Gut Health Expert: 50% of Children Are Chronically Ill! Prevent Your Child from Getting Sick

We are in a pediatric chronic condition crisis right now. Almost 1 in 2 kids have at least one chronic condition in the US we can't let that be the new normal. It is the new normal, but it doesn't mean it's okay. 80% of our immune system is in our gut. There's so much signs pointing to the gut linking to these chronic conditions. The initial colonization is at birth, during labor, and that's how the baby gets their first flush of microbes. C section born babies have a higher risk of this progression of allergic disease called atopic march, eczema, allergy, and asthma.

There's this world we just don't see, but it's so fascinating. It controls so many things.

If you do have poor gut health and really imbalanced gut health in the first six months, first one year of life, we can in a way predict if the child is at higher risk for these atopic March symptoms.

My son Nova was having all these GI issues. We were looking for the answers and we could not find them in the traditional medicine community. I literally stumbled across Tiny Health. We thought we were feeding him health healthy, but we didn't know that he needed more fermented foods.

A baby's microbiome is very malleable. And that's why in the early days, it's so important to check and make sure that they have the right balance.

Does stress impact the microbiome just like food?

Absolutely.

How so? Hey, it's Josh. Before we get into this episode, I have a small yet powerful favor to ask of you. The community has been growing by thousands lately and the bigger the tribe, the bigger names of world class guests we can have on this podcast that I can bring to you from my heart, from my curiosity, so you can have more wellness and wisdom in your life. Would you please be so kind as to hit the subscribe button wherever you're watching or listening to this podcast. It'll allow us to rise naturally in the algorithms based on your 2 second act of generosity by you just tapping that little subscribe button wherever you're viewing or hearing this episode. Thank you so much. It means the world to me and our entire team here at Wellness and Wisdom. Now enjoy the podcast. Okay, Shara, we're just going to go whenever we go. I am so fascinated with this world that we cannot see that you are always in touch with the microbes on our skin, in our body, in our mouth, in all of our doorways. I mean, it's such an incredible world. You guys are scratching the surface at Tiny Health. Welcome to the podcast.

Thank you. Happy to be here.

Yeah. This world, it's so fascinating. I think we've tried for a long time to even understand the world that we cannot see when it comes to microbes. But when you look at birth and what's going on in birth and the vaginal canal and how the baby gets, you know, assimilated from the mother's womb, there's so much incredible intelligence that's happening that we just cannot see, but yet you definitely notice. And I noticed. That's what led me to you. I'm going to share in a minute how I, how I found you in tiny health. It's such a, almost magical world. Do you find this world to be magical? This world we cannot see of microbes and gut health and everything that's going on in our body and on our skin? It's freaking fascinating.

Some people think it's spiritual too, because, you know, it's 38 trillion microbes living in or on you, right? And there's different pieces of microbiome, different spaces, right? There's the oral microbiome and there's the skin microbiome, which covers your entire, you know, your largest organ, right? And then the gut microbiome, there's the vaginal microbiome. Now the gut microbiome. The gut health is what you hear most often because it's the most well studied part. And you know, the oral microbiome, as you may know, is certainly really important. The amount of microbes you can find in Your gut is 10x the number in your, your oral microbiome, right? And because there's so much more microbes in your gut that can even be oxygen intolerant, meaning there are some microbes that when exposed to oxygen, they die, you know, and those are actually beneficial microbes. A lot of microbes that are actually good for your, your immune system are non oxygen tolerant. So they live in your gut and they provide this function to train your immune system at birth in. And as you grow older, you are being exposed to all these worldly microbes from the environment, nature, pets, food and things like that. And your body adapts to it, right. And gets more diverse. So we can, yeah, you know, we can dive into.

There's so much there, literally Tiny health. I love the name. Do you remember where you were when you chose that name? Were you like in a car in the Bay Area? Were you at Fisherman's Wharf? Like, when did you say, oh, that's it, that's, that's going to be my mission? That's going to be my Dharma.

Yes. I have to credit my husband. He came up with the name Tiny Health. Tiny means, you know, not just the tiny babies, because we started with a baby gut health test mom and babies in the first 1,000 days. But tiny also means the invisible tiny microbes in our guts. Right. So it's. There's dual meaning to it. And initially to, like, our company name actually is Seating Inc. So it's like Seating. And the reason why I chose Seating for the Incorporation Incorporated name because I learned, you know, that you get your microbes from your mom at birth through the vaginal canal. So the fetus in the mom's womb is sterile. There was some controversy around this, some debate around, oh, does the fetus have a microbiome? And now the science is actually proven that they don't. There may be some transfer, but the initial colonization is at birth, during labor. And the baby acquires mom's vaginal microbes first and some fecal fluid. You know, there's a reason why the vagina is next to the anus for a very strategic reason for birth. Some fecal fluid, which is actually healthy, inoculates baby when the baby comes out and swallows the, you know, all the fluids during that process. And that's how the baby gets their first flush of microbes. Right. And then magically to continuing on that process, the breast feeding action, the mom is continuing to transfer her gut microbes to, through breast milk, to her infant. So because of that, the first, you know, initial colonization really does sort of map the trajectory of how the infant's microbiome develops. Right. And it's so crucial for immune training. The first 1000 days is really that critical time point. If you, you know, talk about, like, that immune system being related to the gut microbiome. Now we know that 80% of our immune system is in our gut. And. And if we're acquiring that at birth, what seats the baby's gut initially does matter. And you know, and also, like, what I learned through my own journey, because I actually had a C section of my daughter when she was born. So I was like, oh, she's not going through the vaginal canal.

Yeah.

May she be missing certain microbes that are important for immune training. And I learned, yes, the answer is that, yes, she was missing certain microbes. And, you know, the other thing I learned was that the microbiome of the baby, because they're only acquiring that at birth, it's really simple. It's very low in diversity. So if you think of like, no microbes in the fetus. And when they're born, they have there's maybe like 10 seats in a theater. Like, if you imagine the baby's gut like a theater room and there's only 10 seats, then what gets filled matters. So is it, you know, 10 good, good guys in there or is it 10 bad guys in there? Ideally, you actually want nine good guys and one bad guy. So the bad guy is represented by E. Coli, something that you may have heard of, an unfriendly microbe. Right. And the nine guys should be BIF bacteria, which is very protective, and it trains their baby's immune system. These 10 microbes are supposed to, you know, be adapted to digest breast milk, mom's breast milk. So then we go into the science of breast milk. Like, mom's breast milk is one third human milk oligosaccharides, or for short, HMOs. And it just goes through the baby's gut without being digested. So it's not for baby. It's actually for the microbes in the baby's gut. So if the baby doesn't have birth bacteria, then these HMOs aren't being digested. And then what takes hold is more of these equalizers. So oftentimes, if we see a baby's gut having 9 out of 10 E. Coli, we know it's imbalance. And then as the baby grows older and usually around six months, you start solids, right? You have your two kids, right? So you've been through that whole process between six to eight months is when they start, then the seeds expand from 10 to 20 to 50. Now, we, if you and I did our adult gut tests using a Tiny health test, we will see probably 3, 500 species more strains. Like, we now have strain resolution, too. An adult gut is pretty complex at this point, and a baby is very simple. A baby has 10x less microbes. So from a scientific perspective, it's much easier to categorize universally healthy gut in an infant versus in adults. It's a little harder to tell. There's no really such thing as a one universal healthy microbiome.

Wow. Okay. There's so much there to unpack. So what you said is so profound to me because I have seen it firsthand, how I found you and how I found Tiny Health was my son. Nova was having all these GI issues. And look, it's no knock against western medicine. If I break my leg, I need them. I need to get my leg fixed. But when it comes to just this allopathic Model. It makes me exhale. It just makes me. And I think most parents so, so have so much trepidation about going there because once you enter the system, it's really hard to exit the system. And that system is a for profit system. It's not a for health system. But I digress. I mean, really, what I'm saying is, like, we were looking for the answers and we could not find them in the traditional medicine community. And so we went to functional docs and different people in Austin. And then I literally stumbled across Tiny Health and Lauren, who's my executive assistant, shout out to Lauren. She was like, you need to look at this. We gave Nova the test. I eventually jumped on a call with you. We became a partner, and history's in the pages. I just feel like this is so important because so many people just air in this traditional mindset. And I don't know, Cheryl, if it's just training or conditioning, if your baby's sick, you take them to the doctor. Right. It's just this. Almost like it's care.

Right. It's not really healthcare.

Yes. And so that's how we found you. So first and foremost, before we dive into the many layers here, thank you for what you do. Because we were able to actually use different supplementation based on the test results. And we just. There's no way we would have gone that deep. And it probably would have been 20 or 30 times more expensive if we went there as parents. So thank you.

You're welcome.

Thank you so much for doing this.

I'm so grateful you found this.

Yes, me too. So now on that place of most parents dilemma, share with us the breath of fresh air that you're bringing. That's really what it feels like. It's a breath of fresh air when it comes to parents. And I know there's many different tests with Tiny Health. It's not just for babies, it's not just for kids. There's a lot more. But share with us the breath of fresh air that you're actually bringing to parents so that they can become their own citizen scientists. Right. They're not. You're not practicing medicine. This isn't medical advice, but this is about living your life well. But take us from that place.

Yeah. I mean, it really just comes back to why I started the company. Right. My own personal story and my personal struggle. So, like, like you, I was. My kids were experiencing symptoms, but even before that, like I mentioned earlier, my first daughter, she was born about six years ago and she was breached, so. Oh, yeah. And the medical system was like, oh, she's breached.

