Adapted from episode 123 of The Perfect Stool podcast with Martha Carlin, the CEO and founder of The BioCollective & BiotiQuest* and Lindsey Parsons, EdD, and edited for readability.
Lindsey:
So I understand that you’re interested in the gut microbiome started with your husband’s Parkinson’s diagnosis. So can you tell me more about that?
Martha Carlin:
My husband was diagnosed in 2002 with Parkinson’s. I started studying many different aspects of food, the science behind food and all of the things that are going down the pipe. But I was also studying different mechanisms in Parkinson’s. In 2014, the first paper was published that showed that a researcher could actually divide the two primary types of Parkinson’s. There’s one where people are more tremor dominant and there’s another type where people have more trouble with their posture and gait freezing. And he was able to separate the two groups by their gut bacteria. I had just been learning this term, the microbiome, and reading about changes from Dr. Martin Blaser and his book, Missing Microbes*. And I was like, “Okay, wow, all these worlds are converging.” And so I quit my job and started funding research at the University of Chicago, looking at my husband’s and my microbiome, and I did that for about six months until I went on to found The BioCollective to look at the Parkinson’s microbiome and even broader into other disease states and health states as well.
Lindsey:
And so what do we know about the microbiomes of Parkinson’s patients then?
Martha Carlin:
Well, it’s interesting because that first paper in 2014, if you look in PubMed now, the number of papers annually has escalated like a hockey stick. The gut is definitely dysbiotic, meaning so out of balance. There is a group in Finland who claims to have identified the microbe that is causing Parkinson’s. I have some question that there’s a single microbe. I think that it’s a larger scale dysbiosis, but the group in Finland has been looking at an organism called Desulfovibrio. That bacteria produces hydrogen sulfide and also produces a magneto magnetite. And there are implications in iron metabolism in Parkinson’s as well. So those two pieces fit together in an interesting way.
And then we have actually found markers associated with mycobacteria species in our Parkinson’s microbiome, and that ties pretty nicely to the Harvard Doctor and Nurse’s study that showed low-fat milk, so consuming low-fat or non-fat dairy, increased the risk of Parkinson’s. There’s quite a bit of evidence that the dairy supply has been contaminated with Mycobacterium avium paratuberculosis. So there are some people looking at that as well. And so we have that in some of our biomarkers. And then there are multiple researchers looking at the whole microbiome and loss of function. There are implications in the oral microbiome with loss of amylase function, the breakdown of starch. So you see these papers pop up and people get really excited. It’s like, “Oh, this is the answer.” But I think it’s a little bit more complicated than one organism. But we can definitely see that the gut is disrupted. And that can be from overuse of antibiotics throughout life. And that can be from exposure to chemicals and pesticides, either through work or through the food supply, and a number of these things that knock down the beneficial species. And then just not eating a healthy diet, that’s also feeding the microbes.
Lindsey:
Yeah, so is it my imagination, and this is based on very small sample size, but is it [Parkinson’s] more prevalent in men than women?
Martha Carlin:
It is, actually. So there’s a mirror image between Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. So two-thirds of people with Parkinson’s are men, one-third are women, and the opposite is true of Alzheimer’s. Two-thirds are women and one-third are men.
Lindsey:
I said that only because of my parents’ friends, all of the ones who had Parkinson’s were men, because my parents obviously are getting towards the age where that starts getting diagnosed. So your group was collecting stool samples and analyzing the microbiome of people with Parkinson’s?
Martha Carlin:
Yes, and one of the really interesting things about that is people doing the processing in the lab actually found that they could identify a Parkinson’s person just from the stool that was collected, no other information. They didn’t know from the check card that they had Parkinson’s, but they could tell because the Parkinson’s stool had the texture of concrete. So, the processing of the Parkinson’s stools had to be handled differently than all of our other samples because it was so hard. It wouldn’t go through the syringes that we use to aliquot the samples.
Lindsey:
Interesting. So it was like hardened concrete?
Martha Carlin:
Yes. I mean, it had a very distinct lack of what’s called fecal water or moisture in the stool. That’s pretty interesting because there has never been anything published on this. And chronic constipation often precedes a diagnosis of Parkinson’s by anywhere from 10 to 15 years. And about one third of people who have IBS or IBD will go on to develop Parkinson’s.
