ENCORE: Forget Everything You Have Learned About Probiotics with Kiran Krishnan
For the next few weeks on The Less Stressed Life Podcast, I will be republishing our most popular episodes. As a gut health nerd, I'm excited to bring this one back! In this episode, I was joined by the renowned research microbiologist, Kiran Krishnan. This episode is a MUST listen if you have a microbiome. Forget everything you thought you knew about probiotics, because there's a new guy in town. The Swiss Army knife of probiotics. The Chuck Norris of beneficial bacteria. The master gardener of the biome. Meet spore biotics. Kiran explains the huge benefit these UNIQUE spores have over conventional probiotics. They're the way nature intended probiotics and they're a potential game changer in nearly any major health condition.
ABOUT GUEST:
Kiran Krishnan is now the chief microbiologist at Just Thrive with 20 years of experience in the dietary supplement and nutrition market. He comes from a strict research background, having spent several years with hands-on R&D in the fields of molecular medicine and microbiology at the University of Iowa.
WHERE TO FIND:
Website: https://justthrivehealth.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kiranbiome/
WHERE TO FIND CHRISTA:
Website: https://www.christabiegler.com/
Instagram: @anti.inflammatory.nutritionist
Leave a review, submit a questions for the podcast or take one of my quizzes here: https://www.christabiegler.com/links
ANNOUNCEMENTS:
WORK WITH CHRISTA IN 2024: https://www.christabiegler.com/fss
RESET IN SEDONA
Retreat is full. Stay tuned for info on future retreats! 🙌
Transcript:
[00:00:00] Christa Biegler: Stress is the inflammation that robs us of life, energy, and happiness. Our typical solutions for gut health and hormone balance have let a lot of us down. We're over medicated and underserved. At The Less Stressed Life, we're a community of health savvy women exploring solutions outside of our traditional Western medicine toolbox and training to raise the bar and change our stories.
[00:00:26] Christa Biegler: Each week, our hope is that you leave our sessions inspired to learn, grow, and share these stories to raise the bar in your life and home.
[00:00:45] Christa Biegler: /So during the holiday season, to give us a little bit of a break, and also because I think this is cool and fun, sometimes people tell me, wow, I really love this podcast, but you've got so much stuff, that I wanted to do an encore or a replay of some of our most popular episodes over the next month.
[00:01:00] Christa Biegler: And if they are the most popular episodes, there's probably a reason. So this first one originally aired in April of 2018 with Karan Krishnan. And this is, was the beginning of my professional crush on Karan Krishnan. So I am a how stuff works kind of person. I love the behind the scenes stuff. So let me tell you what's happened since this episode aired.
[00:01:19] Christa Biegler: First of all, Karan wowed me with his knowledge. He's incredible at doing that. He's an amazing educator. And his background is that he is a microbiologist creating products for other companies. He found spores. I think he's going to talk about that in the episode, so I won't bore you with that.
[00:01:34] Christa Biegler: But since then he created his own company. You'll probably hear about that in the episode too. I actually did some really short term contracting for the company because I loved them so much and they were growing. So much, so fast that it was usually things are quite disorganized behind the scenes. I've seen this many times and so that did not last too long yet.
[00:01:57] Christa Biegler: I still love sporbiotics and Kron is no longer with the company anymore. Actually, I don't even know what he's doing. He's probably just taking up. I'm not exactly sure what he's doing right now, but he and his partner, Tom, they exited the company. It was sold to a very large supplement company out of Europe called Novozyme.
[00:02:17] Christa Biegler: Yet, I think the information here is still valid, still stands. I think sporbiotics were really revolutionary to my practice when I added them about five years ago. I hope you enjoyed this episode from April of 2018. Forget everything you think you know about probiotics.
[00:02:31] Christa Biegler: / I want to take a quick minute to tell you a couple things that I'm really excited about that are happening right now. First, something that weighs really heavy on my heart is burnout potential. Everyone is so good at go, go, go glue truck technology that we often just need to stop, rest, and reset. So I'm thrilled to announce Reset in Sedona, a restorative wellness retreat for women craving good food and adventure.
[00:02:55] Christa Biegler: Now I have a lot of feelings about how retreats are non negotiable and I've been practicing for this for years, attending and hosting other private retreats. So if an intentional reset to fill your cup sounds good to you, you can head to the show notes to find the link for Reset in Sedona, or go to kristabigler. com slash Reset in Sedona.
[00:03:12] Christa Biegler: And the second is that I'm currently taking intercalls for clients to start in the new year. I work with people that feel like they're doing everything right in health, but still have food sensitivities, subpar energy and mental focus. Gut issues and eczema. I help them with a sustainable way to eliminate symptoms and feel their best using testing synergistic nutrient repletion and supporting several major systems in the body for balance.
[00:03:34] Christa Biegler: You can go over to Krista bigler. com forward slash FSS. Both links will be in the show notes and now back to the show.
[00:03:42] Christa Biegler: / All right, today on the less stressed life, I'm so excited to be geeking out today with Karan Krishnan. He is the brains at microbiome labs, which if you haven't heard about today, I'm sure you'll be researching them. Cool. Like crazy after you listen to this episode. So he's a research microbiologist has been involved in the dietary supplement and nutrition market for the last 16 years.
[00:04:05] Christa Biegler: He comes from a lot of research as his background. He spent lots of years in R and D research and development and molecular medicine, microbiology at the university of Iowa. He regularly lectures on the human microbiome at health and medical conferences and is sought after for national and satellite radio expert talks.
[00:04:23] Christa Biegler: So he's this chief science officer at microbiome labs, which owns mega spore and a vitamin K two supplement, et cetera. We might let him chat about that here at the end. I feel like we're going to get on all kinds of tangents and he's the advisor to seven other companies, I believe. And he can correct me.
[00:04:37] Christa Biegler: So welcome karan.
[00:04:39] Kiran Krishnan: /Hi, thank you so much for having me. So good to be here with you.
[00:04:43] Christa Biegler: /Yeah, I'm very excited to be talking bacteria. So you have the ability to really Capture your audience when you talk the numbers about the gut. And I think that regardless of the fact that we might know, we may know if you're listening about all the impact with the gut brain connection, how it affects so many, it affects everything.
[00:05:04] Christa Biegler: It's the core, right? So you and I maybe live in this topic in very different ways, but it's fun to give the lip surface to the magnitude of everything that's going on. So do you want to just give us a little bit of background about the gut and why we should all care about it so much?
[00:05:19] Kiran Krishnan: /Yeah. And that I think is extremely important.
[00:05:22] Kiran Krishnan: And it also brings up the point that we're living in a very exciting age because all of these years of the decades of medical research and study and all that have basically been looking at what we consider to be less than 10%. of what a human actually is. And to explain that, it's important to note that there's about 10 trillion cells that make up the entire human body.
[00:05:46] Kiran Krishnan: That's a lot of cells. 10 trillion is a number most people almost never come across on a regular basis. And that's 10 trillion human cells. But compare that to over 100 trillion bacteria cells that live in and on our body. And we used to think of any bacteria that we find in and on our body as accidental travelers You know, we picked them up by Meeting somebody, we picked them up by getting dirty somehow and then they hopped on our vehicle of a body and and they're accidental travelers.
[00:06:18] Kiran Krishnan: But we now come to know that we're, in fact, a lot more bacteria than we are human in many different ways. So the cell count, we have 10 times more bacteria cells in and on our body than human cells. And then the part that's actually even more fascinating is our genetics. we've all been talking about genetics and our genes and our DNA for so long.
[00:06:39] Kiran Krishnan: We know and believe that our DNA is what dictates everything about us. Everything that we can see, hair color, eye color way your face looks, your height and so on. also the DNA dictates the way genetic risk for diseases and how healthy you are and so on. The problem is when they sequence the human genome, what they found was around 22 to 24,000 working genes in our chromosomes.
[00:07:06] Kiran Krishnan: And that sounds like a lot, but then you compare it to a rice plant. A rice plant has over 40,000 working genes. Or if you compare it to an earthworm, a very unsophisticated organism has over 40, 000 working genes. So we are half as cool as a rice plant or earthworm, right? And then the question is, how is it with our very limited number of genes, can we do all the things that we do, that we are cognitive care organisms that we have this capability of creating this world and moving up to the top of the food chain and the evolutionary ladder.
[00:07:42] Kiran Krishnan: And as it turns out, it's because we have over three and a half million bacterial genes in our body. So in fact, we use over 3 million pieces of bacteria DNA on a regular basis to conduct our functions. So what makes us human is actually dictated by the bacterial DNA that's found in our system. And that accounts for over 90 percent of our day to day function.
[00:08:11] Kiran Krishnan: So their role in our well being and in our bodies and in making us human cannot be overstated, and we knew nothing about this until about five years ago.
[00:08:23] Christa Biegler: /Yeah, that's the crazy part. So at no point can we ever give too much attention to the bacteria. So we're really not that mature chromosomally.
[00:08:32] Christa Biegler: Earthworms and rice plants are more chromosomally diverse, but we're more, the thing that sets us apart is bacteria and that's how we function.
[00:08:40] Kiran Krishnan: /Totally. And it brings up a cool term that people can use at their next cocktail party to seem like a super nerd holobiome. So holobiome is defined as a superorganism, right?
