers and starches and, and prebiotics for feeding bacteria because this is what people are learning, hey, I want to feed my good bacteria. The thing I want to warn you about is that it's also possible to overfeed your bacteria. In fact, I would say the highest percentage of bacteria when I see patients. And I've been helping patients with their gut biome for at least 20 years now. Even though some of this information is just now becoming trendy and well known, it's actually been information that, that we've seen in the science and I've been implementing with patients for a long, long time. And so what I find, and I really want you to know is that it's way more common for patients to come in with overfeeding their bacteria than it is for patients to come in with too little bacteria. Hardly ever do I see someone with not enough gut bacteria. It can happen. It, it is a possibility to not have, not be feeding your gut bacteria or to be killing them faster than you're feeding them. So it is possible for them to get depleted, but that's way less common. It's way more common to actually over feed your bacteria. And so again, back to this analogy of the goldfish. You know, when you have a fish as a pet, you can't, you can't give it the whole container of fish food all in one day, it's not going to work. Well, you, we need to, these, these microbes only consume tiny, tiny amounts of prebiotics. So as much as we, we want to do a good job and we are willing to consume more, I want to warn you because it's possible to overfeed your gut bacteria. And how are you going to know, how are you going to know if you've been overfeeding your bacteria? Well, the likely symptoms are, number one, bloating. So if you feel bloated, either down low, up high, if you have a lot of gas, if you have burping, cramping, bowel changes, like if your stool is going to loose or even to constipate it, it's just changing. If you're having weight gain.

Likely you have overfed and you have too many gut bacteria. So please, I want to warn people about that because I think it's way more common than we realize. We, I think we, we are overzealous and thinking, oh, yes, I want to feed my bacteria, and then we overdo it. The other thing that can overdo it with your bacteria is if you're consuming a lot of fermented foods, because fermented foods contain bacteria, things like yogurt, kefir, anything that's like, like a sauerkraut, kimchi, miso, kombucha. These are fermented foods. And so the bacteria are fermenting in the food product already. And so when you consume it, you're adding bacteria, not just a prebiotic, to feed the bacteria that are already in your gut, but now you're consuming more bacteria in the fermented foods. So you're adding bacteria that to what's already in your gut. Which they do show that in cultures that consume small amounts of fermented foods regularly is a good thing, right? Because they're getting regular, consistent addition to their gut microbiome. But what I'm talking about is, I think now I'm seeing people who are again, overdoing it. They're having, you know, a large kombucha every day, or they're having a large yogurt or, you know, fermented foods every day because it's exciting and sometimes it's fun to make your own fermented foods and you're like, yum. But we have to keep in mind that our, our gut doesn't need that much. We want that optimal amount. And so just be really aware and cautious and listening to your body. If you are consuming prebiotics high fiber, which is, again, it's a good thing. But you, if you overdo it and you start to feel bloated or you start to have bowel changes, or you start to be burping and you start. Even if you see. Sometimes we see it in other symptoms, sometimes I see it where patients are coming in and they're getting infections sometimes, you know, like sinus infections, bladder infections, vaginal infections.

