The Dylan Gemelli Podcast - Episode #157: The COMPLETE Guide to Probiotics Featuring Kiran Krishnan!

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Starting point is 00:01:27 90-day supply of their new digestive bidders, and that's a $90 value. So visit Justthrivehealth.com slash Dylan to claim your free digestive bidders with your first 90-day probiotic subscription today. All right, everybody, welcome back to the Dylan Jameli podcast. As you can see, as promised, I have my good friend Quran Christian and back with me. Now, I pivoted about 20, 30 minutes into our last interview and said, okay, I knew you were brilliant. I knew what you had, but I didn't realize it was this good and this much. So what we decided to do now is do a series where we're going to focus on key components and aspects of everything related to the gut and the gut health. We're going to cover so many different topics, but we're going to do it very selectively so that everybody gets a true understanding and we're not skipping all over the place and trying to fit in everything we can in an hour to an hour and a half.

Starting point is 00:02:27 So today we're going to focus strictly on probiotics, every single thing that Quran knows about them. We're going to talk about the good, the bad, and the ugly, basically, the things that we're seeing out there that people are getting into trouble with in terms of using what they're going to talk about. don't understand or no survival of the probiotic itself and other types of products you may want to take with your probiotics and which ones you might want to avoid. So we're going to cover all the bases. I've been working extremely close now with Just Thrive and Karan. He's the chief science officer. He is the man over there. But they are so focused on product development and making sure that everybody is getting taken care of in all aspects. They teach and everything that they produce that Karan has had his hands on is, I mean, nothing short of gold. So Karan, welcome back,

Starting point is 00:03:21 my friend. Thanks for joining me today. It is such a pleasure to be here. Thank you so much for having me. And I love the pivot you made because I think ultimately once people listen to the whole series, they're going to know everything they need to know about the gut and gut health. So I think it's brilliant. It's a great approach. And I'm super excited to be part of it. Thank you. Well, I appreciate you taking time to do this with me. I know it's important to you. and I'm really focusing on key aspects of health and total and the gut as we know. I mean, that I don't like to say one is the most important, but if I had a tie for first, it would certainly be there.

Starting point is 00:03:56 So let's break this down first. I want to make this as simple as we can, but still getting deep into the science of it. So can you just say what is a probiotic and what is the difference between a probiotic, a prebiotic and a postbiotic? Because it's very, very condoct. It is. Yeah, the names are so similar. So a probiotic is defined by the World Health Organization, and this is the universally accepted definition from a scientific perspective. It is a live

Starting point is 00:04:27 microorganism when administered to the host in adequate amounts confers a health benefit, which means that a few things, right? So let's break down the definition. The first part is a true probiotic has to be alive and functioning in the living state in the gut. And so if it cannot survive through the gastric system, if it cannot survive past the small bowel from bile acids, pancreatic enzymes, all of the things that tend to kill microbes, and get to the intestines, get to the site of action alive, then it's not classified as a probiotic. The other part of it is that when they say when administered in adequate amounts, meaning that there's a dose dependency to it where there's got to be some studies that show that $1 billion didn't work,

Starting point is 00:05:07 but $4 billion does work, right? So there is a effect there that is related to the dose dependency. dosing of that agent. And then the third part is confers a health benefit to the host. So there has to be a measurable health benefit to the host. So that is a probiotic, a living organism that is shown to have a health benefit to the host. A prebiotic, you can think of that as food for microbes. Right. So these are typically complex carbohydrates. In nature, you would find them in fruits and in vegetables and in certain starchy foods, you know, things like cassava and, you know, twice-cooked potato and so on, and you'd find them in all kinds of fruits and vegetables. Prebiotics are complex carbohydrates that cannot be absorbed and broken down by us, the human, which means it

Starting point is 00:05:56 passes through the small bowel, enters into the large bowel, and specifically feeds beneficial bacteria. Now, a postbiotic is a dead bacteria that still has functionality. or a component of a bacteria, right? So a number of years ago, so this was probably about 15 to 20 years ago. There was some discoveries being made that, you know what, some microbes, even though they're dead, and you specifically kill them, you administer them to the host. They give very similar effects to the live microorganism. And so then they started, you know, researchers started playing around with the idea that maybe there are components

Starting point is 00:06:34 on the outer cell structure or outer cell membrane of the microbe that actually, that actually does the signaling, that does the work, which means a microbe doesn't have to be alive. And just delivering either the dead microbe or the component of the microbe can create that benefit. But the key thing with that is that they tend to be very specific benefits, very specific effects. So all three can be utilized and should be utilized in someone that's really trying to revamp and improve the resilience and the health of their guide. But they play different roles and they are distinguished. Got it. Okay. So before I knew anything, my whole idea when I hear these is you take a prebiotic before you eat, you take a probiotic either during or sometime during your meal and a post after. Am I completely wrong and off on that? I'm just going by the base of how it sounds. That's what I always thought prior.

