Episode 203 - Gut Health for Mental and Immune Resiliency with Dr. Nick Bitz of Neurohacker

Explore gut health with Dr. Nick Bitz, a naturopathic doctor with expertise in both Ayurvedic and integrative medicine, as we peel back the layers of this complex system and its impact on our overall health. If you've ever wondered just how central your gastrointestinal wellness is to your mental clarity and emotional balance, prepare to be enlightened. From the power of apple cider vinegar in jumpstarting digestion to the critical nature of an anti-inflammatory diet, Nick's insights will equip you with practical strategies for fostering robust digestive health.

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As we thread through the bi-directional communication of the gut-brain axis, we uncover how this intricate relationship influences our mental state, potentially unlocking new avenues for assessing mood disorders. Nick illuminates the jungle-like complexity of our GI tract, offering a glimpse at the fascinating world of psychobiotics and the traits of a healthy gut. The conversation doesn't stop there; we navigate the maze of probiotics, prebiotics, and postbiotics, demystifying their roles and the challenges in selecting effective supplements tailored to our unique microbiomes.

Rounding out our discussion, Dr. Bitz and I touch on specific nutrients that support gut integrity, such as butyrate and L-glutamine, and spotlight the promise held within postbiotics for immune health. We share personal anecdotes on instilling good dietary habits, emphasizing the importance of leading by example and the power of whole foods. By providing a wealth of knowledge that blends ancient wisdom with modern science, this episode is poised to revolutionize your approach to gut health and, by extension, your life.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hi everyone. Welcome to Sandy K Nutrition, health and Lifestyle Queen. Today with me I have a return guest, dr Nick Bitz. He is a naturopathic physician that specializes in Ayurvedic medicine. He is the leading voice in the natural products industry and currently serves as Senior Vice President of Product Development at Neurohacker Collective. His areas of expertise include Neutropics, anti-aging Medicine, biohacking, herbology or Herbology, however you want to pronounce it Nutrition and Dietary Supplements, and we actually recorded a while back all about how to age better with Cenolytics, so you can go and refer to that.

Speaker 1: 0:47

I'm going to try and remember to put that in the podcast description because it was a great episode. But today we are really gonna break down gut health. You know it's such a widely. Him and I were just talking beforehand about how everyone talks about gut health. But really, what does gut health mean? What is good, what is bad, what is, you know, the microbiome? Where does all this fit into gut health? So we're gonna break this down for you today and hopefully you'll be able to get a really good understanding of your own gut health by the time this is over. So with that, welcome, dr Nick. Thank you so much for coming back.

Speaker 2: 1:30

Hi Sandy, this should be a fun conversation. Thanks for having me.

Speaker 1: 1:33

Yeah. So for anybody who hasn't heard the other episode with you, you have to give us a little bit of a breakdown of how you got to where you are right now and what you do.

Speaker 2: 1:44

Yeah, I think that's pertinent to this conversation. You know I am a naturopathic physician. I graduated from Bastia University in about 2007. I practiced in a clinical setting for, you know, about maybe eight years to about 2015, and soon thereafter I decided to work full-time in the natural product industry, which I love. I love formulating for the dietary supplement industry.

Speaker 2: 2:14

You know, during my medical training I was really introduced to the concept of gastrointestinal health and you know it is in many ways that really the foundation of naturopathic medicine and nature care, which you know naturopathic philosophy kind of emerged from. And you know my teachers, my mentors, my colleagues would often say when in doubt, treat the gut. And so that became kind of the naturopathic mantra, and it still is today for most naturopathic physicians, because really gut health is the root of all health in the body, and when you can shift the state of the gut you can shift all states throughout the entire body. And so it really is impossible to create any meaningful change in the body without first addressing the GI tract, and so that is the root of most naturopathic protocols. And you know, again, when in doubt, treat the gut. And you know, when I was in clinical practice I would employ what I call the basic treatment guidelines and I gave this out to virtually every patient really as kind of the foundation of their health regimen, and the idea was really just to establish this foundational protocol before I gave them anything that was too complicated or that was very specific relative to their treatment. And this basic treatment guideline was really geared around GI health primarily. And you know, in short, I would just ask patients to do a couple basic things on a daily basis, including, you know, drinking apple cider vinegar very old-school remedy, but you know, one to two ounces of apple cider vinegar before meals helps to awaken the digestive fire and just really improves the absorption of food quite significantly. So that was a cornerstone remedy.

Speaker 2: 4:21

I also would give a really strong probiotic and back in the day there weren't many good probiotics available for physicians and certainly for the lay individuals as well outside of the clinic At that time I used a Metagenics brand probiotics and got fairly good results, but again didn't have good options available at that time. And I also employed what I called an anti-inflammatory diet, so doing mostly a plant-based diet covering most of the basic needs for folks. So also I'm taught to be like omega-3s exercise, breathing, some of the basic things, but the idea was really to establish GI health first and foremost, and so I think with that in mind you know that was really how I started practice. I did see that it started to give results. You didn't have to do anything else. We just create foundational GI health. People just intuitively get better.

Speaker 1: 5:26

Yeah, I would agree with that, and the whole apple cider vinegar. I mean it's so funny because I have a little bit of a personal aversion to the smell of apple cider vinegar. You know, some people can take, like I. Just, you know, I actually made bone broth yesterday and I put a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar in there and just the smell can make me. But I think you can get capsules now. They're just like veggie caps, aren't they?

Speaker 2: 5:55

Yeah, you can. You can, you can do gummies.

Speaker 1: 5:57

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: 5:59

But really the whole process starts in the mouth. Yes, and so it is important to smell it, to taste it. That is what stimulates the whole digestive tract.

Speaker 2: 6:07

And so if you're bypassing that with a capsule with a gummy, you're not getting the full benefit. That's a good point. That is it. And there is a flavor. Learning to it, you know, you do learn to like it over time and eventually you end up craving it. It's a very bizarre thing because it is very off-putty. It smells awful, it tastes awful, but over the course of a couple weeks eventually you start craving it and you want it before meals.

Speaker 1: 6:34

Okay, nick, maybe I'll try and do it again, but I personally I opt for just taking straight-up hydrochloric acid beating. I know it's cheating, it's cheating. There you go, it's cheating. But if I didn't do that, I already know I have some issues with absorption. So I'm sure we're going to get into this. But if you don't have ample stomach acid, you can't absorb a lot of the minerals that's in your food, right, including iron. That's like you know, dr Nick. I mean, I read something a while ago about women because this podcast most women, mostly women, listen to this, but they don't realize that when they have really, really heavy periods and then they have poor digestion and then all of a sudden they look they're anemic, they have low ferritin, right, like it all connects to the gut, right.