Joint pain, inflammation, headaches, just skin rashes. It's possible that there's over too many. Either too many good bacteria. That's a possibility. It's such a thing as having too many good bacteria. And that could be an issue because they are fermenting and. And you know, again, such a thing is too much of a good thing. And. Or you could have to. You could be actually feeding bad bacteria. You could be actually, prebiotics can also feed the harmful bacteria, right? So if you're, you're consuming prebiotics and all these healthy foods, you're throwing it all into your protein shake, like, oh my gosh, I'm getting all this good stuff in my shake. And yes, you're to some extent feeding your good bacteria, but you could, could also be overfeeding the harmful bacteria. And these harmful bacteria can then produce toxins. And the toxins not only cause inflammation in the intestinal lining, leaky gut inflammation that goes throughout your body, toxins that circulate around your body, which can trigger things like autoimmunity. So I really want to caution you, even if you're eating healthy foods, you could end up causing an issue. So if you're not feeling good and you're having symptoms, then you, what you can do to find out for sure is to do a stool analysis. Now, in years, for many years, we have had stool cultures. A culture is when you send in a stool sample into the lab and they allow it to grow over several days. Usually you're sending in three samples and they take the average of three over several days to see who's growing there. The problem with the culture is that some bacteria are anaerobic and they're not going to grow in a lab environment. And so we don't eat. They can't see everything. So then maybe not quite a decade ago, they came out with what's called a DNA analysis of the gut bacteria. And this is like a DNA sequencing. So they can, no matter if the bacteria are alive or not or the microbes are alive or not, they can identify them based on their DNA. So they can see bacteria, yeast, parasites, they can see based on the DNA of the microbes and they can tell us who's there. And this is some of the popular tests you might even see there's consumer versions of these stool tests that you can order and that you send in your stool sample and they'll show you what is the population. And then they may make suggestions in terms of how to change your diet, because there is some information about, for example, okay, berries are more likely to feed this bacteria than that bacteria. And so you can start to make adjustments to your diet. Right? Like if you're like, oh, I've just been eating a lot of bananas, let me back off on the bananas. So I'm not overfeeding the banana eating bacteria and I'm going to instead choose berries. So I'm feeding different bacteria that might be too low. Right. And conceptually, I think that's a brilliant idea. And I helped patients for many years. We would run stool panels and we would adjust their diet and we would retest. The thing is, is that it's not as easy as it sounds because there's a lot of cross activity. So sometimes the same foods that feed the good guys also feed the bad guys. And it's very hard to manipulate your diet to get the right outcome with optimizing your gut bacteria. So what I would say is, as much as I would love to be able to help you tweak your diet and optimize your bacteria that way, I don't find that that's a very effective way to do it. And so, and this is after analyzing hundreds of samples and helping hundreds of people, and we would make some progress. But for me, for something to be something I'm going to continually recommend, I need to see consistent, very helpful results. And so I would tell you if I think that's a helpful way to go, what I find works better is for us all to just understand that we need to be having a variety of foods. Because what ends up working better is if you create a variety in your diet. If you eat bananas every day, of course you're going to feed the same bacteria every day. So if you can mix it up a little bit, it's probably my best tip when it comes to feeding your gut bacteria is try to create variety in your diet. Try not to eat exactly the same thing every day, because if you do, you're going to feed the same population. When really we, when it comes to our gut biome, we want a diversity. Remember, there's over 100, 100,000 species. I want to Confirm that I'm saying that correctly. There's so many species there that we don't want to just feed certain ones. We want this diversity of food options. Okay, so try to look at your diet and say, hey, am I eating the same thing every single day? How can I create variety even in terms of just picking different seeds, picking different nuts, picking different fruits, picking different vegetables? And by creating variety, you're more likely to create diversity in a, in a, you know, to make relatively minor tweaks to your gut biome. I'm really excited to open enrollment in my new 14 day detox program. It's based on my experience spending 16 days in the Amazon and I realized I really want to be able to support all of you to safely and effectively detox from home. The 14 day detox includes a kit with protein powder, including antioxidants to support liver detoxification, as well as an anti inflammatory diet plan, daily videos and tips from me, as well as my self care note notebook, and lots of encouragement to spend time in nature to reset your circadian rhythm. I want you to be able to detox your mind, body and spirit so you can get back to balance and move forward in your life with resilience. I can't wait for you to join me in this transformational process. Now if your gut biome is really needing more help than that, like say you're having really a lot of overgrowing pathogenic bacteria, we're going to need to take additional steps. And in that case, that's where I find that doing the DNA sequencing stool panel, which is a clinical exam, it's, it's about a $450 test. It's a single stool sample. I can order through my office for you and we can then see who is living there. Are there, is there H. Pylori, Is there parasites? Is there overgrowing pathogenic bacteria or yeast? We can also see, is there inflammation? Do you have anti gliadin antibodies? Do you have high calprotectin which is a sign of inflammation? Do you. How well are you digesting your food? How's your pancreatic enzymes in your bile, Your fat digestion? So we can see quite a lot about your digestion in this type of clinical stool panel. And from there then I can get way more specific because we can look at those results and say, hey, for you maybe. You know, I think a lot of us need more help digesting our food. Remember, these bacteria feed off of undigested food. And what happens when we're under a lot of stress. We don't digest our food well. So we're under a lot of stress and we're not digesting our food well. Plus, if you add something like PPIs or proton pump inhibitors to treat reflux, which is also caused by stress, then we're really not digesting our food well. If our food is not digested well, it's not going to feed us. We're not going to be able to absorb the nutrients. It's going to feed the bacteria and the microbes. So we end up with overfeeding the bacteria because of stress, decreasing our ability to digest our food. And so this is where we want to come back to. How do we support our digestion? How do we make time in our schedule to sit down, breathe, chew well, send signals to our vagus nerve to communicate to our digestion, Then it's time to make enzymes and digest. You can also take pancreatic enzymes if needed to add some pancreatic enzyme activity to help you digest food while your system heals, if necessary. And again, we can see this on the stool panel. If you're not making enough bile, we can support bile production for fat digestion. If you're not making enough stomach acid, hydrochloric acid, we can add that to help with protein digestion. So we can support the digestion of your food in many different ways, including herbs that are bitters that stimulate digestion, or even just plants that are bitter, like arugula, to stimulate digesting the food. This way you're feeding yourself, you're getting the nutrients and you're not overfeeding your bacteria. They're still going to get enough from, from the stuff then stuff that naturally we don't digest well, like fibers in our foods. Right. And then what we can do is we can again, if there's overgrowing pathogenic bacteria, I would guide you through a protocol of using antimicrobial herbs are effective at addressing the bacteria that are overgrowing without wiping out all your good bacteria. And so that's a very specific protocol that I've developed and tested over the years until I found here's the most effective way that works for majority of patients using antimicrobial herbs. Along with that, we can use certain type of bacteria. I it would potentially be considered a probiotic, except that it most probiotics are lactobacillus and bifidobacteria. Now, those are only two strains of the bacteria that live in the human biome, but those are the two most common that can be produced and put into a capsule or a powder into a probiotic supplement that we can sell. So most probiotics on the market, no matter what brand, if you look on the label, it's going to be Lactobacillus of some type. Lactobacillus species and Bifidobacterium species, those are the two that are easiest. Now there's some others that are starting to become available in product form, such as Akkermansia and, and others.

