Tina Anderson | Gut Health: New Probiotic Strain That Changes Everything | Wellness Force #Podcast

Big distinction. Yes. Having a live microorganism is the actual definition of a probiotic, but it's not that it needs to be alive in the intestine refrigerator. It needs to be alive once it hits the intestine. So it's really important to distinguish.

Hello, everyone. It's Josh. Welcome back to Wellness Force. Today we're talking about this connection between our gut and our brain and everything else in between. We're talking with the one and only Tina Anderson from Just Thrive Health. Tina, welcome to the show.

Thanks, Josh. I'm excited to be here.

Yeah, it's really cool. We were talking before we hit the record button, and I realized your path was literally a wellness warrior path. You went to the pharmaceutical industry and then legal, and you were like, something just didn't feel right in you. We're going to talk about this story. What actually pulled you over to more of a ancestral lens, you know, this real thriving health that we all deserve, but people don't really know you too much for Wellness Force. You're coming onto the show for the very first time. Tell us something fun. You know, give us something like a fun fact about you that we might not know from all your interviews and your appearances on the media. What's something cool about you that we might not know?

Well, I love to Serbian dance. Maybe that's it. I'm Serbian. My parents were born in Serbia, and it's a huge part of my life, and my husband's Serbian, and so. And I love to Serbian dance. So on Friday nights, we'll sit and have a glass of wine, and next thing you know, I'm up dancing all by myself sometimes.

So I love to dance, too. Dancing is like this primal art form, isn't it? It's how people get into their bodies. And I feel like our society right now, everybody's having a really challenging time. Because when this podcast goes live, we'll obviously still be dealing with the ramifications of either being in lockdown or social distancing. And the most important thing we all can do right now is if we want to thrive, is to actually feel at home and safe and really loving in our own bodies. And it's really hard for us to do that, Tina, if our gut is messed up and we're having foggy brain thinking, and there's just this huge disparity between knowledge around gut health and how the brain functions. How did you even get into this field, you know, founding this company? How many years have you been running this company now?

We've been around Seven years. Seven years since we started. We created the LLC and then we launched about six and a half years ago.

There was a moment, I'm sure in the past, I remember Gretchen Rubin was talking to us about this where she was in the legal field and she had this kind of come to Jesus moment. I'm not a religious man, but she had a moment like that and she was like, I got to make a shift. You obviously had that same type of a moment. So before we get into gut health and everything that we're going to talk about for just thrive, take us back to this moment where you decided, okay, my path is going to turn to a different direction now. Going to do something more natural, more holistic.

Yeah, well, I actually have two transitions in my career. I started out as an attorney in the litigation field. I was doing civil defense litigation and worked crazy hours and just did not have a great work life balance. And then I, you know, then I started having children. You know, I could deal with the no work life balance, I guess before kids. But when I started having children, it was really, you know, not something I wanted to live. My, I didn't want to live my life like that. So I ended up going into a family pharmaceutical business which allowed me to have a much better work life balance, be at home a lot more with my kids, but yet still maintain my law degree and still be able to utilize all the things I learned in law school. And, and that was really great as far as work life balance. And I felt like we're in, my husband and I were in the pharmaceutical industry. We were like, this is great. We're helping people get life saving drugs and you just felt like you were doing something good. But after several years of being in the industry, we really started to notice a lot of the abuses in the industry. We started noticing, you know, a lot of the over prescript prescribing of pharmaceuticals to people. We even saw, you know, drug reps come into our office and say like, oh my God, this is great. We won this bid. We won this one bid for one of the largest hospital systems in the country. And the pharmaceutical rep came in and was like, this is great. Now what my job is, is to go to every doctor in this hospital system and lower the number where they prescribe that medicine. And so, you know, we saw it with relatives where they would be on one pharmaceutical led to another. But then we saw it in the industry where people were liter, you know, pharmaceutical reps were literally, you know, educating doctors on, you know, wrong science or, and I'm not saying that every pharmaceutical rep is like that, but you see that really. We saw it with our relatives. Like I mentioned, you know, we had one relative that started on one pharmaceutical and then went. Next thing you know, within six months, she was on a dozen different pharmaceuticals and she was not getting better. So I think, you know, a lot of your listeners would probably relate to. They know, people who maybe or themselves have, you know, they started on one thing for maybe a stomach issue, and then they caused joint pain, and then it's. Then they have a skin rash, and it's like, next thing you know, you're on all these medications and they're creating a lot of havoc. And so I'm a super deep thinker. I listen to a lot of Norman Vincent Peale or read a lot of Norman Vincent Peale. Wayne Dyer, he's one of my heroes, for sure. And my husband is, too. He feels the same way about both of those authors. And I, we just were not doing our life's work. You know, we were like, this is not. We are not doing our life's work.

He was also in the pharmaceutical industry as well at that time.

Yes, yes, exactly. And so he was. We were like, we're not doing our life's work. This isn't the way we live our lives with our own children. You know, we would. We really avoided antibiotics as much as possible. We let their fevers, you know, get to a point where. Because it's your body's own defense mechanism. And so we just decided to start looking into different, you know, getting into a business that was really more in line with who we were and a career path. And so being at the right place at the right time. It was my husband's chiropractor, actually had a connection with these really, really incredible strains. We had looked into different options, but they just didn't. They weren't, like, resonating with us. And so we ended up finding out that we had the opportunity to purchase the rights to these very incredible strains out of London University, these probiotic strains. And from there, just thrive was born. And it was. It's really been the most gratifying career journey I've ever been on, bar none. You know, I mean, seeing what it's done for people and their health. And I always encourage people, follow your heart, you know, follow what you want to do. And don't. Just because you started one career doesn't mean you don't have to. That you have to stay with it for the rest of your life. You know, like they used to do back in the day.

