191: Kiran Krishnan: How to Rebuild Your Gut Microbiome & Reduce Inflammation

What if the biggest mistake we're making with gut health is treating the microbiome like a list of bacteria instead of a living ecosystem? Your gut is home to trillions of microorganisms that influence inflammation, metabolism, immune function, hormones, brain health, and longevity. But modern life—from ultra-processed foods and antibiotics to pesticides, chronic stress, and inadequate fiber—may be systematically stripping away the microbial diversity we need to stay healthy. My guest, Kiran Krishnan, is a research microbiologist and microbiome expert who has spent nearly two decades studying these complex microbial ecosystems. He co-founded Microbiome Labs and has helped develop microbiome testing and clinically studied probiotics. Kiran introduced me to the concept of the holobiome: the idea that we aren't simply human cells and human DNA, but walking ecosystems containing millions of microbial genes that perform essential functions throughout the body. We explore what's actually damaging that ecosystem, how poor gut health can contribute to leaky gut, endotoxemia, systemic inflammation, and metabolic dysfunction, and most importantly, what we can do to rebuild it. Kiran breaks down how much fiber we should actually be eating, the difference between soluble and insoluble fiber, why resistant starch and polyphenols matter, what fermented foods really do, and how to think about probiotics and microbiome testing. We also discuss how fasting, sleep, resistance training, outdoor exposure, and even social connection can influence microbial diversity. In this episode, you'll learn: • Why microbial diversity may be one of the most important markers of gut health • How antibiotics, ultra-processed foods, pesticides, and stress can disrupt the gut microbiome • How leaky gut, endotoxemia, chronic inflammation, and metabolic health are connected • How fiber, resistant starch, fermented foods, polyphenols, and probiotics support the gut • Why sleep, fasting, exercise, outdoor exposure, and social connection can help build a more resilient microbiome We also explore the future of gut health, including the limitations of current microbiome testing and how Kiran is using AI and machine learning to develop targeted probiotic combinations around specific biological pathways. My biggest takeaway is that gut health isn't something we fix with one supplement. We are guardians of an incredibly complex ecosystem—and the choices we make every day can either support it or slowly dismantle it. If we want to improve longevity, metabolic health, inflammation, and chronic disease prevention, taking care of our microbiome may be one of the most powerful places to start. Learn more about Dr. Shah: Website: www.drshah.com https://www.drshah.com Clinic: next-health.com https://www.next-health.com/ Instagram: @extend_podcast and @darshanshahmd Learn more about Kiran Krishnan: Website: biomelc.com https://biomelc.com/ Instagram: @kiranbiome Special offer from Kiran! Join the free Circe community here https://login.circle.so/sign_up?request_host=join.biomelc.com#email to get the FREE Leaky Gut Guide and The 5 Pillars to Building a Resilient Gut. Thank You To Our Sponsors: Next Health Longevity Summit: Head to next-health.com/summit https://www.next-health.com/summit to secure your spot at the first ever Next Health Longevity Summit in Nashville on 9/12! Our speakers include Dr. Shah, LeAnn Rimes, Dr. Jeremy London, Dr. Louisa Nicola, Dr. Vonda Wright and many more! This is one day packed with activities like blood tests, recovery modalities, IV's and brands we love that will completely change the way you think about health. Momentous: Head to livemomentous.com https://livemomentous.com and use code DRSHAH for up to 35% off your first order!

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Before we get started with this episode, I'd like to invite all of you to the first ever Next Health Longevity Summit, happening in Nashville, Tennessee, at the Conrad Hotel on Saturday, September 12, 2026. This is an all-day summit where you're going to be hearing from some of the best speakers in longevity's medicine, including Dr. Vonda Wright, Dr. Luisa Nicola, many of the podcast guests that you've heard here on the Extend Podcast, and of course, I'm going to be there, curating the entire day. We also have incredible vendors coming, so you can try the latest technologies in health, wellness, and longevity. Go to next-health.com/summit and buy your ticket today. We only have 400 spots and

• 0:39Dr. Darshan Shah?

  they're going quickly. That's next-health.com/summit. I look forward to seeing you all there.

• 0:49Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Welcome to Extend with me, Dr. Darshan Shah, a podcast dedicated to cutting-edge science, research, tools, and protocols designed to help you extend your health span. Having become one of the youngest doctors in the country at the age of 21, and trained and board-certified at the Mayo Clinic, I've accumulated three decades of practice as a board-certified surgeon and longevity expert. Over that time, I've discovered that a mere 20% of health knowledge yields 80% of the results when it comes to your health span. We are living in a new era where we are creating a new healthcare system, no longer focused on disease management, but achieving optimal health and vitality. Join me as I interview world-renowned experts, offering you a step-by-step guide to proactively avoid disease, and most importantly, extend your health span.

• 1:35Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Welcome to Extend, the podcast dedicated to helping you live a longer, healthier, and more vibrant life. Today, I'm thrilled to welcome a real pioneer in the field of microbiology. His name is Kiran Krishnan. Kiran is a research microbiologist who has dedicated two decades of his life to unraveling the mysteries of the microbiome. We're going to be talking about the microbiome in this episode in-depth. He's the co-founder of Microbiome Labs, where he developed a groundbreaking gut test called Biome FX. And he's also renowned for his ability to translate complex science into understandable insights for consumers

• 2:16Dr. Darshan Shah?

  and for practitioners. Kiran's work has profoundly shifted our understanding of human health, moving us towards a holobiome perspective, which recognizes ourselves as walking, talking rainforest. He's here to demystify the gut, challenge conventional thinking about probiotics, and share why feeding our microbiome is not just important, but our duty to future generations. Let's get ready to rethink everything you thought you knew about your inner ecosystem.

• 2:47Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Kiran, I'm so excited to talk to you on the podcast today. Thank you for making this happen, finally.

• 2:51Speaker 01

  It is my pleasure. Thank you so much for having me. I've been, I've been wanting to come on here.

• 2:55Dr. Darshan Shah?

  It's so funny, because we run into each other coming in and out of podcasts together.

• 2:59Speaker 01

  Yep, and conferences.

• 3:00Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Conferences, yes, yes, like on stage, like, oh, hi, how are you? And then, like, I think I saw you at something in Austin. We were doing a podcast.

• 3:09Speaker 01

  Skinny Confidential.

• 3:10Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Skinny Confidential. How was it going on? And you just came off?

• 3:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:13Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, that was fun.

• 3:13Speaker 01

  That was fun. And then at A4M and IFM and all these shows. So we've been running around in the same circles for some time, and I'm really excited to sit down with you.

• 3:22Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Finally, yes, exactly. So, you know, you had told me that you just launched this new course for consumers and for physicians and practitioners on the microbiome. And I was super excited about that, because it is one of the most confusing topics for practitioners and for people. If it's confusing for practitioners, who can't explain it to, you know, their patients, it's going to be a confusing topic, right? And your superpower is that you're able to break this down in such a way that it makes it very understandable. And so, I'm really excited to have this convo with you and just kind of dive deep into the microbiome.

• 3:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, I love it. That it's, I've been living and breathing the microbiome for the last 20 years, and my training is as a microbiologist. And so, ecosystems of microbes and network systems of microbes fits really well in the way my brain works, and somehow it makes a lot of sense to me. And then being able to translate it is my passion. So I'm excited to be able to talk about it.

• 4:15Dr. Darshan Shah?

  I love that. So I'm going to ask you a question, just to get things started. You know, you talk about ecosystems right now. A lot of the focus sometimes, I think, when people have a, get a microbiome test done, is they get diagnosed with a deficiency of some sort of critical strain of bacteria in their gut, right? And then the reflex reaction, then, and I see this practitioners do, is let me go find a probiotic that has that strain and just give it back to you, right? Is there a problem with that?

• 4:44Speaker 01

  There is, yeah. Number one, there's a couple of assumptions under, with that kind of premise, right, that we know are completely erroneous, that are wrong. Number one, the, one of the, one of the assumptions is that it's singular microbes that drive functionality in the microbiome. And it's not. We know, we know it's not. We know it's a very complex network system. There is cross-feeding, there's layered fermentation, there is cross-talk between microbes in your immune system, and microbes influence one another quite a bit. And so, we also don't know what you may be missing as an individual, because there isn't a standard microbiome that fits everybody, right? You and I, even though we're both human beings, we could have as different, 50% differences

• 5:29Speaker 01

  in our microbiome, right? But functionality is conserved, and that's what's really important with the microbiome, right? So we have something called functional redundancy within the microbiome. So for example, both our microbiomes should be producing short-chain fatty acids, like butyrate, right? But the microbes in your microbiome that produce most of the butyrate may be different than the microbes in my microbiome that produce most butyrate, right? And so if we're looking, for example, for Bacteriaceae Caucasus pulisicum as like a big butyrate producer, right? We, we know that that's an important butyrate producer. We look at it in your microbiome and go, oh my God, he has great levels of Bacteriaceae Caucasus. So he's fine. And then they look at my microbiome, they go, well, we barely

• 6:09Speaker 01

  detected any, so he must be off. We need to replace it somehow. That's a falsehood, because I could have F. coli, Bacteriaceae, Prosinococcus, all producing butyrate, right? So that premise that singular organisms are really important, and we have to find the one that's missing and replacing it is an oversimplified way of thinking about it. In fact, it's a very kind of allopathic way of thinking about it, right?

