The Bossticks - How To Heal Your Gut, Brain Fog, Allergies, & Disease By Healing From Within Ft. Hannah Kleinfeld, COO Of AllergoSan USA

Episode Date: July 26, 2024

#731: Today we're sitting down with Hannah Kleinfeld, the co-founder and COO of AllergoSan USA, the company responsible for bringing Europe's leading probiotic brand, Omni-Biotic, to the United States. Omni-Biotic is a premium European probiotic brand known for its efficacy and popularity in European luxury wellness resorts, hospitals, and clinical settings, with thousands of healthcare practitioners recommending it everyday. Omni-Biotic challenges the "one-size-fits-all" probiotics. We discuss Hannah's diagnosis and journey with Lyme's disease, how to heal from SIBO, candida, allergies, brain fog, and other issues that healing your gut can alleviate. To connect with Lauryn Bosstick click HERE To connect with Michael Bosstick click HERE Read More on The Skinny Confidential HERE To Watch the Show click HERE For Detailed Show Notes visit TSCPODCAST.COM To Call the Him & Her Hotline call: 1-833-SKINNYS (754-6697) This episode is brought to you by The Skinny Confidential Head to the HIM & HER Show ShopMy page HERE to find all of Michael and Lauryn's favorite products mentioned on their latest episodes.   This episode is brought to you by Omni-Biotic   To receive 20% off your order, visit www.omnibioticlife.com and use code SKINNY at checkout.   This episode is brought to you by Smartwater   Life's full of choices. Smartwater is a simple one. Visit drinksmartwater.com to learn more.   Produced by Dear Media  

The following podcast is a dear media production. She's a lifestyle blogger extraordinaire. Fantastic. And he's a serial entrepreneur. A very smart cookie. And now Lauren Everts and Michael Bostic are bringing you along for the ride. Get ready for some major realness. Welcome to the skinny confidential, him and her.

I think in Europe there is a bit more caution on when antibiotics are prescribed. And actually, many doctors will prescribe a pre-examine. probiotic with the antibiotic. You know, make sure you take a high quality probiotic that you know contains the right strains in them that will help restore your gut floor and really make sure you support your gut that way. And at the same time, you know, many people when they take antibiotics, they will report cravings for sugar and other things.

And that's really just a sign that maybe the bad bacteria in your gut have a chance to flourish. So making sure you're not giving into those cravings and still supporting your body also through good nutrition fiber to make sure your gut, you know, supported. Hello everybody. Welcome back to the skinny confidential him and her show. Today we're sitting down with Hannah Kleinfeld, who is the co-founder and COO of Alargo USA, the company responsible for bringing Europe's leading probiotic brand Omnibiotic to the United States. Omnibiotic is a premium European probiotic brand known for its efficacy and popularity in European luxury wellness resorts,

hospitals and clinical settings with thousands of healthcare practitioners recommending it every day. Omnibiotic challenges the one size fits all in probiotics. And this is just a fascinating conversation around how to take better care of our gut. We also discuss Hannah's diagnosis and journey with Lyme disease, how to heal from SIBO, candida, allergies, brain fog, and other issues that healing your gut can alleviate. This episode is for anyone that wants to feel better, look better, perform better, with a very simple change that's easy to do on a daily basis. Again, this is a wellness focus episode for anybody that wants to just live a better

life. With that, Hannah Kleinfield, welcome the Skinny Confidential, him and Her show. This is the skinny confidential, him and her. When did you first become aware of the gut microbiome? Yeah, so my health journey started when I was in my early 20s, and I came down with a really bad case of Lyme disease. I essentially went from being this high performing, you know, kind of feeling invincible 20-year-old to barely being able to get out of bed overnight. And in that journey of kind of getting diagnosed, starting the treatment, and then putting together my body again after the treatment with many antibiotics and other things, I began to look at all the different parts of my body and learning more holistically how to repair and heal. And a big part of that was the gut microbiome.

When you say you started feeling all these symptoms, walk me way back. What do you mean? Because you must have started to feel these things and not known it was Lyme. So what were those symptoms? Yeah. So it was weird because, you know, I was working a pretty intense job. So at first, the first symptoms I would think were I was more tired. It was harder to get out of bed in the morning.

But I was thinking, well, you know, I've been doing this now for two years, this job. I'm not sleeping that much. I'm traveling a lot. So it must just be catching up with me. And then I would feel like my brain was slower than a lot of my colleagues and things that usually were really easy for me. We're starting to get harder, like problem solving, doing analytics on my computer. And then as that kind of, that was again a few weeks to a few months, then I was starting to realize I was getting a lot of food poisoning, even though everybody else

around me was fine. So, you know, again, that was probably not food poisoning. It was the Lyme bacteria starting to mess with my gut and my overall immune system just being lower. And then also I was just having weird like muscle spasms. I would feel really, exhausted and like shaky after working out, even though it wasn't a hard workout. And then, you know, over time that just got worse and worse to the point where I just couldn't even get out of bed. Did you ever figure out the cause of the lime? It's a tick. I mean, you know, lime is transmitted mostly by ticks, although some say now it can be transmitted by other little insects too. But yeah, I had a tick when I was probably three, four years before that on Nantucket, actually.

