[00:00:00] Luke Storey:  I'm Luke Storey. For the past 22 years, I've been relentlessly committed to my deepest passion, designing the ultimate lifestyle based on the most powerful principles of spirituality, health, psychology. The Life Stylist podcast is a show dedicated to sharing my discoveries and the experts behind them with you. All right, welcome to the show, guys. Here we go. Very pleased to see both of you. And it's interesting doing remote recordings with more than one person because I find my eyes darting around.

[00:00:40] It's great. I don't know if I've done one of these. Maybe I did. Actually, I did one of them, yeah. So, we're all making adjustments as a result, of course, of the current situation we find ourselves in. So, Tina, of course, has been on the show before. And so, I'm happy to have you back. So, let's just go ahead and jump right into it. What I really want to focus on today because it's so timely is immunity in general. And I think a lot of us are aware that gut health is paramount when it comes to building immunity.

[00:01:10] And so, I want to cover that. But I want to just get into as much of the gut biome and just virology in general since that's kind of what we're dealing with currently. This is going to come out in a few weeks from the time of this recording, so I'm sure things will have changed and developed somewhat by then. But something that won't have changed is how to keep our gut health happening and our immunity strong. So, let's just go ahead and jump in to how gut health, leaky gut, et cetera, affect our immunity to things like viruses, bacteria, fungal infections, et cetera.

[00:01:50]Tina Anderson:  Yeah, I could start and Kiran could finish up. But thanks, by the way, for having us on. We're excited to be here. So, basically, the estimate, about 80% of our immune system is actually found in our gut lining. So, people aren't thinking of their gut necessarily when they're thinking about immune health, but it's really the first place to start when you're talking about it, your immune system, because that's exactly where the immune system is, is in your gut lining.

[00:02:16] So, we know that there are toxins that are in our gut that seep into our bloodstream that cause that leaky gut that we always talk about. We can go into that in more detail. But when you have those toxins leaking into your bloodstream, it causes this inflammatory response that's not good for us. This is why people who have autoimmune diseases and allergies, they almost certainly have a leaky gut. So, it's really important that we first and foremost start talking about our gut health when we are talking about immune health.

[00:02:48]Kiran Krishnan:  Yeah. And let me deconstruct something really important that Tina said, unpack it a little bit. And a lot of people have heard this, where you've heard about 70% to 80% of your immune system or immune tissues in your gut, right? But what in the world does that actually mean? And if that's true, why is it in the gut? So, let's talk a little bit about the immune system. So, your immune system has a couple of big sections or parts to it.

[00:03:12] One is the site of battles, and the battle can occur anywhere in your body, anywhere this damage, battles occur. But typically, to really mount a really robust response to wherever that site of infection or damage is, the immune system drains part of that battle into a lymph node. So, that's why when you go into a doctor's office, if you're feeling sick, they're going to check around your throat and all that. If you have an upper respiratory thing, they're looking for swollen and tender lymph nodes, which then indicates as an active infection going on, right? 

[00:03:43] So, think of lymph nodes as like sites of battle, and proliferation, and action going on. Then, the other part of the immune system is your sampling tissue. So, your immune system has a highly sensitive detection mechanism called sampling tissue. And that sampling tissue's job is to constantly be detecting and learning all of the things that your body is encountering on a regular basis. And in that sampling tissue, your immune system starts to make decisions on what to respond to and what to not respond to. And the what to not respond to is equally important because that yields something called oral tolerance, right?

[00:04:21] If we end up responding to everything we come across, then we're going to really have a broken-down immune system. And there's lots of conditions like that, starting from basic things like food sensitivities, and allergies, and asthma. All of these things are a result of loss of oral tolerance. So, that sampling tissue, the vast majority of it, is actually in your digestive tract, right? So, you've got all of this, it's called a mucus-associated lymphoid tissue and the gut-associated lymphoid tissue, it covers your entire 20-something, eight feet of that digestive tract.

[00:04:55] And here's a crazy thing about it. Imagine you are an immune cell and your job sitting there in the gut is just sample everything that's coming in. And the reason you're there is because physiologically, the most abundance of things that enter the body is through the oral cap, right? The way we are designed is we put food, drink, and all that. That's the largest amount of stuff, foreign stuff that enters the body. Also, everything up here drains into the gut.

[00:05:21] So, if you think about your ears, the Eustachian tubes drain into the gut, all of your sinus cavities that house things that you breathe in end up draining into the gut, through the throat, even your lungs, stuff you breathe in that gets into the lungs. There's something called a mucociliary elevator that pushes all of that up, little hair-like cilia with the mucus, pushes it all up so that you can then swallow it and it goes into the gut. Kids eat their boogers primarily for this reason, in my view.

[00:05:50] And we can have that conversation because I've been exploring why in the world does every kid, even today, that's born to have this instinct of eating their boogers, right? It's a really important subject because when you think about it, and I've observed, my kids are nine and now, six, my six-year-old and my nine-year-old when they were between the ages of three and around five, if they pulled out the grossest, nastiest thing that they could find in their nose, their instinct was to put it in their mouth, right? 

[00:06:19] And we lose that instinct over time. The question is, why is that true for all kids born today? And it's true for all of us, I think some of us may deny it, but we all ate our boogers. Booger is like a natural vaccine. You're picking up mucus IGA-covered viruses, bacteria, and all that have entered your body in some form, and then captured by your mucosa. And then, now, it's in this beautiful immune stimulatory capsule. And your instinct to eat it sends it into the sampling tissue in the gut.

[00:06:53] And then, your gut can mount a really robust immune response against that and recognize it for future encounters. We see this through the work of Dr. Simon Cutting, who's using natural antigens and using probiotic bacteria, sticking them on bacteria, sending them into the gut through the digestive tract. And then you see this robust immune recognition response to those antigens through the gut, right? So, you are an immune tissue, you're sitting there in the gut, and your job is to detect all of the microbes coming in, the viruses, bacteria, protozoans, amoebas, and you're supposed to figure out what's good and what's bad, what to attack, what not to attack. All the while, you are covered in microbes, right? 

[00:07:37] Because every square millimeter of our tissue in our gut is covered in microbes. So, it's a profound task to ask for our immune system to be vigilant, monitor, figure out what's going on, figure out who's coming in and out, who's good and bad. All the while, they're covered in the microbes that they're supposed be detecting. So, how does that actually work? That was a big question in the science of immunology for decades. And then, they figured out about 15 to 20 years ago, there's something called immune crosstalk between the microbes that live in the gut and the immune tissue whose job it is to monitor them.

[00:08:14] The microbes that live in the gut do a big role and a big service in communicating to your immune system who should be there and who shouldn't be there. And they, in fact, can go as far as when an invading microbe comes in, actually flag that invading microbe for detection by your immune system. So, your immune system would cease to have the intelligence to protect you without the presence of the right types of microbes in that system. And again, that accounts for 80% of your immune tissue. So, your gut and your microbiome with respect to the immune system is the Central Command Center, but we can't overstate the importance.

[00:08:55]Luke Storey:  That's really interesting. And you might have just uncovered the newest biohack of eating your boogers.

[00:08:59]Kiran Krishnan:  Yeah, absolutely. And a lot of things I proposed in a talk is booger parties. Like get all the kids together, share the boogers. There are all kinds of immunity we have in all of that. But to me, it explains that instinct. One of the things, I'm a microbiologist by training, but I'm a closeted evolutionary biologist. Meaning, I thrive on this idea of looking at what occurs naturally in nature, what instincts we tend to have and what purposes that instinct serve, right? Same thing with babies.

[00:09:33] Babies are fascinating creatures to me. Having had a couple of them, there's so many aspects of them being fascinating. But one of the things that babies do that without a doubt to me is unusual behavior, but it makes sense when you think about it from the microbiome perspective, is they put everything in their mouth, right? The question is, why is it that it's a natural instinct of a newborn baby up to one-and-a-half years or so to sample their entire environments first with their mouth? Babies don't pick things up and look at it, and feel it, and all that, the first thing they do is put it in their mouth.

[00:10:08] And as a species, our mouth is on a central sensory organ, right? We are visual, we're tactile, we're auditory, but babies sample everything with their mouth because early on, our ancestor babies are born, they're put in the dirt, they're put on the ground, they put all kinds of rocks, and dust, and dung, and all that in their mouth because there are studies that show that early exposure to environmental bacteria helps develop that gut-associated lymphoid tissue, right? So, it's all so well-interconnected that our microbiome, the development and how it looks is absolutely paramount to immune function.

[00:10:47]Luke Storey:  And then, what about speaking of children and developing the gut biome and sort of seeding the biome as it pertains later on to immunity? What about children that are born via C-section and children that aren't breastfed? Can you talk about the initial development of the gut biome and the immune system from birth and what happens when either of those things don't happen?

[00:11:18]Kiran Krishnan:  Yeah. And Tina, I don't know if you want to comment on this, but we've had a bunch of focus on this early on. And then, I can follow up with more nerdy details.

[00:11:28]Tina Anderson:  Yeah.

[00:11:29]Luke Storey:  Okay.

[00:11:29]Tina Anderson:  Yeah. Right. Well, I mean, obviously, the most a child is inoculated with their microbiome, with their gut bacteria through vaginal childbirth, and skin to close skin-to-skin contact, and breastfeeding. And so, of course, being born ceased by cesarean section does become problematic. There are ways that we can, they could swab the mother's microbiome and get it to the child when they're first born.

[00:11:56] But because we know that some people have to have a cesarean and we wouldn't suggest putting anyone's life in danger or anything like that. So, it's definitely, that is actually the only time you are inoculated with your microbiome, is during vaginal childbirth, close skin-to-skin contact and breastfeeding. So, we don't really get the same Lactobacillus and bifidobacteria strains through our environment. We never got those from our environment. We get them through natural childbirth.

[00:12:26]Kiran Krishnan:  Yeah. And that's an important point then to highlight is, let's talk about the vaginal bacteria to begin with, right? So, the vaginal bacteria is really interesting. The vagina is interesting for many reasons. But when you think about it from a microbiology standpoint, it's even more fascinating because a lot of the body contains bacteria, which, all parts of the body contain loads and loads of bacteria. Nothing in the body is effectively sterile.

[00:12:52] We used to think our urine was sterile, and that we all heard that, but that's not true. We thought our blood was sterile. Our blood's not. For every milliliter of blood, we've got over a thousand bacteria cells and we have like 5,500 milliliters of blood in our body. So, we're loaded with microbes. And in the gut, diversity in the microbiome is really important. We want to have lots of different bacterial species and with some degree of uniformity.

[00:13:19] Now, when it comes to the vagina, which is an amazing place for bacteria to grow because it's warm, there's moisture in there, there's actually access to food source that comes from the gut and other parts of the mucosa. But yet, a healthy vaginal microbiome is typically predominated by one species only in most women, right? So, it doesn't have diversity. Now, what tends to happen is once a woman gets pregnant, by the end of the second trimester, that she automatically starts having increase in diversity in the vaginal microbiota. 

[00:13:52] There are species that start showing up that actually would never exist unless you were pregnant in the vaginal microbiota. In particular, certain species that are responsible for breaking down milk-based proteins and fat, right? So, they're showing up there just in preparation for inoculating the baby. And then, of course, as evidence showing that there are immune cells that go to mom's gut and in utero during the development stage, during gestation, these immune cells take it through the cord blood, take these bacteria and deposit it into the baby's amniotic fluid because you find mom's gut bacteria in the amniotic fluid.

[00:14:32] That's an amazing transformation. And when you think about that, we can then use our immune system, which is only known for just defense. They are instead just carriers in this state going to the gut, bringing bacteria, taking it to the gestating babies. So, it's absolutely fascinating. Then, one of the important things that occurs right before birth is the water breaking. The water breaking also services another purpose in that it helps dislodge a lot of the large bacteria that are bound to the membranes in mom's vaginal canal. 

[00:15:03] So, that starts bringing up the bacteria. As the baby starts passing through, he or she will get a big ingestion of bacteria into the mouth, nose, ears, and so on. And then, the other important part is the baby will get exposed to mom's fecal bacteria as well. The vaginal canal is right next to the anus where fecal matter comes out. And often times, as you talk to most women who went through natural childbirth, they defecate during the process, doing the pushing. 

