From Gut to Brain: Understanding Parkinson's, Constipation and Blood Sugar Dysregulation and Probiotics to Address Them All with Martha Carlin

Welcome to The Perfect Stool: Understanding and Healing the Gut Microbiome. This is your host, Lindsey Parsons, and today I'll be speaking with Martha Cartland. Martha is the CEO and founder of The Bio Collective, a platform that aims to unlock the mysteries of the microbiome. Martha's research, inspired by her husband's Parkinson's diagnosis, delves into the intricate connections between between our environment, diet, gut health, and brain function, earning her the well-deserved title of citizen scientist. But before our conversation, if you haven't yet followed or subscribed to the show, be sure to do so. And if you want to get transcripts of the podcast, pop over to my website, HighDesertHealthCoaching.com, and sign up for my newsletter. You'll also get my free ebooklet, Finding Your Root Cause Through Stool and Organic Acids Testing, when you sign up. If you haven't yet done my quiz on which stool test would help you get to your root cause, you can find a link in the show notes and take that. Now on to the show. Welcome to the podcast, Martha.

Thanks for having me today. I'm excited to be here.

I am too. We had a great pre-podcast conversation, and I've been really excited to do the recording. So let's, let's launch in.

Great.

So I understand that your interest in the gut microbiome started with your husband's Parkinson's diagnosis. So can you tell me more about that?

My husband was diagnosed in 2002 with Parkinson's, and I started studying many different aspects of food and the science behind food and all, all of the things that are going down the pipe. But I was also studying different mechanisms in Parkinson's. And in 2014, the first paper was published that showed that a researcher could actually divide the two primary types of Parkinson's. There's one where people are more tremor dominant, and there's another type where people have more trouble with their posture and gait freezing. And he was able to separate the two groups by their gut bacteria. And I had just been learning this term, the microbiome, and reading about changes from Dr. Martin Blaser in his book, Missing Microbes. And I was like, okay, wow, all these worlds are converging. And so I actually quit my job and started funding research at the University of Chicago, looking at my husband's in my microbiome and did that for about 6 months until I went on to found the Bio Collective to look at Parkinson's microbiome and even broader into other disease states and health states as well.

And so what do we know about the microbiomes of Parkinson's patients then?

Well, it's interesting because that first paper in 2014, if you look in PubMed now, the number of papers annually has escalated like a hockey stick.

Mm-hmm.

So the gut is definitely dysbiotic, so out of balance. There is a group in Finland who claims to have identified the microbe that is causing Parkinson's. I have some question that there's a single microbe. I think it's a, it's a larger scale dysbiosis, but the group in Finland has been looking at an organism called Desulfovibrio. Yeah, that bacteria produces hydrogen sulfide, right? And also produces a magnetomagnetite. And there are implications in iron metabolism and Parkinson's as well. So those two pieces kind of fit together in an interesting way. And then we have actually found in our Parkinson's microbiome, we've found markers associated with Mycobacterium species, and that ties pretty nicely to the Harvard doctor study, doctor and nurses study that showed low-fat milk. So consuming low-fat or non-fat dairy increased the risk of Parkinson's. There's quite a bit of evidence that the dairy supply has been contaminated with Mycobacterium avium paratuberculosis. So there are some people looking at that as well. And so we have that in some of our biomarkers. And then There are multiple researchers kind of looking at the whole microbiome and loss of function. There's implications in the oral microbiome with loss of amylase function, so the breakdown of starch. So you see these papers pop up and people get really excited, like, oh, this is the answer. But I think it's a little bit more complicated than one organism. But we can definitely see that the gut is disrupted, and that can be from overuse of antibiotics throughout life. That can be from exposure to chemicals and pesticides, either through work or through the food supply, and a number of these things that's knocked down the beneficial species, and then just not eating a healthy diet that's also feeding the microbes.

Yeah. So is it my imagination, and this is based on very few sample size, but Is it more prevalent in men than women, Parkinson's?

It is actually. So there's kind of a mirror image between Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. So 2/3 of people with Parkinson's are men, 1/3 are women, and the opposite is true of Alzheimer's. 2/3 are women and 1/3 are men.

I said that only 'cause of my parents' friends, all of the ones who had Parkinson's were men because my parents obviously are getting towards the age where that starts getting diagnosed. So, so your group was collecting stool samples and analyzing the microbiome of people with Parkinson's?

Yes. And one of the really interesting things about that is people doing the processing in the lab actually found that they could identify a Parkinson's person just from the stool that was collected. No other information. They didn't know from the check card that they had Parkinson's, but they could tell because the Parkinson's stool had the texture of concrete. And so the processing of the Parkinson's stools had to be handled differently than all of our other samples because it was so hard, it wouldn't go through the syringes that we use to aliquot the samples.

