the bossbabe podcast - 229. ONE Shift You Need To Make For Your Mental Health

Episode Date: July 5, 2022

You know those butterflies you get in your stomach before a big meeting? They’re real!  Well, kind of. The truth is that those are messages going from your gut to your brain, and that connection goes both ways – impacting how we think, act, feel and perform. Tina Anderson is the founder of Just Thrive Health, one of the best probiotic supplement brands on the market. She joins us to discuss the importance of how our gut health can seriously affect our mental health in today's stressful climate. Get ready to learn the signs that your gut may be out of balance and understand what diet changes you need to make to support and strengthen your brain-gut health. These connections might surprise you, but it’s important information that just might change your life.  Highlights: What is the “brain/gut connection” and why it matters. How to figure out if you have a leaky gut. 5 things you need to STOP eating if you want to heal your gut. The simple lifestyle shifts you can make today to take care of your mental health. Links: Shop all of Just Thrive’s lab-tested products – Use the code BOSSBABE at checkout for 15% off your purchase at https://justthrivehealth.com/discount/BOSSBABE  Learn more about the scientific processes and studies that go into Just Thrive products – justthrivehealth.com/pages/our-story Episode 149: Why Your Gut Health is Linked to Energy and Anxiety with Tina Anderson Episode 182: Why Healing Your Gut Should Be a Top Healthy Priority + The Steps on How to Do It with Tina Anderson Blog: 5 Supplements That Power BossBabe CEO’s Daily Routine   Follow: bossbabe: @bossbabe.inc Danielle Canty: @daniellecanty Natalie Ellis: @iamnatalie Instagram: @justthrivehealth

The gut and the brain are speaking to each other back and forth, and that communication with each other is really critically important. We want that communication to be improved as much as possible because we want the gut to be healthy in sending signals to the brain to maybe be calmer. We want the brain to be calm and to be able to send signals back down to the gut so that our gut is actually handling the digestive process that much better. A Boss Babe is unapologetically ambitious and paves the way for herself and other women to rise, keep going and fighting on. She is on a mission to be her best self in all areas. It's just

believing in yourself, confidently stepping outside her comfort zone to create her own vision of success. Hello and welcome to the Boss Babe podcast, the place where we share with you the real behind the scenes of building successful businesses, achieving peak performance and learning how to balance it all. I'm Danielle Canty, Boss Babe co-founder and your host for today's episode. So let's get ready to dive in. You know those butterflies you get in your stomach when you're super excited about something or that gut-wrenching feeling you experience when you're really nervous? Well, that's not just a feeling, it's actually your brain-gut connection. Yep, that's right.

There is a super strong connection between your brain and your gut and it's more important than you think. Today, I have with me Tina Anderson, founder of Just Thrive Health, one of the best probiotic supplements on the market and she's going to discuss the major importance of how our gut health can seriously affect our mental health, especially in today's climate. Get ready to learn the signs that signal your gut may be out of balance and understand what diet changes you need to make to strengthen your brain-gut connection. Let's get ready to unravel this deep connection some more.

Welcome, Tina, back to the Boss Baby Podcast. It is always such an honor to have you on here, and I feel like you are always so wise and share so much about how we can help our bodies support ourselves in business. So first of all, a massive thank you for coming back on the show. Oh, well, I'm so excited to be here, Danielle. Thank you so much for having me again. So our audience at Boss Babe, and I include myself in this, we really prioritize being productive and we really value functioning at a high level. And there was lots of things that you can do around that mentally and all these hacks like drinking water or like turning off notifications, making sure you're not

distracted. A lot of these things we know, but a recent discovery I had, thanks to you, was actually really understanding the power of the gut and your mental and cognitive performance. This literally blew my mind that the two would even be related. So I want to start our podcast there by talking about how is the gut related with the brain? That doesn't necessarily make sense to a lot of people. So great question. And it is crazy because so many people associated some type of like gut issue with having gas or bloating or diarrhea or constipation and like digestive issues. And for sure, that's a time when you have gut dysbiosis or gut issues, if you have these gastrointestinal type of disorders. But we are now just discovering all of the different effects that your gut has on your overall health. We'll talk about the brain health in a second. But when we talk about skin

health, like what our skin looks like, when we talk about autoimmune issues, you talk about your immune health overall, 80% of your immune system is found in your gut. We know that your gut health determines if you're somebody that gets sick a lot or somebody that doesn't get sick often. Like I said, allergies, all of these things are all associated with the health or non-health of your gut. We could do a whole podcast episode on that, and I think we maybe have already. But when we talk about the brain, this is what's so fascinating is now we know that there is this bi-directional communication going from the gut to the brain and the brain to the gut. So the gut is sending signals to the brain and the brain is

sending signals back down to the gut. And when you think about this, we know we've grown up, we've had butterflies in our stomach, and when we're nervous or excited, that's your brain sending signals to your gut. It's also sometimes you have to go to the bathroom when you're nervous about something or you're excited about something, you start having to go to the bathroom more often or you get like loose stools and it could be because you're nervous. This is the evidence that we now know that the gut and the brain are speaking to each other back and forth. And that communication with each other is really critically important.