[00:15:33] And then, defecation is important because there are lots of bifidobacteria in that fecal matter. And that bifidobacteria becomes one of the early predominant species in the baby's gut. And so, the way it tends to happen is the baby comes out. Hopefully, he or she went through the vaginal canal, got exposed to mom's fecal matter. They didn't wipe off the baby immediately. So, some of that stayed on when it was available to kind of set up shop in the baby.

[00:15:59] And then, early on, the facultative bacteria, meaning the ones that can work with oxygen in the gut, will start eating away all of the oxygen in the gut. And that happens in the first like three or four weeks. Once the oxygen is quenched, then the anaerobic bacteria, which is the main ones in your colon, start to have a chance to proliferate. And once they start proliferating, they really start setting up the process of neurological development and all that because they produce things like short-chain fatty acids and so on. 

[00:16:31] Breast milk contains 600 to 800 different species of bacteria. And breast milk is loaded with microbes, right? It's mind boggling. Almost 25% of the nutrient content of breast milk are over 200 different oligosaccharides prebiotics that the baby cannot digest for energy. It's there purely to feed the microbes that are now starting to try to establish themselves in the gut. So, this process has been perfected by evolution, right? This is the only mammalian food that has been perfected by millions of years of evolution.

[00:17:08] And it's perfected in such a way that it absolutely sets up an amazing ecosystem in the baby's gut that then impacts a baby in a positive way for the rest of life. If the baby comes out cesarean, then the baby doesn't get the vaginal bacteria exposure, doesn't get the fecal bacteria exposure. In fact, the first bacteria the baby gets exposed in as documented well in studies is streptococcus, and E. coli, and other bacteria from the doctors and the air in the exam rooms. That already starts changing how the baby's microbiome develops, thereby cesarean section babies tend to have almost double the risk of immune dysfunction, of obesity, asthma, allergies. All of these kinds of dysfunctions are driven by that difference in how they come out.

[00:17:56]Luke Storey:  That's really interesting because when I learned that, just the basic fundamentals of that, the vaginal canal, and all that, I observed my two brothers who were 12 and eight years younger than I, and they were both C-section, their mom's really tiny, my mom's bigger. And I was nine pounds. And I'm sure it was no party, but it went down as quickly as it could happen in a hospital in Denver in 1970. But my two brothers, they've worked a lot in their health. In fact, one of my brothers has been carnivore for like two years and has not been sick once since he did.

[00:18:31] That's really interesting. Another topic. But both of them historically have been sick all the time. They just always had a cold and they get rid of a cold, they get another cold. And I always thought, they lead a pretty healthy lifestyle, what the hell is going on here? And then, I kind of put those pieces together and thought, oh, that's really interesting, that correlation that we have a different mom, same dad. So, I guess we have some different DNA, but their mom's not sick all the time. She's healthy, you know what I mean?

[00:18:59]Kiran Krishnan:  Right. Yeah. And they were C-sectioned, you said? 

[00:19:03]Luke Storey:  Yeah. 

[00:19:04]Kiran Krishnan:  Yeah, absolutely. That has a huge impact for the rest of their lives, starting at birth.

[00:19:09]Luke Storey:  Yeah. And then, another thing came to mind was my mom told me that her water had not broken by the time I was born and that they had to put me in an incubator for a few days and be isolated because of a risk of infection or something. And I'm horrified to learn a few years ago that I was not breastfed either, because I just always figured as my mom was pretty earthy, and I asked her about it because I did some functional medicine lab. She's like, no, I didn't do it, the doctor said, it's a hassle, and you don't feel like it, you just do the formula, it's fine.

[00:19:39] And she believed the doctor. And I was always like, God, I got robbed of the water breaking, I didn't know until you just told me, but also, the breastfeeding. Now, I turned out okay, and I've worked on my gut health a lot. But you seem to observe the difference between like adult C-section babies. So, Tina, you mentioned something. When a woman has to elect for whatever reason to do a C-section, that they can swab the baby on the way out and introduce that inoculation manually when it is missed by not going through the canal?

[00:20:14]Tina Anderson:  Yeah. I have no experience with it because I had all three of my children born naturally, but I've read some things about it. And I know Kiran has talked about it at length, too, that you can swab it. In that way, you can somehow pass the mother's microbiome, at least part of it, on to the child. 

[00:20:30]Kiran Krishnan:  Yeah, where that comes from is a couple of studies at New York University that did it where in the case where a C-section had to be done, what they would do is they would just swab the vaginal canal after the baby comes out, and then swab around the eyes, nose, and mouth of the baby. And they found that following those babies for a period of time after birth, that just doing that alone kind of negated some of the negative effects of being born C-section.

[00:20:58] A lot of people are also starting to do, where, and actually, one of my boys, I did this recently last year n when she had a baby, where she knew she was going to be C-section because of whatever the medical conditions were associated with it, and so, you can put sterile gauze into your vegetable canal. And she was doing this at home. Her and her husband were trying to shove gauze in there before they had to go to the hospital. And then, they got to the hospital and they were able then after birth to pull that out, and just wipe the baby down. So, just that simple thing alone seems to make a big difference. 

[00:21:32]Luke Storey:  When it comes to the element of the fecal matter that you were talking about, I find that really interesting because we're led to believe, and I think rightly so, that you don't want fecal matter around anywhere. And that's why there's sinks and bathrooms everywhere, and you want to wash your hands, and make sure that it does not get anywhere. It's crazy that that's part of the natural birth process and that it doesn't make the baby sick or kill the baby. And that kind of leads me into the—well, there's a couple of things I want to cover, is what happens when the mom's gut biome is wrecked and how that could happen.

[00:22:07] And then, also, this idea of fecal implants for people that have not had antibiotics and have been eating non-GMO organic food because they live in the middle of a freaking jungle somewhere. And they have a great test sampling for someone who has SIBO or some other like more severe gut issues that people now or I even have a friend that cured himself of, God, what did he have? Ulcerative colitis. No, he had Crohn's, actually. Yeah. And he found a donor that had never taken antibiotics. It happened to be a buddy of his that lived a couple of miles away. And so, he spent, I don't know, a few months, if not a year, collecting this guy's poop every day, taken it home and injecting it into himself of Crohn's disease.

[00:22:55]Tina Anderson:  Wow.

[00:22:56]Kiran Krishnan:  Yeah.

[00:22:56]Luke Storey:  I mean, it was not pretty. He's like, I wouldn't recommend it for the faint at heart, but it worked. And he completed his gut because he had wrecked it with antibiotics and things like that. So, I guess maybe give us a bit on some of the things that are damaging to the gut biome for a mother or anyone. And how much validity and where are we in terms of the science and development with fecal implants for someone who's severely compromised in terms of their gut health?

[00:23:23]Tina Anderson:  Yeah.

[00:23:24]Kiran Krishnan:  Yeah. So, a fecal transplantation is a really interesting field. And I think in the future, it'll become a really effective tool for lots of different things. There are case studies on people with certain types of neurological disorders, cerebral palsy that can get a fecal transplant and show lots of resolution. So, it's a really interesting area. The big discussion around it is donor selection, like you said, because there are also cases that, for example, one that was popularized by the media of a lady who had GI issues.

[00:23:58] I think she had an inflammatory bowel condition for years. She was always an athlete. She's very fit and lean, but had the GI issues, and then got a fecal transplant from a donor. And this was facilitated by her medical team, the donor is anonymous donor as far as she's concerned. And then, immediately after that, over the next 30, 40 days, started to realize she's putting on lots of weight. And she can't control it to a certain degree. And she had always been very lean and fit, never had this problem.

[00:24:33] And then, as they looked at it deeper, the donor was overweight, that got the transplant. So, it helped the gut issue, but then, it created a metabolic issue, right? And because there's so much being transplanted when you transplant someone's biome into someone else, there's so many factors being transplanted. The donor selection aspect of it becomes really interesting. Now, we also find, because I've worked with doctors and lots of people that do their own transplants, that often, you have to do it multiple times in order for it to actually take a hold because in the initial phases when your microbiome is being set up, in that first 858 days.

[00:25:13] So, the first two-and-a-half, three years, there is this really important crosstalk between your immune system and your microbiome where your immune system is learning who your resident microbes are. And then, there is this process of selecting and allowing certain bacteria to predominate or to exist in a homeostatic way in your microbiome. And that part is not really quite understood because there's lots of studies on twins, where they are identical twins, are born within minutes of each other.

[00:25:44] So, they get the same microbiome exposure from mom. They have a hundred percent same genetics. And yet, their microbiomes can be as much as 50% different when it comes to the species level, right? So, there's this selection process that occurs between your immune system and your microbiome, that part which is not well-understood. So then, in your immune system's memory and mind, it has a microbial signature that it's trying to maintain. So, you bring a fecal transplant in, which is a bunch of bacteria from another person.

[00:26:14] A lot of them may get attacked by your own immune system and reject it in a way. And then, your microbiome starts reverting back to what it's looking like, then you've got to do it again and do it again. Some of the larger clinics that do this will say that you need to do it six, seven, eight times sometimes before it really takes. But it all highlights how amazingly versatile and important your microbiome is because it can control so many aspects of your wellness and function, and it also speaks to that really intimate relationship between our immune system and the microbiome.

[00:26:53]Luke Storey:  Awesome.

[00:26:53]Tina Anderson:  Yeah. And I think talking about the pregnant women, people ask me all the time, is it okay to take your probiotic when you're pregnant? And of course, we always say, "Ask your doctor if it's okay." But I mean, my God, if there was ever a time to be taking high-quality probiotic or doing other things to support your gut health, it's when you're pregnant because you are literally passing on your microbes to your baby. And that will dictate a lifetime of their health. So, really, really important for pregnant moms to be focusing on the health of their microbiome.

[00:27:25]Luke Storey:  Yeah, it seems like that should be part of, what I call, the pre-production or the trimester zero, I think one of my colleagues that I'm going to interview calls it. She might even have a book on it. But it's the time you spend before you decide to get pregnant and kind of just readying the troops and getting your body in optimal shape. I think the gut would have a really important part in that. 

[00:27:49]Tina Anderson:  Or if they're trying to conceive, too, the same thing, I mean, for both parties.

[00:27:54]Luke Storey:  Yeah, I always think I'm kind of like not part of that conversation.

[00:28:00]Tina Anderson:  You are.

[00:28:01]Luke Storey:  Just have a big ego and the quality of my sperm, I figure I've been into the biohacking stuff for so long, like what could I possibly be contributing that's not going to be positive? But yeah. I mean, I guess if you have weak sperm motility or you have something going on in your genetic expression as a man, you could also be contributing. This is going to be a random one for you. I was thinking about before, how when you were describing the immune system and how the immune tissue in there, I think, as you put it, is able to identify things that you swallow or things that are coming through your lymphatic system, your sinuses, et cetera. 

[00:28:44] And then, it's identifying it as friend or foe, and sort of building antibodies to that, right? And correct me if I got any of that wrong. Do you know anything about the practice of urine auto-therapy for building immunity? This is going back like 15 years ago. In my early part of my journey, this became a thing for a while where you would drink like a shot glass if you're going—I mean, it became a thing for so long with me. 

[00:29:11] It became a thing, a trend. Most people wouldn't, but I was hardcore. And they said Gandhi did it, and it was part of the Ayurvedic system, et cetera. And it was based on that idea that it was like basically creating your own vaccine. And so, there was a period, sorry, folks, but it happened, where each morning, I would have a little shot glass of my own pee. Now, this was not a pleasant experience and I couldn't quantify the results of it, per se. 

[00:29:36] So, I discontinued that practice. But I was interviewing David Wolfe yesterday and he worked in an alternative cancer clinic in Tijuana where people would come in and do stem cells, and ozone therapy, and all this stuff. And one of the most effective things they would do to boost immunity was urine injections. I'm thinking it would be like doing an intramuscular injection of urine with the same idea that your body's going to build up antibodies and kind of work as its own vaccine. Have either of you heard about anything in that realm that supports immune function or is that just wives tale?

