 Hey everybody, good afternoon. It's so good to be back. I've been traveling and filming a documentary and a little busy So the episodes haven't been coming quite as freely, but we're back and we're here with one of my absolute favorite people in the world Kiran from microbiome labs and we're going to talk about some new products They have and why you need to know about this content. It's so cutting edge And I just love the science that he always brings to our conversations I'm going to formally introduce him but before I do you guys know where to find me if you've seen Misty any past episodes you can find them all in itunes or stitcher or wherever you listen to podcast Those are the audio versions and if you want to see the videos You can find them on my youtube channel, which is just under my name. We now have over 80 episodes So they're all there for your watching pleasure and we've been on before with kiran So please go back and check out that episode. It was fantastic full of great content We were talking about all kinds of things including spraying probiotics of the nose So you'll want to catch that and catch what we talked about there You can find me at jillcarnahan.com free blogs free resources there And if you want any of these products, I'll be sure to include the links But you can find them at microbiome labs or on my website jill carner. Sorry dr. Jill health dot com So without further ado, I will introduce kiran christian He's a research microbiologist that's been involved in the dietary supplement and nutritional market for the past 18 years He comes from a university research background having spent several years with hands on in r&d fields of molecular medicine and microbiology at the University of Iowa He established a clinical research organization where he designed and conducted dozens of human clinical trials and human nutrition He's also co-founder and partner in new science trading LLC nutritional technology development and research company and he's co-founder and chief science officer at microbiome labs He has a frequent lecture on the human microbiome. I always love your content kiran and again I love talking to you because you bring the great research there And he's been an expert guest on many many outlet shows national and satellite radio podcast. You name it. He's been there Always love those lectures. He's currently involved in 16 novel human clinical trials and probiotics and the human microbiome and on the scientific advisory board For seven other companies in the industry. This is one of the reasons I love talking with you because you bring this great science And I Never support companies. I don't believe in you're not paying me to do this interview and I just want people to know that because I really I think I said this before but I'm just going to start really briefly 20 years ago I was diagnosed with Crohn's disease right after breast cancer super aggressive And the only thing I knew was there was this one weird probiotic that worked when everything else failed And guess what it was a spore And I didn't know at the time was a bacillus spore and I had no idea what it was or why it worked or why I only needed one capsule to do the same as these other ones And the other ones really made me worse and they were the typical lactobacillus bifidobacter that is being pedaled Again, there's no problem with that for some people, but there's something very different about spores You've told your story before too. What I want to do is just briefly review like how do you get into this? And then let's dive into this new line. And how did you get into looking at probiotics that can affect the brain The sleep the stress Yeah, of course. Well, first of all, thank you so much for having me Jill. It's always a an honor and a pleasure I always love our conversations whether it's on air or off air. So Always a pleasure to be on so thank you so much for having me So, yeah, I got into this because My passion of microbiology is really about exploring kind of the unseen universe around us, right? I was either going to be a physicist or microbiologist That was one of the two paths I was going down because in both cases you're exploring kind of unknown forces that Impact our lives on a daily basis without most people really realizing it and then when you get to study it You realize how profound it is in our outcomes, right? And so Since my math is not as great as it should be. I definitely want the microbiology out which worked out better for me anyway, and so When you when you get into studying microbiology, especially when you get into clinical microbiology The focus often becomes on pathogens and and the path the pathology of the pathogenic disease, right? And so how do microbes infect and what is the process of infection and all of that? And that was very interesting to me Those are that was one of the most exciting areas of research Work that I was doing early on in my career But then you come to really realize soon that you know of all the organisms discovered microorganisms discovered 99.9 of them are either benign or or beneficial in some way, right? And so the the small tiny point one percent or so that can cause illness In a in a specific way get a lot of the limelight, right? That's that's who we all think about when we think about organisms So it became a real Natural fit for me to go. What about the other 99.9 percent, right? We really need to know and understand those a little bit better And so my whole world kind of started shifting in wanting to understand The rest of the microbes and in fact the ones that make up the vast majority of what we encounter And and soon around then the human microbiome project started kicking off by the NIH Which is really trying to study our ecosystem Which is a big chunk of that 99.9 of beneficial benign bacteria So for me the human microbiome became the place to go into it was