292. Probiotics That ACTUALLY Work - Science, Benefits And Education
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Thank you for listening to the Boost Your Biology podcast. My name is Lucas Owen. I uncover the most cutting edge health information on the planet, ranging from hormones, nutrition, supplementation, fat loss, biohacking, longevity, wellness, and a whole lot more. Welcome to the Boost Your Biology podcast.

Hello, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome back to the boost your biology podcast. Today, I'm super excited, because we'll be exploring the depths of probiotics, and different strains in particular that can benefit your gut health. And so I'm joined in the studio today with Tina Anderson, the co founder and CEO of just thrive, Tina, welcome to the podcast.

Thanks, Lucas. I'm so excited to be here today with you. Awesome. So Tina, maybe you want to let my audience know a little bit about your background and your fascination with optimizing gut health.

Yeah, absolutely. I have a very interesting journey, actually. I started out in law, so my career started as a lawyer. I was in litigation for many years, working crazy hours and not really feeling satisfied in my life's work. And so

I was fortunate and then I started having children and then I was fortunate enough to go into a family pharmaceutical business where I was able to have a much better work-life balance, spend more time with the kids, but still be able to utilize my, all the knowledge I learned in law school and as an attorney. And so that was great for a while. I was in the industry with my husband as well and we were in the industry and we

And after being in the industry for a while, you know, we first got into it thinking this is great. I'm involved in like bringing life-saving medications to people and helping people feel better. And after being in the industry for a while, we started to see a lot of the abuses. You know, we saw the overprescribing of medications. We saw our own family members being prescribed one pharmaceutical after another and after another and then never getting better.

And we just really believed in our heart that we weren't doing our life's work. And we wanted to do something that was our life's work and just feel more passionate about what we were doing. So we were very naturally minded, as it was with our own kids. We have three children, and we were always...

going the natural route. And then we're like, well, we're not really doing that in our career. So we started doing a lot of research, learning more about the gut than we ever knew before. This was shortly after the Human Microbiome Project was launched by the National Institutes of Health, told us more about the gut than we ever knew before. And so through all that research and realizing some of the problems with many probiotics on the market, we were able to actually find

bind and license these very unique strains out of London University. And from there, we launched Just Thrive. And it's been the most gratifying career journey I've ever been on by far. Interesting. No, it actually reminds me a little bit about my journey as well. My father's a pharmacist. So I had the choice of going down that path. And then I decided I'd rather become like a naturopath.

and look at things more holistically. And of course, you would know that naturopaths are obsessed with gut health. And all they do is talk about gut health and stools. So what I'd love to sort of explore, Tina, is, I mean,

the evolution of the products, like in terms of specifically your core pillar products, which is, you know, I've heard a number of people report positive effects from, I've looked into the science behind them. And I would love to sort of describe, allow you to sort of explain to the audience, your particular probiotic is a spore based probiotic. So did you want to sort of explain what that even means?

Sure. So a spore-based probiotic just basically means it has this endospore shell around itself and that shell keeps it in its dormant state. So when you swallow it, it's actually dormant and then it goes down into your intestines and then it takes its shell off and then it goes into its live vegetative cell state.

So it actually recognizes the intestines as its home. And why that's so important is that the very definition of a probiotic is a live microorganism when conferred in adequate amounts, confers a benefit onto the host, which is the body. So just that first part of the definition, it needs to be a live microorganism.

Not a live microorganism when it's in the refrigerator at the store or comes in on ice, you know, when it's being delivered to you. It needs to be live when it hits your intestines. And that is so key. So that spores have this endospore shell around itself. And where these came from was our environment. So our ancestors used to live off the land.

they would eat roots and tubers off the land and they would get these roots and tubers were teeming with this really beneficial bacteria, these spore bacteria. And they would eat, they would consume these spores on a regular basis. And when you consume them, they would be in their dormant state. When they were found in the soil, they were dormant. They had their hard shell around them. When you swallow them, they were dormant. When they hit the stomach acid, which is very acidic and

as you know, and it's meant to be the gastric barrier, those bacillus spore strains would actually stay in their dormant state. And it wasn't until they got through that stomach acid and hit the intestines that they took the shell off and that's when they became alive.

And then when they get there, when spore bacteria get there, get to the intestines and they take their shell off, they actually stay there for about 21 to 28 days. And they're working throughout the entire intestinal tract, kind of reading the microbial environment and doing something different

in your gut than they are in my gut, depending on what our guts individually look like. And so they're very intelligent bacteria and we evolved, our ancestors evolved with these spore bacteria. Unfortunately, in the world we live in now, unless we go to tribes in Tanzania or Papua New Guinea, we're not faced with this healthy soil that's teeming with this beneficial bacteria.