[00:08:52] Kiran Krishnan: So when we looked at evolutionary science to see, okay, how did humans, who are relatively incapable of stuff when you look at our physical characteristics, right? There are many animals out there that are... Far stronger than we are, that are more adapted to living in the outside world because they have thick hides, or they have fur to protect their body and their skin and they're stronger, they can climb, they can run faster, all of these things that outdo us.
[00:09:19] Kiran Krishnan: How is it that the human, the homo sapien, has actually surpassed all of the animals and gone to the very top of the evolutionary ladder? One of the reasons is because we have been fortunate enough to allow the cohabitation of thousands and thousands of other organisms. So holobiome means superorganism.
[00:09:40] Kiran Krishnan: So what we are essentially is a walking, talking rainforest. We are an ecosystem. That is put together by thousands of different species that have to work together in concert in order to perpetuate health and wellness of the whole you know We always had this view of the human body as all these organ systems connected by nerves and vessels and our brain Controls everything as it turns out.
[00:10:06] Kiran Krishnan: That's not really true. What we really are is a walking talking ecosystem and the amazing thing about that view is we now understand disease progression differently. Now we can go, we can look at virtually every chronic disease, things that are extremely scary like cancer, all the way to things that are benign, but really annoying like acne as having kind of similar progress.
[00:10:31] Kiran Krishnan: If you mess up some part of that ecosystem, it throws off the entire whole. And that's really what a disease is. A disease is a messing up of some component of this complex ecosystem that throws off the balance of the whole organism.
[00:10:47] Christa Biegler: /I love how we can always dial back and just embrace that whole, keep it simple, stupid thing because really we do have core concepts and if we start at that, then things feel or seem less complicated.
[00:10:59] Christa Biegler: We can go down all kinds of rabbit holes from that, but we have to stay true to the core.
[00:11:04] Kiran Krishnan: /Absolutely. And the, in the core is to me where real change can happen. If we keep going back to the core and we keep things simple and we try not to complicate things too much, that's where we tend to see the most change.
[00:11:19] Kiran Krishnan: Just going back to the basics and it becomes really easy in this world of really advanced scientific discovery and abilities to, to study things to really get away from that core and really focus in on one small little component in great detail, forgetting the baseline message and that's keeping it simple and going back to our basics.
[00:11:42] Christa Biegler: /So tell us a little bit, so we know that we're a walking, talking ecosystem rainforest, but where do we get this microbiota?
[00:11:51] Kiran Krishnan: /Yeah. And and that's how important mom is to all of us. We all have this special bond with our moms for the most part. And the, one of the most important things that mom does for us is it, is she gives us our ecosystem.
[00:12:05] Kiran Krishnan: In large part, you end up with this ecosystem that's completely unique to you. That's another important thing to mention is that. No two individuals in the world have the same exact ecosystem. They're even identical twins who are born of the same mother, who have 100 percent the same genetics can have up to a 30 percent difference in their ecosystem.
[00:12:26] Kiran Krishnan: So that's the most unique thing about us. So during the birthing process passing through the vaginal canal, We get a huge inoculum from mom, and in fact her vaginal bacteria have changed at that point to add new species that typically aren't there when she's not pregnant or not having a baby.
[00:12:46] Kiran Krishnan: And so her vaginal canal becomes this amazing bio soup. If you will, of really important bacteria that end up inoculating the baby. Now that inoculum, as you pass through, ends up getting into the baby's mouth and ears and nose and virtually every other orifice and of course the skin as well. Now the other part of it is through fecal matter.
[00:13:09] Kiran Krishnan: One of the most common things that happens during natural childbirth is mom defecate. And that defecation is all right there, they the exit for defecation and the exit for the baby are inches apart and so it's actually perfectly normal and also very healthy for the baby to get exposed to mom's fecal matter.
[00:13:28] Kiran Krishnan: And that's another big source of bacteria. So between the vaginal canal and the fecal matter, the baby gets a huge inoculum initially, and then after that, it's close interaction with mom and dad and then breast milk. Breast milk is, probably one of the most important things anyone can do for a baby.
[00:13:45] Kiran Krishnan: And we can elaborate on that as we go along.
[00:13:47] Christa Biegler: /So I think about having babies, I don't know if you've had any babies, and I remember having this conversation with the OB staff about, I don't know why God put the anus and the vagina so close together, because it seems a little backwards. But now we're having a conversation about our creator knowing what he's doing, putting those two pieces together, I think.
[00:14:08] Christa Biegler: And so now moms can go brag at mom groups that, yes, I did crap on the table during birth because I like to keep things entertaining around here.
[00:14:16] Kiran Krishnan: /exactly. And that is life giving poop. It's so important. For example, One of the most important bacteria that the baby needs in its initial part of life.
[00:14:25] Kiran Krishnan: So especially in the first six months having adequate amounts of this bacteria is absolutely critical. And that's bifidobacteria and bifidobacteria is found in large amounts. And the reason for that is bifidobacteria in your intestines, in yours, in mine, in all our intestines are concentrated at the distal end of the intestine.
[00:14:46] Kiran Krishnan: Basically in the distal part of the colon. So the farthest part of the colon, right by the anus, right by when poop comes out. So when mom defecates what is concentrated in that fecal matter is bifidobacteria. And if the baby doesn't get enough exposure to that bifidobacteria, it's been shown to create a significant amount of issues within the baby for example, immune dysfunctions, it dramatically increases risk for asthma, allergies, eczema, psoriasis.
[00:15:16] Kiran Krishnan: Also, it can increase risk for behavioral disorders as well, including autism spectral disorders. All of that from not getting enough poop.
[00:15:24] Christa Biegler: /Yeah, that's all we need it. That is our whole life simplified. Poop on your baby.
[00:15:28] Kiran Krishnan: /Oh, poop on baby. If you imagine so you think about our ancestral babies, we now have these ultra sterile hospital environments.
[00:15:38] Kiran Krishnan: But for millions of years, mom has been squatting. And essentially pushing the baby out onto the ground, onto the dirt. And and at the same time as she's squatting and pushing the baby out, poop's coming out, and the baby's, the first things the baby comes in contact with in the open world is dirt and poop.
[00:15:59] Kiran Krishnan: And and that's how our system evolved. And in fact, when you start looking at, and when you consider that, and you look at the types of bacteria involved in dirt and the types of bacteria involved in poop, the two most important genres of bacteria that the baby needs early on in life are the bacteria found in poop and the bacteria found in dirt, like the bacillus spores.
[00:16:19] Kiran Krishnan: study had that had published showed that. The bacillus spores works alongside with mom's natural bacteria to actually build the baby's immune system. Within the gut so that dirt poop combination is absolutely critical, and for the most part in childbirth today, we've put barrier, of course against the dirt we no longer deliver babies in the environment But we also start to put barriers against the exposure to fecal matter, and the biggest form of that is c section
[00:16:51] Christa Biegler: / how do you suggest that parents overcome the disadvantages of having a C section or even antibiotics or a traumatic birth?
[00:16:59] Kiran Krishnan: /Yeah and the good thing is the good news of that is that you can overcome some of it. So it depends on the scenario. If if the C section is elective, which people still do today. There was a big trend of it in the nineties where people were scheduling the birth because it's so much more convenient.
[00:17:15] Kiran Krishnan: That's really unfortunate. And if you're choosing to do that. or if your c section is required medically, there's of course many conditions in where c section is required, so people shouldn't feel bad if they ended up having c section if they needed it medically. thAt's perfectly reasonable.
[00:17:31] Kiran Krishnan: But if you're having a c section and you're at the hospital, or you're going to be at the hospital, you can talk to your doctor about doing an impact swap. So for example, if mom is going into the OR, what they can do is take sterile gauze and put it in the vaginal canal. And then once the baby is removed from the incision, the first thing that should happen is that sterile gauze should be removed from mom's vaginal canal and wipe the baby down with the gauze.
[00:18:00] Kiran Krishnan: Wipe all over the face and skin and head and all that. That seems to negate a lot of the negative effects of c section and not getting that appropriate exposure. And that was a stu extensive studies done at NYU by two microbiologists and I think OB-GYNs. So they showed that if you can swipe swap the baby with mom's vaginal juices right off the bat, right as soon as the baby's pulled out, it can negate a lot of the effect.
[00:18:25] Kiran Krishnan: The other thing that can be done is giving the baby the right kind of probiotics. As I mentioned the bacteria the good bacteria found in dirt that our humans have been exposed to for millions of years. Plays a really critical role in designing the initial part of the gut and the microbiome.
[00:18:41] Kiran Krishnan: So the spore based probiotics and then the third part is breastfeeding. Breast milk contains six to 800 different species of really beneficial bacteria. It also contains 200 different types of prebiotics that the baby can't digest her food that's there purely to see the good bacteria within the gut.
[00:19:00] Kiran Krishnan: So if you've ended up having a C section or antibiotic use or any of that during birthing process. Please breastfeed the baby as much as you can and for as long as you can.
[00:19:12] Christa Biegler: /So what are your thoughts on use of supplemental colostrum even later on in life? So sometimes that's considered a gut healing.
