Transform Your Health and Digestion with THESE 3 Things

Today on Midlife Conversations, I've got the founders of Bio Optimizers on. I've got Wade and Matt. And I was dying to jump in and talk with them today because, as you all know, you've been following my journey with gut health, learning about leaky gut, learning about all these underlying things that I was chalking up to midlife issues like perimenopause and menopause. I thought it all had to do with just aging badly. And I really learned, and you've all followed my journey with this in the last year and a half, how much our gut plays a role in all of these things. All of these. I've talked to you about gut testing, how I found things out. We've talked about parasites. I even talked about removing other toxins from my life. But I wanted to go deeper on why do we need to do certain things, like why do we need to add in HCL to our. Our diet? Why do we need to take certain types of probiotics? And what do we need to look for in that? What do we need to do to protect our gut? Aside from just the normal eating, well, drinking great water, you know, moving our bodies, what else do we need to do? Because if you are like me in any ways, you've not believed that you had leaky gut or a problem going on with your gut. So thank you so much for being here today, Wade and Matt. I can't wait to jump in and talk with you.

We're excited.

Yeah, thanks for having us.

Let's back up a minute, because how did you all get into this industry to begin with? Like, I know, Wade, that you were a bodybuilder. I know that you both were interested in these things, but how did this even come about? How was your company born, Wade?

Yeah, great question. So, you know, you scratch your own itch, essentially. So know. I came to popularity because I was one of the first vegetarians to ever go to the Mr. Universe contest. And Matt said, that's really weird and unusual. Let's create a company. And we started doing education programs. What happened, though, after the Mr. Universe? So imagine this. This is the pinnacle of aesthetic idea ideals, right? You're, you're, you're, you're fit. You got all these people. And after the Contest, I gained 42 pounds of fat and water in 11 weeks. The things that I was doing to lose all the body fat and to build all the muscle and to get to this ideal state actually totally trashed my gut. And Matt and I had the good fortune of meeting probably the healthiest human we ever met, certainly the healthiest senior citizen. This guy was in his 70s. His name was Dr. Michael O'. Brien. He just radiated health and vitality. And I went to him, Matt and I went there, we went this long seminar and he said, I said to him, I said, I don't get it, Dr. O'. Brien. I, I've done all the training, I've done all the diets, I'm doing the exercise, I've got this bottling, like all these things doing what went wrong. And he told me something that changed my life and it'll change the listener's life right now. He said, wade, you've learned to build the body from the outside in. I'm going to teach you how to build the body from the inside out. Fast forward. We started using his very sophisticated enzyme and probiotic systems, key amino acids, working on our gut health and everything. And in six months, I transformed my inner world, which had external benefits. Not only did I recapture my physique and how I looked at, but I felt a level of energy and vitality that I had never experienced before. Keep in mind I'm a trained nutritionist. Exercise we did. I was going to the world championship level, coach thousands of people and didn't know this information. So Matt and I said, that's it. We're going to go on a mission and we're going to go out and fix a million people's guts.

Wow.

We don't care how long that's take that takes.

See, I love that mission and that vision because it's so easy to get caught up in the aesthetics of it. Right? Like, so bodybuilding and fitness. And I grew up in those years too, where like that was like, you eat the same foods, you break it up every two to three hours. It's like the same rigid thing. And people get caught up in the aesthetics, but they're not really thinking about like the long term health or how we feel. And I think what happens is we pigeonhole the way someone looks and we just assume they're healthy. Like we just like. I honestly never would have imagined I had gut problems because esthetically I looked lean and fit. Right? So I think this is the thing now I heard somewhere too that you weighed were vegetarian and Matt, you were keto. Is that accurate when you guys kind of met? Okay, this was fascinating to me because there's this like ongoing argument about, you know, carnivore keto versus vegetarian or vegan. What did you guys find out that with that connection and Gut.

Yeah. We were both zealots about our dietary philosophies. We argued, debated for many years and start to find some common ground. And, you know, when you really break down nutrition into macronutrients, calories and micronutrients, then we're not that different. I mean, Wade does eat more fiber. He is, in my opinion, the. The fiber king. And I, I tend to eat a little bit more fats, but besides that, our diets are pretty similar, and a lot of people get caught up in dietary tribes and they just start arguing with each other, which is, in our opinion, a waste of time and energy. So in terms of things that we found common ground on, it was the digestive piece. It was enzymes. And back to Michael o', Brien, he really taught us about enzymes and probiotics. And we'll get into P3OM shortly. When we started taking enzymes with our protein, with our meals, with our shakes, as Wade said, it was transformative not just from, you know, aesthetically, but how we felt. We just felt a new level of energy and vitality. And it's important to understand how nutrition really works. So you can eat the best food in the world, but your body needs to break those down into small components, and then those components need to get into your bloodstream and then become building blocks, whether it's amino acids or essential fatty acids or glucose, which is energy. So in other words, if you're not breaking the food down and absorbing it, you're not getting the value from it. And just to give you one example, from our lab, when we took mass times, which is one of our enzyme blends, we found that we get 1200% more amino acids compared to not using it. And why are amino acids so important? Is because they build neurotransmitters to help rebuild broken down muscle tissue to help you recover from workouts. Amino acids are really the building blocks of life. And Wade, maybe you can just cover the five stages of digestion, just the basics of it.

