67. The Gut Healing Secrets You’ve Never Heard Before with Kiran Krishnan

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Welcome to Rooted in Wellness with me, wellness advocate and holistic nutritionist Mona Sharma. Together we will take a journey to discover natural healing practices from imbalance to balance, guided by ancient wisdom and modern scientific insights. I was raised living summers on an ashram, so I learned early on that food is medicine and and your kitchen is your greatest source of healthcare and prevention. After facing two heart surgeries, anxiety and weight challenges, I discovered that just because your symptoms are common doesn't mean that they are normal. Together with some incredible guests, we will explore the power of our mind, body and soul connection, returning to our roots to rediscover our greatest well being. What if your gut isn't just about food but the foundation of your emotional, hormonal and mental well being? In this episode, I sit down with my dear friend Kiran Krishnan, who's a research microbiologist, a gut health expert to explore how your microbiome shapes everything from your stress response to your energy levels, your mood and your immune system. We unpack what most people miss when it comes to healing your sick gut. It's trying to communicate. And when you learn how to listen with breath, with light fiber and nervous system rituals, your entire body begins to recalibrate. Kieran shares the groundbreaking science behind the gut brain connection, why fiber is more powerful than any supplement, and how simple daily rhythms can create lasting transformation. He reminds us that healing doesn't have to be complicated. It begins by restoring your relationship to the most ancient intelligence in your body, your gut microbiome. Kieran Krishnan is a research microbiologist and co founder of Microbiome Labs. He has spent his career studying the gut brain axis and helping people shift from symptom management to root cause healing. Through his work, Kieran empowers people to trust their body's intelligence and embrace the daily rituals that create lasting balance. He is one of my favorite teachers and I know you're going to love this episode. Let's dive in.

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Before we dive into today's episode, I want to take a moment to share something that's been a complete game changer in my wellness journey. IFIT you know how passionate I am about the science behind everything we do for our health. From the supplements that we take to the way that we nourish our bodies. Well, that same level of scientific rigor is exactly what drew me to iFit. This isn't just another fitness app promising quick fixes or trendy workouts that fade away. What sets IFIT apart is their unwavering commitment to science backed fitness. Every single workout is carefully crafted by world class trainers and informed by real research. Whether I'm flowing through a Pilates session in my living room, getting my heart rate up with cardio, or building strength with weights, which I love, I know that each movement, each sequence, each recovery period is designed with intention and backed by evidence. Some days I need that gentle movement to support my nervous system. Other days I'm ready to challenge myself with something more intense. IFIT understands that wellness isn't one size fits all, it's deeply personal. As someone who is incredibly selective about the brands that I align myself with, IFIT has earned my trust through their dedication to combining cutting edge science with accessibility. You've probably heard me talk about the importance of movement and consistency and, and that's exactly why I love iFit. IFit delivers interactive science backed workouts with world class trainers for use at home, in the gym, or on the go. Whether you're doing cardio, lifting weights, or Pilates, every workout adapts to your needs and your goals. It's fitness informed by science and made personal. Learn more@ifit.com that's if I t.com. I'm so excited. You were, as I was saying, one of the first people at the very top of my list to come on this podcast.

Thank you.

And I feel really blessed to call you a friend, but also one of my greatest teachers. You were a great teacher, Karan Krishnan. Thank you for being here.

It's my pleasure. Thank you so much for having me. This is a really exciting format. I love that we're live. Right. Because I think, and there's an energy about being live. I think that kind of brings out the best information, at least in my brain. Yeah.

Surprise.

Yeah, exactly.

So you're a microbiologist, you're a gut health engineer, you're an investor, you do so many things. You're an incredible teacher.

Thank you.

So great. I just, I can't emphasize this enough that even, even as a nutritionist, your course with Rebel Health. Yes, Rebel Health Tribe was probably one of the best that I've taken. Like, I feel like we need to deliver that to nutrition schools.

Yes.

That's how good it was. I learned so much valuable information that I wish I had back then.

Oh, thank you so much. And you know, the world of the microbiome and how it impacts everything. Right. Gut to your immune system, metabolic health, and of course your brain, it's all ever evolving, you know, and it's, and it's very nuanced in some ways. It's very Esoteric for some people, because right there are these invisible microbes that conduct all of these crazy functions that we can't really wrap our head around. And how are these microbes affecting us so, so much, so profoundly? Right. Being able to put all that into an understandable package that is meaningful to someone has been, you know, one of my greatest passions. Like to me, that has been so fulfilling to be able to do because I found early on that I have one talent and really one talent only, and that's taking, like, complex things and making it understandable to people.

So tangible. Absolutely.

I can't sing or dance or anything. So.

Yeah. Okay. Next lifetime. Next, hopefully. Well, before we get going, we're going to dive into everything about around the Gut microbiome. This podcast ultimately was founded on my healing journey, but really, how can we merge ancient wisdom with modern day medicine, like this actual integrative healthcare that we all talk about. How can we make that happen? So to start, you know, maybe you just share what are two or three things that help you feel rooted in your health and who you are every single day?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think number one is understanding and appreciating my form and functionality, Right. Knowing that there is an amazing complexity to how we function and that we can take it for granted. Right. We can wake up every morning and just go about our business and breathe and eat and drink and do what we do, not really realizing or having to pay attention of all the mechanics that are happening inside at a thousand times every second to function the way we function. Right. So what really makes me feel rooted is realizing that throughout the day and then, and then sitting in that realization and then appreciating the happenstance that has created this amazing organism. Right? And then at some point, making sure I try to do one thing that day to honor the system, Right. Whether it's being grounded or whether it's feeding it the right thing or whether it's just resting, whether it's, you know, meditating or humming something. Right. To activate the vagus nerve, for example, something simple like that, that, that just honors this complex system that has taken millions of years of evolution to become as sophisticated as it is. And yet it's simple enough for us to just go about our daily day. We don't have to think about it, Right.

We throw things down the hatch, we expect the body to deal with it.

Yep. And more often than not, it does. Right. This may be a crazy way to look at it, but one of the things I appreciated about that reality show, my 500 pound or 600 pound life. Right. I used to watch that show from time to time. Right. Because the thing that baffled me about it is the degree of abuse that they put their body through. Right. It's the diet, the lifestyle and all that. This human body that can sit here at £175 with great movement and functionality and all that can also become 600 pounds and still be functioning in one way or the other. Right. It's mind blowing what our systems allowed us to adapt to. Not a good thing to have to do. But it again underscores the amazing functionality that our body undergoes without us having to think about.

That's a good segue to the next part is a lot of people, when they end up in that £600 have done things that they don't realize are uprooting them from recognizing kind of the miracle that this is.

Yeah.

Somebody who is so in tune with your body and understanding the mechanics of the body. Do you notice when you drift? Like when you're not in alignment with your form and functionality, do you notice when you drift and what are some of those habits that cause you to drift?

Yeah, absolutely. So I notice it in three ways that can shift within a couple days. Right. So I spend a lot of my time speaking with people, doing interviews like this. I have the privilege of teaching people and so on. And so my brain has to function optimally. And I'm also really bad at preparing, Right. So I don't prepare for interviews. I don't like, you know, read up and study things and all that. I'm just continuously reading material, studying it, understanding it, and it just sits there. Right. And depending on what the topic is, and oftentimes I don't even know what the topic is that I'm sitting down to. I need to pull that information out in a way that makes sense to people. And I can find myself struggling to find the information and connections. If I haven't slept enough, Right. Or if I've eaten too much, that actually has a huge impact. So if I, for example, have a really heavy breakfast, that disrupts my brain's functionality throughout the early mornings and early afternoon. Right. Or late morning, early afternoon, if I haven't exercise in a few days, I feel the difference. Like my brain feels sluggish, my body feels sluggish. Right. My level of energy in sharing the information and pulling the information and thinking about all the connections drops down. It gets blunted. I can feel that. Right. So that's one way in my brain functionality. And I count on my brain every single day. So today I'm feeling fairly good because I got some good sleep. You know, I had a very nice light breakfast. The other way is I actually went ahead and got a lot of my kind of button down shirts and all that as custom tailored.

Right.

Because I have a proportion that's like hard to find stuff off the shelf that fits well. Right. So I got them custom tailored. So there's very little forgiveness. And if you go a few days and you allow yourself to get too bloated or you know, a little soft around the edges, when I put those clothes on, I feel it right away.

That's a good one.

Yeah, that actually is like right away I'm like, oh, no. All right, tighten things up here. So those are, those are two ways that like always are very apparent to me.

I'm going to be adding custom made clothes into my health hacks.

Yeah, yeah. One thing a week that you wear that's custom, it'll keep you honest.

That's smart. And I love that. Thank you for calling that out. Because I think a lot of us, we're dealing with so many symptoms these days, just living in this modern world. And because of that stress, we're so reluctant to associate, oh, it's because I ate too much or because I didn't get enough sleep or I don't want to blame it on the fact that I was up late scrolling last night.

Night.

When there's a direct correlation from somebody who understands that. So thank you for answering this. So I want to dive in obviously to gut health. And I think we're starting to understand that our gut is so much, there's so much more to it than just digesting food. And the science that's emerging that I'm fascinated with is how it's connected to everything in our body. And you know, despite knowing that if we just say all disease begins in the gut, now the signs that no, the gut, what happens in the gut is directly related to your liver, to your hormones, to your heart health, to your brain health. And I think that with that encouragement and understanding for people, they may start to treat their digestion a little bit differently. So maybe just start off with this. I mean, when we think about it being our immune system, let's talk about the gut being the root. But how is it the root of disease?

Yeah.

How does it make sense for us to understand that all disease begins in the gut?