Speaker 2: 7:33

It all connects to the gut, yeah, 100%. And again, iron is very hard to absorb. It creates a lot of GI distress. So even if you are taking a supplement, you may not be using it, yeah, and you may just be getting, you know, abdominal cramps and digestive complaints. So it's very hard to do that without really strong digestive fire.

Speaker 1: 7:58

Oh, trust me, I. That's a whole other story, but I ended up in a merge thinking it was gallbladder once and it was iron. This is way back in my early 40s, so over a decade ago, and so you know you do need to be careful when you are taking these. You know medical prescribed irons, right.

Speaker 2: 8:21

Yeah, no doubt, no doubt. And more is not necessarily better. You know, I tend to work with some iron liquid formulations that are very gentle, plant based. They tend to be a little bit easier forms to absorb. But more is not better. It really is about replenishment over time, not over the course of one day, and so I give your body a chance to do that by doing less over the long term. It's important.

Speaker 1: 8:50

Okay, so let's actually talk about what are some of the symptoms of poor gut health, and then we'll get into some of the ways in which we want to see the gut work properly.

Speaker 2: 9:09

Yeah, I think, before we even go there. I mean, maybe we just define what is the gut.

Speaker 1: 9:14

Okay, yeah.

Speaker 2: 9:15

Yeah, I think that if that's critically important to this conversation, sure and endlessly fascinating. I mean, in essence, the gut is this tube from your mouth all the way to your rectum. It's a hollow tube and in essence, that tube is the external world. It's not the inside of your body, it's actually exposed to the outside world and so it's not considered you, it's considered the surface of you, but it is not you, and so wrap your head around that. It's pretty mind bending.

Speaker 2: 9:50

But this hollow tube that from the mouth to the rectum is, it's incredible. There's a lot of surface area there and there's a lot happening there. You know it's a it's a dark, wet, very complex kind of kind of environment. If you will, it's almost like a jungle. If you lay out your GI tract, it is the size of a basketball court. So there is a lot of surface area there and on that surface area, you know, we have trillions of bacteria. You know we have millions of fungi and viruses and other microorganisms as well. Of course we focus on the bacteria, but there's a lot happening there and they're living together and collectively and we use them to create our own health. We rely on them as much as they rely on us. I mean, it's quite fascinating.

Speaker 2: 10:47

And so this tube is. In essence it's this three-layer tube. The first layer is the inner lining and it's a layer of mucus, and so that creates a nice buffer between the external world and you, the internal world. And then you have the muscle layer and there's two sets of muscles. There's this longitudinal kind of long muscle and then there's a circular muscle, and so they work together to create peristalsis, which is that movement of food and substance through the GI tract Super fascinating. And in between those two layers of muscle you have the nervous system, so you have what's called the enteric nervous system.

Speaker 2: 11:30

And the gut is considered the second brain. There's millions of neurons that live inside the gut that communicate up with the brain and the brain back down into the gut. They're directly linked. Can we pause there? Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 1: 11:45

The reason I want to pause there is because, okay, I want to make everybody understand how much of your brain health is actually reliant on the health of your gut, and this is proven. So people don't really understand the connection there. So I just wanted to pause because it's such an important point that you just made there with the enteric nervous system. So, basically, you know there's people who have a lot of issues depression, anxiety, right, it's this wide spectrum where you can kind of fall on one end or the other, or sometimes on both, and it all kind of goes not all of it, but a lot of it comes from the gut health, right?

Speaker 2: 12:37

Yeah, I mean I would say that the gut actually is primary over the brain in a lot of ways.

Speaker 2: 12:42

You know that there are nine time the connections going from the gut up to the brain versus down from the brain to the gut, so there's a lot more information going upwards than there are downwards, but they're connected.

Speaker 2: 12:56

I mean, we know that people that have depression, as an example, will almost always have some imbalance in their gut, and so a lot of the science that's emerging right now in the field of gut health is related to the gut brain axis. It's a very real thing and we know that in order to create health in the mind and the emotional state and the spiritual state, you got to start with the gut first, and likewise, you know you need a balanced mind, you need a happy mind, you need a healthy mind in order to create just harmony in the gut as well. So it goes both ways and we're learning that. You know there are certain probiotics that impact the mental, emotional states of individuals, and so we call them psychobiotics. Very cool, but just showing that you can give a probiotic that establishes itself inside the gut and through its metabolism, its metabolites, these byproducts that it produces, it has a direct impact on mind.

Speaker 2: 14:02

So profound, so we're just now learning about the gut brain axis and how we can get in there and make some modifications to improve health. But it is new science, but it is certain we know that that direct, bi-directional communication is in fact a thing.

Speaker 1: 14:24

Okay, you were explaining that and then I had you pause and you were talking about you know, the three layers, and you were talking about the gut and the brain, and then I cut you off. So please do continue, yeah.

Speaker 2: 14:41

So you know it's when you get into the gut. It's really hard to define, I think, what is a healthy gut. And you can certainly look at, you know, what does it look like to have, what does it feel like to have a healthy gut? You know, and I would say it feels differently for a lot of different individuals. But I would say, in essence, what we're looking for are these two indicators. The first one is just bowel movements. Right, you're looking at the quality, the quantity, the timing of your bowel movements. It's critically important that you have one to two well-formed bowel movements per day, at the same time, every day. It should be easy to pass. They shouldn't be smelly, they should be light brown color, really the consistency of a ripe banana. I know it's not fun for a lot of people to hear all this stuff, but as a naturopathic doctor, we talk about these things because it is critical to health, and so do you want to have-.

Speaker 1: 15:48

Do you follow the Bristol stool chart at all? Do you have clients? I have, yeah, absolutely Okay. Yeah, I think it's a good guideline to know what your poop should look like. Everyone, yeah, totally.

Speaker 2: 16:00

Yeah, and it's important too that you're not having too many bowel movements.

Speaker 1: 16:04

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 16:05

Obviously everybody knows that constipation, having no bowel movements or very infrequent bowel movements, is unhealthy, but having too many is not favorable as well, and so you want to have one to two per day same time, well-formed. So bowel movements, I think, are the greatest indicator of GI health overall. And then we kind of talked about this earlier. But digestive fire.