We want that communication to be improved as much as possible because we want the gut to be healthy and sending signals to the brain to maybe be calmer. We want the brain to be calm and to be able to send signals back down to the gut so that our gut is actually handling the digestive process that much better. So there is so much evidence now. We know that we've got Alzheimer's, dementia, ADHD, autism, all of these mental health disorders or cognitive dysfunctions are all related to an imbalance of your gut. I love this. And I think for a lot of people listening, this is a really good way to ground this initial thought about the connection is, and this comes down to a little

bit and I'm just bringing in some of my medical knowledge, but I would love you to add and tweak this, but it's about your nervous system too, right? So a lot of us will recognize fight and flight. So fight and flight is like when you're scared, you need to like get somewhere, like, let's think about back to the caveman days. And we're like, okay, fight and flight. We have to run. We have to send all the blood that is in our system to our legs, our arms, our muscles to actually move our bodies and get us out of that place and to our brain so we can think smart and move. Then we have parasympathetic nervous system, which is all about like your rest and restoring. And that's when a lot of that blood goes to normally, like your bowels and your digestive

system to like work through that food that you've eaten earlier on. So what happens? Why do we get like nervous poops? When we're in fight and flight sometimes, then why do we get nervous? Like what is that connection? Yeah. Well, when we're in that fight or flight, you know, state of mind, and you said it exactly right. We were, our ancestors were being chased by saber tooth tigers and, and you go into this fight or flight state so that you could run off and get all the adrenaline to go and get away from some type of danger. The problem with what we're dealing with now is that we get in this fight or flight stage when we get an email that gets us upset. When, find out some type of bad news with your business or you're in traffic,

you're getting this fight or flight state and we are staying in this fight or flight stage. And that's, I think, the biggest difference that people don't realize is that the fight or flight stage is a good state. We need that. It protected our ancestors from dangerous animals that were attacking us. But what's more dangerous now is staying in that fight or flight stage all the time. And so what happens is all of the function of your body is going away from your gut. And so that's what's causing us to start going to the bathroom, having some loose stools, or maybe the opposite is true, some constipation. So it's like we're in this state of being in this fight or flight state all the time. We're really not,

you know, tending to our gut, our garden, if you will, you know, we're not tending to it on a regular basis. So because we're always in this fight or flight stage. So there's one like that, the mind that is affecting the gut at this level, like you say, going into this like stress nervous system, this anxious nervous system, and the gut at this level, like you say, going into this like stress nervous system, this anxious nervous system and the gut not getting the support that it needs. What about from foods as well that we're not getting now in our diets that are leading to a lot of us having gut issues, which then, and you're right, we did do a podcast on gut health previously, but I feel like this is coming from a different angle, but we'll put the link to that

in the show notes. But on that one, we spoke about my acne at the time and things that I was suffering with, but why are we fundamentally as a nation having so many more gut issues that are then affecting us in a multitude of ways? Yeah, no, that's a great question. I mean, the biggest thing is that we know we are more bacterial cells than we are human cells. So we are 10 times more bacteria than we are human. I mean, that's really hard for people to understand because we think that the human cells are what make us as humans, but really we're 10 times more bacteria. But yet we live in this world that is so antibacterial. Everything we do in this world that we live in is so offensive to our bacterial health, to our microbiome. So from the foods that we eat, from the glyphosate that's

sprayed on our food supply. So that's like the glyphosate is the active ingredient in Roundup that's sprayed all of our produce. So that's why I'm always a huge fan of eating organic because we at least could eliminate some of that glyphosate that we're taking in, which is so disruptive to our bacteria that live in and on us, our microbiome. And also with the cleaning products that we use, with other personal care products that we use, they're so offensive to our gut health. But in our foods, that's the biggest thing. Our foods are grown in soil that's got glyphosate sprayed all over it. It's over farmed, lacking nutrients. It's no longer nutrient dense. So the problem is the food that we're eating. One of the biggest offenders to our gut health is antibiotics. So antibiotics we take,

but antibiotics are in our food supply too. They use antibiotics for meat that different animals. It's really important to eat clean when we're talking about supporting our gut health. And it's also important to do, I always say there's a lot of things to do to support our gut health. One of them is eating clean, but another one is meditation or some type of mindful practice, whether it's breath work or meditation, whatever it is, because we know that when we're calmer, our gut is able to handle things better. And like I said, the reverse is true. When're calmer, our gut is able to handle things better. And like I said, the reverse is true. When our gut is healthy, it's able to send signals back