Yeah. So there's a couple ways to think about this that makes it understandable, makes it relevant. Right. And also it Makes it easier to take action. Number one, you know, if you think about basic functionality of most organ systems in our body, right? Our liver, gallbladder, brain, heart and so on, those things can degenerate over time. Cellular function, which of course, all those organs are made out of cells. Cells and their natural production of energy to function the way they function creates a exhaust, if you will, superoxides and so on that eventually damage the cell. Right. It's no different than your car. The engine and the running of the engine and the generation of that energy creates this exhaust and creates heat and all that that eventually damages the car. Right. This is why engines don't run forever. And so every one of the cells that make up all the organ systems in our body are conducting respiration, which is the way we produce energy, and as a result of respiration, are incurring damage. If that damage is accelerated and is not curbed and repaired efficiently, then you start to progress towards dis. Right? So your brain can get damaged over time. That leads to dementia, Alzheimer's, you know, brain fog, things like that. Right. Your neurological system can get damaged. That can lead to things like anxiety, depression, even neurological conditions like Parkinson's. Your heart and your vessels get damaged over time. Cardiovascular disease, Right. Your liver, your gallbladder, your pancreas. That leads to metabolic syndrome. And so one key function of the gut in that whole way of thinking is that the gut provides all of those systems with the required components to repair on a daily basis. Right. And the beauty of it is not all of it comes directly from diet. Right. Some of it does are amino acids and carbohydrates and polyphenols. They'll come from diet, but there's a whole host of nutrients that we need to repair ourselves on a regular basis that we cannot get from food that are actually formed and synthesized in our gut. Right, right. And as a result of that, we need to have a really optimally functioning gut in order to assemble the nutrients that are required to repair our systems. A great example of that is urolithins. Right? So we think about urolithins as this compound that helps re engineer and repair mitochondria, which is the engines of the cell, and help turn over dysfunctional mitochondria, create new mitochondria, so your cells can keep. Keep making energy and doing what they do. Urolithins don't come from our diet. Our gut microbes make urolithins for us from fermenting polyphenols. Right. So that's one perspective is that the gut is the warehouse and the distribution center for critical nutrients and the production center of critical nutrients that every cell in your body needs to function optimally. The second view is when the gut is dysfunctional, it leads to something called chronic low grade inflammation. It leads to leaky gut, you have barrier dysfunction, you get endotoxins and other things leaking through that becomes one of the most prevalent sources of chronic low grade inflammation. And the studies are pretty clear that chronic low grade inflammation is the impetus for a lot of chronic diseases. Right. So then if you have, then you think about the double whammy here. Right? So you've got a dysfunctional gut that's not producing the nutrients your body needs to repair and regenerate each day. On top of that, that dysfunctional gut is allowing too much inflammation. That combination becomes an amazing recipe for chronic disease.

What do you say? Is that not one of the biggest problems? Because most doctors aren't trained in gut health. Because when we talk about, you know, is it the hormones or is it the gut, is it the liver or is it the gut? Or, you know, doctors aren't trained to look at the gut, so they're automatically writing prescriptions or just treating something else as kind of like a, our friend's state without looking at the source. Right?

That's exactly right. I mean, and there's so many examples of that. Right. So if you look at estrogen, for example.

Yeah.

You know, estrogen is detoxified through the gut and the liver. Right. And the gut liver connection. And if you have too much 16 oh or 4 oh, and you're, you're risking things like estrogen dominance with the risk of cancer or estrogen dominance with things like endometriosis and other issues. Right. Those are all related to gut liver dysfunctions. It's not the hormones themselves that are a problem. Right. It's the detox, a phase one, phase two detox methylation and the glucuronidase that basically neutralizes the estrogen from being reabsorbed. All of that is happening in the gut and the liver. And as a result, if you don't have a healthy gut and thereby not a healthy liver, you're going to end up with estrogen imbalance. So it becomes less about the hormones itself and more about how the hormones are managed, which is the role of the gut.

This is so relevant because obviously hormones are in the spotlight right now. And I feel like every podcast or every educational seminar needs to come with a gut health aspect to it so that the two go hand in hand for people to understand. So you mentioned gut damaging habits. Here's many of them living in this world. You know, you can say that walking outside could be gut damaging depending on where you are. So can we talk about maybe some of the most common that you see and then we'll go through maybe some of the things that we can avoid or change? Yeah.

And to frame that, you know what I like, like to have people understand is that we are a beautiful microbial construct, right? We are made up of thousands of species that have to work together to perpetuate the health of the whole. We have more microbial DNA in our system than human DNA. We have more microbial proteins than human proteins. We have about the same number of microbial cells as human cells. So we are a microbial construct. And we've taken this beautiful microbial construct that's taken a few million years to evolve the way we have and put it in an antimicrobial world, right? Just that understanding alone means that we've created an environment that is anti human because it goes against our foundational setup and function. So what does that mean? What are we doing? Right? So number one is our diets. Our diets are absolutely horrific. If you think about the standard American diet, right? The SAD diet, we're talking about highly processed foods, ultra processed foods, too many calories, empty calories especially, that are non nutrients, right? We're talking too much sugar and simple carbohydrates or very low amounts of fiber, right? Fiber intake in North America or certainly in the US is horrific, right? So very low levels of fiber, polyphenols. We're getting very low diversity in our diet. And when you understand that our microbiome evolved with one of the highest diversities in the mammalian kingdom through our really diverse diet and through our nomadic movement, right? So if you think about animals that have the most similar types of microbiomes to us, the most similar in diversity, it's really the baboons. It's not our closest cousins, which are the great apes, right? So genetically we're closer to the great apes, but from a microbiome perspective, we're closer to baboons. And in part because baboons are omnivores, they travel in tribes, they're up on the trees, but they're also down on the ground in the dirt, right? So they have a lot of behaviors like humans did, at least our ancestors did. And as a result, we gain this massive amount of diversity. So our food is killing our microbiome. We're not feeding the microbes, what they need and what they want. Number two is the overuse of antibiotics, right. A decade and a half ago, even the CDC estimated that 50% of antibiotic prescriptions are written for non bacterial infections. I've talked to lots of doctors about this to understand where this may come from. And a lot of it is this issue of urgent care centers, right? If someone's feeling sick, right, and they go to an urgent care center, the doctor, they might, may understand that they're dealing with a viral issue, but the person's going to demand that they give them some medicine because they feel like they want to do something to get better. And doctors often think, well, I guess antibiotics are harmless, I'll give them an antibiotic, right? So they'll give them a Z pack or something like that for a three day course when they don't really need it, right. And often it can be overwritten as a precautionary measure. And then we have parts of our food that are extremely toxic, like things like glyphosate. We did a study, a clinical trial with King's College in London where we took the commercial product roundup, not just the glyphosate active, we actually compared it to the glyphosate active. And this is where a lot of misnomers happen because you can see studies that show that glyphosate as an active ingredient doesn't really harm the microbiome in any significant way. Right? Fine. But when they add the glyphosate to all the adjuvants and all the acids and things like that that they put in the commercial product, it dramatically increases the impact. Right. So we did a head to head study on a pristine pediatric microbiome. This was in a, in a microbiome system because we couldn't feed it to the child, of course. Right. And so we took regular active glyphosate without all the adjuvants that are in the commercial product. And then we took the commercial product from a warehouse, you know, from a, from a home store. And then we did about the level of exposure that you get in a lot of breakfast cereals that's allowed by the epa. And we did a three week test to see how much it impacts the microbiome. The glyphosate by itself had very marginal impact, but that's not what we're exposed to. The commercial product with all the adjuvants and all the bases and all that that are in there, basically converted that healthy three year old microbiome from being pristine to looking like somebody with inflammatory bowel conditions, right? The production of ammonia went through the roof. The production of branched chain fatty acids went through the roof. The production of short chain fatty acids, which are critical, plummeted down, diversity shrank, pathogens increase, right? We saw all these changes in a relatively short amount of time. And you imagine how ubiquitous those chemicals are, right? People are using it on their yards and front and backyards, on their driveways. And then of course, it's in the food supply as well. And then we've now have the microplastics and all the forever chemicals that come with it. And then another under rated impact on your micro. Another driver of impact on your microbiome is stress, right? Stress is incredibly potent at dismantling the gut microbiome through a couple of different mechanisms. One is there are a number of opportunistic microbes that have evolved the capability of reading our stress hormone levels. Because these microbes have learned that when our stress hormones are high, our immune system is compromised. And as a result, they express their virulence factors. When our stress hormone's high, that's their best chance for evading the immune system and proliferating, right? So when we're experiencing stress, it's like little doses of antibiotics almost into our system, right? Creating this environment that's better for pathogens. The second mechanism is studies have shown that when you have an activation, fight or flight activation in your central nervous system, it actually skews the amount of mucin that your body secretes in your intestines. The mucin is where all the microbes live, and it can really damage the diversity of your gut microbiome over time. So there's a lot more. But if we just think about those four, those are very prevalent things that people experience regularly.

Everyone's touched by all of these, right? Can we go back to glyphosate just for a second? That's an incredible study. And I want to hover on it for a second because one, I wish that there's a glyphosate residue free label that's now starting to come on, but it's very few products. And two, we're seeing an abundance if we know that glyphosate is predominantly sprayed on oat crops and wheat crops, and then we go into the grocery store and everything down the aisle for kids snacks and foods, right? How many oat products are there that aren't glyphosate free? So just be mindful. I think we need to, you know, it's not to cut it out completely, but just your consumption of it. Do you think it's going to be common to test children for glyphosate?

Yes. As the tests become more accurate and more easily accessible, I think it will be. And I think it should go a long with normal stool testing and other things that we look at. Right. Because it is a ubiquitous toxin, if you will, and very common in processed foods. And kids consume a lot of processed foods. Right.

So mothers are told to eat a lot of oats when they're pregnant. Right. For lactation and stuff like that.

Well, and you know, the other problem is like, okay, we know that fiber is so important. Right. I'm a big proponent of increasing fiber consumption. Right. And there's really, really good reason for that. But the problem in places like the United States is that somewhere around 80% of all fiber intake comes from wheat.

Yes.

Right. And a lot of that wheat is treated with Roundup and herbicides and pesticides. And so as people are trying to increase their fiber intake, which is good for them, they're also inadvertently increasing their exposure to herbicides and pesticides. So then there has to be this really active decision making on, like, how else can I get my fiber right. Without simply just going to increasing whole wheat consumption because you may be exposing yourself too much to herbicides, pesticides.

I think we're going to spend some time talking about fiber. It's something that I'm like mostly passionate about in my practice. But let's just move on to the next part about if people start to remove these inflammatory agents from, you know, these inputs to their body, can they expect that alone to be enough to support healing the gut? Can they see changes within a few days?

Typically they can, yes. So when you think about the microbiome. So the microbiome is constantly trying to move towards a confirmation of balance and functionality because it's an ecosystem. Right. Most ecosystems are constantly trying to move to a state of harmony and balance, if you will. They increase some of their resistance factors, meaning they compete with each other. They create balance as a result of that competition. Now, that said, I think we want to assist the microbiome as much as we can. Right. So we want to be very deliberate about our nutrition and what we're feeding the microbiome. We also want to utilize things like probiotics and prebiotics that can supplement and add to that repair. Because it's hard to judge where you are in your dysfunction. Right. It's hard to judge whether or not you're At a state where you go, okay, I'm just going to clean things up and it's going to revert back to functionality or I'm going to need to clean it up and drive functionality. Right? So where are you in that? It's so hard to judge. So I always tell people the most sensible thing to do is clean things up and drive. Right. There's no downside to driving. Right. So drive. So push the ecosystem towards balance and functionality, utilizing every tool that you have in your bag, you know, assuming you can afford it all. And a lot of it is very affordable. Right.

