How Embarrassing Gas, Bloating & Constipation Happens (& How To Get Rid Of It Forever)

Hey, what's up? It's Ben Greenfield. I believe that in the past you've heard me talking about bloating and gas and constipation and all the annoying issues that a lot of people, especially people who are like me, who are foodies, have to deal with. Well, I have the ultimate elixir for you, the ultimate remedy for sopping up bloating and gas. Something you can pop right before a meal, and it literally gets rid of all of it. I'm interviewing the doc who invented this stuff on today's show, and we take a deep dive into all things gut and even talk about how to retrain your bacteria. Even if you don't feel like buying a supplement, yet another supplement, you're going to learn a ton in today's show, and I do recommend that you take advantage of the fact that they're going to offer you a money back guarantee on trying this stuff at the end of the show. So stay tuned. It's. It's a real doozy when it comes to gut health. You're going to learn a lot of things in the show.

He's an expert in human performance and nutrition, voted America's top personal trainer and one of the globe's most influential people in health and fitness. His show provides you with everything you need to optimize physical and mental performance. He is Ben Greenfield.

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Hey, folks, what's up? It's Ben Greenfield. And for millions of people, including yours truly, that have had to deal with bloating and abdominal discomfort, often accompanied by embarrassing bathroom decommissioning issues like diarrhea or constipation, life gets pretty miserable. And there is a lot of new research that I've taken note of that shows that a big part of this is due to what is called methane producing bacteria. Methane producing bacteria. And the idea is that if you don't treat it, these bacteria feed off the foods that you eat and they make gas. And the gas then makes you feel bloated and uncomfortable and creates a lot of these issues that, frankly, have been a bane in my side. And that I'm glad I discovered a bit of an answer, too, specifically after talking with my guest on today's show. He is actually a gastroenterologist, which means he knows his way around the gastrointestinal tract as the name would imply. His name is Dr. Ken Brown. He's been practicing this stuff for over 15 years focusing on inflammatory bowel disease which is also known as IBD and irritable bowel syndrome, ibs. And he's been working on these solutions using natural herbs to try and fix bloating and gas. Now I've been using a lot of the techniques that he's taught me in my own nutrition program and they've worked. I literally do what he says prior to consuming a meal, such as a carbohydrate laden meal or a meal with fructose in it or a meal with say like onions and garlic in it, these so called fodmaps that can produce gas and bloating and it's no longer an issue. So I wanted to get this cat on the show because he's pretty smart. Like I mentioned, he knows his way around your gut and talk about what we can do to get rid of gas and bloating and complete bathroom embarrassment. So Dr. Brown, welcome to the show, man.

Ben, thank you so much for having me on. It is truly my honor to be on your show and discuss destructions of bathrooms. I like that.

I like how you led with yes, destructions of bathrooms. Not destructions, just. Just slight decommissioning or being in there a really long time and people knock on the door.

This is my toile. My whole day involves discussing bathroom habits with my patients. So I'm really comfortable talking about this stuff.

Is this one of those deals where you had gut issues in the first place and got interested in this like in medical school or you just have some other reason you're infatuated with the GI tract?

Well, so one of the reasons why I went into this particular specialty is because when you go to medical school you start out and you kind of have to make these broad stroke decisions early on like your second and third year. Am I going to be a surgeon or am I going to be an internist? I was going to be a surgeon and I realized that lifestyle didn't suit me. And gastroenterology is really the only specialty where it's, you know, mouth to anus. The gut affects health in every other way. And then like two days a week I get to play video games and remove polyps from people and save their lives so it fits me like a glass.

What do you mean you get to play video games?

Well, people come in and they get procedures done, endoscopies and colonoscopies and we have the ability that you can come in and I can remove a polyp that was going to turn into cancer. And it's just a camera that I put in somebody and it, I had my team, I've got, you know, we're looking at the tv, we remove these polyps and it is a, it's a win, win for everybody. It's the only specialty where you actually do procedures and then you also have some big intellectual stimulation. So I call it playing a video game because it's just, it's, it's fun for me to get in there and civilized by removing polyps. I feel like I'm a polyp hunter when I'm out there. So.

You know, I actually got a colonoscopy once. I don't know if I told you this.

No.

Yeah, my, my cousin, well, two of my cousins had some really serious issues with their colons. And then I had a family member on my mom's side die of colon cancer. And so I would basically, you know, lay awake at night wondering if there was anything going wrong with my colon. Right. Like, and so I wanted that peace of mind just in case because there were so many family issues going on. So I went and I got a colonoscopy and it was actually worth it for me because a, it's a, it's kind of a minimally invasive procedure. I mean, it's, you know, you have some anesthesia involved, but it's not like, you know, you're on a huge antibiotic regimen afterwards and you know, you're not getting anything really cut out. And B, the peace of mind just from knowing that I was, I think the way the doctor described it was squeaky clean in there as far as polyps are concerned. You know, just, just knowing that I'm okay gave me a great deal of peace of mind. But at the same time, you know, one of the reasons that I got the colonoscopy was, you know, I have had bloating and gas and GI issues. And I was kind of wondering if it was due to, you know, inflammation or the potential presence of polyps in the colon. And while that isn't the case, I definitely came across some other reasons, particularly these methane producing bacteria that were causing gas and bloating and constipation in me. So where I wanted to start with was if you could, can you explain exactly how these gas producing bacteria produce methane? Like how this all happens in the first place and how they get there in the first place?

Sure. So what we're kind of describing here is you know this when people feel real bloated. I do want to clarify that. Bloating, the way that I define bloating with my patients is when you have, like, trapped gas. This isn't a situation where you're burping a little bit or you're passing a little more gas, or even some people feel like bloating is water retention. This is when you eat and especially starchy type foods, and then you blow up like you're three, four months pregnant is the way that all my patients actually describe it. What's happening now is there's this huge paradigm shift that we have seen when we labeled everybody as having irritable bowel syndrome and we said it was all in their head. Now we realize that it's not in their head. It's probably in their small intestine. What can happen to somebody is that they can go through a very stressful period, take antibiotics, or even have a very poor diet. And then what will happen is it kind of shocks the area and then bacteria can start to grow. And, oh, I left one. One important cause out, which is infection, because if you ever have an infection, that's probably the most pertinent cause and it'll shock it. So if you can think of it, normally, it's a very crystal clear stream. And then now all of a sudden, we've dammed up both ends and allowed bacteria to start growing, so we've turned it into a bit of a sewer pipe. Then whenever you eat, the bacteria can start to break it down before you can. And I know that you have talked about SIBO before, but that is the definition of what SIBO is. Small intestinal bacterial overgrowth.

