How Your Microbiome Affects EVERYTHING with Microbiologist Kiran Krishnan!

Foreign. Hello and welcome back to the Full Circle Healing podcast where we merge modern cutting edge science with traditional healing wisdom and everything in between to help you come full circle back to your original natural state of health and well being. I'm your host, Michael, and over the past 15 years I've helped hundreds of thousands of people find the information, practices, tools and resources they needed to find their way back to optimal health health. Our guest in this episode is our good friend and leading microbiome educator, Kiran Krishnan. Kiran's a research microbiologist and a health and wellness expert who aims to make complex information understandable to all. He's founded a number of successful health and supplement companies over the last 20 years, including co founding and leading Microbiome Labs, the preeminent microbiome therapeutics focused brand among healthcare professionals. He's currently a co founder and partner in three other companies that aim to revolutionize wellness care. He's conducted and published several research studies in scientific journals, has published chapters in scientific textbooks and research books and global patents, and is sought after speaker on human health and the microbiome. In this episode you will learn how the microbiome impacts almost all aspects of health and chronic disease development, from the gut brain connection and autoimmune disease to the liver and healthy hormone balance and everything in between. As always, Kiron takes deep scientific information and presents it in a way that's easy and fun, giving you practice steps you can take right now to improve the health of your microbiome and in doing so, improve your overall health today. If you enjoy this conversation and decide you'd like to learn much more from Kiran, head over to RebelHealth Co microbiome to learn all about the build you'd resilient gut microbiome and beyond course that we've collaborated with him to create. And now let's get started with Kieran. Hey Kieran. Welcome to the podcast.

Good to be here, Michael. Thanks for having me.

Yeah, yeah, this will be a lot of fun. We've done a ton of interviews, but this one's going to be a little bit different than the past and it's an exciting topic. And I think that when we first started doing webinars and interviews together, the microbiome conversation was more, I don't want to say fringe, but it was not a mainstream conversation. The topic of microbes and the gut and the bugs and probiotics and such was still kind of like in its infancy. And in the decades since, I think the microbiome has become kind of the center Conversation of a lot. And there's still some things that we'd like to clear up though. And so going to ask you to share your knowledge and expertise around it and hopefully give us a great picture of what the microbiome really is and what it really does, and maybe some dispelling of myths and then giving some people some tips. So, perfect, let's start at square one. When I use the term microbiome, what does that actually mean?

Yeah, so the scientific definition of that is the totality of microbes and their genetic elements as it relates to the host.

Right.

So that means every kind of microbe that lives in and on us and all of their genetic elements, that whole thing together is considered your microbiome. Now, we do often segment the microbiome. When we say the gut microbiome, the skin microbiome, you could say that it's not inaccurate. Those microbiomes are connected in certain ways.

And influence one another.

The more accurate way of referring to it is the gut microbiota or the skin microbiota. It's speaking more to that specific ecosystem. But nonetheless, people use those terms interchangeably and it's important to mention it because if people hear someone say, oh, microbiota this, microbiota that, they don't get confused and go, I thought it was a microbiome. So it's important then to elaborate on the second part. So the first part is microbes, which can be bacteria, viruses, protozoa, fungi, algae, all kinds of things. Right. The predominance of the microbes that live in and on us are bacteria, but there are certainly lots of other kinds as well. And then the second part, and I think this is really where the rubber hits the road and why this topic is so important is the genetic elements. The genetic elements are really important because these are genes from the microbes that the microbes express. And when they express the genes, it creates compounds, it creates enzymes and effectors that can change how our bodies function. And in fact, there are 150 times more microbial genes functioning in our body than human genesis. So we get more effect out of the microbial ecosystem in terms of day to day function as a human than we do from our own human cells.

Right.

And that's where the rubber really hits the road. Because when you, you know, disease is a matter of dysfunction.

Right.

And if you think about a majority of function comes from the microbes, dysfunction can also then come from the microbes, which leads to disease.

Right. And so an imbalance in the microbial system easily leads to A dysfunction. The dysfunctions lead to disease. And this is why this whole topic is so important.

That's wild. 150 times more genes. And so these genes are controlling functions in the body. And there's a lot more, too, that the organisms actually control and, and contribute to. But that's, that's really fascinating. So in some ways, we're like a hundred times more microbial. And you're mentioning bacteria, fungus, viruses. I think a lot of people who might not be super educated on this topic might hear that and think most of those things are bad. But I've heard you cite studies before that like, if you remove, if you sterilize the microbiota in the gut of a mouse, it'll die.

