Kyle Kingsbury Podcast - #130 Dr. Mahmoud Ghannoum

Episode Date: December 2, 2019

Dr. Mahmoud Ghannoum is one of the world's leading microbiome researchers and the scientist who named the mycobiome, our body's fungal community. He lectures at many institutions globally, including the National Institutes of Health, on the microbiome and his breakthrough research on probiotics. We are joined by his son and fellow guest of the show Afif Ghannoum to discuss all things fungi, the microbiome and much more.   Connect with Dr. Mahmoud| Check out BIOHM | https://biohmhealth.com/ Website - https://drmicrobiome.com/     Show Notes| KKP #59 Afif Ghannoum - https://apple.co/2LcZmxL   Show Sponsors| Waayb CBD www.waayb.com (Get 10% off using code word Kyle at checkout)   Caldera Lab https://calderalab.com/kyle Use codeword Kyle at checkout for 20% off your first purchase of (The Good)   Comrad Socks www.comradsocks.com/kyle (for 20% off)      Onnit  Get 10% off all foods and supplements at Onnit by going to https://www.onnit.com/kyle/   Connect with Kyle Kingsbury on: Website | https://www.kingsbu.com/ ( Supplement List & Newsletter) Twitter | https://bit.ly/2DrhtKn Instagram | https://bit.ly/2DxeDrk Get 10% off at Onnit by going to https://www.onnit.com/podcast/   Subscribe to Kyle Kingsbury Podcast iTunes | https://apple.co/2P0GEJu Stitcher | https://bit.ly/2DzUSyp Spotify | https://spoti.fi/2ybfVTY

Hello, friends. Today's guest is a man named Mahmoud Ghanoum, and we get into a really cool story on how he got to America. He's a fantastic and brilliant human. I think he's been in the field of the gut biome and the mycobiome was actually the term that he created to talk about the fungal network that resides in our gut and intestines. Brilliant human. He wrote his thesis on candida, which is what causes a lot of yeast infections, I think 30 plus years ago. Just a brilliant man. We really dive into what matters when it comes to gut health and how we can treat some of these things, as well as the home tests that they provide. He's got a brand new book coming out, which we'll link to in the show notes. I highly recommend it.

Check this podcast out. Also click subscribe so you never miss an episode. Leave us a five-star rating so more people can hear about the show and one or two ways that the show has helped you out in life. And finally, last but not least, support our sponsors. We've got incredible sponsors that help make this show possible.

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Yeah, yeah. It just kind of keeps that momentum heading in the right direction. And obviously the technology's changed, our ability to actually see what we're looking at and see the changes and kind of, what is that, the movement. It's funny as people always talk about biohacking,

but I get more excited about the quantified self-movement. And we see that in medicine, too, where it's not just, obviously, people wearing whoop watches and things like that where they can see their sleep scores. But as technology shifts, we can actually see exactly what's going on inside and what's making shifts happen. Well, and be able to react. You know what I mean? Like, all this data is meaningless if you can't do something with it you know that

that's the next challenge is making it truly actionable you know well we had you on about a year ago and um and now we're here i think we talked a bit about how your father got here last time but for people who didn't listen to that show, we will link to it in the show notes, but I do want to get this and we're going to link to a really cool story that Washington Post did about how you got to America. So if you would, please tell us that story because it's fucking crazy and it's awesome and it's beautiful. You know, I, with my family, we were on holiday in England because I used to be a professor at Kuwait University. And in the summer there, it's too hot. So you have two months holidays,

which we tended to go to England to spend it. And we were one week off. And we were watching in the evening BBC News and they say, oh, Saddam Hussein put the army on the border of Kuwait. I said, oh my goodness's Saddam Hussein put the army on the border of Kuwait. I said, oh my goodness, what's happening here? And we call a friend of mine, what's going on? He said, oh, don't worry.

It's all, you know, he just talked this guy. And in the morning, Afif, we went to sleep. Afif woke me up dead, you know. They took Kuwait. Oh my God, our world changed. So you can imagine you are in holiday and then suddenly you can't go home, you know? So then to cut a long story short,

I was very fortunate because before the invasion, I was invited to give a talk at the Willard Hotel in DC to talk about the biology of garlic, of all things. So I called the organizer. I say, please send me the ticket to England instead of Kuwait, which they did. And to cut a long story short,

I came and I really was desperate to get a job because I lost, I have three kids, young kids, and then we have no job. So what I did, I got in touch with a professor at the National Institute of Health, and Jack Bennett, his name, great, great professor.

He became the president of the Infectious Disease Society of America. So he said, Mahmoud, you need to come back in a week because we have a big meeting and I have all these investigators coming. You should meet them if you want to get a job. So I was going back to the hotel in the train, subway, and then I saw this travel agent. Well, and just to jump in, Dad, part of the context was there was no money. You know what I mean?

This is not like the days of, oh, I'll just put it on the credit card. Like, Dad had one shot. Like, I remember him telling us afterwards that he'd been like eating apples out of the lobby and when they're like come back in a week like that's just not possible yeah the assets are frozen there's no venmo or cash app or any of that stuff at the time paypaling or anything so you know he comes across this guy i saw this guy and he is a black guy so i said i said to him

you have to help me you are a black guy you So I said to him, you have to help me. You are a black guy. You must know how people suffer. And the guy's a travel agent. And he's a travel agent in the La Meridiana Hotel around that area. So he said, what do you want from me? I say, I need you to add a leg to my,

I want to go to Milwaukee to a friend of mine until I come back. To cut a long story short, he said, okay, I do it. And he did it. And he gave me some money. And it's lo and behold, I go one week to my friend, come back to the meeting in DC.

And Jack Bennett, he invited me to his house where he invited all the investigators. That evening, I got two jobs. It's unbelievable. One at UCLA and one at Wayne State where I went ucla so so for like 30 years we've told this family story of this like mysterious travel agent who paid out of his

own pocket to like change my dad's ticket gave my dad 80 bucks like because my dad again not no money right and people would always say well do you know who the guy was i'm like no you know kind of lost the time type thing so like a month ago i'm like let me just put something on facebook and see if anybody you know so i put this post i just said were you a travel agent in 1991 in dc i put some details and it was shared almost a thousand times and someone at the washington post saw it so they contacted me and they're like, this is an awesome story, especially like this time with like, you know, kindness and, you know, immigration.

