How A Specially Engineered Bacterial Strain Can Allow You To Enjoy Drinking Alcohol Without Toxic Hangovers, With ZBiotics Zack Abbott.

My name is Ben Greenfield, and on this episode of the Ben Greenfield Life Podcast.

The issue here, at least in part, is that we know the gut is a major source of acetaldehyde, and we know that the liver has a great solution for acetaldehyde, but at that point, it's maybe too late. And so basically, the idea here is that we just took a safe, edible probiotic bacteria you already likely eat every day, whether or not you take probiotics, and it's ubiquitous in nature, sends the soil, and then we engineered it to express an enzyme very similar to the one your liver uses to convert the acetalde to acetate the same way your liver does. And so the idea is you eat this probiotic before you drink, and then it's in your gut, and as outside is forming in the gut, the bacteria are in there to help your body kind of deal with that acidi before mixed away in the bloodstream.

Fitness, nutrition, biohacking, longevity, life optimization, spirituality, and a whole lot more.

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All right, folks. So as many of you know, I've not completely sworn off alcohol. I'm not on that longevity enhancing bandwagon that says no cocktails for the rest of your life. As a matter of fact, I'm not even really celebrating sober October, at least not in a strict sense of the word. I like to have an organic glass of wine every now and again, or I should say a glass of organic biodynamic wine if you want to be a true healthy biohacker. I love to have, like, bitters, like digestifs and aperitifs. You know, a lot of these, like wild crafted cocktails where I'll take Italian ebolibo, or one of my latest infatuations is Croatian Polankovic liqueur, and add a little bit of lemon and apple cider vinegar and sparkling water and make myself a cocktail at home. However, I will not deny that even in small amounts, alcohol can get converted into some things that long term might cause some issues in your tissues, so to speak. And even though I endorse responsible consumption of alcohol, I think it's helpful to have some things around that you can help to control the damage with. And so that's where the story of today's podcast begins, because my guest, his name is Zach Abbott, he actually was working at a research lab and came up with this crazy idea of engineering probiotic strains to actually help you digest alcohol better. That's my Bastardized explanation. I know Zach's going to take a deep dive into the science today, but he's with this company called zbiotics. He'll be able to explain exactly what it is and what it has to do with your desire to drink alcohol. Probably a good topic to be talking about during our approach to the holiday season. But anyways, Zach, welcome to the show, man.

Awesome. Yeah, thanks for having me. Thanks for having me. Excited to chat with you today.

Yeah, for sure. And I forgot to tell people during the introduction, but I'll put show notes for everything we talk about. If you're listening or watching, go to BenGreenfieldLife.com ZPodcast or if I'm cool and European, I could say BenGreenfieldLife.com ZedPodcast and Zach, first of all, it is kind of interesting that your name starts with a Z and, and you're in charge of a company called zbiotics. Is that, is that personal? Do you actually name your company after yourself?

Yeah, unfortunately, that was. It was meant to be a placeholder. Yeah, yeah, we were, you know, I was a little.

I thought, by the way, maybe Z was like the, the Alphabet letter soup for the specially engineered probiotic strain or something like that.

Right. It was kind of one of these things where, you know, I literally came up with the name in like five minutes when I was like, planning a. For a pitch competition. It was meant to be like a placeholder before I'd even started the company. And I thought, ah, you know, it's never become something. We'll change the name and it's just something. But then we did a bunch of naming exercises after, you know, we were looking to launch the first product and, you know, the name really worked. We owned it. And people kind of see Z as like a sciency letter. And we're trying to launch, you know, we were launching the world's first ever genetically engineered probiotic of any kind of to go to market. And so it sort of felt like a nice, unique name to kind of like, you know, be the flag bearer for genetically genetic probiotics as a category. Sort of like Z biotic. So, you know, forever. You're right, by the way, but not intentional.

Yeah, Z does sound scientific. It's kind of like NASA or the Russians. Right? Like, anytime you drop something like that in a conversation about science, you become instantly credible. So I think we could throw Z into that equation too. Hey, million dollar question, though. Before we get into what an engineered probiotic even is or how this came to be, do you actually drink. And if so, just to break the ice here, what's your cocktail of choice.

Or your drink of choice? I do drink, although definitely less since starting running this company and the amount of work I have, it's sort of like I find myself having less and less time for sort of social activities. But yeah, when I do drink, I say my favorite cocktail if I'm just relaxing is a boulevardier. And then I'd say my favorite cocktail if I'm out having fun and socializing with friends is probably whiskey soda.

So I have no clue what a boulevardier is. Can you explain?

It's a Negroni, but with whiskey instead of gin.

Okay, so the fast track for getting drunk as an Italian. I get it. I've had some experience with Negronis. Now, do you have any thoughts on this? I think probably Dr. Andrew Huberman, bless his heart, is largely responsible for this craze of people pretty much swearing off alcohol completely. And of course there's a surge in these alcohol replacement drinks that technically aren't alcohol, but mix of different herbs and things like that. What do you think of this whole shift towards people just saying in general, alcohol is going to kill you no matter what?

Yeah, I mean, I think that, look, we know alcohol is not good for you, so if that works for you, I think it's. It's obviously it's great. That being said, you know, I also think that for some people, a sort of an all or nothing solution is not sustainable. And that's okay too, you know, if you decide to drink alcohol, just choosing sort of responsible choices and drinking in moderation and anything you can do to basically kind of mitigate kind of the damage that we know alcohol always does for us. So look, if you're happy with full sobriety and don't feel like that impacts your life, then I think that's great. But a lot of people find that it's a normal and healthy part of a adult social interaction and works as sort of a social lubricant. It's something that's enjoyable for the flavor and that kind of unique. Uniqueness of the beverages. So I think that that's also okay. It's an important part of your psychological health in many cases when engaged in responsibly. And so, you know, I think teach their own.

Yeah, you obviously know way more about the interaction of alcohol with. With human physiology than I do. Being steeped in the science of this, I suppose, and even developing probiotics help the body deal with this. But what do you think about the Notion of alcohol as a hormetic stressor, meaning small responsible amounts that don't get you inebriated that you use in the same way you might use a wide variety of plants and herbs and spices, might have a little bit of a cellular resilience inducing effect. Just like this concept that things that could kill you in large doses, like spending three hours in the sauna or an hour in an ice bath, or eating a giant shopping cart full of kale, might not be that great for you. Having little bits of alcohol might actually induce some kind of a hormetic stress. And the way I think about this, and I'm curious to hear your thoughts on this, is that a lot of times when alcohol gets thrown under the bus, it's because people are using large doses of it. And some of the studies don't really break out the difference between someone having, let's say a small glass of wine with dinner each night and averaging based on that, maybe seven drinks a week and someone who's having like seven drinks on a Saturday night and just flooding their body with those toxins.

