The Shocking Truth About Probiotics, GLP-1, and Gut Health with Colleen Cutcliffe

The real question isn't what's the best probiotic, but what supports metabolic health? So flash forward, we're now recovering our gut. We're concerned about our metabolic health. Why is that distinction so critical for people?

The right question is, what do you want your probiotic to be doing for you? What is the problem you're trying to solve? And to add to that, you can expect more from next generation probiotics, and you should be looking for something that's going to boost your digestion and your metabolism, and it's going to help you with your cravings and it's going to help you with your energy and all of those things that fixing your microbiome really can do. And so rather than what's the best probiotic, the question is, what's the best probiotic for me? Am I trying to hit up all those things? And if you are, then you should start looking for these probiotics that have these next generation strains in them.

Before we dive into today's episode, I wanted to say that wellness was never meant to be a solo journey. My name is Mona Sharma, celebrity nutritionist, and that's why I created the Rooted Academy, a space where we can cut through the noise and bring together real conversations, real support, and real healing. If you're ready to be part of a wellness movement that actually guides you towards tangible changes that last, join us inside rooted by visiting monasharma.com all right, welcome everyone. To everyone who's joining us live. Welcome. I'm excited to get to your ama's. My friend who I said I feel like I've known forever, but we just met at an amazing dinner party with our dear friend, Dr. Darshan Shah. Colleen Cutliffe.

Cut.

Colleen Cut. Cutcliffe.

Thanks so much for having me. Say it again.

Cutcliff.

Cutcliffe.

Okay. Welcome, Colleen Cutliffe, to Rooted in Wellness.

Thank you. Thanks so much for having me. I agree. We met at one dinner and we just bonded immediately. And I think we have so much stuff in common about how we've come to where we are here. It's just never a straight line. And so excited to dig into stuff with you today.

I cannot wait to hear more about your story because it resonated so deeply with me. Let's start off by, like, the intention of this podcast really so merging Eastern medicine, Western medicine, but also how everyone listening can feel more rooted, rooted in themselves, in their health and their happiness, and almost like this inner knowingness that we have to heal and to know what to do. So can I ask you maybe a personal Question. What allows you to feel more rooted in your everyday and who you are and your health?

Well, I grew up in the United States, but I'm Chinese. And so this merge between Eastern and Western philosophies and health and wellness has always been kind of something that was either in conflict with each other or kind of coming together. And so I think that for me, a long time ago, I did this exercise which I actually encourage everyone to do, which is to write down, like literally grab a piece of paper and write down what are the most important things to you. It doesn't have to be a long list. Probably should be only be three or four things. And what is the prioritization of things that matter to you and that becomes your compass for happiness? And if every day you are living in a way that is in line with that list, you're going to feel rooted in health and wellness and peace, really. And if every day you're doing things that are not aligned with that list, it's going to feel disruptive. And so I think that's just an important exercise and kind of a daily practice to make sure you're living in a way that's aligned with what you think you should be prioritizing.

That's so beautiful. We're living at such a time of like, just deep overwhelm and massive to do lists. And a lot of us wake up and we rush into our day and it's easy to get distracted. Right?

Yeah.

And I know you'll probably mention later too, just the feeling of gratitude and kind of like narrowing everything in brings more of a sense of peace and calm, which we're learning is impacting our gut microbiome and taking away stress.

Yes.

But I'm curious, like, also because of your, your healing journey and for a lot of the men and women who are sitting in that chair because we've gotten to a place or someone in our family has gotten to a place of health imbalances, we're very aware when we drift from the things that cause us to feel rooted. So do you notice when you're drifting, are there habits that you have to cause you to feel uprooted from who you are in your health?

Well, I would say it's probably the people around me who notice more. For many of us, it's, you know, your friends, your family, your spouse sort of saying, what is going on with you? They're usually the, I think the early warning signals that something's not quite right. And I think it happens when, like I said, you're If I'm acting in a way or I'm prioritizing things in a way that aren't aligned with what I know are the priorities for me, like I miss a kid's event and that's to do some thing for work, and that's not my priority. Right. And so those are the moments where you don't even necessarily know that that's the thing, but then it just triggers, like, just disappointment throughout the rest of the day or throughout the rest of the week. And so I think those are. Those are moments. And the other thing is I'm pretty religious, and so if I want to have, like, my weekly sermon and, you know, I don't have to go to church, but I have to get that sermon. And now everything is available online that also helps keep me grounded in there are things bigger than me out there. And that's just really helpful and calming to know.

Yeah, I love that you brought that up again. It goes back to that overwhelm. And I think when we pull back and find whether it's connection to ourselves, connection to others, or connection to a greater cause, kind of lessens the grip of the intensity of life, especially these days.

Yeah, yeah. And I'd say the other big trick is learning how to say no to things, because there are going to be a million people who are going to want a piece of you. They're going to want things from you. And being able to say no to that is your way of saying yes to the things that actually matter to you. And so that becomes an important discipline.

I think so. Good. It's a superpower to say no.

Yeah, I think so.

You're a busy lady, you know, sharing before the show. So excited to have you on as an expert, as a scientist, to be able to speak to the gut microbiome. We hear from so many doctors, we hear from so many men. But I think that your approach and the way that you speak about the gut microbiome and digestion, you make it so much more tangible for us to understand. You have a plethora of information and science behind being the CEO and co founder of Pendulum Therapeutics. So let's start off with this concept of digestion. It's a hot topic. Everyone thinks that the gut microbiome is simply digestion when it is so much more than that. And your work is tying all of this together. And I have a feeling you'll say that in what we're uncovering about the gut microbiome, we're still in the early stages of uncovering this ecosystem within us and what it can do. But can you share a little bit about how the gut microbiome now is so much more than just digestion?

