Do Probiotics Live Through Stomach Acid?

[Music] dr tom bain thank you so much for joining me today

pleasure thank you for having me

yeah you know uh you are a chiropractor a functional medicine practitioner and one of the founders of microbiome labs is that right

that is correct

okay i first found out about you and this is interesting because i kind of have a unique what i’ll consider above the rest product so sometimes when i find people that are using my product it makes me look at their nutrition company and i find that they are a step up but this this is not how this happened um i actually saw you in a chiropractic meeting it was the florida chiropractic association and i went to one of your presentations and it was kind of jaw-dropping for me it’s like wow this is different and i remember trying your uh your megaspore biotics and i will say it’s the first time i ever took a probiotic where i actually felt a difference yeah and it was literally that same day yeah

well you know us us chiropractors are interesting breed um i i’ve traveled the world i’ve lived in europe for five years in my early years and the more than any other uh medical profession chiropractors are entrepreneurs and and i find that it’s not that we’re born entrepreneurs and none of us we didn’t get any education to be an entrepreneur in chiropractic school but by and large we’re a stubborn group of people that doesn’t accept the status quo and just says i don’t like this i’m gonna find a different way to do this and like i did not dream of running a probiotic company like that wasn’t a plan since i was a child

you know for me i i went to chiropractic school with this idea that i was gonna be a sports medicine chiropractor played a lot of sports as a kid was doing a lot of in undergrad i did uh athletic training uh certification and i was just i just wanted to be like a sports guy uh and and then i got into chiropractic school and i started learning about nutrition and all this other stuff and i was like wait a minute i could be like a gp but make dietary and supplement recommendations instead of drugs like this is pretty interesting you know and that that led me to europe and i got some experiences there

and so but the when people say how did you get here how did how did you create microbiomes it’s like it came out of frustration it came because i couldn’t find a probiotic that did what everybody advertised them to do i kept thinking okay if i do this i’m changing this person’s microbiome when in reality that wasn’t the case at all i thought i was i was giving them something with the intention of making a change to their microbiome but i really wasn’t and uh

and so then i i got frustrated pissed and i started investing my own time and money into research and saying well these guys say this i’m gonna i’m gonna do a study and i’m gonna find out and sure enough all those other guys were lying oh our product survives through the stomach no it doesn’t i just did a test here doesn’t survive at all it was dead in seconds oh my my products well i when i open up the capsule your product was already dead you know and so it just the whole probiotic industry at the time when when i got exposed to the spores i wasn’t even using probiotics i was so frustrated with the the lack of of consistency of the lack of benefit that i just continued looking and looking for something else um and that’s when i found uh dr cutting in in london and he was a preeminent sport researcher we started picking his brain we started looking at his research and

and that just kind of was the impetus to uh to start the story and then sure enough what i did is you know i consider you a like a first responder right you’re one of those guys that you listen to something and you’re like well sounds pretty good i’ll give it a shot if what you said is true then i’m going to be a great client of yours but i’m going to put you to the test right this is a great talk sounds great but you know give me 12 bottles i’m gonna give them my twelve hardest patients and i’m gonna call you back and let you know how it goes

right and that was all i was asking for people right uh just give it a shot and um and and and from that what i recognize is that people like you and and people like me people that were in that in the chairs they were equally as frustrated they were equally mad about the results they weren’t getting with what they were told was supposed to help them you know so so it’s it’s funny how things come around it’s like uh you know my my dad kind of my dad’s not a chiropractor and he stole insurance and stuff he’s a business guy and he’s just kind of like i don’t know now you’re doing products what are you what is what where are you kind of all over the map and i’m like you know dad i’m just trying to find my way i’m just trying to figure out how to help more people right yeah

so you know and just i have to tell you that you’ve described me to a t because at the time you know i’m trying to help people with all their gut problems and i you know from everything i’ve learned the microbiome was so important and probiotics was one of those things to help it so i’m recommending probiotics but i’m not getting results now eventually i recommended one probiotic that i started getting some results and this is how i knew people started coming back to repurchase that probiotic it wasn’t like you know they um i never heard from them again or you know but they said ever since i’ve taken been taking that i’ve been doing better and and they would come back for months in a row purchasing that same probiotic

now it’s interesting because fast forward so i started recommending that one at the time and after recommending 10 others prior to it or carrying them i should say carrying them in my office because of what i had heard now when uh and when i had taken those particular probiotics i really didn’t notice a difference but when i had taken yours for the first time after that seminar and this is back in your early days i want to say probably around 2014 2015 is that about i think it would have been 15 yes okay

and now here’s what i realized one of the probiotics in that one that i was getting some results with was the same as one of them that is in yours and uh that was the i think was bacillus subtilis and then the others were the typical things that you would see in in you know uh probiotics like you know the lactobacillus and the various others that you would see on on a typical probiotic label or that you might even see on a thing of yogurt right exactly

well in you know fast forward i started recommending the megaspore biotics and everyone started getting results in fact some people even maybe a little bit strong at the first you know taking which is okay because we’re looking for a change and it’s funny even in chiropractic you know we sometimes forget to tell our patients before doing uh chiropractic adjustments that you’re going to feel different and it might even be uncomfortable it might be pain as we make a change sometimes you know change results in discomfort right not that they really had discomfort but you know all of a sudden things are moving and then after a couple days it adjusts exactly

