Podcasts about Human Microbiome Project

For thousands of years, medicine revolved around one simple truth—all disease begins in the gut. The ancient healers, from Hippocrates to the early Roman physicians, saw digestion as the key to health, using fermented foods, fasting, and herbal remedies to restore balance. Then, everything changed. With the rise of Germ Theory, antibiotics, and industrialized medicine, doctors stopped treating the gut and started waging war on bacteria. This shift erased centuries of wisdom, leading to an explosion of autoimmune disease, mental health disorders, and metabolic dysfunction—all traced back to the gut. But now, science is proving what medicine once knew. Thanks to pioneers like Dr. Jeffrey Bland, Dr. Sidney Baker, and Dr. Alessio Fasano, and the groundbreaking Human Microbiome Project, we are finally rediscovering the gut's true power.   TOPICS DISCUSSED: How the ancient Greek and Roman physicians treated disease The four humors of health  The rise of Germ Theory 200 years of medical mistakes and hubris and the price humanity has paid How the 2007 Microbiome Project changed science forever What our future can look like if we polay our cards right   Did you like this episode? Click here to sign up for email updates on my new book   Leave us a Review: https://www.reversablepod.com/review   Need help with your gut? Click the link, or visit gutsolution.ca for help: Get help now   Contact us: reversablepod.com/tips    SOCIAL MEDIA: Instagram  Facebook  YouTube  

Matters Microbial #71: Disinfecting the Built Environment December 25, 2024 Ever wonder what's growing on your toothbrush? Today, Dr. Erica Hartmann, Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Northwestern University, joins the #QualityQuorum to discuss how antimicrobial resistance can occur in the built environment we see all around us every day—and why it is vital to learn more about this association. Host: Mark O. Martin Guest: Erica Hartmann Subscribe: Apple Podcasts, Spotify Become a patron of Matters Microbial! Links for this episode An essay on the Hygiene Hypothesis. An overview of the “built environment.” The trouble with triclosan. An essay on heavy metal resistance. An article from Dr. Hartmann's group about the toothbrush microbiome (“Project Pottymouth”). A link to the Human Microbiome Project. An overview of antibiotic resistance and antibiotic resistance genes. An article about silver nanoparticles on toothbrushes. A blog post about probiotic cleaning products. An interesting post from Dr. Hartmann's team about viruses in your bathroom. A video by Dr. Hartmann about her research. Dr. Hartmann's faculty website. Dr. Hartmann's research team website. Intro music is by Reber Clark Send your questions and comments to mattersmicrobial@gmail.com

The Microbiome Key to Reversing DiseaseDid you know that the state of your gut microbiome could be the key to your overall well-being? How about how and why polyphenols can potentially reverse disease?Your gut influences everything from your immune system to your mental health, and even how your body responds to food. Curious about how your gut health affects your overall well-being and how you can maximize it to get even healthier and live longer? In this episode, you will learn:The connection between gut health, mental health, and harmful substances like glyphosateThe importance of balance and diversity in gut bacteria, and how it influences healthThe role of the gut microbiome in health and disease.How antibiotics and glyphosate disrupt gut health and affect hormone-producing bacteriaKey findings from the Human Microbiome Project on gut health and its importance in determining overall healthThe influence of xenobiotics, including plastics and fragrances, on gut microbiome balanceThe role of soluble fiber, polyphenols, and postbiotics in promoting a healthy gut and overall well-beingThe impact of modern diets on gut bacteria, including the effects of processed foods and the role of soluble fiberTUNE IN and explore the profound connections between gut microbiome, endocrine disruptors, and modern health challenges!e!ABOUT OUR EXPERT: STEVEN GUNDRY, MDBestselling author: The Plant Paradox™️, Gut Check and more! Founder @gundrymd & @gundryhealthResearch-based gut health solutions from this top former cardiothoracic and heart surgeonDr. Steven R. Gundry worked in medicine for over 40 years. He's probably best known for his work as a cardiothoracic surgeon and heart surgeon.He is also a New York Times bestselling author of The Plant Paradox and The Plant Paradox Cookbook. Known for promoting a controversial lectin-free diet, he claims that lectins, proteins found in plants, cause inflammation and disease—ideas criticized by many experts as pseudoscience. Gundry has transitioned from surgery to nutrition, advocating low-carb, ketogenic diets and hosting the Dr. Gundry Podcast. Despite the criticism of his theories, particularly regarding lectins and heart disease, he remains a prominent figure in the health and wellness space.He is the Director and Founder of the International Heart & Lung Institute as well as the Center for Restorative Medicine in Palm Springs and Santa Barbara, CA.Learn more at gundrymd.com.MORE ON DR. STEVEN GUNDRY, MDhttps://www.instagram.com/drstevengundry/https://www.threads.net/@drstevengundry****************************************READY TO TAKE CONTROL OF YOUR HEALTH AND TRANSFORM YOUR LIFE?My GUT HEALTH COURSE is one of the key starting points.YEP! IT ALL STARTS IN THE GUT!In my...

This week Mitch and Tom dive into the microbiome to find out exactly what it is and the various ways in which if affects us! Tom explains The Human Microbiome Project and how it led to the level of understanding we have today while Mitch looks at FMT and the immune effects of the microbiome. Music: EVA - 失望した

If you want to improve your digestion, your immune system, and your overall health, one might begin with a focus on a healthy gut microbiome. Today we're talking with Stanford University professor of microbiology and immunology Dr. Justin Sonnenburg, co-author of the book entitled, "The Good Gut: Taking Control of Your Weight, your Mood, and Your Long-Term Health." He and his wife, research scientists Dr. Erica Sonnenburg, argue that our typical modern diet has caused the microbial diversity or intestine to shrink substantially. Turns out that's a big problem. Interview Summary My impression is that this field of work on the microbiome is just exploding. It seems like every day something new comes out, something exciting, some kind of major breakthrough. It's wonderful to have a leading scientist like you to join us to help explain this. Let me begin with this question. I recently read something very interesting in the article that discussed your work, namely that you've hypothesized, and this is a quote from this article, "Humans may merely be elaborate vessels "designed for the propagation of bacterial colonies." Now that's pretty interesting. Tell us more if you would? Yes, absolutely. I should note that this is an idea that has been propagated, just as microbes are propagated over time. I did say that, but I'm now attributing it to the great scientists that came before me. I will say that the microbes in our gut have been for a long time a curiosity. For hundreds of years we've known that they live there. Over time we've learned that they're affected by what we eat. We know that they're involved in digestion and gut health. But what is really phenomenal is, as you alluded to in the introduction just the ability of these microbes to impact so many dimensions of our health. Everything from our immune system, to metabolism, to things like moods, behavior, and neurodegeneration. When you start to think about microbes getting passed from generation to generation - because as a new baby is born, their gut is sterile in the womb, and then they're rapidly colonized when they come to this world largely by microbes from their mother and other adults around them - you start to realize that these microbes may actually be the ones calling the shots and dictating aspects of our biology to promote their growth through evolutionary time. It does change the way you think about this relationship in some ways. One might jump to the conclusion that microbes are a bad thing, and you'd like to have fewer of them. That's in fact what antibiotics do, they get rid of them. But we need more rather than less, and it sounds like the shrinking diversity of the microbiome is really a problem. How do our diet and lifestyles damage the vitality of the human microbiome? I'm imagining this is a 'let me count the ways question,' but what are the leading concerns in your mind? Yes, completely. I think you're right in that it's very hard to single out one particular factor, because as populations become more industrialized and embrace all of the technologies and medical practices that go along with the industrialized lifestyle, we have so many factors that can impact our microbiome. Certainly, diet is a major factor, and we can come back to this. But we know that most of the microbes in our gut reside at the far reaches of our digestive tract - at the very end of the line down in our colon in our large intestine. That means that if we're eating simple nutrients, like most of the things in a western diet - sugars, starch, fat, protein - a lot of those things get digested and absorbed in our small intestine, which leaves nothing remaining for the microbiota. It's really complex carbohydrates and dietary fiber, that serve as the major fuel for the microbiota because we can't digest those complex carbohydrates. The western diet has greatly reduced dietary fiber content, which has left a lot of our gut microbes starving. But there are other aspects of diet, certainly artificial sweeteners, emulsifiers, and probably the high fat content of the western diet are not great for our microbiome. Then beyond diet, antibiotics as you mentioned known to be great for fighting infectious diseases, but not so great for maintaining all of the friendly microbes that we harbor in our body. A variety of other factors like C-sections, baby formula, the incredible sanitation in our environment, again, a lot of these things are a trade-off because we have reaped a lot of benefits from a lot of the lifestyle medical practices technologies. But at the same time, we've implemented these in the absence of understanding the importance of our gut commensals, and the other commensals on our body for our health. Now we really need to start thinking about do we need to restore diversity to this community? Certainly, we need to start thinking about taking care of the community more diligently. You mentioned in some detail how diet affects the gut, but how does it happen in the reverse? Is there a reciprocal relationship going on? Yes, it's a great question, and there are some papers that have been published looking at how gut microbes can affect food choice in model organisms like fruit flies and other organisms that are studied in the lab. We know that microbes in the gut as they metabolize things are producing a lot of interesting chemicals, little metabolites that get absorbed into our bloodstream can circulate through our body. Certainly, some of them cross the blood-brain barrier and can interact with our central nervous system. Now, whether some of those molecules can actually impact our food choice, I think is an interesting topic, we don't know a lot about that. You can imagine a microbe that's really good at, for instance, degrading pectin and it might grow very well. We know there are many microbes that grow well when we, for instance, eat an apple. If that microbe happens to produce a molecule just by chance that then can go in and increase our craving for an apple, that microbe has hit the jackpot for proliferating, it can guide our actions to choose an apple and then it actually profits from the pectin that comes in when we eat the apple. While this would be a very rare quirky event to happen, when you think about the trillions of microbes that exist in every person and have existed in every person across the planet throughout time. It's possible that things like this have happened, and it's a matter of us as scientists trying to track down those stories. There's at least some optimism that there could be virtuous cycles that gets set up rather than these destructive cycles potentially. Help us place this in some sort of a context. You talked about a myriad of dietary things that could affect the microbiome, and probably other things out there in the world too. How serious is the impact? Yes, and this brings up kind of the question of what is a healthy microbiome? Has lifestyle impact that our microbiome? What would be ideal would be to have a time machine to go back, and actually survey what the microbiome looked like thousands of years ago before industrialization, and maybe even going back greater than 10,000 years to what our gut microbiome looked like when we were hunter-gatherers even before we started farming. Just to get a sense of what are the microbes that humans harbored over long periods of time during our evolution with the idea that perhaps our human genome was shaped over evolutionary time in some way by these microbes, that we have adapted our human biology to deal with the specific set of microbiome features or species. We don't have a time machine, but there have been groups that have surveyed paleo feces for instance - the fossilized stool from humans from 1 to 2000 years ago. These data indicate that the microbiome has changed drastically. As we have industrialized, we have totally departed from this more ancestral microbiome. The other way that we can gain insight into this is by looking at modern humans that live lifestyles similar to our ancestors. Hunter-gatherer populations and rural agriculturalists, and we've done a lot of work studying the Hadza hunter-gatherers of Tanzania looking at their gut microbiome. That exactly supports what the paleo feces have told us. That there were features in the microbiome from before industrialization that have changed drastically. We've lost species, they've gone extinct. Hunter-gatherers and many rural populations still harbor these microbes. We expect that there's probably around 500 to 1000 different species of bacteria in an individual's gut microbiome. We've lost hundreds of these species over the course of industrialization. Then, the flip side of that is hundreds of other species have come in and replaced them. We've actually had this kind of wholesale change in configuration in our gut microbiome, and what this means to our biology, we're trying to figure out right now, but it is a really marked change. I have to say I admire the breadth of your work all the way from basic laboratory studies to in the field studies with hunter-gatherers. I could see how your big picture view of this is really pretty unique. Let's talk about how the gut communicates with the brain, and does the health of the microbiome affect things like eating regulation? We've talked about that a little bit already, but also things like mental health. I just want to start by saying that this is a field of research that is in very early days still, we have a lot of work to do to really figure out the connections. You can imagine then the gut microbiome composed of hundreds of species, and then trillions of cells and changing over time within an individual, and different between individuals, and then secreting thousands of chemicals that go into the bloodstream. Then put on top of that the complexity of the central nervous system and brain, and then try to map the interactions between the microbiome and the central nervous system is exceedingly complex.  I think that one of the really important things to note here is that if you look at a lot of the anxiety, and depression, Alzheimer's disease, neurodegeneration in general at this center of a lot of these diseases much like other diseases of the industrialized world lies inflammation. The immune system actually becoming too inflammatory, and that leading to, you know, in some cases autoimmune diseases, but in other cases Alzheimer's disease, and/or anxiety and depression. One of the things that our lab is focused on is really trying to understand how when you change the gut microbiome, how does the immune system change? How does the inflammatory status change of the system? Because we really think that this is the key mediator of many of the things that have gone wrong including things like diabetes and metabolic syndrome.  We're now at the point of understanding that certainly if you go into an animal model and you change the gut microbiome in a major way like industrialization has changed the microbiome of people living in the United States, you completely change how the immune system functions. You can really change how an individual would react to a respiratory infection, how well they would respond to an immunotherapy if they were battling cancer, you can just completely change immune system functionality. In trying to understand this better we've started to do dietary interventions in people to see if we change the gut microbiome in beneficial ways with diet, can we make the immune system less inflammatory? We've done this so far in healthy adults, and now we're really interested in extending this into all sorts of populations that are suffering from different inflammatory diseases, including things like anxiety, and depression, and neurodegenerative diseases. We'll have more information about this. There's some beautiful fundamental research out there that shows unequivocally that the gut microbiome is regulating behaviors, and cognition, and fundamental aspects of what happens in our brain. But a lot of this has been done in animal models, and it's very hard to extend to humans in a detailed way. I can't wait to see these studies, they're just absolutely fascinating and so important. You know, something occurred to me as I was thinking about this, and this may be outside the area of work that you're focused on, but there's a lot of interest out there in the world and the impact of endocrine disrupting chemicals, or things that leach from plastics and things known as forever chemicals, and their impacts on a whole host of things like cancers, and obesity, diabetes and more. Is there any reason to worry about the microbiome in this context? Yes, completely. I think everything that we come in contact with, particularly things that we ingest, but even things that are absorbed through our skin or we inhale, the microbes that live in and on us are just incredibly sensitive detectors of everything going on in the environment. I mean, their survival depends upon it. One of the, in fact, key features of one of the first species from the gut microbiome to have its genome sequenced, Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron this is a bacterial species that was sequenced in the lab of Jeffrey Gordon, it was published in 2003. One of the key interesting features of that genome was the expansion of environmental sensors that were encoded by that genome. It was very clear that this bacterium was living in a dynamic environment, and having to sense and respond to minute to minute variations in the chemical cues that were coming in. That means that when you start to change those chemical cues, you start to change the function of the microbiome because those sensors that those bacterial encode are wired into their function and how they behave. This is again, hypothesis, but I think your question is a a great one because there are these realms of inquiry where we are just right at the beginning of understanding that major things that are going on in our environment could be impacting this really essential component of our biology. And we really have no specific idea of how the perturbations may cascade through our microbiome and our biology. A lot to look at there, but I have no doubt that those chemicals are having an impact on this community filled with environmental sensors. It's going to be so interesting to see that work take shape. It would be great if community of people working on the microbiome could come together with the people in interested in the impact of these forever chemicals on health so that a full picture of their impact can get painted. So what do you think are the most pressing scientific questions that need to get addressed? I think that we're still really searching for the definition of a healthy microbiome. And this is something that dates back to a wonderful project that was started by the National Institutes of Health, the Human Microbiome Project. That was an effort from sequencing centers that had sequenced the human genome to turn these sequencing technologies to this uncharted aspect of our human biology, our microbiome. One of the goals of that sequencing project was to determine what a healthy gut microbiome is. And our assumption at the time was, well, we should sequence a bunch of healthy Americans, and kind of look at what's common between them. We now understand that the healthy American most likely harbors a microbiome that is not really optimal for health, it's actually probably a microbiome that's predisposing us to a number of inflammatory conditions.   Our human genome probably dictates whether you as a person will get an autoimmune disease, or cancer or you know, a different inflammatory disease. But it's really a microbiome that appears to be pro-inflammatory, and so that doesn't mean that it's terrible and that we need to scrap the whole thing. But it means that it probably can be improved. A big part of that improvement probably can come through feeding it better food and getting better functionality out of the microbes we have. But it also probably means that we need to bring back certain functions or certain species that we've lost over the course of industrialization, to bring back some of that biodiversity.  You know, I think of the microbiome as similar to this complex rainforest, just hundreds of species interacting in this really dynamic way, and as you start to degrade that ecosystem it's really hard to maintain its full functionality. You start to lose functions, and it starts to operate suboptimally. And so thinking about ways to bring back the health and biodiversity of this ecosystem, I think is super important. One of the key things that we have to do as a field, and I want to just reflect back on the work that we're doing with hunter-gatherers and implications for what might be a healthy microbiome. It is not at all clear that all of the microbes that we've lost are healthy and need to be reinstalled in our gut. I think that we've probably lost species that we, you know, just as soon not have. But mapping which ones are health-promoting, and in which context, because you know, what's health-promoting for one person may not necessarily be health promoting for someone else that's going through something very different in their life in a different life phase. So we need to understand all that complexity, and really crystallize how can we optimize a microbiome for an individual in a given context.  This sounds like a really complex problem, and it is, but I think that one of the really exciting things that's happening in the field right now is this combination of what we call omics data, the ability to measure so many different aspects of the microbiome at one time so we can get a really detailed picture. Then all the great computational approaches for bringing all that data together, using things like machine learning and artificial intelligence on big data sets to really distill out meaningful signals that give us a better idea of some of these complex questions. It is a complex thing to go after, but I think it's not out of reach and that's I think the big frontier for the gut microbiome. Well, speaking of the big frontier, let's end with a big picture question. What can be done to make things better? You mentioned improving diet would be one thing, but how do you look at those big picture questions? One of the incredible things about the gut microbiome and its relationship to its human host, is this like feedback system. For instance, if you are in a slightly inflammatory state, it can be hard to get out of that inflammatory state because the inflammation is reinforcing microbes that are then reinforcing the inflammation. You end up with these feedback loops that are very hard to break, so even if you were to do something like a fecal transplant in some instances of inflammation where you try to reinstall healthy microbes, those may not engraft and take up residence because the host inflammation will get rid of the good microbes and select in the microbes that feed the inflammation. There are these feedback loops that are very hard to break, and we know the gut microbiome is very resilient, so you can perturb it and it will by and large return to a starting state, not exactly what the starting state was, but there is this great resilience and recalcitrant to change over short time periods. This is why industrialization has been so powerful because it's happened over multiple generations across an entire population, and it's driven our microbiome in one direction.  I think if we want to bring back a more diverse healthy microbiome, it requires changes in our habits, changes in what we eat day after day for years on end to really change the species that are in our microbiome and what those species are doing. We got a little bit of insight into this, but I'll finish with one specific example. One of the dietary interventions that we did, we compared a high fiber diet, so this is eating things like legumes, whole grains, vegetables, fruits, thinking that that would be kind of optimal food for a healthy gut microbiome. We compared that diet with a high fermented food diet, so another cohort of individuals, we gave kombucha, kefir, yogurt, kimchi sauerkraut, food with living microbes in it that had been transformed by fermentation. Basically, so these were just healthy adults we let them eat those foods, they ramped up on the foods for four weeks, and then for six weeks they maintained high levels of those foods. We actually saw that the high fiber diet had very different effects on individuals depending upon their starting microbiome. If you had a very diverse microbiome to start with, you actually improved your inflammatory status, you got less inflammatory over the course of the intervention. But if you start with a low diversity microbiome, the high fiber diet doesn't do much for you. The fermented foods actually had a really amazing effect, they increased microbiome diversity and they also decreased over two dozen inflammatory markers that we were able to survey through these great technologies that give us comprehensive immune profiling. We really saw a signature of exactly what we'd want to see to counter the industrialized deterioration of the gut microbiome with the fermented food diet, increased microbiome diversity, decreased inflammation, and this was just over the course of a 6 to 10 week intervention. We're really curious to pursue these findings in more detail, and see if now we can go into diseases that are pro-inflammatory, and counter those diseases to actually treat them in some way with the fermented food diet.  If I were to tell people what to do to counter all the negative impact of industrialization on our microbiome, I would say consume some fermented foods every day, and then start to integrate dietary fiber. As you eat the fermented foods, you'll increase your microbiome diversity. And our hope is that will allow you to harness the benefit of the high fiber diet as your microbiome diversity increases. Bio Justin Sonnenburg is a professor of microbiology and immunology at Sanford University. His research focuses on the basic principles that govern interactions within the intestinal microbiota and between the microbiota and the host. He is the coauthor of The Good Gut: Taking Control of your Weight, Your mood, and Your Long-Term Health.  

