Well with Arielle Lorre - 314: How to Optimize Gut Health and Heal from Sibo, Candida & More with Hannah Kleinfeld

Episode Date: May 13, 2024

Hannah Kleinfeld is the co-founder and COO of AllergoSan USA, the company responsible for bringing Europe’s leading probiotic brand, Omni-Biotic, to the United States. Her educational background includes a BA from Yale and an MBA from Harvard. She worked as a Harvard leadership fellow at Boston Medical Center and at McKinsey with a focus on healthcare, before joining the founding team of AllergoSan USA in 2019. In this episode, we talk about gut health: how to heal from SIBO, candida, allergies, brain fog, and other issues that healing your gut can alleviate. We also explore probiotics, European vs. American solutions, targeted strains, how certain probiotics can target stress, and more. Hannah also shares her journey with Lyme disease, from her long road to diagnosis to where she’s at now after working to manage the disease. This is a great episode for anyone suffering unexplained symptoms and wanting to understand better all that the gut is responsible for!Subscribe to Patreon for exclusive weekly content: patreon.com/ArielleLorreThis episode may contain paid endorsements and advertisements for products and services. Individuals on the show may have a direct, or indirect financial interest in products, or services referred to in this episode.Visit www.omnibioticlife.com and use my code BLONDE for an exclusive 20% discount. Join the gut health revolution and experience the Omni-Biotic difference for yourself. When I discover a product like Omni-Biotic that's meticulously researched, formulated, and tested, I'm thrilled to share it with you all. Give Omni-Biotic a try and take a step towards a healthier, more vital life!Produced by Dear MediaSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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would auto-huees under-sorgue, go to your re-sadviseur or sunnycars. The following podcast is a dear media production. Welcome to the Blond Files

I'm your host, Ariel Lori, and I'm here to talk all things wellness. From how to achieve optimal health and well-being to the best beauty tips and everything in between, no topic is off limits. I know there's so much information out there, so I'm bringing on expert guests and sharing my own experiences to help you sift through all the wellness stuff without the BS. Enjoy the show. Hi, everybody. Welcome to the show. I have a great episode for you today. This episode is for anybody who is interested in the gut and gut health, anyone who's interested in healing various health conditions, chronic health conditions via the gut, and how it is all interconnected. It's such a fascinating episode that really gets into the nitty gritty, which I know

you guys love as much as I do. And my guest has a really fascinating story of how she healed her health conditions via her gut health. So I'm talking to Hannah Kleinfeld. She's the co-founder and COO of Allegro San USA. This is the company responsible for bringing Europe's leading probiotic brand omnibiotic to the United States. She is super smart. Her educational background includes a BA from Yale and an MBA from Harvard. She worked as a Harvard Leadership Fellow at Boston Medical Center and at McKinsey, with a focus on health care before joining the founding team of Allegro San USA in 2019. So Hannah has a really interesting Lyme healing journey. So in her early 20s, she went from a high performance lifestyle to literally not even being

able to leave her bed almost overnight. And after having her condition dismissed by several doctors, she was finally diagnosed with Lyme disease. And we talk a lot about this and about how women in particular. experience these chronic debilitating health issues and we are often dismissed. So she experienced a range of debilitating symptoms, including extreme weakness and fatigue, major brain fog, muscle spasms and stiffness, difficulty walking, GI issues, food allergies. And after being introduced to functional medicine and learning about health from a holistic perspective, she realized that healing her

gut was critical to managing her symptoms. So she tried several U.S. probiotics. brands to repair her gut from all of the antibiotics that she was taking and to manage these persistent symptoms. But unfortunately, they all pretty much yielded little to no improvement. So then she was introduced to omnibiotic through a practitioner in Germany who told her about the brand's clinical studies and in-depth microbiome expertise. So when she started taking omnibiotic, she experienced dramatically improved gut health and vitality, as well as an overall reduction in the severity of her symptoms. It's pretty amazing. So she became passionate about getting omnibiotic to the US. It's a highly esteemed brand in Europe. It's widely recognized for its efficacy and trustworthiness.