Starting point is 00:07:30 Yeah. Generally, that should be fine. You know, in most cases, you don't have to consider timing to be a big issue. Got it. Now, sometimes you do want to take the postbiotic, which is the dead bacteria or bacterial components, apart from the probiotic because they could interfere with each other's functionality. Some cases, they're synergistic. And that should be the role of the companies, the brands, doing the research and figuring that part out and telling you, okay, you should take it, you know, two hours apart or three hours apart or, you know, you can take them together. So they should be able to tell you that generally the way you're thinking about it should be fine. across the board. Okay. I personally take the prebiotic first thing in the morning. I take the probiotic before my heaviest meal. I don't really take a postbiotic, I guess, per se. I do have a couple

Starting point is 00:08:22 questions. One, you said that prebiotic is basically like a complex carbohydrate. So would you recommend supplementing a prebiotic or can you get that through food or how does that work? Because I see some prebiotic formulas, which I take, you know, with Just Drives, which I love. And I I'm not a big carbohydrate guy as it is. So can you kind of touch on that? Yeah. So I think, you know, most people should get a mix. The benefit of getting prebiotics from food is that you get a little bit more diversity out of the prebiotics, right?

Starting point is 00:08:52 So, for example, if you eat a banana that's not super ripe, so, you know, or you ate, say, a sweet potato or cassava or kiwis, you know, you're getting prebiotics from all of these, but you're getting five, six, seven different versions of prebiotics. The issue, though, is that the dosing isn't precise, right? So if you're trying to rebuild your gut, you want to know that you're getting the right amount of a prebiotic that is clinically validated to increase the good bacteria, decrease the bad bacteria, increase things like short chain fatty acids. And so I always think of it as this kind of, you know, dual system where there are certain things for my gut that I want to be precise about to ensure I'm achieving at least a base. line effect, and then everything else I just want to add in as like this beautiful rainbow of things because the gut loves all the diversity, right? So the way I think about prebiotics is I try to get two to three servings of prebiotics throughout my day from food, but I absolutely take two to three grams of a prebiotic as a supplement because I know that the precise dosing and I

Starting point is 00:10:01 know what the clinical effect of that is, right? So think of the dos, the supplementation as like the the baseline effect that you need to get, and then everything else is kind of icing on the cake. Something that you said that just kind of popped into my head was about taking the potential interference that you could have with the postbiotic mixing. Now, I've seen like three in one products and these ones that claim it's a pre-post pro all in one. Is that not a good idea? It's absolutely not if they haven't researched it because they often interfere, right? So for example, Just Thrive has a product called Just Calm. That is mostly a postbiotic, right? So it's a bifurabacterium longum. What's interesting about the strain is it is alive in the capsule,

Starting point is 00:10:46 but it doesn't have to be alive for it to confer its function because the function of that strain in terms of lowering anxiety, lowering stress, improving mood comes from this natural carbohydrate structure that it has on its outer membrane. There's a structure called peptidoglycan, and then they have another carbohydrate layer. They call it like an exopolisacride, right? So this exopolisacride and the peptidoglycan is what actually gets released from the bacteria and then has this immunological effect to reduce cortisol, reduce stress, and reduce neuroinflammation. But that bacteria will work what is live or dead.

Starting point is 00:11:22 So it's mostly a postbiotic. What's interesting, though, is if you mix that with any other probiotic, it knocks out its function. Okay. Right. And so we know that, and that's why we didn't mix it. it together with the spores. We didn't mix it together with the prebiotic. We sold it separately, and we recommend to people take it a couple hours apart from your other probiotic for that very reason. So I'd say the vast majority of the products on the market that are called

Starting point is 00:11:48 symbiotics, right, or they have pre-pro and this, that, and the other, they're not studying it. They're not testing it to make sure they're compatible, and then they're just not knocking out each other's effect. I want to stay on the probiotic stuff, but I have a question. because it dawned on me as you're talking about this, that you've mentioned carbohydrates now multiple times, that they're needed for gut health. So that being said, would you say that going too low a carb

Starting point is 00:12:17 can be detrimental to gut health? Because you keep bringing up carbohydrate in the prebiotic, then in the postbiotic. So my mind is going up. If we're just eliminating carbs, that could have a potential negative effect on the gut. It does, yeah, and the study's showing this, right? So people that go carnivore long term and so on, they will have a very negative effect on the gut over time.

Starting point is 00:12:41 Got it. The reality is the vast majority of microbes in your gut, the 30, 40 trillion microbes in the gut, their predominant food are carbohydrates and their plant-based carbohydrates. For the most part, it's fibers and starches and prebiotics. Now, that doesn't mean we need, you know, like processed carbs. right? That's not going to help at all. Any kind of carbohydrate that we break down and absorb and it raises our blood sugar doesn't help the microbes at all, right? So when we're talking about carbohydrates that are important for microbes, we're really talking about fiber, prebiotics resistant starches, those kind of things. And the reason why those are all beneficial is because we can't break them down, doesn't