Is there talk in the scientific community around antibiotics and how often they're recommended and the disruption to the gut?

Yeah. So you see it in standard, like, protocols, like you see it in recommendations that come down from governing bodies, right? So, for example, the American Dermatological Association, I think, has now reduced some of the criteria needed or, sorry, enhanced the criteria needed to prescribe antibiotics for acne. Right. Because they're recognizing that people are taking three, six months worth of broad spectrum antibiotics for pimples. Right. It's like, it's gotta be a better way to do things. And so they're even seeing now that the guidance documents are going out saying, okay, let's be more restrictive, let's try this, this and this first and only in certain cases of this type of cystic acne will you prescribe antibiotics for this term. So it's getting a little bit better. And you can look at the metadata and see that some of the antibiotic use is going down. You see now in hospitals, and this is a little bit of a throwaway, but it's a good sign that when they give you an antibiotic in the hospital, they also give you yogurt, right? It's a good sign. Not that the yogurt they're giving you does anything. Right? But at least that that indicates awareness, right? So. So I think we're moving in the right direction. But what I see more often than not are, are people having the awareness that, oh my God, I have to take an antibiotic because there are times you need it and that where it can save lives. And they write to me and they write in and they write to other people that they learn from and they go, what do I do to protect my gut when I'm taking this antibiotic? Right? So I think the awareness in the public sphere is getting better and that's where we're really going to make a change, Right? Because it's going to be each individual's own effort to protect their ecosystem.

Can I ask, personally, you've got two kids who are a little bit older than mine. Growing up, did you ever have to draw the line and kind of speak to your wife about trusting the process and their bodies being resilient to heal themselves, to not go on antibiotics? I work with so many people who, they have kids, every time they get an ear infection, prescription after prescription after prescription, it's like. It's too much.

Absolutely. So there are a number of times, and both my kids were born C section, unfortunately, because they had to be. Right. One, my son was breech, and my daughter, they call it the vbac. Right. They're going to try to do the vaginal birth for the second child, but she didn't come out. And so they had to do it that way. So they already have a dysfunction to begin with because they're not getting the proper inoculum. Now, we try to overcome some of that with practices that you can do that can be really beneficial, but that makes them more susceptible to things like sinus infections and ear infections. So there were times when they would start to show temperature, they would start to show signs of a sinus infection or urine infection or throat infection. Right. A sore throat. And the inclination is towards a quick course of antibiotics, but I would always kind of hold them back to be very sure that it's a bacterial issue first. Right. And that it's not a viral issue, which oftentimes it is. Now, a viral issue can mold into a bacterial issue. If your body doesn't take care of it, that's called a secondary infection. Right. And at that point, you may need an antibiotic. But I think you want to be much more diligent about understanding whether or not the primary driver is a viral issue or bacterial issue. And doctors can often tell there's some signs. Right. Based on what the mucus looks like, based on what the. The ear looks like or the throat looks like. One area I never messed around with is that if they would strep, we would hit them with antibiotics. Right. So the moment they complained about a sore throat, the first thing we would do is go get a strep test. And if it's strep, you're taking an antibiotic. If it's not strep, even if it might be a different bacteria, we might wait it out and do other things to try to support their system, to try to clear it.

Thank you. I wanted to hear that because I think a lot of people, they go to the doctor's Office. And then it's just. It's fear. Right. And obviously want to do whatever we can to help our kids. And yeah, my son was a C section baby too. So I've just been so cautious since he was a little baby. We were giving him probiotics.

Yep.

Yeah. Just to help with. With that. But that also makes me think too, in terms of. Let's talk about with our children and sanitization. Right. Kind of like another issue when we go into our schools. There's Clorox bleach everywhere. There are scented fragrances in the bathrooms and those glade plugins and everything. Do you see this as a contributor to the rise in allergies and stuff like that for kids?

Absolutely. Right. Not only is there really scientific rationale behind that, the loosely called hygiene hypothesis. Right. But there's some really good data around this too. So there was a study called the Finnish Allergy study. And this is in the country of Finland. Right. It's a fascinating study because Finland and other areas of social medicine, the government becomes really concerned about, you know, trends that are occurring because the government has to pay for these trends. Right. So they're seeing this massive trend towards an epidemic of allergies and asthma in the kids. But there is a geographic region of Russia that's very close to some of the main cities in Finland that is only about 100 kilometers apart. And that area, Russia, has much lower allergies and asthma and so on. And so they took on this study to figure out what is the difference between them. So geographically, they're essentially the same. But are there other behaviors that are affecting the outcomes of these kids? And what they were able to see is that in Russia they've got their doors and windows open much. They don't sterilize their surfaces the same way they do in Finland. Right. The lemon scented antimicrobials that we've been programmed to think is clean, that's not really clean. And then they have their doors and windows closed all the time. It's the same circulating air inside, but every surface is clean and sanitized. That they assumed was likely the culprit for why there's a big difference now. Then they went one step further and they said, okay, let's test this. Right. Let's take a handful of daycares in Finland. Of course, given the way they're structured, daycare is provided by the government. Right. So the government can kind of control what they do in daycare. They took a handful of daycares and they created dirt piles and Then they followed kids for a number of years who were mandated to play in the dirt piles a few times a week versus kids that went to daycares that didn't play in the dirt piles. And they found a dramatic shift in the prevalence of allergies, asthma and so on. Right. And this occurs through a couple of different mechanisms, which is really interesting. Number one is the most sterile your environment is the less diversity you have within your microbiome. Right? And this goes back to the idea that we are a microbial construct and we're in an antimicrobial world. So if you're killing microbes around you constantly, you're creating an antimicrobial environment that you're putting your microbial construct in. Right. It's not cohesive to the way we function. Number two, exposure to environmental bacteria is really important for the diversification of our own microbiomes, but also for the training of our immune system. This is called immune tutoring. Right. So our immune system goes a little bit haywire when it doesn't get adequate exposure to other microbes and so on. This is what the immune system trains on all the time, Right. So it doesn't get that training, it goes a little bit haywire. It starts attacking things that it shouldn't attack, like, like ragweed and pollen and so on. There's another component to this called the atopic march. And this is really interesting because it correlates with eczema in kids. Right? So eczema is another epidemic that's occurring in kids, Right? You see it all the time, I'm sure, in the clients that you work with. Eczema is directly related to the formation of allergies and asthma. If a child has eczema, they have eight times higher risk of developing food allergies, environmental allergies and asthma. So then the question is, why is that? Okay, so our skin microbiome is really, really important for maintaining the barrier function of our skin. Our kids are being born, you know, especially if they're born C section, they're over bathed, they're over sterilized. Right. Their environments are sterilized. So they're not getting a lot of microbial contact on their skin. And we're constantly cleaning everything around them. We're cleaning our hands before we touch them and so on. And as a result, our skin is not developing the way it should in terms of its dermal function, and thereby it's increasing the aberrant responses on their skin. So the skin's getting drier, thinner, and having barrier issues. Right. So that's directly an impact on dysbiosis of the skin microbiome. Now, because the skin barrier is dysfunctioning, environmental and food borne antigens. An antigen is anything that can trigger an immune response are penetrating through the skin and entering into circulation through the skin, which is a very unusual route. It's supposed to go through the oral route. Right. And in the gut, we have all of these sampling sites that allow our immune system to learn not to attack these things. But when they go through the skin, it elicits a whole other type of immune response that causes a very inflammatory, allergic type of response. So kids are walking through the world with barrier dysfunction to their skin. Peanut allergens, exposed to everything, foodborne pathogens, ragweed pollen, everything's going through their skin instead of their oral cavities. And your immune system is overreacting to everything. So we are creating an epidemic of allergies, asthma, immune dysfunctions and so on. And it's through the mismanagement of our microbial ecosystem, both on our bodies, in our gut, and around ourselves as well.

Yeah. I'm thinking about, gosh, everything that they're exposed to. Often we can't control a lot of things that happen outside of our house. But when I'm working with my clients, we do an audit and I throw out all of the cloroxes and the Mr. Cleans and the disinfectants. I often say, if you want to keep something like that, then keep it for your toilet or something. Right. But other than that, you can make everything like easy, homemade cleaners that are safe and effective. There's also so many other clean brands. Do you have a dog?

I do. We have a couple. We always have them.

Yeah. It's funny just mentioning just the exposure. Right. And understanding we're going to consider getting a dog now.

Yeah. And the studies around that. Right. So households that have dogs have kids with lower incidence rate of allergies and viral infections. And a study that came out in early 2020, which coincided with the pandemic and a massive amount of adoption of dogs, which is great, was they showed that if you brought a dog into your household, it actually expanded your health span and lifespan. There may be some oxytocin and emotional components to that, but it's also the level of exposure you get and the healthier your microbiome is as a result of it. So, yeah, dogs are wonderful that way.

All right. We haven't even gotten to a protocol, but you can buy a dog, get a dog, new family member, clean up your Inside the. Inside of the house with homemade cleaners. Be mindful of glyphosate. Looking for glyphosate in all of your products. My gosh. And then the next one is stress.

Stress, Manage stress. Two other things I would add to that. Right. So we don't want to underestimate the power of managing stress. And it sounds kind of frou frou. It's like mindfulness work, meditation. There is real prevalent biochemistry there as to why that is so powerful. In fact, there was a, like a prospective study written up as a analysis of a number of studies around this in the Frontiers of Immunology in 2015, where the authors concluded that stress induced gut dysbiosis was the number one cause of mortality and morbidity worldwide. Right. They showed how stress induced changes to the gut and the resulting leaky gut and the resulting endotoxemia or chronic low grade inflammation was at the root of the vast majority of chronic illnesses. Right. Really well written rationale referencing lots of studies on the topic. And so we cannot underestimate stress. And then I would add two more things. Number one is actually three more things in terms of your microbiome. One is diversifying your diet. Right. So we want to eat a whole food, diverse diet. Number two is getting outside. So getting engaged with the natural environment. You know, you're fortunate to be on the west coast or going to the beach and going to canyons and walking through those areas. Where I live in the Midwest, we have a lot of forest preserves and all that. So we walk through, we kick up the dirt, we sit down on the ground and eat stuff. Right. So you want to get engaged with nature as much as you can. And then the third thing is exercise, actual resistance training. And a lot of people don't realize this, that resistance training, when you contract your muscles against a resistance, it releases a set of chemicals called myokines. These myokines actually have a profound effect on your gut. Health. Health. Right. So lifting some weights can be very therapeutic and beneficial for your gut.

