103: Exciting BreakThroughs in Gut Health with Tina Anderson & Kiran Krishnan

In this episode, we talk with two former members in the drug industry who experienced firsthand the “kabuki theater” endless loop of research (that didn’t accomplish much) along with the troubling practice of hard-selling drugs to doctors’ offices. Meanwhile, they both witnessed friends and family members take six to twelve prescriptions, yet seeing little to no improvement. Fed up, our two guests did not grow discouraged, jaded, or give up. Instead, they became leaders in microbiome health and gut supplementation. 

Tina Anderson is a former trial lawyer specializing in settling cases through mediation, bringing both sides together. Mediation is her passion. So is her family, which is why she left the high-stress job behind to start a business with her husband, creating a unique supplement containing the super probiotic strains of renowned researcher Dr. Simon Cutting. Tina is now a wellness evangelist, helping people live their best physical and emotional lives. 

Kiran Krishnan is a research microbiologist whose focus is the human microbiome and wellness. His expertise is in the newest frontier in microbiology: gut commensal spore bacteria. Kiran is a frequent lecturer worldwide and as a guest on various radio and satellite podcasts. He also speaks frequently at autism conferences. Kiran established the Clinical Research Organization, where he conducts human clinical trials in human nutrition for over 17 years. Kiran began his rigorous research in the fields of molecular medicine and microbiology at the University of Iowa.

In this podcast, we cover:

• The two traits of a healthy gut
• How to “go granular” in determining the root cause of health issues
• The gut health/autism connection
• The “next generation” of probiotics
• How your natural environment impacts your microbiome
• Leaky gut and chronic illness
• Why “diet diversity” is suitable for your microbiome
• Much more

What are the two distinguishing traits of maintaining a healthy gut? 

Generally speaking, there are two characteristics of a healthy gut that sustains a level of healthiness: 

1. The first trait is diversity in your microbiome. Over the past 15 years of microbiome research, study after study concludes that the more diverse your gut microbiome is, the healthier you are, and the more resilient you are to disease. Longevity studies also show a correlation between diversity in the microbiome and living longer. 
2. The second trait of a healthy gut is permeability. In other words–how dysfunctional is your intestinal barrier? Is the gut highly permeable? This condition is known as “leaky gut syndrome,” but many research papers of the past were calling this barrier dysfunction, endotoxemia, mucosal barrier system dysfunction, and epithelial dysfunction. All these terms mean the same thing: leaky gut. This is when the barrier system, the “tube” known as our intestines, separates our digestion from our circulation. When this barrier is compromised, it becomes one of the root causes of disease in the world. 

A paper published in 2015 showed a correlation between barrier system dysfunction is the number one cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide. 

What role does commensal spore bacteria play in overall wellness?

Spore bacteria is crucial to gut health and sorely lacking in most human’s microbiome today due to environmental and dietary influences. 

Kiran stumbled upon this several years ago when he began searching for “the next new thing” in the field of probiotics. At that time, the industry was stagnant, with supplement companies competing through higher strain counts (30 billion! 50 billion!) or more doses. The market was all about increasing the CFU count in those days. Kiran wanted to find a new way to improve probiotic effectiveness for consumers, so he began researching spores. After studying for two years, Kiran presented a new recommendation for commensal spore bacteria to be the next generation probiotic. 

Early on, when Kiran laid out the plan for clinical research, the company he worked for was acquired by a larger company, and they were not interested in continuing the research. Kiran decided to pursue this work independently, and his search began for a business partner. Tina and her husband took the risk (thankfully), and now commensal spore bacteria is helping many people.

Stay tuned as Kiran and Tina share more about this fascinating new form of probiotic and how it can contribute to a healthier YOU. 

Tina Anderson and Kiran Krishnan’s message for the world is that a healthy life begins in the gut. Be open-minded to new ways of boosting your microbiome and see the results for yourself! 

If you would like to try Just Thrive products – use the link below: www.bioptimizers.com/justthrive

Don’t forget the code awesome15

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 live today from new Brunswick, Canada deep within my 14 day quarantine traveling around the world. These days has become a interesting experience, but enough about that because today's guests, we are going to get into one of my favorite fields, which is gut health, immune health, and spore based probiotics. And my two guests today, joining us know a lot about this topic, an extraordinary amount. Let me introduce you to them. First and foremost, we have Tina Anderson whose journey into the world of health had a unique start with some unusual turns. Get this. She began her career as a trial lawyer who specializes in settling cases by bringing both sides together, a personal passion of hers. I am volunteering her for the political situation in the United States following us right now, more than she doesn't know, she doesn't know that yet anyways, but once her second child arrived, Tina left that high stress job behind.
 

 Wade Lightheart: So she could focus on her family. And along with her husband created a unique supplement line that contains the superior probiotic chains of renowned researcher, Dr. Simon, cutting by promoting gut health, gut health and probiotics. Tina shares her passion for wellness, helping others live their best physical and emotional lives. And what the person who joins us today is all is Kiran Krishnan. And he's a researcher and microbiologist whose focus is the human microbiome and wellness. And this is I think the most fascinating field that is expanding in the health and wellness industry today. His particular expertise is in the newest frontier of microbiology gut commensal spore bacteria. No, say that four times really fast. We're going to ask him about what that means. And then I'll tell you that Kiran is a frequent lecture largely to the national and international medical audiences. So we might get a little geeky. He's also an expert guest on live radio, satellite podcasts, and many autism conferences. So let's kind of touch on autism because it's spiraling out of control in the world, coming from a strict research background in the fields of molecular medicine and microbiology at the university of Iowa. And over the last 17 years, Kiran has conducted dozens of human clinical trials in human nutrition, through clinical research organization that he established. Folks Welcome to the show.
 

 Tina Anderson a...: Thanks, Wade. Great to be here.
 

 Tina Anderson a...: Thank you for having us. This'll be really fun. I love the name of the show. Awesome health. I think it really doesn't get any better and more descriptive than that. So we're we're excited to be part of it. Thank you.
 

 Wade Lightheart: Well, thank you very much. Both of you for joining us today and the awesome health was two things. One, you want to feel awesome, but it was actually seven principles that we outline and we give away to all our educational, all our partners, all our clients, it's on our website. It's the seven principles in specific order of how you apply your time, energy and money in order to get maximum results. You know, both own supplement companies. It's one of the things I said is like, Hey, we don't get to supplements to like a number five. I would say you can't supplement yourself out of a bad lifestyle, but,uand I'll let either one of you jump in here first and foremost, how did a former trial lawyer and a microbiologists end up working together?
 

 Tina Anderson a...: Well, you see, I was in court one day and no, yeah, I'll let, I'll let Tina tell the story.
 