Yeah. And. And that makes sense, like the part about infection. Right. Because you'd kill off good bacteria and allow for the overgrowth of bad bacteria. And the same, of course, would make sense for antibiotics, that you'd kill off the good bacteria and allow for overgrowth of bad bacteria. But the part you said about stress, you know, I'm familiar with stress as being a cause of, for example, ulcers, but I hadn't heard it before used in the context of bacteria. How would stress cause this issue?

Stress causes it because we change the motility of the intestines. When you're in this high cortisol state that fight or flight, your intestines are slow down a little bit, and that can really alter a lot of different things. So when people go through a very stressful environment, it's like insult to injury. Many times I'll See a patient that will unfortunately have a death of a loved one or go through a bad divorce and then they're really messed up in their GI track from then on. I know that you have had extensive experience doing endurance training with triathlons and such. I have a lot of triathletes that come see me because the stress and the extreme amount of training that happens can actually do the exact same thing. And then when you start using different things like fructose based energy goo and stuff like that, it can really mess with people.

Yeah, I was gonna say like, like part, part of it would be, of course, you know, I know that the gut becomes more permeable during endurance exercise. A lot of these folks are exercising in the heat as well. But then in addition to the stress, of course there's the idea that it's traditionally a pretty heavily carbohydrate fueled sport. And you know, even if you're, even if you're eating like a low carbohydrate diet or doing like a ketosis diet to, to hack endurance, so to speak, they're still present in most of these gels and sports drinks you're consuming during the activity. Highly fermentable compounds. You know, like you mentioned fructose, maltodextrin. I think I heard it described by a physiologist I had on the show named Alan Lim is releasing a bunch of like screaming demons of death into your gut with holding like tiny little cluster bombs or something along those lines. A highly scientific explanation of the digestion of maltodextrin, which. But ultimately, yeah, I mean when you, when you combine stress with these highly fermentable foods, it seems to blow up even more. And, and I went for years, I mean honestly, I would say like 10, almost 15 years, thinking that it was just normal to walk around all day with copious amounts of gas and like hop on a bike ride or to go for a run and literally just be farting the whole time.

We. So when I, my initial background, I was doing pharmaceutical research and I actually doing pharmaceutical research looking at using a poorly absorbed antibiotic to help with people like this. And this is eventually how I developed Atran teal. But one of the things I did is I submitted a whole study proposal to Salix Pharmaceuticals, which is now owned by Valiant, where I knew the whole process. I had all these athletes that were coming in after I would treat them, they would say, man, I did really good in this last race or I did really good in this last triathlon. I didn't have to use the bathroom. I didn't feel bad. I submitted a whole protocol where I believe that if we fix people's guts, many people that do these endurance training can actually have a personal best. And they felt it wasn't a big enough market and rejected my study proposal. But I still have the. I still have it. And once we get a little time, I would love to sit there and try and find all these athletes that have a known, let's say, average for a time to finish in a certain race, treat a handful of them, and then do placebo on the other and just see if the objective times change. My belief is that you can get the bacteria to go so that when you do take in these highly fermentable carbohydrates, you get to break it down and absorb it instead of the bacteria having a little party every time you do it.

Yeah, I guarantee we've got a good, good database of listeners who would probably want to be part of that program. As a matter of fact, when I first started this podcast 10 years ago, almost every interview was with a professional triathlete or marathoner or swimmer or cyclist. Because I was heavy into endurance sports. That's all I was doing. And I initially designed the podcast just. Just to help people become better at endurance. You know, I was running a physiology lab. I was traveling around the world, competing in triathlons and coaching triathletes and putting on triathlon camps. And so kind of started off this podcast, even though I eventually forayed into biohacking and longevity and general health and fitness. It began with a. With a big bent towards endurance sports. I know a lot of those people, God bless them, still remain a part of the core listener base.

I'm trying to get my company, my Digestive Health Associates of Texas D hat we have a. We're a very large group. We got almost 90 people. I'm currently working with the head of research. We do a lot of pharmaceutical research. I want to build a whole natural functional arm so that we can start getting some data on these kind of things. You always do a real deep dive. I kind of have to. I always laugh because we always talk about the N of. So my experience is N in the scientific terms is the number. So it's, you know, number needed to treat nnt, and these are all, you know, statistical ways that people refer to things. I have to laugh because I've seen a lot of the stuff you've done, and it's almost like it's not the end of one. It's the Ben of One that's, you know, going out there and doing it on himself before he tells everybody else to do it. So I call it the Ben of One. Whenever weird stuff starts, I like that. Yeah, it's the Ben of One where my wife's like, what did you order? I'm like, I heard this podcast and something shows up. And there I am doing nicotine riboside and things.

So I'm gonna see if benofone.com is actually taken off to look that up. Yeah, I'm gonna get a godaddy after we talk, see if I can grab that. Okay, so we know that bloating is occurring from the presence of these bacteria. How do you test for this? You know, for a while, I thought that doing just like a stool test would allow you to elucidate bacterial imbalances, and it can discover the presence of yeast and fungus and parasites. And even with these newer testing services, like viome, for example, do like, the whole microbiome. But from what I understand, that's not really the best way to determine whether or not you actually have this bacteria present in the. The upper GI tract, like up around the small intestine.