• 6:34Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Exactly.

• 6:35Speaker 01

  Yeah. And that's why it loses the ecosystem nature component of it.

• 6:40Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, and I love that you mentioned this, an allopathic way of looking at it, because in Western medicine, which is allopathic medicine, we find a deficiency and we correct it with a molecule. And that's not how the microbiome works. To your point, it's an ecosystem, there's a lot of different organisms that can work together to do the same thing at the end of the day. And so really looking at it, at it as a functional organ system, right, I think is, is a better way to think of the microbiome.

• 7:08Speaker 01

  Totally. You know, if you look at Estroblome, right, very important constellation of microbes, right, that help recycle estrogen in, in cycling women, and then that level starts to reduce as you enter perimenopause. But Estroblome can be made up of 40, 50 different species, right? And that, the, who makes up Estroblome could be different from person to person. And so if we're looking for singular players within the Estroblome constellation, we may miss the fact that they have adequate Estroblome, because we're looking for the individual players, rather than the collective of the ecosystem, right? And so, if you're looking at it, then if you're looking at what are all the microbes that play a role in Estroblome, and we see that in each individual at adequate amounts, it gives us a better

• 7:51Speaker 01

  understanding that the functionality is preserved, right? Even though certain species may not be present, the functionality is still preserved.

• 7:58Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right, right. And so, to your point, like, okay, you mentioned Estroblome, you mentioned short-chain fatty acid production. Let me ask you, what are the number of different functional capacities of the microbiome? It seems like, you know, the, it does some very important functions, and, you know, we mentioned two of them right now. How many different functions are there?

• 8:19Speaker 01

  At this point, it seems like an infinite number, right? Which is crazy. And, and the thing that actually illustrates this is that you, you look at how sophisticated we are as a species, right? We're the top of the evolutionary ladder, top of the food chain. We have around 22,000 functional genes, right? And it sounds like a lot, but a cockroach has 22,000 functional genes, right? And an earthworm has about 30,000 functional genes, right? And so you go, well, how are we so sophisticated? Well, we've got over two and a half million microbial genes in our system. And as it turns out, we use a lot of that genetics for functionality. And so I think the, that we're at the tip of the iceberg in terms of understanding the functions that microbes afford to us, which is why we have

• 9:04Speaker 01

  a new term for a human. The new term is a holobiome, right? A holobiome, the definition of a holobiome is a superorganism. We are essentially a walking, talking rainforest, right? We are made up of lots of different ecosystems that have to work together and communicate with one another in order to perpetuate the health of the whole. And if we start dismantling any component of that ecosystem, the dominos start to fall. So when we were building, so the gut test I built when I was at Microbiome Labs, it's called Biome FX. At that time, we could find about 40 well-defined functions that we knew were important to health, that we could detect within the microbiome. But that was

• 9:45Speaker 01

  just tipping the iceberg, right? So we knew that that crevasse would be endless as the research comes out more and more, because of the vast genetics of the microbiome.

• 9:55Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, and people talk about the gut immune connection, the gut-heart connection, the gut-brain connection. Is connected to everything.

• 10:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:01Dr. Darshan Shah?

  To your point, which I love this as a even a philosophical model of thinking of ourselves as humans is we are. We're a collection of DNA from many different organisms together that happen to live within this one vessel that we have.

• 10:16Speaker 01

  Right.

• 10:16Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And we're only consciously aware of what's happening in our brain, right? But there's so much else going on. And to that point, too, you know, our, our mitochondria. They have an independent set of their own genes and they are come from an independent organism.

• 10:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:33Dr. Darshan Shah?

  That came into our cells from the very beginning of human evolution. So looking at it as like a holobioome, as you say, makes a lot of sense.

• 10:41Speaker 01

  Yeah. And, and what I really want people to understand, right? So if we'll talk about a lot of cool stuff in this conversation. But if there's one thing I want people to take away from this is that if you have the holobioome mentality, what you start to understand is two really important things. Number one is that you harbor a very important ecosystem that has been developed over centuries, if not millennia. Right? Like our ancestors, all the trials and tribulations they went to and all that helped collect this collection of, of microbes. That makes us function.

• 11:14Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 11:14Speaker 01

  And it becomes part of our duty to optimize it and pass it on to the next generation. Right? This is where the human intelligence sits. It sits within each of our bodies. Right? And it becomes our individual duty to pass it on to the next generation. And I say that without hyperbole because if you think about the amount of functionality that the microbiome affords you. Right? If we don't pass on high diversity to our next generation, effectively what we're doing is we are handicapping them with function. Right? It'd be the same as if we said, the choices you and I are making today means that our kids would be born without a spleen. People would go, whoa, what are you doing then? Right? Like you gotta pay attention to it, right?

• 11:59Speaker 01

  And then the generation after that's born without a spleen and only one kidney. Right? It would be very traumatic to think about that, but that's what we're doing. Our microbiomes in the, in the 15,000 or so microbiome tests that I've done at, at microbiome labs, we were seeing average diversity counts of around 140 species. Right? We're supposed to have upwards of 10,000 species in the microbiome.

• 12:24Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Wow.

• 12:24Speaker 01

  Right? Our closest, you know, hunter gatherer foraging ancestors, the Hadza tribe in Tanzania and Papua New Guineas and all that. They have seven, eight, 900 functional organism species within their microbiome. Even since the last, say, you know, 500 years, we've lost probably 60% of the diversity in our microbiome, which means we've lost functionality.

• 12:48Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Wow.

• 12:48Speaker 01

  Right? So that's, that's crazy.

• 12:50Dr. Darshan Shah?

  So how do we know that? How do we know the microbiome of our ancestors before the Hadza tribe, for example?

• 12:54Speaker 01

  Yeah. So a couple of different ways. So, so there are some really amazing microbial ecologists that are doing, you know, like investigations. Basically what they're doing is they've looked at glacial ice cores. They're looking at what the environmental microbes look like because there is a corollary between environmental microbes and our microbes. Cause we're in constant osmosis with the outside environment, right? We're shedding microbes and we're picking up microbes from the environment. So when you look at the diversity within the microbiome and the types of compositions of bacteria that are, that exist in the environmental microbiome, it's a corollary to what the human microbiome looked like. They also have looked at guts of ancient fossilized animals.

• 13:36Speaker 01

  So like bees, honeybees that are fossilized in amber. They've gone in and looked at what's in the gut and been able to played out certain microbes and understand what the microbiome looks like in those animals that we existed with. And then a lot of it is also doing modeling work based on existing hunter gatherer tribes. Right? So the Papua New Guinea tribes and all that, that lived the way our ancestors did just a few hundred, if not a few thousand years ago.

• 14:02Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 14:03Speaker 01

  So there's a lot of great modeling that's been done to understand that there is a steady decline in diversity.

• 14:09Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 14:09Speaker 01

  You know, and part of that, what that helps answer is also why are we born with less and less functionality? Right? If you think about modern medicine and all the research that has gone into biology and medicine and all that, why is it that each generation is born with a higher incidence rates of allergies and asthma and spectrum disorders? And, you know, all of these, these chronic dysfunctions.

• 14:33Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 14:33Speaker 01

  A lot of it can be answered by what is happening to the microbiome from generation to generation. You know, and we're decimating it. So, so keeping that holobioome in mind, right? So that's one is like we, we, it becomes our duty to harbor these organisms. Optimize them as much as we can and then pass them on to the next generation. The second thing is about feeding the microbiome, right? Because we are guardians of this very important ecosystem. And the way I want people to think about it is that with every meal that they consume, what in that meal have you chosen to put that feeds your microbiome? Right? How have you fed your microbiome? And it's, I could just see T-shirts, it's 12 o'clock. Have you fed your microbiome today? Right? Like I want people to actively think about that. It's like, you know, having kids, right?

• 15:17Speaker 01

  You would never not think about feeding your kids. You're the guardian of that child. We're the guardian of the microbiome and we constantly forget to feed them. Right? And there's very specific things they want to eat.

• 15:28Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah. Going back to diversity, I just want to focus on this a little bit more. What are we doing to reduce the diversity of our microbiome right now?

• 15:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:35Dr. Darshan Shah?

  I mean, obviously we need to feed our bacteria, but like to your point, we have less and less diversity every subsequent generation. Why is that happening?

• 15:44Speaker 01

  There's a, there's a couple of things that are really driving it. Number one, the environment that we live in right now. Right? So we know that pesticides, herbicides, antimicrobials in food sources, preservatives, all of those kill microbes. And so it's, it's reducing diversity quite a bit as a result of that. And the thing about the microbiome that's really important is the cross feeding element of it, right? So if you harm a certain layer of microbes, then what you're doing is you're reducing the amount of substrates that they produce. And those substrates generally feed another layer of microbes.

