Kiran Krishnan: Gut Health Secrets for a Stronger Immune System & Better Skin

This episode is brought to you by Nourish Me Organics, your gut health superstore. Nourish Me Organics is the premier online store for all things gut health, including probiotics, prebiotics, natural health supplements and home fermentation kits. So head to www.nourishmeorganics.com and use the code Happy Gut for 10% off in this episode. Crib Govenda, a seasoned food scientist and registered nutritionist, interviews microbiologist Kieran Krishnan on the interaction between the microbiome and immune system, the impact of antibiotics on gut health, the gut brain interaction, and the connection between gut health and skin health.

Hey guys, Cribbing Gavin from the Gut Health Guiish podcast. We've got a background in food science and today we have the legendary Kieran Krishnan back onto the show after a long time. Kieran, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much for having me. It's, it's great to be here, man.

Kieran is the one of the co founders of Microbiome Labs, I would say the premier company around the world when it comes to spore based probiotics. He started a new venture with another colleague called Civ Biome, which we're going to explore during the show as well. The topic of leaky skin, which is I think, fascinating. But Kieran, for people that don't know you will start with your origin story. Who is Kiran Krishnan?

Yeah. So if you were to read a biography of Kieran Krishnan, I think one of the things you'll, you'll start to realize is that he's a giant nerd to begin with and has been obsessed with, with science and math and understanding the world around, around me since, since I was a little kid. And the thing is, my, my parents have a nice mix because my dad was an engineer and my mom's a medical doctor. And so I've got both sides of the world of science, the hard mathematical based science, physics and so on, and then the software science around biology, chemistry. So parlayed that mix of having a little bit of both of them into the world of microbes and microbes. I got into microbes because I was always fascinated and still am, about the kind of the unseen world, right? So it's either exploring things like dark matter and quarks and all kinds of subatomic particles, or it's exploring subatomic seeming life, right? Or subcellular life, if you will. So I gravitated towards microbiology and as I was coming out of academic research and looking for where did My area of expertise, or at least my area of interest lie in the world of microbiology. The human Microbiome project started kicking off and it became clear to me that that was an area that was very, very much a pioneering area in health and wellness and certainly in just understanding how we function as a human. So I dove into the world of the microbiome and fortunately a few years after that was able to found microbiome labs as a way of rethinking and retooling a lot of our old ideas around gut health and probiotics and prebiotics and so on. And then also supporting practitioners and health minded people with tools to effectuate the microbiome and gain health. And it still remains my top passion today. And teaching and education is another really, you know, area of interest for me. And so I've always had one skill and the one skill I have is explaining complicated things to people in a way that they can understand. And that's, that's really, you know, what I do most of the time on a day to day basis. Product innovations and research and all that aside, one of the things I do most frequently is just explaining things.

And you're so good at explaining things, Kieran. I've watched so many of your videos and I think the audience really appreciates all you do. Fascinating introduction, very apt with who Kieran is. I've had the pleasure of meeting you in person, so I'm indeed very blessed. Kiran, where do we kick off? I think in Melbourne at the moment. We're just coming out of our winter and I think a lot of people are still suffering with sniffles and, and colds and flus and things like that. So I think a good jumping off point would be to talk about how, because you're one of the experts when it comes to the microbiome and certainly distilling it into very simple explanations. So how is the microbiome, the gut and the immune system working together to keep us healthy?

Yeah, that's a, that's a really, really important topic because it not only does it impact us in from the perspective of defense against disease and things like that, it's also equally important from the perspective of tolerance. Right. Because you know, we want an immune system that reacts to the right things, but we also want an immune system that doesn't react towards things that it shouldn't. And more often than not, that's where the immune system goes haywire. Right. You've got immune systems that are attacking things that it shouldn't. So that's where simple things like allergies and asthma and food intolerances come from, but more serious things like autoimmune conditions, Right? Those are all examples of the immune system attacking the wrong thing. So, so when it comes down to it, the simplest way to explain the relationship between the immune system and the microbiome is that it's almost one in the same system. It's kind of two parts of the same system. And the microbiome acts as the eyes and the ears of the immune system. So imagine your immune system is a military that was created in your system, in your bone marrow, in your thymus and so on. And it's a military that has been created with all of the equipment necessary to defend the system. Right? You've got all the T cells and B cells and complement systems and all of these tools to defend the body. The problem is it doesn't have any general. It has no information about who the enemy is, who it should attack and who it shouldn't attack. Now, the reason why the immune system is born naive, if you will, is because we're constantly producing new immune cells. We're constantly producing macrophages and T cells and dendritic cells and all of those parts of the immune system and humans are adapted to live in many different environments. My environment here in Chicago is going to be vastly different than your environment in Melbourne in terms of what my immune system needs to pay attention to versus what your immune system needs to pay attention to. So if there was a set code for the immune system in order to make it understand what to attack and what not to attack, the immune system would cease to be able to adapt to changes in the environment, which is what we needed to do. If I come and visit you in Australia, I want my immune system to be able to adapt to what is going on in your environment versus just being programmed to function in Chicago. Right. And so that is a really important aspect of the immune system that people need to understand is that it is constantly learning and trying to figure out what it's surrounded by, what it should attack and what it shouldn't attack. Now, at the same time, the immune system doesn't have an outward facing component, right? We don't have immune tissue on the outside of our body sensing the environment, sensing the microbes and things that we're encountering. So the immune system has to get its information from somewhere. And as it turns out, we're gets it from is the microbiome. Now why does it get the information from the microbiome? Well, the microbiome is loaded in all areas of the body where we gain the most exposure to the outside environment, right? So take the digestive tract, for example. The digestive tract is probably where we expose ourselves for the most part, to the outside environment. So everything we eat, everything we drink, most of the things we breathe in. So if you breathe in, all the particulate matter gets caught in your mucus in your upper respiratory tract, in your lower respiratory respiratory tract. That mucus is then moved up through the respiratory tract through something called a mucociliary elevator. It's like hair, like structures that move the mucus up, and then you end up swallowing it, right? So everything that drains from your ears, your eyes, and all that drains to the back of your throat through the eustachian tube, and then you swallow it. So everything you're encountering ends up in the digestive tract. Things also can go in the urogenital tract, of course. And then, of course, things can break through the skin and enter that way as well. But no matter what, it's entering into a mucosal surface. And most of the mucosal surface in your body is loaded with microorganisms, right? And these are the commensal microorganisms, assuming you've got a healthy microbiome. So the microorganisms encounter the environment first. Now, the microorganisms have the capability of dealing with many of these things that you encounter on their own, even if it's a virus or bacteria, some, a toxin, something that's harmful. For people with healthy, robust microbiomes, the microbiome themselves can neutralize the potential offending threat. Now, at the same time, the microbiome then sends signals to the immune system to recruit the immune system to the area to show the immune system what it has encountered. Now, the reason why the microbiome has to recruit the immune system is because the immune system is outnumbered by microbes 200,000 to 1. For every one immune cell we have roaming around and monitoring the system, there are 200,000 microbes. And keep in mind that a set of things that the immune system is supposed to protect you from are microbes. So the immune system is supposed to be able to identify microbes, one in every 200,000 that might be a potential threat. It's a really, really difficult tasks of the immune system. And the only way it accomplishes that is because most of the other microbes are working with the immune system to alert it when something is off. When something comes in, that is a potential harm, right? So imagine an Immune system where there's no microbiome, what tends to happen is the immune system remains dormant, it doesn't react to anything, or it reacts to absolutely everything it sees, including the host tissue. Right. Those are the two extremes of what happens with immune systems that don't have a companion in a working microbiome. And so when you think about the cold and the flu and things like that that you may encounter in a winter month, what's so important is if you breathe in the influenza virus, the virus goes in, it goes into your respiratory tract, it goes after your lung cells, so it starts infecting your lung cells. The first thing that's going notice that are the microbes in your lungs and they're going to go, hey, something's going on here that we don't like. It'll start releasing things like interferons, interferon gamma, for example, to try to curb the replication of the virus in that region. At the same time, it's shooting off flares to recruit the immune system to that region. Now, if the microbiome can control the infection enough and get the immune system to come respond normally, you might feel a little lethargic and a little under the weather for a day or so. And then the microbiome shuttles the adaptive immune system to show up and really take care of it. Normally you're fine after two or three days. For the individuals with the messed up microbiome who's not looking to help the immune system, the difference, what tends to happen is the virus comes in, it starts replicating in the tissue. Because you have a dysfunctional microbiome, it looks at it and goes, I don't really care. I'm not here to work with the host, so I don't really care. The virus keeps replicating. Now the infection becomes bigger and bigger and bigger. And then finally when the immune system notices it, it's a much bigger problem that it has to deal with. So now it has a robust response with inflammation and all that. And now you're feeling really down and under the weather, you've got high fever, you're fatigued, your body aches and pains. That is all the response of the immune system to a larger scale infection. And then because the microbiome is not functioning, it doesn't bring in the adaptive immune response, which is the more potent response. And so that gets delayed, so you feel sicker for longer. And then it takes forever for the adaptive immune response to finally show up, to start controlling the virus and then creating the antibodies against it. And you finally will start getting better after about 10 days. So the individual with a healthy, robust microbiome may feel slightly under the weather for a day or two, become perfectly normal after three or four days. The individual with the messed up microbiome will feel really bad for about six, seven days, and then it'll take them another three or four days to recover from it. And the big difference between those two individuals is the presence of the right types of microbes in their system. So you could start to see that if you have conditions where the microbiome is dysfunctional already, those people will have a harder time dealing with infections. And this was very, very evident, for example, in Covid, right. If you took a 48 year old with diabetes, compare that to a 48 year old without diabetes. The 48 year old with diabetes had a tenfold increased risk of dying from COVID 19 just because of the dysbiosis that they have that led to the diabetes. That same dysbiosis compromises their immune response as well.