of course this dark abyss of unknowns Which is which is exactly what drives me, right? So it's it's starting off and that being lost in this space that is immense and then looking for solutions and connections and connecting the dots so for me it was a it was a natural fit and Part of the reason why we founded the company microbiome labs the whole idea is that is to You know take doctors like yourself that are on the front lines working with patients with complex issues and then utilizing the power of the microbiome to provide therapeutics That can really make a difference, right because you don't have the time to do that work Your patient's not doing that work. You are working with the patients. We're not doing that work So we have to be behind the scenes working through the research to really Line up all the dots so that at the end of the day the patient has a has a solution, right? So I found that to be a great fit for us And for me personally and so that's where we've been for the last 10 years or so focusing on it Yeah, and my experience again, I I didn't know what this thing was that helped me 20 years ago It was just a strange one strain thing But the thing that's so fascinating to me is you guys brought the research that's very compelling And it's always been that way and one of the things I respect about you Is you bring great research to this world in this realm that hasn't always had great research Like a lot of the companies. I don't feel like have the same level and then not only that that matters But what matters to me is in the clinic. I give it to a patient. Does it work, right? And over and over and over and over again what I saw which is why I'm here talking to you is it works It works up the spores work So for before we go into these new ones that talk about the stress response And the gut bringing access and I have another little story about that. We'll go to that in a minute Let's just talk about spores in general. We've talked about this before but I think it's so critical for patients to understand Number one number of millions of colonies isn't where it's all at Why is that and what makes spores different? Yeah, so the the CFU count is not the basis of Of efficacy of product, right? So so the market went kind of crazy in haywire because the market was not driven by science So it was driven by megalomaniacal marketing thinking right where the idea is that if three is good Six must be better and if 10 billion is good 50 billion must be better And so as companies started to Compete with each other on the shelf for what looked better on the label They just kept upping the game for higher and higher and higher potency and since there's no establishment on You know that governs probiotic dosing and all of that stuff like we have an rdi for vitamins, right? So you know, okay. Here is the the minimum daily amount you need Here's the the the recommended daily allowance and then you have maximum threshold doses and all that for most of these Vitamins, we didn't have that kind of structure for the probiotic industry. So then marketing just drove it haywire Right, you know, I've been a consultant for lots of companies in the last Decade and a half and I've been the scientific voice in many of these formulation discussions And you sit in the meetings and they're like, okay, so we're going to do a product We're going to have 17 strains and 50 billion CFUs. They've already decided I'm like What is the basis for 17 strains like where'd you come up with that number? And and it's while they're closest competitor that they're fighting for shelf space has 15 strains, right? And so they want just a little bit more and then they have 30 billion So we want 50 billion, but we want 50 billion and 17 strains for the same price As the 30 billion and 50 billion million strains which means Or 15 strains, which means that you need to get lower quality strains At a lower price to meet that amount, right? So then you're buying Literally tanker loads of lactobacillus acidophilus for nothing You know, you can buy a shipping container of this stuff out of china That costs nothing and you could make millions of bottles for a dollar Right and sell it at nine dollars and make a killing But and that's kind of where the probiotic industry started going, you know, and is it was unfortunate And clinically what I see is number one, there are strains of lactobacillus that increase histamine So I patient with mass selectivation I have patients with mold illness and some of these patients get worse on the wrong strain So it doesn't matter these cheaps. Again, it's not that they're all cheap But some of these strains like lactobacillus KCI for example often will increase histamine So that matters and then number two if you have Dysfunction with digestion absorption motility and pronus to overgrowth of small bowel bacteria Sometimes adding to that mix with good normal strains that are human compatible Does not help patients. It makes them worse. Have you seen that as well? Yeah, absolutely. I mean that that's been one of our big You know gripes with the industry in general is that you can't just Combine dozens of strains, you know, that are number one not well characterized, right? So the studies have also shown this was a study published in nature in 2017 Where they took a bunch of probiotic products kids probiotic products off the shelf and they analyze them and 94% of them had the wrong Strains in the capsule and what was claimed on the label, right? Because people are not doing the genetic analysis that's required to verify that What they're buying from the in that container load is the actual strain that they think it is, right? It just looks like a powder. How can you tell? Is it acidophilus? Is it kasi? Is it ruderi? What is it? Or is it any of those at all, right? And and what is the contamination level and so on? And so what we were always griping