i want to get into more about your probiotics specifically but since i brought that up what’s going on and what might people do to smooth that initial use of the probio of megaspore biotics

so it’s funny in in the in the experience i had so i so i was not going to launch a product without testing it myself so the first batch we got first they sent 50 bottles you know over and and and i said you know what i’m just going to give him my most difficult patience and so i started getting and so i had gotten i had had like a 100 people on the product and i’m talking to the guys in the lab and they’re like how’s it going and i’m like fantastic they’re like are people having any problems with it i’m like no like they’re all taking it and nobody’s having any problems i hang up the phone the next three people come in having problems and and it was just a weird thing that i that so many people benefited before i saw

but now that i’ve got thousands of people hundreds of thousands of people on the product what we see about 15 of the time the initial reaction is uncomfortable uh sometimes it’s well okay so 15 of time the reaction’s uncomfortable if we take that 15 90 of the time that discomfort is you can live with it it’s a little bit of cramping it’s maybe a little bit of a loose stool but it’s not something that’s you know changing your life you know it’s not not making you stop doing or stop functioning

but you know as a chiropractor as a person who sees patients it’s that that 10 that keeps you up at night right those are the ones that you know they they start taking it and next thing you know they’re having very intense intestinal cramping they’re having flying diarrhea they’re just their bodies are reacting very intensely to the change that the probiotic is initiated and so i found it very difficult to identify who it was going to be right i had this athlete fit clean eater and he reacted very negatively to it initially and i thought no way he’s going to react negatively but he did and other people were really sick who i thought for sure they’re going to have a negative reaction but they didn’t and so because i couldn’t really say you know okay this person this type of person is the person you’re going to see the reaction from

i just started titrating everybody so rather it’s a two capsule a day dose and so rather than saying you know start with two capsules a day i had people start with one capsule every other day and i had to do that because if they’re gonna have a negative reaction at the lower dose it’s gonna be less of a reaction and i can and then i can be there to talk to him about it and i’d say okay okay well we’re gonna stay at the lower dose for a couple weeks and let your body get used to it and then we’ll slowly go back up i can’t honestly say that there’s been one person who just had this horrible reaction and they could never take the product again

the thing is is that the the bacteria that make up megaspore they used to be ubiquitous they used to be everywhere in our environment if you pulled an apple off the tree and ate it you were getting a mouthful of these spores because they were environmental bacteria that we co-evolved with they they aren’t um they’re transient bacteria when they’re in our digestive tract

so so the whole idea the whole story that we tell our patients and that the marketing that’s told us as doctors is that oh you want to take this probiotic because it colonizes in your gut that’s garbage uh but probiotics don’t colonize in your gut what you get is you get a transient effect so the most your lactobifido-based probiotics they they’re dead on arrival uh as they pass through they make some ph changes sometimes some of the dna will trigger some reactions at the pair’s patches the galt the immune system of your gut you can get certain things that’s why you’ll see you’ll see a provac where they’ll say for the for the benefit of upper respiratory infections or for the treatment of of irritable bowel right and that’s because the dead bacteria triggers some kind of change that changes a symptom but the minute you stop taking the probiotic you didn’t do anything to change the environment of your microbiome you still have a dysfunctional microbiome you’re just getting a transient benefit as the probiotic passes by

the spores are transient but when they’re in there they’re reconditioning they’re getting rid of pathogens and they’re creating an environment that’s conducive for the bacteria that you got from your mom to increasing the concentration the increase in their numbers and so that’s supported by science colonization is not supported by science

an aerobic organism existing in an anaerobic environment is not supported by science so if you tell me i open up the capsule and bacteria’s alive then it must be some type of aerobic organism it’s living in an oxygen-rich environment your stomach is devoid of oxygen so so the back for a bacteria to exist inside your digestive tract it has to be biphasic it has to be able to exist in the environment but also have functions in your digestive tract

and so we’ve co co-existed and co-evolved with these bacteria these bacteria have been on planet earth longer than humans have been on planet earth and they’ll probably be here long after we’re gone they’re very um they’re very they’re they’re robust organisms that have found how to survive in different environments and what they do is they use the environment to move from host to host every animal we’ve looked at every sea creature we’ve looked at every insect that we looked at they have these particular bugs in their digestive tract and they have receptor sites for these organisms to attach to in the digestive tract

so i can’t look at you and say that you need lactobacillus acidophilus lactobacillus makes up one percent of the microbiome yet the number one probiotic we supplement is lactobacillus if we were actually doing what many physicians say we’re doing when we give people active bacillus we would be creating redundancy in the microbiome we would be making people sick so it’s good that the marketing they sold us saying that you know this is going to colonize your in your digestive tract and we repeated that marketing say to our patients it’s good thing that that was a lie because if it was true we would be making people sick uh because we would be taking you know a microbiome that has a thousand different beneficial species and we would be reducing it to one that’s not good diversity is health in the mic when it comes to microbiome

and so what we recognize with the spores is that the spores go in their bacteria and they talk to other bacteria and when they get in and they see an overabundance of e coli or c diff or some other bacterial pathogen that’s not supposed to be there they start fighting with them they have the ability to produce antibiotics they fight for food with with the bacteria they try to make its life miserable and and if they can’t just get it to leave then they then they start making antibiotics and start selectively killing off the bacteria that’s in the microbiome