 Tina Anderson a...: Yeah. So, you know, I was doing the high stress, crazy hour corporate lawyer thing and working, you know, billable hours. And I just, I had my second child and said, I didn't want to do this, live this life anymore. So I was really fortunate to be able to go into a family pharmaceutical business, which was great, cause I was still able to be an attorney and be able to practice law. And, but then I just after, and I was excited because I'm like, this is a field that's really great. I'm helping people. We're delivering life saving medications to people. This is wonderful. And then after being in the industry for enough years, you just started to see the abuses. We saw the abuses with over prescribing of medicines pharmaceutical reps going into doctor's offices and trying to convince them to prescribe a medication when a patient didn't necessarily need it. We saw that with relatives of ours who were on one medication then, you know, within a couple months on six different medications, a dozen different medications and never really getting better. And so we just, my husband and I decided we really weren't doing our life's work. We wanted to do something that really meant something to us. And so a friend of my husband's good friend of my husband's worked with Kiran and we all got together and had a lot of meetings and a lot of different ideas. And then one day we were, we were told that we were, had the opportunity to license, these really, really incredible strains from exclusively from London university. And so we partnered up together and, and here we are, and from there just thrive. Probiotic was born and it's been the most gratifying career journey I've ever been on [Inaudible].
 

 Wade Lightheart: Well, let's hear the other side of the story.
 

 Tina Anderson a...: Yeah. There's always, there's always two sides to the story. Yeah, no, I, I think as a, you know, I've been in this industry now for almost 20 years, I've, I've been typically behind the scenes when I left the university track and university research. I actually got into the industry by starting a clinical research firm that where I designed and ran unique and cost-effective clinical trials. So nutritional supplement companies, one of the big holes I saw in the whole supplement world, it's just so hard and expensive to run studies, right? Because it's based on the pharmaceutical model and what was nonsensical to me about the way studies are done or have to be done is most of them look at disease endpoints. And if you show success in the trial, you can't talk about it because you're a supplement. You can't talk about diseases States, right? So if you have a,uan amino acid that reduces blood pressure and you do a huge study on it and you prove it out, that's great, but you can't go out there and say it did that. Right? So I, my whole idea was how do we come up with better mechanisms of actions to study so that we understand how it changes the structure and function of the body? So we're within the Shea but within the governance of the, of the law, but still gives the supplement company signs to talk about. Uyou know, so that's how I got into the space. I started working with a lot of supplement companies on formulation, really kind of working behind the scenes. Uand I was,umy me and my research team were actually hired by a large multinational that,ubasically asked us to come in and kind of design the next generation of probiotics. And their big question was, you know, what is the next new thing in the field of probiotics, right? Because most of the products were kind of competing in the same capacity. They were just trying to increase more strains, more doses. They're trying to just bulk up the CFU count. And they said, is there a different approach? So we started doing our research and went out there in the world and studied the products on the market, looked at the deep dive on the research. We came across these spores and we said, you know, this is a completely different approach to what bacteria as probiotics can do in the gut. And the, hopefully we'll get into that, hn terms of what they actually do in the gut, which is really interesting. Umnd so we did that work for a couple of years. We came back to the company and said, Hey, we've, here's what we would recommend as the next generation probiotic.
 

 Tina Anderson a...: We in fact, laid out the clinical research outline as to how you would study it. And then they said, Hey, this is great, but we just got acquired by an even bigger company, and we're not doing anything with this, so thanks. But no thanks. Right. And so we were like, wow, okay. But that two years worth of work really made us realize that there were massive gaps that we were missing in how we use bacteria therapeutically, and we were missing lots of opportunities to help people. And so at that point, we decided let's go add it ourselves. And we were looking for partners that, that were willing to, you know, take the risk as you know, there's a huge in starting your own business. And it's, it's nothing simple about it. And and, and Tina and her husband, Billy were, were willing to take that risk. And so it was, it was a good partnership, right? From day one, they were passionate enough about it, that they were willing to jump in and do it. And we were here for the science
 

 Tina Anderson a...: We had a lot of Fun along the way.
 

 Wade Lightheart: And I'm going to, I'm going to get to the science part of it, but you brought up something and I think this is, is this something I've been dealing with? And I think everybody in the supplement industry has been dealing for so long, and we get into these arguments oftentimes with the medical field. So if you live in say North America, for example, is there is an extensive pharmaceutical lobby which prevents and it's, it's, it's really, it's insidious in the sense that it prevents, you mentioned this, it prevents supplement companies from demonstrating that their products have a potent and powerful effect on a variety of conditions. You're not allowed to say that we have products that we're not allowed to say a lot of the things that they do. And then when you start having a conversation with the medical doctor, they're like, well, do you have any studies to show for it? And it's like, yes, but if I show you the studies, I can get my company closed down. Like, you know and then on the flip side of the equation, which you also brought up, so you brought up two of my biggest pet peeves, and that is that many of the, hrial designs, I would say that happened within universities because much of this is funded through university education programs. You bring money to the university, they build out a program, they do that sort of stuff. And to produce a road they're very costly, they're time consuming. And oftentimes they're out of the range out of say, smaller or medium companies, another words you need to have this ginormous chain. And then the third piece of this is as we see supplement companies who do kind of breakthrough stuff, they get to a certain level of success. And almost across the board, some large multinational company buys them out and either dismembers the product or berries the product because they want to continue down their pharmaceutical track. Yeah. You've been on both sides, like obviously from the university. Can you explain to me and our listeners what it's like to be inside the university system versus the kind of like the more capitalistic business system that you're in now, even though your performance is the same thing. I'm curious about that, how's that?
 