against is that if you're just loading your system with tens of billions of cfu's Of these unknown uncharacterized species number one, you may be competing with your own indigenous Bacteria, right? Because if if lactobacilli that's coming in is somewhat similar to your lactobacilli But and we don't know the exact mechanism of action of how it works It may be competing for binding sites and all that with your own endogenous species And and number two if nothing else if they're just dying to the stomach They're loading your mic your microbiome in your system with genetic material That is unknown, right? We don't know what that is because they're these companies are not Doing proper genetic analysis and gene typing and blast searches and all that on these on these bacteria to really understand what they hold Within them, right? And that genetic part of it to me Is even scarier because you don't know what genes these microbes are carrying, right that and and and as you dump tens of billions of these bacteria into your system every single day and you're exposing your microbiome to those genes It can make foundational changes to how your microbiome functions In ways that we wouldn't we couldn't predict at the moment, right without them doing the studies And so for us, it's always been critically important that any company that does a probiotic product and it doesn't matter what species it is, right? There are many different effective species You have to study it, right? You have to show What it does in the microbiome you have to show what it does to the rest of the microbiome You have to show what it does to the immune system You have to really characterize the bacteria properly. And so we just have way too much in this industry of just what I call kitchen sink formulas, right? Just throw everything together And let's make it the biggest sounding number and that means it's really effective And and and hopefully what we're trying to do is set the bar high to go. Okay guys Here's are the basics we need to do to have an efficacious probiotic I love that and again, I would rather have someone not take a probiotic than just grab one off the counter At wall greens and not know what they're taking now some of those strains have been studied but not all of them Um, two questions come to my mind and then I still want to get to the new products one is uh, I've heard a lot in the last decade on soil based probiotics and um, There are those do contain spores, but my understanding is a lot of times they're again not studied And those were the very small cases I recall there was a case of pancreatitis with these on the strains that had no Evidence behind them because some of them became very aggressive What's your comment on why like the strains that you guys have studied that are spores and are from the soil at the root But these random large Soil based things I actually deter patients away from them because we don't really know Do you want to comment on that soil based organisms? Yeah. Yeah, so, um We actually there was an early on product when we first came out That we were always very nervous about and then that product eventually came off the market, I believe Um, but again, it's because they had this mass of really Uncharacterized organisms that they just characterize as soil based, right? And you just don't know what's in there And and unless you know what each of the players are you really don't understand what the functionality is going to be in the God And it's true some of those could be opportunistic Some of those could have, you know, virulence factors that that we don't know about and Most companies in our space don't have the scientific capability of studying these types of things, right? So that's the big problem They don't know how to take a microbe and do full end-to-end sequencing and gene blasting and Understanding all of the proteins that the microbes produce and all that But what they do really well at is just very quickly put the marketing story together You know grab a bunch of ingredients from a bunch of different suppliers Put it all together and call it a product and so When this whole phenomenon of soil based probiotics came about You know the the general idea behind it is okay The problem is you cannot have a big mix of uncharacterized bacteria But you just don't know it's you're setting yourself up for disaster because there's going to be something in there That's going to cause somebody some illness, right? And that's a big problem now with our with our products even though Spore, bacillus endospores are known to be ubiquitous in the environment We actually went the the further step of specifically isolating bacillus endospores that are commensal to the gut microbiome, right? So all of the spores that we work with actually came from healthy human volunteers rather than coming from the environment now Initially they probably came from the environment ended up in humans, you know Basically adapted to being much more savvy within the human microbiome rather than the outside because you'll find for example Subtilis that is better adapted to be outside than subtilis. It's adapted to be in the gut, right? And and what we wanted was subtilis. It's adapted to be in the gut Uh, and then you have to take them and then you have to do full Genome analysis to make sure there's no virulence factors. There's no toxin production They their chromosomes are very stable meaning Through irradiation and antibiotic use and all that they don't shift and create antibiotic resistance So you have to do all of those kind of studies to make sure these are safe bacteria And unfortunately the 98 99 of the companies in our space just don't do that kind of stuff No, this is great because a lot of people understand what goes into making a great product and and why I think they're so effective Interesting just a little tidbit on inflammatory bowel