Yeah, there is no back in the day. Doesn't exist anymore. Especially in this like technology world where like right now we're talking through a computer, you know, tens of thousands of people are listening and we're all connected through like invisible energy in the air that goes from satellite and back down to earth. I mean, the dream that we're all trying to create, everybody's got a unique dream and along that path. This is my question for you. We all get tested, like everyone gets tested for their integrity and like you said, doing what your heart's actually moving you to do. Was there a moment where you were making the shift from either legal to pharmaceutical to then being more in the natural health world where you really had that gut check moment and you thought to your, okay, this is where I really stand for what I believe in. This is my integrity. I'm not going to cut a corner. I'm not going to give away what my heart really wants me to do. Like, everybody has that multiple times. Tina, what was that for you?

You know, it was just my husband and I talking and we were, it was that day at the office when the, you know, farm pharma rep came in and said that and we're like, we got to do something else. This is, we're done. You know, we need to do something that's so much more in line with how we want to help people. We, we thought we got into this industry to help people. And of course there place for pharmaceuticals. Of course, you know, life saving type things, acute situations. We just didn't feel it was a place for chronic conditions. You know, nobody ever gets to the root cause and doctors are very rarely talking to people about what did you eat today? And you know, are you, you know, what are you, what's. Why do you think you have high cholesterol? Why do you have high blood pressure? Why do you have an autoimmune disease? Like what's the root cause? And that's where we didn't, we didn't see that emphasis in the pharmaceutical world. So of course there's a place for pharmaceuticals. They, they save lives. And of course I' not anti them. It's just that it wasn't, I didn't like, I didn't want to be a part of, be a part of that.

Well, look, I'm a very controversial person and we don't get to this place in the podcast world unless we're really adamantly speaking our truth. So I am very much anti pharmaceuticals unless it is for a condition like my mom has manic bipolar. So there are certain things that she has to take. Right. Because the brain chemistry has shifted. And I think for some people it is, you know, a life or death thing. But we lean so much, Tina, this entire world leans on the magic pill. I don't think there's a magic pill. I think when we look at powders and supplements, there are certain natural things that we can consume. I'm super curious and excited to dig into this strain that you found. But what is it when people look at the supplement world or even just your products, that they get wrong? In other words, when people learn about probiotics or people learn about this natural health world, what's something that they're traditionally getting wrong about?

The entire thing, I think that they're not looking at like, are products doing studies? Are people, are they have what they, what they're claiming on the bottle? Is it really, has it been studied? Has it been backed up by scientific research? And I think that's where, you know, people get caught up in the lifestyle of a brand and they get caught up in that feeling like, oh, this is, it's just a fun brand. It's great. And unfortunately, when we started, I'm like, well, we're gonna just sell because it works. I mean, this works like no other probiotic out there. And I just thought I was naive enough to think, oh, you know, that's what's gonna happen. But I didn't realize that you do have to do.

The science is going to sell it for us.

Right?

Right.

And so, but unfortunately, I think people miss out on that science and the science is really important. And I just would encourage people that they really, when they're taking a supplement that they contact, you know, get in touch with the customer service department, get in touch, get on their website, do some research, look at their studies, look at what they've done and really make sure that it's a high quality and high integrity product. Because one of our big focuses was to raise the standard in the pharma or in the supplement world. You know, there are, there are people selling snake oil out there, obviously that's why they have a, you know, some supplement companies have a bad name, you know, but I do feel that one of our big missions is just to raise that bar and by doing double blind human clinical trials and to do things that no other supplement companies are doing so that we really, people will go to supplements and turn to supplements that are really helpful instead of going the pharmaceutical route.

How many Times did you have to change the formulation? I think Dr. Cutting was the gentleman who was a gentleman, or it was a. It was a lady.

Yep.

So Dr. Cutting partnered up with your husband and yourself, and that's how you found these strains. And it was actually from a specific university. But since then, can you tell us about that? And then how many times did you have to reformulate or tweak or twist in order to come to market with something that your heart really said was true?

Well, that's actually an interesting story because we really didn't have to change the formula that many times because Dr. Simon Cunning was about to sell these strains to the rights of these strains to a major national conglomerate. And last minute, he decided not to because he was so afraid that they were going to shelve them because so many of these probiotics are being sold on a different story. And this is a whole new category of probiotics. And so he was really afraid that they were going to keep them from the market and shelve them. It was almost.

Why would they do that? Tina, Sorry to interrupt you. Why would they shelve them?

Because they have spent millions and billions and billions of dollars to tell this story of the Lactobacillus bifidobacter. And it's just. It's what's out there. And they didn't have the, you know, it's a whole. It's like an upward battle to tell this new story. And why would they. When they have, you know, billions of dollars in sales with these other probiotics out there? And so that's really what he kind of got concerned last minute. And they were gonna sell. He was gonna sell them for a. Has an incredible amount of integrity that he, you know, he really. He worked on this for years. He researched this for years. And he wanted these strains to get out to the mass population because of the fact that they were actually going to be helping people. And he was so petrified of them being shelved.

Wow. I mean, for me, this is another gentleman where you yourself had a gut check moment based on integrity. He had the same thing. It just seems like the part of this company that I resonated with and why I wanted to talk about this. There are hundreds of companies, maybe even thousands at this point, Tina, that, quote, sell probiotics. Right, Right. But like you said, like, what's the integrity? What's the testing behind this? Can we go a little bit deeper into what this strain actually is? Because I think people know about the Bifidus and lactobacillus but this is something really interesting. This is a bacillus strain that's specific to just thrive. And is this something that we can do? Can everyone do this?

