28: A Deep Dive Into The Gut, Brain And Skin Microbiomes with Kiran Krishnan

[00:00:00] And anything that’s a syndrome is even worse. Like irritable bowel syndrome. Could it be more generic? Like, oh, your bowels are irritated. Why are they irritated? They did not like the weather. Like, do they not like what I’m wearing? Why are they irritated? Right. It makes no sense at all. And the problem is, you know, when we look at modern medicine, Medicine works is you have to be able to label and call something a thing.

And then you have a pill that goes with the bank, right? And so now you have a disease in the pill and the disease in a pill, right? One fellow for every deal, as many people have heard. And that’s the problem with labeling things, because now that you label it, we have this confined view that, okay, this is this thing.

We need a pill or two pills and three pills for that thing, right. Without really looking at why do we have. There’s no questioning the origins or the root causes of these conditions.[00:01:00] 

Hi there. Welcome to the Feel Better Now podcast. I’m your host, Jackie Bowker. And if you’ve arrived here, know there is something in here to spark yourself to create a better future in your health, in your career, in your relationships for both yourself and for those around you, just one small action step at a time. With so much love and gratitude to being your guide.

Let’s get started.

Hi everyone. Jackie Bowker here today, we have such a special guests be incredibly courageous and mighty Kiran Krishnan. One of my personal heroes, I use Kiran’s practitioner only products in my clinic and I’m so proud cause I was one of the first Australian practitioners to do so. He is so very special to me, Karen and I chat about the infamous [00:02:00] diagnosis, IBS irritable bowel syndrome, and what that really means how the gut is related to mental health, the brain, our skin.

This is the stuff, people that we need to learn in school, but we don’t yet. Karen is a class act he’s company. Microbiome labs was born out of sheer frustration from the lack of research that goes into probiotics. And this is something we need to take really seriously as these are living organisms that we are putting in our.

Karen’s company is one of the very few that run clinical trials on the actual finished product. Like me Qur’an is on a mission to help people feel better and make vibrant health accessible for all. He is a true pioneer. His new research on the psycho biome is mindblowing. He’s coming back on the show to talk about that.

And he’s one of the womanist, most genuine people I have ever met. We have so much fun together. Enjoy this meaningful chat about the role of the microbiome. [00:03:00] In improving your gut health, your brain health, your skin health. Karen is a gift to the world in. Welcome. Welcome. Welcome, Karen. I’m so excited finally, to have you on the show today, pumped for our discussion.

Thank you, Jackie. Thank you so much for having me. And it was great to meet you. What, five, six years ago. I don’t know how long it was, but it was a while ago. So I’m glad we could finally connect to do this. It’s one of the amazing things about social media. So Karen and I met at a conference in 2016 over in the states and even having a few Instagram chats, I’m such a huge fan.

And I’m excited about this discussion because we’re going to get right into the nitty gritty of gut imbalances and skin imbalances and brain imbalances and how they’re all connected. Yeah, absolutely. And in fact, they’re all intimately. I think we give people some significant insight to bring down some of the complications around all of these conditions.

What’s interesting about a lot of these things is they’re all seemingly unrelated [00:04:00] because they affect different parts of the body. You know, you could have anxiety at the same time, have eczema at the same time, have, you know, weight issues that you’re dealing with. Right. And they seem like completely disconnected conditions.

It is different parts of the body, different pathology. But at the end of the day, it’s the same root cause it’s driving them all. So if you know what that is, and you know, some tips and tricks, how to address those root causes, you can really make a significant improvement in all of those types of conditions that are seemingly unrelated.

I love that so much looking at the body as one whole system. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Systems biology is the approach I take for. Everything. Health-related right. It’s all connected. And it all follows one another one after the other. And it just, and when you look at the pathologies and you look at it from that perspective, it actually becomes much more simple than we make it.

Yes. I know. Well, humans, we overcomplicate things. Don’t we? So Koran, you don’t know this, but over [00:05:00] the years, Year, we have had a survey out in the market and over 12,000 people have completed it. And it’s own your energy. One of the questions talking about things being connected is about the gut and 78%.

So nearly eight out of 10 people at. That they have some form of gut imbalance, whether that’s bloating or cramping or, you know, funny poos, something like that. Can you talk a little bit about gut imbalances and what is happening there? Yeah, so, you know, we have a bit of a misconception that our ability to detect.

And deal with food comes purely from our physiology, right? We have digestive organs in our system. We’ve got our mouth, which is where it starts our teeth to grind and masticate food. And put it down into a paste, like consistency that we then swallow. We of course have enzymes in our saliva. We have, once things go into our stomach, our stomach has these capabilities.[00:06:00] 

Releasing enzymes, releasing hydrochloric acid, churning things, and then moving it down to the small intestine. It has this process of digestion and many people know about the digestive organs. We even know about the pancreatic enzymes. I think Korea’s must make to chop things up and move food down and so on.