It's an integral component of detox regimens at wellness retreats, such as Lancerhoff, and it's endorsed by celebrities like Victoria Beckham, Diane von Furstenberg. And it's even used in European hospitals and clinical settings where thousands of healthcare practitioners recommend these probiotics to their patients. So they are a little bit ahead of the U.S. in that regard. They have countered the industry standard of one-size-fits-all probiotics with their innovative line of targeted formulations. Institute Allegro-San develops each omnibiotic product to deliver specific health outcomes validated by over 100 clinical studies. So we get into all of this in the episode today. Like I said, It's really fascinating and they did give me a code to give to you guys.

So you can use the code blonde at checkout for 20% off your first purchase. I have been taking OmniBiotic because as I talk about in this episode, I've been having my own health issues since last fall, as many of you probably know. And I have noticed a huge difference. So again, you can use the code Blonde at Checkout for 20% off your first purchase of OmniBiotic. And I hope you guys enjoy the episode with Hannah. Kleinfeld. Welcome, Hannah. Thank you for having me. Really looking forward to talking to you today. We were just talking about your personal story and your background and how that influenced what you

do today. So I think before we get into like gut health and probiotics and all of that, I would love for you to tell the audience about your own journey with health and how you kind of went from being healthy to being essentially bedridden overnight. Yeah. So you know, you just mentioned it. I, you know, was living in New York City out of college, working in business consulting, kind of just living the life in my early 20s. And I pretty much didn't think about health at all. I thought I was kind of invincible. And sort of overnight, I went from this really high performing, high energy person to almost being bedridden. And it took a little while to figure out what was going on. And it turns out it was a pretty bad case of Lyme disease. And thankfully, I found a functional

medicine doctor with his team of nutritionists and other holistic healing approaches. And he really helped me get back to my overall health and well-being. And that's also how I learned about the importance of the gut microbiome and how closely it was related to so many different aspects of health. And together with my doctors, I was, you know, working on repairing my gut, both from the Lyme, as well as the many months of antibiotic treatments I was doing. And I got really frustrated because a lot of the probiotics, especially that I was taking here in the U.S., they just weren't really leaving me with really substantial improvements. I might see some improvement, but it wasn't really lasting. And through luck, I got introduced to Omnibiotic through a doctor friend of ours in Germany.

At that time, Omnibiotic was taking the market by storm there. She was raving about the clinical studies and the fact that these are targeted formulations and I gave it a try. And within a few days, it was really game changing for me. And I really, you know, I felt an improvement in my gut health, but also my brain fog, my mental clarity, things that I had really been struggling with for months before. And I had, you know, friends, family members sent me more omnibiotic for months to come to really help me maintain my progress. And eventually that beg the question, you know, why are they not in the U.S.? And, you know, that whole Lyme journey also really taught me about the importance of health and well-being and really prioritizing your health and

putting that first. I had an experience last summer. It was not Lyme, but I went, same thing, from high energy, high performing, high functioning, to overnight, almost bedridden, like debilitating, just could not function for months. And mine was actually related to Botox. It was the most jarring experience of my life because, one, I didn't know what was going on initially. But until you're in that place, you don't really realize, like, just how important your health is to you. that we all just kind of take it for granted. And to your point, do you feel kind of invincible until something like that happens. And then you would do anything to get better. And when you can't

get answers to, like that is just the most frustrating thing. What were some of your symptoms, if you can talk about that? And how did you ultimately get diagnosed? Yeah. So anyone who knows Lyme knows that, you know, it's called the great imitator, which is why it's so tough to kind of diagnose and, you know, really figure out what's going on. But for me, it was a whole host of almost random symptoms. Now that I'm connecting the dots, I see where it started. And it started out with just like really weird backaches, which I had never had before. And then it was a few months of random headaches. And then I started thinking, oh, I keep getting a lot of stomach bugs, even though nobody else was getting them. And I thought, you know, at that point, again, I was traveling a lot for work. So I thought, hmm, maybe I'm not eating the best foods. Then I started. feeling like I was the only one on my team who just was slower in my thinking and thinking was harder. And at that point, I remember talking to friends and family and I was telling them this. And many of them were just saying, you know, oh, you're probably just stressed. You've been in this job for two years. You know, you maybe just need to go on vacation. I went to a primary care doctor in New York.