Do you and your wife have a ritual at home as a family and how you start the day?

I wish we did.

Yeah. Your kids are a little older, so.

They are. They are. We used to. We're, you know, and. And part of the difficulty around that for me is my travel. I travel so much. Right. So we try to have individualistic rituals and we try to avoid certain things. Right. So for example, I work on this a lot too, and I know my wife does, and my. And I and our kids don't have the option because they don't keep their phones with the room. But when I wake up, I resist looking at my phone as the first thing. Right. We specifically got automatic curtains in the bedroom because I wanted to be able to push a button. And then the light comes in. Right. And I've been really working on some deep diaphragmatic breathing early. Like the first thing that I do. So open up the curtains, light comes in, I sit up in my bed and I try to do some deep breathing exercises. That has been really powerful to me. And then, you know, put on my slippers, throw on the robe, and I'm humming all the way to the bathroom. Right. So humming is really important because it activates the vagus nerve and that is really beneficial for the gut and the gut brain axis. So I'm humming a tune and kind of singing something, Right. Nobody can hear me, which is good because remember, I have no talents in that space. And then you get to the sink and I splash my face with some cold water. That also activates the vagus nerve. That for me does a lot, lot in the morning, you know, and, and, and that really helps.

These are great tips. I'm trying to think of just like easy hacks that we can incorporate every day that don't even involve having to eat something or take a supplement.

Yep.

What about red light therapy?

Yeah.

Going out into the sun. This is something I'm trying to get my kids before they do anything else, just come with me outside barefoot and just look up towards the sky. Any science behind that?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, there, there's connection to, from the optic nerve to your brain, Right. And then brain to the gut. So your central nervous system and your gut, which is the enteric nervous system, that's a neurological system surrounding your gut are intimately connected. And your gut is also a diurnal system, meaning it works off of the same 24 hour circadian rhythm and clock. And so your gut is constantly looking for signals to figure out what time of day it is because it's quite dark inside there, right. So it's looking to your brain. This is why blue light exposure in the night can disrupt your gut, because your brain is signaling to your gut that it's not nighttime yet. Gut don't go into the reparative housekeeping mode, right. Where your gut goes into repairing itself, repairing the lining, detoxifying the body and so on. And so we want that light exposure at the right time. So that early morning light exposure to sunlight does wake up your gut as well. And Goes, all right, wake up, we gotta now start getting ready for food that may be coming in, drinks that may be coming in, upregulating immune response. Right. Shut down some of the housekeeping mechanisms that were going on and let's get ready for the day. Right. And different microbes take over at that point. Right. So it's a very dynamic signal, but a system, but it's looking for signals from the central nervous system.

I think this is one of those ancient rituals also, along with humming sun salutations. Right. Surya, Namaskar. It was all designed to take in the energy of the sun to be looking at sunlight, to take that into our bodies, to wake up our bodies.

Yep. And the movements associated with that are really awesome because they open up the back and the hips and all that. But if you imagine you've been in this supine, laid down position this whole all night, right. Hopefully for seven, eight hours, you need to get the things moving, you need to get your joints moving and all that. So, yes, sun salutations are fantastic.

So many people rely on coffee for a bowel movement. Do a sun salutation.

Yeah, exactly. Right, absolutely.

So would you say that the gut then, you know, you're talking about this communication system. Is there enough intelligence in the gut to understand when we're, you know, dealing with daily stress versus the dangerous, chronic, daily consistent stress to turn on and off?

Yeah. The stress that we really need to respond to biochemically. Right. That is one of the most profound things that has become dismantled in a modern society. Right. Because the fight or flight response and stress response is a very important evolutionary thing. It's protected us throughout the course of human evolution because it alerts us to danger. And it's a learning system. Right. So, for example, if you're walking out in the tall grasses and you see kind of a shiny object that looks like a sharp tooth and you don't respond to it and that thing jumps out and bites you. Then the next time your brain remembers that. Right. And it causes you to fight or flight in response to that stimuli, your gut. Its role in all of this is to reset the system. Right. So your brain takes over when you have a stimulus that indicates danger, but it's your gut that turns off that signal. Right. And so what tends to happen in the modern world is that our brain being overstimulated and responding to virtually every signal we see triggers the fight or flight response. And because our guts dismantle, we can't turn it off. Right. So, and I think a lot of people can, can probably associate with this is, you know, you're rushed in the morning, you're trying to get ready for things, you're already stressed and worked up, right? You get in your car, you're driving to work, and then let's say somebody cuts you off. Your tolerance level for dealing with that simple thing is really low, right? So you might yell at them through your windshield and honk and do that, but the feeling, the rush of adrenaline and all that that you have from that one small, non dangerous interaction will last for hours, right? And you get to work at that point and your tolerance level is even lower, right? And your ability to focus on the work and the tasks at hand is even harder. The reason for that is because we're now in the fight or flight response, right? So the brain has recognized a danger, whether it's, you know, an email you got in the morning or being late or whatever. The superficial thing is because we no longer constantly face true life or death danger, right? But we still have the system in place. And so your brain recognizes this stuff. You've programmed yourself to feel stressed about these things and so you recognize it it as a problem. And so your brain kicks on the fight or flight response. Now the way the brain kicks on the fight or flight response is by activating the immune system to recruit inflammatory mediators to the central nervous system and to your heart and your muscles, right? What your brain is trying to do is go, nothing else matters at this point. We just got to get blood to the brain so we can be visually acute. Your brain can function, you can be alert so you can hear things well, get blood to the heart so your heart can pump faster, get blood to the muscles so your muscles can respond, right? And nothing else should work well. So forget digestion, forget your immune system, forget repair, forget all of that stuff, right? None of that matters because we're in a life or death situation. Mind you, in the modern day it's a tweet or it's a comment, exactly, right?

Social media, an email.

Email, right? Or a comment somebody said, or just being late, right? So those kind of things. So now your brain is going into this fight or flight response. Your brain is inflamed, your heart is inflamed, your muscles are inflamed. The rest of your systems aren't functioning properly because they've been deprioritized. The evolutionary system allows you to be in that state for a few minutes to deal with the life threatening issue and then come back down from it, right? The way you Come back down from it is cortisol is surging. Right? Your brain triggers the HPA axis, so cortisol is surging. Cortisol is driving a lot of this fight or flight response. Now, what tends to happen is a portion of that cortisol also goes into your gut. The reason it goes into your gut is because there are microbes in your gut that metabolize the cortisol and the cortisol, the metabolic byproducts go to your kidneys and it turns on sodium potassium pumps to drive more fluid into your circulation. That's to increase your blood pressure so you get even more blood perfusing through everything. Right. This is why chronic stress increases blood pressure and creates hypertension. So as the cortisol is dumping into your gut, your gut is trying to mediate it by sending some of it to your kidneys. But it's also starting to increase the expression of glucocorticoid receptors, which start to bind up the cortisol. Right. And as a result, it binds up the cortisol, it activates the liver to start binding up and metabolizing cortisol to bring down the cortisol from your system. So you can go back to the rest and digest or parasympathetic. Right. That's what's supposed to happen. But if your gut is dysfunctional, here's what happens instead. This is where things get really dismantling. You go through the fight or flight response. Cortisol is increasing, cortisol gets dumped in the gut, some of it's being metabolized, sending to the kidneys. Blood pressure is going up, and the remaining cortisol in the gut is actually increasing intestinal permeability. That creates inflammation really rapidly. One aspect of that inflammation, called IL6, interleukin 6, has its way of going back up to the brain and reactivating the HPA axis. So it puts you in this continuous cycle. Right. A single stressor in the morning, if you don't have a healthy functioning gut microbiome can be re triggering throughout the day, keeping you in the fight or flight state for the entire day. Right. We were designed to experience fight or flight in life or death situations for a matter of minutes and then come down from it because it's a very unhealthy state to be in. But because of our systems and because we're dismantled, our gut is dismantled, we can remain in the fight or flight state for hours, if not the entire day. Right. And the gut is not there to turn off that switch.

There was ever A reason to now master your mornings. I think that is it.

That's absolutely right.

I'm sitting here smiling like just one. The brilliance of the body and how it takes over to help you survive. You literally described your body being able to survive, yet how many. And our listeners too. Gosh, this morning I got an email that threw me off completely. Right. Every day there's so many micro hits to our system that could trigger that response. And I think also many of us just, we've gotten used to living that way. Right. It's like an accepted part of life, but understanding the physiology behind it and then overhaul how that's connected to your health and or digestion is where things really need to change.

Yeah.

So what is the. Go ahead.

Well, so let me. Another addict to that. Right. If people aren't scared enough. Yeah. Here's where it goes even more awry. When your gut is unhealthy, you don't have the right components within your gut to turn off the fight or flight response switch, as we talked about. Right. But that same unhealthy gut then is also not producing enough tryptophan as an example, because the vast majority of tryptophan that our central nervous system uses to make things like serotonin, melatonin and so on that are calming and reparative and protective to their central nervous system come actually from the gut, from synthesis, from the gut, not from our diet. Right. So you're not producing enough tryptophan, but the tryptophan you do produce is instead of being converted to melatonin and serotonin is going to kynurenic acid. Right. Or kynurenin, which is neurotoxic. Right. There are studies, for example, that show that kids on the spectrum tend to have an overproduction of Kyneurenin compared to kids who aren't. Right. So their guts are at the central checkpoint for that. So kids who are on the spectrum have a dismantled gut where they're taking tryptophan and turning it into a neurotoxic compound versus a neuroprotective compound. And that's all governed by the gut. So that dismantled gut that's not turning off the fight or flight response is also not making enough tryptophan. But the tryptophan you do make is becoming neurotoxic on top of that, when you go to sleep at night, we mentioned how that's a reparative time. Right. And your gut is supposed to go in this reparative phase when you Go to sleep. You're supposed to get an increase in something called BDNF so that your brain derived neurotropic factors so that all the stresses your brain went through throughout the day and inflammatory damage, it can be repaired so that you wake up the next morning with the same brain you started with the day before. Right. If your gut is dismantled, you're not producing enough B to enf, you're not repairing your brain at night, which means you wake up the next morning with a brain that's slightly more damaged than the day before. Right. And years of that lead to significant amount of cognitive dysfunction. Right. And can lead all the way to dementia and so on. So I always tell people, and this is not hyperbole, I know it can sound like hyperbole, but the stress and anxiety that we experience today is the precursor to dementia, Alzheimer's and other neurodegenerative conditions. Because it's the same pathway, same pathologies that eventually create neurodegenerative conditions like Alzheimer's and dementia that create stress. Right. So we have to get a hold of it at some point.