and then they make waste products right that sounds gross there’s bacteria inside me making waste products well yeah but the waste parts these bacteria making full spectrum of b vitamins in their methylated form coenzyme q10 nanokinase vitamin k2 short chain fatty acids butyrate propionate acetate

so the bacterial poop if you will is food for us it’s hardcore nutrition for us and and it’s it’s nutrition that in many cases we don’t get our colonocytes need short-chain fatty acids to function we don’t make short chain fatty acids the bacteria in our gut make them and so if we don’t have the right balance bacteria in our gut our our colonocytes and our colon die

you know and and this is what when you know we see this in inflammatory bowel patients it’s like the the the biggest example of this is are the inflammatory bowel patients where the colonoscopes you see a a scope of their colon and it’s like there’s a fire down there the class sites are a bit burned away and and the the component of that is long-term dysbiosis uh a devoid of short-chain fatty acids and then death to the cells uh that require the short-chain fatty acids so so it’s it’s fascinating when you really dig in and you really understand well wait a minute these guys are selling me marketing information they’re not telling me science when i really dig into the science you know science is this one bacteria at a low dose does x treats x symptom

and so here’s these three bacteria that treat three different symptoms and what the marketing guys do is they put those three bugs together and they say that that bug does three different things that’s not research we don’t know if they cancel each other out we don’t know how they behave when they’re together so if you’re going to study you have to do research on the finished product

in the professional space in the united states there will be 580 million dollars worth of sales from probiotics that’s chiropractors medical doctors acupuncturists selling probiotics to patients there is one probiotic that has done research with the finished formulas us we’re the only one

there’s this company in belgium that does these studies where you can observe what your bacteria what your probiotic does in different parts of the digestive tract it’s a it’s a it’s a model where they take a patient with irritable bowel they take a sample of their stool and then they run it through this like it’s it’s a it’s a it’s a synthetic digestive tract for lack of a better word environment yeah and you can see this is what my probiotics do in the small intestine this is what it’s doing the ascending colon this is what’s doing a transverse colon

so it’s doing a descending colon and you can see what it’s doing it costs 30 dollars to do a test with it right we’re the only probiotics doing tests with it why is that well according those guys are like yeah we’ve done a couple with other ones they don’t and when we said we wanna study our products they’re like we’ve done a number of probiotics a lot of them don’t do anything and it’s like wow okay well we think ours does something you know so we tested it no these other companies are doing this testing they don’t want to know right they don’t want to know they’re marketing companies and they’re just trying to get their piece of that pie they’re just trying to get sales

for me it was look people come to me they pay cash for my service they trust me i have to do right by them i have to make sure that the products i’m using are studied that the the that i can definitively say to someone when you’re in this situation this is how you treat it and this is the research that supports that right so that’s the that’s where i want to be as a practitioner i i don’t want to be a well we could try this you know that’s not me and so

so we put the product to the test the amount of research we did before we launched a product is more than everybody in our space has done combined it’s crazy it’s wrong but it is what it is and and the thing is i bet that there were more people like me that were frustrated and that were having these same lack of results and i was right and we took off based on that messaging simple messaging your product’s dead and there’s no research on it we’ve got research and we’ve proven that our product can survive through the gi tract that message alone got guys like you to take a risk to take a chance and and to say and look if you bought those first 12 bottles and it was a dud i never would have heard from you again

right and so but i was okay with that right i knew at that point i had to get in front of people like you i had to get the messaging out and develop just enough trust so you would try it and i knew if i did that i’d get you and sure enough that’s what happened

and uh you know since we launched in in 2014 um we doubled in size year over year over year and uh you know we’re the largest probiotic

in the professional space now and we’re the youngest um and and we’re really getting a foothold in the education side naturopathic schools chiropractic schools you know i went to national college chiropractic the naturopaths that now go to national in chicago in their conversations they when they talk about probiotic they say megaspore by name it’s almost like saying kleenex right it’s like because they’ve been so trained to look at the research and the only one that’s got research is us they’re using our brand in place of of the word probiotic because that’s all they’re learning about and so so it’s interesting the type of people that embraced us first responders people who want to change students that are looking at science

who didn’t respond people who had a vested interest in the way things were uh people who fought us tooth and now when you look at you’re like why are they fighting us we’re coming in with a different mess wi-fi is oh they’re invested in the status quo they need things to stay the same ah okay we don’t need that person in our lives so that’s kind of how it’s been it’s been a crazy roller coaster ride uh been a lot of fun

you know what’s what’s neat and you just gave so much uh content i loved how you talked about the microbiome and how really the microbiome is doing the digesting the processing of food and and making the nutrients that our body can then absorb and use and and how that process works i’m gonna have to you know come back to this hit rewind and listen a couple times you gave us so much content right there

i do want to kind of break into the listeners here and say hey you know what now it’s time to actually expose some dirty little secrets that some of the other companies do and because i’m a chiropractor i am marketed to in fact i can start my own supplement line with my own name on it just by saying yes you know they will uh private label for me so in a sense i’m like becoming a whole another brand of something that i know very little about i can have you know dr haley probiotics and i could probably have him here in my office tomorrow so there’s private labeling

and then there’s also i i can go to a um a manufacturer of a supplement company and say well you know i was thinking about carrying my own probiotic oh we could do that we’ll put you know this we we do that for a lot of people we’ll put this list in it and you know you can have your labels made send them to us we’ll put them on the bottles whatever you want so there’s all kinds of options for people starting supplement companies or making their own supplements there is a huge difference between someone that does that and goes out and starts selling it and someone that says wait there’s a problem here how do we fix it we do the research and we make something we test it and and see what kind of so i absolutely love what you have done and it is neat because in a short time