She did some tests, but unfortunately not the right test. She even tested for a line, but not the right test. So it came back negative. And she just told me, oh, you need to. to eat more protein, which was kind of a random advice because I was actually eating a lot of protein, so that made no sense to me. And eventually I was talking to a family member in Europe who had had Lyme before, and she really urged me to go on this journey and to dig deeper. And that's how I ended up finding my functional medicine doctor who was really well versed in Lyme and helped me diagnose it and really develop a treatment path going forward. But yeah, it's so scary, especially when you're a young woman, you feel like something is wrong with you, but like no one's really relating

to it because, you know, maybe you look good. I heard so many people say, well, you look fine. Yes. And it's like, well, maybe to you, but inside I really don't feel good. And it's just this really weird experience to be going through. Yeah. I can relate so much because I presented fine on the outside and I was dying inside. And I think a lot of the symptoms of lime, you know, this brain fog and aches and pains and just feeling off are consistent with what I had to. And there are these invisible symptoms. Yeah. So I was going to doctor after doctor after doctor saying, I have vertigo. You know, I was totally fine one day. The next day I feel like I'm spinning. I have brain fog. I can't think. I can't process things. And they're like, okay, but you look fine. I mean, everyone said like, oh,

it's stress or anxiety. And I'm like, but. I'm not stressed or anxious. And then, you know, I ended up even going to a psychiatrist and they diagnosed me with major depressive disorder. I've never been depressed in my life. I mean, it was crazy. It's wild. Yeah. And it's I think it's also tricky because these symptoms, whether it's Lyme or, you know, chronic inflammation in your body, it's all these kind of non-specific things that can occur with a lot of different illnesses or issues. And that's why it's so difficult to pinpoint in the end. Is there a specific test for Lyme that's different? from what like your general practitioner would test if somebody thinks that, you know, maybe

they're experiencing some of these symptoms. Yeah. So the short version of this is there is the test that kind of look for the acute illness. It's the ELISA blood test, which many practitioners will run, especially if you're like, oh, I had a tick bite two days ago. I now have a fever or some sort of symptoms that might indicate you have an infection. The problem with that is it often doesn't detect if it is an infection that occurred a longer time ago. So then you actually need to look at antibodies and other more advanced ways of testing, there's a couple of different methods, but that's really what you need to be doing. Okay, so you started on this healing protocol and you said that you started doing the omnibiotic and you started feeling better instantly.

So how did that integrate with the rest of your protocol? Was it before? Was it congruent? Did you start doing it after when you were already starting to feel a little bit better? How did that come into play? Yeah, so I think first of all, you know, for me, my healing journey from Lyme was really almost like a year-long journey. I would say from, you know, initially it started out with really antibiotics and trying to kill the Lyme. And then it really was a process of repairing the damage from the Lyme, but also from the antibiotics. And omnibiotic for me came in, I would say, about halfway through. So I had already finished the antibiotics and was really working with my doctors here in the U.S. to repair my gut. because, you know, again, the gut is related to how you absorb nutrients, your brain fog. A lot of things

were tied to that. And that's how I, you know, got introduced to Omnibiotic in Europe. So I'd say that it's about halfway through. But it was really a big game changer for me. Many things started improving and changing once I started fixing my gut. And it sounds like it started improving so quickly, which is shocking. I think that we all hear that, you know, the gut is connected to everything. The gut brain access. We hear these terms, but I think that we still tend to kind of think of these systems as isolated, and especially here, I mean, we're treated by different specialists and they isolate different parts of the body. And we know now that the gut influences, like you're saying, our brain, our sleep, our mood, everything. So could you talk a little bit about how the gut

influences those different systems? Sure. So, you know, as you said, it's connected to so many different things in the body. So one of the first things I always think about is if your gut is inflamed and your gut bacteria are out of balance, most likely your nutrients aren't even getting absorbed properly. So you can eat as clean as you want. You can take the best supplements, but they're not really getting into your body. And many people, you see that when their gut is in imbalance, they have leaky gut, their nutrient absorption, their market, they're basically nutrient deficient. So that's kind of the most closely related to your gut health and digestion. But then, you know, 70 to 80% of the body's immune cells are actually located in the gut.