Wow, that's so interesting. So you've got say for instance, the lung environment as an example. So you have a microbiome that's in the lung that's then helping the body to identify friend and foe.

Yes.

So is there some sort of signaling mechanism like a protein that they use? Can you explain that a little bit more?

Yeah, absolutely. So there's a few different things, right? So the most common, and this actually will bring up a very important topic, the most common way in which that the microbes in a given local area, let's say in the lungs, when they notice an infection, infection happening, they're trying to signal the immune system. They use inflammatory cytokines, right? So they use things like inner Leukin 6 or NF, Kappa B or interferons. Right? And they shoot those off in the local area. That becomes kind of the alarm that triggers the immune system to go, something's happening over there, we gotta go. So they get to that spot and they get that quickly, right? Now, people with chronic conditions or people with underlying co factors like diabetes, obesity, heart disease, autoimmune conditions, all of these types of conditions are hallmarked by having something called chronic low grade inflammation. These individuals tend to be inflamed throughout their body all the time. Which means that when something infects your lungs, if you have the right microbes in that area, throwing off inflammatory cytokines to try to get the immune system to come, it's so much harder for the immune system to notice those cytokines because there's inflammation throughout the body already. So that is another way in which the immune system gets compromised because the signals from the local microbes to try to get the immune system to the side of action get drowned out by all the other inflammation that's going on in the individual's body already. Right. And so, and then keep in mind that leaky gut is one of the most prevalent drivers of chronic low grade inflammation. So if somebody has leaky gut and it's inflamed throughout their body, it becomes really hard for their immune system to be directed to the right place in order to go after a new infection or an infection in general.

I hear you. That's, that's such a brilliant point. So it's like, it's a very noisy environment and it's very hard to discern the correct signals that the bacteria are sending to the body to identify friend and foe. There's a couple of little interesting sort of tangents that we could explore there. Something that I'm dying to learn myself. So when, when we have this, as you, we're explaining this mucosal reaction pushing up, phlegm trapping, typically what happens is we'll get told to take like a, like a, like a cough syrup or a medicine to expel this flaming out of the body. And then typically what happens is you cough, you expel the phlegm and then you spit it out. So is it better to actually swallow it so it gets down into the heart of the immune system, which is the gut to train the body or is it better to spit it out?