Like, well, we want to do a story. So we do a story and literally, I think it was the second comment. This woman's like, I think this is my boss, this guy, James Dorsey. So it took us a few weeks. We tracked him down. The dude passed away six months ago wow yeah so

we're we we now literally friday we got a hold of his wife and his kids so we're actually planning a reunion with them washington post is going to do another story but it was like this guy for a few hundred bucks just changed changed everything you know because It's amazing. It's amazing. I was going home after I got the job and I was taking the plane back to England to wait for my visa to come to UCLA. And honestly, I was crying because I could not believe it. When I told people, I'm going to go to America and get a job, a friend of mine in England, he said, you can't do it in two weeks. I say, I'm going to get a job. And honestly, I got two jobs. And it's all because of the goodness of people, both James, as well as Jack Bennett. They were great people. And that's what I say about America. You know, America is a

great place. There are good people. And that's what we should think about all the time. Yeah. And this nation is built on immigrants. You think about that way, unless you're indigenous, you came from another country. Exactly. Yeah. It's a really powerful story. Well, we will link to the fullness of that in the show notes with the Washington Post. It's an absolutely great article. So let's talk about what you've been doing for the last 30 years here, because there's so much that we're going to dive into. You have a new book called Total Gut Balance.

You're the first person to coin the term microbiome. And that's, I think, in large part what the book is about. We've been so focused on the microbiome and bacteria, good bacteria, bad bacteria. And there's this whole other family, this whole other genre of things that we need to pay attention to. And they are much more rapidly manipulatable than the bacteria in our gut. You are absolutely right. So as you say, I've been doing, working for the last more than 40 years with fungus, especially candida. And when I first started, I can tell

you a story, which is again, more than 40 years, my mentor at the university in England, he gave me a paper. He said, Mahmoud, this is what you are going to work on. And what the paper was about taking arabate, if you treat it with antibiotics or steroids, guess what happens? They develop fungal infections. So I knew that if we change one, we are going to affect the other. If we change the fungi, we are going to affect bacteria and vice versa. So let's go to 2010 when everybody started talking about the microbiome. And of course, they were talking only about bacteria. I said, no, no, no, we really need to think of also the other community in our gut as well as in our body, which is fungi. In addition to bacteria and fungi, also we should say there are viruses, there are parasites. So it's all of this collection of organisms that form different communities, yet they work together.

And that's where I wrote my first article, opening piece saying, we really need to look at this because by looking at both bacteria and fungi, we are going to be able to really impact more our health and get wellness and good health faster. So that's how we started in that area. And the good news, you know, I started, I put a team, and we really worked on characterizing, as you said, the fungal community. First, we did it in the mouth, the oral cavity, because there was an interest to understand how fungi affect the patients with HIV, because they tend to develop

candida infections. And when we looked there, we found that, you won't believe it, 101 species of fungi in the mouth of healthy people. Then we tried to look, okay, what about bacteria as well? So we found that they work also together. And we found that one fungi or one yeast in particular can antagonize candida. In other words, when you have pica or pica, depending how you say it, candida is under control. And then we started to think, how can we control this? And that's where we started to look at the gut. Because as you know, the largest collection in our body of microorganisms, even though we have in the skin, in the oral cavity, in the reproductive

system we have, we have organisms, but really the gut contains the largest collection of microbes, both bacteria and fungi. So we started looking at that, especially we looked at, of all people, Crohn's disease patients. And, you know, to our surprise, we found that not only these are present, both bacteria and fungi, but they work together. And these organisms, they work together towards our goodness

or really cause us issues with our health. And that's where we started to build our effort to say, okay, how can we change this dynamic inside so that we have good or beneficial microorganisms and get rid of the bad ones. And that's where they really, the start of our thinking of, can we do that with diet? And that's where the origin of the book started. I love it. Yeah, we got a lot to dive in here. This, I know I brought this up on our podcast, The Fief, but in 2015, I had just done a 55K Ultra and I was really dehydrated. I was the only guy who didn't

run without a camelback, which I mean, it was my first run. So I thought I'd be able to get every amount of water at the race station, but I kept getting sick after the race and just head colds left and right, Couldn't really train. And so I had a comprehensive stool analysis and I tested for the highest amount of candida as well as the highest amount of blastocyst hominis parasites. And so the explanation from the functional medicine doctor was like, this stuff's already in you. But when you dehydrate yourself to that degree, the body will start pulling water from the intestines and that can lead to the spread of these bad guys. Yeah. And there's a couple of things going on. This is something

that people don't realize. When you're doing something like that, even heavy duty exercise in general, you're putting a tremendous amount of stress on your body and you essentially start becoming immunocompromised, right? And whether it's HIV, cancer, but even other things like a common cold, if your immune system is compromised, those organisms can start really growing out of control. So if you have any susceptibility to imbalance, it can just get worse, you know? So yeah, it's not surprising. On the water piece data, that's interesting. What do you think of that?

Yeah, I think first of all, what you said, we, like 50% of people have fungus or candida in their gut. If it stays in low number, which means colonizer, few, maybe 2% to 3%, it's fine. The problem becomes when it, of course, in overgrowth. And using water in particular, or even more example, or a better example of people, a lot of people can understand if you take antibiotics. So when you take an antibiotics, you really are putting a lot of pressure,

not only on the bad bacteria that causing infection, but also you are killing the good ones, such as lactobacillus or bifidobacterium, which keeps Canada under control. Yeah, they're like the policeman in the neighborhood. And you wipe out all the good guys along with the bad guys. And then you just, you allow that not beneficial fungi to flourish. Exactly. That's exactly what happened.

As you say, and so interesting, our study shows not only it flourishes, but also start put strategies to keep the good bugs from coming back so that it stays. You know, now I can control the situation and I keep those good beneficial microbes down so that I have, you know, it's selfish. They want to live. And that's what exactly happens. And you know, like one simple concept people need to understand, the microbes in our body, they feed on things. So whatever we eat, we can affect them.

The story here, if you eat good food that will benefit your beneficial organisms, then you are going to have good health. But you can eat some bad ones, you know, a lot of meat, red meat, for example, what you are doing, you are encouraging the growth of microbes that cause inflammation. So that's why it's really in our hand how to control it. So let's, I i mean we just touched on diet here let's talk about some of the ways that diet can really impact this because uh you know there is a large debate back and forth and one of the things that i find that's interesting that you you say you can still perform a ketogenic diet or a paleo diet in different ways that you

can enhance the beneficial microbiome and all the organisms in there that are good for us while still eating low carb and paleo and obviously in a variety of other ways. So let's dive into that. I think this is really very, very good point because what I decided to do with the total gut balance program we have is to look at what other diets are available, like paleo, like keto, like Mediterranean diet, and try to see, design a trial that's flexible. You can adopt those, but do a little bit of modification so that you are going to control it.