Correct. So, unfortunately, everybody's trying. We all know how important the microbiome is. I mean, if there's one thing your listeners could get out of this, you. I always tell my patients, I said, if you see a pregnant woman, she's eating for two, you should be eating for 100 trillion. Because our microbiome is that important. Testing the microbiome is not going to tell you if you have dysbiosis or a change in the bacteria upper. In your upper intestinal tract. So I always say that it isn't that bacteria are good or bad. It's that they just happen to be living in the wrong place. Testing your stool will not be able to tell you that. So we have to find some other ways to try and figure out if people have bacterial overgrowth. And unfortunately, there is no real, you know, just perfect test that you can do. There are different breath tests that we can do where we use lactulose or glucose, and we can see if the people are producing methane or hydrogen. Unfortunately, there's a lot of heterogeneity in how these tests are done and how they're interpreted. So I basically use that as something to try and put another piece to the puzzle. There are some institutions that'll do culture of the small bowel, but that's really invasive, and it's. It's still not very sensitive, nor specifically so. Ultimately, I just take a really good history. If you're the kind of person you come to me and you say, I was training for Kona Iron man and really training hard, I started to get sick and then I ended up getting really sick. And I've never been right since. And now every time I eat especially starchy foods, I blow up. You look like a duck, you walk like a duck and quack like a duck. I'm going to treat you first because we don't have a perfect test yet. So the history is everything.

You know, one of the things that I've noticed too is when you look at a lot of these foods that produce a lot of gas and bloating particularly, and I don't know if you'd agree with me on this. You're the doctor, I'm not. Fodmaps, you know, a lot of these fructans, oligosaccharides, monosaccharides. What am I missing? Disaccharides and polyols, particularly garlic and onions to the biggies. Because I used to be like the, the whole food salad bar fiend who would go in there, make myself the big whole foods vegetables, and within 2 hours after my big ass $30 salad from whole Foods, like I could almost see my stomach bloating. But one thing I do on that was I would usually do either a, the big container of the red onions just for a little extra flavor, or even more consistently the roasted garlic that they have there, like a huge spoonful of it, like easily the equivalent of a full bowl bulb of garlic. And I would just be bloated as hell for hours. And I would find that while garlic and onions were two of the biggies, you know, wheat, which falls into that category of a fodmap, that was another one. Apples were another biggie. And so I think that if you eat those kind of foods and you get a whole bunch of bloating from them, it can be a pretty big clue without you having to go out and do one of these. For example, breath tests are often mentioned as one of the best ways to test for something like sibo. But for me, if I'm talking to somebody and they're like, they say every time they eat garlic or onions, they get a lot of bloating and gas, I think it's a pretty good sign there's a lot of methane producing bacteria present in the upper GI tract. Would I be on the right track with that?

Yeah, totally. So the fodmap diet F O D M A P is the diet that a lot of my colleagues would recommend for people. I think that there's a lot of other diets out there, but they all do the same thing. They take away the slightly more difficult to digest molecules so that you're not feeding the bacteria. You're essentially trying to starve the bacteria. And if you're not giving them a buffet every day, then slowly the amount decreases. There's the SCD diet, there's the elemental diet, there's the elimination diet. All these diets do the same thing, which is that they essentially starve the bacteria. And the hope is that you're not always just allowing the bacteria to have this great little party in your belly. Although garlic and onions can be. Actually be very good for you because of the polyphenols in them, for some people they are hard to digest and they create a tremendous amount of bloating and discomfort. And it sounds like you were one of those, especially if you're having a $30 salad. That's a big salad.

I don't know. Whole foods is not huge. Honestly, whole paycheck at, at, at Erewhon in la, that's like the size of a tiny little mayonnaise container. So I mean, I'm just, just saying that's reality these days. But it's annoying the fodmap diet, like the FODMAP elimination diet, because, you know, while eliminating garlic and onions is doable for a lot of people, I mean, once you get rid of really just about any fruit is off that diet, just about any cereal grain bread, biscuit, pasta, a ton of nuts, cakes, like a bunch of different condiments, anything fermented, you got to get rid of kombucha. Most alcohols are out, most dairies are out, including like yogurt and goat milk and a lot of these good ones. So that was another very, very beneficial result of my, my ability to be able to hook up with you. And some of these polyphenols you're creating was I can eat some of these foods and I. That's what I want to get into next is these polyphenols and how they actually work. So can you get into the mechanism? Because a lot of people are familiar with polyphenols as just like the bright antioxidants that you find in, you know, darkly colored fruits and vegetables. But I hadn't realized how much of an impact they actually have on gut bacteria. So can you talk about polyphenols and how those would actually work in the gut, sure.

So if we think about polyphenols, these are phytochemicals or these are molecules that are found in plants, just like you said. It's these molecules that are on the skin of vegetables and fruits and they give them these deep, rich colors. There's actually, they're everywhere. We probably just don't take in enough here in the Western world, the US we probably need a lot more polyphenols. What's really cool is the science of polyphenols is taking off and there's tons of great bench research that's actually going on broadly. They're broken down into kind of four broad categories. The, the one that most people talk about are flavonoids and that's the largest subset. Now this whole class of molecules are really potent antioxidants, anti inflammatory, anti aging molecules. This is what makes the Mediterranean diet anti inflammatory and anti aging. So when you produce these oxidative stress or these reactive oxygen species, these cause damage to lipids, to proteins. It's this oxidative stress that's been linked to all these pathologies. But when you have reactive oxygen species, you actually decrease your nitric oxide also. And so you don't have as much blood flow to the area. So you allow this whole process to keep going. So these polyphenols are fantastic molecules that actually decrease the inflammatory process. Now when we developed atron teal, we realized through some animal data that we had a very, very specific thing that we were trying to accomplish with these, with these polyphenols and flavonoids and that was to get rid of these methane producing bacteria. And so we put three polyphenols together to actually do one specific thing which is get the bacteria to go back to where they should.

So thethe polyphenols, in terms of their impact on the actual bacteria, you're saying that it's purely an anti inflammatory process via which they're affecting the bacteria?

Actually, no, the polyphenols that we put together. So when we think about polyphenols in general, and when you eat a polyphenol, the skin of the, of a vegetable, it'll actually go through and some gets absorbed, some doesn't. A lot of it'll go to the colon where your ionic bacteria will break it down into beneficial molecules for you. There's a new term on a study that's just about ready to be published. I don't think it's out there quite yet, but I saw that it was accepted from manuscript where they looked at postbiotics so we've discussed probiotics, which is where you take in live bacteria and hope that they help out. Then you take in prebiotics, which is essentially undigestible fiber that feeds your bacteria. This research team has now shown that we can start looking at the postbiotics. The postbiotics are the molecules that are broken down by our own bacteria or that the molecules produced from breaking down polyphenols. These guys are trying to figure out how do we develop some toilet paper or a toilet that'll show you what postbiotics you have. This way you'd have to look into it and say, okay, well I'm lacking this, so I need to eat more of this to feed those bacteria. That's the general polyphenol look.

