[00:00:01] Luke: How do you think the Make America Healthy Again agenda's going so far? At the time of this recording, it's been, I don't know, a couple of months or something, right?

[00:00:11] Tina: Yeah. I think the best part of it has been the awareness that it's caused in our society. People who weren't talking about health and wellness are now talking about it and talking about the food that's out there. They're questioning ultra-processed foods. So I think the awareness part has been a huge success.

[00:00:32] Kiran: Yeah, I'd have to agree with Tina. I think the awareness part is probably the biggest win. So some of the ideas are along legislating health, meaning banning these things and banning certain additives and all that, it's a step in the direction of increasing awareness. But what you're trying to do then is force people to make the right choice, and that never really goes well.

[00:00:53] If they don't really understand why they can't have red dye number 45 in their Cheerios or whatever, they'll just find another way, and food companies will find another way. So you can ban the existing ingredients' they'll just come up with new stuff. And so I think ultimately, it's the awareness and the knowledge that's so important.

[00:01:13] And one thing that goes along with the awareness is that people are now seeking the knowledge more, which is why programs like this, for example, become really important, because people need to go somewhere to learn about what am I putting in my body? What impact does that have? How is that relate to the things I'm feeling?

[00:01:31] And then what are some of the simple things I can do to modulate my experience and improve my health span? It can be very complicated for people because you hear a lot, there's 1,000,001 things you can do from the moment you wake up to that time you go to sleep.

[00:01:48] Luke: Totally. That's why I feel compassion for people that listen to this show, because every week I sit down-- it's not always about health, but when it is, it's like--

[00:01:55] Kiran: It can be complicated. And everything sounds like the most important thing. And so you can get this paralysis by just feeling overwhelmed and overanalyzing every little step you take and every little thing you do. And then one of the things I get when I engage with a lot of people is they feel wholly inadequate because they do see influencers and all that who seemingly live a perfect life.

[00:02:21] They wake up and they have a three-hour morning routine because they're getting up at 4:30 in the morning every night. At least this is what they're portraying. And they're sleeping 12 hours every night and their diet is perfect. They don't eat a single drop of a seed oil or this or that.

[00:02:36] And it really makes people feel inadequate and a failure in the same way that back in the day, the ultra-skinny fashion models used to make people feel fat. And that leads to inaction or more negative action to me in ways that, I think, can drive harm towards society.

[00:02:59] So I think what my goal would be and the way I talk to people about health and wellness and all that is, number one, start with at least an 80/20 rule. 80% good decisions, you're going to make 20% bad decisions.

[00:03:13] Luke: I'm probably somewhere in there.

[00:03:14] Kiran: Yeah. Which then you're living. Because there's a lot of living that happens in that 20%. And if you live 100% perfect, you lose out on a lot of the aspects of being human.

[00:03:27] Luke: Also go broke.

[00:03:27] Kiran: And you go broke. Yeah, exactly. We can't all spend crazy money on every little thing. And so a lot of it to me is about building your system to a level of resilience where the 20% doesn't break you. And so there's some foundational things that I think are really important for people to understand. And I'm hoping that comes out more in some of this Make America Healthier Again idea.

[00:03:51] Luke: Yeah, yeah.

[00:03:52] Tina: Yeah. I overheard a conversation with two moms saying, "RFK better not take away my kids' Uncrustables. These are lifesavers to me." And I thought, oh my God, that's crazy that she would say that. But then I realized like, this is great. It's still planting a seed in her head.

[00:04:08] She knows that those are not probably healthy and she's doing them out of convenience, which I'm a mother, of three kids. I understand how hard it is when you're getting out the door, but at least it plants the seed in that mother's head and says, "Oh, maybe I should make different choices for my child." So I think just having people have this top of mind has been really a huge success.

[00:04:27] Luke: Yeah. I think you both raise a solid point that the education and awareness. I want to be optimistic, but I would say I'm a bit cynical just because there's so many major life-threatening issues that seem to be sidelined by a lot of the leaders in this space. Like the freaking bioweapon that's still being injected into babies, for example.

[00:04:52] And I know you guys, you're with a company, so you don't have to agree or disagree with that. The thing spraying in the sky, 5G towers next to every freaking church and school. It's frustrating to me because I don't think it's important that we educate people about Froot Loops, right?

[00:05:08] Kiran: Mm-hmm.

[00:05:09] Luke: But it's like, in terms of needle movers and something that's really going to impact society and people's health and longevity, I think some of the things that are getting attention are relatively insignificant versus some of the more grievous harm that's being inflicted upon people or that they're inflicting on themselves.

[00:05:29] That's the cynical side of me. The positive side is like, "Wow. A few years ago, no one in the mainstream was even acknowledging any of that, let alone the Froot Loops." So I'm trying to be patient and just allow things to unfold. And also, one of the things I like to remind people of is that we are each responsible for our own wellbeing.

[00:05:53] I think one of the downsides is us looking to a politician or legislation to fix our lives. It's like, I don't care what the government says. I'm going to do my own research. If I make mistakes, it's on me. But I think one of the downsides too is people outsourcing their power to legislation when meanwhile, every time you pick up a fork, it's like you doing it, right?

[00:06:18] Tina: Yes.

[00:06:18] Kiran: Yes, it is.

[00:06:19] Luke: But to Tina's original point, if the knowledge and awareness isn't there, then people don't know they're harming themselves and these corporations are feeding us all kinds of poison that we're just unaware of. So it's like you can't have informed consent if you're not informed.

[00:06:36] Kiran: Yeah. And that's a really important point because the solution to alcoholism and alcoholism risk is not prohibition.

[00:06:45] Luke: Right, right. Yeah. That didn't work out so well.

[00:06:47] Kiran: Didn't work out so well. You'll find another way. What is the underlying driver of alcoholism? Why would someone become addicted to it? That's really where the solution lies. It's not stop the vice or ban the vice. And so that's where my concern is, that that's the easy route that it'll end up taking, is that we're just going to ban a lot of things and remove this from that, remove that.

[00:07:11] But yet maybe we're not putting enough emphasis on the education side of it and the empowerment, and like you said, informed consent. You have to have the informed side of it.

[00:07:21] Luke: Yeah. To me, in terms of food, there's a few main offenders-- one being aspartame, the other one being MSG, and then I'll probably throw really gnarly seed oils in there too. I'm curious if you guys have your worst offenders. But in terms of regulation, you take something like MSG, if you go to the gas station and buy some beef jerky or some chips, and you look at the ingredients, you're like, "Oh, I have a little awareness of this. I want to make sure it doesn't say monosodium glutamate." You read the label and it just says spices.

[00:07:54] There's a lot of that going on, even in the supplement industry, unfortunately. So that part of the education awareness, I think, is really helpful because as the consumers become more educated, then the demand for products that aren't shady like that grows. And then manufacturing gets cheaper and people can launch companies that have clean products that are actually successful.

[00:08:18] Tina: Yeah. I think just going back to the whole foods, the whole real foods is just exciting to see people talking about that more.

[00:08:25] Luke: Totally. On that note, so we mentioned that it can get very expensive. You guys have a really great company with relatively affordable, very meaningful supplements. One thing I like about Just Thrive is you guys don't just put out 57 products in your suite for the hell of it.

[00:08:44] Oh, we got a vitamin C and a B. You just stick to your thing, which is mostly gut related. What, for each of you, would be the top three free health supporting practices or interventions? Don't involve buying a freaking product.

[00:09:03] Tina: All right. Okay. I would say avoiding products that have glyphosate and pests that are sprayed with--

[00:09:10] Luke: Oh, I forgot glyphosate in my main offenders.

[00:09:12] Tina: Yes, yes.

[00:09:13] Luke: Throw that in there.

[00:09:14] Tina: So I would say avoiding foods that are laden with glyphosate because those are so disruptive to your gut health. So that does involve buying something because you're going to be buying foods that are organic, but trying to avoid those types of foods.

[00:09:32] We know now that intermittent fasting actually in the fasted state will help certain bacteria proliferate. I do think that when you're hormonal or in menopausal years you have to be a little bit more careful with intermittent fasting. Maybe not as long because it could add stress and contribute to increases in cortisol. But intermittent fasting is a great tool.

[00:09:53] Luke: That actually saves you money.

[00:09:54] Tina: Yeah, exactly. See.

[00:09:56] Kiran: You're not spending.

[00:09:57] Tina: Yes, exactly. And then doing some type of either meditation or breath work, something that calms you down because we know there's a huge connection between the gut and the brain. So just trying to do, whether it's deep breathing, whether it's meditation, whether it's a walk in nature, whatever it is that just calms you down.

[00:10:15] Luke: Excellent.

[00:10:16] Kiran: And not to overlap too much with what Tina said, I do very much agree with the intermittent fasting component of it. I think that when we narrow the window of time in which we eat, especially if we can narrow it to the most active part of our day, there's a massive opportunity for health with regards to that.

[00:10:38] And hopefully we're doing it in a way we're not overcompensating for the times that we did not eat. So that's one of the failures where people experience with intermittent fasting.

[00:10:47] Luke: I'm familiar with that. It's like, I'm not hungry all day. My wife's like, "Do you want to eat dinner?" I'm like, "No, I'm on the fast." 11:00 PM, I'm like, "Some sugar would be great right now." It's like, no, that's not it.

[00:11:00] Kiran: And when you rationalize it, because you go, "Well, I haven't eaten all day, so now I can make up for it." So that's the nuance that people have to be careful about. The other couple of things, one is movement. And people overcomplicate movement, exercise, working out, and all that.

[00:11:18] I have so many friends and people that I talk to. In their mind, if they can't go to the gym and dedicate an hour, hour and a half to working out, then there's no point. And it's so easy to talk yourself out of doing that because you're busy and you're like, "Ah, I don't have time today to go to the gym. So there's no point. I'm just going to keep doing whatever I'm doing at home, working and so on."

[00:11:40] But what the studies actually show is that very minimal movement throughout the day, especially every hour or so, standing up and moving around the house, moving up and down the stairs, four to six minutes at a time has a massive impact in your health span.

[00:11:59] Walking down the street is enough. Something like, I think it's about 15 hours or so a week of some degree of conscious movement and walking. It doesn't have to be high intensity. It could be weighted walking. It can be carrying something with you. You could just take a backpack and throw some bricks or books in it and just walk down your street.

[00:12:22] That type of thing has such an impact on your overall health and health span. And normally it doesn't cost anything. You don't need fancy equipment. You don't need gym membership and so on. So I think that's really underrated that people don't do enough.

[00:12:34] And then the last thing is engaging with nature. This builds in the aspect of getting outside, which is great, and moving. But one of the things I always suggest to people is if you go on hikes or walks in natural environments, bring along something with you that you might eat that day, whether it's a fruit or sandwich or whatever it is. And then sit down in nature and eat.

[00:12:58] That is one of the most powerful ways in which we engage with the environment, like our ancestors did inadvertently. Every single day, they ate in nature. And you're actually bringing in so much of what's in that environment into your system.

[00:13:12] And it's a very natural osmosis that we have with the natural environment. And it has a huge impact on our overall health. There are studies that show that people that live in rural parts of the world versus people that live in urban parts of the world, the rural parts of the world have much more diverse microbiomes and they tend to have much better health span as a result of it.

[00:13:32] Same thing with the something called the Finnish allergy study. And this study really, to me, hit the nail on the head on the importance of this last part that I talked about. The Finn allergy study was comparing a town in Finland that was geographically very close to a town in Russia. So they're only about 100 kilometers or so apart.

[00:13:51] The difference between the two towns is that in Finland they have massive levels of allergies, asthma, all kinds of issues that kids have, epidemic issues of viral infections, allergies, asthma, and so on. In Russia, they didn't have the same problem. But geographically, the towns are so close.

[00:14:08] So the country of Finland sponsored a big, long study to figure out what is the differences between the two areas that have this different outcome. They figured out that in the town in Russia, they simply didn't sterilize their home so much. They don't have that clean Clorox-ish smell as the definition of clean.

[00:14:26] They kept their doors and windows open a lot more, and the kids just played naturally in the dirt more. So then they said, okay, so we have this issue of over sterilization and lack of exposure to the outside environment. So that was the conclusion. Then they said, what do we do about it? Well, let's take the daycare centers that are all around Finland-- these are government sponsored daycare centers as part of their offerings to their citizens. And they said, "Let's take a number of daycare centers and put dirt piles in them and make it mandatory for the kids to play in the dirt. And then compare them to the outcome of the kids that didn't play in the dirt." And they found that the kids that played in dirt, allergies, asthma, all that stuff drops dramatically. So the importance of engaging in nature cannot be overstated.