Yeah, that's a great question. And it depends on the amount because you can certainly swallow enough that it actually upsets your gut. Right. So a lot of people who have chronic sinusitis, they get build up so much mucus and what we call post nasal drip that that drip constantly dripping into the gut will actually cause diarrhea because there's enough bacteria and immune factors and all that going into the gut where it disrupts the gut microbiome's function. It's not a long term disruption. I think it's not like taking an antibiotic, but it can disrupt their gut. So I would say you certainly want to swallow some of that. Yes. But if it's a lot and you've got a bronchitis, bad lung infection, you probably want to expectorate as much of that out as you can. You will inevitably swallow some just because it's in your mouth and just the act of coughing alone. If you imagine coughing, there's this mad cloud of microbes that come out, and not all of it comes out of your mouth. A lot of it stays in the mouth as it hits the walls of your mouth, right? And then eventually as you swallow saliva that gets swallowed in. The sampling happening in the gut is really, really important. About 80% of your sampling tissue for your immune systems in the gut. So encountering all of those things in those sampling tissues becomes a really important part of your immune system. Starting to learn what is happening, what are you being exposed to, and then your microbiome will notate if those are things to attack or not attack. Right? So the tolerance factor is another important part we should touch on. Because, you know, we mentioned earlier that what's equally bad to an immune system that's not reacting to the right things is one that's overreacting to too many things. So the immune system, being naive, has a tendency just to react to things, right? But you don't want it reacting to benign things. So even your own commensal flora, for example, or you know, viruses that live naturally within your system or even. And food particles and so on. So how does that get regulated? Well, when there's a type of T cell called a T regulatory cell, these cells roam the system and they look for aberrant immune responses. So these are immune responses that your body doesn't want or doesn't need. And the moment those immune cells start to respond, the T cell sees it, the Treg cell, and it suppresses that immune response. And as a result of suppressing it, it actually helps teach, hey, this is not something we need to attack. So it helps build tolerance. But the expression of the Treg cell is dependent on microbes. So when you have a healthy, diverse microbiome, the microbiome triggers the proliferation of Treg cells in order to help regulate all the immune responses. Now, the microbiome can also tag things and flag things for tolerance sake, so that your microbiome knows that, okay, I don't need to attack this thing. It's completely normal. So that is a really critical part of how your immune system functions. So imagine then you have a compromised microbiome, right? You've got chronic inflammation throughout the body, chronic low grade inflammation. You've got a lot of dysbiotic areas of the body. So if a virus or something enters into that area, your microbiome in that area is not necessarily helping because they're mostly opportunistic pathogens. So they're like, they don't want to bring the attention of the immune system. To that area either, right? Because they're doing some questionable things themselves. So you don't get the alertness of the immune system. Then the infection keeps getting worse and worse. Your own cells start to shoot off cytokines who are getting infected and dying. Then finally the immune system may see it in this milieu of inflammation. So it might actually end up seeing it at some point, but it's going to be delayed and the infection is going to be bigger. And then now your immune system comes along. And the innate part of the immune system is the fast acting early responders. But the problem with the innate part is that they're not specific for whatever is causing the problem. They just know a region to show up and they show up in that region and they start bombarding everything. Imagine they are trying to kill a mosquito with a blowtorch, right? That's basically what they do. You're going to kill the mosquito, but you'll probably burn the wall a little bit behind the mosquito as well. So that's what the innate immune system does. It shows up, it goes, oh my God, there's something happening here. We don't know exactly what it is, so we're just going to blowtorch and carpet bomb the area as a result of that. Now you're also damaging your own tissues, right? Your own cells are getting damaged as a bystander in this little war that's happening. And that means that lots of your own components of your own cells are being exposed as debris. Now the adaptive immune system comes along to try to figure out, okay, what is actually causing the problem and what is our specific tool for that one offender. And the adaptive immune system shows up as a result of antigen presenting cells that present the potential culprit to the adaptive immune system, right? So these are macrophages and dendritic cells. So they show up, right, following the innate immune system. They look at the whole debris, they start gobbling up parts of all the stuff that's out. They keep presenting it to the T cells and B cells or the adaptive cells are going, okay, this might be the culprit, I don't know, this might be the culprit, right? And so they present all kinds of stuff. And then the T cells and B cells have to mount antibody responses to all the things that it's showing. However, the T reg cells know when you're presenting your own tissue accidentally, because that's one of the things that occurs when you have a bombardment in an area and you have a lot of cellular debris, some of it gets your own tissue, gets picked up by the macrophage, and the macrophage accidentally presents to your immune system your own tissue component. Right? Now, your T cell or a B cell might make an antibody against your own tissue, which will lead to an autoimmune condition. However, the way that's prevented is that the Treg cell that's monitoring all of this goes, hey, wait a minute, that's our own tissue. Stop that presentation. Right. But again, the Treg cells require a healthy microbiome to make sure that their numbers are good. So when you don't have a healthy microbiome, not only do you have a slow responding innate immune system, because you don't have the microbes calling the immune system to the right side of the region, you've got an overt inflammatory action happening. You're getting a lot of your own tissue damage, your own tissues being presented by macrophages and dendritic cells, and you don't have enough T regulatory cells to stop all that. So now you have an increased risk where one of these T cells or B cells is going to think your own tissue is a culprit and form defenses and antibodies against your own tissue. This is how you end up with that autoimmune condition. Right? This is why people who are susceptible to autoimmune conditions, which one of the key susceptibilities is having a very dysbiotic gut mic. This is why a lot of times they'll end up with, say, lupus after cold or flu. Right. And often a cold or flu could trigger an autoimmune response. And there's this environmental trigger that's required, and that's because this process of your immune system accidentally targeting your own tissue and you don't have the microbiome to prevent that from happening.

Wow, that's a brilliant explanation of the very complex workings of the immune system and how important the microbiome actually is. And to have a resilient microbiome to resist these type of infections and if you do end up with an infection, to actually fight it in an effective manner. So I certainly encourage audience members to go back to the previous episode to explore how to actually build a robust, resilient microbiome. The million dollar question, following up from your brilliant soliloquy that was just flowing so well, was how. So what, what happens when we take an antibiotic to fight an infection? Because it seems to be antibiotics are very important, especially if you're really suffering. You. You're on. Yes. You're going to go down this sort of pneumonia pathway when it comes to lung issues. So what is the. Firstly, we need to recognize that if it's bacterial, then the, and the antibody becomes useful. But then what happens if you, what happens to the microbiome when you take the, the antibiotic? Is there a negative aspect to it as well as the positive?

Yeah, so, so let's tackle viral infections first. Right? And this is where antibiotics are most often misused, Certainly in the US even the CDC estimates that at least 50% of the antibiotic scripts are unnecessarily written, and that's often for viral infections. And the thinking is twofold here. So if I start feeling really run down and have the sniffles and all that, it's more than likely a virus, which means that it has to run its course. But I've got work to do, I got to get to the office. So I might go to my doctor or urgent care and an educated doctor or urgent care center will know in their mind that this is a virus. It has all the telltale signs of a virus and there's nothing really you can do about it but just go home and rest, right? That's what you have to do. But at least in the US where we have kind of a for profit medical system, many of these doctors and clinics are competing with each other. And so if I went to one of these clinics and they gave me nothing for it and just said, go home and rest, I'm likely I'm less inclined to go back to that clinic. Next time I feel sick, I want to go somewhere where they're going to give me something. Right? And so many of the clinics and doctors then feel pressured to write a script for something, even though they know intellectually it's not necessarily going to help that patient. Now, the way they rationalize it is sometimes when you have a viral infection and if the viral infection goes for a certain amount of time, you can get a secondary bacterial infection as a consequence. Right? So in their mind they're going, well, I know it's not going to help with this, but maybe it'll prevent a secondary infection. So I'm just going to give it to them, not knowing. Doctors don't know that the type of harm that the antibiotic can create if you don't need it, right? So in that case, what actually happens if you start taking an antibiotic for a viral issue? It's actually going to slow down, slow down your response. And there are research proof of this where a course of antibiotics during a viral infection actually dramatically Slows down the body's ability to fight off the virus because you're decimating the microbiome. Right. If it is a bacterial infection, then the antibiotic is certainly going to help because the antibiotics working directly on the bacteria. The problem, however, is that you could revert and get a second infection from that same bacteria because your immune system and your microbiome is now compromised. Right? So there's absolutely times where you need an antibiotic for an infection and it'll save your life. But generally, if it's a viral issue or fungal issue and you're given an antibiotic, it's going to compromise your immune system's ability to deal with it because of the impact the antibiotic has on the microbiome. Right. And we now know how important the microbiome is for immune function. This is actually was very beautifully shown in the area of immunotherapy for cancer. Right. So there are certain cancers like melanoma and non small cell lung cancers, where immunotherapy works really well. Right. And basically what immunotherapy is, is it's a way of getting your own T cells that to go after the cancer cell. Right. Because normally we're all developing cancer like cells all the time. Right. But we have our immune system that detects it and shuts it down. And it's typically the T cells within the immune system. So what they're figuring out is that there's a way of upregulating your T cell's ability to go after cancer tumors. And what's great about it when it works is that that is that it's a very potent treatment against that tumor and there's no other collateral damage. Right. Because the T cell is so specific for the tumor, it's not like radiation or chemotherapy that just destroys lots of stuff. It's very specific for the tumor. And then the reemergence of the cancer is very low. Right. Because now your immune system is trained on how to go after this particular cancer. So. So that immunotherapy is really great. It counts on the immune system functioning properly in order for it to work. What the studies show is that if the individual was treated with the course of antibiotics before starting immunotherapy, the immunotherapy does not work as well because the T cells don't function like normal because the microbiome has been devastated. And they've also shown that when people have high levels of keystone species or high diversity in their microbiome, the immunotherapy works Much better than with individuals that don't have healthy looking microbiomes. Right. So that also underscores the importance of the microbiome in allowing for your immune system to function properly. Which means that if we're going to use an antibiotic, something that we know is going to decimate the microbiome, at least for a period of time, it has to be a very conscious choice or a very good reason. Right. And it shouldn't just be kind of willy nilly because you think you might have a, a strep infection. I'm not sure, I don't know. I feel rundown. I just need a pill. Those are dangerous places to start using antibiotics. You should have some confirmation that it's a bacterial illness.