Totally. I couldn't agree more. That sort of lumping the behavior of drinking into sort of one broad category is definitely massively oversimplifying how humans engage with alcohol. And interestingly, you know, we see that some of the cultures that have, you know, the most longevity, alcohol is an important part of their diet. And in every single one of those cases that alcohol is used in moderation. And so I think that there is, it is a reasonable hypothesis. Obviously that's correlative. So there's no real data to support that the alcohol itself is creating any form of longevity. But it's a reasonable hypothesis. And it's also reasonable to say that alcohol, when engaged in responsibly, is not necessarily going to be, you know, uniformly, you know, detrimental to longevity and kind of your overall health. And so I think it's an interesting idea. There's a lot more data that needs to be gathered here because the fact that like you said, it's a perfect example, right? Seven drinks over seven nights versus seven drinks all in one night will have a very different effect on your health. Even though both were the same amount of drinks in a week.

Yeah, I'm glad you brought up that that blue zones type of piece where you do look at a lot of these long lived hotspots and alcohol, maybe the Seventh Day Adventist as a side, seems to be a little bit of a staple. I think it's kind of contextual though. It's like if you're having a glass of wine or an aperitif or a digestif while surrounded by a bunch of people laughing and breaking bread in a parasympathetic state and full of joy and social engagement, that's obviously different than drinking three beers on the couch by yourself after a day of work while you watch Netflix to drink away a little bit of stress.

Absolutely, 100%. And I think that for me, that context is actually what's the most important part about it. Right. That for. For many people, alcohol is a good kind of platform or, you know, behavior that goes along with a lot of healthy social interaction. And so in an effort. So in some cases, sort of an effort to, like, go in these all or nothing, like sober October or dry January, kind of. It's. It also becomes socially isolating sometimes because people like, well, I don't want to go out because I'm not drinking. You know, and that. That's a. You know, that that correlation in and of itself is maybe not all the most ideal, but I think that this concept of all or nothing puts people into situations where they're making kind of either or decisions, which I think can be detrimental in its own way, because psychological health is also fairly important.

Yeah. You'd be surprised the number of people I've run into who have said, well, I'm still going to go out and tie one on socially, but they're actually using psilocybin. I must have run into, like, four people in the past couple of months alone who are microdosing with psilocybin instead of drinking alcohol in the evening and just figuring out a different way to kind of spin the dials, you know, super interesting.

Very. You know, I think that as we sort of, you know, culturally evolve and understand the kind of health effects of different sort of substances that we ingest, I think that, you know, we're going to find the ideal situation and, you know, as long as we're committed to improving our health, both our biological health, but then also our psychological health and social health, all these things together, I think we're going to find some really cool. I think some cool practices are going to emerge. I think that's great.

Yeah, done. This podcast is officially over. Drink responsibly with other people, not too much at a time, and use psilocybin occasionally. All right, thanks for listening, everybody.

Yeah, perfect.

No, I'm just kidding. So the. The interesting thing is that I think a lot of people might not realize what exactly is going on, you know, when you metabolize Alcohol, because from what I understand, it's not exactly the ethanol that's the issue. It's the byproducts that's being broken down into. Can you explain exactly what's going on and why alcohol would be problematic as far as its potential as a toxin?

Basically, you know, at the highest level, when you drink, you, you know, you ingest the ethanol, right? And then that goes into your stomach and your intestines and it's, you know, most of it's pretty rapidly absorbed into your bloodstream. The ethanol then circulates throughout your bloodstream and it has the effects that it has. And then it makes its way to the liver where it's, for all purposes, from a detoxification standpoint, it's. It's sort of broken down in two stages. So the ethanol gets converted into acetaldehyde using one enzyme, and then that acetaldehyde is subsequently broken down into acetate using a second enzyme. And then so that acetate is essentially, you know, it's vinegar. It's innocuous, if anything, you know, it's a short chain fatty acid. It can be beneficial. A lot of metabolic fates happen from acetate, but at that point, from a toxicity standpoint, your body has successfully detoxified the molecule. That intermediate acetaldehyde is highly toxic, much more toxic than ethanol itself. The good news is that your liver is very good at both of those reactions. And so very little of the acetaldehyde that forms in the liver actually makes its way into your bloodstream. And it's not really a source of acetaldehyde. That being said, what happens in the gut is a little bit different. So I said most of the alcohols absorb pretty quickly. That being said, some of the alcohol that makes its way into your gut is broken down directly in the gut, in large part by your microbiome. So the microbes that are living in your gut before it can be absorbed in the bloodstream. And so this is not a very significant amount of alcohol from a sort of intoxication perspective. But it actually becomes really important in terms of human health and the way you feel the next day, because this alcohol is converted into acetaldehyde, but then not subsequently into acetate like it is in the liver. And so even though it's a very small amount of alcohol that's being broken down in the gut, almost all of it is being converted into acetaldehyde and not acetate. And so the gut ends up being the major source of acetaldehyde in the body. And we See that in scientific literature, it's well established that colonic acetaldehyde levels are five to 10 times higher than blood acetaldehyde levels at any given time after a night of heavy drinking. And this acetaldehyde is highly soluble. It gets absorbed out of the gut into the bloodstream. It circulates throughout the body like wreaks havoc. Acetyl causes like combined to DNA and bind to proteins and really junk up the gears in your cells and cause cell death, which causes systemic inflammation. Acetaldehyde combined to receptors in your brain, which causes nausea and anxiety and all these different things. And then that acetate makes its way to the liver and it's broken down very efficiently in the liver, but at that point it's kind of like too late. And so when you kind of wake up the next day and you feel miserable, acetaldehyde is a, is a major culprit in that. It's not the whole story. There are other things that are happening. So the ethanol itself can basically binds to receptors in your brain, which is part of what causes the intoxication effects, but it also affects the quality of your sleep. And ethanol also affects a lot of your hormone balances. And so it affects the way you feel hunger and satiation. It affects the way your body deals with glucose and so the glucose, insulin response, like all these things are affected. And so the next day you're kind of dealing with downstream effects of largely those two molecules. There's another. There's sort of like other very small things that happen that contribute a little bit, but those are, it's kind of like the, the major story is kind of like those two molecules. And so those are kind of like the key elements of, of what you're, what your body is dealing with.

Those two molecules, namely being acetate and.

Acetaldehyde, sorry, ethanol and acetaldehyde. So once we get to acetate, the. Yeah, right. We're pretty happy once we get to acetate. Yeah.

Okay. Is there like a dose dependent effect, meaning if you drink a certain amount, do you wind up kind of like overloading the liver with acetaldehyde or ethanol? That gets converted into acetaldehyde and then at that point it begins to accumulate in the gut, or is there always some accumulating in the gut, some accumulating in the liver, and it's just the stuff in the gut that we want to worry about the most?