• 16:17Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Got it.

• 16:17Speaker 01

  Right? So you don't have to kill off all the bacteria to reduce diversity. You can just kill off a certain layer of bacteria and then other bacteria that depend on them and their metabolism stop functioning as well. Right? And so it doesn't take much to harm diversity over a matter of few years. I'll give you an example of a study we did with King's College in London. What we were looking at was a pristine five year old's microbiome.

• 16:43Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Okay.

• 16:43Speaker 01

  Right? So this was a child that we had to find out of the fjords of Netherlands somewhere, right? So we were looking for a vaginal birth, like full term vaginal birth, breastfed for at least one year. At that time, when we took the microbiome, very few vaccines, no antibiotic courses or anything. We found this pristine microbiome and we use this system called the Schein system, which is a simulated GI tract, right? So it has everything from the stomach all the way down to the distal colon. And it has a full mucosa, mucosa layer, epithelial layer, and you inoculate it with a microbiome and you stabilize the microbiome. And then you stabilize it for three weeks. You feed it like you would feed a human. So you feed it food and all that, and it moves through the system.

• 17:24Speaker 01

  And it's a really, really accurate model of what happens to the microbiome when you feed it certain things.

• 17:29Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right?

• 17:30Speaker 01

  And we published a number of studies using the Schein model. So we ran a bunch of these models in parallel and what we said was in two of them, we're going to take what is the EPA accepted levels of glyphosate in, in cereals, in, in children's cereals, and expose that microbiome to that and see what happens to it over three weeks. Right? So then we had the control ones and then we had the ones that we fed the EPA accepted levels. What we found, and this paper got published, was that in as little as three weeks, we saw a significant change in that microbiome that made it look more like the microbiome of someone with IBD, with inflammatory bowel disease. Right? It went from a pristine, high diversity, five year old's microbiome

• 18:14Speaker 01

  that was producing lots of short chain fatty acids, you know, making amino acids and peptides and metabolic, was metabolically perfectly healthy. It started shifting towards a microbiome that was making branched chain amino acids, lots of ammonia. Right? Lots of things like peak Cressall, which is another toxic element. So it completely shifted the microbiome with that small microdosing of those, of that pesticide over time. And so that right there just illustrates, you know, that consistent daily exposure to these types of chemicals has a profound effect on the microbiome.

• 18:51Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Wow. Yeah. I mean, that's a, that's a, that's a really good point that I think there's these invisible things that we're putting into our environment, like glyphosate is one of them. You can't see it. People talk about it every once in a while, but they don't really, you know, make it, make it known that eating organic is going to help your microbiome. Right? And so I think there's a lot that, that's happening out there that's ruining our microbiome. But we don't even like deal with it. We just live with it day to day.

• 19:15Speaker 01

  We do. Yeah. When we, when it doesn't even really settle upon us that it's harming this ecosystem that we're supposed to harbor. And when we do that, we're actually setting ourselves up for disease quite significantly. Right? So the other things that actually harm the microbiome, so the pesticides, herbicides and all that. And then of course, all the chemicals in our food.

• 19:34Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 19:34Speaker 01

  The overuse of antibiotics.

• 19:36Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Just work with the chemicals in the food found mostly in, I was just think you're talking about ultra processed.

• 19:41Speaker 01

  Ultra processed food.

• 19:42Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Like with the food dyes and the, and the preservatives.

• 19:46Speaker 01

  Antimicrobials.

• 19:47Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Antimicrobials.

• 19:48Speaker 01

  All of those things.

• 19:49Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Okay.

• 19:50Speaker 01

  To some degree now, the microplastics that are found too. There's some early evidence that the microplastics have a negative effect on the microbiome as well. So, and of course, majority of Americans are Assuming ultra-processed fruits. And then the other, the double whammy about the ultra-processed fruits is not only can it be actually harmful to the microbiome, there's nothing in them that actually feeds the microbiome either.

• 20:10Dr. Darshan Shah?

  That's true too. You know, and so. You become full and then you don't have anything that your microbiome can eat.

• 20:15Speaker 01

  Totally. Yeah. I mean, you don't have space for fiber and polyphenols and all that, right? So, so that's a double whammy to the microbiome. And then the third thing is the fact that we're not feeding the microbiome or the average American eats about eight to 10 grams of fiber per day, right, which is wholly inadequate to feed the microbiome. You look at some of our hunter gatherer tribes, right? They're eating over 150 grams a day of fiber and resistant starches. Then the overuse of antibiotics, you know, even the CDC, a number of years estimated that around 50% of the antibiotic prescriptions are unnecessary. And antibiotics save lives and they're necessary in the right time, but they're certainly over prescribed as well.

• 20:54Dr. Darshan Shah?

  When I went to medical school, they were, they taught us basically that there's no downside to giving an antibiotic. So if someone's kind of sick, give them an antibiotic, it's fine.

• 21:02Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. You know, they come in with, I actually had a, we were working with a number of urgent care centers in Chicago. And we were trying to create a probiotic for them to help with viral issues, right? And it was really interesting, the conversations we had because they were giving antibiotics for what they know to be viral issues, right? And the antibiotic's not going to help.

• 21:23Dr. Darshan Shah?

  No.

• 21:23Speaker 01

  But what they said was that people come in and they expect to walk out with a pill, right? Or they're not going to be happy and they're not going to come back next time. They're going to go to the place down the road that's willing to write a script, right? And so they're doing, well willing to do it. And the reason, because they don't have the understanding that it actually does cause harm, right? And taking that one step further, there was a great study out of Johns Hopkins that looked at people who were on antibiotics. So they took individuals that were given a course of antibiotics at the hospital. They did microbiome, you know, ecosystem sampling, and they figured out what that person's microbiome looks like before the antibiotic. Then they measured it throughout the course of the antibiotic and then for six months after they stopped the antibiotic. What they found, of course, was taking the antibiotic had a significant disruption to the microbiome.

• 22:07Speaker 01

  That was also present six months after stopping it. But what was super interesting about this study is they also followed the individuals that lived in the same household. And they saw similar patterns of disruption to that individual on the antibiotic, even though the people in the household were not taking an antibiotic. Right? So it just shows this biome cloud that we live in.

• 22:28Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Sure.

• 22:29Speaker 01

  Within a household. And if one person's microbiome is significantly disrupted, it actually impacts others.

• 22:35Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 22:36Speaker 01

  In the household as well, you know? And so you think about the domino effect of that, right? In, in the ecosystem, in our society. So antibiotics is another one. And then stress. Stress is such a potent disruptor of the microbiome. There's a very strong connection and it's a cyclical issue between how stress disrupts the microbiome. And then as a result of the changes in the microbiome, it actually makes you more susceptible to stress. Right? And then that stress that you're now more susceptible to disrupts the microbiome further. And the cycle keeps going, right? Yeah. And so, in fact, there was a 2015 publication in frontiers of immunology and they went through the pathology of it.

• 23:20Speaker 01

  And they basically presented a case that stress-induced leaky gut, which I'm sure you've talked about a good amount, was the number one cause of mortality and morbidity worldwide.

• 23:32Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Really?

• 23:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, because they could.

• 23:33Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Stress-induced leaky gut.

• 23:34Speaker 01

  Because they could connect the clinical effect of leaky gut, which is endotoxemia, the presence of LPS in circulation to the vast majority of chronic conditions and how it propagates most of the chronic conditions.

• 23:47Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 23:47Speaker 01

  Right? So, so we cannot overstate the importance of thinking about not only the health of the microbiome, but then the consequence of the dysfunction, which is intestinal permeability.

• 23:57Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 23:57Speaker 01

  And the chronic low-grade inflammation that comes along with that.

• 23:59Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right, right. Okay. So I just want to put a bow around all the reasons our microbiome is not healthy. What we're doing to it, right? So we're not feeding it. We are putting toxins in our gut that kill it. One of those toxins is antibiotics. Another one that, you know, I always talk about too is like non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs. Most prescription drugs are not good for your.

• 24:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:21Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Microbiome, right? So the less prescription drugs you're taking, the better. And one of the things that we do at Nex Health is we try to, you know, take people off of their prescription drugs just by getting them healthier in conjunction with their primary care doctor, making sure everyone's on the same page, obviously. I think another thing that, you know, is very important to talk about is also alcohol, stress being a major one as well. These are all the things that you can try to avoid ultra-processed food. So your microbiome has a fighting chance.

• 24:48Speaker 01

  Yes, exactly.

• 24:49Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right? And then once you're, once you give your microbiome a fighting chance, then there are things that you can do to feed your microbiome and keep it healthier, right?

• 24:59Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 24:59Dr. Darshan Shah?

  But before I get to that, I do want to highlight this diversity thing again, right? Because I think a lot of, a lot of what is really helpful is having the most diverse microbiome that you can. And that means diversity means many different types of strains of bacteria that are in there, living synergistically. How does someone increase the diversity of their microbiome?