The part that we really ignore quite significantly is the role of microbes in allowing us to handle and manage food. Right. And there’s a reason why people in parts of the world handle and manage the food in their part of the world. Well, it’s not that their systems are different. It’s not that their stomach is different than someone with a stomach and a different part of the region.

It’s not like their intestines are. It’s that their microbes are different, right? Indians can eat a diet 98, 90% just full of fat. Compare that to someone on the equator. We eat a lot of coconut and you know, other types of greens and compare that to people in Sub-Saharan Africa or north [00:07:00] America, or even Australia that.

More processed foods and things like that, right? We all can deal with these foods differently than people in other parts of the world. And the reason is we have different microbes in different regions. So we incorporate into our system. There’s a reason why I can’t go to Mexico city and drink the tap water.

And not get sick, right? Or you can’t go to India and eat street food and not get sick yet. A billion Indians eat street food every single day and are fine. It’s because of the microbes in the system. So if we continue to ignore the role of the microbes indigestion, we’ll continue to have these digestive issues.

Everything from bloating. Cramping loose tools, you know, pain in the gut. When you eat certain foods, the inability to tolerate foods, all of those things are driven by microbial dysbiosis in the gut. It means you don’t have the right types of microbes or they’re not predominate. To deal with the foods that you’re consuming and the [00:08:00] reason they’re not predominant, or the reason we don’t have the right types of microbes are one of many.

One is either you’re not getting enough exposure to the right types of microbes. You didn’t get passed down the right types of microbes from your parents or a combination of all of those, including the fact that we’re damaging microbes consistently by the things that we’re exposing ourselves. Right. So it’s an ecological problem in your digestive tract, starting all the way from your mouth, where you have a huge number of microbes on.

21% of all the microbes that live in your body, live in the mouth wow. Into your stomach. Your stomach also has lots of microbes, even though we think of the summits, the very acidic environment, and it’s not really great for microbes. There are microbes that do live in the stomach. And then of course your small intestine, which has even more, and then your large intestine, which has the largest concentration of microbes in your body, all of those ecosystems are absolutely necessary in order for proper digestive.

So we’re not looking at that enough. Yes. And [00:09:00] I love how you talk about that. We’re not looking at the microbes and that the microbes are everywhere. I always tell people if you’ve got gut issues, you’re actually one of the lucky ones, because I work a lot with people that have anxiety and just overwhelm.

And can we talk a little bit about. This thing called the HPA access, which is very much a term bandied around practitioners, but I feel like I’d like you to explain it to me. What does it mean and how is it connected to the gut? Yeah, absolutely. So you’re absolutely right. That if all you’re dealing with is indigestion type of issues and bloating and all that, you are not just lucky at the moment, but you’re lucky in the stage that you’re in because.

More than likely those indigested issues are the early steps, bigger problems, right? Because we know that this function in the gut starts typically with digestive related symptoms that can happen even as a kid, it can be a baby that has that spits up a lot, [00:10:00] right. And cannot handle mother’s milk. What cannot handle formula, whatever the baby’s consuming.

It can start as early as that. And throughout your early years and your teenagers and your early twenties. You may end up having worse and worse digestive issues, but that’s just the beginning. Those were some worst digestive issues will start to impact things, the call, the gut-brain access or the gut skin access.

So they’ve got long axis, all of these other components of the body. Right. So going back to the HPA axis. So the HPA axis stands for the hypothalamus pituitary adrenal axis. Right? What does all that mean? Well, it’s basically how the body turns on. The flight or fight response. When you experience a stressor, most people are familiar with the flight or fight response.

That’s really where your body goes into this defensive survival mode when it is faced with something that could be life-threatening right. It’s a very, very important mechanism because that’s, what’s kept us alive as a species for millions of years. If we didn’t [00:11:00] have a proper functioning HPA axis, humans wouldn’t exist.

Right. We would have gotten eaten or killed. In some way or the other. Right. So having the proper HPA axis is really, really important. And that’s especially important back in the day when we’re walking around as forgers and gatherers and hunters, and we’re walking through wilderness and we’re not sleeping in protected areas, right.

That’s fighting sense of tingling when we sense danger. What happens is when you experience an external stressor, right? So let’s say something seems dangerous to use you see something or hear something or feel something. The first part of your body that perceives that danger is the hypothalamus, right?

So that’s a part of the brain. That is attuned to this type of stimuli, the hypothalamus senses it because of the auditory, visual or other stimuli. And then the hypothalamus releases a hormone to trigger the pituitary gland, the pituitary gland, which is sitting there, the base of your [00:12:00] skull then understands that.

Okay. It’s time to go into action. So the pituitary gland. Triggers another hormone that then activates your adrenals, your adrenals have the ability of producing a stress hormone called cortisol. Right? So then they are doing, they’ll start producing cortisol to increase levels of cortisol in your body.