So again, if your gut is out of balance, if you have dysbiosis or leaky gut inflammation, that directly impacts your immune system. And it either makes you very susceptible to illnesses or it can also upregulate your immune system into overdrive, which can basically lead to, you know, allergies and other kind of autoimmune conditions. And then you mentioned that the gut brain axis is a huge connection between the gut and the brain. Our gut bacteria helped produce 90% of our happiness hormone serotonin, as well as other neurotransmitters, hormones, metabolites. So without these gut bacteria, our brain isn't even getting the messenger signals that it needs to function properly. And then, you know, the last thing I'll name is, which I think

is such a cool connection to the gut liver connection. So, you know, the liver filters everything we're getting from our intestines, and if there is too many toxins leaking from our intestines into the bloodstream leading to the liver, the liver gets overburdened, and that also impacts our detoxification, our metabolism, you know, so, and then of course that impacts your energy and how you feel overall. Yeah, I think that when people think about having, you know, gut issues, they think of, you know, digestive issues, maybe bloating, gas, constipation, diarrhea, things like that, but I know from personal experience, too, that you can actually have good digestion and have these other symptoms. I had really bad gut issues years ago. And, you know, my main symptoms were

problems with my skin, problems with my sleep, anxiety. So there are these other symptoms that you may not associate immediately with gut health, but to your point, they are super influenced by what's happening. Yeah, they actually say the skin is the external mirror of the gut, which I think is such an incredible saying, and it's so true. Yeah. Yeah, I remember thinking at that time that my skin was flaring up because of my hormones, which could have been true, but the person that I worked with said, well, you know, we can't treat your hormones without treating your gut again to what you were saying. Like, you have to start there because, you know, it's like a downstream kind of thing. It's all related. And then how do things like stress,

lifestyle, different things that we encounter environmental toxins, foods. How does that all impact the gut? Because we're talking about how the gut impacts other systems of the body. But how is, you know, the bacteria influenced by our lives? Yeah, this is a great question. And I wish more people were thinking about it. So if you think about it, you know, your gut bacteria, they're living beings. They are living within us. And they are impacted very strongly by things, you know, like the environmental toxins we take in overly processed foods, medications, especially antibiotics, they kill our good gut bacteria, even stress we know has a very depleting impact on our gut microbiome. So really, if you look at this modern lifestyle,

this modern world we live in, it's very destructive to our gut microbiome. And unfortunately, Western medicine is kind of neglecting the role of the gut in many things. Yeah, I feel like this may be kind of a tangent. I feel like, like they neglected, but haven't there been a lot of studies around like fecal transplants and just how profoundly impactful that can be for certain conditions? Yeah, it's becoming more of a conversation, although I think the thing that is still a little bit disappointing in that is a fecal transplant is really expensive. And it's also, you know, for certain conditions helpful, but can also have strong side effects or risks that you need to consider. Whereas, you know, what are things kind of the day to, you

can do in your day-to-day living to hopefully not even ever get you to a place where you might have to consider these more drastic interventions. Yeah, I think that our health care as a whole is very reactive and not proactive and not really preventative. So, you know, the burden is on us to make sure that we're taking these measures so that we're, you know, not getting sick and having to enter that whole system. Yeah, for sure. So who should be taking a biotic. Should everybody be taking one? So my opinion, and I think many healthcare practitioners would agree with this, is if we lived in a world where we're not exposed to all these daily stressors, you know, if we were still farming our own food, living on a farm somewhere with no stress,

meditating daily, like in the sunlight, you know, just living this perfect low stress connection with nature life, our gut would probably be okay. But, But that's not the reality for most of us. You know, many of us are exposed to the environmental toxins, too overly processed foods, eating more sugar than we should, maybe having an occasional drink, you know, things that we just do on a day-to-day basis. And so in that situation, many people benefit from incorporating a probiotic in their daily routine.

