326. Probiotics Incredible Research You MUST Know - With Michael Bush
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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 have a special guest joining me in the studio, Michael Bush, who co founded growth ways partners who has a wealth of knowledge around novel formulations, probiotics, supplements, and a whole lot more. Michael, welcome to the podcast. Thanks. Glad to be here. Awesome. So Michael, maybe let my audience know how did you find yourself, you know, so fascinated into the supplement space?

Well, I started out in the healthcare industry. And so around 1999, I became so disenfranchised by the healthcare industry. Basically, we're trying to make as much money as possible by treating as many things as possible at the last possible moment in people's lives. And so it's not about keeping people well, it's about

you know, making money off of illness. And so I kind of made a transition. At the time, I went and worked for a bioinformatics company, did a turnaround over there, and then we sold it. And then I went to a kind of a medical device, but more of a services company. And then after that, I just began consulting. And as luck would have it, I had a friend who was a CFO at a probiotic company called Gnaden Biotech in Cleveland,

and he asked if I would come in and look at their CPG business, and I said, I'm not a CPG guy, but I'm sure somebody is. And then eventually they called to see if I would come and look at their patent portfolio and kind of see what they had going on from a technology standpoint and realized that what they had was this really novel probiotic

that they hadn't published studies around and all this other kind of stuff. And they had a supplement business. They had a line of supplements in about 50,000 stores at the time. And the brand was, you know, selling well. We had nine SKUs. But I really saw opportunities after kind of meeting with consumers and talking and looking at what the trends were back in 2006.

It was when Danone was really making their push with Activia and consumers were basically experiencing pill fatigue. They were just like, I've no mass. I've had enough. I take enough capsules and tablets in a day. And so we saw opportunities with this particular probiotic to put it into food and beverage industry primarily. So that's what we did. And we went whole hog. We sold the supplement business in 2012 to Reckitt Benkiser.

And so they're running that brand now. And we ran the ingredient business. We sold that to an Irish ingredient and services company called Carrie in 2017. And by that time, we were in about 1400 food and beverage products sold in 70 countries.

The consumers were loving the fact that they could have a probiotic that had 38 published clinical studies on it. But rather than having to take a capsule or a tablet every day or a gummy or whatever, they could drink a kombucha or they could have a muffin or they can have cereal that were fortified with it and things like that. And so I just fell in love with the natural products industry and the people I met and the probiotic industry just really intrigued me. I was deep in it.

But it got to the point where at one point I was the president of the International Probiotics Association.

I saw so much room for advocacy in this space and the probiotic industry continues, just grows like crazy. It's continuing to grow. Next week is one of the largest international probiotic association meetings in Vancouver. And so it's just great to see the industry just taking off and becoming more and more consumer responsible, consumer friendly. And we're starting to see more and more quality clinical work being done around probiotics, prebiotics, postbiotics.

It's just, it's a great industry. I just really enjoy it. And it's like watched it change lots and lots of lives. Well, that's really fascinating that you've seen it evolve so much over the years. You've sort of seen the typical standard probiotic capsules and then the different product formats. What do you think is like really interesting

in trend right now in terms of product format? Is it more liquid or is it food? You still see food. You see lots of capsules. You still, I mean, if you look at the probiotic industry in general, it's still the largest place probiotics are sold or in yogurt, fortified yogurts.

um, to this day. I mean, it's, it's the lion's share of the industry, but, um, and so what I'm seeing today format wise is it's still kind of remaining the same, except for you're seeing more and more probiotic fortified foods and beverages. And now you're seeing prebiotics and postbiotics going into foods and beverages as well, where you can never put any probiotic in those before. Um, and then format wise, or excuse me, like

When we look at the direction that probiotics are going into, it's almost exactly what we predicted 10 years ago. And that was in 2006, it was all about digestive and then it became about immune. And then you started seeing some heart studies happening.

Now you're seeing everything is specialized. You're seeing specialty strains for stress. You're seeing specialty strains for, you know, GLP activation or mitigation of symptoms. You're seeing specialty strains for things like recurrent kidney stones or even things like gout. And so, and then lots of work is being done now and has been done in the sports nutrition space around the way proteins and probiotics, you know, work together.

Well, this is really exciting to explore because I've always also been excited about the fact that these probiotics are going to become more specific to certain organs and tissues and cellular pathways. I know last time we spoke, you mentioned a specific probiotic that has been shown to raise GABA levels profoundly in the brain. So do you want to share a little bit more about that? It's crazy. So it's a company called Verb Biotics. I happen to be on their board and I helped. It was a spin out from a company called Ginkgo Bioworks.