Yeah.

Like you can't. Like, we couldn't exist without these things. Correct.

We couldn't. If, if there was some way to push a button and remove all the microbes from your system and sterilize you, you wouldn't function more than a few days. Your, your systems would start to fall apart. Because the other part of it that's really interesting is, you know, we have all these different organ systems, right? Your skin, your digestive tract, your immune system, your heart, your brain, and all that. Many of these organ systems, the way they function, are dictated by the microbes that live in or on that system. The microbes are controlling that your small bowel functions like a small bowel, or that your stomach functions like a stomach, or your intestines function like your intestines, or your skin functions like how skin is supposed to function. If the microbes in those regions shift, your small bowel might start to act like your big bowel. And then now your small bowel is dysfunctional, Right?

I'll just give you a very simple example on the skin, right? So our skin is a very important barrier. It's supposed to protect you from things escaping, like moisture in particular. And then, of course, things penetrating in, whether it's toxins, environmental toxins, whatever it may be, microbes, and so on. There's a couple of really important aspects of that barrier function. Number one, it's this ceramide layer, which is a fatty acid layer in the top layer of the skin. Number two, it's the pH of the skin, right? If the PH of the skin becomes compromised, meaning the acidity on the skin starts to go up and becomes more basic or neutral, it completely screws up how the skin functions. What actually happens is if the PH gets. Gets disrupted and the PH starts to go up, what starts to happen is you Start to get fungal overgrowth on your skin. We all know that that's a huge problem. Right. So how do we control the PH on the skin? Well, we don't have a mechanism for it. Right. There are two types of bacteria that have to work together. Bacteria number one is one that breaks down the oils that are being secreted from your skin into fatty acids. Bacteria number two takes the fatty acids and modulates it to an acid and then that acid maintains a lower ph on your skin. So then if those two types of microbes are now not functioning, all of a sudden your skin barrier would start to get compromised. You'll start getting fungal overgrowth all over, your hair would start falling out.

You'll get, you know, constant eye and.

Ear and other infections all over the place, respiratory illness. You'd be uber sensitive to the sun. Your skin would dry. I mean, it'd just be an absolute mess because two of those organisms, two classes of organisms on your skin are gone. Wow.

Yeah. I think when most people think of microbiome, they're only thinking of the gut. So the fact that the microbes control the skin, I think a lot of people out there too, skin, I don't know the numbers, but I'm sure that the market on skin anti aging and healthy looking skin products is in the upper billions of dollars. And so it's a big, it's a big topic that a lot of people are interested in who might not have any idea that the microbiome plays such a big role. And I want to do talk about the gut just for a minute before we, well, a few minutes before we jump into some of the other, maybe lesser known realms of microbiome function because we've done a lot of gut related microbiome webinars and interviews in the past and I've heard you share some pretty mind blowing information around this. So I know you could talk for. And we've done it two hours alone on the microbiome in the, in the gut and the functions that it has. But can we just kind of give a blanket little overview? Things like how does the microbiome play a role in, in leaky gut you talk a lot about endotoxins and what are endotoxins helping in digestion? You mentioned the production of certain molecules or substrates that are beneficial and then we'll talk about the immune system after. So don't lump in the immune system with this one. Just the beginning level kind of stuff there.

Yeah, yeah. And this is why this part is so important.

Right.

So there was a publication in a journal called Frontiers of immunology in 2015. And this was a meta analysis publication, meaning it was the researchers in this, for this topic studied a whole bunch of studies on this topic to come up with the scientific consensus. Here's what they concluded. They concluded that leakiness in the gut that occurs as a result of disruption of the microbial system in the gut. And in this case, they focus a lot on how stress causes microbial disruption and leakiness, that that leakiness results into a pathology or a pathway to, that.

