What's REALLY Happening In Ben Greenfield's Gut? How To Unmask Your "Microbiome Mysteries" With 1 Cutting-Edge Gut Test

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

Podcast, the Vitre test. It's a 16s based test where we basically identify the distribution of the different bacteria and IKEA that is in your gut. But what the test gives you an insight into is it gives you an insight into your gut diversity. And when we talk about gut diversity, we're talking more about the, the richness of your guts, that is the total number of species that is in your guts, but how evenly spread out they are as well. Another thing that the test does for you is we give you insights into the metabolites that they might be producing. So here we're not primarily measuring the metabolites themselves because you cannot do that with the 16s, but we can give you insight into the metabolites that your gut profile may be produced in based off on your result.

Fitness, nutrition, biohacking, longevity, life optimization, spirituality, and a whole lot more. Welcome to the Ben Greenfield Life Show. Are you ready to hack your life?

Let's do this. This. Well, it's no secret I like to poop into random hot dog trays and tubes and toilet paper and swabs and send my results off to a lab to see what's going on inside my gut. So I'm constantly trying out the latest and greatest tests in a selfless, sacrificial act of self experimentation to let you know know good ways to figure out what's going on with your gut and how you can improve your gut health. You've of course, probably heard podcasts I've done on the gut metabolism axis, on the gut brain axis, and the gut immune axis. And it's no doubt that the gut is important, but testing it is an ever expanding field. So one of the recent tests that I did was called a vitrac V I T R A C T. I'll link to it if you want to check it out for yourself if you go to BenGreenfieldLife.com Vitract podcast. That's V I T R A C T podcast, but basically they do this whole profile of the gut. And I'm gonna let my guest on today's show explain to you its difference in terms of what they test for, the sensitivity of it, and what you can find out from testing your gut. So my guest on the show is Dr. Chidozi Ojibbor. I do not know if I pronounce that 100% correct, but I'm just gonna roll with it. He's a scientist, he's got over research Experience in bacterial genetics. He's got a bachelor's in microbiology, a PhD in molecular genetics. So obviously a pretty smart cookie when it comes to decoding the gut. He's now spent a decade developing antimicrobial entities that target disease causing bacteria in ecosystems like the gut. And he's even won a global citizen award for combating drug resistant bacteria related to cystic fibrosis. So in his lab he studies everything from phage therapy to CRISPR technology to gastroenteritis and beyond. And today we're gonna talk all things gut. So Dr. Ojibor, what do you want me to call you for the show? Chidozi Ojibbor. Do you care?

No, no, I don't care. You can call me chidozy or dozy for short. Either ways, it's fine.

I like dozy. Is that an actual nickname that you have?

Yeah, a few of my friends actually call me that.

No, no. It sounds a little bit sleepy maybe. But you know, I should probably ask you before we even dive into all things gut, what, what are some of the things that you do based on what you know, as far as your diet or your supplement or your lifestyle regimen to take care of your gut? I'm just curious to hear from the expert what you do, knowing what you know.

Yeah, I mean, first of all, thank you for having me on your show, Ben. It's good to be here. And to your question. Yeah, I do very simple things like, you know, stay hydrated. I think that's one really easy thing everybody can do, you know. Water, we know, plays a huge role in digestion, allows your body harvest nutrients from food properly. It also enhances gut motility, which is a very key component of your gut health. Avoids constipation and you know, increases the consistency, enhances the consistency of the mucus lining up your gut epithelium. So I stay hydrated.

Can I, can I ask you a quick question about hydration? Because I've kind of always wondered this. I don't know if you have the answer, but of course hydration is important. But then you also hear the age old advice to. I think it's the three, two, one rule. Quit eating heavy meals three hours before bed. Quit drinking a lot of fluids two hours before bed. And then quit use of technology and stressful business activities. And bright light an hour before bed. Which makes pretty good sense. But the water piece, I've always wondered, you know, how much does water leading up to bedtime influence your ability to have a nice hydrated, slippery, easy bowel movement the next morning or is it just kind of how well you stayed hydrated the entire day before that next morning's poop? Does that make sense?

Yes, it does. I think it's the latter. I think it's how well you actually stay hydrated through the day, going into the next day versus how much water that you actually drink prior to going to bed.

Yeah, that makes sense. I guess a lot of these ayurvedic colon cleansing blends and magnesium oxide and triphala, they all tell you to drink 8 to 16 ounces of water when you take them for your bowel cleansing the next morning. But then It's a catch 22 because you wake up at midnight and 2am and 4am to pee.

Oh yeah, yeah. The approach I've always taken to is, I think for gut health generally is to do things in a way that is spread out versus actually doing things at specific time points. And water is one of them.

Got it. So what else besides hydration?

Yeah, eating a diverse diet. You know, I prioritize fresh vegetables and fruits and nut seeds. I particularly prioritize whole foods I grew up eating. You know, I grew up in Nigeria, so we are very familiar with actually doing farm to table, from direct farm to table. And that's the approach I take in my household today. So eating diverse food like that, we know that, you know, fresh fruits and vegetables are high in fiber and those particularly enrich the beneficial organisms in your gut and also promotes gut diversity. So I do that.

What do you think about people who are eating an all meat diet now like this, this carnivore diet craze?

