Gladden longevity — Episode #22

 Speaker 1: Welcome to the Gladden Longevity Podcast with Dr. Jeffrey Gladden, MD, FACC, founder, and CEO of Gladden Longevity on this show. We want to answer three questions for you. How good can we be? How do we make 100 the new 30, and how do we live well beyond 120? We want to help you optimize your longevity, health, and human performance with impactful and actionable information. Now here's today's episode of the Gladden Longevity Podcast.

The Gladden Longevity Podcast is provided for informational purposes only. It does not constitute medical advice. This content is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of a physician or other qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. The use of any information and materials linked to this podcast is at the listener's own risk.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: On this next episode of Gladden Longevity Podcast, I'm going to have a conversation with Tina Anderson, who has kind of a circuitous route to getting to being passionate about probiotics and gut health that you'll hear about. I think a couple of things that are super exciting in this episode are number one, they've come out with a psycho-probiotic, which basically is designed to improve stress levels, improve anxiety, depression, things of that nature. I think you're going to find that's really interesting to hear about. And the other thing, if you're not familiar with spore-based probiotics, you're going to come away with a deep understanding of why spore-based probiotics really have a leg up on other probiotics and how they actually help modulate the gut biome in really healthy ways, decreasing brain inflammation among other things, as well as leaky gut. I think you're going to want to hear this episode because at the end, we end up talking about putting together cocktails of probiotics to actually get at a number of different things simultaneously, so I think you're going to find this a fascinating conversation.

Welcome everybody to this edition of the Gladden Longevity Podcast. I have with me today Tina Anderson. Tina is the co-founder of a company called Just Thrive and she has kind of a fascinating story as to how she got here. She's really a lawyer if you will, in her initial career, and we'll talk through that in terms of how she got to where she is today, but the topic today is really going to be gut health and probiotics. She's been involved with that in a big way. I think you'll find this to be a very, very interesting show.

So Tina, welcome to the podcast. Good to have you here.

Tina Anderson: Well, thanks Dr. Gladden. I'm so excited to be here.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: How did you get from being an attorney to dealing with the gut biome? It's kind of like going from being an attorney to dealing with crap or something.

Tina Anderson: Yeah.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: I don't know.

Tina Anderson: Just a different kind of crap, right?

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: A different kind of crap. Anyway, that's a transition. Maybe you can walk us through how you got there.

Tina Anderson: Yeah. So it is pretty interesting journey, that's for sure. I was in litigation for many years, working crazy, crazy hours-

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Tina Anderson: ... and I started to have a family, I started having children, and I just didn't want to work those kind of hours. I didn't really love it.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Tina Anderson: It was not feeding my soul at all. I decided to go into a family pharmaceutical business where my husband was working as well. It was great because I thought, "Oh, this is fantastic. I get to work in industry that's helping people. We're delivering lifesaving medications, helping people feel better." I was very much in a part-time capacity. I was able to be home with the kids a little bit more, which was great, but I was also able to utilize my law degree and work in that way.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Nice.

Tina Anderson: After being in that industry for a while, we just started to see a lot of the abuses going on in the industry. We saw a lot of the-

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Tell me about that. Tell me about abuses in the pharmaceutical industry, because that's an interesting, that led to a pivot is what I'm hearing, so tell us a little bit about that.

Tina Anderson: Yeah, so one of the biggest things we started seeing with relatives that we had, they would be on one medication and the next thing you know, they would be on 12 different medications and really not getting any better. One medication would maybe cause joint problems and then they'd have another medication for that issue and then they'd get on another medication would cause skin issues and then the original cause or the original issue is not even being resolved.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Tina Anderson: Then we started, we have a one story that comes to mind. My husband, Billy who's my business partner had won this huge bid for a huge hospital system for a cholesterol medicine. The pharmaceutical rep came into our office and giving him a high five, like, "This is awesome. I can't believe we just won this bid. Now, you know what my job is?" he says to my husband. He goes, "You know what my job is? My job now is to go to every cardiologist in this hospital system and lower the number that they prescribe the cholesterol meds."

We were like, "Oh my God." It's like we saw it with our own eyes and like I said, we were shocked but yet, we were like, "Why are we shocked because we see this with our own relatives."

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Let me get that straight. The rep was going to go in there and try to get cardiologists to prescribe less of the drug because you had a capitated price for it or what was that?