Absolutely. And, you know, all of us, I think, do believe and know fundamentally that our gut microbiome is important. People are. A lot of people have been taking probiotics. They try to eat. Well, they're eating kimchi, trying to, you know, drink kombucha. And so I think. And there are all these phrases that we use all the time. Oh, that's my gut instinct. I've got butterflies in my stomach. All these emotions that we have, we tie back to our guts. And so inherently, I think we all know that the gut is so important. But this is one of those cases where science is finally catching up with kind of what we intuitively know. And it wasn't until kind of DNA sequencing technologies became available that 20 years ago we could actually start to understand what is the gut microbiome and what is it doing. And the biggest, most fundamental thing that we've uncovered is that traditionally, if you go look in like a med school book or biology book, there are 11 systems, 11 organ systems in our body. Every one of them is tied to the microbiome. And so we now know that the microbiome is tied to every one of your systems, which means that it's tied to every one of your ailments and health and everything that you're feeling and doing. And so how do we start to tap into that? That is kind of the magic of the microbiome. And that's where we sort of think about the microbiome is more than just digestion. The microbiome is all of your biological systems. How do we tap into it?

How do we understand it, too? It's funny, people always ask me how I get my kids to make better food choices, which isn't easy, especially, you know, as they get older.

Yes.

But something that I've done since my kids were little is getting them in tune with their bowel movements and their poop. I talk about poop all the time with my clients, and they notice a difference in their digestion when they consume foods that tend to be less nutrient rich. So things that are packaged, or maybe the pizza and, you know, chip birthday parties and stuff like that, but there's really no other way. Like, if we could. If we could get more information or at least have access to understanding the gut, seeing what happens. Most doctors aren't running things like stool tests or aren't even asking about digestion. There's more awareness around when we were off or when our digestion was off as an opportunity to tune into the healing that needed to take place.

Absolutely. And it's so funny that, you know, we as a society, we're constantly building tech and devices to measure every little thing about, you know, the biometrics of our body. And yet still the most powerful metric of whether you have a good gut is your poop.

Right.

I mean, it really is. And I talk about this, but for anybody who's out there listening, imagine, are you someone. Have you ever pooped and then turned around and looked in the toilet at what was in the bowl? If people are being honest, I think everyone would raise their hand and say, yes, I do that. Maybe you do it every single time you poop. And the question is, why? What are you looking for? Why are you looking in the toilet bowl? Why are you annoyed when there's too much toilet paper in there and you can't see your poop? And it really does come back to this caveman information that what you're looking for is your poop is an indicator of what's happening inside your body. And the reason you're compelled to always look at it is that your brain is sort of clocking baseline. Okay, this is what my poop is supposed to look like. This is what it's supposed to seem like. This is what it's supposed to come out. How often am I supposed to go? You kind of are tracking that all the time in your brain so that when it is off, you know something's wrong. I mean, it literally is our biggest diagnostic tool.

Absolutely. So look at your poop.

Look at your poop. Don't be embarrassed. Check it out.

Yeah, teach your kids. We have to start doing this more often. Thank you for clarifying. I want to dive into the work that you've uncovered. You know, 80%, 88% of Americans are metabolically inflexible. Inflexible. So what discoveries, what findings have you found in the lab that associate the gut microbiome and gut bacteria with this metabolic dysfunction?

Well, one of the really interesting things that happened once people started to be able to look at the gut microbiome is they started to discover that there are some differences between people who are healthy and people who have metabolic syndrome. So all the way to having, you know, full on type 2 diabetes. And maybe one of the most interesting things is that it wasn't just like, oh, we studied a bunch of Americans and we saw this difference. It was global. It was in Europe, it was in Asia, it was in Australia, it was in the US and people started reporting these comparative studies where they were showing that there were just these differences in people that had metabolic issues versus people who didn't have metabolic issues. That was the first thing that said there might be something interesting here. The second thing, and this is going to get a little bit gross, but there are these. There's a procedure called a fecal microbiome transplant, and it is exactly how it sounds. You literally give someone your shit. So you take stool from one person who's healthy, and you put it into a person with diabetes. And some of these studies that were done, a few of them, they showed that when you did that, you could actually see better insulin sensitivity. In other words, you could resolve their metabolic syndrome by just simply doing a microbiome transplant, a stool transplant. And then that tells you, okay, there's something in that transplant that is conferring a benefit to these people. So you take the data of what's the difference between the sick person and the healthy person. Can I start to understand why those differences might be important for metabolic health? And then you look at the fact that you can now have a curative component, and you're off to the races. You're like, there's something there. And what we have discovered, let's fast forward 20 years of research, is that your gut microbiome is actually where you metabolize the vast majority of your food into all these molecules that are really important for your immune system, your inflammatory response, and a little thing called GLP1. So all these drugs out there, these GLP1 drugs, they're actually mimicking your body's natural hormone, a GLP1 hormone. And that is stimulated by your gut microbiome and by very specific gut microbes, and we now know what those are.

Wow. And it's so important to know that we make that already, right? It's a peptide.