Yeah, I mean, so for most people, the reaction from acetaldehyde to acetate is as fast or faster than the reaction from ethanol to acetaldehyde. So in the liver. And so usually you're not going to overwhelm the acetaldehyde breakdown. So you can't overwhelm the whole system by drinking a lot. Right. And like your liver can't keep up and so you're exposed to this alcohol for longer. But in terms of gut acetaldehyde, that is very dose dependent. So the more alcohol you drink, the more acetyl is going to form in your gut, the more that's going to get out into your bloodstream and sort of wreak havoc before it makes its way to the liver. So definitely like. And it's not even just the volume, it's also the volume per unit time. Right. So drinking three shots in succession is going to overwhelm your system much faster than drinking, you know, three glasses of wine over the course of three hours. Right. Or something like that.

Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. And obviously we aren't even talking about other contaminants that you might find in your drink of choice. Like if you're having the $2 margarita special with the high fructose corn syrup or.

Right.

You're consuming something that has processed sugars, the espresso martini with that potent combination of caffeine and alcohol. Like, there's a lot of other considerations besides the acetaldehyde. But I guess I'm hypothesizing here that my healthy, responsible listeners are already choosing high fructose, corn syrup free and non preservative laden sources of alcohol. So now the main thing they need to worry about is just the acetaldehyde.

Yeah, exactly. I mean, yeah, you evaluate those risks like you would any other time. Right. Like independent of the alcohol. Right. Like the other things that are in there that, you know, you have to make your own kind of decision about what you want to do with those. But yeah, definitely. Right. Like high sugar, high fructose corn syrup. Um, caffeine is actually really interesting when mixed with alcohol that show there's good data to show that it reduces sort of your risk tolerance. Excuse me, your risk aversion, you know, even synergistically, even more so than the alcohol itself. And so people who drink caffeine and alcohol are more likely to make really bad decisions like drinking and driving are more likely to kind of, you know, do things, engage in risky behaviors that they wouldn't normally do. So definitely strongly, you know, encourage people to really, really be considerate about whether or not they should be having caffeine with alcohol.

That was the original impetus for, I think, some nightclubs, I believe it was in Europe, kind of outlawing that Red Bull vodka phenomenon, not only for the reasons you stated, but from what I understand, it increases risk for things like stroke, atrial fibrillation, et cetera. Which is kind of funny because I know a lot of folks, not a lot of folks, but a handful of folks who will nod their heads in agreement that, oh, yeah, Red Bull vodka, and then they'll sip their highfalutin refined espresso martini at martini bar. It's pretty much the same thing as caffeine and alcohol, right?

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Yeah. Okay. So when it comes to what we can do about this, particularly the acetaldehyde, you have a unique approach, and I'd love to hear a little bit more about the science of how you could do some micro adjustments to the microbiome and actually equip the gut to better be able to deal with acetaldehyde. So, obviously, kind of like a loaded question based on your history with engineering probiotic strains, but I'd love to hear you get into this. We got time.

Totally. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, like, look, I'll start by saying kind of like the high level, and then kind of dig in, right. A little bit. That, as I said, I mean that the issue here, at least in part, is that we know the gut is a major source of acetaldehyde, and we know that the liver has a great solution for acetaldehyde, but at that point, it's maybe too late. And so the idea that we could deal with acetaldehyde in the gut seemed like a pretty, you know, pretty straightforward idea as a way to kind of deal with some of. Of the effects that that drinking could have on kind of your next morning. And so it was. It was, you know, in looking at that problem. So, you know, my PhD is in microbiology. I study bacterial gene regulation. I know that there's a lot of bacteria living in your gut. There's a lot of bacteria in your. That is, you know, in your food that passes through your gut. And we take probiotics, which are live, edible bacteria. And so this felt like a really great mechanism for delivering that function of the liver into the gut. So bacteria perform, say, like 3,000 biological functions, and most of those functions are for the purpose of the bacteria. Right. And so then sometimes, sort of tangentially, some of those functions could be useful to people. And so the idea that we could apply genetic engineering to ensure that one additional function was added to a bacteria that could create a known kind of function or benefit for us universally was kind of the idea behind robotics generally that we could just basically take a probiotic that we know is capable of kind of performing these biological functions in the body and ensure that it performs a function that we find useful. And so then kind of looking around for applications of that, the knowledge that acetaldehyde in the gut is important for the way you feel after drinking, then I thought like, this would be a great kind of application of the technology, prove out the concept of genetically engineered probiotics in a way that people could understand and really feel for themselves. And so that's where we started. And, and so basically the idea here is that we just took a safe edible probiotic bacteria you already likely eat every day. Whether or not you take probiotics, it's ubiquitous in nature, sends the soil, and then we engineered it to express an enzyme very similar to the one your liver uses to convert the acetyl, that acetate, the same way your liver does. And so the idea is you eat this probiotic before you drink, and then it's in your gut and as outside is forming in the gut, the bacteria are in there to help your body kind of deal with that acid I before it makes its way in the bloodstream. And so that's really at the highest level, kind of like this the approach we took.

So you're basically turning the gut into a giant liver.

I mean, in a way, yeah. Or like a liver outpost, maybe. Yeah.

Well, talk about playing God. But obviously people, I think all joking aside, hear you say something like genetic engineering and their eyeballs pop out, especially people in the health sector, because apparently anything genetically engineered could be very risk prone, not have a lot of long term safety data behind it. So, you know, how do you address this idea that, you know, people are avoiding genetically engineered foods, yet you know, you're hawking this genetically engineered probiotic that digests acetaldehyde for you. What do you say to people who are concerned about the safety issues here?

Totally. And like, I appreciate very much the concern that exists around genetic engineering. I think what's the problem has been is that the technology has been conflated with some of its applications. So what I mean by that is that a lot of people are scared about GMOs and upset about GMOs because of the way they've been used. So, you know, there is a large debate in this country, and rightfully so, around like the safety of like, for instance, like Roundup ready corn, right? Like this Idea that we can add more pesticides to our. Our fields if we have this corn that's resistant to the pesticide. And so the fact that the strain is of corn is not. Is genetically engineered is not inherently what makes the product unsafe. The fact that we are adding more pesticides to our field maybe is what the problem is, Right? Or like, is the debate of the problem, right? It's like, is this roundup unsafe for our health and for ecological health? I think there's very reasonable arguments on that. And so, unfortunately, the technology that enabled that business practice has been conflated with the safety issue itself. But the fact that we've genetically engineered it has no effect on its safety whatsoever. It's just a technology, a tool to write, to make final products. And the analogy I often use for this is that there's also a hot debate in this country around guns and gun control. And I think that regardless of what side of the aisle you are on that conversation, odds are good that you're not saying that we shouldn't use metallurgy, the technology used to make the gun.

Right.