Tina Anderson: Oh no, no, no, I'm sorry. No, he was going in to convince the doctors to prescribe more of it by saying-

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: More of it, okay.

Tina Anderson: If let's say 200 was the number cholesterol you should be on cholesterol medicines. They were going to say, "Oh no, if your patients are 190 or 180, they should be on the cholesterol meds."

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Got it. Yeah. So he is basically hawking the medication, right? Yeah.

Tina Anderson: Yes, yes. That was kind of shocking. We see that when we go to the doctor, there's a lot of emphasis on getting on meds. We're very deep thinkers, we read a lot of Norman Vincent Peale, Wayne Dyer, and this message kept getting sent to us that we are not doing our life's work. My husband was seeing a naturopath and they thought about it for years and we talked about different products maybe to bring to market that would actually make an impact, would actually help people but nothing was working. Nothing was really ... We didn't want to just become a “me too” product, we wanted to do something that was different.

One day this naturopathic doctor that my husband saw called him into his office, said, "You and Tina need to come here because you will not believe this but we actually, I got the rights, the opportunity to purchase the exclusive rights to these spore-based probiotic strains."

Of course our answer was like, "What the heck is a spore-based probiotic?"

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Yeah.

Tina Anderson: That was a whole other story but we started delving into the research, we started understanding the human microbiome project, we started to understand all about how this was such a unique and a different category of probiotics that we would be bringing to the market. From there is where Just Thrive was born. We-

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: You basically had kind of an understanding it sounds like, that you wanted to be in the healthcare space. Initially you thought it was pharmaceuticals was going to scratch the itch, then you realized that it was pretty polluted environment with lots of agendas, competing agendas going on. But you wanted to continue to stay in the healthcare space is what I'm hearing, and you felt like you wanted to bring forward some products? I guess your husband, he has a pharma background or what's the story there?

Tina Anderson: He was in the pharmaceutical business also.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Okay.

Tina Anderson: It's a family pharmaceutical business that he started pretty much from its inception.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: I see.

Tina Anderson: Mm-hmm (affirmative). He was-

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: He's not a Pharm D, he's not a doctor of pharmacy. No, it's just a business kind of thing for him or was?

Tina Anderson: Right, exactly.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Okay. Got it.

Tina Anderson: I think the biggest thing was the fact that we were very much into natural living anyway. We know that's the way we were living our lives with our children, ourselves. We weren't nearly as naturally focused and natural minded that we are now, then as we are now, but that was really our biggest motivation was that we really wanted to be more ...

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Was your husband struggling with something that he was seeing the naturopath?

Tina Anderson: Oh?

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Was there something there or ...

Tina Anderson: Yeah. You know what? He had actually a, he shattered his leg and had all kinds of issues with that. He was working through pain and some chiropractor treatment as well.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Tina Anderson: It was mostly from his shattering his leg from an accident that happened actually outside of the office. He slipped on ice. That's what happens when you live in Chicago.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Yeah. Yeah. There you go. Okay. Really nobody with a gut issue per se, none of your kids or yourself, your husband.

Tina Anderson: No.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: But you come across this spore-based probiotic and then introduce the audience to spore-based probiotics. I think everybody probably listening to this podcast is familiar with probiotics being bacteria, some of them are live, some of them are dead. Maybe we can talk about different elements of this, and then there are prebiotics, just so you understand that that's usually some form of fiber, resistance starch or fiber that actually kind of promotes the growth of healthy bacteria. I kind of make that analogy that's more like fertilizer, if you will. The prebiotic is a fertilizer, a probiotic is more like the seeds if you will, but we can talk that through in some more details. Tell us a little bit about spore-based probiotics and what's special about them.

Tina Anderson: Yeah. The biggest thing that distinguishes a spore-based probiotic is its ability to survive the gastric system and get to the intestines alive. A spore-based probiotic is called a spore-based probiotic, because it has this endospore shell around itself, not around the capsule, I'm just talking about the actual strain. It naturally has this endospore shell around itself and that shell is an armor-like coating and the armor-like coating allows it to get through the gastric system, get to the intestines 100% alive.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Yeah.