Speaker 2: 16:29

Digestive fire is critically important. In Sanskrit it's called Agni, which is the God of fire, and Agni is the root of all health from the Ayurvedic perspective. So Ayurveda and naturopathic medicine, they say that digestive health is the root of all health, and digestive fire is critically important, and so it's really about maintaining a bright digestive fire all the time. You should wake up feeling hungry, you should be hungry before you always eat your meals. You should break down your meals very effectively without any gas, bloating, indigestion, heaviness, and so if you have a really strong digestive fire, you have a light GI tract, and that really is the goal. And so I think that those are two of the most surface level indicators whether or not you know if you're healthy overall from a GI perspective.

Speaker 1: 17:27

I have a question. I have a question about digestive fire, because low stomach acid is so common. How do you know if you have low stomach acid? What are symptoms? Would it be the gas and bloating after a meal that you would have that if you don't have enough stomach acid?

Speaker 2: 17:45

Yeah, I mean, obviously there's some clinical tests that you can do. One of the very interesting protocols that is used from an atropathic perspective is, assuming that everybody's low on HCL, and you can start giving HCL and you ramp it up over the course of weeks until somebody gets a very hot, fiery sensation in their stomach and then you ramp it back down, and so what you're doing is you're just creating homeostasis, you're normalizing physiology so that people are able to produce HCL without a pill overall, and so that's a hack that is used clinically, usually under the guidance of a physician. Obviously, you can do a pH test, where you swallow a little capsule and you ingest it and then you check the pH level of the stomach. But ultimately, I think it just comes down to how you feel. Are you digesting your food and do you have hunger when you're supposed to have hunger? It's a very easy indicator, I think.

Speaker 1: 18:47

Okay, that's good to know because I'm sure a lot of people want to understand that a little bit more. I've done the Betaine HCL challenge with clients before, and then there's people who are on PPIs and H2 inhibitors and these are drugs that actually block the ability to produce, either to cut off production or to reduce production. So work with a practitioner if you are on these medications. I'm going to say, because there are little hacks that you can get around it. But again, you have to work with your own practitioner because we're not giving you any medical advice here because there's a lot of conditions out there that might require you to be on them for a reason. So I just wanted to note that, okay, that really helps. That helps to know really, how do you know if you don't have ample stomach bacteria? Will you be gassy? Will you be like? How do you know that?

Speaker 2: 19:55

Yeah, there's a lot of ways to get at it. I think one of the most direct measures is through stool testing. You know, I think that's the most obvious way. There's a couple different testing methods. One is basically targeting the whole community, all the microorganisms in your gut, and that's through microbiome sequencing, that's through mRNA testing, and you get an idea of all of the bacteria that are in the gut and then you can actually target specific strains as well through quantitative PCR and that really just measures and analyzes the amount of a specific DNA sequence.

Speaker 2: 20:35

So if you want to learn about how much ocaramontia, as an example, you have, you can do a before level as well as an after level after doing a protocol to see what change you have. But it's a hard thing to measure because everybody's so unique and so we can't say, like everybody should have 4% ocaramontia Like. No, we don't know that. Like, your fingerprint is very different than my fingerprint internally and we're starting to learn more and more about what a healthy fingerprint looks like. But there's a lot of variety within the spectrum of a healthy fingerprint and so there's not just one.

Speaker 1: 21:22

I love that you said that, Nick, Just because I'm such a big proponent of bio individuality. And then you know, doesn't your microbiome change? Can't you eat something? Let's say you're traveling, and you're traveling and you're eating food that you normally don't eat, and then you get back home and your gut is off for about a week until you get back to your own routine. So I'm like you know your microbiome is changeable, right? Would you agree with that?

Speaker 2: 21:57

100%. Yeah, gut plasticity is a very real thing and we know that the microbiome changes within hours of having a meal. You know, there's some really good science showing that if you shift your diet from an animal-based diet into a plant-based, fermented-based diet that's high in fiber, within three days you can create really significant change in the GI tract. So it is possible to shift your GI tract both positively and negatively.

Speaker 1: 22:29

Yeah, yeah, I'm sure everybody's experienced that when they travel, you know, and they're eating foods that are just not you know, it's like it's not great for your gut or it's your gut's not used to it. And you know, I've even had, I've even had clients who were, for example, they were vegetarian for a short period of time, and then they try and eat meat. And okay, what do you think of this? Because I find this kind of fascinating, because I've said, okay, well, if your body hasn't had meat in two years, let's say you stopped eating meat, for whatever your reasons are, and then you go and try and eat meat again. It's like your gut you're not even producing the enzymes anymore to break down that meat, so you're going to have like a rebound effect. Your stomach's not going to like you very much, like. What do you think of that?

Speaker 2: 23:29

Yeah, I mean it comes down to the enzymes. It also comes down to your microbiome. I mean your microbiome in part is responsible for breaking down proteins, fats, carbohydrates and, depending on what you feed it, that really dictates the type of microbiome that thrives.

Speaker 2: 23:49

And so if you've been eating a specific kind of diet, you've been pushing your microbiome in a specific direction and helping a subset of bacteria to thrive. These other ones that may be more important for breaking down meat protein. They're not thriving, and so you can get there slowly over time. But it is important not to make that leap in one day and start eating a big steak for the first time and just expect your body to do the work as you hope.

Speaker 1: 24:17

Yeah, well, okay, I think. Do you want to continue with symptomatology or do you want to move on, because we can start? Because this is where people get really confused, like there's prebiotics, there's postbiotics, there's probiotics, and it gets super confusing. Do we need all three? Which ones proliferate? Which ones actually leave the gut when you don't take them? It's a confusing topic for sure.

Speaker 2: 24:52

This is where it gets fun. Okay, I think we've set the stage, but I think when you get into probiotics, prebiotics this is where I think it really becomes interesting. Obviously, probiotics, I think, have become quite the buzzword. The whole category has grown over the last 20 years or so. If any of your listeners has ever had food poisoning, as an example, the stomach flu, or they've taken antibiotics, they might have been told to take probiotics to help repopulate the gut. That's important.

Speaker 2: 25:29

Most people have that basic concept down. Put very simply, a probiotic is any live microorganism that confers health benefits to the body. That definition includes two things it means to be live and they need to confer a health benefit. A lot of what people assume are probiotics don't actually meet the definition of a probiotic, often because they aren't living or they aren't giving the benefit that they are promised. I think what we see on the marketplace presently are really, I would say, b-grade or even C-grade probiotics. They're not very effective for most people. I would say most people are somewhat familiar with lactobacillus and Bifidobacteria. They're probably in 95% of the probiotics that are in the marketplace, but neither of these strains are very viable or efficacious. We're starting to learn that right now.