Essentially, yes, yes. So, yeah, I could back up. So Bacillus, they're endospore probiotics, so we call them spore forming probiotics. So there's bacillus indicus, bacillus subtilis, bacillus clausi. I mean, these are all the strains that are in our product and these are all endospore probiotics and they have this endospore shell around themselves. And the beauty of these spore forming bacteria is their ability to survive the gastric system naturally. So when you swallow, when they're in the capsule in the bottle, they're actually dor. When you swallow them, they're dormant, so they're not live. It's not until they hit your intestines that they have the ability to take that endospore shell off and become alive. So the traditional probiotics that you see that are made up of the Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium strains, those strains are, they're alive. You know, if they get through the transportation, you know, path, they're alive bacteria. That's why you see them in the refrigerator. And so they're live bacteria. Ours are not live in the bottle, they're dor. So the problem with live bacteria is they have difficulty surviving. You know, first of all, they can't withstand the room temperature of the store shelf. So how in the world would they ever survive your body temperature, which is.

98.6 or even the HCL pathway. Right. Getting through all the hydrochloric acid in the stomach.

Exactly. Like the gastric barrier, the stomach is known as the gastric barrier. So most of those products, if they're not killed off by the body temperature, they are 99.99% of them are killed off in the stomach acid and therefore get to the intestines. De have the ability to get there alive because they don't become alive until they hit the intestines. And this is not something that Dr. Cutting, you know, created or engineered. These are, he was able to isolate these strains from the environment and have them. These strains were the same strains our ancestors used to get from the environment. So when our ancestors ate off the land, they ate roots and tubers, they would get the soil off the land and they got those bacillus strains from the soil and they were dormant then. And then you would swallow them and they were dormant, and it wasn't till they hit the intestines that became alive. And so that's really the big distinction is that these strains are actually, they're alive. They stay there for 21 to 28 days. They're gut commensal, meaning these strains belong in the gut. They were intended by nature to go in the gut. You know, I don't want to go off too much, but like Lactobacillus and Bifidobacter, you never found those strains in the soil or in the environment. The time. Even though our gut microbiome is comprised primarily of Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium, we didn't get them from the environment. We got them through childbirth. So, you know, when a mother gives birth to a baby, the baby is inoculated through vaginal childbirth. The baby is then inoculated more through breastfeeding, through close skin to skin contact. So that's when we got our Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium strains. We never got them from the environment. What we did get is Bacillus strains, these spore based probiotics from the environment and from the soil. And so when, you know, you would eat them off the, in the soil, they would go through and they stay there. When they get to your intestines, they actually stay there for about 21 to 28 days, doing a whole lot of good in your gut.

This is fascinating to me because if you look at the healthiest populations and you study the work of the Weston A. Price foundation and you look at nutrition and physical degeneration. He went across the world. He was actually a dentist. I'm sure you're familiar with his work.

Oh, yeah, we attend their show every year. We speak at their show every year. Yes.

Oh, this is great. So I was actually a guest on their show and I've had the founder on my show and we talked about how when you look across the planet, the healthiest children of any population, they were the ones that were playing in the dirt. You know, they were getting their fingernails dirty and they might have even eaten some dirt. Tina. Okay, like all these bacillus strains, all these bacillus strains that you're talking about, like, this is really the foundation of our gut. And right now, you know, our main mission with Wellness Force is helping humans heal mental health, physical health, and also to connect with the higher power. We cannot do any of these things unless we have a healthy gut. So what have you seen as far as case studies and just people that have been writing into you. Do you have, like, one story or one person that really, like, warms your heart and you think about, okay, my products actually help that person heal their mental health or heal their physical health. Can you share a story with us?

Oh, I have so many stories, Josh. This is tough, but my one that always comes to mind is a mom whose son is on the autism spectrum. Kids who have autism have a lot of gut dysbiosis going on, gut imbalance going on. And I saved. I have goosebumps as I talk about it because I saved all of her voicemail messages. And she. It was early, early on, and a store owner who would love the product was. Gave it to her, and she's like, okay, she didn't want to try it. She didn't want to try it. And then she's like, fine, I'll try it. And it has been, you know, life changing for him. You know, when you start to heal your gut, when you start to, you know, start going. When kids start going to the bathroom regularly, they're getting rid of those toxins. You know, they sleep better, and then they start sleeping better, then they can concentrate more. I mean, it's like a domino effect. You know, I always say, like, side effects may include more energy. You know, in the pharma world, we're always talking side effects. Could. Sure.

You know, it's always, like, two minutes long. Yeah.

Yeah, exactly. Our side effects are, like, more energy, better immune health, you know, all of these really great things. But that one. Anything involving kids just warms my heart. Of course, I'm a mother of three, and it's like, you just can't help but. And to see the progress that he's made, you know, I'm not making any claims about autism that we could change, you know, a child's path or anything like that. I'm just saying that kids who aren't on the spectrum have severe gut dysbiosis. And now we know that the spores are actually helping rebalance the gut, and that's having a dramatic impact with kids on the spectrum. And that's why we speak at Autism one every year. We had a doctor early on when we launched, she said. She pulled me, and she held both of my arms, said, please, you guys need to come and speak at the autism convention. And fortunately, it was in Chicago, and that's where we're based out of, so we were able. It was, like, literally a month out. That got us on the main stage, and it was really great. So that's one of the. But I have so many, I mean, I have, you know, know, I friend who said it saved her marriage actually, because she's like, I literally had no energy anymore and my doctor told me I'm just, you know, you're just getting old, you know, that's just what happens as you age, you know, and, and so now, next thing you know, she's, you know, getting. The minute you start going to the bathroom regularly, I mean, and people think they're regular, but when you, you know, start getting on the spores and you're going regularly, it's like you really have more energy. You know, you're sleeping better. You of energy and all that because.