Because you recognize that metallurgy could also make a spoon, which is a very safe product that has. And so it's really a technology that enables kind of products. And so we should evaluate the safety of the product, not the technology used to make it. And with genetic engineering, I think that. So that's a tool that can be used to make, you know, all kinds of products safe or unsafe. And. And I think that there's some sort of misconceptions around what genetic engineering is. You sort of mentioned, like, kind of playing God. And in reality, I mean, I think that gives scientists a little too much credit. Like, we aren't doing. You know, we are basically, what genetic engineering is, is our. Is. We now have a increased understanding, better understanding than we did 20, 30 years ago about how life already alters its own DNA. And now, because we understand that better, we can guide that process more directly and more efficiently. So, you know, 200, 300 years ago, we were doing basic. The same thing of trait transfer with plant crossbreeding. And it's a natural process that plants do, and they essentially, like, mash all their DNA together, and a bunch of traits cross over, and then we select for the plant that has the traits that we want, like a juicier fruit or, you know, a better color or whatever it might be. It's a very imprecise process. Plants are relatively new to the game of gene transfer. Bacteria are 2 to 3 times, you know, 2 or 3 billion, or 2 or 3 billion years older than plants. So bacteria are much better at kind of editing their own DNA. And we've come to understand how bacteria do that. And they do it very effectively, very efficiently. And so now that we understand that process, we can guide that process better in the lab. And so right now what I do for genetic engineering is I literally just mix live bacteria with DNA and then the bacteria will take up that DNA on its own using processes it's already evolved to do. It will then match that DNA to its own existing chromosome and swap that DNA into its own chromosome. It does all that itself and it knows how to do all that. So like, I'm not really doing a lot. I'm just sort of facilitating a natural activity. And that is genetic engineering. And when I do that, that creates a gmo. And so the process does not make the bacteria unsafe in any way. Now it's a question of what that DNA is and how that affects the bacteria, whether or not it's going to be unsafe. And so with our first product, we genetically engineered the bacteria to express an enzyme that is present in 70% of all life on the planet, including many of the bacteria that are already in your gut. You know, your liver cells make this, this enzyme and many of the bacteria that are in the soil that the bacteria already naturally engages with have this enzyme. And so all we're doing is making sure that you're getting enough of a very common enzyme at the right time and in the right place. But nothing we've introduced into this is like, is unseen by the bacteria or by your gut or by the external environment. So obviously the product we're creating is very safe because it's not, we're not introducing anything new. It's really about a matter of optimizing for a specific use case of human health that nature didn't have any incentive to optimize for before. When you think about the end product, that's really the question about whether our product is safe or unsafe.

Okay, and not to excessively stereotype here, but you hear about the red faced Asian businessman who literally is very red faced after say, quaffing a few beers. And the reason that I understand that's the case is because they lack a certain enzyme. I believe it is something like a dehydrogenase enzyme or something like that that breaks down the alcohol. Is that the same enzyme that you're genetically engineering a probiotic strain to produce?

Essentially, yeah. So the enzyme that the liver uses to convert. Right. It's called acetaldehyde dehydrogenase. So it's basically the enzyme that the liver uses to convert the acetaldehyde into acetate is mutated in, in certain people. And that mutation is most common in sort of like people of East Asian descent. And so what happens there is that the alcohol you drink that makes its way to the liver and is processed in the liver, the alcohol is processed into acetaldehyde. But then that second step from acetaldehyde to acetate is not very efficient. And so you get this massive kind of dose of acetaldehyde. Acetaldehyde, among many other effects it has, is also a vasodilator. And so it causes the blood vessels as well, which creates more blood kind of rushing to the surface and skin. And so that's why you get that flushing reaction. And that's due to a huge exposure to acetaldehyde, which also has kind of other undesirable effects beyond just the flushing. And so. But most people have a functional version of that enzyme. They don't have that flushing action unless they drink a lot of alcohol, at which point the acetate that's building up.

In their gut, everybody will get a little bit of a red face. It's just some people don't make as much of the dehydrogenase, so it might set in earlier. I think I should name, by the way, that another issue that I'm aware of that can cause that red face is histamine sensitivities, which you can genetically test. And a lot of people nowadays, including me, I've started to do this will take a natural antihistamine prior to alcohol consumption, if you have poor histamine pathways. There's a genetic testing company, I don't know if you've heard of it, Zach, it's called Strategene. And they test you for all these so called dirty genes like your nitric oxide pathways, your glutathione pathways, et cetera. And one of my pathways that's heavily dirtied is my histamine pathway. And a lot of high histamine foods would include fermented foods, canned fish like sardines, that's a biggie. Alcohol, particularly things like wine and beer or even kombucha, would be pretty high up on the totem pole too, when it comes to histamine producing compounds. And so I think an antihistamine seems like a pretty good solution as well. And as a matter of fact, when I drink, I've been using, I have a whole stack, so I take a little bit of glutathione later on. I've been taking a shot of your zbiotics prior, but then I also use a little bit of an antihistamine as well. It sounds like a desperate attempt to be able to get away with alcohol consumption, but I'm all about a little better living through science if you're going to have a couple of glasses of wine.

That's exactly right. I mean, like, you know, I think you could call it desperation. I think it's like, you know, look, we're leveraging the tools we know as we understand the biology better. Better. What's interesting about antihistamines is that most of them actually have a sort of, I don't know if you call it like a side effect that they're vasoconstrictors. And so that also sort of masks that symptom of the vasodilation of acetaldehyde. So that's sort of another reason why sometimes people who do have a flushing reaction find that antihistamines can help. That being said, that's really combating symptoms rather than you're still being exposed to. Right. Acetaldehyde. It's just not causing vasodilation now.

Yeah, yeah. Considering another hack that people use is the activated charcoal carbon type of absorbent post alcohol consumption. I think the main reason I, I'm not a huge fan of that solution and why I like using zbiotics and throwing a little bit of glutathione antihistamine into the mix too, is the activated charcoal. Basically absorb any other supplements you take, including anything you might take to help you sleep better, like your favorite sleep supplement. And then it can also kind of make you constipated as well. So even though I think it does a good job absorbing toxins, I mean, you're talking about just allowing your body to produce the enzymes in the gut biome that digest the acetaldehyde anyways. Seems like a pretty good solution.

Yeah. So, I mean, look, actually charcoal is a pretty interesting one because that's based on a sort of a thought experiment that didn't work. Right. Like, so the, when you go into the hospital with like, you know, poisoning and often alcohol poisoning, they'll pump you full of activated charcoal, but like it's like a kilogram. And so the volume in those pills of activated charcoal is, you know, on paper and in practice is shown to not have, you know, the absorbing amount is, is way like massively thousands of times too small.

Huh. I didn't Realize it was that much smaller than what they use in the hospital. Wow.