But, you know, we're going to in the summer. Yeah. But, you know, you know, They're everywhere. I mean, the East Coast is crazy. And what was a little bit, you know, I mean, this was, the tick was probably almost 10 years ago at this point. And back then, my understanding and many doctors' understanding was if you don't get that Bulls rash, you know, the red rash around the tick bite, you're fine. And I didn't get the rash. And so I just forgot about it. And then a few actually now kind of thinking back a few weeks later, college students,

started back up. And I was the only one who had a few days of like fever and flu-like symptoms. What could you have done? Is there because there's things you can do now to mitigate, right? Absolutely. If I had caught it right then, that's the acute stage of Lyme. I would have taken maybe a week of antibiotics and I would have been fine. Wait. So when you say if you caught it, like you mean when you saw the tick bite on you right away or later on when you got the fever? Both either. So now if I were to get a tick bite today, I would. take the tick off, send it to a lab, which is like you can literally just Google tick lab or whatever. And the lab would analyze if the tick had Lyme or all the other co-infections

that it carries, barchinalla, barbezia, whatever. And if I saw that that tick that had bitten me had any of these infections, I would probably almost prophylactically, like seek out a doctor and figure out what the next step should be. But even if I hadn't done that, when I had those flu-like symptoms, if I had gone to a doctor, done a test, shown up positive, taken antibiotics, I would have been fine. The problem is I didn't diagnose it because I didn't think it was an issue. And then literally a few years later, when my body was probably under stress because I was working really hard and whatever else, that's when it flared up and, you know, remained undiagnosed for probably almost another year before I finally addressed it. It's almost like, and I've interviewed a couple

different people with Lyme. It's almost like it lays dormant. Yes. Until you become really stressed out, which is a lot of things. Right. Let's be honest. It's a lot of things. But it almost like the stress activates the, is it dormancy award? Yeah. Yeah. Like it almost like it shakes it up. Can I ask a dumb question though maybe for maybe the people on the East Coast or people that are exposed to this would be like rolling their eyes. But is this if it just bites you real quick or is it if it stays on you for a minute? Yeah. The research there is actually still a little bit ongoing and almost controversial. It used to be that they said, no, it has to be, I think it was at least 12 hours, which, you know, feels like a really long time to notice a tick on your body. But I've actually

seen or heard in recent years that they think it can even be a pretty quick bite. So I wouldn't count on that anymore. But the antibiotics now, I mean, it was, and again, maybe a dumb question, and then we'll get back into it. Was there in the early days of this, was there not an antibiotic that exists? No, there were. It's pretty, it's pretty common antibiotics, too. It's just, A, the testing and diagnose it, just the process is not that great. So you can actually be positive, but it can be detected as negative. And then also, you know, many doctors, unfortunately, just weren't as aware. You know, if someone comes into a primary care doctor with flu-like symptoms, they wouldn't necessarily think, oh, it's summer. Let me test for ticks, you know,

starting to get better now. Yeah, there was like a period where if you said you had Lyme's disease, you were looked at like you were kind of crazy, right? Yeah, totally. It's getting better. with everything, though, is people think you're crazy until it becomes right. Well, they definitely think we're crazy. Were you like in the bushes or were you just taking a walk or were you swimming? How did you get the tick bite to begin with? Yeah, I don't quite remember. I just know we had a puppy at that time. So I was definitely like sitting in the grass a lot, you know, walking through the dunes with this puppy. I wasn't like in the bushes, you know, hiking off road or something. So it and even now, I mean, I was on Antucket last summer and I was just with my dog out in the backyard and had a tick crawling up my leg. What did you do you ride? I ran. I ran. I killed it, flushed it down the toilet. It wasn't, it hadn't bitten me yet. But, you know, just the East Coast in general is there's a lot of ticks, a lot of ticks. Do you notice, or is it just me, that the rise in Lyme's disease, is it Lyme or Lyme's?

Lime. The rise in Lyme disease has gotten crazy. Yeah, I've been thinking about this too. I think it's a combination. One, it's actually crazy just from an ecological perspective. You know, the more deer and mice you have, the more the ticks have hosts to feed on. And if you look at a lot of the East Coast deer are actually really the deer population is a real issue. So that's one thing. And then I think also thankfully the diagnosis is just getting better and there's more awareness.

So I think many people who maybe had it before too, they're now digging and taking the initiative to really try to find the root cause. Are they finding it in other countries or is it just United States primarily? No, it's also in other countries. I mean, Europe also definitely has an issue. I think the East Coast in particular is just for whatever reason a bad place to be. And is there any correlation? Sorry for all the questions. I'm just curious about this. Is there any correlation in the tick biting the deer?

Could it be from the deer or no? I think, well, this gets into really controversial territory because the question is where does Lyme? Yeah. Where does Lyme even come from, you know? It was the government testing. What I mean? I'm just going to just throw it out there. TBD, but, you know.

Now I'm going to be in trouble. But anyways, we just keep us moving along. I think it's just, well, that's actually another issue with the whole Lyme and tick-borne illness overall. There's not that much research. So there's still a lot of questions and hypotheses. So at this point, I think the deer and the mice are really more the hosts for the, for, you know, the carriers to actually feed because ticks need blood to survive.

That's their food source. So if they latch onto a deer, they stay alive. They probably get the deer sick too, but really eventually they come to the human and then they got us sick. Or your pets actually dogs can have Lyme and I'm sure cats can too. No, and I'm just kidding. I'm not educated enough on the subject of Lyme, but you hear people saying those kind of conspiracies and where those came from in the rock. What are the conspiracies? No, no, and I don't even like, I just want to know what they are.