There's one fundamental assumption that every single nutritionist, or most every single nutritionist will do. And they assume that everything that you put in your mouth then gets delivered in case.

Yeah, this was a huge breakthrough for me because I didn't understand that before. It's true. You could be eating the best foods, but you're not necessarily breaking it down, utilizing them, processing them.

Correct. And so what we learned is there's five essential stages in the digestive process, and if you have a disruption in any one of these, it's going to be problematic. And we know for a fact. Here's the data. 12% of the emergency hospital visits right now are gastrointestinal issues. There's 100 million people in the US alone suffering from digestive conditions on any single day, with over 50% of those who are on either over the counter or prescription medications regularly in order to deal with this. Left unchecked, digestive issues lead to a host of diseases that, you know, Hippocrates said 2500 years ago, all disease begins. Amazing how we figured that out.

So here's real quick, Wade, before you tell me the five stages, I want to, I want to go a little bit deeper on that one thing you just said here. Um, because you said people end up in the hospital with digestion issues, I think there's a lot of people normalizing, bloating, gas, feeling discomfort. Is any level of that ever normal?

Yeah, it's normal if you have a dysfunctional digestive system, which I would argue that most people, you look at a hundred million people, that's almost a third of the population on any given week. And so that's going to cycle through. And look, if you've got gas, if you've got bloating, if you have constipation, if you have diarrhea, if you have indigestion, if you have heartburn, if you have foods that you're hypersensitive to that inflame you on any level, you've got some degree. And these are early warning systems that are, if you don't pay attention to. And most of the over the counter stuff is to block your awareness of. And guess what, sooner or later, you're taking the drive in the ambulance, you're going to the hospital, and the next thing you know, some guy is carving you up and you're going to live with a complicated life for the rest of your life. And I've seen those cases and I've dealt with those cases and it's an, it's, it's a nightmare. It is an absolute nightmare that you want to avoid.

So, so for me, for me, I was having a lot like before I knew about the, what was going on in my gut. I started getting that bloated after meals and I, and I'm a celiac. So I kept thinking, did I have some gluten that I'm not aware of? Did I have. But. And so I kept normalizing it and then I did what a lot of people do. You go and get the over the counter toms or whatever. And like you said, you're just masking.

It with that and probably making it worse. That's the other side effect. So let's, let's get into these five stages so our listeners will understand because I'm going to actually correlate some associative symptoms that would identify which area you might be. Want to focus on. You know, we always want to be budget conscious.

And Wade also maybe talk about the products that can help them at each phase.

Yeah. So the first stage is probably the most fun stage of, of, of the digestive process.

The eating part.

Well, no, it's actually the smelling, the tasting, the touching, the feeling of the food, the preparation, the anticipation, the salivary response in the body. You know, you, it's, it's, it's that oh my God, I can't wait to eat this meal kind of thing. And that's a really important part. And that's why there's so much focus on cookbooks and cooking shows and prepping things and creating the herbs and anticipating. Your body actually gets into a state of being aware of the food that you're getting. And what's interesting is in India, it's all about the five electrical senses that are activated with food. And the most popular foods are finger foods. Actually holding our food actually creates a nervous system response in the body. So if you think of why do people like burgers and fries and pizza and all and tapas and all this sort of stuff? It's because there's an increased sensory awareness.

Wow.

About what that food is and the emotional connection that happens in that. So then it goes into your mouth and you start masticating. Most people don't choose their food properly. You do have some enzymes that are being released to break down carbohydrates in there, hopefully. And then the food's going to travel down the esophagus into the upper cardiac portion of the stomach. So there's a. And there's debates on if you should wolf your food or you masticate your food, depending on the dietary philosophy. I think more chewing is probably better than less. As the general rule, as the food gets down into the upper cardiac portion of something. This is what separates us from every single animal species. All animals eat their food in a live state. And why is that important? In fact, that's the foundational component of the entire raw food movement is that you need the enzymes and bacteria cultures that's normally associated with the food. So a tiger eats its food raw.

They're eating that cow eats. Killing it and eating it right then. Yeah. Or they're grabbing fish right then.

And the big advantage of that is you actually take the entire enzymes of that species, and when that species dies, it actually creates an activation of enzymatic enzymes in that just starts breaking it down. Humans are the only species that do not eat raw food as a general.

So, Wade, the whole raw food movement was based on this then, is what you're saying is based on the idea of getting the proper original form. So you get the enzymes. Is that accurate? And that's why, like raw milk, because you're not pasteurizing. And so you get the enzymes.

Enzymes and the probiotics. And we'll get into that later on in the digestive system. And I did a raw food diet for two years straight and experimented that. And there's problems with that. If you keep going down that, we'll get into that later too.

Plus you can get more parasites. Imagine you're eating all the raw food.

Yeah. So in that first 30 to 60 minutes, this is where the enzymes are supposed to be breaking down. If you don't have enzymes, and if you haven't taken enzymes with it, you're not going to carve out essential amino acids that you need to set up your digestion. And that can actually rob your intestinal tract and lead to things like constipation and a bunch of issues.

Have to get taken before you eat. Then you can't do it after. Is that optimally?