But so they screened using AI and other techniques, 200 million strains, and they were specifically looking for a metabolite. And they were so rather than doing what most people do is they find a probiotic, they're like, yeah, this is interesting. Let's see what it does.

They, VIRB sets out and they do everything from a mechanism of action first. So they said, we want something that produces a clinically valid amount of GABA in the gut. You know, the neurotransmitter it's been shown, you know, incredibly helpful for stress and sleep. And so after straining all those or screening all those strains,

They narrowed it down and then tested a bunch. And then ultimately they found it's a special lactobacillus plantarum, which is it's a LP815. And what it does is when it gets down in the gut is it actually produces clinically relevant amounts of GABA in your gut. And it has been shown they've now done three clinical trials on it and they're all showing results.

you know, really good significance in reduction in stress in humans and also in companion animals.

So they're showing in dogs and cats, I mean, you know, there's, you've got all kinds of anxiety effects going on in dogs and cats and the GABA has been helping them tremendously. And it's the same thing in humans. It's working out really well. And it's, it's just one example of like being able to take the technology that's available now, looking at this huge variety of organisms. I mean, if you think about a screening, you know, screening 200 million strains,

I mean, even screening, screening 200 a couple of years ago was wildly labor intensive. Well, now the technology is, yeah, so advanced. The ability to pinpoint molecules and even bacteria is just phenomenal. And would you call that, because I've always sort of spoken favorably about certain probiotics that can, like,

Like, technically speaking, they're classified as like a psychobiotic, right? So with this one, this one could be... You could, you could, you know, all the organizations are trying to figure out how to define various. And so they're kind of like, it's still a probiotic. It does what a probiotic does. I mean, a probiotic has a globally recognized definition by the WHO. And so it certainly does what a probiotic is supposed to do.

but it's yeah interesting it's its main uh purpose in existing is for stress mood and sleep are there any i mean akkermansia you've probably seen that popping up a lot and i've spoken about it already like many favorable benefits for the body you know metabolic support even helping with insulin sensitivity are there any other specific strains that

Like you're hedging your bets, so to speak, that it's an up and comer. Yeah. I mean, so butyrate is like the king of the gut, you know, it's cracked for gut bacteria and, but taking, um,

Butyric acid or taking butyrate is not exactly a fun proposition. I don't know if you've ever been around it, but it's smells awful. It's really hard to formulate with. And so same company, Verb, is working on a butyrate producer that is specifically

geared towards just producing butyrate in the gut rather than having to take some sort of coated butyrate or butyric acid. And that is a very interesting novel organism that has not been made grass yet and that will be.

- Why do you think so much focus has been on butyrate though, specifically out of all the other short-term fatty acids? - It's just from, I don't claim to be an expert on this topic,

It tends to be the most active when it comes to really stimulating the growth of gut bacteria. It's just, like I said, it's like crack for gut bacteria. You put some butyrate in there, it grows like crazy. And it's like if you look at what's going on in the prebiotic world, one of the things everybody's looking at is can we combine this prebiotic and a probiotic to force this prebiotic to...

to help the prebiotic to help the production of the butyrate, but not seeing a ton of butyrate producers that are producing enough that it really makes a big difference. What about in terms of, because obviously you mentioned the GLP-1 action, I've seen some strains mentioned in preclinical studies that they can increase GLP-1 levels. Are there any that you think have merit or it's still too early days? I think it's too early. I mean, I think that...

What people have done is they've said, you know, what does the scientific literature say? Okay, you know, throw some fiber in the gut and it's a GLP activator, right? So if we would use the logic that, you know, hey, we can make a bar, put five grams of fiber in it and call it a GLP activator.

I mean, we're not necessarily being honest with our consumers. Because the consumer, when they hear GLP, they think one of the GLP drugs. So they think, "Well, if I eat this bar, then I won't be hungry and I won't have to worry about getting a prescription for Ozempic or anything." It's certainly not like that. If it were General Mills or Quaker Oats, they would have been the weight loss. The secret of weight loss would have been oatmeal every day.

And so you're seeing some things. One of the most interesting things I've seen in a while is a probiotic and they haven't published the data yet, but a probiotic that has shown significant, I mean, really significant reductions in the symptoms and side effects related to taking the GLP. So less nausea, less of the, you know, all of the things that typically GLP, you know,

Apart from the appetite suppression. Yeah, exactly. It's got all the things that you want and none of the things you don't want. Exactly. That's pretty cool. And that was kind of one of those studies that they did.

And they were really surprised at the effect that it had. And so I think you're going to see some more research going on around that area as well. You know, like what can you do to take alongside your JLPs to either make them less, you know, to reduce the side effects so that you can increase compliance, but also at the same time, you know, they're just as effective because, you know, it's not too effective once you stop taking it.