Yeah. I mean, they like, literally, like I say, I mean, like those pills are whatever, like a few grams and we're talking like a kilogram or two. And so, you know, there are papers showing that like activated charcoal has like absolutely no effect. And so it was sort of one of these things where like somebody's like, oh, well, we use this an extreme scenario. Maybe it'll help in kind of this other one. And you know, so I would encourage, I think many of the things you mentioned, I think do have good scientific hypothesis around them. But, you know, with activated charcoal, I think we can be pretty confident that. And your point though, the problem, right, is quantity, right? That like when you're trying to match, like absorption is one molecule. One molecule, right? Like they interact on a one to one scale. That's the ratio, right. The stoichiometry is very ineffective. So you have to have like this presence of it the whole time, right? That all the outsides being formed for the hours that you're drinking, you have to have this molecule also present in sufficient quantities to facilitate binding. And so that's fundamentally why we went to a biological approach. So rather than sort of having a one to one ratio and a chemical reaction, which we've shown throughout the 6,000 years of human history that people have been drinking, that they haven't been able to find sort of like a chemical in nature that can one to one deal with this problem is we went to an enzymatic approach. So the idea that one enzyme of acetaldehyde dehydrogenase is a machine. It can continue to break down more and more acetaldehyde every molecule engages with, so it's a much more powerful solution. Like one can break down many. And so, and then if we put in a bacteria which is an enzyme factory, we can make, you know, I was going to say a number. I can't even. I can't even say the number. I mean, it's, you know, millions or billions of these machines of these enzymes that can all make, break down molecules of acetaldehyde. So we get a massive sort of exponential extrapolation of the effect of acetyl breakdown when we go into biology instead of chemistry.

Yeah, that's pretty cool. Now you said that when you make the zbiotics, that you take a probiotic strain and then you mix it with DNA, where are you getting the DNA?

Yeah, so I mean, that's, I think, where the art meets the science, right? That we essentially we want to design a piece of DNA that will, that will basically integrate, you know, leveraging the back, the bacterial ability to kind of integrate the DNA into its genome. We can, we can basically direct where, where that happens by the way we design the DNA. And so in the last 10 to 15 years, we've gotten very good at sort of like reading and writing DNA. And so we can basically make short strings of DNA using chemistry, and then we can basically. So then we can design exactly where we want it to go in the genome and we can make sure that like, that edit is extremely precise and we know exactly what kind of what's happening as opposed to like the plant cross breeding where you just are like mashing together whole, whole genomes and kind of don't really have any control over that happens. So right now we literally, you know, you can just order that DNA, that strip of DNA to be, to be made and, you know, the design of it. And so if it's not well designed, it's not going to integrate. And so there is like, the bacteria need the DNA to look very similar to their own DNA or else they're not going to integrate it. And so we have to design DNA that is very similar to DNA they already have. And then we include the trait we want in that strip in a part of that DNA, and then the bacteria are able to kind of integrate that.

How do you make DNA? Are you just like stringing together the A, the D and the T different nucleic acids?

Yeah. So luckily I don't have to make the DNA. There are many companies that are very good at synthesizing DNA. But yeah, I mean, fundamentally it's just, it's like, you know, writing, it's composing sort of, you're just like sticking. They're just sticking the nucleic acids together in an appropriate sequence. And, and so we've gotten very good at doing that. Very efficient. We, I mean, sort of like the synthetic biology community, not, not. We, as in symbiotics, have gotten very good at synthesizing DNA, you know, pretty, pretty efficiently so that we can sort of do these, these projects now.

Yeah. How do you know it's safe though? I mean, how do you know I'm not going to grow a third arm in my gut, you know, from consuming something that's been genetically engineered.

Yeah, I mean, I think that, you know, first and foremost, there's no reasonable expectation that that would be the case. Right. The fact that like the string of letters of DNA is that's the instructional code for the bacterial cell and so whether, like, the code itself, it's like, you know, that's not going to have any effect on you as a human. Um, it's just DNA. You eat all kinds of DNA and all kinds of different, you know, confirmations all the time.

And so, yeah, that's true. Like, if you, if you eat meat, you're eating DNA, right?

Absolutely. If you eat anything, you basically, yeah, that comes from a living cell. Right. Is if you meat, you eat plants, you eat mushrooms, any of that, it's all DNA, Right. And. And all of the code that we're talking about is in those cells that you're eating. And so it's really just like us putting them into different cells. And so the question about safety would be not in the actual act of genetic engineering, it's in, like, what is the outcome? What does that cell look like at the end? What does it do? And is that unsafe in some way? And so basically, like, what functions are you affecting? And so the two ways to ask that question, or the two kind of major considerations, I think is like, first and foremost is the literal function you are putting in unsafe. So in this case, like, the fact that we're programming the cell now to break down acetaldehyde, is that in some way unsafe? And then the second sort of, like, kind of more broad question is, is the fact that the bacteria is now able to perform that function, does that affect something else in its genome that would then make it unsafe? And so those are kind of the two questions you have to ask when you're again, like, the tool made the product now, now we have to ask, is that product safe or unsafe? Right. It can't mutate you. That's not like, how this works. That's not how, you know, genetics works. And the fact that we've mutated it in some way does not mean that now it can mutate you. So it's really about, like, what function does it perform? And so we do all, you know, there's many things we do to test for safety in terms of like, is this product not safe? Is the function that is performing unsafe? Or is it affecting some other function that would make it unsafe? And so at that point, now we're like, it's the same as if we find a new strain of bacteria in the wild and we want to give that as a probiotic, or if we sort of a cross breed and make a new fruit, like, we want to make sure that, like, did we. Again, that's just another way of kind of changing its DNA in Some way. And we've been doing that for hundreds of years, intentionally and thousands of years, sort of like kind of unintentionally. And so at that point, right, we evaluate the safety of the product the same everywhere, right. Like we look at toxicity, we look at allergenicity, you know, pathogenicity, we look at all those things that are the standard kind of battery of tests. We do them to an extreme level. We address the genetic engineering and make sure that we're not, you know, we're not disrupting something in a way that like could create a problem. So for instance, like some techniques for genetic engineering involve using antibiotic resistance cassettes and so, or like mobile genetic elements, so pieces of DNA that are intended to kind of move around. And so, you know, we make sure that we don't, you know, use any of those of those kind of like things that could cause ecological problems. Right? So we don't use antibiotic resistance, we don't use mobile genetic elements in the final product or anything like that. So all those things are just best practices that eliminate kind of the risks that are innate or inherent to genetic engineering. And so then what we end with is something that we know looks like anything else we would test. And then we do all the standard safety testing that we would do for any other kind of standard food.

Okay, that's good that you do safety testing. Although you did just shatter my pipe dreams of becoming some kind of mutated zbiotic superhero and getting some spidey stuff.

We can game plan how to do that later.

Your secret Batman labs. Hey, so you talked about antibiotics briefly there and it is interesting because I was looking into Akkermansia bacterial strain recently and interviewed Colleen Cutcliffe from Pendulum and they've created a process in their lab that's basically just an oxygen free series of tubes like the human gut to make an Akkermansia strain that helps to control blood sugar and digestion of fibers. There's another product I'm aware of, I forget the name of it, but like Akkermansia, you gotta load with it for a few weeks to really start to see the beneficial effects. It's a lactate digesting enzyme that you take multiple rounds of over the course of a week to gradually load your gut up with what it needs to digest lactose, the sugar and dairy. Now with your product with Zbiotics, do you need to kind of load with it for a certain period of time and use it consistently? That's kind of part one of this two parter. And the second is if you were kind of doing that and you got an antibiotics regimen, would it kind of like wipe everything out and you got to start from scratch?