Tina Anderson: The overwhelming majority of probiotics on the market simply don't make that journey to the intestines alive. They're very sensitive organisms. They get to that stomach acid and they're killed off by the stomach acid so it's basically dead bacteria that's going into your intestines. The biggest difference with spore-based probiotics is its ability to survive that gastric system and arrive 100% alive in the intestines.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Right. Now it is interesting that whether bacteria and probiotics or alive or dead, they still can have impacts on modulating the gut biome, which is interesting. You would think, "How could a dead bacteria have any impact?" but actually studies have shown that it does. That being said, if you can deliver live bacteria through the gastric pH, if you will, that acidic pH, that low pH that could, theoretically, be better. Tell us about that. Tell us about the pre biotic, what it does that other probiotics can't.

Tina Anderson: Yeah, no, that's a great point because we say that all the time. There are definitely some benefits of taking dead bacteria or getting dead bacteria, but they tend to be more symptomatic type of relief where this is getting to the root cause. The biggest thing with the, once these spore-based bacteria get to the intestines, they actually have the ability to read the microbial environment, so they're doing something called quorum sensing. They have the ability to read the microbial environment and they have the ability to get rid of some of the pathogenic bacteria and also have the ability to help bring our beneficial bacteria back to life or kind of have them proliferate more. They're actually changing. One of the first studies we did was, after a survivability study, was a gut model study and that gut model study actually showed that after two weeks we saw a 30% favorable shift in the microbiome of this gut model study that we were using.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: What kind of model was that? Was it in humans or was it in ...

Tina Anderson: No, it's a gut model study.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Okay.

Tina Anderson: There's only two universities actually in the whole world that do these types of studies and it modulates the human microbiome, but we do have human clinical trials that we could talk about later. We know that after two weeks, this is actually creating a 30% favorable shift in the microbiome and I don't know-

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Was that administering it into that model on a daily basis or one time dose or how was that ...

Tina Anderson: Yeah, it was on a daily basis. Yep.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden:  On a daily basis, okay.

Tina Anderson:  On a daily basis, yes.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Right. That's pretty fascinating if you can actually weed out pathogens and optimize better bacteria. I think it's important for the audience to understand too, that there is no normal gut biome. We all do these stool tests, whether it's Biome or Vibrant America or Genova or whatever, and they’re always comparing your gut biome to sort of what they think is a standard normal. But when you talk to the people that are really doing all the DNA sequencing of people's gut biomes, so people that are involved let's say in fecal transplants and things like that, they'll tell you that there actually is no actual normal gut biome because gut biomes adapt to environments, to foods, to everything else, so if you go to Mexico and you eat the food there and you're exposed to bacteria that aren't in your gut, you get diarrhea but the people that live there it's normal for them. There isn't one absolute normal gut biome.

But that being said, can you tell us a little bit more about the spore-based bacteria, how they're modulating or what kind of bacteria? Are they improving glucose sensitivity or they're downregulating bloating? Are they increasing butyrate production or do you have any sense of what's going on with them?

Tina Anderson: Yeah, so the spores are definitely helping increase short chain fatty acid production-

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Okay.

Tina Anderson: ... by gosh, up to 30, 40%, one of the studies had shown, so the spores are actually ...

And if I could just back up a little bit to make it a little bit elementary and I know your audience is very sophisticated, but I think it's just easy to go back to the fundamentals. If you envision a garden and there's a garden that's been stepped on and trampled on and there's weeds growing all over that garden and you compare that to our gut. Our conventional probiotics, the lactobacillus and bifido bacterium, the idea was to reseed the gut. You throw in more seeds in that garden and you hope to plant a few plants here and there.

But the difference with the spore-based probiotics is you put those seeds in the garden, they actually have the ability to attach to the soil in the garden. They have the ability to actually get rid of the weeds in the garden and have the ability to help those plants that have been trampled on come back to life. It's like the spores are like the gardener of the gut. They're going in and getting rid of the pathogenic bacteria, they're going in and helping our good beneficial bacteria come back to life or proliferate in the garden. It's not just throwing a plant here and there.