So the way I think about that is as far as diet is concerned, I like to stay, I like to promote more like a hunter gatherer style of eating versus like strict carnivores and, or strict vegan. And that's because we've seen that the people that actually have the best gut diversity are people that have a well rounded kind of diet. So they're eating vegetables, fruits, eggs made here and there, but it's actually pretty much well rounded versus just like strict carnivorous diet. But as far as what the literature says, there are interesting studies actually that have separated people into groups where you have a group eating like a primarily animal based diet, which is what the carnivorous diet is mostly made up of today, versus the other people eating another cohort eating a well rounded diet. And some interesting things actually they saw in that study in four days they saw an enrichment of certain bacteria such as bacteroides Allistypes and Bilophila and these are organisms that are bile resistant. And it makes sense because your bile acids will produce for the metabolism of lipid. But the consequence of an overgrowth of organisms like that is we know that the buildup of those kind of organisms can actually potentially lead to an over accumulation of gases like hydrogen sulfide.

And you wait, you saw that build up in the carnivore or the omnivore diet?

The carnivore. Okay, yeah, the carnivore. And so, but you know, but you know there are different sides to this story, but primarily in terms of the gut health moving towards the plants rich diet is what we know favors your gut health.

Now when you're doing plants yourself and you're talking about the wide variety, how much emphasis do you place on fermented plants like kimchi or sauerkraut or even yogurts or kefirs or things like that?

Yeah, huge, huge emphasis. I think one of the fantastic, very fantastic group that I respect, the group of Dr. Justine and Erica Sonnenburg of Stanford, they've done this fantastic study on the role of fermented foods on, on the gut microbiome. But, but you know, we've, this is an age old knowledge actually. You know, fermented foods play a very, very key role in promoting your gut diversity. I think I personally can do more of that. I think I used to do more fermented foods when I was back, back home in Nigeria. Now I do more of like just including dietary fibers. But fermented foods play a huge role in promoting go diversity.

Can a probiotic even come close like if you're, if you're using a probiotic? So does it do as good a job as a wide variety of fermented foods if it's a well formulated probiotic?

That's, that's a very good question. So it depends, it depends on the scenario. So in situations where you actually have zero amount of the particular strain of probiotic that, that you want in your gut, then it makes sense to seed first with probiotics. But you know, the, the approach that actually works best is for you to feed your resident's gut bacteria with the essential prebio to allow them bloom. But like I said, if you have zero amounts of those organisms, then you have to start by seeding them first with the probiotics and then grow them with prebiotics later.

Yeah, that makes sense. When we talk more about testing, obviously we can delve into what some of this might look like from a customization and personalization standpoint. But before we start talking about the testing, one other question about your own setup. Are you using any kind of additional supplementation or any of these popular products for the gut, whether it be magnesium for better bowel movements or a lot of people are using an Akkermansia probiotic now for blood sugar. Are you on board with any of these supplements?

Yeah, I think some of these supplements are great. Personally, I don't use any of them just because I personally don't have need for them. I do my gut microbiome tests quite regularly and it looks like things are evenly and well shopped spread out there. But absolutely, I mean, there is the, there is the pendulum Akamancia probiotic now, which they call the GLP1 probiotic that is there. I do have a few friends who are using those and the outcome that they are seeing there is great. So, yeah, for some people it makes sense to supplement, but I would always go with arming your resident bacteria with the capacity to produce those metabolites versus just supplementing.

Okay, got it. Tell me about this test. Am I pronouncing that correctly, the vitrekt, or is it vitract? Vitract, Vitract. Okay, tell me about it.

Yeah, so the Vitrecht test, it's a 16s based test where we basically identify the distribution of the different bacteria and IKEA that is in your gut. And I say that it's 16s. What I mean by that is every single bacteria in your gut has what we call the 16s gene. And so what we do is. But these 16s genes have variable regions that is unique to every bacteria. So by sequencing the 16s gene, we are able to identify a bacteria and then assign a particular name to that bacteria when we compare them to what we have on the reference database. So it's a 16s test, it identifies bacteria and archaea. But what the test gives you an insight into is it gives you an insight into your gut diversity. And when we talk about God diversity, we're talking more about the richness of your guts. That is the total number of species that is in your guts, but how evenly spread out they are as well. Another thing that the test does for you is we give you insights into the metabolites that they might be producing. So here we're not primarily measuring the metabolites themselves because you cannot do that with the 16s test, but we can give you insight into the metabolize that, you know, your gut profile may be produced in, based off, on, of, on Your result and an interesting thing that will also give insights to different biomarkers. If you're thinking about a dysbiosis test, then the Vitrak test is the test you should be using. Because when you talk about these bioses, you're talking about the total composition of what's in God. You want to have a sense of the total composition of what's in your gut. You want to have a sense of the relative abundance and how spread out they are. And that's one of the things that, that this test caters to.

So if you're not actually measuring metabolites that the bacteria in the gut are producing, how do you actually know what metabolites you're seeing on a test?

Yeah, it's a good question. So what we are reporting on the test is not the metabolite, but we are reporting the metabolite producers. And so take short chain fatty acid for example. One, the way to actually measure short chain fatty acids is if you are using like metabolomics method techniques where you know, like you know, mass spectrometry where you can particularly identify that metabolite that has been produced and then quantify them. But what we are doing is upstream of that. We are giving you a sense of the potential amount of the metabolite that may be produced in your gut based off on the abundance of the organisms that we know in academic literature actually produces those metabolites.