 Tina Anderson a...: Yeah. No, that's a, that's a great question. And I'll add one more thing to the restrictions on research. Not only is it, if you do a study that has a disease endpoint, you cannot talk about it. Even if the study is a phenomenal study in, in the U S now it's becoming more and more restrictive where you can't actually study disease, end points. For example, if I wanted to take your product and study it on a disease endpoint, like let's say reducing cholesterol, right? We, we have, we have some some data that shows that it can do that. I would need an investigational new drug in order to just even do this study. Right? And then everyone is, is recommending you publish the studies on clinical trial.gov. And so if you do a study on a supplement that has a disease endpoint, and you put it on clinical trial.gov, that's a way that the FDA can kind of comb and look at, wait a minute, here's a supplement company doing a study on a disease endpoint that's illegal, and it doesn't fit. They need an investigational new drug file to do that. And so you're not even allowed to study it, right? So, so we're in the supplement world. We are severely hamstrung on the, our ability to prove efficacy using science. And so the easiest thing to do is not do it. And so most supplement companies are not encouraged or have a methodology to do the science at all. Unow looking at it from the university standpoint. So when you're at the university, your, your, your singular focus as a researcher in the university is to acquire grants or acquire, sponsored research and keep research going. Right. Uin fact, the research that you do at universities are supposed to create more questions and answers because your next step is to apply for another grant to study it even a little deeper. And so you, your, your whole motivation is about nothing but doing perpetual studies. And it doesn't really matter to you if any of those studies really come out in the world and impact anyone in a positive way. Right? So if I'm at a university and a company comes to me and wants to do research, I am restricted by what am I studying and what is the compound, because if it's a supplement compound and it's a disease end point, then it's, it's, mecomes on me to ensure that from a regulatory standpoint, it's fine. Uhut I'm also motivated to get money. So then when a pharmaceutical company comes in and goes, Hey, study this for us. Uhnd here's, you know, a million dollars to do it. I'm like, that's the easier route. I'm just going to go that route. You know, I'm not going to try to figure out how to do this with an enzyme or amino acid or anything like that. And then from the business standpoint in the university, m lot of professors have this, this idea of discovering something, but when you discover it and you want to spin it off from the university, the only methodology typically to spin it off as into the pharmaceutical space. So even if you find a natural compound, like this is happening in the microbiome space, like if I find bacteria a produces a compound B, and that compound B has a profound effect, let's say on ulcerative colitis, right. Then my route as, as the professor is not to harvest bacteria a, grow it up as a probiotic and introduce it into the gut, like a probiotic so that it can produce compound B in the gut. My job as a professor then is to isolate and figure out what compound B is, synthesize it, build patents around the synthetic method of making compound B, and then spin that off into the pharmaceutical area, because that's how you could get the big sell off. Right? So all of those things are in play, none of which facilitate discovery and development of natural compounds t deal with therapeutic issues.
 

 Wade Lightheart: Thank you for such a succinct description of that kind of, I call it Kabuki theater where you're just in this endless cycle. UI listened to fellow by the name of,uEric Weinstein. And of course his brother Weinstein he's, he runs a really great podcast called the portal. And he said, one of the most interesting things, if you look at scientifically,uthere was kind of this golden age, 70 or 80 years ago, there was just breakthrough after breakthrough, like you said, most of the world today is running on science that was developed 70, 80 years ago. And these perpetual kind of very singular organic corporate government political channels are impairing the massive explosions of developments in science, for example, between him and his brother and their wives. Uthree of them have global changing breakthroughs that have all been squashed out and he's frustrated. And it's one of the reasons he started the podcast is because of this. And feel free to jump in here, Tina, at any time when I get into this, because I want to illustrate to listeners when they're evaluating options around say drugs, which are advocated by your medical system versus natural health products. So one I would say to summarize is leveraging your external pharmaceutical system. And the other one is activating your inner pharmacy. That's how I would, that's how I would address the two ones. So how does a company such as yourself, mork with people and how do you develop those relationships, where you have great people who run nutritional supplements that really want to have high levels of health. They want to be able to build cool things, build something that makes a difference, has a demonstrated that it needs to kind of straddle the regulatory environments, fear that we find ourselves in.
 

 Tina Anderson a...: We follow what we have to, we follow the FDA guidelines and we were At FDA compliant. We do everything we have to do. And,uyou know, we've been helped. We've been getting the word out there by, you know, associating ourselves with big health and wellness influencers who take the time to research and are trusted. And, and they, they realize that we have a product that is so research that we have products that are researched and not just, you know, thrown together in some cheap manner, but.
 

 Wade Lightheart: A mishmash of maybes. I like to call it. Maybe it works. Maybe it doesn't, I don't know, but I saw a paper somewhere. Let's throw it in the bottle.
 

 Tina Anderson a...: Right. And Kiran talks about that all the time. You know, it's, there's people take one study for one ingredient and then take a generic version of that ingredient and throw it into their product. And then they say, Oh, well, my product study for this, you know? Yeah. The rights. So, yeah. It's, it's been challenging. That's definitely been challenging, but kiran You may want to expand.
 

 Tina Anderson a...: Yeah. Yeah. For sure. I mean, I think one of the things I really strive to do myself and and, and we, we work with Tina and her marketing team and so on is how do we explain to people how their bodies work? Right. And that, that's the part to me, that's really empowering for them. And, and also gives us a lot more leeway in talking about things. So again, it goes back to the mechanism of action, right? So you've got this end point, which is, let's say you've got a gut condition, you've got ulcerative colitis. And we really can't say anything about ulcerative colitis as a condition. But what we can try to talk about is what are all the things that are going wrong within your microbiome, within the mucosal layer, within the gut lining within the immune response that lead to this issue. Right? And so we heavily focus on all of the things that start to get dismantled in your gut that leads to condition a condition being condition C. And then we talk about how nutrition, how lifestyle, how your environment, and then of course, supplements as well, can intervene with some of those mechanisms that seem to be dismantling,uthat leads to the health issue. So we try to get very granular on,uwhat is the root cause of the condition. And I think that becomes a real, not only the real comfortable place, but also the high value place for supplementing nutritional companies. If we can really start to focus on an examine root cause,ubecause pharmaceuticals, the whole pharmaceutical industry is not looking at root cause at all. They don't care about root cause it's about intervening in a single reaction with a small molecule that alleviates a symptom, right? That's the whole mechanism behind everything they do. They do. Uwe are actually going back to the root cause and going, okay, what is organically going wrong with the system? And I think that's a place we can really play into and, and impact people.
 

 Tina Anderson a...: Yeah. I think run hit the nail on the head when he said empowerment, because that is, that's one of our core values. It's what we are about is empowering our customers to take control of their health and not to just take the doctor's words for granted and just really empower themselves by learning and providing them all the knowledge and research and science that we can on our website. And when Kiran is speaking or we're speaking at different events it's really about empowering everybody. And it may not be our product. It may be another product, or it may be something, it doesn't matter. Just get away from pharma. Don't listen to that message. That narrative that's been, you know, ingrained in us for all these years
 

 Wade Lightheart: Beautifully said, I believe that we are entering in what is potentially the golden age of probiotic research. And I think we're going to look at back at this time that we are in, I think we've entered into the initial stages of it, I think over the last 10 years and who knows how long and how deep this rabbit hole is going to go. But very much like the breakthroughs that were happening in physics and chemistry, you know, or around the turn of the century. And then up until about world war II, there was kind of like a really golden age where there was just an absolute explosion of technology and I'm seeing this starting to happen. And I know you guys are working on some of the cutting edge stuff you mentioned earlier. I would like for you to talk about, and you can do it in two different areas. And then you can go whichever way that you want here. We have this incredible rise in expansion of the diagnosis of autism in the world. It's a huge, huge issue. I think, what is it like one in a hundred kids now are getting odd, are being diagnosed with autistic autism. And like 40 years ago, it was like one in a hundred thousand or something like that. It was like, so something really crazy has happened in the world. So there's that then there's this other area that you've developed, which is the use of spores and what that means and that sort of stuff. So which one of those topics would you like to kind of dive into next and we'll get to, cause there may be a correlation or there may be as soon as, or they might not be interrelated, but I'll let you kind of take it from there.
 