[00:19:20] Christa Biegler: I mention it To parents. So I work with a lot of eczema kids, okay? . And often I'm seeing a history, at least in the really severe cases, I'm almost always seeing a history of a traumatic birth. Possibly antibiotics of birth. They almost always have jaundice, which is really interesting, like almost a hundred percent very fascinating.
[00:19:37] Christa Biegler: But we talk through. Supporting internal organs and an internal systems in the work that we do together. And I mentioned colostrum as a potential that some people use and not a lot of people have on to use that. But what do you think about supplemental colostrum?
[00:19:51] Kiran Krishnan: /So I use colostrum. travel a lot.
[00:19:54] Kiran Krishnan: I fly. This year I've flown over 250, 000 miles. So I put a lot of stress on my immune system and on my body in general. From all of that travel and all of that presenting and all, so on. I use it quite a bit. I've also used it with my kids. It depends on the company also, there's good, clean colostrum.
[00:20:14] Kiran Krishnan: There are immunoglobulins that have been extracted from colostrum that can be highly effective. What I tend to find and when you start looking at the research behind colostrum is they've done a lot of good studies showing the modulation of the immune response in the intestinal tract. by colostrum.
[00:20:33] Kiran Krishnan: So colostrum becomes a really important component to me if you have an unhealthy gut, if you have a dysbiotic gut, if you have leaky gut, for example, if you have inflammatory conditions, which as you mentioned the eczema, psoriasis, those are all indicators of inflammatory conditions. All of those things, I think can be helped quite a bit with the use of colostrums.
[00:20:54] Kiran Krishnan: They're basically immunoglobulins that help , bind up toxins. Within the gut in, in, in particular bacterial toxins. And then also modulate the immune response in the gut to lower the amount of inflammation that's occurring in the lining of the gut. And it does the job well to do that.
[00:21:12] Christa Biegler: /I think one thing that I wanna make sure I mention. From what you just said is that this is a key point that a lot of us disregard or forget. You were talking about how you put your body under stress, voluntarily by the work that you do. But you're always supporting yourself. And so I think it's important for people to recognize where they're deficient and stop and say, Whoa, I need to just give myself some support.
[00:21:34] Christa Biegler: Even if it's short term because of this or this reason. So I think that's a valid point to stop and put a flag on.
[00:21:40] Kiran Krishnan: /Yeah, absolutely. I think that's really important that you did that because the other thing is when we understand the disease process in the new light that we have, the, in, in view of the microbiome, in view of human as an.
[00:21:52] Kiran Krishnan: Ecological system. One of the things start to understand is that typically, disease starts way before it ever shows up as something that's diagnosable. So for example, if you have an autoimmune condition like Hashimoto's, process that has led to that diagnosable state of the disease, probably started 15 years before that.
[00:22:15] Kiran Krishnan: Even 10 years before that, sometimes much longer than that. And it's a slow disruption of the ecology and your body's always trying to adapt and fix it. And then you continue to disrupt it. And then the body's trying to fight this battle, but eventually the disruption wins out and then you get this diagnosable disease.
[00:22:33] Kiran Krishnan: So even though you're feeling fine, at the moment, if you're putting your body through stresses, if you know that. You're not sleeping as much as you should be. You're not eating as the way you should be. You're not getting enough exercise. You're not being mindful enough. You're not, centering yourself on a daily basis.
[00:22:50] Kiran Krishnan: Life is stressful. You still feel fine. But all of those things are causing that slow ecological disruption that will show up as a disease. Three years, five years, ten years from now, so people are very acute, you know They're like they don't really think about stuff until it happens and we want to make sure that we keep thinking about our body as this ecology And we know all of the things that disrupt the ecology.
[00:23:17] Kiran Krishnan: So as we're doing those things Let's also do things to complete to keep resetting the
[00:23:22] Kiran Krishnan: ecology
[00:23:23] Christa Biegler: /I love that. And you mentioned something that reminded me of another point I saw you speak about somewhere else. And so I just want to diverge for a quick second from childbirth before we move on in the life cycle to talk about one other big stressor that's becoming a big, this is an interesting topic.
[00:23:39] Christa Biegler: So we're talking about spore based and things that come from the environment. That's our main end message today, but there's other environmental stressors and there's some things that are really seeming to really, but the system really, but our GI system and that is.
[00:23:55] Christa Biegler: Potentially some of the environmental chemicals that we're dealing with that are regularly in our dirt. Can you speak for just a second about kind of the impact of glyphosate and what that has, what that looks like just from a purely scientific and an evidence perspective?
[00:24:10] Kiran Krishnan: /Yeah, absolutely.
[00:24:11] Kiran Krishnan: In fact there are this awesome gathering of data that has plotted the use of glyphosate in certain regions within the country. And the data shows when they start using glyphosate and as they increase the use of glyphosate, they plot it in parallel to the increase in prevalence of numerous diseases.
[00:24:30] Kiran Krishnan: So things like autism spectrum disorders, obesity, cancers, Parkinson's, diabetes, Alzheimer's, they plot it right next to the plot of the increased use of glyphosate and they are Absolutely parallel. And this is 20 years worth of data, and so it's absolutely clear that there is at the least a correlative effect of the exposure to glyphosate and the increased risk for these diseases.
[00:24:57] Kiran Krishnan: Now, all that in mind, the FDA and the companies that produce and use glyphosate will tell you all day long that it's safe and it's been tested to be safe in humans. Hence the FDA has approved it or the USDA has approved it. for use. Now, the reason why they say it's safe is where the science breaks down.
[00:25:17] Kiran Krishnan: So glyphosate is a compound that interferes with a biochemical pathway called the shikimate pathway. It's basically a biochemical process that leads to the production of energy and so on. Now, the shikimate pathway is a pathway that is found in plants, and when you disrupt that pathway in plants, it kills the plant.
[00:25:39] Kiran Krishnan: So the rationale there is that human cells don't use the shikimate pathway. And so because we don't use the shikimate pathway, this chemical that interferes with that pathway is completely harmless to us. That's the rationale behind the safe, what they pronounce to be the safety of glyphosate.
[00:25:56] Kiran Krishnan: The problem is. The bacteria in our gut utilize that same pathway. And when the bacteria utilize that same pathway, the killing effect that it has on weeds and other plants, that same killing effect occurs in our gut. So it's basically consuming large amounts of antibiotics every single day through your food and it's destroying our gut microbiome.
[00:26:20] Kiran Krishnan: And now we know that when we disrupt our gut microbiome, it causes disease. It doesn't take a major scientific leap to put those two things together that what glyphosate is actually doing is it's destroying our gut microbiome. And because of that. It's causing our huge increase in risk for all of these diseases.
[00:26:39] Kiran Krishnan: So essentially, your environment... is, which is supposed to be helping your microbiome. We're supposed to be getting exposure to all of these good bacteria within the environment that enhance and protect the microbiome. Instead, we're getting exposure to these chemicals that are destroying the microbiome on a daily basis.
[00:26:58] Kiran Krishnan: It's so pervasive that there are cases now that have been published where they can find glyphosate in the cord blood or the umbilical cords of newborn babies. It's, it's in there. It's getting in everywhere. And your neighbor or yourself might be using the weed killers in your yards.
[00:27:15] Kiran Krishnan: And then the thing is once it gets into the plant, it can't be washed out. So even if you take your, buy your vegetables, you soak them, you wash them, you're still not going to get rid of glyphosate because it actually goes into the cell structure of the plants. And so when you consume those plants, then it, your bacteria get exposed to it.
[00:27:32] Christa Biegler: /Oh, I wish we had time to go down that path. Cause I have some funny stories, but we'll save them for later.
[00:27:36] Christa Biegler: Yeah, I don't think there's any escape from that and it's more, this just goes back to that other flag point of when we know we're under stress, then we should really work on supporting that in different ways and really increasing our knowledge and how do we support that?
[00:27:48] Christa Biegler: How do we always be working on improving our core health in different ways. And that kind of goes back to that whole topic.
[00:27:55] Kiran Krishnan: /Yeah, absolutely. Let me mention something about stress. I want to give people two visuals so that they really understand what stress is doing. We all know that stress is bad for us.
[00:28:04] Kiran Krishnan: We've always heard that stress can make you sick and stress is bad for your health. But people really don't appreciate what stress is actually doing. Let me give you two biochemical things that stress actually does when we increase the amount of stress hormones that we produce in our bodies.
[00:28:20] Kiran Krishnan: So things like norepinephrine, epinephrine a lot of the cortisol and all those other hormones. One of the things that it's doing is it's actually increasing the virulence or the ability to infect of many of the organisms that are laying dormant within our bodies. So viruses, we all have.
[00:28:38] Kiran Krishnan: Viruses, bacteria, amoebas, all of these things within our body that are pathogenic, but are just sitting around and not really causing a problem until there's an opportunistic time for them to do one of the biggest drivers of those opportunistic times is the increase in stress hormones. So stress hormones in the body totally changed your microbiome.
[00:28:58] Kiran Krishnan: and favor the growth of pathogenic and infective organisms. So that's one mechanism by where stress really destroys the body and has such a negative impact. The second one is stress causes leaky gut. And we'll talk, we can talk more details about leaky gut, but leaky gut is the as stated in a 2015 published study in a journal of Frontiers in Immunology, it's the number one cause of mortality worldwide.