Starting point is 00:13:23 affect our insulin, doesn't give us any calories, but it does feed the microbiome what it needs to not only proliferate, but then convert those into very important substances. Thanks for covering that. I'm glad that you made it very clear. We're not talking about the bad refined carbs. And I know how people like to twist and mix words. So thank you for doing that. I'm sure that you're obviously used to that as well and you're a great teacher, so you cover the base. All right. So we'll save the rest of that for our next episode where we get into the gut kind of diet premise, so to speak. But I want to get back to the, the, the, probiotics side of thing. So if we're looking at a pro, a pre, and a post, is there one that's more

Starting point is 00:14:04 important out of all the three? Or do you absolutely need three? What's the recommendation there? Yeah, you know, if someone was only going to pick one, I would say find the right probiotic, because the right probiotic can, you know, provide you more prebiotic-like effects from the foods that you eat, so it can enhance the fermentable capability of the microbes that are already existing in the gut. And then some of these probiotics will also give you postbiotic-like effect by increasing the growth of certain microbes within your gut microbiome. So I would think about the prebiotics as like general good food for the microbiome, but you also want to make sure that you're utilizing the food properly, and that's the job of the probiotic. Think about the

Starting point is 00:14:49 postbiotic as like signaling molecules within your gut, right? Because they do very specific signaling, but you also need a healthy microbiome so that the signals can actually translate to beneficial effects. So in both cases, the probiotic becomes a critically important core of all of it, right? And so I think if someone would choose, I would say go with a probiotic, and then the second most important would be the prebiotic, and then the third would be the postbiotic, but that would be specific for very, you know, very specific conditions and issues. So given the fact that we know leaky gut is such a massive problem and probably damn near everybody has it or has had it. And there are some things that are just unavoidable, but there are ways to take care of it.

Starting point is 00:15:38 Would you say that a probiotic is the first and or best step into ensuring that we're minimizing the damage and that's the path to actually curing or treating it? Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, a prebiotic can be very useful for leaky gut, assuming your body can, or your gut can utilize the prebiotic appropriately. But one thing we know, and we've published studies on this, showing that the right kind of probiotic can alleviate that leaky gut quite significantly in about 30 days. So that's very hard to do with a postbiotic or a prebiotic. In fact, if you did all three, it'd be a very profound effect. But I would say if I would pick one for leaky gut, it'd be the right probiotic. Yeah, because I've had pretty high-level experts that have come on here and kind of scared people telling them it could take years to fix leaky gut and some that I'm not going to name names, but even acted like you couldn't fix it at all, which we know is ridiculous.

Starting point is 00:16:34 So if things are done right and you're using the right kind of products, and obviously I preface this by saying you're eating the right kind of foods and taking care of yourself, you could be on the road to recovering a leaky gut in 30 days if you have the right kind of. of probiotic to help. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. You know, the thing that takes longer. So think about, you know, let's give an analogy so people can understand it, right? So let's say you've had a wall that is acting like a dam and you're trying to block water. Now, let's say the wall has had a bunch of leaks and then the water continuously leaks. And on the other side of the wall, you've got erosion happening, right, as a result of the leaking.

Starting point is 00:17:15 Now, you can fix the leaks relatively quickly. Like you can go and plug it up with all the mortar and stuff, but it's going to take a little while to fix the erosion that has occurred. Right. Right. The damage. So that's the part that takes longer with leaky gut is that with the right probiotic, prebiotic and other lifestyle changes, you can make significant improvement in the level of leakiness in a 30-day, 45-day period. But then all of the downstream damage that the leakiness has done over the last several years, that's going to take a little bit longer. to improve. This is one of the reasons why we tell people that, you know, don't expect,

Starting point is 00:17:54 like, profound changes in your outcome in a short amount of time. Know that you can make significant progress in a short amount of time, but with a probiotic, I say, at least go 90 days, right? Because it's the effects that you're seeing, the leakiness that they're experiencing and all that has taken years to happen, right? And they're not going to completely reverse all the symptoms and all the downstream effects of it overnight, they want to give it time, but know that you can make a significant improvement in a short amount of time, but stick with it so that you can get all of the benefits of it. Okay, sweet. So you know, I'm sure you've done this, probably not to the extent that I have, but you'll go look back in time and think, what the hell was I thinking

Starting point is 00:18:38 or what was going on in my head at the time. So I'm going to be honest with you and you'll, you'll know where I'm going with this. So I'd say, I don't know, probably. less than 10 years ago, but a good while back, I just started taking whatever probiotic and thought, well, I'm doing what I need to do. Everybody's saying to take these digestive enzymes. And I had zero clue. I turned the bottle around. And you're talking to a guy that, you know, heavy researcher, heavy into wellness. And I just said, I don't know what this shit is. I'm just going to take me. I'm sure it's doing what it's supposed to. It, my point is, one, know what you're taking before you take it. And two, it's tricky because you'd look at the back of a bottle of a good probiotic and it's not like

Starting point is 00:19:23 a bottle that you'd see that says magnesium vitamin D3 and a bunch of things that you know what they are. These are strange words. You can't pronounce half of them. And it's confusing to know what they even are. And most people, unless they're educated, you know, strictly into what you study, they don't know what they're reading at all. So could you break down a little bit what to look for? And, you know, with the spore-based, compare a spore probiotic to a regular one. Because I, again, I got turned on to spore probiotics several years ago, and I just, it was my mentor, and I kind of just took his word for it.