Lindsey:
This is interesting because you mentioned that at least one bacteria that’s implicated in Parkinson’s, Desulfovibrio, is a hydrogen sulfide producer, which typically would produce diarrhea. And I literally just did my previous podcast on hydrogen sulfide and have a client in this situation who had only constipation as a symptom. I ran a SIBO breath test on her that came out completely negative for methane, and I thought, “what’s going on?” And then I started looking a little further into it, and I found that in a small percentage of people who have an excess of hydrogen sulfide in the large intestine, it can present as constipation. So it’s interesting that the constipation could be in conjunction with this Desulfovibrio.
Martha Carlin:
Yes, and Desulfovibrio is also highly present in wastewater, in large animal feedlots and those type of operations, and also in the public sewer lines. So, it may be that wastewater treatment is not fully addressing these types of microbes and they’re also potentially making it somehow into the water supply.
Lindsey:
Yeah, well, just one more reason to have a good quality water filter!
Martha Carlin:
Exactly!
Lindsey:
Okay. So can you also explain about probiotics and mannitol and how that relates to Parkinson’s?
Martha Carlin:
Sure. So I actually attended the World Parkinson’s Congress in Portland back in 2016. My husband’s had ups and downs over the years and that time was a down point for him. And he was not walking well and unable to really navigate crowds. Anyway, I attended a session there from a group called CliniCrowd from Israel, and they were presenting data from a researcher who had shown in a mouse model that the sugar alcohol mannitol could stop the aggregation of the proteins and actually pull them out of the brain of the mouse. And I was like, “Wow, that’s really fascinating.” And I came back, got the paper, bought a book on mannitol chemistry, and started reading about mannitol chemistry. It is the most abundant sugar in nature. And in plants, it manages osmotic stress. So then I’m thinking, “Okay, back to the concrete stool, that’s an indication of osmotic stress for sure.” And so in my mannitol chemistry book it was talking about bacteria that use mannitol as a carbon source or that can produce it. And there were a handful of bacteria that could actually produce mannitol and they did that by converting glucose and fructose into mannitol. Humans don’t really use mannitol; we eliminate it through the urine and feces.
So I thought, “OK, let’s see if we can put a factory back that can make mannitol in the gut, and maybe this will help with the Parkinson’s.” And so we prototyped a product and gave it to my husband at the beginning of 2017, and we were taking his microbiome samples all along the way. And in less than 30 days, he was no longer walking with a cane. He was able to navigate a crowd. And then we sent the samples off and continued to take them all the way up to 120 days. We could see that his microbiome continued remodeling all the way through that 120-day period and was moving back closer and closer to the profile from the Human Microbiome Project for the healthy human stool. And so we’re like, “Oh, wow, this is pretty remarkable”, and so we went on to file a patent. I’ve really studied and spent more time digging into different mechanisms and how mannitol may work in the body in different ways. And of course, you’re eliminating glucose and fructose, which is a signal to the body. Insulin resistance is implicated in Parkinson’s and so there’s a lot of other connections that go back to sugar and the importance of getting rid of that sugar. But the initial idea actually came from this research that showed that mannitol could stop the aggregation of the proteins.
Lindsey:
And what were these proteins related to Parkinson’s?
Martha Carlin:
Yes. So, it’s alpha-synuclein. It’s actually an antimicrobial peptide that then aggregates in the brain. And I think one of the mechanisms is mannitol is a neutral molecule and typically the folding and aggregating is driven by a charge.
Lindsey:
Okay. And so did your husband also have an issue with constipation? And if so, did that probiotic combination help?
Martha Carlin:
He did have an issue with constipation. Although, what I would say is a lot of times people don’t really even know. They’ve had constipation so long that they think it’s normal not to go every day. And so it did help with that, and we really started to have conversations about, “Have you gone today?”, “If you haven’t gone today, it’s important that you go today”, “drink more fluid and eat more vegetables”, etc. Anything that’s going to help move that waste through the body. So it become more top of mind for sure since we did that. We had never really discussed it before.
Lindsey:
And so that probiotic, did that become a product?
Martha Carlin:
It did become a product. So we went on about three years later to bring that to market and it’s called BiotiQuest*. And the probiotic that I made for John is called Sugar Shift Probiotic* because it shifts that sugar metabolism.
Lindsey:
Does it catch it quick enough to change your blood sugar?