You'Re not towing around a trailer anymore. Literally and figuratively, like you've let go, if you know what I'm saying, y'. All. So these spore based probiotics, I love this because I want to go back to what you said. They survive the digestive process to actually get down in there to the tight junctions and they pass through the hcl. I have to ask you then, and I've never really even thought about this myself, why do the probiotics that are stored in the refrigerator section at Sprouts or in the stores, like, like, what's the narrative there? That's actually not true. Like, are these companies lying? Are they just trying to push a product because it's old science? Like, is there new science that you found about the spore based. Give us the skinny on the contrast between the two.

Yeah, so I think it's a little bit. I don't think anyone's lying. I don't think anybody's purposely being malicious or at least I'm naive enough to think that.

Right. Well, the path to hell is paved with good intentions. I'm not saying they're lying, but let's get real. Like, what's the truth? You know?

Right, right, right. A lot of it is that it's based on old science. You know, the Human Microbiome project was launched by the National Institutes of Health about 10 years ago. Taught us more about the gut than we ever knew before. I mean, just this past year there were 50,000 studies that were published on gut health. I mean, we are just starting to scratch the surface. Gut health is, we know, is responsible for virtually every aspect of our overall health. And now we learned about how our microbiome is, is affected by probiotics through this Human Microbiome project. So a lot of it is based on old science and it's really what they used to know, and there is some science that even dead bacteria that gets into your intestines will provide some symptomatic relief. People may be listening and think, oh, well, I've taken a probiotic and it did kind of help. And that's true. Some of them, there actually are more studies on dead bacteria, or there used to be more studies on dead bacteria, because dead bacteria will provide some type of symptomatic relief, but it's not getting to the root cause of the issue. It's not, you know, shifting that balance.

In the microbiome so it doesn't hurt. And that's a good thing, but it doesn't optimize. You know, one of the things that we focus on is in this healing process for intelligence, we gather information, we actually apply the information, and then the last thing is we embody it. I mean, you can kind of get the energy. You can look at someone's face, you can look at someone's body, you can. You can feel the energy that's coming off of them and you can tell whether or not they're healthy, whether or not they're well. And that's an embodiment quality that can't be faked. You know this phrase, like, fake it till you make it. It doesn't work in the health world. Like, you're either healthy or you're not. And so this is my question to you on the path of you gathering and applying and going back and forth, not just with Dr. Cutting, but in the formulations of this. You had mentioned that the strain hasn't had to be touched really at all. But yet you do have a lot of other products. How do your project, how do your products work in synergy? And what did you change? What have you changed recently? Based on science?

Yeah. So we focus primarily on gut health. But one of the mission, one of the missions of our company and the core values is that we only bring products to market that are missing and needed. So we're not a supplement company that has 100 different SKUs just because we could do that. And we really focus on products that are missing and needed in the market, even if it's an uphill battle. So. And we have focused on gut health, but we do have a product that not focused on gut health or vitamin K2.7, because we know how, thanks to what Dr. Weston A price. We know how important vitamin K27 is. We have our probiotic, which is our flagship product, is where we say you start with health. I mean, you start your gut. It all begins in the gut. And I cannot emphasize that enough. I mean, we are 10 times more bacteria than we are human. Everything is surround everything. You know, there's really, it's hard to find any disease that's not associated with a, you know, dysbiotic gut. And I think that's what it's hard for people. Most people will think about, you know, gut health if you have like diarrhea or constipation or other gastrointestinal issues and things like that. But they don't think about it when it comes to weight management or they don't think about it when it comes to mental health or anxiety, depression or heart disease or diabetes, autoimmune disease, you know, so those things are all related to an imbalance in your gut. So that's where you start, is ground zero is your gut. Then we have our prebiotic. So our prebiotic is the food that our good bacteria needs to eat. So the problem with many of the prebiotics, you would think as a probiotic company we would have launched a prebiotic right away. Well, we didn't because a lot of prebiotics have difficulty distinguishing between the good and the bad bacteria. So the, the oligosaccharides that are found in our product actually target only the beneficial bacteria. So they're only feeding the beneficial bacteria. We also have our IGG product which is super exciting for immune health. I mean, just your probiotic of course, is so ground zero for immune health. At 70 to 80% of your immune system is found in your gut. But our IGG stands for immunoglobulin G, it's a universal antibody. So IGG is an antibody. Its job in the body is to bind and neutralize toxins in the gut and help your body will safely remove them. And so our IGG product allows for 25% more IgG in your gut. So it's helping get rid of that viral load in the gut. So it's really, really an effective product. We actually were invited to a group of HIV experts from around the world to talk about our probiotic. And that's where we met the people who came up with this igg. And we were able to. It's actually a medical grade food in higher doses. So but we have the IGG is, and the reason that it was doing so well with HIV patients is they knew that people with HIV were dying of gut enteropathy or leaky gut. And they knew that this was also helping with the intestinal cell wall and stuff.

So it's very powerful. It's very powerful. And I think that most people don't even realize about the igg. Like, this is something that has a huge role to play in the immune system. But I want to be really clear. The IgG is not a pathogen killer, right? Like, what is the function of the IgG?

No, it's the same function as the IgGs that our body naturally creates. It recognizes pathogenic bacteria, it recognizes, you know, mold and other toxins that enter into your body, and its job is to bind them and neutralize them, and then your body safely removes them.

Okay.

So it's really an incredible product and feeling really grateful that everybody in my family is on it during these times, you know, because it's like we want to do everything right now to be optimizing our immune system and supporting our immune system.