Now, at the same time, the pituitary is also triggering your sympathetic nervous. Your nervous system in your body has really two phases that it tends to act in and then can be in between the two phases throughout the day. One phase is called the sympathetic phase. That is the flight or fight phase, right?

That’s the phase when you’re active or you’re trying to face danger and you’re trying to run away and save yourself, or you’re trying to fight the danger. Or this parasympathetic phase, which a lot of people refer to as a rest and digest phase. That means all of the systems that are responsible for resting, for recuperating, for digesting and assimilating nutrients.

All those [00:13:00] systems are preferred and functioning versus in the sympathetic phase, all the systems that are required to fight or run, those are being favored. So when the pituitary gland gets a signal from the hypothalamus. The pituitary Glen activates your adrenals. And then it’s also activating the sympathetic nervous system.

What the sympathetic nervous system does is it starts increasing your heart rate. It starts increasing your respiratory rate, and it’s trying to get blood to your brain and to your heart and to your muscles. That’s where you want activity. You’re not digesting your body. Doesn’t care about repairing anything.

Your immune system is suppressed because you don’t need your immune system. At the moment. It has to divert resources to the things to keep you alive. Now, the way the sympathetic nervous system rushes blood to your brain and to your heart and to your muscles is by increasing influence. Right.

Inflammation is perfusion of blood by just like, if you get a cut on your hand around that, cut this inflammation to try to heal the cut. [00:14:00] And what do you see around that? Cut. You see red swollen skin, right? That’s perfusion of blood to that area. So the same thing happens in your brain. Same thing happens in your heart and in your muscles.

So it’s not very hard to see that that’s not a nice state to be in most of the day, right? Where you can’t digest, you can’t rebuild your immune system. Doesn’t work appropriately. You’re actually in this inflamed overactive state, your blood pressure is high. Your heart rate is high. Everything is under stress.

Right. That’s not a good state to be in 18 hours of the day, 15 hours of the day, right? That’s a St. You need to be in for a few minutes in order for you to run away from danger or fight the danger and then be able to come down from it. So that’s the HPA access that actually activates this response. Now the role of the gut place that is really, really important.

Is, as I mentioned, cortisol gets dumped in the gut, right? One of the things that happens, it gets [00:15:00] metabolized and it helps me police blood pressure. Then it also starts binding glucocorticoid receptors. There’s another effect of cortisol in the gut. When you have an unhealthy gut, when you have an unhealthy gut, when cortisol gets dumped in the.

It increases leaky gut, right? It causes inflammatory response in the gut lining and it drives leaky gut. And as a result of that leaky gut happening inflammation goes up even higher. And in particular does a compound in that inflammatory cascade that increases quite a bit. That compound is called interleukin six when interleukin six goes.

One of the big problems with it is it can make its way to the brain and re trigger the hypothalamus and then the pituitary and then the drain. Right. So a single stressor that kicks off this HPA activation to put you in the flight or fight state. So you can try to survive that single stressor, if your gut is dysfunctional, will cause leaky gut [00:16:00] and get you to reactivate your HPA access again.

Right. And then what happens when you reactivate your HBA? You get more cortisol, dumps more into the gut, the gut, and becomes even more leaky. Interleukin six goes up again, reactivates the HPA access again. So a single stressor can reactivate your HPA axis over and over and over again for hours on end, thereby not allowing you to come down from that stressor.

And here’s a double whammy. This is here’s a real kick in the pants. Right then I L six, that I six, when it goes. It also lowers the expression of those important glucocorticoid receptors, the ones that are supposed to bind the cortisol to turn on the signal, to bring down the system. So not only is it reactivating your HPA access, it’s also making it harder and harder to switch up.

Right. That’s where the gut comes into picture because when you have the right type of bacteria in the gut, what tends to happen is when cortisol dumps into [00:17:00] the system, not only do those bacteria prevent cortisol from making you got leaky, so you don’t have this reactivation, they also can send neurotransmitters to the brain to start trying to shift the brainwaves to that more relaxed meditative state.

So you can actually come down and recover from whatever is freaking you out, right? So it’s perfectly normal to experience stress. It’s perfectly normal to deal with stress. The big difference today is because our guts are dysfunctional, the same dysfunction that doesn’t allow us to digest things properly.

That leads to. And gas and discomfort in the gut that same best function also causes this reactivation of the HPE access from a single stressor. So our ancestors used the HPA access to survive and after the danger was gone, they would come down and they’d be perfectly fine for us. We get the HBR access activated for or reasons, and our ancestors did, right, because of a [00:18:00] tweet.

We saw an article or a comment somebody made or text somebody, or someone cuts you off in traffic. Non life, threatening things, trigger the HPA axis, and then that single trip. We’ll continue to trigger the activation throughout the day. That’s a big difference. So now most people are in this kind of heightened spin like that adrenaline rush, that hypersensitivity the lack of ability to really deal with a lot, right.