Today, I am blessed to have here with me Dr. Steven Gundry. He is a cum laude graduate of Yale University with special honors in Human Biological and Social Evolution. After graduating Alpha Omega Alpha from the Medical College of Georgia School of Medicine, Dr. Steven Gundry completed residencies in General Surgery and Thoracic Surgery at the University of Michigan and served as a Clinical Associate at the National Institutes of Health for years. There, he invented devices that reverse the cell death seen in acute heart attacks; variations of these devices subsequently became the Gundry™ Retrograde Cardioplegia Cannula. It has become the world's most widely used device of its kind to protect the heart from damage during open-heart surgery.  In 2002, Dr. Gundry met someone who would change the trajectory of his career… and life. He crossed paths with an "inoperable" patient named “Big Ed”. Using a combination of dietary changes and nutraceutical supplements — Big Ed lost weight and cleared most of his arterial blockages. An obese, chronic "diet" failure himself, Dr. Gundry adapted his Yale University thesis to design a diet for himself based on evolutionary genetic coding. On this diet, he lost weight — to the tune of 70 pounds — and reversed his own ailments, such as migraines, pre-diabetic status, and arthritis. He stopped eating sugar, grains, peanuts and cashews, nightshades and other lectin-heavy foods. Having experienced weight loss and the results of eating a lectin-free and gluten-free diet himself, and inspired by growing research involving the NIH's Human Microbiome Project, his commitment to better health and longevity through a better diet solidified. His work creating nutraceutical products and supplements advanced. He is now the leading expert on the lectin-free lifestyle as the key to reversing disease and healing a leaky gut. Dr. Steven Gundry freely shares his research on how to maintain a healthy microbiome and live a long, vital life via his best-selling books, YouTube channel, Gundry MD blogs, and weekly health podcast, The Dr. Gundry Podcast. In this episode, Dr. Gundry defines ketosis and explains the direct benefit that ketones have on the brain. Plus, Dr. Gundry dives deep into the mitochondria and why they have to uncouple to survive. You'll find out what the “mito club” is and why calorie restriction is a non-starter, and it simply does not work. Tune in as we chat all about MCT oil, melatonin, and the benefits of sheep and goat dairy.  Order Keto Flex: http://www.ketoflexbook.com JOIN MY 90 DAY HEAVY METALS DETOX PROGRAM (9 SPOTS LEFT): HTTP://WWW.KETOKAMPDETOX.COM  -------------------------------------------------------- / / E P I S O D E   S P ON S O R S  Biotiquest Sugar Shift product. Regulate glucose, reduce cravings, achieve deeper ketosis, and remove glyphaste.  https://biotiquest.com/products/sugar-shift Use the coupon code KAMP10 for 10% off their products.  Bioptimizers Masszymes for better digestion on keto and carnivore. Get your FREE bottle of Masszymes right now by heading to http://www.masszymes.com/ketofree and use coupon code ketokamp10 .  Text me the words "Podcast" +1 (786) 364-5002 to be added to my contacts list.  [00:50] Dr. Gundry Gives His Definition of Ketosis  Generating ketone bodies is done by free fatty acids entering the liver from circulation.  The liver can convert free fatty acids into ketone bodies. Ketone bodies are short-chain fats that are water-soluble.  Ketones have a distinct benefit in getting to the brain, which free fatty acids can't because they're too big to get through the blood-brain barrier. Ketosis should happen every night after about eight hours of not eating if you are metabolically flexible.  50% of ordinary people are not metabolically flexible.  [03:50] Uncoupling To Survive: How The Mitochondria Release Pressure  Dr. Gundry recommends reading Uncoupling To Survive: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11053672/ When you're starving to death, mitochondria have to save themselves at all costs.  If mitochondria die, then it's all over.  Making energy is hard work; it's very damaging to mitochondria.  Mitochondria have to have ways of protecting themselves, and one of the ways they protect themselves is to release pressure.  There are five pressure release valves for the mitochondria.  We couple oxygen and protons to make ATP. If we uncouple the burning of oxygen from making ATP, that's how we release pressure.  [21:05] The Reason, Most People, Cannot Get Into Ketosis Right Away  Most people can not get into ketosis by following a high-fat diet because they lack metabolic flexibility.  Many people are insulin resistant. Their cells no longer listen to insulin, so insulin keeps rising and rising.  It can take three to four weeks to liberate fat from fat cells on a ketogenic diet because insulin levels stay high for so long.  The ketogenic diet came about to treat childhood epilepsy.   If you put kids on an MCT oil-based diet, with only about 50% of their calories coming from fat, they would get the same benefit as the full-blown ketogenic diet. [32:25] The “Mito Club” - How Your Body Is Just Like A Nightclub  The mito club has one entrance, and there is only one exit.  If everything works out okay, a proton and electron will couple and exit the mito club.  However, there are a lot more electrons than there are protons.  Electrons will also couple with oxygen; it's a bad match.  The mito club needs to be cleaned up every night after closing.  [38:40] Calorie Restriction Is A Non-Starter, and It Doesn't Work  The best way to expand lifespan and healthspan is calorie restriction.  However, calorie restriction is a non-starter, and it doesn't work.  Calorie-restricted animals are profoundly hungry.  A study found that the animals with time-restricted eating lived 11% longer than the animals who ate the same amount of food but ate throughout the day.  This concept has been proven in humans as well. [47:05] The Major Health Benefit of Taking MCT Oil or Powder  30% of sheep and goat dairy is MCT.  MCTs are an excellent fat that goes directly to our liver, where they are automatically converted into ketones.  You can have insulin resistance, take MCTs, and generate ketones.  A tablespoon of MCT oil will have you generating adequate amounts of ketones to begin uncoupling mitochondria.  MCTs are easy to take; you can mix them in salad dressing.  Many females have issues with MCT oils and their stomachs, so start slow. Powered MCTs work well for women.  [53:35] You Have Melatonin All Wrong: It May Have Nothing To Do With Sleep  Pistachios actually have the highest melatonin content of any food. The Mediterranean diet gets melatonin from olive oil, red wine, and mushrooms.  Melatonin isn't there to put you to sleep. Instead, it's there to repair mitochondria.  Also, melatonin may be one of the secrets of cancer therapy.  Dr. Gundry has cancer patients on up to 100 milligrams a day of melatonin.  Check out Melatonin The Miracle Molecule: https://www.ultimatecellularreset.com/product/melatonin-the-miracle-molecule/ AND MUCH MORE! Resources from this episode:  Check out Dr. Gundry's Website: https://drgundry.com/ (use code “gundry30”) Follow Dr. Gundry Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drstevengundry/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DrStevenGundry/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/drgundry YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtxo0nTZjzlKJq5-vJq6s6g Unlocking the Keto Code: The Revolutionary New Science of Keto That Offers More Benefits Without Deprivation: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0063118386/benazadi-20 Listen to The Dr. Gundry Podcast: https://drgundry.com/the-dr-gundry-podcast/ Uncoupling to Survive: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11053672/ Melatonin The Miracle Molecule: https://www.ultimatecellularreset.com/product/melatonin-the-miracle-molecule/ Join the Keto Kamp Academy: https://ketokampacademy.com/7-day-trial-a Watch Keto Kamp on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUh_MOM621MvpW_HLtfkLyQ Order Keto Flex: http://www.ketoflexbook.com JOIN MY 90 DAY HEAVY METALS DETOX PROGRAM (9 SPOTS LEFT): HTTP://WWW.KETOKAMPDETOX.COM  -------------------------------------------------------- / / E P I S O D E   S P ON S O R S  Biotiquest Sugar Shift product. Regulate glucose, reduce cravings, achieve deeper ketosis, and remove glyphaste.  https://biotiquest.com/products/sugar-shift Use the coupon code KAMP10 for 10% off their products.  Bioptimizers Masszymes for better digestion on keto and carnivore. Get your FREE bottle of Masszymes right now by heading to http://www.masszymes.com/ketofree and use coupon code ketokamp10 .  Text me the words "Podcast" +1 (786) 364-5002 to be added to my contacts list.  *Some Links Are Affiliates* // F O L L O W ▸ instagram | @thebenazadi | http://bit.ly/2B1NXKW ▸ facebook | /thebenazadi | http://bit.ly/2BVvvW6 ▸ twitter | @thebenazadi http://bit.ly/2USE0so ▸clubhouse | @thebenazadi Disclaimer: This podcast is for information purposes only. Statements and views expressed on this podcast are not medical advice. This podcast including Ben Azadi disclaim responsibility from any possible adverse effects from the use of information contained herein. Opinions of guests are their own, and this podcast does not accept responsibility of statements made by guests. This podcast does not make any representations or warranties about guests qualifications or credibility. Individuals on this podcast may have a direct or non-direct interest in products or services referred to herein. If you think you have a medical problem, consult a licensed physician.

In this episode, Dr. Ian Fields joins Dr. Mark Hoffman at the mic to discuss the role of the microbiome in obstetrical and gynecological conditions. --- SHOW NOTES Dr. Ian Fields completed a fellowship in Female Pelvic Medicine & Reconstructive Surgery and received a Master of Clinical Research degree from Oregon Health & Sciences University. His research focuses on changes in the urinary microbiome and their association with lower urinary tract symptoms. Dr. Fields begins the episode by describing the microbiome as “all of the things outside of our cells that make up the human body,” which includes bacteria, viruses, and fungi. He explains that the microbiome may play a role in how humans maintain states of health, in addition to having large impacts on the pathophysiology or development of disease states. Dr. Fields references the Human Microbiome Project, a United States National Institutes of Health research initiative that was aimed to improve the understanding of microbiota in relation to human health and diseases. The physicians then transition to cover the role of the microbiome, specifically in the field of obstetrics and gynecology. Dr. Fields explains that the most studied condition is bacterial vaginosis. From a urogynecology perspective, he expresses a particular interest in urinary tract disorders, such as urinary incontinence, recurrent urinary tract infections, and interstitial cystitis. Dr. Fields emphasizes to listeners that urine is not sterile. In addition, he highlights how the use of vaginal estrogen increases the presence of lactobacillus within the genital microbiome, and thus is beneficial in the settings of genitourinary syndrome of menopause and recurrent menopause. Dr. Fields concludes the episode by briefly addressing other areas of study regarding the microbiome in the field of obstetrics and gynecology. For example, studies have revealed a link between vaginal microbiota and risk of preterm birth, as well as neonatal gut microbiota and the mode of delivery. Ultimately, Dr. Fields states that the microbiome is an underfunded and understudied aspect of medicine, and he urges listeners to acknowledge the large potential the field has. --- RESOURCES The Human Microbiome Project: https://hmpdacc.org/hmp/overview/ Brubaker L, Nager CW, Richter HE, Visco A, Nygaard I, Barber MD, Schaffer J, Meikle S, Wallace D, Shibata N, Wolfe AJ. Urinary bacteria in adult women with urgency urinary incontinence. Int Urogynecol J. 2014 Sep;25(9):1179-84. Wolfe AJ, Toh E, Shibata N, Rong R, Kenton K, Fitzgerald M, Mueller ER, Schreckenberger P, Dong Q, Nelson DE, Brubaker L. Evidence of uncultivated bacteria in the adult female bladder. J Clin Microbiol. 2012 Apr;50(4):1376-83. Hoffman C, Siddiqui NY, Fields I, Gregory WT, Simon HM, Mooney MA, Wolfe AJ, Karstens L. Species-Level Resolution of Female Bladder Microbiota from 16S rRNA Amplicon Sequencing. mSystems. 2021 Oct 26;6(5):e0051821. Richter HE, Carnes MU, Komesu YM, Lukacz ES, Arya L, Bradley M, Rogers RG, Sung VW, Siddiqui NY, Carper B, Mazloomdoost D, Dinwiddie D, Gantz MG; Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Pelvic Floor Disorders Network. Association between the urogenital microbiome and surgical treatment response in women undergoing midurethral sling operation for mixed urinary incontinence. Am J Obstet Gynecol. 2022 Jan;226(1):93.e1-93.e15. Fettweis, J.M., Serrano, M.G., Brooks, J.P. et al. The vaginal microbiome and preterm birth. Nat Med 25, 1012–1021 (2019).

With the advent of the Human Microbiome Project and advancing technologies in whole-genome sequencing, the critical role of the gastrointestinal microbiome becomes clearer and clearer. We know the microbiome helps extract nutrients from the diet, creates important systemic metabolites, communicates with our skin and brain, and so much more. That being said, one such bacteria continues to stand out in the crowd– Akkermansia muciniphila. This bacterium, or lack thereof, may be a key player in obesity, metabolic disorders, inflammatory bowel disease, and ‘leaky gut'. In today's episode, we explain the vital role of Akkermansia muciniphila. We discuss dietary strategies to boost levels and the new Akkermansia probiotic supplement! Today on The Lab Report: 2:30 The mucus layer of the GI tract  6:00 Mucin vs. mucus and altering the mucus layer 7:35 Akkermansia muciniphila 11:55 Logical Speculation – High levels good or bad?   14:10 Clinical implications of low levels of Akkermansia 16:40 Strategies to boost Akkermansia 18:05 Finally! A new Akkermansia probiotic! 19:05 Berberine is kinda awesome 20:00 Question of the Day How does Genova evaluate Akkermansia and mucin? Additional Resources: GI Effects + Microbiomix Pendulum Life  (Use Promo Code GENOVA for 20% off your first month of a Pendulum membership!) Subscribe, Rate, & Review The Lab Report Thanks for tuning in to this week's episode of The Lab Report, presented by Genova Diagnostics, with your hosts Michael Chapman and Patti Devers. If you enjoyed this episode, please hit the subscribe button and give us a rating or leave a review. Don't forget to visit our website, like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Email Patti and Michael with your most interesting and pressing questions on functional medicine: podcast@gdx.net. And, be sure to share your favorite Lab Report episodes with your friends and colleagues on social media to help others learn more about Genova and all things related to functional medicine and specialty lab testing. To find a qualified healthcare provider to connect you with Genova testing, or to access select products directly, visit Genova Connect. Disclaimer: The content and information shared in The Lab Report is for educational purposes only and should not be taken as medical advice. The views and opinions expressed in The Lab Report represent the opinions and views of Michael Chapman and Patti Devers and their guests.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What research is emerging around plant health and soil biology in relation to nutrient-dense food? What role can farmers and gardeners play in building soil health to grow nutrient-dense food? Farmer, on-farm researcher, author, and Cover Crop Coach Steve Groff shares his experience and insights on keeping soil biology alive and well for soil and human health. Steve is a third-generation farmer based in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, who was an early innovator in using a roller-crimper in his no-till commercial vegetable operation to manage and terminate his cover crops. His grandfather was an early adopter of cover crops in the 1950s. Steve was at the forefront in using a daikon radish or "Tillage Radish" to naturally bio-till the soil with the plant's tuberous roots to alleviate compaction and encourage biological life. Steve also emphasizes that farmers need to continue to do their own on-farm research and have an adaptive mindset for the ever-changing world of agriculture, particularly as research on nutrient-dense food as prevention and medicine continues to grow and be rediscovered. To learn about Steve Groff's soil health journey and mindset, you can read his new book The Future-Proof Farm: Changing Mindsets in a Changing World, which is available online at https://stevegroff.com. For more information about soil health and cover crops, please visit the Virginia Soil Health Coalition's Tips and Resources website at https://www.virginiasoilhealth.org/resources-1. To take the pledge to follow and educate others about the four core soil health principles, please visit the 4 The Soil website at https://www.4thesoil.org/take-the-pledge.html. Please visit the National Institute of Health's (NIH) National Library of Medicine at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/ for emerging research studies and findings on soil and human health connections. The 2007 NIH-supported Human Microbiome Project is a multi-year research study that specifically includes research on the connections between soil diversity and the microbiological life of the human gut.

Today, I am blessed to have here with me Dr. Steven Gundry. He is a cum laude graduate of Yale University with special honors in Human Biological and Social Evolution. After graduating Alpha Omega Alpha from the Medical College of Georgia School of Medicine, Dr. Steven Gundry completed residencies in General Surgery and Thoracic Surgery at the University of Michigan and served as a Clinical Associate at the National Institutes of Health for years. There, he invented devices that reverse the cell death seen in acute heart attacks; variations of these devices subsequently became the Gundry™ Retrograde Cardioplegia Cannula. It has become the world's most widely used device of its kind to protect the heart from damage during open-heart surgery.  In 2002, Dr. Gundry met someone who would change the trajectory of his career… and life. He crossed paths with an "inoperable" patient named “Big Ed”. Using a combination of dietary changes and nutraceutical supplements — Big Ed lost weight and cleared most of his arterial blockages. An obese, chronic "diet" failure himself, Dr. Gundry adapted his Yale University thesis to design a diet for himself based on evolutionary genetic coding. On this diet, he lost weight — to the tune of 70 pounds — and reversed his own ailments, such as migraines, pre-diabetic status, and arthritis. He stopped eating sugar, grains, peanuts and cashews, nightshades and other lectin-heavy foods. Having experienced weight loss and the results of eating a lectin-free and gluten-free diet himself, and inspired by growing research involving the NIH's Human Microbiome Project, his commitment to better health and longevity through a better diet solidified. His work creating nutraceutical products and supplements advanced. He is now the leading expert on the lectin-free lifestyle as the key to reversing disease and healing a leaky gut. Dr. Steven Gundry freely shares his research on how to maintain a healthy microbiome and live a long, vital life via his best-selling books, YouTube channel, Gundry MD blogs, and weekly health podcast, The Dr. Gundry Podcast. In this episode, Dr. Gundry defines ketosis and explains the direct benefit that ketones have on the brain. Plus, Dr. Gundry dives deep into the mitochondria and why they have to uncouple to survive. You'll find out what the “mito club” is and why calorie restriction is a non-starter, and it simply does not work. Tune in as we chat all about MCT oil, melatonin, and the benefits of sheep and goat dairy.  Order Keto Flex: http://www.ketoflexbook.com Free Keto Webinar: www.ketosismasterclass.com  -------------------------------------------------------- / / E P I S O D E   S P ON S O R S  PureForm Omega Plant Based Oils (Best Alternative to Fish Oil): http://www.purelifescience.com Use ben4 for $4.00 off. Paleo Valley beef sticks, apple cider vinegar complex, organ meat complex & more. Use the coupon code KETOKAMP15 over at https://paleovalley.com/ to receive 15% off your entire order. Upgraded Formulas Hair Mineral Deficiency Analysis & Supplements: http://www.upgradedformulas.com Use KETOKAMP15 at checkout for 15% off your order.  Text me the words "Podcast" +1 (786) 364-5002 to be added to my contacts list.  [00:50] Dr. Gundry Gives His Definition of Ketosis  Generating ketone bodies is done by free fatty acids entering the liver from circulation.  The liver can convert free fatty acids into ketone bodies. Ketone bodies are short-chain fats that are water-soluble.  Ketones have a distinct benefit in getting to the brain, which free fatty acids can't because they're too big to get through the blood-brain barrier. Ketosis should happen every night after about eight hours of not eating if you are metabolically flexible.  50% of ordinary people are not metabolically flexible.  [03:50] Uncoupling To Survive: How The Mitochondria Release Pressure  Dr. Gundry recommends reading Uncoupling To Survive: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11053672/ When you're starving to death, mitochondria have to save themselves at all costs.  If mitochondria die, then it's all over.  Making energy is hard work; it's very damaging to mitochondria.  Mitochondria have to have ways of protecting themselves, and one of the ways they protect themselves is to release pressure.  There are five pressure release valves for the mitochondria.  We couple oxygen and protons to make ATP. If we uncouple the burning of oxygen from making ATP, that's how we release pressure.  [21:05] The Reason, Most People, Cannot Get Into Ketosis Right Away  Most people can not get into ketosis by following a high-fat diet because they lack metabolic flexibility.  Many people are insulin resistant. Their cells no longer listen to insulin, so insulin keeps rising and rising.  It can take three to four weeks to liberate fat from fat cells on a ketogenic diet because insulin levels stay high for so long.  The ketogenic diet came about to treat childhood epilepsy.   If you put kids on an MCT oil-based diet, with only about 50% of their calories coming from fat, they would get the same benefit as the full-blown ketogenic diet. [32:25] The “Mito Club” - How Your Body Is Just Like A Nightclub  The mito club has one entrance, and there is only one exit.  If everything works out okay, a proton and electron will couple and exit the mito club.  However, there are a lot more electrons than there are protons.  Electrons will also couple with oxygen; it's a bad match.  The mito club needs to be cleaned up every night after closing.  [38:40] Calorie Restriction Is A Non-Starter, and It Doesn't Work  The best way to expand lifespan and healthspan is calorie restriction.  However, calorie restriction is a non-starter, and it doesn't work.  Calorie-restricted animals are profoundly hungry.  A study found that the animals with time-restricted eating lived 11% longer than the animals who ate the same amount of food but ate throughout the day.  This concept has been proven in humans as well. [47:05] The Major Health Benefit of Taking MCT Oil or Powder  30% of sheep and goat dairy is MCT.  MCTs are an excellent fat that goes directly to our liver, where they are automatically converted into ketones.  You can have insulin resistance, take MCTs, and generate ketones.  A tablespoon of MCT oil will have you generating adequate amounts of ketones to begin uncoupling mitochondria.  MCTs are easy to take; you can mix them in salad dressing.  Many females have issues with MCT oils and their stomachs, so start slow. Powered MCTs work well for women.  [53:35] You Have Melatonin All Wrong: It May Have Nothing To Do With Sleep  Pistachios actually have the highest melatonin content of any food. The Mediterranean diet gets melatonin from olive oil, red wine, and mushrooms.  Melatonin isn't there to put you to sleep. Instead, it's there to repair mitochondria.  Also, melatonin may be one of the secrets of cancer therapy.  Dr. Gundry has cancer patients on up to 100 milligrams a day of melatonin.  Check out Melatonin The Miracle Molecule: https://www.ultimatecellularreset.com/product/melatonin-the-miracle-molecule/ AND MUCH MORE! Resources from this episode:  Check out Dr. Gundry's Website: https://drgundry.com/ (use code “gundry30”) Follow Dr. Gundry Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drstevengundry/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DrStevenGundry/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/drgundry YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtxo0nTZjzlKJq5-vJq6s6g Unlocking the Keto Code: The Revolutionary New Science of Keto That Offers More Benefits Without Deprivation: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0063118386/benazadi-20 Listen to The Dr. Gundry Podcast: https://drgundry.com/the-dr-gundry-podcast/ Uncoupling to Survive: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11053672/ Melatonin The Miracle Molecule: https://www.ultimatecellularreset.com/product/melatonin-the-miracle-molecule/ Join the Keto Kamp Academy: https://ketokampacademy.com/7-day-trial-a Watch Keto Kamp on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUh_MOM621MvpW_HLtfkLyQ Order Keto Flex: http://www.ketoflexbook.com Free Keto Webinar: www.ketosismasterclass.com  -------------------------------------------------------- / / E P I S O D E   S P ON S O R S  PureForm Omega Plant Based Oils (Best Alternative to Fish Oil): http://www.purelifescience.com Use ben4 for $4.00 off. Paleo Valley beef sticks, apple cider vinegar complex, organ meat complex & more. Use the coupon code KETOKAMP15 over at https://paleovalley.com/ to receive 15% off your entire order. Upgraded Formulas Hair Mineral Deficiency Analysis & Supplements: http://www.upgradedformulas.com Use KETOKAMP15 at checkout for 15% off your order.  Text me the words "Podcast" +1 (786) 364-5002 to be added to my contacts list.  *Some Links Are Affiliates* // F O L L O W ▸ instagram | @thebenazadi | http://bit.ly/2B1NXKW ▸ facebook | /thebenazadi | http://bit.ly/2BVvvW6 ▸ twitter | @thebenazadi http://bit.ly/2USE0so ▸clubhouse | @thebenazadi Disclaimer: This podcast is for information purposes only. Statements and views expressed on this podcast are not medical advice. This podcast including Ben Azadi disclaim responsibility from any possible adverse effects from the use of information contained herein. Opinions of guests are their own, and this podcast does not accept responsibility of statements made by guests. This podcast does not make any representations or warranties about guests qualifications or credibility. Individuals on this podcast may have a direct or non-direct interest in products or services referred to herein. If you think you have a medical problem, consult a licensed physician.