• 25:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, that is probably the most important question regarding the microbiome. Because we know that high diversity is the gold standard mark of a healthy microbiome. It's resilient and it wards off disease processes and all that. We also know that there's a lot of longevity-related studies showing that high diversity is associated with longevity, right? So how do you favor diversity? Now, here's, here's a good news. Many people may have gotten a gut test and they would show like, oh my God, I don't have any of bifidobacteria in there. I don't have any of this genus in the, in the microbiome or my diversity is really low. In most cases, those organisms are present. Their numbers are just so low that it's even hard to pick up on a test, right? Most gut health tests are probability game.

• 26:06Speaker 01

  Because the ecosystem is very complex. It's really hard to pick up every last bacteria that's in there. So, so if the numbers are so low, the chances of picking it up are low. And so you may not show up on the test. So I don't want people to get discouraged if they've had a gut test and they've seen that their diversity is incredibly low, that the microbes aren't even there. I can't do anything about it, right? So they're there and you can do something about it. The most powerful thing is food, right? Food impacts microbiome more than anything else and it's fiber. It's a combination of soluble and insoluble fiber. My recommendation always is about 70% soluble fiber, about 30% insoluble. Throw in some resistant starches in there and then prebiotics like oligosaccharides, which are our first foods within the microbiome, right?

• 26:49Speaker 01

  But now as adults, we don't have to get them for breast milk, breast milk anymore. We can get them from fruits, fructose oligosaccharides, xylitoligosaccharides that come from the inner part of the corn cob. And then there's galacto oligosaccharides that come from fermented dairy as well. So those can be very powerful for the microbiome, increasing diversity. The second part of it is what I call exposure. Exposure is reduction of your exposure to things that harm the microbiome, but increasing exposure to things that we know drive diversity within the microbiome. The main thing is other people and outdoors, right? So getting together with other people, right? Just in, in small groups, spending time together, having dinner together, right?

• 27:31Speaker 01

  Having people over to your house rather than just talking on the phone or chatting with people online, right? Yeah. The old school stuff.

• 27:39Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Being social.

• 27:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, being social, right?

• 27:40Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Who knew that one of the other benefits of being social is more diversity in your microbiome?

• 27:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:46Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Maybe that's why people that are more social live longer.

• 27:49Speaker 01

  Absolutely, right? And there's another, there's a, there's actually a biochemical element to that as well. Because social interactions also increase oxytocin. And oxytocin has been known to help the diversity of the microbiome as well, right? So we know that the microbiome wants you to be social.

• 28:05Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 28:06Speaker 01

  Right? It's a very important part of the ecosystem. And then the other aspect of that is being outdoors, right? So there's lots of studies showing that people that live in rural areas or in the countryside have more, much more diverse microbiomes than people live in urban areas, right? But if you live in an urban area, what can you do? You can go for walks and hikes and all that and canyons and, you know, natural habitats and the beach, wherever you are. And one tip on that is when you go out in these natural habitats, go and eat something there. It's the most natural way to engage with that outside environment, right? So bring an orange, an apple, a sandwich, whatever it may be. And sit down on a rock, sit down somewhere and just eat. Now, don't use a hand sanitizer on your hand before you do it, right?

• 28:50Speaker 01

  But just sit down and eat. It's one of the most natural ways to engage with the, with the environment. And it has an impact on your microbiome. Then the, the next thing I would say is managing stress, of course. When you reduce stress, your microbiome diversity will go up. You will actually start seeing proliferation of more species that weren't able to grow under a fight or flight state. Then another tip is sleep. So the microbiome is a diurnal system, right? There are certain microbes that only propagate when you're sleeping at night.

• 29:21Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Really?

• 29:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, they turn on housekeeping genes, right? They, they induce the mitophagy and the autophagy, the cleaning up of the cells and the increasing the mitochondrial function. They do all of this cleanup work. They up, they upregulate something called a migrating motor complex, which is that electrical sweeping through the gut, right? So all of these important things, but they only can grow when you're sleeping. And so if you don't sleep adequately, you don't give them a chance to grow.

• 29:47Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 29:47Speaker 01

  Another one, which is also a little bit counterintuitive, is fasting, right? So a little bit of intermittent fasting actually increases the diversity of the microbiome. And the reason for that is also because the microbiome is a layered. Feeding system, right? So when you take in a bunch of food at dinner, for example, and you've got, say, starches and carbohydrates and fibers and polyphenols all in there, the primary digesters are going to take those macronutrients and start breaking it down.

• 30:13Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Got it.

• 30:14Speaker 01

  Right? And then they make substrates like acetate, lactate, and so on, that then feed the next layer. They make substrates that feed the next layer, but those next two layers can only do their feeding when there's no more food coming in. Right? So a 12, 13, 14 hour period of nothing coming in gives them a chance to proliferate as well.

• 30:32Dr. Darshan Shah?

  That's a really good point.

• 30:33Speaker 01

  Yeah. So just those few things alone.

• 30:36Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yes.

• 30:36Speaker 01

  Will will start to dramatically increase your diversity of your microbiome.

• 30:40Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And what about, I just want to add one last one is eating a diverse, a diverse diet, right? Just like, you know, making sure you have all the different colors of vegetables and and also just diversifying different food choices. Does that help?

• 30:54Speaker 01

  Absolutely. Yeah. The more diverse your diet is, the more diverse your microbiome will be.

• 30:59Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Okay.

• 30:59Speaker 01

  And even even similar categories of foods, right? So if you look at roots and tubers, right, you might think like, oh, they're all the same. No, each one is a little bit different. Have different carbohydrate structures that feed different microbes. One of the tips I always give people is go to an ethnic grocery store. You know, like we have amazing Asian marts and Mediterranean grocery stores, and you'll find fruits and vegetables and tubers and all that there that you don't find at the Whole Foods down the road and just pick one or two of them up, you know, and add them in your diet.

• 31:28Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 31:28Speaker 01

  The more diverse your diet is, the more robust your microbiome is going to be. Absolutely.

• 31:32Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Absolutely. And maybe even adding different spices and different seasonings, right?

• 31:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 31:38Dr. Darshan Shah?

  All of that's helpful. The more you can eat the full spectrum of vegetables and fruits and spices, I think it's very helpful, too.

• 31:45Speaker 01

  It is. And, you know, and the thing is, like, if we look at the behaviors, the lifestyle choices that that are associated with longevity, healthier outcomes and all that, right? All of them actually help improve the microbiome and the diversity of the microbiome, which is maybe one of the ways in which all of these healthy choices help you live longer, right? So like the things we talked about, the sleep, more improved sleep, movement outdoors, going for walks and things like that, right? Social behavior, high diversity of of real foods. Then there's another one, actually, that that I'm sure you do a good amount and I love to do as well, is resistance training.

• 32:23Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 32:23Speaker 01

  Right? As it turns out, when you lift weights, it increases the expression of myokines. And these myokines actually have a direct effect on your gut microbiome. The lining of your gut, the diversity of the microbiome and so on. So lifting things, moving things, moving weights around and all that also can be very good for your gut, very good for your gut health.

• 32:43Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And I think, you know, it's a really important point to mention here is that a lot of the longevity benefits of sleep and exercise come from a direct effect on the organs of your muscles and your brain, but also can come from a healthier microbiome.

• 32:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:55Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And so I think, thinking of it that way, that to your point of the, you know, the holotropic organism, like, it makes sense that if you're healthy, your microbiome's healthy.

• 33:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. Yeah. If you're healthy, the ecosystem in which the microbes live is a healthy ecosystem, right? And they can proliferate.

• 33:14Dr. Darshan Shah?

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• 33:57Dr. Darshan Shah?

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• 34:05Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Can we talk about feeding the microbiome? Now, you talk about fiber, insoluble and soluble. I think a lot of people, they go out and they buy a fiber supplement because most people know there's not enough fiber in our diet. And so they'll buy a fiber supplement. But I find that they're just buying a purely insoluble fiber supplement, right?

• 34:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:23Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And so those are the kinds that, you know, kind of get your bowels moving. You, if you're constipated, people will buy that.

• 34:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:30Dr. Darshan Shah?

  But the insoluble part of this, that seems to be something that people are missing. Is that a different supplement if you're not getting enough fiber in your diet?

• 34:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. So I want to make sure people understand, right? So in terms of what it does to your bowels, right? So soluble will slow down your bowels, right? So people think S for soluble, S for slow. Insoluble speeds up your bowels. And so now, which one do you need more, right? In fact, you need all of them, but some people may benefit more from one or the other. One good way to understand that is actually time your bowels. Right? Like people, everyone should be under, everyone should understand the transit time of their bowels. Right? We should have an idea of that. Now, how do you, how do you understand that? So basically, when you eat something, you want it to come out the other end somewhere around 24 to 30 ish hours.

• 35:21Speaker 01

  Right? If it comes out in 12 hours, it's coming out way too fast, right? You need to slow down your bowels. If it's coming out in 40 hours, it's taking way too long and you need to speed up your bowels.

• 35:31Dr. Darshan Shah?

  So once a day is probably a good metric.