Like paleo, for example, they go after green, no greens, dairy products, for example, They don't want it. And these are good. Also, they tend to increase the amount of red meat, which, as I mentioned, it will lead to the growth of organisms which are bile tolerant, and they cause usually inflammation. Okay. So that's why it's very important you can follow that because they have good points about them. You know, the whole natural food and, you know, the way our ancestors used to eat in the paleo, it is good,

but you need to modify it so that we can have more food elements, which you can get from our total gut balance, so that you encourage the beneficial organisms and keep the bad ones under control. The same applies for the Mediterranean diet. I mean, the Mediterranean diet is a great diet. However, when you think about it, they use a lot of pasta, a lot of stuff which is complex carbohydrate and carbohydrates which really can affect our microbes. Also, they tend to have a lot of alcohol,

even though I like to drink, but you really need to limit it a little bit. Like what we suggest in our book, it's not like no alcohol, no, but three glasses a week is great because they also have some benefit. However, if you over take alcohol, as you know, there are other problems associated with it,

and that's why it should be limited. So, it's everything in moderation. Yeah, one of the things, that last point is the critical piece, when obviously through our gut test, we see thousands of consumers, and we see everyone's diet, we see what they're doing, and we had a group of women, it was a couple of years ago, where they were showing a very aggressive type of fungi called zygomycota, which dad said, these may be undiagnosed immunocompromised cancer, HIV. It's pretty rare to see this type of fungi. It's very aggressive. But there were enough of a cluster that we thought this is too much happenstance that all these people would not know they were immunocompromised.

So when we dug deeper, what did we find? They were completely cutting out dairy and carbohydrates, like completely. These were people that they look out of like a Lululemon catalog type thing. Like they take care of themselves. Now, the problem is they really would have no reason to think to look for that. So they're probably, they were, remember, they had all sorts of digestive issues. They had no answers because no one's looking for this type of thing. And the problem was they were completely eliminating these because there's a big theme around the

idea that carbs are bad, dairy's bad, you know? So what we found when they put in even just a little bit back in, zygomycota started to come back under control. And you know, this is very interesting about carbs because I know everybody is interested in carbs, too much carbs, too little carbs, and this sort of thing. I think our diet, it does not demonize carbs. I think our cells require some carbs.

We need some energy. The problem, what type of carb you take. For example, if you take sugar, then that is not a good carb. You know, like glucose, for example. Why? Because the candida loves sugar. It really goes after it.

And when you give too much sugar, you have overgrowth of candida. However, there are other good carbs, which are, they have fibers, for example, okay, more complex carbohydrate, where they can help the growth of beneficial organism, okay? And that's what you really need to do. The other secret about carb, it's good to take carb because we need energy sometimes. The problem if you overindulge in that and take too much, your body will take some energy, but because they can't take it all, it's going to start to be converted into fat.

So it is better to eat small portions of carb at different times of the day. Because with this, you are able to use it, take the energy, and there isn't too much left to, of course, cause the weekend. And of course, insulin resistance and a lot of issues that we have fall into that as well. I'm curious, have you guys looked at what things like intermittent fasting and extended fasting can do.

Because obviously that too almost has like antibiotic-like levels where that will take out good and bad, but then the refeed becomes very important. And that's something I think that Dr. Jason Fung and Peter Atiyah and different people that are really looking at that have come to understand. Like what you put back in your body in that first few meals is really going to make a difference in what you allow to reflourish and repopulate the gut. I think this concept is very good because as we said,

really what organisms live in your gut depends on what you feed them, okay? So you can fast, which you can eliminate some of these bad organs, or you can reduce, let's say, the amount of carbs you are taking, and then you may lose some weight.

But then when you want to go in, try to select the appropriate or the right type of carbohydrates, which is that have a lot of fiber, okay? And then also try to take plants or food that has proteins, because having that type of good proteins versus having proteins from red meat have been shown to really encourage the growth of beneficial organisms and

also reduce the inflammation. So I agree with you completely. You really need to know, okay, now I want to fertilize in a way or give nutrients to my microbial garden, but I want to give it to the good guys. And that's the key. So specifically with intermittent fasting, when our nutritionists go through like our gut reports, what we found were that they sort of fell into two groups, people that were doing IF. It was sort of what I characterize as someone like myself, like a newbie or like, oh, intermittent fasting is the latest thing I'm going to try versus someone like you that's more sophisticated. Like this is maybe the next or last step on optimization, right? The people that were doing it, it was a lot like people who do Ramadan, fasting in Islam, where

the second it's time to eat, they go absolutely bananas, right? It's like, ah! And the problem is they'll eat anything because now it's the window to eat. I've followed the rules. And the problem is you're now just pounding your microbiome with not only like a hit of an enormous amount of food matter, which is a giant feeding frenzy, but also a lot of carbs, a lot of fried foods, those sorts of things. So again, what we found were those types of people had really bad digestive issues

because they were just overwhelming their system. So it was more the people that were very thoughtful about what they're eating when they weren't fasting. You know, I tell you, this is very interesting. Why? Because I come from Lebanon. And Lebanon, of course, as Afif mentioned, there is Ramadan and people fast. Basically, what's fasting in that area is you don't drink or eat anything from sunrise to sunset. The problem in Ramadan, we have the nicest sweets ever.

So people change day for night. So what they do, they stay late, they sleep late. Then in the afternoon, just relax. I remember when I was in Kuwait working, people come and 11 o'clock to work. And then by three o'clock, they go home. They go to sleep because the breaking of the fast is six o'clock. And then when the breaking, when it happens, okay, you can eat now.

Oh my God, the amount of food and the sweets and this sort of thing. Basically, instead of really fasting, they switching day for night. So you are sleeping during the day, you're fasting, they're switching day for night. So, you are sleeping during the day, you're fasting, you're eating as much as you want. And particularly, as Afif said, is the type of food you eat because, you know, you are famished. So, it's good to fast, but you need to think again, what type of food I want to put in my mouth. And that's really critical. Yeah, this is making me think of Dr. Sachin Panda, who's obviously he's been on Dr. Ron and Patrick's show,