My guest this episode is Dr. Justin Sonnenburg, Professor of Microbiology & Immunology at Stanford University. Dr. Sonnenburg's research focuses on how microbes in our gut impact our mental and physical health and how diet and your environment shape your gut microbiome. We discuss the architecture of the gut microbiome and microbiota variability in different regions of the gastrointestinal (GI) tract and how these can change in response to diet, environment or genetics. We explore the early establishment of your microbiome and how your mode of delivery into the world (C-section or not) shapes your gut. We also discuss lifestyle factors that can alter your microbiome and the integral role the gut microbiome plays in communicating to other organs, including your brain. Dr. Sonnenburg details his recent clinical study, which found that diets rich in fermented foods (but not fiber) increase microbiota diversity and reduce signals of inflammation. Additionally, we examine how foods typical in Western Diets (e.g., high fat, low fiber, processed foods) can negatively impact the gut microbiome. Throughout the episode, we discuss actionable tools from peer-reviewed clinical findings that anyone can implement, regardless of budget, in order to optimize their gut microbiome and health. Thank you to our sponsors AG1 (Athletic Greens): https://athleticgreens.com/huberman ROKA: https://roka.com - code "huberman" Helix Sleep: https://helixsleep.com/huberman See Andrew Huberman Live: The Brain Body Contract Tuesday, May 17th: Seattle, WA Wednesday, May 18th: Portland, OR https://hubermanlab.com/tour - code: ‘huberman' Pre-sale tickets go on sale on Tuesday, March 8th at 10 AM PT Our Patreon page https://www.patreon.com/andrewhuberman Supplements from Thorne https://www.thorne.com/u/huberman For the full show notes, visit hubermanlab.com. Timestamps (00:00:00) Dr. Justin Sonnenburg, Gut Microbiome (00:02:55) The Brain Body Contract (00:04:16) AG1 (Athletic Greens), ROKA, Helix Sleep (00:08:30) What is the Gut Microbiome? (00:12:49) Gastrointestinal (GI) Tract & Microbiota Variability (00:16:00) Breast Feeding, C-Sections & Pets (00:21:56) The Human Microbiome Project at Stanford (00:26:30) Traditional vs. Industrialized Populations (00:28:58) Resilience of the Microbiome (00:35:10) Regional Differences Along Your GI Tract (00:42:04) Fasting, Cleanses & Gut Health (00:51:19) Dietary Differences (01:01:24) Simple vs. Complex Carbohydrates, Processed Foods (01:07:03) Artificial & Plant-based Sweeteners (01:12:44) Cleanses: Useful? Harmful? (01:14:50) Your Microbiome & Your Immune System (01:20:17) Dietary Fiber & Fermented Foods (01:32:13) High-Fiber vs. High-Fermented Diet; Inflammation (01:41:33) Ripple Effects of a Healthy Diet (01:45:00) Does a High-Fiber Diet Make Inflammation Worse? (01:47:22) Over Sterilized Environments (01:50:15) The Gut Microbiome's Effect on Physiology (01:56:45) Gut-Brain Connection (01:59:30) Probiotics: Benefits & Risks (02:04:20) Prebiotics: Essential? (02:07:00) Tools for Enhancing Your Gut Microbiota (02:11:12) Dr. Sonnenburg's Research, Zero-Cost Support, YouTube, Spotify, Apple Reviews, Sponsors, Patreon, Thorne, Instagram, Twitter, Neural Network Newsletter Title Card Photo Credit: Mike Blabac Disclaimer

In today's episode with Luisa Santos Bay, we go deeper on the microbiome and we get clearer on how it actually can transition the health care system from sick care to preventive care. We talk about the Human Microbiome Project and what they are trying to do, about mapping the microbiome, the future of pharmaceuticals, allergic reactions, how to eat healthily according to a micro biologist and the finally we assess the chances of creating Jurassic Parc. About Luisa: Luisa Santos Bay is doing a Ph.D. on how the gut microbes may affect animal behavior at the Center for Evolutionary Hologenomics (University of Copenhagen), which is funded by the Danish National Research Foundation. Supplementary comments to what Luisa said: The bacterium Helicobacter Luisa mentions is specifically Helicobacter pylori. Research suggests that when in life H. pylori colonises the human gut/stomach it defines its actions. E.g. if you get H. pylori early in life, it may protect you from obesity. The example of mating in flies Luisa gave is in fact in mosquitoes and the associated bacterium is Wolbachia. The relative abundance of the human gut bacterium Akkermansia is low (not increased) in severely obese individuals.The Human Microbiome Project (HMP) was an American research initiative lasting 10 years (2007-2016). Thus, it has ended, but the general human microbiome research has certainly not ended. You can read about the results of HMP at: https://hmpdacc.orgConnect with Luisa: https://www.linkedin.com/in/luisa-dos-santos-bay-nielsen-017891a4/ --- Green Innovation Group Podcast is a podcast hosted and sponsored by Green Innovation Group, a Danish consulting firm with one mission: Reaching drawdown and making the world more sustainable through innovation, rethinking the status quo and action. This video series is our take on how to make the biggest impact and it is a great way to get everyone on board the green wave. We wish to make our knowledge accessible for everyone who wishes to put green innovation on the agenda. Download our latest research report: https://www.greeninnovationgroup.com/#DownloadsFollow us on LinkedIn to stay updated: https://www.linkedin.com/company/greeninnovationgroup/ Watch on Youtube:https://youtu.be/9fw7TlaSmc4Connect and discuss innovation with us: Frederik: https://www.linkedin.com/in/frederikvandeurs/ Joachim: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joachim-espeland-almdal-017a6973/ web: https://greeninnovationgroup.com

In a companion interview to his June 7 talk with Stanford's Michael Snyder, Harry speaks this week with Noosheen Hashemi, who—with Snyder—co-founded the personalized health startup January.ai in 2017. The company focuses on helping users understand how their bodies respond to different foods and activities, so they can make diet and exercise choices that help them avoid unhealthy spikes in blood glucose levels.January's smartphone app collects blood glucose levels from disposable devices called continuous glucose monitors (CGMs), as well as heart rate data from patients' Fitbits or Apple Watches. The app also makes it easier for users to log the food they eat, and see what impact each food has on their glucose levels. Once the app has enough data, January's machine learning algorithms can start predicting the effects of different foods and activities on blood glucose. It can then recommend meals and exercise that'll help users keep their blood glucose in a healthy target range. The goal isn't to prevent glucose spikes completely, but rather to prevent diabetes from emerging over the long term in people at risk for a cluster of serious conditions known metabolic syndrome. That could help individuals live longer, healthier lives. And at a population level it could save billions in healthcare costs.Please rate and review MoneyBall Medicine on Apple Podcasts! Here's how to do that from an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch:• Launch the “Podcasts” app on your device. If you can't find this app, swipe all the way to the left on your home screen until you're on the Search page. Tap the search field at the top and type in “Podcasts.” Apple's Podcasts app should show up in the search results.• Tap the Podcasts app icon, and after it opens, tap the Search field at the top, or the little magnifying glass icon in the lower right corner.• Type MoneyBall Medicine into the search field and press the Search button.• In the search results, click on the MoneyBall Medicine logo.• On the next page, scroll down until you see the Ratings & Reviews section. Below that, you'll see five purple stars.• Tap the stars to rate the show.• Scroll down a little farther. You'll see a purple link saying “Write a Review.”• On the next screen, you'll see the stars again. You can tap them to leave a rating if you haven't already.• In the Title field, type a summary for your review.• In the Review field, type your review.• When you're finished, click Send.• That's it, you're done. Thanks!Full TranscriptHarry Glorikian: I'm Harry Glorikian, and this is MoneyBall Medicine, the interview podcast where we meet researchers, entrepreneurs, and physicians who are using the power of data to improve patient health and make healthcare delivery more efficient. You can think of each episode as a new chapter in the never-ending audio version of my 2017 book, “MoneyBall Medicine: Thriving in the New Data-Driven Healthcare Market.” If you like the show, please do us a favor and leave a rating and review at Apple Podcasts.Harry Glorikian: I've been making the show long enough that you can see a kind of family tree emerging, with branches that connect many of our episodes.That's definitely the case with today's interview with Noosheen Hashemi, the co-founder and CEO of the precision health company January AI.The branch leading to Hashemi started back in June of 2021 when I interviewed Professor Michael Snyder, the chair of Stanford's Department of Genetics.Snyder is a huge proponent of using wearable devices to help people make better decisions about their own health. In fact, the day we spoke he was wearing seven separate devices, including one called a continuous glucose monitor or CGM.A CGM is standard equipment these days for about 3.5 million diabetics in the U.S. who need to know when their blood sugar is too high and when it's time to take more insulin. But Snyder believes that blood glucose data could also help tens of millions of other people who don't yet take insulin but may be on their way to developing full-blown diabetes.Back in 2016 Snyder got a visit from Hashemi. She's a longtime Silicon Valley tech executive and philanthropist who'd been searching for a way to use AI, wearable devices, and big data to get more people involved in medical research. Hashemi told me it took just two meetings for her and Snyder to decide to join forces to co-found January. The company makes a smartphone app that collects blood glucose data from disposable CGMs, as well as heart rate data from patients' existing wearable devices such as their Fitbit or Apple Watch. The app also makes it easier for users to log the food they eat, and see what impact each food has on their glucose levels. Once the app has enough data, January's machine learning algorithms can start predicting the effects of different foods and activities on blood glucose. It can then recommend meals and exercise that'll help users keep their blood glucose in a healthy target range. The goal isn't to prevent glucose spikes completely, but rather to prevent diabetes from emerging over the long term in people at risk for a cluster of serious conditions known metabolic syndrome. That could help individuals live longer, healthier lives. And at a population level it could save billions in healthcare costs.As you're about to hear, Hashemi and I talked about why glucose monitoring is so important and what companies like January can do in the future to make the predictive power of AI available to more people.Harry Glorikian: Noosheen, welcome to the show. Noosheen Hashemi: Thank you, Harry. Harry Glorikian: So, it's great to have you on the show. It was interesting that, you know, the minute Dr. Snyder mentioned the company, I was immediately Googling it. And I was like, oh, I have to talk to this company. I have to understand what they're doing and, and what's going on.And to be quite honest, I've been doing my homework for the past couple of weeks. And I'm like: I think I have to call my doctor and get a ‘script to actually use the product. Just to help everybody get up to speed on this, can you bring people up to speed on where we are with glucose monitoring and health in general? Whether they have diabetes or whether they're just, you know, what, I, maybe someone like me who I hope is a generally a healthy person.Noosheen Hashemi: Sure, absolutely.  Yeah. So from Mike Snyder's four-year multi-omic IPOP research,  we learned that people who are so-called healthy and have healthy A1C levels could actually have huge glycemic variability. He sometimes calls these people with pre pre-diabetes.  I think eight people developed diabetes during his four-year study.There haven't been enough longitudinal studies in healthy people with glycemic variability to suggest that they will necessarily develop diabetes. So to date, there's really no conclusive evidence that healthy people can benefit from balancing their blood sugar. Also, not all sugar spikes are bad and a two-hour bike ride might produce a big spike, but that's fine. It's not the spike by itself that we worry about. It's really  how high the spike is against our baseline, against the population, whether the spike comes down quickly, the shape of the curve, the area under the curve. These are the things that are illuminating in terms of our state of metabolic health.So  at January we really view metabolic health as a spectrum. So we want to support people to figure out kind of where they are on that spectrum. And to try to really help them move up to healthier points on that spectrum. So we don't see it as a moment in time where you are something or you are not something. You are kind of on a spectrum of metabolic health, and we continuously want you to be self-aware and, and really improve your location on that spectrum. Now, something to keep in mind,  and why I think it's important for people to take action on this, is that 84% of the 88 million people believed to have pre-diabetes today, and 22% of the 34 million people that are believed to have diabetes today, are not diagnosed. They are undiagnosed. That's 75 million people walking around with pre-diabetes and don't even know. So, if we don't measure people's health, that doesn't mean they're healthy.  So we really encourage people to be  you know, vigilant with their health learn so that they can, they can act, you know, self-advocate. Be able to self-manage.So we do think that wearables are an easy, useful way to kind of see where things are, but then you need companies like January to make sense of it all. Harry Glorikian: Yeah. I mean  you know, it's interesting because you know, I'll go to my doctor and they'll do that one time measurement. It's like taking your car in and you're like, it was making a noise. It's not making the noise right now, but, you know, try and diagnose when that event is not happening. Whereas with the wearables, I can, I can actually see, you know, my, my heart rate variability change depending on my exercise process. I can see my sleep change if I had one too many glasses of wine. I have to tell you, I hate it because I would like to have more wine than my monitor allows me to have, but you know, you see the immediate feedback, which would let you sort of course-adjust accordingly. And you know, when I, there was a paper, I believe that was published in Israel where there, I think it was 500 people that they looked at and where you could see that every person, they could eat the same foods, but their spikes would be different or how long that spike would be based on genetics, based on their microbiome. And so if you're not monitoring, how will you know that your quote, healthy diet is actually healthy for you? Noosheen Hashemi: You don't.  You definitely don't. And yes, that's study shows variability between people, but also we've shown glycemic variability for the same person. So we had somebody at the office have the same good sleep nine days in a row, and they had a different glycemic response to that. Mostly every single day, nine days in a row, depending on how much they had slept, how stressed they were, how much workout they had done. And most importantly, how much fiber was in there.  So we are radically different person to person, and this is why we encourage people.  No one is going to know you as well as you do. And no one's going to be as interested in your health as you are  as you should be, as you might be. So we really encourage people to learn, learn, be self-aware self-advocate, self-educate. Harry Glorikian: So, help people understand this term metabolic syndrome, you know, and, and talk about how many people, maybe who are pre-diabetic go to full-blown diabetes, you know? Noosheen Hashemi: Okay. Yeah. So  I mentioned that 122 million people have either diabetes or pre-diabetes in America.  88 million plus 34 [million]. And then a larger number of people, if you believe Mike Snyder's pre-diabetes number, that's even a larger number. But metabolic syndrome is a cluster of conditions that leads to type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and stroke. These conditions are basically high blood sugar—which has been historically measured by A1C  blood tests called hemoglobin A1C, but increasingly it's measured by time and range using a CGM—high cholesterol and triglyceride levels, high blood pressure, high BMI, and high waist to hip ratio. So this kind of fat right in the middle.So the 2002 diabetes prevention study showed that unless there's an intervention, 58% of the people that have pre-diabetes could end up with diabetes. And usually they think of this prevention as weight loss.That's what the DPP programs, diabetes prevention programs, are about.So if you have pre-diabetes the cells in your body don't respond normally to insulin. And insulin is a hormone that facilitates your cells taking up glucose, which is a source of energy for your body. Your pancreas basically makes more insulin to try to get the cells to take up glucose. You sort of get into this terrible vicious circle. So eventually your pancreas can't keep up and then you have this sort of excess sugar sitting in your bloodstream, which is really a problem. And it can really lead to microvascular complications like retinopathy or neuropathy or diabetic nephropathy.So as you know, diabetic retinopathy is the most common cause of blindness in working adults in the developed world. And in diabetic neuropathy, essentially high blood sugar can injure nerves throughout the body. And usually damages nerves in the feet, in the legs and feet, which hear about foot ulcers and amputations coming from this.And of course  diabetic kidney disease. Nephropathy is something that  is the number one cause of kidney failure, actually. Almost a third of people with diabetes develop kidney disease. So you add this with the high blood pressure we can increase the force of blood through your arteries and damage arteries. And then you have excess blood pressure, you knowblood pressure and diabetes together, basically increase your risk for heart disease. So it's really a terrible cluster of conditions to have. And so if you have three of these conditions, three of these five, you essentially have metabolic syndrome. And if you have metabolic syndrome, you're at a higher risk of developing these different diseases. You really don't want to go down this path. The path itself is not great. And then the comorbidities from this path are just worse and complications of course are very painful, costly, and potentially, deadly.Harry Glorikian: And so that's one end of the spectrum, but in reality, even someone like me who tries to watch he eats, who goes running regularly, or tries to go running regularly. I mean, you know, I have sleep apnea because they tell me my BMI is too high. Right. So  but this sort of technology, you know, I could be spiking and keeping a high glucose level, which would inhibit my ability to lose weight, et cetera. So how can more data about blood glucose, and its relationship to diet, help people avoid diabetes?Noosheen Hashemi: Yeah. So for so long, we've been able, we've been told just to avoid refined sugar, refined flour, eat a lot of vegetables, walk 10,000 steps. You'll be fine. Or, you know, weight loss is given as the end goal to cure all diseases. You know, why don't you, Harry, drop 25 pounds? Or how about drop 5 to 10% of your weight? Harry Glorikian: Just like that!Noosheen Hashemi: It's true, weight loss really improves biomarkers. But how many people who get this advice can actually do that? And at the timeframe that they need to. So we feel like that's just not a practical approach to solving a problem.A more practical approach is to really figure out what works for each individual. You know, you mentioned you've dialed your own wine drinking based on its impact. I've done the same. I was, you know, enjoying two, three sips of wine. And then I learned that it would wake me up in the middle of the night. So I stopped having even the two, three sips of wine. So don't feel bad that you can't have your second and third and fourth glass. But basically we offer a multitude of levers that you can dial for your lifestyle. For example, intermittent fasting and calorie restriction together have shown benefits in clinical studies for improving insulin sensitivity, if you do them together. So you can't just fast and then gorge yourself. But if you fast and you restrict your calories together, you can really improve insulin sensitivity. So we let you, we help you using the January program to learn to experiment with fasting and calorie restriction and figure out what works for you. How much of it you can make. You know, slowly  help you essentially build it into your habits and your daily routines to fast. You know, we increase your fasting period 15 minutes at a time. So you may start with January you're eating 16 hours a day and you're fasting eight hours. You may end the program having reversed that.And other thing is we, we really pro promote fiber consumption. So increased fiber intake has been associated with higher levels of bacteria-derived short chain fatty acids, which is a regulator of GLP-1 production. As you know, GLP-1 is an incretin and a recognized regulator of glycemic homeostasis and satiety. So we help you track how much fiber you're eating. We encourage you to eat more, knowing what foods spike you, spike your blood sugar, helps you basically eliminate or reduce consumption of those foods. It tells you how much, how much of those things to eat  or alternatives that kind of honor your food preferences  and food tastes, but have lower glycemic index. If you can't walk 10,000 steps a day, okay. January tells you how much you need to walk, when you need to walk to keep your blood sugar in a healthy range. So you really need data  to, to dial your lifestyle. There are many levers and there are no silver bullets and there's too much to keep in your head. Which is why it's nice to have AI sort of help you kind of make, you know, take it all in to a platform and then synthesize it and give you insights.Harry Glorikian: Yeah. I mean, like,  I've got my, my Apple Watch. I've got my, you know, Whoop band. Right.I don't have as many as he [Mike Snyder] does, but  I know, I think my wife would kill me if I, if I was wearing eight things, but, but it's, you know, it's true. Like it's, you know, each one of these, because they're not holistically designed, give me a different piece of data that then I can then react to. You know, one is probably more of a coach that causes me to push a little bit farther, you know, et cetera. So  I mean, I hope one day we evolve to something that's a little bit more holistic so that the average person can sort of, it becomes more digestible and more actionable. But you know, I do believe, based on my conversation with him and even all the work that I do multi-factorial biomarkers or multi biomarkers are going to be how you manage, you know, yourself much better.But you know, tell me how January started. What is the thing that excited you about what you saw and what attracted you to this role? Noosheen Hashemi: Yes, absolutely. So January's origin story started with me deciding in 2016 to start my own company, essentially, after many years of running a family office, investing in, serving on boards of companies and nonprofits.  I had early success at Oracle  where I rose basically from the bottom of the organization in 1985 to vice-president by age 27. Along [with] Mark Benioff, who at the time was 26. It was quite the time, taking the company from $25 million to $3 billion in revenue. So  you know  a really, really amazing tenure there. In 2016, I started this massive research in, into theses that were getting a lot of attention, you know, big trends over the next decade. And most importantly, what I really knew. You know, the classic kind of [inaudible].  I happened to attend a conference, a White House Stanford University conference on societal benefits of AI and how to integrate sort of ever-changing AI into everyday life and into the real world. It was a healthcare panel that took my breath away. So Faith A. Lee who had organized the conference with Russ Goldman. They suggested that interested parties run off to this machine learning and healthcare conference in LA two weeks. I immediately booked my ticket. And there I met Larry Smarr. I don't know if you've come across him or not, but he was the first quantified self, maniacal quantified self person I had come across. And he had diagnosed his own Crohn's disease way before symptoms had manifested. And so, and then the common theme of this conference, between all of these presentations was that machine learning could essentially fill in for missing variables in research, not just going forward, but going backwards. So I was just hooked and I never looked back.But it was a hard problem. My own husband had been investing in healthcare and warned of like an opaque sector. He was like, “Honey, this is heavily regulated incentives are aligned with acute disease, not with chronic disease, not to mention even anything or prevention. It's just not a market economy.” And he knew how interested I am in market economies. My first love before medicine was economics. So that's a whole different podcast. So he warned that I'd be sort of fighting this uphill battle, but I was not discouraged. I basically kept on researching.I came across the MIT economist Andrew Lo. I don't know if you've come across him, but you should definitely talk to him. He's brilliant. His work showed that so little research had been done compared to what we really need to do in terms of medical research. And he comes up with ways of funding, medical research, he has a lot of innovative ways that we could really change  the whole model of medical and scientific research, but it kind of became obvious to me that the answer was that we needed to get everyone involved in research.So just, just putting things in perspective. After Nixon declared a war on cancer 50 years ago, we now have some therapeutics and some solutions to cancer. We have really nothing for neurological diseases. We're spending over $300 billion just on symptoms of Alzheimer's— don't talk about even the cure or anything like that. We have nothing for aging, which is the ultimate killer. So it was, to me, the answer was obvious, which was, we have to get everyone contributing to research. Everyone should be looking at themselves. And then with the data, we can also learn across populations. And so deep phenotyping of the population sort of in a multi-omic way was the answer.And that's what led me to Mike Snyder. I actually looked for multi-omics. I went to Stanford medical school and I met with the CEO. He said, what are you interested in? I said I'm interested in multi-omics. He said, you have to talk to Mike Snyder. And so  basically what Larry Smarr had done at the [San Diego Supercomputer Center] was to measure everything by himself. But Mike had essentially extended this kind of research to others, not just to himself. So not only sort of diagnosed himself with diabetes before the doctors, but he'd also run the Human Microbiome Project, the IPOP study, innumerable other research using metabolomics, proteomics, transcriptomics, wearables, and so on.So he had spent a lifetime studying how people went from healthy to disease essentially. And he had taken a whole person approach, which is what I was interested in.  And so in his role as chairman of genetics at Stanford and head of precision medicine at Stanford, he was kind of already living in the future. And that's kind of where I thought, you know, all of us needed to go. So our first meeting was supposed to take 45 minutes. It took 90 minutes. And in our second meeting, we agreed to join forces. It was like, it was instant.  It was just instant chemistry. Like the universe just brought us together.And then all of a sudden sort of everything fell into place for me. Looking back at my life, I been getting ready for this actually all along. Caring for my dad who had been diagnosed with cancer too late to actually give him  a surviving chance. My mom  had been misdiagnosed with asthma when she had heart failure. So I had to leave my family, you know, everyone get together and really intervene. Really changed her, her lifestyle in order to save her life. She is thankfully now 91 years old and living fine, but it has absolutely no salt in her life and a completely different, different life. My own health, my own health journey sitting in front of a computer for three decades, more than three decades, as we know that now they call it called sitting, you know, Harry Glorikian: Right, the new smoking. Noosheen Hashemi: The new smoking. My experience running a couple of hardware companies, my love of food, and my skills of kind of scaling companies. You know, all of this came together. I just basically became obsessed with prevention and I felt that, you know, food could play an outsized role.So wearables, you know, give you signals from the body continuously, which is incredible.  But you also need to understand what people are eating and, you know, we can talk about that a little bit later, but we can basically now imagine predicting chronic conditions, much like Larry and Mike had. And then, you know, postponing and potentially preventing them. And if they've already started, prevent them. Harry Glorikian: Yeah, I was lucky enough to be there and help when Evidation Health was getting off the ground and, you know, once we started to see the data coming in, I remember looking at the data. Is that real, like, is that actually happening? And I was like, the first thing I was thinking of was like, how do we design a clinical trial? Like if you're going to actually say that's happening, that trial is not going to be trivial to set up, to make that claim, but you could see it in the data.And, you know  I actually think some of the shifts that you're talking about, if it wasn't for things like the Affordable Care Act, if it wasn't for putting EMRs in place, if it wasn't for some of these shifts that have happened, you and I would still be, you know, battling this system that pays you no matter what. Right? And I think now is technology is a way that that can empower the average person to manage their own health. I'm not going to say optimally, but boy, a hell of a lot better than no information. I mean, at least some information can maybe give you an early warning light of something that you might be able to intervene in.And I don't know anybody that likes being sick. I mean, I don't do well when this thing starts to age a little bit and not function the way that I want it to. So I've tried to try and keep it in as good of a running condition as I can. So it lasts as long as possible. I mean, I'm one of those people that would listen if I just drop dead at 95, like just boom gone. I would be so happy. Right. As opposed to this sort of chronic  dynamic. [musical transition]Harry Glorikian: I want to pause the conversation for a minute to make a quick request. If you're a fan of MoneyBall Medicine, you know that we've published dozens of interviews with leading scientists and entrepreneurs exploring the boundaries of data-driven healthcare and research. And you can listen to all of those episodes for free at Apple Podcasts, or at my website glorikian.com, or wherever you get your podcasts.There's one small thing you can do in return, and that's to leave a rating and a review of the show on Apple Podcasts. It's one of the best ways to help other listeners find and follow the show.If you've never posted a review or a rating, it's easy. All you have to do is open the Apple Podcasts app on your smartphone, search for MoneyBall Medicine, and scroll down to the Ratings & Reviews section. Tap the stars to rate the show, and then tap the link that says Write a Review to leave your comments. It'll only take a minute, but it'll help us out immensely. Thank you! And now back to the show.[musical transition]So you mentioned AI, you mentioned machine learning. Where do machine learning and other forms of AI fit into January's service and you know, what do you do on consumer data? What kind of predictions can you make that wouldn't otherwise be possible?Noosheen Hashemi: Okay. I can first talk about exactly that. What did we do that hadn't been done before. What is really unique? What are we filling? So essentially in one word, it is prediction. You said it. So  as you know, there've been, there have been glycemic prediction models for type 1 diabetes, but type 1, as, you know, is a serious condition, which, you know, precision really matters for type one. It's life and death.But there hasn't been much done with type 2 diabetes. And so we set out to do predictions, for type 2 diabetes. And  the type 1 diabetes models are pretty simple. They basically are an insulin-carb calculus, essentially. But as we dug in, we realized that  you know, carbs are not all the same and that there are so many other factors besides carbs that affect glycemic response, including things like fiber fat and protein, water, and foods. We wanted to understand glycemic index and glycemic load of foods. So our major  machine learning  research projects, we basically did research for two and a half years before we sold anything.  One of the first things that we did was to try to understand the foods themselves. So we essentially built the largest database. Essentially we licensed all the, these curated food databases, and then we labeled the foods that didn't have food labels, because right now the only food labeling you really have is like grocery foods and chain restaurants.So we labeled foods and then, recognizing that glycemic response was better associated with glycemic index than carbs alone, we set out to create glycemic index and glycemic load for all these foods. Then we ran a clinical trial and associated people's glycemic response to the glycemic load of foods they were eating. And then we turned that into a prediction. So, the prediction model.  Why is it so cool? Well, why should you use your body to figure out how many glasses of wine is going to spike you? Why not have the AI tell you that? Why not do that in silico?  It's this weekend, you want to cook for your wife. You want to get her the right fried chicken recipe. Well, check those out in January, check out those recipes in January. If you know what the glycemic response of, of each one of those recipes could be, it really helps you compare foods. For kind of recipes you can comparefood items in your local cafe. You want to figure out what to eat. You don't have to put them through your body to figure out how you're going to respond, put them through the AI to figure out how you're going to respond.And then in terms of, you know, how we're different. I mean, we essentially live in the future. We, we don't  we don't live in blood pricks and strips and blood glucose meters. We kind of live in the CGM, HRM (heart rate monitor) precision foodworld. We've turned food into actionable health data, which is a necessary ingredient you need if you want to understand people's glycemic response. And if you want to be able to predict it, and that is our huge innovation that nobody has. And we have quite a bit of IP around it. There are a number of things that we're using. We're using meta-learning.  We're using  neural networks. I don't know how much I should say about what we're using. Yeah. We have one paper that we've put out, which is really, really, really simple.  But we, we always talk about, what kind of papers we want to put out and how much we should put out and how much should we not put out, but essentially you can look at the people that advise the company and you can see that, you know, we have a lot of expertise around  essentially… Harry Glorikian: But Noosheen, when you're doing this right, you need to, at some point, I think you need a baseline on say me for a certain period of time before the algorithm can then respond appropriately to that. And then doesn't that potentially change over time, time you mentioned the yogurt, the meusli, right.  And how that affects. So it's constantly gotta be in a feedback learning loop.Noosheen Hashemi: Yes. Yes. And the beauty of January is that essentially you don't have to wear a CGM 365 days out of the year. We think that with AI, we allow you to wear a CGM intermittently. So maybe you want to wear it every quarter  to update our models  just to see how things are going, but you don't need to wear it all the time. You can wear it for a period of training and then basically run your simulations in silico rather than through your body. Let the AI do the work. So you definitely should wear it intermittently so we can update our, our models because people do age. People do have inflection points in their health. They get pregnant, they travel, a lot of things change, but we don't think it's necessary for healthy people to wear CGMs all year long necessarily. Harry Glorikian: So now we're talking about consumer behavior, right, for a, for a tech product like this. And if, you know, if you look at some of the data that I've read in some of these papers, you know, the potential market is significant. It's, you know, it's quite large. I mean, if I just said, you know, 15% of the people have pre-diabetic levels of glucose after eating, that would translate to like 50 million people in the United States alone. But the service depends on the CGM, the app, the external heart monitor. It's, you know, users have to be diligent about monitoring and logging food intake and activities during the introductory month. So for a quantified self junkie, I get it. They're all over this.  What's the plan for getting everybody else on to this? Noosheen Hashemi: Well, I think it's all about the user experience. And I think we have a, we have a long way to go as an industry and for us as well.As a company we have, what we imagine to be the user experience is nowhere near where we are today.I'm old enough to remember world before Starbucks. So you would see ads on TV for MJB coffee, which is something you made at home. You know, I don't know if you remember that but Starbucks created a new experience, really a place between home and work where you would stop by for coffee.And so the outrage around the, you know, $3, $4 latteat the time, do you remember that?Well, Starbucks continue to improve the experience. They added wi-fi, they had ethical coffee, they had kind of a diverse employee population. People's initial wonder and worry gave way to this, you know, gigantic global brand. And I think all of that is because of the experience that people had. I think we need to make health a positive experience. We need to—we, including January—need to make health something that people….it's going to be a little clunky in the beginning, just like the old, you know, cell phones used to be. But while we're going through this process, the companies need to work on to improve the experience and people need to be patient with the clunkiness of everything  to get us to a place where these things become much, much more pleasant to use and easier to use, and essentially AI starts reading your mind about what you were eating and what you were doing. That is going to happen. You know, I've gotten so used to my Apple Watch now that I actually love it. It actually is doing a very good job training me. Just at the right time, you know, “Come on, you still have a chance. Let's go.” You know, all the things that it's doing  I'm actually liking it. It's it's enjoyable. Because it Is coaching. And I feel like the answer for mass adoption lives in experience. We need to improve the experience dramatically. Harry Glorikian: It's interesting though, because I I'm play with a lot of these different things and I noticed that depending on how they're designed, how they're put together, it nudges me to do that much more or et cetera. I don't always listen. Human beings don't always do what they're supposed to do for their better good. But  you can see how, when the app is designed in a way to nudge someone the right in through the right mechanisms. And that's the problem, right, is trying to—not the same mechanism works on everybody. So you may have to have multiple approaches that the system tries like AB testing for a website to, to get them to do that.But so, if the average person like me wants to do something like this, obviously I have to get a ‘script from my doctor, which just drives me crazy that I can't just—because I can buy a finger-prick, right, over the counter and poke myself a thousand times and then write down these numbers to see what happens. Which seems a little clunky in my opinion. But I can't buy the CGM that does it automatically. There's gotta be some medical person saying like, we're gonna make more money off this if we do this or do that, or, or it just doesn't make any sense to me.  How do you, how does January come at the expense reimbursement or the insured part of it, or is this just out of pocket for everybody? Noosheen Hashemi: Sure. So right now  government insurance, companies, and private insurance companies cover CGMs for people that are intense insulin users. So people that prick themselves four times a day. And so that's three and a half million out of 122 million people that have pre-diabetes or diabetes. So it's a very small population. And the rest is all cash paid. And it it's really out of pocket. So we have an early access price of $288. And we, you know, we include the CGM, but you can also buy CGMs only from January. You can just, if you just want a CGM, you don't want to do anything else. You're just curious. You want an introduction to this world? You can order a CGM from January for $80 if you want to do that. So if you're one of the 12 million people that are insured by Kaiser—and Kaiser doctors will not write you a prescription, you can go to your doctor and ask them, they won't write you a prescription—come to January. We will give you a CGM. You can be introduced to the program and then, you know, take, take up January from there and experience the magic of CGMs alone. I really do think they are a magical product because they they're showing you for the first time you kind of can see inside your body, which is really phenomenal. Unfortunately by themselves, they're not that effective and they're not that effective by themselves longitudinally. So if you really want to keep track of how you've been doing, what food spiked you, how you can, you know, what kind of exercise, things like that. They don't really have that additional intelligence, but they are magical, they are really magical tools. But, you know, you want an insightful experience on top of that. With the AI that can essentially synthesize this kind of data from your heart rate, monitor from your food, from your glucose monitor and sort of let you know how much to eat, what to eat, how to hack your food, how much to walk, how much, how much to fast, when to fast, how much fiber you're having, not having. That's where we come in. Harry Glorikian: I feel like at some point I'm going to need a big monitor in my house that just tells me these things as I'm walking by. But you know, it, it's interesting. I mean, we are entering the era of real wearables and apps and big data and, and, you know, but here's the question though. Soyou know, Apple just announced what's going to be the update to their iOS and, you know, pretty soon I'm going to be able to push a button and share data with my physician.  Which is funny because I go in his office and I pull up my phone and I'm like, here's my longitudinal. And here's my longitudinal. And I'm like, look, you can take the measurement because you're supposed to, but here's how it looks over the last three months as opposed to the one time when I'm here. Can January's customers export and share the data with their doctor? Noosheen Hashemi: We have a report  midstream at 14 days that you can share  with, with your doctor. But of course we intend to, you know, we have features planned that are going to make things way more easily done, much more easily in the future. We really strongly believe that people should own their own health data. We are huge advocates for people owning their own health data, because there are a lot of people hanging onto your health data and they don't want to give it to you. I'm talking about device makers and others. You're paying for the device, which comes with the data, but they don't want you to have the data. So they're like, “You can have the data and study it yourself, but you can't give that data to other people.” But that doesn't work.We are living in a multi-omics world. Single 'omics by themselves, the single side node biomarkers, you know, “Harry, you just manage your cholesterol. Noosheen, you can't keep two things in your head. Why don't you just manage your A1C? And Mike, you should watch your blood pressure.” That just doesn't work. There are many, many markers that you've just, as you just said, that we need to keep in our heads. We can't keep them in our heads, but that's where AI comes in. We need to feed them into something and people must have the right to own their data and share their data with whoever they want. If it's their coach, it's their doctor, it's their wife or spouse or significant other, their dog. They should be able to share the data that they own.As long as they provision it properly to whoever they want to give it to because you know, someone doesn't want their employer to know X, Y, and Z. Somebody else wants their coach to know that is people's rights. And coming from kind of a libertarian point of view, I really think people, you know, people should own their own data and they should be able to mix it with other data  for synthesis, if they want to. Harry Glorikian: Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, I totally believe in that. I always, I also understand that people may not understand the implications of sharing sometimes.  And that's not clear, but I do believe that the next iteration of where we're going to see this technology go is multifactorial software programs that can take a number of different inputs to give a much more holistic view of what's going on with me, so I can manage myself better share that information. My biggest worry is most physicians I know are—it's not totally like, it's not their fault, right….Noosheen Hashemi: They're so busy, so they're spending 15 minutes a year with you. And during that 15 minutes, you know, they're taking a point in time, you know, to see a snapshot of your health. And your health is way more complicated than that. We're talking about reverse engineering, 5 billion, years of evolution. And you know, they're going to get, see if such an infinite small part of that. We need to be way more self-aware.Harry Glorikian: Well, it's funny because I do have, some of my physician friends will be like, you want me to understand that genomic marker that whatever, like, I can't, I can't get my patient to manage their insulin level!Noosheen Hashemi: I have a lot of empathy for that. They just don't have the time.  I completely fully understand. Which is why I think we should carry more of the, we should have more agency over our health and we should carry the burden a little bit more.Harry Glorikian: So what is wild success for January? Noosheen Hashemi: Well, we want to keep on this path of developing our multi-omic platform. We want to essentially  help people understand themselves deeply and figure out how to dial their lifestyles and sort of tweak and tune their health. This is non-trivial obviously because there's not enough research in food science or enough research on prevention. You know, out of the $3.8 trillion that we spend on healthcare, 2.9% goes to prevention and 10% goes to acute care end of life care. Just think about that. More than three times as much goes to end of life acute care than goes to prevention. And I'm talking about healthcare costs, I'm not talking about research costs in terms of what NIH and USAID and all of those people spend. So there's not enough research that's happening. You know, people's health data is not organized today. I'm sure there are companies who are trying to organize the world's data. You know, the company that tries to organize the world's data is trying to organize your health data. So I think that's pretty smart.  I think today it's still very opaque and it lives in silos, but I think in the future is going to be mixed.  I think today people just aren't fully empowered yet, you know, with the knowledge and with the agency and with the tools they need to really manage their health.Wild success for us means that people, that we're part of this revolution of consumerized healthcare. We're part of the food-as-medicine revolution, the precision nutrition revolution. So we see ourselves coming up with tools that can essentially get amazing experiences in the hands of millions of people.If you can think about a company like Livongo going public with 192,000 patients. Or if you think about everyone that's playing in the metabolic health today, if you put 12 or 13 companies together, maybe they have a million users, or maybe a million and a half users. Where is that compared to 122 million people that have pre-diabetes diabetes and another a hundred million people that are optimizers? They're either wearing a wearable, they belong to a gym, they're on a diet. You have the entire population as your market. And we have very little that has really made a major foray into health. So wild success means having a product that becomes mainstream. Harry Glorikian: So I think what you're saying is January is moving beyond just CGMs and metabolic syndrome, right?Noosheen Hashemi: Absolutely. Yeah, we, we imagine ourselves, we have built an expandable platform. Our goal is to keep doing deep phenotyping. So we will add 'omics  you will see us adding 'omics beyond what we have today. You will see us  get to other cardio-metabolic disease, you know, cardiometabolic disease, essentially going beyond metabolic disease to the rest ofmetabolic syndrome. You'll see us be ahardware-agnostic company. We want to essentially let people wear whatever they want.  Whatever works for them and, and still try to bring that data, synthesize it and make sense of it and feed it back to them so they can take action. Harry Glorikian: Excellent. Well, that's, that's a great way to end the program with. We have so much more to see from the company and what it's going to be able to do with the data and, and, and help  you know, people live a healthier life. Or like I said, with me I'm constantly trying to measure what's going on. It's just distilling it to make it easily consumable to do what I need to do rather than have me learn statistics so that I can figure it out. Noosheen Hashemi: We have to get, all of us need to get better than that. I remember when I first put on my Oura ring, you know, there's, you know, most people  first when they wear their Fitbits, you know, first it was like, how much did I sleep? And then they kind of learned about REM and sort of deep sleep and then slowly. And then Oura came and then it was like, oh, and Whoop had already had heart rate variability, but then, you know, Oura came in with their other markers, you know, restfulness. And efficiency, sleep efficiency and timing, et cetera. And so people are slowly wrapping their heads around this. It takes a little whil. And yes, January gives you a lot of levers. You know, there's fasting, there's fiber, there's calorie management. There's you know, the spikers. There is the activity counterfactuals—I ate this, but had I eaten this other thing, this would have been my glycemic response. Or had I walked X number of minutes after that, this would have been my glycemic response. At the beginning it's a lot, but that's where it goes back to the experience. We must make the experience enjoyable and better, and we must, companies like us should strive to make the experience enjoyable, make them fantastic consumer experiences like Apple products. But remember Apple's 45 years old and we're just getting going with this, But [Apple is] a great role model. Harry Glorikian: Wellyou know, my doctor may not like it, but I may have to get one of these. He's listening to this podcast. I know that he will, because he always comments on them. Noosheen Hashemi: We're definitely doing that. And you know what? You can have Mike Snyder, you can chat with Mike  about your numbers after. That would be a lot of fun.Harry Glorikian: Excellent. Oh, I look forward to it. So thank you so much for participating. Noosheen Hashemi: Thank you, Harry. It was pleasure.Harry Glorikian: That's it for this week's show. You can find past episodes of MoneyBall Medicine at my website, glorikian.com, under the tab “Podcast.” And you can follow me on Twitter at hglorikian.  Thanks for listening, and we'll be back soon with our next interview.