Oh, interesting. So it was like hardened concrete.

Yes. I mean, it had very distinct lack of what's called fecal water or moisture in the stool.

Yeah.

That's pretty interesting because there has never been anything published on this. And chronic constipation often precedes a diagnosis of Parkinson's by anywhere from 10 to 15 years. And about one-third of people who have IBD, IBS, IBD, will go on to develop Parkinson's.

This is interesting because you mentioned that, well, at least one bacteria that's implicated in Parkinson's, Dysulfobacterium, is a hydrogen sulfide producer, which typically would produce diarrhea. And I'd literally just did my previous podcast on hydrogen sulfide and have a client in the situation who had only constipation as a symptom and ran a SIBO breath test on her that came out completely negative for methane. And I thought, what's going on? And then I started looking a little further into it and it was like, oh, in a small percentage of people who have an excess of hydrogen sulfide in the large intestine, it can present as constipation. So it's interesting that, that the constipation could be in conjunction with this Desulfovibrio.

Yes. And Desulfovibrio is also highly present in wastewater. So in large animal feedlots and those type of operations, and also in the public sewer lines. So—

Interesting.

It may be that wastewater treatment is not fully addressing these, um, types of microbes. And they're also, you know, potentially making it somehow into the water supply.

Yeah. Well, just one more reason to have a good quality water filter.

Exactly.

Okay. So can you also explain about probiotics and mannitol and, and how that relates to Parkinson's?

Sure. So I actually attended the World Parkinson's Lindsey Parsons Congress in Portland back in 2016. And at the time, my husband was, you know, he's had ups and downs over the years. And that was kind of a down point for him. And he was not walking well and unable to really navigate crowds. And anyway, I attended a session there from a group called Clinikrowd from Israel. And they were presenting data from a researcher who had shown in a mouse model that the sugar alcohol mannitol could stop the aggregation of the proteins and actually pull them out of the brain of the mouse. And I was like, oh, wow, that's really fascinating. And I came back, got the paper, bought a book on mannitol chemistry and started reading about mannitol chemistry. Of course, it's one of the most— well, it is the most abundant sugar in nature. And it in plants, it manages osmotic stress. So then I'm thinking, okay, back to this, the concrete stool, that's an indication of osmotic stress for sure. And so in my mannitol chemistry book, it was talking about bacteria that use mannitol as a carbon source or that can produce it. And there were a handful of bacteria that could actually produce mannitol. And they did that by converting glucose and fructose into mannitol. And humans don't really use mannitol. We eliminate it through the urine and feces. So I thought, okay, let's, let's see if we can put a factory back that can make mannitol in the gut, and maybe this will help with the Parkinson's. And so we prototyped a product and gave it to my husband at the beginning of 2017, and we were taking his microbiome samples all along the way. And in about 30 days, well, less than 30 days, he was no longer walking with a cane. He was able to navigate a crowd. And then we sent the samples off and continued to take them all the way up to 120 days. We could see that his microbiome continued remodeling all the way through that 120-day period and was moving back closer and closer and closer to the profile from the Human Microbiome Project for the healthy human stool. And so we're like, oh wow, this is, this is pretty remarkable. And went on to file a patent and have really studied and spent more time kind of digging into different mechanisms and how mannitol may work in the body in different ways. And of course, you're eliminating glucose and fructose, which is a signal to the body, and insulin resistance is implicated in Parkinson's. And so there's a lot of other connections sort of back to sugar and getting rid of that sugar. But the initial idea actually came from this research that showed that mannitol could stop the aggregation of the proteins.

And were these proteins related to Parkinson's?

Yes. So it's alpha-synuclein.

Mm-hmm.

It's actually an antimicrobial peptide that then aggregates in the brain. And I think like one of the mechanisms is mannitol is a neutral molecule, and typically the folding and aggregating is driven by a charge.

Okay. And so did your husband also have an issue with constipation? And if so, did that probiotic combo help?

He did have an issue with constipation, although, you know, what I would say is a lot of times people don't really even know. They've had constipation so long that they think it's maybe normal not to go every day.

Ah, yeah.

And so it did help with that. And we really started to have conversations about, have you gone today? If you haven't gone today, it's important that you go today, you know, drink more fluid or, you know, eat more vegetables, like something that's gonna help move that waste through your body. So it's, it's become more top of mind for sure since we did that. We had never really discussed it before.

And so that probiotic, did that become a product?

