WEBVTT 00:00:00.320 --> 00:00:05.760 David, I'm always amazed that at the end of the day, despite all of our technology, 00:00:06.000 --> 00:00:10.640 everything we're doing with speakers and electronics is still just magnets and copper 00:00:10.640 --> 00:00:11.280 wires. 00:00:12.000 --> 00:00:17.200 It's pretty remarkable when you think about all the intricate interactions and subtle 00:00:17.200 --> 00:00:21.760 divisions of labor that went into this thing that that you, the listener, are hearing in 00:00:21.760 --> 00:00:23.040 your ears right now. 00:00:23.280 --> 00:00:25.890 Um it's pretty mind blowing. 00:00:26.130 --> 00:00:30.530 Yeah, I just I think it's worth just pausing for a moment to appreciate that. 00:00:30.930 --> 00:00:36.370 Yeah, maybe we should have like a prayer, a meditative uh 00:00:36.690 --> 00:00:37.570 silence, yeah. 00:00:37.730 --> 00:00:43.170 Um but but during this silence, we can just reflect on the fact that this is a podcast. 00:00:43.650 --> 00:00:44.130 Yes. 00:00:44.290 --> 00:00:50.210 Um, and it's uh co-hosted by me, David Pinsoff, and uh my co-host Dave 00:00:50.210 --> 00:00:51.170 Petrozki. 00:00:51.620 --> 00:00:54.660 You said that like that might not be me, but it is me, right? 00:00:55.140 --> 00:00:56.020 That that would be you. 00:00:56.100 --> 00:01:00.020 I mean, unless there's another person named Dave Petrozowski who's been um showing up. 00:01:00.500 --> 00:01:01.700 There's only a couple of us. 00:01:01.860 --> 00:01:03.540 If you do a search, there's only a couple. 00:01:03.620 --> 00:01:04.580 There's no not many. 00:01:04.660 --> 00:01:06.100 So I think there's like five in the US. 00:01:06.260 --> 00:01:08.900 One of them, though, uh does GPS research. 00:01:09.060 --> 00:01:13.540 And so occasionally I get a graduate student application for somebody who's like interested 00:01:13.540 --> 00:01:17.540 in GPS technology on buoys in the Navy or something. 00:01:17.620 --> 00:01:21.310 And I I have to politely forward it along to the other David J. 00:01:21.470 --> 00:01:21.550 P. 00:01:21.710 --> 00:01:23.150 Trazewski, in fact. 00:01:23.470 --> 00:01:27.310 Yeah, I ironically, a person got lost looking for the GPS researcher. 00:01:27.710 --> 00:01:28.190 Yeah, exactly. 00:01:29.150 --> 00:01:31.150 First, first hoop not jumped through. 00:01:31.230 --> 00:01:31.390 Yeah. 00:01:31.470 --> 00:01:33.550 David, are there other David Pence offs? 00:01:33.950 --> 00:01:35.390 Uh not to my knowledge. 00:01:35.470 --> 00:01:37.630 It's a pretty rare last name, actually. 00:01:37.790 --> 00:01:38.270 Yeah. 00:01:38.510 --> 00:01:40.190 So is this all going in the intro? 00:01:40.350 --> 00:01:46.350 Is this going to be but are we eventually going to get to the title of the 00:01:46.510 --> 00:01:46.910 podcast? 00:01:47.710 --> 00:01:48.910 Uh what is the title? 00:01:49.320 --> 00:01:52.200 Uh it's Evolutionary Psychology the podcast. 00:01:52.520 --> 00:01:52.680 Yeah. 00:01:53.000 --> 00:01:56.600 Oh wait, we forgot to say actual evolutionary psychology by actual evolutionary 00:01:56.600 --> 00:01:57.560 psychologists. 00:02:06.840 --> 00:02:12.680 David, many times we have people on who do psychology 00:02:12.680 --> 00:02:18.650 or anthropology, um, but we're wading into new territory here with uh somebody 00:02:18.650 --> 00:02:21.610 who does work on the microbiome. 00:02:22.170 --> 00:02:22.570 Yeah. 00:02:22.810 --> 00:02:28.650 Um, it is the coolest, hottest topic in science now, if I could share that 00:02:28.650 --> 00:02:29.050 opinion. 00:02:29.210 --> 00:02:29.690 Do you agree? 00:02:29.770 --> 00:02:32.330 I feel like it's really an interesting topic. 00:02:32.650 --> 00:02:38.460 I have people are just uh I I have no idea what is the hottest topic in science 00:02:38.540 --> 00:02:40.620 other than artificial intelligence, which I think is. 00:02:41.020 --> 00:02:42.380 Well, yeah, that's a big one. 00:02:42.700 --> 00:02:46.700 But um I feel like I see microbiome stuff all the time. 00:02:47.020 --> 00:02:48.300 You know, uh probiotics. 00:02:48.380 --> 00:02:50.220 I feel like I see the stuff on on TikTok. 00:02:50.380 --> 00:02:52.140 The kids are talking about the microbiome. 00:02:53.020 --> 00:02:53.820 Are they? 00:02:54.060 --> 00:02:54.460 Yeah. 00:02:54.780 --> 00:02:55.100 Okay. 00:02:55.260 --> 00:02:55.820 Uh yeah. 00:02:55.900 --> 00:02:56.700 Well, you're in LA. 00:02:56.780 --> 00:02:59.740 We're in sleepy Santa Barbara, so we don't, yeah, we're like 10 years behind. 00:02:59.820 --> 00:03:05.350 Um I think this is the episode that uh sometimes people say, I wish the 00:03:05.350 --> 00:03:09.190 episodes had more practical advice for my everyday life. 00:03:09.350 --> 00:03:13.190 And if you want practical everyday advice for your life, I think this is the episode for 00:03:13.190 --> 00:03:13.350 you. 00:03:13.750 --> 00:03:16.310 Yeah, there's there's some really good practical advice. 00:03:16.390 --> 00:03:21.990 And also it's just a mind-blowing uh tour of what the microbiome 00:03:22.310 --> 00:03:22.630 is. 00:03:22.870 --> 00:03:27.240 Uh All the different details and facets of it. 00:03:27.320 --> 00:03:28.680 Like I found it absolutely fascinating. 00:03:28.760 --> 00:03:31.320 I feel like I learned so much listening to this. 00:03:31.400 --> 00:03:36.360 Um, I actually grocery shop differently, even though so I had seen so this is uh 00:03:37.080 --> 00:03:43.000 Katrina Weitzen, and she is um um at UC Irvine, and she 00:03:43.000 --> 00:03:47.400 gave a talk at the John Patton uh Memorial Symposium, and it just blew my mind. 00:03:47.560 --> 00:03:53.490 And so I wanted to invite her on the podcast and uh the work she's doing on the microbiome. 00:03:53.650 --> 00:03:56.290 She's like one of five labs doing this kind of work. 00:03:56.450 --> 00:04:01.650 It's incredible, cutting edge science with immediate real world implications. 00:04:01.890 --> 00:04:06.370 And again, it's coming from an evolutionary perspective, thinking about the ways in which 00:04:06.370 --> 00:04:09.730 our diet might be mismatched from the way that we're designed. 00:04:10.130 --> 00:04:10.370 Yeah. 00:04:10.610 --> 00:04:16.610 It's just incredibly mind expanding to think about the whole ecosystem of 00:04:16.680 --> 00:04:21.160 microbes that's living inside of you and how they've evolved symbiotically with us. 00:04:21.320 --> 00:04:27.320 And you know, we get into how you can often trace um the the genetics of a human better by 00:04:27.320 --> 00:04:31.720 looking at their microbiome than by looking at the human uh themselves and their DNA. 00:04:31.880 --> 00:04:35.000 Um uh it's just really fascinating stuff. 00:04:35.080 --> 00:04:36.680 Um, I think you'll really enjoy this one. 00:04:36.920 --> 00:04:37.240 Yeah. 00:04:37.320 --> 00:04:43.240 So uh enjoy along with your very, very large number of uh microbiomes that 00:04:43.240 --> 00:04:46.280 are also along for the ride as you listen to this episode. 00:04:46.530 --> 00:04:46.770 Yep. 00:04:47.010 --> 00:04:47.730 Enjoy. 00:04:52.210 --> 00:04:52.850 All right. 00:04:53.170 --> 00:04:55.170 Um, so today we have Katrina. 00:04:55.250 --> 00:04:56.610 Um, is it Whiteson? 00:04:56.690 --> 00:04:57.490 Is that Whiteson? 00:04:57.570 --> 00:04:57.650 Yeah. 00:04:57.890 --> 00:04:58.370 Whiteson. 00:04:58.450 --> 00:05:03.090 Um, I met you at John Patton's memorial seminar. 00:05:03.570 --> 00:05:09.410 Um, and I was just before we started recording, I was saying how just incredible um 00:05:09.570 --> 00:05:15.090 your talk was, and we got a chance to talk, and I think completely differently about 00:05:15.520 --> 00:05:17.840 which sounds like a boring thing, fiber. 00:05:19.040 --> 00:05:25.040 But but you study microbiome, you study your incredible, um just incredible research, 00:05:25.200 --> 00:05:26.720 and we want to get into it. 00:05:26.960 --> 00:05:32.960 But I want to start by asking the uh maybe as a lead-in to um John Patton. 00:05:33.200 --> 00:05:39.040 So you were can you talk us through how did you get involved working with John Patton? 00:05:39.120 --> 00:05:44.890 And what what is somebody who's studying microbiomes doing talking to John Patton. 00:05:44.970 --> 00:05:47.050 And how did you guys meet, or how did you start working together? 00:05:47.370 --> 00:05:47.770 What did you do? 00:05:48.490 --> 00:05:49.930 Great story and a great question. 00:05:50.090 --> 00:05:55.770 So when I so I started a lab at UCI in 2014, and I think I met John Patton within a couple 00:05:55.930 --> 00:05:57.210 years of that time. 00:05:57.450 --> 00:06:03.210 Um, right around the time I started my lab, uh the uh we recruited this um famous 00:06:03.210 --> 00:06:09.130 salivary scientist named Douglas Granger, and he started the salivary biosciences 00:06:09.130 --> 00:06:09.930 institute here. 00:06:10.420 --> 00:06:12.100 Wow, a salivary scientist. 00:06:12.180 --> 00:06:14.580 I was not even aware that such a field existed. 00:06:15.460 --> 00:06:20.900 And I'm there, I'm sure that uh Professor Granger has many titles beyond Salivary 00:06:21.060 --> 00:06:21.620 Scientist. 00:06:21.700 --> 00:06:23.540 Um, but he had a big research. 00:06:23.940 --> 00:06:25.220 I'm drooling to learn more about that. 00:06:26.420 --> 00:06:27.620 Salivating at the thought. 00:06:27.860 --> 00:06:28.100 Yeah. 00:06:28.500 --> 00:06:28.740 Yeah. 00:06:28.820 --> 00:06:32.580 In fact, they would do these workshops, and then you you'd get a mug that said something 00:06:32.580 --> 00:06:37.060 about saliva in really big letters, and then Eclastad is like drinking coffee out of this 00:06:37.060 --> 00:06:38.900 mug that says saliva on it. 00:06:39.410 --> 00:06:42.130 I can't imagine like the titles of papers in that literature. 00:06:42.210 --> 00:06:43.330 It just gotta be so funny. 00:06:43.410 --> 00:06:45.970 It's just like rife for a lot of spit ticks. 00:06:47.010 --> 00:06:47.890 Oh my gosh. 00:06:48.290 --> 00:06:53.570 So so John Patton um knew somehow was connected with Douglas Granger. 00:06:53.650 --> 00:06:58.850 I don't exactly know how they uh got to know each other, but um, but Douglas Granger, who 00:06:58.850 --> 00:07:03.330 was here ECI, facilitated my introduction to John Patton. 00:07:03.410 --> 00:07:09.060 And I remember we all met together, and John shared his story of the people he was working 00:07:09.060 --> 00:07:14.260 with in Ecuador and just the possibility that we could study the microbes living in the 00:07:14.260 --> 00:07:19.460 saliva samples, which then we extended to chicha, of course, and even to chica. 00:07:19.780 --> 00:07:21.060 What is what is chicha just for preparing? 00:07:21.300 --> 00:07:24.020 I don't think we've talked about I I don't know if we've talked about chicha. 00:07:24.180 --> 00:07:24.500 Uh yeah. 00:07:24.900 --> 00:07:28.180 I've heard some stories from Clark about chicha that were that were very fun, but it's 00:07:28.660 --> 00:07:32.100 worth um yeah worth repeating yeah yeah definitely. 00:07:32.260 --> 00:07:38.190 Um so chicha is a fermented beverage that people in Ecuador and other parts 00:07:38.190 --> 00:07:39.310 of South America make. 00:07:39.390 --> 00:07:44.510 And I mean, they really subsist on this bev on this fermented beverage, which is made by 00:07:44.510 --> 00:07:50.350 having the women of the household chew on um starchy root vegetables like yucca, 00:07:50.830 --> 00:07:56.590 and they chew the vegetable and then spit it into a vat, and it's like a communal activity, 00:07:56.750 --> 00:08:01.550 and then they let the vat ferment for a couple of days, and it gets to have mild 00:08:01.960 --> 00:08:06.280 alcohol content like a kombucha or a light beer. 00:08:06.440 --> 00:08:12.360 But the amazing thing about it is that people get something like 2,500 or 3,000 calories 00:08:12.360 --> 00:08:13.960 a day from drinking chicha. 00:08:14.040 --> 00:08:17.160 And it's it's like a water purification method, too. 00:08:17.400 --> 00:08:18.760 People really depend on it. 00:08:18.840 --> 00:08:23.080 Like when a hunting party goes on a trip for a few days, if they run out of chicha, 00:08:23.480 --> 00:08:26.840 everyone has this feeling of impending doom, like we're gonna die. 00:08:27.000 --> 00:08:27.960 And maybe they're right. 00:08:28.040 --> 00:08:31.210 If they drink water, they could get diarrheal illness. 00:08:31.290 --> 00:08:33.610 Like there's so many reasons why it's so important. 00:08:34.090 --> 00:08:39.690 Um, and anyhow, it's it's uh it's a fermented beverage that's really important to the food 00:08:39.690 --> 00:08:42.810 culture in Ecuador and nearby parts of the world. 00:08:43.130 --> 00:08:43.370 Amazing. 00:08:43.770 --> 00:08:45.530 So it's like a source of hydration. 00:08:45.610 --> 00:08:46.250 Uh yeah. 00:08:46.730 --> 00:08:47.370 Approximately. 