But those are really new and we're just starting to see how well they work.

So though what I was going to refer to is the bacillus form, the bacillus bacteria, what the research shows is they are what I consider to be like traffic directors. So they're able to maintain the healthy bacteria. Right? Because if you have an imbalance, you don't want to just wipe out everything. You want to keep the good guys and just decrease the bad guys. Right? That's to me the much better effective way to re optimize your gut biome. We need to keep the good guys and direct the traffic and get the, the pathogenic bacteria to decrease and go away. That's what the bacillus forms of bacteria are really good at. That's what the research shows. So we can use the bacillus, such as a product called Megaspore. And there are others, many others that contain bacillus forms. I can put links so you can see what I'm talking about. The bacillus forms are the traffic directors. And so we can use those bacillus forms, especially when there's an imbalance that needs to be addressed. And then once we get the balance back, then we can go more back to maintenance, which might be your dietary diversity of foods and potentially a maintenance probiotic which is going to be a lactobifido, maybe in the range of 25 to 50 billion per day. But sometimes if you have a, if your biome is doing really well and you're able to maintain it with your diet, you might actually need to take a probiotic all the time. It's really a matter of learning your body and your exposures and, and if there's certain times when you know your microbiome is being affected, then you can take additional probiotics and help re establish it. The studies show they are effective at that. But remember, it's not just about taking a probiotic with lactobifido because there's so many other species. And so it has to be optimizing your diet, healing from stress and at the same time giving the, the support to the good bacteria and to direct traffic if there's overgrowing pathogenic bacteria. Just along those lines, I wanted to mention one thing when I'm addressing an imbalance of bacteria is I always take it very slowly because again, the pathogenic bacteria can let out toxins. So if we try to, as much as we want to get rid of them, if we just go and pounce on them, we are going to probably create a battle and they're going to release a bunch of toxins and you can have what's considered die off symptoms. So you can actually feel worse by killing these bacteria because they're letting out toxins that cause inflammation. So to me, there's no reason to do that. There's, we don't want to light a fire, so to speak, when we're trying to help you feel better. To me, there's, I've definitely found that it's, there's ways to address overgrowing bacteria without you having to feel worse, without having to cause die off. And the best strategy essentially has to do with taking it very slowly. We just start with very low doses of bacillus, the traffic directing bacteria, and we start with very low doses of the antimicrobial herbs and we gradually increase and we really listen to your body and modify the dose very individually so that if you need help with that, definitely reach out to me so I can help guide you with that protocol. Because I see too so many patients who.