Starting point is 00:20:03 Now I know it was the right thing to do because it was kind of obscure back then, and most were going in a refrigerator, and this one wasn't. So I'd like you to touch on that too, but just the breakdown of what are we even reading? What is this like strange terminology on the back? Yeah, you know, what you're actually looking at when you look at the label is you're looking at the genus and the species of various organisms that they've thrown into the product. The genus and the species tells you, for example, lactobacillus acidophilus or bacillus subtilus. So the genus is the group that the microbe belongs to and then the species is a very specific version of that microbeciles. from that group, what's really important to note is that for any really effective probiotic,

Starting point is 00:20:48 you should see a third thing, which is a strain ID, right? So, for example, lactobacillus acidophilus DDS1 is a very specific strain ID or bacillus subtilus H.U.58. That's a very specific strain ID. Now, why is that strain ID important? Well, because there's lots of different kinds of bacillus subtilus, right? So that's like saying homo sapiens sapien, that is how we characterize us, humans, right? Where homo sapien is our genus and then sapien is the species.

Starting point is 00:21:21 So we're homo sapiens sapien, but that doesn't tell you whether that homo sapiens sapient is Dylan or myself, right, or somebody else. And we're different people. We have different functionalities. We do different things. And so we need to get to that very specific name or what we call Strain ID. of the microbes. So first step, when you turn around and you look at the bottle, and there's just a bunch of bacteria with no strain IDs already, you know that, okay, I got to be a little cautious because they don't even know what these microbes are

Starting point is 00:21:50 and what they actually do, right? Because, for example, I gave you that example earlier of that bifidobacterium, the one that's in Just Calm, that fights against anxiety and depression. So that particular product has eight different published papers on that strain showing dramatic reduction in anxiety, in stress, improvement in mood disorders, all kinds of stuff. And all of those benefits come from one gene in that bacteria, right? So that bacteria is called bifidol bacterium longum, so that's the genus in species. 1714 is a strain ID. There's lots of different bifidobacterum longums that don't have the one gene that makes it the 1714,

Starting point is 00:22:32 which means that all of those other longums don't do any of that stuff. right? So one gene difference can completely change the functionality, the bacteria, right? So it's more complicated than we thought. So when you look at this product and you go, all right, there's no strain IDs, that's first kind of red flag like, okay, maybe they don't know what's in the product. The second thing is that if the company is making the big claims of how many strains and how much of the CFU count, right? We all see like the 25 billion. 30 billion, CFU, 50 billion. If that is the main part of their claim, then you have to be cautious as well. Because what they've done is they formulated a product to hit a number.

Starting point is 00:23:17 And that number is completely arbitrary. There's no such thing as you need 40 billion to be effective, you need 50 billion to be effective, or that more is actually better. All that is kind of marketing smokescreen, right? Because in fact, you could take a single strain, like a bifrobatum Longham 1714. At 2 billion CFUs, it would be far more effective than another product with 15 strains and 20 billion CFUs just because it's the right strain and it does the right thing. Right. It's like if your toilet is broken, you want a Homo sapiens sapien who's a plumber, right? It doesn't matter if you bring 1,500 painters there. They're not going to be able to figure out to fix the toilet. And so we need to get very specific because microbes do very specific things.

Starting point is 00:24:05 So what I want people to know is that a few of the red flags, again, to review to think about, if there's no strain ID already, that's a red flag. If the claim on the bottles are how many CFUs and how many strains, they're making a big deal of having 15 strains and 50 billion CFUs, that's another red flag because that's marketing people that have thrown strains together with no rationale behind it at all, right? So those are the two big lookouts for people. And if the product has to be in the fridge, that's another.

Starting point is 00:24:35 big lookout. If the product's talking about some very special capsules and things like that, that is another lookout as well, because that means they're trying to engineer the whole delivery system to get these products to survive. And as we talked about before, a true probiotic has to be a live microorganism. Right. And so those are some of the lookouts that people should think about. And then ultimately, the only way you know that a probiotic formula is going to do anything at all and not actually cause a problem in your system, and we're You talk about what kind of problem, you know, kind of erroneous probiotic formulas can create. But the only way you know is if there are studies on the finished product, right, on that finish

Starting point is 00:25:16 formula. So the other thing to look for, this is another red flag. Lots of companies do this. They call it a studied probiotic, clinical research, they'll say. But what that means is one or two of the strains in their formula has studies on it. But there's no studies on the combination. And we know that microbes can knock each other's function out and compete and do all of that. So when you're looking through the company's websites, if they go clinically research probiotic,

Starting point is 00:25:42 and then the clinicals that they're referencing are research on the single strains, then you know that's another red flag as well. Wow. So it's heavily complicated and easy to take advantage of somebody. Because, I mean, I'll look at something like that and it says 100 billion CFUs or whatever on it. I'm immediately going, okay. sweet. This is what I need. I mean, and most people will do that because it is too confusing and they're not going to take the time to look up every single ingredient on the back of those. It just looks like