Hmm. This is a really common question that I get asked, which is around, like, in terms of effectiveness of probiotics, oftentimes I get asked, I'm like, Oh, Lucas, you know, I thought probiotics just get degraded in the stomach, and they don't actually make their way to

the large intestine or the small intestine. Did you want to sort of explore like the general premise behind probiotics? You mentioned the live organisms, microorganisms. Did you want to sort of explain, because I understand that they do affect the entire body because there are many different genes that they can turn on and off. Did you want to sort of elaborate on how like the benefit seen with probiotics in general is

coming through which pathways? Yeah. So the biggest thing, you know, you had touched on this about probiotics that, you know, are live microorganisms and the stomach acid. Yes, the stomach acid is going to kill 99% of the probiotics on the market. And those, you know, those audience members that, you know, listen to

you and have asked that question are very smart individuals because that is very true. Most probiotics are being killed off by the stomach acid. And this is very, it's almost undisputed. It's basically like we're getting dead bacteria therapy when we're taking the common conventional probiotics out there. And that's why we see such a difference with the spores is that they are

They are arriving alive. So the biggest difference with spores and the majority of probiotics out there is their ability to arrive alive. And they survive that journey through the intestines and through the stomach acid and to the intestines. So that's really key.

And then when we talk about what probiotics do as far as affecting the whole body, that is so important because so many people for so long have associated gut health with, oh, you know, I have gas or bloating and diarrhea and constipation and, you know,

those are absolutely indications that you have some type of gut imbalance going on. If you have diarrhea, if you have constipation, if you have bloating, if you have gas, those are signs you have some gut imbalance going on. But what we now understand is that it's hard to find any disease out there that's not associated with some imbalance in our gut. You know, when we talk about, you know, our immune system, 70 to 80% of our immune system is found in our gut lining. So we have

When we're talking about our immune system, we're talking about gastrointestinal issues. Then when we're talking about heart disease, any of our organ systems, liver function, brain health, our mood, anxiety, depression, autoimmune issues, all of these issues are literally stemming from the health or the unhealth of our gut. And it, of course, all leads back to leaky gut. And that's really the huge...

offender in our overall health. Having that leakiness in the gut is literally causing us this chronic low-grade inflammation that is really the root of every disease out there. I mean, every non-communicable disease out there. I'm glad you mentioned like that leaky gut sort of theory and that pathway because I

I feel like now we're at a time where a number of people are starting to recognize, yeah, actually, maybe that might be triggering my skin issues, might be triggering my mood issues, my hormonal imbalance. And I think it's important to realize for these people that acknowledge that is the different offenders, the things that actually can open up the gut lining or

induce that state of intestinal hyperpermeability. So do you want to sort of explain maybe, or just outline some of those offending factors that might actually be contributing to leaky gut?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, one of the biggest offenders out there are just antibiotics. You know, antibiotics that we take, of course, are, you know, of course, antibiotics save lives and sometimes people need to take them, but they are overprescribed. We, that's very clear. The data is showing that they're overprescribed and they are very detrimental to our gut health. They're killing the bad bacteria, which is why you brought them on, but they're also killing your beneficial bacteria. Yeah.

But the thing is, you know, antibiotics are found in animal products too, not just in the antibiotics. We know a lot of times now people know even doctors are hesitant now to give antibiotics as often as they used to, but they're found in animal products as well. So antibiotics is a huge, they are huge offenders to our gut health.

Also glyphosate, which is the active ingredient in Roundup, huge offender to our gut health. I would argue that it's almost worse than an antibiotic because glyphosate only targets the beneficial bacteria.

It doesn't even kill off the bad bacteria. So it's only targeting the beneficial bacteria. So we know glyphosate is a huge offender. Stress is another huge offender. And people think that that's kind of woo-woo and it's, you know, there's no science behind it. Well, there's lots of science behind that. We know that when we are stressed out

This brain is sending signals down to the gut through the vagus nerve, and it's causing all kinds of problems with our gut. And then the reverse is true. Of course, if our gut is dysbiotic, then our gut is sending signals back to the brain. And now we're experiencing more stress than usual. So there's a two way, you know, communication going between the brain and the gut.

So I'd say, you know, the fact that we don't eat a diverse group of foods is another offender. You know, we, our ancestors use a, you know, 500 to 600 different types of foods through a year period of time. And we on average eat 15 to 16 different types of foods a year. We're eating the same thing over and not creating that diversity in the microbiome.