[00:30:13]Kiran Krishnan:  To be honest, I haven't seen any studies on it. I don't know if anyone is actually publishing studies. I've heard about that a lot, but I have not seen any actual published literature. Now, just using scientific rationale, it can make sense. Any sort of excretory component of your body will contain not only microbes and all that that your body has encountered and are trying to get rid of in a particular way, but it'll likely also contain certain protective antibodies already on those microbes.

[00:30:44] IGA, for example, IGA is the most abundant antibody in all of the secretory mechanisms. It's found in saliva, mucus, and all of that, all of the mucosal tissues in your body. And so, your microbes that are being excreted are getting coated in IGA. So, what you may get as a result of re-consuming those things is you get microbes that already have antibodies on them that then helps tutor your immune system about that exposure.

[00:31:13] One of the important things that occurs both in the gut and other ways as sampling is the development of a whole regulatory mechanism within your immune system, right? Because you've got the innate immune system, which are the rapid reactors to the immune system. And I can give an analogy on that. And then, you've got the adaptive part of the immune system, which is slower to react, takes a little bit more time to kind of muster up its function. But it's the highly specific part of the immune reaction.

[00:31:41] And in between there, there's something called the regulatory part of the immune system, the T regulatory cells whose job it is, is to identify all of the various immune reactions of the body, and then teach the immune system, hey, you don't need to react to that protein, you don't need to react to that particular bacteria or virus because those are things that are normal within our system. And that T regulatory part of the immune system, also called the Fox P3 positive part of the T cell system is governed by the presence of microbes in large part.

[00:32:14] So, the microbes are helping the immune system shuttle for innate to adaptive. They're also helping the immune system shuttle and rev up the regulatory part that teaches the immune system what to react to and what not to. When something enters your body already covered in IGA, that really helps the immune system start to understand it and deal with it. So, there could be something on it, but I haven't seen a study on that. But to me, it's analogous to the eating booger part, is we're sampling things that have been captured in other parts of the body, covered in antibodies, sending it into the biggest sensory part of the system and to develop a more robust immune response.

[00:32:58]Luke Storey:  I see a market opportunity there for a supplement manufacturer that could make your urine taste good.

[00:33:08]Kiran Krishnan:  Totally, just like an add-on. Like, here, this is a urine enhancer, alright, just a few drops.

[00:33:14]Luke Storey:  The funny thing is, about that, as gross as drinking your own urine sounds, it's not actually that bad. I mean, I'm not going to make urine kombucha anytime, but it's not as disgusting as it sounds. Actually, I remember it being—I mean, I haven't done it in many, many years, but I remember it being like super freaky just mentally, but then, once I did it a couple times, it was like, what's the big deal? But I also thought it was sterile because people think of it as not eating your own poop, but came to think at that time, it was sterile.

[00:33:45] But as you indicated, there is bacteria in there. Talking about the IGA, this is an element of immunity and immune function I've never understood, like IGA, IGG. When this pandemic first started to emerge, I started taking tons of the Just Thrive Ultimate IGG. Well, I could say you're to Tina, the probiotics are insane and really, really helped my gut, just like very obviously, like no brainer. Okay. I was this way, started taking this spore-based probiotic. Now, my gut is awesome. Better than ever.

[00:34:24] So, I thought, well, their immune thing is probably pretty good. So, I just started pounding it. And my girlfriend also, I kind of put on the counter, I turned out to be that controlling boyfriend, as to force her to take what I take, but I was a little concerned not knowing the nature of this virus, what it is, if it's a real thing, if it is, how real, et cetera. So, it says maybe, I don't know, take two on the bottle. I was taking like six at a time, a couple of time, and instructing her, what is this IGA and IGG? And specifically, in that particular supplement, what makes it work?

[00:34:57]Tina Anderson:  Yeah. So, IGG is an antibody, as you know. And basically, IGG in our body, IGA in our body, they're all antibodies. And the antibody's role in the body is to attach and bind to antigens in the body and safely remove them from the body. So, we already make IGG. Our body is beautifully designed already to be fighting these antigens like overgrown bacteria, pathogenic bacteria, viruses, toxins, like mold toxins. That's the job of IGG. IGA in the body is to attach to these antigens and safely remove them from a body.

[00:35:37] First of all, you were right to be taking the ultimate IGG during this time because we definitely want to be supporting our immune system. And our IGG actually just gives us about 25% more IGG within the gut itself. It's also been studied to help strengthen the gut barrier, which is really important, so we don't have this overreaction of our immune system when toxins seep out into the bloodstream. So, the combination of the spores and IGG is so important to be supporting our immune function.

[00:36:10]Kiran Krishnan:  Yeah. And to add the nerd color to that, what Tina said, is let's just summarize some of the differences in the function of those different antibodies. As people will hear IGA, they'll hear IGM, IGG, and then of course, there's IGE, which is the one that facilitates the allergic type of responses. But let's leave that out now. IGA is kind of like your first-line-defense antibody. It's in your saliva, it's in your mucosa. It's secreted a lot in your body and it's less specific.

[00:36:44] So, each antibody has the capability of binding to lots of different things, right? So, it has less specificity, more broad application because it's encountering things all the time and your body secretes it out to go, hey, just go bind to whatever you see. And then, once it binds to it, the body can decide, okay, is this something that we really care about or not? And if it's something that requires an immune response, then the immune system will attack it. If it doesn't require it, it will just leave it there with the IGA bound to it.

[00:37:14] So, it's left alone. Like if you look at the electron micrographs, most of our commensal bacteria in our gut have some IGA bound to them. So, our immune system is built some IGA tolerance towards the bacteria in our gut. Now, IGM gets a little bit more specific. So, IGM becomes more specific to certain bacteria, certain viruses, certain toxins. IGM is a bigger antibody. It's more like a gobbling antibody if you think about it.

[00:37:45] So, you imagine you've got this virus floating around, and here comes this massive antibody, and it just kind of gobbles it up, and it holds it, and basically, completely neutralizes it. That's a neutralizing antibody. IGG is a memory antibody. And the thing is IGM only lasts for a few weeks, right? So, your first line of defense when something enters your system is IGA, and hopefully you have enough diverse IGA that some of the IGA can bind to that new thing coming in.

[00:38:15] Then, the second line of defense, once IGJA binds it and starts triggering this immune cascade, you have B cells that come up and start making IGM towards that specific thing. Then IGM is circulating all over looking for that specific thing, and just gobbling it up, and messing it all up. And then, the third one comes in, and that's IGG. IGG is a little bit more elegant, more finesse to it. It is highly specific to that one antigen, but it's the one that's going to hang around for years. That's the one that's going to provide your immune system with the memory of that specific thing.

[00:38:50] So, in your circulation, the largest volume of antibodies you have are IGG. And they're very specific to things and they're very effective at binding things that alerts the immune system. Macrophage comes along, goes, that's bound by IGG, I'm going to eat it. It will eat it, destroy it, and you never even feel it. Because when IGG binds to something and neutralizes it, it doesn't elicit an inflammatory response. It doesn't elicit the fever response. That's what they mean by immunity, right? 

[00:39:21] Immunity doesn't mean that you are somehow impervious to it, it means that if you do get exposed to something, your immune system has a mechanism of taking care of it in a way that you want to feel it. What we feel when we feel sick is our immune system's early response to something and the triggering of the fever response, triggering of the inflammation, the malaise, and all of that stuff is the immune response to that object.

[00:39:49] So, we can continuously get infected by things that we are "immune to", we just never feel it because we're now dealing with that highly specific, very powerful part of the immune system that's just going to neutralize things quickly, never triggering the inflammatory response. Now, why this product becomes so important is because early on, the company that we're working with that makes the product discovered that when you pull out IGG from bovine sources, so from cows, that cows are out there in the pasture, right? They're exposed to all kinds of stuff, viruses, bacteria, molds, toxins, all of that stuff.

[00:40:29] So, over time, they build this strong immunoglobulin resistance to all of that stuff. You pull that out and you concentrate that immunoglobulin, you take it, then as you are exposed to any of that stuff, those immunoglobulins bind it up and never cause any response in your immune system. So, it's like a huge helping hand for your immune system. And your instincts were totally right to dose up on it right now when we are potentially vulnerable to something because what we need is to support our immune system to take away some of the other work that it has to do, which is dealing with all the normal stuff it's always encountering should it encounter this new pathogen, right? 

[00:41:11] Because should it encounter this new pathogen, it's going to take a lot of work for your immune system to rev up the IGA, the M to G response and not get too inflamed all at the same time. At that same time, you don't need to be dealing with the mold toxin that you might come across or the other viruses and the other bacteria. Some of those things can be helped by the IGG. So, it's really supportive of the immune system. 

[00:41:34] One more thing I'll say about that, the thing that got us the most interested about this, and Tina and I sat in meetings with some of the top HIV researchers in the world because of this product and our initial collaboration with it is the NIH, The National Institute of Health published a study back in 2014 showing that in the case of HIV patients, that the biggest driver of mortality was the leakiness in their gut. And what happens with the viral infection is the virus first starts to infect in the gut lining as well. And as it's infecting in the gut lining, it creates this really disrupted gut mucosa.

[00:42:14] It opens up the barrier, so things leak through. But it also drives all of this inflammatory response in the gut, which then creates a home for all of these other opportunistic infections. This particular product has had a couple of published studies in HIV enteropathy showing that even in that extreme case where the immune system is overloaded and suppressed at the same time, that it was able to modulate the immune response and strengthen the immune response against everything that the immune system encounters. So, that, to us, was incredibly powerful because that is one of the most stressful type of scenarios of the immune system. So, for people without HIV, people who don't have AIDS, if you're taking it, the helping hand it affords your immune system is really quite powerful.

[00:43:02]Luke Storey:  I want to congratulate you, Kiran, on your ability to actually translate into normal parlance. I totally understand everything you're saying. So, when you say I'm going to give the geeky perspective, actually, it doesn't come across that geeky. I'm going to stay there with you. So, I just want-

[00:43:22]Kiran Krishnan:  Well, thank you. One of the things I realized early on in my life is I have zero talents with the exception of taking complex concepts and explaining in a digestible way. That's all I can do. You put me in a pageant, there's nothing I could do on the stage that would be impressing at all. This is the one thing I can do, and I've always done it in my life. But that's a really important thing because I think hopefully, it empowers people, so they have the understanding what's happening in this amazing vessel that we all get to exist in, right? And the more knowledge they have about that, the more power that they have on their health.

[00:43:58]Luke Storey:  Yeah, I think I just decided because I don't know if I ran out or I just stopped taking that IGG, but now, I'm like, oh, shit, I should be taking this all the time.

[00:44:07]Kiran Krishnan:  Right? So, I take four with my first meal of the day, and then I take four before bed. At night, when you're sleeping, there's all of this recovery and rebuild things that go on in the body, especially in the gut as well. And there's microbes in the gut that trigger the rebuilding of your cellular system. So, the mitophagy that you probably talked about in the whole biohacking world, the autophagy, the cleaning up of the cellular debris, the regeneration of mitochondria, all of that stuff is triggered during the sleeping phase. And lots of bacteria help trigger those effects, too. So, we can get in a bunch of IGG before bed and reduce the inflammatory and toxic response of the immune system as to give to everything that we've put in our body throughout that day, we can allow the housekeeping genes, and the housekeeping function occur much more effectively.

[00:45:01]Luke Storey:  That's cool. Yeah. In the immunoglobulin category, there's a product I've been using for a long time, which is grass-fed colostrum, like first six, seven bovine colostrum this company, Surthrival, makes. And I buy it in these huge, I think they're like five kilos or something. They're really expensive, but it's also delicious, so I'm addicted to it. But I never really look that deeply into the health benefits.

[00:45:26] I just figured if baby cows are strong, then maybe grown-up Luke can be strong for taking this. But I think one of the things in there is the immunoglobulin. So, that would make sense coming from the bovine source. Is that like what one would find beneficial about taking colostrum from whatever species of animal? And do female humans also make colostrum or is that just relegated to dairy cows?

[00:45:55]Kiran Krishnan:  No, female humans do. That's some of the first phase of actually what comes out of the mammary glands from breastfeeding, is colostrum. And part of that is because the human baby has an inability to make its own immune response early on. And typically, up to about six months of age. So, the baby is counting on mom's antibodies and immunity. That actually kind of goes back to one thing that popped in my head when you're talking about being exposed to mom's fecal matter, and why that would not make the baby sick is because that's mom's homeostatic bacteria.