The other big distinction is they stay there for about 21 to 28 days. These spores are actually in, they will eventually leave the body, but they do colonize for about 21 to 28 days where they stay there and they're making a change in the gut. They work from the small intestine all the way down to the distal colon.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Let me ask you a question. When I think about spores, I think about, and maybe I have this wrong, but that spore forms are induced in response to stress, that spores will form around bacteria to protect them if you will, if they're in a hostile environment. When plants are stressed, for example, they go into a different morphology. Seeds can stay dormant for 50 years until it rains again kind of thing and then sprout and do all that kind of thing. I think bacteria have a similar capacity in that sense, but with the spores, if you're swallowing the spores, is the spore element a harder shell, is that dissolving off and releasing bacteria into the gut or what actually happens there? Do you have a sense for that? Or is it the spore itself that's actually working?

Tina Anderson: Yeah, no, the spore, it takes its shell off and then it just leaves through the body.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Okay.

Tina Anderson: Yeah, you're going to leave it, so it's the bacteria within it. Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Right. Yeah. Just so people understand, when you're swallowing this, it's kind of like you've got a capsule that's protecting the bacteria as it goes through the stomach, but once it hits the intestine, it sheds that shell and now the bacteria are released to do their work at the garden. Is that ...

Tina Anderson: Yep. Yep, exactly.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Okay.

Tina Anderson: Yep, exactly, exactly.

The other interesting thing is these strains actually, so one of the studies we did was with antibiotic survival, the ability to survive antibiotics. Most probiotics would be killed in the presence of an antibiotic, but these spores actually have the ability to survive in the presence of an antibiotic, which is another big distinction versus others.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: That's really interesting. When we take antibiotics, and sometimes we have to take antibiotics for whatever reason-

Tina Anderson: Right.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: ... we know it's having an impact on the gut biome. We know that children that grew up taking lots of antibiotics, either for ear infections or recurrent strep throats or whatever it is, that their gut biome is really altered for the rest of their lives in that sense. I guess the question I'm asking is do the spores rehab people who have been treated with high dose or protracted courses of antibiotics? Do you think of it as a rehab for those people using these spore-based probiotics?

Tina Anderson: I think of it as a rehab as well as a maintenance of our health, because we are faced with so many offenders to our microbiome on a daily basis, pretty much everything we do from antibacterial soaps and antibiotics that are in our food, let alone antibiotics we take, glyphosate, all these things are so offensive to our gut health. Not only is it a rehab, we know that the bad news is there's all these offenders to our gut health. The good news is our gut bacteria can be rehabbed. It really can. We can heal our guts. We could do that with the spores, we could help clean up that garden if you will, and then you could also maintain your health with it and that's the biggest goal with it.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: One of the things that happens when the gut's not working well is people develop leaky gut. The tight junctions in the cells are broken and that can be measured based on zonulin levels and things to know whether or not that's occurring. But anyway, it allows molecules, macromolecules, into the bloodstream that shouldn't be there and that can lead to symptoms, brain fog, inflammation, autoimmune diseases, things like that. Do you have data that Megaspore is able to repair leaky gut in this whole scenario or is that something you don't really have data for yet?

Tina Anderson: Oh yeah. You mean Just Thrive or Megaspore ... Okay.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Well, when any spore-based ...

Tina Anderson: Yeah, with a spore-based, yeah.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Yeah.

Tina Anderson: We actually have a double blind human clinical trial measuring metabolic endotoxemia, which is the more clinical way to address leaky gut. Basically the study took 100 students, healthy college students that had really no medical issues whatsoever that they knew of, they're not on any medication, and they found out that 55% of them had a leaky gut and didn't know it. Then the-

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Very common, by the way. Most people don't know they have leaky gut.

Tina Anderson: Yeah.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: We find that all the time.

Tina Anderson: People ask all the time, "How do I know if I have a leaky gut?" While there are tests out there, you're not going to find them at Quest and LabCore-

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: That's right.

Tina Anderson: ... to find out if you have a leaky gut, but they estimate like 80% of the adult population has a leaky gut and doesn't know it. Basically then the college students that had a leaky gut, they divided them into half and they gave half the placebo and half the spore-based probiotics. They basically found that ... What they did is they sent them home, no dietary or lifestyle modifications, and we all know what college students do to their guts.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Yeah. A lot of pizza and beer going in.

Tina Anderson: A lot of pizza and beer, exactly. They went and they came back after 30 days, gave them a challenge meal, which was a fast food type of a meal and found out that the treated group that took the spore-based probiotics saw a 42% reduction in LPS toxins.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Oh, wow. LPS, so that's.