 Tina Anderson a...: Well, I can start just talking about the autism perspective. You know, basically one of the things that we've theorized before is just that, you know, autism, one of the biggest drivers of it is this glide to the food supply that the kids are eating and they're getting, you know, they're, they have this glyphosate, that's sprayed all over our food supply and is in everything that we're eating and kids are eating is really causing a lot of disruption in the microbiome. And therefore that's, what's, you know, the microbiome is what is being affected by it. Of course the use of antibiotics, all, all the things that normally disrupt your gut are definitely, you know, really contributing to the rise in autism. So I mean, that would be some of the bigger offenders in my opinion of gut health too, that are affecting kids on the autism spectrum.
 

 Wade Lightheart: So just we'll get into that. Do you think Kiran you might want to talk about this one, but do you think that there is a generational effect? So in other words, if say there was toxicity within the grandparents and toxicity within the parents that at some point, and, and I, and why I'm leading to this cause I'm going to lead to from, or cite something that Dr. Edward, how demonstrated in his research 60, 70, 80 years ago, that we're in this kind of critical generation where it seems like there's an explosion of these genetic based diseases or these things like autism and stuff that didn't exist before as an unintended consequences of technological indication, but are they solely within this lifetime or are they carried on from, is it a generational thing that's causing unique mutations or whatever, or is it solely within the individual in this generation, which is your thoughts?
 

 Tina Anderson a...: Yeah. So there is a transgenerational effect, but it is not driven by mutations in our genome, right? So the human genome really hasn't changed all that much and we haven't harbored any higher prevalence mutations over the last several decades that much over pre decades previous to that. So the, so the question becomes then how are these negative effects passed on from generation to generation? Y does it scale from generation to generation? And the reason for that is, is really at the end of the day, the microbiome. So when you look at what the microbiome represents in an, in a typical human, the microbiome represents 150 times more genetic material in that human than their own DNA, right? Our own, our chromosomes contain somewhere around 22,000 functional genes, but that, but the typical human has somewhere around two and a half million microbial genes in your system. And many estimates show that over 90% of metabolic activity comes from the microbial genes, right over 48% of all of the molecules floating around in your blood, that conduct all of the chemistry that makes you human come from the gut. And it's not stuff that we eat. It's not stuff that we've, we've absorbed from our food it's stuff that is being created by bacteria in our gut that are essential to our function, right? So the way that we are creating this trans generational effect is every mom whose microbiome becomes compromised because of the food she eats the medication she's taken, the environment that she lives in, she's passing a dysfunctional ecosystem to her child, and then that child passes on that dysfunctional ecosystem to the next child. So the really important thing to look at here is this mass extinction event that's happening. And, and I think most people can understand the, the impact of a mass extinction. When we talk about our own ecosystem, right? When we have animals that are going extinct and how that creates disruption in our ecosystem and so on. But the mass extinction that's happening in us is these really immense important commensal organisms that we Harbor, right? And we have to think of it in this way, that we are actually stewards of years, millions of years of evolution, of coevolution between microbes and humans, right? So all of our ancestors went through these trials and tribulations over millions of years, under very harsh conditions. They co-evolve with this really important group instead of bacteria, that they now create this really beautiful symbiotic organism, which is a human where we actually offload almost 90% of our metabolic activity to the bacteria that we Harbor. And again, this relationship has developed over millions of years now because of industrialization and modern technology and all of the ways that we live right now, we are killing off large groups of those microbes that we Harbor and the next generation is getting a fewer and smaller set of those organisms. The next generation, after that gets an even smaller set its equivalent without exaggerating and sounding crazy. It's equivalent to the idea of saying, okay, my child, because of my behavior, my child is going to likely be born without a gallbladder. And then his or her child is going to be born without a gallbladder and a spleen. It's like losing entire organs from the whole human system generation to the next, right. And that's why it's not only just autism it's things like asthma, asthma as an absolute epidemic among kids. These days, it's over 9 million as severely as medic kids in the U S uh, wlso know that things like allergies, uh,bvioral disorders for ADD ADHD, all of those things are expanding, including diabetes, obesity in kids. Uh, aof it is, is, has a transgender generational effect from this mass extinction that's going on in our system.
 

 Wade Lightheart: That's so eloquently and succinctly stated to something I noticed when I, when I read Dr. Edward Howell's book, food enzymes for health and longevity, and he was doing all these various experiments with everything's, from cats to rats and all these animals. And they fed them these radically enzymatically deficient diets. And by the third generation, they had an explosion of genetic diseases, inability to procreate and strange social behavior. In other words, not, they didn't act like normal cats or rats or dogs or whatever he was studying. And here we are today in a very.. And he predicted that those things would happen to us because of the unintended concept of the interruption of our natural food supply and activity. You're echoing the same thing. He was mostly concerned with enzymes. These are bacteria, which are essentially a mobile bags of enzymes of chemical converters. And our mitochondria is actually originally bacteria that eventually just fused with the cells. So it makes sense that our mitochondria, which is driving our energies production systems is correlated to similar. The metabolic outsourcing that you just said that like 48%, I think it was, was your words that you said of our metabolic outsource sourcing is happening here. And we know that bacteria are the most adaptable organisms in the world. They fly through space on rocks and land and other planets, and they are on vents where it's 30,000 degrees and they're found under the Arctic under a mile of ice and, and everywhere in between, these are ex super, highly organized bacteria based on that. What have you been able to kind of go into in regards to spores and maybe addressing some of the issues of this passing off of the generational loss of the essential metabolic,contributions that our microbiome makes to our whole physiology physiological system?
 