So completely agree. If there is a scenario where someone has to use the antibiotic, is there any strategies that one could use to counter some of the negative impacts of this signaling issue that's emerging?

Yeah, so there is. And in fact we published a paper on this, I think maybe in 2020, where we showed that using the spore based probiotics, or the megaspore in this case, and then we added in the HU58, which is just the subtilis at high doses, if you use a combination and you add the prebiotic, it actually negates a lot of the negative effects effect of the antibiotic because the spores are constantly revamping the microbiome and the antibiotics will knock everything down. In about two or three hours of ingestion of the antibiotic, the spores come in, if you're taking it right after or right around the same time, and they revamp the system, they increase lactic acid production, short chain fatty acids and all that, and they remodulate the microbiome from the damage that that dose antibody did. Right. So you can absolutely fight that battle and it's very workable. And the thing is, once you're done with the antibiotic course, let's say it's a seven, ten day course, if you stick to that same regimen for prebiotic and probiotic, I always recommend three times longer than the antibiotics. So let's say 30 days, you're going to reverse or negate the vast majority of damage that the antibiotic has done, that's brilliant.

So if the antibiotic is indiscriminately destroying especially keystone species, these microbes involved in signaling, then what we're trying to do is bring those levels back up and also introduce some more resilience, spore based organisms that could potentially be resilient. To the impacts of the antibiotic. And how, how about something like immunoglobulins colostrum or something like a direct butyrate supplementation, something like that?

Yeah, I think, I think those all can be absolutely beneficial as well. I would say butyrate. So, you know, if you have a tri butyrin type of product, could be really beneficial. Butyrate does modulate inflammation and does support some of the keystone species and the resulting microbes that depend on the keystone species. I would say polyphenols are probably really important as well and can be hugely beneficial. And then you can also use probiotic yeast like Saccharomyces boulardii that is also then not impacted by the antibiotic and can provide a lot of support by producing lactic acid and then as a precursor to short chain fatty acid. So, yeah, I mean, I think, you know, if you had to go on a course of antibiotics, which talk to your doctor, and if that's the right decision, then then you should absolutely throw whatever you can at your system to negate the negative effects of the antibiotics. Right? Because if you have to be on it, that's fine. It's probably really important, but it, but it doesn't mean you have to suffer from the side effects. Now, here's another really important aside. And if you don't do this, right, so let's say you were given a course antibiotics and you just take the antibiotics willy nilly without doing much to try to support the microbiome. Not only are you impacting your microbiome, but you're impacting the microbiome of the individuals that live in your same household old. And this was a very interesting and surprising study. So this study was published, I think, in 2019 or 2020, and it was a study out of Johns Hopkins. And what they did is they took individuals who are given a course on antibiotics at the hospital. Prior to starting the course antibiotics, they did a bunch of stool testing and they mapped out their microbiome and then they followed their microbiome during the course of antibiotics and up to six months after. Now, at the same time, they also then mapped out the microbiomes of individuals that live in the same household as the individual on the antibiotic and those individuals were not on the antibiotic. And then they also mapped their microbiome throughout the course of the antibiotic. And then six months after the household individual stopped taking the antibiotic, what they found was that the perturbations they could see in the microbiome of the individual who was taking the antibiotic. Very similar perturbations were also observed in individuals that lived with that person who were not taking the antibiotic. This did not have to be intimate partners. It was platonic partners, siblings, parent and child, all of that. What that underscores is that we live in a home biome. We have a cloud of microbes around us all the time. It matters what our microbiome looks like and functions like in terms of the people around us. Our microbiome can have either a negative or positive effect on the microbiomes of the people around us. And why that is so important is because we should all be thinking about this from a household perspective. Right. It's an ecosystem that we all are part of and it's an ecosystem we all have responsibility for. And so if there's one individual in that household that's taking an antibiotic and they're not necessarily a health conscious individual and they're like, whatever, I've taken antibiotics before, that has an impact on everyone else in the house. And that impact can be quite measurable for some of the people who are not taking the antibiotic. Right. And if you're a parent, for example, and you're putting a lot of effort into ensuring your kids are healthy, if you're not taking care of yourself the same way, your bad microbiome has a negative impact on your kids microbiome time as well. So, so that's another very important thing for people to keep in mind is that the household has to be healthy and, and we all share a cloud of microbes within our households.

That is incredible, incredible research. Thank you so much for sharing that. I think a lot of light bulbs are going to be going off in households to be more cognizant of how we, we use antibiotics and especially how we negate some of the effects. I think it's a nice little segue to move on to another interesting topic and certainly something that you guys are working on a lot in, in the microbiome lab space and your other ventures is the gut and the brain interaction because you have a wonderful suite of products called ZenBiome. So how about we talk about these psychobiotics for one of a better word, and how these tools may be used to help someone's mental health.

