Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais - How the Microbiome Impacts Your Quality of Life | Seed Co-Founder, Raja Dhir

Episode Date: December 18, 2019

This week’s conversation is with Raja Dhir, the Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Seed Health, a microbial sciences company pioneering applications of bacteria to impact human and environmental heal...th.Now some of you may already be familiar with what the microbiome is but for those who aren’t, I’ll share a brief summary of it via Harvard’s School of Public Health.Picture a bustling city on a weekday morning, the sidewalks flooded with people rushing to get to work or to appointments. Now imagine this at a microscopic level and you have an idea of what the microbiome looks like inside our bodies, consisting of trillions of microorganisms (also called microbiota or microbes) of thousands of different species.These include not only bacteria but fungi, parasites, and viruses. In a healthy person, these “bugs” coexist peacefully, with the largest numbers found in the small and large intestines but also throughout the body.The microbiome is even labeled a supporting organ because it plays so many key roles in promoting the smooth daily operations of the human body.Each person has an entirely unique network of microbiota that is originally determined by one’s DNA.A person is first exposed to microorganisms as an infant, during delivery in the birth canal and through the mother’s breast milk.Exactly which microorganisms the infant is exposed to depends solely on the species found in the mother. Later on, environmental exposures and diet can change one’s microbiome to be either beneficial to health or place one at greater risk for disease.The microbiome consists of microbes that are both helpful and potentially harmful. Most are symbiotic (where both the human body and microbiota benefit) and some, in smaller numbers, are pathogenic (promoting disease). In a healthy body, pathogenic and symbiotic microbiota coexist without problems.But if there is a disturbance in that balance—brought on by infectious illnesses, certain diets, or the prolonged use of antibiotics or other bacteria-destroying medications—dysbiosis occurs, stopping these normal interactions.As a result, the body may become more susceptible to disease.And so this is where Raja’s company, Seed comes into play.Seed partners with leading scientists to translate breakthrough science into live biotherapeutics and innovations for consumer health with a portfolio targeting conditions where bacteria can become or replace the primary standard of care.Seed, develops scientifically-validated, next-generation probiotics with a mission to bring much-needed precision, efficacy, and education to the global probiotics market.Raja believes the magic happens at the intersection of technology, systems biology, and translational science.He’s got a unique way of thinking and follows those thoughts with action.And that’s what this conversation is really about— how to take an idea powerful enough to change the world for the better and make it a reality?_________________Subscribe to our Youtube Channel for more powerful conversations at the intersection of high performance, leadership, and meaning: https://www.youtube.com/c/FindingMasteryGet exclusive discounts and support our amazing sponsors! Go to: https://findingmastery.com/sponsors/Subscribe to the Finding Mastery newsletter for weekly high performance insights: https://www.findingmastery.com/newsletter Download Dr. Mike's Morning Mindset Routine! https://www.findingmastery.com/morningmindsetFollow us on Instagram, LinkedIn, and X.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Starting point is 00:01:21 even in your own internal development and ability to communicate it, far outweighs the risk of idea theft. All right, welcome back or welcome to the Finding Mastery Podcast. I'm Michael Gervais, and by trade in training, a sport and performance psychologist, as well as the co-founder of Compete to Create. And the whole idea behind these conversations is to learn from people who are on the path of mastery, who have committed their life efforts towards mastery of self and mastery of craft. We want to better understand not only their insights about their craft, which is good because we can hopefully apply those in our own life, but at the deeper
Starting point is 00:02:03 level, we want to understand how they've approached mastery of self. How do they use their own inner life and their mind and the whole thing to be able to explain and make sense of the world around them? Finding Mastery is brought to you by LinkedIn Sales Solutions. In any high-performing environment that I've been part of, from elite teams to executive boardrooms, one thing holds
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Starting point is 00:03:41 That's linkedin.com slash deal for For two full months for free, terms and conditions apply. Finding Mastery is brought to you by David Protein. I'm pretty intentional about what I eat, and the majority of my nutrition comes from whole foods. And when I'm traveling or in between meals, on a demanding day certainly, I need something quick that will support the way that I feel and think and perform. And that's why I've been leaning on David Protein Bars. And so has the team here at Finding Mastery. In fact, our GM, Stuart, he loves them so much. I just want to kind of quickly put them on the spot. Stuart, I know you're listening. I think you might be the reason that we're running out of these bars so quickly. They're incredible, Mike. I love them. One a day, one a day.
Starting point is 00:04:29 What do you mean one a day? There's way more than that happening here. Don't tell. Okay. All right. Look, they're incredibly simple. They're effective. 28 grams of protein, just 150 calories and zero grams of sugar. It's rare to find something that fits so conveniently into a performance-based lifestyle and actually tastes good. Dr. Peter Attia, someone who's been on the show, it's a great episode by the way, is also their chief science officer. So I know they've done their due diligence in that category. My favorite flavor right now is the chocolate chip cookie dough. And a few of our teammates here at Finding Mastery have been loving the fudge brownie and peanut butter. I know, Stuart, you're still listening here. So getting
Starting point is 00:05:09 enough protein matters. And that can't be understated, not just for strength, but for energy and focus, recovery, for longevity. And I love that David is making that easier. So if you're trying to hit your daily protein goals with something seamless, I'd love for is with Raja Deer. He's the co-founder and the co-CEO of Seed Health, a microbial sciences company pioneering applications of bacteria to impact human and environmental health. Okay, some of you might be really familiar with the microbiome. And those who aren't, let me share a brief summary that I think really ties it up well. And it's from Harvard School of Public Health.
Starting point is 00:06:12 And as many of you know that I've been fascinated with the microbiome for a long time and its impacts not only on health, but also for performance. So here's what they had to say. Picture a bustling city on a weekday morning. The sidewalks flooded with people rushing to get to work or to appointments. Now imagine this at a microscopic level, and you have an idea of what the microbiome looks like inside our bodies, consisting of trillions of microorganisms, also called microbiota or microbes, of thousands of different species. These include not only bacteria, but fungi, parasites, and viruses. In a healthy person, these, what we call bugs, coexist peacefully with the largest numbers found in the small and large intestines,
Starting point is 00:06:59 but also throughout the body. The microbiome is even labeled a supporting organ because it plays so many key roles in promoting the smooth daily operations of the human body. And so this is where Raj's company, Seed, comes into play. Seed partners with leading scientists to translate breakthrough science into live biotherapeutic and innovations for consumer health with a portfolio targeting conditions where bacteria can become or replace the primary standard of care. Cool as that. Talk about disruption. And C, develop scientifically validated next-gen probiotics with a mission to bring much-needed precision, efficacy, and education to the global probiotics market. It's really a wild west out there right now for probiotics. And so Roger believes that the magic happens at the intersection
Starting point is 00:07:52 of technology, systems biology, and translational science. And he's got a unique way of thinking, and he follows those thoughts with action. And that's what this conversation is really about. How do we take an idea powerful enough to change the world for the better and turn it into a reality? So with that, let's jump right into this week's conversation with Raja Deer. Raja, how are you? I'm doing great. Yeah. Thank you for being here. It's hard to complain looking out this window here at the Pacific Ocean. I know. I mean, we are blessed. So I've been following what you've been doing for a while.