Okay, got it, yeah. So it's kind of like you know what these bacteria are going to produce. So once you know what the bacteria are, you know what metabolites someone could be producing.

Exactly, exactly.

Now how is this any different? It's kind of confusing to people, honestly from other gut tests out there because for example, I've recommended a lot the Genova diagnostics three day stool panel. Viome is another very popular company, Thorne. I know they're doing at home gut tests. It used to be, I think longevity, I think now it's just called Thorn. But how is Vitrex any different?

Yeah, good question. So, so the vitre test gives you, if you are interested in got these viruses versus you know, just looking at the pathogenic deep dive then you should be doing a vitro test. I'll give it. I'll take an example from one of the companies that you mentioned, Genova or GI Map. Those are great tests too. But those tests primarily cater to if you are interested in a pathogenic deep dive. And that's because you know, they use quantitative pie to identify the bacteria in your gut.

You said PCR. So they're not using 16s sequencing, they're using. What's PCR stand for again?

Yeah, polymerase chain reaction.

Yeah, polymerase chain reaction. So it's a different form of sequencing. And what you're saying is they're looking at yeast and bacteria and fungus and things like that, but when it comes to dysbiosis, not so accurate a look at the actual bacterial balances.

Yes, that's because, like PCR in itself, by itself is limited in that you have to design primers to identify every single bacteria. But the way we have gotten around that is to identify bacteria by their 16s gene instead, which gives us a sense of the totality of the organism that is in your gut. That is how you get a better sense of these viruses versus just looking out for specific bacteria, preselected bacteria.

How would you compare to something like viome?

Yeah, so what viome shows you. So when you look at Vitrax, which that does a 16s test and thon, that does a metagen genomics test, what we give you a sense of is your taxonomic profile. That is the composition of your bacteria. But. And for thaw and other life forms like fungi and viruses. But for viome, they're doing meta transcriptomics. Now, meta transcriptomics is. It goes away from giving you a sense of the taxonomic profile. That is who is there to potentially what they may be doing. So they give you information at the RNA level. All of these different techniques of profiling the gut have, of course, their own pros and cons. So it just depends on what you're looking for.

Okay, so back to vitrak test. I think what would be kind of interesting would be to actually go through my results and use that for illustrative purposes. And as we go through that, I think you'll be able to break down what key markers you're actually testing for and what they mean. So you just want to. I'll defer to you as far as the order in which you want to go in. So if you're watching the video version, we got the gut microbiome analysis from Vitrakt with my results and hopefully none of my personal details or credit card information showing right there on the screen. So go ahead. Let's go through this dozy.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So what you're looking at is Ben's test. And I must say that, you know, it was really interesting looking at this just because, you know, we know everybody knows who Ben is. He's, he's, you know, his attitude to health and all that. So what I'm going to show you here is what the Vitrach report looks like when you take one. So this report is stratified into four different sections. The section one basically gives you a sense of two values here, your gut health score and your diversity score. Now, before I go into that, we say that if you're between 0 and 49, it represents poor. If you're between 50 and 79 needs work. And then 8200 means satisfactory. But what is your gut health score? So here we are. Basically Everybody starts at 100%. Now, for every single organism that is outside of what we consider the optimal range, which is the range that healthy people who have taken the test actually fall in between anything that falls outside that is considered, it would reduce your points accordingly.

Right. Docs you some points every time you find some bad bacteria or an imbalance or something like that.

Exactly.

It looks like my point total is a 70. 78 out of 100.

Yes, 78 over 100 for overall gut health. Yes. And we're going to also get into why that is shortly.

Okay, got it.

And for your diversity score, for diversity, we use the Shannon Wyna index. So this is pretty much like the academ, one of the academic indexes for calculating your gut diversity score. It takes into consideration two things. One, it is the richness of your gut, which accounts for the total number of species that were found in your gut ecosystem by looking at your sample. But secondly, it also takes into consideration how evenly spread out your species are. So what we mean by, you know, that evenness is, say, for example, you and I took a gut microbiome test band and we both have 500 species. But if two species out of the 500 in your own ecosystem makes up 90% of that of your gut ecosystem, we would not say that that is actually evenly spread out. So that impacts on your score.

Right. So you don't just want a wide range of bacteria, but you don't want one or two or a few specific strains to be overcrowding or overpopulating relative to the other.

That is correct.

So 87 on diversity score. So that's a little better.

Yes. Ben scores 87 here on diversity score. Meaning that. Meaning that he's in the satisfactory range.

Okay.

Okay. So the section two of the test here is where we report selected bacteria out of, you know, all of the organisms that we have found in your test reports. But we have about 30 to 31 organisms here that we select and show on the test reports, because there's only so much you can show on the test report. Another thing you're going to get aside the test report here is actually a full profile of every single bacteria that we found in your gut ecosystem. But why did we select this specific organism? Selected them because we know so much more so much about them from academic literature on how they contribute to health and disease. Now in this section we stratified these bacteria into health associated bacteria and then the disease associated bacteria. So we'll start with organisms that are the health associated bacteria. The first group of those organisms are called the probiotic bacteria. Now what you're looking at here are the names of the organisms and then you see your the percentage abundance of those organisms in your gut ecosystem. And then you see the implication of, you know, whether or not you are low. You see the implication of that and the implication of high levels of those organisms. One, the first one here is Akkermansia. So for Ben had about 0.1% of your gut made up of Akkermansia. The up the ranges that we recommend here is between 1 and 5%.