last friday as an example um i actually had my first colon hydrotherapy session one of my previous guests was a colon hydrotherapist that was uh you know previous president with the uh international colon hydrotherapy association the iact.org and when i walked into her office obviously they’re very concerned about having help a healthy gut healthy digestion the first thing i saw was the megaspore biotics display i thought that is so cool because you know it’s healthcare professionals not just chiropractors healthcare professionals and especially people with a concern of the microbiome uh you guys are huge now

yeah we are um and i’ve spent a lot of my time these days in the international markets i’m actually headed to europe i’ll be in pretty much the whole month of october i’ll be in uh geneva switzerland copenhagen spain and we’re really trying to build the brand uh in the rest of the world now so

so quran christian my business partner he’s he’s a microbiologist brilliant guy uh brilliant scientist brilliant businessman um so he’s focused on running the us um and and keeping everything you know focused there was and so we we used to kind of just divide and conquer uh he take this project i take that project and we keep each other updated on it

but the need for uh one of us to be in the rest of the world was was painfully obvious and and my experience in europe europe especially will be launching uh next year uh mega sport has to go through some regulatory approvals for that um so so i’m spending a lot of a lot of my time in the rest of the world building out these uh other areas of the world and it’s it’s been great because it’s almost like starting over again right because i can go back to to those initial you know that first lecture you heard you know i can go back and do that now in new zealand and it’s a brand new lecture again right

so so it’s it’s it’s it’s been great i just we just transitioned this year to that change and and so uh the opportunity to uh build the business and and help more people i mean why did i become a chiropractor i bet i’m guessing you became a chiropractor for the same reason i became a chiropractor i help people yeah right and so when i was grinding it and and working six days a week as a chiropractor i couldn’t see more than 25 people all day i spent 40 minutes with somebody to understand what’s going on with them i’m not a five minute a patient kind of guy right

so i spent 40 minutes with patient i could see 25 people in a day but boy by the end of that day i am wiped out and i’m working six days a week seeing 25 people a day and i’m exhausted right now 250 000 people are going to take my product today yeah right i’m i’m impacting people in a way i never could have right i never could have impacted the help help of a quarter of a million people in one day never right but now i have this platform where i can and now i have this platform where i can take it overseas and and and grow it even bigger

so so it’s it’s it’s exciting but i think it’s rooted in you know a positive intent right i didn’t come in here with the idea of saying i need to make a million dollars right i need i need to make this to make you know there was there wasn’t a talk about money to this money was is an effect it wasn’t the goal right and and i i really believe that we built the company on that foundation we hired people based on that and we’ve created this culture within the company and we’ve been able to grow with that with that and and but we’ve grown with that intent at our at our core and and every time we make a new decision we’re like well we’re making that decision for the dollar are we making a decision because it can help more people and and we continue to innovate and do things to help more people

one of the things we’ve been working on for a while now that is just fresh is what we call psychobiotic and it’s a it’s a bacteria it’s dead um but we’ve got data that shows that it helps with anxiety and depression

now as a chiropractor if somebody comes to me with anxiety and depression my role is to get to the root of their problem and solve that so that they no longer express the symptom of anxiety and depression but here’s the problem sometimes finding the roots hard and sometimes treating the root takes time

so if you’re somebody with anxiety and i need six eight months to clear the source of your anxiety but i can’t i can’t help your symptom in the time that it’s gonna take that i’m gonna lose you if i can’t get symptom improvement along the way you’re not gonna stick with the program for eight months waiting to get better right that’s just human nature so to be able to say to somebody look anxiety and depression has a lot to do with the lps that your body’s spilling into your bloodstream every time you eat megaspore will stop that leaky gut and heal it up you need that that’s long term going to repair your microbiome and repair your anxiety

but in the meantime take this dead bacteria because it’s going to lower the intensity it’s going to it’s going to take the anxiety that you’re having and it’s going to reduce it it’s going to kind of shave off the edges a little bit it’s not going to make it go away but it’s definitely going to make you feel better it’s going to make you have less anxiety it’s going to make you be able to function better while we’re reconditioning your microbiome and getting your getting to the root of of your anxiety

right so so it’s a fascinating product and we’ve got we’ve done so much science and research on it before we launched it um you know we have this infrastructure now that allows us to some just like you i listen to what they say i’m like hmm all right let me put it to the test if it does what you say it does then i will i will sell it to my i will give it to my my uh database of doctors i will bring it into the microbiome labs brand and i’ll make it one of our products

and so at this time we’ve got like six projects going on some of them are like crazy like like curing cdf type stuff i mean like really going for it like really trying to make a huge impact on human health and uh and and it’s great because we’ve got the team in place that can analyze these things we can do the research in-house and and we we can really test whether or not these products function and do the things we need them to do we can have conversations with guys like you and say where’s your pains point you know what what do you have what are you struggling with

and then we can create products or combinations of products to help you with your pain points and so he said it’s it’s it’s funny because i think a lot of people come into this industry and they can move the industry with the intent of this is my profession and i’m going to make money doing this and and then they construct everything from that perspective i didn’t need a new job i had a job right i didn’t need the money i needed results i needed to get rid of the frustration right and so