Interesting.

It's really fascinating stuff. So what you're seeing is this shift everybody's trying to learn about the microbiome. Possibly just looking at stool is one level and then looking at what these bacteria produce, the postbiotics is the next level. And we do know that when these bacteria break down different things, it can do all kinds of cool stuff. There's, I was talking to a researcher where he was showing me that when you break down a certain flavonoid and these guys all are in labs all over the world, so everybody's slowly putting the pieces together, it'll eventually all come together. So when these bacteria break it down, they can do different things like vasodilate or this. We've learned that this molecule can actually increase BDNF in the brain, which is brain derived neurotrophic factor. So trying to be myopic about it and say, oh well, we just need this one thing, meaning pharmaceutical industries that always try to have one molecule to do everything. This whole complex mother nature, the way that these polyphenols work is what makes them so effective.

This is super interesting because basically what you're saying is like the postbiotics, you could almost consider this to be like when you eat something, you would use the restroom and you'd poop it out eventually. And what you're saying is that these postbiotics are almost like the waste product of bacteria that your body winds up being able to use for other beneficial activities 100%.

So we know that these bacteria will break down certain things into short chain fatty acids. That is the fuel that our colon uses to keep all the cells healthy. So these postbiotics are actually the result of what the bacteria really want. So take it one step further. We know that if you Eat a diet that is very rich in processed foods, sugar. So on the bacteria that like that will proliferate more. And then they're showing that they can even send signals to create some of these cravings that people have. So you may be at the mercy of your own bacteria and not realize that you're doing what they want by sending signals. So when you look at the postbiotics, I could sit there and go, look, Ben, you're, you know, you're, you don't have enough of this one particular molecule that when a proanthocyanidin, which is a type of polyphenol proanthocyanidin, gets broken down, then we know that that's not going to decrease TNF alpha over here because we've shown that that molecule does that. So let's increase this in your diet. That'll help these bacteria proliferate and ultimately you'll have decreased inflammation in your body.

Okay, so when we look at like mechanisms of, in the gut that are associated with obesity, like the pharmacy bacteriode ratio, that's one that you see quite commonly talked about, what you're saying is that we can actually alter the ratio of that. And from what I understand, that ratio is also associated with things like your craving for carbohydrates and other things that happen when you eat, say like a diet high in carbs or you overfeed on calories for a long time. The bacteria in your gut, from what I understand, can actually become dependent on that diet or generate cravings, literally neurotransmitter based cravings in response to that diet. And you can actually alter that ratio and fix those issues by feeding the bacteria what they would need to produce certain postbiotics.

Correct. And they've actually looked at some twin studies on this. So they've looked at twins where they said, okay, well, is this, are you, are you strictly a product of your genetic background or can we look at this? And they're looking at stool studies and twins and doing different things and realizing that one twin that has a healthier lifestyle versus the other one. When they look at the postbiotics produced or the molecules that are being produced, they're showing that 60% is not in the genes at all. It's what you're doing to manipulate your own bacteria. And everybody keeps trying to take probiotics to throw at it, which, you know, I'm, I'm here nor there on probiotics. I just know that the data isn't real good on it. But I do know that the data is really good. When we look at countries that they eat a high polyphenol content, the problem is. So we just got. We got our NSF certification, which is certified for sport. It's kind of a big. I'm extremely proud of that. And we got. We're going to be a sponsor at the cpsda, which is the Collegiate and Professional Sports Dietitian Association. It's a huge honor I'm submitting myself to. Hopefully I can give a lecture and kind of talk about some of these things. But when we were there, I had somebody from our team was actually listening to one of the lectures, and it was fascinating to see these dietitians talk about polyphenols. There's a PhD named Dr. Joanne Botel that you're going to see a lot of of the publications that she's been involved with. But she's the one that went into detail about how these polyphenols work to help athletes. What it does is it helps with recovery. She had some great data showing that if you take somewhere around 550mg of anthocyanidins and proanthocyanidins, which are the really big complex polyphenols, they can do all different kinds of stuff, including increasing your VO2 max, decreasing your CK production after exercise, increasing ATP so that you recover quicker. So now we're seeing all these professional associations looking at polyphenols to try and help the athletic performance. The one thing that she did bring up is that, unfortunately, it would take quite a bit to try and get this. Like, if you took like a thousand milligrams per day for three days before and after competition, they show that you can have increased recovery, enhanced training, shorten the lag time, the healing time, but you'd have to eat like five big cups of blueberries, like several times a day. And so that's where the concentration of polyphenols, which is what we did with Autran teals, put the three together, then you end up getting 550 milligrams three times a day, reaching that amount. And that's what. That's so cool because we didn't do the original research on this. I'm going to conferences and listening to brilliant people tell me about my own product. I'm like, that is cool.

That's really cool. And what I would suspect, and correct me if I'm wrong on this, would be for people who are, say, like, addicted to carbohydrates or have eaten a poor diet for a long period of time. Once you actually switch to a healthier diet and perhaps even eliminate a high intake of carbs, that the inclusion of polyphenols and their ability to be able to adjust that pharmacy bacteriode ratio would potentially retrain your gut to be able to better respond to the diet that you're feeding it.

Oh yeah, I have a, I, I, we were both at Paleo FX and I gave a lecture talking about this, the sort of the Venn diagram of IBS diet and leaky gut. And I have a slide in there. It's funny because I went to, I took my whole family to Spain last year. I've got a family that's obsessed with tennis and I, you know, I'm walking around Spain and I'm looking and everybody still smokes and they eat what they want to eat and, and then they eat dinner at midnight and you know, everybody says, oh, it's because they're relaxed. Oh, it's this. But we did go out to the suburbs also and people, you know, drive cars and they, you know, they, they live normal lives. And I started looking back, they eat 10 times the amount of polyphenols that we eat over here and they have less diabetes, less coronary disease, less dementia. And I realize that that's part of the whole Mediterranean diet aspect, but this is probably why. So when you have people that have a high sugar diet and they try and radically switch, all those almost addictive molecules are going up to the brain saying we want more. And it in people. I've had patients tell me flat out that it's like they were, they could not stop eating it. So getting them to try and shift there say, okay, look, you just have to do a little bit, let's get your bacteria to help you. Let's feed your bacteria. Maybe consider a fast before so that we can go into this thing and then open that up.