Creates, that becomes the number one cause of mortality and morbidity worldwide, right? So the simple thing I'm going to explain now is the number one killer of people worldwide, right? So, and that's not at all hyperbole because that was the conclusion of this scientific study that looked at dozens of studies on this topic. So how can that be? And what's the role of microbes there? So your gut is a dynamic barrier in that it has to allow certain things through, like food and nutrients and so on. But there's lots of things that come through your digestive tract that shouldn't be going through. So of course, microbes themselves, toxins from the environment, you know, and so on, chemicals and all kinds of things, right? We don't want those things moving through because they'll end up in circulation, and we don't want those things in circulation. So your gut has a very important barrier function. That barrier function has a few different components to it. There's a mucosal layer, there's a single layer of intestinal cells that are sitting shoulder to shoulder that can open when things are supposed to go through, but then they have to shut when they don't want to allow things through. And then the immune system is monitoring a lot of this stuff, right? So the structures that we're talking about, the mucosal structure, the immune cell, the, sorry, the intestinal cells, the tight junctions between them, the management of all of those structures are dependent on microbes that live in that space. And the function of those structures are dependent on those microbes as well. If those microbes become compromised because of lifestyle choices, so, say, poor eating or stress, excessive stress, lack of sleep, overuse of antibiotics, eating processed foods that have lots of, you know, preservatives and antimicrobials in it, if those microbes become compromised, then you compromise the barrier function. You compromise the mucosa, the intestinal cells, the tight junctions. Now, the dynamic barrier is just an open barrier. And what tends to happen is lots of Things like bacterial, viral toxins, you know, microbes, environmental toxins, all that leak through and end up in circulation, creating this endotoxemia like condition. What that means is now your leakiness in your gut has led to chronic low grade inflammation throughout your body. And when you look at the vast majority of chronic illnesses, they have chronic low grade inflammation at the core. Right. This is how a leaky gut that stems from dysbiosis, which is an alteration of the microbes in that region, that's how a leaky gut can lead to being the number one cause of mortality and morbidity worldwide. Because a leaky gut leads to systemic inflammation. Systemic inflammation is at the root of disease.

That's a pretty bold statement to call it the number one cause of chronic disease and death. But the studies are pretty obvious and it's not really a debatable thing. And so it's, it's incredible once you start learning about this, to realize how widespread that goes. Because what I didn't know when I first started learning from you and others is that when these inflammatory cytokines and other things get stirred up in the gut, there aren't local. Yes, the trigger for it can be local, but then those things circulate everywhere. So that's how inflammation in the gut could cause my fingers to hurt if I have arthritis, for example, because the inflammation is triggered systemically instead of just in one place. Because the messengers that say, hey, problem inflammation, those get into the bloodstream and then they go everywhere and you see elevated levels of them on blood tests. And so I didn't put that together until I really started learning about how there really isn't a local thing and where stress triggers arthritis. Same thing. It's like the same systemic response. So what you didn't mention there in the gut that I find so fascinating, at least not in detail, is that the microbes in the gut actually teach our own immune cells how to function, basically, and kind of teach them what to go after and how to go after it, right?

Yeah, yeah, that's exactly right. So our immune cells, the best way to think about them is that they are a very well equipped army with no genital.

Right.

So they are. Our bone marrow and our thymus is continuously producing immune cells, but it produces call naive immune cells. They're not mature, they're just naive. Meaning they don't actually understand what their targets are. Now that makes sense because, Michael, you live in Italy, I live in Chicago.

The targets are immune cells are completely different in those two regions. Right.

Your allergens and viruses and all that are different than what I have here.

And so we can't have a uniform, functioning immune cell system. The immune system is supposed to adapt.

To the environment that you're in.

And if I left Chicago and I moved to Italy within a few months, I'd want my immune system to have adapted to that environment. The only way that can happen is if you. If you produce immune cells, new immune cells that are naive, that are open to almost any kind of function, then the question becomes, how do they get trained to understand what is the function that they need to. To perform? Who are the targets, who to attack, and equally importantly, who not to attack. Right, because that's the tolerance part of your immune system, and I'll address that as well. So what tends to happen is your microbiome, who's like the front, I call them the neighborhood watch, if you will, of your ecosystem. They're constantly running into all of the compounds and other microbes and so on that are entering into the body, right? And so they have an inventory of the things that the hosts are constantly being exposed to. And when those microbes encounter the naive immune cells, they are able to teach the immune cells what is coming in, what to attack and what not to attack. It's a very complicated mechanism of how they do that, but it's really well understood. It seems really esoteric that bacteria can.

Teach your immune cells to do this.