It is almost as though, my gosh, I wonder what would happen, you know, if we just start with stress as the foundation more than any protocol or anything else. Right. I know from my own personal healing journey there's two things that changed. One, when I went to the ashram to heal, the stressors were taken away. Obviously. I wish everyone listening could just go and experience ashram life, because that's what happens. You shut down all the running open tabs in your mind and your body can just experience stillness. The second thing that happened is I started eating a lot of high fiber foods and I think that the two in conjunction together was exactly what my body needed. I didn't need any supplements, I didn't need any hardcore protocol whatsoever. So I wanted to own in on that because I think today anyone we talk to on the streets will say that they're stressed. Their stresses are higher now than ever before in history. And on top of that, we're seeing more prescription drugs being written for the stress and the worry and the anxiety that people are going on on adults and children.

Yeah. And the drugs aren't attenuating the process. Right. And it's not, certainly not affording an opportunity to repair the damage that stress is causing. Because some of the biochemistry is still there. Even if you're on anti anxiety medication, the biochemistry that leads to the anxious feeling is still occurring in your system. So you're still getting the damage, even though in certain percentage of people, they may feel better on it and a certain percentage doesn't feel at all any better and some feel worse. Right. So it's a crapshoot a little bit. But nonetheless the biochemical process that create the stress response are still present and they're still causing damage. Right. So you're not repairing at all. So that combination of just turning down the noise, being more mindful, grounding yourself and then adding fiber is really powerful. Right. And I think this is one of the reasons why. The meta analysis studies on fiber consumption shows that for every 10 grams of fiber you add to your daily diet, you can reduce your all cause mortality by 10%. Right. And that's linear all the way up to about 40 grams of fiber per day. Right. Then the effect tapers off a little bit. But imagine a simple tool that can reduce your all cause mortality risk by 30 to 40%. Who wouldn't want that? Right? It's fiber.

It's fiber.

Yeah.

And how many people do you know that are getting 40 grams of fiber a day?

Yeah, virtually nobody. Anyone that I have control over their mouth is doing it. But anyone outside of that know? Oh, I mean it's the. I think the average consumption in North America or certainly in the US is somewhere around 6 to 8 grams.

Yeah.

You know, wild. Yeah. Which is crazy.

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Yeah. So yeah, the things that they don't relate to that underlying issue, Right? Yeah. So you bring up joints. That's problem A. That's a wonderful point. Because if you take something like osteoarthritis, right, it's according to the World Health Organization, the second cause, the second leading cause of disability worldwide is osteoarthritis, right? And that is a progressive inflammatory process that the types of inflammatory markers that exacerbate osteoarthritis, the degeneration of cartilage, are exactly the same markers that are elevated when you have leaky gut and a dysfunctional gut microbiome. Right? So you might be feeling the tights, the knees are sore, the fingers, the hips and things like that start to ache and you might be going, it's just age, right? It doesn't have to be right. It's a progressive inflammatory condition that is driven in part by a dysfunctional gut. The other thing that people experience is energy imbalance issues, right. If you're feeling sluggish, if you're getting sleepy throughout the day and so on, it's not only that you haven't gotten enough rest, but it's a gut liver dismantling issue. Because the liver is kind of a central command for energy metabolism, right. So when your brain, for example, calls on more glucose, it's your liver's job to respond to it. And if your liver doesn't respond effectively because your gut liver axis is dysfunctional, then your brain goes into a bit of a panic mode and starts causing cravings, right? So now not only are you tired and you're foggy, you're craving things, you're craving cupcakes and sugary things, right? Because your brain is trying to get you to upregulate some glucose intake. And the stress itself that you experience is a driver of the stress you will experience tomorrow because it's a self perpetuating cycle. Right? So if your gut is dysfunctional, we know that increased stress creates more dysfunction in the gut. And the more, the higher the dysfunction in the gut, the more stressed you will be and so on and so forth. Right? So if you're somebody that's already fairly stressed and, and don't deal well with stressful inputs and so on, know that it's only going to get worse because each one of those bouts of stress you're experiencing are causing a bit of a dismantling of your gut, which makes you more susceptible to stress. And the problem with that is long term exposure to stress and stress feelings causes depression. Right. It's that loss of hope, right. Which is kind of the, the definition of depression. And so now you're going into a depressive mode and not just the stress mode. Right. And so there was a wonderful study called the GAIA study of 2025. It's a nutritional study on whole foods and a lot of fiber. They consumed a lot of plant based foods. And they looked at cohorts of people that were eating normal processed everyday foods versus people that were fed a very specific whole foods diet that was kind of a Mediterranean style diet. Right. And they had both of these cohorts or people that, that had diagnosed stress and anxiety disorder and risk for depression. And what they found was just the whole foods alone with the increased fiber and plant based materials had a profound effect on their outcome compared to the people that consumed regular processed foods. Not only did they not get better, they got worse in that study period. Right. And that's all the intervention that was just the dietary changes. So it underscores the impact the microbiome has on that outcome.

And it's frustrating too. Right. You know, I've worked with people who were clinically diagnosed as being depressed. Telling them to go eat a salad and some whole foods is probably the very last thing on the list. However, I know that when it's backed with education. So you mentioned the vagus nerve. Can you hover on that a little bit? So whether it's depression or anxiety that people feel, the science behind the vagus nerve.

So the vagus nerve is this amazing connection between the gut and the brain. The gut and the brain. And I like people to think about the gut and the brain. As two ends of the same system, right. They're all your nervous system, if you will. And that controls all the inputs and outputs within the body, Inputs being the foods and the things that we're consuming and the stressors that we experience or the, you know, the visuals, the auditory and all the other things that we experience. Then your nervous system is deciding how those things impact your body. The communication between the gut and the brain is through the vagus nerve itself. And the vagus nerve is a bidirectional highway. But interestingly enough, given that it's a bidirectional highway, about 80% of the information goes from the gut to the brain and only about 20% from the brain to the gut. Right? So that starts to underscore, like, where is most of the information coming from in terms of how we respond to the world around us? It's coming from the gut, right. It's the largest sampling site of the body. So it's utilizing the vagus nerve to send those signals to the brain. And the problem with the vagus nerve is we have something called a sympathetic parasympathetic balance. Right? And the technical term for that is called a sympathovagal tone. It is. What neurological tone is your vagus nerve in? Is it in the sympathetic tone, which is more the fight or flight response or the parasympathetic tone, which is the rest and digest and repair response? And we want to activate the vagus nerve because we want the vagus nerve conducting that information from the gut to the brain, and then the 20% from the brain to the gut. So we have to activate it. And vagal tone is activated and improved by activating the vagus nerve. Right?

Right.

So things like humming, meditation, deep diaphragmatic breath. There are even devices now you can use, right? Like a company I think they call Truvega maybe, right. That has a device that you can put on your vagus nerve that's near the carotid.

That I think is another one.

Which are great because those are simple things that we can do to activate the vagus nerve, improve sympathovagal tone, and start to push the body towards a parasympathetic effect. Now, this is also why, when you're undergoing stress, deep diaphragmatic breathing can be so powerful. Right. There are studies that show that breathing exercises are as powerful as any medication on reducing stress and reducing that acute stressor. And the reason for that is breathing engages the vagal tone. Right. Your body's learned to again, take inputs and create outputs As a result of that, and your breathing is an input that tells your lungs and your gut that, okay, I'm in a relaxed state, I can now turn my brain off. Right? So think about this. Physiologically, if you're being attacked right now, if a cheetah is chasing you, right? I mean, you'd have no chance. If a cheetah's chasing you, let's say it's a really old slow cheetah, it's chasing you and you're running away from it. You can't do deep breathing during that, right? It's short, shallow breaths that are very rapid. So that input is now telling your brain through your gut and your lungs that, hey, we're in danger, Keep producing the things we need for fight or flight, right? Let's say you do run away from this old tired cheetah that gives up and you go up a tree or something like that, and now you're relaxed, naturally, the first thing you're going to do is start taking deep breaths, right? To catch your breath as we say. So then that signals through your lungs and your gut to your brain that, okay, we're safe. Start turning down the fight or flight responses and start turning up the rest. Repair digest responses, right? So breathing is so powerful, but it works through the vagus nerve. With the vagus nerve not functioning, your gut and your brain don't talk to each other the same way, right? So there are studies on mice called a vagus nerve, where they cut the vagus nerve and you see a complete disarray on their metabolic response, their immune response, their cognitive response or eating response. Like the brain no longer knows that you've eaten enough food and keeps producing hunger hormone. Right? Everything goes disarray. And that's the importance of the vagus nerve.

So this is what's fascinating. If we know that the body needs to be in an optimal state for it to function at its best. If we put the lens of nervous system regulation on that first, to cultivate the environment for the body to feel a sense of ease and peace first, then the body can come back online, right? It's less about the treatment and this is what I wish, like, for healthcare in the future. If doctors would simply acknowledge this when you go in to ask you, hey, this protocol will work if you put your system into that rest and digest and recover state first.

Yeah.

And I think we're really missing the beat on that.

We absolutely are. You know, I like to think of it as reparative time. Right, right. So we talked about earlier how Every metabolic function of every cell creates a exhaust that is damaging to the cell and that drives dysfunction over time. Right. And that's in fact a great model for aging. And so in order to curb that and reduce the impact of that, we need restorative, reparative time each day. Right. We're supposed to get most of that when we sleep. And so that's why you want to be very cognizant of the amount of sleep you get. But even throughout the day, you have to have components of reparative time. So then you want to ask yourself, and let's say we get doctors to, if not people, prescribe it to themselves. Prescribe yourself three times a day, 30 minutes at a time, where you have reparative time. Right. Do you have enough of that? Are you sitting down somewhere kind of disengaged, just in your own thoughts and breathing, relaxing, Whether it's listening to music, if watching something that may not stress you, reading something that's very calming, whatever it may be, that is reparative time. And one should prescribe that to themselves. Right. Or it's too easy to just go damage, damage, damage, damage every day, all day. Because we talked about how resilient the body is, and it tries to adapt to all that ongoing damage, but at some point it becomes too much.

I can hear listeners saying, I don't have time, I don't have time. Nobody has time. But I think for a lot of practitioners that I meet with, it's really a boundary or paradigm that they set. It's part of their lifestyle. Life is built into the ability to either have a slow morning, take those 10 minute breaks, go for a walk outside, ending the day with family, that's the foundation. And then everything else gets added in because otherwise life is just gonna happen. You can feel every second of every day feeling stressed, and then you're paying for it later, Right?