to the brain. So let's just touch on that a second, because I feel like, you know, opening this podcast, talking about the connection between your mental health and your gut health and how we can be more productive. But I think let's stay on that health piece there. So how can the brain, how can our brains help support our gut health, first of all? So what can we be doing mentally that supports our gut health? Because I'd never thought about that before, but now I'm from the conversation we just had, even talking about the synthetic nervous system and those anxieties and that, what can we all be doing? Because I think often we fight challenges that we have just from one angle. Whereas I was thinking about having the hose pipe on the fire from all different

directions versus just coming in the right way. So what can we do mentally that supports our guts? Yeah. So mentally I would, you know, I think anything that calms you down, you know, walking in nature is really important. It's something that I'm pretty passionate about. Breathing, deep breathing, just taking care of your breath work. There's so many different apps out there. There's different programs that people could use just to learn about breathing and being more controlled in your breathing and not breathing so quickly, which we all do. And we're busy, we're running around. And then meditation is a great thing to be doing just to just calm. The more calm you are,

those calming signals will be sent down to your gut. And anything that could calm you down. I mean, it's just so funny because it just goes both ways. I mean, they're both sending, the vagus nerve is connecting the gut and the brain. So basically as well, what we're saying is for your gut to function well, it needs a really good blood supply. And right now, a lot of us spend so much time in fight and flight, which actually decreases that blood supply to it. And we want to get that balance back between the sympathetic and the parasympathetic system. So calming yourself down. So anything that you're doing that relaxes you so that you just wake up a vagus nerve and a great way for those who don't

know is to do box breathing to control the vagus nerve as well, because vagus nerve is linked to increased heart rate. Like, so if a vagus nerve is under activated, you will be like going more into sympathetic. So calming that down. I always do box breathing, which is where you breathe in for four, hold for four, breathe out for four and hold out for four. And that always calms my heart rate. So those things are really good. If you suffer from gut issues and you want your brain to support your gut, awesome. So then how does our gut support our brain? There are two big offenders to our brain health. There's LPS inflammation that comes from LPS toxins are lipopolysaccharides. Lipopolysaccharides are basically toxins that are

found in our gut that are really not problematic until they start to seep into our bloodstream. When these LPS toxins seep into our bloodstream, they could go to any one of our organs, one of which is the brain. And so that is a major driver of inflammation in the brain. Another big offender to gut health is just external stressors that we deal with on a daily basis. Like I mentioned, you know, you got an email that upsets you, you're stuck in traffic, you know, you're in a fight with a loved one, whatever it may be.

So you've got two big sources of brain health inflammation. One of them is the LPS toxins and one of them are these external stressors. We want to take care of our gut because the more our gut is healthy and the gut lining, that intestinal cell wall is solid and not allowing these toxins to seep into our bloodstream, the less likelihood those LPS toxins will seep up into our brain and cause this inflammatory response. And then the other thing is the healthier our gut is, it's sending signals of calmness. We know that our neurotransmitters are produced in our gut. 90% of our serotonin, so that's our happy hormone, is produced in our gut.

Dopamine is produced in our gut. GABA is produced in our gut. So all of these really critical neurotransmitters are actually produced in our gut. So many people think our serotonin, our happy hormone is produced in our brain. It's not, it's produced in our gut. And I think that's one of the biggest reasons like psychiatrists have their hands tied with like a lot of the medicines that they have available all these years is they, you know, they have like anti-anxiety meds and SSRIs, different type of anti-depression medicines. They're having a lot of difficulty helping patients because the problem is really stemming in the gut, not as much stemming in the brain. And I think that's why all this new discovery going on with this gut-brain connection, why we're seeing such profound results with products that are focusing on the gut and how it affects the brain. Because that's really the root cause

is the gut dysbiosis going on because those are the ones sending the signals to the brain. This is such a game changer when you start realizing this and having these conversations. And I was chatting to one of my friends about this recently, and I'm such an advocate for being proactive with your mental health and getting the support that you need with therapists and mindset work. And sometimes there's actual chemical imbalances. And I think about this like a little bit like a car, right? So you have gas and you have diesel or for UK people, petrol and diesel. And if you put petrol or gas into a diesel car, it won't run. And like the same thing, like the shell is there, but it can't run if the chemicals with inside it, the fluids with inside it are not actually giving each area what they need and

they're incorrect. And I think that's something that we forget quite often is like, well, hang on a minute. Yeah. You might really, really need to work on your mental health and you might be really suffering with depression X, Y, and Z. And yes, you can do a lot of that through speaking and understanding what's happening in the brain, but also what's happening chemically to you. For my time as being a chiropractor, we did talk about this, like sometimes there's chemical depression, you know, and really just recognizing that, that, you know, whenever we're looking after our bodies, it needs to be like a biopsychosocial model, really thinking about like, you know,