That’s coming in from an emotional standpoint because those centers of the brain are off the reasoning’s part of the brain. The part that deals with negative emotions, all those centers, the coping centers of the brain that are called those coping centers are. When you’re in the activated HPA axis. Does that make sense?

Oh, I love how you explained the connection. I always say to people, the gut and the brain were one organ. It’s just one grew up in one grew down. So if you’ve got a leaky gut, you have a leaky brain. Thank you for explaining that. [00:19:00] So eloquently and in so much detail, because I think. It’s so important, but what you came back to is, as Hippocrates said, all disease begins in a gut.

And I was talking to Dr. Tom O’Bryan about it. You know, that’s now been morphed into it. All disease begins in a leaky gut and I’m so passionate about helping people. Just, if you haven’t rebuilt, you got to rebuild it. Just assume that you’ve got a leak.

Yeah, no doubt. I mean, in the studies we’ve done in published, right? We see in healthy, normal, young people, 22, 23 years of age, no reported health conditions, including no digestive conditions in a no medications. They’ve never been diagnosed with anything, perfectly healthy, normal body weight. If you look at them, they look like the picture of health with 55% of those people have really bad leaky gut.

Right. It’s amazing. It’s 55%, which means that there are walking cauldron of disease. It’s simply [00:20:00] brewing in asymptomatic yet. And when you look at the connection between the gut and the brain, and more, when we talk about stress and mood, one statistic, that’s really well-known well-studied is really telling them that, for example, When you take the healthy human population, adult population, right?

It’s somewhere around 19% of the adult population are diagnosed and reported to have anxiety or depression and or depression. Right. It’s still pretty high when you think about it, but for just the healthy, normal adult population, when you look at the. Population people who have diagnosed IBS, 51% of them have anxiety, depression.

Right. So almost two and a half times more likely to have anxiety when you have IBS. And so I’m so glad you brought up. Two and a half. It’s just, the connection is staggering. And I, you know, I’m so grateful for the work that you do to make it more mainstream. I want to talk about this IBS, you know, this [00:21:00] term, uh, have many clients move through my clinic and they say, my doctor diagnosed me with.

And I was taught in functional nutrition school that when there was a diagnosis of IVs, it was the doctor didn’t know what was wrong with you and needed to call it something. Can you comment on that? Absolutely. You know, I hate a lot of these labels because it’s, it’s really a way of putting a label on something so that it seems like we have a handle on what it is and anything that’s a syndrome is even worse.

Irritable bowel syndrome. Could it be more generic? Like, oh, your bowels are irritated. Why they irritated? They did not like the weather. Like, do they not like what I’m wearing? Why are they irritated? Right. It makes no fucking sense at all. And the problem is, you know, when we look at modern medicine, the way medicine works is you have to be able to label and call something a thing.

And then you have a pill that goes with the thing, right? And so now you have a disease in [00:22:00] the pill and the disease and a pill, right? One pill for every ill, as many people have heard. And that’s the problem with labeling things, because now that you label it, we have this confined view that, okay, this is this thing.

We need a pill or two pills or three pills for that. Right without really looking at why do we have it? There’s no questioning the origins or the root causes of these conditions. It’s how do you control the symptoms associated with those things? So it does the whole thing of IVs just drives me crazy.

It’s one of the dumbest diagnoses I’ve ever heard. It’s no different than having anxiety, depression, you know, all of them, the abnormalities that you can have with mood disorder. And just calling it like irritated brain syndrome. Like, it just makes no sense. So we dig in a lot to IVs and we do a lot of work to really understand IBS, you know?

So, yeah. Well, and let’s talk about that. You, you certainly do. And one thing. [00:23:00] So impressed eaves and even a strong enough word with your, your work and your mission in making vibrant health access to all is the research, the clinical trials that you do. So I want to talk about that because I have a lot of people that come to me and they might be, you know, buying probiotics from the local chemist or so can we just break down quality in supplements and you know, is there.

Yeah. I mean, that’s the whole reason microbiome labs exists. Right. You know, the year before we founded and launched a company, if you’d have asked me if we have, if we would have a brand or a company of our own, I would have told you you’re crazy because I never had an intention to do that. I wanted to always work behind the scenes.

Do research and you know, how other companies kind of develop products. And I was perfectly happy doing that. I was also running a clinical research organization that I’d built myself doing research for other companies are trying to encourage them to do research at least. Right. So that was great. But what [00:24:00] we saw.

You know, it was a huge gap in the world of probiotics, right? Probiotics have a lot of promise because they impact the microbiome. And as we know, if you can impact the microbiome in the right way, you can solve a lot of health problems in a very profound manner at people with every stage of conditions, right.

When it comes to the microbiome, it’s never too late to make a change and make a difference. And so we saw that early on, you know, this was back in 20 10, 20 11. And then when I started looking at probiotics in the marketplace and part of this is we were actually hired to do a study. My research company and development company was hired to do a study on probiotics in the marketplace.

