The Liz Moody Podcast - How To Optimize Your Gut Microbiome To Heal Your Whole Body: Foods, Supplements, Lifestyle Practices and More with Ara Katz

Episode Date: April 18, 2022

My guest today is Ara Katz, the co-founder and co-founder and co-CEO of Seed Health, a microbiome science company pioneering innovations in probiotics and living medicines to impact human and planetary health, and my personal daily synbiotic of choice. She’s one of the most knowledgeable people I’ve ever spoken to about the microbiome, and we die in deep here. We get into: what a microbiome actually is what the metabolome is, and why it’s so important in the future of gut health how to know when you should be treating your gut microbiome to impact your skin, oral health, etc (versus your skin or mouth directly) the conditions that probiotics won’t help with the age that your microbiome stops developing why some people are more prone to allergies, autoimmune conditions, and more how much you can change your microbiome in your adult life how to tell if your microbiome is in good shape exactly how modern society has changed our gut microbiome the best diet for your microbiome WHY we have to take probiotics, when historically, they weren’t even available what everyone gets wrong about how probiotics actually work in your body what happens when you stop taking a probiotic the best and worst foods for your gut microbiome the best lifestyle practices for your gut microbiome This episode is sponsored by Seed. You can get 15% off your first month’s supply of Seed’s DS-01™ Daily Synbiotic or their new DS-08™ Pediatric Daily Synbiotic by going to https://seed.com and using the code LIZMOODY. Healthier Together cover art by Zack. Healthier Together music by Alex Ruimy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello, friends, and welcome back to the Healthier Together podcast. I'm your host, Liz, Moody, and I'm a cookbook author and long-time journalist. If you're thinking like, whoa, Liz, it's not Wednesday. Why am I getting an episode today? Well, you are right. Today is a bonus episode that's all about the microbiome. Seed has been a longtime partner of the podcast, and I decided it was high time to bring on the co-founder and co-CEO, Eric Katz. But lest you think that this episode is just going to be selling you seed, let me reassure you,

this is less salesy than 99% of the non-founder guest that I have on. In fact, Eric Hoshan's skepticism about the hype around probiotics more than almost anyone I have ever met, and she has a refreshingly honest point of view about what role they play in our life. I wanted this to be one of the most comprehensive episodes about the microbiome ever, and really break down some actionable steps that you can do today that will make a real difference in your overall health. We talk about what a microbiome actually is, what the metabolome is and why it's so important in the future of gut health.

How to know when you should be treating your gut microbiome to impact your skin, oral health, and more versus your skin or mouth directly. The conditions that probiotics won't help with. Why some people are more prone to allergies, autoimmune conditions, and more. How much you can change your microbiome in your adult life? How to tell if your microbiome is in good shape? The best diet for your microbiome? What everyone gets wrong about how probiotic?

actually work in your body, the best and worst foods for your gut microbiome, the best lifestyle practices for your gut microbiome, and so much more. When it comes to the microbiome era is one of the most knowledgeable people I have truly ever spoken to. A little bit about her. She is obviously the co-founder and co-CEO of Seed Health, a microbiome science company pioneering innovations in probiotics and living medicines to impact human and planetary health, and my personally daily symbiotic of choice. ERA's work has encompassed work at the intersection of health, consumer tech, media, and design. She has led award-winning work in science communication and storytelling under the seed brand,

and her efforts have earned accolades such as fast companies' world-changing ideas in 2019, 2020, and 2021, Times Best Inventions, 2018, and various accolades for marketing, design, and science communication initiatives. Most recently, she authored a kid's book of, about your microbiome to introduce the next generation of kids and their grownups to the microbiome and offer a powerful new framework for kids to understand their bodies and how the choices that we make impact our health. ERA is also a co-founder of Seed Health's Environmental Division, Seed Labs, and Luca Biologic, Seed Health's Women's Health Venture in partnership with Dr. Jacques Ravel,

which develops living medicines targeting the vaginal microbiome for unmet medical needs in neurogenital and reproductive health. If you do want to try seed for yourself, which I highly recommend, it has honestly changed my life. You can use my code Liz Moody for 15% offseeds DS01 daily symbiotic or PDS-O-8 pediatric daily symbiotic. Again, that's code Liz Moody for 15% off seeds DSO-1 daily symbiotic or their new PDS-O-8 pediatric daily symbiotic. Now, let's get into all Things Microbiome with ERA Katz. All right. I am here with ERACats, the founder of Seed.

I am so excited to talk to you today, ERA. So thank you so much for taking the time to join me on the podcast. Thank you so much for having me. Amazing. So we're going to talk about all things microbiome, which I think is a very trendy, but very confusing topic for a lot of people. So let's just dive right in. In layman's terms, as if I were like five years old, what is a microbiome?

Well, a microbiome is the collection or community of microbes that reside either in and around or on the body, which is the human microbiome. It could be resident to a specific environment, like the soil. So some people have heard of like the soil microbiome. It could even be a coral reef. So really it's constrained to saying it's a community of microorganisms that live in on and around a specific area and that have. evolved and or exists there to perform very specific functions in the health of that environment or host. So really the best way to think about it, and for the human body, especially just because that's, I think, where most people hear about it today, the microbiome

is the community of trillions of microorganisms that includes bacteria, fungi, can viruses, but again, the reason I think bacteria, there are about 38 trillion of your microbes or bacteria. but in the human body, which is crazy, the microbiome makes up about 50% of your cell count. So if you just imagine that like 50% of the cells in your body are like not human, which is crazy. They live in on and around our body. That's the human microbiome.

But what you're talking about when you said like, oh, the microbiome's kind of trendy, what people usually interchange the word with these days is gut health. And that's for a couple of reasons. The first is that's where the majority of the research and the field started. the second, which is a good reason, is that it's the most diverse microbiome of the human body, mouth being the second after that. So it's the densest, it's where the most amount of microbes congregate,

and it's where the most diverse amount of species exist in the human body, which is in the gut and the GI tract. So that's why it's kind of used interchangeably. But technically the microbiome is all the microbes that live in on and around the human body. And that includes fungi, too. that's really interesting. I always for some reason, like, really focused in on the idea of bacteria. I almost thought biome, like, was related to the word bacteria, which I'm like, maybe that's not true. But it's a bunch of things other than just bacteria.