That is the optimal situation because you want to set your system up now in the next 30 to 60, after that 30, 60 minutes period goes by, your body is going to allow what's called hydrochloric acid to come into in there. Now, hydrochloric acid serves two key elements. Number one, it disinfects your food. It kills the bugs, the parasites, the viruses, the bad guys, whatever. It's designed to do that. The second thing that it does is it changes the PH of your food. Now, why that, why is that important? Because a sophisticated enzyme formulation understands that certain enzymes work within certain ph ranges. And as the hydrochloric acid kicks in, it stops the enzymatic activity of some things and activates the other. As it goes through that entire process, most people just throw a bunch of enzymes at it. And it's not a sophisticated formula at all. So you want a variable ph enzyme formulation. And that's the difference between plant, animal and, you know, cultured enzymes that we do. And we'll get into the nuances of that.

And Natalie, wait just to queue up Natalie here, because I know you've been using HCL Breakthrough, which is the solution to replace the hydrochloric acid that tends to decrease with age. So maybe you can talk about that.

Let me ask you something real quick before you talk about that because I want to make sure. So the reason I started using hcl, the reason it came was when I learned about the parasites. I had a friend tell me and she said if you take HCL after your meals, like when you eat all your organic food, whatever that will help you prevent. That's all I had to hear and I started doing it. But then I had one of my doctors tell me I'm concerned about you taking hcl because then your body won't produce its own. And so I kind of thought through that. Then I started going down the rabbit hole. Now I'm like, wait a minute, it's declining anyway as we age and our nutri. So I, I want to add it in. So then I learned, and this is what I'm going to ask you about too, that you, there's a way to test like how much HCL you actually need because you want to actually almost create where you are going to feel like you have heartburn and then back it off. So I wanted to get your thoughts on all of that. Like is that proper? The way I'm thinking that it's decreasing as we age, so we all should be adding it in. How much does it actually prevent stuff and how much should we be taking of it?

Great questions all around. So I'll dive into that real quick. So basically here's a simple easy test that everybody can do. They take a half to a teaspoon of baking soda, put it into 4 ounces of water, stir it all up, drink it on an empty stomach. If you burp within five minutes you got enough hydrochloric acid. If you don't, you don't. So it's a simple and easy test. Most people the time they hit middle age don't have enough hcl that can lead to an H. Pylori over overgrowth. And that's when you really start have problems now, which I have.

If you don't have enough hcl, you'll.

Have some, but not enough. What happens in the food starts to ferment in your stomach right up in the up the stomach. And then what happens is there's the esophageal sphincter opens up and the gas exceeds and then some of the HCL that you do have starts splashing up and that's what creates that heartburn. And acid reform.

Makes sense. So it's not just your open sphincter or whatever it is, it's this.

Correct. And then what do, what do you go out to the doctor, you go over the counter, what do they say?

They give you an antacid or proverb. Yeah, they wanted to take it, the esophagus.

But now further exaggerates. Number one, you're not digesting your food anymore. And that's going to lead to gas and bloating and a bunch of other things and undigested proteins, which is a real problem when you get the intestine. So you get that straightened out. Next, the food goes. We add what's called bicarbonate buffers. Fancy. Same for minerals like magnesium is probably the most important thing to buffer that acid coming out. And then what? It goes into the intestinal tract and this is where the bacteria are going to work on it. Now your digestive system has what's called, I say, 10 good, 10 bad, 80 opportunists. Right.

So this is step four. You're talking about stage four right now. Right, Exactly. So this is what you're in the digestive tract. Okay, got it.

Yeah. It's like a sale at Macy's. Right. There's 10 the noses on the dizzle. It's just, it's just a. It's a. It's a mosh pit down there.

Okay.

Okay. Now there's hundreds of species of bacteria, okay. And we're not actually feeding ourselves, we're feeding the bacteria. If we don't have bacteria in our guts, we're dead. It's a symbiotic relationship and different bacterias work on different elements of digestive systems. And so that's why you might be more inclined to cultural foods from where you are. There's genetics, there's what the bacteria you have, any course of antibiotics is going to wipe out. So if you've been on antibiotics, you've got to rebuild your gut. And most people were on it long time ago. Also, a lot of modern foods cause problems. Things like glyphosates cause problems as well. Inside of that and a variety of preservatives and dyes and elements. So our digestive systems are under a continuous assault from the modern world. And I'm not complaining about the modern world, it's just the reality that we're dealing with. There's one element, though, that's the big enemy of your health and vitality, and that is proteolytic probiotics. Okay, why is proteolytic probiotics first off, almost no probiotics break down protein. There's only very few strains.

Okay.

And just eating your.

Just, just eating your ferment, fermented food is not going to do this.

Correct.

Jump in with some data on that. So we, we have a lab, we've tested pretty much every commercial probiotic that's available. We only found two that were able to break down protein, and one of them is P3OM, which we'll get into.

Yeah, that's amazing because there's a million probiotics on the market and you don't know what the heck they're doing. People are just grabbing whatever. We don't know.

And here's the problem. If you're not breaking down your protein properly. Okay. And if you don't have the probiotics in there, number one, if you're waking up with bad breath, crusty eyes. Right. If you are feeling bloated. Right. Constipated, whatever, brain fog in the morning. What's happening is you've got some of these bad guys which are taking that protein and they're creating things like indole and scadol and all these toxins. Some of that protein is going across the intestinal tract and leaking into your system, which is causing immune system responses because it's thinks it's under attack. It thinks there's a viral attack or something else. So now you got protein floating around the bud, your immune system's going on. So if you get those allergic reactions to food, if you're feeling bloated, you're feeling groggy in the morning, that's a good indication that your guts are off. Also, if you have really stinky poo, that's another indication that you're getting fermentation over there. Right. And. And you know a funny story about that. If you go into any bodybuilding gym.