 Tina Anderson a...: Yeah. So that's, that's really at the crux of what happened with us back in I guess it was 2010 when we were kind of looking at, okay, what is the next generation of probiotics? Because what I was trying to figure out is what are the behaviors that, that we typically conduct as humans that tend to have a profound effect on our microbiome and thereby our, our overall health outcomes. Right? And one of the things that became clear through studies that were, that were published at that time, was that your connection to the natural world or your physical connection had a huge impact on your microbiome and then had a huge impact thereby on your health outcomes. So there was studies being done, for example, on people in Russia that lived in rural regions versus urban regions, and they studied their microbiome, they studied their health outcomes, and they find that if you're in a rural region, you're closer to dirt, your windows are open more you're in the outside environment, more versus an urban area, which is all concrete buildings. Then it has a huge impact on your microbiome. They studied that in, in us, in Bangladesh and Japan. So to me, it became clear that, okay, having some sort of interaction with the natural environment has a huge impact on your microbiome. What is it within the natural environment that provides that positive impact? Because the vast majority of bacteria in the outside environment can't function as a probiotic, they don't really have a huge impact on your, on your microbiome, that in the probiotic sense. So we kind of honed in on microbes that may have an impact on your microbiome, that you should be encountering in the outside environment, right? Because one of our absolute facts is that over the last several decades, we've moved from being at least 50, 55% outdoors to almost 90% indoors. Right? So just that shift alone has such a huge impact on our exposure to the outside world and, and potentially picking up you know, passengers that act in a therapeutic function. So we honed in on which microbes are commensal meaning they naturally live in the gut, but we're supposed to pick up from the outside environment. And the only ones that made sense were ones that could survive through this gastric system, right? Because if you're going to pick up a microbiome, the outside world, more than likely, you're going to inadvertently swallow it. And the stomach is called a gastric barrier for a reason it's designed to kill microbes if it can survive through the stomach and it can get to the intestines, can it survive through bile salts? Can it survive through panic, enzymes, all of these gauntlets for bacteria. So we kind of honed in on bacteria that had the natural capability of surviving through with the idea that if nature gave it this ability to survive through this microbial gauntlet, then maybe it is supposed to function as a probiotic in the gut. So that's how we honed in on the spores because the spores naturally survive through the gastric system, naturally survived through biosalts pancreatic enzymes. They get into the gut. And when they're in the gut, they break out of this armor like coating, which they have the ability to put on themselves. And then they go to work for you as your profile, as a probiotic bacteria. Now we, when we started trying to figure out what do they actually do in the gut? What we came to understand is they've been used in the probiotic industry now for over 65, 70 years, the first spore based probiotic was launched as a prescription drug,in 1952 in, in France and Germany. Uand they will use to treat dysentery infection. And since then they've been developing all of these drug versions of these probiotic spores,uto treat gut infections. So what that's sowed is that these bacteria have a unique feature where they can go into the gut, they can read the microbial environment, something called quorum, sensing, where they can actually read the chemical signature of all the other bacteria in that space. They somehow know which microbes shouldn't be there or overgrown and so on. They'll come and sit next to those microbes and they'll compete with them for that space in numerous different ways and bring down the growth of those problematic microbes, right? So they're, they're kind of your seal team six that you're sending in to find the bad guys and kind of bring them down. So our hypothesis was that's, that's been shown now for 60 years, is the opposite true? Can they also then improve the growth of the, of the good functional bacteria? That's kinda how we honed in on it and started doing the work that we do. So we, that's why we use the spores. And then our big focus was how did the spores impact the rest of the microbiome? And is that impact meaningful,
 

 Wade Lightheart: Amazing stuff. I love getting into this stuff. Cause I think it's so fascinating as I, yeah, it's, it's really great. When can you talk a little bit about the quorum and how it is that some bacteria are capable of determining what's going on? What, what, what are they using to understand how the microbiome works or what's inside there, what's going on? Like what what's do they know what that is? Or do they have a wifi satellite system what's going on there?
 

 Wade Lightheart: So, so yeah, so there's a lot of research going on in this area of quorum, sensing how bacteria talk to one another. There's a couple of categories of quorum, sensing molecules. One are, are virulence factors, right? So for example, there are some bacteria that don't turn on their toxin production. Like if they're trying to make you sick, I'll give you an example like listeria monocytogenes listeria is a very common foodborne illness. If you eat, you know, let's say 500 million cells of listeria, that's just kind of a random number on a, on a contaminated burrito. They know when they get into your gut, they speak to each other to understand what their volume of what the number of listeria are. They know through their own genetic code, that that's not enough of them to actually cause trouble in the space. So they start replicating slowly without turning on any of the toxin genes or things that they would use to start creating an infection. And what they do is they wait till they have a big enough number. And then they all in coordination turn on their toxin genes at once. So they have this shock and awe kind of,uapproach. Now they won't do it when their levels are small, because they know that they do it to a certain degree. It's going to get recognized by both the immune system, the other microbes in the system. And they're not powerful enough where they get squashed pretty quickly. So they try to increase their numbers. So what they do is they create a little,uvirulence factors or small molecules for each other. So each other can read how many of their neighboring listeria are around. Now. Some bacteria are sophisticated enough to intercept. That listeria's message, right? So this listeria is talking to listeria. They're sending messages that they think are coded, just been between them. There are other microbes that have picked up over a period of time, the ability to pick up that molecule and go, wait a minute, listeria is here. You know, let us start actually competing with them. So it's a number of things. It's small molecules, growth factors, hormones in some cases,utoxins and other cases. So it's a really complex plethora of, of molecules that bacteria use to speak to one another. And some bacteria are very good at actually intercepting messages between other bacteria to understand what's actually going on. In fact, there are some researchers that are trying to create devices that let us listen to what bacteria are saying, right? So if we can identify what, what molecules they're releasing and what those molecules mean, we might be able to intercept and understand what they're actually saying to one another. Right? So it's, it's, it's actually...
 

 Wade Lightheart: Yeah. So literally what's happening inside people's intestinal tracks is it's like a mission impossible movie. Totally. We have intercepted a transmission from a terrorist organization that is a boat to cause a massive toxic dump inside a major organ of your body. If you take this mission, you have so much time in order to get this solved. And and then you, you take your spore, bacteria drop is like they're flying in exactly into the drop zone and they go in there and do their thing. And if they start listening, we'll probably hear the mission, impossible . Right. Just joking all joking aside though. I think this is what's. So, I mean, when you get studying this stuff, it's so easy to get really like, it just never ends. What are some of the things that you guys have found and can state without violating any legal, moral, or ethical codes, as we always say, we're, we're willing to talk about anything or share anything as long as it's legal, moral, and ethical. That's all right. That's our policy. What are some of the things that you have been able to discover that you can say that may make a difference in people's lives?
 

 Tina Anderson a...: Yeah. Oh, sorry. Go ahead, Dana.
 

 Tina Anderson a...: Okay. Well, we always, you know, we start out with like gastrointestinal discomfort of course, like things like gas and bloating, diarrhea, constipation, of course, those are the things that will bring people to a probiotic in the first place. And so we see some pretty incredible results with those types of issues. But what, what is really fun is just to see people who are getting sick less often, you know, a friend of mine who's a dentist is like, I got sick all the time, just because my hands were in people's mouths all the time. And just, you saw that kind of effect from being on it. She diagnosed herself with having leaky gut. So she saw it, she started taking the product and then she started seeing some pretty profound results with it. And then of course, people with skin issues, you know, you think of your people forget that your gut is really responsible for skin issues. So when it comes to skin rashes, eczema, psoriasis, acne, all those types of things, you, you know, people need to go to their gut and, and focus on that first. So we've seen some pretty great results. And then even just with mood disorders, we've seen great results with that. I've had so many people say, you know, I took this because I had some, you know, gas, bloating, but I have so much more energy and I have, so I feel so much better. And, you know, I, I always laugh because it's like our side effects are very different than the pharmaceuticals, you know, where side effects include, you know, suicide and all of that. Yeah. Pharmaceuticals.
 