Yep.

Visiting my mom in Toronto, every single hospital bed was full. And there's, you know, all of these seniors coming in with Parkinson's and Alzheimer's and they're eating this food in the hospital that is just like so void of any nutrients and fiber. And a lot of it's dietitian approved also. And then compound with the fact that they're in a very stressful environment with sirens going off and, you know, alarms and stuff like that. And it's really not anywhere near being close to being part of our healthcare system as it should be.

Yeah. And it's a very sterile environment.

We talked about how, oh my gosh, Wipes and everything.

Right. So yeah, yeah.

All right. Everyone wants to know some of these hacks that actually work. So I've heard you talk about transforming your gut in 30 days. So what would you say are some of the non negotiables? We've gone through a few of them, but let's say you're creating a protocol for our listeners. What are some of your non negotiables to start to heal the guests?

Yeah, so I break it down into five pillars, right. So through the course we were talking about, I really go through the five pillars and why those are important. And you have to do something, at least one thing in each of these pillars. Right. So this is the way people need to think about it. So number one is food. We talked about that. Increasing fiber, increasing diversity, and moving towards whole foods and less and less processed foods. Number two, I like to think of it as exposure. So exposing yourself to beneficial microbes, whether it's in your home environment, not over sterilizing, getting outside in natural environments, you need exposure to beneficial microbes. Number three is stress management. Right. So we absolutely need to manage stress like we talked about. Number four is sleep and exercise. So these are reparative stimuli that are really, really important. And number five, supplements. And supplements can be very useful. Right. The right probiotic, the right prebiotic, you know, the right polyphenol mix and so on, those can all be a really good accelerator of recovery. But the thing is, not any one of those things by themselves is going to make a profound effect. It's going to be a cumulative effect of doing something within each of those pillars. Right. So I want people to prescribe themselves restorative, reparative time each day. I want them to prescribe themselves outside time each week, week and movement with. With that outside time. I want them to start to track and understand the diversity within their diet. Right. How many different foods are they eating on a weekly basis? And try to add new foods each week and maintain the ones you added. So you want to get to the end of the year having added 40, 50 new foods. Right. That'll be tremendous. You want to try to work yourself up to 35 to 40 grams a day of fiber, soluble and insoluble, about 80% soluble, maybe 20% insoluble. And you want to find the right supplements that have clinical studies that can drive the repair within your gut microbiome. And you want to do all those things while you're managing stress.

And almost all of those were free.

All of those are free. Yeah.

Can we hover a little bit on variety and diversity and the power of that. From an Ayurvedic standpoint, the concept of eating seasonally, I wonder if there's truth to this. Have you ever seen studies where microbes within soil at different times of the year that are actually beneficial for our gut? Microbes based on our immune system supporting our immune system?

Yeah, absolutely. There is a seasonality to the gut as well. Right. So when you follow indigenous tribes like the Hadza tribe of Tanzania or the Papua New guinea tribes, these are hunter gatherer tribes that live today like our ancestors did a few thousand years ago, we see a significant seasonality in how they eat. And we see as a result, a seasonality shift in their microbiome that causes better adaptation to that season. Right. So, for example, if you're an Inuit Indian, you know, and you are are eating a large amount of fat and seal blubber, their microbiomes have adapted to utilizing that fat in ways that we cannot do that. Right, right. We also know that, for example, Japanese individuals, microbiomes have adapted to digesting seaweed that our guts cannot because they've pulled gene genetic capabilities from fish that can break down seaweed. And so we see that environmental changes, seasonality, all affect the microbiome. And if we were living the most foundational type of life, we would see those changes within our guts as well. It's hard for people to track that and all that. So I just say, you know what, Try to diversify your diet as much as you can. Right. Get as many different types of whole foods in as you can.

I always say go to the organic section every single week. Buy what's on sale. If it's something that you're not typically used to eating, buy what's on sale. And that will force you to diversify.

Totally.

Right?

Yeah. And ethnic grocery stores too, too.

Yeah.

So by my house, we have a massive, like, Asian grocery store. We have a huge Middle Eastern grocery store. And you'll find, like, roots and tubers and fruits and all there that you don't find at your regular whole foods. And, you know, even though there are still roots, tubers, vegetables, they're foundationally different in terms of their structure that they feed different types of microbes. So try to add one of those in each week.

Great. I've never added in an ethnic, like, shopping place.

Yeah.

As part of a healing product.

It's like star fruit. Right. You might only find it in an Asian grocery store. And it's functionally different than, say, a pineapple, even Though they might be in similar families or bok choy is different than, you know, your typical leafy green and so on.

Yeah, yeah. All right, moving to supplements then, Hot topic. A lot of people are supplementing for the sake of supplementing, especially for the gut. Oh, I heard this was good for my gut, so I'm going to take it first. Is it worthwhile doing a stool test? Do you recommend them for everyone? And which one do you recommend? And then let's talk about spore based probiotics as well.

Yeah. So with supplements, you know, they can be very useful. That's one of the pillars. But you'd have to utilize a supplement that we know can move the needle because there's a lot of nonsense out there. Right. Unfortunately, in the whole supplement wellness world, there's also a lot of nonsense. There's stuff that can be really impactful, but there's a lot of nonsense. So you have to learn how to navigate through that. Which will give people some tips with the stool test. What I tell people is adopt the foundations and the fundamentals first and then do a stool test later if the issue you're dealing with is not being fixed by adopting the foundations. Right. Because the thing is, in the stool test you could see things that could be alarming that could simply be fixed by increasing fiber intake. Right. Which everyone should do anyway. So you can absolutely test the stool first and gain some insights. But I say adopt the foundations and then once you've done the foundations and you're foundationally sound, if there's still issues, then do a stool test to see if there's some deeper insights you need of some unique things about your microbiome that are creating the symptoms or the issues that you're dealing with. Right, right. For example, a quick example in that is like you may, someone may inherently have. Have really high sulfate reducing bacteria and as a result, high sulfur foods or sulfate foods that are typically healthy. So think about eggs and, you know, crustaceans and leeks and things like that. Mushrooms that can be really healthy for you and good for you. Could be inflammatory to somebody else because they break that down and then they.

Healing the problem.

Yeah, exactly. And they create hydrogen sulfide, which is very inflammatory. So for that individual, they may start cleaning up their diet, eating more whole foods, increasing their fiber, but they're still having loose stool and cramping and all that. That would be a good insight. Then to go, okay, you've done the foundations, stick with the foundations, but now let's do some adjustments on your diet. Right. To bring down the sulfur reducing bacteria. So those could be tweaks that are interesting. Now, you could do that ahead of time or you could do it after. I think it's kind of give or take, depending on the practitioner you're working with. Right. And then talking about spore based probiotics. So when we developed spore based probiotics a number of years ago, what was most interesting about it to me me was that it was the closest mimic that I could find to how we would naturally interact with microbes, especially in our environment. Right. Because I was looking at a lot of the probiotics and, and I'm, you know, even though I'm trained as a microbiologist, I'm like a closeted evolutionary biologist. Right. So. And I say closeted because those guys are huge nerds. So I want to be cool. And so I think of everything that I would do in, in evolutionary biology perspective and go, okay, did we do things that way through the course of evolution? And if so, okay, maybe right for you. Right. So then I look at our interaction with microbes. Did we get these particular strains at this massive dose every single day naturally? And if the answer is no, then I'm like, okay, then I'd be a little suspicious of what that might do to your system. Right. Because it may not be favorable. So we started looking at like, what is our most natural way of interacting with microbes after you're born and after you're done nursing and interacting with mom and dad that closely, it's through the environment. Right. And the vast majority of environmental bacteria aren't really going to act as probiotics because they're going to die going through the gastric system. Then we identified these microbes that are called Bacillus endospores that have a way of protecting themselves through the gastric system. And certain types of Bacillus endospores have a profound effect on your gut microbiome. Right. They're so intelligent, so powerful, that they can alter your entire gut microbiome in a favorable way at really low doses, at 2 or 3 billion CFUs per day. So that was really our impetus to go, oh my God, that's nature's probiotic, if you will. And our ancestors inadvertently ate those bacteria every day, eating in the dirt and drinking waters out of rivers and streams and hunting and foraging and normal things that human did, because many of these organisms are ubiquitous in the natural environment. So that, to me was all the impetus I needed to go, that's a natural interaction with the Bacteria. Now let's take it and study it and do some actual clinical trials to figure out if they actually have clinical benefit. So that's where I really gravitated towards the spore based probiotics because to me it was like the best solution, you know, to modulating the gut.

Yeah, I think it's, it's a big industry. People are so caught on looking at, you know, the higher the billion or 2 billion or 3 billion ratio that it has to be better for them. But I think you have to know where the product comes from and also know why you're taking it. In your course, you, in all of your education, you break down the differences between the symptoms. So a lot of our listeners who are suffering from, whether it's bloating or gas or heartburn or indigestion or maybe they have been diagnosed with sibo and really how the protocol has to change for each. Can we go through maybe like, you know, for every day, is there something that you recommend for our bloating and gas supplements of sufferers as a staple outside of like the, the top five in terms of their diet and which probiotic to look for? Is it spore based for everyone?

So spore based can be quite foundational for everyone. Right. Because they fix a lot of the core issues of dysbiosis and that is the shift in diversity in the microbiome and the increased prevalence of pathogens within the microbiome. And these pathogens elicit a lot of inflammatory responses. They activate the immune system when it shouldn't be activated. They also don't aid in any of the digestion. And many of these pathogens can also ferment and create gas, which is really dysfunctional. The other problem with the presence of the pathogens, and this is really relevant to bloating, is the stasis that occurs in the bowel. Right. Stasis in the bowel means the bowels aren't moving effectively. So then food sits for too long in areas like the stomach and the small intestine where it can ferment and gas can be created. So movement of the bowel is really important. So then how does a probiotic help with that? Well, one of the biggest reasons why the bowel doesn't move effectively is a loss of signals from the brain to the gut. This goes back to the gut brain through the vagus nerve and the signals for peristalsis. So the movement of the bowel comes from the brain and the brain sends that signal down through the vagus nerve and impacts the enteric nervous system. That's the neurological system covering the gut. And then that triggers the smooth muscle cells in the gut to start contracting and moving things down, Right? Right. Same thing for gastric emptying and so on. And as a result, if your gut is dysfunctional and leaky, endotoxins from the small bowel can make their way up the vagus nerve and they lodge themselves in an area called the dorsal vagal complex, which is right at the brainstem. That inflammation and that lodging of those inflammatory endotoxins in the dorsal vagal complex disrupts the peristaltic signals from the brain to the gut. Gut. So the brain is going, all right, gut move, you're eating. You got to move the stuff along. Right? You don't want it to sit there for too long. Move it along. The signals aren't getting to the gut, so things are sitting in the stomach too long. They're sitting in the intestines too long, the small intestine too long. And they're getting fermented and putrefied. And then gas is being produced. You're getting bloating, indigestion, distension, and discomfort at the same time. On top of that is the signals from the brain also trying to get your stomach to release more hydrochloric acid, trying to get your pancreas to release more digestive enzymes so you can effectively break down those foods and absorb them rather than allowing them to sit there and get putrefied and fermented. Right. And again, that disruption in the vagus nerve causes some of those problems. So from what they would take, I would suggest a probiotic, like the spore based probiotic. A lot of the bloating and indigestion can also be driven by an overgrowth of H. Pylori. So there's a Lactobacillus reuteri strain that actually combats H. Pylori in the stomach. And then on top of that, I would add artichoke extract, right. Hydrochloric acid as a supplement. So betaine, hcl. And then if they're not producing enough bile, they should always check their liver health. So anyone that has any sort of bloating or distension in their belly should get their liver checked. Right. Because there's a strong indication that your liver is not producing enough bile because it's dysfunctional. And when I say get your livers checked, I mean just liver enzymes and also potentially a CT for fatty liver.