Yeah, and this is so important because of course we know that anxiety, depression and all are at epidemic levels. Right. And we're seeing that in, in younger and younger kids as well. In fact, I heard this statistic, I can't say I know for certain. It's true, because I haven't validated it myself, but the person I heard it from is a pretty well respected person. But they were saying that the level of anxiety, psychosis, cognitive dysfunction in the average high school child today is equivalent to what the average asylum patient was like in the 1960s. Right. And so if you imagine the high school kids today, the level of anxiety, depression, add all of the things that they face on a regular basis, those were asylum level problems just a few decades ago. So we know it's highly prevalent, right? And so then the question becomes, well, what's happening? Well, we know stimuli is different these days. That's absolutely a factor, Right. We know that our phones and social media and all that give us too much access to information. We're certainly surrounded by negative stimuli much more than we ever were, and it's kind of hard to escape a lot of that. We're also bombarded with lots and lots of information and triggers and all that nonstop. So that certainly plays a role. But I think our resilience in dealing with simple stressors has also gone down quite a bit. It. Right. And that is a factor of the gut brain access. So if you just think about the last few decades, everything, every condition that has anything to do with the gut and the gut microbiome and how the gut microbiome influences the condition, every one of those conditions have gotten worse and worse and worse as we go along, right? So take diabetes, obesity, autoimmune conditions, allergies, asthma, Alzheimer's, dementia. All of these conditions can be traced back to some origins within the dysfunctional gut microbiome. And all of those conditions have been getting worse and worse and worse in terms of prevalence, severity and so on. And that's because our gut microbiome continues to get decimated as we go along, where our diets and use of antibiotics and all that stuff that we know of drive dysfunction. So here's the role of the microbiome in this process of anxiety, depression, mood disorders, cognitive function, and so on, number one. And we'll talk about two different mechanisms. Number one is the role of certain organisms within the microbiome to stop HPA reactivation. Right? So some people may know that the HPA axis stands for the hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis. The HPA axis is the system that gets activated when we encounter a stress response. And the thing is, that system, the biochemistry and the functionality of that system has not changed in a million years, probably, or at least in the last 200,000 years when you Consider modern man. That system is designed to trigger a fight or flight response. It's a survival response. And it's been a very important thing for the evolution of humans because it's what gave us the, the smartness to identify dangers and either fight or flee from the danger and survive. That same thing, the same biochemistry is functioning, but now is triggered by things like a text message or a tweet or something we see online or something we see on the tv. No longer is it just things that are life or death. We have this kind of stimuli all the time, so we're constantly triggering this fight or flight response. The thing is, the fight or flight response is incredibly important and normal, and it's perfectly fine to stimulate it and cause the HPA axis to release cortisol. Cortisol is a stress management hormone. Now, cortisol does a number of things when it's released and in response to an external stressor. Number one, it starts to increase your respiratory rate, your heart rate. It creates vasodilation so that you can get more blood to the most important areas. And in the case of a flight or fight response, it's to your heart, it's your muscles, and it's your brain, right? And one of the ways in which your HPA axis gets blood to profuse into your heart, into your brain and into your muscles is by increasing inflammation. Your macrophages and dendritic cells, which are part of your innate immune system, get stimulated to release catecholamines, which are things which are like chemical irritants that increase inflammation. Because we know that inflammation is perfusion, right? Blood rushes to the sites where you, where you have inflammation. Hence, if you hurt yourself here and it's inflamed, it's going to be red and hot because the blood is rushing to the area. So your body is designed to try to get blood to your brain and to your heart and to your muscles in an activation of your fight or flight response. It does it by upregulating inflammation in your brain, in your heart and in your muscles, right? And that recruits blood to that area. Now the other thing, and cortisol plays a very important role in all that happening. The other thing that happens to cortisol is it gets dumped into the gut. In the gut, it gets metabolized by certain bacteria and the byproducts of the metabolization of cortisol ends up in your kidneys where it turns on sodium and potassium pumps and floods your system with fluid, increasing blood pressure, thereby perfusing the system Even more. More. This is why chronic stress creates hypertension, right? Because stress is designed to increase blood pressure acutely, to increase perfusion. So when you're in fight or flight response, and if a predator is chasing you, you absolutely want inflammation in the brain, in the heart and in the muscle. You absolutely want elevated blood pressure because you need to be able to form, you need to be able to function in the right form in order to get away from the predator. But the last thing you need when you're reading an email or a tweet or a text is inflammation in the brain, heart and muscle and increased blood pressure, right? We're not trying to survive anything, but we still get that same physiological response. Now, here's where it becomes really bad for us in the modern world is with the flight or flight response, you're supposed to enter into this state of fight or flight. Cortisol's levels are high, it's activating all these processes, including all the inflammation. But then when the danger subsides, you're supposed to be able to come down from, right? Our ancestors experience that. They're walking through the grasslands, they see a rustling in the grass, they go into fight or fight, they run from danger, they get to a safe place, they sit down, they breathe, and they can come down from that and go back to their basal state, right? Now, that is how it's supposed to function. However, if you have a messed up gut and you don't have the right organisms in your gut microbiome, you cannot come down from the flight or fight response because it's the responsibility of the microbiome to attenuate the HPA axis activation. And when cortisol gets dumped in the gut, like I talked about before, it makes the gut profoundly leaky. And there's a compound that increases in concentration as a result of cortisol dumping in the gut, and that's called IL6. IL6 can increase, make its way to the brain and reactivate the HPA axis, putting you through the whole same cycle over again, even without a new external stress, right? So what happens to the average modern person is that you're driving to work, let's say, and you're running late and somebody cuts you off, and those are the triggers that triggers the start of the HPA access activation and then puts you in fight or flight. So now you're super stressed and you're angst and you're in this fight or flight response and you can't come down from it because your leakiness in the gut keeps up Regulating it. So now you get to work. Work. And then the first irritating thing at work heightens you up even more. And your tolerance level, right, is so low for things that the whole day you're being triggered by things over and over and over again. And you stay in this state of heightened anxiety or fight or flight throughout the entire day. It's hard to ever come down from it because the off switches aren't working. The off switches are dependent on the microbiome. So what psychobiotics are are microbes that have been identified as commensal microbes that have special features in turning off the HPA activation and shutting down the system back to the basal level. They produce compounds like peptidoglycans and, you know, these carbon, these complex carbohydrates on the cell membrane, membrane of these bacteria. And these complex carbohydrates get digested by the macrophages and released into circulation. These carbohydrates go and they attenuate and stop the HPA reactivation. So your body can come back down to the basal level. So they provide you a resilience. They don't act like a, you know, like a Prozac where like they all of a sudden numb you and your, your, your central nervous system is wired down and all that. That's not what their function is. Their function is to be taken every day. And then in 30 days or so, you'll see that your perception of stress in general is dramatically reduced because it reduces the height of your cortisol curve and it also allows you to taper off cortisol much faster. Right. And you're not constantly being reactivated with the HPA axis because it can shut down your HPA overt action. So psychobiotics play a very important role because they're giving you the ability to be resilient and manage stress. Because we can't get away from stress. We all have it in our lives, but you need to be able to manage it. And your body needs to be able to go through an HPA activation, come back down, and then start repairing itself. Right? If you can do that, then you're perfectly fine. We're all going to experience some bouts of stress from time to time. Time. And, and the problem is experiencing a bout of stress and not being able to come back down from that heightened sense. And then if you don't come back down at night, you can't sleep properly, your digestion's messed up, you probably have loose stool, and, you know, you put on weight, all of these things, it just Goes downhill from there.

I think we can all resonate with what you said. I had a cheeky little smile on my face recounting some past experiences of, of being irritated and stressed. And I think it's just a reality of modern living. So it's. Social media is not going anywhere. The level of stress is certainly not gonna alleviate. It's just part and parcel of the lifestyle that we live the in the modern era. But we can use these tools like psychobiotics. Symbiome is amazing. You've. I think there's even a sleep version of Zen biome as well. So how. There is just very quickly, how is the, the sleep aspect impacted by the psychobiotics? Is it a similar type of thing?

It is because when, when you're in a fight or flight response and you're in that. What we call the, the sympathetic activation, right? So the neurological system has a parasympathetic sympathetic. The, the parasympathetic is, is the rest digest repair system. The sympathetic is kind of the fight or flight system. And so your nervous system kind of toggles between those two. If you are an average westerner or person living in a modern city, the likelihood is that you toggle towards the sympathetic side most of the time. And then you have lots and lots of external stimuli that kind of keep you in that sympathetic state. The problem with the sympathetic state is, is it, it works against sleeping because biologically your body's saying if you're in danger, the last thing you should do is close your eyes and lay down. Right? You need to be moving and running and acutely aware of your surroundings and so on. So your visual and auditory perceptions and all that heighten. And so you cannot sleep in that state. You need to be able to shift back to the parasympathetic, calm the situation down, release things like gaba, release things like melatonin so your system can shut down. You need to feel safe in order to be able to sleep. And so most people biologically don't feel safe. Right. Whether they know it or not, from a cognizant perspective, their biological system is telling them they're not safe, so they can't sleep. So the psychobiotic, because it can turn all of that off and bring you back to your basal state, actually helps induce sleep in individuals that are struggling with sleep. Right. So stress and sleep kind of go hand in hand. If you're stressed, you can't sleep, and if you're sleeping adequately, you'll have less stress. And if you're not sleeping enough you're going to actually increase your stress and that increased stress is going to prevent sleep even more. So it's a vicious cycle for most people and it has to be arrested somewhere. And that's one of the places the psychobiotic works.