You know, I am flashing back. I think it was 50 or 60 episodes ago, and we were talking with Dr. Michael Ruscio. He wrote Healthy Gut, Healthy youy, and he was stating that in his research, I think it was either 70 or like 75% of Americans have leaky gut. And when I heard that, I mean, my jaw just like hit the ground. Because I'm thinking, if 75% of people have something that is a perforated gut lining where particles are entering the bloodstream and causing just a myriad of health issues and they don't even know it, how much is that contributing to the broken medical system where they're going to their doctor and saying, I can't focus, I'm not in a good mood. And they're just pouring like billions and billions of dollars into a broken system where insurance companies and medical wings profit and flourish. Meanwhile, companies like yours. How do we get the message out? Obviously we're doing that on this show, but what's the real message behind the message about people that are experiencing leaky gut and going to a traditional medical system? How do they even recognize that they're there first?

Yeah, well, I think it's just safe for everybody to assume that they have a leaky gut. I mean, especially, I mean, 55% of people who are healthy, quote, unquote, don't have any chronic conditions, have a leaky gut.

So basically, we just all have leaky gut.

I mean, in fact, the study that we did, you know, so we did a double blind human clinical trial on leaky gut that was published in the World Journal of Gastrointestinal Pathophysiology. So really first of its kind study on metabolic endotoxemia, which is the fancy word for leaky Gut. And that study took 100 college students, and 55% of them had a leaky gut and didn't know it. These were all healthy young kids. And this is, you know, they were not on any medication. They had no other issues. And we sent them, you know, that 55%. We took them, sent the. Not we, but the university that did the study took half of that population and sent them with a placebo. Half of them got sent back home with the spores. 30 days, no other dietary or lifestyle modifications, no restrictions. And God knows we know what college students do to their bodies. And when they came back after 30 days, the treated group had a reduction in LPS toxins leaking into the bloodstream by 42%.

What is an LPS toxin?

Okay, LPS toxins is like the outer coat of gram negative bacteria. So if you have. So LPS toxins are all over your gut, basically every time your gut die, or gram negative bacteria, which makes up about 60% of our gut flora, every time those bacteria die, which happens all the time, they release LPS toxins. And they're really not problematic in the gut. But when those LPS toxins seep into the bloodstream, that's where we get the problem. There was a study that came out a few years back showing that the number one driver of Alzheimer's is LPS toxins in the bloodstream. So, I mean, all kinds of toxins that are leaking into your, you know, gut, even food particles that are leaking into your, not your gut, into your bloodstream, are really problematic. So when these LPS toxins seep into your bloodstream, they create this inflammatory response. And so it's a low grade, you know, almost like a low grade seepage. And so those college students, you know, they were, through their whole life, they were having this LPS toxins seep into their bloodstream. And so next thing you know, they have this. Then all of a sudden, one time, you know, they have this massive inflammatory response. The next thing you know, they have, you know, an autoimmune issue. They have allergies, they start getting, you know, they started experiencing anxiety and depression, all of these things. So LPS toxins are really, really dangerous. And that is really the biggest culprit of all of these. It's really the number one driver of all diseases is LPS toxins leaking into the bloodstream.

Wow. Just so, just fascinating to me because I haven't heard of that before. I have obviously heard of the leaky gut. And what happens with the syndrome where once these particulates start to enter. It can actually make the body have such a negative response to these particles entering that no matter now what foods you eat, you can actually develop food sensitivities even by eating like organic eggs, organic broccoli, pasture raised chicken, all these things can start to aggravate you. And then those will show up on a food sensitivity test. I mean it's just like, wow, like really going back to the root cause what do you think that when we look at the actual root of the root, like if we can get down way to the bottom teeth, these supplements actually help to heal. Like what are these supplements actually healing at the root? At the root, at the bottom?

Yeah. Well, I have to be really careful because it doesn't heal anything. I can't ever make that claim. It's really supporting your own body's gut health is what it's doing. But we have to, I mean, if we back up a little, we are, you know, I mentioned we're 10 times more bacterial cells than we are human cells. Yes, we are. So we are micro, we are bacterial microorganisms, our whole body. That is who we are as individuals. Yet we live in such an anti microbial world. I mean we're living in this world with antibiotics, with glyphosate in our food supply. We're living in a world with stress and sugar and alcohol. I mean the sugar, all these things wreak such havoc on our gut. And so we have to start removing those things for one. But how are we going to do that? Even when we eat the cleanest of the clean organic, we're still getting glyphosate in there. People occasionally need to take an antibiotic. And so we're destroying our gut bacteria every single day. So what the spores do in just thrive is they go in there and they're rebalancing the gut. And so we did a study. One of the first, well, one of the first studies we did was a survivability study. So we found out that our strains survive 100% in that, you know, that pathway from the, you know, mouth all the way down to the intestine. So that's the first study. The next study we did was a gut model study. There's really only two universities in the world that do this study. But it's the way you simulate a gut and what a human gut is like. That study show that These spores after two and a half weeks showed a 30% favorable shift in the gut. So like the best way to describe it is if you envision A garden. And the garden is, you know, there's, you know, plants that have been stepped on and trampled on, and there's weeds growing all over that garden. You kind of compare that to your gut. You know, you've got good bacteria and you've got a lot more bad bacteria going on in your gut. So the spores go into that garden. They actually get there alive, 100% alive. They attach to the soil in the garden, so in your body, they attach to the intestinal cell wall, and then they have the ability to get rid of the weeds in the garden. So they have the ability to actually get rid of the, you know, pathogenic bacteria. And then they have the ability to take those plants that have been stepped down and trampled on it and bring them back to life. So a really, really effective approach to your gut. So we're actually reconditioning the gut. We're going in there and making this lush garden in our gut. And one of the biggest. I mean, every health expert out there agrees that if you have a diverse microbiome, you are healthy. That is what you need, is diverse. Diversity is so important. And we know that these strains are helping increase diversity. We have studies that show it. In fact, we have a study on the probiotic and our prebiotic together that's showing that it's increasing diversity by 30%. With both of. I mean, just with the probiotic alone is tenfold. But then when you talk about the prebiotic, you've got it 30 fold, where you're really increasing the diversity in the microbiome. So the key is that these strains are actually creating diversity in the microbiome, which really equals health.