Outside of the realm of probiotics, Michael, any other, because my audience loves hearing about new ingredients and things like that. Is there anything else you think that

I mean, have you contributed to over the years in terms of pioneering or trademarking any ingredients? I mean, lots. And so, I mean, our, you know, the one that we sold, I was the CEO of Gnaden when we sold it. And that was, we trademarked that. That was trademarked Gnaden BC30. They've now changed it to just BC30, but that's the product that's in literally thousands of SKUs of food products.

I'm working with a company right now, it's a weird analog. It's not necessarily what you would call a functional ingredient per se when it comes to human health. But one of the issues that we're having is with artificial preservatives, sodium benzoate and all these other ones. And so a company I'm on the board of is a company called Kinova. And it's really interesting. They actually take the throwaway stems of button mushrooms

They pull the chitosan out of it. And so, cause there's chitosan, most chitosan that's in the market comes from shellfish. And so this is actually a vegan chitosan. And then it's spelled, this is CHI. Yeah. And so, so it's interesting ingredient on its own, but then we further process it and it becomes a,

Preservative, a natural, completely organic preservative that you can replace things like tunnel pasteurization. You know, you can you can replace in certain applications, especially beverage applications, all of the artificial preservatives.

And you can even list it on the, one of the interesting things about this particular ingredient is it's a great preservative that gets rid of these artificial preservatives. And you can actually list it on your label as a natural flavor because that's kind of its standard of identity. So when you look at an ingredient list on a food or a beverage that contains it, it won't even say contains any preservatives because it really doesn't. It's categorized as a flavor.

And the rationale for using that would be to extend the shelf life? Yes, so to eliminate the use of artificial preservatives, or in many cases, like for example, if you take a company like Poppy, for example, they use tunnel pasteurization. So they put the stuff in a can, it goes through this tunnel, and they do the tunnel pasteurization. And it costs about two cents a can.

to pasteurize a can of beer, a poppy, whatever. For less than, for a cent or less, you can use

you know, this organic ingredient. And it does the same preservation that the tunnel pasteurization does without having to use all the energy and without having to use the tunnel pasteurization at all. And it also increases carbonation. So it's kind of one of those things that's interesting. It's like one man's trash is another person's treasure. And in this case, you know, we take all the throwaway stems from these button mushrooms and create this really interesting preservative.

Yeah, fascinating. So you're saying it's basically like an analog or a variation of chitosan? Yeah, so we take the chitosan and we actually refine it further so that it then has the properties that it needs molecular weight-wise to act as a preservative.

Yeah, because a lot of... This is sort of a side tangent, but in terms of thickeners, fillers, and additives that are oftentimes added to products such as titanium dioxide or magnesium stearate, I'm not sure why magnesium stearate gets a lot of hate, personally. I've never really understood that. Because it's just magnesium and stearic acid. Stearic acid is...

not unhealthy. Yeah, and a lot of people are just, they're just using it as like a flow agent. So it's typically in minuscule, you know, even the titanium dioxide, it's in minuscule, you know,

amounts in a capsule or something like that. It's funny when people get concerned about what's in a capsule. You feel like asking them, did you look at what you ate for lunch today? Because, you know, or you'll have somebody that they'll, you know, they're like, they switch supplements because they want a veggie cap. But

It's the only thing vegetarian that they do in their whole life is not used. Like what's the, well, the alternative is oftentimes gelatin, right? And gelatin, gelatin is a health food because it's got like glycine and I don't understand the logic sometimes. And now they're even doing, you know, gelatin made out of, you know,

seaweed and things like that. And so it's, there's becoming natural or vegan options for just about everything, but it's going to be a while before we've got everything covered.

Are there any, though, in terms of like that you think that consumers should be cautious of, like in terms of maybe sweeteners or dyes or colors, things like that? A lot of people are really sensitive to sugar alcohols. And so, you know, like erythritol. Yeah, erythritol, things like that. People are super sensitive sometimes. You know, there's the research that's being done on the artificial colors. You know, it's certainly not my specialty, but it's but there's just

I kind of just look at it like the shorter the ingredient list, but without exception, when you look at an ingredient list, whether it's on a food or on a supplement, if you can't find out about the things that are in it, I'm not a fan of proprietary blends. I'm not a fan of not knowing how, when somebody puts in the probiotic world, you'll see has 30 billion CFU and then they'll list 15 strains.

But you don't know if it's 29.9 billion CFU of some Eric acidophilus and then a whole bunch of nothing of the others. So, you know, there's, you know, there's, there's the labeling requirements or, you know, guidelines that should be followed that, that if, if folks are following them, then typically a company that you can trust. And if you see somebody obfuscating in some way or another, there's typically reasons.