[00:15:11] Luke: Wow, that's super cool. And you just reminded me of something this morning. Sometimes when I get up in the morning and I feel kind of stuck and I'm avoiding a big important project, which for me happens to be writing at the moment-- it's like the 10,000-pound keyboard. You know what I mean? I'm just like, "I know what I'm supposed to be doing, and I can't."

[00:15:32] One of the tricks that I'll do on myself is to just accomplish something totally unrelated and unimportant, which for me usually has to do with some type of gardening or playing around in the yard. So just this morning I was replanting some plants into different pots in the yard, and I really enjoy, and I don't know why, maybe this is why, getting my hands in soil and just touching the soil and the dirt.

[00:15:56] So my question is, every once in a while, I'll see what looks like it could be not mold like you'd get mold behind your drywall in the bathroom, but there's some funk happening in there. And I'm always paranoid about breathing it in. But then I'm like, "There's mold everywhere in the natural environment, and maybe you're inoculating yourself or immunizing yourself by having that exposure."

[00:16:20] What do you guys think about just the idea of getting more in the dirt in regard to microbes? I know you are both gut experts. Is it good to get kind of exposed to all those microbes?

[00:16:32] Kiran: Very much so. So there are a number of centers for recovery. So for people who suffer from clinical depression, where they have to be institutionalized, to a point, because they're a danger to themselves or have very strong suicidal ideation and all that, some of those centers have incorporated something called gardening therapy, which is, yes, you go plant stuff.

[00:16:56] You get your hands in the dirt, you plant trees and flowering plants and all that, and you feed them and nurture them and all that. So there's one aspect of caring for something that helps take some of the onus off of yourself, but they also started doing studies to figure out what is it in soil that might have that impact.

[00:17:16] And there are lots of microbes, including a microbe called Mycobacterium vaccae, that they show that when you engage with it, even just by touching the soil, inevitably the microbe enters your system one way or the other. And it can upregulate serotonin production, 90% increase over baseline in that time.

[00:17:37] And then with serotonin, the other aspect of it is you also upregulate tryptophan. Most of the tryptophan in your body is synthesized by the gut microbiome. We do a really poor job of absorbing it from diet. And tryptophan is required for melatonin and serotonin as well.

[00:17:54] And then along with that, you upregulate dopamine as well. So you have a sense of reward, accomplishment. You are engaged. You're focused on the task, and then you feel good because the happy hormone's up. So I think there's a massive importance in that.

[00:18:11] Luke: I knew nothing about that. I just know like when I need some busy work that helps me get engaged with life in a way that I need to, that's the thing. I want to go play around in the yard and play in the dirt.

[00:18:23] Kiran: And gardening becomes a staple behavior of retirees often. And why is that? Why is that so engaging to the retirees? One of the difficult things of working all your life for a job, your kids, and all that, and then disengaging from that is a loss of a sense of purpose and meaning.

[00:18:43] Especially now your kids are old. They don't need you the same way. And that's a very difficult thing for parents to go through. And I saw this with my dad who retired too early. Your sense of purpose and importance, your relevance becomes in question to you when every day somebody needs something from you in the office and they need you to sign this and make a decision there and so on.

[00:19:09] Next thing you know, you're just a dude sitting in a room. Nobody's calling. Nobody needs you for anything actually. No decisions need to be made. And that loss of relevance is a really hard thing for people to experience. And so your dopamine, serotonin, and all of that stuff can go down quite a bit. And so gardening then brings out this new sense of purpose, and it also increases the biochemistry that helps your mind.

[00:19:35] Luke: Wow. Makes sense. You're nurturing something. I think as many people get older, if they've accomplished something in life, they move toward contribution. It's like your values change, like winning, getting, achieving, to, I've won the game here. How can I mentor, help? And things like that, that makes sense.

[00:19:59] Do you think there's any downside to like mold exposure and things like that if you're playing around in dirt? I guess it's not so much like if you were gardening, but in planters specifically. I have house plants and then they start not doing so well, so I want to switch them around, and that's when I'll see they look white. That looks funky. Should I be touching that or breathing it? Do you think there's any risk in that, or is that just part of the natural world?

[00:20:23] Kiran: I think there's very small risk in that. I think with any of those things, including every pathogen, we know, the dose really makes the poison. People have heard that before. If you have mold in your home and it's in your air vent system and so on, and you're sleeping at night, and for 12 hours in the night, it's blowing on you, mold spores and so on, that's a very different exposure level than touching it and encountering it in the outside environment where it's diluted quite a bit from the soil and the air and all the other particulates that are out there.

[00:20:57] So what you want with almost everything is you do want small doses and small exposure to it because it's part of how your body and your immune system learns what it is and learns how to deal with it. So having no exposure we know is a bad thing. That's the hygiene hypothesis.

[00:21:13] That's what they learned in Finland and a number of books and all that have been written about it. Having no exposure is bad. Having high concentrated exposure is also bad, but having passive exposure, how you would get it in the natural environment is very much an evolutionary part of how our bodies learn to deal with the environment.

[00:21:35] Luke: Cool, cool. Every time you guys have been on the show together or apart, we end up focusing on gut health because that's your thing and you're really good at it. But I'm wondering about the relationship between the gut and mental health.

[00:21:54] And I ask because I hear things about that correlation, the gut-brain connection and whatnot. But also I've noticed throughout my life, in periods of gut dysbiosis, for whatever reason, my mood gets super jacked. And it took me years to make that connection, like, oh, my digestion's off. And it's like, "Wow, I'm very anxious," or I get depressed.

[00:22:16] It's never manifested in a real mental health crisis or something like that. But I'm starting to become a bit more tuned into that relationship subjectively, and so I'm curious what either of you have to say about that.

[00:22:30] Tina: Yeah, so there's a huge gut brain connection. We know that through the vagus nerve. The vagus nerve is a bidirectional, we call it the communication superhighway. Because the brain is sending signals to the gut and the gut is sending signals back up to the brain.

[00:22:43] And so in our gut, just for example, all of our neurotransmitters are being produced in our gut. So 90% of our serotonin, which is our happy hormone, is being produced in our gut. Dopamine's being produced in our gut. GABA, which is our calming hormone, produced in our gut.

[00:22:59] So all these critical neurotransmitters are actually being produced in our gut, not in our brain like we've thought for so many years. And so there's this communication always going on between the gut and the brain. And years ago I would talk about this and people would be like, "That doesn't make any sense."

[00:23:13] But then when you tell them, "Think about when you're excited about something. You're super excited. What happens?" You get butterflies in your stomach. And they're like, "Oh yeah, that makes sense." Or you're super nervous or afraid and you have to go to the bathroom. It's like there's a complete proven gut brain connection, not just anecdotally, but now in the science, it shown, that there's a huge gut-brain connection.

[00:23:36] Kiran: Yeah.

[00:23:36] Luke: It just made me think of something. A common phrase people use when they're frightened, they'll say, "Oh, it scared the shit of me."

[00:23:44] Kiran: Yes.

[00:23:45] Luke: I never actually thought about that until this moment.

[00:23:48] Kiran: I had just brought that up in a previous [Inaudible].

[00:23:50] Luke: Scared shitless.

[00:23:51] Kiran: Scared shitless, right?

[00:23:52] Tina: He literally just said that earlier today on a podcast. Yeah.

[00:23:55] Kiran: Yeah, because--

[00:23:55] Luke: Really?

[00:23:55] Tina: Yeah. Honest to God.

[00:23:56] Luke: This is your second podcast today?

[00:23:58] Kiran: Yeah.

[00:23:58] Luke: Damn. You guys are doing great.

[00:24:01] Kiran: Yeah. So that was one of the examples, is that we always said, "It's scared the shit out of me." Why is then there's some reality to that? So there's a connection between innate fear, panic, anxiety, and then a disruption in bowel function.

[00:24:18] We feel that immediately, but what we're also not realizing is our risk for fear, anxiety, panic, and all that comes from a disrupted bowel. So if you look at the epidemiology of this, so if we take people with IBS, if we take adults with IBS, any given age range, 18 to 35, let's say, it's about 60 to 70% of the adults with IBS also have some form of confirmed anxiety or depression.

[00:24:46] And you compare that to the same age cohort of people without IBS, it's less than 17%. So if you have IBS, you're almost four times more likely to have anxiety or depression. So they go hand in hand. They're all gut-brain issues. So what's actually happening here from a physiological standpoint?

[00:25:07] It's a very interesting mechanism because when you look at things from an evolutionary perspective, we've all needed this fight or flight response because fight or flight response is a very important response in order to allow our species to survive. Because you have to become acutely aware of things that are potentially dangerous to you.

[00:25:30] And one of the ways in which you become acutely aware of that is you sample the world around you, you sample the environment, and you can do that auditorily. You can do that visually. You can do that through taste and through the gut. We push away things that have a rotten smell or taste to it because we've learned through the course of evolution that that is likely bad for us. So those are some of the innate connections.

[00:25:54] Now, what is supposed to happen, and I'll talk about what's supposed to happen physiologically but what happens in normal western society. What's supposed to happen is we're supposed to be walking down the road, let's say, and there's a rustling in the grass, and it's a potential predator or a opposing tribe that may be coming to kill us or something like that, and we sense the danger.

[00:26:19] Now, when you sense the danger, your body goes into fight or flight mode. What does that mean for an individual? Everyone's heard that, but let's explain what actually is happening physiologically when you go fight or flight. Your body goes, okay, all non-essential functions shut down because we've got to survive.

[00:26:35] So we don't care about digestion. We don't care about repair. We don't care about assimilating nutrients. I don't care if you have a wound or something broken inside your body. We're not repairing any of that. We're funneling all the energy and the activity within the body to getting blood to the brain, getting blood to the heart and to the muscles.

[00:26:52] We're increasing your auditory and visual acuity so that you're more present and you can fight or flee from the situation. It's all about survival. And the way your body gets blood to your brain and to your heart and your muscles is inflammatory cytokines from your immune system start kicking off.

[00:27:12] And so you're actually experiencing a massive amount of inflammation. That's how it gets blood perfusing to your brain. And so cortisol starts to go up, and cortisol is the main actor that drives all of these physiological changes. At the same time, cortisol, as it's cycling through your body, as you're going through fight or flight, some of it's also dumping into the gut.

[00:27:33] And then there are microbes in the gut that break down the cortisol and they send the byproducts of that to the kidneys. And in the kidneys, it upregulates sodium-potassium pumps to get more water into your system, into your circulatory system to increase blood pressure. Because the blood pressure increases perfusion of blood to your brain and muscles and all that.

[00:27:54] This is why chronic stress leads to hypertension. Every doctor will tell you that. You got to manage your stress or you're going to get high blood pressure as a result of that, because of this action of cortisol. Now, all that is fine if you need to survive. So then that system kicks on. You fight. You flee. You get out of danger. You get to a safe place. Then all of that is supposed to turn off.

[00:28:18] Now, the way that turns off is cortisol starts binding something called glucocorticoid receptors. So imagine your cortisol levels going up, up, up. You're going into fight or flight mode. Physiologically, you're inflamed. You've got inflamed brain, inflamed heart, but you're ready to fight or flee.

[00:28:34] And then as you get yourself to a safe place, cortisol starts getting to a high enough level where it starts binding receptors throughout your body, a lot of it in your gut. And then the binding of those receptors is the signal to turn all of this off, to go back into parasympathetic rest, recover, and relax.

[00:28:53] The problem in the Western world is this: we go through a fight or flight response. Cortisol goes up. Cortisol, like I mentioned before, goes into the gut as well. When your gut is dysfunctional and you don't have the right microbes in the gut, when cortisol enters the gut, it actually makes your gut profoundly leaky.

[00:29:12] Luke: Really?

[00:29:13] Kiran: Yeah. You got a massive inflammatory response in the gut, and your gut becomes transiently, meaning in that period of time, profoundly leaky. So you get a massive influx of endotoxins and other things that are entering your circulation, and an inflammatory cytokine called IL-6 goes way up. The problem with IL-6 is when it goes way up, it can make its way to the brain, and it can re-trigger the HPA axis as if you're experiencing a second stressor.

[00:29:42] Luke: So it's a negative feedback loop.

[00:29:44] Kiran: It's negative feedback loop. So when it re-triggers it, cortisol goes back up, does the same thing, goes back in the gut, gut becomes profoundly leaky, IL-6 goes up, re-triggers HPA axis. And everybody can relate to this. Just think about when you are driving to work, for example, or something stressful happens in the morning, how long it takes you to come down from that, if you do at all.

[00:30:08] You spend the rest of your day in this heightened anxious state. Your tolerance levels are really low. You're snappy. You're just not in yourself. That's because we're not really coming down from that fight or flight response. And we're the only animals in the animal kingdom that can induce this as anticipatory stress. This is a very unique thing that humans have. This is part of the downside of being so highly cognitive that we are.