 Wade Lightheart: May cause internal bidding, headaches and turnover waiting dizziness and death.
 

 Tina Anderson a...: Yes. We're our side effects are like better mood, you know, better sleep, feeling better. I'm happier. And all of those types of more energy. It's, it's incredible. I, I have one, one customer that's like, I swear it saved my marriage because I was constantly exhausted. And finally she got her energy back and she was able to do things. So it it's been pretty incredible. And I mean, crime scene a lot, I know on the clinical side that I'm sure he would love to share too. Yeah.
 

 Tina Anderson a...: Yeah. I mean, I, you know, what I would say is a couple of really important general themes that people can kind of digest if you will, no pun intended and and keep in mind for their overall health and wellness. Now, when it comes to the, to the gut and the microbiome, there are, there are two hallmarks that are absolutely critical in, in maintaining health. And I'm just talking in general, right? Just general health. First one is the diversity in your microbiome. You know, how diverse is your microbiome? And over the last 15 years of microbiome research, that theme has been you know, tried and tested over and over again. And we know that the more diverse your gut microbiome is the healthier you are, the more resilient you are against disease. The longer you live this longevity studies on that, on the diversity in microbiome. And so on, that is arguably one of the most important features of a healthy individual and someone who has a resilient system. The second part is the permeability. You know, how dysfunctional is your intestinal barrier? If your intestinal barrier is highly permeable. And there's many ways of describing that, of course, the colloquial term in the supplement world is leaky gut. If you look in research papers, they do use leaky gut quite a bit now, but they used to always call it barrier, dysfunction, endotoxemia you know mucosal barrier system dysfunction in in epithelial dysfunction. So they have all these different names, but it's all the same thing. Meaning that the barrier system that separates the outside of the body, which is the tube in the intestine, from the inside of the body, which is circulation. If that barrier is compromised, that becomes one of the largest root causes of disease in the world in 2015, that was a review paper published in the frontiers of immunology that showed that barrier system dysfunction. And that permeability in the intestinal lining was a number one cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide. It drove,
 

 Wade Lightheart: Do we have the study of that? I'd love to react to that.
 

 Tina Anderson a...: And it's a, it's a 2015 study. So we'll be able to send you the actual paper itself.
 

 Wade Lightheart: I mean, think about that. Yup. That's, that's massive.
 

 Tina Anderson a...: It's massive. They, they show in that study and then of course there's been hundreds, maybe thousands of studies that have supported that whole concept that barrier dysfunction in the intestines, allowing the intestines to have this leakiness to it, and actually is the biggest driver of chronic illness. And we're talking about all manner of chronic illnesses. It's in fact, really hard to think of a chronic illness issue that isn't associated with a dysfunctional microbiome and the leakiness in the gut, right? So it becomes one of the biggest things, even HIV, as an example, the NIH published a study back in, I think it was 2012 with 2013, showing that the leakiness in the gut and they call it HIV Enteropathy was the number one predictor of mortality in HIV. Even more than viral load in HIV. Biggest driver of going from HIV positive to AIDS was the leakiness in the gut. That was another study published,uback in, I think, 2016. Uso th there's there's so much, it's so profound, a most recent study, I think published in 2019 on cancer showed that cancer cachexia, which is that wasting syndrome. Uyou know, where people just start losing weight and wasting away cachexia is driven by leakiness in the gut and that accounts for 60% of the mortality in cancers. And so it has nothing to do with the chemotherapy or the changes in diet. It's the barrier dysfunction in a, in a dysfunction of the microbiome. So those are two really important themes that people can wrap their heads around is you have to always continue to work towards an increase in diversity in your microbiome, and you have to make sure that the barrier system in your intestinal lining is sound. If you can keep those two things in check, then your, your risk for having all of these chronic illnesses and all that goes down quite dramatically, as a supported by all the studies,
 

 Wade Lightheart: That's incredible and a beautiful setup for the next piece. Tina, did you want to jump in there with something I saw you click off? No. Okay. All right. So based on that, now we have established a few things. Number one, we have a symbiotic relationship with bacteria that almost 50% are met or a metabolic components are reserved in that we have a ginormous factor of genetic materials comparative to our human body in there. And we have, and the diversity of that I guess, is, is very important. Number one, so that we can make the vast Ray of what I call the inner pharmacy chemicals. But number two is that protecting this microbiome barrier, that the barrier between our food in her stomach versus whatever might've leaked over to the other side is one of the issues that allows for survivability in a variety of different conditions. So the question becomes, and I saw this research, not that long ago, they they've been studying these,uthese tribes that hadn't had interaction with humans, and they found that they had all these other bacteria strains that we had never heard of that are gone. And the other, so the third piece is as a whole, as a general rule, it's a pretty good idea that many of us in the world today are suffering from the condition of lack of diversity of bacteria, which makes us more susceptible to a variety of these different conditions that are going on, which leads me to the big grand Poobah connection is what things have you found that were missing, that you can demonstrate that,uenhance our diversity in the bacteria? So what, what things can we do as responsible health advocates to take so that we can reintroduce these type of bacteria into our intestinal tract to increase our,uour capabilities of the inner pharmacy?
 