And with that proprietary blends, I fully agree with you, Michael. I've always been against that. And even like, it sort of makes me wonder though, as myself as a formulator person,

yes, I've got great formulation ideas, but I really would rather be transparent on the label and show this is how much of each ingredient. But then it's also like, okay, but how does Lucas protect his formula? Patent it or trademark it. You can trademark it. And if you're going to then, if you're going to do clinical work, if you're going to do any clinical trials on, for example, a proprietary blend, you trademark that blend name, whatever you want to call it,

And so therefore, if anybody in the future tries to use your clinical trial on an exact, you know, you on their own proprietary blend that happens to be the same.

all of a sudden they're violating your trademark. There's also the ability to patent formulations. And so if it's a truly novel formulation, you know, getting a patent isn't the hardest thing in the world. And so, and I often encourage people, it's like, you know, do your patented trademark work way ahead of time so that you're not building a market for someone else who's, you know, faster or smarter than you to take advantage of.

Okay. Yeah, definitely. We'll definitely have a chat offline about that because obviously we spoke about some great combinations. What about, Michael, in terms of, let's talk about caffeine. Caffeine is a, you know, everyone knows about caffeine, mostly in the context of pre-workouts, but in terms of, you mentioned something really interesting about an encapsulated caffeine. Yeah, there's been a number of companies that have

been able to, because, you know, if you have, if you take something, you know, somebody, you give somebody 400 milligrams of caffeine and you're like, you know, good luck to you because it's going to just dump into your stomach all at one time. And you're going to have this huge bolus of caffeine. There's a number of companies that have taken various technologies and

And they've been able to coat that caffeine where basically what these coatings do, it's imagine like extended release drugs or, you know, it's typically used in drugs. But so you'll coat the caffeine so that it breaks down over the course of, say, four hours or six hours.

And so you have so your your, you know, your PK study will show that, like, you're actually keeping the caffeine, the caffeine levels at an adequate level to keep you caffeinated for a certain period of time.

And you don't have that spike and you don't have that crash afterwards. And it's, you know, it's just a very cool technology that is now extending beyond caffeine into things like probiotics and to other functional ingredients where you, maybe you want to, for example, there's, there's probiotics out there that you want them to grow in the small intestine. There's other ones you want to grow in the large intestine. And so you could hypothetically say,

coat these, these, the probiotics so that the ones that you want to go into the small intestine are dropped, they are completely protected from stomach acid and bile salts. And then they drop off half of the load in the small intestine and they drop off what's supposed to be in the large intestine and the large intestine.

really interesting ways to deliver these functional ingredients. And like I said, you're starting to see a couple of companies that are out there really doing some innovative things in that space where now we're starting to see more of an extended release approach to things outside of just capsules and protection and things like that. You're actually coating the ingredient themselves.

I always find it really fascinating exploring different like routes of administration. I mean, I've always been really fascinated by sublingual administration because I've always like, I've been trying to understand like how does it, which molecules actually have the capacity to work sublingually. So if you have

Had any experience or like looked at products in that format? Yeah. I mean, back in the day, we did a bunch of work on thin strips and, you know, sublingual a little bit, but I mean, it's the same concept. Basically, you're trying to get, you know, you're trying to get the molecule to,

you know, make it, you know, avoid digestion, you know, something that's broken down. And so sublingual is cool. I mean, it's like if you look at some of the medications that are on the market that are sublingual, you know, just makes them work much more, you know, because the molecule is small enough, they just get right through. You probably recall a couple of years ago, everybody and his brother was trying to do everything transdermally.

And so you could get a patch for anything, but you're like, okay, well, these molecules are so giant, they're never making it through the skin. And so, but sublingual is a, it's a neat technology for things where it, you know, where the application is there. I've seen B12, I've seen sublingually, you know, and then lots of drugs. Yeah. Yeah. You mentioned the transdermal route. That's oftentimes I've seen a lot of, yeah, formulations that make big promises, right?

But deep down, it's like, there's no way that's actually making it into meaningful quantities in the bloodstream. There's some sort of law that applies for molecules to be able to pass through transdermally. I can't remember what it was. I forget as well. But there's a certain molecular weight that's just not getting through, that's just not making it into the bloodstream. The molecule is just too big to get through the skin and out of the patch and everything else. What about in terms of like...

A big area of like optimization is like hormonal health specifically. I mean, male testosterone optimization, that's a huge market, you know, that's, and it's testosterone levels are not getting better across the board. It's we're going down. Same with fertility, anything in that realm you think is pretty interesting to share with my audience. So, yeah,

On the testosterone side, not as much from the gut side of things. On the women's health side of things, it's incredible what's going on because, so I'm 57 and it makes me feel incredibly old that now millennials are going into perimenopause.