Found My Fitness a couple of times and just a wealth of knowledge. But he was talking about that link between our circadian rhythm and the whole network in our stomachs. And we can process carbohydrates better in summertime and we can process carbohydrates better in summertime and we can process carbohydrates better during the daytime so to flip that on its head and eat your largest meal right as the sun goes down and very high and sweet so you could see how that would be a real

the amazing thing what we're discovering are things that were actually natural eating rules forever right but now we're just kind of like one that I always think of in discussions like this is Japanese sumo. They force feed sumo wrestlers to eat right before taking long naps. Why? Because they've known forever that the more food you're putting in your system

right before you're taking a long rest, your system's not good at digesting, right? So yeah, it's a lot of these things that we're sort of coming back to really understanding. We've just known forever, but it really is just last 50 years, we just changed the rules on what's appropriate eating and types and junk food and all that good stuff, you know? Yeah. Yeah. There's definitely a lot there. Well, let's talk a little bit about what types of carbs feed the good guys. Starches, things like that, things that are higher in fiber. Every now and then,

I mean, I do eat a lot of meat these days and I feel really good. I'm gaining muscle and losing fat. I have lots of energy. Of course, that's when I say that the highest quality. So if it is beef, it's grass fed, a lot of organ meat, wild caught fish, free range pastured chickens that are eating worms and bugs and not just living on corn and soy. And I think that's made a big difference in how I feel. But every now and then, especially when I'm really working out hard glycolytically, I'll have a Japanese yam or a sweet potato. And I think that has really helped me perform better. And obviously my weight's where I want it to be. So I'm not too worried about packing on extra pounds

at this point. I think you mentioned the secret word, the sweet potatoes. Sweet potato is one of the indigestible carbohydrate or resistant starch. And these are the best food for your gut. They are able, we don't break it down. We don't digest it. There are two types of carbs,

digestible and not digestible, or resistant, okay? Now, the digestible, our intestine can break them down and this sort of thing, like glucose, okay? Whereas the resistant starch is a good example is the sweet potatoes.

The, what you call, you have the sweet potatoes, you have bananas, for example, especially in the unripened phase. The, what you call, you have the sweet potatoes, you have bananas, for example, especially in the unripened phase. Yeah, they're a little green. It's green. That's much better than having it because then you have the resistant starch.

And this goes, it's not broken down in our intestine. It goes down to the colon where the microorganisms or these microbes are there, and they are able to break it down. And then once they break it down by the beneficial organism, they start producing all these metabolites like short-chain fatty acids, which really help us with our immunity, with our overall digestion. The other thing which you mentioned, I know you enjoy your red meat,

but you said fish, for example. This is a fantastic source of good food, good proteins. So it's like people, sometimes they go one extreme or the other. We don't need protein. We don't need carbohydrates.

We don't need fat. We really need all of this, but we need to select the right type for this. And one of the example, the protein is what you said, the fish is a great source for the good microorganism, especially also for anti-inflammatory effect. Yeah, and you mentioned the short chain fatty acids, like that's butyrate, butter gets its name from that.

And that is right there for the taking. The intestines get to feed on that first. It's going to lower inflammation in the gut first. And then it's going to get out in the bloodstream and lower inflammation throughout the body. Exactly, exactly. That's exactly. And also all these metabolites

not only affect us locally in the gut, but also they have communication with our brain. So you have this, what you call gut-brain access. And we used to think before that our brain is telling us what to do. Now we know that it's bidirectional. It means our gut talks to the brain, our brain talks to the gut, which really makes it harmonized when you eat the right stuff. Well, let's dive into fungi here.

I know you guys, I mean, you in particular, you've, I think your thesis was on Candida? Yes. Is that right? Yes. Some time ago? Yes, it was. Actually, I submitted my thesis in 1978. It was on the effect of steroids on Candida.

Because as you know, people who use steroids, what happens, they are predisposed or they are likely to get infection with candida. Are you talking about prednisone and things like that or more like the anabolic steroids that bodybuilders take? Oh, particularly prednisone, corticosteroids and this sort of thing. That's what I did my study on.

But really, in general, steroids tend to support the growth of candida. And that's why it is well known that some medications, they affect our microbiome in a detrimental way. And one of them is steroids, as well as antibiotics, which we mentioned previously. So... And why is that, Dad? Like, antibiotics, I understand, like, what's functionally happening, but what is it about steroids that are doing it? Yeah, well, this reminds me of what I did in my thesis.

Basically, there are receptors in the human cells which can be recognized by Candida and that will allow them then to really overgrow and cause more and more issues. So steroids are basically overwhelming with those receptors? Yeah, they are present on the human cells and the host cells

and then Candida recognizes them very well. So when you have a lot of it, that's what will happen. Yeah. It's, it's, it's, uh, it's blowing my mind that we're talking about this right now. Cause one of my best friends who I've fought with for a long time in the UFC is now in Bellator. Um, he has, uh, Crohn's disease or maybe not Crohn's, but what's the other one? Ulcerative colitis. And I know people with Crohn's disease, or maybe not Crohn's, but what's the other one? Ulcerative colitis. Ulcerative colitis. And I know people with Crohn's, I know people with irritable bowel syndrome, and all of them are prescribed prednisone across the board. Like that's exacerbating the issue. No doubt about it.

And that's why when we started the work with Crohn's disease, by the way, I have good news for you also. Based on our work, which we started a few years ago, I put an IH grant, National Institute of Health grant, it's called RO1. This is one of the most difficult to get, to try to understand the interactions between bacteria and fungus in Crohn's disease. And July 19th was the start date. They gave it to me. It's $3.1 million to try to understand this mechanism. And by understanding this mechanism,

we are going to be able, hopefully, to help people with Crohn's disease how to deal with this. So I'm excited. Well, and that is very important to point out too, because everybody talks about these things like a panacea, but the reality is, the way I talk about it is we are in the understanding of the microbiome where we were with the understanding of cancer in like the 40s, right? Like we understand this is happening. We understand this is obviously detrimental to health, but the mechanism of action of how it's

working, we just don't understand yet. So with the microbiome, this next wave, maybe like 15 years ago, was like, there's something here. There's these organisms seem to have both a negative effect and a positive effect, right? Now it's the next generation of, well, why is this happening? And then metabolites and everything. So that's one of the things that's very important to point out is we still do not understand why this is happening. We're only now completely finding all these interconnections, but it's literally probably the next 50 years

of understanding, like, why is this happening? You know, what's so exciting about this is basically when we started to look at this, we started to see, okay, these organisms are there. So we know they are there, but now what do they do? We didn't understand. And then we published a paper and we showed that the bad organisms, which is candida, E. coli and serratia, serratia marcescens, two bacteria and one fungus, they come together and they form what we call a biofilm.