not just the mind side of it, but also that physical side. I'm just really appreciating and enjoying the discoveries and the research that's being done right now into this area of gut health, because in many ways, I think with the right products, it actually can be solved probably much more easy than talking therapy in some ways. I'm like, wait, I could take a good probiotic for this. And so I want to also talk about a lot of people, what they're eating, you mentioned this earlier, organic, but if you're not eating organic quite often, it will have like antibiotics and et cetera, which can be really giving our gut a hard time. It can be overwhelming, right? So let's do like a starter pack for people. If you're having brain fog, if you're having a lot of fatigue, if you're having

a lot of these symptoms, which we know quite often is from chemicals and the brain, what are five things that people should avoid to improve their gut health? Yes. So I would definitely avoid antibiotics. That is a huge offender to our gut health. And so we know that antibiotics save lives and sometimes that people need to take them, but you definitely should avoid them when you have like a viral infection. You don't want to be taking them.

So people, they're just so over-prescribed. There was a study that showed that when someone took an antibiotic, it actually wreaked havoc on the gut for up to a two year period after taking them. So it's really important to, you know, only use antibiotics when you really, really need them. Really try to stay away from meats that have antibiotics in them. That's really important as well. Like I said, the other one is glyphosate, which is the active ingredient in Roundup. So trying to avoid foods that are sprayed with glyphosate or Roundup and not to be using Roundup on your lawn outside. And that's really important as well because we're ingesting

that and that's not good for our microbiome. Another big offender to our gut health is stress, which I say that all the time. And I know we already talked about that, but people think it's kind of woo-woo, but it actually really is a big offender. Stress does really cause a lot of issues in your gut. And then we also have sugar and alcohol. All those things are very offensive to our gut health. I'm sorry to tell everybody that, but that's the reality of it. So just moderation, all that kind of thing. And then the household products. Obviously, we've been drenching ourselves in antibacterial soaps and hand sanitizers. Well before the pandemic, I always was preaching about how we should never be using them because those antibacterial soaps are literally killing the microbes that live in and on us that are very, very healthy for us.

You know, we think bacteria bad. Well, really, less than 1% of bacteria out there is actually harmful. Those are just the ones that get all the attention. But most of the bacteria that is living in and on us is very supportive to our lives and to our health. And, of course, one of the biggest offenders to gut health is leaky guts. We know that we want our gut lining to be very strong and not allow toxins to seep into the bloodstream. So having a leaky gut is very offensive to our gut health. Let's take a quick pause to talk about my new favorite all-in-one platform, Kajabi. You know I've been singing their praises lately because they have helped our

business run so much smoother and with way less complexity, which I love. Not to mention our team couldn't be happier because now everything is in one place so it makes collecting data, creating pages, collecting payment, all the things so much simpler. One of our mottos at Boss Babe is simplify to amplify and Kajabi has really helped us do that this year. So of course I needed to share it here with you. It's the perfect time of year to do a bit of spring cleaning in your business, you know, get rid of the complexity and instead really focus on getting organized and making things as smooth as possible. I definitely recommend Kajabi to all of my clients and students. So if you're listening and haven't checked out Kajabi yet,

now is the perfect time to do so because they are offering Boss Babe listeners a 30-day free trial. Go to kajabi.com slash Boss Babe to claim your 30-day free trial. That's kajabi.com slash Boss Babe. So how do I know if I have a leaky gut? Like how do people know listening to this? Great question. Yeah. So it's so funny. The study that we did, we actually did a double blind human clinical trial on leaky gut. I think we talked about that maybe in one of the other episodes, but that study took a hundred college students, 55% of them. These are healthy college students, no medical issues, no pharmaceuticals, nothing like that. Healthy college students, 55% of them had a leaky gut and didn't know it.

And so they estimate the adult population, like 80% of them, 80% of the adult population has a leaky gut and didn't know it. And so they estimate the adult population, like 80% of them, 80% of the adult population has a leaky gut and doesn't know it. Unfortunately, we can't go to LabCorp or Quest to get that kind of study. Those types of studies, the way you determine if you have a leaky gut is to see after you eat a meal, how much of the LPS toxins seep into the bloodstream. You can't find those at normal, that you could really only see that in a research setting. But the chances are, if you have allergies, if you have autoimmune issues, I mean, you definitely have a leaky gut. But otherwise, it's like we probably could almost mostly assume that we all have some degree of leakiness in our

gut. And that leakiness of the gut is basically like, envision like a faucet that's got a drip and it's like this constant drip. And it's not a problem. You don't have a problem for a while with that little drip, but all of a sudden the bathtub just overflows one day because that drip just gets too much. And that's what happens with leaky gut is these toxins start to seep into your bloodstream every little bit, every once in a while. And then all of a sudden, somebody develops Crohn's disease, somebody develops an allergy, somebody develops an autoimmune disease, somebody develops heart disease or whatever it could be. This is from that leakiness of the gut. So someone develops anxiety. We see that a lot. People never really had anxiety. And then all of a sudden they have anxiety because now we're getting this inflammatory response to the brain sent up.