No, because inevitably. Can we not talk? I just want to know what it is. No, I don't know because I'm saying inevitably people will be like, oh, misinformation. I don't know enough about this particular thing, but I know there are some conspiracies that people were doing some kind of testing that got out that got out of hand. And I think now, you know, especially after the last few years, people are not as opposed to those viewpoints. But again, I'm not educated enough on the subject. But it does seem that there has been a rise. But to your point, it could also be because people are now saying, oh, this is a problem. They're properly

diagnosing this thing. Before it's like, hey, maybe you're just sick or you have whatever. Yeah, Lyme has actually been called before the great imitator because it can be misdiagnosed for so many other diseases. And, you know, I hear this all the time, people who eventually then get diagnosed. And when I say Lyme, I really mean tick-borne illnesses because it's not just the Lyme. It's also these other co-infections, but it can be misdiagnosed for rheumatoid arthritis, IBS, you know, other autoimmune conditions because it just attacks your whole immune system. And so, yeah, I just, I think, yeah, it's one of those things where diagnoses are maybe getting better now because otherwise there might be people who are living with this, who think they have other conditions, but if they just had the right testing, possibly they might find

something. Okay, so let's get back to the topic at hand. When you found out that this was actually Lyme, what were the steps you started to take to kind of heal yourself? Yeah, so I was lucky, really lucky to find a great team of doctors in New York City. They were functional medicine. It was a functional medicine doctor, and then he had a team of nutritionists and kind of other, you know, more holistic practitioners on board. And we did a whole host of things. We started with antibiotics, many months of multiple antibiotics. And then we also did, you know, from a nutrition perspective, really making sure I get my nutrient levels back up. I did acupuncture.

I really looked at all parts of the world to say, what can I learn from, you know, traditional Chinese medicine, Ayurvedic medicine, what can I learn from Europe where I had grown up and really kind of assembled my own toolkit. Where did you grow up in Europe? I was born in Munich and lived there for a good part of my own. my childhood, then lived a little bit in Erlangen, which is a different part of Germany and then actually back in Munich and in between in the U.S., so I was back and forth quite a bit as a child. When you reflect on your childhood, what are the main differences that you see in between European and American wellness? Yeah, I think when I think of my childhood, the first two things that come to mind is my mom and I, we walked almost everywhere. We had a car, but, you know, she would put me in the

stroller. We would go to the weekly farmer's market. She would load up on all her fresh stuff. You know, fresh fish, fresh meat, fresh vegetables, and we would walk back and we would play outside so much, you know, whether it was rain or shine. And maybe that was just because I grew up in the 90s, but I do think there was a bigger emphasis on walking places, not always just driving in the car and being outside versus in front of maybe technology. Any other things, beauty, wellness that you've noticed as you've gone on? Yeah, I think now when I think about more from a wellness perspective, I think the European lifestyle in many ways is more conducive to just overall well-being. And also, you know, more conducive to gut health, given that that's a topic that's so dear

to my heart. Just, you know, how just the more balance, there's more emphasis on work-life balance versus here, especially in the big cities, this major hustle culture, which is just really harmful to our stress levels. Also, the way food is sourced, you know, every time I go to Europe, whether it's Germany or other places, there's just more emphasis on locally grown, fresh, seasonal produce versus, you know, here, I mean, it's great. You can go into any supermarket and find everything you could possibly ever need, but a lot of it is packaged, highly processed. A lot of the ingredients here wouldn't even be allowed in, you know, foods in Europe.

And I think that does make a difference on our overall well-being. When you were healing from Lyme, was there a toll that it took on your, mental health or did you just notice it physically? No. So I mean, first of all, you know, my, well, yeah, this is a loaded question, but I think, first of all, just being taken out of what a normal 20 something year old would like to be doing, you know, seeing friends and going to work and just, yeah, living your life. It was a big shift for me. And one of the crazy things with Lyme is the healing journey is not linear. So you could be feeling, a lot better for a few days, but then you get these die-off reactions or Herksheimer reactions,

and you literally feel like crap again for, you know, days. And that was really hard to cope with because I felt like I couldn't really, I couldn't really trust my body anymore. I might commit to something for, okay, I'll see a friend in a few days from now thinking I was feeling better and then I was feeling really terrible again and I had to cancel. So that definitely impacted my mental well-being. And then also, because my body was so inflamed, it was definitely also impacting my brain and my ability to focus, concentrate so much brain fog. Do you feel 100% better today now? Yeah. I actually think it set me on a path to really focus on my well-being and in many ways, I feel better than I felt in my 20s. If someone's listening and they're experiencing a bunch of

different things. Maybe they think it's IBS or whatnot. What are the specific things that you would do to get the right testing done? I would 100% find a functional medicine doctor or a naturopathic doctor because they are so well trained and looking at every single system in your body. They do blood work that usually primary care physicians just wouldn't order. There's so many other great tests, a stool test, a test for your adrenal. It's just all these more holistic tests you can take. And then if they suspect something like an underlying inflammation or pathogen, they know where to dig to hopefully get the right tests. What are some things that you notice with bad gut health,

like that you immediately are like that person needs to support their gut? Yeah, I mean, it's so crazy. The more research comes out, the gut is connected to almost every other system in our body. But when I'm talking to friends or people I meet, a couple of red flags to me are, of course, if they say they have digestive issues. But then also if there's skin as a, you know, a mess, like they say they keep having acne and nothing is working.

If they just tell me they have trouble concentrating, trouble focusing, they are foggy in their brain. That's a pretty good sign that something is wrong in the gut. And what can we look at when we have a good gut? I mean, what are the things that you know? Can you look at someone and see if they have a good gut? I think that's a little harder. But if someone says they have good energy levels, you know, good digestion, their skin, is radiant, their brain is clear. I would say that's a pretty good indication that your gut is also

being supported. What about the other microbiomes? Because there's other ones and we've been learning slowly about it. What are things that we can do to support? There's skin, there's oral. Is there any others? Vaginal? Yes. There is, yeah, so those are the big ones. Is there a penis microbiome? I actually think there is. Yeah, there's actually some interesting research coming out on like sperm health and male fertility on and the microbiome. It's about time that they took them on. Yeah, but I mean, how can we support those? I think it's always kind of the same principles apply.

