Transcript:

Episode 19: Microbiome

Dr. Pompa:

We have very exciting show today. We have on as a guest my favorite biochemist in the world, and I know a lot of biochemists these days. Now, don’t run because I said I have a biochemist on. We’ve had a couple of those in the past. You all tend to go I don’t understand what he’s saying.

I promise you, this guy, this one knows how to talk to you all in a way that you’re going to understand. It’s about a topic that I really believe you need to put your thinking caps on. This topic is a topic that all of the doctors that we coach have to fix this single problem to get people well today. Therefore, this may be why you don’t feel well. This may be why you still have brain fog, anxiety, sleep problems. This may be why you still can’t lose weight.

The topic is the microbiome. I just lost some of you right there, but hold on. I’m going to make it really simple, then I’m going to introduce my guest formally. This is the bacteria that is in our gut, good, bad, viruses, bacteria, funguses, the microbiota. He’ll explain what that actually is and how it affects our health.

I can say this; over the last ten years this topic has grown in the amount of research of how this affects our health and how it affects our hormones and how we feel. With all of that said and a small intro, Dr. Shayne Morris, thank you for joining us. I appreciate you being here.

Dr. Morris:

It’s a pleasure. I’m glad to be here, and I’m glad we’re talking about one of my favorite subjects, the microbiota.

Dr. Pompa:

When we hear the word microbiome, microbiota, what does it all mean?

Dr. Morris:

It’s a relatively new science. We’ve known about bacteria in our world for centuries. There’s a lot going back to early times discovering things that were attacking us or making us feel poorly. Some people threw out the theory that it must be something we can’t see. Certainly it wasn’t until the discovery of technology like the microscope.

Even then, as you and I both know, they were demonized. Our work from the 1800s until almost now, we focused on killing microorganisms and destroying them for our benefit. It wasn’t until around 2007 when the human microbiome project started, and they were looking at not only the good guys, of course, before that you had probiotics. We knew there was some beneficial bacteria in our food and ferments.

In the human microbiome project, that’s where all heck broke loose, so to speak. We were able to see that not only were there good bacteria in our world, but they were another organ, the bacteria that live on us and in us. They became as important as our brain or our heart or our liver. They became an amazing tissue that we can no longer live without.

Dr. Pompa:

Explain that. I think in some of those early studies it showed that we have ten times the amount of bacteria than we do cells in our body. Obviously, there’s a relationship here. How in the world does this bacteria affect our brain, our immune system, etc.?

Dr. Morris:

That right there, you’re touching on one of my favorite research projects because you’re right. It’s easy to imagine when you go to the lake and you slip on a rock and you know that that rock is covered by microorganisms that make a slime. You think of organisms as kind of gross. What are they doing there? Do they just happen to land on us and live on us because we provide food and shelter?

That is one aspect, but the aspect that you and I are interested in is not only do we have trillions and trillions of organisms, a hundred times the amount of DNA – when we say that, a lot of people say big deal. There’s a lot of organisms. There’s a lot of DNA. What that means is that your DNA creates you, allows you to be as tall as you are and the bones you have and the skin you have and the eyes you have and the brain you have. Your DNA creates that.

Your DNA is limited to what you were given from your parents. Now imagine all the other things you can do, fight off disease, get rid of parasites, travel around the world and not get sick when you’re in tropics and the ocean and you’re being bombarded by all these new places. The reason you can do that and the reason you can eat foods from across the globe and so on and so forth and you can have friends and hang out and give kisses and hugs to your family, the reason you’re not constantly being sick isn’t necessarily because of you. It’s because of the trillions of genes that your bacteria give you.

They give you certain proteins. They give you certain immunities. They help create most of your serotonin, which feeds your brain. Of course, we all know what serotonin is. They give you the ability to sleep and wake. They control sleep cycles. They control liver toxicity.

Bacteria can cause more non fatty liver disease than alcoholism in some cases. We now know that they’ve produced so many proteins from their vast array of DNA that they can make whatever we need. They make vitamins. They make toxins. They make immune enhancing agents. Now you and I are one of the few people that know that they control our genetics. They turn our genes on and off.