Yeah. So one of the things that, so like you mentioned, Akkermansia, it's a really interesting probiotic. The way that it functions or the way that it is required to function is it basically has to take up residence in your gut. And that can be really difficult because everybody's microbiome is different, right? So your microbiome and mine are totally different. And your microbiome today and your microbiome in three months will be very different. And so the idea that something can get into, kind of regardless of the different communities we all have in our gut, the idea that like a single microbe can kind of get in there and have a beneficial effect is really difficult to do. And for the most part, this is why there is no FDA approved drug that's probiotic based at the moment, because that consistency is incredibly hard to get. And so, you know, load it. Like you say, loading up your gut for weeks or months on end is kind of like your best hope. And with a strain like Akkermansia, the good news is that many people's microbiomes already have it. And so there is a kind of like space or a niche for that to hopefully seed your gut. It's not going to happen for everybody, but it's a much higher probability than say like Lactobacillus, which for most adults, which is, by the way, the most, one of the most common probiotics, most adults do not have Lactobacillus in their gut, or at least not in significant numbers. And so this idea that, and really the reason why it's probiotic is because it's a leftover of the dairy industry, not because it's good for human health. And so the idea that it could have kind of a benefit is pretty, pretty weak hypothesis, like Akkermansia has a stronger one, it's more present, more, more common. But generally speaking, this is a huge problem. Right? It's a big challenge. As a microbiologist, I was well aware of this when we started Zoobotics and, and so I decided I wanted to design something that could sort of sidestep that complexity, that we didn't weren't worried about what was happening in our microbiome since it was such a huge and complex problem. And so instead I chose a bacteria called Bacillus subtilis, which is something that you likely eat every day of your life. It's ubiquitous in Nature, it's on the surface of fresh fruits and vegetables, it's on the surface of your countertops, all these things. And so it goes in your body all the time. And its natural life cycle is to pass through your gut. So even though you eat it every day, if you were to sequence your microbiome, you would find very little or no B. Subtilis in it as a permanent resident, as a transient member. And so by that mechanism, it passes through everybody's gut kind of the same, so we don't actually have to see the gut. And I actually think that's a good thing, because your microbiome and my microbiome are very different. They may both be very healthy. And so the idea of trying to muscle something in there could disrupt the balance that your microbiome, the ecosystem that your microbiome already has and that homeostasis. So we pick something that your gut is very used to seeing that does not see the gut. And so for that perspective, we don't have to load up your gut to take advantage. Basically, the idea that as this bacteria is kind of floating down the river, it's expressing this enzyme, which. Which. And the enzyme is what's useful to you. Right. Not like kind of the other things that the bacteria is doing. And then you pass it out the other side and the function is no longer there. And so then if you drink again, you have to take the product again, because we don't want to see the gut. And so then therefore, the idea of like an antibiotic disrupting it is not really an issue because it's not sort of like, yeah, it's not taking up residence in the gut.

Yeah, yeah, there you go. Take your amoxicillin like candy, folks. You're not going to do any harm.

Maybe don't do that.

So the bachelous subtilis that you called it, you couldn't just consume the fruits and vegetables and compounds that contain it, and then it would produce the acetalde dehydrogenase. You'd still have to have a strain that had been modified in the way that you guys modify in your lab.

Right, Exactly. Bacillus subtilis doesn't naturally express this enzyme. Different strains potentially might, but they definitely don't like. So our engineering was large, so the platform we built was about getting a lot of enzyme expression in the conditions of the gut. So bacteria turn on and on. This is why I studied in my PhD was how bacteria turn on and off different genes in different conditions. Right. So if a bacteria finds itself in a place where there's lots of nutrients, it will turn on metabolism and growth genes, and it'll turn off some of its other important functions that it doesn't need in that moment. But then if it gets stressed out or attacked by another bacteria, it'll turn off its metabolism genes and turn on, like, you know, fight or flight mechanisms. And so it's really, really amazing. Bacteria are incredible biosensors, and they. They can kind of react to very fine differences in their environment. And so what we had to do was engineer bacteria that, when it's in the gut, would make a lot of the protein that we wanted and not turn that off in favor of something else. And so we engineered this strain of bacteria to make sure that it was making a lot of. Of that acetaldehyde dehydrogenase enzyme as it. As it went through your gut so that you have that enzyme when you need it. Like, many of the bacteria in your gut are capable and do make this acetaldehyde dehydrogenase enzyme. It's just, they're not making it necessarily at the right time and in the right amount. And so you don't necessarily get the benefit of that enzyme. And so we're just making sure you're getting enough of that enzyme at the right time.

Yeah. You wouldn't believe the times the past couple of months that I've been to a party or a social event and handed out a few bottles of these. And my friends have texted me the next morning and been like, dude, where do I get that stuff? I feel great. This morning. The same friends who are drinking, frankly, a lot more than I do. And I've always told them, take a shot of this little liquid shot, the zbiotic stuff, for those of you listening who haven't seen it yet. And I tell them to drink it because I think this is what the label said right before you start drinking. But what if you forget? Could you still drink it after? And it would work.

So it helps best before. And so, like. And so it depends on what you mean by like, kind of like after, right? So if you drink like two drinks and you're like, oh, you know what? I should, I should, I should drink my zebiotics. This might, this night might be a little bit more. And so you. And you drink zebiotics and you have like two or three more drinks, it'll help most with those two or three more drinks you have after. Right? If you drink like four or five drinks, let's say, and then you go home and you take it before Bed. I mean, at that point, a lot of the acetaldehyde that formed in the gut is probably already been absorbed in the bloodstream. And so if you take a probiotic. A probiotic, and it gets in there, it can help with what's left in the gut. But anything that's out in the bloodstreaming, some of that will cycle back into the gut and we'll have a second pass at it. So it'll help. It's just you're really getting kind of. You're not getting the full benefit of the product at that point.

Yeah. Okay, that makes sense. So do you. Like I mentioned, I'll use glutathione sometimes because I like that. For helping the liver detoxification pathways.

Exactly.

And so do you stack the Z bottle sweetening or like in your own personal protocol or just in terms of alcohol management as a whole? Is there anything besides this myopic focus on alcohol dehydrogenase that you implement when drinking or that you recommend?

Totally. I think that it's really important that we do not claim, nor should anybody claim, that they have this magical kind of cure. All get out gel free card stacking. A lot of responsible habits and behaviors together.

Well, that's why you're not a billionaire yet, Zach. Sorry.