so that was the impetus for change for me but now because of the way we set it up now we’re turnkey now we are the innovators in the microbiome space you know we are the ones that are leading the pack everybody not everybody likes us but everybody wants to hear what we have to say because we’re research driven and nobody else is in the space so so it’s fascinating it’s been it’s been a crazy ride and it’ll be an interesting the next five years are going to be crazy uh the the the new innovations that we have coming out it’s it’s going to be really fun and it’s going to allow us to move from the integrative medical market to the consumer markets to gastroenterologists pediatricians it’s going to allow us to make moves into those different areas

so that we wake up in the morning and we’re helping two million people a day you know that’s that’s the goal that’s the how many people can we help in one day and uh you know my goal you know before i leave this plane i hope i can get that up to five six seven million people a day you know i think that would be phenomenal um but it’s been great to grow it the way we grew it and then now it’s just a beast it’s a machine and and and we can plug and play with all these other things now because of how we constructed it so it’s been a fun ride

you know i i love it and i i the approach that is so critical for you know anyone that’s struggling with an issue you can take a medicine to get an effect or a certain benefit and that medicine could even be something uh natural a natural supplement as you had mentioned but if we don’t get to the root so some of these things that we use are to buy time as we get to the root a straight medical approach would be oh you have the symptom um take this it reverses that symptom you never deal with the cause so um would that be like the functional medicine approach or

yeah i mean functional medicine is that’s what it’s all about it’s about getting to the root of the problem finding the the source of the symptom not reducing the symptom the challenge is is in today’s world some of the problems that are causing the symptom are chronic and they take a while to fix and and and therein lies the the issue like i’m confident like i know when a patient takes megaspore that we are reconditioning their microbiome we are making lasting changes to their microbiome it’s been proven we’ve done it in modeling studies we’ve done it in human studies it’s been proven so we know we’re making that change

now when you look at the research and you look at well when the microbiome is out of balance what are the associated symptoms or problems that are related to that and it’s everywhere it’s diabetes it’s every autoimmune disease that we can talk about it’s everything and so everything has starts with a dysfunctional microbiome and if you can make that change then you’re actually at the source and you’re correcting the reason why they have hashimoto’s disease you’re actually impacting the reason the chain you’re making the change to to why they are expressing hashimoto’s disease

right so so you’re actually at the source but that that microbiome has been dysfunctional for 15 years it’s not changing in 15 days and so how do you how do you keep the patient engaged in the process before their symptoms improve that’s the key and and there are things that can be done transiently to the microbiome to improve symptoms while you’re getting to the source while you’re taking the time to make the changes uh to the microbiome which may take six or eight months right so so that that’s been the impetus of a lot of the products that are in the pipeline right now yeah it’s pain points for doctors you know

h pylori infection ulcers h pylori infection so in the course of time as as physicians we’ve been taught h pylori bad wrong h pylori’s not bad it’s bad when it’s overgrown it’s overgrown yes it’s gonna cause ulcers but when it’s in check and part of a healthy microbiome it’s actually a very important component for satiation feeling full after you’re eating right and when it’s out of balance you keep feeding the pie hole because your brain is not shutting off because it was the responsibility of that low level h pylori to manage your brain communication the communication between your gut and your brain right

fascinating because when i was in chiropractic school it was triple antibiotics uh you know and and charcoal and also stuff killed age pylori and everything else right and kill everything else along the way

so you learn we’re learning these things right and and and so and then so we want it we don’t want to kill h pylori we want a different approach to h pylori we want to modulate h pylori right so we’re changing the narrative there but we’re changing it based on science we’re not changing it because we feel like we’ve got a competitive advantage we’re saying what does the science say and how can we create a product then that you know if if h pylori is in a very high concentration and there’s pathology because of it well we need to kill it down but we can’t kill it off along with everything else in the area because we’re going to create other problems with that so

so that’s an example and something that’s in our pipeline where we’ve taken new research and we’ve developed new products based on that research based on the facts right based on the science i know it sounds weird i know you think we should all be doing that but none of nobody’s doing it in the nutrition space nobody’s behaving like a pharmaceutical company in the physician space right you know you can you can make claims with pharmaceuticals because they go through a process of of proving that their product does something we don’t do that nutrition space we do it with one ingredient and at a university level they’ll put out a research study on that one ingredient and then we mix all these things together and we use all the studies from the different ingredients and say this is what this product does that’s not science and and that’s what we that’s what as chiropractors that’s what we’re inundated with day in day out so it’s the microbiome labs is the breath of fresh air because we’re actually operating like we thought everybody was operating

yeah yeah and you know there’s a difference between research and science and people can research and hypothesize uh but until it’s proven by science you know or tested scientifically i completely agree with you so at this point now let’s see you are in united states probably canada

yes and we’re in canada right now across border uh there’s some regulatory approval that we had to go through uh to get canadian approval to get be part of health canada and um we expect to have that early next year covet killed that we were supposed to have canadian approval um third quarter of 2020. there’s certain things that covet really crushed regulatory research type stuff it’s still not really getting into full swing yet um so so we’re in canada through a cross-border thing we’ll be there uh by next year a lot of our other products are available in canada uh but megaspores is not until next year except be across border

okay and i i wish we actually did cover a lot more of the you know what is in the megaspore biotics um you know we talked very basically mentioning a bacillus strain um and you talked about how normally people would have gotten these on their apple from the tree or whatever the case was is the problem that now that that we’re scrubbing our food clean