A biofilm, it's like we have the plaque in our teeth. Every morning we brush our teeth to get rid of that biofilm. Otherwise, it will cause an infection in our mouth, as you know, in our periodontitis or whatever. Now we discover that these organisms in the gut do the same. They come together and they form what we call biofilm or digestive plaque so that people can relate to it. And we found that the way to try to improve the health or our gut health in Crohn's disease patients and other people who have these diseases is to try to break down this biofilm. And that's where we are going. And the NIH grant is going to give us more ability

to even look further into how to interfere with that. And we really are on the right track now, I feel. Yeah, that's awesome. And you guys have done a fair amount of research on some of the good beneficial fungi that have the ability to help break down biofilm. Well, let's dive into the ways that we can break that down to restore balance in the gut. Yeah. So basically what we found is after my dad published his study in 2016, he found that there was this interaction of these three organisms. So we said, okay, really the way to do

this is to work backwards. And we did something called correlation analysis where we can take thousands of probiotic organisms, thousands of pathogenic organisms, and then we look for where's their activity? Where are the probiotic ones breaking down the pathogenic? Really, the way probiotics up till now have been approached was, let's just go straight to the clinic. We have an interesting strain. It's got some activity. Let's see if it does anything. We said, listen, let's try and solve this specific problem of biofilms. So what we found was that on the yeast side, it was Saccharomyces boiardi. And we found a specific strain that worked really well. And then we combine that with three bacterial strains, because again, we take the view that you really have to be looking at again the total

gut balance if you're only addressing bacteria or fungi it's not just one or the other you're not doing and then what we did is we added a digestive enzyme called amylase which we knew had some biofilm activity and we found a really synergistic effect when we combined them four so that but the key was really doing this correlation analysis to really say, okay, how do we surgically target these biofilm forming organisms? And if you can break that down, then you can get underneath. And that's the key.

When people, when you're brushing your teeth and you're trying to get rid of plaque, think of your mouth as a pool, right? And there's just that gross water at the end of the season. It's time to be done with it. Plaque is like you put a pool cover over it. Now, it's impossible to penetrate through, and those organisms in that dirty water are just going nuts. Mosquitoes, everything, right? So you have to remove that pool cover to be able to clean it. Same idea with biofilm. It's

really a shield over pathogenic organisms. And it's those organisms that you're trying to get to. It's not so much the biofilm itself. That's really just a shield. Because in a way, these organisms, what they do when they are within this biofilm, they come together and they start producing carbohydrates, polysaccharides, and proteins, which protects them. It's like a tent. It becomes a tent and they are living inside. So this makes it very difficult for antibiotics or antifungal, for that matter, to break this tent, okay, tent cover. At the same time, our host immune cells also cannot penetrate and break that. So the way to do it, we need to see how can we in a way bust these

biofilms. And we came out with a couple of approaches. One is what Afif said, we designed a probiotic that contains strains, not only bacterial strains, which are good, but also has saccharomyces, which is a yeast, a good yeast. And then when they come and work together, in addition to the enzyme amylase, we showed, we just published a paper actually in April of this year, 2019, and we showed we were able to destroy this biofilm. Now, the other interesting thing, which come in to bring us back into the book,

we also identified what are good food to break the biofilm. And we, like, for example, eating garlic is fantastic, you know, apple cider vinegar is great, you know, coconut oil. So you need to have not only a probiotic, you can get some of these elements from your food you eat as well. Yeah, you touched on coconut oil, and that's been the great debate among the keto community is C8, C10, and C12 that are found in MCTs and coconut oil. And the large debate is you want it to be a smaller chain of fat. That gives you the most bang for your buck from an MCT standpoint, and that's the most bang for your buck from converting into ketones. But C12, lauric acid, that's what

contains a lot of the beneficial fats that are going to help you regulate, that are going to help break that biofilm. So, and of course, you know, unshamed plug here for Onnit, but we use the full spectrum. We have C12 in our MCTs. And I think that's a really important piece there when we're talking about overall health and wellness and not just trying to fine tune, I need more ketones. Yeah. And that also ties into the fact that everybody, we still hear it all the time. Oh, what probiotics should I use? And we're like, listen, probiotics are important. We think they should be part of it, but it's very important that you're taking this approach to your gut is really a garden, right? And you can have all the seeds, all the probiotics you want in the world, but if

you do not have amazing topsoil, it really doesn't matter because you have this amazing community already in your gut. Your best bet to better gut health is fostering what's already existing in your GI. So you can supplement with more probiotics, but you can do that through prebiotics, through, again, a diet that's really optimizing the entire GI through coconut oil. You know, but a lot of people want these surgical silver bullets. It doesn't work like that.

I think the other thing, which I'm sure you are going to ask, it's not just about the diet. It's about lifestyle. You know? Oh, yeah. Yeah, you read my mind you know you know for example we are all stressed i mean there's no way with the amount of work we do the travel we do the coming home and taking care of the of the kids i had a friend of mine uh we were talking and and he said, Mahmoud, I'm working so hard. He was from Boston. And then I go home and I have the kids and I have to play

with them. And then after that, I have to go back and do more work. It's really hard. So stress is one of the major issues. And that's, you will love this. In the analysis we did, we found people who eat the perfect food, yet their balanced microbiome is out of whack. They are imbalanced.

The good news is, in our testing, we look at both the microbiome, but also we have a questionnaire. We look at, do you sleep well? Do you exercise? Do you do, you know, are you stressed? And we found these people, in spite of the fact they eat the best food,

they are stressed out. So in the book, we mentioned that you really need to start to do something to reduce your stress. And of all people, I mean, if my mother hears this now, she will say, what happened to this guy? I started to do yoga, you know? And I love it because, you know, I spend like one and a half hours, especially on Sundays, where I just don't think about anything.

I'm just trying to control my breathing, do the movement, and this sort of thing. And honestly, by the end of the session, I feel great. So this is very, very important. You need to address the stress, you need to sleep better, and of course, you know better than me about exercise. But even that too, right? That was going to be my point. When people think stress think stress, they're like, oh, anxiety, worry. But like, it can be physical stress in your body. Some of our most passionate customers are actually in the bodybuilding community. Why?

Because they have severe digestive issues a lot of time. And a lot of times they come and they can't figure it out because they're eating well. They're doing all these things. We're like, listen, your body is not built for this type of stress. And especially like they're putting insane amount of supplements or doing all sorts of things. A lot of protein farts, protein shakes,

everything out of a, out of a bottle. You know, there are, there, there's, there's two sides of that coin, you know,

like Ben Pekulski and, and shit, I can't believe I'm forgetting the guy's name. Who's, um, it'll come to me. There's another guy, Vertical Diet. Can you look him up?