Starting point is 00:26:13 foreign language. Yeah. So why would one then need to be refrigerated as opposed to one that wouldn't? What's the difference and why is it? I mean, you kind of touched on why it would be negative to refrigerated, but break that down a little bit more so people have an understanding because honestly, for years, people said, well, it doesn't need refrigerated. It can't be good. Yeah, totally. Now, here's where the refrigeration part came in, and this is actually kind of a industry thing to protect brands from being sued, right? So what happened was, you know, all these brands are calling out how many CFUs they have on the product, right? So let's say you formulate a product and you go, okay, we have 30 billion CFUs, and that's the claim you're making on the label and you're making it in your marketing and so on. But you put the product on the shelf and those strains are so weak that they're dying.

Starting point is 00:27:01 in the capsule sitting at 70 degrees, 75 degrees, right? They're that sensitive. And then what was happening is that class action lawyers were picking up these products, testing them and going, hey, it says 30 billion CFUs, but there's only 3 billion when I test it. So then they're suing brands, right, for false advertising. So one of the ways in which brands have overcome that is they're going, well, if we put them in the refrigerator and they remain dormant

Starting point is 00:27:26 because microbes will remain dormant in the refrigerator, right? And then when you take them out, they can start growing again. This is why food doesn't spoil in the refrigerator, the same way it does it at room temperature. And so companies started telling the stores that you have to put the product in the refrigerator, but they made it, they couldn't tell them, of course, put in the refrigerator so we didn't get sued. They said, put it in the refrigerator because that's going to enhance the efficacy, because you're going to deliver more live bacteria. But the big question I had when I first started this is if these strains cannot live at 70 degrees,

Starting point is 00:27:59 in the room temperature, it's 98.6 degrees in the body. How are they going to live there? Right. And so that is like a complete misnomer that if this thing has to be refrigerated, there's no way it's surviving and functioning in the body. If it's that sensitive, right? Now, the spores, this brings up the question of what makes spores different. So spores are these very unique kind of microbes. They're commensal microbes. They live in the gut naturally. And then they transit through often because they go back out into the environment. And the thing is, when they get to the distal end of your colon, because they're leaving the gut, they know that outside can have harsh environments, right? It can be dry, this UV radiation, all of these types of things that can kill microbes. So they go into a spore state.

Starting point is 00:28:43 They actually cover themselves with a thick protein calcified coating, like a armor, like a piece of armor, and then they can go out into the natural environment and then exist there indefinitely. You know, for literally thousands of years. They can just exist that way until we swallow them again. And then they get into the system. And then the moment they hit the intestines, they break out of this protein-covered shell, and then they go to work for you.

Starting point is 00:29:11 And they're like a regular, or live vegetative microbe. So the spores have a unique capability of being able to survive in room temperature, in hotter temperatures than that through UV radiation and all that, too. Okay. So spore is the way to go. that in your view? Generally it is.

Starting point is 00:29:30 Yeah, I mean, you know it's going to be a safe bet, but again, not all spores are created equal. So you need to make sure that you have the right species and the right strain ID and that there's been studies on the finished product. So if a company, again, is calling out one of the strains and then showing studies on one of the strains and not the other ones and not the combination,

Starting point is 00:29:49 really most importantly, then you know that they're not really validating that the product, the formula works. Why is it that most strains don't have that survivability? Why is it that they can't make it all the way to your gut intact and alive? You know, in part because nature did not design them necessarily to leave the body and exist outside and then come back in. So to give you an idea, like some strains, for example, do really well when they are all by themselves in, say, a fermentation capacity. Right. So you take, for example, a lactobacilae and you're fermenting milk with it.

Starting point is 00:30:31 It's a monoculture. So it does well as a monoculture, meaning there aren't a bunch of competitive bacteria. It's doing it under very controlled temperatures and controlled pressures. All of that is like makes it ideal for that strain. It's not robust enough to start throwing in other strains, heating the temperature up, making it more acidic. It doesn't have the cell membrane structure to deal with that. Now, you know, there's, I think everyone's heard of a bacteria called Lactobacillus acidophilus. Acidophilus is lover of acid, right? So it's acid and phyllis, the prefix and suffix there. So they found a version that actually does better under more acidic conditions because it can survive.