Basically, microorganisms, which fall into different classifications. But the truth is that the majority of the field today has focused on bacteria because it makes up such a large percentage of the microbiome. And that's where a lot of this research and science is today. There are a lot of people looking at the fungi. There are a lot of people starting to think about what they call the vireome, which is the collection of viruses. And actually most interestingly, not to confuse anybody, because I know this is not for the five-year-olds,

but where the field is heading, which I'm sure we'll get into as we keep talking, is actually less obsessed with the microbiome, which is what's living there, but actually the metabolome, which is what are those microbes doing? what are they metabolizing? And so the metabolone is the collection and your community of the metabolites with the function of what these microbes are actually doing versus which ones are actually there or not there. Interesting. So just thinking I had a little bit, the metabolism would include prebiotics because that's what the probiotics know. Okay. No, the metabolon are more

the metabolites that microbes are producing and they're metabolizing different compounds. So some of those compounds could be prebiotic. There are some substrates or compounds that come from prebiotics that a microbe may take and then, for example, metabolize something from. And I think what's really interesting is we're going to start to learn a lot more about the importance of the metabolites. We're already learning about it in a number of different areas. We're going to make some announcements in the next few months about incredibly interesting research looking not just at stool, but looking at blood and other biomarkers where the metabolites are present and what that's going to mean for the future of the field of microbiome as well as obviously for probiotics.

So for the best way to think about it today is we've really focused in the beginning of the field of microbiome was very obsessed with which microbes are in there, particularly bacteria. And now we're moving to a place of, well, if we know different microbes can do the same thing, it's kind of less about which ones are there, but more about what their actual function is. And I think that's really interesting. And that's where a lot of the field is headed. Could you give us like a little sneak preview of how having that type of information might play out for a normal person living their life? Sure. I mean, everything from being able to understand the production of micronutrient and synthesis, which you can't produce certain vitamins. For example, like you can't make vitamin K folate. You can't make certain B vitamins without microbes in your body.

You can't make it endogenously. You can't make it with your human part. The production of short chain fatty acids, maybe people in your community have heard of things like buterate. or propitiate or acetate. So these are fatty acids, short chains, fatty acids that are produced by microbes that are incredibly important to all kinds of aspects of your health butrate is a great example.

It's kind of like a fuel source for your epithelial cells as an example, which is people know about like leaky gut or the importance of the integrity of your gut walls. These are really important compounds that are made not by your human self, but by microbes as just one example. The more forward-looking research example

would be that in gut brain research, Dr. Sarkis Mazmagnan from Caltech, who's on our board and scientific board, and with whom we collaborate, he identified microbe that makes a very specific metabolite that they have correlated and are looking at using for the treatment of, in his research for therapeutics in autism. So they're going to start to not just look at taking the microbe to do something, but they're actually going to start to look at the metabolite for small molecule therapies for very specific disease conditions. So would the idea be that someday we're going to be able to take metabolites directly versus taking things that influence how our microbiome metabolizes things? There'll be different approaches. And it depends what it will be. I think the metabolites will

mostly be for like small molecule therapies and those will go through like phase drug trials. Interesting. Okay. So you said that our gut microbiome is our biggest microbiome. And we have all these other microbiomes that we've heard of. We talked about on our asht, the dentists. edition of the podcast, our oral microbiome and how incredibly important that is. I know that the vaginal microbiome is very important. Our skin microbiome is very important. So how does your gut microbiome interact with all of these different microbiomes on your body? I should have even mentioned that. It's a great point, actually, which is that there are these different axes that are being studied. So for example, I just brought up the gut brain microbiome axis, which is really that interplay,

that two-way highway that exists between the gut and the brain and the microbiome. I would say it's not a uniform. Like the gut is not necessarily connected to every single microbiome in your body. So I think that gets a little sensationalized. But there are very important axes that it is connected to. Some of the ones that, you know, the gut brain obviously is one that I think has also just become a little bit trendy. I think there's some big correlations and big things being said in certain worlds that I think

the evangelism is a little bit ahead of the evidence. But nonetheless, I think it's certainly the awareness of that interplay between the gut and the brain is something that is going to continue to only reveal itself further. There's things like the gut skin axis that I think other people have heard of particularly who have autoimmune conditions or things like eczema or isis atopic dermatitis where we know that there's certain inflammatory pathways that trigger, you know, that are connected between the gut and the skin that when triggered, contribute to the development of some of these skin conditions or like an inflammatory response. By the way, that doesn't mean that there aren't also topical ways of modulating the skin microbiome that don't modulate the gut skin access that can still be impactful. And that's where a lot of the skin microbiome research has also headed. Yeah, that's what I was kind of wondering is like I don't think we can probably directly impact our brain.

So it makes sense that you would want to treat your gut to treat the gut brain access, etc. But like with your skin, you can do topical things with your oral microbiome. You can do things that directly treat your oral microbiome. So how do you kind of know when you should be treating the gut part of the access versus the other parts of the axis, if that makes sense? There might be instances, for example, with specific types of acne where it might be both. There might be instances where maybe with something like eczema and depending on what developmental stage, if it's a baby versus someone with a steady state microbiome, the answer might be both. It might be one. One might be for more the dampening of symptoms and comfort.

Like, for example, in the topical world, that could still be. moduli in the skin microbiome, it just may not actually be going after maybe like a specific pathway, for example, from a gut skin perspective. I would say that my answer would depend very much on a, where is the research today? And what is the very specific condition you're talking about? Because there is no one universal way to say that. I can tell you for certain, the notion that you could take oral probiotics for vaginal health is an area that I think, again, has been incredibly sensationalized, whereas I don't think we've seen any really compelling data outside of the vaginal application of probiotics to modulate the vaginal microbiome in a way that would be

meaningful. So it's very hard to understand how taking oral supplementation of probiotics through the GI tract would modulate the vaginal microbiome. Obviously, there's compounds in things like de manos that are sugars that people take for things like UTI that obviously can interact with or inhibit things like E. coli. but that's because they're being urine. That just happens during the urinating out versus things like the vaginal microbrin, like I think that's an area where we're pretty clear that we think the vaginal application of microbes is going to be far more effective than the research.