Speaker 2: 26:35

These bacteria rarely arrive alive in the GI tract. They're very susceptible to any kind of damage from heat or from stomach acid. Manufacturers will often include 1,000% overage in the product just to make sure that it needs a label claim at the time of production. These organisms are very sensitive and so they're not very hardy. They're not very robust. Even if they do arrive alive, which is possible, maybe 1% gets through the GI tract, through the stomach. They don't colonize the GI tract.

Speaker 2: 27:17

You would want these bacteria to take up permanent residency. I think people assume when they're taking these bacteria that these live bacteria are getting into their belly and they're proliferating and taking over. I think that that isn't actually what's happening, unfortunately. Generally speaking, people are consuming dead bacteria. That isn't without benefit. These dead bacteria are now called postbiotics, which I'll speak about here briefly. They do exert a very strong response in the body. They do move through the GI tract. They incite an immune response that cascades throughout the body. They help to turn on and turn off some of the inflammatory processes inside the body. But they don't take up residency. They aren't living, they aren't colonizing. They just are moving through your GI tract and stimulating that response.

Speaker 1: 28:20

Can I ask you a question about probiotics, because I'm sure people have seen this enteric coating. Is that just a marketing gimmick or does it actually do something?

Speaker 2: 28:34

It depends. I would bet that most companies aren't testing it to make sure that in fact the enteric coating is doing something. Sometimes there are companies that do, but how you would test that is very challenging, very difficult. Of course you could do a stool test before and after just to make sure that the bacteria is bypassing the stomach acid and getting into the lung.

Speaker 2: 28:59

It's hard to do that. There's a lot of. It's really a leap of faith to take that type of product. I would argue that it's better to just use a heartier probiotic that you know is going to arrive alive.

Speaker 1: 29:16

That's good. Sometimes the enteric coating ones are a lot more expensive too. I have to ask you because you get such a massive variance in cost? You can go to your drugstore and get something off the shelf that's a shelf stable, or you can buy a therapeutic grade. It could be a metagenics product, it could be cytometrics, any of the ones that practitioners use and they're way more expensive, way more, meeting the most likely expenses. Listen to sick people. Hear her out. I mean I know they say potency guaranteed on them and third party tested for some of these therapeutic grade supplements. But how do you know what to look for?

Speaker 2: 30:12

Yeah, as a consumer, it's really a crapshoot, you don't. There are better strains than others. Always look for a DNA-verified strain. Usually it'll have a little number after the name of it. That just means that it's been DNA verified. We know that that is the strain that is in the product. If it's generic, if it just says lactobacillus acidophilus as a generic name, I would worry about that because you don't know that that actually is what's in that product. It hasn't been tested. You don't know the source, you don't know what it is. Always look for a DNA-verified strain. I would say that's number one. Always look for a strain that has been clinically studied.

Speaker 2: 30:59

A lot of these DNA-verified strains are unique to suppliers. The suppliers have put the science behind them to make sure that they are safe, tolerable and efficacious. That's an important point. I would also argue that you should really choose your strains wisely. As a rule, I generally don't recommend using lactobacillus-obiphyrobacteria. Really, I will lean on spore probiotics every time I consider them that A-list probiotic. Oh gosh, it's not just effective. Spores are very effective. The science is there. We evolved with these microorganisms over hundreds of thousands of years. They were in our food supply. They're known as soil-based organisms.

Speaker 2: 31:51

They look very differently than lactobacillus-embifidote. They are dormant. They have this shell that surrounds them that protects them. You can cook with them, you can put them in capsules, they can sit on a shelf. When you ingest them, they move through your stomach and they're unaltered by the stomach acid, which is fantastic. They enter the small intestine, where the pH shift in the small intestine will awaken that spore probiotic to shed its shell. They come to life. Spores always arrive alive, which is unique in the world of probiotics. I love it because we know that they colonize the GI tract very well. They are transient. They colonize for about three to four weeks, but they exert a very strong effect within that three to four-week window, which I love. They help to remodel the whole GI tract, to move you out of an unhealthy state into a more favorable, healthy state.

Speaker 1: 32:59

Okay, I have to ask you about this because I've also done a lot of research on spore-based and you have a couple of different trains of thought about them. What you were saying in a very unhealthy gut situation it can really help turn things around relatively quickly for a person who's got a lot of issues. I don't know. I've heard and I would love to hear your opinion on this that spore-based are great to use short-term but like our soil, we would plant things I'm talking about. Let's go back. Let's go back in time, nick, where we would have our own garden and we would be exposed through our vegetables and we would be exposed through planting through the air, through maybe what's left on our veggies after we wash them. But some have said do you really want to be ingesting these all the time constantly and have them proliferate to be almost like the majority of the population in the microbiome? I don't know, because then I've heard people say use the human strain. Human strain is better. It gets so confusing.

Speaker 2: 34:24

It is confusing, so I will say when you put it in perspective, look, they say 37 trillion bacteria living in our gut. When you look at the amount of lactobacillus that are in there, it's way less than 1% of the total population, really. So bacillus species, which are the spore probiotics, they're not found in massive amounts, so they're not taking over your GI tract and repopulating and pushing all the others. That's not how they work. These organisms are very safe. There are different strains to be mindful of. There's three that are widely used. There's bacillus coagulans, bacillus clasae and bacillus subtilis, and these two of these bacillus clasae and bacillus subtilis were the first pharmaceutical probiotics based out of Europe. They've been around since the 50s as a prescription. They've been used clinically with great success for a very long time and, again, because they're transient, your body gets rid of them very effectively.

Speaker 2: 35:46

Generally, I don't recommend doing spores or any probiotics really every single day. It's good to give your body a break, and so once you take spores, you know that they're going to stick around for that three to four week window and do their good work, and so you don't need to keep inundating the body with more bacteria. And the nice thing about spores is that less is more. So when you get into the world of lactobacillus and bifidobacteria. Over the course of the last five to 10 years, we've seen this massive increase in CFU levels in products. They started at a billion CFU and then they're at 10 billion, and then you see products now that are 100 billion. And it's just a numbers game. It doesn't mean that more is better, and I'll argue that it's actually not the case. The research on spores shows that they work at very small doses again, because most of them all of them are arriving alive, and so some of the studies start at 15 million with an M.

Speaker 1: 36:49

Oh wow.

Speaker 2: 36:50

And so you don't need massive doses, you just need a sprinkling of these bacteria on occasion to have this really pretty broad, significant effect in the body.

Speaker 1: 37:01

That's pretty amazing actually. Thank you for clarifying that. Now, what about prebiotics? Because you're going to laugh at this. I was on this prebiotic kick for a while and I was using Inulin and it was a product that you can put in some of your cooking right, so that you increase the fiber. So maybe can you just explain what prebiotics actually is, what they are. What are prebiotics first, before I tell my story?