If you think the microbiome, it's living organisms, right? Whether they're in your gut or on your skin. And you want to create an environment that's supportive of them. So you want to avoid anything harsh. So on the skin, it would be any harsh chemicals on your skin, even in your environment, like toxic cleaners, you know, cleaning products, things like that, because that can definitely disrupt your gut microbiome, you know, any microbiome. And then also, you know, more and more research is also showing that, for example,

the vaginal microbiome is actually pretty connected to your gut microbiome. So if you're, for example, taking antibiotics, that might not just be disrupting your gut microbiome, but could also be impacting other microbiomes on and in your body. I was just at the airport the other day and without fail always when I'm out running around, it is always a smart water that I grab. First of all, this is so weird, but the way it looks and the shape and how it fits into my handbag is so ideal. I love it because it's not super lumbering.

It's like a chic bottle, if you know what I mean. But also it's alkaline. And this is really important. So alkaline water for me is always the water. that I grab. This is the water that I always want. Smart water specifically has 9.5 plus pH and an added antioxidant, which is a real plus for me. It's also a vapor distilled bottle water, which is another thing I look for with bottled water. And it has added electrolytes. So you get this like really pure, refreshing taste. It's a taste that I am very specific about, actually. This is the water that I

always give my kids when we're on the go. It's absolutely amazing. If you're looking for a water choice. In a world filled with overthinking, smart water is providing you a refreshing change of pace, a moment of clarity with a simple choice of hydrating with smart water. When it comes to my life, there's a lot of things that I like to streamline, and I like to eliminate decision fatigue. So having my go-to waters is important. Life's full of choices, smartwater is a simple one. Visit drinksmartwater.com to learn more. That's drinksmartwater.com. Sometimes we get pushed back when we are hesitant about things like antibiotics, right? Like our son got sick and the doctor, we were in Europe actually, and the first thing

I said was take these on antibiotics. And because we're skeptical, we kind of called a bunch of different people that we know and they said, hey, like maybe don't. And we didn't. And he ended up clearing up and being fine. That was a chance we took. I'm not every parent's going to take it. I don't want to give that advice.

But the reason we were hesitant to he was so young and we felt that around of really strong antibiotics, which was suggested. was maybe going to have a worse long-term effect on him than actually eradicating what was going on. That being said, there's obviously a place where you need antibiotics if you have a life-threatening illness or something going on infection. If someone has to take antibiotics, what would your immediate advice be if they have to go through a heavy dose? Yeah, absolutely. So I think one of the really main things to know is antibiotics definitely deplete our gut microbiome, even as quick as a three-day dose of antibiotics can have lasting changes to your microbiomes. Like a crazy thing to me is when people get a little cold and they're like, I'm going to take a Z-pack.

Yes. Like that's wild to me. Yes, it is. It's wild. And I think, again, another reason actually that I would say is different to Europe because I think in Europe there is a bit more caution on when antibiotics are prescribed. And actually, many doctors will prescribe a probiotic with the antibiotic. So that would be my biggest advice. you know, make sure you take a high quality probiotic that you know contains the right strains in

them that will help restore your gut floor. And actually, our omnibiotic AB10 has shown in clinical studies to reduce antibiotic associated diarrhea and replenish the gut. So really make sure you support your gut that way. And at the same time, you know, many people when they take antibiotics, they will report cravings for sugar and other things. And that's really just a sign that maybe the bad bacteria in your gut have a chance to flourish. So making sure, you're not giving into those cravings and still supporting your body also through good nutrition fiber to make sure your gut is supported. So would an indicator, and I'm sorry, I'm peppering you with questions, an indication of maybe poor gut health be sugar cravings? Yes, yes, absolutely. Yeah. So actually

sugar cravings can be a big sign that you have candida, which is a yeast overgrowth. So actually I had that too when I had Lyme, another lovely thing to be dealing with. And I was just craving chocolate. It was wild. And you could also see my tongue was coated white. Like a really thick, heavy white coating on the tongue is often a sign of candida or just poor gut health. So yeah, those are two signs to look for. And also maybe get a tongue scraper. Yes, that too, that to oral microbiome. You know, it's all connected. One thing that I really love when I go to Europe, we talked about this off air, is the pharmacies. Yes. You go in and it's a totally different experience. than going into United States pharmacy.

What is your viewpoint on that? Yeah, I love pharmacies in Europe too. And I actually think it's such a lost opportunity here in the U.S. Because the pharmacies here feel so anonymous and clinical. And, you know, in many people in Europe, they have your, it's like your pharmacy. You know, it's the pharmacy you go to. It's around the corner. The people there know you.

And for me, the pharmacists are this intersection between the prescription drugs that we need and more natural solutions. So if I were to go into a pharmacy in Germany with a script for an antibiotic, the pharmacist would say, oh, I see you're taking an antibiotic, have you considered taking a probiotic with it? And then I might say,

oh, no, I haven't. Which one would you recommend? And they usually would recommend a specific one, and in this case, actually often omnibiotic AB10, because they have seen the clinical studies and they know that it works. What are some things that you think are, being manipulated when it comes to the industry of probiotics?

