067: How to Address Leaky Gut with Matt Gallant

Do you know how to address leaky gut? You may have heard the term or may even be dealing with it yourself, but is there a way to potentially eliminate it? Matt Gallant, my Bioptimizers co-founder and biohacking genius, joins us to talk about his latest research and findings on gut health and leaky gut.

Leaky gut is when your gut is permeable, meaning stuff can get through your intestinal walls.Think of it like pipes in a house: if your pipes have holes in them you’re going to have problems in your house. The same is true for your gut: if you have leaky gut then you have tiny holes in your intestines and that is going to cause health issues. The digestive track itself is one long canal from your mouth to your bum. In that canal there are five stages that happen as your food is broken down and processed by your body.

The first stage is touch, taste and sense; it happens when your mouth starts to salivate. Your body salivating is its way of prepping the rest of your digestive system for the other stages including stage two. Stage two is actually chewing your food. Once your food is chewed and swallowed it goes down past your esophagus and into the upper portion of your stomach. From here your food should be broken down by enzymes in the food, but most food doesn’t have enzymes any more so your body is being asked to do this extra work.

The next part of digestion is your stomach acid coming into the mix. It is meant to do two things: break down food and to eliminate pathogens, viruses, parasites and bacteria. But most people have significantly depleted their body’s stomach acid levels by their 30s or 40s, and that means their food isn’t being broken down fully again. And they also aren’t able to fend off bacteria, pathogens, and parasites either.

After its down its two jobs, hydrochloric acid leaves the intestinal track and your microbiome now helps finish the digestive process.The final stage is elimination: your digestive tract moves the waste material out and completes the cycle. Matt and I also talk about the solutions we have created for the problems many people experience within these stages of digestion, including our latest Leaky Gut Guardian.

Leaky Gut Guardian works by helping to seal the gut. More scientifically, it actually helps to rebuild the biofilm. It also replenishes the right probiotic balance so it feeds the good guys working in your gut, which helps you fend off bad bacteria, pathogens, etc while also helping you assimilate your food better. Matt shares some of the data from his research with Leaky Gut Guardian, as well as how leaky gut might be increasing people’s belly fat and why we need prebiotics as well as probiotics.
We finish our episode by talking about our latest version of our plant-based protein shakes and intermittent fasting.

Join Matt and me to get the skinny on how to address leaky gut and improving your digestion on today’s edition of Awesome Health Podcast!

Episode Resources:

• Matt Gallant’s Website: https://mattgallant.tv/
• More information about Leaky Gut: https://leakygutguardian.com/

Read The Episode Transcript:

Wade Lightheart: Good morning, good afternoon and good evening. It's Wade T Lightheart from BiOptimizers with another edition of the Awesome Health Podcast. And we have none other than the co-founder, my friend, my buddy, my business partner, and long time biohacking legend, Matt Gallant who is joining us today live from Panama. Dude, how you doing, man?

Matt Gallant: Good man. Always love doing these shows with you, so excited to be here.

Wade Lightheart: Yeah. You know, we've been doing shows, I think for 20 years for ourselves, like off screen. It's nice to actually get some of the conversations. I wish we had maybe documented some more of that stuff in the past and probably some things we… Good thing that we didn't document. But today, as always, when we're bringing you back as we do periodically to talk about some specific items, some new breakthroughs, because you're kind of like… So people don't know Matt. He's the genius in the lab, kind of like a combination between Einstein, Beaker and maybe Ben Greenfield or Dave Asprey or something…

Wade Lightheart: I don't know. I don't know how that combo, you could kind of maybe see where you draw your magic, but you're always optimizing. You're always testing. You're always running experiments. And recently you've run a whole bunch of experiments with a PhD team in regards to biofilm and this whole leaky gut issue. That's proliferating. And for people who know about digestive issues and problems, they're hearing about leaky gut. They're hearing about crap in their brains and crap in their blood and all this garbage that's messing them up and screwing up their lives. And now they're breathing with mask and it's all this, can you shed some light on us about what's the whole story behind leaky gut? What is leaky gut? How do people get leaky gut? Why they get leaky gut? What's this whole story, man?

Matt Gallant: Yeah. So just the definition of leaky gut is intestinal permeability. Essentially means you've got these micro holes in your intestinal lining, which you don't want. Cause' and then… I want you to explain he basics of the tube in the body cause' it's a great illustration. But imagine that you had pipes and you have holes in your pipes, it's going to be a disaster for your house. So it's kind of similar with the body. You don't want to have holes and have you know, fecal matter or even undigested food go through. And a lot of times when people have reactions to food or autoimmune issues, that's the culprit. And maybe Wade, you can talk about how the digestive tract actually works in the body, cause' I think a lot people aren't clear about that.

Wade Lightheart: Yeah. For those who haven't listened or heard or checked out some of our explanations of the digestive tract, keep in mind, it's a single canal from your mouth to your bum. And you know, there is a very elaborate multistage process. And we're going to summarize that in five distinct stages that comes in as the first stage, which is taste, touch, feel, sense the food which creates the salivary response. For example, if I say dill pickles and sauerkraut, you start to salivate in the back of your throat. Your body actually starts to react. Or you smell your mom's favorite food there. Your body's actually prepping for that food, for that meal. Then it goes into your mouth, you start masticating it, which is a fancy name for chewing. And you know, some people gulp their foods. Some people chew their food. There's a bunch of camps about which way you're supposed to eat it depending on the diet. But the bottom line is most people say that chewing your food good is really important. The food then travels down that tube to through what's called the esophagus and into the upper cardiac portion of the stomach. So during that first 30 to 60 minutes, this is where the natural enzymes present in the food are supposed to be breaking down the food. Guess what? It's not happening because you don't have enzymes in your food anymore.