disease. We know patients like myself with the genetics nod genes for Crohn's what happens is because this background I think will help people understand our conversation All it is is someone like me has an abnormal immune response to normal microbiome Which means I could have a very inflammatory response to something that's actually a resident in my gut That's not a pathogen so I could like some strain of and then there's also you and I talk a lot about endotoxemia Just briefly if you're listening endotoxemia is basically when the bacterial coatings leak from the gut lumen into the bloodstream And they are one of the most potent inflammatory triggers for heart disease obesity mood disorders, which we're going to get to in a second and so it's so relevant because it's not just about Planting a seed like a probiotic and having it grow and flourish It's actually about communication in the body these probiotics are actually messengers And they communicate with the immune system and if you have a permeable gut or immune dysfunction or pronus to auto immunity It matters because it could send the wrong message and then all of a sudden you're down the road to some auto immune disease Because you've got the wrong milieu of microbiome. So just a little bit of Framing that so patients understand why we're talking so much about the species So let's move to these new i'm so excited about the that's um zen biome cope and zen biome sleep Tell us first like how did you get into this now? We know the gut brain connection And then let's talk about these products and what they might do for patients Yeah, so this is this is a super exciting area for us. So the gut brain connection has always been Something that's been on my radar and our and our microbiome labs teams radar for years You know number one because of the incredible prevalence of Anxiety depression sleep disorders in society today, right? And we're not even talking about people with major depressive disorders or really bad anxiety where you can't leave the house, right? That's there But the vast majority of people and unfortunately, I think it's somewhere around 30 to 40 of the total population suffers from kind of functional depression and anxiety, right? Meaning that they're experiencing daily anxiousness. There's their They're basically facing daily levels of depression and then in many cases. They're kind of self medicating in many different ways, right? Whether it's drinking wine all day long or it's like, you know, addiction of food or addiction to other substances You know, whatever it may be, but they're self medicating most of the time And and they're in this weird limbo where their condition is not severe enough for them to go Okay, I need to go see a psychiatrist and get a diagnosis and go through all of that process Um, you know and number two, they don't want to get a diagnosis because once you get a diagnosis then You're on that drug regimen, right? And I know and The vast majority of the population is very concerned about starting down that path of ssri's and anti anxiety meds and so on and so, you know in a in a Attempt to avoid all of that. They basically try to deal with it, right? It's it's it's meditation apps and and life's and wellness things and Mindfulness work and and then lots of self medication too And so we you know, we realize that that's a big issue and we also realize that From a therapeutic standpoint, nothing has really changed in the world of psychiatric medicine, right? It's it's been basically the same class of drugs for 50 60 years It's same same ssri same anti anxiety meds Just kind of different flavors to them to certain degrees So the microbiome to us really presents a unique opportunity to get a grasp On the thing that the average person is dealing with right and to me. That's where we can really make the difference It's not necessarily the patient that's so severe that needs to be hospitalized. It's the it's the mom It's a dad It's a student at school the people that are experiencing sleeplessness daily anxiety daily stress that we know You know and I know because we do we read the studies we do the lectures That that stress and anxiety and all is also driving things like leaky gut chronic inflammation Endotoxemia setting them up for all kinds of other chronic illnesses down the road, right? So for us This is a really really important gap in therapeutics, uh, even within functional medicine And so it became an area of focus for us and when we break down the pathology When we look at the gut brain connection and what within the gut is either missing or creating a problem We find really two big areas, right? So area number one is lps Which we've already been dealing with through the spore based probiotics or mega spore We know that high levels of lps through endotoxemia through leaking in into the blood Will be a significantly disruptive to the brain function, right lps interferes with dopamine binding it interferes with serotonin binding It can turn things like tryptophan metabolism from being made into serotonin and melatonin Instead to be made into things like kinarenin and quinolinic acid, which are neuro toxic, right? We know that it creates inflammation in the brain. We know it triggers micro glial activation So we know lps is highly toxic to the brain and has all kinds of mood and depressive disorders as a consequence But we're already dealing with lps really well with the spores There's a second part that we weren't quite dealing with with the spore with the mega spore as well That we really wanted to dig into and fortunately for us We have a an amazing partnership with the with a group out of ireland called precision biotics And and they've been specializing in this work for the last 15 years And they've been working with a group called the apc, which is the world's most renowned gut brain research Area in cork ireland, right? And so a lot