[00:29:24] Kiran Krishnan: Leaky gut because it's a number one driver of most chronic diseases that we know of and so the stress is Opening up those gaps in your intestine lining and actually causing things to leak from your digestive tract into your circulatory system So just I want people to have those two visuals and what stress is doing so that they really understand the importance of Working on a reduction of that stress.
[00:29:50] Christa Biegler: /It's discounted like crazy. I believe me, it robs you of your nutrients. It's so important. I appreciate you painting those visuals for us.
[00:29:58] Kiran Krishnan: /Yeah.
[00:29:59] Christa Biegler: /Okay. So we talked about birth and kind of all that big ecosystem, but we're talking about where do we get our microbiota and the bacteria evolves, right?
[00:30:09] Christa Biegler: And so when do we really get to where it's set and determined and how does that change over time?
[00:30:14] Kiran Krishnan: /Yeah. So the microbiome initially when you're first born and within the first six months tends to be dominated by a few species. Bifidobacteria is one of those species. The moment you start introducing solid foods, which is usually around six months of age, we start seeing an increase in diversity of the microbiome.
[00:30:33] Kiran Krishnan: New species can start to crop up because now there's other sources of nutrients that can be consumed by different bacteria within the gut. So we start to see an increase in diversity of the microbiome right around six months. And that's good. That's what we want. And then over at the end of the first year, you're starting to get a glimpse of what your adult microbiome looks like.
[00:30:54] Kiran Krishnan: But after one year to two and a half years is where we start seeing the biggest shift in evolution of the microbiome and right around two and a half years of age is where you end up with what would be your adult life microbiome. This becomes your unique signature of microbes that live in and on you that you will carry for the rest of your life.
[00:31:14] Kiran Krishnan: Now for the next few years, you can make some slight changes to it and that's typically dictated by the foods that the people eat, where they live the amount of antibiotics that they're consuming or having to consume. And all of those things can shape the microbiome at that point, but for the most part, around two and a half years, you start establishing your unique traits.
[00:31:34] Kiran Krishnan: And your unique set of microorganisms, so essentially your ecosystem. And so that first two and a half years becomes absolutely critical to minimizing the things that can really disrupt people's microbiomes going really full organic as much as you can because anything that's not organic is loaded with...
[00:31:55] Kiran Krishnan: glyphosate, for example minimizing the use of antibiotics if you can minimizing processed foods that have a lot of preservatives in it. Certainly not using any personal care products on babies at that age that have antibacterial, antimicrobial compounds in it, and then allowing the baby to get dirty.
[00:32:13] Kiran Krishnan: So the whole thing with a one year old, two year old is they go out and if you let them play in nature, they'll go out there and they'll get in the dirt and they'll get dirty and they'll have fun. That's natural to them. They don't have the same view on dirt that we do as adults.
[00:32:29] Kiran Krishnan: And there's a reason for that is because that dirt is extremely important in shaping that microbiome of theirs. So that kind of environmental exposure to natural environments and minimizing things that wouldn't hurt the microbiome becomes critical in that first two and a half years of life.
[00:32:45] Christa Biegler: /Okay.
[00:32:45] Christa Biegler: So at first babies inoculated with mom's bacteria, so moms work on your bacteria now, and then about two and a half years old is when the microbiome really we're really evolving the bacteria until that time, and then it gets determined, right?
[00:32:59] Kiran Krishnan: /Yep. Absolutely.
[00:33:00] Christa Biegler: /Okay. So that seems unfortunate, right?
[00:33:04] Christa Biegler: For all of us adults that are past two and a half years. But let's talk about, there's a lot of things that can impact the microbiome and I'm curious kind of about the length of how they impact it, but tell us how quickly the diet can change the microbiome environment.
[00:33:17] Kiran Krishnan: /Yeah and that's the thing, we don't want to lose hope saying that, we're over two and a half years, so we can't make an impact.
[00:33:23] Kiran Krishnan: The good microbes are still there for those of us that have dysbiotic guts, and we know that because we've got some condition we're working with, whether it's, mood disorders, or it's obesity, diabetes, whatever it may be. We know it's driven by a dysbiotic gut, but the good news is you can still make changes within your gut to affect that condition in a very positive way.
[00:33:44] Kiran Krishnan: As an example, you know the difference between being obese and struggling with weight all the time versus being lean and being that kind of person that can eat whatever they want and never really gain weight. is like a 3 percent shift in the ratio of Bacteroidetes to Firmicutes. And that small change can completely change your body composition.
[00:34:06] Kiran Krishnan: And these variables can be affected for, by diet. As you mentioned, diet can change your microbiome within a 24 hour period. You can have upwards of a 25 30 percent change in your microbiome. That's a 20 30 trillion organism change. By just changing what you eat in a one day period.
[00:34:25] Christa Biegler: / I was just going to say, so when you eat healthy foods, you're going to crave or your body's going to want healthier foods,
[00:34:30] Christa Biegler: right?
[00:34:31] Kiran Krishnan: /Absolutely. So most of your cravings and your likes and dislikes and foods and all that come from the type of bacteria you've been feeding with with the types of things you've been putting in your system. So if you're eating a lot of processed foods and a lot of sugars, you will more than likely crave more sugars and more processed foods because those are the types of bacteria that are now proliferating within the gut.
[00:34:52] Kiran Krishnan: The ones that do really well on those sugars and when they do well then their whole point is that they're trying to perpetuate their own survival so they will create neurotransmitters and all that they send to your brain to make you eat more of those types of foods. If you happen to do the hard thing and change your diet and cut out the sugars and all that for a period of time, it doesn't take long for your microbiome to change to a point where those cravings would go away.
[00:35:19] Kiran Krishnan: And you demand healthier foods because now you have bacteria that like those healthier foods and they encourage you to eat more healthy foods.
[00:35:27] Christa Biegler: /Yep. I see that all the time. So let's talk about how antibiotics affect the microbiome and how we can possibly rebound from them.
[00:35:33] Christa Biegler: I know you have some interesting stats about how they can wipe out some bacteria. Can you talk to that a little bit?
[00:35:39] Kiran Krishnan: /Yeah. So there's a couple of studies that have shown for example, clindamycin is a very commonly used antibiotic for upper respiratory infections, sometimes for sinus infections, ear infections.
[00:35:51] Kiran Krishnan: So it's probably one of the more commonly used antibiotics, both in adults and probably kids as well. Study published, I think it was in 2015 showed that a single course of clindamycin a 10 day course, which is a common course of antibiotic can take your microbiome over two years to recover.
[00:36:09] Kiran Krishnan: So for two years, you could have a disrupted microbiome. We also know that fluoroquinolone antibiotics which have been used quite extensively over the last few years because they are more powerful and we're developing more antibiotic resistant strains. So they've gone to these new generation of fluoroquinolone antibiotics.
[00:36:27] Kiran Krishnan: They can disrupt your gut so much that one of the biggest side effects of fluoroquinolone antibiotics is anxiety and depression. sO taking course antibiotics can then lead you to psychiatric issues. And then Augmentin, for example, is another broad spectrum antibiotic that's used quite a bit for acute infections.
[00:36:46] Kiran Krishnan: A single dose of Augmentin at 650 milligrams can wipe down your microbiome by 90%. So imagine 90% of those a hundred trillion bacteria get killed off. with a single dose of the antibiotic. Now they will bounce back, but what bounces back and in what proportion is where things get really disrupted.
[00:37:07] Kiran Krishnan: So yeah, so antibiotics have a huge impact. Now, and I don't want to demonize antibiotics. They are necessary in many cases. They will save lives. If I have bacterial meningitis and I'm really sick, I'm going to want the doctors to pump me full of antibiotics to save me. But... There are things you should be doing again, if you have to be on antibiotics, there are some significant things you can be doing to reduce that recovery time from two years to as little as four or five, six weeks.
[00:37:36] Christa Biegler: /like taking probiotics?
[00:37:38] Kiran Krishnan: /Yeah, exactly. I figured we'd just leave a cliffhanger there and don't tell them what they can do. But yes, taking probiotics. So the right kind of probiotic. The spore based probiotics are really useful because they are stable in the presence of antibiotics. Not only are they stable in the presence of antibiotics, but they also do something called anti inflammatory.
[00:37:56] Kiran Krishnan: competitive exclusion. One of the biggest issues when you take antibiotics is it favors the reappearance of unfavorable organisms like Clostridia, for example, and Enterococcus. These types of bacteria get to bounce back faster than your good bacteria once the antibiotics have wiped down the population.
[00:38:14] Kiran Krishnan: So what happens is the new resulting Microbiome has too much of the bad bacteria. One of the things that these spore based probiotics do is they have the ability to go in, find those overgrown and bad bacteria, and actually directly kill them and bring them down, and then they produce prebiotics inside the gut to regrow your good bacteria.
[00:38:36] Kiran Krishnan: As you're causing this decimation of your garden, of your flora within your gut, The spores are acting as a gardener and going in and continuously pulling out the weeds, retilling the soil and re supporting the growth of the good bacteria. So they're doing that actively in the presence of antibiotics.