It did become a product. So we went on about 3 years later to bring that to market and it's called BiotiQuest. And the probiotic that I made for John is called Sugar Shift because it shifts that sugar metabolism.

And does it catch it quick enough to, to change your blood sugar?

It does change blood sugar. So Parkinson's is a little tough to do a clinical trial in just because endpoint measurements are much more difficult. And since we thought it would be impacting blood glucose because of this change in the conversion of glucose and fructose, we chose to do a trial in diabetes.

Oh, okay.

And so we actually had 30 people take the product and 30 people in the control group. The control group was just the fibers, the same fibers that are in with the probiotic. And so there were some benefits just to the fiber, but the long-term trend of the blood sugar continued to rise on just the fiber, where the trend went down with the bacteria and the fiber together. And then over time, we got a decrease in fasting blood glucose, glucose, postprandial blood glucose. Decrease in insulin, uh, the HOMA-IR improved, and HbA1c— it took 6 months for the HbA1c actually to improve. So the clinical trial was 90 days, and then we unblinded at the end and kept 10 subjects on the product for another 3 months so that we could see what the additional changes would be.

Okay. And how much of a decrease in A1c happened after that 6 months?

I think it was 14%. I think it was a 14% decline in HbA1c.

Okay, great. And then I, I don't think we talked about dopamine and Parkinson's and how that relates.

Well, of course, the dopaminergic neurons in the brain are what are kind of losing their power, I guess, is how I would characterize it in Parkinson's. And that comes from the gut also. So all of these hormones and neurotransmitters are are made in the gut and the interaction of the gut bacteria with, through the vagus nerve to our brain, this communication loop that goes on. So you can get this stress mechanism that puts, in Parkinson's, they get into fight or flight and they're sort of stuck in this fight or flight stage that is producing these stress hormones and that is affecting neurotransmitters, including dopamine. And what happens is then, you know, the body starts trying to figure out, okay, how do I turn this off? And it starts dampening down things in order to try to save itself, but you start to lose function that way.

So can you tell me about the BioFlux model and how you use that to create the probiotic formulations?

Sure. So, so the BioCollective was originally started to collect fecal samples and get whole genome sequencing. Of all the organisms in the sample. So a lot of times if you, if you get a report from somebody, they don't do whole genome. So we got this large dataset of samples and then we built a computational model where we can see how bacteria work together as a team. And that's what's going on in your gut. The bacteria are working together as a team, either for good or for bad. And so what our bioflux computational model does is it feeds in the genomes of probiotic organisms and then it runs them with certain growth media. So kind of the standard food profile, if you will, of what bacteria are eating. And it will show what they use and produce over a period of time so that we can design a team of bacteria, of probiotic organisms that will perform the function we want them to. So in the case of the Sugar Shift formula, we design a team that can sustain that sugar conversion for 12 hours and produce metabolites like reduced glutathione and butyrate, which is beneficial for the gut lining. And so you can start to see, okay, you want it to make mannitol, but you want it to do other things. What else is it doing in the context of that teamwork?

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Yes.

Okay.

So just like humans have genes, bacteria have genes, and those genes are essentially all the different capabilities that they have. And what's really interesting is in terms of humans and the microbes in our bodies, we have roughly somewhere in the neighborhood of 200 to 300 times more genes that come from the bacteria than our own gene function.

So are there any probiotics that are specifically designed for Parkinson's?

I mean, I designed my Sugar Shift probiotic for my husband with Parkinson's, but there is actually, there's a company out of Korea called Benad. I think is their name, and they have a product called Neurale that they're currently doing a clinical trial in the US in Parkinson's, and they have done some clinical trials in Korea. It is a single strain of Lactobacillus plantarum, and we actually got that strain and sequenced the genome and compared it to the plantarum in our formula to see if there were any unique properties in that. Particular strain that our strain did not have. There's also—

Edwerther?

No, ours actually had some capabilities that it did not have, but ours had all the capabilities it had. And then there is research ongoing at the University of Edinburgh on Bacillus subtilis, and they're studying that organism in worm models. I guess they can give the worm a tremor. And then that Bacillus subtilis gets rid of the tremor. And we have a Bacillus subtilis in our formula. It's not the one they're studying over there, but they have some similar capabilities as well.

So you brought up an interesting point, which is like, so I'd like, I looked up the Nurali and it's not inexpensive. That's the, the L. plantarum PS-128, right? And, and it is quite an expensive probiotic. And basically you're saying for your much more reasonably priced probiotic, you basically have a strain that does everything their, their fancy strain does.

Yes, I am saying that. I have had some conversations with them 'cause I thought, well, they were at that time considering like making it available to other people to purchase as a strain ingredient. And, but they ended up, I think not, I think they decided not to do that.