Tina Anderson: Lipopolysaccharide, yep.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Lipopolysaccharide which is basically released from gram negative bacteria. LPS is a big deal because it actually causes brain inflammation, we feel it accelerates aging, and does a lot of negative things. LPS, just so the audience understands, that's a big deal. I'm sorry, so what did it show again?

Tina Anderson: It's a big deal. Yes.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Yeah.

Tina Anderson: It showed a 42% reduction in those who took the spores.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Okay. Of this. Yeah.

Tina Anderson: Yes. But here's the scary part is the placebo group, they saw a 30% increase in LPS toxins.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Hmm.

Tina Anderson: What that's telling us is that when you have a leaky gut, it's kind of like a drippy faucet. People will say, "I never had any allergies. I didn't have this issue. I didn't have an autoimmune issue."

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Yeah.

Tina Anderson: You're constantly getting this leakiness of the gut and these toxins are seeping into your bloodstream, one day that faucet overflows, that bathtub overflows, and that's exactly what happens when you start to develop diseases is you have this leakiness of the gut that is now causing some major, major problems.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: This is a really key concept that the body has a lot of redundant capability. It's not built to be fragile, it's built to be resilient and sturdy so that being said, you can absorb insults and not have it impact you because the body has what's called physiologic reserve to be able to deal with that. But to your point, if you get enough insult, like alcohol, your body can process alcohol but if you get enough alcohol, now you're damaging your liver, now you're getting fatty liver, now you're developing cirrhosis, things like that, so there's a threshold in all of this. A lot of people are living with issues that they don't know they have that are actually accelerating inflammation in their body, which is accelerating the aging process like LPS, and yet if you're really being proactive and preemptive about this, if you're doing things that actually mitigate that subclinical pathology, if you will, that subclinical process, you're really doing yourself a big favor and taking care of it early, as opposed to waiting till it's too late or [inaudible 00:23:05] .

Tina Anderson: Yeah, absolutely. The thing is, we know gut health is responsible for virtually every aspect of our overall health. It's hard to find any non-communicable disease that's not associated with some type of imbalance in the gut.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Tina Anderson: People always go to their gut with digestive issues like gas, bloating, diarrhea, constipation, acid reflux, and yes, those are all indications that you have some gut imbalance, but people are just starting to understand that skin issues are stemming from the gut, mental health disorders and mood disorders are all stemming from the gut.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Yep.

Tina Anderson: That's really important for people to realize as they're looking at supplements that they want to be taking on a regular basis.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Yeah, no, exactly. That circles us back around to, we've talked about leaky gut and LPS and things, but what about people with bloating? There are a lot of people that suffer with bloating, gas, constipation, diarrhea? Do you have any data on spore-based probiotics and their impact on that?

Tina Anderson: Yeah. We haven't done specific studies on those, but we know we have incredible results with people with bloating and diarrhea, constipation. We see it all the time. Constipation seems to take a little bit longer, but diarrhea usually clears up pretty quickly. But bloating, we have incredible success with that as well. Again, those are indications that you've got some gut dysbiosis, which may start causing other issues with you. You want to make sure that you're taking care of your gut first and foremost. I feel very passionate. It's foundational for our health. It's where we start with our health because when our gut is inflamed and unfortunately in the world we live in, a lot of people's guts are inflamed, we're not absorbing all these other nutrients, so we could be eating clean, we could be taking all kinds of supplements, but if your gut is inflamed, you're just not absorbing all these other nutrients that are so important to us.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Yeah, exactly. It makes me wonder too, circling back to the antibiotic equation, we know that if people are on antibiotics, they can develop some very severe forms of diarrhea that can be even life threatening. We know that there's a probiotic out there called saccharomyces boulardii that will protect against something called C. Difficile, which can be a life threatening kind of diarrhea. I wonder, do the spore-based probiotics, do they have any impact on, let's say if somebody's prescribed a course of antibiotics, taking this along with the antibiotic, if that decreases antibiotic induced diarrhea or things like that? Is there any data around that?

Tina Anderson: Yeah, we did a study on liver encephalitis patients who were on some of the strongest antibiotics. We studied their ability to survive the presence of one of the strong antibiotics. We know that it's helping combat the negative effects of the antibiotic in those cases. It's really incredible and we recommend everybody that you're on an antibiotic, you should be taking a spore-based probiotic, absolutely. They will survive in the presence of the antibiotic.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Yeah, that's fascinating. Let's talk a little bit more about the brain. Have you done any cognitive studies or anything like that to show any increase in cognitive function or decrease in brain fog? It doesn't even have to be objective testing, it could just be symptom surveys or something like that. Do you have data around how it might be helping people's brain function or their mood or that kind of thing?