I'm curious the difference in the approach to gut health between, like, Europe and the United States. Because I know that, you know, especially here in L.A., we have this culture that's like free of everything, gluten-free, sugar-free, which is great. You know, I try to avoid those things as well, but like dairy-free, whereas in Europe, like, the cheese course is a course and you're getting so many bacteria from that, right? Like good bacteria. So it's just interesting the difference when it comes to that. But what are some other differences? Is it just more like accepted that gut health should be, you know, part of overall health there?

Or like, what is the approach there? Yeah, I think that's a really great question. You know, I think, I mean, a little bit generalizing here. But, you know, I do think in a lot of Europe, there's still more focus on eating these like farmers market foods, you know, really fresh, kind of not transported from too far. And I think that of, you know, is a lower kind of toxic stress on the gut microbiome as well. So I think part is just in the lifestyle. But also, you know, in Europe right now, when you get. prescribed an antibiotic, many doctors will prescribe a probiotic with it. And many times this is

especially omnibiotic AB10. So it is kind of a lot more ingrained even in the day-to-day practice of many doctors to say, oh, you're taking an antibiotic. You need to support your gut microbiome through a probiotic. Let's talk about omnibiotic. Yeah. So how did omnibiotic come to be? And then can you talk about how you became part of this? Because you were largely responsible for getting this in the United States, right? Yeah. So Omnibiotic was founded in Europe almost 30 years ago by this woman called Anita Fraudelne. She's still the CEO of the headquarters in Europe. And she was a pharmacist by trade and lost her husband to colon cancer when he was very young. And when she tells the story, she remembers, you know, she says he had the best doctors. They tried everything,

but still nothing worked. And she had a son. And she kept wondering, you know, will the same thing happen to my son? And then a couple years later, as she was, you know, in her pharmacy, she came across the Hippocrates quote again, which is, you know, all disease begins in the gut. And that really was this like light belt moment for her. And she asked herself, you know, wow, yes, we have all these microbes in our gut. Is that something that could have helped my husband? Because she felt like they weren't really thinking about that. And that really ignited this passion in her to research the gut microbiome, learn more and eventually led to the formulation of these omnibiotic probiotics. So that was in Europe and they've, you know, since really taken the

European market by storm. I, as I said, got to know them through my Lyme journey. And, you know, for me really the big thing was whenever I was taking probiotics here in the US, I just never felt that step change. You know, there were small incremental improvements that lasted for a few weeks. And then I kind of felt like my progress had stalled again. With omnibiotic, I, because it has these targeted formulations, I was actually able to be a lot more deliberate of what I'm trying to work on. So, okay, I'm trying to repair my gut from antibiotics. Let's do that with omnibiotic AB10. Once I was done with that, okay, I'm really struggling with brain fog, leaky gut. Let's take omniburic stress release because we have seen in clinical studies that it has these outcomes.

And so that was for me a really big game changer and it made so much sense. And yeah, that beg the really truly beg the question. Like, I don't want to keep having to ship these to the U.S. through friends and family, you know, why are they not here? The market didn't have targeted probiotics back then, and that really started this journey of bringing them to the U.S. What are targeted probiotics? How is that different from other probiotics on the market? Yeah. So before I dive into that, I think it's really important. And to me, when I learned about this, again, it made so much sense, you know, we have 400 to 600 to 600 different bacterial strains in our gut. These strains do different things in the body. So,

one strain might be really good at, you know, building up your mucus layer. Another strain might be signaling to the immune system. So it's really hard to take like a couple strains, throw them into a product and just hope that it has benefits. You know, it probably will have some benefits, but it's kind of like, okay, what am I even looking at? What am I hoping to achieve with this? So the idea with targeted formulations is that you actually mindfully combine the strains with certain endpoints or outcomes. in mind. So, you know, are you working on a probiotic to support overall digestion? Great. Are you working on a probiotic that really helps you restore your gut after antibiotics? That's a completely

different collection of strains. That's the idea behind targeted probiotics. And then how does AB10 differ from the stress relief? Yeah. So AB10 was, you know, to restore the gut. So we know when we take antibiotics, it also kills many of our good gut bacteria. AB10 contains 10 strains that are really essential to restoring and replenishing your gut after antibiotics. And the cool thing about these strains is they actually have the ability to fight certain unwanted or pathogenic bacteria that can take host in your gut if it's depleted. So one of these, you might have heard it as very common in hospitals, is C-DIF. And we know that the strains in Omnibiotic AB-10 have the ability to fight or push out C-Diff. Omnibiotic stress release was developed with a completely different focus,