Like when you when you see, okay, this is like bullshit when it comes to someone selling probiotic. Yeah, I think the biggest thing for me is with probiotics, the more we learn about our gut microbiome, you can't take a one size fits all approach. You can't just take a couple different strains based on whatever you've seen in the research and combine them and hope that that's what they will actually do in your body. we have 400 to 600 different strains in our body, and they each do different things. And we also know that some of them can work together in teams to accomplish something else,

and we also know that some of them can compete against each other. So you need to be really mindful in selecting the strains that you want into a product and actually have a specific health outcome in mind. When it comes to beauty, what's the differences in the pharmacies here and there? I would love to know more about the skin. Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, the pharmacy that I went to when I was a kid, they would literally mix this cream for like a family friend of ours who had eczema really badly,

would mix a cream together that was like no additives, just really clean for this person. And I think, yeah, they're again more focused on, you know, of course there may be if you have really bad eczema, you might have to take a, you know, prescription cream for that. But they might, again, also be at the. intersection to recommend some other more holistic approaches that could be beneficial alongside. What are some products that you go for when you go to the European pharmacies? Are there specific ones? At this point, I love to browse. I think it's always just inspiring to see what new products there are. I do love, you know, any good body lotions, especially the ones. There's a brand called

Weleda. I think that's how you pronounce is here in the U.S. in Germany. It's called Veleda. They are here in the U.S. too. And they are just. just so, like, products from nature, really, and that, I love that. Is there products that you think are just crazy here? Crazy good or crazy? Crazy like ingredients, bad. Yeah, I mean, I think, of course they are. You know, I think it comes from anything.

If I look at some of the foods here, the high fructose corn syrup everywhere, overly processed things, I just look at that and think, oh, my gosh, what is happening? And, you know, even kids foods, I have a one-year-old. And when I look at the kinds of foods and snacks that I could be giving her, that's a little scary. And, you know, of course, in the beauty products, I think it's so hard nowadays to know what is actually in beauty products because the names no one can pronounce.

It's wild. Yeah. So, you know, that's why we look to people like you, Lauren, to tell us what to use. I mean, I even, it's like so much, it's so much digging that you have to do to get to the root of anything. Yes. I mean, today I was talking about natural flavors. It's like you don't even know.

what that is. Yes. I've been using eyelash glue when I apply individual lashes. And I just looked into that because I had this weird feeling about it. It's filled with triclosin. Well, I think it's just on and on. I mean, you just really have to like monitor every little tiny thing you do. Yeah. Doing what we do in talking to people like yourself and maybe people that are in some cases considered on the fringe. Like I think I can understand and empathize with people where they get frustrated because it's like, oh, now I got to get rid of this or I got to get rid of this cleaning supply or I can't do this food anymore. And it's like at some point it starts to sound like we're crazy. But I think one of the frustrations of a lot of people that we talk to and especially

here in the United States is that there are so many bad ingredients and things that people are using now in so many everyday products, foods, cleaning supplies, cooking supplies, all these things that like we have a real problem in this country that you don't face another. Like when we just got back from Italy. And I felt zero guilt about eating all the pastas and all the desserts and I came back and I was actually in better shape maybe than when I left. And I just ate like if I ate like that in the United States, they would need a wheelbarrow to get me out of the restaurant. But it's, it's crazy to me to see some of the things we're doing in this country. And it's alarming. And I think like sometimes being a vocal person and having people like yourself on the show, I can get what people

see this. And it's frustrating because they're like, well, this is, I'm doing all this in my life. and I'm scared and I don't know what other choices to make. You know what I mean? Yeah, I totally get it. And it's so frustrating because at some point it can almost feel overwhelming, right? If it's all adding up. I think for me, it's always about finding like what are the little things that you can tweak in your life to maybe, A, eliminate some of these things from your life, you know, your diet,

whatnot, but also to make your body more resilient. And again, coming back to the gut, you know, for me, a big part of making sure that my body can process these toxins better. I'm always going to be exposed to some level of toxins is really making sure my gut wall is solid so that they don't get reabsorbed into the blood, overburdening my liver, increasing inflammation. You know, it's just a cascade of things. So I think also just figuring out what are the small tweaks you can make to just make yourself more resilient. I think that's really good advice. And I think if you're listening and you are overwhelmed, taking that to heart, what I would do is I would write down every single thing you do every day.

That's where I would just start with. So for instance, like toothpaste, right down toothpaste. For me, I wear individual fake lashes a lot. So write that down, write down the lip gloss that you use. Or, you know, if you use a certain kind of floss, write that down. Things that you're doing every day and then look into the brands that you're using because a lot of them have so many hormone disruptors. And it's not like it's one product necessarily like you're saying.

It's doing it every single day with the same purpose. So like, for instance, like a crest toothpaste, you do that every single day. That's an endocrine disruptor. It's full of them. Absolutely. I mean, I think you just like, I think people are finally coming around to the idea and waking up to the fact that you just cannot trust labels on a box and you cannot trust, you know, broad, basic opinions from, you know, you have to really be your own advocate.

I was just even speaking to somebody on this trip we're on and I was talking about this hormone panel I did. And it was an in-depth hormone panel with a private practitioner. that I ended up doing after getting basic advice from my general practitioner. And it was much more in depth. And she was like, shock. She's like, well, everything that I got showed normal. Like, yeah, but you got to understand like normal is being based off a medium of things that,

in my opinion, are not normal. Does that make sense? Yeah. Like we have a health and like an issue in this country where the baseline is not baselines of other places. Yeah. I think we have to be realistic about that. Yeah, it was actually really interesting.