 Tina Anderson a...: Yeah. so that's a really important question because diversity has two aspects to it. One is the number of bacteria that you have within your system. And the other one is the uniformity of the bacteria, right? That makes a difference too, because let's say you've got 200 different species of bacteria, but 20 of them make up more than 80% of the bacterial cell mass, then they're doing most of the metabolic work and the other 180 are quite silenced, right? So that's another factor in disrupting diversity. So we have two things to think about when it comes to diversity. One is increasing the number of microbes in the system. And number two is how do you create uniformity within the system? And, and the uniformity part, let's take that on first. The first part with uniformity is really kind of diversifying your diet because lots of different bacteria feed off of different types of substrates, right? So the more diverse your diet is the more,udifferent classes of bacteria you'll feed in equal proportions. So if you eat just one kind of food all the time, you're really only feeding one class of bacteria. All the rest are kind of suffering and starving out one by one. And so increasing the diversity of the diet becomes extremely important. And then here's a counter-intuitive measure adding in a little bit of fasting because there are microbes in your system that actually only do well during a fasting period. And in fact, they get quite a bit suppressed during,uwhen food is present and coming through the system. So you, if you've got 12, 13 hours throughout a 24 hour period where you're not actively eating, that gives those other microbes a chance to flourish to a certain degree so that they can maintain their numbers as well. The third thing with,udiversity would be to reduce your exposure to things that kill microbes. Uyou know, and, and unfortunately for us, we've, we are this beautiful microbial construct and we've put ourselves in a very anti-microbial world, right? Everything around us kills microbes,uour food system, of course, with Roundup all over it. Roundup is a, is a really powerful antimicrobial. It's an antibacterial,uwe've got preservatives and anti-microbials added into our food. We've got chlorine and fluoride in our drinking water, right? We've got all of these components within the things that we take in that actually are designed to kill bacteria. So if you have this constant killing going on within the system, then you're, you're going to harm the diversity within your microbiome. Take Roundup as an example,uthat really messes up the uniformity because it's, it preferentially kills beneficial bacteria because a lot of the pathogenic and opportunistic bacteria in your microbiome, which it's normal to have them in there, but what a lot of them are more resistant to the negative effects of Roundup. So long-term exposure to something like glyphosate and Roundup actually selectively increases the growth of, of opportunistic pathogens and bacteria while the good ones are, are continuously being suppressed. Right? So if you can focus on those kind of three things or four things really it's increasing the diversity of the diet fasting to a certain degree. Uand then, and then removing things that actually kill microbes, you'll do a big service to the diversity. Now one really exciting thing was we did a, we published a study,ulast year, showing that the spores, when you add the spores into the gut, it actually increases diversity of the microbiome as well, because remember, they're going in reading the signature going, Hey, this one's overgrown. We're going to bring that down. This one's undergrown. So we're going to increase the growth of that. So they kind of play this orchestrating role within the microbiome to help bring back microbes that are suffering with really low numbers and, and bring down microbes that tend to be overgrown and dysfunctional. So if you can do those four things, you're really going to improve your diversity quite a bit.
 

 Wade Lightheart: Beautiful. one of the descriptions I like to use, as I said, if your gut biome is kind of like 10% good, 10% bad and 80% opportunists. So, so there's another thing I think, and this is related to diet and diet changes because we see all these different diet books and diet strategies for different people. And a lot of people will interview my business partner. I, because I'm a plant-based guy and he's a keto guy. I mean, we're pretty far apart on the spectrum. And do you believe that? And we think there's a range that people finding the right diet to them, which is both genetic and epigenetics, but also related to, so, and then we always hear if sometimes there's a component when you switch diets, there's a transformation phase that makes it very, either beneficial or complicated, depending on what your microbiome is right now, for people who might have struggled with a more diverse diet. Now use an extreme example. Uhf you look at, hr. Jordan Peterson and his daughter, he's kind of came to fame, and now he's only eating meat because everything else has these inflammatory response, which have horrible States, his daughter's miraculously surviving because it's all that she's able to do. But it's obviously a very difficult. And obviously it's a, it's a game of diminishing returns. Do you believe that by people who are suffering, not saying in his case, but people who are suffering from a variety of conditions that are forcing them to live with these very, very compromised diets, because I see so often in the fasting or cleansing community, like, yeah, I just, I took out this and I took out that and I took out this and I took out that, and I got better, but at a certain point, there's nothing left to take back. Do you believe that that's where spore intervention can maybe start bringing back the capacity to metabolize a variety of different foods where people would have struggled before there'll be able to get, and then get all the benefits that the byproducts that those bacterias is that kind of where your research is leading?
 

 Tina Anderson a...: Yeah. So that's a very important topic because this whole elimination diet process that we go through I think the words you use are really, really descriptive of that, which is a system of diminishing returns on it, because you might feel better in the, in the moment, you know, you might feel better acutely because you've removed something that, that tends to not agree with the way your system is right now, or your body can metabolize it the way our say your microbiome can't necessarily metabolize it or utilize it in the right way. And so you feel symptomology from that, but, and so you eliminate that and the symptoms are gone, but the big problem is in the long-term it's going to hurt you. Because what we do know about the microbiome is you know, the vast majority of microbes in the microbiome require plant-based material. You know, one of the definitive functional definitive features of mammals is mammals really changed from a lot of other categories of animals, like in vertebrates and so on, because we harbored this large ferment of base in our gut, right? Most mammals have a colon like structure that is designed purely for fermentation and the vast majority of microbes in those structures. In our case, the colon are anaerobic and they ferment a plant-based material. And we, as a species can not actually utilize a lot of the plant-based material directly, unless it's fermented in our colon. And so a big part of being a mammal is having an harboring this large ferment of base, and then feeding that ferment of base. And so for us, when we work with clinics and doctors and practitioners and all that, our approaches, we can not just have people do elimination diets, and then remain on this highly restrictive dietary program for the rest of their lives, because that's going to hurt them down the road in a very significant way. So the idea is, can we introduce foods that they're cannot utilize right now, but introduce it in the context of sports or, or introduce it in the context of spores plus oligosaccharides, which are prebiotics that help increase diversity naturally. Uand, and then get those foods back into their system, you know, because that's really where we will see people thrive, right? It's we, I can't tell you how many times I hear people say to me, Oh, I'm doing fine. I've, I've no issues as long as I don't eat this, this, this and that. Like, and that's the thing. Humans are omnivores, we're resilient animals. And one of the things that gives us the evolutionary advantage that we've had as a species is our ability to eat a huge variety of, of food sources and metabolize them. Like if we take a lion, for example, a lion is an obligate carnival, right? If it's, if there's a drought and the Willdabeast are gone, the lion can't just go non some plants and some bark and survive, the line's going to be dead. Same thing with the wildebeest, if there's a drought and there's no vegetation, the wilderness is not all of a sudden going to start attacking and eating rabbits and so on. Right. So we, on the other hand can dig for roots and tubers and eat insects and eat nuts and do all these crazy things to survive through a number of conditions. So, yeah, to me, that's a big, important context is that we want to get people's gut diversity up,uand so that they can start adding back foods into their diet.
 

 Wade Lightheart: It's so cool.
 

 Tina Anderson a...: Yeah. Kiran will always recommend that people go to, you know, different ethnic grocery stores, you know, go into an Asian grocery store, a middle Eastern grocery store, just to really increase your diets diversity by having different types of getting different microbes from those types of foods. So another little tip.
 

 Tina Anderson a...: Yeah. I mean, if you look at you know just something as simple, like take a squash or, or a Chinese broccoli versus your, your typical the American broccoli, even though they're both in the broccoli family, they're their carbohydrate structures are different enough that they will feed different categories of bacteria in your system. You know, so I say, if you go to a Chinese or an Asian market, you go to the middle Eastern market, you'll find roots and tubers and fruits and plant a plant material there that you don't find it, your whole foods and trader, and you really don't have to have too much of it. You can just incorporate one of those new things into your diet for that week. And then next next week, add in something new and just kind of keep trying to diversify anthropological studies show that the, that our human ancestors consumed upwards of 600 different types of foods on an annual basis compared to, you know, if we look at an average Westerners, maybe eating six different types of foods.
 