• 35:33Speaker 01

  About once a day. Yes, it's perfect. And so then how do you time it on your own? Well, the easiest thing is eat a bunch of beets, right, for one of your meals.

• 35:41Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Ah, right.

• 35:41Speaker 01

  And then, and you'll see that coming out in the toilet. So look for it. Next few times you go, you defecate. When you see the red color of the beets coming out, know when you had, when you consumed it, kind of time your bowels and see, are you in that 24, 30 hour range, right? If you're much slower than that, then you know, okay, I need to speed up my bowels. So I might need about half of my fiber source as insoluble, which speeds up the bowels, and then the other half is soluble. If it's coming out too fast, like 15 hours, 14 hours, then you probably need more soluble than insoluble, right? So 80% soluble. Well, what's the difference between these two fibers, right? So soluble fibers are basically fibers that bind water, and they'll form a gel in your gut.

• 36:25Speaker 01

  The beauty of that is it has another effect on top of it, right? For your metabolism, it blunts the glucose response and it makes you feel full. Right? So you eat less. It has kind of a, you know, like a GLP-1 like effect, right? So it slows down gastric emptying, it blunts the glucose response, and it makes you feel full, so you'll take in less calories. And it's a very, very powerful effect. Well, I've done studies on this. I've worked with companies that have done research on this, and the effect is it can blunt glucose response up to 60 to 70%.

• 36:56Dr. Darshan Shah?

  That's massive.

• 36:57Speaker 01

  Right? It's massive, right? And so your, your blood sugar levels stay fairly uniform throughout the day. You don't see the big spikes, you know, over 200 and then drop back down to 90 and back again and over and over. It's staying in that 120, 130 range and then until you fast and it starts to come back down, right? And so taking the soluble fiber before a meal is really important. So the best way to do that is the most well-known soluble fiber, psyllium husk.

• 37:23Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 37:24Speaker 01

  Right? It binds water. Now, psyllium husk is not necessarily good fiber for your microbiome. And the reason for that is it's very poorly fermented. So it's not necessarily going to feed your microbiome. Now, it's great for the blunting effect and the metabolic benefit. So I always recommend psyllium husk as part of that fiber intake. But you also want in there things like PHGG, partially hydrolyzed guar gum, right? Inulin can also be effective in there, right? Peptens can also be effective in there. So these are arabinogalactans.

• 37:55Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 37:56Speaker 01

  So you'll see some, some supplements that have these particular fibers in there. These are collections of soluble fiber. What's good about them is that they form different kinds of gels. Some of them are high viscosity gels, some of them are low viscosity gels. So some of those gels will move further down your bowel and stop things lower in your bowel. And some of them will stop things higher up in your bowel because they're a higher viscosity gel. The other thing the diversity of fibers gives you is that it feeds different microbes in different parts of your colon. You want gel, you want fibers that feed microbes in your transverse colon, in your ascending and descending to get the maximum benefit.

• 38:32Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 38:32Speaker 01

  Of it, right? So you want a diversity of soluble fibers. You want four or five different types. And then if you're doing insoluble fibers, it's going to be more things like nuts and seeds and, you know, those types of things that you may consume, right? But my goal, the way I do it every time, is I do five grams minimum of a supplemental soluble fiber, about 15 minutes before every meal. And then in my meal, I ensure I have at least five grams of fiber as part of the meal itself.

• 39:00Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Makes sense.

• 39:00Speaker 01

  Right? From fruits and vegetables and other things. And it's super easy for people to Google and go, what are some good food sources of soluble fiber? You'll find all kinds of things, peppers and tomatoes and carrots, that everything has soluble fiber in it. Right? So then I know I'm getting about 10 grams with every meal at least. And then two to three meals, usually three meals throughout the day for me, that's about 30 grams of fiber that I know I'm getting, right? And then there's other fibers because I eat nuts throughout the day and so on. I'm getting myself up to 40 grams.

• 39:29Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Got it.

• 39:30Speaker 01

  Right? And everybody should be around 40 to 50 grams, not starting tomorrow. You have to build up to it, but that should be the goal.

• 39:37Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Makes sense.

• 39:38Speaker 01

  Because the data on that is very compelling.

• 39:41Dr. Darshan Shah?

  It's very good, right?

• 39:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's one of the most powerful things you can do for your health.

• 39:44Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Absolutely. You know, one of my friends, Dr. Karan Rajan, I don't know if you know Dr. Rajan?

• 39:49Speaker 01

  I know him well, yeah.

• 39:50Dr. Darshan Shah?

  He made a really great fiber supplement called Lo.

• 39:52Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 39:53Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Which has like, I think, eight different types of fibers in it that can be an easy way to kind of hack this because I find it difficult to like get all these Different fibers and things and inulin and all these supplements. I'm just like, his fiber brings it all together into one.

• 40:06Speaker 01

  It does. And it's tasteless, I believe, and it completely dissolves.

• 40:09Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Really good. You can put it in your coffee. You can put it in your water. You don't even taste it.

• 40:14Speaker 01

  Yeah. And what I think about something like that is it allows us to think about how do we feed our microbiome before we feed ourselves?

• 40:21Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 40:21Speaker 01

  Right? Let's feed the biome first, then we eat, right? That's the proper mindset of a good guardian of this ecosystem, right?

• 40:29Dr. Darshan Shah?

  It's like having a pet, right? Like if you have a pet, you're not gonna, I re-feed our pet right before we sit down for breakfast and dinner. And then our pet gets fed and we know.

• 40:37Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 40:38Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And, and it's not there at our, you know, seats begging for food.

• 40:41Speaker 01

  Right. Same with our kids, right? Our kids and babies and all that. We're gonna feed them before we sit down and eat ourselves. We're gonna ensure that they have adequate nutrition and give them what they need because we have guardianship over them.

• 40:54Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Exactly.

• 40:54Speaker 01

  Right? And we have guardianship over our microbiome. So we need to shift that mentality.

• 40:58Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right, absolutely. Last category on this topic is fermented food. Can you talk about how that works?

• 41:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, fermented foods are really interesting. So one of the biggest misnomers that I heard when I got into the health and wellness industry, um, looking at gut health, was that fermented foods were loaded with probiotics, right? When they're not. They are amazing. They are predigested foods that have a lot of amazing active nutrients in them that are really good for the gut. But the bacteria that are doing the fermentation will die in the stomach, right? They're not gonna go in your gut and live there and do a bunch of amazing things. But that doesn't mean fermented foods are not really important for the microbiome. If you can tolerate them, because there are some people that'll have a hard time tolerating certain types of fermented foods. If you can tolerate them, I would certainly add a small portion of fermented foods, at least in one or two of your meals.

• 41:47Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 41:48Speaker 01

  You know, one of my favorite things that I add is, uh, kimchi.

• 41:50Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Same.

• 41:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, right. It's super easy. It's delicious. I need spice in everything I eat anyway, you know? It's either sriracha, kimchi, or, or, uh, Indian pickles, like pickle mangoes and things, right? And so I'm always adding some sort of fermented spice in there as well. And normally that's, that's good enough. You know, you're getting those organic acids and, and, uh, the peptides and things that are being made during the fermentation.

• 42:13Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, for sure. So, you know, one of the things that happens when your gut is, your gut microbiome is not healthy, is directly in the gut, right? And what happens is your gut microbiome is not healthy. So then your gut cells are exposed to a lot more of the toxins, because your microbiome is not there to protect it. And your gut cells, you're actually, which are only one cell layer thick, your gut endothelium, then start separating from each other because they're just not healthy. And then the separation causes what's known as leaky gut. And when you have leaky gut, bacteria start getting through into your bloodstream. And a way to measure that is by measuring LPS or lipopolysaccharide from bacteria.

• 42:54Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And that causes what is known as endotoxemia. So I just wanted to paint that whole kind of picture for my, uh, listeners. Because the biggest problem with that is now your immune system has to deal with this mess.

• 43:05Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 43:06Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And it causes chronic inflammation, which we all know is one of the leading reasons or, uh, uh, core root causes of chronic disease, right? And so, you know, we, we set ourselves up for leaky gut when our microbiome is not healthy. So this is a reason to keep your microbiome healthy. But if you have leaky gut, other than focusing on the microbiome and keeping your, getting your microbiome built back up again, what can you do for the gut cells themselves to get them healthy?

• 43:36Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, so the, um, the epithelial cells that make up the lining of the gut, right? Have, there's, there's two components to it. There's the cells themselves, and then there's the mucosal layer on top of it. And that mucosal layer is basically like a thick mucus lining that protects the gut line, the gut cells. Because it's only one cell thick, as you mentioned. And then the space in between them is the, the tight junctions that can open and close dynamically, right? So those are three things to think about that we can do, uh, that we can help in one way or the other. So some of the compounds that actually help this layer is glutamine, right? So L-glutamine, one of the reasons why it's so helpful is in the small bowel,

• 44:14Speaker 01

  the cells that make up the lining of the small bowel can use it as a fuel source to reproduce and to, um, to replicate themselves, right? So the damaged cells can get kicked out and then they can be replaced by new cells. And then glutamine can also induce some of the mucus production. Beyond that, butyrate is another really important thing, right? So I'm a big fan of, uh, not only endogenous butyrate production. You wanna maximize as much butyrate as you can produce in, in, in your gut, which is one of the big benefits of fiber is that it gets converted to butyrate. But you can also take butyrate as a supplement, right? There's, uh, tributyrate, for example, a version of it. What's great about butyrate is it does a number of things. Number one, it reduces inflammation in the lining of the gut. And that inflammation will continue to damage the lining of the gut. It would persist.