Starting point is 00:08:31 And I've been fascinated with microbiomes and the health, the gut brain access for a long time. And so I want to definitely hit squarely in this conversation about what you've come to learn and what the insights that you have to help people live better. And I also want to start in the proper order, like what got you to want to do this, right? Maybe you're just a businessman that found this to be an open market that's unexploited, or maybe you really love this industry. I'm not sure yet. So before we pull on that thread, take us back to early life. What was it like growing up? Whatever age you want to start us with? Let's see. So when the sperm first connected with the egg, there was a flash of zinc and that was the moment of inception. Oh God. Okay. That's your dry humor's coming out already.
Starting point is 00:09:23 Okay, good. And so, all right. So where did that sperm and egg happen? Both my father and my mother come from a lineage of North Indian base Himalayan ancestry. I got a pretty cosmopolitan and international upbringing. My mom grew up basically for the first 10 years of her life on a ship. My grandfather was, at a very young age, the captain of an international shipping vessel. And so my mom grew up in the captain's quarters and had visited 50 or 100 or so odd countries before the age of 10. And all kinds of crazy stories that that type of exposure has, but also imparts a sense of comfort with solitude and curiosity and tolerance to uncertainty and the unknown, which I think was passed on to me. My father is really analytical. He's an engineer. And so a lot more of that type of rational thinking and taking systems and
Starting point is 00:10:20 tweaking them and thinking of things as able to be modified. I think I got a lot from my father. But if you ask them, they'll say that I was an anarchist as a child. Most of my belief systems were self-taught. I found indoctrination to be quite onerous. And that really got to take full flight during my high school years when my mom forced me and then I became a voracious participant of debate. And by the end of my senior year, I was among the top and by some rankings, the top debater in the country, which enabled me to get a full ride to undergrad, which if you ask entrepreneurs,
Starting point is 00:11:06 there's kind of a line of thinking and entrepreneurship about whether entrepreneurs are born or made. And I cast my vote in the entrepreneurs are made hat because if you surround yourself with a lot of really smart, of course, you have to have a base level of aptitude. But if you surround yourself with a lot of really smart people and you remove a lot of the typical constraints, like going into debt for college or needing to pick a major that has a certain salary basis or paying your way through school, for example, your mind, you have your base level of stress is so much lower. It's in a Maslow's hierarchical type of way. And I think that you can incubate. And I mean, I don't think that we build adults anymore.
Starting point is 00:11:53 I think we build like adolescents for a very long period of time that need to be incubated in these progressively larger nests. And one such example, I think, is the American university system, which if done well, can be really positive. If done poorly, can be like a very fertile ground for distraction. So I'll pause there, but that's a little bit of a wind in, I guess. So we go from zinc to extended wombs. Okay. All right. And what does it mean to grow up in Northern India? Like what, what is that from a cultural perspective? What does that mean? Yeah. I visited a couple of times. My son, my grandparents are still there. And, um, Oh, you weren't born there. I was not. No, I grew up in it. I grew up in the suburbs
Starting point is 00:12:40 of Atlanta. Okay. So mom and dad moved to the U S yeah. Uh, but my mom was, uh, early twenties, my dad, mid to mid twenties. Okay. And then, so you grew up in Atlanta. Oh yeah. Okay. And that was suburbs you said? Yeah. For the most part, very small, sleepy town. Um, for the, I, most people from that area don't really ever leave that area, but debate for, for some strange reason, three of the top 10 debate schools in the country happen to be concentrated in like a 20 mile radius in central northern Georgia. So it was really my ticket out. I mean, I spent summers in different universities at debate institution every week or two, even since starting since i was 13 or 14 years old i was traveling all over the country to tournaments at northwestern berkeley harvard and
Starting point is 00:13:31 um were you were you if there was different groups this is me trying to oversimplify something there's an athletic group there's a drama arts group there's the the, um, uh, nerd group, you know, there are, I'm not sure what the goth group, there's the risk-taking kind of whatever group, you know, what, what group did you, to oversimplify your early years, where'd you fit in? Uh, so the nerd, the nerd group, but of the nerds that also were confident enough to, uh, be class clowns a little bit. Okay. Yeah. All right. So you had a little bit of an off-access humor to you. It wasn't like you knew you were the academic.
Starting point is 00:14:10 Yeah. I wasn't shy, though, about it. So if someone didn't get my joke, it was kind of just like, well, fuck them. Because? Well, I just would still go for it, I mean, is my point. I wouldn't censor myself based off of what I thought the audience around me was. And I think that has helped. Okay. So at a young age, that level of confidence can flirt easily with hubris and arrogance. Like it can get, you know, as you're trying to sort it out,
Starting point is 00:14:37 were you more on the quiet confidence or more on that hubristic come try me i was very much in the hubristic overconfident side and as a result i was uh uh checked a couple of times and my wings definitely got roasted they didn't burn off entirely but i they got they got a little warm what does that mean uh the uh fly too high your wings burn off reference. That's right. Yeah. So tell me what that, what actually happened. What does that mean to you is what I want to ask. Try to think of a specific, I mean, you kind of create skeptics, you create a trail of skeptics, or you force yourself to have to deliver more than if you under-promised and over-delivered. And I think a couple breakout narratives will come to me as I think about it. But if conceptually it was more of the,
Starting point is 00:15:33 I guess if you don't see failure as, if you don't activate your avoidance systems towards failure in a traditional sense, you become a little bit more tolerant of, you know, things not necessarily going the way that you first anticipated they would be. Okay. So definitely not rigid. You know, you're in, you have a flexible framework to that you, even from an early age. And when you say you've been roasted, your wings have been roasted. What I was thinking is that there was some sort of hardship story where you fronted somebody in a public place and, you know, you didn't clip your wings, but, um, definitely made it known that, Hey, sit in place. This might be even more conceptual or meta of a point, but as a testament to how little attention
Starting point is 00:16:21 I paid about external cues, those things as singular, isolated, transformative events wouldn't even register in my memory. I'm sure if I really tried, I could find something, but it's not so linear, I think, in a way. What does occupy your memory? Gosh, I'm obsessed with biology. I love biology. So more facts? Facts, but ways that integrate into shaping worldviews. And so I don't, my brother's a doctor.