This episode: Newspapers report on scientific studies about microbiomes a fair amount, but certain kinds of studies are more likely than others to show up in the news! Download Episode (5.7 MB, 8.3 minutes) Show notes: Microbe of the episode: Cafeteriavirus-dependent mavirus   Takeaways Research into the human microbiome has generated a lot of interest, even among non-scientists. This is especially true since the beginning of the Human Microbiome Project in 2007. But sometimes things are lost in translation from published studies into general news.   This study is a survey of microbiome studies reported in six different news sources from three different countries, either general news or business news. General news did a better job reporting on different kinds of microbiome studies proportionally, but certain kinds of studies were reported on proportionally more or less frequently than they were published.   Journal Paper: Prados-Bo A, Casino G. 2021. Microbiome research in general and business newspapers: How many microbiome articles are published and which study designs make the news the most? PLOS ONE 16:e0249835. Other interesting stories: Gut microbes in C-section babies can be similar to non-surgical births after several years   Email questions or comments to bacteriofiles at gmail dot com. Thanks for listening! Subscribe: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Android, or RSS. Support the show at Patreon, or check out the show at Twitter or Facebook.

We know that gut health is trending, it's pretty hot right now, right?! Well, tune in to today's episode as Mase explores SIBO with a bonafide SIBO doctor. Small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, it's a deep dive today, exploring what the heck is this actually?! Mason and Dr Nirala cover the nuanced approach required to treating SIBO, exploring why it may be overdiagnosed and other gut symptoms (constipation, food sensitivities and more).   If you've ever traveled to a third world country, got some sort of bug, 'fixed it' and then realised you never truly recovered, then today's episode is for you! (Also, if gut health and immunity are important to you, you are going to love today's episode.) Dive in, here are some of the stuff discussed in today's episode: The nuanced nature of SIBO when compared to irritable bowel syndrome To heal from SIBO, a strategic approach is required, not just a one-size-fits-all What role chronic stress plays in suffering from SIBO How hypothyroidism, mould exposure and other autoimmune diseases are connected to SIBO The misunderstanding around 'reseeding' the gut How the 'breath' test works in diagnosing SIBO Which foods to avoid during SIBO Dr Nirala's dietary treatment plan Dr Nirala covers the three possible treatment plans (herbs, antibiotics, diet) A brief touch on the Blood Type diets   Who is Nirala Jacobi? Dr. Nirala Jacobi, BHSc, ND (USA) graduated from Bastyr University in 1998 with a doctorate in naturopathic medicine. Dr Nirala practiced as a primary care physician in Montana for 7 years before arriving in Australia and is considered one of Australia’s leading experts in the treatment of small intestine bacterial overgrowth (SIBO), a common cause of IBS. Dr Nirala is the medical director for SIBOtest, an online testing service for practitioners. Dr Nirala is so passionate about educating practitioners that she founded “The SIBO Doctor”, an online professional education platform. Dr Nirala lectures nationally and internationally about the assessment and treatment of SIBO and is the host of the popular podcast The SIBO Doctor podcast for practitioners. Dr Nirala is the medical director and senior naturopathic physician at The Biome Clinic, center for functional digestive disorders in Mullumbimby, New South Wales. Dr Nirala is the co-founder of the Australian Naturopathic Summit. When she is not actively researching, seeing patients or lecturing, Dr Nirala can be found enjoying the beauty of nature   Resources: Dr Nirala's Instagram The Human Microbiome Project Dr Nirala's  FREE SIBO Questionnaire The SIBO Success Plan 8 Hour Course SIBO Mastery Program (for practitioners) Visceral Manipulation Barral Institute Feeding Your Microbiome (Dr Nirala Podcast with Dr B) The Blue Zones book Healthy to 100 book Blood Type Diet   Q: How Can I Support The SuperFeast Podcast?   A: Tell all your friends and family and share online! We’d also love it if you could subscribe and review this podcast on iTunes. Or  check us out on Stitcher, CastBox, iHeart RADIO:)! Plus  we're on Spotify!   Check Out The Transcript Here:   Mason: (00:00) Hi, Nirala.   Nirala Jacobi: (00:02) Hi, Mason.   Mason: (00:03) Did I pronounce your name correctly?   Nirala Jacobi: (00:04) You did.   Mason: (00:06) Okay. Nirala Jacobi?   Nirala Jacobi: (00:07) Very good.   Mason: (00:08) Yeah, yay.   Nirala Jacobi: (00:12) Yes.   Mason: (00:13) Okay. Guys, got to do it in person today, which is-   Nirala Jacobi: (00:17) What were the chances of that?   Mason: (00:19) Considering you live in Wilson's Creek, I think they're pretty good. But in terms of the chances of doing it, two people, that's a party but I think that's a legal party at these times, isn't it?   Nirala Jacobi: (00:29) These days, it is.   Mason: (00:31) Oh, pretty legal. Goji is sitting in the room if you hear Goj wrestling around, but dogs don't count. Guys, we're talking about SIBO. We got the SIBO Doctor here. I'm following you on Instagram for, I think, like three years.   Nirala Jacobi: (00:51) Wow. Okay.   Mason: (00:51) Yeah. I've been aware of your work. SIBO has been one of those things I used to say, facetiously, that it got trendy about three years ago in terms of I don't know where you see the mass awareness come about in the naturopathic and medical circles or whether it's even really accepted in the medical circles but, obviously, you would have watched the trend occur and then the mass misdiagnosis and then realisation that we're actually able to test and find out that it is this SIBO, which we'll find out from you what it is. Why did it, all of a sudden, hit mass consciousness? What I see a few years ago anyway.   Nirala Jacobi: (01:42) I'm going to go back nine years. I've been a naturopathic doctor for about 22 years now. I have practised in Montana and saw everything from heart disease to urinary tract infections to actual IBS or irritable bowel syndrome. We had really good result rates, but there was always a subset of patients that just did not improve. Then fast forward nine years ago, I sat in a lecture at one of our conferences and heard about SIBO. It was like a light bulb went on because it explained those cases that just didn't improve with conventional naturopathic approaches even to irritable bowel syndrome.   Nirala Jacobi: (02:27) Then, I started to become an expert in SIBO. I moved here about 15 years ago, Australia, but I became an expert and started lecturing for other supplement companies and to practitioners and started a breath testing company because there was just nothing here at all about SIBO. I think one of the reasons why it has really exponentially grown the interest is if you think that about 11% of the world's industrialised nation has IBS. IBS, according to conventional medical texts and the conventional medical approach, has no real cure.   Nirala Jacobi: (03:18) To find something that actually is the cause of IBS that is so profoundly responsive to treatment, I think, really gave hope to a lot of people. Now, of course, with that comes the fact that SIBO is often, as you mentioned, I do think there is an element of overdiagnosis. Everybody just basically treats according to the symptoms, which is not what I recommend at all. Because in that case, you can use antimicrobials and things like that for far too long.   Nirala Jacobi: (03:53) I think it has to do with the fact that there really wasn't other options for people. They really improved when they began to treat SIBO, or I saw a dramatic improvement in my patients when we finally treated the cause rather than just giving probiotics and giving fibre and giving all of the stuff that we know how to do, and people were actually getting worse, not better with those approaches. That was really my journey into this.   Mason: (04:22) That was probably about a time when I think naturopathic medicine got a little bit more integrated even. There were all these different pockets. All of a sudden, naturopaths, even though they were specialising in particular areas, became aware of just all these different specialisations, became I did say trendy for that reason, because it was about the end of that era where people were really trusting health coaches who would read up about the symptoms of SIBO and, therefore, put their clients onto an antimicrobial or whatever it was and just flying blind. You've got the breath test of your business where I see it's like if you're in Chinese medicine, you are doing pulse and tongue and the questions diagnosis. If you're in naturopathic medicine, you need that testing most of the time, I'd imagine.   Nirala Jacobi: (05:25) Yeah. I'm a gastrointestinal specialist. I don't just do SIBO. I specialise in functional gastrointestinal disorders, so I do a number of tests. This, I think, is a big shortcoming of practitioners where they consider the finances of ordering a test for a patient. I always tell practitioners that I teach, "You're not their accountant. You don't know if they want to test or not want to test, but it's your job to give them the best options and the diagnosis," because if you're just reading, you're not going to get better because SIBO is a really distinct condition that requires a really strategic approach. There's different kinds of SIBO.   Mason: (06:10) That's always what happens. Yeah. It's the same with PCOS or whatever it is. There's different arms. Obviously, there's different sources. There's mainly four major causes, is that right?   Nirala Jacobi: (06:25) There's four major groups of causes.   Mason: (06:27) Okay, okay.   Nirala Jacobi: (06:29) But maybe what we should do is backtrack and really define what SIBO is, right?   Mason: (06:33) Yeah, good idea. Well leading, you can tell you have a podcast.   Nirala Jacobi: (06:35) Yeah. All right. Let's talk about ... so that people can really understand that it's not just bacterial overgrowth, and as soon as you kill the bacteria, boom, that's it, you're cured. In some instances, that's the case, but it's actually the exception rather than the norm. But SIBO stands for small intestinal bacterial overgrowth. It's a condition where bacteria that are typically usually found in the large intestine are, for some reason, found in the small intestine.   Nirala Jacobi: (07:03) Now, the surface area of your small intestine is about the surface area of a double tennis court. Imagine having a massive bacterial overgrowth right where you absorb your nutrients, where you release your enzymes, where you do all of these different important digestive functions and, all of a sudden, that surface area is just chock-a-block with bacteria. These bacteria ferment the food that you're eating into hydrogen gas. There's a group of bacteria or a phylum called proteobacteria. The main gram-negative bacteria in that group are Klebsiella, Proteus, E. coli, those types of bacteria that are the biggest culprit for causing SIBO.   Nirala Jacobi: (07:47) Why is this happening? This is how we get into the underlying causes. I think one of the main driving cause of SIBO is, imagine you've gone to Bali, you had a case of food poisoning, or if your listener is in America, you've gone somewhere else and you had food poisoning. You came home, it resolved, but then you still have ongoing digestive symptoms. Actually, over time, they become worse, you go to the doctor, they diagnose you with IBS. That is the classic scenario.   Nirala Jacobi: (08:19) What happens there is the bacteria that caused the food poisoning are not the bacteria that are causing SIBO, but they're the bacteria that are damaging to the enteric nervous system, which is really the motility, the brain of your gut. You are meant to have this innate ability to clear bacteria from the upper gut, because the body doesn't want them there. You're supposed to sweep them all towards the small intestine. When you've had a case of food poisoning that results in this damage, you actually cannot effectively clear these bacteria from your upper gut.   Mason: (08:55) What is it that's affected in the small intestine and it stops you from having the motility to move it out?   Nirala Jacobi: (09:03) This part of the nervous system is called the migrating motor complex. It's a part of the enteric nervous system. Enteric just means digestive or your gut. It's basically the brain in the gut. This particular section of the small intestine is meant to clear these bacteria out every 90 minutes on an empty stomach. Imagine that you've had this food poisoning and it damaged that section or that particular part of what clears the gut out in the upper gut.   Nirala Jacobi: (09:32) That actually can be tested with a blood test. We're trying to get it to Australia. Because of COVID, we've had some issues. But we do want to offer this test for people to test for these antibodies, because if you know that's the cause, the proper treatment for SIBO for you would be to have antimicrobials, whether that's the conventional antibiotics that are indicated for this or herbs. Then you must follow it up with something called a prokinetic, which is a medicine that aims to reset this migrating motor complex. That's probably the biggest group of people that have this as an underlying cause.   Nirala Jacobi: (10:10) But then you also have people that just were totally stressed out for a long time. Chronic stress, as you probably have discussed this before, causes you to be in this chronic fight or flight. If you're in chronic fight or flight, you're not in rest and digest, it turns off your digestion. These natural antibiotic fluids, like hydrochloric acid, bile, digestive enzymes that are meant to kill bacteria are very poorly produced and, therefore, you suffer not just from maldigestion, but then also bacterial overgrowth. That's a different kind of cause of SIBO that then wouldn't necessarily require the prokinetics.   Mason: (10:50) Like a stealthy, slow-grown...   Nirala Jacobi: (10:54) Yeah, yeah.   Mason: (10:54) I like that you're just actually bringing up those antibacterial fluids. I was going to ask you, and you did it straight away.   Nirala Jacobi: (11:04) Yeah. Then the other one, there's more, the fourth group ... The first one would be a matter of a problem with motility. That is not just this, what we call, post-infectious IBS. It can also be hypothyroidism, other autoimmune diseases, mould exposure. All kinds of things can cause this problem with motility. Then you have these digestive factors, and not a big one because a lot of people don't think about this, but previous abdominal surgery that causes scar tissue known as adhesions that actually attach to the small intestine in the abdominal cavity and cause like a kink in the garden hose. That prevents bacteria from leaving the small intestine. Also for that, you would need prokinetics. You can see how it's so much more intricate than just, "Here are some antibiotics," or "Here's berberine and here's Allimax."   Nirala Jacobi: (11:59) One last thing I'll say about SIBO before the next question is that there are two groups. I've mentioned the proteobacteria that produce hydrogen. There's another group of ancient organisms. They probably live on Mars, too. Honestly, they're like extremophiles. They live on the bottom of the ocean. There are these ancient archaea. They're not even bacteria. They produce methane. Methane, we know, causes constipation. If you're somebody that's been diagnosed with SIBO methane or SIBO-C or SIBO constipation, it's likely that your methane is high. That's a different kind of treatment. That's starting to be thought of as actually a separate condition. That's advanced SIBO discussion.   Mason: (12:46) I like that. We always got this travelling of these bacteria up through the ... Is it the ileocecal valve?   Nirala Jacobi: (12:55) Ileocecal valve.   Mason: (12:57) Ileocecal valve. Is that a constant occurrence of reality?   Nirala Jacobi: (13:00) No.   Mason: (13:00) No?   Nirala Jacobi: (13:01) No, that is not how it happens. These bacteria, they are normal in very, very small amounts. Nothing in your body is really sterile. Nothing really, even though we think it is, but it's not really.   Mason: (13:17) But we've been told it is.   Nirala Jacobi: (13:17) Yes, exactly.   Mason: (13:17) Programmed.   Nirala Jacobi: (13:18) Yeah. It's like modern medicine at the time thought that's what it was, but it turns out that one of the most famous bacteria that survives the stomach is H. pylori. We know it can survive very well there. But you have maybe 1,000 bacteria or colony-forming unit per mil in the upper gut, just below the stomach, the duodenum. Then as you progress towards the large intestine, actually, the diversity and the sheer number of bacteria increases. That's normal.   Nirala Jacobi: (14:00) These bacteria, even though gram-negatives that cause SIBO, are actually not pathogens. They're called pathobionts. Pathobionts are organisms that you normally find in low amounts. But when they get overgrown, they become pathogenic. I often tell people, my patients, I say, "Your gut is like a white supremacists neighbourhood. It's just one kind of bacteria, and you need diversity and you need low numbers of those organisms." That's what we're aiming for.   Mason: (14:36) There's, I guess, an as above, so below, we've sterilised everything in our environment, in our house, and we have low bacterial biodiversity there, we're going to see low bacterial biodiversity internally. Is there a particular macro or even micronutrient cycles that that gram-negative bacteria ... What did you say? What was the group?   Nirala Jacobi: (15:02) The group is called proteobacteria.   Mason: (15:03) Proteobacteria. Is there anything that would feed them excessively?   Nirala Jacobi: (15:08) No, it's basically food. Those bacteria are usually found in higher amounts in the large intestine. They're normal there. A pathobiont becomes problematic when it outgrows its environment or the other bacteria in that location. They've actually just did a microbiome assessment study on the small intestine. I think the other reason, just to briefly sidetrack to get back to your first question, why is this such a big deal now, is because we know so much more.   Nirala Jacobi: (15:44) The Human Microbiome Project that's undergoing, it's like discovering the universe, because what happened before we were able to actually understand what was happening in the small intestine, we couldn't culture out these organisms because they would die. They were anaerobes. They couldn't be cultured out. Now that we have this different technology that uses RNA and DNA, we can understand far more. Now we actually understand the normal microbiome of the small intestine a lot more. It's totally fascinating to be in this field of microbiome research.   Mason: (16:26) Of the large intestine bacterial testing and analysis of the biome, testing has got a little bit more efficacy with that, is that right?   Nirala Jacobi: (16:33) Oh, way more.   Mason: (16:34) Way more?   Nirala Jacobi: (16:36) Way more, because it used to be culture-based, it turns out it's like fairy dust of what actually is in the large intestine as a representation of the ... We know about Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium. That is literally just 2% to 5% of your entire microbiome. There are so many more species that do fascinating things.   Mason: (16:59) We've had the chat on the podcast a couple of times of why just throwing a probiotic in the gut is ... Quite often, you can get a little bit more sophisticated.   Nirala Jacobi: (17:09) I think we're at that place now where ... I'm somebody who used to just do a probiotic. "Yeah, just a couple of Bifido, couple of Lacto, you're good." But now, I'm way more strain-specific. I would use Bifidobacterium lactis HN019 if you're constipated. I'm not going to necessarily give a whole combination of products, or I give you Lactobacillus rhamnosus if you have leaky gut and eczema, for example. It's a lot more fun now than it used to be.   Mason: (17:46) Yeah, I can imagine. It's like rather than just having your shotgun, you got the Men in Black chamber. You walk and there's all different types of guns and grenades all over the wall, but in a more life-giving kind of ... Like a seed gun.   Nirala Jacobi: (18:01) I like that. Actually, this brings up a really important point, is that even when I went to naturopathic medical school, it was taught to us that we could reseed the gut. Remember that?   Mason: (18:15) Mm-hmm (affirmative).   Nirala Jacobi: (18:15) We cannot do that. These Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium, they are response modifiers. They actually do something that is not involving reseeding. If you've lost a lot of your native species because you were on chronic antibiotics for acne, or Lyme disease, or whatever that may be, if you've lost a lot of your species or have really reduced them, probiotics will not reseed what you've lost. You can't do that. It's a really important point because some practitioners still preach this method, but I had to really switch my thinking. I tell my patients, "I'm going to give you this probiotic for this symptom. I'm not going to give it to you because you're reseeding." You can't do that. Not if it's 5% or 2% of the gut.   Mason: (19:01) In terms of it being for the symptoms specifically, is that because the probiotic is able to do it like having a short-term effect within the gut and then it's on its way?   Nirala Jacobi: (19:11) Yes, exactly. Exactly. That's what probiotic research is really good at, is seeing what symptoms a particular strain can alleviate.   Mason: (19:24) Obviously, we've touched that medication and antibiotics can be another reason why we could lead to SIBO and IBS.   Nirala Jacobi: (19:33) Medications like proton pump inhibitors that stop stomach acid, there's some debate whether or not, but I have seen people definitely have a problem with SIBO after using chronically proton pump inhibitors, and others that are more slowing the gut down. Medications like opiates and things like that, morphine will really slow it down. But then that's pretty temporary, you're not going to see chronic SIBO with that.   Mason: (20:05) Yeah. The stress factor, you're looking at a combination, mould exposure, stress, and antibiotic here and there, it's kind of a cocktail of reasons, I imagine.   Nirala Jacobi: (20:18) This is always the overwhelming part for people. It's like, "Oh, my God, where do I even begin?" But this is where a really skilled practitioner can ... I actually have a questionnaire that you can get on thesibodoctor.com. That is a questionnaire about finding the cause for SIBO. You can download it, it's free, as is the diet that I've devised for SIBO. You can take that to your practitioner and it can whittle it down to what the possible causes are. It goes through these four groups of causes.   Mason: (20:52) That's cool. Something that I really like about your approach is I'm hearing just on your website right here, you've got the patient course, practitioner course. Obviously, you're a practitioner and you've got a focus on the patient being able to understand it and get to the source themselves, getting, for lack of a better word, empowered around it, getting informed, and then bridging the way that they can then take that questionnaire and they can create a dialogue between them and their practitioner.   Mason: (21:25) It's something we always ... You go there automatically. It's why I like your work. It's something we always try to do and talk about on the podcast when we're chatting with practitioners as well, because it diffuses it. You've even got great resources there of like once you've treated yourself, how are you going to stay out of that practitioner office, which it's overlooked quite heavily. I don't know what your thoughts are on that.   Nirala Jacobi: (21:49) The SIBO Success Plan, which is the patient course, it's an eight-hour course that goes through everything from leaky gut to all these different things, it really was born out of a necessity. In a perfect world, everybody would have a practitioner that is SIBO savvy that can nail this thing for you. But I got calls from people or emails from people in Finland and from all over the world that just said, "There's no one here. No one can help me." This is the course that really had to be made for people like that. They don't have a practitioner.   Mason: (22:26) You go straight to sibodoctor.com/sibo-success-plan/. So good. Eight hours?   Nirala Jacobi: (22:35) It's eight hours because it's eight modules. One of the reasons I shouldn't say I love SIBO, because SIBO is a medical condition, but if a practitioner is listening to this, if you can master SIBO, you got the gut down. You understand practically most of the things that can go wrong with the gut, bearing in mind that there are other issues that are more anatomical problems and stuff.   Nirala Jacobi: (23:06) But everything from, like I mentioned, leaky gut, the effects of stress on the gut, what to do when you're constipated, how to help yourself with different home treatments, I have an online dispensary guide that guides you through all the major products that are out there that are for SIBO, and pros and cons and stuff like that, and food sensitivities, histamine intolerance, salicylates, oxalates, SIFO. SIFO is small intestine fungal overgrowth, which often accompanies SIBO. There's a lot there that I had to cover to really make it comprehensive for people.   Mason: (23:46) Do you do a leaky gut analysis on a patient as well? Is there always going to be a presence of SIBO and therefore-   Nirala Jacobi: (23:55) Not always. No.   Mason: (23:57) No?   Nirala Jacobi: (23:57) The thing is SIBO can cause leaky gut.   Mason: (24:00) Can cause... Right.   Nirala Jacobi: (24:00) But just because you have leaky gut doesn't mean you have SIBO. But it is a major cause of it. They've even done research on, all right, well, one month after clearing SIBO, the intestinal permeability was also resolved. If you have the wherewithal and the fortitude to get rid of SIBO, then you can also get rid of leaky gut.   Mason: (24:24) I think it's important that you said you do love SIBO because it's, as I mentioned before in the podcast, we're at that point where my mum, she's nine years post-aneurysm, 24-hour care, in a wheelchair all the time. We've done well to keep her off medications and keep her going well, but it's just this bloating that's been there and it finally got to the point where we're like, "Right, we got to test for SIBO," and so we've got there. We're doing the breath test thing. Is it five days?   Nirala Jacobi: (24:52) No, it depends on if you're constipated.   Mason: (24:55) All right.   Nirala Jacobi: (24:55) If you're constipated, it's a 48-hour prep for this test because what we want to do is have bacterial fermentation really down, really reduced before you then start the test, which is a three-hour test where, first, you get up in the morning, you drink this very sugary drink. That's a prebiotic substance that promotes the growth of those bacteria that you've starved over the past two days, one or two days. Then you're measuring your breath every 20 minutes. If we see a rise of hydrogen or methane before 90 minutes, that's the window of SIBO.   