Martha Carlin:
It does change blood sugar. So Parkinson’s is a little tough to do a clinical trial in, just because endpoint measurements are much more difficult. And since we thought it would be impacting blood glucose because of this change in the conversion of glucose and fructose, we chose to do a trial in diabetes. And so we actually had 30 people take the product and 30 people in the control group. The control group was just the fibers, the same fibers that are in with the probiotic. And so there were some benefits just to the fiber, but the long-term trend of the blood sugar continued to rise on just the fiber where the trend went down with the bacteria and the fiber together. Then over time we got a decrease in fasting blood glucose, postprandial blood glucose, a decrease in insulin, the HOMA-IR improved and HbA1c. It took six months for the HbA1c to actually improve. So the clinical trial was 90 days and we kept 10 subjects on the product for another three months so that we could see what the additional changes would be.
Lindsey:
And how much of a decrease in A1c happened after that six months?
Martha Carlin:
I think it was a 14% decline in HbA1c.
Lindsey:
Okay, great. And then I don’t think we talked about dopamine and Parkinson’s and how that relates.
Martha Carlin:
Well, of course. The dopaminergic neurons in the brain are what are losing their power, is how I would characterize it in Parkinson’s. And that comes from the gut also. So all of these hormones and neurotransmitters are made in the gut. And the interaction of the gut bacteria through the vagus nerve to our brain, this communication loop that goes on. So you can get this stress mechanism that in Parkinson’s, they get into fight or flight, and they’re stuck in this fight or flight stage that is producing these stress hormones, and that is affecting neurotransmitters, including dopamine. And what happens is then, the body starts trying to figure out, okay, how do I turn this off? And it starts dampening down things in order to try to save itself, but you start to lose function that way.
Lindsey:
Can you tell me about the BioFlux model and how you use that to create the probiotic formulations?
Martha Carlin:
Sure. So the BioCollective was originally started to collect fecal samples and get whole genome sequencing of all the organisms in the sample. So a lot of times, if you get a report from somebody, they don’t do whole genome. So we got this large data set of samples, and then we built a computational model where we can see how bacteria work together as a team. And that’s what’s going on in your gut. The bacteria are working together as a team, either for good or for bad. And so what our BioFlux computational model does, is it feeds in the genomes of probiotic organisms and then it runs them with certain growth media. It’s the standard food profile, if you will, of what bacteria are eating. It will show what they use and produce over a period of time so that we can design a team of bacteria, of probiotic organisms, that will perform the function we want them to. So in the case of the Sugar Shift* formula, we designed a team that can sustain that sugar conversion for 12 hours and produce metabolites like reduced glutathione and butyrate, which is beneficial for the gut lining, And so you want it to make mannitol, but you want it to do other things. What else is it doing in the context of that teamwork?
Lindsey:
So is the BioFlux model literally a computational model built on the data from putting together bacteria or seeing what the individual function of any given bacteria is?
Martha Carlin:
So just like humans have genes, bacteria have genes, and those genes are essentially all the different capabilities that they have. And what’s really interesting is in terms of humans and the microbes in our bodies, we have roughly somewhere in the neighborhood of 200 to 300 times more genes that come from the bacteria than our own gene function.
Lindsey:
So are there any probiotics that are specifically designed for Parkinson’s?
Martha Carlin:
I mean, I designed my Sugar Shift* probiotic for my husband with Parkinson’s, but there’s a company out of Korea called Bened, I think is their name. And they have a product called Neuralli, that they are currently doing a clinical trial in the U.S. in Parkinson’s, and they have done some clinical trials in Korea. It is a single strain of Lactobacillus plantarum, and we actually got that strain, sequenced the genome, and compared it to the plantarum in our formula to see if there were any unique properties in that particular strain that our strain did not have.
Lindsey:
And were there?
Martha Carlin:
Nope. Ours actually had some capabilities that it did not have, but ours also still had all the capabilities it had. And then there is research ongoing at the University of Edinburgh on a Bacillus subtilis, and they’re studying that organism in worm models. I guess they can give the worm a tremor and then Bacillus subtilis gets rid of the tremor. And we have a Bacillus subtilis in our formula. It’s not the one they’re studying over there, but they have some similar capabilities as well.
Lindsey:
So you brought up an interesting point, I looked up the Neuralli and it’s not inexpensive. That’s the L. plantarum PS128, right? It is quite an expensive probiotic. And basically, you’re saying for your much more reasonably-priced probiotic, you basically have a strain that does everything their fancy strain does.