Starting point is 00:16:59 And so I always found the medical school texts to be overly descriptive and detailed in nature. And certainly it's not about cramming your brain with Latin words or progressions that you don't ever need. But I very much try to learn the essential or the vertebrae of a number of different disciplines to anchor and build knowledge around. I'm a firm believer that if you don't assimilate a fact or some information immediately into a web or a tree of knowledge that you're constructing inside your own mind, that it's pretty useless information because it lacks context. And so those are the types of things that I try to build on, whether it be in physics, whether it be in biology, whether it be in, you know, chemistry in some instances, environmental sciences, but I generally lean even on psychiatry and psychology. I take a pretty deep interest in like, you know, maps or patterns that people start building in their head, which then they use as their basis for navigating the world around them. So, um, yeah, I, I, I don't know if that answers it, but I, I, I really like to encourage people and myself to, to, um, adopt what I call an essentialist, uh, worldview, which is, you know, nothing more, but make sure you get all the bases and then cast a pretty
Starting point is 00:18:20 wide net because, um, you don't, there's the, the more things that you're pretty good at understanding, um, the richer the world, uh, appears and feels as you, as you work your way through it. Formal education for you or more self engineering? Yeah. Uh, most of my tech scientific and technical nature is, um, is autodidactic, but I do have a degree in philosophy and biology. I finished undergrad in three or so years and then used the last year to just incubate a couple ideas on my scholarship. Okay. And it sounds like, you know, you're using language that is refreshing, you know, the vertebrae across disciplines, you know, or principles of interest. It's a really cool phrase. And it sounds like what you're trying to do is create some sort of string theory for the things
Starting point is 00:19:14 that interest you most. And I'm interested in your model, right? You're talking about your psychological framework. So let's take an example. Can you think of a time that was incredibly difficult for you? Look, entrepreneurship isn't anyone who glorifies entrepreneurship. It's hard. It's uncertain. It's difficult. There's difficult decisions that involve people and money and product development. It's hard. What's a specific difficult time that you've had? So prior to founding Seed, which is my current company, I was the co-founder of a food tech company called Vital Amine. And we had a pretty simple goal. We wanted to isolate micronutrients from plant material. And in the perfect embodiment of it, we would find plant biomass that was non-inedible, um, and,
Starting point is 00:20:05 and basically valorize or salvage. Non-inedible, which means? That was, uh, inedible. Inedible. Non-inedible would mean? Edible probably. Yeah. I'm sure everything's edible to some extent, but non-nutritive. Okay. Yeah. Okay. And, um, you know, I've, I, the microbiome has always been my passion, uh, or at least since 2006, when I read a paper that showed that you, and this was before the field of microbiome science even was a real, was a, was a mainstream or a real area of science. And, um, you know, they, this was a pretty landmark paper. You took the gut microbiome from an obese mouse and a lean mouse and you switched them and their entire shape changed in a very short period of time.
Starting point is 00:20:49 And so I knew that this or gene therapy were going to be areas that I always wanted to get back to, but I didn't want to do bench work. Okay, hold on. So I don't know if you're going to answer the difficult moment because I was trying to get to your map, but let me stay here for a minute. Is that when you read that piece of research on the biome, and it was a fecal implant, right? So they took the fecal matter of one and switched it around and injected into a healthy rat. And then all of a sudden that rat's composition changed overnight. And I remember the first time I read it, I was like,
Starting point is 00:21:22 what is this? What happened for you when you read that bit of research? I mean, look, it's it's your as a young investigator, it's your dream to find these. And this builds on the systems thing where we started talking about, you know, to find these features that fundamentally change the way you orient yourself around a discipline. Like in this case, it changes the way we think about the nature of biology, right? Like we're more than our genes. We're more than our dietary inputs. The same identical twins could, for the most part, go through life the exact same way and still have very different outcomes
Starting point is 00:22:00 based on these organisms that cohabitate with us. And I found it checked all the boxes for me as an area that I wanted to continue to see through. It had philosophical questions about the nature of self. It had deep scientific and technical utility and applications for human health. It had an opportunity for optimization. It gave agency to things that you traditionally would deem inoperable or unable to be modified or adjusted. And lastly, it was starting to draw interest from not just one field. I always thought the way that we broke down the medical sciences was a little strange and actually very unscientific. So I don't know why a doctor should
Starting point is 00:22:51 only focus on your nose, ear, and throat, other than the fact that they have proximity to each other. Or, you know, it's a really strange way of organizing ourselves around body site. And so here you found something that came in and bull, and bulldoze that wall down and you had immunologists, you had microbiologists, you had neurologists, you had gastroenterologists, psychiatrists and psychologists as well. People, ECNS, like coming and working all together on the same problems and that had a lot of technical and big data and looking at patterns. And it just was such a rich field that I kind of knew, maybe not today, but at some point in my lifetime,
Starting point is 00:23:38 hopefully within the next decade, this thing is going to really heat up. And that moment for the field happened in 2015. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Momentous. When it comes to high performance, whether you're leading a team, raising a family, pushing physical limits, or simply trying to be better today than you were yesterday, what you put in your body matters. And that's why I trust Momentous.
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Starting point is 00:26:11 Just good design, great science. And if you're ready to feel the difference for yourself, Felix Gray is offering all Finding Mastery listeners 20% off. Just head to FelixGray.com and use the code FindingMastery20 at checkout. Again, that's Felix Gray. You spell it F-E-L-I-X-G-R-A-Y.com and use the code FINDINGMASTERY20 at FelixGray.com for 20% off. You're a systems thinker, first and foremost, right? And a couple of times I've asked, because, cause I'm trying to understand like how you, what's
Starting point is 00:26:45 what it's like to be inside you, like the thinking patterns, the emotional states, the way that aha moments or challenges take place. And you're very cognitive. You think through things probably clearly and quickly. Is that right? Yeah. So one of your assets is cognition, metacognition, even, you know, the log rolling effect where you're able to watch how logs roll
Starting point is 00:27:10 on each other and not be necessarily the log. Yep. Right. Okay. And so, so then you spot a trend that sits across other disciplines, cross pollinates across many disciplines and not a trend, but a bit of information, sorry. And you go, I'm going to invest my life efforts towards this. But it's, I went thinking about you right now, you probably didn't chip all in. You don't seem like this aggressively, you know, emotionally, uh, risk taker. It's like, I'm imagining that you thought about it for a bit, but I don't want to presuppose anything. So when you, when you found this information and it made some interesting connections, what did you do then walk me through that arc, you know, the main
Starting point is 00:28:00 frames of that arc. Yeah. So this is, this will give you some clues into my arc as well. And it also doubles as advice for budding entrepreneurs immediately seek out, uh, find the best in the field and learn what they do, uh, in a way where if you had a conversation with them, they would leave that conversation, not being able to stop thinking about that conversation. And that's kind of the outcome or the goal. And then the alignment that you need to do to make that a reality will give you the clues kind of to the individual tactical steps you have to learn. You have to do so much. It's not just about cramming knowledge. It's about explaining it. It's about innovating, having a new approach. Certainly you have to internalize their work, but you also have to be able to then connect it or contextualize or add to it in a way that augments their skill set. So that's...
Starting point is 00:28:52 Okay, hold on. I love that thought. I bet this happens for you a bit. It happens for me too much is I'll get emails that say, hey, I love your work. I'd love to pick your brain. I love your work. I'd love to take you to coffee like wait i mean that's i don't i'm running out of time to like do the like the deep meaningful stuff is
Starting point is 00:29:12 like i'm trying to figure it out and i don't want to sound rude but that's not gonna work for me because of i guess the interest that bandwidth be memorable if you don't invent God, the amount of free, both me and my co-founder, I've done so much free shit for other people just to build ourselves into the place we are today. This like quid pro quo type of, or like one-sided relationship with, with people that you want information or knowledge or life experience from it it just isn't rational it doesn't make any sense you have to probably give a lot more um that's why you know up until recent times these things were done under mentors or under tutors or apprenticeships i mean which took a long time to nurture those relationships before you get knighted as an apprentice and or you got to pay
Starting point is 00:30:02 your way into an institution you got to earn some hoops that way i don't mean just paying in a crass way but universities are businesses you know and you've got to have an academic this that and the other and the track record and have money to get into you know research institutions okay so so i love that insight like create a conversation where the other person is left stimulated. Okay. What else, what else happens? So that's what you did. That's the first thing you did. Any new project in mind that I've ever started. Uh, that's the first place that I go. So I'll put a list together of the people that are the best in the field. And sometimes it'll be years before I actually even reach out to them. But knowing that this venture or this idea or this project won't be successful until I can hang
Starting point is 00:30:50 with at least any combination of between two to five of the people that are on that list. Okay. Pause here. Where do you go next? Do you start to research their work? Do you start to read? Do you write? How do you categorize or systematize your information? And where does it live? Do you have a wiki page? What do you do? Yeah, so I start with passive learning. And if you have trouble with recall, then I would advise going straight to active learning.