Okay. So if you have like a yeast infection reaching for a gut supplement, wouldn't necessarily be the first line of defense. Yeasts are different than bacterial infections, but certainly for something like UTI, I think, that's where we feel our bacterial vaginosis or even things like preterm birth or fertility or post-menstruation or post-sex restoration of the vaginal microbiome. I think that's where we feel there'll be a lot of promise in the localized application of microbes. And then obviously the science is kind of continuing. This is a hard one because it can also exist in other places.

Yeah. But for the other conditions that I mentioned, I think that's where we kind of believe there's like a huge opportunity for the localized application versus wasting money on anything like orally that says it would affect your badge of myromo. It was interesting to me that you mentioned at what stage of life you are. I think that's something that I haven't heard much about in terms of your microbiome. Is there a point where your microbiome is kind of like more developing and more set? Absolutely. And our name comes seed.

our name was derived from the biological process of seeding, which is basically the very first exposure that a infant has to microbes, which is the beginning of their microbiome. And so there's a lot of interesting research about the role of the maternal microbiome, the metabolites that moms have circulating in the amniotic fluid. And for a long time, people thought the womb was totally sterile. but what we're starting to understand is that while there may not be like a huge microbial mass or population in the prenatal stages we know that like the mother's diet and the mother's microbiome and then certainly at birth where the majority of that that mother load happens from the vaginal

canal from fecal matter and from skin and then of course immediately from environment is where the initial seeds are kind of the majority that this kind of first mother load comes into contact with the infant there are prenatal factors that impact this too. That big load, first load of microbes happens at birth. C-section or vaginal, by the way, just looks a little bit different. And then over time, that microbiome through and different scientists say different things through what people debate between three and six years old is basically almost entirely environmentally shaped. So you first get that seeding, rest milk is the initial fertilization.

about third of carbohydrates and breast milk are not even digestible, nor are they for the human part of the baby. They're only for their microbes to flourish. That's interesting. Which is fascinating, if you think about the way evolution has beautifully co-evolved us in our microbial parts. And then, you know, everything from environment, exposure to nature, whether you have pets, what you clean your house with, what's on your skin, hygiene, whether or not the child has antibiotics in the first few years of life, environments they're exposed to what other kind of different exposures, particularly for children that live in more rural or agricultural areas versus if you live in the built environment, all of those factors contribute to what becomes

basically the blueprint of your microbiome and what you call it the development of a steady state microbiome at that window of somewhere between three and, as I said, scientist debate between three and six, but I'm going to say between three and five around. And all of those factors, then what we're starting to understand and where there's a lot of really good research is that that blueprint impacts basically your health journey for life. But in the developmental window, there are things that can go very wrong that lead to the result of, I think, what we're seeing today, which is a prevalence of things like seasonal and food allergies, autoimmune conditions, particularly in asthma, at a rate in children that really is just only rising.

Okay, so I'm listening to this and I'm like, I was raised during a time where they doled out antibiotics like candy. I was a C-section baby and you said there is certain bacteria there, but they certainly weren't doing the stuff they're doing now, like swabbing me or anything like that. How much can I change things now in my adult life and how much am I kind of like going to be behind the pack for my whole life because of my childhood? Everyone always asked this question. They're basically like, oh my God, I'm fucked. Honestly, though. I'm like, eh, mom, like, hello. So I think there's a few things. I think the first thing is the over sensationalization sometimes of C-section versus vaginal, which also carries a lot of shame for people who now are learning about

this stuff or, you know, they didn't have a choice from medical or health perspective. And look, at the end of the day, there's so many other factors that impact the microbiome. And actually in the presence of breastfeeding and the absence of antibiotics in the first 18 months, they actually start to see the microbiomes of infants that are vaginally born versus C-section converge, which is really interesting. Then the next question is, oh, I'm fucked because I was C-section and I was formula fed and breastfeed and like antibiotics. And so the truth is, is that that those things can be very disruptive in the early windows. The other factors that I mentioned could be very well supported. And whether your parents knew it or not just by having dogs, right?

Like just by the way that like people were kind of more naturally making certain decisions that they probably didn't realize were good and or bad for your microbiome. But for the most part, yes, it definitely makes you, there's a susceptibility increase, I think, is what we're seeing from the research to some of the conditions I mentioned. I think we're learning a lot more. We don't have the kind of longitudinal studies for today from birth to 30 years old, but we are coming up on data sets that are like 10 to 15 years old now, where I think we're starting to learn, of course, a tremendous amount. In the same way that those factors were so important in the developmental windows, they're also important in the way that you think about

your health as an adult. And I think we know that the microbiome, which is really interesting, I think the last count put the genomic kind of contribution to the microbiome at less than 2%, which means that almost 98% of the microbiome is environmental, is the nurture, not the nature. Yeah. The coolest thing about microbiome is going back to your opening statement about why it's so you say trendy. We say like the zero to one, right, which is that it is this whole, you know, it's not charcoal lemonade.

It is a new framework for biology that if you think about we only, understood 50% of ourselves until now, we only understood a small percentage of the genes that are being expressed, albeit human genes are probably one to one more important than the microbial genes. But nonetheless, they express, I think, 300 times the amount of genes in our human genes, which is fascinating if you think about just so much of the picture we didn't have until now. Yeah. And I think there's so many factors that the fact that that 98% leaves open, and yes, there could have been disruptions in the blueprint that make you more susceptible. But we know how critical diet is.

We know how critical avoidance of non-discriminate use of antibiotics can be. We know how important being in nature and being around, but diverse microbial ecosystems can be. And I think we know that there's things that like in a lot of our modern medications that can be really disruptive. And we know the basic stuff even without knowing anything about the microbiome, about sugar and processed foods, omega-6s, lack of omega-3s. I mean, so many things that we know that are intuitive even for our human selves are incredibly important in the nurturing of that

ecosystem to function well, even if you were susceptible to some of the blueprint of glitches early on that you kind of had no control over. And we'll get into all of the dietary lifestyle changes and all of that down the line for sure. But I'm curious, first, is there any data about just how malleable your gut, your microbiome, all of that is as an adult? There's amazing stuff. I mean, look, they'll show a microbiome change and respond to the stress of a crowded elevator. So it's like that little of something. Your microbiome then is shifting. I think a lot of people are like, am I taking a probiotic? It might not. And I'm eating fermented food or am I not? But you're like, our microbiome is shifting and changing literally all the time, basically.