Dr. Pompa:

I know there’s been projects like the human microbiome project. There’s been genome projects where they said humans must have hundreds of thousands of different genes that account for all the complexities of a human. In that project, they found out that we have 24,000 or 25,000, if I’m correct, very similar to a rodent. It’s like what? We have so much more function than a rodent. Shouldn’t we have all these genes?

Then I think later on with the microbiome project, to your point, is literally these bacteria are changing and sharing their information with our cells and giving our cells this complexity. We’re sharing information. Explain that because I know that we’re going to lose people, but it’s such an important point that we actually are gaining higher cell function because of the bacteria that we’re sharing information with. That’s a complex thought.

Dr. Morris:

It’s really a complex thought. It’s easiest to think about your body, 25,000 genes allows you to make – if you’re a manufacturer of a car, your body can make three models of car by itself. If you add in the microbiome, it brings so many more tools to the table. It brings new proteins. It brings new hormones.

It brings new epigenetic signals, which are ways to talk to your DNA. It brings more immune signals. It now allows you to make a hundred different cars because of the tools that it brings. It literally brings all these tools to your body that allows you to do 25 times more than you could, if you were sterile. If you didn’t have your microbiome, you would be limited. It opens up the future for you.

Dr. Pompa:

This opens up a can of worms because I think post World War II we literally thought we were going to cure every disease by killing every bacteria. Antibiotics were invented, all types of antibiotics in the soaps, in the hand creams. You name it, we thought we had it. Infectious disease was killing all these people. If we just get rid of these pesky little bacteria and all their bad guys that go with them, we’re going to win.

When we come back, we’re going to talk about how we’ve set ourselves up for potential failure in disease on Health Hunters Radio with Dr. Shane Morris. Dr. Shane, post World War II, I think both of us would agree there’s a time and a place for antibiotics. Did we get ourselves in trouble with all the antibacterials and antibiotics post World War II?

Dr. Morris:

We did. We got ourselves in a lot of trouble. I would say that we got ourselves in trouble in three ways. One, we decided antibiotics were the way to go. Killing bacteria were the way to go, so we targeted the pathogens.

We did it in the way of target the antibiotics, targeted vaccines. Let’s not forget about vaccines because viruses aren’t all bad. When you do things wrong, you screw your system up. Then we also targeted our food sources. We started putting antibiotics or otherwise known as antibiotics/pesticides/herbicides globally or at least in America we used them like crazy.

Those three things combined disturb not only the human microbiome, but they disturb the environmental microbiome. That was huge when you think about where we get all of our nutrition and all of our relationships from our microbiome. A lot of our microbiome, as you know, comes from our interrelationship with humans, but it also comes from our food. Our food provides from it. That was hugely a large mistake, and now we’re suffering the consequences with all of these chronic issues.

Dr. Pompa:

I know one of the things that my doctors and I would screen for is how many antibiotics, how many rounds of antibiotics have you had, whether it be ear infections, strep throat sickness. I can tell you from a clinical perspective, the more rounds of antibiotics, typically the worse the immune system and the more sick and inflammation somebody has later on in life. It’s hand in hand. By taking these antibiotics, I know the diversity and the amount of bacteria. The more diversity, the better. Does it affect this – maybe we should back up and explain why a greater diversity of bacteria is a good thing and why antibiotics mess that up.

Dr. Morris:

You’re right. Generally speaking there is this rule of thumb that the more diverse your microbiome, the more healthy you are. That’s true for a lot of us, but when you start looking at people that are already suffering chronic issues, they’re finding sometimes less diversity because their body has now changed. If you were to live with a problem long enough, let’s say you live with type 2 diabetes for a long time, you’ve now altered your metabolism enough that you need to be careful switching back, going back to what we consider a healthy microbiome for you. It takes time. It’s going to take some change.

Bottom line is you’re right. There’s diversity, and how do we get diversity? We have access or you expose yourself to a lot of bugs. That scares people to not be clean, not be cleanly. It’s true.

You can get pathogens when you get sick, but when you’re healthy and when you have a good microbiome, you’d be surprised at how not sick you become even though you are exposed to people in the room that feel terrible. We’ve seen the studies, and most people are starting to see it in the mainstream media where it’s not only good for things like colds and flus and help you fight your immune system, but we’re seeing it for type 2 diabetes. We’ve seen it for Alzheimer’s, autism. We’re now linking it to sleep cycles. We’ve now seen that it is a critical organ that we need and we can’t live without. It’s no long acceptable to even think of killing it. If you’re going to do something, do something that makes your microbiome stronger, not kill the bacteria.