Tina Anderson: Yeah. Most of our data is anecdotal for the spore-based probiotic alone.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Tina Anderson: We know that the cutting down the inflammation, one of the biggest offenders of brain health is that inflammation that's coming from the LPS toxins. We know just the spore-based alone is going to help lessen the amount of LPS going into the bloodstream, so that's been really great. We know that our neurotransmitters are produced in our gut. 90% of our serotonin, our happy hormone, is produced in our gut. Dopamine is produced in our gut, GABA, the calming hormone, is produced in our gut. We know that taking care of our gut is going to help those neurotransmitters along the way.

Then recently we launched something called a psychobiotic, which is basically a probiotic strain that is helping with cognitive function, helping support our brain activity as well. This bifida longum 1714 strain has been studied extensively showing that it's actually allowing people to handle stress better. It's actually increasing theta wave activity, so that getting it more into that flow state. There's some pretty incredible studies on that strain as well, so that's been really exciting.

We feel like the spore-based probiotic is handling one aspect of our offenders of brain health and that's the LPS toxins going up to the brain. Then the other offender of brain health is just those external stressors that we can't get away from on a daily basis. It's actually helping reduce cortisol levels, so that's been shown in the study as well. Then also the brainwave activity, helping modulate the brainwave activity and increase the theta wave activity.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Is that also a spore-based probiotic or [crosstalk 00:28:26]

Tina Anderson: It's not. No, it's not, but it does have a coating around it. It's an exopolysaccharide and so it does have a coding around it that allows it to get into the intestines.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Now is that a manmade coating or is it the bacteria itself has the coating?

Tina Anderson: It's the bacteria itself that has the coating.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: That has the coating. Okay, I see.

Tina Anderson: Yeah.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Okay, got it.

Tina Anderson: Yeah, it's not a terra coated or anything like that.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: That brings up the idea of probiotic cocktails, if you will because there are some really interesting probiotics out there. We've done a podcast actually on Pendulum, which maybe you're familiar with, which does some really nice things with GLP 1 signaling and insulin regulation, hemoglobin A1C reductions, butyrate production, some nice things like that. I can imagine that putting together a cocktail of probiotics would be beneficial in the right individual where you're working on different things simultaneously.

Tina Anderson: It really does make sense and I'm glad you brought that up because so many people think, "Oh, I just need to take one probiotic and this is the only one I should be taking." We know the bacteria, we are 10 times more bacteria than we are human. I know people are sick of everyone talking about this, but I can't overstate that enough because our bacteria is dictating so much of our overall health.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Tina Anderson: That's why we launched this other probiotic strain because we know it was doing something different than the spores. The spores we feel are very foundational. I think Pendulum is a great probiotic and I don't say that very often. saccharomyces boulardii, you hit all the ones that I agree with. I think saccharomyces boulardii is a great probiotic strain for the right purpose. It does something very different than the spores do, but it's also really important. I agree with you and some of the studies with Pendulum are fantastic, so I agree with you 100%.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting. I think if you're listening to this, I think it is interesting to think about getting the right cocktail of probiotics for yourself and prebiotics if that's the case too, because we know those really aid in the efficacy of the probiotics that you take. I guess the thing would be I would ask you now is what's on the drawing board for you guys? Where do you think you're headed next with all this? Do you have other things you're going after or what's happening there?

Tina Anderson: Yeah, well, we just recently launched the 1714 strain, the psychobiotic and that is really what we're focusing on because this is so relevant right now and because it's been so effective. Since we've launched, it has been ... The testimonials have just mind blowing. It's been really exciting because I feel like psychiatrists have had their hands tied for so many years using anti-anxiety meds and SSRIs, focusing on the brain when so much of brain health is stemming from the gut and now we have something that's getting to the root cause. We're focusing on really getting that product out there because we know it's so relevant. We see young adults at epidemic levels, dealing with stress and anxiety. We're seeing this with young children even. That's really been a focus of ours.