Okay, so, so my Akkermansia score is low. I actually don't think I was taking the that one. You mentioned the pendulum probiotic at this time, but is that common for someone to have a very low Akkermansia count?

Yes, actually more than 90% of the people who take the test are actually less than 1% on Akkermansia.

And what do you recommend to people who have a low Akkermansia count?

Oh yeah. So we know that there's a lot of dietary fibers that actually increase Akkermansia levels. We also have a commensurate probiotic. So for people that actually have low levels of Akkermansia, the first thing we recommend to them is take seed your gut with Akkermansia probiotics and then you can further feed them with prebiotics that are known to increase the amount of Akkermania bifidobacterium as well. Here is low. We recommend that you should be between 2 to 2 and 5% ban is at about 0.1%. This is also another organism that we tend to see to be low in in most people who have taken the test. Glautia faecalibacterium. And these are very, very important short chain fatty acid producers. Faecali bacterium, for example, is known to be the largest butyrate producer in the gut. It's an obligate anaerobe. That is to say that it does not grow in the presence of oxygen, but it has a huge metabolic freedom to produce butyrate. That is to say that it can produce butyrate from different dietary sources and has different pathways to actually produce butyrate. We've also seen that this actually makes up, is part of the organisms that make up the largest components of people's gut ecosystem. Ben has it as high as 8% here, which is great. We encourage that. You can actually increase it a little bit more in the excess of 10%. But 10, 8% is great. And we should also remember that even if you don't have as high as 10% or more of fecalibacterium, we should remember that there are other organisms that are also producing this short chain fatty acids. So you can actually have an enrichment of those other organisms that are producing short chain fatty acids.

And it looks like it's pretty low as far as my scores go across the probiotic range. Is it possible that even if someone were, say, eating a wide variety of fermented foods, which I do, that other factors could be present that would be causing those levels to be low?

Yes, absolutely. I mean, there's a lot of things that can impact the gut. Diet is definitely a modifiable factor, but other factors like antibiotic intake, stress, your sleep, wake cycle, exercise, you know, all of these things, or even, you know, if you're, if you're sick or you just have like a condition, all of.

These things can actually impact or travel. Like, I took this test after about two weeks of hefty international travel, which I know can impact.

Oh, yes.

As well. I even saw one study that kind of equivalated that to the use of antibiotics. As far as the amount of dysbiosis hefty amounts of travel across multiple time zones can cause.

Yes, absolutely. This is also what we tend to see in actually my brother's report, who travels a lot. We tend to see that his numbers go back and forth and when he's more stable, like in his primary location, over a longer period of time, we tend to see that things stabilize. So, yes, to your point, travel is something that can actually impact things like this consistent travel.

Interesting. Got it.

Yeah. Okay, so, but I think that. And I'm going to show that shortly, but I think that what is happening for your reports, particularly Ben, is that you're actually feeding another set of organisms, which I'm going to show shortly, that produce a lot of short chain fatty acids.

That's all piece of the puzzle. Okay, cool.

Yeah. Okay. Rosaboria is also another short chain fatty acid. Okay. So here it looks like we need to increase the amount of short chain fatty acid produces in that, you know, in Ben's gut ecosystem. So that's the first piece of the report, which is the probiotic section. So let's look at the common cells. So these gut common cells are actually these bacteria that coexist within your git without causing any harm. You can actually have, you know, large amounts of these common cells, but they play very, very important roles. They help to creates that homeostasis within your intestinal tracts. They also contribute to anti inflammatory state and many of them also produce very beneficial metabolites. It's not just short chain fatty acids. They produce things like, you know, neurotransmitters and B vitamins, like B12, you know, vitamin K2. This is where most of the organisms that produce them actually fall under.

So would it be fair to say then that like a probiotic bacteria is one that naturally resides in the gut and a commensal would be something like, I don't know, like an immigrant or even like a beneficial invader who might not be there normally but who's not doing harm and may actually be helping out with the gut economy or there of all gut health.

Actually the common cells, they're pretty much like the probiotic. They are known to be part of your intestinal flora actually.

Why do you break them out into two separate categories then?

Yeah, that's a good question. So we break them into two categories because. So we call this. So this probiotic bacteria are also common cells, except that the common cells are the ones that we know are found in a large amount in the gut. Okay. They're known to be found in large amounts in the gut. And then for the probiotic also we know them to be the, some of them are bacteria that we can actually buy specific probiotics, for example bacterium.

Whereas you couldn't go out and like, like buy over the counter a commensal and take that as a probiotic like Alistair. Okay, got it.

Okay. So here we're seeing that Ben is actually optimal on pretty much most of them. So I was talking about what I think is happening with your test result, Ben. I said that I think that you're just enriching another organism that is a very well known short chain fatty acid and that's coprococcus here.

What did you call it again?

It's Coprococcus prococcus.

Okay.

Coprococcus, yeah. So this is. There's like three to five different species of Coprococcus that are known to have huge metabolic freedom to produce short chain fatty acids, butyrate, acetate and propionate. And as you can see, I think this is the largest that we've seen in our data set.

I'm like off the charts high on that. What would cause something like that to be so elevated?