And of course, the world we're living in, you know, the toxins in our environment, the household cleaning products, the personal care products that are just loaded with chemicals and the antibacterial hand soaps and hand sanitizers, just very detrimental. And I was talking about antibacterial hand soaps and hand sanitizers well before COVID. Like, do not take them. They're literally counterproductive or do not use them. They're counterproductive to

fighting our immune system, if we're killing our bacteria, you know, our bacteria is helping us. Less than 1% of bacteria is actually harmful. The overwhelming majority of the bacteria is actually beneficial, if not critical for our overall health. You know, when it came to like analyzing and selecting specific strains, like

just talk us through the evolution of the discovery of these particular strains in, in the, in your just thrive probiotic, your original, original one. I mean, has that product evolved? Like you had version one and then version two, or has it stayed the same? Talk us through the, um,

Yeah, the evolution of that. Yeah, it has not changed at all because, you know, we hit the nail on the head when we brought this to market. I mean, we were complete disruptors when we brought this to the market. Nobody was talking about spores. Nobody knew what we were talking about. It's kind of an ugly word, you know, to a lot of people. And we'd go to health food stores and they would tell us, you know, oh,

no, but there's no lactobacillus and bifidobacterium. And we would explain, well, that's because those are very sensitive organisms. You know, look, some of them need to be in the refrigerator. If they need to be at the refrigerator to stay alive, how in the world would they ever survive your body temperature if they can't even withstand the room temperature of the store shelf? And then they'd say, oh yeah, that kind of makes sense. And then we had research. I mean, that was the other key. We've done quite a bit of research. We wanted to really elevate the standard in the supplement industry.

So we actually, there's a double blind human clinical trial on the combination of these particular spore strains on leaky gut. It was the first leaky gut study of its kind. We, it's actually the only one that I even know of right now that has, you know, whether it's a pharmaceutical over the counter or a supplement that's actually showing, you

lowering of LPS toxins in the bloodstream. So we, so this, this study was done. It's actually a fascinating study. It was done by university of North Texas. They took a hundred college students out of those hundred college students, 55% of them had a leaky gut and didn't know it. And these were healthy college students with no, they weren't on any medicines or any type of, they had no restrictions or anything like that.

55% of them had a leaky gut and didn't know it. And so what we did at what University of North Texas is they took those college students and split that group in half that 55% split them in half, gave half a placebo and then the other half, these spore based combination of these spore based probiotics that are used in Just Thrive.

They sent them home with no dietary or lifestyle modifications. And of course, we all know what college students do to their microbiome over a 30-day period. They came back.

And that the placebo, or let me start with the treated group. So the treated group, so the group that had the spores saw a 42% reduction in LPS toxins seeping into the bloodstream. So LPS toxins stands for lipopolysaccharides. These toxins actually seep into the bloodstream. They are such huge offenders. And that's what causes that chronic low-grade inflammation that is the root cause of all disease.

After 30 days, oh yes, go ahead. I might add to that as well because my audience will be shocked to hear this as well. With LPS, I was doing some research the other week on there's actually new evidence coming out that LPS, like an increase in endotoxin, can actually decrease testosterone levels in men.

And like, if any guy's listening to this and he's wondering, you know, wanting to know like ways to lower LPS, like you're literally showing us a human clinical trial that demonstrated a reduction in LPS just by using

a probiotic, but anyway, continue. Yeah, no, absolutely. And it is very true. That is your gut is dictating your production. A healthier gut produces elevated levels of testosterone. I mean, there's many studies on that. So, um, so yeah, so this, the group showed that the study showed that that treated group saw a 42%

decrease in LPS toxins going into the bloodstream. And this is only after 30 days, again, no lifestyle or dietary modifications, no other, you know, supplementation with this probiotic. Now here's the scary part. The placebo group actually saw a 32% increase in LPS toxins. So what that's telling us is that every time we're eating, every time we're eating, we have a leaky gut and

It's like a drippy faucet. You know, so many people will say like, all of a sudden I get an, I develop an autoimmune issue. All of a sudden I developed an allergy. All of a sudden I developed anxiety. Well, you, it really wasn't all of a sudden when those LPS toxins are slowly dripping into your system and causing that chronic low grade inflammation,

that's when you start seeing disease. And that was probably the scariest part about that study was showing that when you have a leaky gut, it's like you have this drippy faucet and one day it just overflows. And very encouraging that the leaky gut human clinical trial, you know, the strain showed a 42% reduction in LPS toxins. And it's why we see such profound results with the product. It's literally like nothing else on the market.

There's a really famous doctor that unfortunately just passed away, I think in the last year or so, Dr. Ray Peet. He was the first doctor that educated me about the dangers of endotoxin and lipopolysaccharide.

And then I went down a rabbit hole and explored like how that is linked to so many different types of diseases. And I was looking for strategies, like anything possible that could lower endotoxin. Like I wanted a supplement with it. I wanted to take anything or even certain foods that could help to reduce that burden because there's certain types of fibers, which I'm sure you're aware of that can actually decrease that load. But yeah,

One thing that my audience is probably curious about is like Tina, is it possible for them to take like a test that can measure their endotoxin levels in their blood?