You're for people that don't know that's where the feet come out first.

Yeah, but right. Usually. But first. Yeah, they're upside down. They're supposed to be head down. And that's the safest way to birth baby. And it used to be a variation of normal people used to know how to birth breech babies. But it's the lost art. I don't want to get into the politics of it. There's a hope, political kind of reason why. Why breech babies are now automatically pushed to a C section. So I had to really research all that. And that's when I learned, actually to advocate for myself that the system is just kind of like, on a certain path because of certain maybe political happening or one study that was really flawed that kind of, like, made breech births now taboo, you know, when it's not supposed to be. So anyway, without kind of like going into the detail, I had to learn that, okay, well, breech births are normal. So I need to not just, like, listen and nod to what my OB GYN said. They basically said I just needed a C section. So then I went through this whole journey of researching, well, is it so bad to have a C section? And what does it mean for my baby's lifelong health? I've always been a gut health person, like, you know, understanding how fiber is really important and certain processed food is really harmful for your gut. But I never really understood, as I mentioned to you earlier, where the microbiome came from. Right. Then when I dug into the research on how the baby acquires the microbes, I'm like, oh, my gosh. Like vaginal birth. There is a distinct difference between baby born via vaginal birth versus C section. There's a distinct difference in your guts. And then I was like, what does that mean? And then I realized that C section born babies, or in the literature at least, have a higher risk of this progression of allergic disease called atopic March. So that usually starts with eczema around three to six months, usually around six months when they start solids, and that progresses to food allergies and then Asthma by age 6 and then Hay fever as an adult. So this trilogy, or basically trilogy of childhood conditions that then result in hay fever in adult. But then if you double click into it, I spend months researching this, why these allergic reactions, right, to food from dietary allergens, skin allergens, respiratory allergens. It's a sign that the baby's immune system wasn't Trained correctly. And I'm like, what is training this baby's immune system? So when a baby is born, they're. They don't have an immune system. Right. They're fragile, they're learning. And these microbes in their gut train their immune system system. So that's why, coming back to like the sort of like, you know, if you imagine the baby's gut as being a theater room with 10 seats, who gets seated? And those initial 10 seats really do matter. And as the baby grows and there as the seat, the theater expands, what inhabits really do guide their immune training. So eczema, allergies, asthma, they're all a sign that their immune system at birth wasn't trained correctly. And I was like, okay, well, if my C section born, baby is going to have a higher risk for all these things, what can I do to mitigate it? Right. I did try for vaginal birth, breech birth, but, you know, I labored for 16 hours and it didn't happen. But I was at peace with it because I knew, I tried. I also found out about vaginal seating. So, meaning, you know, there is a couple studies at the time done where after the C section operation, you can actually, you basically place a gauze in the vagina for an hour before operation. Because even if it's an emergency C section, there's a lot of pre ops planning and things like that. There is actually time. It's not so hectic and brushed as people think. Right. So there is an opportunity to include in your birth plan plan B, if you do need a C section to add a vaginal seating procedure. And you, of course, have to discuss it with your OB GYN. And some OBs just don't want to do it. But what it is, is you.

I would think you could just demand it.

You, you have the right to have the right.

Women don't understand. A lot of times they have way more power than the hospital tells them they do.

Yes, for sure.

Yeah.

Yeah. So my midwife did it because my OBGYN didn't actually, you know, want to do it. Basically what it is is the gauze is filled with your vaginal fluids, you know, for an hour. And when the baby's born through C section, you immediately, within the first two minutes, swab it around their mouth, their face to mimic the vaginal birthing environment. Right?

Yeah.

So there has been way more papers published now, and babies who were swabbed with the vaginal seating do look more like vaginal, vaginally born babies than C section born. Babies. So this was early on though, I read that paper and like, maybe I should do that. So I ended up doing that again. I mean, there's a little bit of controversy around that just because there's not enough like clinical evidence yet on. Sure, on that. But to me it's like if the baby's passing through the vaginal canal.

Anyway, it's so interesting because you're in this world of science and so, you know, on your board, in your literature, in your studies, there's a lot of medical academia as there should be for the people that are more left brained and analytical and want the science. And then there's just the big deep breath we can all take and say, well, how does God, Creator, nature want the babies to come into the world anyways? Through the mother's canal. Now, for some reason that can't happen. Then I think mimicking that as much as possible is so good for the baby in ways that we cannot see. You know, I started this podcast with, with a quote by saying there's this world we just don't see. But it's so fascinating. It controls so many things. Look at the mitochondria in our system. Look at all the good bacteria, the bad bacteria, which is really, like you said, there's, there's, they need each other in the theater. If there's one bad person, if there's 10 great people and there's no quote, bad bacteria, there's not going to be enough diversity to really drive the movie, to actually make it happen. So what I'm saying is that we need this dysbiosis, healthy dysbiosis, if that's even a term, we need that. But yet we live in a world that is just so hygienic and everything's so perfectly clean all the time. And even in hospitals. We spent 10 days in the NICU. It was absolutely heartbreaking, absolutely the most stressful time my whole life. I would not wish that on anyone. Y' all. So definitely pay attention to the layers that we're going to expose today with Cheryl. Cheryl, when you did that seeding, which by the way, I love how that's tied into the, the company name. Yeah, that was the initial question.

Yes, we digressed.

That's a good digression. So, so when you did that seating and when you started to watch the baby come into their lives, you know, what was that like for all the parents, even the people that are, you know, gonna have the misfortune of going down the route of like being in a nicu? Like we had to go through, like, there's ways in which I think you can help right now.

Yeah, for sure.

Own experience.

Yeah, exactly. So, so that's why, like, as I was going through this journey, coming back to the story, I was like, oh, there are things you can do to, to course correct early on. So if the, my baby isn't passing through the vaginal canal, how can I get her, my vaginal microbes seated first? Now that I've, I'm more educated about the vaginal microbiome. There is a community type that you want and if you don't have that, you know, healthy vaginal microbiome like lactobacillus dominated microbiome, you probably shouldn't swap your baby with it. So there are contraindications. In a perfect world, if you do have, you know, if your gut and vaginal microbiome is healthy, you are passing on the healthy pieces to your baby. But it could also be in a very bad shape. Right. And that's the, like, you know, that's what you want to know. And our test empowers you to learn about that.

So you, the mother would want to go through a series of real tests to see how her microbiome is even before the birth. Regardless of if it's a VBAC or a cesarean or a natural birth. She'd want to test herself first.

Yes, yes.

To make sure she's passing that on. Seeding it to the baby.

Yeah. It's a much longer conversation. So then basically I uncovered a lot of literature showing that you can intervene. There are many things you can do to ensure that your baby has the best start in life, the best kind of chance of healthy microbiome. So seeding could be one of them. If your vaginal and gut microbiome looks good as a mom. And again, I'll come back to that and then breastfeeding, because I'm learning that you can continue to transfer your microbes to your baby through breast milk. That's also very restoring for a C section born. There is an impact of formula. It kind of enriches baby's gut to a little bit too early in a way before six months. So, so as, but as long as there's some breast milk involved, it keeps the maturation low, which is what you want in the first six months. You want to keep diversity low in the first six months before baby's exposed to solids. And you know, there are certain, like, you know, if the mom was missing certain microbes in her gut, then she is Actually not passing that on to baby. So then baby may need extra supplementation with certain probiotic strains. And mom can, can also take it and then pass it on through her breast milk if you don't want to give it directly to infant. So this comes back to like when I was then pregnant with my second son, I had a VBAC with him. So vaginal birth after a cesarean section. So it's also another myth that you have to have once a C section, always a C section. It's just not true. And then when I tested my gut during pregnancy and my vaginal microbiome during pregnancy, I actually did not have good gut health. I was missing bifidobacteria, which is what I was supposed to transfer to my baby in vaginal birth. And my vaginal microbiome was not in good shape. So I had to course correct. And because I had just, you know, I was really just coming up with Tiny Health's concept at a time. In fact, I incorporated a week after my son was born, my second child. I knew that I didn't have the microbes to pass on to him even through a vaginal birth. So I had to supplement him with a probiotic for a few weeks. And then when I finally tested him, he had like the right, you know, microbial composition and the right balance. We have now come a long way. We are about almost two years old since we launched in April 2022 and we've served over 25,000 families. So we have a lot of moms who vaginally birth their babies and breastfed their babies. And their guts, their baby's guts don't look very good. Where we do have the mom's sample, the mom was also missing the biffs, the Bifro bacteria. So it is important. I mean, there is a strong connection. I know it's a lot of weight on the mom, but you know, and that's certainly can influence the baby's microbiome too. But that's kind of why we now, you know, sort of like if you are planning to have more babies in your future, check in the mom's microbiome now. Like in the, the gut.

Sure.

And the vaginal microbiome. Because for adults it takes a lot longer to course correct. For me, when I learned that I had zero BIFFs, zero Armansia and low Lactobacillus, it took me six to nine months of regimented dietary like changes, supplements and lifestyle changes to really get to a point where I was 0 bis. I now have about 8% biscuit, even without probiotic supplementation. So it's possible. It just takes a lot more effort. Whereas in a baby, you can really turn it around in a few weeks, in three to four weeks. A baby's microbiome is very malleable. And that's why in the early days it's so important to check and make sure that they have the right balance.

Okay. So when it comes to dads, and this is a selfish question for me, and also, I just think people for forget that the father is actually the one that plants the seed. Of course it grows, it grows inside of the woman. So special, so sacred. But what are the ways in which fathers dictate the health of a baby's microbiome?