Dr. Pompa:

Obviously, that’s being exposed to bacteria. We were the parents. When we dropped our kids off at daycare and church, no hand sanitizers. Parents would be like your kid is going to get exposed to all these bacteria. We just got it.

Number one, those things are toxic. Number two, they wipe out your first line of defense, your own bacteria that are protecting you. I see a change. There’s the antibacterial soaps. I hear some people getting it.

Triclosan is this antibiotic that’s in all these antibacterial soaps that causes liver cancer. We’ve learned that it is so devastating to our good bacteria. What’s your thought on that? I’m sure there’s people still using these things, even though there’s an awakening. Tell us a little bit about that.

Dr. Morris:

I think you’re right. First of all, we’ve tested between the things that you’ve brought in, samples, and myself, we’ve looked at antibacterial things. Believe it or not, they don’t do a good job of killing pathogens. In many cases, they can actually kill the good guys and leave the bad guys behind. You’ve set yourself for failure right off the bat.

In most cases, warm water, a little bit of agitation, maybe some natural version of a soap, that’s perfect. You don’t need to go down to these depths of chemical killing. Honestly, the chemical killing doesn’t work. It ends up making things worse.

Beyond that, one of the things you said is we have started to get the message out there to stop using chemicals. Don’t use chemicals on you. Don’t use chemicals on your food, then being outdoors. Getting out into the world gives you exposure.

Some of the most healthy microbiomes are people like the Amish. They have quite healthy microbiomes. Why? They’re in the world quite a bit during the day. They’re not isolated in rooms that are sterile and not exposed to other bacteria.

My argument with you as well is herbs. We promote herbs. We know that herbs help us with medicinal issues but what people don’t accept is I postulate that they also associate our microbiome with their issues. The more medicinal herbs we take, the better our microbiome is and the better we are.

Dr. Pompa:

You’ve developed a lot of formulas, and I promise we’ll talk about some of those. It’s been in your heart. A term you’ve coined, herbalomics. I know that everyone wants to take different vitamins, etc., but to your argument, herbs are way more powerful, way more missing in the human species that we used to have a close contact with for our microbiome, for what they bring from a medicinal standpoint. Today we’re not getting that. Herbalomics is kind of what you’re saying, right?

Dr. Morris:

Exactly. The herbalomics piece, not only does it speak to our body to say let’s get better, let’s heal, let’s get new nutrients, whether they be antioxidants or other types of epigenetic triggers, but they also do the same thing for the bacteria. They turn things on and off for the bacteria. This also begs the story of diversity.

One of the ways to enrich diversity, as you and I both know, people start eating well. You’ve got chronic issues. You have hypothyroidism or you have type 2 or you’ve got the beginnings of neurological breakdown. They start eating better, but they don’t get better.

Dr. Pompa:

We’re going to talk about even some of the testing you can do when we come back on Health Hunters Radio. I think for people that really grasp how powerful this is what we’re talking about here, Dr. Shayne, tell me if I’m speaking truth here. If we took the microbiome of an obese person and gave it to a thin person – and this happens, if I’m correct – potentially the thin person could start gaining weight and even be obese just from shifting the bacteria in the gut from this person to that, and potentially the opposite. Take the microbiome from a thin person and give it to the microbiome of an obese person, and it could help that person lose weight, where as they couldn’t before. Is that true?

Dr. Morris:

That is true. There’s some funny stories about that. In the animal model, rat, mice and on up, we’ve demonstrated both of those examples. We’ve taken a microbiome from a thin to fat and the fat got thin and vice-versa. We’ve done both of those in animal studies.

Ironically, that happened by accident. I believe it was in Britain where they were doing fecal transplants to a C. diff patient, and the healthy fecal sample they took was from an obese person. That’s the nicest way to say it. The recipient of that fecal transplant actually became obese after the fecal transplant.