So those are really some of the big offenders. And leaky gut really is so prevalent right now that they estimate that 80% of the adult population has a leaky gut. And so leaky guts, when it comes to your ability to work, can that be expressed in ways of like brain fog or struggling to focus or tiredness? Like what a way is okay. Cause I'm, I'm noticing that a lot. There's so much, there's so much, and actually this is not about necessarily gut health, but recently I had to move out my place because it had mold and I started getting really sick and a lot of brain fog. And again, those toxins in my body, like it happened so gradually, I didn't really

realize it. But then one day I was like, wait, I think about two years ago, I didn't have this much trouble concentrating. Like, why am I literally having to have the perfect environment to concentrate? Like I couldn't go to a coffee shop because it was just too much distraction for me to concentrate. So would you say that people listening to this, if you're like, look, you're struggling to concentrate, you're having brain fog. Sometimes you're like, my brain feels slow. That's something else I was kind of experiencing as well. Are all of these also signs of like, okay, definitely get your gut checked. I mean, I think I was obviously a little bit with the mold too, but for me, it's still toxins in the body, whether it's coming from

the gut or this mold in this case. So I imagine like a lot of the leaky gut symptoms are very similar. Very similar. I mean, you hit the nail on the head. One of the top complaints that people have is the brain fog. And then when you start to heal that leaky gut, when you start to seal up that gut lining, you start seeing things are more clear, you have more clarity, you have more focus, you're driven more. And that's also with the psychobiotic, which we can talk about later, which is a new strain that's out there talking about really, that's a really important tool in creating more, getting yourself more in that fade away brain wave activity and more of a calming state and having, improving your cognitive

function. So we know that, you know, yeah, the leakiness of the gut is very, is a huge cause of the whole brain fog and inability to concentrate. We see that all the time. We chatted about the things that people should avoid. What are things that they should do? So obviously we're going to talk about probiotics in a second, but what are like foods that generally are like better for you or certain things that you should be doing that we avoid antibiotics, but what are things that like, oh, proactively seek this out? Yeah. One of the biggest things I always encourage people to do is to eat a diverse group of foods. So, you know, we're so used to eating, I think we

eat like 16 different foods throughout a year where our ancestors used to eat 600 different types of foods in the year. So it's really important that we eat a diverse group of foods, you know, go to ethnic grocery stores to get different types of foods. But we all, myself included, I get in that habit of just kind of making what's easy and the same thing, but trying to eat different roots and tubers from different things that are in season. And like I said, like Indian grocery stores or Asian grocery stores, just to get some type of diversity with your foods, but really being very prescriptive about trying to introduce new foods into your diet. That's a really big hack with your gut health. The other big thing is intermittent fasting.

There's science that shows that intermittent fasting really is beneficial to our gut health. It actually helps increase diversity in the gut. We want diversity in the gut. We want a diverse group of microbes in our gut. And by intermittent fasting, it sounds kind of counterintuitive by not feeding it, but there are some bacteria that actually proliferate in the absence of food. So it's

actually better to do some intermittent fasting. So many people do intermittent fasting for losing weight. And some people have luck with that. Some people don't, but I do it because I know how beneficial it is for our gut health. And then, like I said before, I think the mindful practice, you know, we talked about that already, just doing some type of mindful practice, super beneficial for our gut health. And the good news is that, I mean, yeah, taking a high quality probiotic is very, very critical in the whole piece of it. And we can talk about that later. But what I always say is that it's just, it's a lot of different things. Like you said, you know, you want to approach it from all angles. So we have this incredible probiotic that we've seen incredible results on, but I would

still, I mean, I still intermittent fast. I still try to eat a diverse group of foods. I still practice mindfulness and I do my deep breathing and meditation because I know that our gut is literally the most important organ for our whole body that determines our health. We know when it comes to our mental clarity, our mental health, to our physical health, to getting sick or not getting sick, and the way you metabolize food, your weight management. I mean, it's hard to find anything that is not associated with the health of our gut. So I'm throwing everything at it because we know we need to be taking care of our gut because it's dictating virtually every single aspect of our

overall health. So, so important, so powerful. Before we come to the probiotics, I want to ask foods that are labeled often as probiotics, like kombucha, is it kefir? I never know how to pronounce that. Some people say kefir, some people say kefir. Are those good? Are those worth taking or not? Yeah. The thing is, I think they're good because I think they're nutrient dense. We know that fermented foods are very good for us. They just are not a replacement for a probiotic, a spore-based probiotic. Because one of the things that we talked about in our last episode was that ability of probiotics to survive the gastric system. In order to be a probiotic, it needs to arrive alive in the intestines. The overwhelming majority of probiotics never make it to the