• 44:59Speaker 01

  So butyrate brings that down. Butyrate also triggers goblet cells, which are the cells that make the mucus that protects the lining of the gut cells. It produces, it causes those cells to produce more and more mucus. It also will help regulate your metabolic health as well, right? Butyrate turns on your AMPK and CCK. These are all receptors that help you with better insulin control and insulin resistance issues. And it turns on fat burning and so on, right? So it's metabolically healthier. And the healthier you are metabolically, the healthier your microbiome will be and the lining of your gut. Because we know that intestinal permeability, damage to lining of the gut, is directly associated with insulin resistance and metabolic dysfunction as well. And it's a self-perpetuating issue like the stress, right?

• 45:44Speaker 01

  Where, where damaged gut lining will increase insulin resistance, that insulin resistance will actually further damage the gut lining, right? And, and, and then, uh, the other part of it is hormone optimization, right? Estrogen is so important for the gut lining, right? So, and, and for every mucosal lining, in fact, in the body, including in the vaginal canal, right? So what estrogen does is it helps your gut lining cells and the cells in your vaginal canal make things like glycogen. And that glycogen increases fermentation and acid production and increases the growth of lactobacillus, right? And that's how you have a healthy vaginal canal and a healthy gut as well. Estrogen actually feeds diversity within the microbiome.

• 46:26Speaker 01

  So women going into perimenopause, for example, start to see a significant decline in estrogen, increases their mic, their diversity, sorry, increases intestinal permeability significantly, which then acts as one of the drivers of why they see an increase in osteoporosis, cardiovascular disease, musculoskeletal pain, increase in anxiety, depression. Those are all issues of endotoxemia. And so managing your hormone levels becomes also another important way of helping the lining of the gut.

• 46:58Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Everything's so interrelated.

• 46:59Speaker 01

  They are, right?

• 47:00Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, it really is. You know, what about, um, colostrum? Are you a fan of colostrum?

• 47:05Speaker 01

  I am, yeah. There's actually two, two components, uh, two things that I really like. So colostrum can be very helpful. Within colostrum, there's immunoglobulins that can be helpful as well. And it has a modulating effect on the immune response. Colostrum is not necessarily gonna induce the repair of the lining of the gut, but it brings down the toxicity and the inflammation of the lining of the gut, right? Lactopharin is another very important compound. Lactopharin is a compound that's made in mother's milk, so we all get exposure to it early on. But most humans continue to make lactopharin most of their life. That's another thing that declines as women enter perimenopause is lactopharin production. Why is lactopharin so important? Well, it actually binds up things like LPS in the lining of the gut.

• 47:48Speaker 01

  So it can't induce inflammation in the gut cells or in the liver or in circulation, right? It modulates the immune response, and then it also helps the mucosal layer remain structured. Another thing would be immunoglobulins.

• 48:01Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yes.

• 48:01Speaker 01

  IgG, right? Bovine immunoglobulins, very powerful. Lots of studies even on something called HIV enteropathy. HIV enteropathy is basically the very accelerated leaky gut that HIV positive individuals have. And it was published by the NIH that this is the number one driver of people going from HIV positive to having full-blown AIDS, was how leaky their gut was and how much endotoxemia they had, right? And so there's been studies on immunoglobulins being used to, to reduce the endotoxemia and the leakiness of the gut and reduce the accelerated damage that occurs to the lining of the gut.

• 48:38Dr. Darshan Shah?

  How do you get bovine immunoglobulins?

• 48:39Speaker 01

  Uh, fortunately, there are supplement products, uh, IgG, um, 55% concentrated IgG. If you, if people just Google IgG supplements, they'll find it. Uh, microbiome labs has a product called Mega IgG, Just Thrive Health has IgG. Very, very powerful. They also have studies on IBD showing that it has an impact on the large bowel, as well as a small bowel as well. So both of the, those can be very, very powerful. The other one, the other category, that is a little bit of an unsung hero right now, is polyphenols supplementation.

• 49:12Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Let's talk about that.

• 49:13Speaker 01

  Right? Yeah. Polyphenols are, I can't say enough about how amazing they are as compounds, right? So number one, they act as prebiotics, right? So they feed certain microbes. And they increase diversity as a result of that. Now, some microbes will convert those polyphenols to really important compounds like urolithins, right? And what do urolithins do? Well, they fix our mitochondria, right? The powerhouses of our cells. We can't make urolithins ourselves. And so we count on microbes metabolizing polyphenols to do that. Polyphenols also affect epigenetics, right? What genes we turn on and off, what genes we express. And we now know there's, there's something called Yamanaka factors, which are, so you're, you're very familiar with, uh, in the longevity space.

• 49:56Speaker 01

  There's now research showing certain types of polyphenols, like green tea catechins and EGCG and all that, having an effect on the upregulation of Yamanaka factors, right? We know that polyphenols likely turn on sirtuins, right? Those really important enzymes within our cells that, that protect the DNA and replication and lengthen telomeres and all that. So it has like endless applications and we just don't get enough of it.

• 50:21Dr. Darshan Shah?

  How do we get more polyphenols in our diet?

• 50:23Speaker 01

  Uh, what I love to do is I, you know, I do supplements with, with things as well. There are some polyphenol supplements out there, but one of the best ways is just eating your fruits and berries.

• 50:32Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 50:32Speaker 01

  Right? Berries especially, right? Um, what I do is I try to at the end of each meal, get somewhere around a half a pound or a pound of berries.

• 50:40Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 50:40Speaker 01

  Blackberries, blueberries, cherries and so on. They're loaded with polyphenols, about a pound gives you about 500 milligrams of actual polyphenols. And that's enough.

• 50:50Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Drinking a pound of berries a day.

• 50:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:53Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Wow.

• 50:53Speaker 01

  Yeah. And it actually, it, it sounds like a lot, but it's actually not. It's a, it's actually just a couple handfuls.

• 50:58Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, it's a great dessert.

• 50:59Speaker 01

  Yeah. And sometimes you could drizzle a little honey on it, you know? If the, if the berries aren't that good.

• 51:03Dr. Darshan Shah?

  There's polyphenols and honey too.

• 51:04Speaker 01

  Exactly. Yeah. So it becomes so nice. And I have that little bit of a sweet tooth where I'm like, at the end of a savory meal, I want something sweet, right?

• 51:11Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 51:12Speaker 01

  And the beauty of it is frozen berries are perfectly great.

• 51:15Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And they're packed with polyphenols.

• 51:17Speaker 01

  They are, yeah, because they cut, they get them at the ripe stage, the ripest stage, and then they uh, flash freeze them.

• 51:23Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right?

• 51:23Speaker 01

  Yeah. So they're, they're stable and then you could just thaw them out and, and eat them at the every, every meal. Polyphenols are an unsung hero in our, in our world of nutrition.

• 51:32Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Absolutely.

• 51:33Speaker 01

  You know, and, and I think people are starting to catch on, but it's such an important component of the microbiome.

• 51:38Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, for sure. Listening to this episode, people got a full gut healing protocol, just in everything we talked about here, which is fantastic. So I want to turn the conversation a little bit towards testing. So when we test for leaky gut, we're testing for uh, zonulin levels, which is a protein marker leaky gut. We test for LPS, which is those bacteria leaking through. We're testing for inflammation. And then when we see someone has leaky gut, you know, we put into place a gut healing protocol, but then we also recommend getting a microbiome test as well, right? And so you and I were talking earlier about microbiome tests. There's many different ones out there in the market. Some of them only sell to like doctors and practitioners that can order them for you because interpretation is very difficult, right? And then some of them are consumer level as well.

• 52:21Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Some of the more popular ones, like you had mentioned, there's Vibrant America has one, right?

• 52:25Speaker 01

  Biome Effects.

• 52:26Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Gutsumer, Biome Effects has one.

• 52:29Speaker 01

  Tiny Health.

• 52:30Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Tiny Health has one. We use ViTract here, I hear. Um, and was, is there another, oh, yeah, Genova has one too, right?

• 52:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:37Dr. Darshan Shah?

  GI FX, I think it's called, right? I think those cover like the big five.

• 52:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. And the different types of technologies that are used.

• 52:44Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right, right. And so I want to talk about a little bit of the different technologies, okay? Because I think this gets really confusing and a lot of practitioners listen to this show. So I'd love for you to like, give us an overview of the technologies that are used.

• 52:56Speaker 01

  Yeah. So PCR, let's start with PCR, right? So PCR is present in some of these tests. Now, the main reason you would add a PCR.

• 53:04Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Polymer chain reaction.