Wade Lightheart: Check out our stuff about Edward Howell "Food Enzymes for Health and Longevity", the enzyme nutrition, the whole enzyme concept, and why we've eradicated that with modern food production and distribution, that's a whole episode on itself. But beyond that, that 30 to 60 minutes is a critical stage. Now, since we don't have enzymes, our body starts producing it, but that means incomplete digestion for a lot of people. In the second stage, or it's actually technically is the third stage, what happens is hydrochloric acid comes in. Now a lot of people think there's this big bowl of acid sitting in your stump, but the food drops in and just dissolves. No, that's not the case. The case of the matter is, is you got hydrochloric acid that comes in after 36 minutes and it serves two distinct purposes. First purpose is in charge of disinfecting from all the pathogens, the viruses, the bacteria, the parasites, any agent that can mess you up that has entered into this single canal. Guess what? That's, what HCL is supposed to do. And unfortunately the average person by the time they're 30 or 40 years old is making a fraction of it. And that leads to a whole lot of issues. Second thing that it does is it shifts the pH of that food chime and that activates some enzymes and deactivates others. This is an important process because not all enzymes work in the same pH levels of particularly with proteases and how they break down. So why we divide developed mass signs, the way that we did to work in all stages of pH. Most people don't do that. Then after that, what happens is hydrochloric acid leaves the intestinal track. It's buffered by bicarbonate buffers, which is a fancy name for alkaline minerals that neutralizes the acid. So it goes into the intestinal track. And that's when your microbiome, which is a fancy name for the good, the bad and the ugly bacteria that inhabit your system anywhere from 200 to 500 strains exist.

Wade Lightheart: In fact, there's about somewhere between 5 and 10 times, the amount of bacteria in your body, than there is cells in the body. No, one's measured that for sure, but it's somewhere on their own. There's a lot of guys in there. And this operates in a symbiotic relationship. The good guys help produce, finish that final stage of turning our food into energy units and building blocks. The bad guys, steal the food from the good guys, poop inside your system and make you feel ugly, tired, bad breath, waking up, not feeling your best, probably got some background material in your system. And then the final stage is called through peristaltic contraction, which actually controlled through the whole thing, which is smooth muscle tissue that contracts and moves out your waste out of the body whatever's left over. So whatever you don't consume is now waste or food for the bad guys, depending on how that digestive system. Now, where people run into problems. Number one, they don't have enzymes in their food at the front stage and they don't get the first part of digestion. Number two, they have low hydrochloric acids. Doesn't able to further accelerate and break down and fight off the invaders that are always assaulting your body all the time. And then the third stage ultimately is the probiotic level. Do you have enough good guys and a few bad guys inside that system. So you can make that final stage of conversion. And is your pelvic floor in a great place where you have activated, so your smooth muscle tissue, and a lot of that happens from sitting and stuff. So we have the 12 week awesome health course that you can always check out. And we kind of explain it all in detail, but that's the summary, but then there's this weird thing that happens, which is leaky gut, which is the food's supposed to transport after, like, when it's all been broken up by the good guys, but sometimes there's like little holes. That happened. And its' things that aren't supposed to get into the bloodstream, do. So can you talk about that for just a second?

Matt Gallant: Yeah. Before I do, you know, I just want to talk about BiOptimizers in what we've been focusing on for the last five years. So five years ago, we made a big, huge decision, which is we're going to build the most complete line, most effective line of digestive solutions ever done, and we've done it. You know, first we started with MassZymes, which takes care of the enzyme part of the digestive process, which is huge. You know, then we came out with P3OM, which is a patented probiotic that helps you break down food also helps eliminate bad bacteria. And we have evidence of that. We'll talk more about that later on the show, you know, then we got hydrochloric acid, which as way to dress is a huge game changer. As you get older, helps get rid of a lot of potential bad guys that might be lingering in the food and other ways. Then, you know, we released, you know, things like Gluten Guardian to break down gluten, you know, came out with Herbal Parasite Cleanse to deal with parasites, ConstiCleanse, to deal with constipation.

Matt Gallant: In a lot of ways, this is going to be one of our last products because it really completes the picture and it's Leaky Gut Guardian. And we'll talk more about that. But the issue is a lot of people have these holes and most people don't realize, but an undigested protein in the bloodstream is, you know, first of all, deadly in a worst case scenario. People that are allergic to foods that can literally create a deadly reaction, that's what's going on. The body senses that protein is a threat. It produces an incredibly intense immune response and creates issues. And maybe you can talk a little bit about this way. A lot of people think that, you know, if you go to a hundred out of a hundred on an immune response, it's a good thing. But you know, one of the things we know now for an example is cytokine storms can be extremely problematic. And you know, when you hear about auto immune disease,again, if your immune system is just on hyper mode all the time, it can be problematic. So do you have a few words to add about that?

Wade Lightheart: Sure, dude. So years ago I wrote a book called "Staying Alive in a Toxic World" and the foundational principles behind that, were we cannot control the sheer, you know, exponentially growing number of assaults on the body. Chemicals, electromagnetic frequencies, genetically modified foods that we might not recognize, pathogens, organizms, viruses - all these things that we're hearing about in the news and you read about online. They seem to be growing exponentially. And our immune system is an adaptive response over millions of years, that responds to its' environmental conditions and adapts to it. And it has these response systems like cytokine response, immune system response. And you might've seen the white blood cells eating up the bad guys and stuff, and then, you know, a junior high video or something like that. But the bottom line is, is we have an elaborate array of responses. However, imagine your immune system, it works on a scale of a hundred.