and poor farming practices right um you know you go to a farm and every year it’s the same crop in the same spot every year just leeches all the nutrients all the nutrition out of the soil it makes for unhealthy soil and the bugs don’t like unhealthy soils so they leave and so so it’s a combination of the over um antiseptic approach to our food combined with poor farming practices that we don’t get this daily dose of spores in our diet anymore

yeah yeah farming practices are horrible they’re dousing the fields with pesticides herbicides and fungicides and killing all those uh beneficial microorganisms that are even in the soil that should be releasing the nutrients in the soil for the vegetation to absorb and you know now we gotta fertilize the the farmlands because the soil is dead and you know we have gone so backwards in in our vegetation in our food supply we have it’s terrible

look when you look at a real biodynamic farmer you know they’re rotating the crops they’re they’re planting other plants alongside the crop that feed it other nutrition you know they’re putting alfalfa next to the to the corn because the the minerals from the alfalfa are feeding the corn and and and activating some of the microorganisms that are that are crucial to the to the health of the plant and so uh that that’s just that’s something that’s inconvenient and and and it’s really not it’s not it’s difficult to do on a mass scale and so that’s that’s where health takes the back seat is when companies try to go from all

right we’re doing this at a small scale but now we need to ramp it up you know how do we how do we have a pig farm with 20 000 pigs on it right that’s not going to be a healthy pig farm right you know you got you got somebody else they got their biodynamic farmer they’ve got four or five pigs that are eating all these healthy vegetables so that’s a much better pig than going to the slaughterhouse and and living with you know 20 000 pigs so we just don’t have the capacity to do it on these grand levels and and and that that eventually is the death of health when it comes to our to our food chain yeah yeah

well i want to bring something else up uh and i got a big big thank you um you had sent me some products when i was in a pretty significant time of need

yes i did

so uh just a couple months ago i had kovid 19 unvaccinated by choice and um you know i was waiting for it expecting it as anyone else should i do believe everyone’s going to be exposed to it some people are that aren’t vaccinated are probably going to be symptomatic some people that are vaccinated might get symptomatic i became more symptomatic than anticipated and was you know weak and i it was a stressful time in my life so my immune system was beat down at the time and you know i’ve always been one of those people when i kind of know what’s good for me and what’s not and what i should be eating and when i obey that good things happen you sent me two products and one of them being the megavirin witch i would probably say it’s fair to say this is not a covid treatment but something that will support your immune system

you know what that’s a product that up regulates your body’s ability to defend itself against infection uh virus is included uh but that that would be a fair statement of of that product and and why we formulated it

well it was one of those things it was literally when that and you sent another one which i thought this was really neat it being a spray by the way there’s nothing in here anymore i thought i thought this was neat because it being a spray with a probiotic in it and some additional uh immune and antioxidant support but it really was one of those things that i knew i would benefit from it at the time and it was an emotional experience it was one it was probably the first time i ever you know received uh something in the mail where wow you know you know thank you thank you thank you and um of course you know i got better quickly and and and recovered and i’m glad to have the immunity now to this horrible virus that’s been going around

exactly you’ve developed an immunity to the virus as intended that’s how we build immunity we get exposed we fight through the infection it’s inconvenient it’s uncomfortable and then you you develop immunity

but let’s talk about the people that struggle a lot worse than you right let’s talk about the people that end up in the hospital people that die right so the when they talk about it there’s you know there’s lots of information going on right and uh and and so but but some of the most interesting information is when they talk about the covet storm i’m sorry the uh the cytokine storm

uh and so so what we have in our body we have our body has the ability to produce cytokines cytokines are these small inflammatory byproducts right and every cell in our body has ability to to function and and produce or respond to these cytokines and so what happens with covid is you get the infection and then through the process of fighting the infection your body starts to produce these cytokines in response to the infection okay so it’s a normal process cytokines are for infections and they’re for injury and things like that it’s a way to stimulate your body to fight the infection or heal right so it’s a good thing

but what happens is that there’s a group of people that before they catch the covet they already have elevated cytokines their cytokines are already at a high level and those are people that have leaky gut so the the number one way people have elevated chronically elevated cytokines is because when they eat some of the waste that’s going through their intestinal tract spills into their bloodstream and their immune system responds as if it’s septicemia as if you have bacteria in your blood that response is a cytokine response so what we’re seeing is somebody who oh mr smith he was 45 years old he was healthy as anybody he’s on a ventilator and then he died

well i’m sorry to say first of all i’m very empathetic to anyone who has lost somebody due to the covet infection i am in no way making light of your loss or saying anything derogatory about how they were treated or what but until i see more science i will stand firmly with there’s no such thing as someone who dies from covet that was healthy they had a legal gut they had elevated cytokines they got the infection the cytokine ran out of control and then they went into liver they went into organ failure the cytokines are start attacking the weakest organs the organs that have the highest concentration of cytokines in them and

so the reality of situations look sometimes there’s science and then sometimes there’s news and news just kind of takes a little bit of the science and tries to fluff it up and tries to get huge to do it with what they need them to do right so to me the incidence of obesity in the united states is and the incidence of of diabetes and pre-diabetes is one of the driving factors in the mortality rates that were seen deaths that were seen were i i know they were a loved one but they weren’t healthy don’t tell me they were healthy they don’t tell me that they weren’t having this chronic inflammatory situation before they got the code because that’s that’s what the science is showing us