• 53:05Speaker 01

  Polymer chain reaction, right? Which is, which basically uh, uses a probe to look for a single gene.

• 53:11Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 53:12Speaker 01

  And then it amplifies the presence of that gene so you can read it, right? And PCR can be very useful, especially if you're looking for certain organisms. Assuming your probe is accurate and it looks at the right, it's going after the right gene. Most companies will add a PCR because it helps get it covered by insurance.

• 53:29Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Got it.

• 53:30Speaker 01

  So you cannot get a sequencing based test covered by insurance. There is no uh, code for it, right? Insurance code for it. So adding the PCR helps you get covered by insurance. The problem with PCR is it artificially amplifies the presence of that organism, right? So then a lot of the tests that focus a lot on PCR, they look very pathogen driven, right? Cause they're looking at like these 15 pathogens, they're PCRing them. So it looks like the whole sample is loaded with these pathogens, right? And, and the issue with that is that it can start driving clinicians towards lots of antimicrobials, lots of killing stuff, right? Which almost never helps the microbiome.

• 54:08Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah. And so just so the audience knows, the pathogens are the ones that are really, they're disease forming pathogens and then you have to get rid of them. So a lot of clinicians will jump to giving your antibiotic to get rid of them.

• 54:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, they will. Now, what's, what's interesting about the microbiome? The pathogens are collectively housed, it was called the pathobions, right? There's a very specific reason why they're looked at as pathobions. Bions, meaning that they are part of the ecosystem. It's different than like an outside pathogen coming in from a, from a dirty food, right? Like E. coli O15787, if you eat like contaminated lettuce or something, or this.

• 54:45Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Really sick.

• 54:45Speaker 01

  Yeah. Oh, the cyclospor that's going around and the things like that, right? That's a different, that's an exogenous pathogen. Within your gut, you have opportunistic organisms that have pathogen potential, but they don't necessarily express their pathogenicity or their virulence genes, which are the genes that make toxins and all that, unless they're in the right condition.

• 55:05Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 55:06Speaker 01

  Right? In fact, when they're not in the right condition, they can in fact be beneficial. And so it's important to know that the pathobions are there, but it's really important to understand the context in which they live.

• 55:17Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Got it.

• 55:18Speaker 01

  So their presence is not the bad thing. It's who are the rest of the people around, right? That context is really important. So what, one of the uh, analogies I give is like, if you're planning a city and um, and somebody comes to you and says, hey, we have, you know, five police officers for the city, is that enough? The first question you'd ask is, well, what's the population, right? If it's a hundred people in the city, five police officers is enough, right? A hundred thousand, then it's not enough. So the context matters, right? And so that's what the, that's what we really need to understand about the microbiome. So the presence of pathogens themselves are not the issue. It's what else is around them and what else suppresses them or allows them to function, right?

• 56:00Speaker 01

  So the PCR will often really focus on the presence of the pathogens and even can make the pathogens look amplified. So clinicians need to be careful that what they're really seeing is an amplified version of the pathobions, right? So they don't, it doesn't necessarily have to be alarming. You don't necessarily have to go after and kill them. What you really need to do is work on the diversity.

• 56:19Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 56:19Speaker 01

  So the pathogens are suppressed. The second type of technology is called 16S sequencing, right? So 16S sequencing is basically looking at these uh, gene regions that all bacteria have and looking for two or three of those genes and then trying to identify the bacteria from those genes. The problem with it is 16S is very inaccurate at the species level. So at the genus level, you can tell that lactobacillus is there, but it's very hard to tell whether it's lactobacillus acidophilus or Gasserai or something else. You're making a probability guess, right? And so 16S will give you a better ecosystem map, but it's not accurate at the species level. For, for the human microbiome, we really need to know what's there at the species level, right? It matters.

• 57:03Speaker 01

  Then the next one is called next generation sequencing. It's called whole genome sequencing.

• 57:07Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 57:07Speaker 01

  Where you're basically sequencing the, the microbes from end to end, this, their entire sequence. So it's a much more accurate at the species level. But what you want is you want that test to give you contextual information. You want it to provide you a map of what the microbiome looks like so you understand the ecosystem, right? So those are the main types.

• 57:26Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Those are the three main types.

• 57:27Speaker 01

  Those are three main types that you see in the, in, in the space.

• 57:30Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And PCR is probably the one that's going to give you the least amount of information. And then the advanced sequencing is going to give you the most amount of information. But obviously the cost goes up the more uh.

• 57:40Speaker 01

  It does, yes. Measurably, you know? Yeah. PCR tests can be as cheap as, you know, 80 bucks, 90 bucks or less. And whole genome sequencing test is going to be $200 to $300.

• 57:50Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 57:50Speaker 01

  Now, the thing about it is no matter what the microbiome test is, what's important for clinicians to know is that they're non-diagnostic, right? We don't know enough about microbiome testing and the accuracy and all that because there's a lot of errors in how sampling is done, right? So, so if you, if you take a stool, for example, it's not homogeneous, right? So the microbes aren't equally mixed everywhere in the stool. So it depends on what part of the stool you, you sample and nobody's wants to play with their stool very much, right? So the way most consumers do it, right? They have to poop in this little tray thing and then they have to scoop it out. They're just gonna barely touch it and throw it in the thing and get it out, right?

• 58:28Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Exactly.

• 58:29Speaker 01

  So there's a lot of errors in that. I, in fact, I actually did a, a study a long time ago looking at how much you have to sample that stool in order to get an accurate representation. You have to go through the entire three dimensional structure of the stool about 10 times.

• 58:45Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Oh my gosh.

• 58:46Speaker 01

  Nobody's doing that. Nobody's sitting there stabbing their poop, you know?

• 58:49Dr. Darshan Shah?

  10 times, exactly.

• 58:50Speaker 01

  Right? And so, so what you're gonna get is a, is a representation to some degree. And also keep in mind that stool is excretory, right? And much of what you get is what is in the distal bowel.

• 59:02Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 59:02Speaker 01

  Right? And so it's not telling you what's in the upper part of the bowel, what's in the transverse colon and so on. So you, so you really have to take it with a little bit of context.

• 59:11Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 59:11Speaker 01

  And the way I tell clinicians to think about microbiome testing is it can be very useful, especially when you pair it to symptoms that the person is experiencing. There are restrictions like, oh, I can't eat this kind of food and it might, you might get a clue. I'll give you an example of that. For example, they might have a really hard time eating things like eggs and mushrooms and leeks and all that. And these are perfectly healthy things, but they might go, I don't know, I eat that, I just feel off, right? And you go, well, those are sulfate, high sulfate foods, right? And then if you look at a microbiome test and they go, oh, you have a high sulfate reducing bacteria, which means that those bacteria are taking the sulfates from that food and turning them into hydrogen sulfide.

• 59:50Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 59:50Speaker 01

  Which is very toxic, can be toxogenic, very inflammatory for your bowels. So they feel worse when they eat those types of healthy foods. So it gives you that kind of contextual information, but you have to pair it with the symptoms, with the history, with the restrictions and other issues that the patient has.

• 1:00:07Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Exactly. I find like, you know, with the microbiome test, one of the more useful things that it can find for you is definite pathological bacteria, so things you have to be treated. And then also the diversity score is something I use a lot too.

• 1:00:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:00:20Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And that just gives me an overall indication of what. Type of diet is this person really eating, you know?

• 1:00:25Speaker 01

  Yep, exactly. Yeah. And, and, and you could tell, for example, you know, are they really heavy in protein? You know, and maybe they're too heavy in protein, right? Because they're saccharolytic bacteria. So you have two types of major fermentation going on in your gut. You have saccharolytic fermentation and proteolytic fermentation. Saccharolytic fermentation is where fibers and resistant starches and all that are converted to short chain fatty acids, right? The beneficial kind.

• 1:00:49Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 1:00:49Speaker 01

  Proteolytic fermentation is heavy around protein digestion. And that protein digestion does produce noxious compounds like P. cresol and pneumonia and so on. So if you look at a microbiome test and you go, wow, this individual is really high proteolytic fermentation, they're probably eating too much protein and not enough fiber, you know? And so they might be going at 200 grams of protein per day and maybe 10 grams of fiber. They're actually creating more problems for themselves. Yeah. So it can guide you in that case as well.

• 1:01:16Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah. Let's talk a little bit about probiotics. Do you like probiotics? Are you a believer in probiotics? Tell us how you look at those.

• 1:01:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think probiotics can be a very powerful tool, assuming that they've had the right development and the right testing. Right? What kind of irks me about the probiotic industry in general, which is actually why we started Microbiome Labs back in 2013, is this idea of kitchen sink formulas, right? Like, oh, we've got 18 strains in here. We're going to throw them all together and then put them in some special capsule. And that's a probiotic, right? When we know that it's much more complicated than that, what you really have to look at is how do you create a true consortia? Right? A consortia will be a number of microbes that you've paired together that actually work synergistically to affect certain pathways, right? And then what are those pathways?