We make that already. And more importantly, you can start to lose parts of your gut microbiome over time through taking antibiotics, simply through aging, through travel, actually your circadian rhythm, when it changes, you start to lose some of these microbes. When we women go through menopause, we lose these microbes. And so when you're depleted in these microbes, your body is now not able to make as much of its natural GLP1. And so now you start to look to external ways to improve that, but you actually could. Talking about getting rooted in wellness, you can improve the roots of your gut microbiome and supplement those Back and get back to being able to make your own GLP1 and be metabolically healthier.

We're gonna dive more into metabolic function with GLP1 and the amazing Pendulum products, which I'm gonna go back to something that you said. This isn't an American issue, a U.S. issue. This is a global phenomenon. And that really surprised me there because typically, if I'm educating my clients, the words that we're hearing a lot of are variety and diversity. And I kind of made the assumption that that was an issue within the US because of what we done to. What we've done to our soil. But if this is a global issue, what are some of the common contributors then that are causing this?

Well, McDonald's, I think. Stress. Soda stress. Right. I mean, we're. In some ways, it's an awesome thing that we are a more globally connected community of people. But the downside of that is then we also spread all our bad habits to each other. And so when you look across the board, globally at the diet, which is one of the biggest waste influencer microbiome, you start to see that there are some commonalities like the depletion or the reduction in fiber intake and pollination, polyphenol intake. Those are kind of global things that are happening that we. The increase in, you know, fats, in high fat foods, in processed foods, all of that is sort of happening at a global level. And so it's maybe not surprising from that perspective that you're seeing this global, you know, increase in obesity and metabolic issues. And to your point, also a global increase in anxiety and stress and digestive issues. All of those things are. They're coming together.

Yeah. Amongst adults and children. Right. Which is really frightening.

Yeah. In fact, it was so crazy. I read this article that talked about infant, you know, baby car seats, how car seats for infants used to be a certain size. And then all the manufacturers had to make them larger because babies are getting fatter earlier and earlier. I mean, that's how early we're talking about it starting.

Yeah, I'm talking all the time around, like going to schoolyards and stuff like that. I've never seen so many obese children. And it's not a judgment on the parents, it's sadness because I'm sure a lot of these parents are doing things that they think are normal or are right, but it's just become too accessible to have access to these foods. And then we have a school system that's selling them the garbage food that's nutrient void, which is Causing the issue to begin with.

Yeah. The most convenient and the least expensive foods, which is what everybody's looking for. Convenience and inexpensive are the worst for your health and the worst for your microbiome. And so that's a different system. We could talk about another day.

Yeah, exactly. What's interesting, if I'm, you know, you mentioned your ethnic background from my South Asian background. They're two cultures who spent a lot of time focusing on food, food preparation. There was a lot of variety of fiber, probiotics and prebiotics and stuff like that in our diets. I find myself often saying to my clients, instead of going on a diet, just try eating like your ancestors.

Yeah.

And for the first time last week, I was met with somebody on the other end who is a younger female client. She's like, I don't even know what that, what that is anymore. Like, what does that look like? She was Eastern European. But I think that there's something so powerful if we just like, forget this diet mentality, just simply go back to what your ancestors were eating. You'll probably see it's a lot of those polyphenol rich foods, nutrient rich foods, lots of good quality fats and things that came from the earth that help our system thrive.

Absolutely. And those, those foods are going to help you have a thriving gut microbiome. And when you have the right gut microbiome, all these cravings that you get, all these crashes that you get, those will go away too. And so you start yourself on a really good hamster wheel, which is to say that once you start replenishing your body with these kind of more whole foods or more ancestral foods, you'll start to have a more diverse, in a good way, microbiome. And then you'll find that all these other things will begin to resolve themselves. So you start to get benefit after benefit from it.

I want to go back to the fecal transplants.

Okay.

For a second.

Let's talk about poop.

Let's talk about poop again, just because I know that there's also been other studies around depression and anxiety through fecal transplants. How far are we in terms of looking into the future on when this could be used as a modality? It sounds really gross to think about, obviously, but is this us, the direction of where things are moving in order to restore the body?

I think it's a, you know, throw the kitchen sink at it kind of a solution. So there are certainly places where the efficacy of the fecal microbiome transplant, like in clostridium difficile infections is incredible. And, you know, when death is on the line, you'll take that, that fecal microbiome transplant. And so I think in those cases, they really are making their way much more into practice, into clinical practice. I think in other places, it's harder because there is a safety issue with.

Oh, I can't imagine.

Yes, because as you mentioned, we're still very early in our understanding about the microbiome. And so when you do these transplants, you're transplanting everything, and so you don't really know if you're getting everything along with it. And so there are cases that have been published showing, for example, a woman had a C. Diff infection. She received a fecal microbiome transplant from another person, and then all of a sudden, after that, it cured her C. Diff infection. But she started to have metabolic issues, and she never had those before. And so you're really transplanting a lot of unknown into a person. And so I think where it's starting is the fecal microbiome transplant tells you that there's something curative in that transplant. And where we have to get to, where the investigation and the money and the time and energy has to get to is. Is distilling down. What are the parts of that that are actually leading to that benefit? Because that's the actual product that you want to make that safe and reproducible and palatable.