Yeah.

And you go to the bathrooms in there where people are pounding a lot of.

Oh, yeah, I thought it was just the egg whites. I thought it was just too much egg whites.

What's going on?

Yeah.

Because bodybuilders and athletes know that you need protein to build muscle and just to maintain muscle. But oftentimes they're using cheap proteins. They don't have the koi enzymes or the bacteria and stuff. They don't have enough hdl and they run into problems. Yeah.

Because they're having gas. Just blaming it on too much protein. But what I'm hearing you say is because it's not breaking down correctly, you're not processing it correctly.

That's right now as a middle aged person.

Yeah.

Okay. As particularly as you start going to premenopause, menopause, all that sort of stuff. Right. Your amino acids getting into the system is essential because you don't have the hormone strength. And the biggest risk factors for aging degeneration. How your skin starts to down your musculature. You're losing your butt, your skin's all drooping is directly related to your muscle mass. So I'm on a mission to help middle aged women. We coached thousands of them back in the day when I was a trainer, is to teach them that you've got to get muscle on your body if you want to age gracefully. And in order to do that, you need enough digested protein to get to that. So you need to train and you need to get those amino acids in there. And so the enzymes, the hydrochloric acid and the proteolytic probiotics work synergistically. Final stage is the elimination phase. And so many people have problems with elimination. If you're not properly hydrated on a day to day basis, if you're doing too much caffeine, if you have an imbalance in your mineral complex that you're not creating the peristaltic contractions, or in a rare case, if you have a misalignment of certain vertebrae, you can actually stop the peristaltic contraction of the body to remove that puts the food through the system and eventually eliminates it. Constipation and you know, diarrhea are actually two ends of the same problem. What happens is you get a buildup of plaque and it starts to narrow that. And if it narrows down completely, that's where you get constipated. And if it narrows down to a little bit, what happens is you get diarrhea. It's the same problem. So what you got to do, got to spend about 90 days is what I had to do to fix myself. I spent 90 days to on a, on a, on a treatment of mass times hydrochloric acid P in combination to eliminate all my digestive issues. And I've never looked back ever since. And we've literally corrected thousands, thousands of people since that time.

I love how you just broke that down in the five stages because you're right, like people have different problems in different stages or they could have the whole thing. And like your last one that you just brought off the elimination stage. I can't tell you how many women come through my my are like, oh, I just go twice a week or and like, what I don't think you all understand listening is that you, your body is getting rid of toxins, getting rid of junk. If you are holding on to that, it's just reabsorbing back into your body. Like you're. You're creating bigger issues. So, Okay, I have a lot of questions here. And first of all, I saw this demo a while back with enzymes. This was super cool. And it really stuck in my brain where we took two processed things of puddings, like chocolate pudding, and we just mix them both with a spoon like your digestion would be doing. One of them we added enzymes to and mixed it. The other one we didn't. And you stir it and then you pour it over. And the one with digestive enzymes, it pours out smooth. The one without it, it's like clumpy coming out. Which. That visual was so big for me because it showed me what digestive enzymes are doing to our. So before we get into details on like, these specific products and all that, I want to make sure I understand the proper order. So you ideally should take enzymes like your mass times before you start eating. Right. Is that accurate before you start? Okay, can you overdo that or is there. How many a day times a day can you do that? If someone's eating five times a day, can they do it every time?

The more you eat. I mean, I would just say the more. The more you eat, the more taking enzymes will benefit you. When we actually launched mass times, we were dealing with primarily with bodybuilders who are eating thousands of calories six to.

Eight times a day.

Yeah, yeah. You know, and Wade and I've taken, you know, 50 to 100 mass times.

You can take them. It's not going to hurt you to do. To do more. Got it. Okay. So that was my first question. And then when is the. So HCL I typically take at the end when I'm done eating. Is that the correct. Like you wait, so you're completely finished and then you take your HCL.

We've simplified it to like a 3, 2, 1 formula. So we recommend three mass times 2P, 3 OMS and one hydrochloric acid.

@ the same time or at the same time?

You know, just simplifying it. You can get like, try to do perfect timing. But I think for. For most people, just so to simplify.

It, it makes it easy. But if in an ideal world, like if I. Because. Because I know, yes, I'm like a perfectionist when it comes to this. And some people listening will be too. In an ideal world, would you do the enzymes before a probiotic? During and the HDL at the end.

With you do the enzymes first, then you would do the HCL second and then.

Oh, HL second. Okay. Yeah, so I had that wrong about HCL being at the very end of digestion. Okay.

You want that second and then the P3M would be last. Or you know, ideally, I, I, we find in a perfect scenario that a person's doing P3OM at night and they would be doing microbiome breakthrough in the morning.

Okay.

And the reason for that is, and Harvard just released the study, I think it was last year that showed that virtually every single person in North American has some variance of leaky gut. How do you know you have leaky gut? You feel bloated after you eat that. Bloated. You know, you can't get rid of that little muffin top that keeps going away. And it's not really fat and it's not really muscle. It's some other goo. What's that? That's an inflammatory response. And you know, Matt and the lab team built a world class fixer. It's, it's gut they should have called.