Speaker 2: 37:38

Prebiotic as a term has really evolved over the last decade. We now define prebiotic as any substrate that is selectively utilized by microorganisms, so in essence it's really just food for the beneficial microbes that are in our gut. Most prebiotics are dietary fibers. However, not all fibers are prebiotic in effect, and the definition has evolved to include the word substrates. So prebiotics doesn't necessarily have to be a fiber. We now know that polyphenols are prebiotics, so a lot of the compounds that are found in fruits and vegetables the yellow pigment that's found in turmeric is a polyphenol. We know that has a prebiotic-like effect, so that fits neatly into that kind of category. So prebiotic really is just food for the bacteria and they're critically important because, just like with a plant, you can plant the tree but you've got to give it water, you've got to give it nutrients in order for that plant to thrive.

Speaker 2: 38:48

And so bacteria are the same way. You can't just give a probiotic and then hope and pray that it thrives in your GI tract. You need to feed that bacteria, and that's where you start getting a lot of the benefits, and so I would love to hear your story.

Speaker 1: 39:02

You're going to laugh. You are going to laugh. I was on this kick with my family about increasing fiber and getting our prebiotics in, and so I was using a prebiotic it was inulin. It's a very common one and then I put it in one of my cooking dishes and everybody had the worst gas. And they're like mom, mom, like what the hell are you feeding us, mom? And I'm like, oh my God, I'm so sorry. So why does this happen? Why do some prebiotics like inulin is pretty infamous for potentially giving gas right why do some give you gas? Because I guess it's doing all the work in there and feeding all the bacteria. It's maybe too much there's there's a couple reasons.

Speaker 2: 39:53

Obviously, when you shift the bacteria, you get rid of some of the bad guys. There's a dying off process called the Herxheimer reaction that can be uncomfortable. There's some gas, so that's that's one explanation. Another one is that inulin tends to create reactions in a lot of people.

Speaker 1: 40:15

Yes, you found that out.

Speaker 2: 40:17

Yeah, it's not a specific prebiotic. So we're now learning about specificity. You know there's low, there's medium and there's high specificity, and so inulin fits into that kind of low specificity, meaning it's feeding all of the bacteria in your gut, the good and the bad, and so, because you're it's feeding some of the bad guys, it's creating a lot of gas, oh yeah, and so that is a common reaction. There's a phenomenon, which I know you're familiar with, called the FODMAP diet, and part of that plan is to eliminate certain fibers, carbohydrates, including inulin, because we know that that creates a lot of sensitivities and a lot of people with GI sensitivity.

Speaker 1: 41:00

Overall, Okay, thank you for explaining that, because people might go and do the same thing. I did years ago and I've learned, obviously with backlash from the family for sure. But here's the thing how do you know, like, don't you have to kind of go slow with prebiotics anyway, if you're adding them in?

Speaker 2: 41:27

Yeah, you don't want to start. You don't want to start high.

Speaker 2: 41:29

So, again, most prebiotics are fibers and most individuals, especially in the US, are deficient fiber. So the daily recommendation is about 35 grams per day. Most people are consuming maybe 10 grams per day, so your body's not used to fiber or using fiber Critically important. It's important to fill that gap. But when you fill that gap or even exceed the daily value, it can create a lot of uncomfortable symptoms because of the byproducts, the fermentation of that fiber by the bacteria in your gut.

Speaker 2: 42:05

And so it is critically important to start slow. You know less is more and eventually if you can get up to a big whopping dose of, let's say, 30 grams, like fantastic. But that's going to happen over the course of weeks or months. And so start slow, be very selective about the type of prebiotics that you're using. Again, not all prebiotics are created equally. I would recommend doing a low FODMAP prebiotic if you can, and it is interesting you know some of the experts right now in the field of GI health are really digging into the prebiotics and they're stating that prebiotics are way more important than probiotics.

Speaker 1: 42:49

I've heard that too.

Speaker 2: 42:50

Yeah, so they really are the driving force behind a thriving microbiome, and so I'm a huge advocate for increasing fiber consumption from your diet, as well as supplementation and small doses.

Speaker 1: 43:05

What are some of your favorite food as medicine? Options for prebiotics.

Speaker 2: 43:12

I'm a big fan of resistant starches. Right now I have been doing a deep dive into that world.

Speaker 2: 43:19

Starches are known as ancestral fibers you know again, evolve for hundreds or thousands of years with these types of fibers, and they're now almost entirely lacking from the diet. And these are very I mean just in short. They come from some interesting food sources green bananas, as it is raw potatoes, rice that's been cooked and then cooled. We do get them from some grains and from seeds as well. There's four different types of resistant starch. But these prebiotic fibers have very unique properties. They act almost like an insoluble fiber, meaning that they pass through your GI tract and they arrive in the colon, but they also have the property of being soluble, and so they're fermentable within the colon. So they're very strong fermenters and as a result of that, we get a lot of these metabolic byproducts from that fermentation process, such as short chain fatty acids, and so they're critically important, and so I'm a huge fan of those. If you can find some of those ingredients, I would highly look at it. There's an ingredient called solenoid that's just arrived in the marketplace no-transcript Solnol S-O-L-N-U-L.

Speaker 1: 44:45

Okay.

Speaker 2: 44:46

That's a raw potato resistant starch. The clinical studies are at only 3.5 grams per day and showing significant benefits, showing increases in achromontia, which is a keystone species. We're learning how can you increase achromontia in the gut and solnol and resistant starch is definitely one way. I'm also a fan of that medium specificity where you're not giving a low specificity, feeding all the bacteria, you're not doing a super high specificity, where only a very small subset of bacteria are giving them benefit. That medium specificity tends to be the sweet spot. There's a couple of fibers that fit into that. Baobab would be one, another one called Sunfiber. That's where I would shoot. I would avoid the FODMAP fibers, including inulin. I just find that they just create too much digestive complaints in most individuals.

Speaker 1: 45:47

Yeah, okay, that's amazing advice. Okay, I make this dish. I am Croatian. I'm Canadian Croatian. I grew up with parents who immigrated to Canada. A big thing that my mom always made was she would make potato salad, but no mayo, no, nothing. We are talking as simple as it gets, nick. There is olive oil in there. There is a vinegar you can choose whatever vinegar, salt, pepper, onion, nothing else. Would that be a good source of resistant starch?

Speaker 2: 46:27

That is a ideal source of resistant starch.