[00:38:55] Christa Biegler: /I love a great analogy. I love a great analogy. A gardener, because that's incredible that they could even do that much. That's shocking. That's not something you would say about other probiotics, honestly.
[00:39:06] Kiran Krishnan: /Absolutely. They're the only ones that we've seen that have that kind of effect where, if you think of your gut as a garden and you've got thousands of these plants, some of them good, some of them bad and you're affecting your garden on daily basis by putting chemicals in the soil.
[00:39:21] Kiran Krishnan: And then every time you add chemicals or there's acid rain. It kills off some of the good plants and weeds start to grow in their absence. What you're doing with the vast majority of probiotics is you're standing on the side of that garden and throwing in seeds. And you're hoping those seeds survive the process of flying into the garden through the acid wash, which is your stomach, and then getting into the soil and somehow embedding in the soil and then somehow outgrowing the weeds that are already there.
[00:39:48] Kiran Krishnan: That's what typical probiotics are. But the spores are the whole analogies, instead of standing on the side and throwing in a bunch of seeds and hoping for the best. You're actually sending in an intelligent gardener that can identify the weeds, pull them out, grow the good plants. Now the other probiotic that can be very useful in addition to the spores during antibiotics is Saccharomyces boulardii.
[00:40:11] Kiran Krishnan: So Saccharomyces boulardii is a yeast based probiotic. It's completely stable in antibiotic during antibiotic use. It doesn't really colonize, but one of the things that it does when it's moving through your system is it produces a lot of lactic acid, and it re acidifies your system.
[00:40:28] Kiran Krishnan: So one of the problems that happens with antibiotics that totally throws off the ecology is the antibiotics kill off a lot of the lactic acid producing bacteria, and when the lactic acid producing bacteria get killed off. The pH of the gut goes up. So the acidity goes down, which means the pH goes up.
[00:40:47] Kiran Krishnan: When the pH goes up, it favors the growth of Candida, it favors the growth of E. coli, of Clostridia, all these other microorganisms that do better in a higher pH environment. That's part of what drives the ecological destruction. When you put the Saccharomyces in there, it produces all of this lactic acid as it's moving through your gut.
[00:41:07] Kiran Krishnan: So it continues to keep the pH low or more acidic so that it's harder for those bad bacteria to show up instead.
[00:41:15] Christa Biegler: /I haven't been giving us by already enough lip service or credit when I tell people, I'm just like this is an antifungal one, so we'll do this as well. That's awesome. One other thing, as we talked, we put that big flag in about supporting yourself when you know you have times of stress. So we're talking about supporting after antibiotics or recovering, if it takes a couple of years, we want to speed that process up because we want to be always working on our immune system because when we get knocked down, it can get worse and worse.
[00:41:38] Christa Biegler: But an interesting thing I heard from you in one of your talks is that when someone else is in the house as a negative microbiome, or maybe on antibiotics, it impacts the rest of the people in the house as well, right?
[00:41:49] Kiran Krishnan: /Yeah, that was a very fascinating study that was I think being done at Johns Hopkins by an MD, PhD who's researching in the microbiome.
[00:41:57] Kiran Krishnan: He presented that data at a microbiome Congress where I was speaking as well. And I was fortunate enough to be speaking there because this data was absolutely fascinating. What he was able to show is if you take a household and you had one person in the household, you taking antibiotics for some reason clearly that person's microbiome gets disrupted quite significantly.
[00:42:18] Kiran Krishnan: And he measured the microbiome disruption up to, I think it was six or eight weeks after the course antibiotics was stopped. So he was able to show that during the course of antibiotics, the microbiome was disrupted and then that disruption lasted for at least six to eight weeks afterwards. And he didn't go any further in the study, but what he wanted to show was That disruption lasts even after the antibiotics are done.
[00:42:43] Kiran Krishnan: But the most interesting thing is he also studied the microbiome of the people that live in the same household that were not taking the antibiotics. And he showed that their microbiomes got disrupted in the same manner as a person that was taking the antibiotics. Just by living in close proximity to that person.
[00:43:01] Kiran Krishnan: And, what was even fascinating is he distinguished between people who are platonic and people who were actually in a relationship together. So it didn't seem to matter if you were just a roommate and you weren't intimate with the person. Or, if you were intimate with a person sleeping in the same bed, for example, none of that mattered.
[00:43:19] Kiran Krishnan: If you were in the same household you suffered the same destruction.
[00:43:23] Christa Biegler: /Interesting.
[00:43:24] Kiran Krishnan: /Yeah. And that's really fascinating now that brings up a couple of really important things to keep in mind. One is, moms, for example, moms, they're so dedicated to their children and the health and wellbeing of their children.
[00:43:37] Kiran Krishnan: They give so much of themselves. to taking care of their kids on a daily basis, especially when their kids are sick and if their kids are going through a course of antibiotics and all that. But what mom needs to realize is as the child is sick and the child is taking that antibiotic and you're giving the child all the things you can try to give them to make them better, your immune system and your microbiome is being destroyed as well for two reasons.
[00:44:00] Kiran Krishnan: One is because that universal antibiotic effect that we just mentioned. But the other thing is the stress. There's nothing more stressful than seeing your child sick. And those two things become so significant in hurting mom's microbiome and her immune system, and of course dad and anyone else that's taking care of the child.
[00:44:16] Kiran Krishnan: So it becomes really important that when your child gets ill, that you're taking extra care of yourself to make sure that you are remaining healthy as well, because you are getting this inadvertent destruction of your gut as well. And then, people who are healthcare workers. If you work in a hospital, you work in a doctor's office, you are surrounded by people who are on chronic antibiotics and that seems to have a destructive effect.
[00:44:40] Kiran Krishnan: That was one of the purposes of his study was looking at the impact on doctors and nurses and people that work within hospitals and what's happening to their guts on a daily basis because they're surrounded by. People who are on antibiotics chronically.
[00:44:54] Christa Biegler: /One of my favorite Quran quotes ever is if only we could all have a giant vagina to go through every time we get sick.
[00:45:03] Kiran Krishnan: /and in the most innocent, nerdy way, I imagine that all the time. I'm like. If we could just be reborn through this amazing, healthy vaginal canal over and over again, we'd all be totally fine because there's nothing more life giving and supportive of wellness than vaginal canal.
[00:45:22] Kiran Krishnan: That's where life really starts. If you think about it, what's happening in the womb. Is the construction of the shell, right? That's the baby. That's the human facets of it. The organ systems, the brain and all that. What really gives the baby life is the bacteria that mom inoculates the baby with.
[00:45:40] Kiran Krishnan: That's the spark, right? So if we imagine if we're an engine and we're ready to turn on the engine, the spark. Plug starts the whole combustion effect that gives the engine life and makes it purr and breed and produce power The spark of life comes from mom's vaginal canal that in that inoculates that shell And until that shell gets inoculated properly It's not really functioning as a human and that's what we've come to understand about of the biome
[00:46:08] Christa Biegler: /You know, in 2020, that'll be your project, trying to replicate that in some fashion and, it will seem really weird, but we're going to start doing all kinds of crazy things.
[00:46:17] Kiran Krishnan: /Exactly. And I've done it in my head a thousand times. I've already created this amazing giant vagina for us in my head. So it's just about putting plans to paper and getting it
[00:46:28] Kiran Krishnan: done.
[00:46:28] Christa Biegler: /It could be like a slide, really. So it wouldn't be weird. It could be fun if you just ignore the some thoughts.
[00:46:34] Christa Biegler: So let's get some applicable or practical use questions out of the way. How long do you think it takes for a probiotic to take effect? And I want to qualify that a little bit more so you can roll with that question a bit. So do you think that people should be cycling or changing strains?
[00:46:51] Christa Biegler: Because if your microbiome is as diverse as a rainforest, should you really being. Pigeonholing yourself with two strains. At least that's been the discussion with traditional probiotics. And then do you feel that people should be on probiotic forever? Long term does body come to rely on that bacteria that's been giving prophylactically or orally?
[00:47:09] Kiran Krishnan: /Yeah. So two very good and important questions, actually. Let's talk about the first one about diversity. One thing we do know with a great deal of certainty is that a diverse microbiome is the healthiest form of a microbiome and there's been all of these. studies on the microbiome and comparing the microbiome of different populations, sick people, healthy people that live in rain forest, people that live in urban areas.
[00:47:31] Kiran Krishnan: And the conclusion is diversity in the microbiome makes you healthy. You actually live significantly longer if you have a diverse microbiome. Your risk for numerous diseases are much more reduced with a diverse microbiome. So the whole goal here is to increase the diversity of the microbiome. So let's talk about probiotics and increasing the diversity of the microbiome.
[00:47:53] Kiran Krishnan: It was presumed that you can increase the diversity of the microbiome by taking a probiotic that has a lot of strains in it, or that has, or is shifting around and cycling through probiotics to get yourself some some increase in diversity. Now that we really understand how the microbiome works and functions, we now know that doesn't work at all.