It like basically coats your gut. Right. It, like, I look at it as like a, it's a coating, right. Like you tra. You drink it in. So the way that I've been doing it is I, before I go on my sauna in the morning, I have, I'm very regimented here. But I get up and I have my, my, I have minerals because I want to put minerals in. Then I mix, I literally mix this, your, the, the breakthrough. I mix it with my glutathione. I don't know if I should be mixing these together. You're going to tell me if I shouldn't or should. But I mix it with my glutathione and my vitamin C and I take that all at one time before my sauna. That's like what I do first. And then at my meals I'm doing the other ones that you're talking about. Is that okay to mix this with stuff or do you want to keep it separate?

What's really interesting is we've got very similar routines.

Okay, so. And then do you take binders too? Because I do that after my sa. So that's a whole nother. That's a whole another thing to, to.

But I, I do the binders. If I'm doing, if I do a binder, if I'm doing some sort of detoxification. Mode.

Okay, yeah, I'm in, I'm in detox mode. So I add binders in, but I want to. Okay, so I want to talk about this gut barrier stuff because there's a lot of people that sell things that it's very confusing right now. People are like, use colostrum or use that. Like there's so many different brands and so many different ingredients. And I was actually looking at one I was using before versus this and I'm not. Tell me what goes into the breakthrough that, why that's so important.

Let's talk about colonizers versus transient strains. So most probiotics will literally just go through your body. They will provide some benefits. So the probiotics will actually consume some of the food, they'll multiply and then they leave your body.

Okay.

So that's why they're transient. They just come in, they come out. However, Microbiome Breakthrough is designed and we've proven it in the lab, that it will build what we call healthy biofilm. That is what seals your gut, that is what that product is designed to do. And you're creating colonies of these healthy probiotics. And these probiotics will help digest the food that's coming in and produce health boosting molecules. So one thing that, you know, just to add to what Wade was talking about, the probiotics will not only digest food, but they produce other molecules. For an example, P3OM, Wade recommended taking it at night. The reason is it will actually produce a lot of gaba, which will help you sleep better at night. And we have a.

With meals and at night. Or did I miss something there? So do you.

It takes eight hours for the GABA to peak. So if you take it with dinner, about eight hours later in the gut, these P301 will actually be producing GABA, which will help calm your nervous system and help you sleep better. And Wade and I experimented with that many, you know, many times, which is, you know, taking mass times and P3M before bed. And thousands of our customers have reported they sleep better. We didn't really understand why. But then we bought a half million dollar machine that showed us they're a GABA powerhouse.

So Matt, when He said the 3, 2, 1, you're doing that at meals, but then you're also doing this before bed. I just wanna make sure I'm following.

Yeah, because you know, one of the top things that will disrupt your sleep is digestion is undigested food. Right.

Okay.

So if you're taking enzymes and P3OM, you know, even right, right before bed, people tend to sleep better.

Okay, so what about the whole colostrum trend right now? Like, do you follow with that? Do you think you need that if you're doing this? Like, what, how important is that you.

Don'T need anything else? I mean, that product, again, will produce healthy biofilm. But yeah, colostrum bone broth. I mean, a lot of these things are probably helping to seal the gut. And again, how do you know if you got leaky gut? You know, Share a personal story. For a while I thought A1 milk protein was evil because I would consume it, I would feel it in my feet, I would get an inflammatory response. However, when I sealed my gut using Microbiome breakthrough, I'm able to consume, you know, A1 milk protein and I don't have any issues anymore.

That's exactly what happened to me. I thought I was, couldn't have lactose. I couldn't, I was. And I thought I could only have raw milk. And I now it's the opposite. So this is the crazy thing. Like I, I used to dismiss this idea of leaky gut for years. And I had guests on my podcast talking about leaky gut. I had doctors say I would be like, I'm not, I'm healthy, I don't have leaky gut. So I want anyone listening to know, like, you could literally look and your lab, your blood labs could be fine, you could look healthy and you could still have leaky gut. Signs to me were just that I felt uncomfortable after some meals and I didn't know why. Like I just, now I know bloating, heartburn is not normal. You're not supposed to have that. It's not an age thing. Also for me, I started to show estrogen dominance. That also is part of a gut problem, by the way, because you're how you're processing it. Also with the gut, when, if you're stirring food intolerances, like I did one of those food intolerance test, all of a sudden it showed like all my normal foods that I would eat as an intolerant, it was showing like salmon, it was showing ginger all these things that I would eat. And the reason is because you have a leaky gut and it's crossing the gut barrier. So this is common. So do people have to test for leaky gut or can they just start treating as if they do?

When you talk to doctors, the main thing, they look at something called zonulin. So if there's zonulin levels or kind of off the charts, it Tends to indicate there's probably a leaky gut situation going on. Now, here's the really good news about your gut. It will repair itself or optimize or get healthier very, very quickly. Probiotics have about a 48 hour lifespan. So for an example, if somebody's got leaky gut, they start taking Microbiome Breakthrough every morning for two, three, four days. And you can take kind of like two scoops for the first week. Don't be surprised if you feel completely different in three, four days. That's amazing because again, it's just, it's a very dynamic environment. And to give you another example, if you fast for, especially for three, four, five days, if anybody does fasting it, your gut will actually start to dry up. The probiotics, the gut lining will start to basically die. So one of the game changers last year for me, because I did a lot of fasting, was ending my fast with Microbiome Breakthrough. Because if I just started eating even things like bone broth or fruit, I would have turbulence in the bathroom for a few days. But when I started using Microbiome Breakthrough, I've never had an issue ending a fast since, which has been amazing.