And so in in what we found through our industry is that when millennials start, when it starts to happen, you better have the supplement engine ramped up because they're much more likely than Gen X or especially than the baby boomers to go something route.

And so you're starting to see some really interesting things like in the women's health and the hormonal balance. There's a company called Nouri, N-O-U-R-I, that's a probiotic company, but it's very focused on women's health.

They've got a men's health product coming out, but the women's health, because I mean, not only do you have the hormonal issues that you need to deal with and the metabolic issues to deal with, but you also have the vaginal health side of things where probiotics can make a big impact. And so it's just from a hormonal balance side of things, I think that we're going to see

I mean, every company I talk to is looking at men's health. You know, it's, it's in the men's health side, you know, there's been a lot of work been done around, you know, sexual health and sexual wellness and women's health. You're seeing more work being done around menopause, hormonal balance and vaginal health. And so it's, so in both, you know, both categories are booming and nobody is not looking at it. I mean, it's,

Especially women's health. I mean, they just, you know, there's, they just take the, you know, they take responsibility. Women tend to take responsibility for their healthcare much more than men do, which is why they go to doctors regularly and men die in the parking lot of doctor's offices. Yeah. Well, that's an interesting pathway there. Michael is looking at the, you mentioned certain types of fibers before.

I do want to explore a little bit about that because there has been one particular fiber that I've been talking about and educating quite a lot on, which is the PHGG, the partially hydrolyzed guar gum. Are there any types of fibers? I mean, the psyllium husks have been well-known for years, but...

Like how has that space evolved? So the fiber market has become two things. It's become, you've got fiber, just regular old fiber that does its fiber thing. And then you have the prebiotic market. And it's,

not all fibers are, are prebiotic and not all prebiotics or fibers, but, but, but some of the more interesting ones are the types of fibers where you can get really good clinical benefits without having to take large quantities. So for example, inulin, which is what is the most popular prebiotic. A lot of people are super sensitive to inulin causes gas, lots of people,

And the dosages are in the 5 to 20 gram range. Really hard to stuff in a capsule. It's even hard to put into a food. If you're putting 5 grams or 10 grams of something into a food, you're eating up a lot of space. Like a protein bar, for example, they sometimes put inulin. But there's fibers out there now where they can make their full claims and they can make the full benefit.

at a gram or two grams. So there's some short chain phoses, FOS. It's a fructooligosaccharide. So the short chain phoses are, you know, have been studied very, very well. There's one called Nutraflora that's been studied exceptionally well. It's very helpful for, you know, gut health, immune health, and some other things. And then there's a xylooligosaccharide, which is

Not actually classified as a fiber, even though if you and I saw it, we would go, that looks like a fiber from where it comes from, but just has a chemical structure that makes it so that it doesn't qualify as a fiber at this point. But the xylooligosaccharides, you're seeing it two grams, two and a half grams a day, really good digestive immune and other types of end support. What are they classifying it as if it's not a fiber? They're just calling it a prebiotic.

Okay. So, but then you've got, you know, you've got the human milk oligosaccharides, which are really blowing up right now, especially for infant formula and things. HMOs are prebiotics. You know, the guar gums and things like that are considered prebiotics. But now you're even starting to see, you know, there's some companies, they have a, there's a prebiotic on the market. It's actually a phage. So it's actually a, it's like, or it's a combination of, and so it's like,

It doesn't look like a prebiotic to me. It's certainly not a fiber, but it has a prebiotic effect. And so you introduce it in the gut and it makes the good bacteria grow and doesn't support the growth of bad bacteria. And so it works just like a prebiotic. It just happens to be a phage. Interesting. Well, what about in terms of like, we spent some time mentioning, so you're saying beneficial bacteria, like when people say it's increasing the growth of beneficial bacteria,

Like most people probably think lactobacillus family or whatever species and bifidobacteria, like lacto, bifido, but bifidobacteria.

Deep down, there are so many. I mean, there's many, many strains in our gut that we can't cultivate. I mean, there's some really important. They're called commensal. Are they commensal? Yeah, exactly. And so they do really important things. There's a bacteria called phacobacteria prosnitiki, I believe. And this particular bacteria is incredibly important for a variety of things, including reducing inflammation.

Well, no one's been able to figure out how to grow this stuff outside of the human body. I mean, you know, people have looked at some of these like acromantia is another one. I mean, there's, there's these strains that are like strict anaerobes where you have to grow them and hold them and everything in the, in the presence, you know, you can't have them in the presence of oxygen.