Back when I had Lyme, I did talk to some of. my practitioners from when I lived in Germany, and many of them were saying, hey, actually the reference ranges are actually different. Like what here is still considered borderline normal in Germany, at least, was already considered not normal anymore. So I think that's true. And the same goes for functional medicine. Many functional medicine doctors actually feel the reference ranges should be more sensitive than what they are. Well, because if you look at it, like if we were just to say, hey, we can face the fact that many Americans, and I'm not, you know, I'm not trying to make any do you feel bad, but many are maybe not in a healthy range of health right now. But if we started

saying that broadly and saying like, okay, the majority of people are unhealthy, then we would have to face that, okay, all of our ranges are off now. So what we're doing now is we're maybe changing some of those ranges say, hey, this is normal, but it's not normal if you compare it to the rest of the world. And so I just think people have to be conscious of the fact that we have a lot of bad ingredients and a lot of bad options when it comes to food and cleaning supplies and things in this country. And that's just where we're at right now. Hopefully that changes. I'm not going to be the one that does that I can advocate for it. But I will advocate for people to be aware of that at least, right? And then to do things like take a solid probiotic and take, you know, care of themselves

in a better way because we're being bombarded by stuff that's just eradicating our systems. Yeah. You went to college. You got your BA at Yale and MBA from Harvard. That's no easy feat. Did you prep to get into these colleges and when you were there, when did you start learning about the importance of a probiotic or was that after? Yeah. So I applied to Yale when I lived in Germany and that was a really interesting and very humbling experience because even though I had lived in the U.S. I didn't really know the U.S. college system.

So that was a whole journey in itself, which is why it's very different to Europe. But I learned about the gut and lime really in between college and Harvard. So I actually deferred my business school by a year because that's when I got lime. And I just, there was no way I was going to business school still battling the lime. So that's, that's kind of how the timeline went. And then how did you start working with the company? How did that transpire? Yeah.

So, so I had Lyme, right, got to know omnibiotic through a doctor. of mine in Germany and I was just really fascinated by this completely different approach to probiotics. It made so much sense to me that we needed different formulations for different health goals. So, you know, Omnibiotic has their psychobiotic, omnibiotic stress release for the gut, gut brain connection. Then we have the Omnibiotic AB10 to help restore the gut after antibiotics, for example. And that made so much sense to me. I tried them. They were a game changer for my kind of recovery from Lyme and really got my gut and my overall. all well-being into better shape. And that really prompted the question, why is this brand not in the

US? And it kept kind of haunting me at business school because one of the things I kind of learned about myself at business school was I knew I wanted to stay in the health and wellness space. So then it was really a question, where would I end up and what would I be doing? And this question kept haunting me through just a wild chain of events. We actually got to meet the founder of Omnibiotic in Europe. Yeah, We just spoke for a while and kind of made a connection. And I asked her, why is omnibiotic, not in the U.S.? And really that's where it all started. How long after you started taking it until you noticed a significant difference?

It was pretty instant. I mean, at that point, my gut was in bad shape because of the antibiotics and the Lyme and everything. And I had gotten really frustrated because even with the doctors here in the U.S., of course they had me on probiotics. But it was a kind of an interesting process back then where they said, okay, we need to work on your leaky gut. Let me try to find a product that has this one strain that has shown in this study that maybe can help with leaky gut.

And so I was kind of, I was switching brands a lot. And then I was speaking to my doctor in Europe and she said, well, yeah, omnibetic stress release, they have a clinical study showing it helps with leaky gut and it reduces inflammation in the colon and does all these things. So I started taking that actually in combination with omnibetic AB10 because of the antibiotic impact as well. And I just within a few days, my digestion felt better. And then I would say within four to six weeks, my brain fog was clearing up.

And then I would say by like three months, I was like, oh my gosh, my brain works better. A lot of the things that I had kind of lost during this whole Lyme journey were finally coming back. Based on what you've learned, what are some of the worst things people are doing to their guts? For example, I was just on like a Twitter or X feed now. the other day and it's like if you want to heal gut, they were talking about probably, but they said like number one on the list was stop drinking alcohol. And I don't know if that's true or not, but sounds true. What are some of the things that we're doing that are just bombarding our gut with bad?

Yeah, I would say alcohol, absolutely. It kills our good gut bacteria and increases inflammation. Similar overly processed foods, especially, you know, sugar, high fructose corn syrup, a lot of these additives. They're just chemicals. They disrupt our gut flora and cause inflammation. Certain medications, you know, antibiotics, but even other things that people might not be thinking about as much proton pump inhibitors,

certain forms of birth control. They are showing in studies now that this actually also disrupts the gut microbiome and stress. Whether it's high physical stress or mental stress, it just changes our whole biochemistry and it also is pretty detrimental to our gut. A lot of people are taking Ozempic. I mean, it's all over Instagram and TikTok. How can someone who's on OZMPIC support their gut? Yeah. And what is OZMPIC doing to the gut? Yeah. So OZMPIC is a, is part of these GLP 1 agonists. And essentially what we know is, you know, when people take OZMPIC, it kind of suppresses our appetite, which helps with weight loss. And, you know, it is used for type 2 diabetes management. So in many cases, it is good to add if you're dealing with that. But it has been really