Absolutely agree, agree, Kieran. I mean, it's one of these force multiplier type things because I think most people know now that sleep and stress management are these foundational aspects of living the best version of yourself. So having something like these type of products, psychobiotics and these formulas to help you in that is going to have dramatic impacts on your life. And it certainly has in my life. So I think, yeah, you know, it.

Creates resilience, which is really, really important. Right. Because like we said, we're gonna always be exposed to stress and stressors and, and things like that. Life is stressful, you know, admittedly, but your, your body has to be able to deal with it. And where we're failing right now is that we're not allowing the normal systems to deal with it appropriately because our microbiomes are messed up.

Absolutely right. I'm going to throw you some red meat now. This is the star of the show. What's really peaking Kieran's interest at the moment is the concept of the leaky skin. And what can be done to tackle this issue that Kieran is highlighting.

Yeah, I've always focused on barriers within the body and barriers are really important because barriers play a very dynamic role in how, how systems in the body function. So the barrier that I've been focusing on for many years now is the gut. So the gut is a very unique and dynamic barrier. And we all know that there's this condition called leaky gut where the barrier system of the gut becomes compromised as a result of changes in the microbial ecosystem. And then all the functions that maintain the barrier integrity of the gut start to fall apart. We also know that when the gut barrier falls apart, it creates chronic low grade inflammation from a leaky gut, which then becomes a massive risk factor for chronic disease. And in fact, it can be attributed that a leaky gut is one of the biggest drivers of chronic disease and mortality worldwide. That's been shown in a meta analysis study in 2015. I became obsessed with barriers and the role of microbes in maintaining barrier systems. The other barrier that I think started working on is the brain. Right. So we've got the blood brain barrier and we know that leaky gut leads to leaky brain. And so if your gut is leaky and dysfunctional and you're getting chronic inflammation. Your brain is also leaky, which means there's more toxins and inhibitors and things that enter into your brain that can disrupt your brain function. Then there's another barrier that most people are familiar with, and that's your skin. Your skin is a very important barrier against the outside world. It's the forward facing organ in your body and it acts as a very important barrier because it is less dynamic than the gut. Meaning the gut has to let in a lot of stuff and then prevent a bunch of stuff from coming in. The skin is really designed to be more so like a barrier. It's got many more layers than the gut does. The gut is one layer thick in terms of the number of cells. It's got many more layers. It's got a nice lipid or fatty acid layer. It's got structural elements like collagen and elastin and all that. And the thing is, as it turns out, you can compromise the barrier function of your skin. And if you compromise the barrier function of your skin, you will get this condition called leaky skin. Now the importance of this was highlighted from a fascinating series of studies called the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging. And this is a fascinating study because it was the first study or series of studies that looked at each individual as their own control over a 50 year period to follow each individual from their late 20s all the way up to their 80s and looking at how their system systems aged based on their choices, their lifestyle and so on. Right. To try to understand what is actually happening to the body during the aging process. Now most anti aging or most aging related studies, the way they're done is they take a current older group. So let's say they take a bunch of 80 year olds and then they compare them to a bunch of 30 year olds and they look at many different functions to understand the difference. The problem with that kind of approach is these 80 year olds went through very different things, things at 30 than the current 30 year olds go through. So it's not a good apples to apples comparison. So these researchers negated that by saying, you know what? We're going to follow thousands of individuals throughout their entire process of aging and document and collate and analyze everything. And so when they were looking at, and this is a part that is quite surprising and exciting, when they were looking at what, what were some of the predictive features of aging that could predict chronic disease development and mortality? The best predictor they found was the condition of your skin.

Wow.

Right. Which is surprising. Now they called it age Skin. So characteristics of aged skin, which is fine lines, wrinkles, dryness, hyperpigmentation or discoloration of the pigment throughout the skin, redness, thinning of the skin, and so on. So all of these things that none of us want, and we don't want it cosmetically. But as it turns out, those are also independent risk factors for chronic disease. They are risk factors that create disease in individuals. Now, the first assumption was that, well, the skin is a reflection of an unhealthy insight, so these individuals probably had a unhealthy inside, thereby the skin looked dysfunctional, and then they develop chronic conditions. It turns out not to be true. Actually, a dysfunctional skin shows up prior to being able to map that same pathology in the body. Right. So the skin dysfunction occurs first. Now what's happening here? Well, the skin dysfunction occurs because of changes to the microbiome of the skin. Skin no different than changes to the microbiome of the gut or areas of the brain. You're going to get changes to the barrier function of that area. Same thing. When the skin microbiome changes, it compromises the barrier function of the skin and it compromises the function of the skin in general. So you do develop things like fine lines and wrinkles and hyperpigmentation and dryness as a result of dysbiosis on the skin. Now, when those things happen, what happens is the skin becomes leaky, which means that toxins and bacteria and viruses and all that can leak through into deeper areas of the skin where they normally are not found. That triggers an immune response. The immune system shows up in that area, starts damaging the area and triggering immune response, and then it creates a bigger barrier disruption, just like it does in the gut. And more things leak through the skin. Some of those things end up in circulation and can create chronic low grade inflammation. For example, in this study, they were able to use aged skin as a predictor for osteoporosis, as a predictor for Alzheimer's, as a predictor for cardiovascular disease. Things that are seemingly completely unrelated to the skin. They could look at aged skin and predict the onset and the severity of these conditions or the risk of these conditions. That was very telling to me. So then I started looking at skin dysbiosis and early stages of skin dysbiosis. And of course, it's no surprise that we're creating dysbiosis on our skin. I mean, just think about all the stuff we put on it, right? We're putting all these personal care products with really harsh preservatives and Antimicrobials and all that. We're sterilizing our skin all the time. You know, all of these things, the environment that we live in and all the chemicals, chemicals we get exposed to. So our skin microbiome is becoming decimated over time and as a result it's creating a barrier function and leakiness in our skin. Not only does that make our skin appear worse, makes it appear aged, or creates inflammation or things like eczema, psoriasis, acne, all of those are a result of skin dysbiosis, eventually causes leaky skin and creates a chronic disease risk risk. So just like how we have to maintain resilience in our gut, seal up the lining of the gut, we have to do that on our skin as well because it's another independent risk factor.

Wow, that's, that's fascinating. So it's Kieran. So there's almost like this, this two way aspect of it. So it's like looking after your gut to make sure it's not leaky to let, to let all these, these Nazis into the bloodstream. Something like, like X LPS or. And, and the other way is to look after the skin so that barrier integrity is maintained to stop any nasties from getting in. Yeah, specifically any nasty types of bacteria. So you've got, you've got these certain species of organisms that live on the skin. Something like not sure if it's P or C. It's one of the, one of the two. It's either C Acnes or P Acnes.