Right.

I thought, well, you know, I could use yours, but I, I like mine because ours also had some capability for detoxifying Glyphosate.

Mm-hmm.

So that's actually a personal passion of mine, and I believe one of the drivers of the increase in Parkinson's is the increase in glyphosate in our food. Glyphosate is an antibiotic, kills the lactobacillus and bifidobacteria in the gut and many of the beneficial species and leaves behind the pathogens. And our Lactobacillus plantarum that came from fermented elderberries in Colorado. Was resistant to glyphosate and able to break it down using something called the third pathway that doesn't produce this toxic, more toxic metabolite called AMPA. So, and our, our Planterium is actually in all of our probiotic formulas, but it is in the Sugar Shift formula.

Cool. So yeah, so I, I always wonder about that. I mean, I talked about it and heard about it and about the whole glyphosate, and I'm wondering how much is left in your food. Is it really enough to say kill off all your lactobacillus and bifidobacteria? Because, I mean, I don't— I see a lot of stool tests, and admittedly, the people I see are probably eating more organic than the typical American, but they still have lactobacillus and bifido.

I mean, it will select for a certain profile. I mean, that doesn't mean you won't have any. And so I'll give you an example. There is one, Bifidoadolescentis, that is resistant to glyphosate, but it's a Bifidobacteria that doesn't make something called a plasmoligin that's important for membranes and, and has been implicated as being beneficial for Alzheimer's. But in the last decade or so, they have started to dry down about 60 different crops with glyphosate. So It's, you know, I'm not just talking about the corn and soy because, you know, if you're working with people who are focused on their health, they're probably not eating GMO corn and soy, but they may not realize that the chickpeas— chickpeas have one of the highest levels of glyphosate that there is because chickpeas are sprayed at the end of harvest. So they get an even drying in the field and they can harvest them faster. Same thing with lentils. So a lot of your legumes, all of your grains, If they're not organic. If they're not organic. But I also need to check with a friend of mine in the organic regulatory arena because sometimes you can use a dry down thing at the end of the— on an organic crop. So I think it's always best to call up and ask, do you use glyphosate in your desiccation process? I mean, I did that with Bob's Red Mill.

And what'd they say?

And they said that, you know, they request that all their farmers do not do that, but they do not test for glyphosate.

Okay. So, but I mean, have there been studies looking at the microbiomes of people that are eating food with glyphosate?

There are more recently, there are, there are some studies on glyphosate impact on the microbiome. And there was a, actually a good one in bees a few years back. That was kind of one of the big flashing red light ones that came out. So I could probably pull one of those up and send it to you. Yeah. Because I just saw one a couple of days ago, actually.

Okay. And is there— there's also a relationship between hydrogen sulfide and pesticides, right?

Yes, I believe so.

So, so it's— I mean, I think I mentioned that in my last podcast, just that, that the glyphosate can potentially result in the overgrowth of hydrogen sulfide-producing bacteria by— is it impacting molybdenum?

Well, it impacts most of the trace metals, so it will chelate. I mean, glyphosate actually was originally, um, a, a metals chelator used to clean pipes, metal pipes.

Oh, wow.

And then they made it into this herbicide and it chelates copper preferentially. So we've actually done a study with Dr. Don Huber, who's kind of one of the global glyphosate experts, in cabbage because it wasn't maintaining its structure, much like our collagen is not— many people's collagen is not maintaining its structure. And glyphosate will bind up in that study boron, copper, and manganese. And those were the 3 trace minerals that were needed for the cabbage to maintain its structure throughout the fermentation process with the sauerkraut. And of course, copper is essential for collagen formation in the human body. It has a lot of downstream impact. I'm friends with Stephanie Seneff, who wrote the book Toxic Legacy. You know, we talk back and forth about our different bits and pieces. And she's written a couple of papers on how glyphosate may be implicated in Parkinson's and other neurological diseases, in autism, and in sort of what's going on in different metabolic pathways as a result of, uh, glyphosate consumption.

Okay. Well then people can definitely check that out, her book. So in our pre-interview, you mentioned aquaporins, and that was actually the first time I'd ever heard them mentioned. So can you explain what they are and the research? That you know about on them?