Speaker 1: 46:30

Oh good, I like it cold. It's just such a clean I'm always like. My husband will always ask me to make that one because he's Canadian and he's like oh, I want you to make yours. He likes mine, as opposed to the traditional with tons of mayo and all kinds of stuff in there. I make that once in a blue moon and cold rice. You said rice is good, but it has to be cold, cooked and cold yeah.

Speaker 2: 47:02

It needs to be gelatinized. The properties shift when you cook rice. You heat it up and then you cool it. That's where the resistant starch comes into play.

Speaker 1: 47:15

Can you explain the difference between soluble and insoluble fiber for our listeners?

Speaker 2: 47:22

In essence, those are the two types of fiber. Insoluble means that it basically equates to roughage. People are like I'm eating a salad to get my roughage. That just means that your body, it's just running through your body. It's fantastic for helping create healthy bowel movements, but your body's not fermenting that. It's not using that as nutrition. Obviously, you're not getting much of anything from it nutritionally. It's just moving through your GI tract.

Speaker 1: 47:54

That's a good one if you have cholesterol, if you have higher triglycerides, because it scrapes things down that digestive tract Right.

Speaker 2: 48:06

Right, yes, both types of fiber would be beneficial just for enveloping the cholesterol that you consume in a diet and then helping the body get rid of it.

Speaker 1: 48:17

Amazing.

Speaker 2: 48:17

That's insoluble, then you have soluble as well. Insoluble essentially means that it arrives in the colon and then it's easily fermented by the bacteria. Again, most of the prebiotics are soluble fibers because they have that property where they can be broken down and easily fermented to create those byproducts that we want.

Speaker 1: 48:45

Perfect, all right, we talked about prebiotics, probiotics, postbiotics. We didn't talk about the integrity of the gut lining. We should mention that, because that's obviously a big component of gut health, right.

Speaker 2: 49:03

Yes, We've talked about things that are not. You, the microbiome the bacteria.

Speaker 2: 49:10

Obviously there's the part that's you, that is, the mucus lining and the cells that make up the colon and the GI tract in general. We do shed our cells. It takes about a week to exchange the cells in your GI tract. It's a pretty rapid process. Thankfully, we can create pretty drastic change over a short amount of time because of that healthy turnover process.

Speaker 2: 49:41

I will say that there are ways to improve cell integrity through the diet. One of the ways is through butrate, which I've talked about short chain fatty acids. When these fibers get into the colon, they ferment, they create byproducts. One of the byproducts is this ingredient. It's a short chain fatty acid called butrate. Butrate does so many incredible things and we're still uncovering more, but it feeds the colon cells themselves. Many colon cells create healthy junctions as well to prevent leakage in between those cells. Those cells rely on butrate as their fuel source. If you lack that short chain fatty acids, your cells are not going to be plump, they're not going to be healthy. Your tight junctions aren't going to be as strong and rigid to prevent anything from leaking, whether it's proteins or bacteria from leaking into the body.

Speaker 1: 50:43

That's where leaky gut comes in. But butrate, if you take it, that can also cause gas right?

Speaker 2: 50:48

It can. It's part of the fermentation process. I would say that it usually doesn't lead to a lot of gas. You can consume butrate in a pill. You can do butrate enemas. I think the easiest way is just to make sure that you're getting the right kind of prebiotics. To make sure you're getting it.

Speaker 1: 51:10

You can also get it in dairy.

Speaker 2: 51:11

I'm a big fan of ghee G-H-E-E, which comes from the Indian Ayurvedic tradition. That is the highest source of dietary butrate that you can get. Consuming that on a daily basis will ensure that that gets down into the colon Grass-fed butter.

Speaker 1: 51:30

that's not bad either, is it it's?

Speaker 2: 51:32

pretty good. Grass-fed butter is literally right underneath.

Speaker 1: 51:34

Yeah, that's what I thought. That's what I thought.

Speaker 2: 51:37

Yeah, that alone is reason, I think, to consume butter and dairy.

Speaker 1: 51:43

Okay, this is great information. What are your thoughts on L-glutamine? Everybody's talking about L-glutamine and we know it's an amino acid, but is it even enough? Is it enough if you've got major issues, nick?

Speaker 2: 52:01

No, it's not enough. It certainly is part of the picture, but I think if you're not doing some other things to create health, it's not going to give you the push that you want. Yeah, Clinically people would give three grams of L-glutamine. There's some good science three to five grams has been shown to be beneficial in these areas. But again, it's only going to provide short-term benefits. If you're not creating that foundation of health, if you're continuing to insult your microbiome with poor dietary choices, with stress, with antibiotics, all of these things, it's not going to be useful in the long term. But it is an important tool, I think, on top of these other things that you might be doing.

Speaker 1: 52:49

What are your thoughts on bovine colostrum?

Speaker 2: 52:56

I'll be honest, I don't know a lot about that. I know that it's emerged as a very potent remedy for so many different things, including leaky gut, but I would say that the science isn't there yet. It doesn't mean that it's not helpful and I would say that the science is probably coming. So I know that there's been more and more interest on that nutrient as of late, but I haven't seen anything that would convince me that that would be a top shelf nutrient.

Speaker 1: 53:32

And what about zinc carnaestine? That one's been around a while right.

Speaker 2: 53:36

Yeah, and again, so far we've been talking about the lower GI tract. Zinc is important for the upper GI tract and so a lot of good research there. It certainly works and you want to make sure that you're taking care of the entire GI tract, not just the colon. Right, and I will point out that oral health is critically important and you're going to start seeing a lot of oral health products in the marketplace because we're understanding the importance for brain health as well as all the things downstream. It all starts in your mouth. So zinc, carnaestine fantastic ingredient again, not the end all and be all, but it can be supportive of upper GI health.

Speaker 1: 54:20

Okay, anything else that you would say kind of helps with the lining, the integrity of the gut.

Speaker 2: 54:31

You know I'm a huge fan of trifola. I talk about this ingredient all of the time. Trifola comes from the Ayurvedic tradition. It's a Sanskrit word that means three fruits. It is, for all intents and purposes, the panacea from Ayurvedic medicine because it is GI focused, as I talked about before. Polyphenols from fruits have a prebiotic like effect and we know that trifola, again, is rich in these polyphenol compounds that have that prebiotic effect.

Speaker 1: 55:06

It's really an incredible ingredient I've never heard of that, nick, I'm going to because I'm the queen of researching all various nutrients. I've never heard of that. Is it P-H-A-L-A?