And they were trying to figure out like, what are the right claims? And does it have to be refrigerated or not refrigerated or. Do we need 15 strains or 25 strains. Like, you know, what is, what’s all this with the claims around probiotics. And we basically studied it for a couple of years and came to understand that most of it is nonsense.

None of it’s really designed with [00:25:00] any proper scientific rationale. You know, there’s no studies that show that a hundred billion is better than 50 billion or 50 billions, better than 20 billion or 17 strains is better than two strains or. And you hear all these things. Like I heard all these things in the market, even doctors would pair it and repeat this things.

They’ll say, oh no, you have to have a product with at least 15 strains in it. Why, where the hell does that come from? Right. Oh, they’ll say you need 50 billion at 50 billion or more, anything less than that. Won’t do anything. I’m like this almost no studies on 50 billion. Most probiotic studies are done with single strain.

At two to 3 billion CFU per day. Right? And so where is this 5,000 billion all coming from? So when we started looking at it, we really realized that, you know, most probiotics and the ideology around how you formulate and create a profile. What’s done well before we knew anything about the microbiome, right?

Probiotics have looked [00:26:00] the way they do today. They’ve looked like this since like the 1970s and eighties, since they’ve extracted lactobacillus acidophilus from yogurt making and started putting it in a pill right after the 1960s. And then they’ve gone from, you know, 2 billion, 3 billion, 5,000, 900 billion.

They go crazy with it. Right. And the thing is most of the probiotics have been designed and produced. Prior to us, even knowing that the microbiome exists. So none of it is made in view of the new research and our new understanding of how the gut functions, right? So it’s archaic. It’s absolutely archaic and does no real advancements in this space.

So when we say quality, when it comes to probiotics, to me, it’s one of the most important. Supplements that requires research because these are microbes, right? They’re living entities, they’re biological entities. They’re complex. It’s not like vitamin C, which is a single [00:27:00] molecule, right? It’s not like magnesium, which is a single inert metal.

We’re talking about a biological entity that has lots of complexity to it that has millions of genes in it that produces thousands of proteins. You need to know what that does when you take it. Right. You need to know how it plays with the rest of your microbiome. You need to know what your immune system is going to think of that micro going in.

Right. And at the end of the day, we need to know that it’s safe and we need to know that it does something because ultimately people are spending their hard-earned dollars. Right? Nobody’s insurance is paying for probiotics. Nobody’s getting it free from hospital. It’s your hard earned money. And that’s the part that.

Really irked me about this whole industry is people are putting their trust and you know, their hard earned dollars on these products to try to make themselves feel better and help themselves. And most of it is nonsense, right? So I viewed it as like this industry full of [00:28:00] companies that are simply taking advantage.

Of people’s needs and people’s desperation to get better. And just putting out nonsense one after the other, not investing in research. And it just that’s was the motivation that compelled us to build microbiome labs. Right. And we said from day one, we said, research is driving this bus for us. You know, we’ll only develop things that are needed if somebody else is doing something well, we’re not going to get into it.

We don’t care how. Sexy trendy. It is how many millions of dollars it might generate if somebody is already doing it. Well, that’s fine. You’ll never see us with a collagen product, right? Cause at the hundreds of companies that are doing a perfectly good college and product, we don’t care. If it’s hot and trendy, we’re going to solve big health problems.

We’re going to fill the gaps of pathology. By doing the right thing and by investing in research. So I would say that people should not use a probiotic that doesn’t have published clinical studies on the finished product. That’s a really important aspect of it [00:29:00] because some companies, what they’ll do is they’ll try to trick you that there’s product has studies by saying research strains or something like that, where.

Five or six different strains that may have studies on their own, throw them all together. Right. And then assume that there’s a collective benefit to all of it, but you can’t make those assumptions when it comes to people’s health. When it comes to their wellness, when it comes to their heart and money, you can’t make those assumptions.

You’ve got to invest in study. Yes. And I mean, there’s so many other things added to supplements these days. What are your thoughts on that? Yeah. You know, some of the things are unfortunately necessary, right? So there are carriers that are necessary and they’re carriers you can use that are okay. That are perfectly fine.

They’re inert, you know, there are some flow agents that you have to add at time to get these things, to blend properly and be homogenous and all that. But I think the things that are most troubling, other things that you don’t know are in the product, right? Because you know, different countries. Standards of what they required [00:30:00] testing of, right.

In terms of heavy metals and you know, the mold and yeast and pathogenic organisms and all of these things. So unless it’s being produced at the highest levels and it’s being vetted by people who know, like in our case, That’s why we ended up selling our products all through healthcare practitioners, right?

Because healthcare practitioners have a higher level of understanding of these things and they can vet the product a little bit better. They can understand what the quality component of it is, what GMP means, right? When in manufacturing, what the tests to see of A’s look like and so on. So those are the things that are scared because there’s lots of chemicals and compounds used in creating a lot of the ingredients that aren’t necessarily late.