Stan the Rhino Efforting. That dude eats incredible. So there's no doubt there are both sides of that coin, you know, and then of course, but I mean, when we start to lean heavily on man-made stuff, you're going to see issues there, right? You're going to see issues there. That's, yeah, that's the issue of processed food. I mean, which, which again, I don't think it's very advisable or even a vegetarian burger. They have so many, so much salt, so many additives. Yeah.

Glyphosate. A lot of that stuff is not organic. Yeah. Yeah. Like there's, it's, it's these, listen, really part of it too is you gotta know where you're at and adjust to that. I think a lot of times we run into people that they'll take our gut test

and I don't know what to do, I'm trying everything. And we look, 50% of people who take our test eat fast food at least once a week. It is not rocket science. Why don't we start with that and go from there? So what I'm getting at is if if someone is eating like that and an impossible burger is the access point for starting to go more plant-based well then we'll then do that do you know what i mean i think sometimes people think

they have to you know become completely optimized all in day three it's just not you you got it you got to make steps to get their line of work. One thing, because I know you are interested in exercise. So I'll come back. There was a study done in Ireland, of all places, where they looked at rugby players, you know, like their football players, basically, you know the rugby very well. And what they found that over-exercise sometimes is detrimental. So you really need to be, moderation is the way to go. And why? What happens, they found that because of too much exercise in one time,

a lot of the blood is drawn to our muscles, you know, for our legs, our thighs, and so that we can do what we are supposed to do. And we deprive our gut from the blood source, sort of. So it's good to, again, to me, like for ordinary people, I mean, people like you, you know how to manage yourself, you know how to eat, you know different supplements you use, so you can manage it. But for an ordinary person, it will be good to just be moderate in what you do. It's 30 minutes a day or even three times a week, that's plenty. You know, as long as you move, as long as you are not sedentary all the time, I think

it's a great, it will help your microbiome. Yeah, that's a big one. I keep harping on is this idea that if we move more throughout the day, and you know, this isn't me that I came up with it. You know, guys like Kelly Starrett, my buddy Aaron Alexander, who just wrote a book on movement. That's how our ancestors did it. We were moving constantly.

We were walking everywhere. We were moving constantly. We were walking everywhere. We were in nature. We were connected to the ground, connected to the sun, connected to the trees. And you see all this science around light therapy from full-spectrum light, like the sun. Okay, there's the biohack, right? Getting in nature, forest bathing, right? The plants are communicating to us. That that's a part of it. And then maybe you would have a really hard extended run while you're hunting. And then you wouldn't have to do that for a week, you know, or you're going to lift something heavier or do some construction to build a yurt or a hut for somebody. That's going to take a couple hours, but then you're not doing that every day, day in and day out.

Exactly. So that balance. And again, like when I, when I think of moderation, moderation can't afford for peaking for an event. It can afford for, you know, really trying to PR and bust your ass. But if it's work hard, there has to be rest hard. That has to be the balance to the equation. It can't just be work hard. I mean, it's not sustainable. You know, like you will work yourself into an injury, you will work yourself into a cold. And that's the same for actual work, the job you do. You know, if you're grinding 10 hours a day, every day, and you're high stress and you're pounding coffee, you're going to get sick. You're going to get hurt. Like you have to have that balance. And I think all the tools that we have for that through breath work, through meditation,

through just walking more, you know, like Mark Bell says, you know, he does a 10 minute walk three or four times a day. I walk a mile around this office every morning and every time before I'm getting ready to leave, every lunch, most big meals I have, I'm going for at least a 20, 30 minute walk afterwards to help digestion and also to clear my mind. I tell you, this is very, very critical. And like for me, I tell you, and people, other people who are not, not have the opportunity to exercise as much. When you are at work, for example, use the stairs, go up the stairs. Now they laugh at me in the lab because I'm always going the fifth floor. And they say, and we challenge them.

They get taken the elevator and I go up the stairs. You know, I also have two labs, one in the hospital, one at the university. And I like that because when I work in the hospital, then I say, okay, time to walk into the other lab. And that gives me exercise. So, you know, this movement is very, very important. Well, even as he's getting older,

like I said, I think before we started, like he'll be 70 this year, we literally work out together. And the main thing we work on is mobility, right? Because the number one thing is, not to get totally off topic, but the number one deciding factor of whether you can live independently after the age of 70 is whether you can get out of a chair which is insane yeah

how well you can get up and down from the floor big one strength hip mobility you know if you're tight right and that's this goes for anybody even young people if you have chronically tight hamstrings or chronically tight quads anterior chain posterior chain that's gonna that's imbalanced long enough it's gonna show up show up somewhere. Right. Yeah. Right. Yeah. So it's, it's funny, but like you said, like I, you're, you're coming from a more extreme type of exercise, like UFC, that type of thing. But even you're talking about doing like 15 minute walks just to like keep the movement. So I think sometimes people get this idea that they're going to do something. It has to be a hundred or a zero, you know, like the acid bath. I saw you doing the other day. Maybe once a month I'll do the acid bath. That was gnarly.

Yeah. But, um, but even that, right. Incredibly high intensity. It was, it lasted under five minutes, right? That was my workout for the day. Then it was a lot of working in walking, breath work, pool time, being in nature, playing with my son, you know, and that's how I balanced that. Yeah. You know, the other thing which you mentioned, it's going for a hike. I think it's a great thing to do because when you are out in nature, you are exposed to different microbes. You are exposed, in addition to the benefits of walking and this sort of thing, getting a little bit of dirt, it's quite good. Because we are exposing, especially our kids, we need them out to play in dirt a little bit.

I tell a story in the book where when Afif, my son was growing up in Kuwait, he was six years. We had a neighbor who has a son. Whenever they come down to play, he used to put white gloves in his hand to show him how dirty it is. And the poor kid was always sick, you know, whereas Afif, because he's playing with everything possible there,

coming, just go in directly to the bathroom and get washed to get rid of the dirt. He was much healthier. So to me, we really now, especially in this day and age where kids sit in front of television or they play with their Xbox and iPads and whatever. Let them be out. I know it's more difficult because we used, when I was a little boy, my mom used to say, go and play, and I go out.