[00:48:14] Kiran Krishnan: So think about a probiotic that has, let's say, 20 strains in it, right? There's not a lot of probiotics that have 20 strains. The average probiotic has somewhere around seven to nine strains in it. But let's take one that we would consider to be a super diverse probiotic that has 20 strains. Even if all of those strains are actually surviving through the gastric system, which is with most probiotics, they actually don't even survive through the stomach acid, but let's presume they survive and let's presume they survive the small intestine and they actually get into the largest part of the microbial population, which is the large intestine.
[00:48:48] Kiran Krishnan: 20 strains getting in and being added to a microbiome that has over 1500 strains is a very small impact on the diversity of the microbiome and the concentration is also very small. Most of these probiotic products will have, let's say, 50 billion CFUs. Now, 50 billion sounds like a lot, but when you put it in context of a hundred trillion, bacteria that are in the gut, 50 billion is like trying to change the color of the ocean by putting a single drop of dye in it.
[00:49:18] Kiran Krishnan: It's nothing compared to the size and scope of the microbiome. So there is no way of making a diversity change in the microbiome. by trying to add more strains at higher doses. And they realized this because they've been studying this in the case of C. diff, right? So C. diff is an opportunistic infection that occurs when you're immunosuppressed and you take a course of antibiotics.
[00:49:46] Kiran Krishnan: C. diff takes over the microbiome and causes significant amount of diarrhea and illness. Now, C. diff is typically controlled by in most healthy people by a diverse microbiome. So C. diff is always there. It's not a bacteria that comes in from outside and causes infection. It's always there. But when your microbiome gets decimated, when the diversity of microbiome shrinks, C.
[00:50:08] Kiran Krishnan: diff has a chance to take over and cause disease. So hospitals and doctors have been studying how do we control C. diff with the probiotics? So they've been giving people oral probiotics that have 300 billion, 500 billion CFUs, 15 strains, 25 strains, to see if they can control C diff. And what they've come up with is they have not been able to have a single measurable impact on C diff by utilizing lots of strains and high doses.
[00:50:36] Kiran Krishnan: And which means that the, that those types of probiotics are not changing the microbiome in any measurable way. The biggest reason is most of those strains don't even survive through the gastric system. So when you take them, they're getting killed off in the acid of the stomach. And then you're just basically pooping out dead bacteria.
[00:50:53] Kiran Krishnan: What they've had to do is go to fecal transplant. So That's where fecal transplants came from, is they realize that they can't get enough strains of bacteria and high enough concentration of bacteria through the oral route to make any measurable change within the microbiome. So what we're going to have to do is take someone's fecal matter, which has trillions of bacteria and then send it up the back.
[00:51:17] Kiran Krishnan: Because then it avoids the acid wash of the stomach and the small intestines and all that so That is significant evidence that you cannot change and impact the diversity By just trying to take probiotics that have a lot of strains in it and high concentrations Now what we have shown we're actually going to be publishing this study Probably in March of next year is with the spore based probiotics just taking five strains It increases the diversity of the microbiome by over 20 trillion organisms.
[00:51:48] Kiran Krishnan: Then the question becomes well, how in the world is five strains actually increase the diversity, right? Again, keep in mind that these are the gardeners, right? So what they're doing is actually going in and completely reconditioning the gut. So they're going in and they're detoxifying the gut. They are actually directly suppressing the growth of overgrown bacteria, of unfavorable bacteria, and then also producing prebiotics to regrow the good bacteria.
[00:52:15] Kiran Krishnan: So these guys actually have the ability to go in, read the microbial environment, that fancy word for that is called quorum sensing, and then figure out where there's less diversity, where there's overgrown organisms, and they can actually fix that by killing off bad bacteria and increasing good bacteria.
[00:52:33] Kiran Krishnan: So we saw this huge Amount of increase in microbial diversity within a microbiome by just adding in these gardeners. This is the spores. So if you're gonna increase diversity by probiotic, so far, the spores are the only ones that have ever been shown to be able to increase diversity within the microbiome.
[00:52:52] Kiran Krishnan: The second part of your question about getting used to it we were concerned about that too because there was a study that's being worked on at the American Gut Project. And what they were studying is they're looking at Crohn's and colitis, these inflammatory bowel conditions because the prevalence of these conditions are going through the roof.
[00:53:10] Kiran Krishnan: And what they are doing is actually characterizing the gut of people that have Crohn's and colitis. Compared to healthy people that don't have those conditions. And they were looking for differences between the microbiomes. What they were able to find is the one measurable difference that, that was quite prevalent was that people with Crohn's tended to have an overgrowth of lactobacillus acidophilus.
[00:53:33] Kiran Krishnan: And Lactobacillus acidophilus happens to be the number one selling probiotic strain in the U. S. in the probiotic industry. It's found in most yogurts and fermented products. It's also found in virtually every probiotic on the market. Now, We don't have enough data to say that the probiotics are causing this condition because of the overgrowth and overexposure of the strain.
[00:53:56] Kiran Krishnan: But there's certainly correlative data to show that too much of any one strain could be a problem. And so with that in mind, what we did is we said, okay, where did our ancestors get? They're probiotics from so that we know that we were looking at sources that humans were continuously exposed to on a daily basis, and that's where the environment comes in.
[00:54:17] Kiran Krishnan: So our ancestors were hunters and gatherers. They were forages. They ate dirt, they drank waters outta rivers and streams. They got huge amounts of exposure to environmental bacteria. And some of these environmental bacteria develop the capability of getting into the system, getting past the stomach acid.
[00:54:36] Kiran Krishnan: And actually going and living in the gut. What's beautiful about what they've done through the course of evolution is these strains have made themselves semi transient. Meaning they live in the gut for right around three weeks and then they leave. And they leave in particular because if they don't leave then at some point they would overpopulate the environment.
[00:54:56] Kiran Krishnan: So they've created this limitation on themselves so that you could still get the benefits of the daily exposure for them, stimulating the immune system, helping you digest your food, producing short chain fatty acids, sealing up the leaky gut doing the gardener work in your microbiome, and then at some point they leave so that then they don't overpopulate so that, so there's a self regulatory mechanism there with other conventional probiotics.
[00:55:22] Kiran Krishnan: The studies done in American gut seems to show that maybe there is a risk at all of overexposure to those particular strengths.
[00:55:31] Christa Biegler: /There it is. It's just odd. It's like they have their own brain, right? When they're this master intelligent gardener, just the way they're working. I don't think people listening necessarily, I think maybe media has made us think that probiotics heal gut permeability issues.
[00:55:46] Christa Biegler: They do not on their own right until we're talking about this spore based and from what you found in your studies And so just that is quite jaw dropping for me. So I'm taking your challenge I'm gonna start putting everyone on it and we're gonna Track and look at the data as well for fun, right?
[00:56:02] Christa Biegler: Because we're all
[00:56:02] Kiran Krishnan: / absolutely
[00:56:04] Christa Biegler: /But here's a big question. So we're talking about looking at what your aunt were our ancestors got probiotics So it sounds like we're talking about dirt based. Can you clarify the difference between dirt based and spore based
[00:56:15] Christa Biegler: probiotics?
[00:56:16] Kiran Krishnan: /Yeah, that's really important because what I hear a lot is people assume that all soil based organisms are spores.
[00:56:23] Kiran Krishnan: That's not true. Most soil based organisms live in the soil, function in the soil. Their whole job is to turn over the soil. They break down plant matter, they break down, carcasses of dying organisms, they fix nitrogen, their whole function is in the soil. Most soil organisms don't really do anything as a probiotic within your gut.
[00:56:44] Kiran Krishnan: They, if you're exposed to them, they pass through. During the passage, they can upregulate some aspects of the immune system, which is good for you, and then they move right out and a lot of them also die in the gastric system. The spore based organisms are sitting in the soil in the spore form.
[00:57:01] Kiran Krishnan: Waiting to get consumed because their natural home is the gut. Their natural home is not the soil. It's actually the gut. They're actually part of the commensal flora, but you gain exposure to them in the outside environment rather than mom's vaginal canal. And that's the big difference.
[00:57:17] Kiran Krishnan: If you see a product that says soil based organism product it's typically organisms that are just grabbed from the soil. And most of them aren't really going to function as probiotics and aren't harmful in any way. They, some of them can actually be beneficial, but they don't form spores. So most of them will die going to the gastric system and they won't really colonize in the gut.
[00:57:38] Kiran Krishnan: What we've done is focus specifically on the spore forming organisms within soil that have the capability of surviving through the gut and then actually colonizing and living in the digestive tract. and creating all these changes. So what you need to look for when you're looking for a spore based product is you need to look for Bacillus endospores.
[00:57:57] Kiran Krishnan: So things strains like Bacillus subtilis, Bacillus Clausi, Bacillus coagulans. These Bacillus organisms are the true spore based organisms and typically the product should say spore organisms on it somewhere. So to distinguish between just soil organisms and soil, and spore based
[00:58:15] Kiran Krishnan: organisms.
[00:58:16] Christa Biegler: /Okay. There's a lot to take in there quite a bit. Yes, I'm just scanning some of my notes there. Other probiotics. So I just want to differentiate. So we talked spore versus soil. They're not quite the same as spores are there waiting. It makes me wonder. I see. So I have some really complex, really chronically ill people.