You'll see it's why some of the fecal sampling and a lot of these kits things are a little bit not as predictive often and have less actionable information just because of how valuable it can be. I think one of the other interesting data points you asked about researcher, like I think there are some interesting studies about immigrants to the United States from, for example, like Southeast Asia, where within three weeks of being in the United States, their microbiome completely changed just based on diet, just being on a Western diet. I mean, you definitely really see areas where also travel, like when we travel to the different places, you know, we're exposed to microbes that we didn't necessarily evolve with and new foods, new places, new people, new microbial communities, new environments. And then, of course, things like you just take a few courses of antibiotics. And of course, you'll see, like, major changes for sure, because those are kind of non-discriminating in terms of good versus bad. Yeah, for sure. Okay, so our microbiome, how can we get a general idea of whether it's like in good shape overall or not? You said that you don't love the sort of stool sample test. Are there signs we can look out for? Are there any tests that you do like? It's not like not like. It's what can you actually derive from them today? Yeah.

in the way that they're sampled that could be immediately actionable for somebody, whereas there are definitely markers, for example. So like the human microbiome project, which was initiated by the NIH under Obama administration, was like $173 million plus initiative, which for the NIH is probably, I think, one of the biggest they've ever done. And, you know, that was interesting because they really set out to say what is a healthy microbiome. And what got answered in that is that, well, there is no one healthy microbiome.

There isn't this like if you have this much of this or this much of this, which is why I was talking earlier about, it's not always like what's there. It's like what they're doing. Right. But I think in general what emerged from that was a consensus. And I think this is pretty true in a lot of the science, although I think we're going to start to see some interesting exceptions in the coming years. That diversity and what they call alpha richness.

which, you know, makes sense. If you looked at a rainforest that was really unhealthy, and I had been subject to deforestation, and there were like four trees remaining, you wouldn't be looking at that and thinking, wow, what a healthy, resilient ecosystem. Right. The way if you were looking at like a beautiful lush rainforest

that was diverse and full of like different species, kind of co-evolving and kind of coexisting in a single ecosystem. And so what came out of that was the markers of diversity, which we know greatly contributed to and richness. And for everyone saying, wait, so wait, so you have this blueprint, but then you can change your microbiome. I don't get it. There's an aspect of kind of resilience that you could think about when you think about

that, how to get that, which is when you have a healthy foundation and you started off from like the right place, the perturbances and the stresses that come in and out of our lives over the course of our health journeys and our health span, it's also having that healthy foundation is what allows you to go back to a place of homeostasis faster. Whereas when you have a less sturdy foundation, that's when even the smallest dressers, in some cases, things like allergens, things that trigger, mistrigger or misfire immune responses were more susceptible to those because we didn't start from like, we didn't pour the foundation correctly, if that makes sense. It doesn't mean that you have to necessarily develop those

things because there's really healthy ways that you can be kind of what you're talking about already. Even with a weaker foundation, you can be building on that foundation mindfully, thoughtfully, and being very careful and then still having like health, whatever way you describe that and being fairly resilient. But that is a conscious function of making like good choices and really understanding the impacts and implications of when you bring stressors in to a weak foundation. Right. So hopefully that's a good way of like kind of.

I mean it because sometimes you say that like steady state thing and then you say you can change your microbiome and then people kind of are like, wait a second, how do I think about this? Right. Exactly. No, I think that makes a lot of sense. I think one of the things I'm wondering though is if you are having XMA or skin condition or I struggle with anxiety, it's a huge thing in my life. How do you know when you should be going for your gut as a thing that you should be treating to treat those things? Or should all of us just be kind of going for our gut all the time? When you start to understand the interconnectedness that you called out earlier, and you start to understand the both known and unknown systemic kind of connections as well as general bodily,

biological and immune and other functions that this ecosystem supports, I would say that we need to think of the microbiome is like, it's you. It's not this like separate thing. It's an interdependent part of you in the same way that like it's like saying to me should I just be eating healthy food when I have an anxiety attack or should I just be eating healthy food all the time and therefore I think when I feel better and I'm taking care of my body I experience anxiety differently. So I think I would just put it through the same framework. It's not like one specific thing for something as multifactorial as anxiety. Yeah. Or as challenging as particularly certain neuropsychiatric conditions or autoimmune conditions are, there isn't just like this one answer

where you're just like, just take care of your gut and your Hashimoto's is just going to totally go away. However, I would say when you do start to understand the importance of the microbiome, I mean, it's like saying, should I take care of 50% of myself? Right. I have the time and then still expect my anxiety to be not triggered. It is such a huge part. I often tell a lot of men that I speak to about the microbiome. It's like the closest they'll ever feel to being pregnant.

because it's like just stewardship of this whole organ and this part of you that needs to function and that you need to keep healthy is like the closest I think like a man will ever feel to being pregnant where you have this like baby inside you that like everything you're taking in you're thinking about is this good for my baby obviously for different reasons but it's an interesting framework that I think when you can really start to understand the importance of this that it is not a trend and that the more and more increasingly what we are starting to understand is that it is a key critical and in some cases probably one of the most important areas of your health that you can actually unlike your genome, which you can't go to Whole Foods and buy anything

for your genome today at least, where you actually could have a tremendous agency over your health. Can you explain to me how our microbiomes have changed? over time. I think a lot of people have the idea of like, oh, if it is this hugely critical thing, why did we not need to take probiotics like 100 years ago or 200 years ago or something like that? Sure. Well, I mean, I think it would be good to separate the question between how they've changed over time and keep probiotics kind of a little bit separately because you could say everything, you could say everything from why we need to eat certain prebiotics or fibers. I will answer the question about probiotics, but it's important to understand that the way that

modern society. One of our advisors, Dr. Martin Blazer, wrote a great book called Missing Microbes. And for anyone in your community, which I'm sure there are many who are environmentalists and understand the notion of biodiversity and the very sad maps that you can look at for how species are disappearing and going extinct, you can just map that exact idea onto the microbiome, our microbiome. We at seed disaffectionally call this the climate change of our insides, which is basically the notion that we used to both had far more limited exposure to all kinds of things that impact our microbiomes. We were not being born C-section and being dosed antibiotics within these critical windows of life at the way the level

that we are, nor were we consuming antibiotics at the tune of 251 million prescriptions a year in the United States alone, by the way, over half of which, by the way, for things that are not bacterials, which is part of the problem. That's wild. Like people going in for viral infections and getting antibiotics. Oh my God, that's wild. 100%. It's more than wild.