This is fast. A lot, a lot of people aren't talking about postbiotics, but I mean, it's really interesting. So basically you got your prebiotics that would feed the bacteria. So these would be like inulin and high fiber foods, like you know, dandelion greens and asparagus. And people talk about like slightly underripe bananas and things like that as prebiotics or even as resistant starches. And then you have your probiotics. So you're eating like whatever, you know, yogurt and kefir and cultured vegetables like sauerkraut or kimchi. And then you would not only be allowing the bacteria, with the inclusion of the prebiotics and the probiotic rich foods to be able to produce postbiotics. But then you can also enhance postbiotic production even more by including some of these polyphenols.

Exactly. And the people that I've talked to about this, it's usually a PhD somewhere that's gotten some grant and he's looking at one particular molecule. I will sit there with some of these PhDs. We're working with some guys in South America right now, and they will have a gas chromatograph, which is what you like in organic chemistry. You run it through a machine, it has different spikes, and then that's like a fingerprint for the molecule. And then you can build the molecule from that. They will show the complexity of what your bacteria can do. And they do this in animal models. And it is so fascinating, so overwhelming and so complex that there's no way that you could sit there and be like, oh, I'm going to manipulate this one thing to produce this one molecule. That's kind of what I got at when Mother Nature's there. So, for instance, the polyphenol that we're using, which is a proanthocyanidin called cabracho, that is a massive macromolecule that happens to be stable in acid and base. So this thing basically works to stay in the intestinal lumen and make its way to the colon, where the colon, the colonic bacteria. Then we'll just start cleaving it off, you know, chipping off little side molecules. And when these guys show me these gas gas chromatographs of how many different beneficial molecules come out, it's truly overwhelming. And you realize, hey, we're never going to be able to replicate this in a drug because using mother nature to do it and using our own bacteria to do it, you team up and it's a symbiotic relationship. And that's the really coolest thing. And this is one of the reasons why we were able to get a patent on Atrantio, is because this novel concept that nobody ever used, cabracho, and the reason why it was so effective is that it, the acid and base environment, that it's actually stable and it doesn't get absorbed.

So that's what's called cabracho. Do you like how I did it with the, with the trilled R?

Yeah, yeah. This is so. Yeah, we're. We're one of the only people that, that put quebracho on something. And this all came about because I realized when I was doing clinical research that there's a doctor, his name is Dr. Mark Pimentel, extremely smart man that came up with the original concept of bacterial overgrowth. This is 10, 11 years ago. And him and I were talking, he had all these mouse models and he had great, I mean, fantastic studies on how he could show that he could put them through stress and then 20% of them would end up developing bacteria in their small bowel. But he said, but you know what? We'll never be able to help the bloated, constipated person because they are producing methane. And the type of bacteria is actually in its own kingdom is called an Archaea Bacter. The Archaeobacter are a. They're in their own kingdom, but what they do is they take the hydrogen that's being produced by other bacteria and they put it enzymatic process and they spit out methane. And then what the methane does is it slows everything down. It works as a local paralytic. So now you've taken that little sewer pipe earlier and we're going to slow it down and we're going to make a bigger sewer pipe and allow more bacteria to grow. And that's how come you have this vicious cycle. And they even showed that those. There was a recent study out of Cedar Sinai. In fact, it isn't published. Also out of the math or labs there, you can look this up. It's really cool. They showed that those people that had methano Brevibacter smithi, or this type of archaeobacter, they. Or I'm sorry, they did it in mouse models. They showed significant weight gain. And that's something that I see all the time. I have people come to me and they're like, I don't get it. I'm eating less. I blowed up like I'm four months pregnant and I'm gaining weight. And now we realize that it's the inflammatory process that's going on, it's the bacteria breaking down these foods before you can get it. And the Methanobravibacter smithi is producing methane, and the methane slows everything down so that more bacteria grow and you ultimately can absorb more calories per bite. So it's this vicious cycle.

Wow. Okay, so what's this kabracho stuff do?

Cabracho is actually a tannin. It's a pro anthocyanidin tannin. And it comes from the bark of a very, very old tree. What it does is it doesn't get absorbed. It goes through the Lumen, and it works like a sponge, absorbing all this hydrogen. It happens to have a natural defense against archaea species and fungi. So what it does is it weakens the outer wall of these Archaeobacter, the M. Smithi, and it has a natural defense against them. We don't have any antibiotics that can do that. So this particular bark does that. Then the next ingredient, which is the conquer tree, which is also polyphenol, but it has some things called saponins. So it works like a little soapy mixture with bacteria. It happens to be able to kill bacteria, but it works specifically to shut that enzyme off. And it's the MCR reductase enzyme that produces the methane. So basically, the cobracho absorbs the gas, weakens this Archaeobacter one, two, punch the concrete, comes in and shuts off the enzyme. That's how it works. Wow.

Okay, so the cabracho, that's the tree, and that one is. Is that a polyphenol, the cobracho.

Yeah, it's. It's a polyphenol. It's a proanthocyanidin.

Okay.

Which is large tannins, large complex molecule. And that's what. That's what all these nutritionists and dietitians are now discovering. That helps with the recovery from exercise.

Okay. So that one bonds to hydrogen and that allows for reduced methane production. And it actually destroys the bacterial layer in the stomach or in the intestine or in the.

Yeah, so basically it doesn't. It doesn't go into. It doesn't get absorbed. It doesn't work in the stomach. If you have it high enough, I guess it could sit there and work in the stomach. But it's. It's specifically. We did it so that you. So it could work in the small intestine. So what it does is it basically weakens, it gets rid of the bacteria, and then you can. It'll eventually make its way to the colon, where your colonic bacteria will break it down. That's where the polyphenol benefit comes in.

Interesting. So. So you're kind of getting two things. You're getting the breakdown in the colon, and then you're also getting the activity in the intestine.