right and so oh this guy he he didn’t he didn’t make it well he wasn’t healthy that’s my point and and maybe he didn’t have symptoms maybe he was able to function a leaky chronic leaky gut is not something that in some people expresses symptoms except inflammation and they manage the inflammation you know they’re able to keep the inflammation under control until they get the viral infection so

so for you you know i mean i was confident you know i knew you were on the spores so i knew that the likelihood that your leaky gut was out of control was minimal um but i also knew that you need your immune system needed a little bit of a kick to help it defend and so you know we had to cancel that was that’s how i knew about it was because we cancelled this call because you had covered and so in the time where i would have been doing this call i walked up to my front desk i was like hey send michael these products get it out today and and let’s get him on it

yeah that’s great

so those products are the result of the need right like when cobit hit um as a company we were like we got to respond we we got to do something i mean there were there were things we did like we sent a bunch of the n95 masks to new york city because those front liners were you know our rep in new york said hey these guys don’t have enough n95 masks so we found somebody in hong kong we bought 10 000 masks and we sent them to new york city so we we did things that we felt were um important you know things things that were trying to be empathetic and helpful to people uh on the front lines

you know trying to figure out and at this point we didn’t know what we were even fighting right so so we’re trying to do that but at the same time we’re like hey we’re a supplement company we we study the science and we do this we need to come up with a solution for people so that they can you know so they can manage their immune system they can manage the inflammation so that they don’t end up on a ventilator or don’t end up dying and so this was our response uh to that and um you know we’ve gotten good feedback from it

yes but for me it was one of those things that i you know it was no problem following the directions and saying you know okay take this many this this many times a day and um it wasn’t a problem it was one of those things where i’m thinking of it i gotta go i gotta go take that my body knows that i’m supposed to be um using the supplement right now and um and you know looking through it too and what’s in it um that just adds to it it’s like oh those those things help you know decrease inflammation and yeah uh or suppress even like allergic responses a little bit and it was a very appropriate desirable what i needed

beautiful wonderful man people should be

you know my only regret was not having it known about it sooner and having it in my house already and i could have been using it before but

yeah yeah you know and there are some interesting statistics you know the the the vitamin d3 deficiency zinc deficiencies these are things that we’re seeing left and right in these patients and so the the the thing is and i’ve had some conversations with with patients right and it’s like they’re like what what’s the best thing i can do it’s like well the best thing you can do is prevent it the best thing you can do is make sure your gut is healthy make sure that the level of inflammation your body is is at a reduced level so that if you do get exposed to it your reaction won’t be as intense

right but i’m not i don’t want to have to fight it right if i have to i will but i’d much rather be in a position to prevent and the prevention is preventing inflammation but what we what kovid has smacked us in the face with is that as a society we are unhealthy we are fat and we are inflamed and and coven is just sinking its teeth into that and it’s it’s it’s having a greater impact because that’s who we are and you can not like it you can complain about it but it’s who we are it’s who we are as a country it’s who we are as as a as a human race we are not healthy and covid has slapped us right in the face with that

yeah yeah we’ve gotten way off track in the past you know a hundred or so years with the industrial revolution and the change in farming practices and you know uh i like to look at food and say you know did this food item exist a hundred years ago exactly um you know and when you start reading labels and seeing all kinds of you know chemical names on it saying you know this is this is man-made yeah you know it’s not

same with probiotics right it’s like oh the best probiotics are in the refrigerated section really because caveman didn’t have whole foods down the street with a refrigerator so how did that how did that happen how did we survive to this point without refrigeration and then we could only be healthy now that we have refrigeration it doesn’t make any sense right yeah like you really when you really start looking at the stories in the on the probiotic industry you just start punching holes and everything that people tell you because it’s marketing nonsense the guy that made up the story that the best probiotics are in the refrigerator he’s probably on an island somewhere he’s probably not working real hard these days but it’s not science and and that’s where microbiome labs came in and it’s where this the space that we filled

you know we are the microbiome marketplace for physicians uh next month we’re launching a brand called better biome it’s a it’s a it’s not a company it’s it’s not a product it is we are aiming to be the information marketplace for the consumer for all things buyer

we want you to understand your mouth microbiome and the importance of healthy bacteria in your mouth as a woman we want you to understand your vaginal microbiome and and what happens as you age and and and different things in your life that impact the vaginal microbiome and how that impacts your health we want to have testing and we want to have conversations about it and so we built uh it’s it’s not koran and i that are going to be the face of better buyer we built a team of specialists pediatricians gastroenterologists neurologists dermatologists people that are at the forefront of their specialty but they’re focused on the microbiomes you know the dermatologist is a specialist in the skin microbiome and understanding the imbalances in the skin microbiome associated with eczema psoriasis and different things like that we might be more than 80 microbiome in our eyes ears we are we are a holobiome

we are a combination of multiple different microbiomes that make a holobiome we are more bacteria than we are human yeah they’re in charge whether you want to admit it or not they’re the ones that are saying go ahead and have that donut it looks good let’s have a normal it’s not the good bacteria telling you to have the donut it’s the bad bacteria telling you to have the donut and they are the influencers that craving that you’re having is the result of the imbalances in your biomes and so so it’s it’s fascinating so we’re building this information marketplace this place where people can go and learn the science of their biomes and