And so they're amazing strains. And so what the industry is trying to figure out is, is how do we make these amazing strains grow in the gut, considering that we can't do it outside of the gut? That's where prebiotics are coming in and things like butyrate and things like that. Because, I mean, we all have, you know, lots of different types of bacteria and fungi in our gut.

And we want to make sure that we support the growth of the good bacteria and we don't let the bad bacteria get out of control. And so what a lot of these do is they help with that balance and they help, you know, the good prebiotics will help the good bacteria grow and not support the excessive growth of E. coli or salmonellas or clostridiums that we all have in our gut all the time anyway.

Yeah, that's a great point you mentioned. In terms of the... So what makes lactobacillus and bifidobacteria so easy to synthesize? Like why are they so ubiquitous? They're just good growers. I mean, you know, they're...

And they were like the strains that were originally identified as, you know, causing a benefit. Way back when I used to do a presentation, it was like the history of probiotics. And one of the things I found amazing was, you know, Genghis Khan, I believe it was, used to, they found that, so they used to preserve the milk for the soldiers in the intestines of camels.

And so that's the container they would use. And then they would realize and they were realizing that the people that drank the milk were healthier than the people that didn't. And I didn't know why. But the reason was, is what was happening is, is it was fermenting the milk and turning it was basically giving them super probiotic fortified milk that was being stored in this camel intestine.

And so, and what they found early on was, is the strains that were doing this were lactobacilli, bifidobacteria, bacillus. And so now we're starting to see people expand outside of those worlds. And there was a taxonomy change a couple of years ago too, where they changed the name of a bunch of probiotics. And so that I think,

Made people feel a little more comfortable not having to put lactobacillus or bifidobacteria as the genus so that consumers would recognize it.

Fascinating. Well, what about, cause you mentioned that, that aspect there, but in terms of like the kefir market as well, you've probably seen, you know, that evolve quite a lot over, over, over time. Yeah. I mean, it's, you know, there's, there's great products on the market that have tons of, of, you know, beneficial bacteria in it. You know, some of them that you look at, you're like, I hope it does. I mean, it has many CFU of something that,

But in the probiotic world, it's all about strain efficacy. So you may have a kefir may have 30 strains in it, and you may find that two of them have some function outside of turning your milk into a fermented beverage.

And so, which is why, you know, our kind of general guidelines that the probiotic association has is, you know, you should label genus, species and strain. And if you don't see that strain listed, it's probably because it wasn't studied. We don't know what it does. And it's just a generic, who knows, could be could be just turning milk into yogurt and it could be doing something, but we don't know.

What about in terms of, because my audience will probably be wanting to know, is there a database for consumers to identify a list of strains that are like from most studied to least studied? Or is there some cool database that you recommend for consumers? You know, there are a couple of databases that have been released.

being built for a long time. I'd be happy to send you a link to a couple of them afterwards. But, you know, really, you know, probiotics are one of those things where, you know, there's a handful of organisms that do the lion's share of the work in the market, and then lots and lots of other strains that have been studied. And then you have the generic

probiotic list. You've got acidophilus. And like I had mentioned earlier, it's all about the strain. A number of years ago, a university looked at, there's the most studied strain on the market in the world is a strain called Lactobacillus rhamnosus GG. It's the strain that's in culturel. It has literally, I believe there are over 2000 studies on this strain.

And so, and it's, you know, universities and everybody's done, everybody's studied the strength. But so what they did was, because what we were finding is, is you'd go to, you know, a retailer and they would have a compared to cultural.

But the problem was, is the only people that could buy cult, the black bacillus GG were the people that were making cultural. So the others weren't actually compared to, it's not like a seed of menathan that you can do compared to Tylenol. Yeah. It's not like a strong reference material is what he's saying. And so basically,

like for example, this university, they used the Lactobacillus GG as the zero, as the reference material. And then they sequenced 99 strains of other Lactobacillus rhamnosus. And they were anywhere from 99.9% similar all the way down to 86%. And so to put that in comparison, we have way more genetically in common

to chickens than the 86% strain has to black faciles GG. But still people are using the strain saying it's the same thing. And so, you know, that's kind of like, that's a heck of a reach, you know, when you're that far apart genetically. And so it really is, the strain is everything.

The research has to be done on the strain. You'll see, oh, acidophilus does that. You're like, which one? Some do, some don't. And so you have to, so I would advise consumers to really be looking for that strain designation. If it doesn't exist, it's probably not there for a reason.

because they're trying to, you know, trying to shortcut something. And and if it does exist, it should be easy enough to put it into the into Google and pull up any PubMed articles or whatever, as long as you have the strain designation. All that's public information. Really fascinating.