Starting point is 00:31:20 But for me, passive learning is kind of like the charcoal filter in reverse osmosis. It separates out the big stuff that you don't need to go down into anymore. And you just kind of see what sticks after a certain period of time that probes what your next level of investigation is. In other words, you're going to read an article and you're going to say, oh, these are the big boulders I'm interested. Then you follow those threads. Yeah. And then you chase those all the way down. So I do start with passive learning, although I've heard that some people have different approaches to that.
Starting point is 00:31:52 Because you mentioned active recall, which, did you say active recall? Active learning. If you have challenges with recall. With recall. Because recall is a tricky thing for people. And you would probably recognize this is that it's actually one of the variables for intelligence testing. And it doesn't mean that you're dumb if you can't recall, but people have different aptitudes and abilities for recall.
Starting point is 00:32:16 So if you struggle with recall, there's mnemonic devices and strategies to help you engage in a way that makes the recall easier. You can also work on recall itself. There's, it doesn't change though. Really? Yeah. So it's, it's considered a, um, fixed. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:32:33 So intelligence is a relatively fixed, you know, uh, model. And so it doesn't change over time, but you can amplify your weaknesses and amplify your strengths as well. But so mnemonic devices creating, um, all different types of systems. You can look all the, like there's 12 of them. You can look them up online. Okay, good. So that, so you go passive, then you get active. I then stay past. Yeah. And then I go into, um, uh, so an exercise that I use actually, it sounds a little weird is, um, I imagine that like, and, and it actually happens when like an investor or, um, an advisor or business partner asks, asks you in an email or
Starting point is 00:33:13 kind of a fire drill, uh, how you would explain the most interesting or relevant points with kind of like a plan, like with some thought leadership to it. And so it's an exercise I do a lot. Like if you go to my drafts folder in my inbox, I have like hundreds and hundreds of drafts that I've just written to nobody. Just because when I imagine there being someone on the receiving end of it, I synthesize and I distill down what it is that I've just learned into ways that would allow me to be effective in communicating it or also cut it down into the minimum viable units of communication. How often do you distill something that you've read into an email or just let it kind of permeate in the background for a bit?
Starting point is 00:34:04 Don't do it too close together. Otherwise, you'll be thinking as you read, you'll be thinking about translating instead of reading. Um, and so it's, it's better if you just, the more time you can, depending on your recall abilities, the more time you can put between it, the better, uh, cause you want to train yourself to read something, learn it, understand it, always stop and chase a word you don't understand. Cause then you won't integrate it. So if there's words or concepts like, um, don't listen in my, my advice would be, don't listen to people that say, just stick to it, make a list and go afterwards and look up all the things you didn't know. I mean, learning is active combat. And so
Starting point is 00:34:41 you can, you can, you can take information in passively, which just means that you're not writing or doing anything else and, you know, jotting things down. Take notes for sure. But always, always back to the vertebrae concept, you have to find a notch to hang it around. Or you have to find a solar system with a star that has enough gravity that it can then go enter into its orbit. Otherwise, it's just going to be drifting listlessly through space. I love it. I listen to a lot of audiobooks and podcasts as well. And I can't do it unless I've got my computer out, my phone out, or a notepad. I'm more digital than on paper.
Starting point is 00:35:21 But it just seems like as soon as I learn something and it's like, Oh, that's a gem. I want to see it. I want to integrate it into my own thoughts. So that's something that you're doing as well. Yeah. Okay. So those are two steps you've got. What else are you doing to make sense of things? Hmm. I've been going on a lot of podcasts recently and talking about them. Yeah. I think it's an interesting response because when you can put your own words to somebody else's principles and concepts, and you're able to pull on two, three, four different other ideas, then it starts to become something uniquely yours, you know, and it's a synthesis that makes sense to maybe, maybe birth a new idea. Okay. So let's
Starting point is 00:36:03 go back to the, that first research article. You go, oh, this is interesting. You found some folks, you did some reading and some research to be proficient in their domain. And then you do what next? with the experts. Basically anybody that has a, I mean, don't be too strict on how you pressure test this idea. So another nugget to insert here is people that are too precious about their ideas. I as an investor wouldn't bet on them because so much of this stuff is on what you gain in pressure testing your own ideas, even in your own internal development and ability to communicate it, far outweighs the risk of idea theft. I mean, unless it's something that's so specialized or particular or like, well, use palladium for this instead of some other rare earth metal, because it's, then it's something that's stealable. But if it's like, Hey, I have an idea for, um, a microbiome company that looks at a lot of different organ sites and has partially therapeutics and starts with this and this, this, and this, and this is going to be the first FDA trial. And I mean, no, one's going to really, you, you talk to investors, talk to, uh, scientists, talk to leaders in the field, talk to people that have failed before.
Starting point is 00:37:31 I don't, I'm very precious about my time. And so if I can immediately tell out someone's not going to add value, I'll be a little, I won't be rude, but I'll just cut the discussion short and walk away. But I'll get a lot of opportunities for like a bite, you know, or a hook. And sometimes you'll see someone come in with something fresh or something new or a perspective that's good. So go wide with it. But don't feel compelled to give everybody the whole hour, for example, or give everybody the entire time of day, but then you pressure test it. You battle test it, you harden it, you refine it. And then ultimately the final test is going back to the experts, get into those rooms and have a clear plan on what you want to do next.
Starting point is 00:38:13 So I'll give you an example. So now at our company, we work with probably at this stage, we have either on our advisory board or as chief scientists in different divisions of our company, 60 to 70% of the top scientists in the entire microbiome field. And in each one of our individual tracks, we have the expert, usually the leading scientist that's never commercialized their work before, that's published more on the subject than anybody else. And these are highly fundable, expert-driven businesses now.
Starting point is 00:38:50 And if you want to be successful, you also can't make yourself be the core pressure point between success and failure. And so you distribute, almost like when you're building a structure, you distribute the risk across a number of very validated pressure points. And then you scale it up. Beautiful. How many people are on your advisory board? 15 now. 15.
Starting point is 00:39:18 And then what is the nature? Do you consider yourself more of an entrepreneur or a science investigator? I would consider myself more on the side, the stage it's almost all my time is spent designing clinical trials, publishing papers, evaluating new technical research, designing experiments. Okay. So you're on the science side. Okay. And then, because I'm going to ask you like, I want to get into the science in a minute, but I was, I want to ask you about your advisory role. When you have those experts, what is the, it sounds so crass, but what does the give get?