Yeah, literally. Yeah. It seems like such an extreme also. I'm like, we've really gotten to a point where we're looking at this. Of course it's going to be used for extreme cases, but just going back to the roots of healing and what our gut needs, that's what fascinates me. So gut healing digestion is literally probably number one. Number two that I'm working with on most, with most of my clients. How far back do we have to look? You know, we think about, again, if we're talking about poop, we're looking at the here and the now. But as we were sharing stories prior to recording, my gut issues go back to, like, when I first got here as a baby and growing up, being put on antibiotics so many times over the years. So do we need to start all the way back there to maybe understand the lack of biodiversity that we have?

I think for some people, maybe for many people, we do, that's really where the root is. And there was a really compelling story. This is one of the reasons I started my company. This study came out in 2012. It was from Marty Blaser at NYU. And he showed that infants under six months old, infants who were on a lot of antibiotics, were later on in life more prone to obesity and diabetes and these chronic illnesses of metabolism. So it wasn't like, okay, when they were two, they had issues, they were under six months old, they were on a lot of antibiotics. And now you're looking at them as teenagers and adults and you're seeing they're more predisposed to these metabolic issues. The Mayo Clinic repeated that study a few years later and they showed that kids under 2 years old, if they're on a lot of antibiotics later on in life, they're not only more prone to obesity and diabetes, they're also more prone to allergies, asthma, adhd, celiac disease. All of these things that show up later in life were the result of an early start where you completely decimated your microbiome and somehow never really replenished it or could recover from it. That's not like a lot of terrible shitty news. But the good news is that you can actually fix your microbiome. So unlike your genes, your microbiome can be modified and you're modifying it all the time. And so the hope of the microbiome is you can change it, you can replenish it, you can get yourself back to a more beneficial microbe, diverse microbiome that can help you with all of these issues. So that's really the name of the game. It might have started way back early and you can't rewind time, but you can make up for that today.

That's such a good point because it invites the opportunity to just do further investigation to your path. So with my son, I ended up having an emergency C section with him. Didn't even read the part of the book because I was so just. That's not going to happen to me. And sure enough, it saved him. So I ended up nursing him. He was breastfed for about 14 months and I was giving him a probiotic at birth. And I just remember as a mom feeling the guilt like, ah, I screwed up. I didn't give him that first dose of probiotics. And what is this going to do to him in the future? But, but he's been really healthy. But I would say that making conscious choices to make up for that has really been at the forefront. And maybe for listeners, whether you were a C section baby or if you'd had to have a C section with your child, but let's dive into maybe the repair that can happen from that. So what are some other things that people should be doing just for gentle repair?

Yeah, absolutely. I think. And this is just to say that if you are, if you need to go on an antibiotic because you have a bacterial infection, you should go on it. So in no way are we saying that you shouldn't go on an antibiotic, but what we're saying is that when you're doing that to be mindful and conscious that you have just depleted your microbiome and so you gotta start planting some new seeds. And I think about it like a garden where, you know, you had a few weeds growing in it, you had to go on an antibiotic to kill it. But the only antibiotics that we have available is like splashing bleach all over your garden. So you, you really kill everything. So now think about that. You want to go back to having your amazing garden, you gotta plant a lot of different kinds of seeds and a lot of waste. So the most important way that you can replenish your microbiome is through the food that you eat. And so if you've been a terrible eater or you felt guilty about stuff you're doing, this is a time where you can just reset the whole thing. So it's a great opportunity to reset with high fiber foods, foods that are high in polyphenols. These are going to feed your microbes. And also you can give it a 1, 2 by not just eating the foods that are going to feed the good microbes, but also supplementing with those important keystone, fundamental microbes at the same time. And that's gonna get you back to potentially even a better state than you were in before.

Beautiful. There's good news. That's the highlight, something that I love that you said. You said that the real question isn't what's the best probiotic, but what supports metabolic health? So flash forward, we're now recovering our gut. We're concerned about our metabolic health. Why is that distinction so critical for people?

Yeah, it's an important. You must get asked this all the time. I get asked all the time, what's the best probiotic?

Probiotic. What do I take? What's this one? That one? This one's trending most online.

And yes, I love this packaging. This one feels very sciency. And so I think the reason, I think that that's sort of the wrong question to ask is because the right question is, what do you want your probiotic to be doing for you? What is the problem you're trying to solve? And to add to that, you can expect more from next generation probiotics. So rather than asking what's the best probiotic out there? It's what am I trying to solve? If you're trying to solve digestion and beyond, and you're really trying to capitalize on all the latest microbiome science, then you should be looking for something that's going to boost your digestion and your metabolism and it's going to help you with your cravings and it's going to help you with your energy and all of those things that fixing your microbiome really can do. And so rather than what's the best probiotic, the question is, what's the best probiotic for me? Am I trying to hit up all those things? And if you are, then you should start looking for these probiotics that have these next generation strains in them.

I want to take a quick break from today's episode to ask if you've ever felt overwhelmed by all the conflicting health advice out there. I get it. My name is Mona Sharma, celebrity nutritionist. And that's why I put together with my colleague Dr. Mark Hyman, 12 Essential Wellness Tips, the foundational principles we live by to optimize energy, digestion and longevity. These are simple science backed and rooted in ancient healing traditions. Register now to get your copy of the 12 tips@monasharma.com backslash 12 tips. I'm curious, like, what's one of the biggest myths that you see with probiotics? And two, for listeners who maybe have been on the same probiotic, we're dealing with the same strains of bacteria for so long, for so many years. At what point do you diversify? Do you tell your body by taking the same probiotic strain for so many years to stop producing that probiotic? Is there truth to that?