Starting point is 00:31:12 So different microbes have different stabilities and different capabilities of dealing with temperature, dealing with pH, dealing with level of dryness and all that. It's based on their physiology. Okay, all right. So we've got that downed. Now, I have another question. And this kind of pertains to the postbiotic because you were talking about in just calm and how it's having this effect on anxiety and stress. And so are you saying, and we kind of got into this on the podcast that we did, are you saying that there is a connection then between something in our gut that's factoring into our stress, our anxiety, and these kind of mental health struggles, then the correlation there

Starting point is 00:31:59 can be treated with some of these bacteria and strains. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the gut-brain axis is one of the best explanations and discoveries around why we actually suffer from mental disorders, right? So this is barring, you know, genetic mutations that create like really bad schizophrenia and things like that. We're talking about more your conventional anxiety, depression, that huge percentages of the population that deal with, brain fog, you know, certain degrees of cognitive dysfunction, so memory loss and all that. Those types of issues are truly a gut brain issue, not just a brain issue. Which is why the strategy, the pharmaceutical strategy, of dealing with things like depression and anxiety, especially depression, with going after just the brain with

Starting point is 00:32:50 things like SSRIs, right? Selective serotonin re-optic inhibitors, they haven't worked, right? Their SSRIs have very little impact better than their placebos. And so, and in fact, in many cases, you can make people worse over time, because the issue is not just in the brain. It's absolutely in the gut and the brain. And unless you deal with the gut, you really can't alleviate that issue in the brain that you're experiencing. The brain is translating the chemistry, right, which is what gives you the feelings, the anxiety, the depression and all that. But the chemistry is between the gut and the brain. Okay. I want to ask you one more question because that makes perfect sense and that correlation. And we talked about that, we're going to do that on a separate episode two,

Starting point is 00:33:39 that whole gut-brain connection. But you know how you said that nature didn't intend for the bacteria to be pulled out and that's why it didn't survive. Do you think that because nature also didn't intend for the types of foods that we're eating, that that's creating the problems. And so we had to figure out a way to counteract and it's like this fight against things that aren't supposed to occur naturally, which has created this added need. Because I have to think that the gut problems and things that are going on are more related to, I don't know, maybe you could go back to Industrial Revolution Time or when things

Starting point is 00:34:15 started to change in the way that things were produced and made. Does that sound right to you or am I just kind of all over the place? No, you're 100% correct about that. I would say that the and this is not hyperbole, you know, I think this is very defensible. I would say that probably the biggest driver of chronic conditions today, all the things that we see is as prevalent as we see has been the change in the food system and not only the introduction of high-processed foods and all that, hypochloric foods, but the elimination of fiber from the food.

Starting point is 00:34:53 And so our microbes aren't being fed. Like when you look at eating ultra-processed foods, I've actually been doing this a little bit in a lecture to doctors that there's two parts of the story that we never talk about the one other part, right? So I'll give you an example. of this, actually, that was in a very interesting study. So when you eat ultra-processed foods, we all know it's bad for you. We all know that they have too many calories, too much sugar more often than not. They're too insuligenic. They're creating insulin spikes and creating

Starting point is 00:35:24 insulin resistance. And there's no nutrition when we think about it from our perspective, right? Meaning there's no great vitamins, minerals, all that stuff that we're supposed to get from food. So as a result, they're bad for you. But the second part of it that we're forgetting is the other reason they're really bad for you. And in some cases, this may be more of the reason they're bad for you, is that they have nothing in them that feeds the microbiome. Yeah. Right. And if you don't feed the microbiome, that becomes the biggest driver of your chronic disease risk, right? Because you lose diversity. You start losing keystone species. Your gut becomes leaky. You start getting chronic low-grade inflammation. Now, here's one study that

Starting point is 00:36:05 kind of demonstrated this. And it was a little bit surprising. So there was a study published by the American College of Gastroenterology, and this was on people with very high sensitivity to gluten, right? And so I'm not remembering if they were fully celiac yet or they were on the road to developing full celiac, but they had very high sensitivity to gluten. Gluten was very inflammatory to them and damaging to the gut. When those individuals, and they took hundreds of hundreds of individuals in the study, when they went on a gluten-free diet, right? In the first two years of being on a gluten-free diet, their mortality risk went up, their heart disease risk went up, and other risk of chronic conditions went way up, right?

Starting point is 00:36:52 And you'd go, wait a minute. So they're gluten-sensitive, gluten is creating leaky gut and dysfunction in them. How is it coming off of gluten, increase their mortality? rate increase their cardiovascular disease risk and all that. The reason is that in the U.S., more than 85 of our fiber intake, the little fiber that we bring in, comes from wheat. Right. And when these people cut out fiber, or when they cut out wheat, they're essentially cutting out fiber. So what this study really showed, what the impact was on your health, if you go for a couple years having a fiber-free diet. And the absence of fiber was more impactful to these individuals

Starting point is 00:37:38 in terms of their health than the presence of gluten, which we know is inflammatory and all that. Right. So that's the part we often forget when we think about poor diets and all that, is that we've eliminated components that are microbiome needs from our industrialized farming practices and so on. Man, I already can't wait to get into the diet stuff with you because I just want to dig into this fiber thing. It's driving me crazy. And I seen the battles that you're having too. And I, I temper myself with going in and I'm not a keyboard warrior because I despise it. So I'm struggling to not go in and like get into it. And like, get into it. I don't want to be what I despise. But it's like, oh. So I can't wait to get into that with you. I know we have a little bit of time less. So I want to cover two more. things real quick with you. The first one briefly, when I found Just Thrive, I really dug in, because I have been approached and talked to so many different places with probiotics, and it just was let down after let down. But I am not a give up guy. I know somebody out there. So one of the things that I found with them was something called HU36 that stood out to me because I looked at it