You know, it's not commercially available. This was done in a research setting. And basically that's what it is. They just, they, that's what the researchers did is they, they took the blood samples of these participants and they had, they measured their LPS level and then 30 days, they came back and measured their LPS level through serum and,

but it's unfortunately it's not commercially available, which it should be because it is the driver of virtually all disease. And it's, it's the culprit of, you know, so many conditions that people are suffering from on a regular basis. So let's sort of, I want to sort of discuss a little bit more about the specific strains. I mean, you said that you nailed it from day one, you spent quite a lot of time probably, I guess, like,

You probably spent quite a lot of time actually perfecting the formulation from day one. Talk us through that process of selecting the different types of strains. How did that come about?

Yeah, well, we surrounded ourselves with very, very smart people. As I mentioned, I'm an attorney. I'm not a microbiologist, but we work with Karan Krishnan. I'm not sure if you or your audience are familiar with Karan, but he's a brilliant microbiologist who was instrumental in the formulation of the product. And he worked alongside with London University, Dr. Simon Cutting in finding the right combination of the strains.

And one of the strains that I would love to talk about is Bacillus Indicus HU36. That is one strain in our product that is so unique in that it actually produces antioxidants at the site of absorption. So it's producing all these really critical antioxidants like astaxanthin, zeaxanthin, lycopene, lutein, all

all at the site of absorption. And the researchers out of University of North Texas actually felt that that strain was so critical in helping combat that oxidative stress caused by, you know, that's why we think we're helping seal up those tight junctions, you know, thereby,

reducing the LPS load. So that strain, the HU36 bacillus indicus is so unique and so critical to our formulation because it's actually producing antioxidants right exactly where they need to be absorbed. - Is that particular strain also used in other probiotics on the market or do you guys have the exclusivity?

Not in the retail setting. Mostly, we did have the exclusivity for a long time, but we don't even have it anymore. But the reason is it's not easy to produce and it's not easy to get high yields out of it. So that's why there is no exclusivity. But I mean, you don't see a lot. I don't know of any other retail product that has that available.

What's interesting as well, Tina, is I've looked at certain strains myself and the lactobacillus entire species. I've sort of looked at a few particular strains. One you might be familiar with is the lactobacillus ruderi. That one there has been studied to demonstrate that it can increase vitamin D levels and also vitamin B12 production.

So did you want to, was there anything interesting or in particular that some of these strains that you've, you know, you've used in your formulation,

Any other impacts on any other biomarkers like C-reactive protein, any other inflammatory pathways, things like that? Well, we do know if you have, I mean, that's one of the biggest things is the reduction of inflammation. When you're reducing the LPS toxins, you're reducing that chronic low-grade inflammation, which is huge. And we also know, you know, when you talk about these other strains like the lactobacillus reuteri,

I feel like sometimes I come across as bashing a lot of lactobacillus and bifidobacterium strains. And what I am critical about is when there are products that have 10 to 15 different types of strains in one product, there is a lot of research on particularly well-studied strains that have a strain ID number next to them that have specific strains about that particular product.

Where we're getting into trouble with probiotics is that people are taking, you know, 15 different strains and putting them all into one and taking the single strain research and acting like they're all going to work beautifully together when there is no research on the finished formulation. That's probably one of the things we're most proud of with the leaky gut study is the fact that it was done on the combination of our strains, not on

one single strain and then mixing it with a whole other strain. And, you know, there's a study that there was some article that came out about a year ago, just complaining about these strains. And there was a study done by UC Davis that talked about, they took 16 probiotics out of

California stores and they found that only 15 of them actually met label claims because when you take 15 different probiotic strains these are live microorganisms and you grow them together in a vat two strains could come together and create a strain that's not listed on the label or one strain could take over another strain and it's that's listed on a label and it's no longer there and

And it can be dangerous. You know, it really can be a dangerous situation because especially with those two strains that come together and create a new strain, we don't know if it's healthy. We don't know if it's detrimental. We just don't know. And that's really what I would love to see probiotic companies doing is either coming out with like a single strain probiotic that has lots of studies on it. Like our Just Calm product is a Bifidolongum 1714. Lots of great studies, great studies about bringing down cortisol levels and

making you calmer. The minute we mixed it with another lactobacillus strain, it negated all the effects of the 17-14 strain. So we cannot assume the function of these strains. We have to see how they work together.

So that's something I'm so passionate about. It's one of the other myths out there with probiotics. You know, people are like, oh, I should take one that has 10, 15, 20 different strains. And no, that's absolutely not true. We need to take a probiotic that has studies and how they work together or take a single strain that has been studied on whatever particular issue you're dealing with.

That's something that I've never really considered myself when looking at different products is like, okay, we've got research of this particular strain in isolation, but then what happens when you combine them? And you've just illustrated that.