Aren'T finding help with that and getting stuck in the process and feeling like, oh my gosh, is there any way to finally optimize my bacteria? And I would say, yeah, there is. We just have to use the right tools in the right sequence and always at the same time acknowledging that these bacteria are living in the environment of our intestines. So it's not just about feeding them or adding more or less or, you know, taking out what shouldn't be there. We have to also think about the environment they're living in and they're, if. So if there's leaky gut and inflammation and the cells are not healthy, then then the good bacteria are not going to be able to thrive. So we also always need to be paying attention to healing intestinal cells, dropping inflammation, making it a happy, healthy environment for the housing bacteria and microbes to thrive. So that's an important piece of this too, which is why I spend a lot of time helping with leaky gut healing. I wanted to just go through.

What are the things that disrupt the microbiome. Right. Because if. If here we are trying to solve it, part of the best way to solve anything is to understand the underlying causes. Because if we understand the underlying causes, there's sometimes we can eliminate those causes or we can avoid those issues, or we can be productive. Right. So how do we address it? What are the root causes of a disruption in the gut microbiome? That, by the way, is called dysbiosis. Dysbiosis is this imbalanced biome. So how do. What's causing dysbiosis? Well.

One is if we. If we kill the good guys, right? There's. There's different things we might do that kills all or some of the good guys. It could also be that the environment gets disrupted and it's not a healthy environment for them. And it could also be that we are overfeeding them like we talked about. Right. So what are the things that can cause these different versions of disruption in the gut biome? Well, one is stress. Stress is a huge factor because, of course, we all have various types of stress. Psycho emotional stress, physical stress, infections that are stress, toxins that are stress. All of these, including psycho emotional stress, are known to disrupt our gut biome. So if you know you've been under stress, you have to figure that your biome is being affected, and you're going to want to be proactive to get it back on track again and help it out. We also know that certain foods like gluten, anything with gluten in it, wheat, barley, rye, spelled, all have gluten in them. And gluten is known to disrupt the bacteria and decrease the levels of various kinds of healthy bacteria. So if you're consuming gluten, even if you don't have gluten sensitivity, even if you don't have celiac disease, gluten. If you're consuming gluten, there's a likelihood you're disrupting your gut bacteria. Also sugar and refined carbs, because sugar is like an easy source of fermentation for bacteria. And yeast, same with different kinds of refined carbs. So if you're consuming a lot of sugar and refined carbs, processed foods, likely you're disrupting your gut biome. Also, any kinds of artificial.

Sweeteners, artificial foods, colors, fillers, and foods those also affect your gut biome infection. Definitely. They absolutely show that. Say, if someone even has.

Gastroenteritis, like a stomach virus, let alone if you have food poisoning, it definitely affects your gut biome or any other reason for taking antibiotics. And as I mentioned, certain Medications, especially for example medications that block acid or proton pump inhibitors and other forms of acid blockers as well as many other medications have an effect on your gut biome. So it's important to keep that in mind. If you're taking medications that you know, we want to check and see is it going to affect your biome and how do we help counterbalance that, especially if it's a medication that you need to take. If you need to take antibiotics, let's make sure we counterbalance that by taking out probiotics so that we can help re establish a healthy biome after needing to take an antibiotic. Also, toxins, pesticides on non organic food for example, as well as mold toxins. So if you're living in it in a water damaged building and there's mold, if you see mold in the building, it could be affecting because mold releases the toxins that are absorbed into our bodies and they affect our digestion and they affect our microbiome really greatly. I see this so often. So if you know you've been exposed to mold or any other toxin that you're thinking you're exposed to, those all affect the gut microbiome. As we talked about, fiber is what feeds them. So if you're on a diet that's a low fiber, whether that's because you've been having lots of processed foods, it's low in fiber, or maybe for other reasons, medical reasons, you've had to be on a low fiber diet that could affect your microbiome. Also, if you're over consuming as now you all know, if you over consume fiber, prebiotics, fermented foods, you can actually be throwing off your microbiome by overdoing it. And, and I see again, I see that way more common than someone having too little. So I would even encourage you to err on the side of less is more when it comes to feeding your bacterium.