On the product, right? There was a study published in, I think it was in nature, which is one of the top journals in 2017, that where researchers at university of California took a bunch of probiotic products on the shelf and they tested them all for genetics to identify the strange, [00:31:00] properly. Right. They found that 94% of the products they tested had different strains in the capsule than.

Right. 94%. And they were looking purely at kids’ probiotics, which is even worse. Right? So 94% think about that. Like 94% of the products you might find on the shelf, you pick it up, you look at the label and you go, oh, okay. This is, I’ve heard of this strain. This must be okay. You take it. You have no idea.

What’s actually in the camp. Yeah. And in fact, in some of those, they found pathogenic organisms, problematic contaminants, all kinds of stuff, because people can just Willy nilly make this stuff. Right. And unless it’s a company that’s spending money, investing in research and innovating, then you know that they don’t have a vested interest in the longterm success of this industry, of the natural medicine part of it.

And they’re just there to make money, take advantage of the hype, right. And the interest, the consumer interest and things like probiotics. People really have to be careful and, you know, lean towards [00:32:00] people like yourself, who, you know, you’ve talked to and you’re an expert on your own and you talk to experts all the time.

Right? So getting information from shows like this as to what to buy and what to use is really important. Yeah. Oh, absolutely. And I always tell people, you know, put yourself in a, surround yourself with a primary care team that know you and understand you and that are experts and, you know, so they can provide a simple guided plan because you can’t see the picture if he’s standing in the frame.

And I love that you have, and I can’t wait to try it. We can get it now in Australia, but I love that you have created. Skin product. So the skin being out second largest organ, talk to me about why microbiome loves would create a skin product. Yeah. Yeah. And then it’s one that takes advantage of the gut skin access.

Right. You know, as I mentioned earlier, we only go into areas of significant. Right. So when I look at what’s happening, what are the primary treatments for certain things? And when [00:33:00] the primary treatments are far worse than the effect of the treatment, that’s an area in which we go, we need to innovate, right.

Is an example of that. It just, it kills me that young kids, adults are all on 90 days, 120 days plus of antibiotics to try to get out their pimples. Right. And that’s really sad when you think about it. Like we could steroids and steroids on top of that. Exactly. And then topical steroids and then ingested steroids and topical antibiotics and oral antibiotics, everything where we’re doing everything to just reduce the pimples and I completely get it.

Why you would want to do that? To me, it baffles me that the medical community hasn’t come up with a. Option for that. So that’s one of the areas where we said, okay, we’ve got to try to figure this out. Right? We can’t let people continue to do that as a primary way of trying to deal with pimples. So this has got skin access and it’s pretty clear.

I think [00:34:00] most people have seen or experienced an example of the gut skin. It was most people that deal with inflame scan or acne, you know, any kind of irritated skin know that there’s certain things that you eat that make it worse. Right. Like you’ll know, oh, if I eat that, I’m just going to break out. Or if I eat that I’m going to get a rash.

Right. We know that the gut skin access exists. So, so that then you just have to jump into it, use science or figure out how it impacts the gut, how the gut impacts the skin. So what we came to realize quickly by. One of the early studies we did the pilot study that we did on the gut skin access. Is that when you modulate the microbiome in a particular way, in terms of the types of short chain, fatty acids that are produced, those short chain, fatty acids can have an impact on the skin mucosa.

So that’s a mucosal layer underneath the outer layer of skin that you can see. It’s also the layer that controls all of the immune response. On the surface of the skin. It also [00:35:00] controls what happens to things like your sebaceous plan, right? So basis Glen is stuck there next to your hair follicles, or you’re poor and it produces Seba, Siemens and stuff.

We can all score it out in those really fun videos where he’s caught out those amazing my kids, right? So some people produce lots and lots of sea bum. And of course, when the sebaceous gland is inflamed or irritated on the inside, it produces more and more. And the more Siva mill produces a higher likelihood is you’ll develop a lesion from that clog for, right.

And so we started looking at this and it became very apparent to us that there’s a clear connection between types of gut microbiome and skin response. Right. Um, yeah. And we did a study. We did a 2022 patients study to begin with and we saw very clearly in a 30 day period. With our probiotic. In this case, we did MegaSpore with the probiotic that we can reduce acne lesions and total lesion.

So inflamed and non-inflamed lesions. I think in that case, it was [00:36:00] almost 35% reduction in 30 days. Right. And the side effects are people’s digestion got better and they felt better. They slept better. Right? All of these other things, because again, these are all the digestive issues that go along. The expression of things like on your skin.

And so we said, oh, that’s phenomenal. We did microbiome analysis on these people, immunological analysis. We worked on all the pathways of how the gut impacts the skin. And then we said, let’s do a bigger study. We want to do the larger. Probiotic acne study that’s ever done. But then we took the mega spore because we realize which of the strains actually did more of the work that impacts the skin.