Wade Lightheart: A hundred mean that it's perfect, it's perfectly capable. And zero, meaning you have no immune system. Like, you know, that which happens to people in some illnesses where they have no immune system, they have to put them in the bubbles and all that sort of stuff. Well, where you're operating somewhere in that range between zero to a hundred. And I would say most people in the modern world are probably below 50 and many below 30 of what their capacity is. And so there is a collective inflammatory response going on literally all the time, just from existing in the world. And a lot of the things that we would normally get that bolster or immune system. Keep in mind, we used to, when we eat our foods throughout evolution, we got the bacteria that we need it associated with the food as well. We always think of the antibacterial components and… But some of that bacteria, we actually need it to digest. So when you eat a carrot out of the ground at my mom's garden, you get the bacteria that's associated with that character. If you eat a fruit off the tree, or even for people, if you look at the people were more in tuned for carnivores, they would eat the end trails first in most indigenous cultures, or they'd eat the raw organs where the most enzymatic capacity and the most bacteria agents would be present and they would eat that. And then they would consume the rest of it. They would actually prepare. So nature kind of works this way, but we've moved away from that model. And we've added all these external stressors.

Wade Lightheart: So what happens is your responsive rate, your inflammatory response rate is going to be a result of two things. The inflammatory agent that's been added to the system, as well as what is the total inflammatory stress load that you're responding to. So it is a combination of those two things. So people that oftentimes have a bad digestive system, everything screws them up. Like they take one bad food and they go out for days. I had one glass of wine and I feel like crap for two days, or I had a cracker at the social club. And I'm, you know, I felt like someone ate knives. And what we find if we repair that digestive system by using some of the things and tools that we've developed over and procedures that we've developed over the last 10, 15 years, guess what? As your digestive health improves, that means your immune system responds to. That means you reduce the inflammatory response inside the body. Those proteins that get into your body becomes hyperreactive to, and guess what? You all of a sudden can now become more tolerant to that glass of wine or that cracker at the wine and cheese party. It doesn't throw you off as well. Not saying that you go down that road, but the bottom line is as you, you need to be consciously bolstering up your digestive system, because that is the defense mechanism you've got. It's like putting the fortress walls. The wall has got to hold because once those invaders get past that wall, they wreak havoc inside your system.

Matt Gallant: Some of the consequences and symptoms of leaky gut include, you know, bloating and gas, indigestion, weak immunity, cravings, low energy and inflammation. But one of the things we want to focus on today's podcast is to talk about immunity. And Wade's alluded to it a little bit. You know, here's a quote from Dan Peterson, from the John Hopkins school of medicine. He said a huge proportion of your immune system is actually in your GI tract. And in a followup study published in the journal of immunology. Researchers found that over 70% of your immunity is created in your gut, which then leads to the question, you know, what's the problem? Dr. Marcelo Campos from Harvard said, we all have some degree of leaky gut. So we're going to be talking about today really is how to fix leaky gut. And the short answer is Leaky Gut Guardian. And the way it works is one, it eliminates the bad guys, and we've got some mindblowing data to share with you on that in a moment. Two, it helps seal the gut and more scientifically, it actually helps to rebuild the biofilm. And we'll talk more about the biofilm in a second. Third, it replenishes the right probiotic balance and four, it feeds the good guys. So one of the huge things we've done, and as Wade alluded to, I'm kind of the, you know, the mad scientist at BiOptimizers always looking to improve things to innovate. We brought in two PhDs. One is a PhD in bacteria, probiotics, you name it. The second one in genetics. And we have them full time running experiments for us, for bacteria.

Matt Gallant: So we just send them leaky gut a few weeks ago and they just ran the first round of tests. And one of the experiments they do is they take well known, harmful bacterias. You know, they took about 10 of them. And they test how effective is Leaky Gut Guardian at stopping those bad bacteria. And it completely, it outperformed their expectations and stop 80% of the strains, the bad strains that they tested against. So that means, we know, again, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that it has the power to eliminate destructive bacterias in the intestinal system. So that's the first piece, which is absolutely huge and we'll shift to some other pieces. So the other piece, which is really the core of the product is sealing the gut. So your intestinal track has something called a biofilm and this biofilm is always rebuilding itself. You know, it rebuilts and it repairs itself very quickly. And that's, when we say there's holes in the gut, there's holes in the biofilm tract. So what we want to do is help rebuild that and keep it building itself up as fast and as, as strongly as possible with the right strains, because in biofilm bacteria, including bad guys and good guys, can actually hide in the biofilm. And that's where, you know, the anti bad bacteria powers of this product come in. So as far as the bio filming capabilities of this product, there's specific immunoglobulins found in eggs that have super powers and when it comes to your gut. So there's an ingredient called IGY max, and that is the core of this product. And we'll talk more, some other things we've added as well, but just the IGY max by itself. You know, the majority of people that use it, decrease in gas, bloating felt more energy. And there was a snotty flied percent decline in something called zonulin, when shows up when you've got too many holes in your gut.

Matt Gallant: And by the way, there's correlations in some studies with zonulin and belly fat. So again, we're not going to make crazy claims, but it is possible that the leaky gut is contributing to belly fat. And if you seal your gut, you'll potentially be able to improve that. And then third there was a 290% declining gut inflammation, which is huge. You know, again, sometimes we get these extended values, is this bloating, this gas, if we can eliminate that, it's huge. Now, one of the things we did for this product, you know, Wade's vegetarian and we know a lot of people are vegan, vegetarian. We built a vegetarian version and a carnivore version. So in both versions, the IGY max is there. So it's not vegan, technically there is this egg based ingredient, it is vegetarian. And there is glutamine which has been shown to help repair the gut. Now on the carnival version, we also have glutamine, which also helps contribute to building the biofilm. And, you know, I'll stop here, to let Wade add some comments before I kind of shift to the strains that we've added for specific reasons. But again, the gist of the product is let's eliminate the bad guys. Let's rebuild the biofilm, seal the gut, replenish the right probiotic balance specifically for immunity and for let's feed the good guys. We'll talk about three and four in a second, but Wade, anything to add on one and two?