But I love for you to really grasp the concept that what we eat is what's feeding our microbiome. And so if you know, if that can motivate you to even be like, wow, I need, I'm going to pay more attention to what I'm eating so that I'm so that I'm doing a good job of maintaining my biome. Especially if you're exposed to some of these things that I just listed, that's even more motivation to say, hey, I need to take steps to help keep my biome on track and if it gets off track, take steps to rebalance it. I was going to Say there is another new stool panel of if some of you might be interested in this. And I think this is, we're going to see more and more developments. Oh my gosh. So I want to go into some of what's up and coming when it comes to optimizing the gut. Biome 1 is a stool panel that not only does the DNA analysis of who's living in your gut, but then they actually create a custom probiotic based on where you're deficient in. So if you're low in certain strains and bacteria, then that's what they're going to put in your individualized probiotics. So you're replacing exactly what you need in your individualized probiotics. So that company is called Flora and I can help you with that through my office if you're interested in trying that out as a way to re optimize your gut biome. Also there's, let's see, there's research that's identifying various specific bacteria and how they specifically help us with our health. And this is very interesting. What you'll see is a lot of times they're named with, let's say Lactobacillus and then a letter and number. So they get a letter and a number. That's how they identify them in the research. And so I think we're going to see more and more products and even food products or beverage products that have these specific bacteria based on the research that shows how they're potentially beneficial. Again, to me, it's like now we're, we're taking this research on a specific microbe and we're saying what if we just add more of that specific microbe microbe, can we actually get a clinical benefit? And I think it's so new that it's going to be a few years before we really know how effective they are. But it, I think it may be worth a try for some of these and for some of you, if you resonate with some of these. So for example, there's one called Bifidobacteria 1741, which is considered a psychobiotic. There's that term psychobiotic because it helps with, has been shown in research to help with stress recovery. Specifically, it helps to bring cortisol down this too high. So in terms of my stress types, this would be especially helpful for a stress magnet or a night owl or sluggish and stressed stress types that have high cortisol. And we're trying to bring it down. The Bifido 1741 helps with that. And that's pretty cool. It's also been shown to help with mental health in terms of cognition, focus, memory, that, that kind of activity. And you can find it in. I'll put a link as well. That one is specifically in some products called, called.

Let'S see, co Zenbiome their zenbiome Cope and zenbiome Sleep and another one called Dual. So I'll put a link for those because those are some really new products with this, you know, using this Bifido 1741. There's also Bifido 35642 which has been shown to modulate inflammation. So this would be especially helpful if someone's having a lot of inflammation in the body. This particular Bifido can help decrease inflammation levels. And so you might then choose a product that has this Bifido in there and that's in that, that, that product that they call the Dual products. Let's see.

If I have the name of it here, but I'll put it down below in the notes.

And let's see the others are some that just see if I can grab this real quick for you.

Yeah, Zenbiome Dual D U A L. That's the one I was thinking of. It has, I think dual meaning. It has both of those in there. There's also quite a lot of research on the bacteria related to the vaginal biometric. And I've done other episodes about the vaginal biome related to the gut biome. So important because if you're having vaginal symptoms or vaginal recurrent vaginal infections, yeast, bv, hpv. We know that the house of the vaginal biome is completely related to the gut biome. So it's important that we go heal your gut biome in order to help heal the vaginal biome and prevent those infections from happening. And we know the, in the vagina the predominant bacteria are Lactobacillus and, and there are studies on this. I can put the, the links to the research, specifically the, the strains of Lactobacillus that are the most common in the vaginal area. Lactobacillus, brevis, Plantarum, Salivarius, Gassieri and Caseyi. And so there are probiotics that.

Have those Lactobacillus predominantly in the product. So if you take it as an oral probiotic, the studies show that it does help with the vaginal biome. And so there's women's formulas that usually will contain those specific strains. There's also some women's probiotics that contain Lactobacillus rhamnosis, specifically the GR1 and lactobacillus root Harry RC14 because that research showed that when women need to swallow those Lactobacillus that it helped to, to not only solve bacterial vaginosis, which is overgrowth of bacteria vaginally, but also prevent the infection from recurring. So again, we can use oral probiotics to benefit something like the vaginal biome. I would say it's going to be similar to other areas of the body. For example, we can use certain forms of Bifidobacteria hu36 which is known to help with carotenoid producing bacteria and that carotenoid bacteria producing bacteria helps with the skin. So it could be used in a skin supplement or I would think it would be helpful for the eyes also. Uh, and then there's bacteria like the Lactobacillus rhamnosis Dr. 7 which has been shown especially to be helpful for mood. It's another one that helps with stress recovery specifically by influencing, now the research is showing it's influencing the serotonin and dopamine pathways. So it's, it's actually affecting the way our bodies are producing serotonin and dopamine. And so those again are the lactobacillus for amnosis Dr. 7 you're seeing, we're going to see more and more products that contain that related to improving mood and stress recovery.