 Wade Lightheart: Yeah. Yeah. My, my research has dieting. The range of people's food that they actually eat. It's about 25 items. Yeah. They is a cycle over and over and over. It's like, you know are there any specific common deficiencies that you found for spores that you guys have developed or cultivated that they, that are common elements that, that, that a lot of people could benefit from taking or trying or saying, Hey, Might May want to introduce this into your diet as, and, and do they need any additional prebiotic foods if they're introducing something that be variants, or maybe they've coming out of a restrictive diet strategy for one of those reasons we illustrate it and they need to kind of start expanding their capabilities. There's is there anything that they can do that you might suggest?
 

 Tina Anderson a...: Well, I would, I would argue that, you know, everybody that wakes up breathing should be taking spores. I mean, these are the same type of bacteria that our ancestors were getting every day. And as Kiran mentioned, we're living in this anti-microbial world, and yet we are more bacteria, more microbes than we are human. And so I, I can't think of any reason why somebody wouldn't want to take it because every day by the world we're living in the chemicals that we're surrounded by the toxins that we're living in or that are living around us, the antibiotics that we take, the antibiotics in our food the glyphosate, like we mentioned the stress that we have in our lives, sugar, all these things are literally wreaking havoc on our gut on a daily basis. And we know now the gut is responsible for virtually every aspect of our overall health. And so,uit's really hard to find anybody that I wouldn't suggest take it, you know, unless you're living in a tribe in Tanzania, you know, when you're eating this clean off of this clean soil. So,uyou know, that I would argue that, you know, most people should be taking it. Of course, people tend to go to a spores when they have some discomfort and have, you know, the gastrointestinal discomfort or some other underlying issue. But,uour focus is trying to get people to stay healthy, to maintain their health, not to, you know, treat something when they have an issue.
 

 Tina Anderson a...: Yeah. And from a diet standpoint, I think people really don't get enough roots and tubers in their system in a roots and tubers are so powerful because they contain both resistance, starches and illegal saccharides and, and our microbiome, you know, requires those things, especially the Keystone species that are really important. Things like Akkermansia and for killing bacteria, these are bacteria species, your gut microbiome that play a very central role in maintaining the function of the microbiome. They feed primarily off of these kinds of compounds, you know, resistant, starches, illegal saccharides and so on. So one of the things that we promote to people, if they're coming out of a restrictive diet is to start taking a prebiotic that has some illegal saccharides in it, because that's kind of foundational food for your, for your microbiome and your colon. And so you start that you have, with the spores with you, and then over a matter of about three, four weeks, you would have made quite a bit over an improvement on the diversity of your microbiome, where you can start adding in foods that you typically wouldn't have been able to tolerate.
 

 Wade Lightheart: Well, it's so exciting. And can you, I mean, I, I get so gay when we're running at a time, cause I have to get you guys back because it's so important, but maybe you guys can share with us a little bit about your company, what you do and how you're helping the world. If you guys can kind of share about that. And we'll put that in the show notes as well. Cause I think this is really cool and we'll have to get you back on the podcast because I want to keep going on this and we're just running out of time. So have at it, tell us, tell us about the company. What's the mission? What are you guys doing? How how's this all work?
 

 Tina Anderson a...: Yeah, our company is just thrive. Ujust thrive. Health is our URL. And so,uwe are really about empowering people to live their best lives. And we really are empowerment is such a huge part of who we are. We only bring products that are research based and,udriven by science. Uthe other big thing,uthe distinctions, we don't bring products that are, we don't do me too products. I mean, we really are focused on products that are missing and needed in the market. You know, there's so many great products out there, like so many great vitamin C's, for example, but we would never launch vitamin C cause there's lots of great companies doing that already. So we're really focusing on finding products that are just missing and just so desperately needed by people. And,uwe're really about empowering people. Our customer service is amazing. So if anybody has any questions, they're very site, they have a lot of great scientific background actually, and,uknow how to talk to everybody about things. So we're happy to, you know, talk to anybody and it's fun to change the world. Especially during this time, it's really fun to see people, the silver lining during this time is just seeing people going to supplements and then really focusing on improving their immune health and supporting their immune health, which has been really exciting.
 

 Wade Lightheart: Anything you'd like to add before we, to our listeners before we.
 

 Tina Anderson a...: Yeah. You know, just one, one message. You know, the, there are a lot of people listening that are probably who have probably been struggling with a condition or maybe a loved one has been struggling with a chronic condition, whether it's an auto-immune condition, a GI condition, anxiety, stress, all of these things that are so commonplace now, I mean over 60% of American adults have at least one chronic that they're struggling with. Right? So so that that's probably going to be the bulk of everyone listening. And, and many of those conditions don't have an easy fix, right? And many of those conditions may seem like they don't even have hope and that you end that this is your life forever, that this is you with this condition. One of the things I want to convey to people is as we start to understand how the human body works and how so much of the human body is controlled by our microbial ecosystem and so many diseases, the vast majority of chronic illnesses can be tied back to a dysfunction in the ecosystem. It means that those conditions can be helped. There's a lot more hope right now than we, than we had even five years ago, to be able to help conditions that were incurable or, or could we couldn't make progress on there. Wasn't a magic pill for lots of those things can be dramatically helped just by lifestyle change by improving your gut by adding in some meditation, some mindfulness, all of the things that we tend to talk about in the natural medicine world. And ultimately there is a tremendous amount of hope for many of the conditions that people are suffering from. So that's the important thing. That's a mission that we, that we follow as well, where we're looking for mechanisms of action. We're looking for pathways to improve people's lives by understanding systems biology. And of course, with the focus on the microbiome. So that's where we are. We will keep bringing out new things. We're going to keep doing research. We've got 10 published papers, I think about eight others on the way to be published. Andyou know, we really appreciate these kinds of opportunities to bring this information to people because we could be doing everything we're doing. It's absolutely meaningless unless we get a platform like this to get to talk about it. So thank you so much for having us on here as well.
 

 Wade Lightheart: Super great. Yeah. Super great to have you both on here. We'll put all the show notes, links and social media handles of yet that sort of stuff in there. So if you can share that with our team, we'll put that in there, go check this information out. Folks, this might change you, or one of your family members life. The world is under a biological attack. In my opinion, and microbial diversity is an essential component for your ability to adapt to an ever-changing conditions of that. Well, the humanity is subject now. And if there was ever a time where we needed to pay attention, this is it. So start pounding those bacteria, the spores eat a diverse amount of food as they suggest. And of course follow us for the latest cutting edge information from some of the greatest and most passionate people in the world. I would like all of our listeners, if you enjoyed this to hit the like button, share it with your friends. This is essential information for you to listen to. I want to thank you for joining us. My name is Wade T Lightheart. I represent BiOptimizers and this is the Awesome Health Podcast show. Thank you for joining us and we'll see you again on the very next episode. Take care.