[00:58:33] Christa Biegler: Just It's really rough. They're on life support with dialysis and whatnot. And I see a lot of pica, right? So that's craving a non food items and craving a dirt and such, and usually I consider that kind of a mineral deficiency, but it makes me curious about what else that could possibly mean.
[00:58:48] Christa Biegler: Like our body innately knows things if we would listen to it sometimes. So it's just a curiosity, but so spore versus soil based, but then Just for context, other types of probiotics are generally derived from animal or human sources. Is that correct?
[00:59:02] Kiran Krishnan: /Yeah, exactly. They're usually isolated from fecal matter in healthy human volunteers or animals.
[00:59:09] Kiran Krishnan: And then they're cultured on dairy to grow them up and and then they're dried and turned into a powder.
[00:59:14] Christa Biegler: /And their survival mechanism... is generally the capsule. There's a couple strains that do survive stomach acid without, I think, bacillus coagulans, but generally that's their survival mechanism.
[00:59:23] Christa Biegler: Whereas the big differentiator is with spore based is that they're so hardy and they don't, they're just not killed. You can, they're shelf stable, et cetera. There are other, there's conventional or I don't even know how to refer to them, spore based and non spore based.
[00:59:37] Christa Biegler: What do you use?
[00:59:39] Kiran Krishnan: /Yeah I just call them conventional probiotics which are your typical lactobacillus strains, your bifidobacteria strains streptococcus and all these other things that are utilized in most conventional probiotics. And like you said the way companies try to get them to survive through the gastric system is by the encapsulation process and, or tableting process where they add special coatings and all that.
[01:00:01] Kiran Krishnan: And to me, I'm a microbiologist. Follow the signs very closely in anything I do or recommend But I also have a side of me that's very much an evolutionary biologist And I also believe that in nutritional therapy What we should be doing for the most part is doing things that we are supposed to be getting exposed to in a natural habitat That we inadvertently don't because of our modern lifestyle, right?
[01:00:28] Kiran Krishnan: And so when I see a company that's taking a strain and it's adding all of this technology to the strain to try to get it to survive our natural digestive system, it indicates to me that strain is not meant to be used as a probiotic, right? Nature did not create it to be a probiotic when you have to engineer it.
[01:00:47] Kiran Krishnan: To try to do a function that's the pharmaceutical model. To me, the pharmaceutical model is all about trying to re-engineer our biology, interfering with normal biological processes or pulling them on a tangent in another way. Stopping something, stimulating something in an artificial way.
[01:01:05] Kiran Krishnan: And that's really kinda how most of these probiotics have been developed. I wanted to go back and look right at nature and say what did our ancestors get as probiotics and which one of these strains that our ancestors would have been exposed to has a natural capability to survive through the gastric system.
[01:01:22] Kiran Krishnan: Having that natural capability to survive through the gastric system, which is very rare for bacteria, indicates to me that nature intends this bacteria to be a probiotic. And as it turns out, when you focus on those organisms, they really do function as probiotics. They are the gardeners of your garden, and nature created them that way.
[01:01:41] Kiran Krishnan: And so this spore is its own micro encapsulation. The bacteria puts this armor like coating around itself to be able to survive through the harsh gastric environment, to be able to survive through the bile acids and bile salts of the upper GI, and then get to the site of action naturally. Once it gets to the site of action, it actually breaks out of this spore and goes to work for you as a functioning probiotic.
[01:02:04] Christa Biegler: /Do you know how long that spore based probiotics last in the gut or how long do the benefits of probiotics last in the gut?
[01:02:11] Kiran Krishnan: /So each individual, the benefits can last for some time because they make a real fundamental change in the gut. As I mentioned, they completely change the microbiome. Give you an example of that. One of the very, very important classes of bacteria in your gut are it's called acromantia.
[01:02:28] Kiran Krishnan: Acromantia, especially mucinophilia, is should make up in a healthy individual 5 10 percent of their microbiome. High levels of acromantia are associated with being lean, having very healthy metabolic systems, very low risk for heart disease, very low risk for diabetes, cancers, and so on. High levels of acromantia are is indicative of a very healthy microbiome.
[01:02:52] Kiran Krishnan: One of the things we showed in a recent study is that when you add the spores in a matter of three weeks, it dramatically increases the amount of acromantia in your body. So the spores have a way of increasing these other good bacterias. So those changes last for some time until, the spores are gone away.
[01:03:09] Kiran Krishnan: So with their continuous influence, they're gone, let's say you stop taking it. And then the glyphosates and other chemicals and all that we're continuously exposed to take hold, they can diminish the growth of acromantia once again. So what we say is. The spores themselves last in your body for about three weeks.
[01:03:28] Kiran Krishnan: Every single dose you take hangs out for about three weeks. Their impact on your body can last longer depending on your lifestyle.
[01:03:37] Christa Biegler: /Interesting. So in terms of immunity, it would be beneficial to be taking these probiotics at least on occasion to help build that up prophylactically ahead of getting some kind of bug, right?
[01:03:49] Kiran Krishnan: /Absolutely. So now, one of the most important aspects of your immune system is something called the Peyer's patches, which is found in the ileum of your small intestine. So that's the very end part of the small intestine. The Peyer's patches are the number one source of sampling. for all the stuff that's coming into your body from your digestive tract from your nasal pharynx and all that.
[01:04:09] Kiran Krishnan: One of the things people don't realize is that there's something called a mucociliary elevator, right? So all the mucus that's in your chest, in your sinus cavities and all these other areas that get exposed to viruses and vector on a regular basis, the mucus in that area captures those toxins and vector and viruses.
[01:04:28] Kiran Krishnan: And then the mucus is designed to move up and then through and then into your throat, right? So you're supposed to be able to like Serp up your, the mucus from the chest and all that and swallow it. So that mucociliary elevator is designed to take mucus that's full of bacteria and viruses that could infect you from all of your upper respiratory system and cause you to swallow it.
[01:04:49] Kiran Krishnan: When you swallow it, what's happening is then that mucus goes in and it presents all of that stuff to your Peyer's patches in your small intestine. And then that gives your immune system a chance to learn what kind of viruses and bacteria you're continuously exposed to and build an immune defense system against it.
[01:05:08] Kiran Krishnan: Now what we've shown through studies. Is the spores interact with that part of your immune system really effectively? And in fact increases the capability of your immune system to form a protective reaction against all of the viruses and bacteria. that you're typically exposed to. So it's important to get that regular exposure to the spores if for no other reason, it's so that they interact with the payers patches and enhance your capability of mounting an immune response to protect the body.
[01:05:40] Christa Biegler: /Okay, good. That's good. Practical things that people should know that sometimes when you're trying to take a probiotic in the midst of an illness, it's, we always used to compare it to throwing a glass of water on a fire, do you agree with that analogy?
[01:05:52] Kiran Krishnan: / you have all that mucus and all that stuff oozing through, that contains the bacteria that's making you ill, and swallowing that is actually a good thing. Most of us blow it out, like when we blow our noses, and blown into Kleenex, or napkin, but it's actually good to swallow that to some degree, and then you take the spores with it.
[01:06:09] Kiran Krishnan: Then as your immune system is trying to fight off that vector virus, you're basically presenting which virus or vector it is that's causing the illness to your immune system. The spores are presented along with it, and the spores dramatically enhance the ability of the immune system to fight that off.
[01:06:24] Kiran Krishnan: So in an acute situation, if you have a cold right now, it becomes really important to swallow some of that mucus and then take some spores with it. It'll enhance the body's ability to fight that cold off.
[01:06:36] Christa Biegler: /I had a dietician that had a question for you about the long term safety of spore based probiotics.
[01:06:41] Christa Biegler: But it sounds like they've been in use for a long time, right? They've been around forever.
[01:06:46] Kiran Krishnan: /Yeah, to give you an example, in the pharmaceutical industry, they've been around since 1952. They're some of the most widely used probiotics in Europe, Asia, Latin America.
[01:06:55] Kiran Krishnan: Everywhere but the U. S. They were launched as a prescription drug in France and Germany in 1952. They have been prescription drugs in most of Europe, in Russia, in Southeast Asia for well over 60 years. So there's a lot of data on the safety of their use, long term use in the pharmaceutical industry where they actually collate this kind of data.
[01:07:16] Kiran Krishnan: Other than that, we also know that spores, these same spores, have been in the highly abundant in the natural environment for the last three to five million years, all throughout the course of human evolution. Our ancestors have been naturally exposed to these same strains and consuming them on a daily basis.
[01:07:35] Kiran Krishnan: Every time they eat food or drink something, so we've had a very long term relationship with these particular organisms Hence their ability to get in and understand what our gut should look like, you know They know better what our gut should look like than we do, you know They have the ability to get in and read the gut environment and figure out what's wrong with it and then make the adjustments to it.
[01:07:56] Christa Biegler: / I started studying probiotics in 2008 and I learned a lot today. This is just a really exciting, crazy growing field. And this is just such a separate piece of it that I think is really going to take hold as more people start to understand what the difference is.
[01:08:10] Christa Biegler: Because honestly, it's just not understanding, we've been conditioned for so long about. conventional probiotics, so much about them. And there's just some key differences about these spore based. They're so much hardier they'll survive the gastric the stomach acid. I know you have some information about how conventional probiotics just really aren't even making it to the site, whereas spore based definitely do.