[00:30:38] If you take a gazelle and he's just sitting there eating grass and he's happy as can be, he's eating grass, surviving. He hears a rustling in the grass. He looks over there. It looks like a lion. He's going to induce a fight or flight response, run away from the danger. When he gets to a safe place, he could care less about the lion again.

[00:30:56] He's not thinking about that. He's not thinking about the future lion. He's back to eating grass and happy as can be. We would be freaking out about the lion, freaking about what it means. Is this grass as good as the last grass, and when is that line going to show up again? So we have anticipatory stress. So we can upregulate our HPA axis, anticipating a doom that may be coming.

[00:31:18] And because our systems are corrupted and we can't come down from it, it becomes so easy to stay in that state all the time. And what is that state? Our brain is inflamed. Our hearts are inflamed. Our muscles are inflamed because our body's using inflammation to drive that fight or flight response.

[00:31:37] And we cannot repair. We cannot digest. We cannot rest in that state. It's a counteractive state. It's a parasympathetic versus sympathetic. And the gut is the checkpoint that helps you turn off that mechanism. So if our guts are unhealthy, we're screwed.

[00:31:55] Luke: Wow. You just described large decades of my life. Very familiar with those patterns. Thankfully, not as much anymore. But that speaks to Tina's point on choosing one of your health supporting practices of meditation. I think that's so crucial of a practice, however anyone does it, to learn-- well, not to learn.

[00:32:19] It's more like my meditation teacher would say, "You're building your adaptation reserves, where you're able to not be as reactive. And thankfully, it really works because I've been doing it for a long time, and I'm much more chill when something's scary or triggering happens than I once was.

[00:32:39] And the only thing I can really point to is just that self-awareness and having a bit of gap of separation between said event happening or believing it's happening, and my perception of it. It's like, is it really that big of a deal?

[00:32:54] Kiran: So the meditation's a very interesting thing because there's been some good studies on this with the gut-brain access. And now we know with a pretty high degree of certainty why meditation can be so useful. And then on top of that, the bacteria in the Just Calm can do the same thing as well.

[00:33:14] Not saying you should replace meditation. You should do both, really. So here's what's actually happening. So I mentioned one of the downsides of being such high cognitive functioning species, is that we can create this anticipatory stress, but we also have the benefit of having multiple brainwaves.

[00:33:31] Our brain can function in many different waves, high frequency waves, low frequency waves, and waves in the middle. So you take theta waves, for example, that are the low frequency waves, and that's where you're much more calm. You're much more adapt to dealing with stressors and all that in a much more logical way.

[00:33:47] In a beta wave, for example, you are highly focused and you are in a task. So for you, one of the reasons why you want to put off the book writing is it's hard for you to get yourself into that beta wave, which is the wave you need to sit down and dig into that book.

[00:34:05] And if you're not in that state when you're thinking about the book, it becomes a huge 10,000-pound keyboard to think about, because your brain is just not in that wavelength. So at the same time, what you want to be able to do is whatever wavelength you're in, when you are faced with a external stressor, your brain should automatically go to the theta wave, the low frequency brainwave to experience and address that stressor.

[00:34:31] That's why meditation brings you that sense of calm, is because what it does is it's training your brain to tap into low frequency brainwaves when you need it. Because if you address the stressor in the beta wave, you're going to blow the thing out of proportion. Because that's your hyperactive crazy mind that's really focused.

[00:34:52] You're going to focus on everything bad about it. What's going to happen? What's going to do in the future? This, that, and the other. Everything's going to be blown out of proportion. But if you can address it in the theta wave, you can absolutely deal with it in a much more calm state. So then one of the studies on the Just Calm strain, the Bifido longum 1714 looked at exactly that.

[00:35:10] This was a professor who's very well recognized for brainwave studies in Germany. And there's a big machine they can put you under that scans all your brainwaves. And what they were doing is they were inducing social stress in people and measuring their brainwave response.

[00:35:28] And the super simple way that they induce social stress is these individuals are under this brain scanner and they're playing a game. And they think they're playing it with two other people who are actual live people. And the game is tossing a ball and getting points. The other two people are simply not tossing the ball to them.

[00:35:46] And that's enough to induce so much social anxiety in people because it allows us all to tap into those times where we felt like an outsider and weren't included and all that. So under a placebo, what--

[00:35:58] Luke: That's funny. They're inducing the rejection trigger.

[00:36:01] Kiran: Yeah, exactly. And it's so triggering because you see the cortisol response and all that go through the roof, heart rate and all that. And so when they do it under placebo, their brainwaves go to this beta wave, this high frequency brain waves. They're panicking. Their heart rates go up, and the cortisol levels go up and all that.

[00:36:21] Then they take the probiotic for 30 days and then they redo the same test. And under that same social stress for the treatment group, their brain immediately shifts into theta wave when they're starting to experience a stress. Because you're playing a game.

[00:36:37] The moment you're playing game, and you're concerned about points, you're concerned about competition, you go into the high frequency brainwave, because you're like, "Okay, I'm going to be good at this. I'm going to win and all that." And then you're starting to get stressed because nobody's throwing you the ball. Your score is zero and everyone else is winning.

[00:36:53] And then they go into theta wave, and they go, "Meh, I don't really care. It's a stupid game anyway." Without the probiotic, they're going, "Oh my God, what's happening?" And they're freaking out about it. So it's a prime example of how a bacteria can alter your brainwave function the way that people do it with years and years of meditative practice.

[00:37:14] Luke: That's epic. With the Just Calm product you're referring to, I think I might be using it wrong because I'll just take it on days where I feel stressed out. And you know placebo. You never really know what's helping. But based on just understanding some of the science and knowing you guys aren't going to make a product that doesn't do anything just for the hell of it I've taken it in that way. But is it more effective if one was to do a longer duration and have more of that particular bacteria seeded in the gut?

[00:37:49] Kiran: Yeah, so you can get some acute effect from taking it short term, but yes, the real benefit is where you have that bacteria in higher concentration in your gut. And part of the reason why this product was ever discovered is University College Cork is one of the biggest microbiome research institutes in the world, and it's in Cork, Ireland.

[00:38:09] And so the researchers there, they coined the term psychobiotic. That's where this whole revolutionary idea of bacteria that can impact your central nervous system came from. And so they were looking at the microbiomes of people that were high strung, stressed out, couldn't sleep, compared to the microbiome of people that were very relaxed and calm and so on.

[00:38:32] And they found one key difference is that people who were calm had this type of bacteria called Bifido longum 1714, is how they characterized it. So they isolated the bacteria and they said, "Okay, if we took this bacteria and replaced it into the people that are really stressed, will it change their function? And absolutely it does.

[00:38:49] And then eight clinical trials later, they've been able to show that having that bacteria in your system allows you to stop that interleukin-6 recycling that reactivates the HP axis. So the bacteria produces a carbohydrate that actually shunts that negative feedback loop we talked about earlier, and the bacteria also can send signals up your vagus nerve to switch your brainwave activity when you experience stress.

[00:39:17] Luke: That's crazy.

[00:39:18] Kiran: So having that bacteria on board all the time is a better way to do it.

[00:39:22] Luke: Wow. Okay. Cool. I'm going to get more consistent with it. It's tough sometimes. There's so many freaking supplements, and I interview so many people like you two, and I'm very convinced that it's legitimate. Oh, this study, that's study. It's like, okay, I need to take that. But then I open my medicine cabinet in the morning and I'm just like, "Dude."

[00:39:40] Kiran: So much.

[00:39:21] Luke: Yeah. Which thing do I need? Do I need any of them? But that's very interesting. We've talked before, I think especially with you, Tina, about-- I remember at Paleo Effects, we were reflecting earlier how we were doing-- which was an event here in Austin that is no longer, but was great.

[00:40:00] And we're in this big hall and we're talking about probiotics, and this is when I first learned that a lot of the probiotics on the market are basically just marketing because they don't survive the acidic conditions of the gut and so on and are a waste of money.

[00:40:15] And we were talking about that on the microphone and there was-- we were on a PA, and I don't know if it was we or I basically shitting on the probiotic industry as a whole. And then I looked to my left and Garden of Life probiotics was the booth right next to us. It was embarrassing, but I don't know. Maybe there's a good or not. I don't know.

[00:40:34] But one thing I like to educate people on, because I feel like I wasted so much money, was on the survivability of these bacteria. You're taking probiotics. They're in the refrigerated section at the health food store, and they always say 20 zillion strains, yada, yada. And I've learned that's not always true.

[00:40:54] So we will link to the prior episodes where we really got into a lot of that because we don't need to repeat ourselves. But when it comes to the Just Calm strain, is that one also a spore-based, or does it need to be to do its thing?

[00:41:09] Tina: It's not a spore-based, but it actually functions like a spore because it has a shell around it cells that Kiran could go into all the science behind it. But it actually creates, not an endospore, the shell, like the spores do, but they do have a mechanism that protects it to get through the gastric system.

[00:41:27] Luke: Okay. Is that like interior coating or something?

[00:41:29] Tina: No, no, no. It's not interior coating. We don't do the interior coating because we feel like that's engineering a strain, and we don't work with any strains that are engineered to survive the gastric system. Everything that we're doing is always based on how we evolve or what's natural, what makes common sense. But there's a peptidoglycan around the strain.

[00:41:50] Kiran: It's actually called a exopolysaccharide. It sounds complicated, but it's super simple. So exo meaning outside. Endopolysaccharide would be inside the cell, so this is outside. And polysaccharide just means long chain of glucose. So it's a carbohydrate chain that is very unique to this bacteria that the bacteria produces outside of itself.

[00:42:16] So if you look at the bacteria on the microscope, what it actually looks like is this oval shape, like most people know bacteria to be, but it has hundreds of millions of tentacles all around it. And the tentacles are these carbohydrates that are very unique to the bacteria.

[00:42:31] Now, here's where this becomes really exciting and really unique, is that exopolysaccharides are communication tools that our body has adapted to utilize because we don't make enough proteins and carbohydrates ourselves. We don't have enough genes to do that. We use microbial components to communicate signals within our own body.

[00:42:54] I'll give you a couple of examples of that. So humans have about 22,000 functional genes. And it may sound like a lot, but an earthworm has about 30,000 functional genes. So we're not very sophisticated in terms of our genetic capability. And so as a result of it, we've incorporated this massive population of microbes in our system.

[00:43:13] We have 80, 100 trillion microbes, and they afford us about two and a half million additional genes. So 22,000 human genes, two and a half million microbial genes in our system. So we've outsourced a lot of our function to the microbes that inhabit our system because we don't have the capability of doing things without them.

[00:43:37] The exopolysaccharides are one of the things. One of the really critical things that the exopolysaccharides do is the development of the human brain. So what does that mean? When a woman's pregnant, in utero, the baby's sitting there in the womb, and the baby's being fed through the placenta.

[00:43:59] If mom has adequate amount of bacteria in her gut, especially species like Bifidobacterium longum that make an exopolysaccharide, what tends to happen is dendritic cells, which are your immune cells, will reach across the lining of the gut, grab this bacteria, swallow it, pull it across into circulation, digest the bacteria, and spit out those carbohydrates.

[00:44:24] And in the case of a pregnant woman, it actually takes that bacterial carbohydrate to the placenta. The placenta then has receptor sites to bind bacterial carbohydrates and carry the bacterial carbohydrates to the baby's brain. The baby's brain has receptors to bind the bacterial carbohydrates, and binding that triggers the formation of the corpus callosum.

[00:44:46] That median space between the left and right hemispheres form the blood brain barrier, increase synaptogenesis, which is the number of neurons in synacted regions, and then form the central nervous system. So imagine that. Arguably, one of the most important things we want to happen in utero is the formation of the human brain, which controls everything else in the body. We've outsourced a signal to that to bacteria.

[00:45:11] Luke: Wow. That's insane.

[00:45:12] Kiran: It's absolutely insane.

[00:45:14] Luke: I think that's one of the reasons I enjoy doing what I do. I'm so fascinated by God's creation. That's just one of the zillions of things the human body does that's miraculous. Truly miraculous. And there's just no way that's not by design. I don't know what you guys feel about--

[00:45:36] Tina: Yeah. No, I agree.

[00:45:37] Luke: A creator, whatever that might mean to you. But why that excites me is I go, "Something did that." Something extremely intelligent put just that particular mechanism of action together. I find that thing just so fascinating.

[00:45:53] Kiran: And then you think about it, this bacterial polysaccharide, so this peptidoglycan, this exopolysaccharide is different in terms of the different structures of carbohydrates that the bacteria produces. So that was important for the development of your brain. And as it turns out, the rest of your life, it's also important for the function of your brain because it is that very carbohydrate that allows your body to switch off the fight or flight response.