The only condition is to come back before sunset. So now you cannot do this with your kids. But at the same time, let them go out, watch them, let them play in the dirt, because this will be great for them. It's going to help their immunity because your body gets used to all different. Basically, these microbes train our immune system to become more robust and better protective. Well, that's another thing, too. Sorry not to interrupt, but almost everything has a microbiome. Microbiome has become synonymous

with the GI, but not only in our bodies, but literally in nature. The forest has its own microbiome. The subway has its own microbiome. And so if you're only concentrating in areas, especially that have high pathogenic rates, that sort of thing, it's impossible. Environmental factors are, in fact, in all of your clinical studies, when they're studying someone with Crohn's, they study someone with Crohn's and a family member that doesn't have Crohn's. Why? Because they know environmental factors have a huge impact on the microbiome. So the more diverse you're allowing your system to be around all sorts of microbiomes it's just again

tied to wellness the better that definitely that makes me think i think there was a study that retroactively looked at kids who grew up on farms versus kids who grew up in the city and they saw that the kids who grew up on farms obviously they're exposed to much more they're exposed to the microbiome of all the animals the farm animals that are there they have a lot of soil-based organisms that they're getting their hands in that eventually get to their mouth. They had far better, shocker, far better immune systems than the kids who grew up in the city. But I say, I mean, I live in a city. My son's growing up, not on a farm. He's in the city. But even having a pet has been tied to better microbiome, better health. And it's not rocket science. My dog drinks out of the toilet.

She's outside. You know what I mean? Like she's just all over the place. And it's, again, it's not rocket science. My dog drinks out of the toilet. She's outside. You know what I mean? Like, she's just all over the place. And it's, again, it's really amazing. The last 50 years, we just, with our food, with our environment, we just made these massive dictates. You know, even Listerine comes from a guy, I believe it was Joseph Lister, but it was a marketing ploy. It was about oral care should be tied to this daily use

of this mouthwash that kills all the organisms in your oral cavity. That was a marketing ploy. Do you know what I mean? So it's a lot of the science, what we're finding that these things are based on, it's not sound. It's really common in 360. It's amazing. Afif brings up a really very important thing. Before, we used to think germs are all bad. We have Listerine. We have all these ethanol wipes, you know, to just whenever you go... Antibiotic hand soap.

Antibiotic hand soap to kill all germs. And now we started to figure out, you know what? Some of these organisms are good. We should not get rid of them, even on the skin. Like there are, a strip, for example, is very good in your skin, whereas staph aureus is not. So there is some, so the idea of all germs are bad really is changing now, because we know some of them

are good and they are our friends. What we're finding too is that even the ones that are quote-unquote bad, if they're removed from the community, the community still goes out of whack. They're all keeping each other in control. Where the misnomer is, is if a bad quote-unquote organism gets out of whack, then you can have complications. But in the community, they have a role to play. So you do not want to

just get rid of them a lot of people think oh if i you know like when we'll do the biome gut report people say oh well i have high levels of this bad one how do i get that one downwards like no no what you have to do is you have to make the entire community strong because then that guy will likely come back down yeah i want candida at zero. No, yeah. You don't need that. You don't need it at zero. You don't want that. You really, both of you bring a very important, especially you wrote about candida now,

because it's absolutely true. Candida, when it is present at low levels, which is the colonizer, in fact, it helps our system. And there is a study which showed that candida can break the complex carbohydrates, okay, which allow the byproduct of that, the simple glucose and the other, to be used by bacteria, good bacteria. And then those good bacteria produce another metabolite which candida can use. So at low levels, even candida is a good person

or a good guy, if you will. However, if candida go out of whack and overgrow, then it is bad. So it's this balance we need to maintain. And you know, these organisms living in our gut, the other thing, they are smart. They don't want you to be sick, you know, because they are benefiting from you, you know. They're living inside you,

you're giving them food, they don't want you to die. So that's why having this harmony is very, very important. And you said something I want to make it clear. He keeps using this term colonizer. What that means is like there is a natural community that exists in your body. They're not coming from outside. So when he talked about the 101 fungal organisms, those are colonizing species that live in your mouth. You know, because like, for example, if you eat, you know, tamales or something, and we did your microbiome test, organisms would show up, but they they're transient like they likely won't be there the next time we test you so you actually have this natural colonizing community so for i think it's 50 of people that have canada is a colonizer for them it's naturally present so again anything like our systems were built unbelievably if it's there naturally it's probably doing

something like that should be the baseline as opposed to just getting rid of things. Yeah, basically it's the imbalance. If you have imbalance, the diet, other issues like stress, as we mentioned, even disease, then you need to bring back the balance. Once you have this balance, then you are gonna have good health

and you can play a really very active part in bringing this balance by eating the right thing. Have you guys looked at the back end of this? What happens with fecal transplants or different encapsulated? I think there's a method they have now where they're actually removing some of the problematic pieces to stool

and then enterically coating it so you can swallow it instead of going in the poop chute. So dad can dive into the weeds on the science, but our view collectively is that fecal transplants are and will change medicine for the next hundred years. I don't know if you saw that probably like two or

three months ago fda actually shut them down because of people a couple people died in clinical trials don't get distracted by that that's basically the the problem is just because it's fecal even though it's gross people take it kind of like not seriously like people are trying to do it themselves it's like getting a blood transfusion like this is biomaterial going into your body from someone else's body so it's it's so critical that what and we'll see this will start getting tightened up is you got to make sure these are pathogen free you got to make sure there's no weird other you know organisms in in it and then the transplants when they're going especially with c diff they're transformational the only and then dead you dive into the science the only worry is that because of a scare where they shut down these trials because they're worried

about the safety that they highly regulate who can do fecal transplants and so there's a chance it might end up being in the world of the big pharma that does it which seems antithetical like this is feces like why you know it's a drug. But the argument is that they're the types that are capable of making it so standardized, so safe, that it'll end up going that way, you know, but. You know, I think no doubt about it. Studies both in animals, as well as, of course, more importantly in human with C. diff, for example, showed that if you do fecal transplant from a donor, whether it's a mouse to a mouse or, you know, it really resulted in good benefits. And it really helped a lot in C. diff. The issue with fecal transplant, as Afif alluded to, is the regulation. The FDA does not understand it. And also, the difficulty of it is it varies depending on the donor. The FDA does not understand it. And also the difficulty of it is it varies

depending on the donor. And the donor, remember, is a human being. So it is possible that same donor, his microbiome or her microbiome could change. So you need some sort of regulation. You need some sort of better understanding it. Now, the alternative is what you mentioned, is that there are companies trying to take capsules and put inside those capsules organisms that are known to be beneficial, and then people can take it. And there are clinical trials where people are really ongoing clinical trials. So to me, I think the future,

where we are now is in the future. As I mentioned, first of all, we wanted to find out what organisms or what microbes are present in the gut. And I think we really gained this and we are well ahead of the curve in that. Number two, okay, what do they do there? And now we are also starting to understand what they do.

Now the future is how can we manipulate them? How can we rebalance them? And that's where there are a number of efforts. One, you can do it through the diet. You can do it through fecal transplant or probiotics, okay? You can also do it what you call post-probiotic. You know, these probiotic organisms, they secrete some metabolites, which are what we mentioned, like, for example, short-chain fatty acid.