where’s that going to be are we going to find that online at a website

yes so so we’re going to launch this in in the coming months it’s it’s consumer driven like up to this point everything we’ve done has been a better my own brand is going to be

and we’ve got podcasts we’ve got articles we’ve got it’s just when it goes live there’s going to be a flood because there’s going to be so much information that’s going to go live all at once uh all these different uh key opinion leaders have been working for almost two years now getting this information together and assembling it so we’ve got a war chest of data that we want to share because we want the consumer to be educated okay that i want smart consumers i don’t want the consumer to be dumb and not understand things i don’t want the consumer to be confused and when you look at how life operates we tend to keep the consumer in a state of confusion we tend to say multiple different things we kind of keep them on their heels a little bit confused that way we can come up with a new shiny thing and say you need this your problem is this now and you need this and and that’s how the marketplace operates i want smart consumers i want people that crave the information that say why do i get bloated every time i eat x why is that and what does it mean how can i treat it and and what’s the research behind it

so so that’s our goal our goal is to take what we’ve become in the physicians space and to become that for a consumer to become that from the marketplace consumer can feel confident that they’re educating themselves they’re getting smarter and they’re getting an understanding of of how these different biomes interact with each other and impact the the level of health that we’re experiencing

yeah yeah that’s awesome um our internet’s glitching a little bit but so we’ll wrap this up but i got one more question for you oh well can you hear me yet

hopefully you can hear me you froze you’re coming back your picture changed uh okay did you lose me

well it was getting a little in and out a little choppy and i don’t know if it’s the storm that i have here right now i’m looking out my window right now and there’s a storm uh but i have a battery back up here we’re not going to lose the recording just got a little bit of choppy in there

you know what i’d like to do we’ll wrap it up just in case what is your favorite testimonial testimonial either chiropractic or microbiome or or something that you know one of those really big rewards for what we do know

some of the more impactful um rewards i have experienced in my life have have happened when i’ve made an emotional connection with patient when i’ve been able to identify that the anger that they’re holding on to is part of the dysfunction and if they could solve the reason why they’re angry that a lot of their health issues would clear up uh

i have to say as as a chiropractor it’s funny because you think oh i did this one adjustment and a paralyzed guy jumped up and ran away i’ve never had that but i’ve had women who’ve been abused um you know break down as as we’re recognizing as as we’re recognizing that part of your symptoms are are the emotions that are trapped in your body and if we could just let go of that trauma if we could just let you release that trauma but then the healing’s just going to go really fast and so

so to be honest i know i’m you know i’m a probiotic guy now but if we’re really talking about things that were the most wow and the most impactful it’s really helping someone in the moment just going where they need to go and and and letting them connect to the pain with the intention of letting it go right because they disconnected from the pain because it was too much but when they disconnected from it they’re they’re holding on to it right and and that that was powerful powerful stuff and so

i’m forever grateful for uh scott walker and met and everything i’ve learned from him and darren weissman with the lifeline technique those types of emotional um types of treatments really made me a better physician because it allowed me to address that emotional component of the triangle

you know i i’m really good at biochemistry i know my biochemistry i could talk diet and i can talk nutritional chemistry with the best of the best i’m a good chiropractor i’m hands-on i’ve got good hands i’ve always had good hand-eye coordination i’m an athlete so so adjusting people was another sport for me i’m good at it

but addressing the emotional side of the triangle was something that that was i never learned how to do it i i i was empathetic i wanted to try to address it but i didn’t have the tools for it when those tools came into my life and i started activating those with everything else i was doing i became a whole doctor

right and uh and and that really you know that’s just because i don’t see patients as much these days uh hardly at all these days but when i look back at my time treating patients it’s those moments that stick out in my head as as being the most impactful is really the opportunity to help people emotionally

that’s a beautiful thing

yeah dr tom i want to thank you very much we got a little choppy when we were talking about whether or not we could um find your new informational platform uh on the website if they go to microbiome labs is that probably the best place to be connected or you’re will that take them to your maybe youtube and other places

exactly microbiomelabs.com is is is our our place now what’s happening we’re getting bigger right and so we used to put all our research on one website and it was our site we’ve got product and we’ve got information we can’t do that right we need to have our research information needs to be two clicks away from our products

so we so we recognize that now we’re following the rules and so so we’re launching a website in january called biome hackers and the biome hackers website is going to be all of our research in one place there’s going to be any product conversation nothing just here’s the science everybody because a lot of people like you you know say hey what about autoimmune disease and then well go to biomhackers here’s the link and here you can read all about all that stuff so that’s going to be an information marketplace for the physicians better biome is meant to be that same information marketplace but geared towards a consumer and that would probably be we’ll be launching that towards the end of this year and that’ll be betterbiome.com

and then also you can look at the biome fx the the stool test that we do that’s a very unique offering we have a chance to talk about that

but oh that’s so important too i’m you know we’ll leave that uh in the description that is one of the things that i i definitely want to know more about um boy i’ve kept you for over an hour already what was that address biome f x

so instead of effects it’s fx the letter f oh with a functional medicine analysis

and man you are such a resource thank you

you know what i appreciate you you know what i i i and i love your aloe product uh it’s it’s the only apple product we sell um and and but i love these platforms i love the opportunity to be able to talk and and just have an organic conversation and do these things so happy to do it again if you want to do a show just on biome effects i’m happy to come back on but uh but appreciate all you do don’t go changing and look forward to talking me again soon

great thank you so much all right brother take care you