I don't know that I've seen any evidence of truth to that. But what I would say there is some evidence of is that switching to a different probiotic with different strains could be helpful because you might be just replenished well enough on what you've been taking and so you can move to another one to kind of increase the diversity. I think there are a few different. First of all, the whole probiotics and supplements industry is complicated.

Oh my gosh. Especially now. Now more than ever before.

Yeah. I mean, have you ever walked into a grocery store or a convenience store and just looked at the shelves of and shelves of things? You're like, what is this? Do I need this? Do I want this? And so I think some of the myths of probiotics that have been, frankly, more marketing gimmicks than they have been based in science are more CFU's are better. And so when you look there, you know, people are 30 billion CFUs, 100 billion CFUs, 500 billion CFUs. And so, you know, more is not always better. And again, it gets back to this question of what do you want your probiotic to do for you? It's not about how. How many of that are in there. It's about what the content is. And to be honest with you, you know, in this case, you don't even know if those more things are going to do anything more for you. I just liken it to coffee. Like, I love coffee, but I don't need 100 cups of coffee a day. You know, I'm good with two. That does the trick. And so you don't need probably 500 billion CFUs or whatever. It's. What are you trying to solve? So I think the first thing is don't worry about the CFUs. What you should really be looking at is what are the strains, what are the ingredients that are in here? And when you look at ingredients and you start looking at labels, you'll notice on most probiotics, almost every probiotic, the label will say either bifidobacterium at the beginning or lactobacillus at the beginning. It's pretty daunting to read these labels of probiotics. There's these words, they're so long, you can barely pronounce it, they're so long. But if you just look for the first word, lactobacillus and bifidobacterium, you'll start to see that most of the probiotics on the shelves, that's what's in them. So the second myth, the first myth is that more CFU's are better for you. The second myth is that all these probiotics are actually different from each other. And so I encourage people, much like you do on probably many other things that you buy, to start looking at labels and familiarizing yourself with them, because you'll start to realize the different package in the different box is still housing the same pill, right?

Yeah. And the diversity, which is key.

And the diversity is key. Exactly.

And what about another myth now? So we're hearing about shelf stable probiotics versus refrigerated probiotics, and if they have to be refrigerated, then you might be wasting your money.

That's a great one. Well, first thing about shelf life stability, that I Didn't know that. I've learned through my business is that that is mostly dictated by supply chain people. Of course, yes.

It won't go bad.

Exactly. If you think about Target, you don't want to have things on the Target shelves that are going to go bad. And so there are requirements about how shelf stable and how long your product has to be able to be shelf stable simply because usually people aren't buying it the minute that you manufacture it off the line. And in some ways that's why I think a lot of people like to buy directly from the company, because you are getting kind of the stuff in that way as opposed to going to the shelves where you don't really know how long that's been sitting on a truck to get to the store and then sitting on the shelf before it makes its way into your home. So shelf life stability I think is important, but mostly driven by supply chain requirements. Shelf stable versus refrigerated is interesting. Some people feel like if it's refrigerated, it must be more potent. And I think the important thing here is that there are certain strains which in manufacturing have been able to be made shelf life stable and some of them haven't gotten there yet. And so they require refrigeration. And so the question is for the most viability of the ingredients that are in that box, you might need to be refrigerated. And in fact, for our products, for example, one of our products does require refrigeration because one of the strains in there is kind of a diva and it needs to stay refrigerated to stay viable. But most of our other products, products don't require refrigeration. There's no difference in quality between the products. It's just about, you know, whether we were able to figure out how to get something to be shelf life stable versus refrigerated. You know, it's like milk. You can buy milk that's refrigerated. Frankly, a lot of the milk that's out there today you can buy, it's room temperature stable.

Got it. Yeah, that's true. So what about the argument then of the acidity and the heat of your stomach acids burning off whatever bacteria that you're taking and it not making it to the gut microbiome, that's really important.

So when you think about the journey.

The journey?

Yes, the journey that has to be made from, you know, taking a pill to your gut microbiome. So if you think about that, it's almost like somebody trying to infiltrate into a Building, it has to make it through your stomach acid. So when you think about your stomach is there to digest foods, it's the first place where digestion happens. There's all this, this, you know, is highly acidic in order to help break down foods. And there's also these mechanical forces that help you break down your food. So the first thing is your pill has to make it through that first, you know, you know, the floor is lava moment. It has to be able to survive the acid of the stomach. And the second thing is once it gets through the acid of the stomach, it has to make its way through the digestive tract all the way to the distal colon. So you need to have something that has a time delayed release. So when you are looking for a good, good probiotic that's going to make its way to the gut microbiome. When we talk about the gut microbiome, what we mean is that it has to have an acid resistant capsule and it has to have time delayed release. And the third thing you should look for is live probiotics because if it makes its way all the way there and it's dead, that's really not as helpful to colonization either.

Right. Okay, thank you for painting that picture. You're in the labs, you are a scientist. So the encapsulation process and having it time released is something that's going to enable it to make it to where it needs to go. And I understand the aspect of the diva that needs to stay alive. So that really, it really helps just make the distinction because I think we're hearing it's either black or white, but I think it really goes back to the reputation of the company and all the science that Pendulum is putting out there also. So thank you for clarifying that for people who are listening. I know that there's a lot of imbalances that are attributed to the gut microbiome. So when I'm in an audience and I'm asking a room full of people, how many people here have food cravings, poor sleep, irritability, anxiety, constipation, diarrhea, all of a sudden, like every single hand in the audience is up. But can you attribute this, like, who is this all a reflection of the gut? I mean, we're saying that dysbiosis in the gut microbiome is the source of inflammation and imbalances that could be related to all of these symptoms. Is there truth to that?