I love this because we're in a time now where we're being forced to look at our health, our economy, our sociology, everything. Our Mother Earth, every single thing on this planet. Nature holds the keys, Tina. Nature holds the keys always. Like, if we just diversify, if we have lots and lots of variety in our friendships and our health and our microbiome, it seems like in the way that we eat foods, lots of colorful foods, not just eating, like, the same foods every single day, we are designed for this. Like, this is actually the return to home. And I don't care if you're more of a spiritual person or if you're more analytical, this just makes sense to us all. We don't really need a lot of words to understand this. It's something that even a child is. Can get. Like, if a child can understand something, why is it so hard for us adults to actually understand the exact same things like play, drink clean water, have social connection, eat healthy foods, eat a wide variety of things. And I want to say, I love the fact that you weren't allowed to say that it heals. I'm just going to say it for you so you're not going to get in trouble. This is actually healing, right? So if we're going to heal our mental health, we have to go into that garden that you talked about. We have to allow the natural things to grow and stop stomping on it. It with all of these foods. And honestly, even all these excessive hand sanitizers. I know right now we're in the COVID era, and I have my own thoughts about that, so I don't want to project them onto you, but we've had six doctors, one of them being Dr. Zach Bush, Dr. Ben Lynch. Many people come on the show, the excessive cleaning and spraying and homogenizing and wiping and everything else. What is this actually doing to us, in your opinion, based on all the research that you've seen and just consistently sanitizing, wiping out all the bacteria that normally we will actually build natural immunity to what's actually happening there, from your perspective?

Oh, it's. You are. I am so on the same page as you. I mean, we've been preaching this for years. You know, I mean, you know, they even say, like, households that clean with, you know, Lysol that 99 kills, 99% of the bacteria have kids who have a higher incidence of asthma and allergies and other autoimmune dysfunctions. Because. Because that is exactly what's happening. We need these microbes. That's what I'm saying. We are microorganisms living in an antimicrobial world because we're killing them all around ourselves. I would never. I mean, I never, ever used hand sanitizer. I will admit that when this all happened, like, the first couple weeks, I'm like, well, maybe I should. I don't know. You know, and I. I was a little bit concerned in the beginning. Now I'm like, telling my kids, do not use any hand sanitizer. Just wash your hands with soap and water and, you know, be. And I feel like the secondary effects of this are just so much greater. You know, kids are building their immune systems when they're babies, when they're young, you know, the ages. I have a niece who's. Or a cousin who had a baby. And, I mean, the baby has hardly seen anyone for the last, you know, four months. And it's like, it's crazy. It's absolutely. I'm like, oh, my God, these poor kids. This is how they build their immune system, by being around other people. And I'm like, the repercussions that will happen later on, I don't know. I hope to God they'll be okay. But it's like, we need to be building our immune systems because viruses aren't going away. I mean, they are not going away. We're going to have more. And the more hand sanitizer we use, in my opinion, it's going to destroy our microbiome, which is where our immune system lives. 70 to 80% of our immune system is found in our gut tissue. And we have got to be supporting our gut health to support our immune system. And we know how important our gut health is for our immune system. And we're using all these hand sanitizers and other household products products, and, you know, they really are very destructive to the gut.

You know, I saw something that just shocked me to the core, and it was. They were at a grocery store, someone in a full hazmat suit, and he was spraying down with hands with sanitizer, spraying an entire aisle. And you know what it said at the top of the aisle? Organic. I was like, you're missing the boat here. People. Like, you're totally missing the boat here. Like, this goes against. Against all the laws and all the actual financial investment that people are making in these products. If you're spraying all their stuff with sanitizer, it's just absolute insanity. And I'd like to talk about this because in some of the interviews you've done, you've talked about, like, the power of gratitude. There's an awareness process for us to get to gratitude. So the way that we feed our gut that has an awareness of its own, the way that we interact with others there requires an awareness of our own. But when you actually talk about this in podcasts that you do, this power of gratitude, what is an awareness practice that can get you there? Because it's not like we can just snap our fingers and choose gratitude. Like, there's something deeper there for us to understand about this.

Yeah, well, I mean, gratitude for me was. It is. It's the way I live my life every day. I mean, even during this whole time, I've been frustrated with my lack of control. I think we're all.

Yeah.