[01:08:30] Christa Biegler: Just the way they act once they get in, being a master gardener, those are some of the key differences I've heard today about the benefits of spore probiotics, maybe over conventional probiotics. Is there anything else to add to that?
[01:08:41] Kiran Krishnan: /Yeah to me, the two biggest things, and the reason why we focus on them so much is we were looking for bacteria that had a universal effect on the body.
[01:08:49] Kiran Krishnan: When I say universal effect, fixing certain fundamental defaults that are associated with having a disrupted microbiome. Two of those things are the diversity in the microbiome. So what we were looking for is a bacteria that can actually enhance diversity of the microbiome. We've been able to show with our studies that these spores do no other probiotics that ever publish any studies or produce any studies to show that.
[01:09:13] Kiran Krishnan: Then the second part is a probiotic that can actually heal leaky gut. Leaky gut, again, being the number one driver of most chronic diseases, being able to heal leaky gut has a significant impact on health and wellness in general. We were the, we published the very first study in August of this year of a probiotic actually healing leaky gut.
[01:09:34] Kiran Krishnan: In fact, we published our study in the in the World Journal of Gastrointestinal Pathophysiology. It's a, Straight up GI doctor journal, where they hardly ever talk about probiotics or anything natural within the gut. But they were so interested in having us publish this study in their journal, because they saw it as a frontier paper, because nothing's ever been shown.
[01:09:55] Kiran Krishnan: To do this effect. Just the ability of the spores to increase diversity and heal leaky gut to me is so significantly impactful on health and wellness. And that's throughout, the whole spectrum of diseases that we're trying to deal with.
[01:10:08] Christa Biegler: /It's a really big deal. I tell people all the time about how when they just throw, a random probiotic at whatever condition.
[01:10:15] Christa Biegler: I'm like it's like step four in the process. Like I don't really add that. So just this idea now I'm excited to experiment with it because as much as I'm speaking to the condition, iBS or eczema or whatever, what we're really always doing is working on gut.
[01:10:29] Kiran Krishnan: /Absolutely. Yeah. And it's the same disruption in the gut, when we were speaking earlier, I mentioned that if you take let's say two diseases that couldn't be more opposite, take acne as a disease and take Parkinson's as a disease, right? One affects younger people. It's typically cosmetic.
[01:10:46] Kiran Krishnan: It's not life threatening, but it's a really annoying condition that has huge impact on people's social life. And then Parkinson's, which is considered to be a incurable. A degenerative disease that typically affects all people. Imagine that both of those have the same starting mechanism.
[01:11:03] Kiran Krishnan: They're driven by the same thing, but they manifest completely differently and at different parts of life. Both of those start with hyperpermeability of the intestines, LPS endotoxins from the gut leaking into the circulatory system, and then causing the immune activation either in the brain in the case of Parkinson's, or in the skin and the capillary beds in the skin in the case of acne.
[01:11:27] Kiran Krishnan: But there's such different diseases with the same driving force. And so our focus has been how can we stop that that universal driving force of many of these conditions.
[01:11:39] Christa Biegler: /So just despite their shelf stability, I feel like a spore probiotics aren't necessarily easy to find. Can you tell us about where we can find these probiotics?
[01:11:49] Kiran Krishnan: /Yeah. When we first started investigating this, we went and we realized that these spores are extremely important and are probably the next generation of highly effective probiotics. We searched the U S market and we found no real spore probiotics, especially not. a multi spore probiotic with more than one strain in it.
[01:12:08] Kiran Krishnan: So we had to create one. So we developed one a product called Mega Spore Biotic. And that's the one that we've done all our clinical trials with. That's the one that we're doing our current six clinical trials with. It's called Mega Spore Biotic. It's got five strains in it.
[01:12:23] Kiran Krishnan: It's typically sold only through practitioners. We don't sell it in retail and so on. But practitioners like yourself. Can offer it to your patients,
[01:12:31] Christa Biegler: /right? And there's a couple strains here. I'm holding the bottle and looking at it. There's a couple strains for sure that are patented specifically for your company only.
[01:12:39] Christa Biegler: So you'd be the only one that has those strains.
[01:12:42] Kiran Krishnan: /Yeah, actually. Four out of the five strains are we have the global exclusive on we work with Royal Holloway London University to obtain these strains when we decided, okay, we wanted to do our own spore based probiotic because we didn't find any in the marketplace.
[01:12:58] Kiran Krishnan: We went right to an academic institute to get access to strains because nobody studies strains better than an academic institute because they look at it purely from a scientific academic standpoint, they get into every aspect of the genetics of the strain, the proteomics, which means the types of proteins, the strain produces.
[01:13:17] Kiran Krishnan: So they studied these strains inside out and knew virtually everything about it. And so we went to them and globally licensed these strains specifically for creating this particular product. So it's only in this product that you'll find these strains that have been shown to, increase the diversity, heal leaky gut, and all the things we've been talking about.
[01:13:36] Christa Biegler: /thank you for going to gather those up and you, and deliver them to us. It's so nice of you.
[01:13:41] Kiran Krishnan: /Yeah. It's in the crazy thing about it is the vast majority of my career, I've been Behind the scenes doing research. I had a clinical research company that I started where I was doing contract clinical research work for nutritional companies, helping companies develop products and so on.
[01:13:58] Kiran Krishnan: Never did I think what I have a product of my own in the marketplace at any point in my career. And so this came purely out of need. I got into the probiotic industry because I was, my research company was hired by a large multinational brand company to study probiotics and to recommend to them what types of strains would be the next generation of probiotics.
[01:14:19] Kiran Krishnan: So through our research work, we came up with these spores and we went to them and said, Hey, these are the real strains. This is what nature has created as probiotics for us. Nobody's using these. You've got to be, you've got to create a product with this. And the fortunate thing now in retrospect is that when we went back to them with this recommendation, they had just got bought out by a much larger entity.
[01:14:42] Kiran Krishnan: And they said, we are not doing any new products right now. We're tabling all of that. We're going through all this reorganization. And we, and I talked to myself, this is so important. I've got to just make a leap and produce a product myself. So this is the first and only product that I've produced.
[01:14:57] Kiran Krishnan: As my own that I put my stamp on and it took us over five years to develop it, to really study the strains, formulate it correctly, figure out the right dosing, how to use it and so on. And then. After day one of launching the product, our focus has been spending at least five times more on, clinical trials than we do on marketing.
[01:15:22] Kiran Krishnan: And that's exactly the opposite of every other company in the supplement world. Every company in supplement world spends a lot on marketing, virtually nothing on clinical studies. And so that's the big difference here. So we're very proud of the product. We've seen huge amounts of differences.
[01:15:38] Kiran Krishnan: We've got almost 10, 000 doctors in the U. S. that use it. We're now in Nine other countries and there's thousands of doctors all over the world that use it. We're completing five new clinical trials, so it's super exciting to see what it can actually do. And I'm always very grateful for the opportunity to be able to talk about it and just talk about gut health as well.
[01:15:58] Kiran Krishnan: Thank you so much for giving me this opportunity because I think it's so important to get this stuff into people.
[01:16:05] Christa Biegler: /And I can tell you're a natural. Like it's just your passion. I bet you jump out of bed for this every day.
[01:16:10] Kiran Krishnan: /I do.
[01:16:11] Kiran Krishnan: I jump on and go spores.
[01:16:14] Christa Biegler: /And you think about that slide you're going to make and it's
[01:16:17] Christa Biegler: just,
[01:16:17] Kiran Krishnan: /Oh my God, that's a fantasy.
[01:16:18] Kiran Krishnan: Yes. The giant slide.
[01:16:22] Christa Biegler: /And as someone who's worked in industry as well, usually you don't see that research and the product always connect or marry so beautifully to the fact that you're doing all that research on the backend will make your marketing effortless eventually. But that's my biggest complaint about spore based probiotics right now is I don't know enough about them.
[01:16:39] Christa Biegler: So thank you for letting me share this with my audience for sure.
[01:16:43] Kiran Krishnan: /Absolutely. It's been a pleasure.
[01:16:45] Christa Biegler: / sharing and reviewing this podcast is the best way to help us succeed with our mission to help integrate the best of East and West and empower you to raise the bar on your health story. Just go to review this podcast. com forward slash less stressed life. That's review this podcast. com forward slash less stressed life.
[01:17:06] Christa Biegler: And you'll be taken directly to a page where you can insert your review and hit post.
[01:17:17] Kiran Krishnan: And
[01:17:19] Kiran Krishnan: this episode ended with me asking Karan if I could help Megaspor Biotics and the family of kick butt products at Microbiome Labs take over the world. But for real, if you now need some Megaspor to help you uplevel your microbiome world, we explain where you can get this Chuck Norris of a probiotic in the show notes below.
[01:17:41] Kiran Krishnan: It's such an effective probiotic that they want you to have a provider like yours truly for dosing. Now, if you loved this episode as much as I did, share it with someone you love because you know now that families share microbiome. We'll see you in the next show. If you hit subscribe, remember it's a boomerang.
[01:18:02] Kiran Krishnan: Good things come back to you. Talk soon.
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