Martha Carlin:
Yes, I am saying that. I have had some conversations with them because they were at that time considering making it available to other people to purchase as a strain ingredient. But they decided not to do that. I thought, “Well, you know, I could use yours, but I like mine because ours also has some capability for detoxifying glyphosate.” So that’s actually a personal passion of mine. And I believe one of the drivers of the increase in Parkinson’s is the increase in glyphosate in our food. Glyphosate is an antibiotic, kills the Lactobacillus and Bifidobacteria in the gut and many of the beneficial species and leaves behind the pathogens. And our Lactobacillus plantarum that came from fermented elderberries in Colorado was resistant to glyphosate and able to break it down using something called the third pathway, which doesn’t produce this more toxic metabolite called AMPA (aminomethylphosphonic acid). Our plantarum is actually in all of our probiotic formulas, but it is in the Sugar Shift* formula.
Lindsey:
Cool. So yeah, I always wonder about that. I have talked about it and heard about the whole glyphosate issue. And I’m wondering how much is really left in your food. Is it really enough to kill off all your Lactobacillus and Bifidobacteria? Because I see a lot of stool tests and admittedly, the people I see are probably eating more organic than the typical American, but they still have Lactobacillus and Bifido.
Martha Carlin:
It will select for a certain profile, but that doesn’t mean you won’t have any. I’ll give you an example. There is one Bifido adolescentis that is resistant to glyphosate, but it’s a Bifido bacteria that doesn’t make a plasmogen, something that’s important for membranes and has been implicated as being beneficial for Alzheimer’s. But in the last decade or so, they have started to dry down about 60 different crops with glyphosate. So I’m not just talking about the corn and soy because, you know, if you’re working with people who are focused on their health, they’re probably not eating GMO corn and soy, but they may not realize that even chickpeas have one of the highest levels of glyphosate that there is, because chickpeas are sprayed at the end of harvest. This is so they get an even drying in the field and they can harvest them faster. Same thing with lentils. So a lot of your legumes, all of your grains,
Lindsey:
If they’re not organic?
Martha Carlin:
If they’re not organic. But I also need to check with a friend of mine in the organic regulatory arena, because sometimes you can use a dry down thing at the end on an organic crop. So I think it’s always best to call up and ask, do you use glyphosate in your desiccation process? I mean, I did that with Bob’s Red Mill.
Lindsey:
And what’d they say?
Martha Carlin:
And they said that they request that all their farmers do not do that, but they do not test for glyphosate.
Lindsey:
Okay. So have there been studies looking at the microbiomes of people that are eating food with glyphosate?
Martha Carlin:
There are, more recently, there are some studies on glyphosate’s impact on the microbiome. And there was actually a good one in bees a few years back that was one of the big flashing red light ones that came out. So I can probably pull one of those up and send it to you. Because I just saw one a couple of days ago, actually.
Lindsey:
Okay. And there’s also a relationship between hydrogen sulfide and pesticides, right?
Martha Carlin:
Yes, I believe so.
Lindsey:
I think I mentioned that in my last podcast that the glyphosate can potentially result in the overgrowth of hydrogen sulfide producing bacteria, by impacting molybdenum.
Martha Carlin:
Well, it impacts most of the trace metals. So it will chelate. I mean, glyphosate actually was originally a metals chelator used to clean pipes, metal pipes. And then they made it into this herbicide, and it chelates copper preferentially. So we’ve actually done a study with Dr. Don Huber, who’s one of the global glyphosate experts in cabbage, because it wasn’t maintaining its structure, much like our collagen is not maintained. Many people’s collagen is not maintaining its structure. And glyphosate will bind up, in that study, boron, copper and manganese. And those were the three trace minerals that were needed for the cabbage to maintain its structure throughout the fermentation process with the sauerkraut. And of course, copper is essential for collagen formation in the human body. It has a lot of downstream impact. I’m friends with Stephanie Seneff, who wrote the book Toxic Legacy*. You know, we talk back and forth about our different bits and pieces, and she’s written a couple of papers on how glyphosate may be implicated in Parkinson’s and other neurological diseases, in autism, and what’s going on in different metabolic pathways as a result of glyphosate consumption.
Lindsey:
Okay, well then people can definitely check that out, her book. So in our pre-interview, you mentioned aquaporins, and that was actually the first time I’d ever heard them mentioned. So can you explain what they are and the research that you know about on them?