intestines alive. And for more information on that, someone could listen to another podcast that we talked about. That survivability is so key. But that's the same issue with a lot of fermented foods. But the difference is fermented foods have other benefits. They're nutrient dense. They have a different supportive role in the gut. So I think they're great to have on a regular basis, but they're not a replacement for a spore-based probiotic. Because the key with the spore-based probiotic is their ability to get into the intestines and actually change the microbiota, like to actually make a favorable shift in the gut. So it's actually having the good bacteria,

the beneficial bacteria take over the pathogenic bacteria. Interesting. Okay, got it. So they help, but they're not a replacement. So let's talk about probiotics then. And we did talk, like you said, about making sure that you have a certain probiotic that survives going through the system and basically makes it down to the gut, right? Because the stomach, and I'm trying to use my understanding so you can correct me, but my understanding is the stomach is like very acidic environment will destroy a lot of things like in the stomach is where we break down foods that we're eating. So what you worked on was creating a probiotic that can withstand the stomach and make it down to the gut and the intestines. Is that correct? We actually licensed the strains from London University. We didn't actually create

them. These strains are actually found in the soil. These bacillus spore-based probiotic strains are actually bacillus strains that were found in our soil. Back in the day before our soil was over farmed and contaminated, our ancestors used to eat roots and tubers off of the land and they would get that soil and these bacillus strains were meant to be consumed on a daily basis. They were meant by nature to survive the gastric system and get into the intestines alive. And so the biggest thing that London University did was they were able to isolate those strains and they were able to manufacture them for production. The big difference is a lot of probiotics on the market today will be

like, oh, we are entericoding them. We're able to put some coating on them. We have not entericoded them. We haven't done any special engineering to allow them to survive. This is the way nature intended these strains. Nature intended these bacillus strains to get through the gastric system and get into the intestines alive. And that's why we see such profound results. When you always go back to nature, things always work so much better. And I think that's what we're seeing even in the brain health space. Yeah, so, so true. Nature provides us so much of what we need. And quite often we do our ignorant human thing and just take over and think we know best to everything, right? If people are listening and they're like, okay, so I hear these things. How do I even know which probiotics to take?

Like I take Thrive. I take your guys because they, for me, I've had so many conversations with you and learned so, so much about it. So can you give like, if someone's listening to this going, yep, I have brain fog. Yep, I think I have leaky gut. Yep, I have all these issues.

Like I want to do something about it. I'm now avoiding these foods and I'm going to add these ones in and I want to do something about it. I'm now avoiding these foods and I'm going to add these ones in. And I want to really make sure I seek out a really good probiotic. Now, obviously we're going to advocate yours and I think they're the best in the market, but can you talk to me a little bit about like what you even look for in a probiotic, how often you take a probiotic, whether you should take a prebiotic with it. Like what is the difference between a probiotic and a prebiotic? Because this stuff really makes a difference to people's lives. Like you say, their mental health, which is, I know going to be really baffling to a lot of people like, wait,

what? This is connected. And also sometimes it really affects people if they have bad guts, like there's nothing worse than being like, I don't want to go out at this time because I know I'm going to need the bathroom or like, I'm nervous about going here because I know I need the bathroom several times a day. Like they can't do hikes, they can't do these things. So it's really a life-changing thing for a lot of people. So what are the next steps to like making sure we get our heel on? The big thing with Just Thrive probiotic is it's, like I said, the ability to survive the gastric system and its ability to actually make a change in the gut. And so when you're looking for a probiotic, you want to make sure you're taking a spore-based probiotic that has studies on it. The biggest thing with us at Just Thrive is our

studies. And we have a double-blind human clinical trial on leaky gut. We have a gut model study that showed a 30% favorable shift in the gut after just two weeks on the product. That's profound. I've never heard of another probiotic that has a study of that magnitude. We want to make sure that their DNA verified, meaning that the strains that are listed on the bottle are actually in the product, believe it or not. There was a study out in UC Davis did a couple of years back and they found that they were testing children's probiotics and they showed that a whole lot, like 16 out of 17 children's probiotics actually were inaccurately labeled. So they had strains on there that were not in the product and worse, they had strains

that were not listed on there that were in the product. So basically two strains come together and they create a whole new strain that has not been studied or verified or anything. So basically two strains come together and they create a whole new strain that has not been studied or verified or anything. So we make sure that ours are DNA verified. So it's really important that you find a probiotic that has a survivability study, that has DNA verification, and that has other human clinical trials on the formulation, which is key. That's one of the big things that we do at Just Thrive is we focus on bringing only products that are researched and missing in the market. And as far as who should be taking it, I would argue that every person alive should be taking the probiotic. I mean, we know that people's guts are