But we know the mechanisms. That's the beauty of it. You can measure all these things, right? And so part of that tutoring happens in places like the lymph nodes, right? So you have a very elaborate system of lymphatic nodes called the mesenteric lymph node system, which is adjacent to the gut. Some of the microbes from your gut can actually move to the lymph nodes where they can train the naive T cells, B cells, and other immune cells to figure out what to attack and what not to attack in that given environment.

Like little schools.

Like little schools. They're like little Sunday school, Saturday schools for your immune cells, right? So that they can come out of the lymph nodes, then, with knowledge, circulate, and then look for the things that they're supposed to look for and not attack, the things that they're not supposed to attack, right? So the not attacking is called oral tolerance. That's what we all want. Because the vast majority of things we encounter, we don't want our immune system attacking it. If it does, then you have food intolerances, allergies, hypersensitivity like histamine responses, stuff like that. Exactly.

Histamine responses, mast cell activation, asthma, all of those things. Or eczema, psoriasis. All of these conditions are hypersensitivities or loss of tolerance. And then you want an immune system to be very effective at attacking the things that it has to control. So if this communication is broken down, meaning you don't have enough of the right kind of microbes to continuously train the immune system, not only do you get an immune system that is not.

Good at attacking the things it should, it's also overly active and attacking the things it shouldn't. And that's why when you meet people with dysfunctional guts or immune issues, they often are sick. Very often. And they also have lots of sensitivities. Right. There's lots of foods they can't eat. There's lots of things that they may be sensitive to because that dysfunction goes hand in hand.

And, and that's fascinating. And what's in it for the bugs? Like, why do they do that? Just so they can have a place to live that's a good place for them to live and they can. Like, what do you. I mean, obviously we don't know the 100% answer to this, but, like, from a biological, evolutionary, physiological standpoint, like, why, why do they do that?

Yeah. So you know what the bugs really like in any given environment. And you see this, if you, if you create like a, like a ferment, for example, and you put many bugs in there. Right. Most fermentations are one or two bugs. So, but let's say you create a ecosystem with lots of different bugs in there. What tends to happen is they, they tend to stabilize the environment over time and develop an ecosystem that is mutualistic because they all like to work with one another to progress the health of the whole. What they don't like is a bug coming in that's egregious and trying to take over the whole system. So the systems tend to be designed to have enough resistance forces, meaning they compete with each other in a friendly level.

But then they also have mechanisms to go after bugs that are being overtly egregious. And that seems to be the relationship that these bugs have with our immune system. Because when something comes in that can be potentially damaging to the system, like a new virus or new bacteria that's trying to take over, the bugs themselves will go after them. Right. If you have the right bugs, the bugs themselves will go after them. But then they've also learned to develop this relationship with the immune system that says, hey, this thing is out of control. You need to control this so we can all be safe. Right.

So, so they do that.

So they're like hippies, kind of like they have a little commune vibe going on with the, with the dogs. I recorded podcast, yes. Or webinar yesterday with Steve Wright from Healthy Gut, and he talked about that the microbes are more like hippies than like. I forget what he. The alternative. But that, that, that it's very. He was talking about how there's bugs that break down certain fibers so that other bugs can break down the thing that's broken down so that that bug can make butyrate, for example, or short chain fatty acids. But the short chain fatty acids, which we can talk about if you want, but the short chain fatty acid making bugs can't break down the thing, the form that their food originally comes in. They need other bugs to break it down and metabolize it and that. So that's why certain types, people hear that they, oh, this organism makes. We'll just use that. We'll say this organism makes butyrate. So I should take a probiotic that has like a zillion of this organism in it because then I'm going to make lots of butyrate, which is a beneficial compound. But that's not how it works. Because somebody else needs to make their food.

That's right, yeah. I mean, so in the case of nutrient breakdown in the gut, there are what we refer to as primary fermenters, secondary tertiary and so on.

So when you eat food, and a.

Bunch of food comes in, a lot of the macromolecules in the food, so the long protein chains along fiber chains and so on are broken down by certain class of bacteria. They have the enzymes and the capabilities to break those down. Now they create byproducts from that breakdown. Those byproducts feed a whole other layer of bacteria, and then those bacteria create byproducts that feed another whole layer of bacteria.

Right.

And that's absolutely true for short chain fatty acids like butyrate, propionate and acetate that are really, really important for function in the gut and outside of the gut as well. And it can only come from that kind of cascading digestion, which means that.