of this research has come out of there and our collaboration with with uh with them And and of course they've been working on this for the last decade and a half as well So what we've come to find out and what seems to be quite clear Is there is inflammation mediated stress response, right? So for your audience To understand how that happens, right? Let's say you're driving down the road to work one day and then somebody cuts you off and that pisses you off Right, so you honk your horn your foot the bird you have exchange or whatever through the windshield And and that creates a bunch of stress in your system. So that's an external stressor That external stressor the first thing it's going to trigger is your hypothalamus To start releasing corticotropin releasing hormone and then you've got activation of your pituitary And then finally your adrenals get activated and your adrenals release cortisol, right? So so we'll pause there at the cortisol level now the other side of that activation of the hpa Is the activation of the sympathetic nervous system And then the sympathetic nervous system's job is to get the body ready for flight or fight response, right? So one of the things it's doing is increasing heart rate respiration rate vasodilation But the sympathetic nervous system releases all these catecholamines that ends up activating the immune system And it ends up activating macrophages and microglia cells, which are kind of macrophages in the brain, if you will And so those cells then release all of these inflammatory cytokines things like nf kappa b In a lukin 6 it'll interfere on alpha and creates massive inflammation in the brain Right and massive inflammation throughout the body as well that can be measured And so part of that sympathetic activation is about driving inflammation in the brain driving exit or toxicity activity And and starting down anything that would calm the system Right and and all of that is just to get the body amped up and ready to go to fight or flight from whatever the danger is Inflammation of course causes perfusion, right? And so one of the things that I think the body's adapted to do is using the immune system As a way to drive blood to areas that the body feels it needs it. So now you've had that external stressor So now you have two outcomes working in parallel One is cortisol levels are going up because of hpa activation and you've got inflammation going up and and Your respiratory rate and heart rate and all that is going up as well, right? So now you feel stress This is the physiological feeling of stress. You're amped up. You're stressed out now feeling stress is perfectly fine, right? That's a normal physiological feeling. We are geared to feel stress What what is the normal response then that tends to happen is cortisol keeps going up as cortisol goes up It starts to create a negative feedback loop for that whole mechanism Right, we have these receptors all throughout our body called called glucocorticoid receptors as cortisol levels cortisol levels go up It starts binding all the glucocorticoid receptors Which then send a negative feedback signal to shut down that whole system, right? That becomes our recovery From that amped up stress, right? The whole idea is we're walking to the grasses. We see something scary It amps us up cortisol flies up sympathetic system flies up We run from the danger We climb up a tree and hide and once we're sitting up on the tree We're supposed to be able to come down from all of it, right? Because if we don't come down from it Then we are constantly in a state of of being amped up the sympathetic system works against the parasympathetic system, right? Which means that we can't rest digest rebuild. We're always amped up moving Seeing a lot of a breakdown of tissue and and creation of reactive oxygen species and oxidative stress We're also full of inflammation because now the immune system is amped up And the macrophages and all that are kicking off all of these inflammatory cytokines So all of this system is is dependent on elevated cortisol Reaching a point where it starts binding glucocorticoid receptors and then that providing the negative feedback to bring down the whole system But here's an interesting aspect of that whole system how that works The trigger or the linchpin for whether or not the negative feedback occurs hangs in the balance in the gut There's a component in the gut That is absolutely critical to make sure this happens the negative feedback happens, right? And we've outsourced this to microbes in the gut Right. So it's it's it's super interesting when you think about it from an evolutionary standpoint our ability to be to to experience stress Right react to it But then come down from it is dependent on the types of microbes we have within our gut right Whether we are constantly stress can never come down from the stress and the stress progresses towards Generalize anxiety and then depression with generalized anxiety Lack of sleep, of course, because we can't sleep when we're stressed up in our sympathetic system Is up whether it progresses to that all depends on whether or not you have a particular type of microbial system in your gut And we'll talk about what that is in a second, right? So that's where modern society is going Right modern society is at that place where we experience stress, but we just can't come down from it Right. It keeps building and building and building, right? So we have Really quick. I was just going to say let's frame this in the sense of the pandemic people have been on this like high alert A few are getting sick Isolating and it's just going on and on and on and on so depending on where you are in the world doesn't really matter So so we're in a time and error where this is the most relevant. It's ever been Absolutely that the timing couldn't be better, right? We need this kind of thoughts and solutions more now