So this is kind of a shortcut. What am I missing there? It sounds so easy.

It is that easy. And one other key benefit of P3OM is that it kills a lot of bad bacteria. Wade was talking about the bad guys.

Okay.

We knew that it was undefeated against food poisoning, both from personal experience and our clients. So when people have food poisoning, it's typically E. Coli. So in the lab, we, we create these battleground environments where we can test the probiotics against bad bacteria. And we found that P3OM does kill E. Coli. So P3OM will help kill a lot of bad bacteria in your gut. And then the Microbiome breakthrough will kill different bad guys. So again, we do a lot of UFC style combat in our lab with the probiotics. And, you know, in terms of getting rid of the bad guys, those two products are absolutely incredible.

So definitely, especially when traveling to underdeveloped places, things like that, this is like your insurance policy for sure.

Quick thing, take a bottle with you. If you get some sort of digestive stress when you're going to another country, and oftentimes you're just exposed to a lot of foods or you get these bacteria things. Take 10 P3oms immediately. As soon as you feel digestive stuff, wait 60 minutes, do another 10, and then do another 10 at night. It's undefeated.

Wow.

We've literally got hundreds of our friends who have gone through this experience. In fact, I have a lot of friends who travel a lot. They will not travel without their bottle of P through M because of those situations.

Oh, that's wild. Okay, that's good to know. Okay, question. I've heard from doctors sometimes, like, you don't want to do these things because then your body stops producing. How much truth is there to that? And does that matter? Like, if you ever stop doing it, does that create a problem? Like, especially the hcl? Why does so many doctors, why will you hear them say that? Like, oh, if you take HCL now, your body stops producing it. Is there truth to that?

When you take certain molecules, let's, let's say you're injecting testosterone or estrogen or whatever you're taking. Your body has receptors where it will detect, hey, there's this exogenous form. So let's produce less of it, right? That's not the case with enzymes. Hydrochloric acid, P3O M. If you stop taking it, you just go back to normal. Your body doesn't shut down production. And the truth is, you know, as we, as we get older, we need to replace or supplement with certain things to combat the natural decline that occurs. And again, with digestive systems, typically in your mid-30s, things start declining. And in your 40s, 50s, 60s, it gets worse. And a lot of people say, well, you need to take more protein as you get older. In our opinion, you need to take more enzymes. Because the issue is if you're taking more protein and you can't break it down, you're not getting the amino acids right. What we really want in our bodies is amino acids, not protein.

This is so critical because this is the trend lately, especially with midlife women and in weight loss and in fat loss, we hear, eat your body weight and protein up the protein. More protein, more protein, more protein. But we're missing this whole part. If you're not processing it correctly, you're just eating extra calories, basically, and you're making more work on your body.

Yeah. Maybe, Wade, you can share your, your experience recently with that.

Well, this is, you know, just understanding this, so going backwards in time. And I'm going to give you that, I'm going to wrap up this whole connection about how we discovered this in the aging process. I'm in my 50s now, so as a plant based guy, there was no plant based products 20 years ago. And so we realized, okay, if we can optimize our digestion, I Can get more amino acids out of less protein. And I was able to to compete at World Championships on 85 grams of protein where my competitors were eating 200, 250, 300 grams. I was probably getting the same amount amino acids as them because my digestion was optimized from when I went and started it and screwed it all up and screwed my system up. I was doing 250 grams, wrecked my digestion, got on the enzymes, probiotics, hydrochloric acid program went down to 85 grams and felt amazing. Okay, so what's the difference? My body weight was the same, my musculature the same, my beta. So what changed my digestive capabilities. Fast forward 20 years later. Last year I decided, okay, I'm a 50 year old guy, can I, can I even get to that level again? And I was able to do so beating people 20 some years younger than me, beat all those guys out, went to the world championships again. So when I ran into my digestive problems, I was eating 200 plus grams of protein a day, but not breaking it down with the digestive products. We talked about mass times HDL P3M. I was able to go to 85 grams a day, keep the same level of muscle, felt great, looked better, it was way, way better. Fast forward 20 years later. Last year I decided, hey, what can I do as an old guy, right? Can I get back to that? Well, using this system which I've been using for 20 years, I went at it again. The difference was and I was able to win and go back to the world champs, all that stuff. But what was different is I did have to increase my protein more so than I was doing back 20 years ago. So my overall hormonal system is not the same as it was when I was 20s. I'm not on TRT, I'm not on augmenting with any of those hormonal products. I'm not against those. I'm just saying that was the rules of the competition. You can't do those things.

Sure.

That meant that even as I age now and even though I've got my digestion, you know, perfect, I still had to increase my protein because my body cellular levels just is not as good as uptaking it. And I think this issue is more amplified with women than it is with men. A lot of women are more sensitive on the digestive side. They are averse to taking protein in. You know, it's like I don't feel that good when I take it. They don't feel good because it's not breaking it down because their hormonal drop off for women is much more significant. And you want that muscle mass and that bone density to stay high as you age in order to look and feel your best moving forward.