You have to have a diversity of bugs, because you need the bugs, you need the primary fermenters, then you need the secondary, then you need the ones that are making the compounds. And this is why you keep coming back to this idea that the healthiest Microbiomes are the diverse microbiomes. And that should be the goal of most people who are trying to improve their overall health, is to get to diversity and improve diversity and maintain diversity and then of course pass on that diversity to the next generation.

Okay, that makes a lot of sense. It's so fascinating to see how they all kind of work together. And you mentioned making compounds or making substrates or making byproducts or creating things. And some of that is short chain fatty acids like you talked about. Also there's vitamins that are made, I know vitamin K2 is produced by microbes in the gut, but people have probably at this point, if they're listening to this podcast, they've probably heard of the gut brain connection. And the brain has what's called a blood brain barrier. And so it's not necessarily that microbes go in the brain, right. And do stuff, but part of what they produce are neurotransmitters. Right. And other chemicals and hormones that can affect our mental experience of mental emotional. Can you talk to that a little bit? Because I think there's, there's a lot of talk now about gut brain and how the, they're really linked together and the microbes play a huge role in this. Obviously they do.

And the reason for this is because there were some very interesting discoveries with ibs, for example.

Right.

So if you take adults who are diagnosed with IBS, upwards of 70% of adults diagnosed with IBS also can be diagnosed or report having some sort of anxiety or mental disorder.

Right.

Compare that to non IBS adults. It's less than 19%, which means that.

If you have IBS, you're almost four.

Times more likely to have some sort of anxiety or depression.

And so it goes hand in hand. IBS is irritated bowels and dysfunction in the bowels and then the brain dysfunction that goes hand in hand. Now there's, there's two parts to that. Number one, the first part is what you talked about, where a healthy diverse gut produces really important neurotransmitters and immune compounds that help calm the brain and reduce the fight or flight response. Right? So these are things like brain derived neurotropic factor, which is a very important compound for repairing the brain. Every night when you go to bed, gaba, which is a really important compound for calming you down, allowing you to go into deep breaths and sleep. And of course serotonin and dopamine, the happy hormone, the reward hormone. Right. Those things are produced in the gut as well. And so without the production, adequate production of those Things the brain just doesn't function the way it should. But the second part of it is that the gut not only can induce proper function of the brain and proper cognitive function, it can also cause the opposite. If your gut is dysfunctional, it can be the biggest source of driving anxiety, or flying into the fight or flight response, or having depression. Right. And that's why when I talk to practitioners and train them, I'm always like.

Trying to get them to understand that.

The gut is not all good or all bad. Right. There's a spectrum there. And if you think about the gut on the spectrum, in terms of our relationship to our gut, we can either be at one end, let's say on the left hand side. Here, my left hand side, you have an optimum, amazing gut microbiome that is protecting the host, supporting it, defending it, producing all the compounds that the host needs for proper function, doing all the wonderful things all day long. On the other end, it's not only not doing those things, it's actually causing and driving disease because it's producing compounds and effects on the immune system and so on that drive a disease state. Right. So everyone's microbiome is somewhere in that spectrum. They're either leaning towards the left, which is a really cooperative, supportive microbiome, or leaning towards the right. That is a dysfunctional microbiome. And a dysfunctional microbiome not only does not support the host, it can drive disease. So the same thing is true in gut brain axis, where if you have a dysfunctional microbiome, it's not producing all those compounds we mentioned that are important for the brain to function. At the same time it's producing inflammatory cytokines and all that drive people into flight or fight or depressive states much easier and on a much more chronic basis. Right. So it's a double whammy there. It's a two edged sword where it becomes so important for proper brain function, proper emotional states and all that to fix the gut, because you need the gut to move towards that left side to be supported.

Okay, that makes a lot of sense. It's a lot more of a spectrum than a black white. And I am now like the last six years have been studying extensively in somatic therapy and working with anxiety and trauma in the nervous system. And I like how you mentioned that the connection between the IBS and the anxiety, but also that the gut can be a source of the anxiety as well, in that oftentimes the brain is a machine that is designed to find patterns and make sense of things and Create stories. And so when somebody's body feels a certain way and they don't know why, it's just all of a sudden, I don't feel good. That's what a lot of people will say who have anxiety or depress, feel good. The brain will then start running with that of, I don't feel good. Why don't I feel good? I don't feel good. And then it starts to create stories and come up with things and run down spirals and go down loops to where when I'm working with people somatically with anxiety, it's really just bringing them back to that sensation in the body and removing them from the story making of the brain that's trying to make sense of the sensation in the body. And oftentimes the sensation reduces, the, the stories reduced, the anxiety reduces. But it's the brain trying to make sense of why does my body not feel good? And if it doesn't have an immediate answer, it'll come up with one. So it works. It's really interesting how much it works both ways. And you mentioned the neurotransmitters. And if your neurotransmitters are all out of whack, you're gonna, you're gonna feel really dysregulated a lot of the time.