Right. Exactly. I gotta, you know, I gotta, you know, so the. The deal is that there's a lot, you know, what you're dealing with when you drink. There's a. There's a lot of things happening in your body. There's a lot of biology happening there. And so you have to. There are different things that kind of. That that you need to address. And so to your point, glutathione is a great way to kind of reload the cofactors and enzymes that. Cofactors of the enzymes that are functioning in your liver and systemically and in your gut. And so, you know, there is some good data as a reasonable hypothesis behind that. I think that for me, you know, the. The biggest problems are really sleep and this gut drive outside, you know, as I've discovered for myself, so zbiotics. And then I make sure that I'm pacing myself and I stop drinking earlier so that, like, I'm not dealing with the alcohol disruption in my sleep. I ideally like to go to bed sober or close to it, so that basically most of the alcohol's effect on sort of like the sleep wake cycle as I'm trying to sleep is mitigated so that I can get better sleep. And I think those two things for.

Me that's a good point, because you get that surge in gamma aminobutyric acid, the GABA inhibitory neurotransmitter, from the alcohol, then it just kind of wears off. Same thing if you eat a real high carb meal before bed, you'll go hyperglycemic. And then as soon as your blood sugar drops, sometimes between midnight and 2am usually you wake up with a cortisol to mobilize more glucose. And similar with gaba, once it wears off, you get a great two or three hours of sleep. Anybody who drinks knows this. Then you wake up at one, and the rest of the night of sleep is pretty crappy. Although you can hack that by just having some sort of GABA precursor next to your bedside and dosing up with that. But you're right. Stopping the alcohol consumption several hours prior to bed really helps out with that GABA rebound.

That's exactly right.

Yeah.

I mean, yeah, basically, yeah. You're dealing with this big pendulum swing, right. Like, and, like while you sleep, which is pulling you out of your sleep cycle, then dropping you back in it. And like, so you really get crappy sleep when you're, when. When you kind of let that kind of chaos ensue while you're, while you're asleep. So the earlier you can kind of, you can work through that, the better. And, and the more you sort of pace yourself, the less that, like, the less loaded up that's that that pendulum is right. Like, the slower, the smaller the swings are. So I think that those are sort of important behaviors that I kind of include alongside. Yeah.

You think there's anything to this idea that certain forms of alcohol are cleaner than others, like high fructose corn syrup and fillers and preservatives aside, like, a lot of people say Mezcal, for example, is very clean. I know a lot of people in like the paleo and health sectors who swear by the Meztal Tequila. Other people or the Mezcal Tequila. Some people say vodka and gin are more clean. Obviously, organic biodynamic wine seems to be pretty favored due to the lack of sulfites and preservatives. But do you think there's anything to this idea of certain forms of alcohol being cleaner, or does that affect your choices at all?

I mean, I think that at that point you're getting into kind of incremental differences that may or may not have an impact depending on your own personal biology. So I think cleanliness, when we think about different kinds of alcohol might be the fact that basically in the fermentation process that makes the alcohol. And then in like the distillation process that makes the liquor. There are byproducts of. So in particular the fermentation that can affect the flavor and often really pleasing ways. So like, for instance, like one of the byproducts of fermentation of wine that's really common is. Is actually acetaldehyde itself. And so in addition to the acetaldehyde you're creating as sort of like the metabolic process of the alcohol, there is like sometimes in certain. So like red wine has a really high amount of acetaldehyde, like in the cup itself. So that is. Has a like a sweet as a nice aroma. And it sort of like creates like sort of like a sweet flavor. And. And there are other sort of like aromatics that are byproducts that basically that the bacteria or the yeast make as part of the fermentation process which affect the flavor in ways that we enjoy a lot of times. And sometimes they affect flavor ways we don't. Then like, you know, this is what the art of kind of brewing and fermentation are. And so your body might have a reaction to a certain congener that somebody else doesn't have. The. It's the same as like, you know, like hay fever or another allergy or something. Right. That like, you know, you mentioned like sulfites and you know, these are things that some people might react to and some people don't. So I think that the cleanliness of the alcohol in general, it's an oversimplification, but in general, clear or light colored alcohols have less congeners than darker colored alcohol.

Okay, okay. That's probably, that's probably the logic behind like the gin, tequila, vodka type argument.

Exactly. Yeah, yeah. And like, you know, brandy, we know, has a ton of congeners. And so there is like some. It is very. But generally speaking, the correlation between that and like the severity of the way you feel the next day are. There's not. There's not good data to support that. That actually has a huge impact. And so I think that for the most part, like with anything, this is very personal. So it's. If you notice that something has sort of an outsized negative effect for you, that's probably because that's how that alcohol interacts with your individual biology more than kind of being a general rule of thumb.

Yeah, that makes sense. Man, I gotta stock up on more zbiotics for the holiday drinking season here. Again, not that I endorse irresponsible drinking, but I think it's a good idea to have a few bottles of this around. Are you guys. Oh, and by the way, I should mention when we were talking about solutions, I forgot two things I'm super strict about. Minerals, electrolytes, hydration before and leading up to drinking, just because of the increased urination that occurs from the diuretic effect of alcohol. So that's one. And then the other one I like is when I'm drinking water, if I'm drinking or I'm going to drink, I like hydrogen tablets. It's kind of like this selective antioxidant. That one kind of flies under the radar. I don't know if you've messed around with that at all, Zach, but I've done a few very interesting podcasts on hydrogen that can dissolve in water and it seems to have a really great anti inflammatory effect that makes alcohol feel a little bit better, especially the day after.

Yeah, that's interesting. I think that it's an interesting hypothesis because we know that first and foremost, reactive oxygen species and oxidative stress is a huge part of what you're dealing with as your body responds to sort of like systemic inflammation from the alcohol. So something that's an antioxidant definitely could reasonably be beneficial. And we also know that hydrogen gas in large part produced by the microbiome is one of the major ways that your body generally deals with oxidative stress. So I haven't looked into the science specifically about hydrogen tablet and whether or not that's delivering a physiologically relevant amount or anything like that, but I think that it's a reasonable hypothesis to be interesting. See, in terms of electrolytes and hydration, I will say that I'd love to address this a little bit. The science on that is really, really interesting. So it turns out that even though we know that alcohol definitely does bind to and affect and inhibit the antidiuretic hormone, which causes you to notice that you pee a lot, it turns out that actually most of the increased urination is just due to the fact that you are increasing your fluid intake. So drinking, say three kind of beers would be. If you drink three glasses of water in quick succession, you probably also peel as well. So there's a lot of data out there to show that you actually at most really only pee one extra time. We see this additional urine flow right as your blood sugar and, excuse me, your blood alcohol initially spikes, but then it normalizes relative to somebody who's drinking the same amount of another fluid. And so the biochemical markers of Dehydration, like vasopressin and things that we normally see with other things that cause dehydration are not actually present when we drink and the next day in high numbers, which is really, really interesting. And so that's not to say that electrolytes and hydration aren't a good idea. Your liver and your kidneys are working overtime to deal with this toxin that you're putting into your body. And so keeping your blood volume high with fluids is valuable, but sort of like a nuanced kind of point here, but you're actually not combating dehydration at all. And I think that we all probably know that at the deepest level, right. That, like, things that make you dehydrated don't feel like how alcohol makes you feel. Right. And like. And, you know, so. And also, if you kind of wake up feeling not great the next day, typically, you know, the thing that would normally make you feel better, which is a glass of water or two, doesn't really seem to help with kind of that next day misery. So, you know, while I definitely would advocate for hydration and stuff, it's, you know, it's. I just want to kind of make the. It's kind of one of these, like, misconceptions around dehydration.