Mason: (25:36) Yeah. If you get the methane, then we're going into that real nerdy, new sector of SIBO. Is that right?   Nirala Jacobi: (25:46) Yeah. [Laughing].   Mason: (25:47) For that instance, my stepdad, he's managing that and he's just looking at like, "All right, test, okay, we can handle it," and trying to get a bunch of carers to all unite and align on that and then looking at having the management of the diet. I think the SIBO diet is the thing. That's why I say I appreciate you saying that you love SIBO because ... But I am curious when you're approaching, how do you keep the excitement up with your patients when you're-   Nirala Jacobi: (26:21) That's a really good question. I think that even just this morning, I spoke with somebody who has been ill for so long, and I'm not saying that just curing her SIBO is going to be the be-all, end-all. People are complicated. There's no one approach to it. You can have somebody who has childhood trauma. We know from studies that even childhood trauma can cause what they call adverse childhood events. It can cause a major shift in the microbiome, for example.   Nirala Jacobi: (26:53) You can have somebody like that that you work with in finding a good practitioner around trauma and regulating their own nervous system. Then you have somebody who just discovered that their house was full of mould, or you have somebody who has an autoimmune disorder or chronic viral infection. It always is different presentations. It forced me to really become really good at all these different conditions, and that's why I think if you can really not just look at SIBO, but the underlying causes for me is where it's really at where I continue to learn also.   Mason: (27:32) Yeah. I guess that's the exciting part, is knowing that you're not just going to have another random go at figuring out what's wrong with you, but you're actually ticking things off to be like, "Look, if it's not this, great. We know it's not this. We know it's not this. We know it's not moulds. That means you're getting closer." I think just the trouble is finding a good practitioner.   Nirala Jacobi: (27:56) We have an answer for that. On thesibodoctor.com, we have also the SIBO Mastery Program for practitioners. After they've completed all three levels, they're eligible to be listed free as a SIBO doctor approved practitioner, so all the people that are listed in there. We had to purge a whole bunch. We had to start fresh from scratch this January. As we go along, this list will get bigger and bigger, but they all have taken these very extensive training courses that covers all of these topics. I think you're pretty safe. A lot of them do Zoom calls. I will say that. Nowadays, we're forced to do more and more virtually.   Mason: (28:37) Which is amazing.   Nirala Jacobi: (28:39) It's amazing. It has its drawbacks. I do, as a practitioner, a hands-on practitioner that does physical assessment and certain manoeuvres, I miss that part but-   Mason: (28:50) Can you explain what the physical assessment and manoeuvres are?   Nirala Jacobi: (28:54) In America, we're trained like physicians. We're actually like naturopathic GPs, if you will. We're trained in physical exams. I always enjoyed that part of my practise, too. Some people have things like the ileocecal valve problem, which is the valve between the small and the large intestine and it can be stuck open, and then you have this backflow problem with bacteria. You can easily manipulate that with using different manoeuvres, or the hiatal hernia manoeuvre, which is part of the stomach moving into the thorax. It's those kinds of things, as well as physical exam and stuff like that. You get a lot of information from looking at somebody's body, for sure.   Mason: (29:39) Yeah, 100%. I can get the drawback, if we can get back to getting in-person as much as possible, great. Otherwise, if you're in Finland and you don't have a practitioner, "Oh, well, that's wonderful."   Nirala Jacobi: (29:49) Honestly, well, 90% of my practise is virtual, and then sometimes I'm like, "Okay, stand up, lift your shirt, press there." That will have the work.   Mason: (29:58) Yeah, you do what you have to do.   Nirala Jacobi: (29:59) Yeah.   Mason: (29:59) Do you ever recommend for people to be physically manipulating their own gut with massage as treatment?   Nirala Jacobi: (30:07) That's a great question because let's hypothetically say ... Well, let me rephrase it. Yes, if it's for just the ileocecal valve. I do have a little video on my Facebook page, The SIBO Doctor, where I go through how to do it, how to actually release the ileocecal valve yourself. It's not going to be as great as when a trained practitioner does it, but it's good. The massaging of the gut, let's hypothetically say that you're a patient that's listening to this and you're like, "Oh yeah, I may have SIBO."   Nirala Jacobi: (30:45) You may have had abdominal surgery for things like you may have had caesarian or you may have had your appendix out or you may have your gallbladder out or the myriad of other things that would be considered routine surgeries, and you have adhesions. That is not a good thing to massage your own belly because it can trigger more scar tissue formation, but light touch, we're just talking light touch. For that scenario, I usually refer to a visceral manipulation practitioner.   Mason: (31:17) What's that?   Nirala Jacobi: (31:19) Visceral manipulation, so the viscera are the organ up in the abdomen. It's extremely light touch but they are trained to actually feel the rhythms of these organs. Don't ask me what that is.   Mason: (31:31) Actually, Tahnee, my fiancée, she's a Chi Nei Tsang practitioner. Do you know that? It's Daoist abdominal massage.   Nirala Jacobi: (31:37) Oh, okay. Yeah.   Mason: (31:38) We've talked a little bit about it. I was wondering whether that's what you were talking about.   Nirala Jacobi: (31:41) Right. No. Visceral manipulation, as far as I know, there's a group from The Barral Institute and they have a very specific technique to very gently break down scar tissue or break up scar tissue.   Mason: (31:58) Okay. That's good to get that resource because there's people listening to the podcast, like Tahnee's not practising and she gets asked a lot about doing abdominal massage, so to be able to tune in with another group of practitioners that are doing this I think will help a lot of people. All right. Well, that's going to be in the show notes, gang. When we do get to treatment and, obviously, the dietary charts, there's different phases of healing of SIBO?   Nirala Jacobi: (32:27) No, so what happened is, okay, so in a nutshell, the food that promotes or that feeds the bacteria are foods that are high in fibre. That makes sense. Those are healthy foods that feed our own microbiome. That's why we want to eat them. In a case of SIBO, the bacteria are like miles further up so they're fermenting in the wrong place, and so you want to minimise those foods. Those foods are known as from FODMAPs, so Fermentable Oligosaccharides, Disaccharides, Monosaccharides, and Polyols. Did I miss it all? Did we miss one? Anyways, so these are fermentable fibres.   Mason: (33:06) Forgot the A?   Nirala Jacobi: (33:09) And.   Mason: (33:09) Oh, okay.   Nirala Jacobi: (33:13) I know, right? Those are the foods that typically are to be avoided when you suffer from SIBO. What I did is I took that diet from Monash. Fantastic work that they did over there to really pinpoint this. Before then, we didn't really know. I took that and put my own spin on it because I found even with that, people were reacting. I made it more restrictive, also added in SCD stuff and that type of thing, because I'm a very structured person and I don't like wishy-washy, vague treatment plans, and so I needed to structure it for myself.   Nirala Jacobi: (33:49) What I found is that I got very good results by having a diet that was in two phases. Then I called it the bi-phasic diet. Phase one was the most restrictive part where you have almost no grains and no fruit and really the high-fermenting foods, and you are basically getting tested for SIBO and you're waiting for your test result. I was already seeing dramatic improvement by the time they came back and yes, indeed, the test says it's SIBO, so then we initiated antimicrobials. That then prevented a massive die-off reaction of just throwing in antimicrobials in a system that was still really activated.   Mason: (34:33) Okay. You've got them going for, what, a couple of weeks now?   Nirala Jacobi: (34:35) A couple weeks, yeah. Yeah. I really did it for practitioners so that they could also tailor it. It still has different food ... Some people are very sensitive to histamines when they have SIBO, and that means no fermented foods, so no sauerkraut, those kinds of-   Mason: (34:55) That was very confusing for people, I think, about 10 years ago when capers and sauerkraut and body ecology diet and all that were going off real big time, and then some people will just get these intense levels of bloating every time they'd eat sauerkraut and kimchis and they wouldn't get it. They're like, "What's going on? This is a healthy food."   Nirala Jacobi: (35:14) "Persist. Persist. Keep it up. It's just your body detoxing." No, it's your body reacting.   Mason: (35:18) Yeah. Herxing became the ultimate. Just, "Oh, it's just a Herx."   Nirala Jacobi: (35:20) Yeah, yeah. Exactly.   Mason: (35:24) Is that normally enough to reduce the die-off from being too hard for someone just recently getting on the diet for a couple of weeks?   Nirala Jacobi: (35:32) It depends. The other thing is if somebody's really constipated, I don't start antimicrobials until at least even with the aid of magnesium oxide or something, I get their bowels moving, because if you add in antimicrobials in a really constipated system, you really are begging for a Herxheimer reaction because the river is not flowing, there's algae growing, it's muddy, it's not moving, it cannot clear out these toxins. I get the system ready before I add in antimicrobials.   Mason: (36:06) That's the most important part, is getting the river flowing.   Nirala Jacobi: (36:11) If you're constipated.   Mason: (36:11) If you're constipated.   Nirala Jacobi: (36:12) Yeah, I would say that that's often when people feel really horrible, when they start something like that and it's just not working. It's ironic because with these archaea or these methanogens as we call them, these organisms that produce methane, once it's actually reduced by the help of antimicrobials, you can expect that the bowel returns to normal, but you can't expect it if you're using some form of garlic extract to combat your methanogens. It will take you a couple of months, or if not longer, to really reduce that level to such an extent that you can have spontaneous bowel movements.   Mason: (36:53) What antimicrobials are you normally using?   Nirala Jacobi: (36:57) When we talk about treatment, there's three kinds. You have your herbs. You have your conventional antibiotics, and these are very specific antibiotics that are not for ear infections or sinusitis. Then you have a third treatment called the elemental diet. Herbs are usually berberine-containing plants, some essential oils like oregano, clove, those kinds of things. There's a bunch of herbs that I use and an extract or a low-fructans kind of garlic. Garlic typically is a FODMAP food, but if we use it with a high-allicine content, we can use quite a lot of it without a problem for these archaea, and we know that they're really effective for that. Then when you look at antibiotics, you're looking at rifaximin, which is a type of antibiotic that stays in the small intestine, doesn't get absorbed, and it's bile-soluble so it works in that perfect environment.   Mason: (37:57) Like the way doxycycline works, I think.   Nirala Jacobi: (38:00) No, doxy is way more broader and you will absorb some of that. Rifaximin is not absorbed. It stays in the upper gut. Then you have neomycin for the methanogens. Some people use metronidazole or Flagyl, and I shy away from that because I think as practitioners, we're the custodians of our patient's microbiome and we have to really respect that. Some people, I have seen some shocking microbiomes, let me tell you, by just looking at stool tests and things like that. Stool tests will not give you any information about the small intestine but, very often, it's not like it's only in the small intestine. Problems continue on with the large intestine.   Mason: (38:44) You're going to have an overgrowth most likely in the large intestine?   Nirala Jacobi: (38:45) Yeah. I've seen microbiomes that are completely denuded, like a clear-cut rainforest, and you're trying to regrow it and no wonder they're so reactive. You had actually mentioned my last podcast guest on my show was the guy who wrote Fibre Fueled, Dr. B., Dr. Will B.   Mason: (39:10) Dr. Will B. Yeah, that's what I call him instead of [mumbling].   Nirala Jacobi: (39:11) Bulsiewicz. I think it's Bulsiewicz.   Mason: (39:15) Yeah, I can never... We were in Arizona.   Nirala Jacobi: (39:19) Oh, right.   Mason: (39:20) I met him at the mindbodygreen weekend. We had a we called it dads gone wild night...   Nirala Jacobi: (39:28) Oh, do tell. Do tell.   Mason: (39:29) Yeah, it wasn't that exciting. It was just me, the DJ, and Dr. B just having chats about the gut and veganism and getting on the gluten-free beers.   Nirala Jacobi: (39:44) All right. That sounds like a hell of a party.   Mason: (39:49) Yeah, it actually was. I think tequila made its way at some point, which is wonderful.   Nirala Jacobi: (39:54) You were in Arizona after all.   Mason: (39:55) Exactly.   Nirala Jacobi: (39:56) Anyway, I really appreciated having him on the show because here he was, a gastroenterologist, epidemiologist, highly, highly trained specialist, and he had a sort of "Come to Jesus" moment when he really started to study the microbiome and started to work on it for himself. Now, he's like a complete convert about protecting the microbiome and regrowing it. I just think he's done a really good job with that book.   Mason: (40:25) Is that where his book is coming from? From that angle or-   Nirala Jacobi: (40:28) Fibre Fueled, yeah. I'm not his publicist, but I have the book and I read it and it's pretty good. Half the book is recipes, so vegan recipes, and how to regrow it. One word of caution, don't start with SIBO with that. We had this conversation. You can listen in on The SIBO Doctor podcast if you want to listen to the Feeding Your Microbiome. That shift is slowly happening. There's a lot more respect for the microbiome. I know of a lot of physicians who look back on medicine, on what it's done with antibiotics with real regret of like this was the wrong thing to do to just prescribe amoxicillin for every child's ear infection, or to prescribe for sinusitis, for these types of things. Still, to this day, it's happening day in, day out not just here but across the world where it's just way over prescribed, and it will catch up with you.   Mason: (41:33) It's an important part of any practitioner's arsenal to be able to reflect on what they're doing and not be too concrete and make sure you don't have too much morality and judgement of yourself if you did just follow the doctrine at the time, but make sure you've got the capacity to... motility to actually move on to what's important, because I know I wasn't really up on the conversation on testing the microbiome and I think we were chatting about that.   Mason: (42:01) Since then, I've got a naturopathic friend who he's basically moved a huge amount of his practise over to testing the microbiome and talking about how it takes out a lot of the guesswork, not only is it the antibiotics and seeing exactly the effect that they're having, which is great as well because you know what you've wiped out, but just dietarily as well, if it's vegan, high-carb, if it's carnivore or just high ... Whatever it is.   Nirala Jacobi: (42:32) Yeah, carnivore, I would never promote. Never because it is so hard on the microbiome. It just is. That's basically just meat, and unless you live in countries where, for centuries, that's what you did and I just ... Anyways, that's digressing but they are, and we agreed on that. We totally agreed that most diets, really if it already has a diet, then it's a fad mostly. What we know is where people live the longest and, to me, that's evidence and that's the Blue Zones.   Nirala Jacobi: (43:14) That's Dan Buettner's work. He wrote a book called the Blue Zones where people lived to be the oldest in the world, fully functional, still doing their daily work, very cognitively attentive, and very happy. There were seven hotspots in the world. They all had different things, but what they all had in common was 80% plant-based diet. For me, I'd go by that. I'd go by that. If people do well on veganism, then do that because the more plants you can eat, the more diverse your bacterial blueprint will be.   Mason: (43:56) That's always with the Blue Zones. Yeah, I first heard about it ... The book I got was Healthy Till 100, I believe it was. That book included a couple of other places. I'll put it in the show notes, guys, the scientifically proven secrets of, I think, the world's longest living people. Vilcabamba was in there in Ecuador, which I think isn't in there with Dan's work but, otherwise, it's like Okinawa, Sardinia.   Nirala Jacobi: (44:26) Yeah, and Loma Linda which is like eating processed vegetarian food.   Mason: (44:33) I think that their faith gets involved.   Nirala Jacobi: (44:33) Yeah, I don't know, but they got there in there, Sardinia.   Mason: (44:37) Maybe they're just right.   Nirala Jacobi: (44:38) Maybe. Well, who knows?   Mason: (44:40) Maybe their prayers are just better than health.   Nirala Jacobi: (44:41) Yeah, respect Loma Linda, California.   Mason: (44:44) Oh, that's right, John Robbins was the author of that book I was talking about. I like him. He balances out, because I think the thing with Dan's work which always I'm like, "So good," then he's like ... because I'm only talking about his behalf and it's like because it's 80% to 90% plant food and then 100% is the obvious conclusion, which I don't find to be the obvious conclusion.   Nirala Jacobi: (45:09) No, because I think and I will say if you look at the standard bi-phasic diet just to keep it in the SIBO spectrum, the standard bi-phasic diet is very animal protein heavy. Then I created a vegetarian bi-phasic diet, which is very amenable to vegans, and it's not just about taking the meat. That was a lot of work that I co-authored that with our clinical nutritionist, Anne Criner, here at our clinic. Then we have a third one which is the histamine bi-phasic. But there is something.   Nirala Jacobi: (45:41) A lot of people have tried veganism and it's just like, constitutionally, they just couldn't do it. I don't know what the answer is for those people because there are some people that just they get weak. Dr. B would probably argue that he thinks that everybody can live like ... I think, I shouldn't speak for him, but I don't know. I find that everybody is a bit different.   Mason: (46:09) Yeah, I'm with you as well. I find if you take one part of the body and solely focus on it, same if you're only focusing on the large intestine and the microbiome and not cellular, in particular cellular markers, then I can see how it would be really easy to justify a vegan diet. I was vegan and raw foodist for quite a while and then moved away from that direction and just was really questioning my need to eat a certain amount of domesticated vegetable and fruit matter.   Mason: (46:46) Then once I got back into the microbiome, I've really come to peace and to terms with the fact that, "No, you know what, that's ..." I was really rocking. I was rocking with that majority of my well-being, and even moving back into lentils and legumes and beans, which had a huge chip on my shoulder about. But then just staying open to ensuring there's potentially ... Like in the Blue Zones, meats are normally a side dish, and I like that.   Nirala Jacobi: (47:15) Yeah. I do, too. I know myself, I haven't eaten red meat in 40 years probably but I eat chicken occasionally. That's my one and only animal that I eat because also the carbon footprint. It's whole 'nother conversation, Mason. Nothing to do with SIBO. But in a nutshell, the diet is a therapeutic diet. It's not a stay-on-it forever diet.   Mason: (47:40) Greaaaaat distinction. I'm going to have to get excited about the diet. I'm going to have to get my mum, because I'll let you all know how. Maybe if I can have a chat again, get you back on here after, I'm going to use all your resources, all the listeners are going to ... I'll keep you in the loop of where mum's at, especially.   Nirala Jacobi: (48:02) Sure.   Mason: (48:03) Yeah, I'll let you know on an intro at some point where she comes back with in the test. If it's positive, then we'll go on that journey together. With meat and impact. Have you tried a wild, invasive deer or anything from around here. It's like-   Nirala Jacobi: (48:21) No, but I'm not opposed to it. I trust my body and I just have no affinity towards those things. Red meat, just no.   Mason: (48:35) Yeah, that's fair enough.   Nirala Jacobi: (48:38) We're really covering a lot of ground, but there's something about the whole blood type thing that I can tell you as a practitioner, that's been nearly a quarter of a century in practise that there's something about that. Blood type As tend to have a little bit harder time with digesting animal protein.   Mason: (48:58) Is that just going back to the classic book, The Blood Type Diet?   Nirala Jacobi: (49:02) Dr. D'Adamo.   Mason: (49:03) Yeah, D'Adamo. That's right.   Nirala Jacobi: (49:06) Yeah. Look, it's still got work to do, but I think there's elements that I certainly have seen be proved in practise. For me, I don't just need theories, I actually need evidence. For me, evidentially, I have seen that in practise, that people that are blood type O, they fade sometimes on a vegan diet because I don't know. I never got so fully into it that I can rattle off the science right now, but it has to do with rhesus factor and different ... Well, the theory was really that when we originated ... See, an evolution story.   Nirala Jacobi: (49:47) When we originated in Africa, everybody was blood type O because you needed to be able to eat dead animals and stuff. You had a very forgiving type of blood type that was not very reactive. Then as we moved north and into Europe, it wasn't really economical to eat your animals, and so you became more farmers and started to grow things, and that was blood type A. Then as you move further north, you had natural refrigeration, and that was the AB type or the B type, which can handle dairy really well. That's the theory anyways. I can tell you that much.   Mason: (50:22) It's a good theory.   Nirala Jacobi: (50:23) It's a good theory.   Mason: (50:23) That was always the thing with The Blood Type Diet.   Nirala Jacobi: (50:26) It checks out.   Mason: (50:27) It checks out. I remember The Blood Type Diet was a funny one because every practitioner I've talked to has said there is something to this-   Nirala Jacobi: (50:35) Yeah, there's something to it.   Mason: (50:36) But the science was never rock solid so it was open for criticism, yet anecdotally, it was on point. I love it. It's good to know. It's good to go into that world because as soon as you get into, as you said, you made that decision, it's why it's hard sometimes to listen to a practitioner talk about diet long-term because you know that the mindset is based on healing. Then as you said, this is a healing-   Nirala Jacobi: (51:03) Therapeutic.   Mason: (51:03) Therapeutic diet. Huge distinction because, otherwise, you stay in a "I'm sick" mentality long-term.   Nirala Jacobi: (51:11) Right. Look, I always tell my patients when you travel ... Well, it's a different world now, but if you were going to see Paris, I don't want you on this diet. I want you to eat baguette and dip it in the cafe au lait. I want you to eat things that you enjoy. Most of the time, when people travelling and they suffer from food sensitivity, it actually miraculously goes away. Of course, celiac disease is a different story, but there is this element of you just having just more endorphins and your secretory IgA goes up and all of that, and people can tolerate a lot of foods that they would not normally tolerate in a happy setting and a happy live-your-life, I want you to drink wine if you're in Italy. Why restrict ourselves to this myopic thinking, it has to look this way?   Mason: (52:03) It's refreshing. I like the way that you're bridging over there. It's something that I've always liked about your accessible approach because it's like bridge into what's actually going on and then I'm going to see your bridge out over there to live your life because, obviously, people do get addicted to being sick and something being wrong and then the fear of if I do something outside of the therapeutic-   Nirala Jacobi: (52:23) There's a lot of fear. There's a lot of food fear and there's this whole new term of orthorexia.   Mason: (52:29) Yeah, exactly.   Nirala Jacobi: (52:30) That's a real thing. A lot of people are so concerned about having made some small error on the bi-phasic diet. I'm like, "You've made no error. It's fine." Not just the bi-phasic diet but also anything, really. They get very, very hooked on that they did something wrong, and there's a lot of food fear and that. Imagine, you're sitting down to eat your meal and you're already worried about the food. Sometimes, I tell people sit for two minutes and just appreciate the food, just take a moment and get into a rest and digest before you eat.   Mason: (53:13) That's where the prayer comes in, the grace.   Nirala Jacobi: (53:16) It used to be prayer, it used to be grace, all of that. That's all. It's a thing.   Mason: (53:21) I feel like we go down this rabbit hole, that's probably another podcast talking about the orthorexia. I know it very well. I've had to go. I was so down the rabbit hole of raw foodism. I had to go and start eating things that I swore I would never eat again to start cracking myself out of just like that scrubbing myself clean with my diet. It's hardcore, and it isn't orthorexia, and it isn't eating disorder in varying degrees. But thanks for bringing it up, because especially when you're promoting a therapeutic diet, I always think the duty of care comes with making sure that people and patients are aware not to get stuck in it. Thank you for that.   Nirala Jacobi: (54:00) My pleasure.   Mason: (54:02) I had really a lot of fun chatting with you.   Nirala Jacobi: (54:03) I did, too. We've covered a lot of ground.   Mason: (54:06) We've covered a lot of ground. We run really fast on this podcast. Look, let's just repeat it again. The SIBO Doctor podcast, and it was episode 64 and 65 that we just talked about with Dr Will B. Worth probably checking out.   Nirala Jacobi: (54:26) It's on iTunes. It's on everywhere. You can go to The SIBO Doctor and just look around. There's resources. All the guides are free downloads, the handout on bringing that to your practitioner in terms of what caused you SIBO. It's a free download. There's a lot of videos, lots of stuff. I'm on Instagram, Dr. Nirala Jacobi, the SIBO Doctor.   Mason: (54:46) Perfecto. Thank you so much.   Nirala Jacobi: (54:48) Boom.   Mason: (54:49) Boom.   Nirala Jacobi: (54:50) Mic drop.   Mason: (54:52) All right. All right. That didn't work. That was a terrible mic drop.   Nirala Jacobi: (54:55) No, that's a very sensitive, very fancy road microphone.