Yeah.

Also similar to. What about hormones? Does the microbiome have anything to do with hormones? Either sex hormones or appetite hormones or insulin, or any of that?

All of them.

I mean, your, your metabolism is largely governed by your microbiome. So, so your ability to feel satiated, your ability to utilize calories properly, your ability to metabolize the food effectively and gain the nutrients from it, that all of those things are influenced by the microbiome, your ability to burn fat for fuel and calories properly and reduce lean body weight, all of those are impacted by the gut microbiome in a very, very significant measured way. And then when you think about sex hormones and you're thinking about estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, and so on, all of those are influenced by the gut microbiome in a very significant way. Most hormone dysfunction conditions like estrogen dominance, polycystic ovarian syndrome, hypogonadism, all of those.

Have a significant and measurable gut dysfunction associated with them and a predictable gut dysfunction, because you can see sometimes the gut dysfunction even before the hormone problems show up. Right. So then the hormones can become a consequence of the gut disruption. So then all of the issues that occur with people with sex hormone issues, whether it's fertility, you know, menstruation issues, you know, performance issues for males, or body composition issues because of testosterone levels that are, that are skewed. All of these things are influenced by the gut microbiome. You just can't escape that. The gut microbiome is centralized in our body's function because again, we go back to the number of genes, right? We, we are highly complex creatures, we need millions of genes to function and the human cell only has 22,000 genes, right. We were less sophisticated than an earthworm that has 30,000 genes. Right. And the reason why.

Honestly, if you, if you hang out in the comments section online, I think that's not hard.

To believe, but these are probably some people that don't have enough biome, so they're more earthworm like in their function. And so we have two and a half million microbial genes, right? So that's what helps us be so sophisticated and functioning. So yeah, absolutely. Every system in the body is affected by the gut microbiome. And so for anyone that's concerned about.

Their health and their well being and.

Wants to be empowered in order to take their wellness and their health into their own hands, they have to learn about the microbiome. They have to learn about what day to day choices they make affect the microbiome in a positive or negative way or neutral way. Right? There's so many things to think about as you're considering your ecosystem or your kids ecosystem or your families, your bio, your home biome, your dog's biome and so on. There's a lot to be learned, but it's very tangible, right? The practices can be easy, the knowledge can be learned and people can really dramatically affect their health by doing that.

It's essential, crucial information I think, especially given how much we are exposed to and how much we go through at this point in modern life that damages the microbiome and harms the microbiome. So it's an essential piece of knowledge. Now it should be like grade school, we should start learning this as kids. Speaking of that, we took our little guy who's just turned one camping last week for the first time and he played in the dirt and played in the forest and played in the grass and played in the sandbox and played. And I was not at all urgent to get him out of any of those things because I knew that he's getting his bugs there totally well.

And you see how innate it is for kids, right? They have no qualms about dirt and rocks and sticks and often they'll even put a Lot of that stuff in their mouth and on their faces and all that stuff. So I think a lot of that is programmed in us to be able to inoculate ourselves appropriately with all of these environmental microbes and all that are really beneficial. Same thing with babies, right? Newborn babies, they sample their environment with their mouth. They don't do it. They don't sniff things. They don't look at things and examine.

They put everything in their mouth because.

That'S a way of inoculating your system with the microbial ecosystem around.