I think it's just your, your, your style of diet. I, I assume here, that I predict here and I'm going to show you one of the reasons why I predict that also that you, you know, prioritize plant, plant based, you know, food mostly. So when you look at your common cells, you can also actually predict the style of the, the long term style of, of eating or of diet that someone is actually.

So you're basically based on what you've seen so far in the bacterial balance, in particular this one that's overcrowding. The rest you're supposing that not knowing about my diet, that I eat a largely plant based diet.

This is, this is one organism that allows us actually learn that. It's called the Prevotella here. Okay, so you have 28% of that. Now the gut microbiome from what we know can actually be stratified in, into three main enterotypes, the Bacteroides, the Prevotella and the Ruminococcus. And these enterotypes basically are, they give us a sense of, for example, for Prevotella, we know that people that actually have Prevotella to be enriched in their gut ecosystem are people that are prioritizing plant rich foods and carbohydrates. Whereas people that actually have Bacteroides to be enriching their gut are people that are prioritizing mostly animal based diet. So for individuals, for example, who are mostly doing carnivorous diet, it would be super unsurprising for you to see high levels of Bacteroides or high levels of allostypes. Because we know that these organisms are high, they're enriched in the presence of high fat foods.

Yeah. And by the way, I'll just come right out and tell you right now, I'm, I'm pretty much omnivorous. I eat a lot of meat, red meat, poultry, fish, pork, organ meats, and a wide diversity of plants, sprouts, microgreens, ferments, et cetera. So I would not categorize myself as a largely plant based individual.

Yeah, I think for your results, actually it also kind of suggests to us that you're rounded up because you have high levels of Bacteroides. And so what we tend to see is people who are on the extreme of Maybe carnivores, we tend to see just super high levels of Bacteroides. And then people who are primarily just like vegan, we see super high levels of Prevotella. But what we are seeing here for your result, you have about 5% of your gut made up of bacteroides and about 28% of that made up of premature. So that's, that's pretty much balanced in terms of just looking at your gut microbiome profile.

But that one that's super high that you said you tend to see super high in. People are eating a lot of plants. Do you think that's potentially detrimental or something I should be paying attention to or doing something about?

No, no, actually this is, we know that these organisms have what we call the starch utilization systems system, which, which is a group of pathways and enzymes that allows them break any kind of carbohydrates. So it's actually, this is actually a good biomarker versus, versus, not. So you're perfectly fine.

And one of, one of the quick questions before we keep going. How much does this fluctuate? Like, you know, if I were to do one test on a Monday, another test next Tuesday, another test a month later, like, does it vary quite a bit?

Yeah, so it depends. The microbiome actually fluctuates. Fluctuates across two different timescales. I don't think the word I should use there is fluctuates. So it fluctuates on a short term scale. There are certain organisms that can fluctuate on a short term scale. But on a long term scale, the organisms that actually are most stable are these organisms we've been talking about, the Prevotella and the Bacteroides. They are enriched based off on your long term diet, but on the short term you're definitely going to see some small changes in the distribution of your gut microbiome. But it's not. Yeah, but it's not anything, it's not anything huge. When you're looking at Bacteroides and Prevotella, which are the main enterotypes.

Okay, got it.

Okay. So it looks like you're optimal for every single bacteria that is on the common cell section, which I was pleased.

To see that like those, those are pretty well balanced.

Yes. Which is great. That suggests that you're keeping an anti inflammatory state. You're producing your gut bacteria are producing beneficial compounds and metabolites like your vitamins, your neurotransmitters, etc. Okay. The third section is what we call the pathobions. So these Pathobions are organisms that, you know, when they're your gut, in small amounts, you're, you know, you're completely fine, or when they're absent, you're fine. But they tend to pose a problem to your gut health when they overgrow. And this overgrowth might be as a result of, you know, intestinal dysbiosis or, you know, a long round of antibiotics regimen that potentially just wipes out the beneficial organisms in the interim that can actually lead to the, to the bloom of these pathobiomes, especially the ones that are antibiotic resistant.

All right, and those are those just for anybody who didn't pick up that term, it's pathobion P A T H O B I O N T. These are the ones that you don't want.

To overgrow, you don't want them to overgrow. So if you have them in small amounts, you're fine, or if you don't have them at all, you're fine. And here you're actually optimal in almost all of them except for Proteobacteria. Now this is also borderline high because we recommend 0 to 4% here and you have 5% here and here. We know that this protobacteria pretty much gram negative bacteria that, you know, if you look at the outer covering of this bacteria, they have what we'll call the lipopolysaccharides. And these lipopolysaccharides are made up of lipid and polysaccharides. We've known for over three to four decades that these components of the bacteria are highly, highly pro inflammatory. So this becomes a problem when you have an increased intestinal permeability. For people that have a leaky gut, what happens is that when they have high levels of proteobacteria, those bacteria tend to translocate from places like the gut lumen across to the epithelium and then they can actually incite complex immunological reactions which sets the stage for inflammation.

So a high pathobion count in that case could be indicative of the presence of leaky gut or a permeable gut lining.

Yes, it could be indicative of that.

So I should be checking out my bowel movements to see if I have any spinach or corn or carrots or seeds and nuts in there to see if stuff's going through or not. Right?