which is the gut brain axis. So it's actually called a psychobiotic in, you know, professional terms, because it really acts on this gut brain axis. We have clinical studies on it. One is actually an MRI study where you can literally see changes on the MRI images between before and after taking omnibiotic in how the brain's connectivity works. So like in the areas where you see attention and focus, it lights up more after four weeks of taking omnibiotic stress release. Wow. Yeah, I was going to ask how long. Yeah, four weeks. That's a really short period of time. Yeah. That's amazing. And then do people take it just for a certain amount of time or is it something that we should take on an ongoing basis? So many people who are looking to support their gut kind of on an ongoing basis because of these stressors, because they know they just want that support. They, some people will just get hooked on one of these omnibiotic formulations and take those. Other people like to kind of switch it up, depending. on their current situation. So, you know, for me personally, my go-toe is omnibiotic stress release because I like that, you know, stress support, the inflammation support. But then if I'm traveling,

I might take AB-10 just to make sure, you know, maybe try to help make sure I don't get food poisoning or things like that. Or if I know I'm, you know, maybe traveling to Europe and eating really well for a few days, maybe I take omnibotic heat talks to just help with my detoxification. So it is fine to kind of switch them up based on what you need most in your life. But again, I do think most people benefit from taking a probiotic on an ongoing basis. Can we talk about the survivability? Because this is another issue. I think that we're all familiar with like CFU and we think, oh, this one is like 20 billion CFU or whatever the number is. This must be amazing. But kind of talk about what happens to most probiotics by the time they reach our gut compared to omnibiotic. Because

this is different. It's a powder as well, right? Yes, it's a powder. So in order for probiotic to be effective, it has to reach your intestines alive and metabolically active. And when we say metabolically active, it really means it needs to be in its peak condition to do its work, rather than just being like half dead and kind of on the sidelines. We've tested omnibiotics delivery mechanism against 10 of the leading U.S. brands in a GI simulator and with omnibiotic 83% of the bacteria reached the intestines alive and metabolically active compared to an average of 7% across these other brands. Wow. Yeah. What is a GI stimulator? Please tell me about that. Yes. It's basically a fancy term for saying it's a machine that simulates your digestive process.

That's so cool. Yes, it's really cool. It has these chambers. So you know, your stomach will have a chamber that's like very acidic and it's churning like in your digestion. And then, you know, you can measure at different points, how many bacteria actually made it, what's their lactic acid production, what are other things we can measure to test their activity? So it's really cool. That's so fascinating. And then is that how they tested against certain pathogens or bacteria or is that just done like in a lab? It's done in a lab, but we also have the clinical studies on the final formulation. So with omnibiotic AB10, we actually have studies in humans showing, you know, it reduced gram-negative bacteria, such as C-DIF by 50 to 60%

and depending on what study you look at. I know that things like CBO and Candida are so prevalent now, how do those take over? Yes. Honestly, this is a really good question because it all comes back to balance. So especially with Candida, Candida is a yeast and it's called an opportunistic microorganism.

And when you talk about opportunistic, it basically means it lives in small. quantities in you and on you at all times. But the reason why for some people it overgrows is because you don't have the good bacteria that are keeping it in check. So if you have enough good bacteria and enough diversity of good bacteria, the yeast cannot overgrow. When your gut is depleted, oftentimes people get yeast infections after antibiotic use. You know, the antibiotics deplete your gut, stress depletes your gut, whatever it is, and that leaves room for these opportunistic bacteria or yeast to thrive.

Yeah, I feel like especially in the last few years, I just hear about it so much. Like, SIBO was the hot diagnosis. Yeah. Especially here. And Candida, you know, whenever I talk about like gut health, I get so many questions about that. And I don't have experience with them. But, I mean, why do you think these things are becoming more and more prevalent? Do you think it's just lifestyle, food, kind of like, just a combination of all of those things?