I'm glad you brought that up. And by the way, unless you're one of those people who's vaping or using nicotine products while you drink, which makes you pee like a racehorse. But I think about that study, I think it was in the Journal of Strength Conditioning Research seven or eight years ago that compared beer consumption post exercise with Gatorade. And I think they were looking at urine specific gravity and hydration markers, and they found that beer essentially hydrated you to the same extent as Gatorade with a similar post exercise recovery boost. Again, proceed at your own risk. And I don't necessarily endorse beer post exercise, but it is interesting.

You're right.

I had forgotten about that study.

Yeah, yeah. And there's been several. I mean, there are studies dating back all the way to 1942 that basically show like, relative Europe, but a lot of studies in rugby players in the 70s who are drinking alcohol after their. After, you know, sport and stuff like that and. Exactly. You know, there's. There's a lot of really interesting studies about like, alcohol inhibiting kind of sort of creatine cycling and testosterone and things like that. So recovery from out from exercise after alcohol recovery inhibits kind of recovery. But the dehydration element of it is not. Is sort of been like. Because it was basically the observation that we know that alcohol inhibits the antidiuretic hormone. And we also just observationally notice that we pee a lot when we drink. It sort of. It led to this hypothesis that became sort of like, fact in a lot of people's brain that alcohol causes dehydration. But interestingly, it doesn't. You know, you're basically more than compensating for the inhibitory effects with the amount of, you know, you know, beer is 95% water with the amount of fluid that you're already drinking. Yeah.

Shattering so many myths. Hey, so now that you have this secret Batman lab where you can take probiotic strains and genetically engineer them with DNA, do you think you'll ever make anything else besides just equipping people to drink more responsibly?

Yes, definitely. So the, you know, and I'm glad you. By the way, I'm glad you phrased that first product that way. Right. The goal here is not, and you mentioned earlier, it's like, you know, the goal is not around, like, irresponsible drinking at all. The goal is like, is much more around the idea that, like, drinking is a normal part of our social interactions. It should not hopefully, have an effect on sort of the next day, like all of your healthy habits and routines that you've been building and working so hard for. Right. The next day. So the idea that if you go out and enjoy a holiday party or a happy hour with your friends, that you still make your morning workout the next day, or you still kind of stick to your healthy habits and routines the next day. And so it's very much like plugging into other responsible behaviors you're doing around drinking. And that's really what this product is intended for. And so with that in mind, right. Like, the goal of the company as a whole was never to kind of like, you know, solve everybody's kind of next day misery after drinking. That ended up being a really cool kind of first application of a technology that I'm really excited about, which is the idea that we can genetically engineer probiotics to do very specific, useful, beneficial things. Right now we sort of just take bacteria that are, for the most part, are leftovers of the food and dairy industry. We mine them out of the ground and then we, you know, and we say, like, hey, eat this bacteria. And I hope that one of these 3,000 functions that it performs is going to be useful to you in some way. And so, like, you know, your microbiome is different than mine. And so maybe it will, maybe it won't. And the idea that we can take that and we can actually engineer it to like overlay a function that we know is valuable. Like this to me, seems obvious in sort of the next generation of probiotic that that is really like very specific and tailored to people's needs. And I'm really excited about that. And so when I was looking for applications of the tech, I noticed early on when I pitched some things that I thought were interesting, kind of got a lot of glazed over eyes, they were sort of scientific. And then. But then when I sort of pitched something that people really understood, sort of the next day effects of drinking, and it was sort of like this unresolved problem. And there was very nice visceral readout of efficacy so people could try it and feel the benefit. And that was why it made sense. It's kind of like an introduction to the world of this technology. Right. So when we launched our first product in 2019, it was the world's first ever genetically engineered probiotic of any kind to go to market. And so really wanted to do right by that technology and make sure that people were really excited about it and believed in it and could really feel the benefit of it. But ultimately, we believe that there are, you know, countless hundreds or thousands of different things that you can do with this to improve somebody's day and improve somebody's life. And so we are building all kinds of products to do all sorts of things. So genetically engineering the bacteria to perform functions that kind of help with every aspect of your day, from, if it's getting better nutrition from the food you're eating, if it's dealing with some of the unavoidable sort of toxic elements that are in our water, in the air, or in processed food, that things that are just impossible to avoid in modern society, or the things that can maybe help you recover better from very normal, healthy, responsible behavior. So exercise is great, but obviously causes an inflammatory response which can delay kind of benefits or like kind of knock you off your routines, you know, occasional poor sleep and sort of that inhibiting your ability to function, if we can help with dealing with that. And so there are so many things that basically, you know, that biologically or biochemically can happen in your body that a bacteria already is part of. And so we can kind of interrupt or intervene in a lot of, in a lot of these kind of biological processes to make products for sleep and mood and function and nutrition and all kinds of stuff.

You got to do. And that'll make dipeptidopeptidase. Help people break down gluten and call it Gbiotics. Actually, no, call it B Biotics. Name it after me. Like you named yours after you called it B Biotics for helping you fare at an Italian restaurant. Much better.

Yeah, we, you know, our goal is to. Is I think that we can, we can make products that basically help people deal with a modern life. And hopefully they're all, you know, that people are all just, you know, they kind of can pick and choose what's going to help with the kind of things we're dealing with. So tying restaurants on the menu for you.

Maybe we can make special requests. My feature request. Hey, this is all fascinating, you know, for people who want to try this stuff out. I know we've got some discount codes and things like that for zbiotics Zedbiotics. I should say if you go to the show notes@bengreenfieldlife.com ZPodcast that's right, BenGreenfieldLife.com ZPodcast ZedPodcast. I will link to ZBiotics. I'll include a special discount code for you guys, links to other articles and podcasts I've done about alcohol and drinking and making your cocktails and ketone cocktail alternatives and all sorts of stuff. So I'll make the Show Notes nice and juicy for you again@bengreenfieldlife.com Z podcast. Zach, thanks so much for coming on the show, man. This is just fascinating. I love this stuff.

Thank you for having me. It was a blast to talk about this and I appreciate having a really cool science conversation.

All right folks, I'm Ben Greenfield. Zach Abbott from ZBiotics. Signing out shownotes are@bengreenfieldlife.com ZPodcast thanks for listening.

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