Martha Carlin:
Sure. Aquaporins are a relatively new discovery in the last couple of decades. And they’re the water channels between the cell membranes. I think they’re up to about 13 right now, but the one that I was most interested in is aquaporin 4, which is prevalent in the brain. And I have actually been working on a hypothesis of something called molecular mimicry, where we can actually create an antibody to, say, aquaporin 4 by either eating a food or having a bacteria that has a similar aquaporin, and our body has an immune reaction to that and then creates this antibody that attacks our own aquaporin 4. As it turns out, there’s aquaporin 4 in tomatoes, spinach, corn, and wheat, I believe. So that’s an emerging area of research that I’ve been looking at. And there are a number of papers on the aquaporin connection to neurological problems. And of course, then back again to that concrete-like stool. And, you know, aquaporin is the flow of water across the membrane.
Lindsey:
Yeah. I think I looked up something related to that. I saw those three things that you mentioned, but I saw soybeans, not wheat as the fourth food.
Martha Carlin:
Oh, you know what, you’re right. It is soybeans because there’s another protein in my molecular mimicry stuff called Alpha crystallin. And that’s in wheat and corn, and humans have an alpha-b crystallin.
Lindsey:
So do you avoid those foods?
Martha Carlin:
I do avoid those foods; I avoid those foods altogether. And it’s interesting because we used to eat spinach a lot because people are like, “Oh, spinach is healthy, eat the spinach.” So many of the salad mixes have spinach in them. I’m like, “ooh, don’t eat the spinach.”
Lindsey:
And there’s no form of spinach that you can eat that removes that aquaporin it’s still in there?
Martha Carlin:
Well, I’m sure there probably is one somewhere but you know, I’d have to go through rather lengthy and expensive exercising doing the genomes of various species of spinach.
Lindsey:
Oh yeah, I was thinking of cooking methods, like when you remove oxalates by dropping in boiling water.
Martha Carlin:
Yeah, because it does change how the oxalates behave. So I don’t know, I’ll have to look at that.
Lindsey:
Yeah. So, I eat spinach every morning and ever since we talked, I’m like, “oh no”. I do know about the oxalates, but I sort of mitigate that by taking calcium citrate with my breakfast, since I don’t eat dairy anyway.
Martha Carlin:
Well, we moved to broccoli sprouts, so we eat a lot of broccoli.
Lindsey:
Okay yeah, I like something I can stir fry in oil and eat next to my egg. So tell me about the other probiotics that BiotiQuest has worked on and sells?
Martha Carlin:
So when we first brought out our products, we came out with the Sugar Shift*, a product called Ideal Immunity, which has a specific strain of Lactobacillus called Lactobacillus ruminus that is very effective at killing foodborne pathogens like listeria, salmonella and E. coli. And then we brought out a product called Heart Centered, and that was focused on cardiovascular health. The microorganisms produce CoQ10 and help with nitric oxide production. So, you know, vasodilation. So we brought those two products to market. And then later that, about a year later, a friend of mine’s mother had to go on IV antibiotics for a month after she got sepsis from a ruptured appendix. And she was having major GI issues and bowel irregularity. And the doctor was like, “That’s how it is, don’t worry about it, it’s not a problem.” And she was pretty stressed out about it. And her son is actually one of my advisors and he’s a fermentation chemist. And he called me, and he said, “that antibiotic formula you were going to make, do you think you could make it now for my mother?” And so, we checked our inventory, went to our vendors, and said, “we still need these two strains.” And we made a small batch. And within a week’s time, she called me on the phone, and she was just raving about how much better she felt and that it was just incredible. And Steve laughed because he had been talking to her about probiotics for 20 years and she had pretty much ignored him. And now she’s a true believer. So we brought that antibiotic antidote to market.
Lindsey:
What strain was it that you added? Or was it multiple strains beyond the usual group?
Martha Carlin:
It’s a multi-strain formula also. There was a research paper that had come out a few years earlier out of the Weitzman Institute that was looking at one 11-strain formula that was given to a group of people after taking antibiotics. And it showed that it actually made things worse. And I sat down with my chief scientific officer, Raul Cano, and he’s a world-renowned microbiologist. And he looked at the formula and he said, “it’s not well balanced. I would never recommend that.” Oftentimes people just go get a lactic acid bacteria.
Lindsey:
Was it a Visbiome or a VSL#3?