[00:46:30] That bacteria is already communicated and comfortable with mom's immune system. And then, the baby's getting both mom's immune system and babies getting both mom's bacteria. So, we're making a full transfer of immune and bacteria in the full crosstalk that occurs between in mom, into the baby as well. Because keep in mind, for six months, most of the immune response that the baby elicits in the body is driven by mom's immune system. But in colostrum, the only difference between colostrum and a serum IGG is that colostrum typically has about 14% or so of the immunoglobulins, the IGG.

[00:47:06] And colostrum has other benefits as well, but what we liked about this product was that it has 55%. It has this huge concentration. And then, the version of this product is actually a prescription product in the US for treating antibiotic-associated diarrhea and other gut infections. We have the version, which is exact same active ingredient, but we could solve it as a supplement, but that's how powerful it is. So, yeah, you can get and you'll get things like lactoferrin and other things in the colostrum that can be beneficial. But this one is at the whole step above that with respect to immunoglobulins.

[00:47:46]Luke Storey:  Right.

[00:47:46]Kiran Krishnan:  And the dairy-free component, too.

[00:47:49]Luke Storey:  Well, when it's dairy-free, yeah.

[00:47:50]Kiran Krishnan:  Oh, the IGG. So, it's bovine-derived, but it doesn't have any of the constituents of a dairy product? 

[00:47:58]Luke Storey:  Yeah, because it comes from the serum, right? So, it doesn't come through the mammary glands. The colostrum comes through the milk. And so, this one is derived directly from the serum. This is analogous to the magic tribe and other tribes, hunter-gatherer tribes that like to drink cattle blood, right? And they feel that that supports some sort of warrior-like constitution in them, and that's may be part of why, because of all these amazing immunoglobulins in blood and serum.

[00:48:29] Interesting. Interesting. Okay. God, there are so many directions I want to go here. I love geeking out on this stuff.

[00:48:35]Kiran Krishnan:  So do we. 

[00:48:37]Luke Storey:  I'm like, I have a million questions, like how do I prioritize them? Okay. So, let me see, this is tough. All right. Now, I did a show with Tina. And we're going to put the link to that in the show notes where we really went pretty deep-dive on all the different types of probiotics and why the spore-based probiotic that I observed had such a profound effect on me, whereas, for years, I've been taking probiotics and spending tons of money on them, and I never really know if they're working or doing anything.

[00:49:10] But when it comes to the balance of bacteria in your gut. And now, we know how it pertains to the immune system, maybe either one of you could just give a condensed version of the different types of probiotic products out there, if any of them have any efficacy, and why a spore-based probiotic is different. Even though we did, like I said, a deeper dive on that before, I think it's important to make that distinction because I know friends of mine, my buddies, that I'm like their health coach by default, somebody at the health food store, like, hey, should I get this probiotic?

[00:49:50] And I'm like, I don't think so. It's like a hundred dollars, but it has millions of strains and it's in the refrigerator. And I'm going, your body's not a refrigerator. Like when you swallow a probiotic, you're 97.5 degrees inside, so there's a lot of misinformation I feel like, kind of marketing, I don't know if it's like scammy or what, maybe these companies think that they're legit. The probiotic industry is like first, okay, in terms of like competition and shadiness, you have the mattress industry at the top, the sauna industry, then you have probiotic industry. In this field for a long time, that's where a lot of the infighting, and kind of misinformation, and competition goes. So, kind of give us the hierarchy of the different types of probiotics that one could take and how they relate to the biodiversity of your gut biome, et cetera.

[00:50:47]Tina Anderson:  Yeah. So, the majority of probiotics that you're going to find on the market are comprised of lactobacillus and bifidobacteria strains. Ours is not. And we purposely did not put those strains in our product because we knew that by nature, they're very sensitive organisms. They have a lot of difficulty surviving the gastric system, which is very acidic, stomach acid is very acidic, and most strains are not going to get there alive.

[00:51:10] Companies know this. They interior-coat them. They do all different types of things to try to get them to the intestines alive. But even if they got to the intestines alive, they encounter the bile salts in the intestines. And then, even if they got there a little bit alive, they just pass through similar to food. So, I don't know that any of the other probiotic companies were necessarily, their intentions were bad. I think it was just based on old science.

[00:51:33] Everything that we do is really based on research in science. And we studied our strains. We did survivability studies, gut-model studies right away. So, that's one category is the Lactobacillus, bifidobacteria. And again, that accounts for probably 95% of the probiotics on the market. The other category, which is what we're in, is spore-based probiotics. So, spore-based probiotics have an endospore shell around themselves.

[00:51:59] So, it's like this armor-like shell around itself. And it's not because we've done anything to engineer them. These are the way these strains are found naturally in the soil. And our ancestors used to get them on a daily basis. And this endospore shell, this hardy shell around itself allows it to survive the gastric system a hundred percent. It's not until it hits the intestines that it takes the endospore shell off, and that's when it becomes alive and goes into its live vegetative cell state.

[00:52:29] And the other big difference is that the spores don't just pass through the intestines. They actually stay there for about 21 to 28 days where they're reconditioning the gut. They attach to the intestinal cell wall. They have the ability to create compounds and nutrients to feed our good bacteria in our gut. And they actually have the ability to create antibiotics to help kill off pathogenic bacteria in the gut. So, it's a very, very effective approach to probiotics on the market.

[00:52:58] And again, they're very, very researched. And again, you're absolutely right to tell people to stay away from the refrigerator probiotics because if a probiotic need to be refrigerated, it means, it can't withstand the room temperature of the store shelf. So, how in the world would it ever survive your body temperature, which is 98.6? And the answer is, it's not. And really, what it is, is dead-bacteria therapy. And it's not to say that it doesn't do anything. Some people will say, well, I had a little bit of symptomatic relief.

[00:53:26] It may do something, but it's not making a profound change in the gut flora. One of the first studies we did was a gut-model study. And it actually showed that after about two-and-a-half weeks, our strains created a 30% favorable shift in my gut. I mean, that alone is so profound that we're actually making a favorable shift in the gut flora that's our gut after two-and-a-half weeks. So, it's like probiotics on steroids, basically. And Kiran, you can go on into the other types of probiotic or anything you want to add to that.

[00:53:59]Kiran Krishnan:  Yeah. I think an important-

[00:54:02]Luke Storey:  I'm sorry. It's funny recording on Zoom because I noticed watching one of my videos, if anyone talks over each other, then you just see one person's mouth.

[00:54:12]Tina Anderson:  Yeah.

[00:54:12]Luke Storey:  I didn't know that. So, now, I'm super paranoid about interrupting. But, Kiran, when you do give your perspective on this, maybe also touch on the biodiversity and how on some probiotics, like I always would buy one because it had these many billion live probiotics or it will boast like 14 strains or 20 strains. And I thought, okay, well, more strains, more active, not only the variety of them, just the number of living whatever they are, cells, kind of bust on that a little bit, too, because I think that's something that's really confusing to people.

[00:54:49]Kiran Krishnan:  Yeah. And the confusion is really valid, too, because we have to keep in mind that the vast majority of probiotics and the whole idea behind how probiotics are formulated was conceptualized well before we knew anything about the microbiome, Right? We've really only learned about the microbiome since 2013, 2012. That's when some of the first studies started coming out to really identify what is going on in this very complex ecosystem between our mouth and our bottom. But the vast majority of probiotics were conceptualized way before that.

[00:55:23] And so, they were formulating and creating "therapeutic products" for a system that they had no understanding of, right? So, let's talk about then from a historical perspective, how did that come about? So, going back to 1902, 1903, Elie Metchnikoff was the original Russian scientist that's kind of credited with the idea of probiotics. He didn't use the word probiotic at the time, but he did conceptualize the idea of using beneficial bacteria to treat ailments.

[00:55:53] So, he was treating gut infections and other issues with fermented milk. So, he had a culture of bacteria that he would ferment milk with. His patient would drink it. They would get a lot better. And in fact, he won the Nobel Prize for this kind of idea that there are beneficial microbes, bacteria that can actually afford health, right? So, that was a first idea behind it. And it started off from fermented milk.

[00:56:19] So, from that point on, fermented milk in various forms like yogurts and Kiefer is an all that has really started picking up steam in terms of their health benefits. And surely, they have numerous health benefits we can speak to. In the 1960s, two researchers called Lilly and Stillwell came up with this concept of probiotic, meaning, foreign-life bacteria, as opposed to an antibiotic which is against life. 

[00:56:45] So then, the idea is that, yes, we can now create categories of bacteria that are specifically beneficial to the host. What are these categories of bacteria? Well, based on what we have since 1902, it's these bacteria that ferment milk that are beneficial, right? So then, they started looking at one of those bacteria that ferment milk. Well, the Lactobacillus genus of bacteria do a great job fermenting milk, especially Lactobacillus acidophilus.

[00:57:15] Why is that? Because they prefer a lower PH and because they prefer a lower PH, their ferment creates less and less of a sour taste. So, they are great species for fermenting milk. Sometime in the late '60s, they also started sampling the gut microbiome, doing culture work to sample the gut microbiome. And they found out that, hey, Lactobacillus also lives in the gut. So then, the idea became that Lactobacillus lives in the gut. Lactobacillus has been shown with the work of Elie Metchnikoff and other studies to be profound and helpful bacteria when you use it for fermentation.

[00:57:54] So, that means that Lactobacillus is a really good probiotic, right? And so, that's where the idea came from. And then, the whole marketing scheme started going into where if a little bit is better, a lot is probably even better. And so, they keep going up, and dosing, and dosing. And the thing is, I've had a behind-the-curtain view on the supplement industry because prior to doing the work that I do with Just Thrive and with the spores, I had a research company and an ingredient company in the supplement industry, so I was involved in a lot of product development.

[00:58:26] And typically, this is how a lot of product development will go in a probiotic setting, right? Companies will get together and meet. And then, I'm in there as kind of the scientific adviser trying to bring the science into it. And then, the team will say, okay, here's what we need. We need a probiotic with 17 strains and 50 billion CFUs. My first question is going to be, why? Like how did you come up with 17 strains? What's the scientific rationale behind that? Why 50 billion CFUs?

[00:58:54] The response is, "Well, our closest competitor we're competing with for shelf space has 15 strains and 35 billion CFUs, so we have to be a little bit better than them. And guess what? We have to keep it at the same price, if not lower. So, the quality of strains has to go down to be able to afford the margins to keep ratcheting up this insane dosing, right? And so, I can tell you with a great deal of certainty, and I would challenge anyone to study of PubMed and all of the clinical research papers, there are no studies that show that a hundred billion is better than 50 billion or 200 billion is better, and 600 billion is better.

[00:59:32] It's not about the dose. It's about the quality of what that bacteria is going to do. And let's put a couple other perspectives on it, right? Take 200 billion, it sounds like a lot, but you're taking that 200 billion and you're putting it into a sea with a hundred trillion other bacteria. That 200 billion that you think is a lot just from a dose perspective is a tiny drop of die in an entire ocean, right? Unless those microbes have very special functionality, their impact on the ecosystem, on the gut is miniscule. We just won't even notice it, right? 

[01:00:09] Two hundred billion is a rounding error when it comes to microbiome numbers. And the same thing with 15 strains, or 17 strains, or 21 strains, it sounds like a lot, but we have upwards of 400, 500 species in our gut. So, trying to increase that number with 15 strains, especially if they're the same genus, meaning, they're all Lactobacillus, you're not really doing a whole lot to improve the condition of gut, right? So, that became our focus, is like, wait a minute.

[01:00:40] We know from the microbiome research that the important thing when it comes to getting an affect in the gut is you have to influence a hundred trillion other bacteria. It's like having one good guy in a population of one hundred thousand, and he's out there doing good deeds and the rest of them aren't really doing anything, the impact is minimal. If that one good guy was an inspirational speaker and an influencer like a Luke Storey, and he can influence thousands among them to do good things, that's when you feel the difference, right?

[01:01:12] So, we were looking for microbes that have the capability of influencing that amazing, massive sea of microbes in the microbiome. That's where we came to the spores. How did we come to the spores? Well, number one, we started looking at bacteria that had the capability of targeting dysfunctional and pathogenic bacteria in the gut, right? What does that mean? Well, so there are bacteria that conduct something called competitive exclusion.