Yeah. But I think also the most important thing there is think about the gut as an ecosystem where all of these organisms are competing for everything, resources, space inclusive. So what we tend to see is that when you increase the amount of your probiotic bacteria, which some of which you're deficient in, you automatically see a reduction in this proteobacteria. And how does that happen? A lot of these probiotic bacteria produce things like butyrate. And we've seen academic literature that butyrate actually plays a huge role in sequestrain lipopolysaccharides. So that's one way to actually, that's actually one smart way of driving down levels of proteobacteria. It is by increasing the amount of your beneficial organisms, such as your probiotic bacteria.

Okay, yeah. And that's achieved through I know, a wide variety of fiber containing foods to elevate that butyrate count.

Okay, exactly, exactly. Yeah. And then for other things like hydrogen sulfide producers, we have organisms like Biophylla. What's one? Disulfavibro. These are pretty much sulfate reducing bacteria. And Bilophylla, the name gives it away. It's a biologic bacteria. It's, you know, it degrades bile to, to produce hydrogen sulfide. Disulfovibro is also a hydrogen sulfide producer. One of the things that we encourage here is when you have high levels, we, we encourage that, you know, you want to keep this almost non existent or super low because an overproduction and over accumulation of these organisms can actually lead to some, you know, an accumulation of hydrogen sulfide.

Right. So, so you get almost like small intestine bacterial overgrowth, like symptoms like sibo gas, bloating, things like that. If those were elevated, if, if those.

Are elevated, more like they cause an impact in your, in your large bowel, which can of course then impact your operable. Well, in which case you're talking about your sigil. Yes.

Well, I'm glad mine aren't elevated then.

Zero. Completely zero.

Cool, good.

Methanobrobacter is another one. You have Zero. These are methane producers. We actually see this with people who are dealing with chronic constipation. And we've also seen this in people who have constipation, predominant ibs. And when you think about it, that makes sense because methanobribacter, a very popular species of it is methanobaric bacteria Smithi, produces methane. And we know that methane actually contributes to the slowing of the transit time of food across your gastrointestinal tract.

All right, good. I'm not producing a lot of methane. I'm not a cow. Great. And I actually don't really fart that much, so that's a clue. All right.

Okay. Enterococcus, E. Coli, 00. Which is great.

Good. No E. Coli.

Okay, now exogenous pathogens. So exogenous pathogens are bacteria that are not, these are not part of your, of your normal flora. If you find them there, especially in high amounts, it means that you've actually picked them up from the surrounding. An example is Campylobacter that is very highly, highly implicated in food poisoning. Shigella contributes to dysentery, Salmonella, staphylococcus, Vibro, yersinia, all of them, you have them at zero. So that's fantastic.

Great.

Okay, so that's section two, section three. Here we are giving you insights into metabolites that are produced. So here again, we are not measuring the metabolite. 16s does not, cannot measure metabolite, but we are basically just showing you the proportion of organisms that we know produce this metabolite. Here we show, start by showing you short chain fatty acid producers, Butyrate, acetate and propionate. So for butyrate and acetate, it makes sense because if you, if you look at your, the, the previous result that we went through, now we saw, you know, short chain fatty acid producers to be low. That's why your score here is 41 and 48. And just to elaborate, what you see are the metabolites. What you see here, your percentile score, pretty much how you compare to other people who are taking the test. And here you're seeing the associated impact.

So still showing an elevated need to get the short chain fatty acids in the gut elevated.

That's correct.

Got it.

For neurotransmitters, everything checks out. Organisms that produce dopamine, GABA could be higher. This is also not, and this is, I think this is important, this is also to say that if your values are low here, it doesn't necessarily mean that you're actually deficient in GABA and dopamine. We're just looking at the microbiota contribution.

Right. But it, but it's a good glimpse into a predictive analysis of the gut brain axis as far as the neurotransmitters that are potentially being created as metabolites in the gut.

Yes, it is. And so we show neurotransmitter producers. For vitamin producers, you actually check out outstandingly on all of them. Vitamin B1 down to K2, you're all in the satisfactory range in the 70s and 80s. Here we have the toxin producers. Here you want your values to be less, closer to zero. So for you, hydrogen sulfide that makes a lot of sense because you don't have those organisms that produce hydrogen sulfide. As we saw ammonia 57 here we are basically looking at, you know, organisms that are known to metabolize proteinous foods to produce ammonia. And you're 57 there. That shows needs work. Methane, you're good. You're actually like in the first percentile. That's wonderful. Lps, that makes sense because we've seen that your proteobacteria, you actually have about 5% of your gut and the proteobacteria.

Okay, got it. Quick question. The ammonia piece, you didn't see that elevated. You said, for example, with the metabolizing of meat. Is there. Or maybe you're getting to this on your recommendations. If so, you could just shut me down and save it for later. But is there a way to actually modulate or lower that value?

Yeah, one way that we tend to reduce that is we tell people to go down a little bit on animal based diet.

Okay.

Okay. So detoxification markers. Great. And longevity factors. So here we are basically just looking at the organisms that that for example, we're looking at myrocinus. We know that there are certain bacteria that actually have, you know, the myosinus enzyme that helps to break things like glucosinolate to isothiocyanates which have anti inflammatory properties and anti cancer properties.

Right. Those are the ones you'd find in high amounts like sulforaphane and broccoli sprouts and things like that.

Exactly. And cruciferous vegetables. Exactly.

And you said mine were a little bit low. Or I could increase my intake of things like cruciferous.

Yes, so you could increase. Yeah, that's a good point. You could increase that. That could help to enrich the organism that break that down.

Okay, got it.