Speaker 2: 55:28

Yeah. So try, yeah, t-r-i and then follow P-H-A-L-A Okay, and so if you work with any astute Ayurvedic practitioner, you will leave that office with a script or a bottle for trifola. It is the cornerstone of Ayurvedic medicine for so many different reasons. It's a rejuvenative, it's an adaptogen, it's nutritive, but it helps to just give integrity to the whole GI tract. So if your GI tract is too lax, it'll tighten it up. If it's too constricted, it'll help create that adaptogenic effect, while it'll bring it back into balance. It is slightly laxative, so it does give you a little bit of movement, but it just creates a rhythm in the GI tract. So if you take it at night, it'll help just to kind of sink your GI tract so you'll have a bowel movement first thing in the morning. But I can talk all day about trifola. I certainly would recommend looking at it. I would generally recommend 500 milligrams. Start low and then work your way up to a gram per day and just see what dose works for you. Often a lower dose will work for most people.

Speaker 1: 56:44

That's brilliant. I love it when I hear of something completely new that I've never heard of. But Ayurveda is not in my wheelhouse, so I thank you for that, because I'm sure the listeners would be like they're all going to go and do all their research, which I love because that's a new one for me. And here's a question. Okay, before I get to my next question, are there any other nutrients that you love that really help with the integrity of the gut that we didn't talk about?

Speaker 2: 57:23

Let's see, I don't know. I mean, n-a-g is a very interesting compound. It helps to build the mucous lining and that's anacetyl glucosamine Fantastic and I think of that in the same vein as L-glutamine very different compounds but work in a lot of the same areas. Overall, we kind of touched the idea of a postbiotic, but that's this new emerging area as well, which are these dead or heat inactivated bacteria. Those can have really important impacts on gut integrity as well, and so we're seeing a whole slew of products that are coming out right now that are they claim to be dead bacteria and they're stable. They are very effective at shifting the immune response, the inflammatory response of the body, including the gut specifically.

Speaker 1: 58:22

So I know, neurohacker, actually they have. Qualia has a symbiotic that has all of the pre the post, like it has all of it in there, right?

Speaker 2: 58:39

Yeah, Fermented foods. It has digestive enzymes to take care of that upper GI tract. It's geared towards the gut brain access, because, again, we're biohackers and we're worried about cognition in large part. And so we have an herb called solastrus in there. That again comes from the Ayurvedic tradition. It's called the intellect tree, a very potent, a new tropic ingredient just to help strengthen that gut brain connection. But, yeah, we have a formula that we're super proud of. We've recently launched. We recently sold out of, you know, we surveyed over 140 ingredients in the GI arena and we whittled it down to these selected few. And so it's, you know, it's a 10 gram scoop that you do five days per week and just kind of, you know, not to overwhelm the body and push pathways too heavily, but just to give the body a little bit of support so that you can create that GI health giving all of those components.

Speaker 1: 59:44

Yeah, it's a great formula. I've tried it. I've tried it, awesome. So here's a question for you, and I'm sure a lot of parents out there will want to know the answer to this.

Speaker 1: 59:58

I have kids who are away and you know they don't live with me. They eat all kinds of garbage I can. I can definitely see proof in that when I see, you know, mcdonald's bags and all kinds of garbage in their rooms. And when they come home next, so you know, over, say, christmas holidays I usually like to do a little protocol with them.

Speaker 1: 1:00:24

What are your, what are your thoughts on that? Because, what I like to do when I have three weeks with one or both of my kids, I like to pulse some of these things in gently, just because they're really bad. I have a whole protocol and they, honestly, they're like be my mom, not my practitioner, right, because, because they'll have, you know, a little supplement schedule, but do they take it? No, right, they don't. When they're away, they don't. So what do you think of, you know, pulsing some little things in? Does that help? You know, like, for example, if I know that one of my kids is maybe having some of their gut issues arise, then if I go and do a little protocol with some alglutamine. Maybe you know some of the other things that we talked about adding some fiber, whatever. Does that have any effect? Does that kind of strengthen things up before they go back again?

Speaker 2: 1:01:26

I mean, it's something I think it's, it's better than nothing. It's better than nothing For sure. Yeah, I mean it really depends on what you're doing. You know my so. So recently my, my older brother, started a detox protocol without asking me any questions.

Speaker 1: 1:01:46

Oh no.

Speaker 2: 1:01:47

I mean, it's a, it's a cascara, a cigarette product with aloe, ferrox, so an irritative, laxative product, and of course, it's very felt, you know, like he was just his bowels were moving, you know, seven times per day, and he's like, oh, this must be working. But I'm like, well, yeah, it's working, but I think it's pushing you too much, and so my recommendation is to get off of that immediately and let's just do something lower force and something that is going to be a little bit slower, a little bit longer term, but actually is creating health. And so that was an interesting conversation, but I will say that I think I think doing that is is really important and, at the very least, I think you're just planting a seed. And so when they're through college and they're living on their own, they're cooking for themselves, they, you know, start becoming more interested in their health as they age. They'll, they'll, they'll reflect back on that and and hopefully, grab a hold of it and make it their own and turn that short term into this long term regimen.

Speaker 2: 1:02:53

I like that. I think that's wonderful. So I think you're teaching them these skills that may may be going over their head right now, but ultimately I think they'll come back to them.

Speaker 1: 1:03:04

Yeah, I think as parents we lead by example and you know we we do our best, obviously, but I think if we can instill cause, one of the things I try so hard to instill with my children is just to eat whole, real foods. You know, with my son he's a bit older and he's got his own place, so I buy the you know the Hello Fresh boxes just to get him cooking, just to get him eating food that you you can actually see and cook and make yourself. And there's cut up onions there, there's cut up. It's easier for him. But Anyway, I just feel, like for any kind of health foundation, especially as it relates to the gut, eat a variety of foods that are whole real foods. Yeah, right, yeah.

Speaker 2: 1:03:54

And I mean, if you want to, there's layers to it, right. If you want to pull off another layer, I mean you could even introduce the allergy elimination challenge diet, which I'm a huge fan of. For me, that's the gold standard of any diet. I think there's a lot of benefit for doing an Ayurvedic diet or a blood type diet or a keto or a paleo or a veg, but ultimately it comes down to your response to the foods that you're eating. So it takes a lot of time and effort and for any kid that's in college or high school, they may not be willing to do something like that, but that is, in my opinion, the gold standard for really shifting their relationship with food over time.

Speaker 1: 1:04:40

Yeah, I think you're 100% right. I cannot because we've hit past an hour and honestly I could ask so many more questions. But I have to ask this because we talked about acid-reducing drugs and then there's the fact that so many people are already low in stomach acid. With people who have SIBO already, they have to be careful with all the stuff that can affect the microbiome. Would you agree?