What about a lot of my consumers or like audience would probably want to know about like stacking, combining strains. They don't, they're probably thinking, do they compete when they're in a capsule, when they get broken down? What are your thoughts on that? I mean, there's not been a ton.

ton of studies done specifically about the interaction of various strains. Like in the capsule, we don't have to worry about it. They're just hanging out, doing their thing. Once they get into the gut and they start germinating, the question is, is like, are they going to out-compete each other for nutrients? If you put it in perspective, somebody just the other day asked me, they said, you know, I need, my gut's all screwed up. I had a microbiome test. It's all screwed up. I need to take a pro, which probiotic will fix my gut? And I said, that's like saying,

which thimble should I use to fill my swimming pool? I mean, you may be able to do it over time or with enough thimbles full, but you've got hundreds of trillions of CFU of bacteria and fungi in your gut, and you're going to throw a billion CFU of some probiotic every day in a capsule, and a portion of it's going to die, and then you're going to get what the studied remaining amount

And it may do a thing that it's been studied for. It may help move an immune marker or something like that. But if you think that that one probiotic is going to fix your gut, you're going to be disappointed. And so I do recommend like people are, you know, the general rule of thumb is, is if you're going to be on an antibiotic, take a probiotic like FloraStor. So a yeast-based probiotic. They're not killed by the antibiotics while you're,

Every other probiotic should be killed by the antibiotics. It's kind of like one of those we don't want probiotics to be antibiotic resistant and so And then when people finish up with antibiotics, I kind of recommend it's like a well-documented You know List of strains, you know in a product whether it's you know Jaro or Garden of Life or you know one of these types of organizations that have well studied strains in their in their products and

do that for 60 to 90 days along with like a cultural or a digestive advantage or all like I do. I just, if I have to, God forbid, if I take antibiotics, I'm taking, you know, four or five probiotics for the next, you know, 30 to 90 days and not having issues with

I also encourage people, you know, get your gut tested. You know, there's good companies out there doing testing. There's a company called Biome, for example, based out of Cleveland, Ohio, and they actually test fungi levels as well. And so you may find people

their gut bacteria may be out of whack because they've got a huge dominant amount of a certain candida strain or something like that. And your typical microbiome testing doesn't really look at fungi. And so I encourage people to do it on a regular basis. And if I was a probiotic formulator making products as part of my, and I was selling a subscription-based model, I would include probiotic, I'd be including gut testing every six months

through the life of my subscription. It shows consumers that what they're trying to affect. Yeah, it's an objective measure will always impress a consumer because they're not always in tune with how they actually feel as well. And in terms of you mentioned there around the Flora store, you said...

flora store and then a combination of other probiotics when you're using an antibiotic. Well, so the antibiotic, I generally recommend to people, you know, don't stop taking your probiotic when you're on antibiotics, because even the cell walls of probiotics often have an effect on the immune system. So like a lot of postbiotics, what are they? They're typically they're just heat inactivated

probiotics. Sometimes they're a metabolic gamish and the cell walls. But, you know, so if the antibiotic kills the bacteria, the cell wall is still intact. But then, you know, start, you know, then kind of take a multi-strain product for a while and then, you know, then get back to your routine.

And obviously include healthy fibers and prebiotics along the way. And it really helps mitigate some of the problems that people have with antibiotics. We should also dispel the myth that all antibiotics wipe out gut bacteria, because that's not true, right? Because not all antibiotics actually...

you know, get metabolized in that way where they're actually, because some of them are only absorbed, what is it, in the stomach or something? Well, and there's antibiotics for gram negatives and antibiotics for, you know, other types of things. And so, yeah, I mean, certain antibiotics and I'm not, I don't have my antibiotic and probiotic interaction list in front of me, but some antibiotics, you know, hey, if you take Cipro, you're probably going to have problems with your gut bacteria. But if you're taking Cipro, you probably got something bigger going on than a little

you know, a little diarrhea during your, your antibiotic treatment. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And you're referring to, cause I've used the word, the abbreviation Cipro for another drug before in this podcast. Cipro is like that super antibiotic that they would give you if you were like, if you, if you got anthrax. Yeah. Yeah. So like really, really intense, not, not Ciproheptadine, which is a different drug that I've spoken about. It's, it's Cipro. What's the actual drug name? Ciprohexamethasone.

- Ciproflaxin or something? - Yeah, Ciproflaxin, yep. - Yeah, something like that. Okay. Well, in terms of my, I mean, another side tangent is also looking at like a traveler's diarrhea protocol. You might wanna mention some other, I mean, I've got some other great ingredients in mind in terms of like activated charcoal, some sort of like binder, but yeah, what would you say for consumers, yeah, looking to prevent traveler's diarrhea? - So a couple of years ago we went to India

I wanted to try my solution for this and it was take Florastor. So it's Saccharomyces boulardii. So I started taking Florastor about 30 days before we left along with my regular probiotics. I added Digestive Advantage, which is BC30, the spore former. So I was taking the Florastor and BC30 and Culturel

the entire time that we were in India and before.