[01:01:43] They have the ability of entering into a massive ecosystem like we have in our microbiome. They use a process called quorum sensing, which is reading the other bacteria's signatures. Every bacterium in the world puts out some sort of chemical signature that can be read by most of the bacteria. So, these specialized microbes have the capability of going and reading bacterial signatures, identifying problematic bacteria. They will sit around them and kill off those problematic bacteria, thereby changing that ecosystem.

[01:02:16] And so, in our view, okay, there are microbes that can do that. These same microbes might also be able to influence the beneficial bacteria and increase their function in the body, in the microbiome. Ultimately, for us to get any profound therapy out of a probiotic, it has to be able to influence the rest of the population. That's the overarching theme here. You can take hundreds of billions of 15, 20 strains all day long.

[01:02:44] If most of them are dying in the stomach, you're just getting a bunch of dead bacteria, debris moving through your system, your body doesn't recognize it, your immune system and your microbiome have no impact on it at all. You just poop it out eight to 12 hours later. You're really just kind of throwing a lot of money out, right? And so, one of the first stories, I'll give you a quick story in this really long-winded answer, but one of the ways that these spores were discovered to have this capability of competitive exclusion was right at the World War II.

[01:03:16] The German army, when they were at North Africa, a lot of the German soldiers were dying of dysentery in North Africa rather than the war itself. And so, one of the things they noticed is that the locals, when they would start to feel sick, one of the first things they would do is look for dried camel dung and they would eat the dried camel dung. And that eating of the dried camel dung would alleviate the gut illness.

[01:03:40] So, they took a bunch of the camel dung back to Germany and isolated out of it Bacillus subtilis, which was at high levels, and then tested and saw that Bacillus subtilis had the capability of identifying and going after problematic bacteria that cause illness. So then, from there, a massive pharma company called Sanofi-Aventis launched one of the first prescription probiotics in 1952 for the treatment of dysentery and bowel infections. And it was a bacillus spore.

[01:04:13] And as it turns out, it's Bacillus subtilis initially, and then, now, Bacillus kochii. And so, that was the onset of it. And since then, there have been numerous drug products all over the world in Russia, in Latin America, in Southeast Asia. And these products are still on the market today using these bacillus endospores to treat gut infection because they're so precise in their ability to read the microbial environment and change it. And then, what we did is we took that same thinking and went, okay, can these same bacteria as they're killing bad bacteria, can they enhance or grow the good bacteria?

[01:04:49] And as it turns out, and we've shown this now in publications, is it can enhance the growth of beneficial bacteria by over 30% in as little as three weeks. So, it's making a profound shift, a 30-trillion organism shift in that sea by adding three billion of these bacteria into the system, right? That's how powerful they are. And here's the beauty. It's been around here all the time. We didn't have to do anything. We're not smart enough to engineer these kinds of bacteria. We are just smart enough to recognize what nature has created and perfected for us for millions of years, and harness it, study it so we know what it does, and then use it therapeutically.

[01:05:30]Luke Storey:  So, if the wide range of strains of bacteria and other probiotics are kind of a moot point and turns out more of a marketing thing or just based on antiquated science, as you both indicated, when it comes to getting your gut biome check like I've done many times, for example, I've often found actually pretty much every time that there are just certain strands that I'm totally missing, so what do you do if some just aren't present in your bodies, like, say, I take the spore-based probiotic from Just Thrive, which of course I do. And then, that's helping to kill off some of the pathogenic, what we call bad bacteria, and it's encouraging the good bacteria that's in there to keep reproducing and doing its job. But what do we do when there's just stuff that's missing altogether that needs to come in from the outside if those other probiotics that have all these different strains are basically useless?

[01:06:30]Kiran Krishnan:  Yeah. And keep in mind, so they typically have the same genus of bacteria, right? So, it's Lactobacillus acidophilus, Lactobacillus rhamnosus, Lactobacillus gasseri, rhamnosus, so on. So, it's all same genus. Even though it looks like a lot of different bacteria, it's still one grouping of bacteria that you're adding in there. And when you look at a normal, healthy microbiome, the Lactobacilli genus of bacteria make up less than 1% of the total population.

[01:06:58] So, you still can't really diversify. You're using a very broad spectrum, what we would call a broad-spectrum probiotic breakdowns. But here's the thing about the test kit. And this is what we found, and this is evidence in one of the studies we published in August of last year is that the stool-testing mechanism is wholly inadequate, right? Especially all the commercial stool tests because they use a type of sequencing called 16S ribosomal. 

[01:07:26] RNA sequencing 16S sequencing is highly erroneous when it comes to identifying bacteria, the species level. And if you're interested, I could definitely go into the explanation of why, but let's just say for now, it's like a really low-resolution camera. It's like back in the day, taking pictures with a Polaroid camera versus using HD camera today. The resolution is really poor, so the ability to identify bacteria is really poor. The other thing is in stool, your microbes are not homogenous, right? 

[01:07:59] So, any part of the stool that you sample will have slightly different conformation and proportion of bacteria than other parts because bacteria don't come out in a homogenous way in your stool. So, you could sample this part of the stool and get slightly different results than if you sample that part of the stool. And not all bacteria are coming out at the same rate. And you're not getting any read on the bacteria in the small intestine because the stool really represents what's going on in the large intestine.

[01:08:28] So, when we started doing studies on diversity and we started using GI model systems that are well-published because it's too hard to do it from a stool. We have to be able to go right into the ascending colon, right into the descending colon to see what is actually going on there because looking at stool and making an interpretation becomes a little bit harder, especially for a clinical trial setting. So, when we use these really sophisticated full GI models, these are full mechanical gastric systems that have all the way from the stomach, all the way down to the distal colon.

[01:09:02] You feed food through it every single day. It's inoculated with full human microbiome. One of them is called a Shine System, published over 50 papers using that system. When we go in and do studies using those systems, what we find is you could have completely undetectable levels of certain microbes, and then you start adding in prebiotics, probiotics, and so on. In our case, it's oligosaccharide prebiotic and the spore-based probiotics.

[01:09:31] And then, three weeks later, now, you've got thousands fold higher increase in the presence of those bacteria where they were previously undetected, right? Because keep in mind, you've got trillions of cells of bacteria in the microbiome. You've got hundreds and hundreds of species. If a species is at such a minute level that they make up just a small fraction of all the trillions of cells, the chance of finding that one bacterium by any detection method is really low. So, you actually can, even if you're a C-section-born, you actually have a higher diversity in your microbiome than you think you do.

[01:10:11] Even if you've had numerous courses of antibiotics, you still have that diversity. What we have as a problem is a disproportion within the ecosystem. You tend to get a significant growth of certain groups of bacteria. These other groups of bacteria that are really important tend to be so suppressed that they're still there, but their levels are nonfunctional. And then, when you add something like the spores, you start to see this big shift where these guys could come up and start doing what they do, these guys that are overgrown start to come down.

[01:10:43] So, like I mentioned, that three-week study, 30% increase in diversity. These were microbes that were showing up that were not previously detectable because their levels are so low. So, that's the ecology of the microbiome that we're just starting to learn right now. And we are hoping from our kind of research that we do that we will help illuminate that ecosystem a little bit better.

[01:11:08]Luke Storey:  That's so interesting. Thank you for illuminating that. Really, really interesting because I think, those of us that work with functional medicine doctors and get somewhat acquainted with our labs, once our doctor interprets that, we just think that's the be-all, end-all. And well, on paper, I got the PDF, so I'm screwed, you know what I mean?

[01:11:28]Kiran Krishnan:  Right. Totally. Yeah.

[01:11:31]Luke Storey:  The other thing I'm curious about is the antibiotics. And I mean, of course, there are a number of different types. Do they wreck our gut biome as much as we think they do? And if one is left with no other choice, say you had a surgery and there's a risk of infection, or you've got a UTI, or whatever, that you just can't beat with natural means, does it make sense while you're taking antibiotics to be loading up on probiotics at the same time, and eating tons of fermented foods, and doing everything you can to replenish or is everything you're doing just getting nuked by the antibiotics anyway?

[01:12:09]Kiran Krishnan:  Yeah. So, that's a really important question. I'm glad you asked that because it's inevitable that you're going to end up having to get an antibiotic at some point your life, right? And like you said, there are times when you need them, and there are times when they could save your life. And then, there's also lots of times where they're overused and used unnecessarily. Even the CDC estimates that 50% of antibiotic prescriptions are unnecessary and are used to treat viral infections and so on that really, the antibiotics aren't really going to help.

[01:12:40] So, we do have a history of overusing these things. The studies are clear that even the very first dose of the antibiotic has a profound impact on your microbiome. In fact, there are studies that show that a seven-day course of clindamycin affects your microbiome for up to two years. You can still find the disruption in the microbiome two years later. One of the studies that are really interesting to me, which I'll mention, is a study out of Johns Hopkins, I believe, published about two years ago.

[01:13:10] And I actually saw one of the medical conference that I was speaking in, the research that was doing the study actually presented at that time, and I was like, I cannot wait for this study to publish because it tells us a couple of really interesting thing. One that actually fits back in our conversation just previous to this. So, what he showed was that, and he was having people being sent from the hospital, they would get diagnosed with something, so they're given an antibiotic prescription.

[01:13:38] The doctors he was collaborating with would then send him the patients and say, okay, this person is about to start a course of antibiotics. So, what he would do then is before they started the course of antibiotics, he would take microbiome samples and he would start characterizing what the microbiome looks like a certain degree from those samples. And then, they would take the antibiotic, and then he would take further microbiome samples and follow the changes in the microbiome through the course of the antibiotic, and then up as far as six months after they stopped the antibiotic.

[01:14:12] What he saw was a measurable, profound shift in the ecosystem of the microbiome once they started the antibiotic through the end of the course of the antibiotic. And then, that shift, which would be characterized as dysbiosis was present up to six months after they stopped the antibiotic, right? So, that's clear. And from other things and other studies have seen, when you take an antibiotic, it knocks down all the bacteria. They start to grow back up again. But every time they grow back up, they grow back in slightly different proportions.

[01:14:43] So, that's the biggest profound change of the antibiotic dose. It doesn't necessarily knock out any bacteria that's gone forever now, but what it does is it continues to create a disruption in the proportions of the various bacteria. That in itself completely change how your body responds to things. But here's the crazy part about his study that actually speaks to what we were just talking about, about having good and bad bacteria within your system, is he also measured the microbiomes of people that lived in the household with the person taking the antibiotic.

[01:15:16] These weren't people that were also taking the antibiotic, they just live in the same household. He found that they also saw a similar alteration in their microbiome, and that alteration persisted for up to six months as well, despite not taking the antibiotic. One individual, right? Isn't it crazy? This is something I call the microbiome cloud that we all had and we all share. We are continuously dispelling bacteria from ourselves, right? 

[01:15:43] o, if we think about, if you don't dust your house for a couple of days, you get this nice layer of dust all over your house. What is dust? 90% of dust is human cells, right? So, the 90% of that volume of stuff you can see is human cells. When you look at the microbiome on the skin, for every one human cell, you've got 30 bacteria. So, 30 times the dust that you see, you can physically see is microbes, right? So, we are all shedding our skin into the environment of the household, the rest of us are breathing those microbes in. 

[01:16:17] Well, another example is every time you fart or pass gas, you're actually parting out bacteria as a cloud of your colonic bacteria that's going. And you just imagine the animation for that, just that bacteria cloud coming out, right? Yeah. And then, here's another way that it spread. So, you go into the toilet, you defecate into the toilet, you poop in the toilet, and then when you flush, one of the things that toilets are designed is the flushing creates a vortex, that vortex thing has been shown to aerosolize fecal bacteria into the air, and then, that get sucked into the air conditioning and blown back out into the environment that you live in.

[01:16:54] And so, eventually, what happens is you start sharing microbes really dramatically with others within your little ecosystem. And so, even if you've had lots of course of antibiotics, if you've had a C-section birth, if you've had no breast feeding over time, you will still get exposed, and to some degree, colonized by microbes that are important in the gut from other people. And so, you have a chance of always having good bacteria.