Yes. Yeah.

And by the way, real quick, back to the ammonia piece. Just something I was thinking about after you said that about meat is part of it improper digestion of meat? Like could it be related to low pancreatic enzyme production or poor meat digestion versus overall meat intake? Because again, I don't eat a ton of meat. It's part of my diet, but I'm not nowhere near my carnivore friends intake.

No, absolutely. Yeah, it could be that. Unfortunately we can't just account for that using a test like this.

Yeah, okay, got it.

Yeah. Okay, so that is the section three and the last piece is the section four, which is where we basically show you recommendations. So based off from what we saw, what should you be Eating and what shouldn't you be eating? And these recommendations, I must say that they're purely based off on what we know in academic literature. And so here we're seeing things like, you know, and we stratify the recommendations into food, probiotics, prebiotics, supplements, and lifestyle changes. Right. So here we see that, you know, Ben should be taking cranberry. Why? Cranberry, rye and cherry. But why should he be taking those? Because those three recommendations increase Akkermansia, cranberry.

Rye, and what was the other one you said? Cherry, cranberry, rye and cherry. Okay, so if you're going to take an Akkermansia supplement, if you included cranberry. Not just on Thanksgiving, folks. Rye. I'm assuming, like rye bread, rye crackers and things like that. And cherry. I love tart cherry before bed, by the way. It helps with sleep. That would increase Akkermansia.

Akkermansia, yes.

Okay, that's interesting.

And we show all the scientific evidence that actually back that up.

Yeah, you've got all the studies listed there. Okay, got it.

Exactly. And we do the same. So that's. That's the approach. So we start out by just showing the things that are low and high, and then all these recommendations just attend to them.

Yeah, okay, that's super helpful. What are some of the highlights on the recommendations that you think are the most critical or important based on what you saw in my test?

I think some of the most critical things here are. We want to get Akkermansia up. One is, we've shown how cranberry, rye and things like cherry can increase Akkermansia, but also probiotics that can increase Akkermansia that are not Akkermansia. Probiotics are enterococcus, fascium, lactobacillus, kefiri. We've seen that in academic literature that by increasing. By supplementing with those probiotics, you can actually, actually indirect, indirectly increase the levels of your commencia.

Did you call it Lactobacillus kefiri? Like what you'd find in kefir?

Yes.

Oh, interesting.

Okay. Yeah.

Well, I know how to make that. I usually use as a meat marinade, but I can start drinking more of it, so that's good to know. Okay, got it. Yeah.

And then for supplements, you see things like sulforaphane, which makes sense because we. We were just talking about the myrrhyanase or bacteria that harbor my enzymes. We know that myosyanins helps actually to break down things like glucose to sulforaphane so here you can actually supplement with sulforaphane. And we know that by supplementing with that you can reduce bacteroide. It is because you're already high in bacteroid. So anything that you see here to be reduced are things you're already high.

Well, my wife and I have really been getting into making sprouts a lot. We actually weren't that into it prior to when I had taken this test when we just got some new sprouting kits from the sprouting company. And I've actually already increased my sulforaphane intake pretty significantly just by having sprouts with just about everything except maybe breakfast.

Yeah, that's actually something that we started in this house like literally last week.

So easy and so cheap compared to buying from the grocery store.

Yes, exactly. Yes. Okay. And lifestyle changes we see. These are some of the things that we recommend. High fiber diet, Fruits, legume fiber. And we show why you should be including those.

I mean, would you ever not recommend that? Would you ever see something where you'd say hey, back off the fiber or don't eat as many plants? It seems like that's just generally a broad recommendation. Just about. I mean besides like an autoimmune issue or you know, an elimination diet for example, which you're no doubt familiar with. You know, that's why some people follow the carnivore for a short term stint to manage some autoimmunity flare ups. But for the most part, I'm assuming you're recommending that to just about everybody. The plant and fiber intake.

Yeah, we. Yeah, yeah, it's a good point. It's one of the things that we have consistently seen to actually have more, it has more, it impacts more health benefits than not.

Yeah, okay, got it.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So then this is what your test result is. And for people who are interested in digging a little bit more, they want to look at all the references where the recommendations are coming from. We also show them those in supplementary terms.

Okay, cool. I have a few follow up questions. The first is I've been asked this before by people I think related to 16s sequencing. Is there evidence that when you implement these recommendations that you can actually shift this profile significantly? Do you take a group of people, do the 16s sequencing, implement the results, come back, do the sequencing again and see actual change?

Yeah, absolutely. There are actually studies and the way these studies have been, have been set up is you pretty much have two groups of people. You give, you test them prior to when they actually start the Interventions. And then after they do the interventions for eight weeks or ten weeks or thereabouts, you then test them again. There are lots of studies that actually show dramatic changes between those two time points. So yes, and we work with clinicians who are already using this test. This is the way they use it. It's more like they use it longitudinally. They test their patients prior to giving them the interventions and after three months they test again.

Okay. And then as far as the butyrate and the short chain fatty acids, let's say someone were eating a low fiber diet because they have gut issues or they have fodmap sensitivities or maybe some type of autoimmune issue. Is there something to be said for the use of butyric acid supplementation or some other approach that wouldn't be so hefty in fiber to increase short chain fatty acids?

Yes, absolutely, absolutely. So in that case, supplementation with beauty raised supplements makes sense, like BHB and the rest, because we know that people who are dealing with IBS issues can't withstand high fodmap foods.