Starting point is 00:38:51 and I thought, okay, this is different. I don't see this. And then I started to read, but I still don't fully comprehend, and I want to, but it's a standout. I'm very clear of that. Could you just say what that is and why it's on the rarer side and what the benefit is? Yeah, it is an amazing strain, right? So this strain is called bacillus indicus H.U. 36. And what it does, it does a number of things, but the thing that it does that is almost superhero like is it produces a huge variety of carotenoids at the side of absorption in our gut for us, right? So carotenoids are really, really important compounds like, say, asazanthin, lutein, lycopene, alpha-carotene, beta-carotene, right? Things we've all heard about why you're eating carrots is good for your eyes and why, you know,

Starting point is 00:39:36 eating beets can be very healthy. Like it's all the colored components of fruits and vegetables. Yeah. And these things are very powerful antioxidants. They're really important for mitochondrial function, really important for our skin, our brain, our eyes, and everything else. The problem is humans are really bad at absorbing carotenoids from our diet. diet. So we absorbed less than 10% of caratenoid tumor diet. In fact, there was a study done on pure beta-carotene as a supplement, and they found that less than 10% of it was absorbed. Now, this became an interesting study. It was called a European Color Spore Consortium Study. There were 80 different research institutes involved in this, and this was going on from the mid-2000s all the way

Starting point is 00:40:19 up to about 2010. And what they were doing is they were trying to figure out how animals in the animal kingdom that express a lot of color on their skin, where are they getting their carotenoids from, right? So think about the orange band around shrimp or the pink color that salmon have or even the pink coats or the flamingos. Yeah. Right? And everyone knows, flamingos eat brine shrimp, and that's how you get the pink color.

Starting point is 00:40:43 But what's in the brine shrimp? Because the brine shrimp aren't pink, right? So all of it is driven by microbes that they have in their gut. And the microbes produce such high levels of caratnoids that you could see it on the skin of the animals. So then the hypothesis was maybe humans also needed microbes because it was really bad at absorbing carotenoids. And that's where this strain was discovered. So this thing goes in and becomes a carotenoid factory in your gut for you. If you were to take supplemental beta-carotene, acesanthens, zazanthin, lycopene, lutein, alpha-carotene,

Starting point is 00:41:20 if you took six or seven of them, it would cost you about $350 a month, and you'd absorb 10% of it, right? This strain is sitting there producing clinically relevant levels of these caratnoids for you right at the side of absorption. Oh, and there's one more study we did. I should mention this. I did it in dermatology study. So we know that caratnoids are very important for protecting the skin, right? It protects it from UV radiation or all the oxidative stress, skin cancers and all these crazy things that can happen.

Starting point is 00:41:50 And then also from blue light irradiation from our screens, right? And so we did a study to see if taking H.U.36 can increase skin caratnoid levels in a measurable way. And we saw in 30 days a significant increase in skin caratnoid levels just by taking the 8-2-36. So it is an absolute carotnoid factory in your gut for you. Okay. All right. I love it. Thank you for breaking that down because I read quite a bit, but it wasn't super clear to me. And I like to look for things that are special and make something stand out. So super, super informative. One last question for you. And this is one where it gets a little tricky because again, this is down to marketing and product placement and different

Starting point is 00:42:40 offerings. If you had to say something else that you would recommend or a few things to take with your probiotics, I started to take a couple things, daily gut detox, digestive bitters, things that I had never taken. Honestly, never did any of them at all. I was always very fearful of doing any kind of detox whatsoever. And I never really thought to take anything else other than the probiotic or the prebiotic in the post. Can you maybe discuss those? if you think I'm taking the right things or what you recommend as add on and what kind of benefits you can also get alongside. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:43:18 So the Daily Gut detox is a really, really great one. I use that all the time. I especially use it when I travel. Now, the term says detox, but don't think of it as a detoxifying type of process, right? Which can be harsh on the system and it can create more problems. What it actually is, are there are IgG immunoglobulins that actually come from a bovine source. So it comes from cows, and it's a huge array of immunoglobulins from cows that can bind to lots of different things. These immunoglobulins can bind to, like, mold, for example, or viruses or dysfunctional bacteria or toxins from the environment.

Starting point is 00:43:55 So taking that on a daily basis, what you're doing is you're reducing the toxicogenic load for your microbiome, right? Because inevitably, we're bringing in toxins, right? Every food we eat, everything we drink, there's toxins coming in. And as a result of that, the microbiome has to deal with those toxins. So what you're doing, and the microbiome and your liver, both of those are kind of dealing with the toxins. And so what you're doing is kind of lending a helping hand to that by binding a lot of those things up through the immunoglobulins and then taking them out through defecation. Now, it's important to note that immunoglobulins are not a general binder like you think of that just grabs everything. These are antibodies that have very specific targets.