So we altered the formula a little bit and we call that formula serene skin. And we did that largest probiotic acne study and in the 12 week period, and the reason we did it 12 weeks, because all of the antibiotic acne studies at 12 weeks, right. So we wanted to be able to compare and show dermatologists, for example, [00:37:00] Here’s what you get with antibiotics for 12 weeks.

Here’s what you get with probiotic for 12 weeks, we had almost a 70% reduction in acne lesions in that 12 week period. Right. Which was better than most of the antibiotics studies. And of course, without the dangers of side effects. So for us, this is a great story. To being able to resolve a problem that shouldn’t be treated the way it’s treated, it’s being treated right now.

Right? Because you might get an improvement in your acne lesions once you start the antibiotic, but all of the long-term effects of that antibody. You know, are far worse than having to deal with the pimples. Right? And so that’s one of those problems that we really wanted to solve, but we, of course, we don’t want to judge anyone that’s taken antibiotics or was taking antibiotics for it because we completely understand that we completely understand the need to do it.

Right. It’s a huge quality of life issue to have acne blemishes, but we want to find people a better way and a better way. Oh, and I love [00:38:00] that. And I’m so excited to bring it into the clinic because at the moment I am working with skin imbalances with anti-microbial herbs and then food sources of that now rogano and garlic, all of those things.

So could this essentially replace a 12 week antimicrobial herbal formula as well? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, when we did our studies, this was the only thing people were taking. Other than that, just to standardize their daily process at home, we give them. Facewash so that everyone in the placebo group and the treatment group had the same face wash.

So outside of that, they weren’t doing anything else. Right. So they weren’t taking anything else for their acne issues. And we saw the same benefit in all the treated people. So, and then we get like lots of other responses on things. What the primary end point. So we were looking at things like fine lines and wrinkles, right?

Improving and people’s skin, hydration levels, improving people, tone, typography, and texture. Right? So we use these really, [00:39:00] really high definition cameras to take very detailed pictures of the skin and the topography of the skin. We start to see all of those improvements. One of our big. Retail partners who will be working with the product here in the states also did like a three, 400 patient like commercial tests with the product.

And people were reporting things like they just, they felt healthier, felt healthier, right? And again, people who have lots of process trying to control their skin. The skin doesn’t feel healthy because you’re using so much chemistry on it all the time. Right? So it’s different when your skin is thicker and they reported feeling like the skin was thicker and healthier.

So it was just, it was so great to see all of that feedback because it’s why we do what we do. Right. If we can put the effort in to resolve some of these problems and you see the results that people get, it’s amazing. It’s exactly why this company exists. Oh, Karen, this is phenomenal. And you know, I could talk to you all day, but we haven’t even [00:40:00] scratched the surface of talking about, you know, your adrenal support, you know, and which again is founded in the gut and the sleep support.

But tell me, what are the three things that you do to feel better? Yeah, well, there’s a number of things, but let’s talk about it. Let’s try to narrow it down with, uh, so number one for me, Like pampering myself as important. Right. I like, I love massage. I get massages all the time when I can. Right. So I will schedule that for me, you know, and make sure that I’m going and taking my time and getting pampered and feeling good about pampering and focusing on myself for a period of time, because.

Many many days that can go by where you’re working, you know, 12, 13, 14 hours a day. You’re traveling all over the place and you’re not really taking care of yourself. So taking a moment to be able to pamper yourself and allow that for yourself is really refreshing to me. And I come out of that feeling [00:41:00] good, feeling relaxed.

It’s very important for me to disconnect as well. I feel like a lot of the work I do is very cerebral, right? I’m not out there chopping trees and wood all day long. So I don’t. Physically tired as much as I get mentally tired, right? The science work and connecting the dots and the lectures and talks and presentations, all of that stuff can be very mentally tiring.

So for me, I need to be able to disconnect and one of the simplest ways for me to disconnect. Watching rubbish TV, right? So like reality TV, things that just don’t require any sort of thinking, you know, just sitting there and watching it and I can get lost in it. And I know it’s, doesn’t impact me emotionally in any way.

So it’s just kind of fun way of relaxing and kicking back. So I need to disconnect. I need to pamper myself a little. And then the third thing is I need to actually challenge my body physically. And one of the most fun ways I tend to do that is cycling. So I was an avid competitive cyclist for some time.[00:42:00] 

And even now I love going out for long bike rides and really kind of challenging myself. You know, a hundred mile, 120 mile bike ride, where halfway through your body’s ready to quit and your legs are tired, they’re burning. Right. But then the rest of it is that mental challenge in the world of cycling.

There’s this thing called the pole, the pole view, right. Which is where like at any given moment, let’s say you have 50 miles left, but your body’s exhausted. When you think about the distance that you have left, it really is defeated. Right. But if you can think to yourself to get to the next poll. From polar or light posts, you can definitely make it there.