They were trying to cure C. diff, and so there was even a legal deal going on there. Wait a second, now you’ve made me obese, and I went in for a C. diff transplant. I don’t know any fat to skinny examples yet in human models, but certainly based on the animal ones we could –

Dr. Pompa:

It did happen in animal models. I’m not certain of that in human models as well. It’s a real deal. You mentioned fecal microbial transplant. On Cellular Healing TV, I’ve spoken about it.

I’ve spoken to many people who actually have done a fecal microbial transplant, meaning taking bacteria via an enema from one human and doing an enema with that bacteria. It shut down their autoimmune. We speak lightly here because the FDA will only allow a fecal microbial transplant for C. diff, which you mentioned, which is a nasty bacteria you typically pick up in a hospital, which is life or death. I’ve had many people with that get their life saved because the antibiotics do not work at a certain point. Then these people oftentimes die.

A fecal microbial transplant can be a lifesaver. The FDA recognizes that. Ultimately, there are many more uses that the FDA hasn’t approved for shifting bacteria from one human to the next. Let’s talk a little bit about testing because I think people listening to this, they want to know. You’re investing in a new way of testing. Talk a little bit about how we can look and test our microbiome.

Dr. Morris:

That’s a great question because we have a lot of animal studies that show that it’s absolutely critical for our health. We need to understand each other. I think that you and I both agree that there’s individuality. Just because you and I are different doesn’t mean I’m healthy and you’re not. We’ve got to weed out the healthy from the unhealthy, no doubt.

The testing allows us to start to scan ourselves of our entire bacterial makeup. Then it allows us to make changes over time like change our diet, change our exposure to the planet, and then retest ourselves. These are called microbiome tests. They can be GI. It can be skin. It can be oral.

They give you a landscape of what you’ve got, and some are even more intense. I know that you’ve worked with a group that looks at [22:51], and we won’t get into that. They’ll even look deeper at are they living and what are they doing? What are they producing, which is all critical. Can we control our microbiome? Yes, we can.

The first go on testing tells you what you’ve got. If you’re struggling with some issues, now you can start to say what can I do to get better? [23:14], IBS, IBD, all those things we talked about, what do you look like now and what changes can you make? Then test yourself again and watch your microbiome change. It will change.

It absolutely can change based on your diet, your herbal intake, and your lifestyle. No question you can change it. That group they just studied in Africa, their microbiome changes 100% from rainy season to the dry season. They’re one of the last hunter/gatherers on the planet. Their entire microbiota changes from one season to the next.

Dr. Pompa:

I talk about that all the time with my diet variation concept. We literally force dietary change. We do that to have a massive effect on the microbiome. It’s part of the adaptation. The body starts to adapt. That’s why I’m not the guy who says eat the same diet all the time. I think it’s destructive for the microbiome.

I think we need to change our diets as seasons change. We even notice massive changes in microbiome after times of fasting, after times of feasting. Something I’ve coined, feast/famine cycles. We can force changes in this microbiome and basically we’re emulating what you just said. We’re emulating ancient cultures that we’re oftentimes forced into these changes because of rainy seasons, time without food, environmental changes.

The microbiome can be changed. Having a way to measure that change, I think as practitioners we have some new hope because we can look at the things that we’re doing. Is it changing it? Is it altering it? Perhaps in the future can we look at the microbiome and even figure out what diets somebody would be better off eating in that moment? Is that going to happen?

Dr. Morris:

Absolutely. When you say the future, that’s precisely what we are waging our research on. For example, blood testing 100 years ago was pretty rudimentary. Now everybody agrees that some forms of blood testing are unavoidable and amazing for detecting issues.

Microbiome is going to be the same way. We’re early. We’re going to get to it, but ten years from now it’s going to be the go-to test for every clinician because it’ll tell you 100 things more than it does today. It’s going to tell you everything you need to know. We’ve got to start now so that we understand where it’s going.

Dr. Pompa:

I was just speaking at the Bulletproof conference. There was an excitement there about the microbiome because billionaire Naveen Jain was there speaking. He has invested millions and millions into this technology. That was the test that you had mentioned, Viome. He sees it.

This guy has the only public license from NASA to actually land on the moon. Obviously, he’s done a lot in his day, but he’s investing into this microbiome. Obviously, there’s something here. He feels it can impact the health of every human on the planet.