Starting point is 00:44:36 So the antibodies specifically bind to an alpha toxin from mold, for example, or specifically to a type of virus or specifically to a type of bacteria that's dysfunctional and then it takes it out of the system. So it's a way of, you know, in this toxic world that we inevitably live in to lend a hand to our microbiome, to our immune system, to our liver, to bring down the toxicogenic load so they have less to deal with. Got it. Okay, sweet. When I saw that, I'm looking at it and I'm thinking, is this going to be some. something that like you said that I should take for travel. Is it going to boost my immune system? And I actually, Dr. Sean Drake brought it to me. So amazing. Yes. When I got sick and I was actually in the emergency room, I couldn't stop throwing up. And he came to see me and he called me. Well, actually my wife called him when we

Starting point is 00:45:25 were at the emergency room. And he brought that over to me to start taking. And, you know, it was one of those things that was a real big help to me. And then as I would have it, then I met you guys and it was just, you know, God's timing, man. You know how it worked. So what about the digestive bitters? That's the other one that I'm taking. What is that for people that are listening? Because I have a special offer for everybody too. I've been taking it almost three months, not quite. And it's a staple for me. And I'll tell you how I take it. And then you tell me if I'm doing it right. So I take every big meal, like I said, I take one of the probiotics and two of the bitters when I have a big meal. Yeah. Yeah. That's exactly how you take it.

Starting point is 00:46:05 You want to take the bitters about, you know, let's say 10 to 15 minutes before the meal. If you remember, if not take away the first bites of food, no problem. Now, bitters aren't impacting the microbiome in any significant way directly. But what they do, which is so critical, is they turn on all of the digestive switches in your gut. Right. So about 50% of all the digestive switches, that is turning on the hydrochloric acid, turning on the bile production, turning on the bile reabsorption, turning on the pain, all of these things that need to happen for your body to properly utilize the food require activation by bitter compounds.

Starting point is 00:46:42 And we have no bitters in our food, right? This, again, this goes back to the food issue and why the food change. We have completely cultivated bitter compounds out of our food. And as a result, when we eat, we're not activating up to 50 of the digestive signals, which is not surprising that people get bloated and distended and have all the, these GI issues because you're not breaking down the food properly, right? And then the partially broken down components of food linger in the gut for too long, and then they can putify, and they can become, you know, turn into toxic, toxiconic compounds, and the bowels aren't moving appropriately

Starting point is 00:47:21 and all that. All of those things require signaling from bitters. And so digestion, think bitters. You need them. We all need them because we're not eating bitter compounds. Absolutely. All right. So they don't taste bitter by the way it's just a capsule that you take so if anybody's worried about that now i i actually drink them with apple cider vinegar because i have a shot before so that i get i get my bitter in there with it but yep they they actually i've noticed a significant difference because i only have one or two meals a day so they're bigger and you know not that i have bad digestion but sometimes when you do that it it hits you wrong certain days and i feel a heck of a lot better ever since i started taking them so the impact is there for sure for sure it's a very

Starting point is 00:48:03 important for the digestive system. Excellent. So that's episode one. This was amazing. So thank you for coming. I'm so jacked to talk about the food stuff. But I wanted to do this first because I think this is the most confusing. And it's kind of like foundationally what you need to start with first before we get into everything else.

Starting point is 00:48:25 So I really appreciate your breakdown and the ease in which you do it and the calm voice that you have. It's just easy to listen to, man. So I really appreciate it. Thank you so much, my friend. Thank you so much for having me. It's an absolute passion of mine to share this information with people because gut health is whole health, right? So without your gut, you really can't achieve really strong outcomes and you can't

Starting point is 00:48:48 be there for your family and friends and your career and all of that. So it impacts everything. And so if I can share some, get some people to make some changes and improve their health. It's an amazing blessing for me. So thank you so much for making it happen. You're stuck with me now, man. I've got you here with me. You're signed on to this invisible imaginary contract with me for this series.

Starting point is 00:49:09 I love it. I'm in. I'm in 100%. All right. So my friends at Just Thrive, they have a special for everybody. And I would highly encourage you to take advantage of this because it is an absolute steal. When you start a 90-day subscription to the probiotic, which you should be doing anyway, you're going to get 90 days free of the digestive bidder.

Starting point is 00:49:30 So that's $90 free. and it's a no-brainer to me. I mean, you should be taking the probiotic anyway, so sign up for 90 days, get locked in, get the bidders for free. Very simple. I'm going to put the link down in the description. All you got to do is clink on it

Starting point is 00:49:45 and go in and get what you need. It's just thrivehealth.com slash Dylan. Sign up, get taken care of, get that added bonus. You'll never want to stop taking them. So, Karan, my man, thank you so much for the time today. We'll look forward to part two. well, it's a part three for us, but part two in our new series, when we get into the entire way to properly get gut health through your diet.

Starting point is 00:50:11 I appreciate it. Thank you so much. Thank you, my friend. That wraps up another one, everybody. Stay tuned for Part 2 coming soon. Dylan Jameli and Karan Christian, signing off.

The Dylan Gemelli Podcast - Episode #157: The COMPLETE Guide to Probiotics Featuring Kiran Krishnan!

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