All of these systems are tied through the gut microbiome. Now, I don't want to be a hammer that sees Everything as a nail. So the truth is it might not be your gut microbiome. Your microbiome might be perfectly awesome and it's something else, but it's an often overlooked part of the body. And so we talked about this earlier. Is your physician asking you about your gut? Is your physician tying all of your it together into maybe one problem that is really in your gut microbiome? And I think it's often an overlooked system. And so that's why people often don't look to it or realize that it needs repair. And one of the other things that happens to many of us is that things are getting worse for us, health wise. But they happen at a pace in which it's unnoticeable. So your metabolism, sometimes you notice it immediately, like you turn 40 and all of a sudden your metabolism is worse. But, but sometimes it's just creeping up on you like, oh, you know, if you Compare yourself to 15 years ago, you would say like, oh, actually my metabolism was better then. I was sleeping better then. I could eat more different kinds of foods then and not have digestive issues. I did have more energy then. And so when you kind of do that look back, you realize there's been this slow decay and that's where it could really be your gut microbiome. And so replenishing your microbiome. I find this with so many people, which is they didn't even realize they had a problem. So they're saying to me, like, oh, I'm not trying to solve a problem. I'm just trying to be the healthiest I can be. They go on the right microbiome intervention and then all of a sudden all these systems are back functional again. They have more energy, they don't have those food cravings, but they didn't even really realize how much it had deteriorated over time.

Absolutely. And I don't think it's, I think it's fascinating. If we look at ancient healing cultures, whether traditional Chinese medicine or Ayurveda, the first thing that they talk to is, is about, is digestion. And they're looking at your tongue and they're asking about your digestive system also I think they really understand, or maybe it's your digestive agni or the heat or the dampness in your body as really being a source of all those imbalances. So that's a good takeaway for people. Don't ignore the symptoms because they will creep up and often we don't notice that we've drifted so far. Absolutely.

And I think that you Know, all the efforts that you're making to try to eat healthier and be healthier, you know, noticing when they do have these improvements can also take a second. So I would say that it's not like an overnight for most people. It's going to take. I always tell people, give it 90 days. If you're going on a new health regimen, give it. If you're doing it the natural way, it's going to take a second to kind of get back into a good place. But then after that, 90 days, do a look back. And especially if you have a practitioner who's kind of guiding you through all this, you'll really be able to see the difference.

Absolutely. I think it's important. You've called it fiber a few times as being kind of a hero for the gut microbiome, it sounds like. I just got back from a trip at the ashram and I thought as a nutritionist, I was doing pretty well on the fiber front. But at an ashram, you were eating, you know, the bulk of your plate is fiber. Different colors, different veggies, some fruits and some grains and stuff like that. It took me a few days to adapt. So for listeners who might be trying to increase their fiber intake, maybe take time, but don't let the symptoms that come up deter you from increasing your fiber. Is that true?

Absolutely. What is. What's the current suggested dietary fiber intake?

A day, 35 to 40. But most people are getting under 15 or 12.

Yes. Right. So here would be my biggest advice. If you are trying to uptake, sorry, increase your fiber intake week. Don't try to hit that daily value right away.

It'll hurt. It's going to be painful.

It's going to be painful. So ease your way into it. And to your point, most of us are not getting that fiber intake. And if you try to get that intake in, you're going to realize it's a challenge. But I think looking at how much fiber that you're taking in will be a good indicator, at least to know where am I in terms of how much I'm supposed to be getting and how much I am getting. And then I would just say my biggest advice is incremental increases.

Incremental. And is that a principle in your house, like with your girls? Was looking at plant fiber focus at meals, at dinner time?

Oh, yeah, my kids, I mean, they are sick of me hearing, sick of hearing me say high fiber. And in fact, at some point I was trying to get. Kids love snacks. And so I was trying to get fiber through all these different kinds of crackers. And at some point my husband said, I don't know if you're trying to find the most disgusting crackers on earth, but you've nailed it with some of these. And I'm like, these have the highest fiber in them, but I think that it's hard to get all that fiber in.

Yeah, I wanted to hone in on that because I think that we're going to move out of this. We're in this kind of craze of keto and animal protein. And a lot of people that I'm working with are becoming deficient in fiber intake or fearful that carbohydrates from plants is attributed to their weight loss or the weight gain. Right. There's a fear around carbs, which is insane to me. Part of my healing journey involved eating more carbs and more squashes and different types of potatoes and stuff like that. My body was actually able to heal. So I hope that this takes like front and center stage moving forward when it comes to optimizing gut health.

Yeah, I hope so too. And, and the, the fact is that not all carbs are equal and so the carbs from your processed pasta are not the same as carbs from a sweet potato. And so I think that is important. And everybody's body is different. And everything that you've been through from birth to where you stand now has shaped who you are and has shaped your gut microbiome. And so fad diets or extreme diets, they might help you in a particular moment, but really where you want to get, get to is being able to have the ability to process all different kinds of foods. And I always say like that's the goal. The best microbiome is one that can process everything. And so if you are really restricted, you're going to get into this self fulfilling prophecy of having a more and more restricted gut microbiome. And so the more that you can, you might need to do that restriction first. But the more that you can then try to step out and have more and more, more ability to process different kinds of foods, the healthier you're going to be overall.