Yeah, it's fun to watch, and it's interesting how that could be programmed. And possibly part of the reason they do that is to get the bugs off the things that they're around. Obviously, unbeknownst to them, it's just like a natural thing that we all do. And puppies are the same way. Like, babies of other animals are the same way. We had a litter of puppies once when I was younger, and they destroy everything because everything goes in the mouth. And so with him, it's more like some stuff we have to watch. So it's stressful. And he's kind of passed that a little bit. Like now we can be like, no, no, don't put that in your mouth. And he might not put it in his mouth. Which, when they're a little bit younger, it's like everything's directly in the mouth immediately. And they have no concept of. No. So it's just in the mouth. The last thing I wanted to ask about in relation to the microbiome that we get questions about is detoxification or liver health or both. In, as far as, like, toxins that we're exposed to, does the microbiome play a role in protecting us or metabolizing those things or binding to those things. And then is there any microbiome linked to the liver?

Yeah, I mean, there's a.

There's.

There's this whole. It's called like a hepatobiliary microbiome access.

Right.

Which means that between the gallbladder, the gut, and the gut microbiome and the liver, there's a very significant connection there. You know, the first part of your question regarding the role of the microbiome. I forgot the first part of the question before the liver part was it.

Does the microbiome play a role when we're like, toxic exposures, as far as neutralizing things or metabolizing things or binding or any of that?

Yeah, absolutely. So your microbiome encounters all of the foreign objects that are coming into Your body, for the most part, unless it goes to the skin or your genital tract. But for the most part, most things that enter your body come through the digestive tract.

Right.

And so the microbiome encounters it first. And because the microbiome encounters it before the liver, there's actually a phase one like detox from the side of the microbiome. We don't call it a phase one detox because we're referring to most of the detox through the liver's function.

But there is a phase one detox. So there's microbes, for example, that have been identified that can break down glyphosate that is coming into the diet. Right.

Which is the herbicide Roundup.

Roundup.

And so that's amazing.

When, when I was at Novozymes, there was a project where we identified a microbe that can break down microplastics.

Wow, that's going to become very important. I've interviewed, I've, I've hosted some very terrifying interviews on the topic of microplastics.

It is, it's when you start learning about it, it really is freaky and we can't get away from it. You know, like you can reduce some of it, but you can't get away from it. And, and so microbes, there are microbes that have adapted to, to break down and metabolize almost anything that comes through the system, like for example, oxalates.

Right.

We, we know we're going to get.

Oxalate exposure through eating certain foods. But then you've got this whole group of microbe, this, this whole genus of microbe called Oxalobacter and it's named Oxalobacter because it's a microbe that really loves breaking down oxalate, so it doesn't create stones and issues in the host. So, so that kind of breakdown occurs first in the microbiome and then things go to the liver that get caught up in bile. And a lot of times it's the more the fat soluble toxins and issues that go to the liver. Now at the same time the liver as it's going through and trying to detoxify things, conjugate things and so on, it in itself needs support. And there's good evidence that the microbiome provides support, detoxing anti inflammatory support to the liver so that the liver doesn't undergo too much stress as it's trying to detox the body from things. This is how your liver gets to fatty liver disease. If it's undergoing too much stress, which can come from alcohol, which used to be the number one cause of fatty liver and then liver cirrhosis. Nowadays it's not alcohol. It started becoming hepatitis and then now it's not even hepatitis alcohol. It's called non alcoholic fatty liver disease, which is basically a dysfunctional gut, leaky gut and endotoxemia. Now you don't have the gut playing first fiddle to the detoxification system. You're getting the liver taking the brunt of everything. And as a result the liver is becoming fatty and dysfunctional. Right. So fascinating. Non alcoholic fatty liver disease is really driven by a dysfunction of that microbiome.

Wow. Well, my goal with this conversation was to hit in some way almost every aspect of where the microbiome influences our health. And I know that that's impossible to do in the amount of time that we're trying to do it, but I think we've painted a pretty solid picture here that it plays a lot of roles, it has a lot of functions and that it's quite important. So I think we're going to wrap it up and I'm going to ask you to share a few. You mentioned a few minutes ago that there are things people can do that are friendly to the microbiome. And we talked about my little guy playing in the dirt in the forest and I should join him. But in day to day life, what are just a few tips you could give people who are, they hear this and they're like, well, I want to start doing something right now that could possibly be beneficial for my, for my microbiome?

Yeah.

I'll give you three very simple things that people can do. The first one is to reduce exposure to things that harm the microbiome.

Right.

So the less processed foods you eat, the less chlorinated water you drink, the less personal care products you use that.