Wade Lightheart: Well, I think just to summarize, you can imagine that your intestinal track is kind of like this. It's almost like works like a strainer. And in other words, it's designed so that particles only big enough gets through, and that strainer is not made out of metal. It's made out of this biofilm. And as long as that biofilm is operating functionally, and there's the right bacteria inside that, it keeps that strainer working right. But when something interacts with that, and that could be a variety of things like the beer and nachos you had at the bar watching the football game, the Canadian kid that had genetically modified corn and assortment array of chemical agents and preservatives and dyes that went in there and killed off a bunch of these guys and put a hole in it. This is what's creating this zonulin response. So it's not beer belly you got, it's zonulin belly, but beer belly sounds kind of cool. And the idea, if I understand here is what we're trying to do is we're trying to allow your body to naturally regenerate with these incredible agents, the IGY max and the right bacteria.

Wade Lightheart: So it's like you send the right materials and the right workers to patch up this area so that, you know, the right size molecules go through. Because if that corn chip gets through your bloodstream, you know, in, through that barrier, and that's where you get in these cytokine responses in these crazy immune system responses, and you start, you know, we've all had one of those where we just, we ate something. Our nose started running our eyes, start watering, we started sneezing uncontrollably. That's how, you know, you've had one of those responses, and that's a good indication that there's something going on inside your body and left unchecked. You're going to end up in trouble. So let's get back to the research and go a little bit deeper here, Matt. Cause' I know you're on the calls with our PhDs all the time and drilling them with questions and quizzes and ideas for experiments. So what else have they discovered?
Matt Gallant: Well, so, you know, this is our third product that we use probiotics in. And again, unlike most probiotic companies that just throw a mixmatch of maybes in a bottle, we are very selective and strategic with what we put in. So, you know, we have P3OM, which is an incredible. We've got some incredible data coming on that again, also incredibly effective at eliminating the most commonly the common causes of food poisoning. We've already run the tests on that. We knew that from personal experience. Then we came out with Cognibiotics, which are strains design that have been shown to improve neurotransmitters in the brain, which is huge. But for this product, what we did is we focused on strains that have been shown to have immune boosting responses. So we're with each product, we try to pick the right strains. The first one is lactobacillus rhamnosus, and it's actually one of the most researched strains. It's been researched since 1983. It's been shown to survive acid and bile environments, which is key. It's been shown in a lot of different studies with against a lot of different types of diarrhea to be incredibly effective at eliminating the diarrhea. And a lot of times, you know, if we go back to food poisoning, you ingest this foreign bacteria that basically creates habit. And, you know, the kind of the whole ecosystem falls apart and essentially you've got diarrhea.

Matt Gallant: So going back to what we've shown in the labs, we know that these strains, this product will eliminate 80% of, at least 80% of the ones we've tested against,of the bad bacteria. So it makes sense that it would help with diarrhea. And third, it's been shown to directly activate the immune response in the gut. There was a study done in Finland by some doctors. So there's some really promising research around that particular strain. The next is lactobacillus gasseri and it's been shown to inhibit tissue and inflammation and intestinal permeability. So again, it's helping with the biofilm rebuilding and scientists in Korea studied this strain. They found that it reduced the waist size and hips and human subjects, so that could relate and probably does relate to the zonulin, which is interesting. So again, really interesting on that part. And the last strain we put in there is lactobacillus helveticus. We love that name. I love it as well. And it's been shown to improve immune response in elderly people, and as well as been shown to induce immune response and protective effects against salmonella and E coli, which again, we've seen that in the lab. So, you know, when we tested in the lab, we tested the whole formula, but you know, there's already been research showing the effectiveness against a lot of bad bacteria. So again, these strains are boosting the immune system. They're eliminating the bad guys and yeah, I mean, that's what the product's all about essentially is. Let's eliminate the bad guys and let's improve the biofilm, let's improve the immune system. So I'll stop here, so you can add any comments before we shift to the next piece.

Wade Lightheart: You break it, you bring up a great point in this research and that is people optimally, they're looking for one of three things. And we talk about this in BiOptimizers. They're looking at aesthetics, they're looking at performance and they're looking at health. And the big misnomer is that we associate aesthetics solely with body fat. And when you're talking about aesthetics, body fat, yes is certainly a component of it, however, we've all seen the bodybuilder with the super low body fat and the distended sick looking belly. We were looking at that and we instantly recognize that something's not right. And do you think that these bloated bellies, whether it's the beer drinking nacho eating guy like myself on Saturday for NFL football, God hope that we get that back or that the hard training, super disciplined bodybuilder who's ripped to shreds with the distended belly. Is this because of this digestive stress, and this increase goop, that's building up or leaking things and inflammatory responses? Do you think that might be the case? Cause' the bodybuilders are known for eating a lot of protein. You know, they're pounding their system with protein.

Matt Gallant: Absolutely. I mean most bodybuilders you know, strength, athletes, you know, powerlifters or anyone that their goal is to become as big and as strong as humanly possible. They have to eat anywhere from 4,000 to 10,000 calories a day. And if you've never tried to eat 10,000 calories a day, you don't know how hard that is. First of all, to do physically cause' you know, we've all experienced hunger, but most people have never eaten to the point where your body doesn't want you to eat anymore. It's the opposite response, right?