Cause it takes five, 10 seconds to get to the next pole. Then it just, just get to the next one and get to the next one. Right. So I love that kind of mental struggle, you know, mind over matter kind of thing that I challenge and put my body through. That’s very exhilarating for me and it really makes me feel good at the end of the day.

So those are the kinds of the three personal things that I love to do. [00:43:00] You know, challenge myself physically. Where you get to a point where it’s mind over matter and you have to get through that mind over matter component disconnecting and then pampering myself as well. So those are three things from beyond that.

Of course I am fasting is probably one of the best things I do for my health. If I didn’t fast, I think I would be really overweight and really unhealthy right now because I don’t get to eat very well because I travel so much and all that. And then of course, taking care of my gut, you know, taking the spores and the right supplements and I tend to feel.

Pretty good. Most of the time I have problems that pop up here and there, but I’m very impatient with results. So I will throw everything at it and get it under control and then, you know, add something new to my practice. So that doesn’t happen again. So, but fortunately I tend to feel pretty good most of the time because I have all those.

Yes. And I love what you’re saying on so many levels. I’m like you, I am a fast action taker and I like results. So I throw everything at it, [00:44:00] which is another whole discussion with people saying, I don’t want to take supplements. I’m like, oh, don’t you want to feel better? It’s not just the supplements. Yeah.

It’s the exercise. It’s the breathing. It’s the sleeping, but they can just be such a weapon. I love you pole to pole analogy because it’s actually the reason I called my company, the global field better Institute, because we can always just reach to feel a little bit better and a little bit better and a little bit better.

And it’s not so overwhelming where you’re sitting in the pain and, you know, you can only see like where you want to get to. So thank you for pole to pole. Yeah. Yeah. And I’ve built my businesses that way. Everything in my personal life has done with the pull, the pull mentality. It’s just one step in front of the other.

If you think about the top of the mountain, when you’re at the bottom, it sounds too daunting more often than not. It prevents you from taking that first step, but I always convinced myself, just, all I need to do is just take one step. And then after I take the ones that I go, I can take one more and I can take one more.

Right. And before we know it, you’re at the top [00:45:00] and you’ve made it there. Right. But, and when you look back, you go, wow. I did all. But it happens one moment at a time. And I think that’s really important for people’s health too. Don’t look at, you know, where you want to get. Don’t look at the overwhelming confusion of how to get there.

Just incorporate two or three or four small little. And don’t expect them to change everything overnight. Right? That’s one of the things I struggle with doing I’m impatient with the results, but just keep adding them in and they add up together. And if we do a part two, which I’d love to do, we can list for people, a bunch of things that they can do to really take care of their microbiome.

Uh, let’s do that. I’m going to look you in coming for you Koran. So one final question, what adventure you’re so ambitious and courageous, and I just love what you stand for. What adventure are you embarking on next? One of my biggest passions is empowering people with information, right? Because to me, [00:46:00] information is power.

Knowledge is power and people have far more capabilities of controlling their wellness, controlling their health outcomes. And they think, right, we lean a lot on the medical community. We lean a lot on doctors, but we really have so much power in our own hands that we just understand some simple things.

How our body works and what we can do to improve it. The microbiome is a perfect example of that. So in that vein, I’m working with a really awesome production company right now to produce a very new and updated microbiome documentary. And it’s really going to be an eight part docu series in general, with some of the best speakers and researchers in the world.

People, I work with people I hope to work with at some point. People at the tip of the spear on understanding, studying, and researching the microbiome. And that is coming up, hopefully by the end of this year in November, I’m not sure what the name of it is going to be yet, but I’m going to share it with you as soon as we have it.

So you can share with the audience and it’s going to [00:47:00] really empower people to take action. Simple action. Simple steps that they can do that will have profound impact on their health. Oh, karate. Yay. One tiny action. Step at a time. What a great way to end this chat. You’re off to have a conversation with Singapore.

Your footprint is all over the globe. I don’t think you quite realize the impact that you have the massive impact on those around you. Thank you so much for coming on the show. It’s my pleasure. And I would welcome coming back. So when we should get that arranged, thank you. We’ll talk soon. If you made it to the end of this episode, celebrate your seatbelt because it means you are truly dedicated to feeling better in your health, in your career, in your relationships.

And I am so proud of you, and if you want more. Feel better now. So tuning every Monday for new episodes and [00:48:00] join our community on Instagram at Jackie Belper for all the behind the scenes action and more. Hey, why don’t you sign up for a chance to have your question answered@fieldfitbitinstitute.com.

Sign up. That’s feel better. institute.com/sign up, but most of all, please keep reaching to feel better because the world needs you to feel good. So you can share that very special gift that only you have. So with that said, see you soon here’s to feeling better now bye-bye Jackie Bowker.