Sometimes they can actually compete or mitigate the benefits of the first strain if you're combining them with multiple. The fact that you guys put in the effort to actually get your exact formulation, multiple strains tested and looking at a clinical outcome is

Yeah, hats off to you guys, because I know that's not a cheap process to run a clinical trial. No, it is definitely not. But it's where we put our resources towards because we really want to...

You know, we want to make a difference and we have and it's been it's been really fun. It's fun when you just do the right thing and you come from the right place and you want to make people feel better. And and we know we don't want to assume anything in this space. You know, we want to make sure that even though this particular strain is so powerful, we want to make sure that they work alongside each other.

What about in terms of like the dosing recommendations? Because a number of people, again, they ask me, Lucas, should a probiotic be taken first thing in the morning on an empty stomach? Or should I have it with my first meal? Did you want to sort of explain how best to utilize the Just Thrive probiotic?

Yes. So we also study that. So we studied these to decide to find out where, when is it the best time to take it? And we ended up studying what the study showed us is that it works better in the presence of food. So we recommend taking it with food. And so the reason why so many people have been taught to take probiotics on empty stomach is because these strains have such difficulty surviving the stomach acid and

And when you're on an empty stomach, you have a higher pH, which allows for greater survivability. We did our study. We did a gastric survivability study on our product and showed that at a pH of 1.3, these strains survived 100% through the stomach acid. Then we also did a study and it showed that these strains actually use food to proliferate throughout the system. So it's best to take it at the end of the meal, maybe at the end,

maybe 10 minutes after a meal. So it has the food to proliferate. So it's like you're getting more for your money. There's nothing wrong with taking it on an empty stomach, but you'll get more benefit by taking it with food. And as far as time of day, it does not matter. We just always recommend you take it with your largest meal of the day. Or I don't know, I just remember my supplements better in the middle of the day when I break my fast. So I always take it, you know, after my first meal of the day.

That actually just reminds me, you mentioned, I mean, we sort of spoke about before lipopolysaccharide. And you mentioned every time we as humans actually consume any food, we're slowly, slowly increasing endotoxin load on the entire human body. And it makes you wonder, Tina, like those that engage in intermittent fasting, when they say they feel so great,

Maybe that effect is attributed to the fact that they're actually decreasing endotoxin load on the body. Yeah, absolutely. And also we know that intermittent fasting increases diversity in the gut, which is kind of counterintuitive.

intuitive when you think about it, but when your bacteria are in a starved state at certain times, they will actually proliferate and will create more diversity. So it's kind of interesting. So that's one of the reasons I started intermittent fasting, just because of the research behind, you know, just that it actually helps create diversity in the gut microbiome.

What about in terms of, I mean, there's other sort of labels and claims and sort of buzzwords. Another one would be like a prebiotic. Did you want to maybe explain that to my audience? What does that even mean? Yeah. So a prebiotic, just think of it as like the fertilizer for the garden. So I like to always say like our probiotic is like the gardener in the gut. So the gardener, it goes in there. It's taking care of like getting rid of the bacteria.

the weeds in the garden and helping bring those good plants back to life. And that's why I'm saying that gardener is going to do something different in your garden versus my garden, because it's actually able to read the garden or be able to read the intestinal environment. It does something called quorum sentencing. So it's going in there and helping get rid of the overgrowth of pathogenic bacteria and helping bring our beneficial bacteria almost like back to life.

The prebiotic is like the gardener or the fertilizer in the garden. So it's going in there and feeding and helping bring more diversity in that garden, helping those good plants really thrive in the garden. The problem with prebiotics is that they have trouble distinguishing between the good guys and the bad guys.

So a lot of times prebiotics can actually make a problem worse for people if they don't clean up that garden in the first place, because those prebiotics will actually feed the bacteria in the gut

while they're feeding the good guys in the gut. We don't want that to happen. We don't want the weeds to overtake the garden. We actually waited for several years before we launched a prebiotic because we found certain prebiotic fibers that only target the beneficial bacteria in the gut. That was very, very important to us because we didn't want to make a problem worse. And oftentimes that's what happens is people will make a problem worse, especially if you have like

you know, really dysbiotic gut, which is why people are coming to a prebiotic or a probiotic in the first place. So I always recommend people starting with the probiotic and then making sure the gardener's done its work and then slowly start to introduce the prebiotic. And just because your goal is diversity and diversity of a lot of those keystone strains like acromantia and, you know, the Kalen bacterium and all of those.

I'm excited that you mentioned Akkermansia because we were sort of touching a bit on before the podcast, which was around the polyphenols and how they can actually a lot of these amazing polyphenols can actually stimulate the production of another beneficial bacteria, this Akkermansia, which is associated with improvements in insulin sensitivity, improvements in general metabolic fitness.