Starting point is 00:39:53 So you're giving them a community, and in good at what they do then they usually know or are far more connected and integrated into the scientific community than anything you could ever offer them which is what makes this so hard because the only things you can give these people are money stock or in some instances I guess a path to commercialize their work but all three are dependent I mean mean, for the, at least I can only speak on the science side. And I think it breaks in some areas like robotics and computer science and clean energy. You find a lot more commercially oriented investigators, but when you come to biology and material sciences and chemistry and physics is the worst. I mean, these people, the best in the field really don't care about money. Their mindset, if you want to transport into their portal,
Starting point is 00:40:54 I mean, these people are driven by coming up with something that has never been thought of or done before. And they're so raw on kind of the end of the create something from nothing spectrum that sometimes you'll find like a couple of the like powerhouses from like the Broad Institute at Harvard, for example, and MIT is, and some Stanford departments are really good at commercializing, but most scientists are more driven by doing good science than they are about making money. So it's very hard. You really don't have anything to offer other than saying, look, you've now gotten a chance to get to know me. You see what we're doing. You see that we're advancing the field. So you have to align your
Starting point is 00:41:36 interests with theirs, that the work that we're doing is accelerating the pace of the field itself. And if we don't do and fund this work, it probably won't get done for a very long period of time, certainly not within academia. And so most of the relationships in our scientific community are with people that say, have a ton of trust in me that something's not going to break down along the way, that their name or research isn't used, uh, incorrectly. Um, but ultimately the thing that the, the, the best thing you can offer somebody back in return, um, certainly you should, you should, that's what advisory shares are for us to give them some kind of, some stake in the, uh, in the, in the company. But, um, the best thing you can offer them is a, is an innovative application of their
Starting point is 00:42:21 own work that they may not have thought about before. There you go. Very cool. Okay. You know, I've been part of some advisory boards and they're exactly that. For me though, they're a community that I normally wouldn't be part of because I'm looking for communities that have multiple diverse worldviews, scientifically informed views. And so those are the fun conversations and people that I love to be around. And so that's the part that I think would community, but I hear your point, which is now they've got, I've got my own community, but I want to be part of that other community as well. Okay. Science is a community. Science is probably, I mean, the whole concept of peer review,
Starting point is 00:43:01 in some ways, science is the most foolproof community because the whole concept is that until your peers validate what you've done, now it breaks down a lot. There's a lot of stuff that sneaks through peer review and there's a lot of politics and a surprising amount of the same principles that you find of introducing bias in other disciplines. When taken advantage of, it can actually be worse because it becomes a Trojan horse where your bias now gets into a worldview it shouldn't under the pretense of being objective. But when it's done well, it's the most remarkable structure for a community. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Cozy Earth.
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Starting point is 00:46:10 That's a big question. I'm curious where you might take that. There's a couple of ways, a couple of places I can take it, but I've been speaking to anybody who will listen recently about a, I think the human centric worldview is, um, much like the earth centric worldview in the 1600s. Of course you would go here. I mean, you're in squarely invested in microbiome. Well, this is, I mean it biologically, but I also mean it in more in, in there's other ways of, I think, uh, digging into this one. This is cool. Um, so it's, it's yes, from an evolution, I mean, from an evolutionary perspective, we are very rare. Organisms like us shouldn't necessarily evolve that often.
Starting point is 00:47:03 Um, I get it. It's special. More importantly, we are aware of the fact that we are special. That can create this feedback loop of speciesism. I don't know. Speciesism. This is something new to me too. It's just like privileging one species over another for example because speciesism species never heard of it yeah let's go yeah yeah and so it's a bias
Starting point is 00:47:33 that our species is something yeah and i don't and and most most of the times when i start this off people will start rolling their eyes like oh god he thinks that like factory farming is bad and we're going there and yes i do think that that's bad just because it's a, it's gross. And you know, it's, it's a weird thing. It's also a weird thing to do, but, um, I understand when there's a purpose, like in medical research, I know why you'd put things in cages, but, uh, you know, I'm not going there with this. What I'm going for is that I think that there's the, the, the world is a lot more beautiful when you don't need to rely on self-constructed ideas of privilege or on the other end of the spectrum need to rely on some sort of divine basis or moral imperative for purpose or for why you exist and what you should and should not do.
Starting point is 00:48:25 And it's summed up really well with this idea that I forget who said it, but it's like, isn't the garden beautiful enough without having to believe that there's pixies in it too? And my worldview is partially based in this idea that look like everything's amazing and no one cares, you know? And I think that when you start to find these common threads, you can synthesize information really well and you have a technical and information-based understanding of the world around you.
Starting point is 00:49:01 And my biggest issue is with pseudo-spiritualism because it has all the looks and feels of a truly valid worldview, but it's devoid of a lot of the substance that makes those things fungible. And so I just encourage, I mean, biology and, and the, the concept of like, like even, even really simple, like how, how evolution works, you know, like the concept about how things are constantly tested and then die, evolution, people think evolution is this linear progression between small organisms up to more complexity. There's tons of very complex things that have, it's more of like a pulse, like it goes out and then it contracts. And then what's left in the contraction blooms out and then it contracts again.
Starting point is 00:49:50 And it's a nucleus out process instead of this like linear march through time. And that's what I mean when I say like human centrism is very much an extension of this like linear forward, the march of progress, industrial type of approach. And it just doesn't serve you from a mental health perspective, nor does it serve you for innovation. It doesn't help you for innovation. You don't come up with good ideas trying to look at the last iteration and figure out where to go in the tree from there. And it doesn't help our planet. I mean, we're pretty close to the next big mass extinction, which is
Starting point is 00:50:25 entirely human driven. And so I try to be an evangelist. I think that connecting with non-human life forms and meaningful ways is just all around a pretty good thing to do. It's like one of those things that once you do it, a lot of other stuff just clicks into place. There's so much in there. Non-human life form connection meaning plants and otherwise just light i mean like sometimes it can even be with uh like animals dirt whatever it might be like forms of matter it can be with it can be with a body of water right like it doesn't have to be with something which has a nucleus and where does spirit, uh, spiritualism, religion, where does that fit in your worldview? Is it a, um, artifact of people needing purpose and meeting or is, do you have a difference?
Starting point is 00:51:12 No, look, I read, I've, this was kind of a little bit more up your alley. So I've been reading this, uh, article in a scientific journal. It's by, I think the lead author was from the Stanford school of psychology. It's called some key think the lead author was from the Stanford School of Psychology. It's called Some Key Differences Between a Happy Life and a Meaningful Life. And look, in some ways, happiness, so happiness and meaning oftentimes get conflated, where happiness seems to be a feature of me being, having meaning, right? Or when devoid of meaning, it turns into pleasure. That's usually how people orient themselves with those concepts.