00:08:47.530 --> 00:08:48.250 Sorry, sorry, David. 00:08:48.330 --> 00:08:48.490 Go ahead. 00:08:48.650 --> 00:08:51.290 Just out of curiosity, uh, what does it taste like? 00:08:51.850 --> 00:08:55.880 I for all the times I've spoken about it, I actually haven't tried it. 00:08:55.960 --> 00:08:58.360 I didn't go to Ecuador with John Patton. 00:08:58.440 --> 00:08:59.640 So I've just heard about it. 00:08:59.720 --> 00:09:00.600 I really should go. 00:09:00.680 --> 00:09:02.440 And yeah, that would be a good idea to go. 00:09:03.080 --> 00:09:07.400 I do personally brew kombucha at home, which I know is not the same thing, but you know. 00:09:08.040 --> 00:09:12.440 Um I do remember uh trying something that was advertised as chicha. 00:09:12.520 --> 00:09:13.800 I doubted it as the authentic thing. 00:09:13.880 --> 00:09:18.170 So I was in Nicaragua with my wife for our honeymoon at a resort, and they had something on 00:09:18.170 --> 00:09:19.210 the menu called Chicha. 00:09:19.290 --> 00:09:23.930 I doubt it's very similar to the one that um is actually made in these local communities. 00:09:24.090 --> 00:09:27.690 But um from what I remember, it was just kind of like really sour, kind of tasted like a 00:09:27.690 --> 00:09:28.250 sour beer. 00:09:28.650 --> 00:09:31.530 Yeah, I think it basically a sour beer is a great way to put it. 00:09:31.690 --> 00:09:37.450 And um actually Doghead Brewery, they made a single batch of chicha a few years 00:09:37.450 --> 00:09:42.120 ago that my grad student who worked on this project, he was really into brewing beer, and 00:09:42.120 --> 00:09:45.720 he I know he was really into that, but I didn't get to try it myself. 00:09:46.200 --> 00:09:46.840 Cool. 00:09:47.960 --> 00:09:51.880 So uh so John Patton, so we you the uh we cut you off, sorry. 00:09:52.040 --> 00:09:52.920 Yeah, we cut you off into the city. 00:09:53.400 --> 00:09:55.160 Too many exciting things to yeah. 00:09:55.240 --> 00:09:59.480 Well, I mean, there's a there's a lot to say, and you guys know John Patton was a talker, 00:09:59.560 --> 00:09:59.720 right? 00:09:59.800 --> 00:10:03.930 So I mean I've got I've absorbed a lot of his stories, even though I didn't go down there 00:10:03.930 --> 00:10:04.250 myself. 00:10:04.410 --> 00:10:06.010 I got to learn so much about it, you know. 00:10:06.330 --> 00:10:06.490 Yeah. 00:10:06.570 --> 00:10:10.810 So but what so for people who don't know, so I think like people know that, like, you know, 00:10:10.890 --> 00:10:15.610 John Patton was in Kanambo and we talked, we have talked to Brun Bowser about sort of what 00:10:15.610 --> 00:10:16.890 life is like there. 00:10:17.610 --> 00:10:20.170 Um, what what are you why? 00:10:20.410 --> 00:10:22.010 So we talked about saliva. 00:10:22.410 --> 00:10:23.610 What are you interested in? 00:10:23.690 --> 00:10:27.290 What did you and John realize you could do together that hadn't been done before? 00:10:27.450 --> 00:10:28.490 What were you guys doing? 00:10:28.810 --> 00:10:30.010 Yeah, great question. 00:10:30.250 --> 00:10:35.780 So um, you know, the people who live in Canambo are living in a there, it's a 00:10:35.780 --> 00:10:37.540 riverside community in Ecuador. 00:10:37.780 --> 00:10:39.780 There's no roads to cities. 00:10:40.020 --> 00:10:45.460 The people who live there, there's they subsist on chicha and whatever they can grow in 00:10:45.460 --> 00:10:47.940 their kitchen gardens and whatever they can hunt. 00:10:48.100 --> 00:10:50.580 Um so they are not eating processed food. 00:10:50.740 --> 00:10:55.790 So we live in a world where most of the industrialized world is consuming something like 00:10:55.790 --> 00:10:58.910 70% of our calories are processed foods. 00:10:59.390 --> 00:11:03.950 They can't just like go to the vending machine and buy a Coke and so forth. 00:11:04.510 --> 00:11:09.630 And so John had been studying or, you know, working in Canambo since the 90s. 00:11:09.710 --> 00:11:15.070 And I think his initial draw there was because the community there has a very high homicide 00:11:15.070 --> 00:11:15.470 rate. 00:11:15.700 --> 00:11:19.700 So it started from a more anthropology perspective in that sense. 00:11:20.340 --> 00:11:26.260 But in the meantime, he was the one providing vaccines and antibiotics to this community 00:11:26.260 --> 00:11:28.660 because they really were quite remote. 00:11:29.140 --> 00:11:32.020 And I and I've talked to Brenda about that a lot too. 00:11:32.100 --> 00:11:35.300 I mean, I don't think it's that nobody had ever eaten any processed food. 00:11:35.460 --> 00:11:38.820 I think that does happen occasionally, but it's not a regular thing. 00:11:39.590 --> 00:11:45.430 And so that fascinated me because I'm very interested in understanding the human history of 00:11:45.430 --> 00:11:47.750 the microbes that colonize our bodies. 00:11:47.990 --> 00:11:52.630 And so we know that in the last century that has changed dramatically. 00:11:52.710 --> 00:11:57.590 And it's not just from one thing, but a combination of things like antibiotics and smaller 00:11:57.590 --> 00:11:59.590 family sizes and sanitation. 00:11:59.670 --> 00:12:03.830 And this really big one about the food we eat being so different. 00:12:04.200 --> 00:12:09.880 The way most of our food is processed, the fiber, the complex carbs that are hard to break 00:12:09.880 --> 00:12:11.480 down are often removed. 00:12:11.720 --> 00:12:16.360 And so as a result, our microbiomes have just shifted really, really dramatically. 00:12:16.440 --> 00:12:18.920 And it's connected to all these other diseases. 00:12:19.080 --> 00:12:22.920 So I mean, on the one hand, it's we've avoided infectious disease and our lifespans have 00:12:22.920 --> 00:12:23.480 increased. 00:12:23.640 --> 00:12:25.370 So that is worth celebrating. 00:12:25.450 --> 00:12:27.530 And actually, we don't appreciate it enough. 00:12:27.690 --> 00:12:29.690 I'm not sure if we think about that so much. 00:12:29.770 --> 00:12:34.570 But I mean, because of vaccination and antibiotics and these other measures, you know, 00:12:34.730 --> 00:12:37.450 lifespan has expanded incredibly. 00:12:37.690 --> 00:12:42.570 Children in the West and the industrialized world rarely die of diarrheal illness. 00:12:42.730 --> 00:12:45.290 Um, so that's obviously really good. 00:12:45.600 --> 00:12:51.440 But the other side of that coin is that we are now pro more prone to autoimmune diseases, 00:12:51.680 --> 00:12:52.560 allergies. 00:12:52.720 --> 00:12:57.760 And there's even more health conditions that we're starting to understand could actually be 00:12:57.760 --> 00:13:01.840 quite connected to our microbiomes, like some cancer types, like why are so many young 00:13:01.840 --> 00:13:03.440 people getting colon cancer? 00:13:03.840 --> 00:13:09.250 Like even Parkinson's disease and potentially Alzheimer's disease and other 00:13:09.250 --> 00:13:11.730 neurodegenerative diseases could be connected. 00:13:12.050 --> 00:13:17.970 So understanding you know what what things looked like in human history is 00:13:17.970 --> 00:13:18.610 really important. 00:13:18.770 --> 00:13:24.370 And from talking to John uh Patton I learned that the people in Canombo don't get 00:13:24.370 --> 00:13:30.100 acne and they don't get eczema and they, you know, their skin is perfect, and 00:13:30.180 --> 00:13:34.660 um, and they don't have a lot of these other allergy and autoimmune diseases that are 00:13:34.660 --> 00:13:36.580 becoming more common in our part of the world. 00:13:36.820 --> 00:13:42.740 So getting to understand um what the microbiomes look like in that community is really 00:13:42.740 --> 00:13:45.380 valuable, especially as it's changing so quickly. 00:13:45.620 --> 00:13:48.420 I'm certainly not the only person who's thinking about that though. 00:13:48.500 --> 00:13:52.740 There's actually a really cool global movement to try to preserve the microbes of human 00:13:52.740 --> 00:13:53.220 history. 00:13:53.470 --> 00:13:57.150 For example, there's a group called the Global Microbiome Conservancy. 00:13:57.390 --> 00:14:02.270 And they've even been trying to build a vault where they store samples from all different 00:14:02.270 --> 00:14:03.630 human communities. 00:14:03.870 --> 00:14:08.990 Um, it might be somewhere in Switzerland, and they're going to try to like save these 00:14:08.990 --> 00:14:09.390 samples. 00:14:09.470 --> 00:14:13.230 And the people who are part of the communities are partners in all of this research. 00:14:13.310 --> 00:14:18.110 So they've done a really good job of, or they're trying to do a good job of making it so 00:14:18.110 --> 00:14:22.990 that the science and the technology is being shared throughout the whole process. 00:14:23.280 --> 00:14:23.920 Wow. 00:14:25.120 --> 00:14:29.360 So that was the initial interest with John Patton. 00:14:29.440 --> 00:14:31.840 And he clearly had thought about it a lot himself, actually. 00:14:32.000 --> 00:14:33.440 He had a lot of really good ideas. 00:14:33.520 --> 00:14:39.360 And he was really interested in weaning the children there with breastfeed for a 00:14:39.360 --> 00:14:40.080 couple of years. 00:14:40.160 --> 00:14:45.600 And he was really interested in understanding how eating chicha, because also infants like 00:14:45.760 --> 00:14:48.240 toddlers were eating chicha from a pretty early age. 00:14:48.320 --> 00:14:53.190 So he was really interested in knowing like how the moment of weaning and getting chicha 00:14:53.270 --> 00:14:56.150 microbes into the system would affect health. 00:14:56.230 --> 00:15:01.750 Um and so actually in our study we ended up focusing on the women and children in Canambo. 00:15:01.990 --> 00:15:05.590 And hind to be honest, years later we were like, why didn't we just collect the samples 00:15:05.590 --> 00:15:06.310 from the men also? 00:15:06.470 --> 00:15:07.910 But I think it also would have been harder. 00:15:07.990 --> 00:15:12.310 It was part of the thinking that the women and children were uh the the master's students 00:15:12.310 --> 00:15:15.030 that John brought down with him were working really closely with them. 00:15:15.190 --> 00:15:18.870 So it was an easier set of samples to collect, I think. 00:15:19.190 --> 00:15:19.670 Yeah. 00:15:19.940 --> 00:15:20.580 amazing. 00:15:20.740 --> 00:15:24.820 I mean, I there's so many questions, and I'm such an amateur, and I think other people are 00:15:24.820 --> 00:15:26.260 amateurs listening too. 00:15:26.420 --> 00:15:28.260 So stupid, stupid questions. 00:15:28.500 --> 00:15:31.300 So one is where is the microbiome? 00:15:31.540 --> 00:15:37.220 And I think people have an have like a I have a cartoonish view, which is sort of what I 00:15:37.220 --> 00:15:40.740 learned in high school biology was we digest food. 00:15:41.060 --> 00:15:45.250 Um, it's sort of what our body does in absorbing nutrients. 00:15:45.890 --> 00:15:51.570 There was very little, at least when I was in school, talking about these uh other 00:15:51.730 --> 00:15:55.570 bacteria, or maybe there's like bacteria in the gut and they sort of help us digest our 00:15:55.570 --> 00:15:55.730 food. 00:15:55.810 --> 00:15:57.490 That's about the extent I know. 00:15:57.810 --> 00:16:02.850 So how is it that there's this whole you alluded to the importance of the microbiome, but 00:16:02.850 --> 00:16:07.090 please disabuse me of the notion that it's simple and insignificant. 00:16:07.250 --> 00:16:10.140 Um, you know, like what what is the microbiome? 00:16:10.300 --> 00:16:10.700 Where is it? 00:16:10.780 --> 00:16:11.580 How do you see it? 00:16:11.740 --> 00:16:12.380 How do you present it? 00:16:12.620 --> 00:16:13.580 Yeah, great question. 00:16:14.460 --> 00:16:16.300 That's a really important place to start. 00:16:16.460 --> 00:16:22.220 So, I mean, first of all, a microbiome is a community of microbes that live in a particular 00:16:22.220 --> 00:16:22.780 environment. 00:16:23.020 --> 00:16:27.900 So nothing is sterile, despite what you might read in medical textbooks about, you know, 00:16:27.980 --> 00:16:30.540 the lungs or urine or eyes being sterile. 00:16:30.780 --> 00:16:31.660 Nothing is sterile. 00:16:31.740 --> 00:16:33.100 There are microbes everywhere. 00:16:33.570 --> 00:16:36.210 And they're just really good at living in all environments. 00:16:36.370 --> 00:16:40.050 They were here, you know, for billions of years before we were. 00:16:40.210 --> 00:16:42.690 And they're really good at living in every condition. 00:16:42.850 --> 00:16:44.130 No oxygen, no problem. 00:16:44.210 --> 00:16:46.850 They've got like a metabolic solution for that, you know? 00:16:47.090 --> 00:16:49.090 So you have microbes everywhere. 00:16:49.250 --> 00:16:54.370 But what makes a pile of microbes different from a microbiome is that a microbiome is a 00:16:54.370 --> 00:16:58.450 community of specific microbes that can thrive in a particular environment. 