Was there any particular I mean, the polyphenol side of things? What's your stance there? Are you a big believer in like, we should, you know, incorporate these polyphenol rich foods? Are there particular ones that you're like, you're a big fan of? Yeah, we actually have a product called gut fortify, which has polyphenols in it that

are helping support the mucosal barrier. And so, yeah, of course I'm a huge fan of it, but we do know that the probiotic alone has been shown in studies to increase the acromantia and adding the prebiotic into the mix actually starts to even increase the acromantia and other keystone strains even more. So again,

we know that already. So, I mean, I think, you know, obviously just like a diverse group of foods and, you know, I'm always trying to go to like ethnic grocery stores and eating different types of roots and tubers. And just even just at my regular grocery store, just trying to find or farmer's market, just trying to find different types of fruits and vegetables that I wouldn't normally eat. And it's so hard because we're all creatures of habit, but I try, you know, we just, I always try to make baby steps along the way.

What about in terms of, I mean, a common complaint that a number of people come to me with, which is like, hey, Lucas, I've got like a white coating on my tongue. I've got something called candida.

you know, what can I do about this? And what sort of, are there any probiotics that might be able to help that? Yeah. We've had a lot of customers come to us with this and have had great success because we know that what the spores do in Just Thrive is they actually, I'd like to say elbow out that overgrowth of candida, of

Of course, candida is a normal part of our gut flora. It's supposed to be there. It's just we don't want the overgrowth of it. And that's what's so great about the spores. I was saying how they're so intelligent. They're not going out and obliterating everything because candida is a normal part of our gut flora. They're going out and kind of elbowing out the overgrowth of it or the overgrowth of other pathogenic bacteria. So, yeah, I would definitely recommend if somebody is, you know, dealing with candida and that overgrowth of candida that we're

you know, you're taking a spore-based probiotic to help support that. In terms of the age range, like obviously I've got people listening to this. They've got, you know, young children. They want to know whether or not they can actually, you know, maybe sprinkle it on their food. Like, yeah, how does that go in terms of applications for cancer?

for children. Yeah, that's what's so exciting is you could absolutely open the capsule up, mix it with food. It withstands heat. It withstands cold. It is, you could bake with these. We've actually tested them up to 455 degrees. You could bake with them. My son used to eat years ago, like piping hot oatmeal. And I would put his probiotic in there. I would open the capsules and mix with food. It's tasteless, colorless, odorless. So a child wouldn't even know it's in there. You could, like I said, you could bake with it.

Um, but otherwise you just open the capsule and mix it with whatever you could put in water. You could just take it right into, into your mouth. Um, that probably wouldn't might just, you know, feel a little bit weird. It wouldn't taste bad. It just would feel a little bit weird, but that's, what's so great. You know, even for smaller kids, you could do, um, like I have, I recently became a grandmother and I have made sure that he was taking a little bit. So my daughter would just put a little bit on her breast while she was nursing and just a tiny bit. And, uh,

that would, you know, it's just great to get, like I said, our ancestors evolved to be getting these strains. This is what we are meant to be consumed on a daily basis. And, you know, the thing that we also have to remember is that

The only time in evolution that we were inoculated with lactobacillus and bifidobacterium is through vaginal childbirth, close skin-to-skin contact, and breastfeeding. And we did not get lactobacillus and bifidobacterium from the land or from the food that we ate.

it really, we evolved to get it, get these bacillus strains to support our bacteria. We really were only inoculated through vaginal childbirth. And I think that's interesting for people to understand because we've been so conditioned like, oh, we need to get lactobacillus from yogurt. We have to get lactobacillus from probiotics, but most of those are dying by the time they get to the intestines. And again, it doesn't mean that they don't do anything. They will provide some type of maybe stimulant

symptomatic relief, but they're not making a true change in that garden. And that's the goal. Our goal is to get to the root cause and make a change in that garden and to be prepared and resilient for all the offenders. I mean, unfortunately, everything we do in this world from antibiotics to glyphosates to stress to, you know, the chemicals and toxins are

are offenders to our gut health. We're dealing with this every day. It's why we see this uprise in allergies with kids. When I was a child, I didn't know, I knew one classmate that had an allergy. Obviously now we have peanut free tables, you know, can't go to a restaurant without them asking you. Our job is to these spores to help us become resilient and keep our microbiome as resilient as possible so that we are better equipped to handle all those offenders that we're faced with.

An interesting concept here is like, I mean, if you look at the overall population and you analyze like most of them, when they talk about having like gut issues, and I'm actually really curious to know what sort of customers specifically are

or purchasing, you know, Just Thrive, what are their main complaints? Is it usually they've got immune issues or is it they've just got like something called IBS? Like why are they actually even interested in your probiotic in the first place?