And having, you know, just trying to find the truth. You know, I think we're all trying to find the truth. And I was really getting myself so Worked up about it. And then I just decided to just focus on gratitude. I know that that's a big theme in my life, and the reason I. Gratitude is so important is I lost my aunt very suddenly and tragically in a very. It was shocking. She was really. I'm very, very. I was very, very close with her. I walked with her every morning. We were really close. She was a lot more like a sister than an aunt. You know, I was with time. And. And after she passed away, I was angry. You know, I was very angry. And something came over me six weeks later to start writing in my gratitude journal, because for six weeks, I didn't want to. I have a gratitude journal on my nightstand. I didn't want to write it. And I was, you know, mad. I was just like, why did this happen? And then I just shift. It shifted my focus. I wrote to, like, my arm came off. And I wrote and I wrote and I wrote. I feel like something just came over me and had me just start writing and. And it just shifted my focus. It's like, why am. I had this amazing relationship with my aunt where some people hardly have any. They have a good relationship. They're close, but how lucky was I to have this kind of deep and rich relationship for as many years as I did? And she actually helped come up with the name Just Thrive. So she's very much involved in our business. I know. Every day. But I just believe. And it just was amazing how gratitude. Like, I knew gratitude was the right thing to do. I knew it was important, but I didn't know how much it shifts your focus and allows you to move forward. And so during this time that we've been going through now, I just did the same thing. Like, my daughter came home from college early, which is great because I was with her. You know, we. I had more time with my older kids, and we were all the. My family of five is not together all the time because everyone's going in different directions. And we were for this period of time, and it was so wonderful. And I just started to focus on all of those things, and I just would encourage everybody to really. And you're right, it's hard. Like, you get started, and it's like, I'm grateful for this. I'm grateful for this. But if you really, really think about what you're grateful for, you realize, you know, you've got the world right in front of you. It's really. It's one of the most powerful emotions that I think has really, you know, changed the course of my life, to be honest with you.

What shifted, though? Because you said something shifted. Like, there were weeks that went by, and you're like, I don't want to write anything. I'm upset. You know, what shifted?

I think that was exactly changed my way of looking at her death. You know, it wasn't like, woe is me, poor me. Why did this happen? It was like, oh, my God, how blessed was I to have her in my life for so many years. And the impact. You know, I was a part of her wedding, and she was a part of all my kids being born. You know, I mean, we just. It was such a rich relationship that it changed the way I looked at her death. Instead of looking at it as, like, this awful thing, it was. I looked at her as a person, and she still lives on with us in different ways. And she is so. Because she's impacted my life so greatly, and she's made me who I am, you know, she's part of who made me who I am today. So I think that is. It just made me look at her death very differently.

And she chose just thrive. That was her verbiage.

Yep, that was her verbiage. So it's really, really cool.

That's a great.

Yeah, it is. She's sitting at my kitchen counter just going, oh, my God, I have an idea. And so it was really cool.

That's so cool. You know, I don't know if you have a connection to a higher power in any way, or everyone has their own unique connection with that, but does that guide you in your business and your family, some connection to a higher power greater than you?

Oh, absolutely. Every day. You know, every day, I mean, I'm always asking, mine is God, and it's like, I'm always asking God what to do in those hard times, when you have hard times and you're trying to figure out what to do. And. And I think that's what's been most fun about being an entrepreneur and being in this business is, like. Is building our team and, like, having, like, I love every single member of our team. We have such an awesome team. And, like, I just. And it's so fun to be able to, like, they'll. They'll say, oh, my gosh, Tina, thank you so much. I can't believe you're letting me take this. And we're like. I'm like, are you kidding? Thank you so much for what you're doing that you're talking. It's just. Just. I think God is guiding us all, you know? My higher power is guiding me to always do the right thing and, or to always certainly try to do the right thing. I mean, in my opinion, it's the right thing. It may not be perceived by someone else, but I just love, I love what we built as. You know, it's so much more than a probiotic company. You know, it's, we are a team of people who are, you know, really making a difference in the world. And if anybody wants to call our customer service and talk to them, they are the most incredible people ever. They are, they love talking to customers and, and it's, and you could just tell they're just happy in what they're doing.

So it's, what's, what's one of the hardest things about running this type of a company? You know, the natural health world? It's a pretty, it can be, I don't want to, I don't want to put that out there as the total truth, but it can be a very challenging world because we're competing. I'm in the natural health world as well. Right. Like Wellness Force is about natural, ancestral based living where we understand that nature always gives us the guide. God gives us the guide. In some way, spirit gets, gives us the guide. But in this world where there's so much clickbait and so much like hooks, where people are getting hooked in from fear and it's like, did you know that you could have leaky gut and just. It's insanity. What's been the hardest thing for you to grow? Just thrive in this world?

Yeah, well, I think for us it was that uphill battle. You know, we had this uphill battle of showing, telling a different story. And we started just calling health food stores, which was great because health food stores are so educated. They know, I mean, these people are so trusted by their customers, but they would, you know, people would always say to us, well, I mean, if this is so great, then why isn't everybody else doing it? And you know, that was always their answer. And it's like, well, there's new science, you know, I mean, there's new science. And that was probably the biggest battle we had. But you know what, even if a customer, if somebody goes to a different type of probiotic, I really don't look at other supplements as our competitors. I look at pharma as our competitor. If somebody has started a journey, maybe on a less potent probiotic, good for them, I'm not going to try to talk them into going on ours. I'm just glad that they have now Chosen a different path. And maybe if that works for them, they'll stay on it. Maybe if it doesn't, then they may, you know, start researching more and find our probiotic or some of our line of products. But I just. I don't really look at other supplement companies as our main competitor. I look at, you know, or even as competitors. I'm just. I really want the whole world. Another big core value of ours is empowerment. I want to empower people to take charge of their own health. Just like what you're doing, Josh. I mean, it's like that. I know. I could tell this is what. Who you are and what you want to do in this world. And it's so much fun to have people question their doctor, not be combative, but question, you know, but why is this happening, you know, or go the functional, you know, Dr. Route, go the integrative, you know, a natural person path route, but, you know, take it into your own hands. And, you know, I just, I think that is really. That's really what we want to do, is empower our customers to take control of their health. And, I don't know, I just. I think that it's very in tune with who you are, too.