00:16:58.690 --> 00:17:04.420 So the moist part of the inside of your elbow has a different microbiome than the dry skin 00:17:04.420 --> 00:17:08.180 on the front of your forearm because the environment is different. 00:17:08.260 --> 00:17:12.100 So different types of microbes are able to grow in those communities. 00:17:12.340 --> 00:17:16.180 And it's there's all it's not just about whether the microbes can get there. 00:17:16.420 --> 00:17:20.740 You know, you could imagine that dispersal is never a limitation for microbes because 00:17:20.740 --> 00:17:24.180 they're little and they can just fly along on the clouds or something, which is actually 00:17:24.180 --> 00:17:24.500 true. 00:17:24.660 --> 00:17:27.220 But um, but they don't just get everywhere. 00:17:27.380 --> 00:17:29.570 So dispersal is a limitation. 00:17:29.730 --> 00:17:34.930 In fact, why don't we have the microbes that our human ancestors have anymore? 00:17:35.170 --> 00:17:38.450 Well, that's because they're not we're not being exposed to them anymore. 00:17:38.530 --> 00:17:40.930 So it's not just like everything is everywhere. 00:17:41.650 --> 00:17:46.850 Um but uh but anyway so a microbiome is the community of microbes living in a 00:17:46.850 --> 00:17:52.740 particular environment and um our gut is the most dense place 00:17:53.060 --> 00:17:58.180 where most of the microbes in our bodies live, but we do have microbiomes in our oral 00:17:58.180 --> 00:18:01.220 cavity, in our, you know, there's nowhere that's sterile. 00:18:01.380 --> 00:18:06.260 Um, and so different microbial communities are useful indicators of health, and we are 00:18:06.260 --> 00:18:10.420 hopefully going to be better at manipulating them to improve our health in the near future. 00:18:10.580 --> 00:18:15.890 I mean, I could definitely imagine a future where, like vaccination, we ensure that 00:18:15.890 --> 00:18:20.050 children have certain microbes at certain points in development. 00:18:20.290 --> 00:18:24.770 And maybe that's going to really help us avoid some of the autoimmune diseases that are 00:18:24.770 --> 00:18:26.370 becoming more and more common. 00:18:26.770 --> 00:18:29.810 But those are still still research questions for sure. 00:18:30.290 --> 00:18:33.010 But as far as the gut goes, I mean, it's like a whole organ. 00:18:33.170 --> 00:18:38.700 You've got some, you know, it's akin to the size of your brain worth of microbes living in 00:18:38.700 --> 00:18:39.340 your gut. 00:18:39.580 --> 00:18:42.540 And microbes have really creative metabolisms. 00:18:42.700 --> 00:18:47.580 So, like you throw a new food substance in there, there's probably going to be a microbe in 00:18:47.580 --> 00:18:50.540 there that contains the right enzymes to break it down. 00:18:50.780 --> 00:18:52.940 And so we were mentioning fiber. 00:18:53.100 --> 00:18:57.500 When you eat fiber, which is carbohydrates that are slow to break down. 00:18:57.580 --> 00:18:59.980 So when you eat them, they don't get absorbed quickly. 00:19:00.060 --> 00:19:02.780 Like you eat white rice, it's gone in 30 minutes. 00:19:02.940 --> 00:19:08.510 You eat beans or another food that has a lot of fiber in it, the fibrous part of the 00:19:08.510 --> 00:19:14.030 carbs will persist in your digestion down to your colon where most of the microbes live. 00:19:14.190 --> 00:19:20.190 And then they'll be able to produ like when microbes get contact with those fibers, 00:19:20.430 --> 00:19:25.710 they produce really healthy molecular byproducts that are important for your immune system 00:19:25.710 --> 00:19:26.830 and your colon. 00:19:27.780 --> 00:19:28.180 Amazing. 00:19:28.500 --> 00:19:28.900 Fascinating. 00:19:29.140 --> 00:19:35.060 Uh am I am I correct that um our odors uh are also related to our 00:19:35.060 --> 00:19:35.780 microbiome? 00:19:36.020 --> 00:19:41.220 And that, you know, when we sweat, like say in our armpits, um, the bacteria that will grow 00:19:41.220 --> 00:19:46.820 and feed on that sweat will emit various gases, and that is in fact responsible for for the 00:19:46.820 --> 00:19:49.460 smell uh more than say the sweat itself. 00:19:50.170 --> 00:19:50.890 A hundred percent. 00:19:50.970 --> 00:19:52.330 Yeah, that is definitely true. 00:19:52.490 --> 00:19:57.770 So you have an armpit microbiome, and um, and some people 00:19:57.930 --> 00:20:03.930 develop microbes that produce more volatile compounds that have strong odors. 00:20:04.250 --> 00:20:08.170 And so that is definitely uh microbiome related. 00:20:08.250 --> 00:20:11.290 And in fact, there's a Belgian scientist who goes by Dr. 00:20:11.450 --> 00:20:16.810 Armpit and he has done a study where he did an 00:20:16.810 --> 00:20:22.740 armpit um transplantation where he he he got twins where one twin 00:20:22.740 --> 00:20:27.940 had trouble with BO and the other one didn't and he did an armpit transplant and it it 00:20:27.940 --> 00:20:31.780 involved the my skin microbes actually don't live just right on the surface they actually 00:20:31.780 --> 00:20:36.660 live like in the top millimeter of your skin so you kind of have to rough the skin up a bit 00:20:36.740 --> 00:20:42.660 but he did that and he um took microbes from the nice smelling twin and 00:20:42.660 --> 00:20:48.550 transplanted them to the one who was having trouble with BO and it was pretty successful 00:20:48.630 --> 00:20:49.590 is my understanding. 00:20:50.310 --> 00:20:50.790 Interesting. 00:20:51.110 --> 00:20:55.830 Uh and and certainly, you know, uh psychologically we we find the smell of body odor to be 00:20:55.830 --> 00:20:58.070 quite revolting um and disgusting. 00:20:58.230 --> 00:21:03.830 Um presumably that is because we are uh sensing a pathogen risk that these are 00:21:03.830 --> 00:21:06.550 rival bacteria that could potentially infect us. 00:21:06.630 --> 00:21:09.270 Do does that sound plausible or or wh what's going on there? 00:21:09.830 --> 00:21:13.910 That might be the case, but it's those the microbes that are causing those smells are 00:21:13.910 --> 00:21:16.140 usually not terrible pathogens or anything. 00:21:16.220 --> 00:21:20.700 I mean, a lot of the really healthy microbes, like the gut anaerobes producing those 00:21:20.700 --> 00:21:25.020 fibers, the smells, we also smell them every time we fart, right? 00:21:25.180 --> 00:21:29.100 And those smells are not good, but they're definitely health associated. 00:21:29.580 --> 00:21:31.420 So that's a really good question. 00:21:31.580 --> 00:21:33.020 I don't fully understand that. 00:21:33.180 --> 00:21:38.780 Um yeah, because BO smells tend to come from pretty healthy microbes. 00:21:38.940 --> 00:21:43.570 They're not really um pathogens you would need to avoid from my perspective. 00:21:43.890 --> 00:21:44.050 Yeah. 00:21:44.210 --> 00:21:47.890 So it sounds like there's been like there's like almost like in the way that germ theory 00:21:47.890 --> 00:21:52.050 happened, and before that, everyone was sort of blind to like the microscopic world. 00:21:52.130 --> 00:21:56.210 It almost I hear what you're saying is like there's like microbiome blindness in the sense 00:21:56.210 --> 00:22:02.050 of both the evolved psychology or or our evolved phenotype is designed around the 00:22:02.050 --> 00:22:06.050 fact that these microbiomes are recurrent part of our evolutionary history. 00:22:06.210 --> 00:22:11.760 But then also scientifically, in the same way, if you don't understand germ theory, then 00:22:11.760 --> 00:22:15.440 you're just like, yeah, let's just, you know, throw the do gross stuff, right? 00:22:15.520 --> 00:22:16.640 Because we don't know about germs. 00:22:16.800 --> 00:22:22.080 If we don't know about microbiomes in the modern environment, or we're not appreciating how 00:22:22.080 --> 00:22:26.960 they work or how our evolved biology interacts with them, then yeah, we might be doing all 00:22:26.960 --> 00:22:29.680 kinds of things that are quite bad for the microbiome. 00:22:29.760 --> 00:22:34.080 And it sounds like what you're saying is that by understanding the microbiome, there's a 00:22:34.080 --> 00:22:39.810 new slice of the world that's interventions, that's preventative, that's like 00:22:39.810 --> 00:22:43.730 healing people or preventing diseases or helping with health. 00:22:43.890 --> 00:22:45.890 Um, yeah, that's that's that's yeah. 00:22:45.970 --> 00:22:46.770 I mean a hundred percent. 00:22:46.850 --> 00:22:52.450 I mean, think about the era when we discovered antibiotics, it was like 1940s, it made a 00:22:52.450 --> 00:22:53.330 huge impact. 00:22:53.490 --> 00:22:58.930 So many World War II infections were had a better and different outcome than they would 00:22:58.930 --> 00:23:01.330 have if we hadn't made that discovery at that time. 00:23:01.620 --> 00:23:05.780 And we were so exuberant about antibiotics that we were just throwing them everywhere. 00:23:05.860 --> 00:23:09.700 I mean, we did the same thing with x-rays, really, actually, you know, like using them to 00:23:09.700 --> 00:23:10.740 measure shoe size. 00:23:11.220 --> 00:23:12.100 Oh my god, really? 00:23:12.260 --> 00:23:13.140 I didn't know about that. 00:23:13.300 --> 00:23:13.460 Yeah. 00:23:15.620 --> 00:23:20.100 If you went to like a really chic shoe store, they would x-ray your foot to get the size 00:23:20.180 --> 00:23:22.580 and like get the right shoe on there, you know. 00:23:22.870 --> 00:23:26.070 And uh anyway, so with antibiotics, kind of same thing. 00:23:26.150 --> 00:23:30.870 You're like anything that happened, you were given antibiotics, and we weren't thinking 00:23:30.870 --> 00:23:36.310 about the downside of hurting the microbiome because it wasn't even appreciated really. 00:23:36.710 --> 00:23:42.390 Um and so that I think we're better about now, although we still in the US use about 80% of 00:23:42.390 --> 00:23:43.910 our antibiotics for agriculture. 00:23:44.070 --> 00:23:48.150 So all of this careful vetting that we're doing, which we should do, of not giving people 00:23:48.150 --> 00:23:52.820 antibiotics for viral infections where they won't help and so on, will We'll only go so far 00:23:52.820 --> 00:23:56.020 unless we also change our agricultural policies. 00:23:56.820 --> 00:24:00.900 The agricultural thing is that uh I don't know much about that. 00:24:00.980 --> 00:24:01.780 Do you know more? 00:24:01.940 --> 00:24:07.620 Like is it is it preventative or yeah it's um it's prophylactic 00:24:07.700 --> 00:24:12.260 that antibiotics are often given because it helps farm animals grow more quickly. 00:24:12.500 --> 00:24:18.310 So pigs, cows, and chickens all will grow more quickly if they're given antibiotics, 00:24:18.470 --> 00:24:22.710 which is a pretty interesting experiment when you think about how we're also giving a lot 00:24:22.710 --> 00:24:24.310 of antibiotics to people. 00:24:24.470 --> 00:24:29.750 So maybe we're unintentionally fueling the obesity crisis with antibiotics. 00:24:30.070 --> 00:24:33.750 There's a lot of science questions there still that we don't know the answer to. 00:24:33.990 --> 00:24:39.320 There's multiple hypotheses about why farm animals grow more quickly when you give them 00:24:39.320 --> 00:24:40.120 antibiotics. 00:24:40.200 --> 00:24:44.840 And it's pretty interesting because it's true across vertebrates like cows, pigs, even 00:24:44.840 --> 00:24:45.480 birds. 00:24:45.880 --> 00:24:51.480 Um and a major hypothesis is that you put less energy into fighting infections when you 00:24:51.480 --> 00:24:53.160 have antibiotics on board. 00:24:53.720 --> 00:24:57.000 Um so that actually is pretty plausible. 00:24:57.160 --> 00:25:02.600 Um but there's other changes you could be making to your microbiome that could be changing 00:25:02.600 --> 00:25:04.280 how you process energy. 00:25:04.470 --> 00:25:05.430 yeah as well. 00:25:05.830 --> 00:25:09.750 One thing that I noticed, so we'll keep going on the John Patton story, but I want to 00:25:09.750 --> 00:25:14.310 interrupt it for a second because I realized from your talk that I didn't even know what 00:25:14.310 --> 00:25:15.270 fiber was. 00:25:15.830 --> 00:25:21.750 So you you explained that like fiber is like creaminess and avocado and lentils. 00:25:21.830 --> 00:25:22.710 It's not roughage. 00:25:22.870 --> 00:25:26.870 I had thought that roughage, like I think of like lettuce as fiber. 00:25:27.030 --> 00:25:28.470 Can you disabuse everyone? 00:25:28.630 --> 00:25:31.750 What is fiber and what's the difference between fiber and roughage? 00:25:32.800 --> 00:25:33.600 Deal, yes. 00:25:33.760 --> 00:25:39.680 Um, so fiber is the parts of carbohydrates that are big long chains 00:25:39.760 --> 00:25:44.640 that hum the linkages between those chains, human enzymes can't even break down. 00:25:44.800 --> 00:25:46.720 So that's a biochemical definition. 