than we ever have And and you know, our microbiomes are probably more Damaged now than they've ever been, you know in the in the recent history because of all of the oversanitization and isolation This but just a little fun fact Anger and fear can preferentially destroy lactobacillus and allow things like flustridia to proliferate So even our emotions actually change negatively the the aspects of our microbiome They do and and since you bring that up, you know, so there's lots of opportunistic organisms within the gut microbiome and the Total microbiome that that respond to stress hormone signaling Whether it's cortisol or epinephrine or norepinephrine They respond and and exercise their virulence factors When those levels are high because they know that the host immune system is suppressed And the host metabolic system is suppressed. So that's their opportunity To actually express themselves and win In the in the population fight, right? So yes, absolutely Studies have shown over and over again that multiple bouts continuous bouts of stress and that stress response Will end up actually creating more pathogenic bacteria viruses and so on in your system Because of the stress itself and the way they respond to stress. So, um, yeah, it's It couldn't be more relevant right now, right? So so the the linchpin I was talking about So here's what tends to happen if your gut is dysbiotic and you don't have the right microbial component in the gut So cortisol as the levels builds up as we were talking about Part of it enters the gut, right when cortisol goes into the gut it actually increases intestinal permeability Right. So cortisol leads to gut permeability Now the problem with that is it does so when your gut is dysbiotic and there isn't this checkpoint and I'll talk about what that checkpoint is But as your gut becomes permeable endotoxins flow through of course lps now has free reign to move up to your brain and Screw up your brain even more like we talked about earlier But the other consequence of Of intestinal permeability or leaky gut is a huge elevation of interleukin six, right? interleukin six being the quintessential cytokine for inflammation When interleukin six is elevated what it tends to do is it goes and it triggers the hpa axis again Right. So il six by itself can activate the hpa axis, right? So now you've got this rising cortisol levels Good amount of it dumping into the gut causing causing leaky gut causing an increase in il six Il six activates the hpa axis again causes more release of cortisol which causes more leaky gut Which causes more hpa activation, right? And here's the other kicker not only does it trigger hpa activation It reduces the expression of glucocorticoid receptors Those are those receptors that cortisol supposed to bind to to provide the negative feedback to shut all this down Right. So not only is the negative feedback loop now cut off But the continuous amplification of the hpa axis is happening. Your gut is becoming more leaky. You're becoming more inflamed You've got more lps now dumping into the system Which puts you at this for all of the chronic illnesses that we've talked about, you know, and and you're Moving towards this area of significant chronic issues, right significant chronic illness And and of course while all the while you're not dealing with the stress, right? The coping centers of the brain for stress are not functioning and not firing You're not in the theta wave state your brain wave activation is all off. So It's just a mess, but that's where the average person is right now, right? With stress and mood disorders and sleep disorders and all that So here is that linchpin in the gut that makes all of the difference when cortisol enters into the gi tract, right? The big thing is something called bacterial peptidoglycans So peptidoglycans are these these fascinating compounds that bacteria make That are basically like a amino acid with glucose on it. I was so with with sugars on it and Some bacteria make it and a bit of glycans as it turns out is important to you and your central nervous system from day one So on on if you're if you're pregnant and you have a baby in utero on your placenta You have bacterial peptidoglycan receptors and transporters, right? So mom's gut bacteria who make peptidoglycan will release peptidoglycan into mom circulation That bacterial peptidoglycan will make its way to the placenta. It'll be bound by the peptidoglycan receptors It'll be grabbed by the peptidoglycan transporters taken through the cord blood Into the baby's brain and the baby's brain has peptidoglycan receptors and transporters And as the studies show when the baby's brain binds these bacterial peptidoglycan That becomes a key stimuli for the proliferation of brain cells And the creation of synapses so synaptogenesis and the myelin nation of the baby's central nervous system That's the putting on the insulation on the nervous system on the nerve on the neurons And then the formation of the blood-brain barrier So the development of our baby's brains and central nervous system Is dependent on a bacterial byproduct, right? Just think about the symbiosis of that. It's insane We have outsourced one of the most important aspects of human development Bacteria Right and a byproduct of bacteria And it just to me that's the mind bogglingness of this connection that we have with microbes Now it's super important when you're in utero But it's equally important when you're an adult as well because peptidoglycans from bacteria Are the checkpoint for how cortisol impacts the gut microbiome and the leakiness in the gut, right? So if you have adequate layer levels of peptidoglycan being produced in the gut by the right type of bacteria That peptidoglycan will actually check The inflammation and permeability that cortisol creates So it prevents that creation of intestinal permeability and it prevents the turning