Yes. You know, it's funny because I got my husband to test too, obviously. Right. I knew I was missing Arkemansia, but my husband has Arkemansia and Arkemansia. Have you heard of that bacteria? It's really crucial for metabolic health. It's something that replenishes the mucus in a gut lining. So, so if, if you heard of terms like leaky gut, it's because your gut lining is weak and bacteria, like bad bacteria, can pass into your blood system.

Yeah.

So AR is a crucial microbe that, you know, helps protect your gut lining, but also really, really good for metabolic health. So. And studies have now shown that that missing Arkenia in older kids is connected to eczema and some allergies too. So it's really crucial. And I didn't have any, but when I, when I tested my, my husband, he had some. So when, when our baby was, you know, eating solids, I would actually get my husband to preach you meat and things like that and then give it to my son so that he can hopefully pass on some microbes too. I, I'm not sure if that's actually, actually the route of transfer.

Yeah.

But finally, when I measured my son's microbiome around I think 18 months old, he had some Arkemansia and my daughter has some Arkemansia too, just from doing.

The baby bird thing where he would chew it and then feed. I said that's what birds do in nature. They chew it and they give it to their young chicks.

It sounds gross, but it's actually, it does sound gross.

People used to do Michelle doing that all the time with our kids.

Yeah, people.

She just intuitively does it.

Yeah. And, and there's a reason too, because you want to pre digest the meat with your saliva. Saliva has enzymes, right?

Yeah.

For the baby. So you're actually helping the baby digest that meat before giving it to, to your child.

That's so good. Yeah, people forget. It's so easy to forget if you haven't taken like the basic education, which mine was like 25 years ago or something. But I remember protease, amylase and lipase. I mean, they're in there that pre digest the food material and then it goes into the microbiome. So yeah, if we're giving the baby that. So as a dad, should I be baby birding my, my son? I mean, should I be baby birding my kids?

Maybe kissing, you know, close contact. You can pass it on too. And what we now know about Arkhamensia is that, you know, it's transmitted from mom to child too, but you don't find it in the first year of life. I always get this question, how do you, Tanya, how? Like, how do you know these answers? When we started, you know, look, I'm not a microbiologist, right. I'm not a doctor. I don't have the right credentials. But before I started a company, I did my homework. I, you know, because I was doing all this research, I actually reached out to the authors of these papers @ Johns Hopkins, Dr. No. Mueller, he wrote this review paper called Mom.

Matters. And I, we're going to put that on the screen right now so everybody can see it. It's called Mom.

Matters?

Yes. Okay. It's on the screen right now if you're watching YouTube or.

Spotify. So influential. It was so influential to me. It had all like the seating stuff in there and the breast milk and all that. And he's now an advisor. He's a scientific advisor. I, I was introduced to Dr. Ruben Mars from Mayo Clinic, and he actually left Mayo Clinic for six months to come and built Tiny Health with me in the initial reference ranges. So all these experts that I was reading about their work, they became my mentors and I was telling them my idea of Tiny Health and how do I learn about the sequencing methods. So they ended up pointing me to a PhD level course online that I then kind of finished and learn all about it. The way we built our initial ranges was through publicly available papers. So there's about three main papers and about 3,000 baby samples. So mom and baby in the first year. So we built our reference range using that. And there are babies from all over the world, from the US From Europe, from Asia. So it's pretty.

Representative. I bet the babies in Europe had much better diversity than North.

America. I don't remember Specifics, but it's pretty similar again, especially in the first 16 months of life, the only job of the baby's gut is to digest breast milk and, or formula. Right. So it's pretty consistent around the world. You know, I think this whole question about a universal healthy microbiome, when you say that with, to an adult, like, you know, obviously our adult microbiome is influenced by culture, the weather, where.

You were born, stress.

Everything. Stress but diet too, right? So like if you ate Indian cuisine all your life, your microbiome is going to look very different from if you just ate, you know, like the American diet. Right. So, but in, you know, in a way we can categorize a healthy microbiome in a baby so well, because diversity is low. Remember the 10 seats versus 3, 500 seats, and then its only function is digesting milk in the first six months. So we think that by mapping the infant microbiome first and defining what's healthy there, and as the infant grows older with more foods and you get into daycare and get more exposure to pets and animals and other friends, we can see like the features of a healthy microbiome from, from baby to toddlerhood to childhood to then adulthood.

Right?

Yeah. So we're not seeking for one healthy microbiome because there's no such thing as a one size fits all. But we can see, do you have enough beneficial bacteria that's protective, like Bifidobacteria archimensia that we talked about for metabolic health? Do you have too much disruptive bacteria like E. Coli, Klebsiella, a cousin of it, inflammation markers? You have the bacteria that helps with protect your gut lining. Do you have, you know, short chain fatty acids that's important for your gut lining as well, fiber, digestion and things like that. So we look into a lot of these features and we don't have a score and our users are asking for a score, like tell me if I'm a 92 or a 75 or whatever. We, we've tried really hard not to give you one score because at the end of the day, you know, it's, it's different like categories of the gut, right, that we, we show you. So that's what we show in the.

Reports. As long as you can see a delta of it increasing and increasing to just more diversity, healthy diversity, healthy outcomes, then I think this quest for perfection is actually really egoic in the sense, like, oh, my kids have to be at this level and I have to be at this level. It's like Our life changes so much. And like you said, wherever we live, if you're around farm animals. That is so fascinating to me, by the way. So we just purchased some land in Dripping Springs, and I know that you have some land, too. Do you have chickens on your.

Land? No, but we're about to get a chicken.

Coop. This is really fascinating to me. This is something that not a lot of people know at all. And I actually heard this. It resounded in some of the literature that you sent me when we had your call, the farm animals. So farm animals kept in a very sanitary way. Right. And not just, like, laying in their own stuff and really funky, but.

They should be roaming around and eating.

Around. So what is.

That?

That. That, to me, is so fascinating. Why does contact with farm animals or just animals in general help a child's microbiome with. What's the science on.

That? Yeah, diversity, really. You know, the more diverse our microbiome is, the more robust it is against other unfriendly microbes. Right. But it all comes back to, like, a healthy gut should have the right balance of beneficial and unfriendly bacteria. It has to be. Has to be. Be productive. So if you are missing those beneficial protective bacteria, if you are exposed to these unfriendly microbes for more diversity, then you may. May get allergic reactions to it. So it's almost like, you know, if you look at generations ago, we used to live on a farm, and that was just a thing we were born with.

Right?

Yeah. And we had that diversity. And then now it's like, we used to live, like, maybe 90% of our time outdoors. Now it's 90% indoors. We're indoors right.

Now. No sunlight breathing from the H.

Vac. Exactly. There's no circulation in the air and all that. Right. So I think also kind of we need to be aware then if we live in this environment and we suddenly go out and get exposed, we might get allergies and things like that. But it has to be a lifestyle. Right. It has to be intentional. It can't just be like, oh, I'm just gonna. You know, we do tell our parents, like, you know, like, try to get a pet or go to a petting zoo. And it was funny because there was one mom who took her. She's like, I have. I haven't exposed them to any pets or animals. Took them to the zoo, and her son, emergency immediately had a reaction. And we were like, oh, no. Like, you know, we were worried, like, they're gonna sue us. But the mom was so Grateful. And she was like, oh my gosh, that's how little I've exposed my kids to animals. But you know, what I'm saying is like this whole farm thing, right, we have young kids, right. My kids are like four and six and yours are even younger. Right. Like, I think it is important to be intentional, to expose them at an earlier age and not wait till it's too late. Right. Because you want this diversity early on on so that their guts are more robust and not wait until we've like just living in a cocoon for like, like, I don't know, like 20 years. And then all of a sudden.

You know what it feels like your company is an answer to. And so many other companies in their unique lanes, I guess in our world of wellness or well being. It's like the more we've divorced ourselves from nature and from just living in a natural way. You talked about us growing up on farms in the past and eating natural foods like butter was not demonic. It hadn't gone through the Time magazine cover. There was a lot of things that we just did naturally because we intuitively knew from a nature based living standpoint, including, by the way, nature based education for children and how that's changed, keeping kids indoors for eight hours a day at school. We've become so divorced from a natural way of living that your company is an answer to give people a window or an insight, almost like an external locus of control so that they can bring themselves actually closer to nature. In other words, it is an answer to modernity's sword. It's the good side of the sword. Because modernity really pulls us away from nature in so many ways. I think it's really beautiful. Have you thought about this concept? Really what you're doing? It's a window to bring people back to the natural rhythms and harmony and microbiome, the world we cannot see in nature. Absolutely thought about that.

Yeah. I mean we get, sometimes we get parents like, oh, you're giving us such gifts. Generic advice on going out to nature more. And you know, but are they. Exactly. I mean, because we can actually tell if you're from your report, your gut, you know, report if your diversity is there. Right. So when we do tell you you need to get out more, it's really there to be a reminder that you can do more. Yeah. And you know, so I mentioned like we built our initial reference range from 3,000 babies. Now we have a whole lot more. It's just, you know, we have much more data now. Like people tell us what you know, their symptoms are their conditions. So we do know which kind of microbiome profile or composition maps to a healthy individual without symptoms. And then which profile maps to an eczema case or an allergy case. Right. Or even like there's a connection between sleep and the microbiome. So if your child is not a good sleeper, check their microbiome. They're probably missing some microbe.