Episode: 2687 Getting to know the organisms that live on and in the human body.  Today, what lives within us.

If it was possible to take a full scan of all of the DNA of every cell in and on your body the results would be startling: Only 1 percent would be human. The other 99 percent comprises all of the bacteria, fungi, viruses and other microbes you literally cannot live without. Learn more in this classic episode. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://news.iheart.com/podcast-advertisers

If it was possible to take a full scan of all of the DNA of every cell in and on your body the results would be startling: Only 1 percent would be human. The other 99 percent comprises all of the bacteria, fungi, viruses and other microbes you literally cannot live without. Learn more in this classic episode. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://news.iheart.com/podcast-advertisers

In this month's episode, we explore how results from the Human Microbiome Project have impacted our understanding of human health and disease. Kathryn Loydall from The Scientist's Creative Services team spoke with Lita Proctor from the National Institutes of Health, former Director of the Human Microbiome Project, to learn more. The Scientist Speaks is a podcast produced by The Scientist's Creative Services team. Our podcast is by scientists and for scientists. Once a month, we will bring you the stories behind news-worthy molecular biology research.  If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to The Scientist Speaks on your favorite podcast platform.

Unser Darm und die darin enthaltenen Bakterien können weitaus mehr, als nur verdauen! Der ist ein unterschätztes Immunorgan, wirkt auf Herz und Kreislauf, bis hin zur Darm-Hirn-Achse. Umgekehrt können Reizdarm und chronisch-entzündliche Darmerkrankungen (Colitis Ulcerosa & Morbus Crohn) uns schwer belasten? Was hilft da? Was kann man konkret machen um seine Darmgesundheit zu verbessern. Was sind Prä- und Probiotika? Welche Auswirkungen haben Antibiotika und andere Medikamente auf die Darmflora? Darum geht es heute... Inhalt: Warum wichtig Mein heutiger Interview-Gast: Frühere Podcasts: Was seitdem geschah... Korrelation und Kausalität Pro-, präbiotika, Ernährung und Lebensstil Kritische Stimmen Regulatorisches Umfeld Jede Behauptung zu einer Wirkungs erfordert eine Arzneimittelstudie Daher Vermarktung als Nahrungsergänzungsmittel Studienzahl und -qualität Cochrane Harmlos? Was ist nun gesichert oder relativ gesichert? Darm und Autismus Darm und Depressionen Darm und MS Darm und Diabetes Darm und Kardiovaskulär Erkrankung Noch mehr? Haut Mund Hirn 1. Wie kommen wir in Kontakt // 2. Meine Bitte an Sie: // Pharma-Song: // Zusammenfassung: Nächste Woche: Belege Wie jung ist die Darm-Mikrobiom-Forschung wirklich – stehen wir noAnfang oder Warum wichtig 3 mal Zellen 100 mal genetische Information Wir sind weitaus mehr als unsere eigenen Zellen Mein heutiger Interview-Gast:Dr. rer. nat. Paul Hammer Geschäftsführer / Managing Director, CEO & Founder BIOMES NGS GmbH, Freiheitstraße 124, 15745 Wildau - Germany paul.hammer@BIOMES.world www.BIOMES.world LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/biomes.world Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BIOMES.world Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/we.are.biomes/ Frühere Podcasts:Mikrobiom allgemein Ernährung/Diabetes und Antibiotika Was seitdem geschah...Die Darmmikrobiota-Forschung steckte bis 2006 noch in den Kinderschuhen, aber nach der Einführung der modernen Technologie, wie der so genannten NGS, hat die Darmmikrobiota-Forschung dramatisch/exponentiell zugenommen.  Allein im Jahr 2019 wurden mehr als 7000 Untersuchungen von Darmmikroben durchgeführt und in der National Library of Medicine National Institutes of Health hinterlegt. Und fast, wir sind am Anfang dieses Jahres 2020, aber die Darmmikrobenforschung ist bereits mehr als 1200, nur in eineinhalb Monaten.  Große Forschungskonsortien (amerikanisches Darmprojekt, Human Microbiome Project, MetaHIT (europäisches Mikrobiomprojekt)) auf der ganzen Welt haben die Darmmikrobiota charakterisiert.  Korrelation und KausalitätJetzt, in diesem Zustand, wissen wir, dass die Darmmikrobiota mit verschiedenen Krankheiten des Darms korreliert. Korrelationen sind natürlich noch kein Beweis für Kausalität Pro-, präbiotika, Ernährung und LebensstilWir wissen auch, dass wir die Darmmikrobiota (pro-, präbiotisch, Ernährung und Lebensstil) so manipulieren können, dass sie uns zugutekommt oder unser Wohlbefinden verbessert. Was sind Probiotika? Bakterien Was sind Präbiotika? Nahrung für die Bakterien Kritische StimmenMediziner nehmen die Einstellung zu diesen Substanzen an, "kann nicht schaden, könnte helfen". Der Mangel an qualitativ hochwertigen Daten, die den Wert von Probiotika belegen, potenziell voreingenommene Studien zur Wirksamkeit, und zunehmend sicherheitsrelevante Informationen legen jedoch nahe, dass dieser unkritische Ansatz möglicherweise nicht angemessen ist (Freedman, Schnadower, and Tarr 2020). Regulatorisches UmfeldÄrzte und die Öffentlichkeit fälschlicherweise könnten davon ausgehen, dass zum Kauf angebotene Probiotika einer strengen behördlichen Aufsicht unterliegen. In den Vereinigten Staaten ist die US-amerikanische Food and Drug Administration (FDA) die wichtigste Regulierungsbehörde, die trotz der Größe der Branche (jährliche weltweite Einnahmen von voraussichtlich mehr als 64 Milliarden US-Dollar) keine zentrale Stelle für die Überwachung von P...

Keeping on top of our fundamentals and knowing ourselves are two keys to maintaining our wellbeing in a crisis. In this episode, we cover finding the silver linings in this and any situation for the benefit of our wellbeing, including taking things a bit slower, connecting with friends and loved ones in the face of social distancing, and eating for optimal mood. Take steps with us this week!   LET’S TALK THE WALK! Wellness While Walking Facebook page Wellness While Walking on Instagram Wellness While Walking on Twitter Wellness While Walking website for show notes and other information   RESOURCES AND SOURCES (some links may be affiliate links) Slowing Down and Connecting "Mommy, I Like the Coronavirus," wsj.com "Social Distancing Shouldn't Mean Losing Human Connection," washingtonpost.com "Homefront During World War II," wikipedia.org How to Install Netflix Party "Netflix Party," cnet.com Video about Netflix Party Co-watching videos without Netflix Party   Food and Mood In a mental health emergency, reach out to your health care provider, call 911 in the US or the National Suicide Prevention Hotline 800-273-8255 "Feed Your Head: Foods That Target Depression and Anxiety," wsj.com. "Managing Stress and Anxiety/Coronavirus," cdc.gov "NIH Human Microbiome Project Defines Normal Bacterial Makeup," nih.gov Broken Brain Docuseries, Dr. Mark Hyman, brokenbrain.com "Defining Dysbiosis for a Cluster of Chronic Diseases," nature.com "Leaky Gut: What is it, and What Does It Mean for You?", health.harvard.edu "These Women Treated Their Anxiety and Depression with Food. Here's What They Ate,"  healthline.com "Anxiety Might be Alleviated by Regulating Gut Bacteria," sciencedaily.com "Human Microbiome Project," nih.gov  "Scientists Bust Myth That Our Bodies Have More Bacteria Than Human Cells," nature.com (NOTE: They do, but not 10x more as previously stated) "Changing Your Diet Can Help Tamp Down Depression, Boost Mood," npr.org "A Suspicious Gut Microbiome: 19 Conditions Linked to Dysbiosis," viome.com "A Brief Diet Intervention Can Reduce Symptoms of Depression in Young Adults - A Randomised Controlled Trial," plos.org "This is Your Brain on Healthy Food," Drew Ramsey, M.D. "Your Gut Microbiome and Anxiety - What's the Connection?", chriskresser.com "Nutrition and Mental Health - What's the Connection?", chriskresser.com "Dysbiosis," wikipedia.org "The Baffling Connection Between Vegetarianism and Depression," psychologytoday.com "Fermented Foods: Functional Foods," foodandmoodcentre.com.au "How to Stay Physically and Mentally Healthy While COVID-19 Has You Stuck at Home," time.com     DISCLAIMER Neither I nor my podcast guests are doctors or healthcare professionals of any kind, and nothing on this podcast or associated content should be considered medical advice. The information provided by Wellness While Walking Podcast and associated material, by Whole Life Workshop and by Bermuda Road Wellness LLC is for informational and entertainment purposes only. It is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health care provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition or treatment, and before undertaking a new health care regimen, including walking.      

According to the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health, a division of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), probiotics—found in yogurt, and other fermented foods, such as kefir and buttermilk, dietary supplements, and even beauty products—are live microorganisms that are intended to have health benefits, when consumed or applied to the body.Most probiotics contain a variety of microorganisms—for instance, Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium—with certain yeasts like Saccharomyces Boulardi qualifying, as well.Many of probiotics sources will also have prebiotics—nondigestible food—inulin—to support the healthy probiotic bacteria. When pre and probiotics are combined together, the term becomes synbiotics.Probiotics create healthy microorganisms in the gastrointestinal tract—where as much as 70% of our immunity is derived from the mucosa-associated lymphoid tissue (MALT) and the gut-associated lymphoid tissue (GALT). Probiotics produce substances—among them butyrate—that influence our immune response.The community of organisms that lives on and in the human body is called the “microbiome.”The Human Microbiome Project, which was funded by the NIH from 2007 to 2016, played a key role in this research by mapping the normal bacteria that live in and on the healthy human body.The NIH says that, “probiotics have shown promise for a variety of health purposes, including prevention of antibiotic-associated diarrhea (including diarrhea caused by Clostridium difficile), prevention of necrotizing enterocolitis and sepsis in premature infants, treatment of infant colic, treatment of periodontal disease, and induction or maintenance of remission in ulcerative colitis.”It was also pointed out that how much of the probiotic a person would have to take, or who would be most likely to benefit, is under ongoing research.From the NIH research, it appears that probiotics are a first line defense against harmful bacteria and, “have an extensive history of apparently safe use, particularly in healthy people.” What is still outstanding is whether the same can be said for those people with severe illness and the associated compromised immune systems.Probiotic supplements are measured by how many CFU’s—colony forming units usually in the billions—are delivered. The NIH says, “the seven core genera of microbial organisms most often used in probiotic products are Lactobacillus, Bifidobacterium, Saccharomyces, Streptococcus, Enterococcus, Escherichia, and Bacillus.”It’s further noted that, “because probiotics must be consumed alive to have health benefits and they can die during their shelf life, users should look for products labeled with the number of CFU at the end of the product’s shelf life, not at the time of manufacture.”For more information, I suggest you sign up for my free, weekly wellness update—Mackie Mail.