on of that inflammatory process In the gut so it prevents the brain inflammation that cortisol can create through the gut microbiome And in fact the peptidoglycan will go as far as binding to To certain types of cells on the intestinal lining that create neuro transmitters That move up the vagus nerve that actually change brain wave activity during moments of stress To improve stress coping mechanisms Right, so it goes so far as to prevent the escalation of hpa activation Prevent the leakiness of the gut from cortisol Prevent the inflammation that's induced by that stressor especially the cortisol component of it And then it also changes brain wave function this bacterial peptidoglycan Right, so that's the component that we really grabbed onto and said, okay That's the second part to this story, right? First part is we're dealing with lps. You've got to stop lps moving through Yeah, the second part is we've got to get a handle on the Inflammation driven stress response and continuous hpa activation So that's the second part and it's mind boggling What we're seeing now when people use utilize the product That's amazing what you just shared and so relevant like you said And I just see like again 10 years ago when some of this started It's just exponentially when I look up il6 and just pression there are thousands of studies relating to that And again, that's relevant to code because il6 is one of the main cytokines related to this not only long haul But bad outcomes and these are all connected Let's talk in our last few minutes about there's obviously these strains that have the proteoglycans in them But what about the other ingredients because what I noticed on the bottle Let's talk about coat first and then sleep and it made sense because I use those ingredients But talk just a little bit about what's in the cope and what why did you choose these other ingredients? Yeah, so so with the what we have this strain called bifidolongum 1714 It's a very unique bifidobacteria with that at what we call an exopolysaccharide So like the spores have this unique capability providing this coating on itself This is a unique strain that also coats itself with peptidoglycans, right? It's a poly exopolysaccharide That's the source of the awesome peptidoglycans that you get Got when you take this the species and that's what's doing all of the checkpoints and and and Bringing down the cortisol and improving sleep changing the brainwave function We have we have two studies showing that when you get exposed to this bacterial peptidoglycan through the through that species It actually changes your brainwave to theta wave function, which is that flow state that everyone wants to be in right? So Now what we did is then because the strain works both improving sleep Parameters like the time to sleep and the quality of sleep and it also helps with day to day coping of stress And reduction of cortisol It can work throughout the day both daytime and nighttime now We looked at the population and we said, okay There's a lot of people that have issues with both sleeping and day to day coping But there are some that are like, okay, I sleep fine But during the day I need a lot of support or during the day I'm fine, but I really need help sleeping Right. So so either way the microbe is going to help Then what we did to distinguish the product is to utilize a couple of key ingredients that we've lugged in the past We've all within microbiome labs have used them personally. So on the sleep side. We use a theanine And and theanine is just such an amazing powerful product. I'm sure you've used it Yeah And and we you know, we think it pairs so well with the mechanism of action How the the peptone of glycan rich strain works And so what we're finding in people that are using it is that they're noticing a change in their ability to fall asleep And then the quality of their sleep. In fact, what we get the most response from is the vivid dreams that people have right Because it you're in deeper higher quality sleep for more for longer So we get that response within the first week or so and then in the on the other side. We also started using on the cope Lemon balm and and saffron Right and and those are both such awesome gentle High quality ingredients with lots of studies showing their ability to kind of simmer down the sympathetic nervous system Right, which tends to be activated in in people who are dealing with stress all the time So while the while the probiotic bacteria is working on the root cause That continuous hpa activation and the gut brain inflammation Then we've got these ingredients to provide support to give more short-term immediate effect right, so you get a kind of a Two two prong deal here where you're dealing with the root cause But then in the in the meantime, you're also getting more immediate relief and more immediate effect So that's that's kind of how we formulated it. We could have just put just the strain in there But we really wanted to have people feel relief much sooner as well And and when you combine the underlying root cause Solution with the with the peptide of lycan and the exopolysaccharide strain And then these really cool herbals that are well Documented well studied then you really get the right, you know the most bang for your buck really Yeah, I am really excited because of course these are brand new So I haven't had a huge like year of popular of patients to see yet But what I'm doing is the cope more during the day and the sleep of course at night Some people will take both some people will choose and again just in interviewing them I usually know which piece is a bigger issue, but you can take both correct because I've been taking both Because I've been traveling a lot and traveling overseas to Europe and all that I've been using both So you would take if you're using both that and the way that we've set up the dosing is So the