It's what's leading to end of microbial resistance, which is a whole other episode. No, that's awful. No. It is interesting because I'm very much like, yes, take antibiotics when they're necessary. Like, they've saved so many lives. But it is absolutely insane that that many of them are going to not even a purpose that they were designed for. I mean, look, the indiscriminate use of antibiotics, when they're not needed, the use of medications, like NSAIDs, like anti-inflammatories, ant acids, which of course are all the results of these, of course, the board poor and declining dietary conditions, the disproportionate amount of omega-6s that we're getting from fast foods and processed foods and all the vegetable oils, the complete lack of fiber in the Western diet, which is a critical factor. That is the food and substrate.

for microbes to be able to proliferate, as well as they use certain prebiotic fibers to be able to create some of the compounds we were talking about earlier. Our move to cities and out of nature and away from microbial exposure, increased travel, or just carrying microbes indiscriminately all over the earth, which of course we never did before. I was wondering, though, if that would be like a good thing, though, if diversity is sort of one of the only things we know is so good. It can be, but it's also, you're just asking me what's changed.

It's not to necessarily say that all of the things I'm saying are bad. It's just to say that there are changes in lifestyle and the ways that we used to live where a rich microbial diverse environment where you were just moving around kind of within very close proximity to where you lived, you weren't getting on planes and you weren't getting exposed to different ventilation systems. You weren't exposing your lungs and your lung access to all kinds of new compounds and new cleaning products from around the world. And it was a time, I think, depending on where you're looking,

that we were experiencing less information and less stressors that were coming in, as well as the fact that we were cultivating, obviously not consciously because we didn't know about it, but through the way that our diets were, these very diverse and rich microbound that obviously had a lot of resilience. But also we're not in the same way that getting around the world, world and being exposed to microbes is a good thing maybe from increasing diversity and of course immune training. You're also exposed to pathogens that you never would have been, you know,

exposed to maybe otherwise too. And so what has happened is that we've really like the climate change our insights analogy is that we've lost so many species and a lot of the diverse species that you might have seen present long time ago or no longer. We are not seeing the kind of diversity and resilience that we did then for a lot of the reasons we've already discussed. And look, those were not times where we died of non-communicable diseases. I mean, we die now of things that you can't catch. That's like, think about that from a human history perspective. People used to die from things you could catch, right? Poor sewage, poor hygiene, close proximity of living, easy for pathogens to pass from one person to another. Now we have type two diabetes. We have

cardiovascular disease, right? And so a lot of that is being correlated now with the rise of or the decline of the ecosystem internally that used to, of course, be great regulator plus, of course, the new environmental stressors. It's hard to say what I'm saying. And then there's a lot of people who then deify the past and say, see, we need to be eating soil microbes because we need to get back to when we just took food out of the ground. And there's a lot of lot of deification of like ways that past civilizations lived as if it's better, which I think sometimes from a scientific perspective can also not necessarily be the way to look at this in black and white. But today, I think I always ask people who deify all

like a lot of the older like frameworks of medicine and how they used to eat then. I was like, well, if you're going to pick that out, I hope you're also looking at how women were treated at that time. So you can't like just pluck one little chair, take one little thing out of history and say like, see, this is how it used to be as if it was idealic. Ask anyone how many women died in childbirth at that time, right? Right. For all the people who are like, you know, you have to give birth with like Palisanto and in a forest, which is, if you read the real history of women's health, not actually, I would always went down. There are so many of those factors. And then to your question about

probatics, I would say there's a few things. Diet and nutrition. nutrition being the most important lever. Obviously, for what we do, of course, we work in the field of microbes and probiotics, but I wouldn't want to speak about that prior to speaking about the importance of diet and plant fiber and a lot of the compounds that we know can contribute to a healthy microbiome. So that's probably like why we have to eat more of those these days and why in some cases supplementation is important. Things like probiotics are interesting. I think the question inherently that you're asking works from a little bit of an erroneous understanding or assumption that somehow probiotics have to colonize to work, like as if they repopulate your gut.

And I think people are always like, okay, is there a point where it's populated and I can stop taking them or something like that? That's where the narrative of the field started, which was a bit of a relic of the dairy industry using specific lactobacilliae that were being used in fermentation. in your question of like, how do you explain these things to a five-year-old? I wish probiotics worked that way. I wish we were so confident that that was the mechanism by which probiotics work. But the truth is that there's thousands of strains of microbes,

millions probably were still discovering, a specific amount today of where the science is, that you can take a very specific strain in that most cases of probiotics, they're bacteria, where you understand that a very specific dosage of a very specific strain can be measured for a very specific end point in human health. The idea that you just like take probiotics to repopulate your gut is fundamentally everything that at least at seed. Like we are, we don't know any science that supports that idea, that any strain, you just

pick up any probiotic off the shelf. Sometimes it doesn't even say the strain. It just says the species and that you don't even know what you're putting in your body, let alone knowing whether or not it even gets past stomach acid or bile acid. It's a malt that happens during the digestive experience for a microbe to go in your body. And so I think part of inherent in the question that you're asking is that a lot of the things that I mentioned and the factors that impact your microbiome, let's just take infrequent bowel movements or the difficulty in going to the bathroom or lack of frequency in going to the bathroom

in pooping. I would say you can correlate that with, okay, often a low amount of fiber and diet, of course, other stress. There are microbes that are been studied to have a very specific interaction and to work mechanistically to trigger the neurotransmitters in your gut that control motility, that move stool through your system. So that's not to take a probiotic or a yogurt shot and repopulate your gut. That's saying, okay, mechanistically, we understand why the specific strain of bacteria can