We just need more money going into this area of research, and I think that it is – this is something that I can tell you, we would not be able to impact the health of these conditions, diseases that we see today if we didn’t understand the microbiome. I want to get into some solutions, how do we change it. Go ahead, you were going to say something.

Dr. Morris:

I was just going to say that I would encourage everybody listening to embrace the microbiome, even if you don’t know what it is yet. Look it up, get involved, get it into world as natural health healthcare because the money that you just mentioned is going into it, it’s such an amazing part of our human health that the focus is actually becoming pharmaceutical. There’s a lot of money going into it, and they’re going to have all these solutions that come out just like they did drugs, and they’re not going to be solutions that work. They’re going to be temporary solutions. They’re going to be targeted solutions, and we need to take and invest our own time and money into this as natural health people so that we keep a corner of this market. This is about our health, and it will be taken away if we don’t make it important to our world.

Dr. Pompa:

Perfect segue. Let’s talk solutions when we get back on Health Hunters Radio. If you all could see me with the beat of our music, I always get this little head bob thing going. I guess it’s catching on. I guess it’s happening.

I think we all have learned a lot. We kind of said some solutions there. Number one, we opened up the door to the fact that you can change your microbiome; therefore, that changes your hormones. That changes how your brain works. That changes your immune system. That changes thin to fat.

We talked about a lot of things here. Shayne, give our listeners some clues here. Is it enough? Let me just start there. Is it simple enough as taking a probiotic? I would say most of our listeners are taking a probiotic. Is it as easy as that, and give us some other things we can do.

Dr. Morris:

For long-term change, no. For short-term it’s always nice to give a probiotic for someone that’s never really tried to address gut health just to let their gut respond. Their gut is going to respond. They’re going to say I feel better. Oh, I feel like crap. You’re shaking it up.

It’s like giving somebody a fermented food. They’re going to respond in a way. That tells you something, you as the person doing it, as well as the practitioner that’s in charge. We’ve got some stuff going on. Let’s dig deeper.

One, we’ve triggered something. We know that things need to be rearranged. Clearly there’s a combination of probiotics, prebiotics, diet, and so on, even exercise. That’s the beginning point. Does a probiotic solve everything? No. Most probiotics can’t take hold.

There’s some evidence we have that it takes about a year of taking a probiotic for some of those organisms to actually take hold and live in you, which is quite a long time. Secondly, you can transform much more quickly with diet. As you mentioned, not every diet is right for everyone. There is the personal piece. If you got off that diet, things go back to the way they were. You also have to be cognizant that it’s a lifestyle change, not just a temporary change. If you go back to your old ways, it returns.

Dr. Pompa:

We carry a probiotic that you developed called MBC. We carry that at Revelation Health on my website. I love the product. Like you said, it’s a starting point.

I find that most people have been on the same probiotic all the time. I like to move people in and out of different bacteria. I love starting with MBC. Is there a danger in staying on the same probiotic? Most people that I run into have been on the same one for months or years.

Dr. Morris:

There are some people that are going to respond to a probiotic over long periods of time, and their body is going to lose diversity potentially. As much as we want a probiotic to work, if it works too well in their gut, if just those bacteria start to become the more dominant ones, the ones you’re eating, then you’re losing diversity. Most probiotics on the market, you can get anywhere from 10 to 20 strains max, which in the scheme of things is really small. I’m embarrassed to say this, but we have MBC, which is our go-to. As you know, we are developing a whole line of probiotics that contain upwards of 60-something organisms so that we can no longer be shotgun approach, that there’s this delicate try this one, try this one, and here’s the foods you need to eat in order to change the other million organisms.  

Dr. Pompa:

You’re creating a human strain of probiotic as we speak as well.

Dr. Morris:

Yeah. We are currently working on a number of projects. In total, we’re looking at probiotics that I’m going to have that are around 63 different strains, which is three times or more than anything you could get in the world at the moment.

Dr. Pompa:

There’s a product you created called F as Frank, B as in boy, R as in Ralph, FBR, standing for fiber. People listening probably don’t understand how that can be such a game changer as a food source to feed your existing bacteria. A lot of you all have some diversity, but you just have too low of numbers. You’re not giving them food. Explain FBR. Explain why FBR is a prebiotic, as you call it, and can really change the microbiome.