There's. Yeah, I Remember we had Dr. Ruscio on the show, which I'd love to connect you to. You two are going to talk for days because this is his whole world. So shout out to Michael Ruscio. Dr. Michael Ruscio has been on the show four.

Times.

Wow. And I think what's most fascinating to me about how I started our conversation together is just this world that we cannot see. What is it that people refuse to see about your world? In other words, what's some of the wisdom and what some of the science backed wisdom that you can stand upon that may not be popular in the western medical.

Mindset? Well, you know, I learned that it takes an average 10 to 15 years for medical, for academic research, groundbreaking academic research to reach medical practice. There may be good reasons for that. You need more clinical trials and things like that. But it's a long time. Right. And for me, I needed to take action sooner for my own family. So for, for me it's like the critical time point, as I learned, was in the first 1,000 days. And when I say that, I really mean the first year of life. One paper I read in relation to the C section, my research in C section born babies is that there's something called a C section signature that a child could be born with, meaning there's more antibiotic resistant bugs that inhabit a baby's gut initially. And there's a paper showing that by one year of age, most C section born babies, their C section signature would have been removed by one year of age. There's a subset of people who don't. The C section signature is still high. For babies who C section signature is gone, their asthma risk is reduced by 3x.

Wow. Let that land. That's.

Huge.

Yeah. 3x less.

Asthma.

Yes. Just from correcting microbiome in the.

Gut. Correct. In the early life. So the first year really is that critical time.

Point.

Yeah. And so for me, knowing that fact, I'm like, I can't wait to, for academic research, like to like for 10 years for medical practice to pick it up.

Right? Yeah. It's like turning a battleship. It takes.

Forever. Yeah. So that Said, you know, it's, it's kind of like we're, as an innovative company, we're bypassing that a lot. But with, you know, hopefully the guidance of your practitioner. We are, again, not medical advice. We want to be careful about that. Everything we recommend is evidence based. So there are papers you can kind of click into, see PubMed articles linking to it. And ultimately it's your call, your decision. But what we're trying to do is really surfacing all these evidence that you may not know. And then we also have a really rigorous way of rating these papers internally. Are they strong papers? Is the sample size large enough? Some papers are weak in power and we don't factor those in. And we have readings. If you click into a metric and see, see, you know, one of the action cards will tell you if this is like strong evidence or emerging evidence or weak or things like.

That. Well, y' all were making enough of a wave that you got attracted to Shark Tank. I saw the preview. You were in the preview, but then I didn't see you on Shark Tank. What.

Happened? Yes, you're right. We, when last summer, we were invited to tape. We were.

Casted. So they saw the, the value in what you're doing with the white space you're.

Filling. Yes, they were very excited about Tiny Hill. So I then went on to pitch Last Summer. And I'm not sure how much I'm supposed to say, but we did get a really good taping in June last year. And we had a couple sharks, really good Sharks Bite and had a deal on the taping. And then I was raising money, I was raising my Series A. And so soon after the taping, we got a few term sheets from VCs for our series A. And the terms were very different. They were much better than what I offered the Sharks in a Tank. And so I had to focus on my Series A. It was kind of like a really tough decision. But ultimately that led to me closing my A. Just like a couple months ago, I closed my 8 1/2 mil series A. It was sort of that versus 9 million viewers potentially. You know, being sure on public television and having all that exposure was, you know, what I had hoped for. But ultimately I had to make a call to prioritize my Series A and raise that money for my company. So it was really tough because we, our whole team, there was a lot of work that went into the pitching, the set preparation, the investment to it. And it was really hard to hear when they didn't want to error us because the deal didn't go.

Through. Yeah, that's so hard. It's interesting. I. Before we even hit the record button, I was asking you, like, you know, what's top of heart for you? And you're like, wow, this week actually has been a really challenging week. And I thought that was so genuine. We did some breath work before we started the podcast. You know, we're humans. Like, I think it's so easy for people to, to hear you on a podcast. You're articulate, you're successful, you're the founder of a company. Everything's all put together. You're a mom, you're a human, you're a soul. You deal with stress just like all of us. And the impact of stress is really unique on the biome because I can specifically remember when I was a personal trainer, I would train people and I would give them these perfect, what I thought were perfect plants, and they wouldn't lose any weight. And then I really get to talk to them in the sessions. And they hated their husband or wife. They hated their life. I was in La Jolla, California. They would drive a Bentley to the personal training session, but they were absolutely miserable. And even back then, before I had any knowledge of the microbiome, before I had done podcast number one of 700, I just had this intuitive sense. I was like, I wonder if it's something with their gut. Because I noticed specifically with the ladies that I'd be training in the past, they had a protrusion. They had kind of like a constant bloat in their gut. Does stress impact the microbiome just like.

Food?

Absolutely. How.

So? Yeah, I mean, there's the gut brain axis connection. Right. That said, it's, it's largely bidirectional is what we know. Like stress affects the gut, and your gut health also affects your mood and your, your stress. Right. So if you have poor gut health, it actually affects your cognitive abilities. Right. And especially when you go back to early life. There's also connection between what the mom's diet is during pregnancy, her butyrate function, her short chain fatty acids. There's two papers showing that mom's butyrate function during pregnancy affects the child's external behavior by 2 years of age. So how, you know, extroverted or introverted they are, and how are they able to express their feelings? So there are, there is evidence that there's a connection. That said, you know, the research there is emerging, and we don't claim to always say we know everything. And that's one thing about Building this company that I want. I want to really be, you know, in this industry, there's a lot of snake oil of people making claims when they shouldn't. And I want to make sure that our company is always grounded on scientific foundation. And, you know, the research around the gut brain axis is really exciting and emerging. Right. But we don't know if it's sort of like, is it a poor gut affecting mental health or is it mental health affecting gut? There is a, like, you know, bi directional effect.

There. Well, is it chicken or.

Egg? Yes.

Exactly. Which one is it really? And maybe instead of deciphering which one it is, just help support them.

Both. Yeah. However, you know, in infancy though, the more directional connection we can make from the gut is gut and sleep. In infancy, gut and eczema and allergies to a lesser extent. More research is needed there. And gut to asthma is a clearer direction. If you do have poor gut health and really imbalanced gut health in the first six months, first one year of life, we can in a way predict if the child is at higher risk for these atopic march.

Symptoms. When you say atopic, what do you mean by.

That? So the allergic. Progression of allergic diseases I mentioned earlier, the triad, the eczema, allergy, and.

Asthma. Okay. That is a topic that I. This is why I love podcasting, because I get to talk to really smart people about terms that I don't know.

Yeah. I mean, sometimes they caught allergic march, sometimes they. They call it atopic march. And it's a march because once you get one, it. You're at high risk for the other ones. Right. And I do think that we are in a pediatric chronic condition crisis right now. Almost one in two kids have at least one chronic condition in the US and that is crazy. Right? It's. We. We can't let that be the new normal. It is the new normal, but it doesn't mean it's.

Okay. And it doesn't. It doesn't mean it's normal.

Either. We can't normalize it. Right. I mean, that has risen in the past few decades. And if there's so much science pointed to, to the gut linking to these chronic.

Conditions. So if, if we know this, and I say we like the collective we, then. Then what? What is the pause or what is the holding back for there to be really beautiful science in schools, feeding kids healthy food, like, what is the disconnect? Is it just economics? Is it purely economics is my question. If we know that this pediatric chronic conditions crisis is happening, then why with all the science that you have and that even western medicine has, isn't there just a relaxation of, okay, why don't we take money from here and put it towards actually feeding kids healthy food? Why is that not happening? Is it purely.

Economic? It's probably systemic and economic too. Incentives, where incentives are like, I mean, our school doesn't teach or you know, like our, our doctors aren't taught nutrition necessarily. Right. It's maybe a small part of their medical.

Degree. I think it's less than a.

Day. Yeah, probably it's, they're not taught prevention. Right. They're not taught about the microbiome. So you have to seek out the functionally trained integrative doctors who, who then have to self teach and they're now institutions teaching that. Right. But I mean, if you look at, you know, like even the healthcare system that we talked about earlier, sick care. Right. Their doctors are great and I don't want to dismiss them because they are there for a good reason. But we do need operations or.

We have passion for these doctors. They get like four to seven minutes with a.

Patient.

Yes. I mean they have such a hard.

Job. Yeah. And you know, like microbiome science is new, right? It really is. The technology has also changed and it's important to know that like we went from culturing bacteria to then using PCR based methods, which means you, you have to like probe one microbe at a time. So a lot of conventional stool tests out in the market are PCR driven, but it's very, it gives you a very limited view of your gut. And then we went from PCR to 16s whole genome sequencing where you can see everything in your gut. But then that technology is being outdated too because you can't see fungi or yeast, you can't see parasites or viruses, you can only see bacteria. You know, our guts have majority bacteria, you want majority bacteria, you don't want fungi or parasites. But 16s has a lot of limitations and false positives. But that was initially what some of these early like gut microbiome testing companies use.16s. Now we've progressed to shotgun sequencing and there's RNA sequencing too. So we use a tiny health shotgun metagenomic sequencing because it is the latest and greatest technology that scientists use in research. So when you read these papers, when I was reading these papers, I was reading shotgun sequencing and I wanted that to be what we used. So basically we've come a long way in using these different technologies to map the human gut microbiome. And we know so much more about the different strains and each strain performs a different function. Right. Even E. Coli strains. Like there are some E. Coli strains that are neutral and there are some that are really virulent. Right. And so we are about to be able to tell you in your report what kinds of E. Coli strains you have. So, you know, even though like people are like, oh, you know, some doctors do dismiss G gut testing and stool testing and all that because I think it's just really hard to keep up with the changing technology.