[01:17:24] So, one of the things I'd like to help eliminate for people is this mindset that they have that I've had lots of people tell me, well, I have no good bacteria in my gut because I had this illness and I went through 10 rounds of antibiotics or I was born C-section, my mother didn't breastfeed, you always will have exposure to good bacteria. And lot of it comes from other people. The question is, what is the proportion of the different bacteria in your system?

[01:17:49] That's the part that's really critical, is what does the ecosystem look like? Is it these 15 bacteria make up 90% of the population and the other 200 are at such miniscule levels that their functions don't realize or do you have a nice uniformity within your ecosystem? That's the staple of health in the microbiome, that diversity and uniformity. And one of the things we really love about the spores is that's what they afford. They afford the microbiome, diversity, and uniformity. Diet and other things, we can talk about, also doing that.

[01:18:24]Tina Anderson:  And the good news is that the spores actually, we've studied them and they actually survive in the presence of an antibiotic. So, to answer your question about whether or not you could be taking it at the same time, when you take the spores, we know that they're so robust that they are able to withstand the presence of an antibiotic, which is great news because most other antibiotics would kill off a probiotic.

[01:18:46]Kiran Krishnan:  Yeah.

[01:18:46]Luke Storey:  Wow. That's very cool. I'm looking at the clock here and it's 3:41. I'm nowhere near done but I know, Kiran, you had another call coming, how are you doing on time?

[01:18:58]Kiran Krishnan:  I'm good. Let's push 10,15-minute buffer. I'm good.

[01:19:02]Luke Storey:  Okay. Perfect. And maybe you hang up and I keep going with Tina if I'm not done.

[01:19:06]Kiran Krishnan:  Totally. Yeah. Absolutely. That's also good.

[01:19:08]Tina Anderson:  Yeah.

[01:19:09]Luke Storey:  Having the ability to do so many long, in-depth interviews here. Let me see. Okay. So, what I want to cover while you're still here. Okay. When it comes to the diversity, I think that's amazing information. I think it's amazing information that while as unpleasant as it is to smell others farts, that perhaps there could be some benefit. 

[01:19:29]Kiran Krishnan:  Yeah.

[01:19:30]Tina Anderson:  Choose your friends wisely.

[01:19:32]Luke Storey:  Exactly. Right. No one is allowed to fart in my house unless it's spore-based probiotic. But then, the first thing came to mind was, what about living with pets? I've had a dog for a couple of years, and obviously, she does her business outside. But now, I live with my girlfriend who brought a cat in, and then there's a litter box in the bathroom, the cat's awesome about using that.

[01:19:51] But I have heard murmurs here and there that even if your cat is good about using their litter box, that their bacteria, and some of it being negative, gets into your environment, and that, that is even the basis of the crazy cat lady phenomenon. When people have a lot of cats that they're cohabiting with, that there are certain bacteria that infect their brain and all this. Do either of you happen to know anything about that or just living with pets inside?

[01:20:18]Kiran Krishnan:  Yeah. In fact, there's a lot on dogs and some on cats as well. So, one of the things with cats, and this is our fault as a species that we've changed, is we keep our cats as indoor animals, right? Our cats don't get the chance to go out and get exposed adequately to other bacteria from other animals, from the soil, and so on, and come back in. And so, the cats can develop a significant amount of dysbiosis. And there are pathogens that live within the cat's microbiome that can then be exposed through stool, like toxoplasmosis, for example.

[01:20:56] Toxoplasmosis is one of those that has neurological effects and so on. Dogs, on the other hand, and this not to create a controversy between dogs and cats any more than there already is, but dogs, on the other hand, there are studies that show that households that have dogs have kids with lower incidence rates of asthma, allergies, and viral infections. Most recently, a study published that shows that if you bring a dog into your household, you will live longer.

[01:21:24] Dogs have that impact of diversifying your microbiome because they're so good about going out and bringing bacteria in. So, one way of doing that, one way of explaining that, of course, is obviously dogs defecate outside. They do smell other poop than when they're out there, they pick those up. They smell the ground. So, the way dogs smell, if your audience is not familiar with this, is they actually blow out with their nose, and then they aerosolize all of the odor compounds in that little micro-environment, and then suck it back in really strongly to hit all of their olfactory nerves.

[01:22:02] So, the way they actually smell, they're picking up loads of bacteria into their nose. And then, when they come back into your house, and then they're sniffing around the house or sitting on your bed, they're depositing all those bacteria into your environment. And that has a nice diversification effect for not only the host, but your ecosystem in the house as well. And that has a really positive impact. 

[01:22:25] o, we always encourage it. And when I talk to people about the simple things you can do to improve your microbiome, one of the things I would say is just adopt a dog. There's lots of dogs that need a home, so you're doing them a service and you are absolutely doing yourself a service. And if you just had a baby and this is your first baby, especially your second baby, bring a dog into the ecosystem because that's going to really help the baby and the child.

[01:22:48]Luke Storey:  That's so fascinating. Can you explain why dog, Cookie, is she in here? No, usually, I close the door before she could run in. She has this habit of, God, it's so annoying, anytime I take her out into nature, she has this habit of finding any feces of any species of living creature and rolling in it on her neck specifically to the point—this is a gross—I have two gross stories, but they're funny, so I'm going to tell them. Once I was hiking with a woman that I was dating, and we're at the middle of nowhere, and she had to go to the bathroom. So, we're around this river, and she ran ways away to go do her thing. 

[01:23:29] And then, Cookie went and chased her. And after she'd come back, Cookie went and rolled in the human feces, which is probably gross feces. Needless to say, that woman at the time was quite mortified. I thought, we're by a river, thankfully, so I could dunk the dog and wash her off. But she also is known to go find other dog poop and roll in it to the point, where at one point, she came back with a turd dreadlock on her neck in the car, and it was disgusting. And so, now, it's like, I want to let her off leash because I feel bad that she doesn't get to run free, but it has its downside, and she'll find horse poop and everything else. Why do dogs freaking do that?

[01:24:10]Kiran Krishnan:  Yeah. I think there's a microbiome connection there. So, one of the things is getting that exposure on their skin probably helps their skin microbiome with a certain degree. We know that. And then, we also know that fecal matter has pheromones in it. So, there is an attraction to the pheromone aspect of it as well. And they like to get the pheromones on their fur and carry with them for a period of time. But I think there may be some instinct in there about the health benefits of having that kind of fecal matter on their skin.

[01:24:45] The other thing that dogs tend to do, like when they're not feeling well, is they go and eat rats, right? I don't know if you've seen that in your dog, and certainly grass, like when their gut is upset, they'd go eat grass, and it kind of helps their gut. And there are microbes in the grass. In particular, Pediococcus acidilactici, that seems to really help modulate some immune response in dogs. And it's an abundant bacterium in grass.

[01:25:07] So, with that in mind, we actually did the first of its kind study on leaky gut in dogs, right? And our thinking was that, wait a minute, these animals are such important companion animals to us. And like us, they suffer from human-like conditions. The most common things are atopic dermatitis, allergies, cancers, diabetes. These are all human diseases that you don't necessarily see in the wild that we have now imparted on our animals, on our pets.

[01:25:37] So, my hypothesis was dogs likely have the same kind of leaky gut that we have. And that leaky gut likely drives inflammation like it does in our bodies. And that inflammation is probably consequential to their health. And so, we did the first of its kind proving, A, that yes, our dogs do have profound leaky gut, B, that that leaky gut is also associated with severe inflammation in our dogs. And the inflammatory markers are correlated well to the chronic illnesses that the dogs face.

[01:26:09] And then, the third part is we can stop it. The same kind of similar probiotic type of formulas or based with Pediococcus that we've created, which Tina is going to have available to the public soon, actually stops leaky gut in dogs, brings down that inflammation in dogs tremendously. So, that's a first of its kind discovery that we made with the leaky-gut dog. So, that's another tie with the dog and their microbiome.

[01:26:38]Luke Storey:  Oh, that's very cool. I'm always biohacking the dog and I learned the hard way that you can't feed the acai to dogs, they're just like chocolate to them, unfortunately. But I'm giving my dog C60 now, and a company called Health 360, they make a really great—it's called Revive, and they have a dog version, and they get incredible results with especially elderly dogs that have osteoporosis, and arthritic issues, and things like that.

[01:27:11] So, I'm always down to find things to help my dog be healthier. One question on that in terms of that, the imbalance of flora in cats, because they're domesticated and living indoors when they should be going outside and getting that information from the biome out there, is there anything that one can do to help protect yourself from that bacteria that could be in your environment from living with an indoor cat?

[01:27:39]Kiran Krishnan:  Yeah. I think to me, the best way is to create that competitive exclusion in the cat's microbiome itself. So, what the cat sheds has less of those kinds of pathogenic organisms. Outside of keeping the cat's litter box outside, that, I think, is probably the most plausible thing, we have lots of people that use this this dog leaky gut probiotic that we created for cats as well and see lots of great impact because some of the same species that we use in the dog probiotic are also commensal important species in the cats, we just haven't done the study on cats yet.

[01:28:17] But there's great translation there. And these are competitive exclusion bacteria. So, we've done similar studies on chickens and in pigs as well, where the question we had is, and as a microbiome-focused company, we're looking at improving the microbiome with everything that we come in contact with, including the animals not only that we live with, but the animals we eat, right? So, we did a big chicken study where we infected 2,700 chickens with salmonella, the infectious salmonella that it causes all of this illness each year from contaminated chicken. And typically, they would be providing these chickens antibiotics to try to keep the salmonella level low, we all know we don't want to eat chickens with antibiotics treatment.

[01:29:00] So, we said, okay, what about these probiotics, the spore-based probiotics? They're competitive exclusion bacteria. Maybe they can bring down the salmonella levels in the chicken. Sure enough, when we added the probiotic to the chicken feed, all of the infected chickens with salmonella, had over two log, that's a 99.9% reduction in salmonella counts in those chickens, as powerful as you would see with any antibiotic for those chickens, right? So, yeah, that competition, that's really what we want to cause in our domesticated animals, and then, hopefully, in the big picture, in the animals that we eat so that they are healthier, so when we eat them, we get better benefits from them. So, in the cats, give them the spores, that will help control the shedding of that pathogen.

[01:29:47]Tina Anderson:  They will be ready soon, Luke.

[01:29:50]Luke Storey:  Yeah, man. Hook it up. Do the biohacking to pets. 

[01:29:53]Tina Anderson:  Yes.

[01:29:54]Luke Storey:  Kiran, I know you've got to go. If you want to sign off, I'm going to let you go and I'll continue on with Tina. And that way, I'll get to greedily get to the rest of my questions without interfering with your schedule.

[01:30:05]Kiran Krishnan:  Yeah.

[01:30:05]Luke Storey:  If you have anything to say in closing, here's your chance.

[01:30:09]Kiran Krishnan:  Absolutely. So, first of all, thank you so much for having me. This has been a pleasure. Thank you for the time. I love this amount of time to be able to talk, as Tina knows, I've never done a recording just less than an hour, nor can I, I don't think because I'm long-winded and I talk too much. But also, at the end of the day, the important message you give to people is so much of what we deal with as chronic illness stems from an ecological dysfunction in our body. We are amazing microbial constructs, right?

[01:30:40] The word I use is holobiome. Holobiome being super organism. What we are, we're not a human system like we used to think of with all this connective neurological tissue and organs all working together. We are a complex ecosystem. We are walking, talking rainforest. We are made up of thousands of species of organisms that live in one construct that have to communicate and work together in order to affect the health and perpetuity of the whole.

[01:31:09] So, we are a walking, talking rainforest. We can now trace back the vast majority of chronic illnesses to some sort of disruption in that ecosystem. And a lot of that disruption comes from the world that we've created around us, the toxicity of the world around us. So, we have taken this beautiful microbial construct, this microbial ecology, and we've put it in an antimicrobial world. Thus, we have shot ourselves in the foot both feet, really, I would say. 

[01:31:38] Now, the great thing about this is now that we understand that so many diseases, so many chronic ailments can be attenuated by fixing the ecosystem, we have the ability and we will have stronger ability in the near future to deal with conditions that were thought to be incurable for a long time. Think of something like Alzheimer's, which is a very scary disease, which the rates of which keep increasing. 