00:25:46.800 --> 00:25:52.080 That the that they're carbohydrates, they're like long chains of sugars, but the things 00:25:52.080 --> 00:25:56.400 connecting the sugars to each other cannot be broken by human enzymes at all. 00:25:56.480 --> 00:26:00.160 So without the help of microbes, they're just gonna stay intact and go through your 00:26:00.160 --> 00:26:00.960 digestion. 00:26:01.190 --> 00:26:06.950 There's also other names for fiber, like soluble as in dissolves in water, or insoluble 00:26:07.030 --> 00:26:09.190 as in does not dissolve in water. 00:26:09.350 --> 00:26:13.270 And there's a lot of like speculation about which ones are healthier. 00:26:13.670 --> 00:26:15.910 To be honest, I think they're all really healthy. 00:26:15.990 --> 00:26:19.350 And the key is just that we really need more fiber in our diet. 00:26:19.590 --> 00:26:24.960 So an average American is getting 10 to 15 grams of fiber a day when the the 00:26:25.120 --> 00:26:31.040 USDA recommends or like the daily government recommendations are 25 to 35 grams per day. 00:26:31.280 --> 00:26:35.760 But people in other parts of the world, like Kanambo, I don't know the fiber intake in 00:26:35.760 --> 00:26:40.240 Kanambo, but I do know in rural South Africa, in a comparable study, people were eating 00:26:40.240 --> 00:26:43.120 more than 70 grams of fiber a day without even trying. 00:26:43.760 --> 00:26:46.240 And so we're getting a lot less fiber. 00:26:46.400 --> 00:26:47.760 And like, where does it come from? 00:26:47.840 --> 00:26:51.920 Like, yes, some come you would get some fiber in lettuce, but just you would eat need to 00:26:51.920 --> 00:26:56.490 eat like 20 cups of fiber to get a pretty small 20 cups of lettuce to get a pretty small 00:26:56.490 --> 00:26:57.610 amount of fiber. 00:26:57.930 --> 00:27:03.210 So if you wanted to get, you know, most people have a gap in fiber of like 10 to 15 grams 00:27:03.210 --> 00:27:03.850 per day. 00:27:04.170 --> 00:27:08.970 And so if you look at the fiber content of foods that we're eating all the time, really my 00:27:08.970 --> 00:27:13.930 point about lettuce was just that you can't get enough fiber out of lettuce by eating like 00:27:13.930 --> 00:27:15.210 human amounts of lettuce. 00:27:17.290 --> 00:27:19.290 You'd have to go really overboard on the lettuce. 00:27:25.120 --> 00:27:30.080 Yeah, like so avocados are high in fiber, which I found so interesting because I before 00:27:30.080 --> 00:27:32.800 this also only knew that they were high in healthy fats. 00:27:32.960 --> 00:27:33.200 Yeah. 00:27:33.360 --> 00:27:38.160 Um, berries are really high in fiber, and so that's cool because they're so sweet, but they 00:27:38.160 --> 00:27:40.880 actually have a lot of fiber and they don't spike your blood sugar as much. 00:27:41.040 --> 00:27:43.680 Fiber can prevent blood sugar spike as well. 00:27:43.890 --> 00:27:49.170 So it's really good to be eating intact foods like fruits rather than juices because then 00:27:49.170 --> 00:27:50.930 you keep the fiber, for example. 00:27:51.170 --> 00:27:54.610 And you can buy frozen berries, so they're not that expensive. 00:27:54.850 --> 00:27:59.810 Um, another thing that is extremely high in fiber and not that expensive are dried beans 00:27:59.810 --> 00:28:00.690 and lentils. 00:28:01.170 --> 00:28:05.890 So a really good way to understand the fiber content is to look at the breakdown of the 00:28:05.890 --> 00:28:10.280 carbs on the nutrition label because it actually tells you how much fiber is there and then 00:28:10.280 --> 00:28:11.800 what the total carbs are. 00:28:11.960 --> 00:28:17.160 So you want to be looking at the total carbs and then the um the ratio with the fiber. 00:28:17.320 --> 00:28:22.920 So if you get white rice, it'll be like what zero to one grams out of 45 grams 00:28:23.320 --> 00:28:24.840 of the carbs are fiber. 00:28:25.000 --> 00:28:30.040 Brown rice, it'll be like four grams out of 40 grams of carbs are fiber. 00:28:30.370 --> 00:28:36.290 But uh beans, it'll be eight grams out of 15 grams of carbs in a half a cup 00:28:36.370 --> 00:28:37.010 are fiber. 00:28:37.170 --> 00:28:39.490 Half of the grams of carbs are fiber. 00:28:39.730 --> 00:28:42.370 So you can so quickly fill your fiber gap. 00:28:42.450 --> 00:28:46.850 Like if you just ate a cup of beans or lentils every day, you would fill your fiber gap. 00:28:47.170 --> 00:28:50.610 Um chia, chia seeds are like that too, actually. 00:28:50.920 --> 00:28:51.720 They're even better. 00:28:51.880 --> 00:28:57.800 Chia seeds, 10 out of the 12 grams of carbs in two tablespoons of chia seeds are 00:28:57.800 --> 00:28:58.280 fiber. 00:28:58.440 --> 00:29:01.560 So I've actually now done several studies, interventions. 00:29:01.640 --> 00:29:06.840 I did one in students and I did another one in breast cancer survivors where we had the 00:29:06.840 --> 00:29:10.840 intervention as two and a half tablespoons of chia seeds per day. 00:29:11.070 --> 00:29:15.870 And that's one of those studies ended a year ago, and I just did the like yearly follow up. 00:29:16.510 --> 00:29:21.550 And so many of the people in that study still eat two tablespoons of chia seeds every day. 00:29:21.630 --> 00:29:24.030 It's just like pretty easy to get yourself to do it. 00:29:24.190 --> 00:29:27.070 Um, it's funny because it's like a fad on the internet now, too. 00:29:27.310 --> 00:29:29.070 That wasn't so sometimes they're right. 00:29:29.230 --> 00:29:31.070 Broken clocks can be right twice the hour. 00:29:31.870 --> 00:29:32.190 Exactly. 00:29:32.830 --> 00:29:38.660 I I imagine there are a lot of internet fads related to this uh microbiome 00:29:38.900 --> 00:29:40.180 body of research. 00:29:40.340 --> 00:29:45.300 Um I would imagine there are a lot of misconceptions and and and there's a lot of misplaced 00:29:45.300 --> 00:29:45.700 hype. 00:29:45.860 --> 00:29:50.660 Uh I would be curious, since you're an expert in this field, if there are any things that 00:29:50.660 --> 00:29:54.500 you would like to correct, any things that you would like to debunk or set the record 00:29:54.500 --> 00:29:57.220 straight on, anything where people are getting too carried away with this stuff. 00:29:57.700 --> 00:29:59.540 Yeah, thank you for that opportunity. 00:29:59.700 --> 00:30:05.670 I mean I think the main one is that probiotics are really not what they say they are. 00:30:05.830 --> 00:30:10.310 So probiotics are like a $50 to $80 billion industry. 00:30:10.790 --> 00:30:16.790 And most of them claim that you're going to eat this, you know, tablet of microbes and 00:30:16.790 --> 00:30:19.430 it's going to become part of your microbiome. 00:30:19.510 --> 00:30:24.710 It's going to make your microbiome more diverse, and that's going to help your health in 00:30:24.710 --> 00:30:25.270 some way. 00:30:25.520 --> 00:30:30.240 But most of those microbes, first of all, are just representing a tiny sliver of the 00:30:30.240 --> 00:30:31.840 microbes in your microbiome. 00:30:31.920 --> 00:30:33.840 So they're not gonna increase your diversity. 00:30:34.000 --> 00:30:38.640 You're gonna like, if this were to be actually possible, you would be like skewing the 00:30:38.640 --> 00:30:40.720 diversity towards whatever was in the tablet. 00:30:40.800 --> 00:30:43.920 You wouldn't be like promoting diversity all around, you know? 00:30:44.160 --> 00:30:47.280 Um, and just they just don't they just don't stick. 00:30:47.360 --> 00:30:50.080 I mean, they just are transient and pass right through you. 00:30:50.320 --> 00:30:52.160 Most of them are not human microbes. 00:30:52.240 --> 00:30:53.830 They're like food microbes. 00:30:53.910 --> 00:30:58.630 They don't um they don't have adaptation to become part of a human microbiome. 00:30:59.030 --> 00:31:03.670 Um, they also are for the most part harmless, but there's actually times when they really 00:31:03.670 --> 00:31:07.830 can be not um just neutral, but they can actually cause harm. 00:31:07.990 --> 00:31:12.310 And for example, um, people who are undergoing cancer treatment, especially 00:31:12.310 --> 00:31:17.670 immunotherapies, if they take probiotics, it worsens the outcomes. 00:31:17.830 --> 00:31:22.390 It like literally makes you have worse chances of having a successful cancer treatment. 00:31:22.640 --> 00:31:26.480 And that's tragic because people are doing this to help their health and they don't 00:31:26.480 --> 00:31:30.080 understand that it's like just it's actually wrong. 00:31:30.960 --> 00:31:34.080 And then another case is after antibiotics. 00:31:34.160 --> 00:31:39.600 And I mean, you'll find many doctors who prescribe probiotics after antibiotics, thinking 00:31:39.600 --> 00:31:42.000 that it's going to like help restore your microbiome. 00:31:42.320 --> 00:31:48.160 But what happens is that then that probiotic is in there, taking up space in your gut in 00:31:48.160 --> 00:31:52.240 the moment that you want these other types of strains to be able to return. 00:31:52.490 --> 00:31:58.330 And so it actually slows the return to a normal healthy microbiome if you eat probiotics. 00:31:58.570 --> 00:32:01.050 Now it might not have long-term consequences. 00:32:01.130 --> 00:32:03.290 That might still be a pretty neutral outcome. 00:32:03.690 --> 00:32:06.410 And maybe it'll protect you from a pathogen. 00:32:06.570 --> 00:32:08.490 So there could be positive outcomes. 00:32:08.650 --> 00:32:13.770 But if you go and read the the actual guidelines coming from the physicians, they will 00:32:13.770 --> 00:32:18.970 correctly state that there's not enough evidence to to say that you should take probiotics 00:32:18.970 --> 00:32:20.090 after antibiotics. 00:32:20.400 --> 00:32:20.640 Wow. 00:32:20.800 --> 00:32:23.520 What should you do after antibiotics? 00:32:23.600 --> 00:32:29.040 Or what's the right metaphor for so if probiotics, like sticking the bugs 00:32:29.040 --> 00:32:31.760 themselves in doesn't work, what's the right metaphor? 00:32:31.840 --> 00:32:33.840 And what should you do after you take the antibiotics? 00:32:34.160 --> 00:32:37.280 Yeah, well, you eating fiber is actually the thing to do. 00:32:37.360 --> 00:32:41.600 And like to and actually, even before you take the antibiotics and while you're taking the 00:32:41.600 --> 00:32:45.070 antibiotics, if possible, getting fiber into your system. 00:32:45.230 --> 00:32:49.630 And I actually think eating fermented foods is really good too, which do have microbes in 00:32:49.630 --> 00:32:49.870 them. 00:32:50.590 --> 00:32:54.990 But and it's not that I think those microbes will engraft and become part of your gut 00:32:54.990 --> 00:32:55.550 microbiome. 00:32:55.710 --> 00:33:01.470 It's just that we know that people eating fermented foods and fiber have higher gut 00:33:01.470 --> 00:33:06.510 microbiome diversity and it can decrease inflammation when you eat fermented foods like 00:33:06.510 --> 00:33:06.750 that. 00:33:07.020 --> 00:33:11.580 So, you know, for example, let's say you knew you had to take antibiotics for like dental 00:33:11.580 --> 00:33:12.300 surgery or something. 00:33:12.380 --> 00:33:13.740 So it was planned. 00:33:14.060 --> 00:33:19.260 I would totally recommend eating really well, like in terms of getting the right amount of 00:33:19.260 --> 00:33:24.940 fiber, and you know, sleeping, all the things that you know to do right, they become even 00:33:24.940 --> 00:33:27.020 more important before you take antibiotics. 00:33:27.100 --> 00:33:32.770 And if you can do those things, then the disruption to your microbiome will be limited. 00:33:32.850 --> 00:33:37.810 Because basically, eating fiber when the antibiotics come in, it gives your microbes a 00:33:37.810 --> 00:33:38.690 place to hide out. 00:33:38.850 --> 00:33:43.970 So then they won't be able, like they won't be taken down in the same way. 00:33:44.050 --> 00:33:48.690 You're like giving them little territories to hide out in that the antibiotics won't get 00:33:48.690 --> 00:33:48.930 to. 00:33:49.090 --> 00:33:52.610 So then they'll still be there after the antibiotics are gone. 00:33:52.820 --> 00:33:53.380 That's amazing. 00:33:53.460 --> 00:33:54.340 And what about yogurt? 00:33:54.500 --> 00:33:59.140 I think like anecdotally, people I have this folk notion of like yogurt and the bacterian 00:33:59.140 --> 00:34:00.580 yogurt is like really good. 00:34:00.740 --> 00:34:01.780 Is that true? 00:34:02.100 --> 00:34:03.300 Yeah, I think that's true. 00:34:03.540 --> 00:34:06.740 I mean, I don't like nutrition is so complicated. 00:34:06.900 --> 00:34:08.900 I mean, we can't even agree if eggs are healthy. 