Starting point is 00:51:56 I think it's something a little bit simpler. I think happiness is a, is a emotional state, which is highly present or oriented in the present. I don't think that like, even when you're happy about future things, when the moment, like your Christmas presents, when it arrives or a trip that you've planned like months in advance, the happiness isn't felt in that whole period leading up to the trip. It's felt when you actually realize it or in that moment of press. So I think happiness is this very thin slice. People say it's fleeting as if it's a bad thing, but I think that's just a descriptive term of it. I don't think there's any judgment attached to that word. I think it's a temporary present
Starting point is 00:52:34 oriented state. Meaning, I think, is integration of past, present, and future in ways that if it's done correctly, you do also feel some sense of, you know, happiness is a part of it. But there's, when people say, look for something deeper, look for something more meaningful, all they're saying is like living in a little bit more integrated with the different states of your life, you know, and letting them all kind of reconcile together and deriving fulfillment or positive emotive response from things that aren't present, either fond memories or time with loved most accessible forms of creating meaning in the way I just described it. So I think that they'll give you a system. Look, they've checked all the boxes. They give you a very long historical series of events that led to what you are today,
Starting point is 00:53:42 that resulted in the creation of you. Okay. They put you and your life experience at the center of your journey or path or whatever you want to call it or, um, life. Um, and then they give you a big, big promise about if based off of the actions that you're doing today of an integration in some future sense that they carry on the top is that it even links but you'll then go back and see all your loved ones and people from your past life and they bring it right back around to the past i mean it's the perfect perfect story narrative for meaning in that sense and it what it gives you
Starting point is 00:54:20 um you know i i heard someone write about it a long time ago i don't know if I'm going to offend people that are really religious that are listening to this. That doesn't have any, I'm not making any value statements on what's right or what's wrong. I'm just talking about it from like the theoretical devices, how it's constructed. And look, like I think there's a, it was probably very important in times when the human condition was a lot less bountiful than it is today. When most people would live in squalor or there's poverty and disease and suffering and betrayal. We're all, I mean, look at, read any story from before, even from up until 1960 or so. I mean, that was really the glory days right invention of antibiotics i would say is pegged to it uh you know but look like even before that
Starting point is 00:55:13 like if you look at even some of these like have you read beowulf you know it's crazy it's it this is uh life it wasn't tough and certainly during the time of when biblical texts in particular were, you know, most popular, you would need some sort of external value system to help give you a sense, a reason to behave, a reason to not steal from your neighbor, right? Or a reason to not, to be just. So I think that it makes a lot of sense. I understand where it came from. And I think that in some instances, it's had a lot of a very quick, accessible and immediately transferable way of helping people access meaning. And to that extent, I think a meaningful life is indisputably more
Starting point is 00:56:02 rich than a non-meaningful life. Now, the question becomes, and to conclude the thought, are there ways of creating a meaningful life which are more customizable than kind of a more out-of-the-box set? So I think as long as the key attributes or features are felt, you'll find people that have found deep, deep forms of meaning by connecting with nature. Nature and evolution also checks those boxes. But it was when too much myth is put around it, it starts to become paganistic and too much ritual. It starts to become corrupted by the human touch. these ideas about, look, my final thought on it is, if you are only behaving out of fear, that if you don't behave well, something bad will happen to you after you die. I mean, come on. You are clear in your approach. I mean, I'm so happy that I asked about your worldview yeah right okay so um you are in many ways a humanist but then you also have this asterisk which is so religionism you're saying is dying or is escaped its utility
Starting point is 00:57:19 and you're suggesting that humanism is like, hey, listen, there's ways to create meaning and purpose that is more customizable than out of the box. But you also put an asterisk that, you know, we also get in our own way by thinking that we're the center of the world and that there are multiple organisms and life forms that are available to us. And, you know, there's something bigger than just our own nine to five job. So, you know, to oversimplify. So where do you go to, let's use that as a bridge and a link into the science, the applied nature of your science, which is, I'm fascinated with microbiomes, that we've got organisms that live in us and on us, and some are healthy, some are not. And the ones that are healthy, the two basic strains,
Starting point is 00:58:11 maybe you can walk us through those, are fascinating as ways to manipulate or, I don't know, what's the better word here? Maybe it is manipulate, you know, better states of optimization by playing with these organisms. So walk us through the applied science and why you're so excited about seed, your company, but also the application of microbiome. Yeah. So just for, to give some context to everybody. So the microbiome is the entire collection of microorganisms. It includes bacteria, it includes virus, it includes fungi, archaea. And you get your first exposure when you're born is through, we believe, the mother's birth canal and through breastfeeding. And a pretty incredible fact is that about a third of the carbohydrates in breast milk are actually not used by the baby as a food source. They can't be broken down by
Starting point is 00:59:12 human enzymes. And they're exclusively nutritive sources for developing bacteria in your early stages of life. And if you think about how metabolically expensive it is to make that when a woman's pregnant, she can't hunt, she can't forage. There's another life that's dependent on it. It's pretty challenging. And her body is making the substrate for organisms. For bacteria. Yeah, crazy. substrate for organisms for bacteria yeah crazy you know so to me that's a that's it's it's a complete mind-bending thought which is are those lactobacillus those are bifidobacterium bifidum
Starting point is 00:59:53 okay okay and then so can you walk us through the two of those yeah hold on let's simplify this thought first right which is uh the cost to make bacteria is enormous. And for some reason, we're passing bacteria. Mothers are passing bacteria to children. Well, they're everywhere. We're living in a microbial world. It's a constant feedback. Everything you touch, everything you... I mean, when you swim in the ocean, the ocean is after the soil of an extremely complex community of microorganisms. It's this giant broth, right? Soil is as dense in most fertile soils, as dense and teeming with microorganisms as the human gut is. And about a third of all the metabolites that are going through your bloodstream are made by bacteria that are living inside of you. This field of science has been implicated.
Starting point is 01:00:45 I mean, last year, Jerome Reyes and his group in Belgium published on people that have depression, anxiety, and found that they're deficient in two organisms in their gut in a thousand person plus cohort. One of the leading technology and biotech companies right now is working in a phase two trial for for alzheimer's disease by blocking a bacterial metabolite from entering into the brain that induces the immune response i read both of those yeah and i'm telling you like my hair stands up when i think about
Starting point is 01:01:16 how how revolutionized yeah or how revolutionary this idea is that a living organism that's inside of us is required is the extrapolation that i'll make they're required yeah for health yeah and and i know that your your background's in cognitive science and psychology and so as someone i mean i'm fascinated by the brain because we're starting to see all these things that we always thought are sterile don't aren't necessarily don't sterile anymore. Oh, it's way dirtier than that. Yeah. And, and so I, I can't, I, I don't want to talk too much about the outcomes because it's still in development. But one of the things our company is doing is we're working with the NIH, um, and we're
Starting point is 01:01:58 conducting the first whole spectrum study to evaluate whether there's bacteria in the brain or not and um you'd be the first there we to to show it in human brain tissue we would be the first to public look if it's there if it's not we're getting brain tissue samples from search fresh from surgery from brain surgery people that have never had surgery before it's the first time that they're getting brain tissue for the last so it wasn't introduced by a foreign substance prior yeah so it's a first brain tissue that's you know it's it's live humans not dead when the immune system breaks down and bacteria can infiltrate live human brain tissue for the last six months we've been collecting one to two samples per week oh my god you know have you heard the phrase air on the brain? Never the same.
Starting point is 01:02:46 No. Yeah. One of my friends is a neurosurgeon. He's like, Mike, once you open it up, like people just change and we're not sure why, but you know, think about that thought air on the brain, never the same. So as soon as he cracks open a skull for all the right reasons that, and, and, and he does a beautiful job on surgery that the person fundamentally is not the same something happens yeah is it bacteria i don't know is it is it literally we'll get i mean we'll get the answer to that because we're gonna get enough that we can cluster people out that um it's their first versus they've had it before so we know that in it's sterile in our processes because we're controlling for it um but next next time we talk, I'll have some more to share on that.