[00:46:20] It is that carbohydrate that inhibits that negative feedback loop. It is that carbohydrate that shifts the brainwave function when you're experiencing stress. So not only was it present and there for you to develop your brain. If it's not there in adequate amounts, they actually correlated to developmental issues.

[00:46:40] ADD, autism, all of these things that we tend to see increasing in prevalence may be due to a lack of the right exposure to the right bacteria. And in our view as a company, as a brand, as a philosophy, we should never look at outsmarting nature. We should be just smart enough to know what nature has already provided for us, and then utilize it adequately. And this is where the philosophy of some of these products come from, including the bitters and so on.

[00:47:09] Tina: And the spores.

[00:47:10] Luke: Why are some cohorts in the population deficient in that particular bacteria? Looking at the Russian-Finnish border and things like that, why is one person deficient or one pregnant mother, for example, not delivering that to the baby's brain and so on?

[00:47:30] Kiran: Yeah. A lot of it is lack of exposure. So lack of exposure to the microbial world. The actual microbial world is outside. And this goes back to the gardening and why you may feel really good being in the soil and the dirt and all that.

[00:47:48] The studies do show that people who live in rural environments, or even studies on the current hunter-gatherer tribes, so you look at the Papua New Guinea tribes or the Hadza tribe in Tanzania, they have species in their guts that do very important things that are completely wiped out in the Western population.

[00:48:05] One example of that is Lactobacillus reuteri. Reuteri is such an important species. One of the things that it does is it upregulates oxytocin. And oxytocin is a love hormone. It's a binding hormone. It creates that bond between mother and child and father and child, but it also creates bond within communities and villages and all that.

[00:48:28] And as a species, we survive because of our community structures. A human by themselves, despite what you may see on the Discovery Channel, most humans are not going to survive by themselves in nature, in the wilderness and all that. It's a very special individual that can do that.

[00:48:46] So we survived as a species because of our ability to have empathy and our ability to have a protective mindset around our own kind. So we formed communities, we formed villages. We were able to build protective mechanisms around ourselves. A lot of that is driven by oxytocin. Because without oxytocin, we become every man for himself, your resources versus my resources.

[00:49:13] Luke: Right. It explains why people in urban areas tend to be more psycho than people that live rurally.

[00:49:19] Kiran: More resource driven, more protective, less empathy, yelling at each other from the cars and all that. Somebody cuts you off and you go like this for a second, and you're like, "Ah." You're so mad, and you're yelling. The loss of all that connection.

[00:49:35] And another aspect of that is social media and stuff. Social media allows you to have a certain degree of anonymity for a lot of people, and that gives them even more impetus to be really divisive and mean and disruptive to other people's lives. So we're losing those important connections that were so important for survival of the species.

[00:49:58] So when you look at their level, the Papua New Guinea tribes, when you look at their level of oxytocin production compared to a Western person, it is 1,000-fold higher.

[00:50:11] Luke: Really?

[00:50:11] Kiran: Yeah. It is massive.

[00:50:12] Kiran: Literally 1,000-fold?

[00:50:13] Luke: Literally 1,000-fold higher.

[00:50:17] Luke: You know where my mind goes? I'm like, I want a fecal transplant from one of those tribes.

[00:50:22] Tina: Exactly. Yeah.

[00:50:22] Kiran: And here's an interesting thing. So researchers have done that. There's some very brave microbiologists that have gone and lived with these tribes longer term, six months or so, and have actually done fecal transplants and then come back to the Western world.

[00:50:35] And more often than not, what they find is when they do fecal transplant, it tends to stick when they remain there. But when they come back to our world and go back to their normal lives, those microbes die off.

[00:50:45] Kiran: Really?

[00:50:45] Kiran: Yeah. They just don't sustain in part because of the change in diet. So they eat a lot of roots and tubers and plants and all that. They're getting a lot of fiber and polyphenols and all that in their diet.

[00:50:58] The other part of it is just the toxicity in our world. These microbes have not adapted to dealing with things like herbicides and pesticides and microplastics and all the phthalates and benzoates and all that stuff that we find in our environment. So they die off for fairly quickly.

[00:51:14] They can't sustain themselves. So when you think about things like the Just Calm, it's about looking at this amazing microbe that nature has created that we need and just putting it back in the system. And it gives you that foundation to be able to deal with life.

[00:51:33] Luke: That's so cool. I love that. And I'm going to get more consistent now. I'm inspired. I don't know why, but at different times I'll go through waves. I'm sure we all experience this, but just anxiety will appear out of nowhere and there's no external stimuli. Sometimes just like, why am I so uptight? Literally nothing's changed objectively. So I think that's really interesting.

[00:51:55] I think something important for people to know would be you just alluded to some of the things that are disruptive or even destructive to our gut health and that symphony of bacteria there apart from just being stressed out and anxious all the time and the biochemical process that you described. What are some of the worst offenders in terms of environmental toxins and diet, water, etc., that are wrecking the gut?

[00:52:25] Tina: Yeah. Antibiotics are a huge offender. And it's not just the antibiotics we take, which unfortunately we have to take antibiotics every once in a while. But it's the antibiotics that are in our food products too, in animal products. We find we're getting those. Us humans are getting them, even if they're in our animal products.

[00:52:44] So antibiotics are the atom bomb that goes off. There's one house that has mold in a neighborhood and they go in and they destroy the entire neighborhood instead of just that one house. And they're very disruptive to our gut health. They create massive dysbiosis. In fact, there was a study that showed a single course of clindamycin wreaked havoc on the gut for over a year period of time.

[00:53:06] And then we know glyphosate, which I had mentioned earlier, the active ingredient in Roundup, which is sprayed all over our food and our produce, and it's wreaking havoc. Arguably, may even be worse than an antibiotic because the glyphosate is actually only targeting the beneficial bacteria in our gut.

[00:53:22] At least the antibiotics is killing off the bad bacteria, which is why you're taking in the first place. Both are very disruptive to our gut health. And then there's personal care products that we're taking. The stress, like we talked about, huge offender. The leakiness of our gut is a huge offender.

[00:53:42] There's so many out there that are just-- the world we're living in is so antibacterial. Antibacterial hand soaps, antibacterial hand sanitizers. Just so disruptive to our gut, even though we are more bacteria than we are human cells, and yet we're doing all these antimicrobial things.

[00:53:59] Luke: I'm happy to say I never used hand sanitizer.

[00:54:02] Kiran: Yeah.

[00:54:02] Tina: We've been saying--

[00:54:03] Luke: I don't think ever, but especially in the past five years, I'm like--

[00:54:06] Tina: I know. But we had been talking about that even before COVID. We should not use antibacterial hand-- our bacteria is our friend. We have to remember that.

[00:54:14] Luke: Right, right.

[00:54:15] Kiran: Yeah. And I want to expound a little bit on the antibiotic aspect of it. And of course, antibiotics do save lives and they're needed in times. And so if your doctor recommends it, talk to your doctor about it. We wouldn't tell people not to take the antibiotics.

[00:54:33] But even the CDC, a number of years ago, has estimated that at least 50% of antibiotic prescriptions are unnecessary. They're being written for things like viral infections. And there are doctors that are being pressured to do it because they run urgent care centers, and those are businesses.

[00:54:51] And so when someone has a flu or a cold, they're coming in and they're getting examined and the doctor's going, "Oh, it's a virus. You just have to let it run its course." But they're getting pressure to write a script because people want to walk out of there with a pill. So one of the things that people need to realize is a lot of the infections and illnesses you're going to get are going to be viral infections.

[00:55:12] That's a little bit more common than bacterial infections. And as a result of that, there's really nothing you can do about it. You upregulate your immune system. You can use mushrooms. You can use vitamin C. You can use lots of different natural things, zinc and all that. And then just rest.

[00:55:27] Use a sauna, use red light therapy. Just do those things and just rest. And it's perfectly fine to be sick. Don't put pressure to try to get antibiotic written because it's not really going to help. And so so many antibiotic prescriptions are going for things that the antibiotics don't actually help.

[00:55:45] And then Tina mentioned antibiotics in the food, but I want to bring up a study on antibiotics and talk about not only is it impacting the individual that's on the antibiotic, it impacts everyone in the household. So there was this fascinating study--

[00:55:57] Luke: What? Are we shedding antibiotics or something?

[00:55:59] Kiran: We're shedding the byproducts of what the antibiotics will do.

[00:56:02] Luke: Really?

[00:56:02] Kiran: Yeah. So this was a fascinating study. They took individuals that were prescribed an antibiotic at a hospital. I think the hospital's Johns Hopkins, where they did the study. So they took a bunch of microbiome samples from the individual and from people within their households before they started the antibiotic.

[00:56:22] And then they took microbiome samples throughout the course of the antibiotic. And then a few months after, up to six months from when they stopped the antibiotic. Not surprisingly, they saw a massive amount of dysbiosis in the individual taking the antibiotic during the course of the antibiotic. And that same dysbiosis was present six months later. But the crazy thing is they saw the same type of disruption in people that lived with that individual, even though they were not on the antibiotic.

[00:56:48] Luke: That's crazy? Is it coming out in the breath or what?

[00:56:51] Kiran: Here's what's happening. We live in a microbiome cloud. Everywhere you go, everywhere you spend a lot of time, your home, your office, places like that, with other people, you have a microbiome cloud around you because we're constantly shedding bacteria into the environment, right through our skin, through our breath, through coughing, sneezing, even through defecation.

[00:57:16] So if you look at your household, you go and you defecate into the toilet. You poop in the toilet. When you flush it and that spins around, it aerosolizes billions upon billions of bacteria--

[00:57:27] Luke: Are you serious?

[00:57:27] Kiran: Into the air. Yeah. And it goes into your ventilation system. So right now, as we're sitting here recording--

[00:57:34] Luke: You guys are breathing my poop?

[00:57:35] Kiran: We're breathing your poop.

[00:57:39] Luke: I like to keep it real here on The Life Stylist. Would you recommend that when someone goes number two, that they close the lid and then flush for that reason?

[00:57:47] Kiran: Yes. That's absolutely important.

[00:57:49] Tina: Unless they have a healthy microbiome.

[00:57:50] Kiran: Unless you want to share it.

[00:57:51] Tina: You may want to share it.

[00:57:53] Kiran: Unless you want to share it.

[00:57:53] Luke: Unless you live with a someone from Papua New Guinea.

[00:57:56] Tina: Yeah. Yes.

[00:57:56] Kiran: Exactly. Then please go everywhere.

[00:57:58] Luke: Go stand over the toilet and take a few deep breaths.

[00:58:01] Kiran: Poop on the fruits, please. But that's really aerosolizing. And actually, if they look it up online, I've been talking about this phenomenon of aerosolizing fecal bacteria, and finally somebody did a test and it went viral online where they added dye to the poop, glow in the dark dye, and then they flushed, and then they turned on the black light.

[00:58:24] And you could see these magical particles all going all over the room. And it gets sucked into the vent and it's blowing onto your toothbrush and other people's toothbrushes and all that stuff. So we're shedding microbes.

[00:58:37] So if you're taking a course of antibiotics and the microbes you are harboring are becoming dysbiotic, and you're increasing the number of opportunistic microbes and all that on your skin, in your gut, in your breath, in your lungs, you are going to be shedding more of those microbes into the environment, and other people are going to pick them up.

[00:58:57] And this is part of the reason when I've done a lot of talks in the world of autism, for example, one of the things I always realized with parents who are working with kids, who have kids who are on the spectrum, is that they are so dedicated to their children, understandably so. They control every aspect of the child's diet, life, supplementation, medication, all of that stuff.

[00:59:20] But as a result of all of that dedication, they're not taking care of themselves. So their own health starts to falter. They're not working out. They're not eating right. They're stressed, of course. All of that is understandable, not to judge at all. But what's happening is that if they really want their child's microbiome to improve, their microbiome has a massive influence on that child's microbiome.

[00:59:43] So the idea of the microbiome needs to be a community conversation. If you have somebody in your household that really doesn't give a shit, so eating bad food and is stressed, being sedentary, and doing all those things, it affects your gut. It affects your health and your bowel. So we got to get more community about it.

[01:00:01] Luke: That's very interesting. In the event that it's medically necessary to take a course of antibiotics if somebody's going septic because they have a wound or something, there's obviously a time and a place for it. Is there any use in really ramping up fermented foods and things like that during that time?

[01:00:24] Because you have to put a gun in my head. I basically have to be dying to take antibiotics, but every once in a while, I get sick and I'm just like, "I don't care what you're going to call it. I need something, even if it's placebo." So I've done that where I'm like, "Oh God, I'm nuking my gut biome." So I'll start eating a bunch of sauerkraut and kefir and whatever. Is that dumb because you're just killing it off anyway, or is that helpful at all?