00:34:08.980 --> 00:34:14.740 So I mean, I don't want to overstate the evidence we have, but um, but the evidence we have 00:34:15.150 --> 00:34:21.070 indicates that eating fermented foods together with fiber is the best thing we know to 00:34:21.070 --> 00:34:21.230 do. 00:34:21.390 --> 00:34:22.670 And that includes yogurt. 00:34:22.750 --> 00:34:27.710 And what's really interesting is that if you study the fecal microbiomes of people who have 00:34:27.710 --> 00:34:33.150 been eating fermented foods, it's not that you see long term that those yogurt 00:34:33.150 --> 00:34:39.000 microbes are part of the microbiome, But rather, I think it's like the molecules 00:34:39.000 --> 00:34:43.320 in the yogurt are nurturing the microbes that you want to have in your gut. 00:34:43.560 --> 00:34:49.400 And so probably there's like a whole level of diversity in our gut microbiomes that's below 00:34:49.400 --> 00:34:52.040 the limit of detection from the way we study them. 00:34:52.280 --> 00:34:57.480 But when you eat yogurt, the molecules in there will promote the growth of those bugs that 00:34:57.480 --> 00:34:59.160 we otherwise weren't detecting. 00:34:59.240 --> 00:35:03.870 And then they become more they then you it looks like your microbiome is more diverse. 00:35:04.030 --> 00:35:07.150 And it is because those bugs have become countable. 00:35:07.310 --> 00:35:10.990 Um, and it could be that you're getting the microbes from other humans around you. 00:35:11.150 --> 00:35:14.350 I mean, microbiomes are very much at a household level. 00:35:14.990 --> 00:35:19.550 So um, and like if you're doing animal studies, you have to take the cage effects into 00:35:19.550 --> 00:35:24.900 account big time because the mouse cage will all share the same microbes, and other cages 00:35:24.900 --> 00:35:27.940 will have different ones, and you'll think you're studying whatever intervention you're 00:35:27.940 --> 00:35:30.820 studying, but really you're just studying which cage each mouse is in. 00:35:31.060 --> 00:35:31.380 Wow. 00:35:31.540 --> 00:35:32.180 Wow, amazing. 00:35:32.340 --> 00:35:36.180 So the metaphor is like we're eating for billions, and we should feed our bugs. 00:35:36.260 --> 00:35:37.300 That's the bottom line. 00:35:37.380 --> 00:35:37.620 Yeah. 00:35:37.940 --> 00:35:38.980 Yeah, that's a good one. 00:35:39.380 --> 00:35:42.100 Feed the feed the right ones and don't feed the wrong ones. 00:35:42.180 --> 00:35:44.500 And so this is coming back to Kanambo then. 00:35:44.740 --> 00:35:49.540 So it sounds like the the thing that John was interested in, and that you and John were 00:35:49.540 --> 00:35:53.710 interested in, and you can tell tell us or correct this if this is wrong. 00:35:53.950 --> 00:35:59.870 Is this a natural experiment quickly changing of people eating a more quote unquote 00:35:59.950 --> 00:36:05.470 sort of maybe like evolutionarily recurrent type of diet without the processed food? 00:36:05.710 --> 00:36:10.750 So, what did you either do or what did you discover working with John? 00:36:11.150 --> 00:36:12.350 What what did you yeah? 00:36:12.590 --> 00:36:14.030 Yeah, well, exactly. 00:36:14.110 --> 00:36:19.470 We set up a study design that was at the household level because we know that microbes are 00:36:19.470 --> 00:36:21.150 shared in households. 00:36:21.500 --> 00:36:23.500 And this was really hard. 00:36:23.580 --> 00:36:28.380 And what John did was really impressive because we collected 00:36:28.940 --> 00:36:34.700 multiple samples from many people that lived in, it was 28 households that 00:36:35.180 --> 00:36:36.540 we were able to collect samples from. 00:36:36.620 --> 00:36:42.460 And we got saliva, chicha, and fecal samples from the women and children in those 00:36:42.460 --> 00:36:43.820 28 households. 00:36:44.060 --> 00:36:49.690 And so as a result, we were able to see how much was shared at the household level, how 00:36:49.690 --> 00:36:53.930 different the households were from each other, how s how similar the mothers were to their 00:36:53.930 --> 00:36:59.290 children, for example, how similar the saliva microbes were to the chicha 00:36:59.450 --> 00:37:05.370 microbes, because the chicha is um begun by chewing on the root 00:37:05.370 --> 00:37:05.930 vegetable. 00:37:06.010 --> 00:37:10.560 So obviously it gets completely seeded by all the saliva microbes. 00:37:10.720 --> 00:37:13.200 And so we got to like watch the fermentation go. 00:37:13.280 --> 00:37:19.280 And actually another thing that the master's students working with John did was they grew 00:37:19.280 --> 00:37:24.880 their own batch of chicha and took time points so we could actually see the succession of 00:37:24.880 --> 00:37:26.880 the microbes in the fermentation. 00:37:27.200 --> 00:37:31.120 They took samples every day for four days from several different batches. 00:37:31.200 --> 00:37:32.560 So that was really cool. 00:37:32.800 --> 00:37:38.630 And then we got to see what was in the gut microbes in the people in Conombo. 00:37:39.030 --> 00:37:43.350 And that on its own, I mean, to be honest, that part I was just really interested to see 00:37:43.350 --> 00:37:49.030 what was there, both the saliva and the fecal microbes, just to see how they 00:37:49.030 --> 00:37:54.790 compared to there had been a few studies of global, a few global studies of populations 00:37:54.790 --> 00:37:56.070 that were less contacted. 00:37:56.150 --> 00:37:59.910 Like for example, the Hadza hunter gatherers had been studied. 00:38:00.470 --> 00:38:04.630 Actually, that just happened around the time John and I started this study. 00:38:04.980 --> 00:38:08.820 And um, and so there have been a few other studies around the world. 00:38:09.060 --> 00:38:14.660 And what people were finding was that the microbes in the in the gut microbiome were, 00:38:14.820 --> 00:38:17.300 first of all, just super diverse. 00:38:17.540 --> 00:38:21.860 So many microbes that are missing from the industrialized world are present. 00:38:22.180 --> 00:38:25.300 And many of those microbes are fiber degraders. 00:38:25.620 --> 00:38:29.700 So um, so there's this one microbe called prevatella. 00:38:29.780 --> 00:38:32.660 There's a lot of different kinds of previtella, but there's one that's in the gut that 00:38:32.660 --> 00:38:36.790 breaks down fiber, And it's basically missing in the Western world. 00:38:36.870 --> 00:38:42.710 Like when I do studies in my UC Irvine students in classes, we basically don't really have 00:38:42.710 --> 00:38:45.190 any previtella in any of our samples. 00:38:45.670 --> 00:38:51.670 But the people in Canambo, more than 50% of the we the 00:38:51.670 --> 00:38:56.150 way we studied the microbes was by cracking open all the cells, extracting the DNA, and 00:38:56.150 --> 00:38:57.030 sequencing it. 00:38:57.220 --> 00:39:00.180 So our readout is sequencing reads. 00:39:00.420 --> 00:39:05.940 And more than half of the reads mapped to this vanishing microbe called Previtella. 00:39:06.020 --> 00:39:10.340 So I mean, that to me was just amazing to see that that is still happening. 00:39:10.420 --> 00:39:12.980 And I think these microbes are really ancient. 00:39:13.140 --> 00:39:18.580 I think it's this is like a hypothesis, but it's possible that the 00:39:18.580 --> 00:39:24.130 microbes in the people in Kanambo have been passed down human to human 00:39:24.290 --> 00:39:25.970 since people lived in Africa. 00:39:26.130 --> 00:39:30.050 Like all of those migrations, people kept the microbes with them. 00:39:30.770 --> 00:39:32.450 And there's other evidence of that. 00:39:32.530 --> 00:39:37.650 Like there's this one stomach bug called Helicobacter pylori, where you can actually trace 00:39:37.650 --> 00:39:43.090 human migration better from the mutations in the Helicobacter pylori than you can from the 00:39:43.090 --> 00:39:45.170 mutations in the human genome itself. 00:39:45.380 --> 00:39:49.220 And actually, that might not be true anymore because now we have more sequencing capacity, 00:39:49.300 --> 00:39:53.300 but there was a period where that was it was easier to learn from the microbes than from 00:39:53.300 --> 00:39:53.860 the humans. 00:39:54.100 --> 00:39:54.500 Wow. 00:39:54.820 --> 00:40:00.820 And uh so anyway, just seeing those privatella in Kanambo to me had this really 00:40:00.980 --> 00:40:06.820 like just very profound implication that the 00:40:06.820 --> 00:40:12.820 microbes could have potentially traveled through all those generations of people out of 00:40:12.820 --> 00:40:13.460 Africa. 00:40:13.700 --> 00:40:17.290 Um and we were getting fiber in all those generations. 00:40:17.610 --> 00:40:23.530 And it wasn't until basically the 20th century when we started like taking the fiber out 00:40:23.530 --> 00:40:29.450 of flour and packaging up all of these tasty treats and taking antibiotics and all these 00:40:29.450 --> 00:40:31.210 other things we did in the 20th century. 00:40:31.370 --> 00:40:35.130 But that's you know, a couple generations of that, and we totally lost it. 00:40:38.680 --> 00:40:43.800 what what do you think are the the health implications for this 00:40:44.120 --> 00:40:44.840 research? 00:40:45.000 --> 00:40:49.560 Um because you know, as we know in the modern world we have all sorts of health problems, 00:40:49.640 --> 00:40:51.240 we have an obesity crisis. 00:40:51.400 --> 00:40:57.000 Um presumably some of this might be linked to uh differences in the microbiome we would 00:40:57.000 --> 00:41:00.440 have had ancestrally versus the microbiome we have now. 00:41:00.680 --> 00:41:05.710 What what do you think are the best um ideas from this line of research, the best 00:41:05.710 --> 00:41:10.750 implications we might take from it in terms of uh modern health problems. 00:41:11.630 --> 00:41:13.230 They're all science questions. 00:41:13.470 --> 00:41:18.910 So um so it's it's kind of early to to even know how to answer the questions. 00:41:18.990 --> 00:41:24.270 But um but like I mean I really do think that there will be a future it might be decades 00:41:24.270 --> 00:41:29.550 from now where we are more intentional about cultivating the microbes in our guts and in 00:41:29.550 --> 00:41:35.160 other maybe in other parts of our bodies too so that we uh uh promote immune development in 00:41:35.160 --> 00:41:38.840 the right way and avoid cancer development, for example. 00:41:39.080 --> 00:41:44.760 Um, and so you know, there's there's a lot of different angles this research is taking. 00:41:44.920 --> 00:41:50.680 Um, but for example, there's a bifidobacteria that breaks down breast milk that is present 00:41:50.680 --> 00:41:56.040 in that has been present through most of human history and that we have lost in the 20th 00:41:56.040 --> 00:41:56.520 century. 00:41:56.840 --> 00:41:59.530 Um and so that means sorry. 00:41:59.610 --> 00:42:01.610 So literally can you explain what that means? 00:42:01.690 --> 00:42:04.410 That like so babies born now don't have it? 00:42:04.810 --> 00:42:09.210 Babies born in, you know, industrialized parts of the world. 00:42:09.450 --> 00:42:15.450 So the US and Europe, for the most part, they are completely lacking this bifidobacteria 00:42:15.450 --> 00:42:20.090 that contains genes that can break down breast milk sugars, which should be called fibers, 00:42:20.170 --> 00:42:20.410 actually. 00:42:20.490 --> 00:42:26.280 So it's the same 15% of the energy in breast milk is in the form of essentially a fiber, a 00:42:26.280 --> 00:42:29.240 complicated carbohydrate that humans can't break down. 00:42:29.400 --> 00:42:31.400 And you need a microbe to break it down. 00:42:31.560 --> 00:42:31.800 Wow. 00:42:31.960 --> 00:42:37.160 And through most of human history, that microbe has been present in the human communities 00:42:37.160 --> 00:42:38.360 that babies are born into. 00:42:38.440 --> 00:42:41.240 And it's not even necessarily that it had to come from the mom. 00:42:41.320 --> 00:42:46.570 I mean, imagine living in a village where there's lots of babies around and you know, you 00:42:46.570 --> 00:42:51.130 just would have multiple opportunities for becoming exposed and colonized, exposed to and 00:42:51.130 --> 00:42:52.570 colonized by this bifido. 00:42:53.210 --> 00:42:55.930 And so we have lost that in the 20th century. 00:42:56.170 --> 00:43:01.690 So I that's a place to start because immune development is so critical in the early part of 00:43:01.690 --> 00:43:02.890 our life like that. 00:43:03.130 --> 00:43:08.810 So I could imagine a future where we are very intentional about making sure that babies get 00:43:08.810 --> 00:43:12.890 this, whether it's only this bifido, maybe we'll learn that there's other bugs that can 00:43:12.890 --> 00:43:14.090 play this role too. 00:43:14.330 --> 00:43:20.180 But that if we could more intentionally colonize the infant microbiome with 00:43:20.660 --> 00:43:26.020 the same types of microbes that humans have had through their history, that might help 00:43:26.020 --> 00:43:31.860 reprogram our immune systems to avoid these allergies and eczema 00:43:32.020 --> 00:43:34.580 and autoimmune diseases that have become more common. 