[01:32:04] Since 2017, we know that Alzheimer's is driven by leaky gut, endococcemia from the gut going into the brain, causing inflammation and neurodegeneration right in the brain itself. So, there may be a probiotic solution for Alzheimer's in the next five to six years. So, we're living in a very exciting time. There's lots of amazing hope down the road. And we have so much more power to fix our system than we actually think thanks to programs like yours to bringing this kind of information. It's been an honor being on. And, Tina, thank you so much. Always good to see your face.

[01:32:42]Tina Anderson:  Nice seeing you, Kiran.

[01:32:43]Kiran Krishnan:  Thank you.

[01:32:43]Luke Storey:  Thanks for joining us, dude, and thanks for your wealth of information, and your ability to deliver it in a way that's actually digestible, no pun intended.

[01:32:53]Kiran Krishnan:  It's my pleasure. Thank you.

[01:32:55]Luke Storey:  All right, man. I'll see you soon. Okay, Tina Anderson. This is funny. I think this is the first time in 300-some odd interviews that I've ever had one guest leave, and then continue on with the other, but if you can afford me the time, I do have some other things that I wanted to go over briefly before we close it up.

[01:33:16]Tina Anderson:  Sure.

[01:33:19]Luke Storey:  God, that was such great information. I'm so stoked for you to have him on your team.

[01:33:24]Tina Anderson:  Oh, he's amazing. I get this until I'm like, I'm just as intrigued as you are when you sit here and he's talking about all of this stuff. And the way he makes it, like you said, so digestible, literally. I mean, he's incredible and funny.

[01:33:37]Luke Storey:  Yeah. Yeah. Very cool, guys. So, thank you for making that happen. In terms of the ways in which we end up with leaky gut, which I'm assuming a big part of that based on this conversation is just the dysbiosis of having too many of the bad guys, not enough of the good guys, something that's been on top of mind with a lot of people, and I've done podcasts with Dr. William Davis and Dr. Perlmutter on eating grains, and gluten, and things like that, and have found personally that gluten is really hard for me to digest. 

[01:34:14] And even if I'm on a good probiotic, like the one you guys make and doing everything right, that if I go off the rails with some gluten, I'm going to pay the price, and just have bad digestion, and heartburn, and whatever for a few days. But then, I notice you guys recently came up with something called Gluten Away, which appears to be this enzyme product. And I've tested it out a few times when I've eaten gluten. And I think I've had a positive effect from it depending on the source of the gluten.

[01:34:42] And I think that the reason might be, I'm gluten-sensitive, for sure, more so than most people I know, although I'm not celiac, but that sometimes, when I eat gluten, it's not organic wheat. So, even if I have a good enzyme to help break it down and I want to hear how that works, that I suspect that there might be a glyphosate or roundup issue, as so much of our weed is sprayed with this poison that no enzyme is going to help you with, that it's not the gluten that's hurting your digestion in that case, it's actually the pesticide. So, give me a bit about leaky gut and some of the different things that we should eat, should not eat, and how we could get away with eating gluten using enzymes or anything else.

[01:35:27]Tina Anderson:  Okay. Sure. So, leaky gut is as most of your audience, I'm sure, already knows, is just the leakiness of the gut. And it's exactly what it sounds like. There are holes in the intestinal wall. And so, there are things called tight junctions. And these tight junctions open up over time. And when you have this dysbiosis in your gut, like you said. And some of the biggest offenders that cause leaky gut would be the antibiotics that we take antibiotics in our food. 

[01:35:52] Glyphosate, like you mentioned, that's a huge offender. And one of the worst things about glyphosate, which, of course, is the active ingredient in Roundup, is that with antibiotics, the antibiotics kill the bad bacteria, but they're also killing the good bacteria, which is what we don't want. With glyphosate, we have a study that showed that the glyphosate is only targeting the good bacteria. So, it's only killing the good bacteria. It's only been killing the bad bacteria.

[01:36:16] So, glyphosate is a huge offender. So, I always encourage people to really try to eat as clean and organic as possible. Stress is a big offender to our gut health and a big cause of leaky gut. We know that there is the vagus nerve, which is the largest nerve in the body, and it's the communication superhighway between the gut in the brain, and they're sending signals back and forth through each other. So, when we tell people to practice mindfulness or deep breathing or whatever type of mindfulness practice that you decide to participate in, we really mean it.

[01:36:49] It does have a really big impact on your gut health. Of course, sugar is a big offender to your gut health, and I'm sorry to say alcohol, but it is. So, we do know that there's so many things, and like Kiran had alluded to, the world we live in, the environmental toxins, all the mold toxins, all the things that we're doing on a daily basis are just wreaking havoc in our gut, and therefore causing this leakiness in the gut. The leaky gut study that we did with the strains that are just used in Just Thrive actually showed that they tested 100 college students, and 55% of them had a leaky gut and didn't know it. 

[01:37:28] They were otherwise healthy, but we found out, they actually did have this leaky gut. So, they estimate that 80% to 85% of the adult population has a leaky gut and doesn't know it. So, this is why we're seeing so much of this, the gluten intolerance out there. And the interesting study that came up, we came up with this product called the Gluten Away, like you mentioned. And it's not intended to replace a gluten-free diet at all. It's really meant for the accidental exposure to gluten.

[01:37:57] There was a study that came out. They tested over 500 gluten-free foods, foods that were labeled gluten-free, whether at a restaurant or whether other grocery store, pizzas, gluten-free pizzas being the biggest offender. And it showed that about 30% of them actually had gluten in it. And so, their label is gluten-free, but they actually have gluten. So, it was really meant for the accidental exposure of gluten. Another study, we think of gluten intolerance as people who are celiac, like you mentioned, and then people who have severe gluten intolerance, who are not quite celiac, but they do have gluten intolerances.

[01:38:33] But really, there's a third category of people and those are the rest of us, people who don't identify as having a gluten intolerance. A study came out showing that any time somebody ate gluten, they cause that leakiness of the gut, it was contributing to the leakiness of the gut. So, really important, the enzymes that we use, one of the main ones is Tolerase G, and it basically is just a super gluten-digesting enzyme in there that's really cutting it and clogging the gluten, the proline-rich gluten at both ends.

[01:39:08] So, if you envision a string, it's cutting it in the middle, and then on the ends of the string. So, really important to remember that it's not a replacement for a gluten-free diet unfortunately, it's really meant to help for that accidental exposure to gluten. And really important for really everyone to be taking it because of the fact that we are all really having this negative effect from the exposure to gluten. And I just want to touch on the leaky gut study that was done. We know that the leaky gut study that was done actually showed that they were measuring LPS toxins.

[01:39:43] So, the LPS toxins, that leak into the bloodstream. That's how we measure that leaky gut. After 30 days of being on the strains, the spores, it actually showed a 42% reduction in the LPS toxins in the bloodstream. That's super profound to show that we've got something. And these students, these college students were not sent home with any other dietary or lifestyle modifications. And of course, we all know what college students do to their bodies. So, we now know that we have something that's actually helping reducing the LPS toxins by 42% in the bloodstream, which is just huge and hugely profound.

[01:40:21]Luke Storey:  Wow, that's very cool and also upsetting because I've said I've been testing out the Gluten Away product. I didn't really read the labeler instructions. As you just indicated, it's not a replacement for a gluten-free diet, but I've straight up like crushed an entire pizza or a huge loaf of sour dough bread. And then, remember, oh, yeah, I've got those enzymes from Just Thrive and I've taken a few. Now, like I said, it has actually helped with the negative impact of those hits at times. 

[01:40:54] And I think that's whether I'm eating like organic flour or not is what I've done, too, but still, it didn't make me like Superman and immune to any negative effects, which is kind of what I was hoping for. But you bring up a really good point, and that is for people that are really sensitive to gluten. And I would argue that everyone is to a degree, they just don't know it because they're not tuned in enough to have those sensitivities. 

[01:41:19] But as I said, like talking to William Davis and David Perlmutter about gluten, they're like, dude, gluten is not good for any humans, no matter what they think. Because I have a lot of, what, I'm fine. And based on the science, you're not. But if you like to enjoy gluten like I do sometimes, go for it and mind up. But I'm waiting for like something to come out that just makes you completely immune to gluten because like bread and pizza are maybe the best food in the world, a combination of bread and cheese.

[01:41:54] But one thing that I've also experimented with when I do have just an irresistible cheat and just like I just got to do it is, and this gets into kind of like a little bit of the orthorexic neurosis here, admittedly, but if I do eat gluten, I'll take a bunch of your enzymes and whatever other enzymes, and then I'll also like eat some activated charcoal afterward, hook up any of the glyphosate that might have been in that flower. And by the way, if it's not organic flower, it's pretty much guaranteed to be chuck full of glyphosate, as I've learned. But do you think that all people in terms of like the leaky gut issue, we're just better off avoiding gluten at all?

[01:42:36]Tina Anderson:  Oh, absolutely, I do. I mean, especially after that study that I referenced, I mean, you may not identify as it being gluten because you don't have a gastrointestinal issue, but it may manifest itself in another way. Maybe you have chronic fatigue, maybe you have headaches, maybe you have a skin rash, and then all of a sudden, you start to remove gluten and it starts to go away. And we know that when you eat gluten, it starts penetrating that gut lining.

[01:43:00] And that is very problematic. I mean, that is one of the most important things we can do for our health, is to make sure we have a very, very strong gut lining. 90% of non-communicable diseases are really associated with a leakiness of the gut. So, pretty much, it's hard to find any disease that's not associated with that. So, I think gluten is a big driving factor in causing that permeability in the gut. And definitely something to stay away from.

[01:43:28] And like I said, it's not always associated with a gastrointestinal disturbance. It manifests itself in many different ways. And we see that, you see that with people all the time that say, "After I stopped eating gluten, I didn't get headaches anymore" or "after I stopped eating gluten, I slept better." I mean, there are so many different causes of when you have that gluten in your body that there's something causes unfavorable things that happen.

[01:43:57]Luke Storey:  That's so true. Yeah, I have a friend who eats a fair amount of gluten. And I try to mind my own business unless someone asks, but I observe, "Damn, girl, you eat a lot of gluten." I said, do you ever have any digestive problems, or heartburn, or constipation, diarrhea? She's like, no, I'm very regular. Everything's fine. And that way, I said, well, shit, maybe gluten is not bad for anyone. But she started doing a bit of research and she was having some skin issues, just acne and things like that for no apparent reason and keeps it clean, organic diet, hormones are in balance, like everything's fine that would be indicative of skin problems. And just for the hell of it, she quit gluten. And within a week, her skin was just completely clear.

[01:44:43]Tina Anderson:  Yeah, I believe. I do.

[01:44:44]Luke Storey:  And it's the only thing she changed. When that happened, I was like, oh, shit, this gluten thing is legit. This is deep. And I noticed, too, in addition to just my digestion getting wrecked when I go off the gluten train, is the interesting thing about it is the effects on me don't happen the next day, it'll be like four or five days later and I'm going, God, why is my stomach hurt? Why do I have heartburn? I'm like popping tums and I'm thinking back, I go, I haven't eaten anything weird, but I forget it was like days before, I did gluten. And then, around the same time, all my joints will start to hurt like any back pain, hip pain, knee pain. I'm 49, so this is a thing.

[01:45:26]Tina Anderson:  You're young.

[01:45:27]Luke Storey:  I'll have to trace it back like, did I work out, am I not taking enough ice baths, and saunas, and whatever, and I go, oh, no, God damn it, last Sunday, I ate the cheese pizza. And it's like, it takes that long to kind of like weasel its way into the inflammatory process of the body. So, I'm slowly learning and getting a little more disciplined, but I do find that that is like one of the most addictive foods out there. And even knowing what I know, sometimes, still just like I literally can't resist.

[01:45:58]Tina Anderson:  Yeah. And I mean, I'm guilty, too. But the nice thing is we are taking care of our gut lining, right? So, we're okay. And the other thing I want to tell you is next time you take it, try to take it before the meal, maybe about ten minutes before the meal. So, it tends to work better that way.