Sure. Aquaporins are a relatively new discovery, I say, you know, in the last couple of decades. And they're the water channels between the cell membranes. And I think they're up to about 13 right now. But the one that I was most interested in is aquaporin-4, which is prevalent in the brain. And I have actually been working on a hypothesis of something called molecular mimicry, where we can actually create an antibody to, say, an aquaporin-4 by either eating a food or having a bacteria that has a similar, um, aquaporin, and our body has an immune reaction to that and then creates this antibody that attacks our own aquaporin-4. As it turns out, there's aquaporin-4 in tomatoes, spinach, corn, and wheat, I believe. So that's kind of an emerging area of research that I've been looking at. And there are a number of papers on the aquaporin connection to neurological problems. And of course, then back again to that concrete-like stool. And, you know, aquaporin is the flow of water across the membrane. So, yeah.

I think I looked up something. I did see, I saw those 3 things that you mentioned, but I saw soybeans, not wheat, as the 4th food.

Oh, you know what?

You're right.

It is soybeans because wheat, there's another protein that in my molecular mimicry stuff called alpha crystallin, and that's in wheat and corn, and humans have an alpha B crystallin.

So do you avoid those foods?

I do avoid those foods. I avoid those foods altogether. And it's interesting because we used to eat spinach a lot because people were like, oh, spinach is healthy, eat the spinach. So many of the salad mixes have spinach in it. I'm like, ooh, don't eat the spinach.

And there's no form of spinach that you can eat that removes that aquaporin. It's still in there.

Well, I'm sure. I mean, there probably is one somewhere, but, you know, I'd have to go through rather lengthy and expensive exercise in doing the genomes of various species of spinach.

Oh yeah. No, I was thinking of cooking methods, like when you remove oxalates by dropping in boiling water.

'Cause it does change the oxalate, you know how it, right, right. The oxalates behave.

So I, I don't know.

I'll have to look at that.

Yeah. So yeah, no, I eat spinach every morning and ever since we talked, I'm like, Oh, but I do know about the oxalates, but I, but I sort of mitigate that by taking calcium citrate with my breakfast since I, since I don't eat dairy anyway.

Well, we moved to broccoli sprouts, so we, we eat a lot of broccoli sprouts. Okay.

Yeah. I, I like, I like something I can stir fry in oil and eat next to my egg.

Yeah.

So tell me about the other probiotics that BioTequest has worked on and sells.

So when we first brought out our products, we came out with the Sugar Shift, a product called Ideal Immunity, which has specific strain of lactobacillus called Lactobacillus ruminis that is very effective at killing foodborne pathogens like Listeria and Salmonella and E. coli. And then we brought out a product called Heart Centered, and that was focused on cardiovascular health. The microorganisms produce OQ-10 and help with nitric oxide production. So, you know, vasodilation. So we brought those two products to market. And then later that, well, I guess it was about a year later, we actually, a friend of mine's mother had to go on IV antibiotics for a month after she got sepsis from a, ruptured appendix, and she was having major GI issues and bowel irregularity. And the doctor was kind of like, that's how it is. Don't worry about it. It's not a problem. And she was pretty stressed out about it. And her son is actually one of my advisors and he's a fermentation chemist. And he called me and he said, you know, that antibiotic formula you were going to make, do you think you could make it now for my mother. And so, you know, we checked our inventory and went to our vendors and said, we still need these two strains or whatever. And we made a small batch. And within a week's time, she called me on the phone and she was just raving about how much better she felt. And, you know, that it was just incredible. And Steve laughed because he had been talking to her about probiotics for 20 years. And she had pretty much ignored him. And now she's like a true believer. So we brought that antibiotic antidote to market. And then—

What strain was that that you added to that, or was it multiple strains beyond the usual group?

It's a multi-strain formula also, but what we did when we made that, it was actually based on— there was a research paper that had come out a few years earlier out of the Weitzmann Institute that was looking at one 11-strain formula that was given to a group of people after taking antibiotics, and it showed that it actually made things worse. Mm-hmm. And I sat down with my chief scientific officer, Raul Cano, and he's a world-renowned microbiologist, and he looked at the formula and he said, well, it's not well balanced. I would never recommend that. Oftentimes people will just go get a lactic acid bacteria.

Was it like a Visbiome or a, or a, a VSL3?

They didn't disclose the name of the product, but I was able to find a product in Israel that had those 11 strains.

Okay. Not that one though.

And we said, you need something that is more well-balanced, that doesn't take the pH to such an acidic level that you can't recolonize a full complement of the microbiome. And so Raul went away with his magic and came back, and then we ran it through the computational model and tweaked it a bit and brought that product forward. And then we also have a culture starter. I mean, I'm going to call it a yogurt culture starter, but it's technically it's not a yogurt if it doesn't have Streptococcus thermophilus or Lactobacillus bulgaricus.

Really?