I think I've talked to you about this before we are not looking to be a 200 SKU supplement company. We are only focused on bringing products that are truly missing in the market and needed. We were the first to bring a spore-based probiotic to the retail market, we're the first to bring this psychobiotic to the market. We are one of the first to bring a psychobiotic to the market. That's what we're focusing on. We do have some new studies on some skin probiotics that we're still kind of researching and making sure it's something that we want to bring to the market, but we're very, very thoughtful in what we bring out because we really want to be making an impact on the world and the society, and we really have, and it's been really, really fun.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Yeah. Yeah, that's really awesome. Back to the psychobiotic, because this is interesting, I haven't heard of this before. Are you targeting people with that predominantly have anxiety, depression, OCD, attention deficit? Is it across the spectrum or is it more lined up with one particular disorder or diagnosis or another, or how do you categorize that?

Tina Anderson: Yeah, almost all of those would be people that would be benefited from taking the psychobiotic. But the other thing is not just anxiety and stress and all of that people are dealing with, but it's also cognitive function, the ability to maybe present in a better way, with college students, taking exams, people giving a presentation, just that cognitive function. The studies also are showing that it's improving cognitive function as well as the ability to handle stress.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Then I think the other thing people are going to ask, putting myself in the shoes of the audience here is how quickly does this work? If you take it this morning, is your presentation going to go better this afternoon? I imagine you probably have to have a run in of a couple weeks or two or three weeks for this to actually have its full impact. Is that correct or what ...

Tina Anderson: Yeah, yeah, I would. There's always the outliers that within a couple days they feel a difference. One of our employees is like, "Oh my God, I felt it the same day. It was crazy." There are people who have said that, but to make a true lasting change, I would look at a month or two probably to see a change.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Okay. Yeah. Excellent. As you think about this, I guess one of the questions I would have for you is what are some of the most important things that you think someone can do for the sake of their longevity, I guess looking at it through the lens of optimizing the gut biome, if you will, but are there some recommendations you'd leave with the audience?

Tina Anderson: Yeah. One of my biggest tips is probably intermittent fasting. I'm a huge fan of intermittent fasting for a lot of reasons, but one of which it's very supportive to our gut health. We want diversity in our gut microbiome, and we know that it seems counterintuitive, but by starving the bacteria, it actually allows certain bacteria to proliferate in the gut so it increases diversity. Intermittent fasting, in addition to all of the other, other benefits that I'm sure you've talked about already on the show, it's really, really beneficial to our gut microbiome.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Yeah. That is fascinating. It's almost like we've talked a lot about hormetic stresses here on the show in terms of stressing the body with exercise, with saunas, with intermittent fasting or more protracted fasting. But it's interesting that you're actually giving your gut biome a workout when you're intermittently fasting and now you're actually strengthening the gut biome with that. That's fascinating. Do you have a sense of how many hours somebody should be fasting in order to get that impact? Is it 12 or 14 or 16?

Tina Anderson: Yeah.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Or what are your thoughts about that?

Tina Anderson: I think it would be great to be at probably 14 to 16 hours, but I always try to tell people, just give themselves grace and start slowly. Don't beat yourself up about it.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Sure.

Tina Anderson: Even if you do 12 hours, that's fantastic. If you could not eat at night and then that way I did it. I just started slowly. I thought for sure I could never work out in the morning without having my breakfast, but now I can't even imagine eating breakfast before working out.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Right.

Tina Anderson: I just would say to go slowly and then try to get to that 16 hours of fasting. For me it's been amazing. I can't tell you and I was adamantly opposed to doing it. I'm like, "There's no way I could do it," and I did it.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Yeah, your body adapts to it. You've got two more points here I think you want to make for us, but I can't help but ask a question right now which is, are you on a cocktail of probiotics yourself or what do you do?

Tina Anderson: Yeah, I take the spore-based probiotic and I take our Just Calm psychobiotic. Yeah.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: [crosstalk 00:36:16].

Tina Anderson: Yeah and if I needed to, I would be on the saccharomyces boulardii.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Tina Anderson: The same thing with Pendulum. I know it's addresses blood sugar issues, which I don't have any, so I wouldn't necessarily take that.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Yeah. All right. Good point.