In this podcast, Eugene B. Chang, Department of Medicine, University of Chicago, discusses his team's research studying the microbiome and microbes.  Podcast Points: How does the microbiome impact health? What is the mission of microbes? How do probiotics work, and are they effective? Chang's lab is interested in the important connection between intestinal microbiota and their human host, and what happens when there is conflict. Chang was an important voice in the Human Microbiome Project, a US National Institutes of Health (NIH) research initiative created to increase understanding of the microbial flora that play a pivotal role in human health and disease progression.  Chang discusses the uniqueness of a person's microbiome. But he states that we all actually share some types of microbes. Chang explains core microbiomes, and their important functions. He provides examples of how the microbiome works, and the role of microbes. Continuing, Chang discusses stability issues regarding the microbiome, and their need for resiliency. He talks about the many factors that are involved, outlining and detailing how select microbial communities function, in regard to networks and stability. And he explains that the interplay between dietary and environmental issues can certainly affect the stability of the microbiome. He talks about diversity within the microbiome, and how it may not be as important as many have proposed. Chang talks about immune disorders and he provides an overview of what microbial communities can do to maintain stability. He continues, discussing probiotics, and why they may not stay around as long as we'd like because nonresident microbes often have trouble breaking into very established microbial communities. 

Si tu t’intéresses un minimum à la santé et la nutrition, tu sais que la flore intestinale, aussi appelée microbiote, est un sujet très en vogue. Ce sujet est au-devant de la scène depuis le lancement du Human Microbiome Project en 2008. Les douze dernières années nous ont révélé que l’équilibre de notre flore intestinale est intimement lié à notre santé et à de nombreuses maladies. Cependant, beaucoup ignore encore que l’utilisation des antibiotiques altère sérieusement la flore intestinale. Dans ce podcast j’explique: Comment…

Visit netsuite.com/tai to download your FREE guide, “Seven Key Strategies to Grow your Profits”Go to stamps.com, and click on the microphone at the top of the homepage and type in TAI—to get a 4-week trial plus free postage and a digital scale without any long-term commitment.“We’ve grown up in under an antibiotic umbrella where we think antibiotics are going to cover and cure everything.” - Dr. Martin Blaser(click to tweet) Health is more than a diet and exercise regimen. When we take a minute to examine our health from a more global perspective, the other factors of well-being surface. Our lifestyle, our habits, our mindset—these are the things that shape a person’s vitality. And on today’s episode of The Tai Lopez Show, we are joined by Dr. Martin Blaser, the Director of The Human Microbiome Project at NYU’s School of Medicine, to discuss the dangers of antibiotic use. Dr. Blaser has 28 patents, and is the author of Missing Microbes, a book that examines how our species is devolving with the declining supply of microbes in our system.Tune in to this conversation to capture an educated perspective of the whole health ecosystem!Don’t forget! You can also listen to The Tai Lopez Show on Spotify! Click “Follow” and let me know what you think!“Our system is completely backwards. It’s a false economy. People are making a lot of money out of germaphobia.” - Dr. Martin Blaser(click to tweet)Points to Keep In MindHumans are actually a partnership between microbes and us (equal numbers of cells)Without microbes we would not be aliveThere is evidence that our supply of microbes is disappearingEvidence that this is at the root of the rising rates of autism, celiac disease, Alzheimer’s, etc. Most probiotics have not been tested in scientific studies over the long termKids who take on average more antibiotics than others turn out fatterWe only look at the benefits of antibiotics because doctors are too concerned about liabilityBabies pick up their mother’s microbes in the birth canalRising rates of cesarean sections are preventing this from happening70 years ago, agriculture experts figured out that if you feed antibiotics to animals, they gain weight fasterSome cities have an antibiotics in their drinking waterSweden uses 40% of the antibiotics we useEpidemics come from the lack of diversity in our current living situationsKids born by C-section are more prone to disease (celiac disease, juvenile diabetes, etc.)The rate of juvenile diabetes is doubling every 25 yearsA Denmark study showed that antibiotics increase risk of inflammatory bowel disease by 14% in kidsWe’ve engineered a system where the doctor-patient relationship is sterile Antibiotics change the metabolism in adults We need better diagnostics to determine viral vs. bacterial infectionsFood preservatives are antibacterials destroying our microbiomeOur good bacteria fights the bad bacteria; this is the problem with anti-bacterial productsHospitals and doctors like C-sections because they’re scheduled

LINKS email: redocean112@gmail.com PODCASTING CHECKLISTS CLICK HERE Transcript HERE Facebook Page:  World Organic News Facebook page. WORLD ORGANIC NEWS No Dig Gardening Book: Click here Permaculture Plus http://permacultureplus.com.au/ Topical Talks Call of the Reed Warbler   U.S. environment agency says glyphosate weed killer is not a carcinogen https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-epa-glyphosate/epa-says-popular-weed-killer-glyphosate-is-not-a-carcinogen-idUSKCN1S62SU   The Human Microbiome Project https://www.nature.com/articles/nature06244   Piltdown hoax   UK is 30-40 years away from 'eradication of soil fertility', warns Gove https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/oct/24/uk-30-40-years-away-eradication-soil-fertility-warns-michael-gove

In this interview, Ross Pelton, RPh, PhD, CCN, describes the new science associated with postbiotic metabolites and their impact on health. Listeners will also discover what postbiotic metabolites are and why they are so important to the human microbiome. About the Expert Ross Pelton, RPh, PhD, CCN, is Essential Formula's director of science, in additino to being a practicing pharmacist, clinical nutritionist, and health educator in Southern Oregon. Pelton earned his bachelor of science in pharmacy from the University of Wisconsin and received his PhD in psychology and holistic Health from the University for Humanistic Studies in San Diego, California. A certified clinical nutritionist, Pelton was named as one of the Top 50 Most Influential Pharmacists in the United States by American Druggist magazine for his work in natural medicine. Pelton teaches continuing education programs for healthcare professionals to use natural medicine and integrate it into their practices. He also has authored numerous books, including The Drug-Induced Nutrient Depletion Handbook, which is a gold-standard reference book for health practitioners. About the Sponsor Essential Formulas Incorporated (EFI) was established in 2000 as the sole US distributor of world-renowned microbiologist Dr Iichiroh Ohhira’s award-winning probiotic dietary supplements and skin care products. Always an innovator, EFI introduced REG’ACTIV in 2015, containing ME-3, a probiotic catalyst that produces the “master’” oxidant glutathione inside the body's cells. A family-owned and operated business, EFI was founded on the philosophy of providing high-quality preventative, supportive, and comprehensive pro-health products for the entire family. EFI continues to flourish and grow through a strong company and product integrity and the knowledge that they’re providing scientifically proven products that positively impact the health and well-being of their customers. Transcript Karolyn Gazella: Hello. I'm Karolyn Gazella, the publisher of the Natural Medicine Journal. Today, we have a fascinating topic. We'll be talking about post-biotic metabolites with probiotic expert Dr Ross Pelton who is also an integrative pharmacist. Before we begin, I'd like to thank the sponsor of this interview who is Essential Formulas Incorporated. Dr Pelton, thank you so much for joining me. Ross Pelton, RPh, PhD, CCN: Hi, Karolyn. It's nice to be with you. Gazella: Well the research regarding the human microbiome is really exploding. Why is this so significant? Pelton: Well I like to give people a little historical overview which I think gives us an understanding of how and why this incredible acceleration of research into the microbiome has taken place. I'd like to go back to the Human Genome Project. It took 13 years and billions of dollars to sequence the first human genome. After sequencing the human genome, one of the primary goals of that whole scientific endeavor, they thought once they sequenced the human genome we would be able to get cures for many of our chronic degenerative diseases. That primary goal of the Human Genome Project was a total failure. We did not get any cures for human diseases from the Human Genome Project, but one important thing that we did get was the development of incredible technology and incredible equipment that allowed for much faster and much cheaper sequencing of genomes. That's when scientists started to use this new technology to sequence the genomes of bacteria in the human gastrointestinal tract. They were astounded with what they found, this whole massive population of organisms in the human gastrointestinal tract. Fortunately, our government then went on to fund the Human Microbiome Project. The funding for the Human Microbiome Project coupled with the incredible technology developed in the Human Genome Project allowed scientists to make tremendous progress in exploring and identifying many of the different species and strains of bacteria in the human microbiome. Now, a little historical overview. Bacteria were discovered several hundred years ago, and scientists like Louis Pasteur had a major impact on the development of microbiology and the study of bacteria. But Louis Pasteur was responsible for the gene ... Excuse me. The germ theory of disease. He solved most of the serious diseases of his time. He developed vaccines for them and taught people how to avoid them or limit their problems. He was a global rock star in his lifetime because he solved most of the common diseases of his time. It would be similar if one person today solved Alzheimer's disease and cancer and diabetes and autism or something. It's amazing what he did, but he set in motion this germ theory of disease. For a couple of centuries, most people had the concept that germs or bacteria were bad. They're causing disease and we need to eradicate them. Well another thing that happened along the way is that the only way scientists could study bacteria was extract them from the body, put them on what's called a Petri dish on an auger plate that allows the bacteria to grow, and then they watched them and observed it. A couple hundred years, that's the only way we could study bacteria, but we've recently learned that over 99% of your bacteria are anaerobic which means they can't stand oxygen. For a couple of hundred years, scientists would extract bacteria, put it in the lab to look at it, but it would get exposed to oxygen and die. For several hundred years, we could not study over 99% of the bacteria in our microbiome, but the development of this incredible technology from the Human Genome Project allowed scientists to start to dive into this new area and sequence the genomes of the bacteria and start to learn what they are and how they function. That's what started to kind of explode the research into the human genome, the human microbiome. Also a very interesting thing happened. There's a thing that I refer to as the genome complexity conundrum. This is a fact that, when the human genome was sequenced, we found out that humans have about 23000 genes which is significantly less than scientists thought they would find, but the conundrum is that the common rice plant has around 45000 genes. Scientists are scratching their heads. How could we as evolved beings as we are have only 23000 genes and the common rice plant has over twice as many genes as we do? The answer to this conundrum is the fact that, although we only have 23000 genes, the bacteria in our microbiome have millions of genes. In fact, over 99% of the DNA in your body is the DNA of your bacteria. This starts to open up an understanding of how important it is to create and maintain a healthy population of these bacteria in your microbiome so that they are doing good work for you. Because if you have pathological bacteria, their DNA and their genes are creating bad compounds that cause inflammation and poison you and create all sorts of diseases. This ... We're starting to understand why it is so important to create and maintain a healthy microbiome because your bacteria in your gastrointestinal tract are controlling and regulating vast amounts of your health. Gazella: Well I have- Pelton: It's kind of a little overview for starters. Gazella: Yeah. I have to say I love that historical perspective because it provides the perfect backdrop for today's conversation. Thank you. It was very thorough. Pelton: Sure. Gazella: Now today, I'd like to focus on post-biotic metabolites because, as you have referred to in your recent presentation, this really is a new frontier in probiotic science. Remind us. What are post-biotic metabolites? Pelton: This is another fascinating area, Karolyn. It's just starting to be explored, but it's extremely important when it comes to microbiome science. [inaudible 00:06:39] say in my lectures and seminars the reason probiotic bacteria is important is because of the work they do. The work that they do is that their metabolic processes digest the food that you give them and break it down and, in turn, their metabolic processes produce a wide range of compounds that we're referring to as post-biotic metabolites. What's really important for people to understand is it's these compounds that the bacteria produce that regulate vast amounts of your health, not the bacteria themselves. We're shifting our focus a little bit from putting all our research efforts and all of our money into just identifying and naming different strains of bacteria. Now, we're starting to realize it's probably more important to identify what are the compounds that these bacteria produce, what are the health regulatory effects of these compounds, which strains of bacteria are more efficient and more effective at producing some of these compounds. That's the new frontier in microbiome science. Two months ago, I gave a presentation at the International Probiotic Association's annual convention in Miami. The title of my presentation was Post-biotic Metabolites: The New Frontier in Microbiome Science. This is what we're starting to explore and understand now. Gazella: Yeah. It sees like it's taking this science ... It's giving it a whole new level of complexity. Let's talk a little bit about practical things like what functions do these metabolites serve as it relates to the human microbiome and health in general. Pelton: Sure. That's a good segue here. I'm emphasizing these post-biotic metabolites. What do they do? Well they have a vast number of functions, and in fact, a very highly respected author and scientist in the microbiome arena—his name is Dr Emeran Mayer—wrote a book called The Mind-Gut Connection. In his book, he tells us that your bacteria with their millions of genes will digest your food and produce hundreds of thousands of metabolites. We're just beginning to understand what all these metabolites, these post-biotic metabolites are. Some of their functions, they have antiinflammatory activity. They adjust the acid-base balance in the GI tract. They have cell signaling capabilities. They have detoxification capabilities. They can directly fight and kill pathological bacteria. There's just a wide range of functions. Let me just mention one major class of these post-biotic metabolites. They're called short-chain fatty acids. This is a class of really important post-biotic metabolites produced by your probiotic bacteria. Since they're acids, short-chain fatty acids, they're weak acids, but they create the proper and optimal acid-base balance in the gastrointestinal tract. The optimal acid-base balance is just slightly acidic, but when people have dysbiosis ... That's the term for different types of gastrointestinal problems or you have gas or bloating or diarrhea or constipation or inflammation or pain or whatever. Dysbiosis is the term for these general conditions. When people have dysbiosis or gastrointestinal problems, the acid-base balance goes anywhere from 10 to 100 times too alkaline. If you're going to get the GI tract back to good health, you have to bring it from it's alkalinity back down to its slightly acidic condition, and these short-chain fatty acids produced by the probiotic bacteria readjust and create that optimal slightly acidic acid-base balance. Short-chain fatty acids also have antiinflammatory activity. If you have dysbiosis and gut problems, you've got inflammation. They'll help to dampen that inflammatory fire. Also another really important part of this in the story with the short-chain fatty acids is the fact that the cells that line your gastrointestinal tract have the most rapid rate of turnover of any cell in the human body. People don't realize this. Most people don't, but you create a whole new digestive tract every 6 to 10 days. It takes an enormous amount of energy for the body to continually generate these new cells in the lining of the gastrointestinal tract, and you do not get the energy to produce these new cells from your blood supply. The energy comes from short-chain fatty acids like butyric acid that are produced by your probiotic bacteria, these post-biotic metabolites. These are just some of the ways one class of post-biotic metabolites, the short-chain fatty acids, contribute to a wide range of health-related things related to your gastrointestinal tract. Gazella: Now, can you expand a little bit more on the mechanisms of action and how these metabolites kind of work on our behalf? I mean the short-chain fatty acids is a great example. Pelton: Sure. Again, there's a wide range of these different compounds, and so there's different mechanisms depending on what post-biotic metabolite the particular strain of bacteria are producing. This gives me a chance to emphasize a really important point, Karolyn. A healthy microbiome is a widely diverse microbiome. By diversity, I mean a lot of different types of probiotic bacteria. It's not enough just to have high numbers but only a few different types. You want to have lower numbers but a wide range of different types of bacteria. If you have diversity of bacteria, you'll have a lot more bacteria producing different types of health regulatory compounds, and the way to create a diverse microbiome is to consume a diverse diet. You have to consume a wide range of different high-fiber foods because these are the foods that your bacteria require. The fibers in multi-colored vegetables especially, that's the number one food group for your probiotic bacteria. Then there's also multi-colored vegetables and various other types of foods that are high in fiber, but our human body cannot digest these fibers. They go through your system into your colon, your large intestine, and that's where your probiotic bacteria start to digest them. That's the food for your probiotic bacteria. Yes, it's important to take probiotics, but you have to learn how to feed your probiotic bacteria well. If you don't, they will not thrive and survive. Here's a couple of examples of some other mechanisms and how they work on our behalf. Some probiotic bacteria produce a wide range of compounds called antimicrobial peptides. Scientists just abbreviate these as AMPs, but antimicrobial peptides are very small amino acid chains or I describe them as small fragments of proteins. They specifically have antibiotic effects, but they have a narrow range of effectiveness. They are only damaging to pathological bacteria. They don't harm your good bacteria whereas prescription antibiotics are called broad-spectrum. They kill everything, your good and your bad, but the natural antibiotics produced by your microbiome and your probiotic bacteria as antimicrobial peptides are only going to function or be active against pathologic organisms. It's an important part of your immune system. These natural antibiotics being produced in a healthy microbiome are sometimes suppressing the growth of any bad bacteria that happen to be resident in your gut. Another example, there's lactobacillus fermentum ME-3. It's a very unique strain of probiotic bacteria that synthesizes glutathione. Glutathione is a post-biotic metabolite of that particular strain of probiotic bacteria. I could go on and on. There are many different types of post-biotic metabolites. Just a couple of general classes, your probiotic bacteria are little chemical manufacturing plants. They make all the B vitamins and Vitamin K and some of the critical amino acids. They make some of our most important nutrients. That's really a source of some of our nutrition. That's a little overview of some of the things and some of the ways that some of these other post-biotic metabolites are helping us. Gazella: Yeah. Those are some great examples. I have to say, when I knew that I was going to talk to you about this topic, I jumped online to do a literature search and I was actually quite surprised at the amount of research specifically about post-biotic metabolites. Can you tell us about some of the more recent studies that you have enjoyed reading about in the scientific literature? Pelton: Sure. Well I'm very excited having learned that a strain of bacteria called lactobacillus fermentum ME-3 can produce glutathione. Glutathione is one of the most important compounds in the human body. We call it the master antioxidant. It's produced in every cell in your body, and glutathione probably protects more of your body than all the other antioxidants combined. Glutathione also is the master regulator of all your detoxification. Being able to boost your glutathione levels by taking a strain of probiotic bacteria everyday is really a breakthrough in health and medicine. That's a pretty unique, new understanding of one particular strain of probiotic bacteria. Another thing that's very exciting to me is that, last year in Japan, there was some independent research done on Dr Ohhira's Probiotics which is a brand of probiotics that's produced in a fermentation process that's different than all other types of probiotics on the market. The fermentation process used in the production of Dr Ohhira's Probiotics allows the final product to contain over 400 post-biotic metabolites. This is a real interesting, new viewpoint and insight into how probiotic bacteria work where you've got a probiotic, Dr Ohhira's Probiotic by brand name, that's produced in a multi-year fermentation process -- and I'll explain that in just a moment -- but the end product contains 400 of these post-biotic metabolites. Let me explain this fermentation process and how these post-biotic metabolites are produced. We start out with big fermentation vats in a sterile warehouse. They start out with 12 strains of probiotic bacteria. Then they, at seasonally appropriate times, harvest and shred dozens of different types of organically grown foods: mushrooms, vegetables, seaweeds, fruits, and so forth. Then the bacteria get to grow and digest and ferment these foods for 3 years before the product is ready for encapsulation. During that 3-year fermentation process the bacteria in those fermentation vats are breaking down the food and producing this wide range of post-biotic metabolites. With Dr Ohhira's Probiotics, we are not so much impressed by the probiotic bacteria we're delivering. We're really focusing on the delivery of these post-biotic metabolites. We get what we call rapid microbiome restoration because we're not just supplying somebody with bacteria in a capsule. We're directly delivering these post-biotic metabolites. Other companies that supply probiotics, you have a capsule with bacteria in it. Those bacteria haven't done any work yet. It's like a starter culture. When you take those bacteria, they have to go into your system, start to try to find the proper foods that they need so that their metabolic processes can begin to start to produce some of these post-biotic metabolites that are responsible for improving the health of the gastrointestinal tract. But with Dr Ohhira's, we're directly putting in over 400 post-biotic metabolites. We quickly readjust the acid-base balance and suppress inflammation and start to heal the leaky gut or intestinal permeability problems and have some detoxification capabilities and start to work against some of the allergies that might be present in the GI tract. It's a very fast, rapid way of addressing gastrointestinal problems. Gazella: Yeah. I'll disclose to our listeners that I actually have been taking the Dr Ohhira brand of probiotics for a lot of years actually now. I have been impressed with the product. You're telling me something very, very new though. I had no idea about the 400 post-biotic metabolites and this delivery of all these post-biotic metabolites. I've always loved the fermentation process and all the organic foods that are put in there in a 3-year period, and there's just so much that I love about the product. This kind of adds a new level of complexity to this particular product. I'd like to stay on the Dr Ohhira product just because I always like to clarify dosages and ... Now, how many strains, again, are in the Dr Ohhira product? Pelton: There's 12 strains that we use to start the process, but again, I want to kind of emphasize that our product is really what we call a complete microbiome product because it doesn't just have probiotic bacteria. It's got probiotic bacteria plus some of the prebiotic food supply that was present in the fermentation process, and most importantly, it's got this wide range of post-biotic metabolites. We just redesigned the packaging for Dr Ohhira's Probiotics, and on the new package, there are 3 different arrows that go in a circular direction. The 3 individual areas, the words inside the arrows say probiotics, prebiotics, and post-biotics. The post-biotic arrow is right front and center on the package. We're trying to emphasize to people the importance of this topic of post-biotic metabolites and Dr Ohhira's specifically delivering post-biotic metabolites. There is no other probiotic in the world that we know of that is produced in this multi-year fermentation process that allows the direct delivery of post-biotic metabolites. Gazella: So as a result, do you dose this differently than you would a typical probiotic? Am I able to maybe use less? How do you handle the dosing of this? Pelton: Sure. The recommended dosage is 2 capsules daily. I'll give just a little recommendation on some other uses of it. If people have food poisoning and it's very common when people travel, get some bad food, and get sick pretty quickly, then I advise them to bite and squeeze the contents out of Dr Ohhira's and swallow it that way because the capsule in Dr Ohhira's is a patented delivery system where the capsule actually stays hard in the harsh acid environment in the stomach and then it becomes porous in the more alkaline pH in the small intestine. So it preferentially releases the contents in the small intestine. But if you've got food poisoning, if you've got bad bacteria directly in your stomach, you want to bite the capsules, squeeze the contents out so it gets directly into your stomach and start to fight the bacteria locally in the stomach. I have people who chew 5 to 10 capsules and do it every 20 or 30 minutes, and it clears food poisoning out very quickly for most people. Another thing to emphasize is that, in the fermentation process, the bacteria learn to grow and thrive and survive at room temperature. Dr Ohhira's does not need to be refrigerated. That's a very nice user-friendly part of Dr Ohhira's. Also because of this patented capsule design, you don't have to worry about food. It can be empty stomach, can be with meals, after meals, makes no difference. Main thing is everyday get them in. If I'm working with somebody that has Crohn's disease or colitis or irritable bowel syndrome, some of these really serious GI problems, I personally suggest they try taking 5 to 10 capsules daily, maybe 5 capsules twice a day for a period of 10 days or longer until you start to get improvement because you want to power these post-biotic metabolites and start to accelerate the change. Some relatively new information, SIBO is a condition that is getting a lot more press these days, becoming more recognized as a fairly widespread condition. SIBO stands for small intestinal bacterial overgrowth where you have bad bacteria that normally reside in the colon, but they backed up into the small intestine and then they digest foods there. They're in the wrong location in the GI tract. They produce a lot of gas and bloating and diarrhea. So a lot of people with SIBO can't tolerate probiotics, but with Dr Ohhira's Probiotics, we're not primarily delivering probiotic bacteria. We're delivering the post-biotic metabolites. Many people on SIBO will find that Dr Ohhira's is very helpful. Gazella: Interesting. An interesting note too, it doesn't taste bad. I've actually opened up the capsule and put it on a little part of my gum. Pelton: I'm glad you brought that up, Karolyn, because that's another recommendation I make. There are a couple of dentists that make this recommendation, and I myself do it personally. Several nights a week at bedtime, I will take one capsule and bite it in my mouth and squeeze the contents out and swish it around in my mouth before swallowing it. This helps support a healthy oral microbiome. It helps to suppress gingivitis and periodontal disease and things like that. We're not calling it a treatment for these conditions. You're just trying to support the health of your oral cavity and a good healthy oral microbiome. Gazella: Yeah, absolutely. Probiotic supplementation and probiotic science has really come a long way. There was a time when we thought that all you had to do is eat a little yogurt and you're good to go. Then there was the exciting research regarding prebiotics and synbiotics. Now, there's this topic of post-biotic metabolites. What does the future hold when it comes to this exciting area of study that seems to be moving quite rapidly? Pelton: Well I think the future is in post-biotic metabolites because ... In fact, even pharmaceutical companies, drug company industry is starting to look at post-biotic metabolites and realizing that there's potential for them to develop new drugs on these naturally occurring compounds that are produced by your probiotic bacteria. These are compounds that are natural to the human body. It's not like they're putting a foreign chemical into your body. As I mentioned earlier, Dr Mayer, in his book The Mind-Gut Connection. He's telling us that your probiotic bacteria produce hundreds of thousands of metabolites. I think the future will be less emphasis on just trying to name and identify strains of bacteria, but learn more about what are the compounds, what are the post-biotic metabolites that these bacteria make, what are the health regulatory effects of these compounds, which bacteria are more efficient at producing these compounds. I think that's really the new area, new era, new frontier of microbiome research. It really is very exciting because we're really starting to understand that the microbiome is the foundation of your health at all levels. There's a physician by the name of Alessio Fasano who discovered the primary cause of leaky gut and intestinal permeability which happens when you have inflammation, it opens up your tight junctions in your GI tract and allows toxic things to leak into your system. Dr Fasano says that 2 main causes of inflammation and leaky gut are gluten and bad bacteria. I recommend that everybody be on a gluten-free diet. Then we need to clean the gut up. I did a presentation a month ago at the American Association of Antiaging Medicine Conference, and my topic was Natural Therapies for ADD and ADHD. One of my primary messages is scientists are looking for the answers for autism and ADD and ADHD in the brain. Don't look in the brain. The answer is in the gut. We have to heal the gut and heal this intestinal permeability problem because if you have leaky gut, you have leaky brain. We mean your blood-brain barrier is leaky and some of these toxins are getting into your brain. You have gut inflammation. You have brain inflammation. We have to focus on the gut, and one of the most serious worldwide health dilemmas right now is the rapid rise in antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Many of the people listening to this probably are familiar with MRSA, methicillin-resistant Staph aureus. There's hardly any antibiotics that are effective against it anymore. Now, we've got antibiotic-resistant [inaudible 00:29:33] and antibiotic-resistant tuberculosis on the rise. We have to understand that we have to reduce our reliance on antibiotics and increase our reliance on good bacteria. We need more bugs, not drugs. The rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria is a global health crisis, and you don't want to have a weak immune system and wait until you get sick because scientists are talking about a post-antibiotic era where antibiotics are not going to be effective anymore. We won't be able to have Cesarean births and we won't be able to have our appendix out or our teeth cleaned because, if you get an infection, you're dead. The answer to the problem is to have a good healthy diet with lots of fiber-rich foods to create a diverse microbiome which gives you a healthy immune system. That's the way to stay away from all these antibiotic prescriptions. That's my little rant on that topic. Gazella: No. It makes a lot of sense. I have to say that human microbiome research is fascinating and so important. This new research on post-biotic metabolites resulting from probiotics just really adds a lot to the conversation that we need to have about -- excuse me -- the human microbiome. Don't you agree? Pelton: I agree totally. I think this is the next level of understanding of how and why the microbiome is important and gives people a little bit more insight into why it's so important to learn how to create and maintain a healthy microbiome so you can have many different types of bacteria producing all these health regulatory post-biotic metabolites so that, in turn, you will have a healthy immune system. Gazella: Absolutely. Well this has been a great interview with a lot of great, important information. Once again, I'd like to thank the sponsor of this interview who is Essential Formulas Incorporated. Thank you, Dr Pelton, for joining me today. Pelton: My pleasure. Nice to be with you, Karolyn. Gazella: Have a great day. Pelton: You bet. Bye-bye.