I mean, that's, I'd say, sort of a branding thing, but yogurt, that's the technical term. It's got to have one of one or both of those in it to be called a yogurt. And Dr. Bill Davis has— his group has kind of coined this phrase, pro-gurt, Probiotic yogurt, because they make yogurts with all these different strains. And so we had such a demand, people were making yogurt with our— you, and you can make yogurt with any one of our formulas. And so we actually made a jar that is culture starter, just so you can take a scoop instead of having to open capsules. And we have prototyped about 20 different formulas that we plan to bring out over time. The next one scheduled to, well, we have one we're bringing out with a physician later this year, that's been doing a lot of work in Crohn's and his focus is on that Mycobacterium avium paratuberculosis.

I was gonna ask you, isn't that one that's, that's implicated in Crohn's?

Yes. And so we have a, we don't have the name for the product yet, but the organism is a, strain of bacteria called Dietzia, and then we're bringing out our kind of mood feel-good probiotic called Perfect Peace, and that will probably come out in the fourth quarter of this year.

Okay. So now how many formulations do you have?

We have 5 and then the, the yogurt starter.

Okay. And is the yogurt starter for one of the formulations or is it?

It's the same as Sugar Shift. It's just in a yogurt starter form. And I forgot also we have the Simple Slumber. So we brought that out because so many people kept telling us, I have trouble sleeping, I have trouble sleeping. And so we made our Simple Slumber product and that makes bacterial melatonin and tryptophan. And it does have a little bit of tryptophan in it. So both the Ideal Immunity and the Simple Slumber have a small amount of tryptophan in them. And so people who are taking an SSRI inhibitor or an MAOI cannot take those because they can get serotonin syndrome from taking a product with tryptophan.

Okay. So for the yogurt starter, I know like with some of these yogurts, like I think the Bill Davis's group was using Elroo, either they're more temperature sensitive. You can't just like put it in a regular yogurt maker. Can you do that with your Sugar Shift?

So it has reuteri in it. So we do recommend that people do it at a temperature below 106. I always do mine at 98 degrees because that's roughly what our body is. So you want it to be kind of acclimated to what your body is.

And how do you do that?

I have done the meta up to about 104, but I like mine better at 98.

And do you use An Instant Pot or something? What do you use to make your yogurt?

I actually have a Luvele yogurt maker. It's Australian. And I like it because you don't have to deal with all those little cups. You know, it's one big quart. You know, you can put 1 or 2 quarts in it, actually. And, and then when it's done, I scoop it out and put it into a Mason jar and, and it's all good.

And you can set the temperature on that one.

Yes, you can set the temperature on that one. The Instant Pot will often get a little bit too hot. And so that's— those are set for yogurt, which Streptococcus thermophilus and bulgaricus are both what are called thermotolerant. So they actually like the higher temperature and they grow faster in the higher temperature where something like Lactobacillus reuteri will actually die at the higher temperature. And that's the organism that used to be in our small intestine, in the small bowel that was keeping out, you know, all these SIBO organisms. And we seem to have lost that Lactobacillus reuteri.

So do you think that's an important strain in SIBO?

It's a very important strain in keeping SIBO at bay.

Any particular reuteri?

Well, you know, Dr. Davis is very keen on the BioGaia strain, and that's a well-researched strain. We actually had our own strain through my advisor Steve, who had done a bunch of research with his reuteri strain, actually in animals, because he was working on the, trying to get antibiotics out of animal feed. Very well-researched strain, but slightly different than the BioGaia strain. And then we have another company that we use their root rye on occasion, and that's one that actually Dr. Davis found that he liked just as well or better than the BioGaia. Basically what you're looking for in the genome is what are called bacteriocins. And these are little molecule, you know, small molecules that the bacteria make. That target specifically other bacteria. So Lactobacillus reuteri will have these reuterins, are what they're called, and those bacteriocins will kill anything that tries to colon, colonize the GI tract. There's another, Lactobacillus gasseri is another one that he talks about a lot in SIBO. We actually don't have gasseri in any of our, formulas, but we have looked at, you know, potentially making a formula that has Gasseri. It's actually become increasingly difficult to get. The one producer that I know that used to sell it no longer sells it.

Hmm. So what, which of the brewer's rice strain do you use then?

Uh, we use one called PCR-7 from Pure Cultures.