Martha Carlin:
They didn’t disclose the name of the product, but I was able to find a product in Israel that had those 11 strains. And we said, you need something that is more well-balanced, that doesn’t take the pH to such an acidic level that you can’t recolonize a full complement of the microbiome. And so Raul went away with his magic and came back, and then we ran it through the computational model and tweaked it a bit and brought that product forward. And then we also have a culture starter. I’m going to call it a yogurt culture starter, but technically it’s not a yogurt if it doesn’t have Streptococcus thermophilus or Lactobacillus bulgaricus. That is a branding thing, but yogurt, that’s the technical term. It’s got to have one or both of those in it to be called a yogurt. Dr. Bill Davis, his group has kind of coined this phrase pro-gurt, probiotic yogurt, because they make yogurts with all these different strains. And so we had such a demand, people were making yogurt with ours, and you can make yogurt with any one of our formulas. And so we actually made a jar that is culture starter, just so you can take a scoop instead of having to open capsules. And we have prototyped about 20 different formulas that we plan to bring out over time. We have one we’re bringing out with a physician later this year that’s been doing a lot of work in Crohn’s and his focus is on that mycobacterium avium paratuberculosis.
Lindsey:
I was going to ask you, isn’t that the one that’s implicated in Crohn’s?
Martha Carlin:
Yes, and so we don’t have the name for the product yet. But the organism is a strain of bacteria called Dietzia. And then we’re bringing out our mood, feel good probiotic called Perfect Peace, and that will probably come out in the fourth quarter of this year.
Lindsey:
Okay, so now how many formulations do you have?
Martha Carlin:
We have five and then the yogurt starter.
Lindsey:
Okay and is the yogurt starter for one of the formulations?
Martha Carlin:
It’s the same as Sugar Shift*, it’s just in a yogurt starter form. And I forgot, we have the Simple Slumber. So we brought that out because so many people kept telling us they have trouble sleeping. And so we made our Simple Slumber product and that makes bacterial melatonin and tryptophan. So both the Ideal Immunity and the Simple Slumber have a small amount of tryptophan in them so people who are taking an SSRI inhibitor or an MAOI cannot take those because they can get serotonin syndrome from taking a product with tryptophan.
Lindsey:
Okay. So for the yogurt starter, I know with some of these yogurts, like the one I think the Bill Davis’s group is using reuteri; they’re more temperature sensitive. You can’t just like put it in a regular yogurt maker. Can you do that with your Sugar Shift*?
Martha Carlin:
So it does have reuteri in it. So we do recommend that people do it at a temperature below 106. I always do mine at 98 degrees because that’s roughly what our body is. So you want it to be acclimated to what your body is. I have done the meta up to about 104, but I like mine better at 98.
Lindsey:
And how do you do that? Then do you use an InstaPot or something? What do you use to make your yogurt?
Martha Carlin:
I actually have a Luvele yogurt maker. It’s Australian. And I like it because you don’t have to deal with all those little cups, it’s one big quart. You can put one or two quarts in it, actually. And then when it’s done, I scoop it out and put it into a mason jar and it’s all good.
Lindsey:
And you can set the temperature on that one?
Martha Carlin:
Yes, you can set the temperature on that one. The Instant Pot will often get a little bit too hot. And so those are set for yogurt, which Strep thermophilus and bulgaricus are both, what is called thermo-tolerant. So they actually like the higher temperature, and they grow faster in the higher temperature, whereas something like Lactobacillus reuteri will actually die at the higher temperature. And that’s the organism that used to be in our small intestine, in the small bowel that was keeping out all these SIBO organisms. And we seem to have lost that Lactobacillus reuteri.
Lindsey:
So do you think that’s an important strain in SIBO?
Martha Carlin:
It’s a very important strain in keeping SIBO at bay.
Lindsey:
Any particular reuteri?
Martha Carlin:
Well, Dr. Davis is very keen on the BioGaia* strain, and that’s a well-researched strain. We actually had our own strain through my advisor, Steve, who had done a bunch of research with his reuteri strain, actually in animals, because he was working on trying to get antibiotics out of animal feed. It is a very well-researched strain, but slightly different than the BioGaia strain. And then we have another company that we use their reuteri on occasion. And that is one that actually Dr. Davis found he liked just as well or better than the others. Basically, what you’re looking for in the genome is what are called bacteriocins, and these are small molecules that the bacteria make that target specifically other bacteria. So, Lactobacillus reuteri will have these reuterins, are what they’re called, and those bacteriocins will kill anything that tries to colonize the GI tract. There’s another, Lactobacillus gasseri, is another one that he talks about a lot in SIBO. We actually don’t have gasseri in any of our formulas, but we have looked at potentially making a formula that has gasseri. It’s actually become increasingly difficult to get. The one producer that I know that used to sell it no longer sells it.