widely used just for weight loss. And one of the interesting things is we actually just did a study with omnibiotic ketox, which is our formulation for metabolism and gut liver health. And they looked at individuals who were on a GLP1 agonist, not Ozampic. The study was done in Europe, it was Lyraglutide. And they either had the group just taking that GLP1 agonist or combining it with omnibotic heatox. And they found that after three months, the group that also took omnibotic ketox almost lost an average of 17 pounds more. Wow. And had a 67% better improvement in body. body mass index versus just taking the drug. And so my gosh. Yeah. So, you know, it's, it's a really promising and exciting thing to when you consider, okay, if you have to take this drug or you are

taking this drug, what else can you do to support your well-being and also your wellness goals? I also think even if you're not taking, I mean, a lot of people listening are obviously not taking OZempic, but even if you're not and you're on a journey of weight loss, I'm still on my last couple pounds of baby weight. I think taking metabolism. supporter like that is important when you're losing weight. I bet you if you guys did a study of someone not taking it and taking it, they probably, the people who were taking it probably lost more weight, even if it was five pounds. Yeah, they actually looked at menopausal women a little while ago. And same thing. Some of them were taking omnibodyc detox, others were taking a placebo and they did find improved

weight loss and improved, you know, waist, hip circumference measures. Because what many people don't realize is if our gut is inflamed and leaky, a lot of these toxins get into the bloodstream. That actually overburdens our liver, which is a huge player in our metabolism. So if our liver is overburdened because it has to keep fighting off these toxins, it can't focus on the metabolic processes. It's supposed to be focusing on like insulin control and, you know, other things. So that's really the connection between why should we care about the gut when we're thinking about metabolism? What's the difference between powder and the pill? Because you guys do a powder, which I think is really great to add to a smoothie or like your morning electrolyte water or your morning lemon water or a tea. But why choose a powder? Yes. This was a very mindful decision because what Omnibiotic or the makers of Omnibiotic in Europe found is that in order for your probiotics to really do good in the body, they have to reach your intestine alive.

and well. The problem with a lot of capsules is if they open in your stomach or in the upper part of your small intestine where it's really acidic, a lot of the probiotic bacteria die before they can even get to where they're supposed to go. We looked at this in a GI simulator where we looked at 10 U.S. brands versus omnibiotic. For omnibiotic, 83% of the probiotics reach the intestines alive and well compared to an average of 7% for these other brands. Nice. How do you recommend taking the probiotic? Yes. So this is really important. So because they're a living being. So the idea is you put them in a neutral liquid. So ideally water, maybe apple juice, nothing too acidic. I just put mine in sparkling water. Is that okay? That's okay, although still water would be better. Or maybe like a dairy or non-dairy milk that would be fine too. Nothing too hot, nothing too cold because you don't want to kill them. And the idea is, is they are freeze-dried in this powder to preserve their kind of state during manufacturing and transport. And when they come in contact with this water, they rehydrate. So that activates them.

The powder also contains some of their favorite food sources, prebiotics. So they wake up from their slumber. They get rehydrated. They find their favorite food. That makes them really strong for their passage through this acidic environment. And that's why they're surviving at such high rates. And do you need to take it on an empty stomach or with food? Yes, on an empty stomach. You want them to get through that acidic environment as quickly as possible. So we say usually take them in the morning first thing before breakfast or before bed. I like that because sometimes other probiotics, if you're taking it, like you have to do it with food. That's what they say too.

But I find it easier if you could just do it first thing in the morning. Yeah. Can you take it with other products? Like for instance, I have like a concoction that I do in the morning where I do like, it sounds like I can, I can't take it with lemon or I can because lemon turns. I know. Alcline in the body. Yeah. It's very confusing. No, you shouldn't mix it with lemon water. You also shouldn't mix it in the like electrolytes because of the high salt content. But you can take it. You could like have your concoction and then your omnibiotic jar and literally drink them. But do the omnibiotic first. Yes, ideally. It's just the you just don't want them. That first contact with a liquid should be a neutral liquid. Because if they came in contact with say your electrolytes or the lemon water, it would be acidic and they're soaking up that acid. And they're soaking up that acid.

liquid and basically you kill them before you can ingest them. So the this the powder first and then later the electrolyte lemon water. It can also be vice versa. It's just you don't want it to mix in the same container. Got it. That makes sense. What is your routine? More probiotics? No, just your routine with your wellness in the morning and night. Yeah. So I have a one year old. So I try to get up before her in the morning some days and I like to do my workout first thing. I know it's not ideal for adrenal health and other things, but I find that that just works well for me. And then I drink lemon water and then I eat breakfast. And ideally I would try to sneak a meditation in there, but that happens on some days and some days it doesn't. And then, you know, I go about my day. I work and then in the late

afternoon when I wrap up, I like to go on a walk with my dog. That's a really big kind of stress managing factor for me. You know, I do the whole bedtime routine with my daughter. And then my actual nighttime routine is, I try to keep things simple. You know, obviously I do my skincare routine. I drink my probiotics. I like to take them right before bed. Yeah, I love it right before bed. It just, I feel like that's when I take fewer other supplements. And for me, it's just part of my routine. It won't, like, this is another dumb question. It won't give you any kind of energy that keeps you up. No. No, it's just the probiotics. It's not, we don't mix, you know, B12 or anything else in there that might keep you up. So it's just the

probiotics. And I kind of like it because, you know, you don't eat like when you sleep, you're not eating. So your digestive tract has basically 12 hours to just, you know. Well, it's also the time when you detox the most. That's true. Yeah. Mm-hmm. That makes sense. Yeah. If, when I had a one year old, my son's two and a half right now. I used to habit stack my meditation with walking. Yes. So I would put him in the stroller and then I would do like a Melissa Wood Health meditation while I was walking. Yes. And that was the way I got it in. I don't know if that's a tip that helps, but that gave me a chance to meditate every single day.