Right? Yeah. And plus their patients, it's like I, I actually have compassion for them not only for the four to seven minutes they get for each patient, but also how do they make quote, quote air quotes their patient change their lifestyle? It's so hard going back to this internal versus external locus of control. So in behavior change, I remember I was interviewing a guy named Near Ayal and he wrote a book and he called, he had this hook model where for true behavior change to occur, there has to be some kind of variable reward. So there has to be a stimuli that changes that gives feedback on the reward that the person is actually working on. And I thought it was really fascinating because with your test, it's this series of really rewards or just series of recalculations.

Right.

It's. It's three to four times a year people do the test. Yes. For both. Ideally for babies parent and who whole family and that. You know what's crazy? I mean, I'll say it, I know you can't say this, but I'll say it. I think just having a quarterly check in of how am I doing on the inside? How is my child or children doing on the inside? It can most likely. I know we can't quantify this, but I can. It can most likely save thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars in medical, maybe even tens of thousands of dollars later on by just being proactive. It's like proactive wellness care is actually what is being called forth here instead of reactive sick care. There's a total paradigm shift that's happening. And it's not just with me. It's every single person in our audience. It's all the different media people that I'm connected to. Everybody's aware of this. N equals 1 Citizen scientist taking my health and my family's health in my hands. But for you, has this come up like, look, there's a cost for everything in life, right? There's a cost to go drink on the weekend and do drugs and unhealthy things, or there's a few Hundred bucks to get your gut tested and your family's gut tested. To me it's a no brainer. But, but how do you overcome that? In other words, you have to, you have to pay your staff, you have to pay your labs, you have, you have so much overhead that you have to do. How did you make this so affordable? It's very affordable for families to do. I mean, compared to what insurance premiums are and the cost of being sick, this is absolutely nothing. But how do you do.

That? Well, shock and sequencing is coming down. Right. If you look at um, you know, the cost it used to sequence your DNA used to be in a tens and thousands of dollars. That's.

Right. And the computer used to fill a whole.

Room. Yeah, yeah. So innovation, right? I mean we're thankful for technology and sequencing methods and it's, it's, you know, sequencing costs are having every two years. So even at this price point of like about 200 bucks, it's maybe less affordable for certain families. For certain families they do do four or five times a year. You know, we are still trying to make it more affordable. But you're right, this is a form of prevention and being proactive. You know, a lot of our parents come to us when their kids have symptoms though. Like you know, 70% of our.

Parents. That's how I found.

You. Yes. You know, like, you know, it's, it's, it is really hard to self prevention.

Right?

Yeah. But it's funny like you talk about behavioral change and the one time in your life where you're most likely to change your behavior is when your child is born. Right. Like, you know, it's kind of like easy to excuse when you're like, you know, an adult in your 20s, they're like, Ah, it's okay, I can handle it. It's whatever. And then once your kid is born, you're like everything, everything is about them and you. Which is kind of why when we work in the mom and baby space, we see their babies born and they have colicky symptoms or sleep issues or eczema. And you know, their, their parents are willing to do anything to improve their health. Right. So it is, it is, you know, in a way warranted because that critical time point is so crucial to course.

Correct.

Yeah. After three years old, it's doesn't mean you can't change your child's microbiome. It's just harder. Right. And like I said, in infancy you can change a baby's microbiome in a few weeks, in a.

Month. One thing that was really fascinating. You said is for the first six months, if I heard you correctly, you're basically filling those 10 seats in the theater through Strictly Mother's milk. That that's all that's happening for the majority of it. Right. And then after those six months, like I think we came to you, I'm trying to remember. I know Carrie Michelle would know the exact dates, but I feel like it was like at the 9 month mark or 12 month mark that we found Tiny health because his stool was just all over the place. So if anybody's ever dealt with this with your children on the screen Right now, it's JoshTrend.com/tiny health. So just click that link on the screen, the screen right now and you'll have a resource for what we're talking about. Because every day to be different. And I, I just intuitively was like this isn't normal, like this isn't normal for him to be having hard, loose, medium, soft. It's just not. Because we were feeding him very great foods. We were feeding him organic foods. We thought we were feeding him healthy, but we didn't know that he needed more fermented foods. We didn't know that he needed. There was a specific supplement that we actually.

Got. He was missing keyback bacteria, some key.

Bacterias. He, he had, he had dysbiosis. And by the way, can dysbiosis ever be healthy? Is there a healthy form of dysbiosis? There's.

A. Too much of something. Yeah, we do have that measurement in our test. Like overabundant species is the, the metric because you want to well, balance diverse gut. Right. And so in some guts we see like if you have 20, you know, in babies you do have like 90% of a single microbe, for example, and that is considered healthy. So that's why I created a baby gut test. Because a baby's gut in the first six months looks very different from a 30, 40 year old's gut. You cannot use an adult range for a baby. So what's healthy for an infant is not healthy for an adult. So in the first year you can find a species that's 90% like one species because remember it's like 10 seats, right. So it represents a lot more, one species represents a lot more space and your.

Gut.

Yeah. But as you grow older, after three years of age, if there, if anything is more than 15% relative abundance in your gut, it's too much of one. You're, you know, surely your diversity is going to get flagged. You're not, you know, so you could have maybe like, which is why probiotic supplementation, in a way, there is a danger of over supplementing a child with probiotics or even adults. Right. If it colonizes, it may hamper the natural diversification that you want in a kid who's eating solids and exposed to a lot of different environmental microbes. So now we, you know, we have the technology we should test, not guess when you supplement.

Right? Yeah, that's such a key phrase, like do not guess. Because if you guess, you're most likely going to be wrong. Unless you have actual data, quantified data to make real data driven decisions from. It's so funny. People think they stock their pantry so they know when they look in their pantry, I have this many cans of beans, I have this. Why don't we take an inventory of what's going on in us? It's the same exact thing. So if you're a parent or if you're just somebody that wants a healthy gut, take an.

Inventory. Take inventory. Especially probiotics, right. When you know, it's like, is every probiotic supplement equal? No, they're not equal. Right. There's some really clinically backed strains. It comes down to the strain level. So make sure if you're taking a probiotic, you are looking at clinically backed strains. And then what some companies do is they kind of like, oh, these are all clinically backed strains individually. And they mix it together and think that the gut will, you know, it will survive the gut when, when you take that pill. The capsule is supposed to also protect the probiotic strains until it reaches the gut. But not all capsules are made equal. Some capsules just dissipate quickly. And certain good bacteria, as I mentioned earlier, if they're exposed to oxygen, they die. So most probiotics don't get to your gut. So they're not all equal. You have to find a legitimate company and brand. And I am actually pretty proud because we are the first consumer company that launched strain tracking. So if you are taking a probiotic supplement, you can see that strain colonizing your gut if it's meant to colonize. So you know, if your child is, know if you're giving your child an infant probiotic, you will probably see that strain in their gut if it's working. We have seen some probiotics just never colonize. And we have that data because we have so much data now. And there's one company, I'm not going to name it, that uses water as the medium and we think that the water is killing the bacteria. So any, we, we don't recommend that brand anymore. But from our data we actually collect, like can see what actually works and what doesn't.

Work.

Yeah. So we're trying to bring more transparency to the supplement industry because there's a lot of snake oil, there's a lot of claims that are not FDA approved or regulated. But because we have the sequencing technology in a stream capacity, we, we can tell, we can show.

That. Cheryl, I think people would literally drop their, drop their jaw to the floor if they realized how much money they were wasting on supplements. I read some data a past week ago that we basically absorb maybe 20%, sometimes 40% of the supplements that we eat because they go through the hcl in the gut and it just basically liquefies and we never actually get it. So my friend Alex from this company Eons, shout out to Eons. They developed this technology called Quick Zone where you put it under your tongue and it gets directly into your bloodstream. So powerful. And I'm wondering like, oh my gosh, can we just do this for all supplements implementation? Because it's almost like bypassing the gut. This is why IVs are so popular, because they don't have to go through that traditional system. What do you make of that for probiotics? Do you think that probiotics and gut health supplements could ever do what they're supposed to do without being.

Swallowed? I mean, there's suppositories for the vaginal.

Microbiome.

Yeah. So there are different routes, but by and large, I mean the oral route is the easiest. Right. But there are differences in capsule vessels and quality and the different strains in it. Like I said, different strains have different functions. You can't just expect to take an off the shelf formulation. And it depends what you're looking to fix. Right. What are you deficient in? You know, like there's this notion of like, let me just take one a day for, for good health. But do you really need it? Right. I mean I, I have a more natural philosophy in terms of like a lot of these things you can do through diet, so increasing fermented foods. But again, not all fermented foods are equal. Right. You can buy very sugary yogurts that may have a counter effect if they have emulsifiers and added sugar and things like that, like your danone yogurt. We make our own kefir from our own grains. Our own kefir grains. Right. It has way more natural probiotics in it than A store bought one. So there's a lot of things that, you know, I think you can maintain through diet and health, you know, a well balanced diet. But I do think you should check in. If there are deficiencies, then sometimes supplementation can get you to back to a baseline that you want and then you have to maintain it through diet. Right. So I'm off that philosophy rather than just doing popping pills every single day, hoping that would fix your.