Speaker 2: 1:05:17

Oh, 100%, yes, yeah.

Speaker 1: 1:05:19

Because I posted something a while back about symbiotic because I mean I loved it, and immediately somebody who has SIBO asked me oh yeah, can I take this? And I'm like, no, no, go see your own practitioner, because I want to make it clear that nobody here is giving you any advice and if you have a medical condition, especially, you better talk to your own practitioner, right?

Speaker 2: 1:05:47

100%, yeah, and ultimately, we're talking about health, not disease, so that's an important distinction here. I will state, though, that by creating health, you can really shift the whole disease process, no doubt, but focused on creating health, not pushing out disease. So, yeah, that is important, and when you get into SIBO, it's incredibly complicated and it's layered, and it really is important to work closely with a practitioner who knows what to do and what to look out for, because some of these things, even though they might be gentle, they can push somebody with SIBO in the wrong direction.

Speaker 1: 1:06:28

Yeah, yeah, and we never even really got into some of the diseases I don't know if you want to go there some of the diseases that are relating to poor gut health. Do you want to touch on that before we close off?

Speaker 2: 1:06:45

I will pass only because obviously dietary supplements in the US we can't touch that Okay, Fair. So I would love to from a physician standpoint, but from a dietary supplement standpoint it's a little bit touchy, Okay.

Speaker 1: 1:07:03

No, I get it. I get it. There's some things going on in Canada too. I understand that totally Okay. Is there anything that we didn't talk about that we need to cover off?

Speaker 2: 1:07:17

Boy we covered a lot today.

Speaker 1: 1:07:18

We did. It's been fun. We certainly did.

Speaker 2: 1:07:21

Yeah, you know, I will say I'm understanding. I feel like a lot of this science and the gut health knowledge is slowly revealing itself to me and I'm figuring out what is real, what's not, what's important, what one thing to focus on versus the 20. And this has been a slow process Even for me. I'm inundated with all of these ideas. I will say what I've been sitting with lately is this very simple idea that everybody's heard but a lot of us aren't doing is this idea of not eating after sunset, and I feel like that is so critically important to resetting the GI tract on a daily basis.

Speaker 2: 1:08:17

And there's this process it's called the MMC, which is the migrating motor complex, and your body turns this on after about two hours of not eating. And once you introduce food, this process stops in the body and it's this peristalsis wave it's called the cleansing wave that goes from, basically, from your esophagus all the way down into your colon. And when you are eating late at night, you're disrupting that entire process. And so this is separate than intermittent fasting. This just means don't eat late at night, after your dinner and before you go to bed, let that MMC process naturally occur and really allow it to take place, and I think that you can get a lot of benefit by not eating after sunset, and so there's so much more I could talk about on that topic, but I have come to learn that that is a critically important element when considering gut health as a whole.

Speaker 1: 1:09:19

You know I love that and last year I actually I became a certified metabolic balance coach and one of the things that I talk about a lot is the fact that everybody's constantly snacking, eating constantly, and it's like you know how you were talking about just even the hunger signal. We lose that right and we're never giving our body that break. So I I'm a big proponent of so I actually did do intermittent fasting for years. I did do it for years until I'm like why am I doing this? Like it, just like it wasn't suiting me, and what was happening was then I'd be like starving by 11 o'clock and I would then gorge and I would be starving and then I would almost. It's almost like that signal was just I needed to eat, eat, eat, eat. And that happens with a lot of people.

Speaker 1: 1:10:19

So I now eat three meals a day, nick. I eat breakfast, I eat lunch and I eat dinner and I wait five hours in between. I don't drink coffee or teas or anything in between. I drink water, sometimes mineralized water, like I'll even have element, something like that between my meals, but no food. And then if I want to have a treat, like I have an apple every single day after my meal, like whether it's lunch dinner sometimes two apples for some reason. That's very satiating for me, but you know it's great for blood sugar, I'll tell you that much. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 1:11:03

I don't do well with intermittent fasting. Everything you're saying I'm like yes.

Speaker 2: 1:11:07

Totally 100% agree. You know again I go back to the Ayurvedic perspective always that it comes down to your body type, and there are certain body types that do very well with intermittent fasting and then there are other body types that don't, and so I think, teasing that apart, you need to personalize your regimen. There isn't this one size fits all. Intermittent fasting is not suitable for every body type. It isn't for mine, it is for what I'll call a kafa body type, which is the larger big bone individual. They do very well with intermittent fasting, but the pitah, the vatahs, they don't, and so I would advise against it.

Speaker 1: 1:11:46

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 1:11:47

I will say too that it's good to create gaps between your meals. From an Ayurvedic perspective, they say listen to your body, and you can do this by watching where you're breathing. And so every hour and a half, every about 90 minutes, your breath shifts from the right nostril to the left, and you're always only breathing through one nostril at a time. And so Ayurveda says you should only eat when you're breathing through the right nostril. Oh, interesting. And you'll notice too, the right nostril is heating and the left one is cooling. And so at night, when you're getting ready to calm down, you need to go to sleep when this one is open and you're feeling that cooling, calming sensation. But you'll notice too, when it's lunchtime and you're feeling that hunger, most likely your right nostril is open. So fascinating. And so Ayurveda says pay attention to those things. That is when you should eat. Don't go against the laws of the universe. Listen to your body.

Speaker 1: 1:12:51

We need to do a show on Ayurvedic medicine because I find it so fascinating and I just don't know enough about it. So we got to do that. We got to do that.

Speaker 2: 1:13:01

I'm all for it. Yeah, it's weird, it's super weird, but again, it's universal. It's based upon these laws that have been used for thousands of years.

Speaker 1: 1:13:09

And so.

Speaker 2: 1:13:10

I think it can be made suitable to the modern world in a non-weird way.

Speaker 1: 1:13:14

Yeah, I like that, I like that. All right, well, tell us, where can we find you anything to summarize? And yeah, let's do that.

Speaker 2: 1:13:25

Yeah, neurohackercom. Neurohacker is widely available on all the social platforms, but Neurohackercom is easily the best place to find products. We are an education first platform, so you find a lot of blogs, a lot of monographs on different ingredients, huge explanations as to why we formulate our products in the way that we formulate them. We also have a podcast we bring on a lot of big guests called Collective Insight. So we love just creating education and putting information out there for individuals. So Neurohackercom- Beautiful.

Speaker 1: 1:14:08

Thank you so much. I really loved our chat today, Nick.

Speaker 2: 1:14:12

Yeah, it was great, thanks no-transcript.