Yeah, well, I think it's natural for people to come to the product because they have some like gut issues. I think most people associate, you know, a probiotic with gut health. And so I would say that's probably where most people start to come to the product. But then after hearing about it for friends or family, it's they hear like, you know, in the pharmaceutical industry, it's like pharmaceutical side effects include suicidal thoughts, bloody stools, like all these horrible things. And with the probiotic, I've heard this over and over again, like,

my God, I'm sleeping better or I'm in a better mood. I'm experiencing better weight management. All of those, like when you start to fix your gut and heal your gut, it's like all this other magic starts to happen. You know, you start to have better sleep. You're in a better mood. Of course, when you're getting rid of toxins and going to the bathroom regularly, you start to see all these benefits.

And now what I'm noticing, and we've been in the business for 11 years. And what I'm noticing is this trend of people. I think after COVID people really feel like I need to take control of my health. We have been preaching this for the last 11 years. This is why we got into this business because we want to empower people to take control of their health and really make a difference in their own health. And, and by doing this, by helping them fix their gut, they start to see that all these other things start to happen and they're, they're in a better mood. They're, they're,

hormones are being balanced better. They're, you know, we know serotonin, 90% of our serotonin is produced in our gut. That's our happy hormone. GABA, our calming hormone is produced in our gut. And so I think people start to see all of these benefits and then they're like, Oh wait, I want to start taking this. I'm going to tell my cousin, I'm going to tell my parents. And it's like, we have family members admit,

Everyone's on it, you know, from extended relatives. And these are people who have been on the product for seven, eight years because it works. And it's just like the same way people take a multivitamin because, you know, oh, I just want to cover all my bases. Well,

you know, I would argue this is much more important to take because than any other supplement, because if your gut is inflamed, it's having difficulty absorbing all those nutrients that we're taking. So, so I I'd say definitely, of course, digestive issues would bring people, a lot of people with allergies and autoimmune issues. A lot of people with mental health issues, you know, anxiety, depression, just helping with their mood because we know the gut is really so responsible for so much of our mood.

You made a really good point there, Tina, around it impacting sleep and generally helping with that stress sort of HPA axis. You did also mention one particular strain earlier on around it actually demonstrating beneficial effects on lowering cortisol. Did you want to just sort of maybe elaborate on that?

sort of pathway there? That's our product called Just Calm. So Just Thrive Probiotic is one that we've been talking about, but we also have a product called Just Calm. And that strain, that product has a strain bifidolongum 1714. And that study has eight clinical trials behind it showing that it's helping reduce cortisol levels. It's helping putting us more into a theta wave. Like, so it's changing our brainwave activity into a more of that flow state and

it's actually helping people perceive stress better. So like they may be faced with the same stress, but they're able to handle it better. And of course, who wouldn't want that? So we've had some really, really great success with that product as well. And, you know, we know that

Stress and anxiety and depression, all those things are all caused by two sources in our research. One is the LPS toxins. We know those LPS toxins seep into the bloodstream. They could go to the brain and cause that inflammation in the brain. And that is a huge driver in stress and anxiety and depression and other mental health and mood disorders.

The other cause of brain inflammation are those external stressors that unfortunately we can't get away from. You know, we have too much on our list of things to do. We've got kids crying. We have, there's traffic, whatever it might be. We get a, we see, you know, an Instagram post that gets us mad, you know, whatever it could be. It just, it gets us all worked up. Those stressors unfortunately aren't going away.

and we're now staying in this fight-or-flight mode. We know fight-or-flight was a protective mechanism for us. Our ancestors needed that to run from a saber-toothed tiger. Unfortunately, in the world we're living in, in the connected world we're living in, we just are having trouble getting out of that fight-or-flight, and that's really what this 1714 strain that's found in our Just Calm product is helping us do, helping us bring down the cortisol levels and helping us be in a better state

having a better brainwave activity. - Yeah, speaking of activating the parasympathetic nervous system, oftentimes I get asked, Tina, around strategies to increase HRV, heart rate variability,

So this sort of product, it sort of makes sense. Does it have any evidence in that regard or maybe anecdotal evidence? People have spoken about that at all. Yeah, no clinical trials on that particular piece of it, but it makes so much sense that it would reduce HRV because it's just calming us down. It's making us, yeah, absolutely. But yeah, we haven't done any studies on that yet, but now you've got me going. I'll have to have them do another, do a study on that.

Yeah, no, because I love looking at, I mean, because a lot of the clients and demographic that I work with, they're patients or clients that have, but they train a lot. They do a lot of activity, a lot of exercise. And actually, it's worthwhile noting that very intense activity or exercise can actually promote a leaky gut. Yeah, I was just going to say that. Yep, absolutely. Yep. Yeah, that's what's hard. Yeah.