You're totally bridging a gap for me because what I know is since I've been healing, I got my muscle, my lean muscle mass came back on. I got lean. Like a lot of things worked for me. And I don't eat exactly my body weight in protein grams. I eat probably 80 grams a day. But it's working great because I'm realizing now because I'm doing all these proper things with digestion. So I mean, I'd like to eat more some days, but I, I, I'm looking, on average, I'm probably about 80 grams a day, which is lower than what you'll hear as the recommended. But it all makes sense to me now. And I don't have these digestion problems unless I forget to take enzymes or things like that. Then I'll feel it and I'll know what I did.

But a really cool benefit of we, we hear a lot from, especially from women is that when they start using mass times, after a week, they'll lose an inch or two off their waist. It's not that they lost body fat. Is that the bloating that they are, they've become accustomed to you were mentioning is gone and their waistline drops.

Okay. So I have kind of a funny thing that I'm gonna own up on. So I, I mean, my book is called 7 Day Jumpstart Unprocess your diet. So I'm a unprocessed natural food person. I, I talk about unprocessed food, but I'm not perfect. Every now and then I want something that's completely, you know, whatever just because I want. Yeah. So last night I wanted ice cream. I just was like, I want ice cream. And they didn't have an ice cream shop nearby, so there was a frozen yogurt shop, which for the most part is junk. So I don't know what was in this yogurt. I'm sure it was junk. But I like went and had this frozen chemical yogurt with all the toppings that I shouldn't have. Nothing hurt my stomach. I was like, that is, that's a testimony to like, I'm taking this stuff so I'd break. That would have killed my stomach before. It would have killed it, but it did. I'm not suggesting that we all go eat that stuff, but it just shows if we break things down properly, we're not going to have all these same issues.

Yeah. Wayne and I are big believers that there's no evil foods. And with the right tools, you can go pretty much eat anything.

Yeah.

And not suffer the negative consequences.

Yeah. Not that we're suggesting you go eat all the processed junk, but it's like it's a nice little insurance policy. When you do have something, it's not going to create that same effect. Like, I know I don't have issue with dairy anymore, where I thought for years I had issues with dairy. But it's. But it's not when I'm doing this correctly. Well, how much do you suggest, like, eating fermented food on top of this? Do you not need to. Is that something you take, you pay attention to still?

I think it's a great idea. Fermented foods are powerful and, you know, ideally have a little bit of fermented food with every meal or once a day, whether it's sauerkraut, kimchi, natto, you know, whatever your go to is. But, you know, it's a good idea.

Okay.

I want to have a fundamental rule around digestion and food supplements and all that sort of stuff is like there's no way that you can eat a perfect balanced diet and get everything that you want. Neither can you supplement your way out of a bad diet.

True.

Every single person who has the kind of radiance, vibrant health that we're all looking for eat a very good diet for their genetics, their body's, their lifestyle, what is sustainable for them for the long time. And they all have a set of supplements that optimize the gaps within their system. And if you can think through that as a listener, then you're going to be light years ahead of the game. And I want to follow one last piece about what you talked about. The medical community. Keep in mind that medical doctors, GPs and stuff like that, they have three optional hours of nutritional training. The entire thing has been educated through the pharmaceutical industrial complex, which is that we're going to. And it says in the New England Journal of Medicines, we do not cure diseases we treat the symptoms of. So every intervention, every prescription, every suggestion is based on that model. And what we've done is we've misidentified as our doctors, our health practitioners, they're the intermediaries to keep us from dying. And they do a good job of that. They're not in charge or, nor are they generally qualified to make these integrations into your digestive health that's on you and that's on putting your team together, experts like yourself, to give them some insights and some direction of where they need to go to get the solutions they require.

What I also love about what you all are doing is I feel like in the gut health world and leaky gut, there's just, we just see this either a prescription model like or you have to go through very, very, very pricey prescribed supplement type of things. What I like is yours is just a lot easier to navigate. Like anyone can grab them and it's, they're just good for us. It's not, it's not complicated. Like you just said, it's the three, two, one. It's just, it's just simple and we all can do it. So I, I want to ask you a question about your protein in a second, but just to kind of wrap a little bow on this because I want to make sure I'm explaining this right. So when we're looking at gut health and digestion, the three things you all that I'm using just to be really transparent is I'm using their microbiome breakthrough in the morning, it's the first thing I do in the morning. I wake up, my sauna's heating up and I go and drink that. That's the first thing that I, that I have then with all my meals. And I'm going to change it up a little bit. I was doing them at the wrong times. But with all my meals I'm doing the enzyme, the P3OM probiotic and the HCL breakthrough. I'm doing that with all my meals. And I'm gonna start with the guidance that you said, Wayne and Matt, about the 3, 2, 1, instead of just. I was guessing and not. I didn't have an order to that. So those are kind of like the ones that I'm religiously using right now that have helped a lot. So those are the ones that I love. I do have a question about your protein because I just got that to try out and I'm, I've always loved like what whey protein did for me, but I had stayed away from it because of the dairy and I just having an autoimmune and all that. I didn't want to, want to do that. How does your protein, because yours is a vegan protein, it's, it's plant based. How does that compare with or you're probably going to tell me. Well, as long as you drink with enzymes and everything, you're, you're processing it right. But Tell me why you came up with that formula and how you're using that, or are you both using it? Matt, you being keto?