Wade Lightheart: Well maybe for one meal, but not on a day after day basis. And they have to eat a lot of volume of food because oftentimes they're eating healthier choices of food. They're not pounding Haagen DAAs and potato chips here. They're eating, you know, lean cuts of, you know, meats and vegetables and, you know, clean carbohydrates and healthy fats and stuff. And yet they still have this distended stomach, which is destroying the aesthetics, which… I love using high performance metaphors. And the reason being is anybody on the high performance side now is saying, you know, you look at disc brakes. Disc brakes have been a major upgrading in brakes. And that was first tested out on Formula One tracks. They're testing out on race cars and they found that disc brakes works and that applies to you and your cars. You go to work and you can stop and not run over the kids in the crosswalk when you were texting on your phone. Well, that's a technological advantage. It's the same thing here. So we're not saying, Hey, this is only for bodybuilders, but from bodybuilders who are subjecting themselves to abnormal levels of stress with a lot of tight parameters, we can derive conclusions and then test those conclusions and apply it to the guy that's having nachos and beer at the sports bar. And so you have to realize is that these high performance areas are great ways to test the limits and then they often have applications. And I believe, you know, both of our backgrounds, we're deep in bodybuilding and the way I looked at it, that is the original biohackers in health. Tim Ferriss indicated it and I think anybody who gets into the etymology of who was doing the radical experience, you can go back to Vince Gironda you know, 60, 70 years ago training the Hollywood. That guy was a deep, deep biohacker and was maybe the first guy ever shred it.

Matt Gallant: No, that's a great point. You know, on almost every level, so just to explain the mentality of bodybuilding that Wade and I kind of came from. It's a total obsession, right? I mean, you have one goal, which is, you know why I'm going to build as much muscle as humanly possible. And two, you know, if you're competing, I'm going to get as shredded as humanly possible. And you know, it's important to realize that the body, you know, those are two very, very difficult things for the body to do either or as hard and to do both simultaneously is one of the most difficult biological things possible. And it goes back to survival mechanisms. So what a bodybuilder has to do in order to achieve those results is extreme. It's extreme in the gym, it's extreme with food, extreme with chemistry, and it's extreme with lifestyle. Everything is extreme. But as Wade's alluding to, there's incredible lessons that we can learn from that. And, you know, we don't need to be extreme. We can optimize, apply these principles, learn from the mistakes, learn from the victories, the wins, the stuff that works and bring it down, you know, 50-80%.

Matt Gallant: And now we've got something that works. But what Wade is talking about is common in the bodybuilding industry for guys to have these distended bellies. They're shredded, they're down to 5, 6, 4% body fat, and this, they still have these extended guts. And again, it goes back to just the amount of food they're eating, gut inflammation. They're not breaking down the food properly and it creates that effect and a very common review and testimonial that we get from our products is that I lost an inch or two off my waist. And again, we're not, we've never said these are a fat loss products. So what's happening again is a reduction in inflammation, a reduction in bloating, a reduction in gas and the belly just tightens up. So, you know, we know that's happening with our clients. And again, for those of you that need to eat a lot of food, what we're talking about, it's absolutely critical to your longterm success.

Matt Gallant: Because a lot of guys, I mean the food just wrecks them. I remember there was one guy on a forum, on Scott Abels forum, and he was dieting down. This was one of the most extreme stories I heard. So he was dieting down and when you're dieting down, you need to find ways to manage hunger. And there's all kinds of ways to manage hunger. And one of the ways is if you're trying to cut your calories is to start really ramping up on low-calorie vegetables. So this guy starts eating. I forget how much he said, I believe it was four to five pounds of vegetables a day. And it was an extreme amount of vegetables so that he wouldn't feel hungry, just kind of fill his belly with low-calorie veggies. And he completely destroyed his digestive system. Like he… I think he blew out his capacity to make enzymes. I remember he said that he just couldn't digest almost anything anymore. And he had to start using digestivator so you know, again, we can learn from these things. But what Wade is saying that you have bloating, gas, inflammation will certainly affect your aesthetics, even though you're might be really lean already.

Wade Lightheart: Well, and that's not, you know, it's not just the question of the vegetables, but what was on the vegetables? Did it have herbicides, pesticides and fungicides? Did it have some kind of weird chemical where it got sprayed bombed on the truck on the way there? Was it genetically modified vegetables? We don't know. But what we can, what we do know is that 12% of the emergency hospital visits today in the United States are related to gastrointestinal issues. A hundred million people on any given day are reaching for an over the counter or prescription medication for digestive health. And as a company who's focused… We've always been about optimizing human biology. That's been our passion that we've been involved before, even BiOptimizers exist, Just personally, we were into that process. But as a company we realize is, if you want to be a biohacker, if you want to be biologically optimized, if you want to be the best…

Wade Lightheart: The first stage to get fixed is your digestive system, because that single canal is where all the magic happens. And if there's disruption in that, it doesn't matter what supplements you take, it doesn't matter what thing that you inject, it doesn't matter any of that stuff, because you're only getting a fraction of the value. You've got to make this system work and we are under attack as a society. But that's not all there. There's some other things that you've thrown in this concoction, because you're never satisfied. You're always like, can we add one more thing? And I think this is really component because some people might say, Hey, wait, there's a contradiction here. You've been talking about P3OM for years as maintainable in the gastrointestinal tract. And there's a lot of probiotics that aren't maintainable. And one of the reasons that is, is because they literally starve to death, when you drop in the bacteria. They've either starved to death before you got to your shelf because they didn't have the right prebiotics before, or they starved to death because they didn't have the right prebiotics in it. Talk about the prebiotic products that you've added to ensure that these things are going to take hold in the system and do the job that they're supposed to do.