Tina Anderson: Because I know the big thing with akkermansia, we have studies that show that our spores are actually increasing akkermansia and other keystone strains, so we know that they're increasing along with our prebiotic as well.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Right. Okay, perfect. Yeah. That's excellent. One of the things that I try to do is whenever I go to the grocery store, I try not to buy the same thing twice, at least not twice in a row. I think there's something to be said for diversity when it comes to food sensitivities and things like that, but do you think that has an impact as well on the gut biome?

Tina Anderson: Absolutely. I think that eating a diverse group of foods is so important to help increase diversity in our gut and going to ethnic grocery stores, going and trying to find different roots and tubers and vegetables. I think that's great that you do that because it's so easy for us to get into our same routine. I think there's nowadays we eat a total of like 16 to 20 different foods a year and our ancestors used to eat 400 to 600 different types of foods a year. We really need to start increasing that diversity, which will help increase the diversity in our gut microbiome, which we all know, having a diverse microbiome is the key to being healthy.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Right. You want to reframe your eating is now it's an adventure.

Tina Anderson: Right. Exactly. It's exciting. Exactly.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Yeah.

Tina Anderson: It's exciting and fun.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: It's an adventure. Yeah

Tina Anderson: Yeah.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Yeah. Think of it as an adventure where you're going to visit different countries, you're going to visit different cultures, you're going to whatever. But if you frame it up as an adventure, I think it may help people to broaden out their palette, so to speak.

Tina Anderson: Yeah.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Yeah.

Tina Anderson: It's fun.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Yeah, it is fun.

Tina Anderson: Exactly. It is fun.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: It is fun. Yeah, for sure. Then obviously your third thing is probably based around spore-based probiotics and I don't know if there's anything you want to add to that, but I think you've made a pretty strong case for it.

Tina Anderson: Yeah, I do feel so passionately about it only because like I said, it's so foundational. Everything else we're doing is going to work that much better if our gut is at least being reconditioned. We need that gardener tending to our gut on a daily basis and especially with all the offenders out there.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Just so the audience knows, there's a practitioner based spore biotic called MegaSpore and then you have your spore-based probiotic. I think those are the only two out there that I'm aware of. Is that correct?

Tina Anderson: That's what's so interesting is now everybody's talking about spore-based probiotics and so it's kind of all the rage and so companies are coming out with spore-based probiotics.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Okay.

Tina Anderson: The biggest difference though, is their ability to survive and so many of these spore-based probiotics really don't have the studies that we have invested in and we don't know that they're staying alive. That's the biggest key is their ability to survive the gastric system, not just be a spore but even if our spore base became alive in the manufacturing process, they would die just like all the other probiotics out there.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Tina Anderson: They need to be spore-based and they need to be spores by the time they get to your intestines so that they stay in their spore shell state and then go into their live vegetative cell state. But we're definitely the leaders. MegaSpore who is sold in the practitioner space and Just Thrive which is sold in the direct to consumer space.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Right. Just Thrive Health is the website, justthrivehealth.com, I believe.

Tina Anderson: Yep.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: We've been fans of MegaSpore for a long time. We've used a lot of MegaSpore throughout the years and it's interesting for the audience that you can get a hold of a spore-based probiotic that is not exactly MegaSpore and maybe you can speak to this, but it's very close. I think it actually has the same people behind it on some level, if I'm not mistaken.

Tina Anderson: Absolutely.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: So that you're kind of getting practitioner grade probiotic, if you will, but you're able to get it on the retail market with Just Thrive Health. Is that-

Tina Anderson: Yes.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Did I get that right?

Tina Anderson: Exactly. We work very closely with MegaSpore. In fact, we started all at the same time and we just decided to split the market up to have a focus on practitioners and then focus on retail, the direct to consumer, and so we are the direct to consumer version of it. In both products, the heavy hitting ingredients, the bacillus indicus HU36 and the bacillus subtilis HU58 are in both products in the same amount, so you're absolutely right. You're pretty much getting ...

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Yeah, practitioner-based. Yeah.

Tina Anderson: Yeah, from a scientific standpoint, a bio-equivalent version of a product in the retail space.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Right. The psychobiotic that's available on your website also, or ...

Tina Anderson: Yep. Yep. They're both available on our website, justthrivehealth.com.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Okay, great.

Tina Anderson: I think we have a coupon code too, for your listeners in case [crosstalk 00:41:19]

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Yeah. I think that's going to be in the show notes, there will be a discount code that you can go on there and order them.