That demographic, that population there, the ones that say they train super hard, but they eat super clean. It's like, and they're always complaining of gut issues. Maybe it's because they're just training so hard. Yeah. Yeah. Which is another reason why I'm like, if you're going to do that, just make sure you're taking spores to be able to, you know, combat all of that inflammation. Yeah.

So you sort of mentioned, I mean, we've gone through the original Just Thrive probiotic, the Just Calm, which is a phenomenal, I love the formulation. You've got a little bit of B, a very small amount of vitamin B6. Is it 0.75 milligrams? Tiny, yeah. Tiny amount of B6. Tiny amount of B6, a little bit of a good dose of the methylfolate, which is the active form, the methylfolate, which is the one that helps with

lowering homocysteine helping with that mthfr polymorphism you got the methyl methylcobalamin as well um and then you got that three billion of the bifidobacterium longum 1714 uh which i'll definitely what i will do um for some of my clients that have actually got when we've done blood work we'll look at their cortisol levels we'll do a before and after

And I'll be curious to see how much it can lower their cortisol levels. Oh, yeah. My doctor particularly is crazy about this product. So she's been prescribing or, you know, adjusting it to all of our patients because who isn't stressed out? I mean, we launched this product a couple of years back. And I mean, it's sold out like that because it's like, you know, people are looking for things that get to the root cause.

cause of an issue. You know, I mean, there are things like ashwagandha and different things we could be taking to calm us down, but really like the, we want to get to the root cause. That's always been our drive is to get to the root cause. Now, of course, for my, a lot of my listeners, they're probably wondering whether or not you ship worldwide. What's the, what's the status like there? Yes, we do ship worldwide. It just takes a little bit longer, but yes, we do ship worldwide.

Okay, awesome. Yeah. And just a reminder for those listening in, if you did actually want to check out some of these amazing products that Tina has done a great job at explaining them and outlining their benefits, there will be a link in the podcast show notes as well as below this YouTube video as well. And there'll be a discount code Lucas, which you guys can apply at checkout. If you did want to actually give these a shot, integrate them into your routine and, you know,

enable them to be part of your entire wellness regime. We've spoken about, I mean, I've spoken about so many different supplements on my podcast and my YouTube channel. I've spoken about vitamins. I've spoken about minerals. I've spoken about herbs. That final frontier, the probiotics aspect, I do think that if we're going to be looking at different probiotics, let's go for ones that have been clinically studied

you know, in humans, not in rodents, not in cell cultures, like let's look at specific strains that have been studied in humans and just thrive really does achieve that. So my final question to yourself, Tina, is future direction and future goals. What are you hoping to achieve maybe in the next like three to five years? Yeah, so we are very confident

committed to only bringing products that are missing and needed in the market. If you look at our formulations and our products, you know, we're never going to be a 200 skew supplement company. We only are very mindful of products that really we feel are missing and really needed in the market. And my big goal is reach, just getting it out there to as many people because we have seen how it has helped so many people.

we are, you know, bootstrapped company and we've never taken investors. We, we've done it slowly, but it's also helped us really get out there because it works. And so one of our biggest things is just constantly researching products that will really make a difference. There's, you could go to a lot of the, you know, supply side West and different shows out there where there's tons of different ingredients and we could just come up with, you know, that's, that's a great business model to keep launching new products all the time. And

we are much more committed to getting these strains that have been proven to work so well, not just in studies, but with our customers and take it out to the masses. And then, of course, always looking for products that are really going

going to make a huge difference. And we're, you know, we recognize that sometimes the gut health space can be very complicated and we have also invested in gut or not gut health, but a product specialists on our team. So if anybody feels maybe overwhelmed by any of this stuff, they could always contact our website is just thrive health.com. And you could set up an appointment with one of our product specialists and learn more about, or have you have any questions, but

you know, I always recommend people start with a probiotic. I would love to say, start with this one and this one and this one, but I think it's better that you start with one and kind of see how you feel. And then, then you could start introducing maybe the just calm product, or you maybe want to introduce the prebiotic or whatever other ones, but, um,

I would always recommend starting with the probiotic. You'll see a huge difference. And I know, yeah, we do have a coupon code for your audience, which is Lucas for 20% off of, I think it's for the 90 day. Yeah, no, that's phenomenal. I mean, Tina, you've done such a, such an amazing job at sort of explaining the science, breaking things down to my audience and also sharing more about the company's vision and your mission as well, which I highly respect and,

Yeah, we need products like yours out there in the world to benefit people. And myself as a practitioner, as a naturopath, I'll be doing my best to be prescribing them where I see fit and where they can best help my particular patients.

Thank you for doing what you do. And yeah, I'm looking forward to keeping in touch. And again, for those listening in, if you did want to leave this episode a five-star review, that really does help with the algorithm. But otherwise, Tina, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. Thank you, Lucas. It was great.

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