[01:00:49] Tina: Yeah. Likely the antibiotic would kill off the fermented foods. And the fermented foods are going to have some gut benefit, but they're not a replacement for a probiotic strain. We know that the spores that are in our probiotic actually will survive the presence of an antibiotic, which is very unusual.

[01:01:07] We've tested this with liver encephalitis patients who are on the strongest antibiotics out there, and the spore strains in Just Thrive actually survive the presence of an antibiotic. And so, of course, you have to talk to your doctor, but you we definitely would recommend taking the probiotic at the same time of taking an antibiotic.

[01:01:25] And then I would take two at the same time. Not one in the morning, one at night. Two at the same time. And then two for a couple of weeks or a couple of months afterwards. Normally, it's just one capsule a day with food. But when you're on an antibiotic, absolutely you need to support that.

[01:01:41] Luke: Oh, that's epic. Because I always just figured you take any probiotic with antibiotics, you just kill it all.

[01:01:46] Kiran: Mm-hmm.

[01:01:47] Tina: Most of them, you're right. They would be killed off by the presence of an antibiotic, but the spores actually survive. They have that endospore shell around itself that allows it to survive, not just the gastric system, but allows it to survive the environment where an antibiotic is at.

[01:01:59] Luke: Wow. Epic.

[01:02:01] Kiran: Yeah. And to put a little finer point on what's happening when you take an antibiotic, there was a great study out of Stanford that looked at the kinetics around how does an antibiotic actually impact the microbial load in your gut. So what this researcher showed is that when you take the antibiotic within the first two hours, it knocks down almost 90% of the bacteria in your gut.

[01:02:25] That's a massive killing off of trillions of bacteria. Now, representatives of each species do survive because it's very hard to kill 100% of bacteria. So what happens is you take all of these microbes, you knock them down by 90%, and then it's a battle of who comes back first because they will grow back in the next six, seven hours or so.

[01:02:46] But because now the environment is so different, the microbes that come back are not necessarily the ones that you want to predominate the area. And here's an example of that. So your gut, generally, especially in the upper part of your GI, starting with the stomach, the upper part of your small intestine needs to be acidic.

[01:03:06] It's a much more acidic environment than it is neutral or basic. It's certainly not basic. And so part of the reason why acidity is important in that part of the gut is because it controls pathogens. Most of the pathogens that can wreak havoc in your gut don't do well in an acidic environment.

[01:03:21] And neither do things like fungus and mold. So the acidity controls the population. The bacteria, the lactic acid bacteria that make the acidity, imagine that they're managing a pH of, say, 4.5 in your gut. You take a antibiotic. It knocks them all down. Now there's no lactic acid being produced, so the pH goes up.

[01:03:41] Now the lactic acid bacteria have a harder time growing in the higher pH environment than the mold and the pathogens do. So then they grow back a little bit faster than the lactic acid producing bacteria. Then you take the second dose antibiotic, everything is knocked down again, the pathogens go back even faster.

[01:04:00] So what's really happening is this array of sequential changes to the environment that ends up creating a dysbiosis where now you have microbes that do much better in a more basic or neutral pH, and they are proliferating. The good guys are still there. Their numbers are just much lower now.

[01:04:21] So then the question is: how do you avoid that rebound effect where the, for lack of better term, bad guys-- they're not inherently bad-- but they're growing back faster? The spores can actually not only survive and function in the presence of the antibiotic, but they also produce lactic acid.

[01:04:43] And so part of what they'll do in that diminished environment is they'll be in there going, "Hey, nobody's making lactic acid. We'll make it." And that helps the good guys come back and brings the growth of the bad down.

[01:04:55] Luke: Wow. That's cool. If what you just described is problematic in terms of altering the pH so that your upper system isn't acidic enough, would drinking alkaline water not be a great idea?

[01:05:11] Kiran: Yeah. I think alkaline water can be problematic for a lot of people because you don't necessarily want to alkalinize the pH in your gut. In the body, it's different. And so in the gut, you really want to maintain an acidic environment. Now, where the benefits from fermented foods can come from is the acid in the fermented foods. Because the fermented foods, the bacteria is not going to survive in there.

[01:05:36] It's not even going to survive your stomach, let alone the antibiotic. But a lot of fermented foods, if they're actually fermented and most of the kombucha and kefir and things like that you can but the store are not properly fermented.

[01:05:49] Luke: Really?

[01:05:49] Kiran: Yeah. They don't go through the whole fermentation process. Part of the reason for that is because palatability actually gets worse the more something's fermented. It gets more sour. It gets more bitter, and so on. And they want to make it more appealing to a larger audience, so they cut the fermentation process and time by a significant amount, so it's not fully fermented.

[01:06:11] And then they add things to try to make it more palatable. They'll add more sugar and things like that. If you're doing fermentation on your own at home and actually letting it ferment, that's great.

[01:06:20] Luke: I make kefir with the grains. I let it go forever until it's almost--

[01:06:28] Kiran: Congealed.

[01:06:29] Luke: Yeah. It's almost booze. You know what I mean?

[01:06:33] Kiran: And it's gassy. Which is awesome.

[01:06:35] Luke: I like that flavor. I like that really strong, sour flavor personally.

[01:06:39] Kiran: And so that's very acidic, and that's a good part of it. Like apple cider vinegar. Most people know that apple cider vinegar has a very strong flavor to it, but that's the acidity of it. So those things can help because it maintains a lower pH in the gut. But take the spores. And we published a study showing that when you expose the gut to antibiotics, it knocks on the good bacteria to significant amount.

[01:07:05] It increases leaky gut quite a bit, and the immune response in the gut becomes far more inflammatory. And then you put the spores in, and it starts reversing all those issues. So the spores can be quite useful there.

[01:07:17] Luke: What about the rotation of probiotics? This is just the basic idea that we want diversity in the gut biome. So I've heard people say that if you-- there's very few really good probiotic companies out there, unfortunately, as far as I could tell. But I'll come across something that's interesting.

[01:07:40] You guys is the one I take the most regularly, but every once in a while, someone will send me another brand and I vet it and go, "It says it survives. It seems to be legit." And the only reason I really do that is because of this idea I have, which may or may not be right, that I want to do a cycle of one probiotic for a few months and then do another one and this kind of thing.

[01:08:01] A, is there any downside to taking multiple different strains or brands of probiotics at the same time or the same week? And is there any benefit to cycling on one particular strain or the other during the course of a year or anything like that?

[01:08:20] Tina: Yeah, so that's one of the biggest myths that we like to talk about.

[01:08:23] Luke: Oh, great.

[01:08:23] Tina: The whole idea of diversity, yes, that's not a myth. We know that having a diverse microbiome means you're healthy. That's undisputed by all gut health experts. We want to create diversity in the gut, but we aren't going to achieve that diversity by switching up our probiotic cup every couple of months.

[01:08:40] Luke: Ah, shit. Okay.

[01:08:42] Tina: Yeah. What's interesting with the spores is they go in there and the actually help get rid of the overgrowth of pathogenic bacteria. And then they help take our good bacteria and help have it come back to life. So we're actually taking our own good bacteria, and that's how you create diversity in the gut.

[01:08:59] And there's really no science showing that switching from one probiotic to another that has 15 strains-- this one has 20. I think it's funny. Sometimes I'll see a probiotic. They'll say like, "Engineered to survive." And it's like, I don't want to take something that's been engineered to survive.

[01:09:15] I want to take something that naturally survives. And that's the other myth that we always like to talk about, is the survivability aspect. But now companies know that most probiotics aren't surviving, and so they're engineering them. But then even when they are engineered to survive, once they get past the stomach, they go to the small intestine. There's bile salts there. They're getting killed off there.

[01:09:36] But yeah, there's really no science showing that switching to different probiotics from month to month is going to create diversity. Actually, I think, Kiran, you came up with this analogy. If you envision like a pool, a inground pool and it's filled with quarters and you throw another penny and another penny here, that's about the effect it would have to switch up probiotics. It's not going to be creating more of your own bacteria.

[01:10:05] Luke: Awesome. I'm glad to hear that because you just simplified my life. Not like I put a lot of energy into that, but every once in a while, I'll be like, "I don't know. I feel like I've been taking this one probiotic for a while. Maybe I should mix it up and introduce something else." So that's good to know.

[01:10:18] Tina: Yeah. And it might be true with some other probiotics, but with the spores, they really have the ability to go in there and create diversity on their own without switching anything up.

[01:10:28] Luke: And what about the food of these strains, your prebiotics and postbiotics and things like that? How important is that? And can that just be achieved by eating tubers and potatoes or whatever? Do you think it's necessary for most people that are of relatively good health to focus on the pre and postbiotic aspect, or can you just make sure, hey, eat a few carrots here and there, or whatever?

[01:10:57] Tina: Yeah. I think foundationally the probiotic is what everybody should really be focusing on because it's creating that diversity, and you're not going to be getting these strains from our soil like our ancestors used to get. With prebiotics, yes, you could definitely get it from foods, but you'd have to be eating quite a bit of prebiotic foods to achieve that.

[01:11:15] And many people do, but many people don't also. And the prebiotic ingredients that we work with actually only target the beneficial bacteria. So we would call it a precision prebiotic because it's precisely only targeting the beneficial bacteria.

[01:11:31] Oftentimes when people already have gut dysbiosis going on, they'll start taking some type of prebiotic out there and it actually makes a problem worse because it's feeding the pathogenic bacteria as well as the good bacteria. Where our prebiotic ingredients only are focusing on the beneficial bacteria.

[01:11:48] Luke: I've heard that years ago there was a trend of resistant starch. I think even at one point I was ordering some cornmeal or something like that with this idea. I don't remember if it went well or not, but I know that's something that people tried to achieve. And I have heard that before, that it could be problematic if you have dysbiosis. You could make it worse if you're feeding them the stuff they really like.

[01:12:11] Kiran: Yeah. I think part of the idea is that you want to start revamping and changing the dysbiotic microflora first before you start doing a lot of significant feeding of microbes, especially with more generalized bacterial food, like generalized fiber and so on.

[01:12:29] Fiber is critically important, and people should have a goal of upping their fiber intake, and that has a huge impact in your longevity and overall health and wellness, and also your risk of all-cause mortality. But it helps to change the microbial environment first so you can get better utilization of the fiber.

[01:12:52] Luke: That makes sense. So like weeding your lawn before you fertilize it.

[01:12:55] Kiran: Yeah, exactly.

[01:12:56] Luke: Got it. I'm so bored with diet trends and stuff. I really don't care. But I've always been curious about the carnivore folks that many of them seem to do well for a period of time, and they eat no fiber. What's up with that? Does everyone need fiber?

[01:13:16] Tina: I wouldn't recommend it. I wouldn't recommend the carnivore diet.

[01:13:19] Luke: I tried carnivore for a week, and I was like, "This is just exhausting." It's like everywhere you go you're like, "Is there enough meat?" It wasn't practical, and I wasn't inspired to keep with it.

[01:13:29] Tina: Not for purposes of your gut health anyway. There may be other benefits that people have, but we always talk about just eating a diverse group of foods. That's one of the best things to do, is eating a diverse group of foods. Kiran will always talk going to ethnic grocery stores and trying to find different types of vegetables and fruits and just try to eat different types of foods to expose your microbiome to those foods.

[01:13:51] Kiran: Yeah. One of the problems I have with a lot of the restrictive diets-- the carnivore diet, like a lot of the other dietary trends are restrictive diets. So they're elimination diets, is what they are essentially. You're slowly eliminating lots of categories of foods. There can be some temporary benefit to people.

[01:14:13] A lot of the benefit, to me, from going carnivore, if you were just eating whatever and feeling like shit and you were putting on weight and all that stuff, and then you go carnivore and you're just eating steak and with butter every day, or steak with salt on it, you're going to lose weight.

[01:14:30] You're going to lose weight. You might even feel better temporarily. Part of the reason is because you're eliminating a lot of processed stuff. You're also eliminating a lot of sugar from your diet or completely eliminating sugar, and you're on a calorically restricted diet. One of the things that people don't realize is that when you go carnivore and you go full meat, that is high levels of protein.

[01:14:54] So 80, 85% of what you're eating is protein. Protein is very satiating. So you inevitably end up eating less calories. So you're on a calorically restricted diet. You've eliminated a lot of processed stuff. You've basically eliminated sugar, so you are going to lose some weight.

[01:15:11] You're going to feel better temporarily, but that's not a long-term solution because over time, and it doesn't take long, your microbiome diversity is going to shrink quite a bit. And we know that diversity in the microbiome is one of the best predictors of longevity and resilience against all-cause mortality.

[01:15:30] This is why one of the most well-studied macronutrients is fiber. So there's numerous, big, long-scale longitudinal study, interventional studies, lots of things on fiber. There's a recent meta-analysis in 2019 that involved almost a million subjects on fiber.