Yeah. I think about the kind of phrase, like, your vibe attracts your tribe. It's not just something that rhymes. It's a real statement. And even if you unpack etymology and like, how we even have phrases that come to be, you know, six and one half dozen of the other, whatever, whatever it is, this phrase, your vibe attracts your tribe. I really feel that from you. And just thrive. And it's something that cannot be faked. It's like we talked about with the learning curve of intelligence. Right. Everybody wants to be intelligent, but not everybody wants to go through this phase of, like, really doing the work to find their tribe. And I think when I hear you speak and knowing now your partnership with Weston Price and even your story, you and your husband's story, coming from pharmaceutical and to where you're at now, what do you think you're calling in? In other words, what's the community at? Just Thrive. Calling in for the most radical, empowering support so that Just Thrive can actually thrive more.

What are they calling in? I mean, I think our whole team is just. They all are very much in line with exactly what I just, you know, explained. You know, just wanting to empower people and to give them the best product products out there. I mean, I literally have to, like, like, rein in some of our customer service agents because I'm like, oh, no, we can't say this. We can't do this because, you know, we have to be, like, compliant with a lot.

We can't say we're healing people, even though we're healing people.

Right. But they. They just want to, like, they want to help so many people. And we have these. We've got these great testimonials, and they just want to, you know, put them on. We can't put them on sometimes because, you know, they make claims and we can't do that. So I just. I think that we're just calling in, just bringing out, you know, spreading the joy of feeling good and having health in life.

Yeah. This strain, this is really unique, and I want to go back to this before we say goodbye. This unique strain, I believe the name of it was something specific. It was hu 36 that. This bacillus indicus. Is that how you pronounce it?

Exactly.

This is like the big thing. This is the big thing that I didn't know before I came across your work and before I came across your company, because I had always thought that, okay, if it's a live product or if it's a live food, then it's gonna be better for me. And that might be true for vegetables and healthy meats. Like, the more live the food, the better. But I'm learning in this show, and this is why I love doing this, is because I get to change my mind when I find new evidence, you know. So share with us as we say goodbye about this hu36, like, what the specificity is here and how it goes down in there, just so people can conceptualize it.

Right. So the really cool thing about hu36, Bacillus indicus is that it actually produces carotenoids in the intestines. So it produces, you know, alpha and beta carotene, lycopene, lutein, astaxanthin, zeaxanthin, all these crotinos antioxidants are being produced in the gut, exactly where they need to be absorbed. And so when the researchers did the Lehi gut study on our product, they actually found that it was that anti. They know that oxidative stress is one of the major drivers of having a leaky gut. And they really believe that this hu36 was one of the reasons we had such success on the study or with the subjects of the study, because these antioxidants that are produced by hu36 were combating that oxidative stress on the gut lining. It is really, a really, really unique strain. And really so effective. And it's really what's making the product stand out from a lot of the other products out there.

This research about it going down and actually reaching the intestines. How old is this research? It's fairly new. Yes.

Oh yeah, it's been, I mean, it's the first study we did, we did our own study and that was, that was done by a lab outside of Chicago. And it was about, that was about six years ago or so. But. But since then we have independent third party labs doing studies on our survivability studies, DNA studies to make sure that what we say is in the label is actually in the product itself. And the one thing I just wanted to leave your audience with too, is the whole alive thing. So we have to remember it's important that your organisms are alive in your gut, not in the refrigerator. So that's really, really important. So there's a big distinction. Yes, having a live microorganism is the actual, actual definition of a probiotic. But it's not that it needs to be alive in the int or in the refrigerator. It needs to be alive once it hits the intestine. So it's really important to distinguish.

And such a huge takeaway too. You know, we covered a lot of ground about probiotics and prebiotics and justthrivehealth.com is the website. We're going to talk about a special discount that you're giving us as well. So thank you so much for that. But before we do that, can you share with us, you know, in the middle of all this stuff, you know, you being a mom and a business owner and a CEO and a human being and somebody who wants truth. And there's a lot of things that you navigate in this world, like in the middle of that, I believe, is wellness. You know, we all want to live our life well. That's, that's our birthright. How do you define that? You know, if you were to encapsulate wellness, how would you define, how would Tina define wellness?

I think wellness is a combination of peace, of peace, of physical peace and mental peace. You know, it's that we're all that you are in sync both mentally and physically and at peace with it all. I think that. And when you feel good, you know, you definitely have more peace. So I think that's really important.

I love that. And spoken from somebody that's giving people access back to their gut health and being, being at peace in their body. We can't have peace just because we want it. We actually have to tend to peace. Almost like it's a garden, you know, including. Including our gut and our total health. The discount is WF15. It's just Thrive Health. You can get 15% off of everything that we talked about, including this. You know, the hu36. I'm gonna try this myself. I'm actually gonna try this, and I'll do an ig. Give us a month. But you have to jump on this, too, because the codes, they're available for only a certain time. So this is going to expire October 16th, so make sure you go to justthrivehealth.com the code is WF15. Tina, thank you so much for coming on the show. I just want to take a deep breath for you and just thank you for the truth you're putting out in the world. Super appreciate you and let us know how we can find you online and anything else you want to share before you say goodbye.

Okay, well, thank you. First of all, Josh, I'm so excited that I had a chance to be here and appreciate the opportunity. And the only other thing I want to say is, is lifestyle. I do want to remind people that you could do all the healthy things that you want to do, but you have got to change your lifestyle. If you're in a bad relationship, you're in a bad job, you've got to change your lifestyle. That's probably the most important thing you could do for your health. So supplements will only go so far, but you've got to change your lifestyle.

All right, well, you heard it here first. If you want to actually transform yourself, it takes a humble and hungry approach, that is for sure. Tina. Thank you. And we'll see you guys very soon until we do you. We're both wishing you love and wellness.

Thanks, Josh.