Zero problems, no problems whatsoever. In fact, I can proudly state that of the tour group that we were with, they were all people we knew, I was the only person that had zero digestive issues. It may also have to do with the fact that we would stop at a roadside restaurant and they would go to the home-style restaurant and I would say, I think Domino's pizza would be good. It would be a good choice at this particular rest area. And so, but...

And I mean, I travel all the time. I was in Mexico a couple weeks ago and we were in Japan last year. I've never had a problem

And I think that, you know, by adding the florist store and things like that, it'll prevent the traveler's diarrhea. You know, if you, you know, if you wind up getting sick, you know, active activated charcoal is great for like binding with stuff in the stomach. But if you're taking activated charcoal, you're doing it, you know, ahead of time or you're doing it because there's a problem. You're typically not going to start taking activated charcoal ahead of time because, you know, it's also grabbed some of the medications we're on and things like that.

Yeah, because I've got a story when I was in London. Funnily enough, I went to the supermarket and I bought what I thought was already cooked chicken. But it was actually uncooked chicken that was left in the fridge. And I remember I got back very late that night, but I was starving and I opened the fridge and I saw the chicken. It was already crumbed as well. So I thought it was already cooked and I took a bite, swallowed it. It was pretty dark. And then I'm like,

Five seconds later, I realized I just swallowed uncooked chicken. And then I took like heaps of activated charcoal and

And I was completely fine. Plus, I mean, it was in the refrigerator. Salmonella doesn't do so great in the refrigerator. And usually you have to have quite a bit or an E. Coli or something. Hopefully. And plus, it was the UK. They've got good sanitation practices in their chicken processing plants and things like that. And so.

No, really, really interesting. Well, Michael, if my audience wants to connect with you, I've got a lot of supplement formulators that, that listen to my podcast and, you know, people that want to get in touch with you, where can they, where can they find you? Growthways.com. So my website for, you know, I have an advisory firm. So growthways.com I'm on LinkedIn and things like that, but always glad to hear from folks. You know, I've been in this space now, you know, 20 years almost. And so it's, yeah,

I love it and I also, one of the things I love and enjoy doing is I wrote a book last year about growing to sell your natural products business. And so I love working with entrepreneurs, especially earlier in the game.

Or as they get prepared to sell their company, you know, what do we do? You know, how do we how do we make sure that we get the maximum value when when we sold Gnaden? I'm still proud of the fact that we sold it for industry high multiple 24 and a half times EBITDA. And so, yeah. And so so by using some of the practices that we that we used and developed there when we were running that business and previous ones before that,

It's all about making sure that you're maximizing value. And even if you don't plan on selling the business, maximizing value is pretty important because the value could be going, could be cash in the pocket of the company versus, you know, wasted money on things that you're just burning cash.

Oh, definitely. And that's not something that I've really thought deeply about because I've only just launched my own supplement brand. You know, I'm planning on being in this for at least another like 15 to 20 years because I absolutely love the idea of formulating. But you never know, like there might be opportunities that pop up.

you know and i need to be sort of ready for that well and it depends too on how what what you're doing with your business you know a lot of businesses in our space are venture capital backed or and then they once they get successful maybe the private equity firm will take them for a second shot or they're sold to a strategic um but the natural products industry is

is a very particular industry when it comes to starting to sell businesses. And it's just because a lot of us in the industry, we've never built a billion dollar brand, but we could build a $50 million brand or a $100 million brand, but getting it from 50 million to a billion is what Procter & Gamble does or Cary does or Novanesis or companies like that.

Nestle, for example, they're great at that. And so they're great and they have very ideal targets that they want to acquire. And I think that everybody would be well served to put themselves in a position to be one of those preferred targets rather than, "Oh no, what am I going to do with my business? I'm making money, I'm just..." But are you building yourself a business or are you building yourself a job? And so it's the big difference.

Yeah, really fascinating. Well, make sure to leave that growthways.com link in the podcast show notes. But otherwise, Michael, you've shared so much wisdom and yeah, really insightful stuff around the probiotic space and the prebiotic market. I mean,

Definitely make sure to, everyone, if anyone's listening into this podcast and wants to get in touch with Michael, definitely do so. He's a wealth of knowledge. And if you guys have enjoyed today's podcast, please do leave it a five-star review. It really does help with the algorithm. And please do share the podcast around. That definitely helps to increase the reach of my podcast. Otherwise, Michael, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. Thank you. Awesome.

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