Matt Gallant: Yeah. Just to zoom out a little bit, again, bacteria, look at them like a living creature. They have the same basic metabolism that all creatures do. They need food, right? They don't have food, they starve to death. And as an interesting side note toowe're seeing now in research that even in your intestinal tract, if you don't feed, certain strains will start dying off in a 24 to 48 hours. So there's a benefit to that. So let's say you're on a Dorito and donut diet and you've been feeding all these strains that love Doritos and donuts. You know, they're going to be sending signals to your brain. Well feed me more donuts and Doritos. And a lot of the cravings that people have, especially when they're dieting down is coming from these probiotics that are essentially hungry. Now, the good news is that in maybe seven days max, maybe five, if you starve those strains, you will start feeding new ones. Let's say you shifted from the Dorito-donut diet to carnivore or to vegetarian and you're eating salads every day. You're down feeding new strains and you're going to notice that your cravings change dramatically. I mean, I've experienced that many times from when I went from keto to wake me up kind of a heavy salad diet way back then after week I'm craving salads of like, this is really weird. I was like 17, 18 years ago in Vancouver. To shifting to carnivore. And then I'm craving steaks every day and just basically eating steaks and eggs. So I've experienced this many times, many ways. And for people that are shifting their dietary strategies or diets, it's a really helpful piece of insight because you know, those cravings sometimes after 2 to 3 days, you're like, man, let me just take care of this with a donut. But if you hang in there, it'll go away.

Wade Lightheart: It's like the first principle of elimination diets is starve the bad guys feed the good guys. That's really the strategy that you're looking to do. And then of course getting the good guys in there cause' they might not have them in. And then they might've got wiped out from an antibiotic treatment that you took when you were 12 for strep throat. They might've got a wiped out when you went and got the tetanus shot. When you, you know, cause the dog bit, you, when you were delivering papers or you got exposed to a variety of different things that could. Maybe you're almost in a car accident or something really threatening that wiped out from a reaction side of it. There's a lot of different things that can disrupt the microbiome. It's the dynamic system super levels of stress. So talk about these prebiotics. This is essentially the feed. This is the stuff that keeps these guys alive so they can do the job that they want. Right?

Matt Gallant: Yeah, because let's say you just take probiotics would know prebiotics, prebiotics is food for the bacteria. They won't grow. I don't know if, as a listener, if you've ever cultured anything, whether it's kombucha in your house, I used to make kombucha here. You know, you make a black tea and then you put a ton of sugar and then you put the kombucha and what happens is the kombucha starts consuming that sugar and it starts producing beneficial acids. And then, you know, after about three weeks, the pH drops to 2.5, 2.7. You have a really acidic, low sugar beverage because the bacteria has been eating the sugar, eating the sugar and multiplying. And that's what you want. So it's the same thing with probiotics. If you're consuming probiotics without prebiotics, you know, the odds are gonna make it and proliferate and grow and maximize the benefits are extremely low. So we've added three prebiotics. First one is inulin and the second one is vitafiber. And the third is d-ribose. So inulin is found and it actually boosts the gut barrier and immune function of the intestinal cell walls. So there are certain things that can feed the biofilm essentially. And inulin is one of those foods.

Matt Gallant: So, and again, the biofilm has a lot bacteria in it. So it makes sense. The other thing too, is a study published in the British journal of nutrition, found that inulin prebiotics directly help modulate immunity function in humans. So there's immune system benefits to the inulin and then the vitafiber and d-ribose just add even more food. So again, we're feeding the strains. Well, we're limiting the bad guys. We're building up the gut wall. We're installing some immune boosting probiotics and we're feeding them. And, you know, let me jump right to one of the most exciting parts about this product. You know, I was at our mutual friend's house in Venice last year and I tried the sample of Leaky Gut Guardian. And I remember the reaction and, and you had the same reaction later that day. I tried it and I was blown away. I mean, it was literally one of the best tasting things I've ever tried in my life as far as a supplement, as far as the powder supplement. I mean, we all know a lot of stuff is, you know, it's okay, you stomach it, but it literally tastes like frosting. I'm talking specifically about the vanilla, the chocolate sauce as well. But the flavor on this thing's incredible and what a lot of people are doing for an example, they're adding it to their buttered coffees or to their shakes. And it just tastes incredible. I mean, I'll eat it straight out of the tub with the spoons I'm putting powder inside your mouth.

Wade Lightheart: First thing in the morning, man, that thing's going down a galette man. It's lovely.

Matt Gallant: Yeah. It's, you know, even just pure dry powder, which has an interesting texture it tastes incredible. I mean, Wade, what was your first reactions when you tried it?
Wade Lightheart: Well, you know, I have a visceral reaction for anything that's good that happens in my body. There is an instant recognition of this is good for me, or this is bad for me. And as I put it in my mouth, there's kind of like a electrical sensation that goes off in my brain and tells me this is good. And you know, that was exactly what I had when the first time I tasted it. What I like, I just hold it in my mouth for a second, because like the flavor profile starts to kick in. And then you have to realize as these bacteria are freeze dried in kind of a dormant state. So once they enter into the system in that warm, wet environment, this is where they, woohoo. The party is on and bacteria are unique in that they actually interact symbiotically with our nervous system that produce a variety of chemicals, neurotransmitters in your brain. And when I took this product, I instantly felt a neurotransmitter response inside me right now. I don't know what that neurotransmitter response was, but I associate that as a biohacker, as this is good. And that's why we call a company biological optimization BiOptimizers. It's like, there's something in here that is optimizing my brain chemistry, that is optimizing my gut, that tastes good, feels good and is good for my entire body. And I've learned to recognize that, and…