That's so interesting. I'm thinking about a lot of my client calls. The ones who have more variety and diversity in what they're eating can go out and have a night where they're eating the pizza or the alcohol or the chocolate cake and they really bounce back. It's the ones that are on these like really hardcore restrictive programs where the second they even taste Something that's awesome. Off plan. They're bloated and it sets them off the following day, and they're really suffering from these. These symptoms. So that's a really good point out.

That's right. I mean, the goal of health in general, and maybe humanity in general, but definitely the goal of your microbiome is resilience. Yeah, the goal is resilience. How many different things can you eat? How many different things can you go through? And you are resilient through that. That's really what you're trying to get to. And I don't know if you remember, but there was a time with newborn babies where there were so many products that were designed to keep them away from any kind of allergen that could possibly make them not. Yeah. And so nurseries were filled with all these hypoallergenic things and antiseptic wipes and good Lord, don't let the baby get exposed to anything. And it turns out that's incredibly harmful to your baby because we are meant to be exposed to all of these allergens so that we can train our immune system on what to be get nervous about and what's just part of the earth. And I think that exposure is really important. And what we've done with these very restrictive diets is to do the equivalent of a baby's room that has no exposure to any allergens. And there might be a moment where you need that, but really, you want to be marching towards resilience.

We've got to move away from this antibacterial, sterile nation that we've gone into. I know obviously after Covid, people got freaked out and worried, but now if my kids get dirty, I'm excited for them. Like, go get dirty. If I see a bug in my lettuce that shows up, I feel amazing. It didn't get killed. I'm so happy.

Yes. If it didn't die, this is probably good for me.

Exactly.

Yeah. And I think that exposure is important, especially for kids. If you've got kids, they. They definitely should be out there playing. And there was this awesome. Some study that was done out of Stanford that showed that people who have dogs have more diverse microbiomes than people who don't. And I love that study because I'm a huge dog person. But it just. Dogs are out there. They're adventuring, they're in the dirt, they're hanging with other dogs. They're bringing all this stuff back. And it's actually really good for you to hug your dog and have Your dog jump on the couch with you. All of this stuff is really healthy for kids through adults.

Get resilient.

Get resilient.

Get dirty. All right, let's shift lanes a little bit. Let's put the spotlight now on Akkermansia. So you've called Akkermansia a keystone strain probiotic, but there's some people through testing who don't have any Akkermansia or some people who don't have access to building Akkermansia. Can you tell us a little bit about this superhero for the gut?

Yeah. This is a strain that we haven't known about for very long, which is amazing because it plays these two really important fundamental roles that have been discovered over the last 20 years. The first thing is that it is the only strain that we know that can directly repair your gut lining. And so. And I'll talk about the two things first, and then we'll get into the details of it. It's the only strain we know that can directly repair your gut lining and the mucin layer around your gut lining. And then the second thing is that it's only one of two strains that we know of that can direct directly stimulate GLP1. So that's about digestion and your structural lining, and it's about metabolism. So in the structural lining one, I think about our gut like a wooden fence. And so I have a wooden fence in my backyard, and when we first moved into the house, it has all these wooden planks held together by glue. Was resilient and strong and amazing. Kept my neighbors from knowing what we were doing, kept me from knowing what my neighbors are doing. But over time, through wear and tear and just aging, the glue can start to thin, A plank can fall. And now you've got a leaky fence. Your gut lining is exactly the same structurally. You have these epithelial cells. Those are your planks, and you have this glue called mucin that holds them together. And Akkermansia's job is it literally lives at the fence, and it strips away the old glue when it gets old, and it puts up new glue. So it is making sure that your fence. Fence is strong. And what happens when you don't have a strong gut lining and a strong fence? Is that similar to your actual fence? You can have these leaks? And so now what that means is all the things that are supposed to be in your gut microbiome are leaking into your bloodstream, and all the things in your bloodstream can be leaking their way into your microbiome. And so you can get these bacterial pathogens, you can get this heightened inflammatory immune response. So if you are low or missing Akkermansia, you don't have the guy who's there making sure your planks have glue on them. So that's the number one fundamental thing that's made it a keystone strain. And the second thing, as I said, it's only one of two strains that we know can stimulate GLP1. So when you eat food, it signals to your body, we just ate food. Let's start increasing the amount of GLP1 that we have. And when you don't have Akkermancy and you don't have that GLP1 stimulation, your body isn't processing all the sugars you just ate. And your body isn't signaling to your brain that you're full. And so you get the. These weird cravings for weird foods at weird times. Your system is basically deregulated. And so that's why akkermancy is such an important strain.

An amazing analogy. That was great. And so this is the tight junctions within the gut that we keep hearing around about, right?

Exactly.

And do you think it's a modern day issue that we're having more issues around leaky gut now more than ever? And is it possible then knowing this, can we have, can we prevent a gut from getting leaky or like the loosening of the fence as we age, as we get older? Is it inevitable?

Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, is it getting worse over time? It feels like it's getting worse over time. There's definitely more reporting of it over time, but maybe more people are starting to realize that this is an issue.

And we're studying it now.