And then there's also Bifido BP L1 which has been shown to help with, when, when there's weight gain around the waist, that kind of what they call central adiposity, which is weight gain around your waist, which is really common, especially postmenopausally, that particular bacteria, Bifido BPL1 has been shown to help reverse that. So these are examples that I think we're going to see much more of this in the coming years, identifying specific bacteria that then could be put into a supplement that you can swallow to for a specific outcome. And again, we're going to have to see the research is there, but we have to see how it's going to turn out clinically. And I would just remind you that I don't think we can put all of our eggs in that basket. I mean, yes, we can use these supplements. They're not found to be harmful or have side effects. But I think it's important to also keep in mind that we need to take into account all of the root causes. Right. It's not just about if you just put that one supplement, that one bacteria, more of it swallow more of it. That might not solve the whole issue. We need to also be helping you with, with stress recovery, optimizing cortisol, optimizing how well you're digesting your food, optimizing insulin and blood sugar levels, you know, addressing nutrient deficiencies, so on. We have to address all the underlying causes. And this then in addition might be, you know, a great addition to, in that effort, in that overall effort to shift the imbalances in the body so that we can create that and see these outcomes that we're looking for. Improved mood, improved focus, memory, as well as preventing all different health issues by creating balance overall. So I want you to, I want you to know about these different approaches, but I want you to know that we have to take it into count with everything else with a whole protocol. And that's why I encourage you to refer to my overall stress recovery protocol because I'm addressing all the potential imbalances, not just the microbiome. Yes, the microbiome is hugely important, but we have to also think about all the other potential imbalances along with it because then everything can help maintain resilience together. If you just work on your biome again, but intestinal cells are not healthy or the hormones are out of balance, you have nutrient deficiencies. It's. It's like fixing if your tie. If your car has four flat tires and you fix one of the flat tires, well, that's better, but we need to fix all the flat tires if you want your car to be driving. Well. Okay. And the other thing I just wanted to mention because I think a lot of you may have questions on this is what are known as fecal transplants. There is more and more research on this concept, which is when you would be given a transplant of a microbiome from another human. And this is used clinically especially for something called C. Diff, which is a really pathogenic bacteria that a lot of times is hard to treat and hard to get rid of. This can be antibiotic resistant. And so if people are having trouble getting this C. Diff to go away and it's causing diarrhea, then they. It is approved in the United States as a potential treatment called fecal transplant, where they're actually taking the microbiome from another healthy human and transplanting into another person. I've also seen this used in other countries around the world, and they've talked about using it for other reasons too. And some people are just using fecal transplants on their own. And I have seen some cases where it's been very beneficial for people. But what I would say is you want to use that. If you really tried everything else, if you've already tried making diet changes, you've already, for example, use my protocol to use antimicrobial herbs and bacillus forms of traffic directors and healing and rebalancing your whole body and you're still, still struggling to get these bacteria under control and you really feel like you're at your wits end, then that's when we would potentially consider fecal transplant. Because just like if you learn, like you've heard from me earlier in this episode, if when you do a fecal transplant, you're essentially adding a whole bunch more bacteria. And so it's very common when you do a fecal transplant to then have overgrowing bacteria. And we're having to manage the overgrowing bacteria after a fecal transplant, which is, we can do that, but it's just important to know that it's not like a quick fix. It, it's going to be a process, but it can and it has helped many people. So it is an option. And I think that we're going to see even more options related to this concept of, of a, of a microbiome transplant. I'm sure there's going to be more innovations related to that. I've heard also from colleagues how they have innovations related to essentially do I doing a microbiome transplant too, especially for cases where we're really having a hard time getting it back on track. So please don't lose hope if you're, if you feel like, oh my gosh, my biome has been off balance for a long time. Please know that there are many solutions, many ways to help you. I worked with some of the most.

Challenging cases, complex cases, people who have them have had to be on most strict diets and worked with many other practitioners and I've helped guide them back out of it to heal their digestion, optimize their biome and help them feel better. So that's where I get my confidence to say it's possible to get your microbiome back on track again. I'm happy to guide you. I'll put resources where you can learn more in terms of my approach to stress recovery, overall, leaky gut healing, biome balancing and just simply getting your health back on track, which is in my book I call Mastering your stress, Master your stress, reset your health. Thanks so much for joining me today and I look forward to seeing you again in the next episode of how humans Heal Be sure to like and subscribe and join my newsletter list so that you don't miss the next episode. Talk to you soon.

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