Correct. So when we initially did our studies, we've got two published studies, one in 2015, one in 2016, and we consistently showed that four out of five people are going to get better. And we did that with just the SIBO population. What we didn't anticipate is that all these people that we treated Kept coming back saying, I'd like some more. I'm like, are you still bloated? They're like, no, I'm not bloated, but I just feel better on it. And we hadn't even really gotten into the overall health benefits of polyphenols yet, because I was focusing on the one aspect. And now I realize why so many people just want to continue to take it because they end up feeling overall significantly better. My theory is because now we're starting to cultivate bacteria that can do good things with it. So it's like I said, it's a moving target. There's a lot going on right now.

Okay, fascinating. But. But that one is basically soaking up hydrogen gas, and that's the fuel that the bacteria would need for methane. And then it would also attack the cell wall of the archae bacteria you were talking about, correct? Okay, absolutely. And this next one that you mentioned, you said it was the whole horse chestnut.

Yeah. So horse chestnut is another polyphenol. It works because it does have some flavonoids, but it's also got these things called saponins in it. Now, these saponins work to get rid of bacteria by forming almost like a scrubbing, cleansing type sort of mixture with these bacteria in the lumen of the small bowel. But like I mentioned, what's super cool is that we found in these animal studies. Now, this is all based off of. Of significant animal studies where states like Nebraska and Iowa were trying to mandate in cattle to decrease methane production because of the whole greenhouse effect and everything. They were trying to realize that cattle ruminants have a lot of these type of bacteria, and when they eat, they produce a lot of methane and they belch it up. So one of the theories was, if we have all these cattle, we can decrease the methane production. That's where we ended up figuring all this out was actually through these animal models. And so what they figured out was this horse chestnut. A molecule in it is super cool because it was found that it can actually block this thing called this methyl coenzyme reductase, or the MCR enzyme. This is the enzyme that the archaeobacter used to make the methane. So here I was looking at all this great animal data going, wow, somebody did all the heavy lifting for me. This is beautiful. And that's how we ended up putting these three things together.

Okay, so, so the horse chestnut then is not killing the bacteria, it's reducing the actual methane production.

It has some antimicrobial activity, but we have it There to actually block the methane production.

Okay.

Each one of the specific there. We also threw a little bit of peppermint in there, which is. I'm using peppermint leaf. Leaf. You'll find that many other supplements will use peppermint oil, But I wanted the leaf because the leaf keeps the polyphenol intact. What that does is that has menthol in it, and it can actually inhibit the calcium channels and it slows contraction. So it buys me a little time for the other two ingredients to work better. And it helps get some histamine, acetylcholine, and a lot of other cool things. But the main reason why we put that there is so that it slows down the area so that the other two ingredients can do their. Do their thing a little bit longer.

So you want the leaf, not the oil?

I wanted the leaf. The. Everyone goes for the oil because they're going for the antispasmodic effect in the stomach. I needed to get to the small bowel where all the action is happening. And if you look at polyphenol constant peppermint is one of the. It's really high. It's crazy. Like, we shouldn't really be just extracting the oil. Let's use the whole plant.

Oh, yeah. I love peppermint. I. You know, wild mint grows all over on my land out here, but we also grow peppermint in the garden, and I put it in almost everything I put in salads. I'm obviously, when I'm using a Trentil, I'm getting it in that too, because I use this compound that we're talking about. But I love just. Just the pure taste of a. Of a fresh peppermint leaf. I mean, it's. It's a. It's an amazing little herb.

Yeah. The actual leaf is really good for you.

Okay. So you put peppermint in this stuff. You. You put cabracho in it, you put horse chestnut in it. All of those would be. Would all those be considered postbiotics in addition to being polyphenols?

Well, I would consider them prebiotics that the bacteria will turn into postbiotics.

Okay.

Because the post is the breakdown of these molecules.

Okay, got it. And then when you put all these three together, do you combine it with anything else? I mean, are there. Are there other. It's in a capsule that you're placing this stuff. But what else is in the. In the capsule, aside from cabracho, horse chestnut, and peppermint?

Actually, those are the only three ingredients. You know, whenever you in the, in the supplement industry, they have to. We use gelatin vegetarian capsules so that it's gelatin but it's vegetarian, so there's no animal products in there. This is gluten free. We're NSF certified, as I mentioned. So everything that's on our label is in these capsules. And just a couple other small things to make sure that the dosing is right. But other than that, those are the three ingredients. Everything else is just a small excipient to make sure that the milligrams are exactly the same.

Have you actually, I mean, you talk about each of these individual ingredients being studied, but have you actually looked at clinical research in terms of what happens when you combine these three together?

Well, the only studies that have ever been published happen to be studies that we have done. We're currently trying to do very large multicenter study to put it, you know, to just go head to head with large pharmaceutical industries. But it just requires so much money that, you know, we're growing. And we were working with, initially working with Texas Tech and then we're, we're looking at, we got our Canadian NPN and some people from Canada have contacted us and they would like to help with doing a study. And if I can get my gastroenterology company to open up this whole functional arm, yeah, we'll do this. We've got two studies that are published. One was a randomized, one was a study where we treated people that failed everything else. And both times we consistently showed that four out of five people would get better. But those are the, those are the, it's a little bit more than the Ben of one. But you know, it's not a multinational study which is ultimately what I would like to do. I certainly believe that I'm bridging the gap between, you know, natural treatments and traditional medicine. And one way to, to do that is to have robust studies where you can say, look, this is, it's a randomized trial, it's unbiased. This is what it is. It's. But it takes time and it takes money.

Yeah, well, you know, it's not going to make aliens pop out of people's chest based on the limited studies that you've done so far when you combine these three things together. But what about, do you need to combine with, you know, a lot of people who have eaten a high fodmap diet or a high carb diet or have taken antibiotics like you talked about earlier, and had small intestine bacterial overgrowth or bacterial issues from that or, you know, you talked about stress, an infection. So a lot of these people have leaky gut who have had to deal with that. And a lot of times I'll recommend things like glutamine or colostrum or, you know, this lignite extract made by Dr. Zach Bush, who I interviewed a few episodes ago, as all ways that you could help to potentially heal the lining of a leaky gut. Are you recommending combining some of these polyphenols that specifically get rid of the methane producing bacteria with some of those items? Or have you found these particular things actually work by themselves to address leaky gut? Or what, what kind of, what kind of stacks or combinations have you found or noted to be effective with something like atrantil?