Yeah, I love that too. I've tried doing that on my dog walks sometimes or even the other thing I've really enjoyed is just doing a meditation before bed. Yeah. Just to kind of wind down, although I really do love a morning meditation. It's just I'm working on incorporating that back into. my routine. There's ways to get creative with it. Today I didn't get to like sit with my eyes closed

but I just put one on while I was making the bet. I mean there's you do have to get creative. True. When you have kids under five, it's like I know exactly what you're saying. It's like you sometimes get it in, you sometimes don't. You just do your best. No, I did this podcast and I hate to be one of these people but it was, I always say

like there's a, when you have young kids like a lot of these crazy routines go out the window. Yeah, it's true. I have single friends that don't have kids yet and they're like oh, this is my routine takes like an hour. I don't have any of that anymore. Yeah, I feel like that was me before having her too. And then I was like, oh, dear, the mornings. Like I'd have to wake up at four in the morning to get all my pre-kid routine done before she wakes up. It's wild. Yeah. It's wild. It is.

What is the science behind your product? Yeah. So it starts with, you know, this was, this is developed by Institute of Lagosan, which is a microbiome competence center in Austria. And they literally are dedicated to gut health and gut microbiome health since, you know, over at least almost 30 years. It starts with understanding, okay, each strain does something else. So what are we, what's the end outcome we're looking to create? You know, what are the health goals we're hoping to address with this formulation? And then selecting the probiotic strains that hopefully will accomplish that.

Then it's tested in the lab to see if the hypothesis holds. And then each final formulation is tested in human clinical studies to show that what we saw in the lab is actually working in the human being. If you could wave a wand and have everyone who's listening have one takeaway through all of your journey with the gut, what would you say? I would say gut health truly can unlock so many other things in your body and things that you might not think are related to gut health could be related to gut health. So if you're looking at your health holistically, don't forget to look at the gut. Do we have a code for our audience? Yes, of course. It's skinny for 20% off on all the products on our website.

And say there's a couple different products. I think that the audience is really going to love the metabolism one. So can you just break down each one for us? Sure. So Omnibotic Heat Talks, that's the one that really focuses on liver function and metabolism. That's the one I just took. Oh, you did? Okay, great. And then omnibiotic stress release, that's our gut brain access support. So really, in fancy terms, it's our psychobiotic because it has shown in clinical studies to also improve mood and cognitive function. Then we have our omnibiotic, which is for gut microbiome restoration. So if you were taking antibiotics or other heavy medications, people who, you know, were in the hospital possibly exposed to pathogens, that's the kind of thing I would recommend there. We have our omnibiotic balance. which is really for overall optimal digestion,

but it also, we know that the strains really help with candida. So that's something if you think you have candida, that might be a good place to start. We have our omnibotic panda, which is for kids and for pregnant women. And then we also have actually just recently brought over from Europe Omnibiotic Power, which is really for people who are living high performance lifestyles and endurance athletes. Would you take the AB, you said AB10, right? Would you take that as just an every day?

would you only do that if you were off of a heavy dose of antibiotics or out of the hospital? It depends. I actually took it through part of my pregnancy because I felt my gut microbiome was shifting so much that it was a good fit. It really depends where your gut microbiome starts. I would usually say if you don't know where you are with your gut, maybe start with a month of AB10 because it will just kind of help things up. Smart. And then you can move on to one of the other products. We actually have our gut health reset program, which kind of does that. It's the first month. it's AB10, then it's a month of stress release, and then it's a month of balance to kind of help first focus on gut restoration, then focus on reducing the inflammation and fixing your gut

barrier and then moving on to supporting your immune function. Okay, you kind of answered, but my follow-up was, would you cycle off of the different ones each month, or would you just stay consistent with one? Yeah, it depends. So the gut health reset program is a nice place to start to kind of get an intro to different products. I usually base my probiotic based on how like what is going on in my life. If I'm going through a period of really high stress, I'm on stress release. If there's a lot of illness going around, maybe I switch to omnibotic balance. Right now I'm just playing around again with

omnibetic heat talks as well. But yeah, I think ideally you would take them a few months kind of consistently unless you're doing the gut health reset program. Okay. I personally love you guys the That's the one that I would recommend, but obviously you just shared the different ones. I think it's so important for kids too. I think what you said about being in the hospital, I don't think people realize what they're exposed to when they are in the hospital. That's a really smart one. And then just to sign off, I did a test, and I don't even know what it was called, but I did this

test where they were able to prick my finger and tell me by pricking my finger every single time I was on antibiotics. It was so wild. It went back to my birth. My mother being on antibiotics when I was born. I could literally track it and I could see like where I had UTIs like when I was like 18. that was like wild.

So I think I don't know what the test is called but Dr. Darrell does it. Dr. Dale Joffrey. He's been on the podcast. Get off your acids. And I think that's a cool place to start. And then you can just see how bad your gut maybe is effective. and sort of make the decision. The gut reset to me sounds like a good place to start, though. I will be

taking the heatox. You guys can go to Omnibioticlife.com and use code skinny. They gave you guys 20% off your order. Can we do like a little giveaway? Yeah, absolutely. Okay. Can we do like all the different ones, like the whole gut reset? Yeah, the gut health reset program. Absolutely. Okay. And how many can we give away? How about three? Okay. Let's give away three. All you guys have to do is tell us your favorite take away of this episode with Hannah on my latest Instagram and definitely check out OmniBiotic Life on Instagram too. Perfect. Thank you. Thank you, Hannah, so much for coming on. Thanks for having me.