And I could be misremembering this, but does coconut oil or coconut products, do they have an impact on short chain fatty acids?

Yeah, they do.

Okay, so if you were, I don't know, let's say you're eating a carnivore diet, you could include things like butyric acid supplementation or coconut oil and elevate levels of short chain fatty acids higher than what they might be on a non fiber diet.

Yeah, yeah, but that's the thing. The goal is, yes, you can do that, but the bigger goal is to, to actually want to arm your resident bacteria to be able to produce these things rather than doing like a complement continuous supplementation. But when you need to, in situations like this, yes, it makes total sense to supplement.

Okay, got it. The next question, kind of a logistical one. I test so much, I don't remember. Is this just like a tissue swab on the butt after you poop or was this the one where you got to fill up a bunch of tubes? Remind me the logistics of the test.

Yeah, so we send you the kit home and then you basically collect your sample on a tissue paper and then you take a swab stick to just pick a sample.

So it's a very small amount compared to like the Genova diagnostics GI map test where you're filling out like, I don't know, like four to six tubes, if I remember properly.

Yeah, that's because they are for Genova for example, they're also kind of like processing part of the samples using different other techniques. So they need, need a large sample size.

Yeah. So way less performance anxiety, folks. You just gotta wipe and you don't have to hover over the toilet and try to fill up everything. So that's good. And then another question about this. If someone tests in terms of their results, obviously they get a PDF. I don't want to give people the impression you're going to hop on the phone for an hour with everybody who gets results back in. But how do you guys approach the process of interpreting or walking people through their results?

Yeah, that's a very good question. So we actually have about 50 active clinics now that are using the test. So one of the services that we also provide is when people take the test and they are interested in working with a practitioner, we can actually link you up with one of our practitioners who can help you walk through the results and give you more insight into your profile.

Yeah, the PDF is pretty helpful, but I know some people might want it a deeper dive walkthrough like we're doing right now. And then as far as the cost of this test, how does it compare to other gut tests in terms of the investment?

Oh yeah. So the test currently goes for 150 US dollars for people in Canada is 210 Canadian dollars. And one of the reasons why is that we have prioritized affordability is because just coming into this space we've seen that that's a major pain point. These tests are out of pocket and people, you know, you get better value from this test when you can actually retest after trying out the interventions. So $150 USD, 210 Canadian dollars.

Okay, got it. And when you were going through the, the vitamins and the metabolites related to vitamin production, have you ever yourself or seen someone go out and get a blood test and see, for example, for, I don't know, vitamin D or something like that, that the results correlate like if you have low vitamin D metabolites that you'd also have low 1 hydroxy vitamin D levels in the blood or something like that?

That's a really good question for vitamins. No, but we've seen that with shortened fatty acids, we've seen that with people who have done the test super low on short in fatty acid producers and then they do another metabolomics test that actually measures and quantify the actual metabolites in their fecal sample and, and that correlated with the lower levels that they saw.

Our Test now in your lab with everything you know about gut and gut testing technology, are there any up and coming technologies or tests or research that you're particularly excited about?

Oh yeah, that's, that's a good question. Yeah, I'm excited about where, you know, the gut microbiome is, is going. I think that, you know, all of these different techniques that we're using now is telling us part of the story which, which is great. But, but in my opinion, I think that where we are actually going to get a full appreciation, especially in the context of these biosis, is when we can merge, you know, whole, more like whole genome sequencing and metabolomics. But the problem now is cost. So you know, as, as there is more adoption, what we envisage is that in the near future the cost will really go down and then we can actually know, combine those kind of true powerful techniques to really understand the gut microbiome.

Okay, got it. So let's summarize. There's four different sections of the test. You're looking at the probiotic bacteria, the commensals, the pathobionts, and then the. What was the last ones?

The recommendation?

Yeah, the recommendation section where you see which foods to eat, which lifestyle factors to adjust and then in terms of, for example, for a guy like me, you're seeing, despite me eating a widely varied omnivorous diet inclusive of fermented foods that travel might have had an impact on the gut biome that I personally need more Akkermansia and more short chain fatty acids. I may want to look into my enzyme production to see how good a job I'm doing breaking down the meat that I'm consuming. And I should increase my sulforaphane intake from cruciferi, broccoli, sprouts, et cetera. And then for the Akkermansia piece, in addition to looking into something like an Anchormania probiotic, Cherry, rye and cranberry.

Right? That's correct. That's a lot of summary actually.

Yeah, it helps me a lot to be able to just summarize things in 30 seconds so I don't have to go up to the refrigerator and Instacart and Amazon and order 100 different things I don't need. So this is super helpful. Well, I'm going to include a link to Vitrakt in the show notes. I believe we have a discount as well on the testing. And so you can go to BenGreenfieldLife.com Vitracked podcast V I T R A C T Podcast. You can leave your questions, your comments, your feedback there. If you have your own gut questions or more questions about how this test works, how it compares to others, just go there and leave them all. And Dozy, thanks so much for doing this, man. It's been super interesting and insightful.

Thank you very much, Ben. Thank you for having me on your podcast as well. It was a good talk.

Yeah, absolutely. It's my pleasure. All right, folks, well, I'm Ben Greenfield along with Dozy from Vitrakt. Signing up from BenGreenfieldLife.com have an amazing week.

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