help you poop better. And I think that's like the way, if you think about it, there's a number of these disruptions that have happened. So like leaky gut, for example, we know that there are specific microbes that as they move transiently through your GI track, they signal to the tight junctions in your cell wall. In the words of Richard Simmons, they help keep it tight. So that's not just take a probiotic to make your gut healthy. That is, we understand a specific strain that has been studied in a specific dose to trigger those tight junction cells to tighten rate. And so that's a great example. Now, the cause of that, why somebody has loose tight junctions, why leaky gut, I mean, there's so many environmental causes driving alcohol consumption. And I mean, there's a lot of

things that have contributed to that to your question about what we used to be versus what we are today. But that doesn't mean that probiotics are just repopulating. It means that they're being studied to do very specific things, at least in our world, in the world in the grand category of the United States probiotics industry where the term is completely unregulated and people say whatever they want, whenever they want and make disease claims and sell you probiotic pillowcases. What I'm saying is a little inconsistent. I mean, look, we work with some of the best scientists and researchers in the field. And I think what we're trying to do is bring much more specificity, precision in science to a field that is going to be, is already, but is going to be in the future,

one of the most important levers we have to improve some of the biggest unmetical needs in human health. And so it's very important that people don't just think, oh, I can just crack open this drink and drink some probiotics with no level of specificity, which you wouldn't just like take a bottle that says vitamins that doesn't tell you which one it is. The idea of how the industry has evolved is good because people have more awareness, but not great when it comes to companies that I think are really trying to push the field forward. Okay, so that brings, I have two questions about that. One, when you're formulating at seed, like your DSO-1, are you guys just thinking about all of the different issues? Are you thinking like, oh, motility, we'll put in a

strain for that. Like, how are, if it's not just sort of like, we'll put in a diverse array that will repopulate your gut, if everything's sort of corresponding to a different effect in your body, and it's a lot more complicated than that. How are you approaching formulation? Our formulation today is kind of interesting. I mean, there's a number of different things that kind of go into the way we think about, to your point and kind of questions earlier, that we're awesome about like topical versus our research spans, the vaginal microbiome, the oral microbiome, the skin microbiome, pediatric and adult kind of gut microbiome, but also, you know, areas like gut brain. So my answer, which we don't have enough,

time for on this podcast would vary wildly across all of the areas of research that we do. But for DSO1 specifically, and even PDSO8, which is our pediatric symbiotic that is coming, that will have just launched me by the time even the podcast comes out, there's a really interesting rationale and approach that is different than I think where probiotics will be thought about in the, or how they will be thought about in the future. But today, I think when we were formulating DSO-1, I think what we said was, okay, why an otherwise healthy person today? Knowing the basic GI and digestive disruptions, as well as some of the basic areas where

we know people deeply care about their health, where we believe the sciences, areas where we eight strains that we identified with Harvard as part of Gary Rifkin's lab, who works more in genomics. We were looking at very specific things that were really really. novel endpoints outside of just kind of the general digestive GI health. So we just kind of tasked ourselves and saying when we were developing and formulating for DSO-1, what would somebody generally healthy? What could apply and be effective across a large heterogeneous population? How could we get to a place where we had the highest amount of responders that we felt that we felt

confident we would have something that would have a good feedback loop and impact across the greatest number of people in cohorts communities? And then we also said, what are some of the really novel areas that are of interest to us where we believe where our scientists and where we believe the science can be? So for, for micronutrient synthesis. So we have in vitro data for endogenous production of folate. So demonstrating how the microbes in our consortia for DSO1 contribute to endogenous production of folate, which is really novel for we've also since, just published a paper on also the production of B12, which, you know, for vegans and for people who have trouble consuming is really interesting. We also looked at some interesting endpoints

on the gut skin axis, so strains that were dampening the inflammatory response that you see with some of the skin conditions we talked about earlier. And so really it was kind of conceptualized from this place of what could confer benefits in and beyond the gut, where would be novel, where we believe the research, where our research was heading already, and where we also believe there was really good characterization around things that we feel impact a large amount of the population, bloating, general GI improvements, increase of frequency of bowel movements, the ease of expulsion, not to be, but a lot of people have trouble pooping. Yeah, we love poop here. Yeah. And so immune function, gut barrier function, looking at the tight junction cells, looking at the things that we know,

again, in a generally healthy population are things that people would care about and or experience from time-to-time mild disruptions of. And of course, that the outliers, people who have pathologies and other things, we of course anecdotally see a lot of very high response rate too. That actually prompted. And then the DSO-1 is currently in three clinical trials, one for IBS at Harvard, one for post-antibiotic recovery, and one for post-alcohol consumption. Yeah, they sent me some of the post-antibiotic stuff when I got my surgery on my nose, they were like, oh, here's like some studies seed is currently involved in because my gut was wrecked from the antibiotics that I had to take post-surgery. And seed was really, really helpful in me fixing my gut, which brings me

to my second question based on everything you just shared, which is that if it's not repopulating, so to speak, the second we stop taking a probiotic or the seed symbiotic, do the benefit stop as well? Like, is this something where if we want to experience all of the benefits that we've talked about, you need to continue to alter it in whatever way is causing those benefits? It's a great question. What I will say is that what we believe and what we believe we've seen as we look at like washout data, which just means like when someone has stopped taking a probatic for a certain amount of time and you continue to look at stool over time just to see kind of like what's coming out and then you start to see the lack of presence of any of the strains.

is that probioticryphansian, which is that the work that they're doing and why we call our products daily is really because of what they're doing as they're moving through your GI system. Now, prebiotics are different because, of course, they're acting as a substrate for microbes to either proliferate and grow or they're acting as a compound or substrate that microbes use to turn into other really important things. So our symbiotic is a combination of probiotics and prebiotics. Our prebiatic is very novel as well, which was part of our formulation rationale, which was to get to use a non-fermenting prebatic because a lot of people on low fat

fat-mout diet or anyone consuming a certain amount of prebiotics, sometimes just experience a little bit of GI discomfort because of the fermentation. Yeah. So that was kind of interesting, but just from pure probiotic perspective, really I think we believe that you usually see at least the benefits that they've been studied for dissipate as you come off of within a few weeks of kind of whatever you would call that washout period. Yeah. What's really hard to answer is that often when people are trying to quote unquote fix things,

and you probably know this from post-surgery, is that they're doing a lot of other healthy and good things for themselves at the same time. And so it's when you see people being more conscious of diet. You see people saying, I'm off alcohol for a month. And so there would have to be really controlled studies to understand whether or not it's the probiotic that needed to be discontinued. Is it the fact that you're also just constantly making a much more conscious choice of good health decisions when you're trying to fix something or you're healing from something? You're probably taking other forms of supplementation. You may be hydrating more. It's you're resting more.