So when we think about leaky gut, just remember that there's three main causes. One of them is infection and bacterial overgrowth. The other one is a, a molecule called zonulin, which is a molecule that our bodies produce when it's exposed to gluten. And then the third one is diet, where you eat a lot of, of processed foods because that has a lot of the different chemicals that they do to, for the GMOs. All these other things, they're showing a lot of evidence that all three things can cause leaky gut. So once you start seeing this tremendous rise in autoimmune disease, meaning your body attacks itself, that is actually because of leaky gut. So when we see more celiac, more Crohn's, more ulcerative colitis, more Hashimoto's thyroiditis, there's a lot of evidence showing that it all comes down to intestinal permeability. So I think it's so important to protect the lining. All health begins and ends in the gut, in my mind. And you have to be able to go from cradle to grave. There's evidence to show that the rise in autism is due to intestinal permeability. There's evidence to show that the rise in dementia is due to intestinal permeability. That's our lifespan. So I know that it's a moving target. I got introduced, I've not met Zach Bush yet, but that him and I have been trying to connect at these different meetings that we go to. But I've heard, I think it's fascinating that he did his research in leaky gut. I have been stacking when people fail atrantio and as a physician, that's what I get now. I get people that kind of fail everything. I'm kind of a last. I'M a third or fourth consult. I basically treat all these people that have failed everything. So I listen to my patients, I listen to colleagues. I listened, you know, when I go to meetings, like for instance, I think you know, you know Rob Wolf, don't you? The author.

Oh, yeah, I know Rob, yeah. Who doesn't know Rob?

I know. Well, he, he was taking for same thing. He was taking outrantil and he did better on it, but then he added Saccharomyces boulardi to it. And so he emailed me and said, hey, I'm having better results when I combine it to him, like, that's fascinating. So then I went to a meeting and I bumped into a naturopath from Australia who had done her research on secretory IgA and how saccharomyces boularity can increase that. And then it was like this. Oh my gosh, that's beautiful. So the combination can sometimes help. And then, you know, some people go through a bad die off reaction. And there was a. I was on a radio show with a guy named Carl Lenore who does superhuman radio.

Oh yeah, I know Carl. I've been on his show but before.

He's great, He's a great guy. And he called me when I was out of town one time and he said, he goes, hey, I'm having a horrible die off reaction. Die off reaction is something that can happen when these bacteria, these specifically these Archaeobacter, when they start dying, they just release their toxins and it can give people a really horrible feeling. They just don't feel good. They feel like they have the flu symptoms get worse. And we're always trying to figure out different ways to try and mitigate this die off reaction. That can happen in about, I don't know, 5% of the people. Carl calls me up and goes, hey, CBD oil works great for this.

Oh, no kidding.

Awesome. Yeah. So he had great success by taking CBD oil to block the die off reaction.

So I'm just, I talk to a lot of people, a lot of people. And I also do well with CBD oil and they even sell CBD oil as a topical that you can, I've done this with peppermint essential oil as well. You can actually rub it topically on your gut and it even has an effect. Then when you have like gastric irritation after a meal or you feel as though you have like a little bloating or stomach upset, CBD oil works really well for that as well.

Yeah, that's. I'm a, I'M a huge fan of cbd. I'm having really good results putting people on Atrantio plus CBD oil. I like it so much that I want to add this to another one of our research arms. Because the CBD, the way that it affects the CB1 receptor and CB2 receptor, CB1 is in nerves. CB2 is in the immune system. So all these people that have revved up immune systems, you can just kind of just chill out a little bit. Let's just take it down a notch. And I'm showing that people's reactions that have autoimmune disease really starts going down. Ulcerative colitis, Crohn's and so on.

Got it. So CBD oil, Saccharomylyces boulardii. Those would be a couple that you'd consider, including with something like this?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I would. And I. I would totally use Zach Bush's stuff. I've heard that that's, you know, that's really good also. And, you know, because that's specifically there. Glutamine that you brought up is an amino acid that helps restore the intestinal barrier. All those things are fantastic.

Okay.

I sometimes will stack it with some other herbal antibiotics like berberine. Had some success with that.

Yeah, that's another one that grows outside. In my house, I've got peppermint, so wild mint grows outside. And then also organ grape. And organ grape. If you dig up the root, it basically contains the same bioactive component that you find in berberine. So it's. It's one of those deals where even though, you know, I travel a ton, I love better living through science, and I use the app atran till that we're talking about. I also love the idea that you can often, in just like 10 acres surrounding you, if you're out in the wilderness, find a remedy for just about any issue that exists, including gut issues.

Isn't that so fascinating? There's. And I keep mentioning the same thing over and over, which I just don't think that the pharmaceutical industry will be able to keep up with Mother Nature. There is. There's been a precedence that's been thrown down. This company called gw, which is a pharmaceutical industry, and they filed with the FDA to make their CBD isolate a drug. So it's the first company, it's a shot across the bow to say we're going to make CBD a drug. Everybody got a little scared about that, and everybody's wondering what's going to happen. I love it because it'll bring up awareness. But it's very myopic in the sense that they're trying to isolate one molecule from traditional hemp derived CBD Oil will have lots of different polyphenols in it, flavonoids, terpenes, all these other great molecules that do a lot more for our body. So I guess I commend pharmaceutical industry from trying to produce a drug out of something that you really can't improve on by taking one molecule out. So let them continue to do that for awareness. We'll continue to do what you're saying. Go out and dig up the Oregon grape root and there you have berberine.

Yeah, yeah. The other thing is that thorn, I don't know if you've heard about thorn. They actually have a new hemp, that's the seed and the stalks. They've taken the Cannabis sativa and then they blend that with a clove extract with a black pepper extract. They put hops in there which makes it more bioavailable and then rosemary extract. And that's a new, a new gel cap that Thorne does and they're one of the few companies that I think can go to bat again in some of these bigger pharmaceutical companies. But that's one that, that I've got, I've got in my refrigerator now as a gel cap. You know I, I was in the CBD business for a while. I had my own blend of CBD that I produced blended with. Yeah it was Ashwagandha, lemon balm, magnesium and a really good water soluble CBD that had curcumin added to it to make it more bioavailable. But unfortunately, I mean like the government and payment process are so hard on CBD manufacturers in terms of limiting everything from payment processing capabilities to you, you having to switch URLs to, you know, I have like, you know my business Kion, which you know is a super duper clean that I wanted to keep separate from, from anything related to CBD just because despite it being an amazing molecule, it's just something that makes regulators super duper nervous. But this thorn stuff is actually really good. If you haven't tried that, I'll, what I'll do is for everything that Dr. Brown and I are talking about for those of you listening in, I'll put a link to it over at. Here's a good URL for you. BenGreenfieldFitness.com Gas that's BenGreenfieldFitness.com gas to check that out.