Okay. Hey, this is Lindsey here, just letting you know that if you're tired of dealing with digestive issues, like bloating, indigestion, soft stool, diarrhea, constipation, reflux, IBS, IBD, or the numerous health conditions that come about when your gut is off, like brain fog, weight gain, UTIs, fatigue, mental health issues, or complex conditions like fibromyalgia and ME/CFS. That's my specialty. With my 3 or 5 session gut health coaching packages, we'll discuss different stool and functional medicine tests to find out the root cause of your symptoms. I'll interpret the results and provide clear explanations, empowering you to make informed choices for your gut and overall health. And together we'll develop a customized action plan based on your test results so you can find relief and regain your health and vitality. I come from a functional medicine perspective, trying to incorporate the latest peer-reviewed research and educating you on protocols used by functional medicine practitioners, but devoting lots of time and support to my clients the way a doctor simply can't. If you're interested in a 3 or 5 session coaching package, you can sign up for complimentary 30-minute breakthrough session. Or if you can only afford one appointment at a time, you can book an initial 60-minute consultation. Links for those are in the show notes. Now back to the show. And yeah, the one from Biogaia Gastris is, is meant to be quite good in methane SIBO and in constipation. Is yours also good in that same way or?

Well, I mean, we haven't studied it for that, but we do get lots of reports of, you know, people taking the product and constipation problems going away. And a lot of Dr. Davis's SIBO kind of protocol people are making the Sugar Shift yogurt either with the capsules or, you know, with the yogurt maker. And it has that PCR-7. Right.

And so when they, when they do it with the yogurt maker, you can presumably get quite a bit more than you might in a capsule. Is there a limit to how much you think is, is beneficial in a given day?

Well, I mean, when you're, when you're making a yogurt, it will. So if you have a single strain, like Dr. Davis has looked in, the single strain of the reuteri will double about every 12 hours. I mean, bacteria grow really fast. Now, when you have a working team like we have, it goes through a succession. So, you know, there'll be some of your early growers that will provide the metabolic food for the late growers. And you— so you get maybe not as elevated counts as you would get in a single strain over 36 hours, but you're definitely going to get a lot more bacteria than just taking a capsule.

And it's just a way to, to buy one set of culture starter or capsules and make it last longer. Right, right.

So yeah, you can make it go a lot longer and you can make, I mean, I've made coconut milk yogurt. Um, there are people who do a lot of non-dairy if they're not doing dairy. I mean, I make my yogurt out of dairy most of the time and I, but I'm getting raw milk, so I'm doing kind of a different. Steck also.

Yeah. So I don't do well with dairies, but I've yet to try making coconut yogurt cuz I don't like most of the commercial coconut yogurts. And there's one that I really like, Cocojune.

Yeah.

If I eat an entire container, I feel nauseous. And I keep saying to myself, but yogurt's good for you, but I don't feel good when I eat it. Like what's going on? Is it another ingredient? Is it the bacteria? Because I have autoimmune SIBO, so I always have to worry about overgrowth of bacteria.

Well, so the coconut yogurt, you have to add a thickener. It will not congeal if you don't add some kind of thickener. So it probably— I, I'll have to look at the Coco June and see what they're using. I actually had one of my customers, she works with children with digestive issues at a hospital in Seattle. And they make— they actually use my Sugar Shift in a coconut milk for their specific carbohydrate diet kids. And her recipe was, of course, it's not vegan because it uses gelatin. But it was gelatin and 2 tablespoons of honey in the coconut milk. And it turned out Fabulous. But except I had a few chunks of gelatin in there. I think I need to blend it up afterwards or something. But I mean, it was, it had a nice thick commercial consistency to it.

Was it commercial coconut milk?

I used Thai, you know, organic Thai coconut milk.

Oh, you used like the thick coconut milk you use in recipes or? Yeah. Not like the thin stuff in the, in the containers.

No, not that. I used 2 cans of Thai coconut milk.

Oh wow. Yeah.

You heat it up, you heat shock it to like 190 degrees real quick.

Right.

And then cool it down and mix that gelatin and the honey in there. And it was great.

Yeah. Cool. I used to make yogurt and I had a yogurt maker and I used to love my dairy yogurt back before I reconciled myself to the fact that I'm lactose intolerant and probably casein intolerant and I just don't do well with dairy, but I used to make lemon and rosewater and wonderful flavors of yogurt.

Well, I think they've just done so much to the cows, just like they've done so much to lots of our food. Isn't, you know, it's not what it was 50 years ago. The cows aren't what they were. The vegetables aren't what they were. The soil's not what it was. And that's, of course, evidenced in our poor gut health and our own poor nutrition.

Yeah. Yeah. So is there anything else you would like to talk about that's currently fascinating you?