you may be in less stress. It's a very hard thing to say. But I would say that the way that we think about, I can only speak to our first two products because there are other things, for example, that we're working on for vaginal microbiome, where a course for a specific amount of time, absolutely for making sure that you are not a hospitable environment for E. coli, that does not need to be a daily thing. Okay. That's why I was saying it's a nuanced answer, but for gut and most probiotics, we believe that there's a washout period after which if you're continuing to see the benefits, wonderful. We don't have the data to demonstrate that, but we also think that's probably could be an artifact of a lot of the other healthy choices that

you're making. That makes sense. We've talked about food a little bit, but just to kind of reinforce it to put a pin on it, what are some of the best foods for our gut microbiome and gut microbiome health, and then maybe what are some of the worst foods for it? Sure. So, I mean, at a very high level, it's always kind of boring because it's not necessarily going to blow anyone's mind from the perspective of like, you've never heard this is also just healthy for you in general. I think to your point about like sometimes earlier when you're talking like sometimes is just how you think about this stuff, which is sometimes people can't get out of the bed and do it for themselves, but sometimes they can do it for their microbiome. So I sometimes hear people say that I rationalize eating healthy because I know it's not for me. It's your little microbiome baby. Exactly, which happens to be very influential in your life.

And so I think, you know, not surprisingly, a high abundance of plant fibers. And some interesting, like, cool facts about that is like, you know, the American gut project out of UCSD and Rob Knight. Rob Knight's lab found that about 30 different types of plants in a given week, you saw a great increase in the diversity of your gut. So I think for a lot of very healthy people, they often eat a lot of the same things. They just kind of get into repetitive behavior because it's really healthy. Like spinach every day. Yeah. Yeah.

Specific for surface vegetables every single day. And so I think what's interesting there is just the maybe the notion that it could be diverse, the diversity of the plant fibers are important. Compounds like polyphenols, which you see in things like walnuts and pomegranates and dark berries. That's a great example where microbes use polyphenols. to produce really important compounds like short chain fatty acids and other metabolites that are important. Short chain fatty acids are, again, like I was kind of speaking about, come from the increase of fiber. So of course, anywhere where you're increasing not just specific plants that you're probably very used to thinking about as healthy,

but there's also like microbiota accessible carbohydrates like broccoli, Brussels, sprouts, beans, and sweet potatoes. And so thinking about those carbs, not everybody likes to say they're eating carbs, but you could just call them microbeauticcessible plant. Fibers. We like carbs on this podcast. Wonderful. Some people have like a block against it. But certainly the dietary fibers that are carbs are composed of these like little links, simple sugars. And depending on their chemical composition, their solubility, their size, they kind of fit into a different array of different functions.

health benefits and niches that your microbes can use and kind of biotransformants other things. So that's interesting. And then obviously, soluble fiber is incredibly important because that is what really helps these microbes proliferate, the good bacteria really proliferate and grow. What is soluble fiber? Like, when people are thinking about eating soluble fiber, why can I say soluble fiber? It's the kinds of plant fibers that dissolve in water and that are very easily fermented by your gut, whereas insoluble fibers, they don't dissolve in water,

and they're not easily broken down during digestion, which those are the ones that are really more like, that's what bulks your stool. That's what gets kind of expelled. Then the next thing would be the high intake of omega-3 fatty acids and kind of mono and saturated fats. So salmon and sardines, but of course for people who are not donated plant-based foods,

of course, things like avocado and of course olive oil, which can be magical. Yeah, it's interesting. I think about those in terms of my brain all the time, or my heart health or things like that, but I don't think I've made the connection before between gut health and eating omega-3s. The rest of a lot of the other guidance is super boring because it's stuff that people know they should avoid, but actually has been really shown to have a huge impact on the microbiome. So very well-known things, like, of course, like overdoing it on like refined sugars and processed foods and of course a lot of the things that have like are made with like, these vegetable oils that are high omega-6 and food additives and obviously a lot of that stuff that I think we already know it does not serve us. But there's also really interesting research on things like the sugar replacements. So the research started with like suprilose and a lot of

the, of course, obvious ones, aspartame, for example, that are detrimental to the microbiome. But now they're starting to look actually at whether or not the more quote unquote healthier sugar alternatives. Excevia. Exactly. Whether or not the way that those trigger, how those are metabolized, whether or not that has an impact on the microbiome too. So that research is still ongoing, but just kind of interesting to understand that just because something's natural. We see this the skin barrier, too, with like natural skin care as well as like detergents and stuff that actually a lot of the compounds that we think are quote unquote natural actually still are incredibly

disrupting to the microbiome of different ecosystems of the body. Yeah, a lot of the skin care chemists that I know will rail against certain essential oils because people are just like, oh, they're essential, they're natural. And they're like, wow, they're really disrupting your skin's barrier layer. They're disrupting them a skin microbiome, et cetera, et cetera. Same thing with oregano oil or people who just tug that like indiscriminately. It's incredibly strong antimicrobial. Do you know whether the research is like leaning? There's people out there who are consuming stevia every day. And they're like, wait, which way is that going to go? Have you read anything?

Not yet. I think there's other implications from stevia, depending on how it's processed, but I would have to go back and look at their research. Those are studies are a couple years old now. I haven't read them in a while. But I certainly will tell you that the research is heading to place that a lot of the things we think that are natural and therefore better are going to be shown to not necessarily be that much better. Okay. So what about lifestyle practices? You mentioned like getting on an elevator can massively influence your microbiome, which is crazy to me. Are there positive? lifestyle practices we can be incorporating that will have a good effect on our microbiome? I wouldn't say getting on the elevator impacts the microbiome. The claustrophobic stress response impacts your microbiome. So if you're somebody that gets stressed in small spaces. So this means I shouldn't fly. Is flying bad for my microbiome if that's like a big fear of mine? I think the way that a lot of people think about the microbiome and when you think about resilience is if you take away all stressors, you know, you don't really allow your body to learn.

right, and to understand. And so it's very similar immune training, right? Like if you're never exposed to, you know, peanut allergens, you don't let your microbiome training wheels work and experience stress and exposures. You have to decide whether or not it's interesting to think about then how resilient you are in the presence of stressors that you can't control. Yeah, it makes me think about like Hormesis and all of the times that we do. We have a dopamine episode of the podcast where we interview a Stanford professor about how we can like increase our dopamine by doing hard things by exposing ourselves to things that are more difficult essentially. Yes.