People are trying to say, can we use these chemicals now to impact our health? And the last area, which I think is going to be important, you know, when you have dysbiosis or imbalance in your gut, your gut lining, what happens, gut damage. Once it is damaged, then we need to really reconstruct it. We need to make sure mucin is back. It's The tight junction is back. So this is the other thing we need to do. So you can see there is a combination of different ways that we hopefully will be able to address our microbiome and make it restored as well as maintain its balance. And the only other thing I'd add is that in our research from our microbiome testing is we found that people fall into a set number of

microbiome clusters. People think that every, like all four of us, I had to say if it was four or five, all four of us would have different microbiomes. What our research was, it's not accurate. We likely all fall into a number of clusters. That's important because what do we do when we get a blood transfusion or blood donation? What's one of the questions they ask? I don't know. I've never had it. What type blood do you have, right? There you go. So if you're... I should have got that question right. Well, there's a stuff called blood, Kyle. No, but like, it would be an utter disaster if you're a type O and you got type A, right? This is just so routine now. Like, kids know this, right? Like,

it's just so microbiome. We're nowhere near that yet, right? So if we're going to start doing donations, I think we're going to end up doing it by clustering, right? That we see that if you're this type of cluster, you're going to need to be matched by that type of cluster. But again, this is probably a decade or two out to that type of preciseness. The other thing too, is there's data showing that, um, did that case study out of Australia where the woman, a woman and a daughter, I think the daughter had C diff and the mother gave a fecal transplant, but the mother was obese and the daughter was not. And the daughter ended up getting weight after. Even though she cured the C. diff. Even though she cured the C. diff. That's something that showed up in the rat studies,

right? You took a fit rat, you gave it to the obese rat, the obese rat got fit, and then you give the obese rat's transplant and the the fit rat and they start getting lethargic and tired. It throws all these assumptions out the window that we have about mental health, about obesity, that these things are completely under our control or can be hit with medication when it could entirely be the organisms in our GI playing a large role. That's unbelievable. Sometimes I say to him, everybody gets in the weeds at work, and I tell him sometimes, like, we got to step back. Like, this is a really fascinating area to be, you know, in the middle. You know, one of the things, which is a chapter in the book, I talk about that subject really precisely. So, what happens? People think at the moment is that all of us are

different in their microbiome, which is true. However, we have commonalities. There are common things. And then we looked at a thousand person in our study from people who send their fecal sample to biome, and we found that they fall into three different categories, even though there is variation between them, but in general, they fall within one of these categories. And now we are thinking, okay, what to do about adjusting this category? And that's where the exciting area, as I said, the future,

you know, because if you fall in this category. And that's where the exciting area, as I said, the future, you know, because if you fall in this category, we know, like, for example, I just give you a simple example. If you fall into a category where there's a lot of protobacteria, protobacteria have been known to have pro-inflammatory, so it causes inflammation. Now, there are studies, and we spent a lot of time thinking about this, to see that if you give it certain fibers, some vitamins, guess what? You can reduce this protobacteria. So now this is where, really, again, the exciting thing about the future. We will be able to look at your profile and make it personalized. The other thing too, based off your profile, what there's starting to be science around is that

when you take a drug, you don't know, or you don't think probably that, you know, there's some percentage chance that I'm a non-responder to this drug, but every drug has non-responders, basically people that the drug will just not work. Well, guess what? There's clinical trials coming out showing that your microbiome can impact if you're a responder or not. So the other thing we'll probably see as we get closer and closer to true precision personalized medicine is it being a factor, what type of medication they give, what type of dose of a medication they give based on your microbiome profile. Like that, that's how tied in these things are. Like really, it makes you think that medication, the last medicine, really the last hundred years has just been like an atom bomb attack to dealing with an issue. Like, yep, we think generally it should work for

this person to take this drug, you know, but it's, we're tying in on understanding how these, it's really a systems approach, you know, to medicine. Yeah. It's fantastic. It's pretty exciting. Yeah. Well, I absolutely love you guys. It's been great having you on the show. I really appreciate that. You know, it's, it's, it's almost the opposite of Western medicine in the fact that you guys understand as well as anybody that the whole thing is tied together. Yes. Everything is interconnected, not just the gut and brain, but all systems. And of course, not just bacteria, but the fungi and everything that's in that community that we have living within us.

So it has been great having you guys on. You have a company called Biome that does this testing. It's available to everyone. I've taken a test before and made some tweaks to my diet based on the results of that. Where can people get a test like this and where can people find you? Yeah. So they can come to our site, biomehealth.com, B-I-O-H-M health.com. Or they can actually just go to guttesting.com, which we own that domain, which I couldn't believe we could get. And yeah. And the other thing is they can learn, we are really doing some interesting clinical trials that we're looking for people to can learn. We are really doing some interesting clinical

trials that we're looking for people to participate on. We actually just did a clinical trial on people with autism. Why? Because we saw people who had children with autism were taking the test inquiring. So we said, let's do a clinical trial on this. So that's the other thing. We are a science-based company. So that's another thing that, that's another thing that we love to do. Just, you know, reach out to us. But yeah, biomehealth.com. The other thing is the book now, Total Gut Balance, is on Amazon, as I mentioned,

as well as at Barnes & Noble, like pre-order. And I have been working with the team to establish a Dr. Microbiome website, DR Microbiome, where we are putting a lot of tips, how to control your microbiome, how to get better gut health. And also, hopefully, we are going to come out with a course to teach you how to follow this. So DR Microbiome will be a good place to visit as well. And if it piques your interest, amazon.com. And Kyle, anytime you want to send us your poo, it's always welcome.

I'm due for another round. I think my wife could use one too, for sure. That's great. It's been great having you guys on. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thanks a lot. Thank you guys for tuning in to today's show

with Mahmoud Ghanoum. It was a good one. Please read his book. It is absolutely amazing and will really inform you the most out of anybody that I've talked to about gut health, why it's important,

and what we can do to help balance everything out and make sure we're in working order. Also, check out my website, kingsboo.com. It's the place where you'll stay the most up-to-date with me through my monthly newsletter, as well as take a deeper dive into exactly what it is that I'm putting in my body, what it is that I'm doing to tinker with my mind through mindfulness meditations and other practices. And that's the way we can stay connected. Also, hit me up on

Instagram at kingsboo with any questions you have on posts, not through the DMs. I don't check those often, but on any post, you write me a question, I'll try to get back to you. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you in a few days.