It used to be P. Acnes. It used to be Propionum acnesis, now it's Acutibacter magnesis.

It's a C. Acnes is the correct terminology. So how's that dynamic of C. Acnes playing out in the skin? What is this organism doing?

Yeah, so that's a great example of what we would consider an opportunistic organism that's kind of overgrowing. Right. So it's not abnormal to find C. Acnesis on your skin. Most, most of us have some small degree of it, but once it starts to overgrow on the skin, and it could be because your skin is too oily or you're not cleaning it enough. So you're creating a lot of anaerobic pockets on the skin, of your surface of your skin, you're driving inflammation from a dysfunctional gut in the bottom layers of the skin, or you're using too many antimicrobials and things like that on your face. You start getting an opportun opportunistic overgrowth of C. Acnesis, what happens is that C. Acnesis can infect the pores in your skin. That infected pore will cause your sebaceous gland to release more sebum as a way to try to protect the barrier of the skin. That sebum enters into the pores, it swells the pores. You've got, on top of that, the C. Acnesis in there, creating an immune response. So now you've got redness and swelling, and that pore and all of that becomes a pimple, a comedone, right? So C. Acnesis, most people that are struggling with acne, an overabundance of C. Acnesis is driving that acne response. And one of the ways in which we said, okay, let's start with that, because that's such a easily demonstrable effect of changing the skin microbiome, right? So we said, let's take individuals who have. Who have a lot of acne, especially inflamed, really red lesions on their face. Let's do a skin swab and look at their C. Acnesis level. And then let's give them a quorum, sensing bacteria on the skin that can compete with the C. Acnesis and bring it down and see if that has a change to how their skin looks. Looks. And sure enough, in. In as little as two weeks or 30 days, most of these individuals, 90% of the individuals, we saw 80, 90% reduction in the number of inflamed lesions on their face. And then we do before and after swabs of the C. Acnesis, we see the C. Acnesis going from 60% of this, of the microbes on their face to down to 13%.

Wow.

Right. And it completely changes their complexion, how clear their skin is, their tone, the clarity and so on in just such a short amount of time, just by shifting the microbes on their skin. And we see the same thing with. With, you know, issues of redness, you know, rosacea like conditions, eczema, like dermatitis, lots of other things, even fine lines and wrinkles and pore size and all of that, because as soon as you shift the microbiome on the skin and you improve it, you start to see noticeable changes on the skin. And then you also know that you're preventing the skin from becoming leaky.

Wow, that's incredible, because so many of us over the years, including myself, have struggled with acne and having poor skin. So you've created this, a completely different line of product or product called sieve biome, which is a topical application of this quorum sensing bacteria that you guys have developed. So that's one pathway, but then you also have your, your serene skin, which is more like a. A probiotic capsule that you. You take. So are you able to explain the benefits of civil biome and then serene skin to optimize your skin health?

Yeah, absolutely. So serene skin works through the gut skin axis because one, one of the. There's. There's really two problems with the dysfunctional gut that impacts the skin. Number one, it's the. When your immune system is dysfunctional as a result of a dysfunctional gut, it's going to attack things with a much more serious inflammatory response, like we talked about earlier, right. Because it doesn't have the tolerance factor. So imagine you've got a dysfunctional gut and you've got an opportunistic microbe sitting on your skin, like, say, staph aureus. The staph aureus microbe is creating toxins and all that in that environment, which is triggering the immune system. Now, the immune system, because of your gut being dysfunctional, is going to have an overt reaction and damage the skin in that area by this blowtorching response that we talked about earlier. That damage that it causes damages the lipid layer, the fatty acid layer, the skin cells and all that. So it creates these dry, patchy lesions. Lesions in that area. Right. Same thing with acne. When you have a dysfunctional gut microbiome, the presence of cutibacter magnesis in the pores will trigger a more profound immune response. So those individuals get red and bumpy lesions all over the place. That's the immune system reacting to it quite a bit as well. So one of the benefits is being able to modulate the immune response from the gut so your immune system is not overtly acting on things underneath your skin. And then on top of that, if you can modulate what the skin microbiome looks like, you reduce the number of triggers that are on the skin. Because the worst case scenario is you have a dysbiotic skin microbiome. So you have a lot of triggers, and then you have a dysbiotic gut microbiome. So now you have an overreacting immune system. That combination is deadly. And it causes all kinds of stuff like acne, eczema, rosacea, psoriasis in many people, and then, of course, aging of the skin prematurely. Right. What you want to do is control the gut and manage the gut microbiome. Serene skin helps do that in ways that are most important to the skin. And then the sieve, topically used, manages the gut, the skin microbiome, and provides resilience through having a healthy skin microbiome. A healthy skin microbiome, like a healthy gut microbiome, allows your skin to encounter negative effects like too much UV radiation or irritating things that are rubbing on your skin, or toxins and environmental things, and yet not cause any damage to your skin because it provides resilience. Right. The same way your gut microbiome can provide resilience to things that you consume that may not be that great for you.

Brilliant. So it's a two pronged approach, one focusing on the gut, the other one topically applied onto the skin. And I just had a tangential thought that perhaps through modern living we've sort of nuked our, our skin with all these chemicals and applications of Nazis chlorine in water, whereas applying this sort of spore based, most likely soil type organism, and it's like going back to old times and putting microbes back that were typically in the skin and environment.

That's exactly right. That's, that's, you know, how we kind of came up with this might be effective because when you look at the skin microbiome, what you start to realize is you've got permanent residents on the skin that change based on influence around it. But for the most part, you're encountering transient organisms in the skin. Skin and transient organisms from the environment have a very positive effect on the permanent resonance on your skin. And so these spores are actually acting as a transient organisms that can modulate your permanent resonance and modulate certain features of the skin and of the skin immune response as well. So it is similar to having a more holistic lifestyle and being out there in nature all the time and getting good exposure to dirt and things like that. Right. Rather than the stuff that we get exposed to on a modern level. And it works so simply and beautifully because it's just, you typically use it just once a day. It comes in a little dropper like this. You add one or two drops in your face and neck. You rub it in after you've washed your face and before you put your moisturizer on. I also use it on my body because I want to protect the rest of my microbial. So I just take a handful of lotion, I had two or three drops of it, mix it and then apply the lotion to the body and it makes such a massive difference on the features and characteristics of your skin. And you start to Realize the resilience difference of the skin. And if, certainly if you're someone struggling with things like acne or eczema or redness of the skin and all that, you'll see a profound difference in a short amount of time. Time.

Awesome. I'm gonna, I'm, I've got my bottle. I'm gonna get started today and I'll let you know how it goes. Kieran, Kieran, you've been so generous with your time. It's, it's been an absolutely epic, jam packed episode of knowledge and information. There's just one more point that I wanted you to touch on, which was this parlor guard H. Pylori product that you have, because I've, I haven't seen any product like it.

Right.

So someone that's struggling with H. Pylori and we'll, we'll start to wrap after this. So what, what is Pylogard? What, what's it actually doing when it comes to dealing with H. Pylori, which is a highly prevalent pathogen that people suffer with?