00:43:34.740 --> 00:43:39.010 So that to me is like a really potentially near-term thing that could change. 00:43:39.090 --> 00:43:40.530 And I mean, it's already happening. 00:43:40.690 --> 00:43:46.450 There's research out of UC Davis that led to a company called Avivo, where they are 00:43:46.450 --> 00:43:47.650 selling this bifido. 00:43:48.290 --> 00:43:50.530 So to me, that's a real opportunity. 00:43:50.690 --> 00:43:55.490 It's interesting though, like when I have a friend who's pregnant and I'm like not wanting 00:43:55.490 --> 00:44:01.220 to proselytize and also there's not decades of research where you can say 00:44:01.300 --> 00:44:06.020 you know what kind of outcomes this will have, but it seems like a good idea to make sure 00:44:06.020 --> 00:44:07.940 that babies are exposed to this bifido. 00:44:08.420 --> 00:44:12.500 How do we know that this company is cultivating the right one? 00:44:12.820 --> 00:44:16.100 I mean, that's a million-dollar question, or it's actually probably a hundred million 00:44:16.180 --> 00:44:18.900 dollar question to do a clinical trial to answer that question. 00:44:18.980 --> 00:44:20.820 And then you'd want to compare different ones. 00:44:20.980 --> 00:44:26.890 I mean, that's a really uh tough question, but it's something that we have 00:44:26.890 --> 00:44:28.170 power to do something about. 00:44:28.330 --> 00:44:31.770 So I really like that that it's uh actionable. 00:44:32.170 --> 00:44:37.130 Um, and then you know, you were asking questions about what other kind of near term health 00:44:37.130 --> 00:44:38.970 impact that this research could have. 00:44:39.130 --> 00:44:44.410 I mean, that's what I love about the suggestion about fiber, because it's really very 00:44:44.410 --> 00:44:47.770 likely to help and it's unlikely to hurt, you know. 00:44:47.850 --> 00:44:53.260 Um, so if you can get yourself to eat more fiber, And there now have been 00:44:53.260 --> 00:44:59.260 many intervention studies showing that even short term, you will push your microbiome 00:44:59.420 --> 00:45:02.540 towards a healthier state by eating more fiber. 00:45:02.780 --> 00:45:06.140 And I guess another piece of advice is to start slow. 00:45:06.300 --> 00:45:10.300 I mean, fiber can cause constipation, maybe anti-intuitively. 00:45:10.460 --> 00:45:12.300 You need water when you're eating fiber. 00:45:12.380 --> 00:45:16.620 So when we do these fiber interventions in the classes here, I have grad students TA ing 00:45:16.700 --> 00:45:21.450 the students, and they have to be like college counselor or sorry camp counselors getting 00:45:21.450 --> 00:45:24.330 the students to drink enough water and stuff. 00:45:24.570 --> 00:45:27.050 And uh so you know start slow. 00:45:27.130 --> 00:45:31.930 It's not that it has to be immediate, but you know, think of it like a year-long project. 00:45:32.010 --> 00:45:35.690 Like if you were going to the gym and wanted to lift heavier weights, you would start slow 00:45:35.690 --> 00:45:36.330 and build up. 00:45:36.490 --> 00:45:40.570 And so if you can do that with fiber, it's very likely to help your health. 00:45:40.730 --> 00:45:46.600 Um it could be helping not just immune related, but it could help 00:45:46.600 --> 00:45:47.960 prevent cancer, for example. 00:45:48.120 --> 00:45:53.800 I mean, if there's any diet, I mean, if you look at all the meta-analyses of tons of 00:45:53.800 --> 00:45:58.920 different studies, there's a lot of agreement that eating more plants and eating more fiber 00:45:58.920 --> 00:46:00.120 will help your health. 00:46:00.360 --> 00:46:05.080 And so I think it's just important to come up with something that you actually like that 00:46:05.080 --> 00:46:10.920 you can get yourself to do that will get you 10 or 15 grams of fiber per 00:46:10.920 --> 00:46:11.320 day. 00:46:11.650 --> 00:46:17.490 And um especially if you're having to take antibiotics or cancer therapy or to be honest, 00:46:17.650 --> 00:46:20.450 really any kind of drug or even microplastics. 00:46:20.530 --> 00:46:24.770 You'll you're protected from microplastics when you're eating fiber because it forms this 00:46:24.770 --> 00:46:29.090 matrix that will kind of help expel anything you take in like that. 00:46:29.410 --> 00:46:34.690 So it's a feels like a pretty easy way to to protect your health. 00:46:35.680 --> 00:46:40.240 And yeah, I mean that's that's kind of the edge of our knowledge. 00:46:40.400 --> 00:46:46.320 There's tons of research studies going on to try to in more detail understand the impact of 00:46:46.320 --> 00:46:51.600 the microbiome on many different cancer types and immune diseases, 00:46:51.840 --> 00:46:54.560 inflammatory bowel disease, for example. 00:46:56.560 --> 00:47:01.920 And there's definitely progress happening, but usually it takes decades before 00:47:02.210 --> 00:47:05.650 basic research knowledge makes it into people's lives. 00:47:05.890 --> 00:47:09.730 And I'm always heartened by that when I think about how much progress we've made in our 00:47:09.730 --> 00:47:14.690 fields, because it's only been about like maybe 10 or 15 years that this has been an active 00:47:14.690 --> 00:47:15.570 area of research. 00:47:15.730 --> 00:47:21.170 And if you look at the cancer immunotherapy example, for that one took about 50 years 00:47:21.170 --> 00:47:26.620 before the initial basic science discoveries and between the time when those were made and 00:47:26.620 --> 00:47:28.380 when the treatments became available. 00:47:28.780 --> 00:47:34.620 And actually the RNA vaccine that we had for COVID, 00:47:34.940 --> 00:47:38.460 that involved 20 years of basic research. 00:47:38.620 --> 00:47:42.380 And if we hadn't had that, we would never have been able to make the vaccine so quickly. 00:47:42.460 --> 00:47:47.980 And it was accelerated by the people who made that happen for all of us 00:47:48.460 --> 00:47:50.380 because there was such a demand for it. 00:47:51.260 --> 00:47:51.900 Yeah. 00:47:53.290 --> 00:47:59.290 so I'm curious about this link between um the microbiome 00:47:59.450 --> 00:48:02.010 and and specific diseases and disorders. 00:48:02.090 --> 00:48:07.050 So I can sort of intuitively understand why having a less diverse microbiome would make 00:48:07.050 --> 00:48:12.490 your digestive processes less effective, make you less able to extract the proper nutrients 00:48:12.490 --> 00:48:17.930 that you need out of food, um, and that I could understand how that could lead to 00:48:18.040 --> 00:48:19.160 health problems. 00:48:19.400 --> 00:48:25.000 But I'm a little less clear about what the causal pathway would be to something like, say, 00:48:25.240 --> 00:48:25.880 cancer. 00:48:26.120 --> 00:48:32.120 Like uh or um the auto uh the auto-dimmune autoimmune diseases, um, I could sort of 00:48:32.120 --> 00:48:36.440 understand why that would make sense and that your immune system is trained on the 00:48:36.440 --> 00:48:37.000 microbiome. 00:48:37.080 --> 00:48:38.120 Is that the idea? 00:48:38.390 --> 00:48:42.310 Um, but with with cancer, that's a little less clear to me what what the link would be 00:48:42.390 --> 00:48:42.550 there. 00:48:42.710 --> 00:48:46.790 Could you could you talk through some of the possible causal pathways that might uh be 00:48:46.790 --> 00:48:47.430 working here? 00:48:47.830 --> 00:48:52.950 Yeah, I mean I we are definitely like at the edge of human knowledge here. 00:48:53.110 --> 00:48:56.150 So some of the studies are more observational still. 00:48:56.390 --> 00:48:56.630 Yeah. 00:48:56.790 --> 00:49:02.550 Um, but you know, for example, let's take colon cancer as an example because it's 00:49:03.020 --> 00:49:06.220 adjacent to the location of all those gut microbes. 00:49:06.780 --> 00:49:12.780 When you are eating enough fiber, then the microbes in your colon are taking the 00:49:12.780 --> 00:49:17.100 fiber and producing these actually quite smelly volatile molecules. 00:49:17.180 --> 00:49:18.860 They're called short-chain fatty acids. 00:49:18.940 --> 00:49:22.860 And like some of them are household items that you're familiar with, like acetate, 00:49:24.410 --> 00:49:25.370 Butyrate. 00:49:26.170 --> 00:49:30.570 These molecules are the favorite fuels of the cells lining the colon. 00:49:30.810 --> 00:49:36.090 So they're used to running on acetate, and butyrate's the most abundant and probably the 00:49:36.090 --> 00:49:36.890 most important one. 00:49:37.050 --> 00:49:41.450 So if you're eating fiber and the microbes are turning it into butyrate, then those cells 00:49:41.450 --> 00:49:43.290 are running on their favorite fuels. 00:49:43.450 --> 00:49:47.290 So the metabolism of those cells is like going in the right direction. 00:49:47.530 --> 00:49:49.640 And now here's where my own knowledge is. 00:49:49.720 --> 00:49:54.520 Um, I don't have a lot more knowledge of each of these pathways, but I have colleagues, for 00:49:54.520 --> 00:49:59.800 example, who have devoted their careers to understanding, you know, particular types of 00:49:59.800 --> 00:50:02.840 metabolic signaling in the cells that live in our colon. 00:50:02.920 --> 00:50:08.360 And if that goes awry, then the chances that one of those cells will be able to take off in 00:50:08.360 --> 00:50:10.760 a cancerous direction increase. 00:50:11.240 --> 00:50:17.210 So if you keep the those cells in a healthy state, it um it helps to 00:50:17.210 --> 00:50:20.010 promote all the features that you want out of your cells. 00:50:20.090 --> 00:50:21.450 I mean, what is cancer? 00:50:21.610 --> 00:50:27.530 Cancer is when one cell becomes a renegade and takes off in a crazy direction with a crazy 00:50:27.530 --> 00:50:33.370 genome and unneighborly practices that just don't respect the cellular 00:50:33.370 --> 00:50:34.810 boundaries around them. 00:50:35.050 --> 00:50:40.840 And so if you are not fueling the cells lining your colon with 00:50:40.840 --> 00:50:46.360 the molecules that they have become accustomed to throughout our evolution, then you are 00:50:46.680 --> 00:50:50.600 making it easier for those cells to go off in a crazier direction. 00:50:52.040 --> 00:50:53.880 Um is it is part of it. 00:50:53.960 --> 00:50:58.930 Um but I mean the correlations exist for distant cancer types. 00:50:59.090 --> 00:51:04.050 And so, and actually, another thing that I should have said first is that one of the most 00:51:04.050 --> 00:51:09.890 important functions of our immune system is to survey and prevent cancer cells 00:51:09.890 --> 00:51:10.930 from taking off. 00:51:11.170 --> 00:51:16.690 And so this actually is probably a more important mechanism that when you keep your immune 00:51:16.690 --> 00:51:22.690 system humming along at its best possible function, then that will 00:51:23.330 --> 00:51:29.100 help promote the, you know, the surveillance and removal of precancerous cells. 00:51:29.420 --> 00:51:30.380 I did not know that. 00:51:30.700 --> 00:51:31.420 Wow, fascinating. 00:51:31.660 --> 00:51:33.100 That's crazy that I didn't know that. 00:51:33.180 --> 00:51:33.500 Yeah. 00:51:34.220 --> 00:51:35.580 Yeah, that is actually kind of crazy. 00:51:35.820 --> 00:51:41.660 And so so the the immune system could actually uh kill the the precancerous cells before 00:51:41.660 --> 00:51:45.580 they they take off just as they would another microbe pathogen? 00:51:45.980 --> 00:51:46.220 Yeah. 00:51:46.300 --> 00:51:51.020 Oh I mean that is a huge and like you know very very important function of our immune 00:51:51.020 --> 00:51:51.260 system. 00:51:51.340 --> 00:51:56.630 And think about when like maybe you have friends or colleagues who have had to take 00:51:56.630 --> 00:52:02.550 immunosuppressants either because of um an inflammatory bowel disease or after 00:52:02.710 --> 00:52:06.630 organ transplant or there's reasons that people have to take drugs that suppress their 00:52:06.630 --> 00:52:07.510 immune function. 00:52:07.750 --> 00:52:13.270 And one of the most um important consequences of taking immunosuppressants is increased 00:52:13.270 --> 00:52:18.390 cancer, like the increased likelihood of cancer developing, because then you don't have 00:52:18.390 --> 00:52:21.190 your immune system there to help protect you. 00:52:21.540 --> 00:52:21.780 Wow. 00:52:22.260 --> 00:52:26.820 And my understanding is that the immune system obviously, I mean, it was interesting to me 00:52:26.900 --> 00:52:29.460 and it's obvious in retrospect, but talks to the gut. 00:52:29.620 --> 00:52:35.540 So for example, like I mean, uh, nut allergy, or or for example, if if if 00:52:35.620 --> 00:52:41.220 uh if a substance is detected in your gut, your immune system learns that that's food and 00:52:41.220 --> 00:52:44.420 not something to attack, for example, like in a simple way. 00:52:44.820 --> 00:52:50.410 Um so so is that right that the immune system is this 00:52:50.570 --> 00:52:56.250 sort of contingent evolved system that's surveying the contents of the gut, 00:52:56.410 --> 00:52:57.770 surveying everything? 