[01:15:51] They showed that for every 10 grams of fiber you add to your diet every day, it reduces your all-cause mortality by 10%. It's insane. It's one of the most powerful dietary things you can do. And think about it. We don't utilize the fiber; we don't break it down and assimilate--

[01:16:09] Luke: Especially most of us that don't like eating veg-- I just don't like vegetables. I take other forms of fiber, but it's more a supplemental practice.

[01:16:19] Kiran: And the people in the highest quartiles of fiber intake compared to the people with lowest quartiles of fiber intake had such a vast difference in their all-cause mortality. It's mind boggling to think that you could achieve such a high degree of resilience just by adding this thing into your diet each day.

[01:16:29] And it's a linear progression. So for every gram you add, there is a realized benefit long term. And even in the short term, you'll start to notice bowel movements being better, energy being better, and so on. And satiety as well, because fiber is the other thing that's really good for satiation.

[01:16:56] But the key to it, to understand why this is so important, is really interesting because the thing about fiber is we don't even utilize it. We can't break it down. We don't pull nutrients out of it. All of it goes to feed the microbiome. So what, to me, those studies really show is the importance of feeding a large diversity of your microbiome. Why and how that has a huge impact on your longevity and resilience.

[01:17:22] Luke: Yeah. 100%.

[01:17:23] Kiran: Back to the bacteria.

[01:17:24] Luke: What do y'all think about taking butyrate? As I understand it, one of the benefits of having that gut diversity is that they're making butyrate, which of course, is very healing to the gut and has all kinds of brain benefits and things like that. Do you think taking butyrate products in addition to probiotics is a good practice? Or is it unnecessary because your gut's functioning properly and already making the butyrate?

[01:17:51] Kiran: Assuming you're making adequate butyrate, then you probably don't need it as a supplemental form. I actually started experimenting with taking some butyrate myself. I've never taken it before, but over the last year I've been taking some of the tributyrin type of products, and I do notice some benefit.

[01:18:10] I take a lot of fibers, a lot of prebiotics, a lot of spores. So I'm making a lot of endogenous butyrate. Where I think it can be really useful is for people that have a lot of SIBO-like symptoms. If they have a lot of bloat and distension in their gut, and they likely have SIBO, they're probably not getting enough butyrate because they've restricted their diet so much to not having fermentable carbohydrates in your system.

[01:18:37] Luke: Interesting. Yeah, yeah.

[01:18:38] Kiran: Because that's what gives them bloat. So they're cutting that out. And so they're really leaning hard on the meats and the proteins and the fats. And so as a result of that, they may feel okay because they're not bloating as much, but they're definitely not making enough butyrate. Now, they might say, "I eat a lot of butter, and butter has butyrate." Well, butter has some butyrate in it.

[01:18:57] Luke: It doesn't have as much as butyrate supplements.

[01:19:00] Kiran: Yeah.

[01:19:02] Luke: I use this company, BodyBio. And the reason I ask is I seem to do really well on a lot of butyrate, but you open that bottle, butter will kind of smell like that, but not that strong.

[01:19:12] Kiran: It's not the same.

[01:19:13] Luke: It smells like socks.

[01:19:16] Kiran: I think that can be beneficial, and I think people who are trying to get a handle on their metabolic health can also benefit from it because you may not be producing enough butyrate or the butyrate's not being converted enough to useful functionality.

[01:19:32] Because you produce butyrate mostly in the large bowel, and it's supposed to make its way up to the small bowel. There may be some issues with it traveling up into the small bowel. So if people are feeling metabolically unhealthy, they have SIBO-like symptoms, it's worth a try because it could be beneficial.

[01:19:51] Luke: I found it to be very useful when my gut gets wrecked from air travel, which seems to be, especially switching time zones and stuff, to use butyrate suppositories. And that's like, one day, fixed. You're done. It's crazy. Yeah. This company, MitoZen, makes them

[01:20:10] Kiran: Okay. I've never tried the suppository [Inaudible].

[01:20:11] Luke: Yeah. It's not for everyone. But as far as getting that butyrate where you want it to go, it's like an instant fix. It's one of those great Band-Aids. It's first aid kit kind of thing. If I start to feel like, oh, something is very off, especially, like I said from travel, that's like, boom, one or two days of those and you're back to normal, which is really useful.

[01:20:37] Tina: The spores actually increase our own short-chain fatty acid production. So yeah, we would be producing--

[01:20:44] Luke: I always take your probiotics when I travel. I take them here all the time too, but I have my little vitamin case that's my non-negotiables, and that's definitely one of them.

[01:20:54] Kiran: So if they really want to increase endogenous butyrate-- we did a study where we saw that the spores increased short-chain fatty acids by 50% compared to base-end.

[01:21:04] Luke: 15%?

[01:21:05] Kiran: 50%. So it's a huge increase. And then if you want to upregulate it even more, when you combine the probiotic and prebiotic, so the prebiotic with the oligosaccharides in it, it goes up to 150%.

[01:21:17] Luke: Really?

[01:21:18] Kiran: It's amazing. Yeah. Because the spores is so good at utilizing the prebiotic to enhance butyrate production. So that becomes your most powerful source. Because here's the other aspect of it that butyrate supplements don't necessarily touch, is that the microbes that produce the butyrate, they don't just produce butyrate.

[01:21:40] They produce butyrate initially. You get a spike of butyrate, but then butyrate production goes down. Then they start making propionate. And then finally they make acetate. Now, propionate and acetate have the function of butyrate, but outside of the gut. So propionate, for example, goes to the liver, goes to the gallbladder, helps reduce toxicity and inflammation in those organs.

[01:22:03] Acetate goes throughout the body. Acetate goes to the skin, the brain and other areas, reduces inflammation, modulates immune responses, kills off dysfunctional bacteria. Acetate and propionate are both antimicrobials for pathogens. We did a study on the spores that are in Just Thrive on acne, for example. In a 90-day period, we can reduce acne lesions by 75% in people with acne.

[01:22:32] Luke: What?

[01:22:33] Kiran: Yeah. And then you go, "How in--"

[01:22:35] Luke: People are slathering on all these topicals trying to fix their acne.

[01:22:39] Kiran: Trying to fix the acne. And so the main treatment for acne right now is our antibiotics, long-term antibiotics. And you think about, well, why would antibiotics help with acne? Well, it's because what's happening really in acne is you're getting a clogged pore for one reason or the other.

[01:22:58] And then your sebaceous gland, which is trying to protect you, it's producing too much SIBO. And as a result, you're creating this an anaerobic environment in your pore where a certain type of bacteria called Cutibacterium acnes ends up overgrowing.

[01:23:13] And as a result of overgrowing, it forms a lesion, and the lesion becomes inflammatory because now your immune system comes in and goes, oh my God, we got an overgrowing bacteria in the pore. So acne is really a bacterial infection in your skin, in your pore.

[01:23:29] It can be driven by diet and immune system and hormones and lots of different drivers, but ultimately, it is a bacterial infection, which is why they use antibiotics to treat it. And so we said, okay, what is your natural antibiotic in your body to keep the bacteria from overgrowing?

[01:23:49] Some studies that indicated acetate, which is one of the short-chain fatty acids, will make its way to the skin, reduce sebum production, and kill off the overgrowing bacteria. So we said, can we use the spores to increase acetate production?

[01:24:03] And if we do that, will it bring down acne? And so the gold standard for antibiotic treatment of acne in a 90-day period is 70, 75% reduction in lesions. We hit that same level by just using the probiotic, just upregulating acetate.

[01:24:19] Luke: I wasn't expecting to solve that problem for people today. It is not on my list. I was like, "You want good poops?" Yeah. Let's talk about bio production, digestion, and bitters. Over the years, I've used bitters here and there because I just find they really helped me digest and there's less gas and issues like that.

[01:24:44] And to me, I've never really studied the science on it. I've just looked at it from a very broad, intuitive perspective, and that is our relationship historically with the plant kingdom that humans all over the planet have been eating very bitter plants in association with meat and fat and things like that.

[01:25:05] But in our agricultural system, we've, over time, hybridized all of the bitter medicine out of plants so that they're palatable. For example, if you go eat dandelion in the wild, it's going to be much more bitter than if you go get dandelion greens at Whole Foods.

[01:25:24] And I started noticing that, like, what's the deal? It's the same species, but it's much different. So I've always thought, wow, it makes sense that you would reintroduce bitters from the plant world into your diet because they would've been here some time ago and now they're not. It's just a fundamental common sense thing. But talk to me about some of the science around why bitters in the diet are so important to digestion and gut health and so on.

[01:25:51] Tina: Yeah. It made a lot of sense for us because we've always gone back to how we evolved. With the spores, our ancestors consumed these spore strains when they were eating roots and tubers off the land. And the same goes with the digestive bitters. Our ancestors evolved consuming these type of bitter plants, like you mentioned.

[01:26:10] And now our society has pretty much engineered our food to be salty or sweet, and we just don't have any bitter foods. And yet we have all these bitter receptors throughout an entire body, and we're not activating them because we're not eating bitter foods.

[01:26:26] And we know that bitters are so beneficial as a digestive aid. They are helping increase stomach acid. They're helping increase digestive enzymes, supporting our bile production, even increasing our own body's production of GLP-1s. So we know that bitters are just so critically important to the digestive process.

[01:26:46] So you think of the spores as the whole microbiome and the bitters as supporting the stomach and the small intestine, which are very important and largely overworked and overused.

[01:27:00] Luke: Tell me about the formulation. How did you guys determine how to create a product that's going to be the most efficacious in terms of getting the results from bitters without having to have people taste the? Which I like bitter foods personally. I think that's why it annoys me.

[01:27:16] I can go out in the wild and eat those dandelion. I think it tastes awesome. But I must be weird. I love arugula, and I even wish it was stronger. You know what I mean? I'm like, "It's nice, but man, if it had a little more kick to it, I think I would actually enjoy it more."

[01:27:34] Kiran: One of the goals we had with the formulation was to get a large diversity of bitters. Because we have about 25 different types of bitter receptors throughout our GI tract, including on our liver, on our pancreas, on our gallbladder, even in our lungs. Our lungs also have bitter receptors, which are really important for the respiratory function.

[01:27:55] And given we have this large diversity of bitter receptors, we want to have a large diversity of bitters. So when our ancestors ate plants and all that, they really ate a large percentage of the plant. If they dug for a root and tuber, they're eating the root. They're eating the stem. They're eating the leaves. They're eating lots of different parts of it.

[01:28:15] And all of those different components provide different types of bitter compounds. And as a result, we evolve to require the exposure to these things. Bitters and bitter receptors are really unique in our species, in the human species. It's another beautiful example of co-evolution-- the evolution of humans and plants, humans and bacteria, humans and animals.

[01:28:42] As we live together with these things, we co-evolve with them where we utilize things that they provide for our function. It comes back to this notion that I mentioned earlier about us being wholly inadequate in our amount of genetics. We only have 22,000 genes, so we can't do a whole lot. We can't do a whole lot more than earthworm does, which has more genetics than us.

[01:29:06] So we've counted on things within our environment to provide stimulus and signaling for us. Just like the bacterial exopolysaccharide, the bacterial carbohydrate stimulates the formation of the human brain, we've then outsourced the triggering mechanisms for digestion to plant-based alkaloids

[01:29:28] And there's a couple of really cool evolutionary components to this. So number one, there's a defense mechanism to it, and then there's a digestive signaling mechanism. So our ancestors inevitably ate bitters with every meal that they consumed. But some potentially toxigenic compounds are also very bitter.

[01:29:48] So this is part of the importance of having bitter receptors in your mouth, in your tongue. So that when they took the first bite, and if it was very astringent and very bitter, your response is to spit it out. But on top of that, it also starts the gastric secretions, and then bitter receptors in the stomach increase the production of hydrochloric acid and increase the release of hormones like pepsinogen and pepsin eventually.

[01:30:14] And then it also allows the stomach to empty the contents into the intestines. So that gastric emptying step is really important, because you don't want stuff sitting in your stomach too long, or you'll feel bloat, fermentation, acid reflux and so on. So you want it to empty from the stomach and go into the small intestine.

[01:30:31] When it's in the small intestine, then you want pancreatic enzymes to show up, and you want bile to show up. Because then bile and pancreatic enzymes do their job of breaking down the food, assimilating the nutrients, carrying fat-soluble vitamins across, and taking toxins and packaging it for the liver to destroy it.

[01:30:49] And it also controls the movement of the food through the bowels. All of those things require signals and input. It's not that our body just somehow miraculously knows that food is in there and we're going to do this and that to the food. There has to be chemical messengers. And as it turns out, we evolve to require bitters in our food as chemical messengers.

[01:31:11] So about 70% of the digestive stimulation in the gut about releasing HCL, releasing bile, peristaltic activity, all of that stuff comes from systems that involve bitters. So if you remove bitters from your diet and you're eating very rich foods, you're eating lots of fats, lots of proteins, you're not triggering any of the digestive signals.