Okay.

Fatty liver actually precedes liver enzyme dysfunction. Right.

Wow.

Yeah. So Fatty liver occurs first.

Okay.

And so you want to. And the only way to really diagnose that is through a CT SCT scan.

Yeah.

And so you want to know if your liver is functioning properly, because the production of bile is very important to reducing that bloating and indigestion and the movement of the food. And so if your liver is not functioning properly, then you want to upregulate liver health. Right. Support the liver. And on top of that, you may need to take supplemental bile for a period of time as well. Right. So with that bloating comes a lot of things that may be dismantling. It's inconvenient and it sucks and it looks bad. Right. But it is an indication that numerous systems could be completely dysfunctional or somewhat dysfunctional. I wouldn't want to scare people and completely. But. And they need to pay attention to that.

Don't ignore your symptoms. Right. I think a lot of people, we've become so accustomed to living with these things because it's such a prominent issue for so many people. Finding a practitioner who. One who knows how to read a stool test, I think is also really key. There's so few people who can actually do that. But really finding a practitioner who's your partner in healing, because these are all states of suffering.

Totally.

And I think that now, especially with the picture that you've painted today, your digestion really is the source of vitality and longevity. Right. So if it's the one thing that we can keep optimized, this is the way to go.

Totally. And, oh, you mentioned my recommended stool test, so I do want to mention that for people. So there's two that I like and I've used myself. One is BiomeFX, which we had developed at Microbiome Labs. It's a whole genome sequencing test. So it gives you a lot of accurate information on things like viruses, fungus, bacteria and so on. And it provides a lot of context and functional groups of microbes. The other one I like that I've learned about more recently is Tiny Health. And it's interesting because they use metagenomics, which is different than whole genome sequencing. So you get a little bit different information. And one of my friends, Elisa Song, she's a functional pediatrician, she's a medical director there. So I already had a high regard for the company, started digging into it a little bit more, and it's really useful. What I like about them is they do some specialized reporting around kids, microbiomes. So if you're testing your kid, that could Be a really cool test to look at as well.

I'm always cautious when I recommend all these tests, but I feel like when it comes to information about your digestive system and how preventative it is, why not do it?

Yeah.

And I talk about poop every day with people anyway, so just make it part of your conversation.

Exactly.

Regular stool test. Do you like an annual stool test a year?

I do one almost every two years.

Okay.

Yeah. Because I keep up with my gut health regimen pretty diligently. Right. If I start to feel like something's off, then I may do it to just try to get an indication if I can make adjustments and make it feel better, then I might do a stool test and go, wait, did something creep in there that shouldn't be there? Right. Did I go to India and eat too much street food and I've corrupted my system in some profound way, so I may do it then.

And do you feel like you're at a point with the knowledge that you have, are you able to get the fiber that you need? Do you ever take a fiber supplement yourself?

I definitely use fiber supplements, yeah. Because I do find it really hard to get that level of fiber from diet. So the way I have it in my head is I need to supplement with around 20 to 25 grams per day because I can, even by mistake, get at least 20 grams of fiber in my diet. I'm cognizant of what I eat in terms of what has fiber. And so I try to make those choices actively, but I'm not counting it. I'm not going like, okay, I ate this much in a salad. It had this much sweet potato, had this plantain. So I'm not counting it. I did a food diary for a short amount of time to kind of give myself an average of dietary fiber I get. Right. And so now I know that from a regular weeks of eating, just being cognizant and choosing things that I know have fiber. I'm getting about 20 grams a day. 20, 25 grams. So then I need to supplement with another 20 grams. And for most part, I use psyllium husk. Organic India is a super clean psyllium husk. It doesn't have any flavor. It's not a fantastic experience necessarily. Right. Because you have to drink, drink it fast. Right? You mix it in water and stir it and just drink it fast. I actually really like doing that right before meals, adding, you know, 6 to 7 grams before each meal. And then I do it before bed as well.

Oh, brilliant.

Right? My stools in the morning when I wake up are like freaking superheroes. Stools, right?

Yeah.

They're amazing. And one of the reasons why I like to do it around meals is it completely blunts the postprandial or the after meal sugar response of the meal. Right. So. So you can be a little bit more forgiving with what you're eating.

That's a good tip.

Right. If that role is there and you just cannot avoid it, if you had 5 to 7 grams of fiber before it, it's going to blunt the response, the insulin response to that role.

That's brilliant. Great tip. Something that I work with a lot of my clients on who aren't in practice of eating a lot of veggies every single morning. Just taking kind of like a kitchen sink, the banana, the berries, the celery, the spinach, the kale, the ginger, coconut water, psyllium, and throwing it all into a blender. Right. Like that, to me, is a nature supplement that you can do for a week here and there. And you'll diversify that way too.

Totally.

And it tastes pretty good.

It does. And that's actually the great way I get my kids to consume some of these things. Right. And I want to address a couple of misnomers that people have because they hear about this stuff online, is that if you blend a fruit, you somehow lose the fiber portion and it concentrates sugars and all that nonsense. And it's absolutely not true. And there are randomized control trials that actually show that. Right. So it's not a guess. The studies that show that. So absolutely blend your fruits. Absolutely. You throw the bananas and the berries and all that in there, you're not negating the fiber and you're also not increasing some sort of magical sugar content. Right, right.

So juicing.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And, you know, throwing some psyllium husk in there is fantastic. You can throw some seeds in there. Right. So. So anything you can do to get some fiber into your system is fantastic.

All right, before I take you through some rapid fire questions.

Yes.

Can you maybe paint a picture as somebody who just has so much information and education on this? Just through understanding and healing the gut microbiome, the rise of autoimmune diseases today, and obviously the rise of chronic diseases that we are seeing today, just the resilience of the gut microbiome to be able to heal itself and, you know, if there's something that listeners could be doing outside of our tips that we recommended today, just really honing in on the fact that if you were to Treat your gut first. The resilience of the gut to be able to heal itself. Can you just paint a picture of that as, like, optimism?

Yeah, absolutely. And that is really the beauty of the discovery that the microbiome controls so much of our outcomes, right? There was an idea in the early 90s and late 80s that genetics controlled most of our outcome. And in fact, that was the impetus around the Human Genome Project. Project was to find the gene that was responsible for every disease we knew about at the time, right? The. The chronic diseases, and then when they sequenced a whole human genome and we found that we're like, wholly inadequate in terms of functional genes, right? We have like 22,000 functional genes compared to an earthworm with 30,000. And so then it was like, oh, wait a minute, so what is controlling most of our outcomes since when the Human Microbiome Project kicked off? And now we know we have like two and a half million microbial genes in our system compared to 22,000 and functional human genes. And so what that really shows is that most of our conditions that we deal with, including things like autoimmune and anxiety and stress and chronic issues like metabolic health, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, all of these things are a result of a disruption in your ecosystem, right? And because it's an ecosystem, you can always fix it. And it is the nature of your ecosystem to move towards balance, right? That's what your gut microbiome and your microbiome wants to do. This is also why it's hard to change it in a negative way. It takes years of persistence, exposure to bad things, right? And this is why we talked about earlier how the body itself is resilient. A lot of that resilience comes from the microbiome's resilience. And just know that if you just start making a few good decisions each day, your system will be able to bounce back. And it wants to move towards balance, right? That's the beauty of it. And it's never too late. You could be 80 years old right now and dealing with immune issues and all that, it's never too late to improve your gut microbiome. It's still your ecosystem. You could be 8 years old. And it's not too early to do it, right? So at any given point in your life, and no matter how far gone your system is, you can always improve it. And that's the sign of hope, right? Because the things that we talked about, the vast majority of them are so simple.

They're so simple.

Simple, right? And it's a cumulative effect of those things that really move the needle. And I've seen, I know you've seen people with profound changes by just making those small, tiny decisions each day. Right. You don't have to revamp your entire life. You don't have to get every piece of equipment that you've heard all the biohackers talking about and all that. Right. You don't have to be perfect. Right. Follow an 8020 rule. I follow an 8020 rule because there's a lot of living that happens in that 20% of bad decisions. Right. And so your, your gut and your system is resilient enough to keep you healthy if you're focusing on it 80% of the time.

Thank you for that. It means a lot coming from somebody who's actually seen the transitions. And often when I'm speaking to the healing journey of my clients, people will often think that, oh, that's them, it's not me. Or because they're not seeing any tangible results. I like, I can't wait for the day that we can see our gut microbiome and just like see if it's happy or, you know, happily functioning every single day. I'm sure that day will come. But until that day, know that everything that you do, the small little changes are actually fueling probably your immune system for yourself at 90, 100 and plus. Gosh, because we're probably going to live that long.

Yeah, absolutely. And you mentioned your immune system. I do want to make a quick tie. So remember, think about your microbiome as the eyes and ears of your immune system. Right. Your immune system is the only system in your body, body that is designed to adapt frequently to changes in your environment. Right. Whether I'm here now in California today, and then I fly back to Chicago tomorrow, my immune system has to adapt to the changes in those environments. They're completely different antigens in these areas. And the only way your immune system knows what you're being exposed to is through the gut and the microbiome in general. It's the microbiome that's translating for your immune system, the environment that you're in. And then it trains the immune system on how to respond to that. Right. So that is really important any stage.

Of your life, especially with autoimmune disease. Right. The rise of autoimmune disease today, that awareness is key.