Lindsey:
Hmm. So which of the reuteri strains do you use then?
Martha Carlin:
We use one called PCR7 from Pure Cultures.
Lindsey:
And the one from BioGaia, gastrus*, is meant to be quite good in methane SIBO and in constipation. Is yours also good in that same way?
Martha Carlin:
Well, we haven’t studied it for that. But we do get lots of reports of people taking the product and constipation problems going away. And a lot of Dr. Davis’s SIBO kind of protocol, people are making the Sugar Shift* yogurt, either with the capsules or with the yogurt maker, and it has that PCR7 reuteri in it.
Lindsey:
And so when they do it with the yogurt maker, you can presumably get quite a bit more than you might in a capsule, is there a limit to how much you think is beneficial in a given day?
Martha Carlin:
So if you have a single strain, like Dr. Davis has looked at, the single strain of the reuteri will double about every 12 hours. Bacteria grow really fast. Now, when you have a working team like we have, it goes through a succession. So, there’ll be some of your early growers that will provide the metabolic food for the late growers. And you get maybe not as elevated counts as you would get in a single strain over 36 hours, but you’re definitely going to get a lot more bacteria than just taking a capsule.
Lindsey:
And it’s just a way to buy one set of culture starter capsules and make it last longer?
Martha Carlin:
Right. So you can make it go a lot longer and I’ve made coconut milk yogurt. I make my yogurt out of dairy most of the time, but I’m getting raw milk so I’m doing kind of a different shtick also.
Lindsey:
Yeah, so I don’t do well with dairy, but I’ve yet to try making coconut yogurt because I don’t like most commercial coconut yogurts. There’s one that I really like though, Cocojune. But, if I eat an entire container, I feel nauseous. And I keep saying to myself that yogurt is good for you. But I don’t feel good when I eat it, like what’s going on? Is it another ingredient? Is it the bacteria because I have autoimmune SIBO? I always have to worry about overgrowth of bacteria.
Martha Carlin:
With coconut yogurt, you have to add a thickener. It will not congeal if you don’t add some kind of thickener. I’ll have to look at the Cocojune and see what they’re using. I actually had one of my customers, she works with children with digestive issues at a hospital in Seattle. And they actually use my Sugar Shift in a coconut milk for their specific carbohydrate diet for kids with these digestive issues. And her recipe was not vegan because it uses gelatin. But it was gelatin and two tablespoons of honey in the coconut milk. And it turned out fabulous, except I had a few chunks of gelatin in there. I think I need to blend it up afterwards or something, but it had a nice, thick, commercial consistency to it.
Lindsey:
Was it commercial coconut milk?
Martha Carlin:
I used organic Thai coconut milk.
Lindsey:
Oh you used the thick coconut milk that you use in recipes?
Martha Carlin:
Yes.
Lindsey:
Not like the thin stuff in the bottle, the containers?
Martha Carlin:
No, not that, I use two cans of Thai coconut milk.
Lindsey:
Oh, wow.
Martha Carlin:
You heat shock it to like 190 degrees, real quick. And then cool it down and mix that gelatin and the honey in there. And it will be great.
Lindsey:
Cool. I used to make yogurt and I had a yogurt maker. And I used to love my dairy yogurt, back well before I reconciled myself to the fact that I’m lactose intolerant and probably casein intolerant. I just don’t do well with dairy. But I used to make lemon and rosewater and wonderful flavors of yogurt.
Martha Carlin:
I think they’ve just done so much to the cows, just like they’ve done so much to lots of our food. It’s not what it was 50 years ago, the cows aren’t what they were, the vegetables aren’t what they were, the soil is not what it was. And that’s evident in our poor gut health and our own poor nutrition.
Lindsey:
Yeah. So is there anything else you would like to talk about that’s currently fascinating you?