[01:31:36] So then we have indigestion. Then we have bloat. Then we have constipation. Eventually we get leaky gut. Eventually we get bacterial overgrowth because the food's just sitting there. It's not moving through the system. Everything starts to fall apart. And this is why still the most common medical complaint in hospitals is indigestion.

[01:31:56] Bloating, gas, indigestion, cramping, pain, diarrhea, constipation, something in that family. That's still one of the most common complaints. And it's so common. We all know. Most people have some sort of gastric or digestive issue. And to me, part of that is because we've eliminated the digestive signals. And that has consequence as a result of it. So, to me, this is foundational. We had to put this together because it's foundational.

[01:32:28] Luke: It's interesting thinking about just that, the bitter flavor. I think any pharmaceutical I've ever tasted is extremely bitter. So it's like, there's some, again, just the intuition, common sense that the bitter taste equals medicine. There's something medicinal about that.

[01:32:48] And the conspiracy theorist in me is like, they took the bitters out on purpose. They bred them out of all of our vegetables and plants. Which may or may not be true. I have no idea. Speaking of the signaling, you guys formulated capsules. I've been taking two of those with every meal, and I'm rocking.

[01:33:06] My gut is in real good shape right now in large part to what you guys create. And you're so generous. You always send me these massive boxes of stuff-- one of the benefits of being a podcast host. But one thing I wondered about is in terms of the signaling, are we missing anything from not actually tasting it, the taste bud receptor sending a signal to your brain like, "Hey, turn on the bile flow. Turn on the hydrochloric acid. It's coming."

[01:33:32] Whereas when you take a capsule of something, the message is still getting there, but it's not getting there until it's actually in you. Is there any benefit to tasting it? Did you guys not make a little squirty bitter liquid on purpose? Or is it just not necessary?

[01:33:47] Tina: It was very intentional to not do a tincture. For one, the tinctures are bitter, and so you unlike you, most people don't like the bitter taste.

[01:33:55] Luke: I won't say I like bitter tinctures. I won't go that far, but it doesn't bother me as much as maybe your average person.

[01:34:00] Tina: Yeah. And so we didn't want to do that because of the alcohol because we think people won't take it as much, for one. And mostly because most of the bitter receptors are not in your tongue. About 30% of them are in your tongue, but the majority of them are actually in the stomach, the gut, and the lungs, pancreas, liver.

[01:34:18] And that was important to us. And those aren't reaching all of those bitter receptors, and it was also for compliance. People will take it if it's easy to take. It's easy to take before a meal. You get this huge spectrum. We have 12 different digestive bitters in there that are touching every part of all these different bitter receptors.

[01:34:41] Kiran: When we were looking at this as a needed product in the marketplace, one of our goals is that if somebody else is already doing it and they're doing a decent job with it, there's no reason for us to do it.

[01:34:52] Luke: Which alludes to what I said earlier. You guys don't have 75 products. Because it's like-- I'll think, "Oh man, I should start a supplement brand." I'm like, "Everyone's already doing all the cool stuff. What am I going to do?" Like, oh, my new vitamin C. [Inaudible] guy. We have that.

[01:35:06] Kiran: Yeah. You're not going to launch another greens, another collagen. There's so many of those out there.

[01:35:10] Luke: Please, if anyone's listening and you're thinking about launching a greens powder company, we're done. We've had enough.

[01:35:15] Kiran: We have enough.

[01:35:16] Luke: There's enough out there.

[01:35:17] Kiran: So when we're looking at it, we go, "Okay, what is really needed? Where is there a gap?" So if someone wants to take a tincture of a bitter on their tongue, totally fine. And there's companies that have that. So there's no reason for us to repeat that. But what has been missing is how do you address the majority of bitter receptors throughout the digestive tract.

[01:35:36] We also believe that it's not as problematic to skip the bitter receptors on the tongue. And here's why. There's really two main purposes to the bitter receptors on the tongue. Reason number one is to ward us off of things that may be harmful. So you bite into something and it's really astringent, you may spit it out.

[01:35:57] Luke: Like a cactus.

[01:35:57] Kiran: Exactly. Like cactus or something that's really--

[01:35:59] Luke: No one likes to eat cactus.

[01:36:00] Kiran: Right. Or potentially like a plant poison. Most of those poisons tend to be very bitter. And so we don't need that anymore because we're basically eating things that we know are supposed to be edible and safe. The second part is something that mimics something called a cephalic response.

[01:36:18] So the cephalic response, and we all know this, you probably even see this with your dog, is when you see, smell food, you start salivating. That cephalic response is an important response to get your saliva going. And it also starts the HCL production in your stomach to prepare to receive food into your stomach.

[01:36:37] Luke: I've heard chewing gum is unhealthy for that reason.

[01:36:39] Kiran: For that reason.

[01:36:40] Luke: Is that true?

[01:36:41] Kiran: It is, yeah.

[01:36:42] Luke: Because your body's like, "Cool, we're about to eat." Psych. No, you're not.

[01:36:45] Kiran: Yes. And you're constantly producing stomach acid and so on. So you're wearing that system out. The bitters on the tongue, beyond the warding off of potential toxin creates another version of the cephalic response. But you can get the cephalic response just by smelling and looking at food as well.

[01:37:04] So to us, that's not as big of a problem of not having the bitter on the tongue, but where you get the big problem is when you're not activating bitter receptors in the stomach, intestines, liver, gallbladder, and so on. And we're not doing that.

[01:37:16] So that was the missing link. And selfishly, for me, I'm glad Tina agree when we talked about this technology to bring this product because I've been working on my gut as a microbiologist and a gut health person for more than a decade and a half now.

[01:37:34] But a missing component of my own regimen was bitters. And I'm like, "I need bitters. I need a complex of bitters." And it was something that I'd looked at formulating a number of years ago. Never got around to it. Did other things. And then finally, in our conversations, Tina agreed that, yes, we need to get this done.

[01:37:52] Luke: What are some ideas that you've had that you've pitched Tina that she didn't want to produce?

[01:37:58] Kiran: All the other ideas actually.

[01:38:00] Tina: No, no.

[01:38:02] Kiran: Boner pills.

[01:38:04] Luke: Yeah.

[01:38:05] Kiran: She's like, "No, we're not helping people with boners."

[01:38:07] Tina: But the digestive bitters was an amazing one because we sold out immediately. Just a couple of weeks and it's gone.

[01:38:15] Luke: That's so cool. Because I feel like there's not a lot of awareness around that.

[01:38:21] Tina: And yet it's so foundational.

[01:38:22] Kiran: Mm-hmm.

[01:38:23] Luke: That's pretty cool that it has caught on for you guys. I was excited when I found that you were making them because, I don't know. Like I said, I've had the liquids here and there. For some reason, the compliance has been difficult for me. Even though they do seem to help. But it is much easier travel wise and things like that to just pack those in my vitamin case, as I said.

[01:38:43] Tina: It's so foundational with the spores. The combination of them is so huge.

[01:38:48] Kiran: And our ancestors did that. So they're eating plants. They're eating stuff from the land. They're getting spores. They're getting bitters. Those two are the one-two punch for your entire digestive system. And so now we're just putting it back in. And the thing is, people peripherally-- I don't know if that's the right way.

[01:39:06] Luke: I think you got it.

[01:39:06] Tina: Yeah, you got it. You got it.

[01:39:07] Kiran: Know about bitters, but they don't know that it's actually a bitter. So for example, this whole scaling of GLP-1 agonist. GLP-1 agonist, the pharmaceutical version basically mimics what bitters do in your stomach, in your GI tract. So one of the classes of bitter receptors is when the bitter binds the receptor, it upregulates your natural GLP-1 peptide.

[01:39:34] And that's part of what slows down the digestive process, improves satiety, upregulates adiponectin and leptin, and downregulates ghrelin, the hunger hormone. That's how you balance how much you eat.

[01:39:47] Luke: So if you're someone that tends to overeat, this would be a good hack for feeling full faster?

[01:39:54] Tina: Absolutely.

[01:39:55] Kiran: Absolutely. Yes. You take it with your meal, and it helps you overcome what, in the metabolic weight loss issue area, they call leptin resistance. Leptin is the satiety hormone. And what tends to happen when people overeat all the time is you build a resistance against the feeling that leptin gives you, which is that feeling of satiety.

[01:40:15] And so your brain continues to produce hunger hormone instead of satiety hormone. The GLP-1 receptors upregulate some of that leptin response. And so bitters are the natural version of that, and humans have been doing it for hundreds of thousands of years. So they know it as GLP-1. They also know it as berberine. Berberine is a bitter.

[01:40:38] Luke: Uh-huh. I didn't know that.

[01:40:40] Kiran: It comes from barberry root. That's it's whole function.

[01:40:44] Luke: I always just correlate it to blood sugar. I never thought about it.

[01:40:47] Kiran: That's exactly what it's doing. So part of--

[01:40:50] Luke: Do bitters have an effect on blood sugar too?

[01:40:52] Tina: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

[01:40:53] Kiran: Absolutely. Yeah. About four of the bitters in the formula have a direct effect on blood sugar levels. Including, it has barberry root in it, which has berberine and Coptis in it, which it's another cousin of berberine.

[01:41:05] And both of those have an effect on postprandial blood sugar response because binding of bitter receptors is the really important step in upregulating post meal metabolism and pulling out all of the sugar out of circulation that may have come in through the diet.

[01:41:27] And then upregulating fat burning too, because bitters also upregulate something called CCK, which is another receptor that turns on fat burning. Because what your body's trying to tell you after you eat a meal is like, okay, you've eaten a meal now. You need to rest and digest.

[01:41:43] So you want that parasympathetic system activated. And then as a result of that, you want your body to be able to clear any elevated blood sugar and then go to fat burning to fuel your whole resting, digesting process. And so that doesn't happen in most people.

[01:42:01] What tends to happen if you're not binding those receptors is your blood sugar levels spike when you eat, and then they remain high because your body's not good at regulating and bringing it back down.

[01:42:12] And then when it does come down, because you're not activating fat burning, your liver basically makes more sugar as the primary energy source. So your liver is just looking at the sugar balance in your body and going, "All right, the cells are asking for energy and for fuel. Your body's not tapping into fat burning, so I'm just going to make more sugar."

[01:42:31] It's going to release glycogen, which is a stored form of sugar, into this circulation, so that your body can have the energy to function. All of that stuff is controlled by bitters.

[01:42:43] Luke: That's crazy, dude. Why isn't this like a foundational aspect of our diet or supplementation?

[01:42:50] Kiran: It absolutely should be.

[01:42:52] Tina: Yeah. It's the same way we felt about the spores. It's like we were screaming from the rooftops with the spores because it's like everybody should be taking this. It's like a foundational food. And the same thing with the bitters. People are really receptive to it because I was saying, we literally sold out almost-- we've never had a launch like that.

[01:43:11] Luke: I think it's a generational thing too, because I remember my grandma used to drink some Swedish bitters or something. Well, she was Swedish; maybe that's why. But yeah, I feel like it's like a folk medicine kind of thing that has just faded out.

[01:43:26] Tina: And there's many cultures to this day that are consuming bitters on a regular basis, like parts of Asia, parts of South Africa. They're consuming them on a regular basis for the purpose of digestive aid.

[01:43:38] Luke: In terms of getting enough raw material, if you're taking two capsules of your bitters, for example, and I'm picturing some hunter-gatherer eating a face full of it, are they extracts, or is it just dried herbs? What's the actual substance consist of?

[01:43:59] Kiran: Yeah. So they are high concentration extracts.

[01:44:02] Luke: Ah, okay.

[01:44:02] Kiran: So the idea behind it is, what you want to do is you want to get all of those alkaloids, which is a big category of compounds that bitters fall into. You want to get the alkaloids out of the plant, which is mixed in with their cellulose and the starches and things like that. So you want to concentrate the alkaloids and have them at a level that clinically has been shown to have the impact of binding receptors and changing things.

[01:44:26] Luke: Got it. And that also prevents you from having to take 75 pills or something.

[01:44:31] Tina: Exactly.

[01:44:32] Kiran: Yeah. So that's why one or two has so much impact.

[01:44:35] Luke: Oh, cool. Cool. I'm curious, one of these days I'm going to take one of your capsules apart and see what it tastes like. Is it super crazy bitter?

[01:44:41] Tina: Yeah, it's really bitter?

[01:44:42] Kiran: It's a bitter. But from what you described, you may not find it to be really obnoxious, but I think your average American would because we have no bitter palette at all. But I don't think. You might actually find it to be okay.