That awareness. So, and to just double click on the autoimmune disease part, you know, it's interesting, like, 40 years ago, we had something like 35 known autoimmune diseases. Now we have like 110. So we've created new diseases for us to deal with. Right. And that goes along with the. This linear progression of dismantling our microbiome. And the reason for that is your system, your immune system is always susceptible to attacking your own tissue if it's not regulated in a way. And there are T cells called T regulatory cells, that suppress those unfavorable immune responses. The problem is those T regulatory cells are upregulated by microbes in your microbiome. So if you don't have the right microbes in your microbiome, the regulators, the regulators of your immune system aren't functioning, then you increase the risk of accidentally attacking your own tissue.

Right, right.

Again, this goes back to the microbiome being the eyes and the ears of your immune system. The microbiome tells your immune system, don't attack that, attack that instead. Right. And without a healthy microbiome, your immune system will either attack everything or nothing. And neither of those are good situations.

It all starts in the gut.

Goes back to that.

Tell me something that you're excited about in the lens of gut health in the future and what's to come.

What I'm really excited about is the ability to really modulate bacterial proteins and bacterial components to affect our gut in a really significant way. Right. So here's what we're coming to learn, that there are numerous bacteria within your gut that produce compounds, so like polysaccharides, you know, and these are compounds that are part of their own structure that seem to have a really profound effect on our system. The psychobiotics I'd worked, I had the opportunity to work with these psychobiotics, Bifidobacter 1714 and 35624. These are strains that are really profound for managing the gut brain axis. All of that comes from their exopolysaccharide. This is just a carbohydrate that they produce on their own shells, if you will, that have a profound effect on our mood and anxiety. So there's lots of bacteria like that in our system. And there are groups that I'm now working with that are getting so good at this, where they can take a known bacteria that produces a compound that we know affect a system in our body, and then tweak the growth environment to favor that compound. And now they're building a library of bacteria where a simple algorithm can go for you. Mona, these are the issues you're dealing with with. These are the processes that we need to attenuate or amplify or reduce, and there are bacteria that do that. We can design a fermentive culture that is absolutely specific to you.

I remember hearing you speak about this somewhere. So this is happening now?

This is happening now? Absolutely, yeah. And, you know, I'm working with a couple companies where some of these types of products will come out over the next six to eight months, which is super exciting to see. But, but in the next three to four years, this is going to get. Gets so dialed in where we can do a stool analysis, a metabolic analysis on an individual and go, this is exactly the fermentive outcome that they need for their specific system. Dial in that, that fermentation with the right microbes and the right inputs and outputs, and then that mix becomes very specific to you.

I can't stop smiling. Can you imagine the transformation that's going to happen as a result of this?

It's crazy. And that can happen from day one when you're born. Born. Right. Let's say you're born from a C section like our babies were. Right? We can do, we can map the microbiome on day one and go, okay, here's what we need to add in to negate the negative effects of the C section. And then if the kid starts getting, you know, a lot of ear infections, sinus infections, we can map their immune system and their microbiome and understand where the dysfunction is and then create a unique product just for them, for that reason, to improve their results. So it's, it's going to be quite amazing because. And the earlier on we do these things, the more protected they will be from more profound dysfunctions down the road. Right. So we'll be able to customize ecosystems.

For people even from this longevity stance, too, as we age, if we're not able to do the things that we've talked about today for gut health optimization, Gosh, if you're given the specific microbes that your body needs in that stance, what that's going to do for a longevity standpoint.

Totally. And here's another really exciting things. I can't, I can't say too much about it yet, trying to dig it out of here, but here's, here's it. It has been identified now with very, very, very good data over 10 to 15 years worth of study on certain strains that are absolutely foundational for healthy aging. Oh, my gosh. And if these, if you're missing these strains, there are six or seven of these strains. If you're missing some of these strains, then that's going to drive More rapid aging and age related degeneration. And what's super exciting is the preliminary studies are if you can add these strains back to the individual, you could do a simple gut test and go, they're missing three of these, four of these seven strains. Right. We can add those back. And it actually has a profound effect on your progression of aging. Right. So when it comes to all of this healthy aging idea, the microbiome is central to that. Right. And we now know that diversity in the microbiome is an effect of aging. And, and even deeper than that, the presence of these particular strains. Right, right. So that stuff is going to come out over the next year or two, which is super exciting. Right. So, yeah, the world of microbiome is fascinating. We're just at the tip of the iceberg.

Yeah. I love that you brought that up because we think we know everything and we just. We don't.

We don't.

I wish I could spend a day in your brain.

It's a mess in there. There's so much stuff happening.

I can't stop smiling. This whole podcast, just learning from you. So thank you for that.

My pleasure.

Where can people find you?

Yeah, so, you know, I engage with people as much as I can on social media. My Instagram handle is iranbiome B I O M E. And then on Facebook, I think it's just Kieran Krishnan. I don't think we have handles on there, but I interact with people as much as I can on there. I've also working on the skin microbiome quite a bit for the reasons we talked about earlier, the barrier function of the skin. Interestingly enough, there's a 65 year long study called the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging that has shown that skin skin microbiome dysfunction leads to skin barrier dysfunction. And the barrier dysfunction is the best predictor of development of chronic conditions. Right. So like your skin dysfunction can drive osteoporosis, your skin dysfunction can drive cardiovascular disease, which is crazy to think about. Right. So I've become obsessed with the skin microbiome and so we have a page called Civ. Right.

I've seen the pictures. The before and after pictures are insane.

They're amazing. Yeah, because, because. And all we're doing is modulating the skin microbiome and you see these profound effects on inflammatory conditions on the skin, age related conditions on the skin. We have these cases that we've done using this really high end photographic system that does a biological measurement of your skin age. We can reduce your biological skin age by 3 years. In a 30 day period.

Sign me up.

And that counts by looking at things like fine lines, wrinkles, age spots and so on. Want all just through modulating the skin microbiome. So it's super exciting. That's at Civ Care and we put a lot of good microbiome information there as well.

Beautiful. We'll link that out. Let's give a shout out to Dose also, since we're here.

Yes. One of my favorites, right? So the unsung hero in our body is our liver, right? Conducting 500 plus functions a day. I was just talking to somebody about this and they were like, at what age should people start paying attention to their liver, right? And I was like, well, at every age I was like, note this, by the time you're 20 years old, your liver has filtered over 4 million gallons of blood for you, right? It's filtered and removed the toxicity of that much. So that's how hard your liver is working. And we are not at all supporting our liver. Right. There was a study that showed that adults under the age of 40, 25% of them have fatty liver disease. There are over 100 million Americans that have fatty liver disease, which is already indicating liver dysfunction. And the liver and the gut go hand in hand. They're two parts of the same system. System. And when your liver becomes dysfunctional, it drives for the gut dysfunction. So that's one of my favorite products to take for the liver is dose for your liver.

Absolutely right.

It's delicious.

It's yummy, easy. It's based on ingredients from nature, which I'm so here for.

Totally turmeric, right? Milk thistle, dandelion root, ginger, all in its most bioavailable form, all at the right dose. And two human clinical trials, which is really exciting to see. So. And, and the other part of it that I love is that it reduces the number of capsules I'm taking totally.

I don't even think of it as a supplement. It's like an elixir, a daily elixir that tastes really yummy. So thank you. You have an incredible informative, educational Instagram page too. So I want everyone to go check that out also.

Thank you.

Finishing off rapid fire questions that come from our amazing listeners. Is kombucha really good for the gut?

So store bought Kombucha is probably not doing a whole lot for you. Here's one of the reasons why. There's a number of reasons, but know this, this is really important for people to know they don't finish the fermentation.

Okay?

Right. Because the true completion of fermentation would actually yield a much more sour and difficult to consume product. And so to shortcut that, they actually stop the fermentation much earlier and then they add sugars and things like that to over flavor. Yep, totally.

20 grams. Up to 20 grams.

It's crazy. That's crazy. And, and, and, and it doesn't have all the organic acids and all that you need from it. So if you're going to do kombucha, do it yourself at home.

Right? Make yourself okay. Biggest microbiome myth you wish would die.

The biggest myth is that you don't need fiber, people. I'm hearing this more and more from the, you know, from the carnivore world and paleo and all that. Like, I can't believe people who are educated as healthcare practitioners are going on there saying you don't need fiber, which is crazy. It's one of the most well studied macronutrients there is. And you cannot, cannot, you cannot ignore those, the research behind it.

People aren't having bowel movements Exactly.

Right.

Animals are putrefying in your body.

Yeah.

Okay.

So fiber needed.

Fiber is needed. Coconut oil, friend or foe for gut health.

So coconut oil has a lot of antimicrobials in it. If your gut is dysfunctional, I would reduce the use of coconut oil because the long chain fatty acids and the lauric acids can be strong antimicrobials and can actually create dysbio. And one of the studies in humans that showed the types of oils that increase leaky gut. Coconut oil was the highest.

It was one of them, yes. It's not for everybody and I think it should be used in moderation. And it's hidden in so many things these days. So thank you. Favorite ancient healing ritual?

Breathing.

Breathing.

Just simple old breathing and humming as.

You walk to brush your teeth.

Totally. Yeah. It's so therapeutic. I mean, one of my good friends, Sachin Path Mattel, you might know him as well, right? He does some amazing breathing training. Breath work. Training. And that's so powerful.

Beautiful. I couldn't agree more. What's your morning ritual for microbiome health?

To me, it's the breathing.

The breathing?

Yeah, the breathing and the movement. Breathing and movement and then exposure to light because it wakes up the biome and tells the biome, hey, enough of the housekeeping stuff. Let's get going to work. And we're going to start metabolizing things. And so one, we didn't talk too.

Much about it, but I know you mentioned fasting Also, I think that's a beautiful ritual for the gut, microbiome and the whole body to give your system a break.

Yep. I've done intermittent fasting for 10 years now, straight about 90% of the time. The only time it kind of falls apart is when I go on vacation. But other than that, I'm intermittent fasting because there's a lot of benefit when there's no food coming in with regards to microbiome. And that may be a misnomer too. Right. That when you're not feeding your biome, that actually it's proliferating and doing things that are really important because. Because there are microbes that are breaking down food that you ate eight hours ago. Right. So you do have to give your biome a certain amount of time where you're not feeding it. 12 to 14 hours is ideal. If you can go 14 to 16 on a regular basis, that's great.

Beautiful. Karen, I can't wait to have you back. I'm so grateful for you.

Anytime.

I'm sure people were taking notes feverishly. Lots of takeaways.

It's been my pleasure. Thank you so much for having me, Sam.