Today is the day. We are talking about the importance of your microbiome and gut health. Everything seems to go back to your gut. Human Microbiome Project – $115 Million dollar project started in 2008 designed to study the microorganisms found in both healthy and diseased people. Bio = Life Ome = the object of study BIOME has also been defined as a naturally occurring community of flora. Necessary for extracting energy from food 80% of our immune system is in our gut 100 trillion bacteria, protozoa, bacteria, and viruses We are talking all hour about your gut biome and how important it is to protect it and cultivate a healthy environment for your body to thrive in. The future: Your Medical Records will list your Enterotype Much like there are eight different common blood types, researchers found the existence of at least three distinct human "enterotypes", or intestinal bacterial communities. Doctors could use your microbiome to custom tailor medical treatments Elimination of multiple disease states through a balanced biome Facts: These organisms outnumber human organisms 10:1 There are 700-800 separate species Discuss GMO and RoundUp crops Prebiotic – A food substance metabolized by the microbiota that directly or indirectly benefits the host – tomatoes, artichokes, asparagus, onions, garlic, lentils, oatmeal, berries Probiotics – A live microorganism consumed by the host with direct or indirect health benefits. Yogurt, Kefir, sauerkraut, soy sauce, brined pickles Thank you for listening to the Staying Young Show! With all the mixed messages on health, you need information that you can use and that you can trust. Listen in as the experts discuss all topics health related. It's time to STAY YOUNG and stay healthy! Each week we tackle a topic and often with leading scientists, best-selling authors, and even your favorite celebrities! As a listener of our show, your input is important to us. Please take a moment to fill out this quick survey so we can serve you better - Survey. For more information on The Staying Young Show, please visit our website, and subscribe to the show in iTunes, Stitcher, or your favorite podcast app. You can also reach out to our host, Judy Gaman on www.judygaman.com for book purchasing, and speaking opportunities in your area!

Are we on the cusp of a new approach to healthy living and treating disease? BBC Health and Science correspondent James Gallagher explores the latest research into how our second genome, the vast and diverse array of microbes that live on and in our bodies, is driving our metabolism and our health. Recent DNA analysis by the Human Microbiome Project detailed the vast and diverse array of microbes in and on our body - bacteria, archaea, fungi and viruses. It has been described as our second genome - a source of huge genetic diversity, a modifier of disease, an essential component of immunity, and an "organ" that influences not just our metabolism but also our mental health. Unlike the human genome which is fixed at birth, this "second genome" can be manipulated in many ways. Researchers have suggested that our gut microbiome has a major role in the development of chronic conditions such as obesity, inflammatory bowel disease and asthma. Now the work has moved onto detailed analysis of the microbes in people with specific problems and measures to change the microbiome. In this major three-part series, James Gallagher investigates the key research shaping our ability not just to read our microbiome and look at predispositions, but to change it for the better. From the ability to manipulate it to stem chronic disease, to the role it plays in determining our health from birth, to its surprising influence on our brain and behaviour - should we now think of ourselves not as self-sufficient organisms, but as complex ecosystems colonized by numerous competing and health-giving microbes? Picture: Probiotic bacteria Lactobacillus, Credit: Dr Microbe/Getty Images Producer: Adrian Washbourne

“The Forum on Healthcare Innovation: Technology and the Future of Healthcare Delivery” was hosted by Jackson Laboratories in Farmington, CT on the UCONN Health campus. The conference was full of healthcare professionals and covered genetic testing (including direct-to-consumer), genomics, the microbiome, patient advocacy and healthcare technology. In this episode, I share highlights from some of the presentations including from Francis Collins, the NIH Director. Francis Collins, Director of National Institute for Health, shares that the NIH also stands for hope. Reasons for hope include uncovering life’s foundations, translating discovery into health and moving forward together. Collins gave an overview of the different projects ongoing at NIH, starting with the backstory of the Human Genome Project. A major aspect of the project that has impacted the future of research and healthcare was the data sharing. Every 24 hours, new data collected from the day was uploaded allowing researchers to start using the data in their own research. It would have taken years if the project had waited to release data when it was officially published. This idea of data sharing has increased collaboration between scientist, accelerating the rate of research and development. Collins also shared his excitement around CRISPR, the gene editing technology. From basic research to human trials. This is huge as people often say basic research is not worth the money, but every once in awhile something like this comes along and completely changes the field. CRISPS has already achieved the status of a revolution in medicine and biotechnology. Collins predicts it will cure the first molecular disease, Sickle Cell Disease. The current major NIH project is “All of Us” (formerly Precision Medicine Initiative). Beta launched in May 2017 with a full launch in Spring 2018 where it will ramp up to having over 100 locations. The purpose of the project to accelerate healthcare, specifically for individualized care. Enrolling one million participants is the goal. The term participants is key, as opposed to human subjects, as the patients are considered partners in this journey. Why now? One main reason is the insane drop in the cost of sequencing, in 2004 it costs $22 million to sequence a genome, now in 2017 the cost is $800. “We don’t have a healthcare system, it’s a sickcare system” Collins explained. The more data we can provide showing prevention is more effective than treatment will help us make this transition in our health care approach. Collins also commented on the exciting new field of microbiome research, studying the bacteria that live in and on us. Human Microbiome Project’s mission is to generate resources for comprehensive characterization of the microbiome. It started in 2008 and is now in it’s second phase. George Weinstock, professor at Jackson Laboratories, state there are 754 studies on clincialtrails.gov (as of 10/25/17) that list the microbiome. New genetic sequencing technologies (like Next Generation Sequencing) has driven this field. Research centers around the relationship between disease and the microbiome. The microbiome has additional obstacles when researching, compared to genomics, due to it’s enormous plasticity. Our microbiome changes with our environment, diet etc. One interesting research study mentioned studies Olympic level athletes to find out if there is a “golden microbiome”, so far they have found a bacteria in common with many of these athletes, M. smithii. Another advancement in the field is an FDA approved product produced from microbiome research data, AEObiome’s MotherDirt. It is a body spray that is designed to be compatible with the microbiome of the skin. James Lu, Co-Founder and Senior Vice President of Applied Genomics, Helix, discussed direct to consumer genomics and a few interesting new genetic themed apps (Neanderthal by Insitome, BABYGlimpse by HumanCode). He also talked about emerging platform for participatory research such as Precise.ly, which tracks symptoms and diseases. Lisa Anderson, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Genome Medical, stressed the potential genetics/genomics medicine has to improve patient outcomes and reduce costs of care, YET it’s not accessible to patients despite the technology existing. Genetic testing is growing 20-25% yearly, however the workforce is only growing by 3%. This gap is continuously growing. Her company aims to reduce this gap by providing real time access to genetic counseling. Anderson also predicts within 5 years every cancer patient will have germline and somatic sequencing. Andrew Ury, Chief Executive Officer and Founder of ActX, explained how direct-to-consumer genetics can be used for a potential screening for drug compatibility (pharmacogenomics). 90% of patients have potential drug genomic interactions. This is especially useful for mental health medications. An announcement/reminder that the first Genetic Counseling Awareness day will be on November 9th. Follow activities with #IAmAGeneticCounselor and on National Society of Genetic Counselor’s website.

You may not realize it, but your body is home to a lot of microbes — way more than you might think. In healthy humans, “microbial cells outnumber human cells by about ten to one,” according to the Human Microbiome Project of the National Institutes of Health.Most of them, called gut flora, live in your digestive system, especially in the colon. Others live in distinct communities in and on your body, in different types of environments — hot or cold, moist or dry.If that makes you feel creepy, relax. While some microbes can make you sick — specific bacteria and viruses, for example — most are harmless, and many actually help keep you healthy. Together they make up your microbiome.Listen in as Emese Zsiros, MD, discusses the exciting whole new area of research on gut flora, how what’s going on in our gut has a huge influence on overall health and happiness, and that our main goal is to look for new approaches that may improve survival for our patients and minimize side effects of treatment.

You may not realize it, but your body is home to a lot of microbes — way more than you might think. In healthy humans, “microbial cells outnumber human cells by about ten to one,” according to the Human Microbiome Project of the National Institutes of Health.Most of them, called gut flora, live in your digestive system, especially in the colon. Others live in distinct communities in and on your body, in different types of environments — hot or cold, moist or dry.If that makes you feel creepy, relax. While some microbes can make you sick — specific bacteria and viruses, for example — most are harmless, and many actually help keep you healthy. Together they make up your microbiome.Listen in as Emese Zsiros, MD, discusses the exciting whole new area of research on gut flora, how what’s going on in our gut has a huge influence on overall health and happiness, and that our main goal is to look for new approaches that may improve survival for our patients and minimize side effects of treatment.

The microbiome has great impact on your health. But as Rob Knight of UC San Diego demonstrates, the good news you have the power to alter it. Learn more about microbiome discoveries, synthetic microbes, what a healthy microbiome looks like and how the Human Microbiome Project is making this happen. Series: "Excerpts" [Health and Medicine] [Show ID: 31643]

The microbiome has great impact on your health. But as Rob Knight of UC San Diego demonstrates, the good news you have the power to alter it. Learn more about microbiome discoveries, synthetic microbes, what a healthy microbiome looks like and how the Human Microbiome Project is making this happen. Series: "Excerpts" [Health and Medicine] [Show ID: 31643]

Lauren Petersen, PhD, is a postdoctoral associate working for Dr. George Weinstock and investigating the microbiome. Our knowledge of the 100 trillion microorganisms that inhabit the human body is still very limited, but the advent of next-generation sequencing technology has allowed researchers to start understanding what kind of microorganisms inhabit the human body and identifying the types of genes these organisms carry. As part of the NIH-funded Human Microbiome Project, her lab is focused on developing and applying the latest technologies to characterize the microbiome and its impact on human health. One of her main projects is metatranscriptomic analysis whereby they are attempting to characterize gene expression of an entire community from human samples such as stool and saliva. Gaining information on what signals or environmental factors can trigger changes in global gene expression of an entire microbial community may provide us with the tools to better treat certain types of diseases in humans. Lauren is currently working on the Athlete Microbiome Project. By collecting stool and saliva samples from a cohort of highly fit professional cyclists, she will make an attempt to understand how their microbiomes may differ from those of the general population. The goal is to characterize the species present, the genes they carry, and how gene expression is modulated in athletes who push their bodies to the limit. Here’s the outline of this interview with Lauren Petersen: [00:00:28] George Weinstock, PhD. [00:01:27] Jeremy Powers interview. [00:01:43] Jeff Kendall-Weed. [00:02:15] Why care about the gut microbiome? [00:03:32] Metabolic functions. [00:03:51] NIH Human Microbiome Project. [00:04:39] Phase II longitudinal study. [00:06:01] Microbial diversity. [00:07:33] Lyme and antibiotics. [00:08:15] Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. [00:09:35] Gordon conferences - Rob Knight. [00:10:27] American Gut Project. [00:10:48] Firmicutes and Bacteroidetes. [00:11:05] Enterobacteriaceae. [00:11:59] Fecal transplant. [00:13:16] Screening donors. [00:13:32] DIY. [00:13:52] C. diff. [00:14:14] Transplants started in the 50s. [00:14:47] IBS. [00:16:12] Healthy donor. [00:17:43] Within a month, Lauren was feeling a lot better. [00:18:13] Instantaneous improvement on the bike. [00:19:22] No more stomach issues, "more energy than I knew what to do with". [00:19:54] Retest data showed perfect match with donor. [00:20:56] Sequencing large vs. small intestinal microbes. [00:21:28] FDA has no idea what to do. [00:23:02] Strategies for maintaining a healthy gut microbiome. [00:23:31] Whole foods, lots of fruit and vegetables. [00:23:48] No gels. [00:24:26] Athlete Microbiome Project. [00:26:34] Microbiome doping? [00:27:05] Ruminococcus - starch digester. [00:28:26] Enterotype - the dominate species in the gut. [00:28:56] Prevotella. [00:30:14] Teasing apart the cause and the effect. [00:32:28] Endotoxins released during intense exercise. [00:32:49] 25 participants at the time of recording, I'm number 26! [00:33:29] Matching cohort of healthy controls. [00:34:28] Ibis World Cup racer. [00:35:01] uBiome. [00:35:08] My app. [00:35:54] The problem with 16S sequencing. [00:36:16] Missing bifidobacteria. [00:37:05] A combination of methods is required for accurate testing. [00:38:30] New commercially available test? [00:39:11] Probiotic quality. [00:40:04] Testing probiotics. [00:41:37] Bifido doesn't like oxygen (or your stomach). [00:42:02] Lactobacillus is more resilient. [00:42:50] Bifido love fructooligosaccharides. [00:43:36] Lack of association with dietary restrictions. [00:44:53] Feed your microbiome!

Today is the day. We are talking about the importance of your microbiome and gut health. Everything seems to go back to your gut. Human Microbiome Project – $115 Million dollar project started in 2008 designed to study the microorganisms found in both healthy and diseased people. Bio = Life Ome = the object of study BIOME has also been defined as a naturally occurring community of flora. Necessary for extracting energy from food 80% of our immune system is in our gut 100 trillion bacteria, protozoa, bacteria, and viruses We are talking all hour about your gut biome and how important it is to protect it and cultivate a healthy environment for your body to thrive in. The future: Your Medical Records will list your Enterotype Much like there are eight different common blood types, researchers found the existence of at least three distinct human "enterotypes", or intestinal bacterial communities. Doctors could use your microbiome to custom tailor medical treatments Elimination of multiple disease states through a balanced biome Facts: These organisms outnumber human organisms 10:1 There are 700-800 separate species Discuss GMO and RoundUp crops Prebiotic – A food substance metabolized by the microbiota that directly or indirectly benefits the host – tomatoes, artichokes, asparagus, onions, garlic, lentils, oatmeal, berries Probiotics – A live microorganism consumed by the host with direct or indirect health benefits. Yogurt, Kefir, sauerkraut, soy sauce, brined pickles We want to empower you with all the health information you need! Our daily podcast is full of tips, tricks, and advice for living a long and healthy life. Judy Gaman is the author of the award-winning book Age to Perfection: How to Thrive to 100, Happy, Healthy, and. Each day she brings you one new tip that will help you stay young and vibrant. Subscribe to the show in iTunes so that you never miss an episode – http://www.StayYoungAmerica.com/iTunes

There are trillions of microbes inside us, on us, and in our environment. And it turns out that humans and these microbes have been co-evolving for billions of years. Thanks to a combination of new technology and The National Institutes of Health’s Human Microbiome Project, we know now more than ever about microbes, how they interact with us, and how we might be able to harness them to improve our health! In our latest Please Explain, Rob DeSalle, curator of entomology in the Sackler Institute for Comparative Genomics at the American Museum of Natural History and co-author of Welcome to the Microbiome: Getting to Know the Trillions of Bacteria and Other Microbes In, On, and Around You, answers your questions about microbes and what they mean to us. Rob DeSalle is also co-curator of the exhibit The Secret World Inside You, currently on view at the American Museum of Natural History through August 14.  Do you have questions about microbes, probiotics, and the way they can influence your health? Send us your questions in a comment below, or let us know Twitter or Facebook!

  On this podcast I'm going to discuss further revelations concerning probiotics, including the Human Microbiome Project and the implications of new discoveries.  Also, in honor of Father's Day, I will discuss prostate health, and share some thoughts and ideas about how to treat BPH and help lower your risk of prostate cancer.

Equilibrium is a probiotic supplement that restores the dietary microbes lost as a by-product of widespread food sterilization. The product is a direct offshoot of research done at the NIH’s Human Microbiome Project, a $115 million dollar census of humanity’s gut flora. The data tells a clear story: as a society our digestive flora is dying off, and this lack of diversity has causal links to western stomach issues. Using a data-driven approach, General Biotics identified the groups of bacteria that are commonly missing from western microbiomes. GB then worked backwards from these data to locate missing dietary microbes that provide the needed function. In this episode, David Salamon, CEO of General Biotics and I mention: The American Gut Project Commensal bacteria protect against food allergen sensitization

If it was possible to take a full scan of all of the DNA of every cell in and on your body the results would be startling: Only 1 percent would be human. The other 99 percent comprises all of the bacteria, fungi, viruses and other microbes you literally cannot live without. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://news.iheart.com/podcast-advertisers

If it was possible to take a full scan of all of the DNA of every cell in and on your body the results would be startling: Only 1 percent would be human. The other 99 percent comprises all of the bacteria, fungi, viruses and other microbes you literally cannot live without. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://news.iheart.com/podcast-advertisers

Nestor Rodriguez, Simon Kaufman and Rich Corbin discuss the ecosystem inside your body. Did you know your body harbors trillions of bacteria that have profound effects on your health, your weight, and even your mood. We each have our own Microbiome! Half of your stool is not leftover food, It is "microbial biomass” There is new research that shows that transferring fecal matter from one person to another can help cure life threatening illnesses. We also discuss the proper way of wiping your ass… find out how you can make your own Puerto Rican Bidet! While on a Safari, Jack McGee sends in a video of a Kenyan radio commercial for our show! A judge orders cops in Nebraska to return $1 million in confiscated cash plus interest to Cali stripper Tara Mishra.

Think small! Microbes are tinier than the dot at the end of this sentence, yet they can make humans sicker than dogs, dogs sicker than humans, jump from animal to human and keep scientists guessing when and where the next disease will appear. Discover how doctors diagnosed one man's mysterious infection, the role that animals play as hosts for disease, and why the rate of emerging diseases is increasing worldwide. Also, why your kitchen is a biosafety hazard, and how the Human Microbiome Project will tally all the microbes on – and in - you. Plus, the extreme places on Earth where microbes thrive and what it suggests for the existence of alien life. And, how one strain of bacteria helped a farmer grow a pumpkin the weight of a small car! Guests: Peter Hudson - Biologist, Director of Life Sciences at Penn State University Peter Krause - Senior research scientist at the Yale School of Public Health Durland Fish - Epidemiologist at the Yale School of Public Health. Information on his Lyme disease app David Relman - Stanford University microbiologist and infectious disease clinician Erich Fleming - Biologist, SETI Institute O. Peter Snyder - Hospitality Institute of Technology and Management John Raeside - Oakland, California Frances Raeside - Oakland, California Jennifer Kate Arnold - Infectious Disease Clinic, Kaiser Permanente Medical Group Dave Stelts - Farmer, head of the Great Pumpkin Commonwealth Neil Anderson - Owner, president of Reforestation Technologies International. Find retail products. Descripción en español Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Think small! Microbes are tinier than the dot at the end of this sentence, yet they can make humans sicker than dogs, dogs sicker than humans, jump from animal to human and keep scientists guessing when and where the next disease will appear. Discover how doctors diagnosed one man’s mysterious infection, the role that animals play as hosts for disease, and why the rate of emerging diseases is increasing worldwide. Also, why your kitchen is a biosafety hazard, and how the Human Microbiome Project will tally all the microbes on – and in - you. Plus, the extreme places on Earth where microbes thrive and what it suggests for the existence of alien life. And, how one strain of bacteria helped a farmer grow a pumpkin the weight of a small car! Guests: Peter Hudson - Biologist, Director of Life Sciences at Penn State University Peter Krause - Senior research scientist at the Yale School of Public Health Durland Fish - Epidemiologist at the Yale School of Public Health. Information on his Lyme disease app David Relman - Stanford University microbiologist and infectious disease clinician Erich Fleming - Biologist, SETI Institute O. Peter Snyder - Hospitality Institute of Technology and Management John Raeside - Oakland, California Frances Raeside - Oakland, California Jennifer Kate Arnold - Infectious Disease Clinic, Kaiser Permanente Medical Group Dave Stelts - Farmer, head of the Great Pumpkin Commonwealth Neil Anderson - Owner, president of Reforestation Technologies International. Find retail products. Descripción en español