Yeah, I think it's a combination. I think it's actually in part just we're all living a really stressed, toxic lifestyle. You know, so many people are taking antibiotics for things where you wouldn't even need antibiotics like a cold or viral infections. You know, it's just antibiotic prescribing is just on the rise. But I also think in a way it's maybe because more and more practitioners are becoming more aware of candida infections and SIBO. So in a way, I think it might also be a good thing. You know, maybe people before we're walking around with these things and they just didn't realize no one diagnosed them. And now there's more awareness. So we're seeing more diagnosis, which is a good thing because then people can take charge and repair and feel better. It's so funny. Like I remember talking to my mom and she's like, I've never been bloated in my life. Like what is a gut issue? And I'm like, I'm sorry, what? Wow. But, you know, I think that there is kind of a generational thing where again, And maybe, you know, because of what we're exposed to now and just like ultra processing of foods compared to when, you know, our parents were growing up. And then to your point, maybe just more awareness that these things are happening.

And I think that so many of us are just so aware of what's happening in our bodies as well. And health conscious. But it's just so funny. I'm like, well, that's nice. That's amazing. Yeah. What are some other lifestyle things that we can be doing to. support our guts, whether that comes to diet. Obviously, it sounds like stress reduction is a big thing.

Yeah, I would say, you know, nourishing your body and your gut with good foods, especially fiber. Fiber is so important. It's the food for our gut bacteria. So if you're deficient in fiber, your good gut bacteria just don't have enough food. I'd say a close second is hydration. Because, you know, your gut and your digestion needs water to actually move things through your digestive tract. So anyone who's dehydrated often deals with constipation. It's just a sign that your whole body is dried out. And then, yes, stress, for sure. It depletes our gut microbiome. It increases oxidative stress, which is inflammation. So that's a whole vicious cycle starting right there. And then, you know, I also would just say medications, you know, as I said, antibiotics, but there's also some other medications

that can really be detrimental to your gut microbiome. Do you have any examples of those that people might not think of? Yeah, so certain types of birth control, actually, and then proton pump inhibitors can also really disrupt your gut. And you see that a lot of people who are taking proton pump inhibitors suddenly have all these gut issues. And again, it's all connected. Interesting. How much of the heavy lifting can the probiotics do versus, like, how much should we be getting from our diets? Because I feel like, you know, again, like what I was saying before, we tend to have this restrictive mindset, I think, around food. A lot of people eliminate a lot of things trying to figure out what's going on.

And we know from studies that variety is the key to gut health. But if somebody is doing an elimination diet trying to figure out what's going on, if there are certain foods that are triggering them, can the probiotics help to kind of fill in those gaps that they're not getting from their food? Yeah. I think in my mind, they really go hand in hand. You know, an elimination diet, most practitioners will really only use this for a short period of time, as you said, to diagnose what needs to be taken out. And then the goal is to add diversity back in. But, you know, again, you need the fibers and the nutrients from food to be healthy and, you know, also to feed your gut bacteria. But also if there's inflammation and if you don't have enough good gut bacteria, it's tough for your digestion to even process these good foods you're taking. in. So the way I think about this is first look at your gut and see what's going on. Repair your gut, you know, make sure you have a strong gut barrier, you have low inflammation, you don't have any parasites or, you know, pathogenic bacteria or yeast that are causing havoc. That's like the repair

and restore. Support your body with good gut bacteria through probiotics and then also nourish your body with nourishing foods to make sure you have those good fibers. You have all the micronutrients. you need for all these important processes in the body, but they're really going hand in hand. Do you recommend that people get testing done? I mean, I know that there are certain probiotics here on the market that can exacerbate things if, you know, we don't really know what we're treating. And to your point, if we do have certain pathogenic overgrowth where maybe a certain strain, you know, won't be helpful. So do you think that people should test if they are experiencing symptoms and just get a better picture of what's going on? Yeah, I'm a big fan of lab testing. I mean, you know,

there's some really good stool tests. And especially if you're working with a practitioner who knows how to interpret them and then make a protocol for you, I think it's always tough to just do a stool test and then you by yourself get the results. And then you're just like, I have no idea what to do now. So I would definitely say if you are going down that route, work with someone, a practitioner who knows how to interpret them and then can make a good protocol for you to repair. I'm sure you've heard so many stories of people having transformative results as a result of taking omnibiotic. Do you have any that you can share with us, aside from your own, obviously? Yeah. I mean, I just love hearing from our customers. You know, there was one customer recently who told us that she had had IBS for years