Well, I mean, I love the title of your, The Perfect Stool, because I talk to people a lot about poop, the understanding that you don't really need a complex, fancy stool report to tell whether or not you are healthy. So in the European Microbiome Study, they actually ranked all these different indicators, different medications, different lifestyle, all this different stuff that were the best predictor of health. And number 3 on the list was your Bristol stool score and your frequency of going to the bathroom. So like, to me, I love that the perfect stool is right in the middle, uh, 3-4, and that you're going every day. You're getting rid of that waste and not letting it sit inside because that's actually one of the things that I've spent countless hours over the last several years looking at is the toxins that are produced by bacteria. And what that can do to us in all these different, you know, the autoimmune disease affecting us neurologically, our mood. Endotoxin from gram-negative bacteria, they showed in a study that they could inject, which I can't believe somebody actually let them inject endotoxin because you can die from endotoxin, but they injected happy, healthy people with endotoxin and they were clinically depressed within 2 hours. So these products of these bacteria that are sitting in, in the body, if we're not getting them moved out of our body, then our immune system is having to deal with them. And that is what is generating all of, all of these problems that we're having.

Yeah.

So get up and go.

Better diarrhea than constipation.

Is that the, well, I mean, so I mean, diarrhea is your body attempting to eliminate a pathogen.

Yeah.

Obviously chronic diarrhea is a severe problem though.

Right, right.

And you know, especially if you have hemolytic bacteria and you're having bloody diarrhea. I mean, I'm not a proponent of diarrhea either.

No.

Um, but in some ways, at least the toxins are not sitting in the body.

Yeah. Yeah. No, I usually, when I work with somebody who has diarrhea or loose stool, It's an easier problem to fix than constipation. And they're also, you know, obviously if it's out of control and there's urgency or there's lack of control of the bowels, it's, it's a bad situation. But the urgency of somebody who's really struggling to have a bowel movement is much worse. Like they're really quite desperate to, to figure out a way to, on a daily basis to get that bowel movement out because, 'cause if not, they do start to have a buildup of pain and bloating and, and all that. And not to mention, obviously, the physiological effects of having those toxins leaking out over time.

And what we did start to see or talk about with my husband when we finally started talking about going is that on particular days when he, he might have more trouble with his symptoms, those were actually days when he had not had a bowel movement.

Oh yeah. People will tell me that all the time.

And once you start to connect that, it's like, oh, mm-hmm. Yeah, that's related. I got to get it out.

Yep. People will say all the time, oh, I have this symptom or that symptom when I haven't had a bowel movement, or sometimes prior to one, start to have some symptoms. So yeah.

And I do a number of people with Parkinson's who had severe chronic constipation that have written me, I've talked to 'em on the phone, they call me periodically. It, Sugar Shift is the only thing they've tried over the years that has helped them with their constipation and regularity. So.

Well, I'm excited to try it out in some of my clients cuz I have a number of 'em who are still struggling, so I'll definitely recommend it and see how they do. Well, this was an interesting conversation. Any final words before we go?

Well, just thank you for having me and thank you for talking to people about the unpleasantness of poop and how important it is in our life. Getting the message out that our gut is really the key to our health and everything we do to focus on, you know, I say like, love your microbes because that is your immune system. It's your digestion of your food. I mean, they're doing all these things for us, and we've, we've gotten to be such a germaphobe society. But really, without our microbes, we can do very little.

Yeah. If people want to try the Sugar Shift, I've got a link in the show notes. I've got an affiliate code set up, and, and they can get a 10% discount with the code PERFECTSTOOL, and all caps. And, and the other formulas too. So you can find that. Any, any other sites that we should mention?

So I also have a personal blog called Martha's Quest.

Okay.

And I write about Parkinson's and the microbiome and alternative health things that may be beneficial for people with Parkinson's. I'll sometimes review books about Parkinson's there. And then if you're really interested in all the technical stuff about sample collection and that, you can go to the Bio Collective. And that's our website that talks about the history of the sample collection and some of the things that we were involved in, in our early research in the company.

Awesome. Well, I'll link to all those in the show notes. Thanks so much for being here.

Thanks for having me.

Great stuff. I love talking to people who have the same curiosity and desire to find concrete solutions to health problems as I do. So check out the show notes for links on all the topics we mentioned with the studies and then the BiotiQuest probiotics and my discount code. If you'd like to support the podcast in other ways, you can buy supplements at a discount from my FullScript dispensary, order tests at a discount from my Rupa Health Lab store, or use my affiliate links to iHerb, Bulk Supplements, or Amazon. If you'd like to connect with me online, you can follow my High Desert Health Facebook page, join my Gut Healing Facebook group, or join my newsletter list at highdeserthealthcoaching.com, as well as follow me on X, Instagram, TikTok, and Pinterest. Links for those are all in the show notes. Lindsey Parsons. Thanks for joining me today, and here's wishing you all the perfect stool.