[01:44:57] Luke: I'm curious. Not like I'm going to enjoy it, but I'm just a geek like that. I like trying things just to be weird. Well, shit, you guys. I feel like-- oh, no, there was something I wanted to ask you. And this might be related to bile flow and stomach acids and stuff, but there seems to be-- over the years, I'm sure you guys have observed in the health space there's trends that wave up and then wave down.

[01:45:23] And way back in the day, when I got started in all this stuff, parasites and parasite cleansing was a really popular thing. Then it disappeared. And now there's a resurgence of concern around that. What are either of your perspectives on how big of an issue parasites are currently?

[01:45:42] Tina: I'm going to let Kiran take this one. This is definitely more you.

[01:45:45] Kiran: That's a great question because I do get this question a lot. And if you're a company that's selling a parasite cleanse, you do a very good job of making everyone feel like everything they're experiencing is due to a parasite. Generally, and I've looked at the data on this, that in the Western world, the likelihood of having an infectious level of parasites is very low. So it's not that you can't have it. You can get it from animals. You might get it from your dog, for example. That could happen if your dog licks your face and mouth a lot.

[01:46:18] Luke: Yeah, she ain't licking my face.

[01:46:19] Kiran: Right. Exactly. I let my dog sleep in my bed and all that, but they don't lick my face.

[01:46:23] Luke: I love our dog, but no mouth kissing here.

[01:46:27] Kiran: Exactly. Because they will lick obnoxious things outside.

[01:46:32] Luke: She'll try it too. It's an ongoing joke in our house. If you're not paying attention and she's next to you, she will go for the mouth.

[01:46:38] Kiran: She'll go for the mouth.

[01:46:40] Luke: She's like a sniper with the parasite bath she wants to give you.

[01:46:43] Kiran: So I think the prevalence rate of actual parasitic infections in people is really low in the Western world. Now, if you've traveled to a third world country recently, and you've been in the rainforest, you've been to India, places like that, you might actually have a parasitic issue.

[01:47:01] But given the narrative that it's the main issue for so many people, I think that's a little bit exaggerated. And I think that in order for you to really know if you have a parasite issue, you have to do proper parasitology. Proper parasitology can be ordered by any conventional doctor, and it's a stool test, but it's not a genetic test. So that's where the problems arise. So there's a lot of genetic stool tests that can pick up--

[01:47:30] Luke: Like GI maps and stuff like that?

[01:47:31] Kiran: Exactly. Yeah. Because you could pick up parasite DNA. Everyone has some degree of parasites in them. But it doesn't necessarily mean it's a problem. What you really need to do is do a microscopic parasite test. And that's typically ordered by a conventional doctor.

[01:47:47] So they'll send actual stool away. And so it can't be a swab of the stool. It can't be a swab of your toilet paper and all. That's enough for a genetic test, but to really do a parasite test, you need actual stool.

[01:47:58] Luke: You got to poop in the little French fry.

[01:48:00] Kiran: Exactly. And you need to send that actual poop in a biohazard tin and so on. And then what they'll do with it in the lab--

[01:48:07] Luke: I love sending those in because at UPS they'll be like, what's in the box? Do you really want to know?

[01:48:12] Tina: Exactly.

[01:48:12] Luke: Go ahead and open it up. High alert.

[01:48:14] Kiran: Do you want to check? You want to scratch and sniff it? And so what then they do with that is they actually take it, and they make slides out of it. They stain it. They look for ovum from the parasites. They look for the actual parasites and all that. That's how you really know.

[01:48:30] And if somebody has like a very bad gut issue, and they've ruled out other things, it's worth going and getting a parasitology test done. But it's not anywhere as common as people are making it out to seem.

[01:48:42] Luke: Cool. You guys see what I'm seeing on social media.

[01:48:45] Kiran: 100%

[01:48:45] Tina: Yeah.

[01:48:46] Luke: These trends come and go, and then the parasite fear porn will go away and something else will come. And sometimes it's legit and sometimes not. But it's just like I mentioned alkaline water before years ago. I was like, "Oh God, we're too acidic." And then I spent a bunch of money on a Kangen machine and realized I was just drinking very poorly filtered tap water.

[01:49:06] Kiran: Yeah. And one of the things about that, I just say--

[01:49:10] Luke: No offense to the Kangen MLM folks out there. God bless you. Good luck.

[01:49:15] Kiran: So one of the things I want to say about that is actually really interesting, and this may be different than-- hydrogen water seems to have a little bit more behind it than alkalinized water.

[01:49:23] Luke: Oh, I'm on it all day every day.

[01:49:25] Kiran: Yeah.

[01:49:26] Luke: But the pH is the same.

[01:49:28] Kiran: pH is not the thing. Yeah. Because the problem with alkaline water is that water wants to be a neutral pH. That's part of the definition of water, is that it's a pH 7. That's the standard on your pH scale. You've got acid. You've got base, and the neutral is water. Why is that?

[01:49:44] Well, because the H2O molecule, it acts as a buffer for any sort of pH. You add acid to water, it buffers it to neutral. You add a base to water, it buffers it to neutral. So alkalinizing water and then putting it into the system, it just becomes neutral. Right?

[01:49:59] Luke: Right.

[01:50:00] Kiran: So it's just basic chemistry.

[01:50:02] Luke: I think the thing is too that I learned sometime after that whole alkaline water craze got me for a moment was if you're too acidic, you can just do deep breathing and turn your blood alkaline.

[01:50:14] It's one of the highs of breath work, is you're just super alkaline for however long that lasts. So I think there's a lot of misconceptions around that, but I think it's fun observing these trends come and go. And sometimes they get me and I'm like, "Wait, do I have parasites?" I need to talk to someone who actually understands these things.

[01:50:32] So that'll be a relief for some people that may be concerned about that. But I think like testing is a really smart thing to do in general. I'm always doing hair mineral tests and every few years I'll do a biome test. I think a lot of the guesswork and probably wasted fears and energy and money that you spend on things you probably don't need can be solved by just getting legitimate testing done.

[01:50:55] Kiran: Yeah. Get some information.

[01:50:56] Luke: Yeah. Cool, cool. I've already asked you guys a number of times your three-- the end of the show, I always ask your three biggest influences, inspirations, etc. You've already done it a number of times, so I'm going to skip that. I know. I should tell people that are like, "Oh, cool, I want to try the bitters and the probiotics."

[01:51:13] By the way, folks, the show notes in general for this show will be lukestorey.com/guthealth. And then for those of you that want to try Just Thrive, that's lukestorey.com/justthrive. And there's a 20% off discount if you use the code LUKE. Now, regular listeners will be very familiar because you guys are one of my sponsors, and so I talk about it all the time.

[01:51:35] But if anyone's new, highly recommend. Goes without saying. I don't talk to people and let them slang their stuff unless I believe in it. And so really stoked with what you guys are doing. Is there anything I left out that we want to cover before we go?

[01:51:50] Tina: No. I just thank you so much for being a supporter of ours for all these years and for our first podcast, like you said, at Paleo f(x) eight years ago maybe. I don't know. It was a long ago.

[01:51:59] Luke: That was a long time ago. Yeah.

[01:52:00] Tina: I just think podcasts like yours are just empowering people. That's one of the biggest missions of our company, is just empowering people. And it's why going on people's podcasts have been so effective for us, because we're able to explain the science and the research that's been done on these strains and our products. And so we just really appreciate it, Luke, and appreciate everyone who listened the whole time.

[01:52:21] Luke: Likewise. I think that's what's so cool about independent media, is you can actually sit down-- I interviewed a guy a couple days ago, and the topic of the show, he's got a company called Zona. Make this cardiovascular exercise, isometric exercise, grip thing.

[01:52:36] I've had it for a while. I was like, "I don't know. I don't really get it." And so I really wanted to get to the root of that particular topic because I never covered it on the show. We sat here for a good hour and just talked about mindset and really got to know the guy. It wasn't about selling his thing, or at least for me, it wasn't.

[01:52:53] It was just about extracting wisdom and life experience from him, of which he had a ton. And you can't do that in a freaking paid Facebook ad or targeting people on the Internet and chasing them around going, "Take our thing. Take our thing." It's an antiquated played out way of marketing.

[01:53:12] So I love that we can actually really get an education. Whether or not somebody's going to buy a product or not is like whatever. They're going to walk away going, "Holy shit, I should go eat more bitters or whatever." So to your point, I really enjoy what I do and getting to talk to people like you.

[01:53:30] So I feel like I'm the luckiest guy in the world because I am always learning more. Just when you think you have it figured out, I'll ask someone about parasites. They go, "Oh man, I was kind of worried about that." All right.

[01:53:42] Kiran: Right.

[01:53:42] Luke: There's a balanced kind of nuanced approach to different things. So yeah, it's fun. How about you? What's next? So you bugged Tina for a while. We got to put some bitters out. If you had a magic wand right now, what would you bring to market that's, you feel, needed or novel that's underrepresented?

[01:54:03] Kiran: I think one of the areas is about helping people reduce the caloric intake. There's more and more data coming out that the caloric intake balance that people have, and this is the old idea, and I know it's not sexy, but calories in, calories out idea has been proven over and over again to be one of the biggest determining factors of your overall metabolic health.

[01:54:30] And we have all of these capabilities in our system to control our caloric intake, and our body wants to control caloric intake because it's a lot of work for your body when you consume excess calories. There's your liver, your gallbladder, your pancreas, your digestive system, your brain, is all overworking to figure out what the hell to do with these calories you don't need.

[01:54:52] Luke: Sorry to interrupt. Do you think that's one of the reasons when we're ill, we lose our appetite? Because our body's trying to recruit vitality to handle that?

[01:55:00] Kiran: Totally. Yeah, absolutely. Because a process of digestion and dealing with nutrients and calories coming in is a very taxing process. And it is also the reason why if you eat a really big meal, you're going to feel sleepy and tired, and you're not going to be able to function as well.

[01:55:17] All of it is because it's such a tax on the system. And so creating something that can help people control their appetite and control their caloric intake throughout the day without having to think about it, I think would be really valuable. And we're looking at ways of doing that through the microbiome, because the microbes really control a lot of those signals.

[01:55:43] Luke: I've heard that with parasites. Like if you crave sugar at night, it's not you. It's them kind of thing.

[01:55:48] Kiran: Yeah. A lot of cravings and all that are generated by dysfunctional microbes within the system. So that's a thing that we're thinking about and conceptualizing. But as far as messages to people, to touch on what we talked about in the beginning is I think everybody needs to start making steps towards better health.

[01:56:08] But I think people should also not feel the pressure of being perfect about it. Because they see a lot of influencers and all that online living seemingly perfect lives.

[01:56:22] Luke: I hope I don't portray that.

[01:56:24] Kiran: No, you don't. You're very human and down to earth.

[01:56:28] Luke: I'm far from perfect.

[01:56:29] Kiran: Yeah. And the thing is, you don't have to be. Let's go back to the 80-20 rule. So simple things like better sleep, get some more movement, start lifting a little bit of weights, try to manage your stress, do some meditation, do some foundational supplements like bitters, probiotics, increase your fiber intake, just doing a few of those things in itself is a really, really big step towards your overall health span.

[01:56:56] You don't necessarily have to go, "Okay, tomorrow I'm getting all of these biohacking devices. I'm waking up at 4:00 AM and I'm doing this, this, and this." It becomes overwhelming to people, and they will never succeed with that mindset. Maybe you can get there over time, but start small. Make tiny habits. Give yourself small victories, and think about the 80-20 rule. Every little bit helps.

[01:57:20] Luke: I've noticed in my own life, I would say I have a pretty high propensity toward neurosis of different kinds. A lot of the practices in my life to which I've habituated are really good for you and positive. Versus my old life, I was very self-destructive for a long time.

[01:57:40] But I have noticed at times that OCD-level, just hyper vigilance about the food and doing all the things. And not even trying to be perfect, but a lot of it motivated out of fear of getting a disease someday or being unhealthy, and it becomes very myopic and self-centric in a way.

[01:58:01] Just always thinking about the body and me, and how I feel and what I'm eating, what I'm doing, it can be very isolating in a way. And I think back to the piece that we did around fight or flight, there's an anxiousness around it. So it's a balancing act of having awareness about EMF and blue light and your water quality and your food and which supplements you take are not.

[01:58:30] I think it's unwise to just completely negate all of that and just live like the average American, because we see the outcome of that, but also the pendulum going all the way the other way and becoming very dogmatic and super controlling and orthorexic about things, either side of that spectrum is going to lead to results that none of us want.

[01:58:51] So I like that reminder of just balance. Take it easy. You don't have to do everything at once, but do something.

[01:58:57] Kiran: Do something. Yeah.

[01:58:58] Luke: Cool. Love it. Well, thanks for joining me, guys.

[01:59:01] Kiran: It's a pleasure.

[01:59:02] Tina: Thanks for having us.