Are full of antimicrobials and preservatives like phthalates and parabens and all that, the better it is for your microbiome because all those kinds of things have antimicrobials, pesticides and all those things in it. So they're going to harm your ecosystem. So reduce exposure to that. Eat real food, slow food, locally accessed food, eliminate as much as you can, the processed stuff. And then for personal care, move, kind of move to the cleaner personal care products, things that are free from a lot of these parabens and so on. Right. So that's one thing. The second thing is, is resistance training, lifting. Right. You're a lot of people are hearing about how important it is to have muscle and build strength and especially as you age, because after 40, you start to dramatically lose muscle mass, strength and function. And so one of the, one of the effects of lifting and doing resistance training is when you do resistance training, your muscles release cascades of proteins called myokines. Myokines actually have a very positive effect on the microbiome. It can actually increase the diversity of the microbiome and seal up, help seal up leaky gut. So lifting is not only beneficial, of course, for your metabolic health and the way you look and feel and strengthen, but it actually has an impact on your microbiome, which may be part of why lifting has a huge impact on longevity. Right, Interesting. Number two tip number three, just like your son did, get out and get in nature. Go for hikes, play in the dirt, walk on the beach, engage with nature physically as much as you can on as regular of a basis as you can so that you, you get adequate exposure to the environmental microbes, natural microbes in the outside environment, which will have an impact on your microbiome. Now, the 99.999% of those microbes aren't going to go and live in your system, but just exposure to them alone actually helps a lot of your beneficial bacteria proliferate.

Great tips. I didn't know that about the myokines. That's new info for me. And more motivation to lift weights. So thank you for those. And this will be the first time we've really publicly announced this, but we are collaborating here at Rebel Health with you to create a consumer facing course, a training program for people who want to really dive into the microbiome in the gut and how to create lasting, positive effect change to affect everything we just talked about in this interview all in one place. You've been teaching all over for 10 years. Tons of, we've done tons of webinars. You're on stock. I can't even keep track of all the stuff you're on in podcasts, webinars, conferences, but never before have you put together anything that is organized and systematic in one place as a course. And we're going to be rolling that out really soon. This is going to air in September 24 and towards the end of that month, it's going to be available for people to check out. So there will be something on this page where people are listening to and watching this, where they can, can opt in to check out that. And thank you for working with us to create that. I think it's going to be a brilliant resource for individuals who hear stuff like this because I think there's so much education on the microbiome out there now. And they hear these things and they're like, okay, what do I do? And we really want to put all the what do I do's in one place and make it easy to follow. So I'm excited about it. That's going to be great. And they won't have to travel to 360,000 miles a year to follow you around to listen to you teach. Which little inside joke. But I think he has more American, is it American Airlines. More American Airlines miles than any other human being on the planet from teaching the last five to 10 years. So there's actually a statue of you at the American Airlines headquarters. So that's really, really exciting. I don't know if you want to say anything on that for a second and then we'll let you go.

You know what I would say is what I was so excited about this is it's really a culmination of 10 plus years worth of work. And it's so great to be able to put all of that relevant information in one place in a format that's easily learnable and in the right sequence. And my envisioning of this, when I think about people getting to access this.

Course and go through it and really kind of become individual microbiome experts themselves, is that this is exactly what this kind of highly relevant topic needs is. It needs advocates around globe, right?

Beacons of information around the microbiome. Because somebody listening to this and who takes a course and becomes a microbiome expert can become that beacon of information for their local community. It starts with their household and their kids and their family, but then their.

Neighbors and so on. Like, imagine being able to teach your neighbors and your friends and family about what's good for your gut, why that's important and help them adjust their diet and their lifestyle and all that. It's just, it will spread like community fire. That's really, really positive, right? So, so that's the, the vision I have. Because when, when you, when you talk to me about doing this course, I.

Was like, that is how we really.

Spread it is me by myself going all around the world doing this has far less impact than a thousand people doing this in many different locations. Right? And this is what it needs because people need to know this information.

They have to be empowered with it.

And it'll really affect people's lives in a positive way.

The microbiome revolution.

Yeah, absolutely. All right.

It's about time yeah, let's do it. So I'm excited everybody will get to check it out soon. Depending on when you're listening to the this, you might be able to check it out now, but it'll be here on this page. So thanks again for sharing this wealth of info. I think we just set a record for most amazing factoids in a 40 minute span. So cheers. And until next time, just thanks a lot for the work you're doing and for working with us to put together such an awesome course.

It's my pleasure.

Thank you.