responsible for every aspect of our overall health. So people have no problem taking a multivitamin. They have no problem. But if your gut is inflamed at all, if you have inflammation in your gut, which unfortunately in the world we live in, most people's guts are inflamed, they're not able to absorb nutrients. So people are taking vitamin D, vitamin C, which are all really important nutrients, but we need to be taking care of our gut first and foremost. It's foundational for our overall health. So I would argue that everyone should take it. And I always say, people in the pharmaceutical industry, which is the industry we came from, would be like, oh, side effects include diarrhea, constipation, suicidal thoughts, all these horrible things where

with the probiotic, it just thrives. It's like we say side effects include better weight management, better mood, sleeping better. I mean, it's amazing. People will a lot of times come to the product because they had some diarrhea. And then all of a sudden they're like, my God, I'm sleeping better. My skin looks better. Am I supposed to lose a little bit of weight? It's amazing when you start to get to the root cause of any problem you're having, all these other things start to fall into place. And that's really what we're focused on is getting to the root cause. So, I mean, people are more motivated to come to our probiotic for an issue and that's great

because it's really exciting to see people start taking it and, you know, like, oh my God, this changed my life. I mean, there's not a day that goes by that we get a testimonial that doesn't bring a tear to my eye. It's like, it's so awesome to see how we've helped so many people that have had life changing effects from the product. But then a lot of times people will come to the product just because they know it's good for them. They want to maintain their health. They want to stay healthy. They want to stay vibrant. They want to stay focused on their work and not have brain fog. And they know they're

under a lot of stress, so they want to do everything that they can to support their gut. So it really is good for just so many people. And I'm actually also very particular about children. We see the incidence of allergies with kids. I'm a mother of three kids myself. They're adult children now. But when I was a kid, which was a long, long time ago, there was one classmate I knew that had an allergy from kindergarten all the way through the end of high school, where now, I mean, we know there's peanut-free tables. You go to a restaurant, they ask, are there any food allergies? I mean, this is an epidemic that we have right now going on with allergies. And this is all because of a gut dysbiosis. It's all because of this world that we're living in that's so offensive to our gut health. So I think it's paramount that people take this on a regular basis.

People will say, I had this issue and it's gone away and now I feel better. So should I still take it? And I'm like, well, of course you should be taking it. You could go to a maintenance dose, but we know that the world we're living in is so offensive to our gut health. And we want to make sure that we're always doing things to support our gut health. So powerful. And you're right. When I was at school, I think it was one kid who had allergies. And now I talk to a lot of parents or friends who have got kids and they're just saying they can't even have peanuts in the school because there's kids, more than one child

with really severe nut allergies. And I too am a testament, I had really bad skin. And taking your probiotics has really, really helped my skin clear up. I don't want to assume that I'm the normal, but how long when someone starts taking probiotics has really, really helped my skin clear up. I don't want to assume that I'm the normal, but how long when someone starts taking probiotics, should they see a difference in their symptoms? Yeah. You know, it's so individual, you know, sometimes for whatever reason, when people have like diarrhea, for example, it seems to clear up really quickly, sometimes within a few days or a week or so, where someone with constipation, it may take

three months. It all depends on a particular instance or how severe the gut dysbiosis is. But usually we say a month or two, you should be seeing some type of difference, oftentimes sooner. Got it. And tell me about the new product that you've come out, because I've been taking your probiotic and your prebiotic, but my understanding is you've got a new one as well now, specifically focused around the gut-brain connection. The prebiotic, just so people can understand, is basically the food for our good bacteria in the gut. So the probiotic goes in there and reconditions. It helps get rid of the pathogenic bacteria and helps boost the beneficial bacteria bacteria where the prebiotic goes

in and it's like the food for the beneficial bacteria. And the key with our prebiotic is that it's only targeting the beneficial bacteria. Sometimes a prebiotic could be people take a prebiotic and their symptoms start to get worse because they're actually, the prebiotic actually feeds the good bacteria, but it's also feeding the bad bacteria. With our prebiotic, we chose them very, very carefully. And it was the reason why we didn't launch a prebiotic right away. We actually held off on launching a prebiotic because we were very, very particular about finding these oligosaccharide strains or fibers that actually go in and only target the beneficial bacteria because we want our beneficial bacteria to proliferate and grow in our gut. That's why you would take a prebiotic. So it's actually just everything the probiotic is doing,

it's just doing, it's helping multiply. So our new product is really exciting because of the conversation that we've just had about the gut brain connections. Our new product is something called a psychobiotic. And a psychobiotic is basically the friendly bacteria that's supporting your cognitive function, so your mood health. And it's a probiotic strain that's really focusing on bringing down cortisol levels and bringing you in a more calm state. And so this is, if you remember, we talked about the two offenders of gut health. One of them is those LPS toxins that seep into the bloodstream. The probiotic is helping takePS toxins that seep into the bloodstream. The probiotic is helping take care of that. The probiotic, we know we have studies that's helping