Wade Lightheart: I do this all the time with all kinds of products. Like I go to the store and I take the sample, I get the feeling and I go, what was that I ask about the ingredients and then you, and I end up on a phone call: Hey dude, did you try out, you know, polymorpho what the heck is this thing? And into the rabbit hole, we go. And every now and then we find enough stuff that we pull out some gems. Then we find a way to optimize that. Then we find a way to aggregate it with some other components and, and truly create something unique like we've done with leaky gut. So I think that's a pretty important thing. Let's talk about, you know, let's talk about immunity. This is a conversation that everybody's going to do. We have to say a caveat. We're not making any claims. We're not doctors, men, not medical researchers. We hire medical researchers. We hire biochemists, people that have all the letters, the PhDs, and all that stuff to give us this information, but we should not take this or construe it as medical or diagnosis or information or trying to do this, but let's go back to what you reported from the new England journal of medicine and John Hopkins university in that immunity response is directly related to the gut. So it would make sense that if I want a healthy immune system, I need to have a healthy gut. What makes this so critical in your opinion?

Matt Gallant: Yeah and this product is actually positively impacting the immune system multiple ways. So, the first way is it helpsboost your gut bombs ability to kill pathogens in a way to alluded to earlier, hydrochloric acid is kind of the first line of defense and then your intestinal tract, the probiotics is another line of defence. The second thing is, you know, you can boost your gut bombs' overall immunity capabilities. The third one is to unleash immunoglobulins in your blood. And this one is one of the big ones goes back to the IGY max. And the way immunoglobulin antibodies work is there's a Y actually, if you look at them, that's why it's called the Igy max. They can dock with the spikes on proteins, outside of pathogens. And we're not making claims here, we're just explaining basic immunoglobulins. And then, you know, the fact the phagocytes can then digest the invaders and keep you safe. But the docking, that Y shape allows it to connect to the spikes of certain pathogens. Let's just say that way. So the IGY max ingredients specifically will actually help boost and put immunoglobulins, the Y shape ones, into your bloodstream and then potentially help you against some pathogens. So that's the immune, you know, the multiple immune system mechanisms, as well, as of course, again, eliminating the bad bacteria, that's gonna create issues. So whether it's sealing the gut, stopping bad bacteria or boosting the immunoglobulins in your bloodstream, those are three different ways that you can potentially boost your immune system. And one of the benefits of what's happening right now in the world with you know, COVID is there's a course of increased awareness of the importance of immunity. And again, we're not making claims, we're just sharing some of the science and the data behind some of the ingredients, and you can make your own conclusions.

Wade Lightheart: Very, very good. And I think very pertinent and timely, and I find it fascinating in this current environment, how many of, I would say, the leading biohackers, health experts, fitness enthusiasts, and activists who are there, they're not as fearful as the population. And I think a lot of people in the population are fearful, rightfully so, and they are fearful because they do have compromised immune systems. They do have a risk. If you look at the associated conditions with this, it's diabetes, obesity, heart conditions and respiratory conditions. And many of those are caused by an over consumption of things that are bad for you and an under consumption of things that are good for you. This doesn't happen overnight. This happens over decades and years and pass on generationaly passed on. And so the component is, we have to recognize, is that we have the successful unbroken line of genetic evolution. Like you, me and anybody listening to this podcast is the result of at least 10,000 consistent generations who have evolved with all these survival and immune system mechanisms. And even if you've led a deficient life, a destructive life, a pathway of compromised immune system and all these things, and you've been to doctors and you've been to medicine, and you're taking all these things, and you're totally living in fear. What I'm going to say to you is that as part of your, what I believe your biological responsibility to the ancestors that will come from you is to take back control of your internal chemistry and activate biological optimization by adding these elements.

Wade Lightheart: Taking these things that we've learned from science, that we've wiped out of our regular food supply and wiped out of the conversation, that's happening on the nightly news and get dialed in with all the people such as yourself who are sharing this and who are frankly walking around going, what's the issue here? I'm feeling okay. I'm not worried about these things because I'm confident that my immune system response my body, my health, I can take control. Cause' I have the tools. I have the practices. I have the processes in order to keep that. And let me tell you, when you talk about feeling good and feeling empowered to take back control of your life, you know, when you are confident about your health, when you are confident that you can go into a crowd of sick people, that you can go out into the environment and be subjected to whatever toxins and stuff, and feel confident that you have the tools, the techniques, the capabilities, do it, I'm telling you, it transforms the decisions you make in your life. It transforms how you run your household, what you think about with your kids and your family and your friends and your associated group of people.

Wade Lightheart: And it's very interesting because, you and I both intersect with both segments of the population and the dialogue and conversation inside the biohacking community versus outside in the mainstream person, that, you know, doesn't have access to things, is two polar conversations. They're very radical decisions and choices and things that people are making. And, I'm grateful, frankly, I'm grateful. And I'm also, I'm cognizant too that how sad it is that everybody isn't using us. How sad it is that the agents in our institutions are not disseminating the kind of the tools that we are readily using in the biological optimization community successfully over, and over, and over person after person. There's a reason we've been around for 16 years. There's a reason why we have tens of thousands of happy customers. It's because this stuff works and it works really well. And there's a systematic process for doing it. And you're a testament to it. I'm a testament. And so is many of our clients and friends. So , what is anything else that you'd like to add about Leaky Gut Guardian and why it's so powerful, why it's so potent and white virtually everybody needs to grab a can right now and try it out?