Yeah, over, over 50% of the adult population has infectious levels of H. Pylori. And then, you know, typically it's in the household, so we just keep reinfecting each other with it. And H. Pylori is a big issue because not only does it cause things like gastroesophageal reflux and ulcers and gastritis and so on, more dangerously, it can also cause autoimmune conditions and then cancer. It is classified as a Class 1 carcinogen by the World Health Organization. So this bacteria is a potent carcinogen in your system. Right. And then of course, the conventional way of trying to go after it is by something called a triple therapy, which they use then two broad spectrum antibiotics and then PPIs, proton pump inhibitors. And the proton pump inhibitors are there purely to try to stop some of the reflux, like symptomology. But it's not doing anything to go after H. Pylori. It's in fact making things worse generally. And then we know antibodies, antibiotics, broad spectrum antibiotics can have a lot of negative side effects as well. So we were able to discover this bacteria. It's a Lactobacillus reuteri. And it's fascinating because the only thing it does that we could see is that it binds to H. Pylori and takes it out of its system. The cell membrane of this bacteria has strong affinity for the cell membrane of H. Pylori. And it's surrounds the Helicobacter pylori. Even in the mucosa of the stomach, grabs onto it and escorts it out of the system through defecation. It doesn't touch anything else, it doesn't do anything else. And that's just the sheer brilliance of microbes in the system because they're so specialized in the types of things that they can do. You couldn't give me enough money and enough talent to engineer a microbe that can do this. This is nature at its finest. Now why would this microbe exist, right? And oh, here's the crazy thing. It doesn't even have to be alive. It's not a living probiotic, right? The cell is dead. It's just the outer membrane still has a strong affinity for Helicobacter pylori. It doesn't have to colonize or do any of those things. It just gets into the stomach, finds H. Pylori, binds it, takes it out, right? It's one of the most elegant microbial systems. It's called co aggregation, which is a expected, which is a well documented way in which microbes can compete with each other. So it's a beautiful system. Now, I've hypothesized as to why this bacteria might even exist, because it's a natural bug. It's not something that we've engineered or created. We just have a massive library of bacteria that we can screen certain functions for. But if you think about this bacteria, right, it does this when it's dead. And I think that's a really important thing to keep in mind because imagine that some people that develop this bacteria naturally in their GI tract and bacteria develop for all different reasons, right? Let's say there was individual with a unique distribution of certain lactobacilli, and then, then they had an overgrowth of H. Pylori and this lactobacilli, somehow as a result of having H. Pylori in the environment, developed an affinity for grabbing onto this other bacteria because this other bacteria was causing issues within the system. And microbes are really good at competing with each other. And so this bacteria developed this capability accidentally through mutagenesis and then moves out through defecation. And over time it can do this even without being alive, because when it comes out in defecation, it's dead when it hits the outside environment. But then, given that humans lived in communities and ate dirt and got and exchanged things like fecal matter and all that, inadvertently, other people in that region started consuming this bacteria accidentally. The dead form that was found in the dirt and it protected that them against helicobacter pylori. Right. So all the people that had exposure to this bacteria had a better chance of surviving and doing well, thereby perpetuating the continuous re exposure of this particular bacteria. So it's some form of awesome symbionic evolution that the fact that this bacterium exists and it's so important to take care of H. Pylori if you suspect you have it. And because this is so gentle and the only thing it does is remove H. Pylori, you can use it even if you just suspect you have it because you have bloating and you have, you have reflux and all that. And it's important then to treat everybody in the household or you'll, you'll simply get reinfected of it.

Incredible. Because so many people suffer with H. Polar. Sorry, Kieran. It's one of these organisms that can really alter the ecosystem in the gut and alter the gut ph, then really exacerbate things like dysbiosis. So having a tool like Polyguard is absolutely a game changer. And I hope if someone's listening to this and they. They're suffering from H. Pylori or they know someone that has H. Pylori to consider Polyguard because could. It could dramatically change your life for sure. Sure.

Yeah.

I think we'll wrap now. We've covered so much, so I'd love to end the show on, on this note, a couple of notes. Finally, if people are really jiving with you, they want to find you, how do they reach out and contact you on the socials or whatever you decide?

So I, I'm, I'm. I try to be as active as I can on social and engage with people if they reach out and they message. So my Instagram handle is Kiran Biome K I R A N B I O M e Also reach out on civ Care for the civ Biome balancing which is S I V C a R E I I respond on there as well. And I've got a wonderful business partner, Isabel, that manages the social there. So there's a lot of great information there about leaky skin and how you revamp your skin and so on, which to me is a really, really important part of overall health. Right. It's something that I've personally started paying attention to finally over the last few years. You know, often as guys, we never really thought about our skin and we just use whatever soap on it and so on. But now I'm like, okay, it's a potential independent risk factor for chronic disease. So I need to pay attention to my skin and what the function and barrier system is like on my skin. So. Civ care kirinbiome reach out. I'm on Facebook as well as Kiran Krishnan and you know, I try to engage as much as I can.

When you do reach out, the skin's looking good.

Thank you, my friend. I appreciate it.

If people watch the video, they can see here. Definitely talks the talk.

Yes. And, and I, I try to live the walk and talk to talk. Oh, my video has gone a little bit haywire here.

We're just about to wrap and if there's one thing that someone could do for their gut health, skin health, I'll leave it up to you. What would they do?

Yeah. Okay. So if there's one thing they can do, number one to me is, is be conscious of what is happening in your system and what you're putting into your system. Right. So I think that consciousness allows for the greatest advances in your own health. Because when you're conscious about what you're putting in and what you're not putting in, that really helps you think about your choices on a day to day basis. And you have to think about your microbiome. You've got this amazing ecosystem here that has been passed down from generation to generation to generation for over 100,000 years from our earliest ancestors who have gone through hell to create this ecosystem and pass it down to future generations. It is our duty to try to preserve it and improve it so we can pass it down to future generations. Because it accounts for more than 50 or 60% of all of our functionality. Right. And if we destroy it and we harm it, we're destroying our capabilities and our functionality and we're passing down a dysfunctional bond biome to our future which then compromises their ability to exist in the world. Right. And so that is a really, really important responsibility that we have. There's lots of things you can do. The probiotics, prebiotics, dietary choices, fasting, removing processed foods, there's so many things, managing stress, sleep. And you should do all of those things. But start with being conscious of this ecosystem that you're so lucky to have have. And then know that you have to preserve it for future generations.

Awesome. Brilliant advice. Almost sage Kieran level. It's awesome, man. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Yes, it's my pleasure. Thanks for the invite and hopefully we'll do it again not four years from now. We'll do it sooner.

Absolutely. Would love to.

We hope you enjoyed this episode of the Gut Health Gurus. Podcast with Kian Krishnan. If you found this podcast valuable, please leave us a kind review and five stars on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcasting app. If you want to connect with our host, Kriben Govenda, please follow him on Instagram, Facebook and TikTok at Gut HealthGurus. Also, check out our Gut Health Gurus Facebook group. With more than 19,000 members ready to help you on your journey to amazing gut health, this episode is sponsored by Nourish Me Organics. Head to www.nourishmeorganics.com and use the code Happy Gut for 10% off. Until next time.