I like that. Yeah. I was actually contacted by Thorne Also and they, they threw in something else that's really cool. I think they put an Omega 3 in there which they've shown that the Omega 3 can be symbiotic with, with the CBD. I'm actually so passionate about this. I have seen so many of my Crohn's patients and ulcerative colitis patients get better and I've been able to keep them off some really toxic medications that I'm doing all those regulatory things that you're talking about that is super hard to do. And we're, we're going to white label my own CBD and it's going to be physician backed, going through all the proper channels, making sure that the interchange and all that work works. It's costing a lot of money, it's taking a lot of time, but I'm that passionate about it that if you've got one of these autoimmune diseases, I really think that you can be helped with it. And clearly you've had the same, same success with that. This is broad spectrum phytocannabinoid therapy.

Yeah.

So that's unfortunate you got out of it.

Yeah. Have fun. Being in the CBD business, man, it's a beast. But I, I wish you the best. I wanted to ask you too about the use of this Atran till. Do you recommend taking before pretty much any meal that you have during the day? Is it one of those deals where you would just take it before a carbohydrate containing meal or how would that work? Exactly.

So when we look at the dosing of it, we've got a 90 count. And in all the studies that we did, if you are a chronic sufferer, so if you've had something where whenever you eat you bloat up, we really suggest that you do this as a full course. So you take two capsules three times a day. With food, it's really with or without food, but I just suggest taking it with food for a full 20 days minimum. Sometimes it takes longer, sometimes it happens a whole lot quicker. But it's two, three times a day and then on a regular basis you can just take it as needed or on a daily for the polyphenol effect. So there's people like me where I'm gluten intolerant and I always have it on me whenever I travel just so that I can take it if I'm going to eat a little gluten. If I'm out traveling at a meeting or something, it's hard to, you know, avoid some of the foods which are going to affect me, I can take it and not have any issues with gluten. So there's the chronic group, there's the food sensitivity group, and then there's. Just take it on a daily basis for the polyphenol effect group.

Okay, got it. So how many capsules?

Two capsules, three times a day until you feel better. Then it's just two to three capsules every day.

Okay. Super simple. In terms of the need to load, the need to take consistently. I mean, do you get to a point where. And I realize this is a tough question for you, being in the business where you're selling this atrientil, but do you get to the point where you've kind of like, knocked out all these bacteria and you can step back on the dosage or stop taking it altogether?

So, yeah, it's pretty. And it's. We have a lot of people. I feel very unfortunate for all the people that try to come off of it and they can't, but almost most people will take a round of it and then just take it as needed. I only say that because if my CEO was listening, it makes it a little difficult to make it a subscription because people get better.

Well, what I did was I. I started off taking a whole bunch, started interrupting, and then so I was taking three before every meal. Now I take two a day before dinner, which is my biggest meal of the day.

Yeah, that's pretty much what I do also.

Yeah. And then if I hit the whole food salad bar, I just have them in book bags. So if I decide I'm going to go after the garlic and the onions and all that, I mean, it's like those gluten digesting enzymes that you can take the gluten polypeptidases that if you do decide to have a pizza, they can limit some of the damage or the lactase that you can take to digest some of the lactose. If you happen to have a bunch of. Of dairy and you're lactose intolerant. Same thing with this. Like, if you decide you want to have your garlic and your onions and all these fermentable compounds, you can at least pop a couple to sop up some of the damage.

Exactly, exactly. There was a recent article. Not to geek out too much, but there was a recent article that I just came across where they were looking at the molecular process that happens when you take these polyphenols. And it looks like two things are going on. It decreases the amount of the enzyme that digests it so you're not absorbing as much and it forms like a weird matrix around the gliadin so it's not as easily absorbed. Which would totally explain why I can eat gluten as long as I take some atrantial with it.

Interesting. Wow, I didn't realize you could use it for gluten too. All right, good. I'm going to add that to my protocol then. I'll be hitting up the pizza parlor tonight with my atrantil. Hey, this has been really interesting, man. And I know we have a discount for folks setup. It's a 15% discount that you get on atrantil. I'll put a link over in the show notes@bengreenfieldfitness.com gas but we've also got a great little link for you as well. It's lovemytummy.com Ben that's lovemytummy.com ben. And if you go there, you can enter the code Ben at checkout. That'll automatically get you 15% off and you'll be off to the otronto races getting rid of your gas and bloating again. I, I would say that GI issues have been like my personal biggest issue. So anytime I come across something like this, that really moves the dial. I'm a huge fan of letting you guys know about it. So that's it. It's horse chestnuts, peppermint. It's quebracho. It was designed by the great and wonderful Ken Brown. Ken, thanks so much for coming on the call and sharing this stuff with us.

Yeah, totally. Hopefully some of your listeners that are still doing the endurance competitions, maybe we'll get some personal, personal records after they take it for a bit.

Yeah. And by the way, if you guys take it and you have questions or thoughts or feedback after you use it or anything else, just go to BenGreenfulFitness.comGas you can leave your questions there. And over there I'll also link to some of those other things we talked about like the thorn hemp and the microbiome test that you can get good sheet to help you out with the FODMAP diet and some other resources that Dr. Brown and I talked about. It'll all be there. BenGriffitness.com Gas and in the meantime, Ken, thanks for coming on the show, man.

Hey man, thank you. It's totally my honor.

Awesome. Well, folks, until next time, I'm Ben Greenfield along with Ken Brown signing out from the BenGreenfieldFitness.com podcast. Have an amazing week.

You'Ve been listening to the Ben Greenfield Fitness podcast, go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com for even more cutting edge fitness and performance advice.