Issues. I think we have this bias where as long as we're being like a good little boy and a good little girl and taking our vitamins, I mean, look at the conditioning that's happening in our world right now. Look what happened in 2020, the reason that we moved out here. There is a war for the mind and that war is coming a lot of times from financial interest about, you should buy this product because it benefits this company the most. So this company is going to feed that information to the media, specifically super bowl commercials. And look at all this stuff. I mean, what's going on with the pharma industry? Advertising on television. There's another way, there's another game we can play. And that game is actually where you just take your health in your hands and you do something every day. Even if it's just you exploring something like getting some chickens or yeah, you know, trying to sprout some grains or having kefir. Like there's so many things that people can do. I wonder though, for this, and this is something that I know so many moms deal with. I've seen this in our forums. I've had moms email me this, especially when we did some of the content around our birth stories for Carrie Michelle when she had her vbac. For the moms that have cesareans, what is the repair process for the baby's.

Gut? Yeah. So we now have the C section signature in our reports because that was the thing I read, you know, where if it's removed by one year, the asthma risk is reduced by three times. We have that indicator. So there are ways you can restore that. And we see that so, so easy to restore in our moms and, and parents breastfeeding is the number one most restorative. Again, like, you know, I would encourage mom to also check in because most of the time if you did have a C section, you would have gone through the operation and you were exposed to antibiotics. Right. So bifidobacteria is the most important bacteria in the first year of life for your baby. And it's also the most sensitive to antibiotics. So usually in even adults, right, if you take a round of antibiotics, Most likely your BIFs are gone and wiped out, and it's really hard to restore that again. I. Mine was zero. It took me six to nine months of really hard work to get, get that back up to like 8%. Right. And in infants, you should see about 50 to 90% of BIFs in the first year of life, actually. So that is really the number one thing you want to see. I specifically want to see, see bacteria infantis in my child because that's the, the most efficient at digesting the HMOs in breast milk. There's four strains basically. Be infantis, be brave, be longam, and be bifidum. Hopefully this is not too, too crazy scientific. Yes. It's, it's. These are the four most important microbes that you want to see in your.

Child.

Okay. And so there are ways. So if mom had one of these boys or she will pass it on through her breast milk, hopefully. And we've seen a lot of that in our tests. If mom doesn't have it and baby doesn't have it, then a probiotic, a. A high quality probiotic that has one of those strains or a combination of those strains will be important to supplement a baby. And then once your baby, you know, and a lot of C section born babies, or even just babies exposed to antibiotics through NICU or whatever ear infections, they have zero. And within one month of supplementation, they, they go from zero to 90% of bacteria. And when that happens, it really crowds out the pathogenic bacteria. So all the E. Coli type bacteria is pushed out and symptoms do go away. So we see that, although we see initial symptoms where if the baby, if you imagine 9 out of 10 seats are E. Coli type bacteria and the good bacteria is coming in, fighting the bad bacteria, pushing it all out. But initially the baby's gonna feel discomfort and, you know, kind of like we, we get reports of like extra gassiness, stool being really, really.

Off.

Yeah. But we, we do tell them, with their physician's approval of course, to persist one to two weeks with careful monitoring and start them with a lower dose, to start them with half the dose and increase it slowly. Cause your, your, your gut, your baby's gut is trying to like, completely change out the. Who's in charge, right. Who's. Who's in the baby's gut. But that, you know, is really crucial in the first six months, first 12 months of life. And it's very easy to, to get that. I also Want to mention, you mentioned a lot about the healthcare system and all that and I want to talk a bit about antibiotics, right? Because you know, I, I forget what the stats are, but something like an average kid take gets two rounds of antibiotics in the first year of life because of ear infections. And ear infections are like, like so, so common these days. I'm not sure if your kids have had.

It. No, thank God, knock on wood. We've not, we've not gotten them any jabs, no vaccines, nothing. They're purely natural.

Children. Yeah. Any medication may have side effects.

Right?

Yeah. And these biffs are so sensitive to medication, like including maybe. I, I don't want to get to the vaccine discussion but you know, antibiotics could just wipe it out and it's really hard to bounce back if you don't do some restoration. But here's the fact. Most ear infections are viral, they're not even bacterial. But if you just take your child to your pediatrician, they're going to say take antibiotics. Right. Because I'm thankful my kids, both my kids had no ear infections at all until recently. So when my son is three and a half years old, finally he had ear infection and ear infection. So I took him to the Minute clinic and the first thing the, the nurse said was like, antibiotics. And like how do you know it's bacterial? Because I know what questions I should ask. Right? And she's like, we don't, but just in case. And oh, like does he have an ear infection in the other.

Ear? Let's destroy his gut just in.

Case. She didn't know anything about gut health, right? And so I'm like. And she told me if the ear infection is in one ear but not the other ear is bacterial. So then I'm like, oh really? So I texted my, my advisor, my medical advisor, Dr. Elissa Song, who's you know, functionally trained, she's a pediatrician in California. She's like, there's no such thing. Like, you know, there's nothing in medical literature that says if it's one sided, it's bacterial. So in fact she was like, here's what I would do. She gave me this whole protocol of like, you know, increases vitamin c by like 10x10000 milligrams throughout the day and you have to do it every hour because vitamin C dissipates quickly, increases vitamin D and you know, vitamin A. And I had this whole list and herbs and things like that. When I finally bought all those supplements, it cost me $200. And the antibiotics that the, the nurse prescribed was $3. So it is interesting, right? Like we, we are getting subsidized for, for antibiotics, right. Medication. And of course in some instances, if you do get strep throat, you do need antibiotics and that could be life saving. But I think you need to advocate for, you know, you need to do your research, your own research. Right. And unfortunately, the healthcare system doesn't reimburse supplements. But, you know, I'm fortunate to be able to afford it, but not every family can. Yeah. So I, anyway, I persisted. I fed him all the supplements. It was painful and at. Sometimes I doubted myself. Should I give it to him? Because I had that in hand, the antibiotics. But I'm like, I went by my gut, I felt like he was improving. And someone even told me, the nurse told me even giving my child antibiotics, it would take him a few days to feel better because that would take time to, to take effect. So I'm just gonna wait. So I told myself, I'm just gonna wait. And he did improve and nothing.

Happened.

Yeah. And then a week later, I think I got ear infection too. And I did the same protocol, I had the same supplements and I did the same thing. I went to my doctor and I was prescribed antibiotics but persisted. And, and so now I'm, I'm like, a lot of parents just need tools, right. They just like, you know, it's really scary in that time point where you're seeing your child cry and suffer and the.

Worst. I'll do.

Anything. Exactly. And so we, you know, it's, it's not again, like doctors are there for good reason and, but if that's the only thing you're prescribed, then what you're going to do. So we don't blame people for, you know, and again, sometimes it is needed, right. Just like my C section was, was really needed. But if parents are equipped with education, like, is it really bacterial? Is it viral? Could it be viral? And have the toolkit and the confidence that if I give my kid these supplements and I'm seeing him improve, then I have confidence that he's going to get better. Right. So I would have averted giving him antibiotics. But if I had to give him antibiotics, I have his baseline sample from before and I can take a sample 4 weeks post antibiotics and see how much his gut health was affected and then figure out how to get him back to baseline. Right. What, what was now was, was there before and now missing because of the treatment and, and guide me to it. So that's what we want to be. We want to Be a resource for parents not to name or shame and not to like point fingers and anything is to give you the data to empower you to make these, these decisions. Right. I'm a data geek, so to me, more data is better. And I, I know how, what to do from.

There. I love it. Wow. I really loved so much how you just shared you got the infection the very next week and then you just went through the protocol and then obviously it's not medical advice. I hate that we have to say that, y'. All. But you already know it's like not medical advice.

Right?

Yes. But then you actually, actually made, you cured yourself. You healed yourself by doing.

That. Yes, yes, for sure. That's a big caveat. But I only say that to, you know, kind of paint a picture that you, you do have to, you don't have to always do what your doctor tells you to do. In a way, you just do your own research. Right? Read labels, read ingredients, read about side effects, and you make your own call. Everything is a trade off in life. Right. There is a risk for everything. Right? So you need to, as a parent, you know best and you should advocate for your and your kids.

Health. Listen, Cheryl, if you and I had to ask permission for every decision that we thought we should ask permission for, we would never be the heads of businesses. We would never be moving forward in life. It just would not happen. And it's the same thing when it comes to sick care or just care in any way. The whole point with science is that the Socratic method is always there to be challenged. That's what it's, that's what, that's the basis of all science is the Socratic method. Can you prove and disprove based on theorem? That's the whole point of it all. But I think people forget that because they just do whatever is easy because they're so overwhelmed with their life and.

Responsibilities. People don't have time.

Anymore. Exactly. They don't have the time to figure it out. But I say you actually do have the time. Like we all have 24 hours in a day. We all have disposable income. Some of us have more than others. But there's ways in which we can take the income we have and use it. So we're actually feeding us instead of monetizing a broken system of like going and drinking on the weekends, even doing unconscious behavior sexually with people. Like, look at how many bars exist. Look at how much unconscious behavior exists in our country. That is just fueling people to give the excuse that they don't have time, that they don't have money, that they just, they can't deal with it right now. But you're right. When we have kids, everything changes. You start looking at life through a different lens of responsibility, responsibility and maturation. And before you know it, you're just putting that same lens on yourself. I think that's the. One of the beauties of being a parent is that you actually start to learn from your children in ways in which you can parent yourself again. And there's so much deep riches and wholeness there. It almost makes me want to cry just talking about it. So beautiful. Because the. For, for. And for all y' all that don't have kids yet, like, this is just as important for you because the child inside of you needs a healthy gut. So whether you have kids or you're just tending to the child inside, inside of you, metaphorically, it's so, so, so.