00:52:58.330 --> 00:53:01.130 And and sort of is is that right? 00:53:01.530 --> 00:53:03.130 Yeah, that's definitely right. 00:53:03.290 --> 00:53:09.050 And um yeah, I mean, actually, there's a a book I recommend if you guys get if anybody 00:53:09.050 --> 00:53:11.290 listening gets interested in the fiber stuff. 00:53:11.370 --> 00:53:16.330 And there's a doctor in South Carol Carolina named Will Buschemitz, and he wrote a book 00:53:16.330 --> 00:53:17.850 called Fiber Fueled. 00:53:18.120 --> 00:53:23.240 And in this book, his goal is that everybody should be able to work towards eating 00:53:23.240 --> 00:53:23.640 everything. 00:53:23.800 --> 00:53:29.000 And it's such a cool way of putting it because everybody has all these food intolerances. 00:53:29.080 --> 00:53:30.440 And he's a gastroenterologist. 00:53:30.600 --> 00:53:33.880 He's come across people with all kinds of sensitivities. 00:53:34.200 --> 00:53:39.960 And a major reaction to those sensitivities is avoidance because who wants to 00:53:39.960 --> 00:53:41.720 be having reactions to their food? 00:53:41.800 --> 00:53:42.680 I mean, that's terrible. 00:53:42.760 --> 00:53:46.760 So it's very understandable that you avoid the foods that cause reactions. 00:53:47.370 --> 00:53:52.330 And there will be exceptions to this, like gluten for celiac disease or lactose intolerance 00:53:52.410 --> 00:53:53.130 and so forth. 00:53:53.290 --> 00:53:59.210 But in general, if you work towards it and have low 00:53:59.210 --> 00:54:05.130 amounts of exposure repeatedly through time, it's a reasonable goal that most people should 00:54:05.130 --> 00:54:06.890 be able to eat most things. 00:54:07.050 --> 00:54:12.120 And that's part of what you were just bringing up with the way that your immune system is 00:54:12.120 --> 00:54:13.800 sampling all the molecules in your gut. 00:54:13.880 --> 00:54:15.960 Because yeah, you have a ton of immune cells in your gut. 00:54:16.040 --> 00:54:18.520 You actually have a ton of nervous system cells in your gut too. 00:54:18.920 --> 00:54:20.440 Yeah, the most neurons. 00:54:20.600 --> 00:54:23.560 I remember that from neuroscience, and it was just sort of passing through, but it's always 00:54:23.560 --> 00:54:24.520 been like, why is that? 00:54:24.680 --> 00:54:28.600 More neurons outside of your brain are in your gut than anywhere else. 00:54:28.840 --> 00:54:29.960 Yeah, that's amazing. 00:54:30.120 --> 00:54:32.760 So all this stuff about butterflies in your stomach and so on. 00:54:32.840 --> 00:54:36.530 I mean, we really do have a lot of sensing capacity in our gut. 00:54:36.690 --> 00:54:41.970 We also have a network of neuroendocrine cells that produce all kinds of hormones and other 00:54:42.210 --> 00:54:43.170 important molecules. 00:54:43.330 --> 00:54:48.290 So, like 90% of the serotonin in our bodies is produced by cells in our gut. 00:54:48.370 --> 00:54:53.650 And they are human cells, but they are adjacent to this massive network of microbial cells. 00:54:53.970 --> 00:54:59.730 So that's another way that eating fiber will impact your health because by 00:54:59.730 --> 00:55:05.260 eating fiber and keeping those microbes humming along on their favorite fuels, all the meta 00:55:05.500 --> 00:55:10.860 all the metabolic byproducts are feeding the immune cells and the nervous system cells, the 00:55:10.860 --> 00:55:12.940 neuroendocrine cells in your gut. 00:55:13.100 --> 00:55:19.020 And that will push those cells towards, you know, giving you all the 00:55:19.020 --> 00:55:20.940 different good stuff. 00:55:21.340 --> 00:55:25.740 And when I just came across, like I didn't know what that stuff was, that's because that's 00:55:25.740 --> 00:55:27.100 the edge of scientific knowledge. 00:55:27.180 --> 00:55:30.860 Really, I mean, there's like a few molecules we've studied really well, like serotonin, 00:55:30.940 --> 00:55:34.220 which there's still plenty of mysteries around that one, but at least we can name it. 00:55:34.470 --> 00:55:38.710 A lot of these molecules are undiscovered by science, like truly. 00:55:38.870 --> 00:55:44.630 Like when I even when I get a sequence data set back, I can only identify usually 00:55:44.790 --> 00:55:47.750 like 30% of the data that comes back. 00:55:47.910 --> 00:55:49.110 The rest is just unknown. 00:55:49.270 --> 00:55:53.030 It's not that it's garbage, it's just that we haven't ever studied it before as a 00:55:53.030 --> 00:55:54.150 scientific community. 00:55:54.390 --> 00:55:57.030 And for molecules, that number is even higher. 00:55:57.190 --> 00:56:02.500 So like when I take a sample and run it through the state of the art, you know, how do you 00:56:02.500 --> 00:56:05.540 catch all the different molecules in a sample type of equipment? 00:56:05.860 --> 00:56:11.060 Maybe like five or 10% of the molecules can even be identified. 00:56:11.300 --> 00:56:16.500 So there's a lot of communication going on there that we don't understand yet. 00:56:16.980 --> 00:56:22.420 But I still think the advice that we could have given you a generation or two ago to like 00:56:22.580 --> 00:56:28.370 eat foods that your grandmother recognizes as food, or eat foods that you can 00:56:28.370 --> 00:56:30.450 read what the ingredients mean. 00:56:30.850 --> 00:56:35.970 So it's not something crazy and processed or like Michael Pollins, like eat food mostly 00:56:35.970 --> 00:56:37.090 plants, not too much. 00:56:37.250 --> 00:56:42.450 I still think that will honestly be the best advice for a long time, no matter how 00:56:42.450 --> 00:56:45.730 fancy our molecular identifications become. 00:56:45.890 --> 00:56:46.930 You know yeah. 00:56:47.240 --> 00:56:49.080 Um, one of what is the effect? 00:56:49.240 --> 00:56:54.040 So I think like um when I moved from Germany back to the US, I noticed that there's a lot 00:56:54.040 --> 00:57:00.040 more enriched flour, which as I understand it, is different than just milled flour, and 00:57:00.040 --> 00:57:01.880 then a lot more sugar in things. 00:57:02.280 --> 00:57:05.640 Um those are cheap things to make. 00:57:05.800 --> 00:57:11.800 What is the effect of sugar or enriched flour or or alcohol, for example, like 00:57:11.800 --> 00:57:14.920 high concentrations of alcohol on our microbiome? 00:57:15.550 --> 00:57:18.030 Well, I mean, everything affects our microbiome. 00:57:18.190 --> 00:57:21.230 So the answer will always be that there is an effect. 00:57:21.310 --> 00:57:26.750 Um, and then it starts to become more context dependent for that person and how much and so 00:57:26.750 --> 00:57:26.990 forth. 00:57:27.150 --> 00:57:32.750 So, I mean, you know, I personally am interested to know if people can mostly eat 00:57:32.750 --> 00:57:37.390 terribly, but then just like sprinkle some fiber on top, and then that will solve the 00:57:37.390 --> 00:57:37.630 problem. 00:57:37.870 --> 00:57:42.920 Or is that really still gonna be hard on your microbiome, and it's important to remove some 00:57:42.920 --> 00:57:45.400 of the more negative aspects of our diets. 00:57:45.480 --> 00:57:47.160 And I think that's a science question. 00:57:47.240 --> 00:57:51.560 But I mean, overall, eating all this processed stuff is probably not great for us, 00:57:51.720 --> 00:57:54.040 especially in larger quantities. 00:57:54.360 --> 00:57:58.760 Um, the way that food is processed in Europe and the US, there's some really big 00:57:58.760 --> 00:57:59.400 differences. 00:57:59.720 --> 00:58:02.120 Um, also in those strains of wheat. 00:58:02.360 --> 00:58:07.930 So you you've probably heard lots of anecdotal stories like I have of people who 00:58:08.410 --> 00:58:13.130 can't eat wheat in the United States, but they go to Europe and they can eat pasta in Italy 00:58:13.210 --> 00:58:14.570 and they can eat bread in Germany. 00:58:14.730 --> 00:58:16.810 And nobody quite understands why. 00:58:16.890 --> 00:58:22.170 And there's a bunch of hypotheses like the strains of wheat in the US have more gluten in 00:58:22.170 --> 00:58:22.330 them. 00:58:23.050 --> 00:58:25.290 So that's actually not a processing issue. 00:58:25.370 --> 00:58:28.170 It's just like the strains that have chosen to grow here. 00:58:28.250 --> 00:58:31.370 And that gluten helps with the texture being nicer, I guess. 00:58:31.610 --> 00:58:37.160 So that's the motivation, but maybe that's why people have a harder time eating gluten in 00:58:37.160 --> 00:58:39.480 the United States or eating wheat in the United States. 00:58:39.640 --> 00:58:44.760 Um there's so many nuances in the processing that I'm honestly not an expert in. 00:58:45.000 --> 00:58:49.880 But it still makes the advice stand to try to just like eat whole foods to the extent that 00:58:49.880 --> 00:58:50.360 you can. 00:58:50.680 --> 00:58:50.840 Yeah. 00:58:50.920 --> 00:58:54.920 And that feels like it's fighting I mean, the there's just this issue of profitability. 00:58:55.000 --> 00:58:59.390 Like Dave and I have talked about how as much as independent or individual people want to 00:58:59.390 --> 00:59:01.550 do things and we can wag our fingers at people. 00:59:01.710 --> 00:59:03.230 And I'm not saying we're doing this. 00:59:03.390 --> 00:59:03.630 Yeah. 00:59:03.790 --> 00:59:07.150 But it's it for me, it's tempting to sort of be like, you should be eating your fiber, 00:59:07.230 --> 00:59:08.270 which is like a joke, right? 00:59:08.350 --> 00:59:10.030 But um as a trope. 00:59:10.110 --> 00:59:15.950 But it's this thing of you know, going to the store, um, or what even if everybody wants 00:59:15.950 --> 00:59:21.900 there to be like whole, fresh foods that are healthy, cheap, abundant, you know, not high 00:59:21.900 --> 00:59:22.860 in pesticides. 00:59:23.020 --> 00:59:26.940 These are we're feeding our kids and our grandkids and our future. 00:59:27.100 --> 00:59:32.220 Um, there's still just structural selection dynamics of like what's profitable. 00:59:32.540 --> 00:59:36.620 Um, you know, and even as you said, like the probiotic thing, like it's a huge market. 00:59:36.700 --> 00:59:39.900 And like, I don't know, are people going to make a lot of money if you're like eat beans? 00:59:39.980 --> 00:59:45.820 You know, like so um in thinking about the discrepancy between what you see when you go 00:59:45.820 --> 00:59:50.490 to a store versus what we know scientifically, yeah. 00:59:50.650 --> 00:59:56.650 Like, should are we fighting the fact that profitability is in the way, or is that a 00:59:56.650 --> 00:59:57.530 a false choice? 00:59:57.610 --> 01:00:02.490 And is there a way to make align profitability with what's healthy for us? 01:00:02.650 --> 01:00:04.650 Um I know I feel better. 01:00:04.810 --> 01:00:10.010 I I I'm willing to pay, for example, like I feel better when I eat healthy. 01:00:10.250 --> 01:00:15.080 And feeling better is a different thing than like something just like tastes good sort of 01:00:15.240 --> 01:00:20.920 right like so yes yeah yeah often feel awful when after eating you know the the junk food 01:00:20.920 --> 01:00:25.560 that I crave you know so it's definitely a trade-off yeah I mean processed food is 01:00:25.560 --> 01:00:31.560 addictive I mean truly addictive the same way that other addictions that we treat 01:00:31.560 --> 01:00:37.160 really seriously um and have therapies for in our country processed food uh 01:00:37.480 --> 01:00:43.320 is certainly in the same category so I mean it's it's there's a lot of barriers 01:00:43.320 --> 01:00:47.470 to to helping people avoid becoming addicted to processed food. 01:00:47.630 --> 01:00:52.670 I mean, that's just basically a normal thing in our society that you're addicted to 01:00:52.670 --> 01:00:54.430 processed food and it's around everywhere. 01:00:54.590 --> 01:00:59.150 Our food environment makes it basically impossible not to be addicted to processed food is 01:00:59.310 --> 01:01:03.070 is my experience of someone that's lived here most of my life. 01:01:03.230 --> 01:01:05.150 And I mean I've lived in European cities too. 01:01:05.230 --> 01:01:09.160 It's you're still having tons of access to processed food. 01:01:09.240 --> 01:01:11.480 I mean, that's just how the modern world is right now. 01:01:11.640 --> 01:01:11.880 Yeah. 01:01:12.120 --> 01:01:17.240 So I don't know how we remove the processed food addiction part, but I mean, it doesn't 01:01:17.240 --> 01:01:19.160 have to be expensive to get enough fiber. 