Yes, and we're studying it now and we're giving names to it and looking at what the causes are of it and how to repair it. And I think the one of the really interesting things about Akkermansia is it has never been found in any food or beverage. And that's people are looking for it, like, where is it?

Where can I get it?

Where can I get it? And that's not to say it'll never be found in anything, but to date no one has found it in any food or beverage except for one place and that is mother's breast milk.

Wow.

And so the current thesis is you get it from your mother and then you spend the rest of your life trying not to look. Lose it.

Oh my gosh. Okay. I'm saying oh my gosh because like the human body is so intelligent. Like the More they hear about these studies. Just like we are walking, talking miracles. We have to. We have to understand this about ourselves. So with that said, then, are people that are low in Akkermansia, are they the people who didn't have breast milk? Why are we seeing so many people with low Akkermansia?

Yeah, there's a variety of reasons to have. How you know that you might have lost your Akkermansia? You know, one is that maybe you weren't breastfed or. I'll just do a little sidebar here. My first daughter was born two months prematurely, and her jaw strength, because she was so early, she just never got those jaw strength to be able to nurse every drop of breast milk that kid got. I pumped.

Wow.

And. And we. And many moms do this. You. You do pumping in excess, and then you store it in your freezer. And then that way maybe another person can help feed the baby. Or at the moment in which you need to feed, you've got it sort of stored there. And if you ever stored breast milk in the freezer, you know that you have to warm it up before you give it to the baby.

It takes forever.

Golden milk, and it takes forever. And there are these devices that you could put on super high, and it'll heat it up faster and faster. And I was definitely an inpatient mom, and I always put that thing on high, like the highest it would go. And I threw the pack of breast milk in there and was like, thaw, thaw, thaw. Let's get there. And what I'm realizing now, the advice that I would give to anyone who's doing that now is try to figure out a system in which you can have it not thaw at high temperature, because when you go to those really high temperatures, you're actually denaturing a lot of the proteins that are probably really important for the baby, and you're probably killing the bacterial strains. Like akromancy would be killed at a high temperature.

Just the cooking, right?

You're just cooking. Yeah, we're cooking too high. Yeah, exactly. And so. And so I think. So you could. Sorry. To get back to the actual question, though. It could be because you didn't get breastfed. It could be because you got breastfed. You had an inpatient mother who was killing all the Akkermansia before it got to you. But we also know that you lose Akkermansia when you go on antibiotics, which almost everybody has been on at least one antibiotic. We know that as we age, we start to lose Akkermansia. We know when our circadian rhythm changes, when we travel and day becomes night and night becomes day, we lose our Akkermansia. We know that through other kind of just general aging processes in menopause, we lose Akkermansia. And we know when we go through periods of intense stress, we lose Akkermansia. So there are a lot of things that are just part of being a human that can cause you to lose it. And I think the important thing is maybe not harping on, oh, man, what did I do wrong that caused me to lose it, but knowing that you can actually replenish it through direct supplementation of Akkermansia, and also, also through foods and prebiotics that feed that Akkermansia. You can get it back, and then you can create a future for yourself that is much more shiny than what you've been dealing with in the past.

So, again, you're showing us evidence of, you know, despite your best efforts, whether it's to lose weight or boost your energy or anything, just through the kind of assaults of modern life or through travel or just having a busy lifestyle, you could become deficient, and that could be causing a lot of your suffering or even your weight gain. And I want to really acknowledge you and kind of celebrate Pendulum on addressing this. Can you talk to us about the products then that you have that help people rebuild Akkermansia within their system?

Yes. Well, when we first started the company, this was about a dozen years ago, literally, we were really looking for new ways to tackle gut health. And we were looking for this idea of beyond digestion, this belief that your microbiome is tied to all your systems and that you could make products that go. That went beyond digestion. Can we make probiotics that really capitalize on all the things that the microbiome can do? And we found these strains that nobody else had. And in fact, when we discovered them, we really wanted to just be able to buy them and package them up and give them to people to see if it helped people. And what we found was that nobody was manufacturing them. And moreover, when we asked people to manufacture them, they were giving us back dead strains. So we had to figure out how to manufacture the strains, then we had to figure out how to encapsulate them so that they made their way to the gut microbiome. And then we had to run preclinical and clinical tests to see did they actually deliver on the promise of improving somebody's health. And so our first product, Pendulum Glucose Control, our flagship product, was this compilation of this formulation of five strains, only one of which was even on the market, the other four of which we had to figure out how to manufacture and put together and deliver. But I would say the most kind of. One of the biggest things that I'm grateful for is that when we kind of gave these to people, we discovered that they really could help people. And this is a publication in BMJ that shows in a placebo controlled, double blinded randomized trial that for people with diabetes, they could simply take this pill that gave them back these microbes and their A1C and their blood glucose spikes could be repaired as well as a drug. But with this natural product, it could lower your A1C and lower your blood glucose spikes through this microbiome intervention that was huge.

Without making any other changes.

Without making. And in fact, we asked people to not make any other changes. No behavioral changes, no dietary changes. Just simply introduce these microbiome strains to your body and it could lower A1C and it could lower blood glucose spikes. And we now know it, it can lower food cravings, all the things associated with GLP1. It can increase energy. And so all of our products are really derived from digestion plus metabolism. And it has been. Look, to be totally honest, if I had known how hard it was going to be, I probably wouldn't have done it.

You're still here. Yeah.

Yes. We just kind of took each step as it came and just moved forward, and now we have these really unique products on the market.