and she was taking omnibiotic and within, you know, a few weeks she was able to eat out again with her family. And for her, that was like such a big change. And I can so relate to that because I remember in my Lyme days when I was allergic to a bajillion things and eating out was so hard. And usually all I could eat was like some steamed veggies and like steamed fish or something really not that appealing. And it's just kind of depressing if everyone else is having a great meal and you're just sitting there kind of half expecting you will have symptoms again after. And so, you know, stories like this, We also hear from several people who are taking omnibiotic heat talks, our gut liver access formulation, that they've had huge improvement in their liver markers on lab work, you know, in their triglyceride levels, in their insulin levels. I mean, there's real lab data that people are tracking and seeing big improvements on with taking omnibiotic. And that's always amazing to see. How do people know where to start? Because I'm listening to this and I'm like, I want all of them. I want the mental health.

I want the AB 10 and I want the detox. And I'm like, if something's good, I'm going to like overdo it. So where should people start? Do they just kind of analyze whatever their symptoms? Like, oh, I'm experiencing more brain fog. I'm going to try this one first. Or I feel like I'm having issues with detox. Like, how do people know which one they should start with?

Yeah. This is a great question. So a couple of pathways. So the first is I always say, ask yourself exactly what are you looking to optimize? And if there's multiple things you're looking to optimize, I would always say, start with like restoring your gut maybe through like a month of AB10 and then go to your brain fog or your gut liver support. If that's not kind of concrete enough, we do have a product fit quiz on our website. So that's really easy to go to as well. I love a quiz. Yeah. And then the last thing is we also

have a gut health reset program, which is a three month program that actually combines the omnibiotic AB10, then followed by a month of stress release and then followed by a month of omnibiotic balance, more for like immune support and immune balancing. And that's a really great place to start because it kind of follows these steps of like restoring the good and eliminating the bad, then through stress release, focusing on your mental health and also your inflammation and your gut barrier and then moving on to supporting your immune system. So this is also a really good place to start. Amazing. I'm going to be doing that one. Yes. Everybody. Highly recommend. I'll let you know how it goes. Yeah. Because again, like after I had those issues, I mean, I just know that my gut was.

was affected. And, you know, I think that whoever is listening, you know, whatever your circumstances are, we can all benefit from this. And it's so important, you know, the theme of this conversation is like to treat this before it becomes a problem. Yeah. And, you know, I think everyone I talk to, they will tell me that if their gut is not feeling good, like if they're feeling bloated or nauseous or, you know, running to the bathroom every two hours, that impacts your life. I mean, it just makes you less confident. leaving the house, it makes your energy, you know, your lower energy, it really impacts so many different aspects of your life. And I think, again, it really goes to showing that your gut is at the core of your well-being and, you know, your, yeah, how you feel every day. Yeah, I mean, I could relate

a lot to what you were saying where it's like, I'm feeling better, but I have so many allergies. I'm like allergic to everything. I get rashes from everything, which never happened to me before. and, you know, I do react to certain foods that I never reacted to before, so I can just tell. I mean, I'm very, like, attuned to my own body. So I'm excited to try and hopefully report back. But thank you so much for coming on and for sharing your story and all of that. I think it's amazing. Tell everybody where they can find Omnibiotic.

Sure. So you can find us, you know, on our website, OmnibioticLife.com and on Instagram at OmniBiotic Life. And, yeah, those are two really good places to start. And we'll link it in show notes as well. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Of course. Thank you. I hope you enjoyed that episode. And if you liked it, and if you liked the show in general, please take a second to rate, review, and subscribe. It goes a long way, and it's actually the best way to support the show. Also, if you want to see more about each episode, you can head

over to The Blonde Files podcast on Instagram. You can go to areaallori.com. And I'm always posting about each episode over on my personal page at Ariel Laurie. Please note that this episode may contain paid endorsements and advertisements for products and services. Individuals on the show may have a direct or indirect financial interest in products or services referred to in this episode.