Starting point is 01:03:27 But to kind of go back to the point, you name it. I mean, one of the research tracks in our company is on preterm birth. I mean, millions of babies each year are born preterm and they have lifelong consequences and puts enormous economic and psychological toll on families in the healthcare system. And the solution could be as simple as changing the vaginal microbiome, which gives cues or signals to the fitness landscape of a baby when it's born back to the mother, to the host. And so we're finding that the mission of our company is to have applications of bacteria where they can become or replace the primary standard of care. So we look for these unmet medical- Through ingestion? Through oral ingestion? Not always, no. Fecal ingestion?
Starting point is 01:04:19 Oral, vaginal for our women's health track. For our oral health track, you induce colonization subgingivally. So wherever the target is, that's where we introduce it. Okay. Very cool. And then are you down to the level of knowing the strands that you think might have the most influence? Now we're way past that now. So now, for example, in our women's health, in our women's health company, over the last 15 years, thousands of women have been sequenced, studied, observed, their medical and personal history has been tracked. And we found over these thousands and thousands of samples, what's some key genomic features that separate stable and healthy from unstable
Starting point is 01:05:06 and unhealthy vaginal microbial communities. So it's not just about knowing which species or which strain, and that's like just your ticket to entry. If you really want to start altering these systems to improve human health, you need tons of data. You need to track people over long periods of time. And then you need to show that you can induce a long-term persistent change in that ecosystem after your intervention. And so these are things that aren't, you can't just do them very quickly. What do you think of probiotics that people go get at Whole Foods or fill in the blank, you know, health store? What do you think about that? Well, I'm very skeptical. I think most of the probiotics that are available in grocery stores
Starting point is 01:05:49 or pharmacies are, well, I know what they are because they come from the same three or four manufacturers of bacteria domestically. There's only a couple of them and half of them are relics of the dairy industry when they found that their starter cultures could be used in different ways. And you might experience some very moderate benefits from those, but the only real mechanism that we know is that they produce a little bit of lactic acid. And if that's what you're after, then you're better off just going for a yogurt or something else, which is not considered probiotic. It's actually considered a fermented food and the two are very different why are why are most um of the tested i'm thinking of what's the yogurt uh yokum what's the brand yakult yakult yeah that most of the probiotics actually have culture attached to them the ones
Starting point is 01:06:38 that are tested what's you mean they like say there's x number of live organisms or something like that well is it more of a organisms or something like that? Well, is it more of a delivery mechanism? No, no, no. I mean, it could be true, but that doesn't mean anything. Right. So there's some strains where a very small amount, like a couple hundred million, um, live, live cells can deliver a therapeutic effect. And then there's others where you don't, they don't do anything at all. And so you find like hundreds of billions, uh, because the idea is that by brute force, they'll, I mean, they're just, it's just guesswork, you know, by definition to be a probiotic, your strains need to be studied in some way. And it doesn't, ideally it's in a human population,
Starting point is 01:07:20 but you have to have a mechanism. You have to have a feature. You have to have some desired outcome. There needs to be some rationale for why that strain was selected, other than the fact that it's just bacteria. So the idea that just being bacteria is enough to be considered probiotic is a marketing myth. Okay, cool. Because you bring up a point that i get concerned about is when some athletes are taking probiotics and there's um you know an enhanced lactic acid response that takes place which is the last thing an athlete wants i mean we're doing everything we can to clear lactate say it again to clear lactate that's right yeah so can you just quickly speak about the dangers of athletes taking probiotics that have a high lactose inside of it? It's not a systemic issue. It doesn't have long-term buildup or certainly, and I think most of the lactate clearance in elite athletes is actually aggregates in muscle tissue. It does. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:08:30 So you're not going to find. It doesn't cross over. No, it's not going to go from your gut and then start to build up in your muscles. So that's not a concern necessarily. How certain are you on that? I'm not trying to trick anyone, but like I've had the thought that that could be a problem, but I can't find research either way. actually just serves to lower the ph of your gut and it doesn't it's it's not in sufficient enough quantities nor does it make sense uh biochemically for it to go i mean if it does it would be a wild uh observation okay cool all right cool all right keep rolling keep rolling like stitch us
Starting point is 01:09:18 into this domain here like if we could flip into the psychobiotic category, right? Like the gut brain health mechanism. And if we can go, if we could move from start with anxiety, depression, and then move into optimized states of flourishing and where psychobiotics, I'm sorry, probiotics as well, um, play and how they play. So I think that the only convincing study I've seen on depression or anxiety is, look, you'll find a bunch of studies that have been done, but if you look a little bit deeper, they looked for 10 different things and they only found one in a secondary thing and they twist the study to say, well, it worked on symptoms of depressed on state on sad mood or mood reactivity, or they'll go tease out whatever of the 50 things that they
Starting point is 01:10:14 asked about that got significance just right under the barrier. But nothing on the market has actually been developed for depression or anxiety when given to an adult that we know of today. I'm very hesitant to say that there's anything that has validity. And we've looked at everything and evaluated this research very closely. However, the Jerome Reyes paper that was published in Nature, these are not commercially available probiotics, but they could be in the future. And in this case, it's the perfect study design. So you look and it's what we did with our women's health company, essentially, but for the brain. So you find thousands of people and you cluster them into groups and you see if there's anything between the two groups that are depressed or not depressed that's different. And then you control for all confounding variables. So in this case,
Starting point is 01:11:13 you have to control for antidepressants or anything else of the sort, SSRIs. Then you find what it is, say, okay, so in this instance, the bacteria that were deficient are two organisms called Coprococcus and Dialyster. Then you go and see if there's, you probe the mechanism on what about these organisms could actually have a role in mental health. And in this case, they found hundreds of bio, of neuroactive metabolites being pumped out and produced by these exact same organisms that we previously didn't know before.
Starting point is 01:11:40 And this is more than just like GABA or serotonin. It's a myth that gut serotonin makes it into the brain because it doesn't. All serotonin that's produced, that's used by the brain as neurotransmitters produced locally. So what happens, the serotonin receptors in the gut, what's happening there? They're just used as local signaling receptors for a range of just like gut motility. And we don't know every single role that they're played. I mean, maybe it's possible that they send a key, they can down-regulate or up-regulate certain genes based on being expressed, but we don't, that hasn't been fully investigated. Um, but then you go at now, the next step of this research is now,
Starting point is 01:12:20 so then you take those organisms or their metabolites and you put them back into people that have depression, anxiety, and you see if it works compared to placebo. And so that's kind of how good science is really done. No one's kind of where the microbiome field is at the very early stages of most people are like either at step one or in some instances have now made it to step two, but all of our, all of our paths in our company are at stage two. Now going back into stage three or past stage three, where you put it back into people and you show that it works for something. Very cool. So if people are struggling with anxiety or depression, what would you suggest when it comes to probiotics? Um, I would, I would not advise any probiotics for anxiety or depression, um, unless GI disorder, unless indigestion is a comorbidity. Uh, and you
Starting point is 01:13:15 find this in people like with autism disorder, where if you fix their gut, you have a tremendous effect on their quality of life because you've removed like a deep-seated latent trigger for negative mood or emotion. Or sometimes if you have stimulation in your gut, it's processed by the body's anxiety, but it's not anxiety in the way that I think it's diagnosed clinically. Okay. Okay. So then let's jump just a little ahead in, there's two things I want to figure out. One is in the most simple terms, how does this ecosystem of gut work? Like how, how does this work? And then what can people do based on your science, but your product base to make their life better, enhance the quality of life. So I think there's very, now to argue against myself, I think there's few things that people can do to improve their quality of life that are more effective than impacting your digestion. Because it's a daily physiological process. Some people
Starting point is 01:14:26 just get so accustomed to the way that their system works that they don't actually realize that they don't have optimal or perfect digestion. I mean, in fact, with our, at least our first product is a cocktail of bacteria, primarily targeting improvements in digestion. And there's a number of different markers that were evaluated. But what most people report is that I didn't realize that I was, uh, had this or that or indigestion or bloating or, um, slow intestinal transit time or my stool consistent, or I didn't have ease of expulsion or, you know, there's a number of different factors and until, until you really adjust and take it. And then you say, well, I just i just kind of uh recalibrated and my baseline had become my currents my previous state and then when you when you try it and stick to it for a
Starting point is 01:15:13 month or two or 12 weeks is the optimal period of time to notice i think these changes for a probiotic for for a new probiotic yeah um most i mean most, I mean, most people like, uh, there's a very low, like placebo response past 12 weeks. Right. Because at that point it either the sugar pill wears off. Yeah. Right. Okay. Um, and so, you know, I think that it's important when I think there's probiotics are one, but I think that like, um, uh, magnesium is a really interesting, uh, micronutrient that a lot of people are deficient in. I think that avoidance diets, not to be too extreme, but cutting out processed foods is a phenomenal, easy first step that you can take. You don't realize those things affect you for a couple days off of just a single acute dose.