[01:46:15]Luke Storey:  Noted. Will do. Then, I wanted to ask you about vitamin K2. And I know that like you guys have that in your product line. And it's one of those nutrients, I think, that's overlooked a lot. People know vitamin C is good for you. You got to have vitamin D levels that are decent and et cetera. But K2 is one of those sort of more obscure nutrients that it seems like we used to get more from our diet when we were eating organ meats and things like this.

[01:46:42] And now, it's largely been phased out of our diet. And I remember, I think it was the work of Weston A. Price that identified when he went around and studied the dental health of indigenous peoples around the world and found that their health otherwise was robust, that they had diets, and fermented foods, and things that were high in K2, and butter, and cheese and whatever. What's the deal with K2? And what foods have it or not? And how is it related to D3 because they seem to often be associated in terms of different supplements and stuff?

[01:47:20]Tina Anderson:  Yeah. Vitamin K2 is really one of the most important nutrients we could be taking. And it's so overlooked. You're absolute right. People aren't really talking about it at all. The role of vitamin K2-7 in the body is to actually remove calcium around, direct calcium throughout the body. So, it literally will remove calcium, pluck from the arteries like the heart and put it into the bone. So, it's literally telling calcium where it needs to go. And really, we don't get vitamin K2 from foods like you mentioned. So, the biggest source of it is that Japanese food, natto, I don't know if you've ever tried that, but I've heard it's pretty nasty. I've never tried it. 

[01:48:03]Luke Storey:  Natto is super gnarly. It smells like the feet of a corpse.

[01:48:09]Tina Anderson:  See, that's a great, great explanation.

[01:48:14]Luke Storey:  The funny thing about natto is I used to live in a pretty big house, and it was a really long house. It was 2,800 square feet. And I lived with a girlfriend at that time. And her bed, the bedroom where she used as an office was like at the furthest reaches of the house. I don't know how many feet, but we were really far apart, as far apart as you could be in the house. And I swear to God, I would open up the natto in the kitchen and I'd hear her 30 seconds later, "Gross." It would like reek, it would like stink up the whole freaking house. And I was like, it's incredible how strong it is. So, if you're going to get K2 from natto, good luck with that, because it's an acquired taste and you'll annoy anyone that you live with. So, anyway-

[01:48:59]Tina Anderson:  Right. And so, you could get it from organ meats like you said, which people aren't really eating these days. You could get it from like cheeses out of like Northern Europe and things like that, but you're not really getting high doses of vitamin K2. And vitamin K2 is actually one of the most well-studied nutrients out there. Rotterdam University did a study. It was over a ten-year period of time, 4,800 subjects in it over ten years and found that just 45 micrograms of vitamin K2 reduce heart disease by 50%, reduce arterial calcification by 50%.

[01:49:35] Of course, reduced heart disease by 50%. But the other interesting finding is that it actually reduced all-cause mortality by 30%. There are studies on vitamin K2 intake with cancer, with diabetes. Really, really important. It's also really important for bone health. A lot of great studies out there for osteoporosis, osteopenia. So, even small amounts of vitamin K2 have such a huge effect on people. It's so important. And it's interesting you mentioned vitamin D.

[01:50:06] I mean, everybody loves vitamin D. It's like the darling of the medical community and vitamin D is super important, especially during this time. People are taking lots of vitamin D. The problem is if you're taking vitamin D without vitamin K2, it increases your body's demand for vitamin K. So, you're actually depleting your K2. So, really important, if you're taking vitamin D to be supplementing with vitamin K2. There couldn't be a more important time to do it because you don't want to be deficient in vitamin K because that is something that could lead to heart disease, osteopenia, osteoporosis, and other conditions like that.

[01:50:44] So, lots of great studies on vitamin K2. As you know, we are mostly a gut health company. We focus so much on gut health, but we also have a pledge to us, our mission is to bring products that are missing in the market and needed, so desperately needed. And we really felt that vitamin K2, in the form that we brought it in, which is a high dosage of 320 micrograms. Pharmaceutical-grade vitamin K2 is a very active compound by nature, so it tends to degrade on the store shelf over a period of time.

[01:51:15] We could guarantee stability through the end of the expiration date. We also included magnesium and zinc in the formulation because we know that those are the two main co-factors of vitamin K2-7. So, really, really thought-out formulation. So, just know that we wouldn't bring anything to the market unless we really felt that it was something that was missing and needed. And we know that vitamin K2-7 is just such a cool, cool nutrient that we really need to be taking, especially with high doses of vitamin D.

[01:51:43]Luke Storey:  I think that's why I was curious about it. Like when a company only makes three or four things, when you could have 20 things and make more money, you know what I mean? I go like, why not have a bunch of things? But I'm always interested in why a company that makes some sort of health product only has a couple flagship products, and there must be a reason why. So, thanks for illuminating that for me.

[01:52:07] I'm wondering, what was the other thing I wanted to ask about, was when it comes to the diversification of your gut bacteria and gut health, what are some other foods that are good to eat just off the shelf? I mean, we're going to assume, of course, that they're organic. And also, foods that are good as a prebiotic, and why someone might also want to take a prebiotic product in addition to just eating foods that are going to be good for your gut biome. What are good like dietary guidelines one might follow with that in mind?

[01:52:45]Tina Anderson:  Well, the interesting thing especially for diversity, a great thing to do is to eat lots of different ethnic foods. So, eating, going to different ethnic grocery stores because that creates more diversities for you. Like the more diverse group of foods we eat, a lot of us just eat a lot of the same meals over and over again, and we all try to eat healthy, but we're not eating a diverse group of foods. That really helps with the diversity in the microbiome as well.

[01:53:12] And as far as like the prebiotic, for sure, prebiotic foods are, I always tell people like we have a prebiotic, but if you eat a ton of vegetables and prebiotic vegetables like Jerusalem artichokes, bananas, I know bananas aren't great, but lots of foods that are high in prebiotics, do that instead. I mean, it's definitely a better route to go, but you do need high doses of that. But as far as the spores, you're not going to get spores from food.

[01:53:39] I mean, our ancestors used to get spores from the food that they eat off the land, and they got the spore bacteria right off of food they ate. But you're not really getting spores from bacteria or from the food that any food's out there. Some people will say, "Oh, let me have some yogurt or some fermented foods, and you'll get those Lactobacillus bifidobacteria strains." You're not going to be getting the spore-based from fermented foods.

[01:54:03] Now, fermented foods are excellent. I'm a huge fan of them. They're very nutrient-dense and they're a great source of nutrients for us, but they're not a replacement for a probiotic. But they are helpful for your gut health as well. But you don't want to be eating yogurts, of course, that are loaded with sugar. And I mean, your audience is smart enough to know that. But it's just always important to remember like all the fermented drinks out there, the Kombucha and stuff, we just want to make sure that there's not an overabundance of sugar in there or anything like that.

[01:54:35]Luke Storey:  In addition to gluten, sugar is my kryptonite and one that I'm fond of. In fact, last night, I had a moment of weakness and pounded three quarters of a Ben and Jerry's.

[01:54:48]Tina Anderson:  Oh, those are small containers, Luke, don't beat yourself up.

[01:54:53]Luke Storey:  Yeah. The thing is I try to find balance. I try to keep it real because I'm so extreme with all the health stuff that I do. Sometimes, it's like I just go, you know what, I got to live a little. Like I-

[01:55:02]Tina Anderson:  Oh, yeah. I know my friends in the neighborhood are like, wait, you had ice cream? I'm like, yeah, I do eat ice cream, too. And I think the problem with sugar is just the hidden sugar. The kids that are being raised with the cereal boxes. An hour after waking up, they've already had 40 grams of sugar when they shouldn't have even had 25 grams of sugar. So, I think, that's where sugar really becomes problematic. Once in a while, I think you can have some.

[01:55:29]Luke Storey:  That's interesting that you say that because I've been questioned by friends and whatnot that see me pounding a pint of ice cream and they're like, dude, like so much sugar. I go, yeah, but I'm not having like these green juices made with apples. And like I literally don't eat any sugar all day long ever. I don't drink any kind of drinks with sugar. I don't eat sugar. And I barely eat any fruit, and if I do, it's usually like lemons, lemon juice or something like that, I mean it's like citrus, not really sugary, but my defense is always, well, if I'm going to eat some sugar, I want to make it count.

[01:56:03]Tina Anderson:  Yeah.

[01:56:04]Luke Storey:  Creme Brulee or like something really delicious instead of pounding like sugary green juice all day long and having like 25 grams of sugar five times a day, I'm just going to have like one really tasty thing and take the hit there instead of having it sneak into my diet in different weights.

[01:56:21]Tina Anderson:  Yeah, I agree. I used to be super hardcore. I wouldn't even—my kids would be like, let's go get ice cream. I'm like okay, I'll go, but I'm not going to have any. And then, I thought about it, I'm like, this is so silly that I did this because it was just the experience. I mean, my gosh, once in a while I could have sugar. And so, yeah, I'm much better about it too. I mean, it's not good to be extreme anyway, I guess. 

[01:56:42]Luke Storey:  When it comes to the prebiotics and taking products, these powders and stuff like you guys have, is there any concern with someone who has dysbiosis and has an overgrowth of bad bacteria, or pathogenic bacteria, or even a fungal infection where now, you're feeding your good bacteria, but also, because you have too much bad bacteria, you're also feeding that? Is that something one would want to be aware of?

[01:57:10]Tina Anderson:  Yeah, I think that's a really great point, and I'm glad you brought it up because one of the reasons we didn't launch a prebiotic for a while was because we couldn't find these fibers that would actually only target the good bacteria. So, these fibers actually were chosen because they target the beneficial bacteria. One of the problems with prebiotics is they don't know how to distinguish between the good bacteria and the bad bacteria. So, exactly like you said, they would actually make a problem worse. Even that being said, when somebody has some dysbiosis going on, a lot of times, we'll say, you know what, why don't you start with the probiotic, really recondition that gut and then, start maybe three or four weeks later and add the prebiotic in. 

[01:57:51]Luke Storey:  Oh, cool. Okay. Awesome.

[01:57:53]Tina Anderson:  But these are very carefully selected fibers so that we knew that they would only target the beneficial bacteria in the gut.

[01:58:01]Luke Storey:  Awesome. Thanks for the information. It's the greatest thing to have a podcast and be able to talk to the people behind some of my favorite things because it's like personal consultations. I never have to call customer service, hey, I got this thing, or get on the frequent chat. It's like I just talk to the owner, man, what a gift.

[01:58:19]Tina Anderson:  Yeah. Thank you.

[01:58:21]Luke Storey:  Yeah. I think I've covered everything I wanted to cover with you. And I'm going to put your prior episode, which forgive me, I don't have the number of it, but I'll put your prior episode in the show notes where we went like way into all the probiotics, and fermented foods, and all that kind of stuff in a different and interesting way. So, I tried to not repeat myself today with you, but thanks for coming back on. My closing question is going to be the same it was last time, and I didn't get a chance to ask Kiran this because he had to bounce. So, you're the one on the hot seat. But first question is, who are three people that have influenced you and your life's work that you might recommend we go check out? 

[01:59:00]Tina Anderson:  Okay. Wayne Dyer. Definitely a huge fan of Wayne Dyer. It's like, when he passed away, I think that I felt like a family member had passed away. Norman Vincent Peale is another one that I love. And I mean, a lot of people that have influenced me have been like my—I mean, unfortunately, it's—well, Simon Sinek is probably a big one, too. I love his work on leadership and that kind of thing.

[01:59:30]Luke Storey:  Awesome. Thanks for that. And then, where can people find you, your company, et cetera on social media, websites?

[01:59:37]Tina Anderson:  Our website is justthrivehealth.com. Instagram is Just Thrive Health and Facebook is Just Thrive Health also.

[01:59:47]Luke Storey:  Awesome. All right. Excellent. Well, thank you so much for coming back on the show. And I'm glad we got to hang out virtually since we're missing each other at the events where we usually get to spend time.

[01:59:57]Tina Anderson:  I know. This is great, Luke. Thank you so much. I love following you. I love watching all your adventures. And thanks so much for spreading the good word around. Appreciate it.

[02:00:07]Luke Storey:  Absolutely. All right. I'll see you soon, Tina. Stay safe.

[02:00:10]Tina Anderson:  Okay. Thanks, Luke.

[02:00:25]

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