cope has 60 caps, right? So if you were taking just the cope and you were like, I don't need the sleep help Then you would take two caps a day of the cope And you take it during the day with food, which is totally normal with your mega spore And then if you were taking both you would take one cap of the cope and one cap of the sleep at night If you're taking just the sleep you would just do one cap of sleep at night And then you're you're in a good place, right? So We're finding that About 80 percent of people are taking both And and only about 20 percent of people are taking just the cope Um, we don't know anyone yet that has taken just the sleep everybody seems to have a good amount of daytime stress The error we're in this is like all of them because I literally see and like we talked right before we got on here like Anyone in functional medicine knows this but our demand for services and people who are suffering It's just exponentially rising and a lot of it's related to the stress response because people are so under stress And we're getting pushed at all sides so and making decisions and family and school and kids and COVID and so it really this is so relevant what I like to is So many people like myself have the tracking rings or other devices So like for me when I do an intervention I can see in real time changes I can see the changes in deep sleep the changes in so i'm excited as well to maybe 30 days or 60 days Give you some feedback Yes, that's awesome. We've been getting we've been getting people reporting from their aura rings and all of that Which has been super exciting and and keep in mind and one thing that's really really exciting and interesting here Is that even though what we're looking at our our improvements in in acute issues right that people are dealing with Or we're trying to get a quick response Because the the species are working on the underlying root cause You're also getting all kinds of long-term health benefits. Yeah by fixing that root cause problem right because And all the stuff you're dealing with is probably I think I'm sure you do too We may be very few but I think lps and endotuxemia and il6 and some of these things we're talking about are the crisis in medicine and the crisis So we're really dealing with the core because you take cardiovascular disease obesity metabolic syndrome mood disorders sleep disorders They all relate to endotuxemia many of them relate to excess cytokines and so it's kind of coming together It's not like a silo approach anymore These there's commonalities in the mechanisms of stuff as diverse as heart disease and depression, right? As always so so fascinating so excited to share your products with the patients and listeners and everything and Just super excited anything else last time we talked we talked about these being on the horizon and now they're out So we will be watching for good results in our patients Anything else on the horizon? Are you looking at more ways to deal with inflammation and mood or anything else that we should be Looking towards in the future where they come. Yeah, we we actually have two very unique strains coming out One that's coming out by the end of the year is called piloguard And this is a lactobacilli But an attenuated lactobacilli, so it's not alive So it's a it's a postbiotic or ghost probiotic, right? And it has a very strong affinity to bind up h pylori In your stomach. Wow, and we know and and we're from from doing microbiome studies and tests We think h pylori is a really under you know under Yeah forgotten Driver of so many conditions, right and and it's so prevalent More than 50 of the population has infectious levels of it Of course, most people knew about it through peptic ulcers and things like that But but now the studies are coming out that there's a lot more It's even most recently a study came out showing its correlation to prostate cancer, right? And so it just screws up the entire digestive system starting in the stomach Right starting at the very front of it. And so to us h pylori is a massive massive issue And and and the treatments for it are super aggressive, right the triple therapy That's super aggressive and that has all kinds of other implications to it So for us the idea is like, okay Is there a first line more gentle way of trying to go about reducing those The numbers and so here is a probiotic strain that actually will will get will disperse in the stomach And then and then it has an affinity to grab on to and bind h pylori Take that whole complex out so you can defecate it out without touching anything else or damaging anything else, right? It's a mind-blowing probiotic strain. I mean you think about it and in that same vein We have another one coming out called mega metallic and the reasons called mega metallic is because heavy metals are another big issue that we're dealing with right A big congressional report just came out. I think it was the beginning of this year Showing how all of these kids foods and baby foods are this Laced with crazy amounts of lead and other heavy metals Of course, so many households in the u s still have lead pipes and all that right so lead is a really really Big problem in terms of toxicity and of course impacts of microbiome We have a species of bacteria again attenuated doesn't have to be alive That can go into the gut and actually bind up all of the lead and arsenic in canvium From the from the liquid from the diet from the foods that you're eating and take it out of the system Right, I can't wait to hear this is fantastic because again two huge problems as clinicians Those are two things that I deal with every day and they're not easy to treat So as always I love your cutting edge approach Kieran, thank you. Thank you for your time for your expertise for your work Always a joy to spend time with you. We will continue sharing and thank you all so much for joining us today