Starting point is 01:16:04 We just completed a trial right now where we looked at the effect of alcohol, ethanol in high quantities has on your gut barrier. I want to know nothing about this. Well, as we start probing new effects that probiotics have on the gut, we looked at ethanol and we looked at antibiotics. And we found that our cocktail of probiotics has a rescue effect on the gut for after ethanol consumption and a resurgence in production of normal physiological function after acute dose of antibiotics. So we're starting to interrogate more and more ways. Which means if you have healthy or using your product or you have healthy probiotic nature or makeup, then when you take alcohol, there's a... Disruption.
Starting point is 01:16:47 It's a disruption, but it sounds like there's also a benefit. No, it's the opposite. It's that if you take alcohol, if you consume ethanol, it'll have a disruptive effect on both your intestinal cells as well as your resident microbiome in the in the dosages that we studied so equivalent of in a 24 to 48 hour period of time like um between seven and nine drinks so how do people that want to also take alcohol how do they um well that's so that's what i was saying. So we actually interrogated, our hypothesis was that we know that our cocktail of bacteria work by stitching up your gut barrier, right? So that's one of the things that previously we've validated.
Starting point is 01:17:35 So we wanted to see whether under this specific trigger, we could actually have a rescue effect. And by taking probiotics alongside these stressors, you could attenuate or improve recovery time. And on both of those endpoints, we saw a dramatic improvement. That's what I thought. Okay, very cool. And so I always got, I didn't know the research on this. So I'm glad that we're talking about this. If I have to take an antibiotic, which I don't want to, if I have to take an antibiotic because whatever reasons, also take a probiotic? Yes. Because you know what my thought was? I don't want to take a probiotic while I'm taking an antibiotic because I'm going to promote the whatever bad bacteria that I've got running around. And I think it felt too simplistic, but you're suggesting if I'm
Starting point is 01:18:20 taking an antibiotic at the same time, stay with the probiotic course. Not just a, I mean, to our knowledge, we are the first company to ever validate this mechanism in this way. So I can't generalize. But it is, we're going to be publishing on this very shortly. Awesome. So you got some good. Good data. Okay. Very cool.
Starting point is 01:18:40 All right. So then last little bit here. I want to thank you for your time. Thank you for. Thank you for having me. It's been really fun. The quality of this conversation. What would you suggest people could do? And let's go two, three, four things, whatever, to improve the quality of their life and let
Starting point is 01:18:59 one of them be something that you have spent your life developing, you know, your, um, your products. Like, I'm, I'm happy to understand that as well, but otherwise like that and otherwise, what would you suggest? No, I mean, if I, as much as I love the company we've built and our first product, um, I don't think it's an appropriate answer to your question of a total life-changing transformative things. Uh, the only plug I'll give is that if you want better digestion or GI function or have some sort of issue with transit time or intolerance of certain foods or you don't have clean, one log, soft, zero to one wipe stool bowel movements on a day-to-day basis and would desire that, go to seed.com and try the product. Um, but that's not an answer to your question. Uh, a couple of things that I think all
Starting point is 01:19:51 around would improve the value of, of day-to-day living is, um, it's a little hypocritical because I say it all the time, but I never do it. Um, but when I do do it, I just feel incredibly good, uh, cold exposure. So a couple of times we live in Southern California and so we don't get that here. We have a very basic, um, you know, kind of steady state temperature. And so, um, it doesn't have to be ice baths or cold showers if you're not tolerant of it. Um, but prolong, let, let your, let yourself get cold. Um, in Iceland, they take their, they take infants and they put them in strollers. And when the parents and adults are inside warming up, they leave them outside in the frigid cold.
Starting point is 01:20:35 It's been a custom in Iceland for hundreds of thousands, if not thousands of years. And this is based off of scientific data and not just ancestral or, you know, historical, but I also just anecdotally and empirically, I feel phenomenal after exposure to cold therapies and certainly cycling of sauna and ice plunge and sauna and ice plunge, as it's done in Russia, as it's done in most of all of Scandinavia, are associated with high quality of life. Less about the longevity side of it, but just on your acute change in mood that you feel from exposure to cold and subsequent return back to baseline. So try to expose yourself to cold a little bit more. I think that diet and nutrition is a cornerstone of, of high of a
Starting point is 01:21:26 high quality life. Um, I would encourage people to completely fill their plates 70% or more with cruciferous green vegetables. Um, and then whatever you want to fill the rest with, as long as it's not processed, just do it, just go for it and see how you feel, you'll feel amazing. And then the third is digital detox. We don't really appreciate, and of course, as a generalization, but we're as a stimulus-seeking beings, which served an advantage prior to our hijacking of those pathways in our brain. We were a lot more sensitive. If people are familiar
Starting point is 01:22:09 with the concept of insulin resistance and insulin sensitivity, I think that we're becoming emotionally insulin-type resistant in many ways. And so by forcing a detox, you're actually giving more power to it than I think it deserves. The best would be digital ambivalence, but that's not really possible in the world that we live in. So aspire for digital ambivalence, but at least like purge yourself with digital detox when you can. And nature is a really good thing that you can fill that void with, I think.
Starting point is 01:22:43 Awesome. Appreciate your brother. Like really well done i the depth of thought and the breadth of integration is refreshing and so thank you for your time yeah thank you for your time thank you for the insights and then folks that are interested in um seed it's seed.com seed.com seedcom. And yeah, I'm looking forward to watching the trajectory of your company. Thank you very much. And I will send over all the fun, interesting things related to gut brain access that
Starting point is 01:23:15 come across my desk because it's a hot field to watch. It is. Yeah. Appreciate you. Yeah. All right. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Thank you so much for diving into another episode of finding mastery with us our team loves creating this podcast and sharing these conversations with you we really appreciate you being part of this community and if you're enjoying the show the easiest no-cost way to support is to hit the subscribe or follow button
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Starting point is 01:25:01 be well, think well, keep exploring.

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