Important. It's also operating from fear, right? I think sometimes again, like that fear of like, oh, what if I, you know, don't do this and do that. What if, like, you know, we have some moms who did go through a C section and had so much guilt, you know, and coming out of it. And when they test their child's microbiome, it was perfect because they breastfed it. They did all the right things and for them it was kind of a relief, right? A point of relief. Right? So I think there's a lot to be said about, you know, even our healthcare system. Like, if you don't take this medication, you're going to, you know, you're going to, you know, get infection and things like that. That's a lot of fear. And sometimes you react to like, okay, I'm just going to take it because I'm worried I'm going to get X, Y, Z. Where I would say is like, do your research. I think just don't kind of react out of fear. Like, I think there's, it's worth researching your health. When it comes to your, your kids health and your health, I think it's good to see both sides of the table and like, you know, I know everyone. One doesn't. Not everyone has the time to read through papers, but at the very least, we at Tiny Health, we are, you know, I've become the company I wish I had when, you know, I gave birth to my first child. Right. I was doing all this research. I'm like, I'm not a scientist. Am I interpreting this paper correctly? So I want to toe the line of like, you know, this is what we know and this is like the scientific evidence and where it is and it's just information, it's just education. We're just putting it out there for you. Ultimately you have to feel empowered to make your own call, your own decisions, right? You, you're in charge of your own health. Don't let anyone tell you what to.

Do. Exactly, yeah. The more you just become an automaton, the more you're actually in slavery. So we have a community, it's on the screen right now. Liberatedlife me. This is exactly the tribe, the place where we're talking about these resources. Because what makes us empowered is actually being resourceful. I think what really disempowers us is when we tell ourselves unconscious story that we can't find the answer or that the. Everything's figureoutable. I'm sure you know this as an entrepreneur, especially as a mom, especially as a wife, especially as a human who just wants to continually evolve her consciousness and my consciousness, I feel the same. Everything's figureoutable. But we have to come from a mindset that it actually is possible and we can figure it out. I think what happens is when the gut brain axis gets incredible dysbiosis, like if somebody's having soda and Cheetos and just no greens, no healthy proteins, no healthy fats, over time it can actually, and this is the point I want to ask you, it can actually profoundly stick people in that state of disempowerment because an unhealthy cycle feeds an unhealthy brain, which feeds unhealthy actions. So the gut to the brain, to the human behavior is a clear, clear connection in my mind, especially after 10 years of having conversations like this. But I wonder for you how you see that play out. The emotional quotient to gut dysbiosis is very big. It's very big. I wonder if you can comment on.

That. Maybe not so much on the research. I haven't looked into that.

Specifically. Well, just anecdotally then. Yeah, I'm trying to get the answer from you non.

Scientifically. Yeah, I mean, absolutely. Right. I think like when you're stressed it does impact your gut function and your ability to digest certain foods. Like even like if you think about, like if you're eating in a stress state, right. You're, you're rushed into eating and you're not digesting it through your saliva, as we mentioned earlier. And that gets, you know, your digestion probably is affected. So you probably see a lot of those in our reports in the digestive function section. Um, but absolutely, there's a.

Connection. Yeah, the stress goes top down and bottom up. So I thought it was really interesting when you said suppositories. One of our other partners that we have that we're Talking about in LiberatedLife, me, along with Tiny Health, is the company called Cy Fox, where you can do blood testing. I don't know if you've heard of Cy Fox before. So I think there's like an arsenal that we can have to just, you know, fortify ourselves. Tiny Health for our gut, and that's, by the way, for dads, for moms, for family, for baby. Like, that's a really big specialty that I think you have cracked the code on in a really cool way. And then Cyox for our blood and testing our hormones and testosterone for men. And then also there's some other companies that I think are coming into this world as well. There's genomic testing, there's all kinds of really cool things. At the nexus of all this, at the intersection of all this, is a mom, a dad, a woman, a man, a human being that just wants to thrive. Isn't that really what we're looking for? We just want to thrive. We want to live well. We want to have energy to show up for conversations like this. We want to have presence. We want to enjoy our life. And I think if that's the end goal and we can all just really congregate and have a conversation about that being the desired end goal, I think we're going to end up in a good place as long as we don't get caught only in the logical academia of it, which is important. There's two worlds there. How do you hold those worlds? How do you hold the world of academia and science and numbers and literature and studies and you being a loving, committed moment and a wife? Yeah, that's a challenging world to hold both of.

Those. It is important, right? Like, I think a lot of people see Tiny Health as the merge between the two. We have really credible scientists on our. On our team and our board from Johns Hopkins, from Washington University, from USC and all that, Cornell. And yet we have a lot of functionally trained practitioners on our team as well to bring the more holistic environment or education to our platform. So, you know, not everything, you know, a lot of it. You know, that said in our reports, everything is scientifically back, everything is evidence based, because we want to make sure, at the very minimum, we can see, you know, some backing behind that. But then we're also very like, you know, we understand that, you know, there are, you know, medicine, you know, like you said, Western medicine isn't, you know, it's maybe 10 years behind academic research. Right. So this is where, you know, we are a wellness test. We're educational, we're not diagnostic, and we're not prescribing anything. We do tell you to work with your practitioner, but we hope that, you know, this brings you more clarity on the data that's out there right now. And it's a living, breeding thing. Like, we don't just, it's not static. A lot of our reference ranges change over time. As we get more and more data, we understand better what's a healthy state, what's an unhealthy disease state. And we, we modify our reference ranges to kind of like expand our knowledge into what we, what we know now. So, and then, you know, the point about the family health too. So we started with the mom and baby gut test and we had a vaginal test for, for moms too. And we do recommend you like people doing it, even preconception, right. Because I think it's important to prepare the vaginal and the gut microbiome before the birthing event. But as we grow our consumers, we have an older child's test and we have adult tests. Dads want to test too, right. Like I said, we talked earlier, dad's influences can influence the baby's gut and, but even, you know, sort of like if you're, you're single, you don't have a kid yet, you know, you just want to test, you can come too. But as it relates to family, we now have a family membership. The reason why, you know, we, you know, you can't just restore your, you know, we talk about behavior change earlier and how when you are a parent, you would do anything for your kid. Right? So a lot of parents come to us restoring their kids microbiome, the child's microbiome. But you can't just do that one time point and be like, okay, I'm done. You know, it's a lifestyle, right? It's a continuous lifestyle. And your child is going to grow older and eat the same foods you eat you put on the table. They're going to live in the same environment, housing environment, they're going to do the same things you do. So if you have poor gut health, your kids, you know, gut health is going to kind of trend towards your gut health. So in a way, we want parents to understand they have to work, you know, they have to work on their gut health too. So one like, funny story, like we were living in California before this. We just moved to Austin, Texas two years ago. And you know, because I run Tiny Health, we do whole family testing. I test everyone twice a year, proactively. When I tested my family, I think six months to a year after we moved here, everyone's gut health dropped. Was. Was.

Worse. It was the.

Barbecue. Oh, no. Like, you know, you know, in California we had. We were grateful to be exposed to really fresh produce from farmers market. We buy organic. We, you know, a water source is amazing there and then here. I hadn't figured out the supply yet, you know, and now, you know, knowing what I knew about our gut health, try to look for better sources from farms. I have a beef share that comes, you know, at once, twice a year. We, we do raw milk from a local dairy here and things like that. But then we started having skin conditions. So I'm like, oh, no. Like, why, why is our microbiome not improving? It actually kind of like was still not good. Then we finally tested our water. So we get water, our water from Lake Austin, and there's lead, arsenic and uranium in our water. So we already do an RO system for our drinking water. But when we shower, especially during the winter, we're doing hot showers and it's getting into our skin, right? We're breathing it in. We gargle when we wash our, you know, brush our teeth with water. So now I got my, my husband to install whole house filtration and we're about to retest our whole family. And I hope that our gut health is, is on the men and improving. But there's always things like that, right? Moving, you know, you're about to move hopefully for, you know, in a better state. But there's. There's a lot of reasons why you should be proactive.

About. Oh my God. So beautiful. Your story. Because everybody can relate to just when they do things like they move and, or big, significant life changes, they go to a different state. All of a sudden they just feel different. There's a reason for that, and it's how we started this conversation. It's because there's so much going on that we can't. There's a. There's a whole world that we can't see that's so important. And I really feel like this is a window into that world. So thank you so much for doing what you do. It's an incredibly challenging and complicated world. And I feel like with the dashboard and the report this is one thing that I want to just give you a huge shout out out on having somebody walk you through this and like explain to you how to make sense of it all in like 20 minutes or 30 minutes. So worth it. So worth it. And you've included that now, which is so beautiful. It's the power of technology. You don't have to go to a doctor's office. You can just meet with somebody virtually. It makes such a difference when a human being is actually communicating to you and sharing with you about what the numbers mean, what the supplements mean, seen with the dysbiosis means. So for people that don't know, let's tell them just on a high level where they can go, what they can do. The link is on the screen, joshtrend.com forward/tiny health. By the way, you gave us 20 off. Thank you for that. So generous. Of course, like I said, it's not cheap, it's not easy to do this. So the code is Josh20. If you enter that in the cart on the Tiny Health website, then you can get 20 off your first order. So just tell people where to go if they want to connect with you. You're on Instagram. Are you personally on Instagram? I know Tiny Health is on.

Instagram. I am.

Yeah. Can they discover.