Dr. Morris:

This is a really fun concept. We call it prebiotic. In the end we’re learning that the prebiotics are more powerful than the probiotics. Together they work great, but the prebiotic can stimulate diversity in thousands of organisms where probiotics, even with my 63, you can’t do any better than that. Thousands can be influenced by your prebiotic.

What that means is when you have a formulation that has a lot of unique carbs, a little bit of fat – keep in mind probiotics or the bugs that live inside are exquisitely designed to metabolize carbohydrates. It’s what they’re genetically designed for. Some are unique, but they like complex carbs. They don’t like sugar and they don’t like human-made carbs, the processed garbage.

Dr. Pompa:

Meaning complex carbs have a lot of fiber associated with them.

Dr. Morris:

Exactly. There are all these really unique compounds that exist in the plant world, both dietary plants and herbal plants. We call them oligosaccharides. You may have heard the term fructo-oligosaccharides or gluco-oligosaccharides or xylooligosaccharides or xylo. There’s all these oligosaccharides or polysaccharides that plants use as part of their makeup.

Cellulose and all these other things that you hear about, these are all carbohydrate based or polysaccharide based. They’re not proteins, and they’re not fats. They’re that other group that we refer to. Most of these are referred to by humans over the millennia as fiber because we don’t digest them. We don’t derive energy from them, but our bacteria do.

Our bacteria convert them into amazing molecules like butyrate. Those of you that practice getting into ketosis, butyrate is the ketone of significance. Your bacteria can make a ton of ketones for you if you’re eating the appropriate fibers because they’ll convert carbohydrates into ketones, which helps that process.

Dr. Pompa:

I heard literally that 20, 30% of our energy actually comes from these fatty acids that you just mentioned, butyrate or butyric acid, meaning that our bacteria eat fiber and literally poop out these fats that are short-chain fatty acids that we need for our daily energy. When you don’t have enough of these bacteria, you’re not breaking down enough fiber, which in and of itself is a problem. We don’t make enough of this energy source, is that correct?

Dr. Morris:

That’s absolutely correct. The cells that use some of that – your whole body uses it, your brain, everybody uses it in your body. People suffer GI issues because the butyric acid is the energy source almost exclusively used by your colon that help you keep the food moving and help your colon stay healthy and vibrant. Colon cancer can be avoided through appropriate microbiome metabolism.

People’s appropriate microbiomes don’t suffer the same Western colon cancer issues we do. We keep coming back to the health of our entire body because of these bugs, and it’s true. Your energy throughout the day is because of these bugs. We can’t avoid these bacteria. They’re just amazing, and the food that feeds them. The fibers are critical and the variety of fiber and the quality of fiber makes a huge difference.

Dr. Pompa:

You mentioned just how important being exposed to dirt is and people aren’t today. Exposing yourself, and maybe you have some solutions on how to do this better, to more good dirt –

Dr. Morris:

[36:52]

Dr. Pompa:

You could do that. We’re on radio, so go ahead. You can do it. I give you permission. You’ll be the only one potentially enjoying that. Notice the word potentially. I just put a thought into everybody’s mind.

What you don’t know, Shayne. We don’t know. I can tell you Shayne has a good microbiome. I’ll leave it at that. Let’s go back to that subject. See how sexual all of our brains are? I wonder if the microbiome has a determining factor that that.

Dr. Morris:

They do indeed.

Dr. Pompa:

Healthy microbiomes. Can we eat dirt? How do we expose ourselves to dirt? Should I go out and roll in the dirt, and would it help?

Dr. Morris:

That’s a great question. We do need to expose ourselves to dirt. People that get exposed to dirt here and there – now, I’m not advocating eating dirt nonstop. When you get vegetables from your garden or a garden that you trust where there’s no chemicals, you’re getting it. It’s amazing for you.

Playing outside, being outdoors, I know you mountain bike and hike. Those are all great things that you’ve got to do to get out and get exposed and then fermented foods. Just don’t overdo them.

Dr. Pompa:

It’s true. We’ll put it all in the show notes. Thank you, Shayne.

Dr. Morris:

Thanks a lot.