• 1:02:08Speaker 01

  And then do you need to affect them in the way that you're affecting them, right? So it takes a good amount of intellectual work in microbial ecosystems to truly develop a probiotic. We developed the first all spore consortia probiotic called mega spore biotic back in 2013. It became, and it still is, the number one selling probiotic among clinicians. If you look at, you know, Full Script, which distributes clinician products, it's the number one selling product for the long time on Full Script. And why did it work? Well, because we, we developed it as a consortia. I was looking at strains that did very specific things and how those specific functions aligned with one another

• 1:02:49Speaker 01

  in order to, to create this real ecological effect within the microbiome, right? And we, our first study that we published, we showed that we can reduce LPS endotoxemia by 75% in 30 days of taking the probiotic.

• 1:03:03Dr. Darshan Shah?

  That's incredible.

• 1:03:03Speaker 01

  Right? And this was published in 2017.

• 1:03:06Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Now, so you're actually healing leaky gut with this probiotic.

• 1:03:08Speaker 01

  Absolutely. And these are, this study was in college students who were doing nothing good for their gut in that 30 day period, right? They're drinking alcohol, staying up late, having stress and exams and all of that stuff. And still, with just taking the probiotic and not changing anything else, we saw a 75% reduction

• 1:03:24Dr. Darshan Shah?

  That's awesome.

• 1:03:25Speaker 01

  in endotoxemia. So if you do it right, if you do the right consortia, you can absolutely do it. And I've actually, working with a microbial ecologist, a retired professor, we've developed a, a system called the Biome Engine. The Biome Engine is a very specific workflow on how we use both AI and machine learning to formulate probiotics. So this is, this is all coming out. This is actually the first time I'm talking about it publicly.

• 1:03:51Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Wow.

• 1:03:51Speaker 01

  So I'm honored to be able to do it on your, on your program. So the Biome Engine is going to be the next generation way of actually developing probiotic consortia. What we do in this, to simplify it, is to, we do a genome up development, right? So for, for example, one of the first things we're going to come out with is a insulin resistance product, a probiotic to help with glucose control and insulin resistance, because as you know, it's a huge issue, right? Upwards of 60, 70% of adults are insulin resistant, whether they know it or not, right? If you look at HOMA IR, you know they're insulin resistant. Their A1C might be normal or fasting insulin may be normal, but they're absolutely still insulin resistant. So we said, okay, the microbiome plays a very important role in insulin response and glucose metabolism.

• 1:04:36Speaker 01

  So we, the way you do it is you look at all of the pathways in the biochemistry that affect insulin response and affect glucose metabolism. And then you look at the ones that are impacted by microbes in the gut. Then what we do is we created an AI tool to search the, the hundreds of millions of microbes that exist in the databases to find the microbes with the right genetics

• 1:04:58Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Okay.

• 1:04:59Speaker 01

  that can affect each of those pathways, right? So then, once we identified the right microbes, then what we do is we put them together in a, in a proposed formulation and we run an in silico, meaning an in computer analysis of whether or not they will work together, right? So this is an AI trial in, in the computer. And then we optimize it through those trials, right? And then we use machine learning to help understand how they will affect the microbiome in different conditions. And then we do all of that testing. And then finally, we get this optimized solution. And then we do the, the clinical trials in humans to validate, right?

• 1:05:37Dr. Darshan Shah?

  I mean, that could be a massive boost to the entire microbiome industry because now you're actually treating clinical conditions using probiotics that are made in this fashion and using modern drug discovery tools like AI to make it happen. That's, that's genius.

• 1:05:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, drug, drug discovery is starting to adapt that same approach. And we're like, why can't we use it for microbes?

• 1:05:58Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 1:05:58Speaker 01

  Right? For the microbiome and, and AI and machine learning is really enabling us to do that.

• 1:06:02Dr. Darshan Shah?

  I'm so excited. I can't wait to talk to you more about that when that comes out.

• 1:06:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:06Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And you're just starting this.

• 1:06:08Speaker 01

  Just starting it. Yeah. We, we, he, he's been, so the, the professor I'm working with has been a microbial ecologist for years. And he's been kind of working on a version of the system. We just, we just got together a couple of months ago and we've really accelerated the development. And in fact, the, the, the first product will be out in a couple of months on that form glucose control.

• 1:06:27Dr. Darshan Shah?

  So cool. Very cool. Can't wait to see.

• 1:06:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:31Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, I love it. So can I ask you, you put all of this, you know, we got a little taste of what we need to know about the microbiome. You put together a course on this for both consumers and practitioners. Can you tell us a little bit about that and where to access it?

• 1:06:44Speaker 01

  Yeah. So the, the course is called, for the consumers, it's called Build Your Resilient Gut. And for the practitioners, it's called Microbiome Clinical Science Certificate Program. And in both cases, there's a little bit of different motivation, right? So in the consumer course, it's called Build Your Resilient Gut, because one of the things I've come to understand over the last 15, 20 years of working on the microbiome is that it's not going to be one miracle pill. It's not going to be one thing that you do. It's a collection of decisions that you make on a day to day basis, right? And those decisions, all of them move the microbiome, the ecosystem in one direction or the other. And so if you're taking one probiotic and it's a good probiotic, but then you're doing seven other things that harms your microbiome, you're not going to get the benefit from the probiotic, right?

• 1:07:29Speaker 01

  And so the only way to help people truly understand what decisions to make is to empower them with knowledge on the microbiome, what moves it, what affects it, how it relates to all the symptoms that they're feeling and so on. So the Build Your Resilient Gut course is a six module course. It's all pre-recorded PowerPoint presentations. I do all the talking. They can take the course and go at it at their own pace. And then it comes with about 15 different resources, which are symptom checklist, guides, schematics, ways of understanding what foods would be best for them and so on. And it's really designed in order to give them enough knowledge base so that they can make the right decisions for their gut from day to day.

• 1:08:11Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:11Speaker 01

  And a lot of it is because I engage with thousands of consumers all the time. And the number one thing I hear is I'm so confused about gut health, you know? And then for the clinician side, what is really important is that, you know, clinicians can go and get lots of academic type of understanding of the microbiome, right? And what I wanted to do was bridge that translational gap between the academic science of the microbiome and then the clinical usage of that information. And so it's a, it's a 11 module course. It's probably about 50 hours of, of study through the course. It's a go at your own pace, but really, at the end of the day, it focuses on the terrain model, right? The microbiome being a terrain and instead of intervening with singular organisms and all that here and there,

• 1:08:56Speaker 01

  it's really about understanding how your, the terrain of the patient affects their outcomes and the, and the symptoms you're seeing, the, the lab test, the clinical outcomes, all of those things. So it's been amazing. We've had over a thousand clinicians go through the course already. And so we've gotten amazing feedback from it. And, and there's just been so much relief on their side, just saying that they finally understand like how they can build microbiome science into their practice.

• 1:09:24Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yes.

• 1:09:25Speaker 01

  Right? Rather than just kind of hodgepodge doing things one, a little bit here and there.

• 1:09:29Dr. Darshan Shah?

  So powerful. I'm so glad you put this out.

• 1:09:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's been, and they can get it at Biome LC. So www.b i o m e l is in Larry C as in Charlie. It stands for Biome Learning Center dot com.

• 1:09:41Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Great.

• 1:09:41Speaker 01

  The other thing we have there is actually, we have a free circle community as well. So circle is, it's like our own little social media area, right? And we have clinicians and consumers, thousands of consumers, hundreds of clinicians in there. We pair clinicians and consumers, clinicians especially that have been trained in microbiome science. And we provide a lot of free resources. So when you come and you sign up for a free Biome Circle membership, you'll get a free guide to leaky gut and endotoxemia. And you'll get my five pillars guide, which are five pillars to building resilient gut, things that you should be doing every single day that actually build resilient gut.

• 1:10:17Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Biome LC.

• 1:10:18Speaker 01

  Biome LC dot com.

• 1:10:19Dr. Darshan Shah?

  I'm going to get right on. We'll link it in the show notes too.

• 1:10:21Speaker 01

  Awesome. Yeah. Yeah. And soon there'll be an AI version of me in there as well that I've been training specifically in a closed model so they can engage with me 24/7, ask it all the questions and all that.

• 1:10:32Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Very cool. Love that. Well, this has been incredible and I really appreciate you coming on. Thank you so much for educating us. We will link the courses in the show notes. And then where can people hear more from you on social media?

• 1:10:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, my, my Instagram handle is Kiran Biome, K I R A N B I O M E. I engage with people as much as I can on there and then on Facebook as well, Kiran Krishnan. And then reach out on Biome LC. I'm in there a lot in the circle community.

• 1:10:57Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Thank you, man.

• 1:10:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, thank you so much.

• 1:11:02Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Thank you so much for listening to the podcast today. Please remember to subscribe if you like this episode and give us a good review and share a link with your friends. It really helps to support all of our efforts. I also want to remind you that the information shared on this podcast is for educational purposes only and is not intended to replace professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Please consult with your healthcare provider or physician before making any decisions or taking any action based on what you hear today, especially if you have any underlying health conditions or on any medications. Your doctor knows your personal health situation the best and it's always important to seek their guidance.