Matt Gallant: I think we hit all the notes, but yeah, just give it a shot. I think you'll be… First of all, first reaction's going to be: wow, this tastes incredible. And two, yeah, I mean, as far as fixing or optimizing your digestive system, it's a game changer. So yeah, give it a shot. We always backed every product. We do buy no questions, 365 day money back guarantee. So for any reason, you're not completely satisfied, just send it back and we will take care of you. But yeah, it's an incredible product. I think, like said, it really completes the digestive optimization and, you know, just to talk about where we're going and we'll have some more podcasts and talk about this stuff. We are shifting to nutrition optimization next, which, you know, digestion's a part of it, but we are releasing a lot more products. We're bringing back Protein Breakthrough later this year. And you know, I'll show a little bit of the backstory and where you can patch some holes, but, you know, we were selling plant based hemp. I mean, it was pure hemp protein. Let's be clear. I believe around 14 or 15 years ago. I mean, obviously way before plant-based was a thing. And then, you know, most people couldn't stomach, the pure hemp. It's a little, you know, it's a little intense.

Wade Lightheart: Smelled like a barn tasted like dirt.

Matt Gallant: It's a little intense, so we created a much better version. Created chocolate. And then we created a berry flavor. For a bunch of logistical reasons, we stopped producing it, I think around four or five years ago. And, you know, people that tried that product,they…

Wade Lightheart: They'll still asking about it. I'm still getting emails 5 years later since we've stopped it.

Matt Gallant: Yeah. My friends like literally, they keep bugging me, when's it coming back? When it's coming back? So we have built a 2.0 version that in my opinion, tastes way twice as good as the first one and the first one tasted good. So we got a chocolate and a vanilla coming out. It's incredible.

Wade Lightheart: Taste is better, amino acid profile better. It's boosted up with some more goodies inside of it. Better profile. And it's a breakthrough. I mean, let's face it. I mean, I'm a plant based guy. I am 100% dependent on plant based proteins, like 100% dependent. Like I would not be able to survive the insane assaults I put on myself in Gold's gym, Venice beach, California. Thank you God, for finally getting me here after 30 years. The bottom line is this stuff is real, and I've been concocting up the Protein Breakthrough formula here with our raw ingredients that we're mixing it up, like literally in the kitchen, blending these things together. It's a complex process, but it's all going to be packaged. It's all going to be easy. You just grab the containers and throw this in. And I'll tell you, even for people who… What I find really fascinating, this is the part that I love as a plant based guy in of course you keto guys, everybody knows, is how many people who are more on the carnivore side will actually take this product and go, wow, I did not know how good a plant based protein could really be. Cause' there's a lot of quote, unquote crappy plant based proteins out there. Right now, all my vegetarian friends are marching through the streets with tears in their eyes because they can't find a decent protein anymore. Cause' you know, just some of the logistical issues, if you're using things like rice, and stuff, it's very difficult to get a great protein with a good amino acid, but we've covered that one. I'm excited about that one.

Matt Gallant: Well, even myself. So for those of you that are aware, Wade and I are doing a radical diet experiments. And right now working on a game changing nutrition book, that'll come out at some point, probably, you know, probably January, 2022, which I know sounds like a long time, but it's going to be a game changer in game changers. Take lot of time, energy, just a table of content is over 60 pages. And one of the experiments we're doing is alternate day fasting. I'm doing a all day cyclical quito refeed strategy. You know, it's hard to break it down. So I eat Tuesdays and Thursdays quito. I don't eat Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and then I refeed on carbs on Saturday and Sunday at a much higher calorie threshold around 5,000-6,000 calories a day. Now the reason I'm bringing this up because I've been doing two shakes, two Protein Breakthrough shakes a day on the weekend, you know. Throwing some fruits, cause' I'm trying to get more carbs in me. And yeah, it's incredible. I mean the first of all the bowel movements, how you feel the energy and here's the big one, right? One of the reasons I do two a day, and this is a big thing for anybody trying to optimize their digestion or eat a lot of food. I have zero bloating and gas. I could do probably five shakes a day. I digest fast. I don't feel bloated.

Matt Gallant: I can actually drink the shake and go right to the gym, which I could never do with most shakes or with most meals. I just have, you know, indigestion while I'm lifting. So yeah, really excited to bring that back. But yeah, Wade and I are just committed to giving you the tools for biological optimization, not just the supplements, but the information we're going to be releasing a blueprint 2.0 later this year, we're just putting the final edits and the touches on that. We're going to be releasing a ton more videos, ways, ramping up the podcast. We're going to be ramping up the blog. Like we're just ramping everything up, you know, products and information on every level. And we're excited. You know, we have an incredible team of multiple geniuses that help us create the best in class products. That's what we're committed to. You know, again it's, our policy is either it's the first thing class was the best in class or otherwise we're not interested. I think Leaky Gut Guardian is a new, you know, there's not a lot of products that are even in this category so I'm not going to say it's the first in class, but it's in my opinion, beyond the shadow of a doubt, the best in class. So yeah, I think it's a great staple for anybody to put in their supplement stack.

Wade Lightheart: Beautifully said. As always, it's always a pleasure to get you on the podcast you've been away for too long. You know, we gotta pull you out of the lab and pull you away from the computer and all the optimization as a serial entrepreneur in biological optimizer that you are. So thanks for joining us today. For all of you who are listening, we've got the show notes will be included in the Awesome Health Podcast. As always, please put a like, a comment, subscribe to the button so you get the updated version. We've got some very cool podcasts coming for you. And as Matt said, we've got a lot more coming. And the who's who of people who we learned from to share with you to condense the greatest, latest, and best ideas to optimize your health and vitality, join us each and every week, check out our pod class, our podcasts and our website, because we've got a lot of information. And of course, if you have any questions, reach out to us at any time, we're here to help. We're here to serve. Thank you so much for joining us today. Take care and have an awesome day.