And working through them. Yeah. You see this with the brain a thousand percent. A great way to think about it in the brain and maybe a little bit. And this is, you know, it's like the first time you make a ski track in the snow. And then you kind of do it over and over and over again, which is kind of a little bit more how the brain and like some of the connections work, and how memory and other cognition and other things work. I think, and similarly, I think it's exposure to stress. I think the question is, can you do it in a way that allows you

to build resilience and have your immune system say, oh, I remember that. That said, I know people look at things like sauna or meditation. I'm just curious if there's any things that we can do outside of what we're eating, what we're consuming that impact our microbiome. Absolutely. I mean, again, I'll go back to the fact that I wish I had some like crazy idea for you because so many of these things are known for like just being generally good for health. But I think the first is sleep. You follow their own circadian rhythms. They need to rest and recover as much as you do. And so obviously if they're up all night because you ate a lot of food at midnight, they're not able to also recover and also help and provide the importance of your sleep and the quality of your

sleep. Sleep deficit has been linked to, like, lower richness and diversity of helpful bacteria as well as a reduction in this short chain fatty acid producing bacteria, which also play a huge role in your immune system. So it's, you know, it's kind of all, it's a good, one big feedback loop. Okay, so sleep is good. Is there anything that's like a little out of the norm that we could start to incorporate? There's stuff, of course, obviously things in nature and not just for like the neurological benefits, but for the fact that you're just exposing yourself to microbes, very rich and diverse ecosystems of microbes. And do you need to touch it? I go around, I love touching large rocks on hikes, but are you just breathing it in by being out nature? Just being in nature because, like, plants are

giving, I mean, there's so many things that are coming off of between plants and animals and being transported and a whole ecosystem that's happening. But yeah, sure, I mean. Touch my brother. I can touch my large rocks. Cover yourself, cover yourself how you hug your trees and hug your rocks. For sure. I mean, one handful of dirt contains a billion microbes just to like think about that. Yeah. Which is kind of crazy.

And then, of course, things like hygiene and brushing. In general, a lot of, I think what's good for your microbiome is not so much what to do, but it's actually much more about like what you can not do as much of. You know, I think a lot of people are just obsessed with showering and all kinds of like body washes and foaming this and all these things that I think for the most part are probably overly hygienic and not really letting these ecosystems be and do what they're meant to do. I think there's more a little bit about that. Obviously, brushing your teeth is incredibly important.

Not only helps keep the world microbiome imbalance, but actually there's like interesting research about the impact of that to other areas of your body like your heart and your lungs, which is interesting. I have a pet. That's a good one, which you already have. And obviously dogs, because they're just outside more, like carry more microbes. But I'm sure your cat is doing a great job of helping your microbiome. Does that apply even if I'm allergic to my cat technically?

So I'm having like a negative impact of my microbiome with her. But like am I getting a positive impact by having her around anyway? Niche question. A niche question. I've not ever seen like a specific study about the net effect of allergy to a pet versus their microbial load for you. I have not seen that. Yeah. Well, I'm going to pretend it's not good so that I can keep her.

And then, of course, there's things like probiotics that we've talked about, right, which is to have really specific impacts that can be incredibly beneficial, depending on what the desired outcome is. And, you know, I think one that, as I said, is not so obvious, but in our world, we think that learning and education and understanding your body and learning about these things to be an incredibly powerful intervention. They see in IBS studies early, research is showing that just two weeks of IBS education to people who have severe IBS helps them feel

that their symptomologies improving. So people simply listening to this podcast are improving their overall health? Absolutely. We see education as an intervention. And I say that because it's actually what empowers you to make better choices, empowers you to be much less susceptible to the next Instagram ad you see. Yeah. It makes you curious to ask questions to seek out different opinions and perspectives from medical, you know, depending on if you have something that needs to be examined or looked at or tested puts you, I think, in a place of agency that I think a lot of people, particularly people who have autoimmune conditions and things that are really challenging to live with, where there's sometimes no really clear answer. I think that education and learning,

and I think especially for women, I'm surprised how many things we do to our bodies without, you know, the amount of research we'll do on, like, finding a dress for a wedding versus what we'll spend just like understanding how like basic basic stuff works. Or to your point for our children, I think that women will go out of their way to find the absolute best option for their children, which is why I really liked how you framed, like this is the thing that we're all carrying around in us. And if we could take care of ourselves in the same way that we take care of others, I think we would see massively positive changes. Absolutely. Could you just leave us with one homework assignment,

something we could start doing today that maybe a lot of people in your experience aren't already doing that will help our gut microbiome flourish? I would say the next time you hear that something is good for your microbiome really go through the practice of trying to understand why and look it up and ask questions and DM us at CED and email our psych care team at CED, which is psychcare at CCE.com. but go through the process of what it feels like to uncover and understand the why of something and then realize that you will never forget that factoid or reason for the rest of your life and how empowering it can be when you really have heard something and then gone through the exercise of learning it at a very foundational level, the why,

and then how that will inform maybe the way you go about other things that you do for your I love that. And to your point earlier, simply the education is going to be good for our health as well. I love that. Well, thank you so much for taking the time today to share all of your wonderful wisdom. I'm definitely thinking about not only my gut, but like my whole body in a completely different way after this conversation. So I really appreciate it. It's amazing. That's the goal. That's why we do this. And thank you for all your awesome questions. I hope you loved this episode with ERA. I told you that there was going to be a lot of crazy information in there, and I hope that it just changed how you view your microbiome and your overall health in general. Remember, if you would like to try seed for yourself, you can use my code Liz Moody for 15% off seeds, DS01, daily symbiotic, or their PDS-O-8 pediatric daily symbiotic.

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