get rid of that LPS toxin. So just the probiotic alone is getting you halfway there. The other big offender to our brain health are these external stressors, like getting cut off in traffic, all of those things. We can't avoid them. They're part of our lives. But how do we handle them better? We all know those people that... I'm one of those things. We can't avoid them. They're part of our lives. But how do we handle them better? We all know those people that... I'm one of those people I hear at ambulance and I'm like, oh my God, I hope it's not going to my house. Where my one girlfriend's like, oh, I hear an ambulance and I'm like, oh, there's another cat going up a tree or stuck in the tree. And I'm like, we all know those people that are just able to handle stress better. And that's what this new product we have is something called a psychobiotic. And it's made with this bifidol longum 1714 strain. And this strain has been

studied extensively by one of the top research institutes in the world that studies the gut-brain access. And basically, we know that when we experience an external stressor, the HPA access gets activated. So the hypothalamus sends signals to the pituitary and then to the adrenals, and then the adrenals start to produce cortisol. And now we have all this cortisol, this stress hormone that's really causing us to be high strong and not able to handle stress better. So the psychobiotic has been shown to actually reduce the cortisol levels. It's been shown to actually reduce the cortisol levels. It's been shown to change brainwave activity to more of a flow state, a theta state. So this is

a brand new product. We launched it about a month or so ago, and we are having such incredible response to the product. It's like I talked about, this is a product that's getting to the root cause. We are not focusing on these anti-anxiety, these SSRIs. We're focusing on getting to the root cause. And this 17-14 strain is actually helping lower cortisol, changing brainwave activity, and making a true profound change in the way people handle stress. And the studies are showing that it's basically allowing people to handle those stressors that we're dealing with in life better. So we are so excited about this.

Unfortunately, we know that stress is such a relevant topic right now. I mean, children are at the epidemic levels of stress like we've never seen before. It's so sad. And so now we have a product that's really making a huge difference in people's ability to handle those external stressors. So it's been really, really exciting. And that product

is called Just Calm. So our probiotic is Just Thrive probiotic and antioxidant. This is called Just Calm, but it's all under the same website of Just Thrive. Yeah. We'll put links in the description and we'll also put a discount on there because if they use Boss Babe at checkout, you get a discount as well, which is 15%. So make sure you use that. And I mean, Tina, this is the third time you've been on the podcast now because what you guys are doing over at Just Thrive makes such a big difference. And for me, it's been such a game changer, clearing up my skin and really helping me battle my challenges that I've had with brain fog, which have been gut related then with the mold. But I really feel like the probiotic has helped me so, so much. And I think you're right. It's

so sad that children are going through so much stress right now and other adults. And I think if we can all as communities and our own little pods have ways to combat that and approach that, deal with all the things. And quite often it's, you know, everyone's looking to the outside. People get, okay, therapy can help with this mindset, mental health can help with this, but they're missing some of the core things that they can do in their body to support that system as well. So thank you for this podcast. Thank you for enlightening us and sharing with me and the audience about that such strong connection, that powerful, important connection for us to recognize between the gut and the brain, because

you know, it's quite obvious when you stop and think about it. I'm like, oh yeah, like all the times your brain affects your, what's happening in your body, the nervousness, the gut, the, you know, all the ins and outs the poop ins and outs that we don't necessarily need to go into but it's there we know it and then just having it seen and shared in this context I think will have been really enlightening and empowering for a lot of people and how they can create that change so thank you so much I'm going to definitely make sure all the links in the show notes for everyone to click on because for sure, women over here like to be productive, like to be our best selves, like to be knowing how we can perform better. And for a lot of people, gut health is something that may

be overlooked in the past, but will not overlook in the future. No, no. Hopefully they won't because it is so powerful in creating so much health in your life. Well, for me, it's like a no brainer. I'm like, wait, if I'm suffering from brain fog and I've been suffering with these things, I've tried loads of stuff. But wait, hang on a minute. It could be my gut. So it's just like, I feel like investing in yourself, you just get that out leaps and bounds the other side. Because when you're performing better, you can support your family more. You can support your business more. you can get more done with lower stress levels. Complete no-brainer. But thank you, Tina. I really, really appreciate it. And thank you

for coming on and sharing all your knowledge. Oh, thank you so much for having me, Danielle. It's always a lot of fun. Thank you so much for listening. And if you enjoyed this episode on the Boss Babe podcast, then I'd absolutely love it if you leave us a review. As a thank you, we'll send you our side hustle success kit, your simple no BS guide to keeping track of everything that you need to do to start and grow your business. To access this freebie, all you need to do is leave us a review, then share a screenshot of your review with contact at bossbabe.com and we'll send this must-have kit straight to your inbox. Bye.