More? Yeah. Tiny health.com so again, tiny for tiny babies, but also tiny microbes in your gut. And we're not just for babies, we're also for adults. I'm pretty responsive on Instagram, so you can always like DM me at Tiny Health. And then I also as. Even though we've grown so much over the past couple of years, I read almost every hello attinyhealth email.com because I really care about what our consumers think and, you know, feedback that we get. I may not respond to every one of them, but I do, I do get a good sense of what people are, you know, asking and you.

Know, like emailing about what are the main things right now? Is there a through line that people are constantly asking about, like, is there a main topic or two or three that most parents are concerned as.

Human beings are very popular with kids who have eczema and allergies. Right. Because again, it's, it's so connected to the gut and this is where we, we can help. I would say as early as possible. Like again, eczema is really tricky. When you have a 2, 3 year old with still with eczema symptoms, it is important to course correct in the, the first six months of life. For first 12 months of life, if possible. Yeah, yeah. So, but we get those questions a lot. And then lately, sleep, you know, that has been a really popular trend for us. A lot of, you know, babies don't sleep well. Right. But there is a difference. So, like, it's funny, my C section born daughter has never slept well. She's just, you know, always been a light sleeper and never had more than 45 minute naps as a baby. And my vaginally born son can sleep two, three hours. He can take two, three hour naps, no problem. Till today. They're like that. Right. And I don't know, a lot of things that we are read in literature, like our data maps back to that we see. We see, you know, a baby who can't sleep well. There is a signature in their guts to show that. Yeah, it's just.

Fascinating. It's fascinating. And again, it's this world we cannot see, but there's a world that we can all see, and that's our skin health, our hair health, our physical body, how much fat we carry, our presence, our posture. All these things I feel like are clues to how somebody is well or not.

Well. Yeah, there are symptoms, but sometimes, almost like when you do have symptoms, it's a little too, not too late, but it's like, you know, you want to check your gut as a leading indicator before the symptoms exist. Right. Ideally. And fix.

It. And we didn't talk about it. Maybe we can do another podcast at some time. The connection between the foods we eat and our skin health. Oh, my God. That is an entire.

Show. There's a skin gut axis.

Too. There's a skin gut axis. See, this is what we have to do. Round two. Okay, so at the nexus point that I talked about, there's all these converging scientific bodies, you being one of them, that can really take people out of the office of doctorhood and bring them into their living room on a computer getting well, which is amazing. Our ancestors would have been so stoked. They would have said, oh my God, I had to travel half a day to go to some country doctor wearing a stethoscope. And now you can do it on Zoom.

Yeah. And we try to make our reports easy to understand. There are a lot of other gut tests out there. Their reports are, I think, less easy to understand. And we try to make it very actionable. What can you do from a diet perspective? What can you do from a supplements perspective? And we include brands we recommend and we have advice on lifestyle changes. Right. Like, for example, it's not just like, oh, get exposed to more animals and nature. A lot of people don't know about the cleaning supplies or household cleaning supplies are really toxic. You know from COVID we are so used to seeing antibacterial soap but certain ingredients in there can get into your gut and if you're thinking about your baby crawling your floors and you know, kind of like licking everything, if they're licking antibacterial ingredients, it could affect their gut too. So we do recommend people to swap out to cleaner, non toxic brands, things like that. It's very actionable. I do want to say I never want to be a supplement company cuz I know a lot of some gut testing companies tell you to take their supplements. Right. So I think there's a little bit of a conflict of interest there and I rather kind of like here are the things you're missing. Go find your own brands or here are brands we trust and recommend from our own clinical. You know, our scientific team vets these products and look at all the, the papers supporting the supplements actually. So if it does exist in our report results, we have either kind of thoroughly check that or we've seen data within our results or our testing platform that it works in.

Consumers. I noticed you have an aura ring. Is that. Yes, I have two. I'm actually using an ultra human and an aura ring. I'm doing an A B test right now. I love data. I think it's great. And I know that my intellectualism and my striving for data and proof and evidence can never ever outweigh the love that I have for my children and the anecdotal experience that I have when I hold my healthy son or I hold my healthy daughter. Now, when it comes to you being healthy, how do you to ask it again? Because this is one of my favorite questions in the world. How do you hold the world of data and science and also being a mother and how do you have wellness in the middle of those two for you? How do you actually live? Well, with one foot in science, one foot in spirituality. I don't know if you have a belief in a higher power or not. Do you, do you believe in some sort of higher.

Power? I do, I just don't know what it.

Is. Great. Okay. Well there's a mystery there that you are connected to. So both of these worlds in the center is you and how do you define wellness there? Like what is, what does it mean to live your life well, how does Cheryl define wellness as a mother, as an.

Entrepreneur? Yeah, doing so Many things, definitely hard. It's competing priorities. Right. But at the end of the day, it's kind of being at peace with yourself and also knowing that in that time point you're doing your best. And as long as I feel like I'm doing my best to, then I'm at peace, you know, because we can't have it all. Can't do it all. Yeah. But for me, there's, you know, I think seasonalities of things I try to kind of improve. Right. So every season I pick two things to focus on. So this season is sleep, which is why I just got my aura ring. I'm realizing that through. Through just education in my aura ring that if I sleep really late because I'm working up at night, then I'm losing the deep sleep, which is important for restoration. And then if my kids are waking me up really early, I'm losing the REM sleep. So I'm not getting the memory. And, you know, I'm not cognitively as sharp. Right. So learning that has really helped me. I'm also focusing on blue light, you know, with the sleep thing. You know, replacing a lot of my light bulbs. You know, my husband thinks I'm crazy. Everything's red and orange now in our house at night. Blue light glasses and things like that. So, like, you know, just two things at a time. You know, I, you know, previous seasons I got rid of plastic and in my microwave oven because, you know, like, when I even birthed my son with a VBAC four years ago, I post my. My. The first six months of my postpartum. Sorry. The first six weeks of my postpartum meal were all microwaved food in plastic. It's crazy. This is before I learned about.

Microplastics. You didn't know. You didn't.

Know. And how it got to, you know. Which is why I cringe when I say that. Right. But that was what I, you know, at that time point, this is how much I knew. Right. So in a way, like, you can hit yourself or, like, how could I have done that to myself and my infant? Right. I was breastfeeding. It probably ruined his gut, too. Thankfully, I was starting Tiny Health around that time, and I was, like, becoming more aware of these things in some sense, to answer your question, it's like being, you know, also forgiving to yourself that in that moment of what you knew, you were trying your best and. Yeah, like, you know, I think doing your best and not being too hard on.

Yourself. Yeah. From a cultural perspective. I know. So are you, of what nationality are.

You? Nationality? Well, I'm American now, but I used, I grew up in.

Malaysia. Malaysia. So I don't know the culture there. I'm. I'm a bit uneducated about Malaysia. Is there, is there culture similar to the surrounding cultures as far as work ethic and, and hard chargingness around.

Work? It's a pretty Asian culture, like a little bit of less forgiving, I think, like more academic focus, British colony. So it's more commonwealth, you.

Know. The reason I asked that is because there's certain cultures in the world and you can even find, I guess that culture definitely in America. Overworking, not enough sleep. So wherever we are in the world, there's just certain ways that I think we just are being called to forgive ourselves for. I mean there's so much shame around overworking. And you're only as good as a man as how many zeros are on your bank account. You're only as good as a woman is how perfect you look. It's all bullshit. None of it's real. It's just a construct. Much like I have to get sick and then go to the doctor as a construct. It's the same thing. So thank you for breaking the construct. Not just with Tiny Health, with your, yourself. You know that having entrepreneur and a CEO on the show saying forgiveness is part of my wellness practice. I can get on board with that. That's really what the world needs. So thank you for holding those two worlds and, and doing what you do. Again, the link is on the screen right now. We covered so much ground in this invisible world. Look, there's many more podcasts about this, I think, because, gosh, you could probably spend an entire podcast on the skin access that you talked about. But what is something that you've been wanting to share in the world about Tiny Health, about the tininess in our own gut and the care of the tiny babies for this gut testing and so much and so forth. What is something you've been wanting to share that maybe we haven't touched upon today that we haven't.

Covered? We covered a little bit. We were really excited about new membership that we're launching called Tiny Plus. So it's a membership for your whole family. Basically it's a 3.99 membership that comes with two gut tests or could be a vaginal test too, and one consult call. But you can buy more kits for your whole family for 169 per kit. It's a really great deal and it keeps you kind of, you know, this whole membership notion really plays into the fact, you know, what we talked about in terms of, you know, testing your gut or gut health is not a point in time. It's really like longevity. You want that longitudinal data. When you see how your gut baseline, what your gut baseline is, and how that changes over time with diet, environment, where you live, and things like that, it really gives you really interesting data and helps you, you know, identify areas you want to.

Improve. You can make good decisions when you have good.

Data.

Yes. But if the data is not good, if it hasn't been vetted, well, your decisions might not be that great. Thank you for coming on the show and being here in the studio. It's so much more fun to do this in.

Person.

Yes. So thank you for dedicating time for this. And when we get chickens, I'll make sure that we share notes. Okay. We can get maybe some chicken feed and chicken coops. Okay. Y' all make sure you go to the Show Notes for this show. It's linked right here on the screen. And share this with somebody who's been struggling with maybe mood or skin issues, maybe their children are up all the time. Just somebody that you intuitively feel would feel the way that you feel. Inspired by this podcast. Share this podcast with them and go over to the Show Notes. It's linked right below. Until Cheryl and I see you again, we're both wishing you love and wellness. We'll talk to you soon.