Martha Carlin:
Well, I love the title of your podcast, “The Perfect Stool”, because I talk to people a lot about poop. The understanding that you don’t really need a complex, fancy stool report to tell whether or not you are healthy. So, in the European microbiome study, they actually ranked all these different indicators, different medications, different lifestyle, all this different stuff that were the best predictors of health. And number three on the list was your Bristol stool score and your frequency of going to the bathroom. So to me, I love that the perfect stool is right in the middle. You need to go everyday whenever you can. You’re getting rid of that waste and not letting it sit inside, because that’s actually one of the things that I’ve spent countless hours over the last several years, is looking at the toxins that are produced by bacteria and what that can do to us in all these different autoimmune diseases that’s affecting us neurologically, our mood, etc. Endotoxins from gram-negative bacteria have a significant effect on our mood. In this study they injected happy, healthy people with endotoxins, and they were clinically depressed within two hours. So these products of these bacteria that are sitting in the body, if we’re not getting them moved out of our body, then our immune system is having to deal with them. And that is what is generating all of these problems that we’re having. So get up and go!
Lindsey:
Better diarrhea than constipation basically!
Martha Carlin:
Well, diarrhea is your body attempting to eliminate a pathogen. Obviously, chronic diarrhea is a severe problem though.
Lindsey:
Right.
Martha Carlin:
And especially if you have hemolytic bacteria and you’re having bloody diarrhea, don’t get me wrong I’m not a proponent of diarrhea. But in some ways, at least the toxins are not sitting in the body.
Lindsey:
Usually when I work with somebody who has diarrhea or loose stool, it’s an easier problem to fix than constipation. And if it’s out of control and there’s urgency or there’s lack of control of the bowels, it’s a bad situation. But the urgency of somebody who’s really struggling to have a bowel movement is so much worse. They’re really quite desperate to figure out a way, on a daily basis, to get that bowel movement out, because if not, they start to have a buildup of pain and bloating and all that. And not to mention, obviously, the physiological effects of having those toxins leaking out over time are terrible.
Martha Carlin:
And what we did start to see or talk about with my husband, when we finally started talking about going, is that on particular days when he might have more trouble with his symptoms, those were actually the days when he had not had a bowel movement.
Lindsey:
Oh, yeah. People tell me that all the time.
Martha Carlin:
People are like, “oh, yeah, that’s related. I’ve got to get it out.”
Lindsey:
People will say all the time, “I have this symptom or that symptom when I haven’t had a bowel movement”, or sometimes prior to one, start to have some symptoms.
Martha Carlin:
A number of people with Parkinson’s, who had severe chronic constipation, that have written me that sugar shift* is the only thing they’ve tried over the years that has helped them with their constipation.
Lindsey:
Well, I’m excited to try it out in some of my clients because I have a number of them who are still struggling. So I’ll definitely recommend it and see how they do. Well, this was an interesting conversation. Any final words, before we go?
Martha Carlin:
Well, just thank you for having me. And thank you for talking to people about the unpleasantness of poop, and how important it is in our life. Getting the message out that our gut is really the key to our health, and everything we do to focus on. You know I say, “love your microbes”, because that is your immune system, it’s your digestion of your food, etc. I mean, they’re doing all these things for us. And we’ve gotten to be such a germaphobe society. But really, without our microbes, we can do very little.
Lindsey:
Yeah, if people want to try the Sugar Shift Probiotic*, I’ve got a link in the show notes. I’ve got an affiliate code set up and they get a 10% discount with the code PERFECTSTOOL, and then the other formulas too. So you can find that. Any other sites that we should mention?
Martha Carlin:
I also have a personal blog called Martha’s Quest. I write about Parkinson’s and the microbiome and alternative health things that may be beneficial for people with Parkinson’s. Sometimes I review books about Parkinson’s there. And then if you’re really interested in all the technical stuff about sample collection and that, you can go to the BioCollective. And that’s our website that talks about the history of the sample collection and some of the things that we were involved in during our early research in the company.
Lindsey:
Awesome. Well, I’ll link to all those in the show notes. Thanks so much for being here!
If you are struggling with bloating, gas, burping, nausea, constipation, diarrhea, soft stool, acid reflux, IBS, IBD, SIBO, candida overgrowth, fatigue or migraines and want to get to the bottom of it, that’s what I help my clients with. You’re welcome to set up a free, 30-minute breakthrough session with me. We’ll talk about what you’ve been going through and I’ll tell you about my 3- and 5- appointment health coaching programs in which I recommend lab tests, educate you on what the results mean and the protocols used by doctors to fix the problems revealed. Or if you’re ready to jump in right away or can just afford one appointment at a time, you can set up an 1-hour consultation with me.
*Product and dispensary links are affiliate links for which I’ll receive a commission. Thanks for your support of the podcast by using these links. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.