We built it for Wade, so Wade, go ahead.

Yeah. So like every plant based person, you run into an issue of getting sufficient amount of protein that you can convert into the amino acids. And in our investigation, when we're looking at all the different plant proteins, there were several different proteins that had very good protein profiles. Pea, hemp and pumpkin, independently, on their own, they're not as good as if they're combined synergistically together. For example, you know, pea, if you have too much pea, it tends to be a little bit clumpy and doesn't mix up well and can also be feel kind of sticky in the guts if you do hemp protein, you know, in its raw form, which I did, all that sort of stuff.

Yep.

It smells like a barn. You know, it smells like a barn and tastes like dirt. But the insoluble fiber is really good for cleaning out any mucoid pack. So it's really good for people suffering from, you know, constipation and issues like that. And then you get pumpkin, which pumpkin has a unique flavor that not everybody likes, but it is a. Has a wonderful smoothing texture. So we combined those in the perfect combination. And to get that down, there was 170 plus versions to get that down. Because almost every single protein powder out there does add some elements that people don't know about that causes the bloating. They add fillers and emulsifiers because plant based proteins don't float as well as, say, whey proteins do. And even a lot of whey proteins put that in. So you drink the whey protein, you feel. Oh, I feel bloated. It's the emulsifiers. Yeah, it's these stabilizers that makes it all frothy. So we put all these in, we put all the elements, we put all, you know, super organic natural products to make a beautiful chocolatey blend that you can mix in there. It's simple, it's easy, it improves your digestive health, cleans the system out and delivers the amino acids that you need. And I've been living on that stuff.

Wow.

For years. We don't really advertise it too much. There's just like a cult like following who is on it, who are like, I've got to have this.

Because it's rare to find a plant based one that people like or that's delivering all that. So, Matt, do you not. Do you not take it because You're a keto, so you.

No, I eat some carbs. I. I do use it. And Wade, maybe you can talk about your chocolate pudding recipe, which is.

Oh, yeah, what is this? Okay, I need to make that today. What is the chocolate pudding?

So here's the thing. I'm probably the only person on the planet that was going into bodybuilding contests eating chocolate pudding every day for breakfast.

Awesome.

So I take a couple of scoops of P3M, I like to throw a little bit of Microbiome Breakthrough inside of that as well. And I put it in a dish, not in a mix up cup, and I just pour a little bit of water into it and start stirring it. And so it kind of gets a little clumpy for a second and I keep stirring it and then I'll add a little bit more, not too much, until I get this. It's like a chocolate pudding or a chocolate frosting. And then I just.

So wait, you left out the protein part. You're using the protein with the P3OM and the microbiome Breakthrough. And water. Is that.

Yeah, I do. I do the two scoops of. Two scoops of protein.

Two scoops. We left that part out. Okay. Two scoops of protein.

And I put a little bit of Microbiome Breakthrough in it as well, because I want, I want all that with it. And I just slowly stir it with just, just the right amount. You got to be, you got to be cautious with the water because you don't want too much and it gets like too soupy.

Yep.

Because you're trying to create a pudding and it just makes this nice pudding. And then you sit there and you, you eat your shake, eat your smoothie instead of just gunning it down.

Yeah.

Number one, it stabilizes your blood sugar really well. It kind of like a meal that you feel good about. And it's a great way to start.

I'm going to try it. I love this. So you all listening? There's a, there's a. If you go to bio optimizers.com forward slash Natalie Jill or bio optimizers.com forward slash natalie jill will also have this in the show notes and under the video, wherever you're listening or watching to this, we listed out the products that we're talking about. So my favorite ones that I'm personally using are all on this page. So you can find the HCL, the P3OM, the Breakthrough, all of that is right there. Easy for you with a little discount. This is super informative. I'm glad I talked to you all because it gets very confusing with supplements. It gets so confusing. Just like there's information overload with nutrition, I think it's even worse with supplements. And my personal thing is there's a lot of, there's a variety of supplements that I use. I'm very particular about the ones that I use. I have to know the story of the company and the founder and why they created it too. Because in the world of white labeling and just marketing I just feel like there's a lot of junk out there and I like to know the story, story of why something was formed and that's what got me so interested in yours is where you form this from. I love the gut story background. So thank you so much for being here today.

Yeah. And just for everybody who's going to go on the site, we do have special bundles where you can get the mouse, the P3M and hydrochloric acid together and save some money. Plus you're going to get, you save 10% with the Natalie Jill code. So make sure to take advantage of that. And yeah, try, try those products. I mean the amount of life changing testimonials we receive on a weekly basis are incredible. And we also have a 365 day money back guarantee. So for any reason it doesn't blow your mind, you get your money back.

Thank you so much.

Number one customer service in the industry, we have real people that answer your questions.

So if you find something, you know.

What'S going on, call our staff, they'll answer all your questions and make sure that you know exactly how to take it. And if you have some unique questions to that person, your diet or some sensitivity or something, let us know. We can probably solve that as well. And again you're, there's no risk if something for whatever reason didn't work out, you get all of your money back. But we're really confident that you're going to love it and be using it for the years to come.