01:01:19.240 --> 01:01:24.600 So that's always the the message in my classes is that, you know, here's five things that 01:01:24.600 --> 01:01:27.160 you all know what they are, and they are not expensive. 01:01:27.320 --> 01:01:29.880 And so the barrier really is not cost. 01:01:30.360 --> 01:01:34.760 Um, it might be time, but I think it's more about just like having it be part of your 01:01:34.760 --> 01:01:35.160 routine. 01:01:35.320 --> 01:01:35.640 Yeah. 01:01:35.850 --> 01:01:41.850 So I I that's really my message is that, you know, pick something that you actually 01:01:41.850 --> 01:01:46.010 like and that you can get yourself to do and just try to do it every day. 01:01:46.090 --> 01:01:49.370 And even if you're still a little addicted to processed food, at least you'll have the 01:01:49.370 --> 01:01:50.250 fiber in there too. 01:01:50.330 --> 01:01:52.090 And I think that's better than not doing it. 01:01:52.250 --> 01:01:57.130 I mean, right now we I there's a Starbucks out the window behind me right now, where they 01:01:57.130 --> 01:02:01.770 sell 20,000 frappuccinos every month, or it might even be more than that by now. 01:02:02.120 --> 01:02:03.800 And it is so much sugar. 01:02:03.880 --> 01:02:09.720 I mean, the amount of sugar a person eats in a day today is more than the amount of sugar a 01:02:09.720 --> 01:02:12.120 person would eat in a year 300 years ago. 01:02:12.280 --> 01:02:14.840 Like sugar used to be this precious commodity. 01:02:14.920 --> 01:02:18.840 Like the queen would have a key to the room that had the sugar in it, and nobody else could 01:02:18.840 --> 01:02:19.560 go in there. 01:02:19.720 --> 01:02:24.890 And it was a very um, you know, people were still addicted to it if they could get could 01:02:24.890 --> 01:02:28.730 get their hands on it, but it just wasn't like everywhere in their environment the way it 01:02:28.730 --> 01:02:30.250 is here, especially drinking it. 01:02:30.410 --> 01:02:32.330 People just get so much sugar that way. 01:02:32.650 --> 01:02:38.090 So I guess if I could say two things, it would be like not to drink sugar, because you just 01:02:38.090 --> 01:02:39.530 get so much of it so fast. 01:02:39.610 --> 01:02:43.690 And I mean, just find something else that you like to drink, but that doesn't have 60 grams 01:02:43.690 --> 01:02:47.930 of sugar in a cup or whatever, because it's like a crazy amount of sugar you get that way. 01:02:48.140 --> 01:02:51.820 And then the other one is just to pick something with fiber in it that you like. 01:02:51.980 --> 01:02:57.020 So if it's beans, I mean, it's actually not that hard to buy a crock pot at the thrift 01:02:57.020 --> 01:02:58.140 store for 10 bucks. 01:02:58.300 --> 01:03:03.740 And on Sundays, you cook up a pot of beans and then you just like eat a cup of them one day 01:03:03.740 --> 01:03:04.220 each week. 01:03:04.300 --> 01:03:08.780 Somehow you put them in your salad, you bring them with you for lunch, like whatever it is. 01:03:09.070 --> 01:03:10.990 that's to me kind of doable. 01:03:11.070 --> 01:03:15.230 Or like for berries, which are quite expensive when they're fresh, they're not expensive 01:03:15.230 --> 01:03:16.270 when they're frozen. 01:03:16.510 --> 01:03:18.110 So maybe you like smoothies. 01:03:18.270 --> 01:03:23.150 So put some frozen berries in your smoothie with some chia seeds in the mornings. 01:03:23.390 --> 01:03:27.630 And then like all day you'll have this feeling like you did something right, you know, like 01:03:27.710 --> 01:03:28.910 you got your fiber. 01:03:29.300 --> 01:03:29.540 Yeah. 01:03:29.860 --> 01:03:32.180 And berries are much cheaper than a Starbucks coffee. 01:03:32.260 --> 01:03:33.780 I mean, you're you're in Europe. 01:03:33.860 --> 01:03:38.340 I was used to like maybe one euro or two euro for a coffee out of a good espresso machine. 01:03:38.420 --> 01:03:42.180 And like coming back to the US, I'm like, I I refuse to spend. 01:03:42.260 --> 01:03:44.420 So I just like have a coffee machines around. 01:03:44.500 --> 01:03:46.260 Like, you know, not everybody can do that. 01:03:46.340 --> 01:03:47.380 But yeah, if you can, yeah. 01:03:47.620 --> 01:03:50.820 Berries are cheap compared to um coffee. 01:03:50.990 --> 01:03:51.230 Yeah. 01:03:51.470 --> 01:03:51.870 You're right. 01:03:51.950 --> 01:03:54.990 I mean, people are willing to spend a really large amount of money on coffee. 01:03:55.070 --> 01:03:55.710 It's a good point. 01:03:55.870 --> 01:03:59.390 Or like boba or whatever sugary drink they're into. 01:03:59.630 --> 01:04:05.630 Another thing is you can make kombucha at home, um, which is I mean, maybe that's 01:04:05.630 --> 01:04:06.750 like a fringe activity. 01:04:06.830 --> 01:04:08.510 It's hard for me to tell anymore. 01:04:08.670 --> 01:04:12.590 But but I mean it's actually not that hard and it's pretty fun and it tastes good. 01:04:12.750 --> 01:04:18.430 And um, and that's like a way to have a kind of unusual, fun, nice beverage that's a little 01:04:18.430 --> 01:04:23.580 bit sweet, but it's not gonna have like when you when you make kombucha, you start out with 01:04:23.580 --> 01:04:27.980 about a cup of sugar in a gram, uh sorry, a gallon of black tea or whatever tea you're 01:04:27.980 --> 01:04:28.300 using. 01:04:28.540 --> 01:04:33.500 But then you give the microbes like a week to m to eat down a lot of the sugar. 01:04:33.580 --> 01:04:37.180 So by the time you drink it, it's actually not that sweet, but it's flavorful. 01:04:37.420 --> 01:04:41.260 So and kombucha has taken off in the probiotics industry. 01:04:41.340 --> 01:04:45.570 So in terms of making profit, I mean there's actually quite a few of these beverages. 01:04:45.650 --> 01:04:51.010 Like even the Super Bowl ads are full of ads for that poppy drink that has the fiber in 01:04:51.010 --> 01:04:52.930 those poppy drinks is inulin. 01:04:53.570 --> 01:04:55.410 And that is a plant fiber. 01:04:55.890 --> 01:05:01.250 Um, so I mean, it's is that as good as making sure you're eating whole foods every day? 01:05:01.330 --> 01:05:03.490 Like probably not, but it is fiber. 01:05:03.570 --> 01:05:05.720 I mean, I I I'll take any fiber. 01:05:05.880 --> 01:05:09.560 I think that counts in the positive category and those have become very profitable. 01:05:10.040 --> 01:05:10.200 Yeah. 01:05:10.360 --> 01:05:10.600 Yeah. 01:05:10.680 --> 01:05:13.400 Because of your you oh sorry, David, just because of your talk. 01:05:13.480 --> 01:05:19.480 I mean, I actually feed my son since I started talking berries and um uh soups with with 01:05:19.480 --> 01:05:21.400 beans and lentils, and he loves it. 01:05:21.560 --> 01:05:24.680 But I'm just like and I just feel like I'm constantly I'm like, this is great. 01:05:24.760 --> 01:05:26.600 Like and it's it's super easy. 01:05:26.840 --> 01:05:29.160 Um and uh yeah, so thank you. 01:05:29.240 --> 01:05:33.010 Like I would not have known it if I if you didn't I I love I didn't hear that talk. 01:05:33.090 --> 01:05:33.490 Yeah. 01:05:33.730 --> 01:05:34.930 That's really cool. 01:05:35.250 --> 01:05:35.650 Yeah. 01:05:35.810 --> 01:05:40.130 Um I I feed my daughter one of my daughter's favorite snacks is just canned beans with like 01:05:40.130 --> 01:05:41.570 a little bit of salt sprinkled on them. 01:05:41.650 --> 01:05:43.410 That's like she it's her go to thing. 01:05:43.490 --> 01:05:47.570 So I'm very glad to hear that that's that's good for her because she just coincidentally 01:05:47.810 --> 01:05:48.530 really likes it. 01:05:49.250 --> 01:05:50.450 Her daughter's awesome, David. 01:05:50.530 --> 01:05:52.450 She likes horror movies and canned beans. 01:05:52.530 --> 01:05:53.170 This is awesome. 01:05:53.330 --> 01:05:57.250 She's well that's really cool. 01:05:57.410 --> 01:05:57.730 Yeah. 01:05:57.970 --> 01:06:00.760 Yeah, no, I'm I'm a very proud father. 01:06:01.160 --> 01:06:07.160 Uh I I wanna make sure I'm getting the the causal pathway here of why processed 01:06:07.160 --> 01:06:08.040 foods are bad. 01:06:08.280 --> 01:06:14.040 So is it because uh companies put in preservatives to keep the food from spoiling so it 01:06:14.040 --> 01:06:17.800 could be transported uh to vast distances? 01:06:17.960 --> 01:06:22.840 Um and those preservatives, while good at keeping the food from spoiling, at the same time 01:06:23.080 --> 01:06:28.210 are damaging to the the microbiome because i while they prevent, you you know, bad bacteria 01:06:28.210 --> 01:06:32.290 from growing on the food, they also kill the good bacteria w uh in us when we eat them. 01:06:32.370 --> 01:06:36.690 Is that the logic of how we're that's one part of the logic, although it's actually not the 01:06:36.690 --> 01:06:38.130 part I'm the most worried about. 01:06:38.850 --> 01:06:44.770 To me, the major problem is that one pretty universal step in all 01:06:44.770 --> 01:06:46.770 processed food is removing the fiber. 01:06:47.250 --> 01:06:47.410 Okay. 01:06:47.730 --> 01:06:53.010 And so basically you're simplifying the food to be a pile of sugar, essentially. 01:06:53.330 --> 01:06:59.320 So um so I mean, white flour is still better than just pure cane sugar in terms of how it 01:06:59.320 --> 01:07:04.200 will affect your blood sugar and what will be left for your microbes to eat in the colon. 01:07:04.360 --> 01:07:10.040 But but when you process food and you remove the fiber, it means that there's nothing left 01:07:10.040 --> 01:07:11.160 for your microbes to eat. 01:07:11.320 --> 01:07:17.160 Like your microbes depend on getting fiber to your colon, um, which is where they 01:07:17.160 --> 01:07:17.480 live. 01:07:17.640 --> 01:07:22.120 The the most density of microbes is in the last part of your descending colon. 01:07:22.280 --> 01:07:28.030 The it uh in good circumstances, you'll have like 10 to the ninth bacteria per 01:07:28.030 --> 01:07:30.510 gram in your in that last part of your colon. 01:07:30.670 --> 01:07:34.270 Whereas in your stomach, it's like 10 to the two, you that's hardly anything because it's 01:07:34.270 --> 01:07:35.150 so acidic. 01:07:35.390 --> 01:07:40.990 And then that number, the density of microbes kind of grows at as you go down the colon 01:07:40.990 --> 01:07:42.350 until you get to the descending golden. 01:07:42.430 --> 01:07:45.710 And that's where like the overwhelming majority of the microbes in your body live right 01:07:45.790 --> 01:07:46.030 there. 01:07:46.190 --> 01:07:46.350 Yeah. 01:07:46.660 --> 01:07:51.620 So if you eat processed foods where the fiber has been removed, you are giving those there, 01:07:51.780 --> 01:07:53.700 there's nothing there for the microbes to eat. 01:07:53.780 --> 01:07:59.620 And so one signature of the gut microbiomes of people in the industrialized world 01:07:59.860 --> 01:08:04.900 are microbes that eat gut mucus, which is an indicator that there's no fiber in there. 01:08:05.060 --> 01:08:09.620 And the microbes have turned to eating the mucus that your human cells are producing to 01:08:09.620 --> 01:08:10.580 line the colon. 01:08:10.660 --> 01:08:14.420 That mucus layer is like what's between you and all the bacteria. 01:08:14.750 --> 01:08:18.670 You want a really, really thick mucus layer for a lot of reasons. 01:08:18.750 --> 01:08:20.910 It's like a sign of immune health in many ways. 01:08:21.070 --> 01:08:26.270 But you know, if you if that barrier breaks down, then you end up with what we call a leaky 01:08:26.270 --> 01:08:30.670 gut, which means you're prone to sepsis, and it means you're which is a blood infection, 01:08:30.750 --> 01:08:35.710 and it means you're prone to just all these molecules getting into your blood, or like have 01:08:35.710 --> 01:08:39.870 you ever known someone who was having appendicitis or a urinary tract infection and they 01:08:39.870 --> 01:08:41.390 started hallucinating? 01:08:41.600 --> 01:08:47.120 And that's because the molecules in their gut were leaking out and interfering with their 01:08:47.120 --> 01:08:48.080 brain function. 01:08:48.320 --> 01:08:50.640 So you want that barrier to be really strong. 01:08:50.800 --> 01:08:54.880 Like one of my favorite stories in all these years of stories I've gotten to hear about 01:08:54.880 --> 01:08:58.000 microbiomes was from a Swedish mucus biologist. 01:08:58.240 --> 01:09:04.080 Um, and he took a he snuck a field mouse into his lab and he'd been studying 01:09:04.080 --> 01:09:07.120 the mucus layer in lab mice his whole life. 01:09:07.280 --> 01:09:12.790 And then he looked at this field mouse, and the mucus layer in there was like way 01:09:12.790 --> 01:09:15.190 thicker, way more complicated. 01:09:15.590 --> 01:09:20.870 And so that field mouse out in the world, having all of its exposures, was able to develop 01:09:20.870 --> 01:09:23.830 a really, really good thick mucus lining of its gut. 01:09:24.230 --> 01:09:29.030 So humans eating processed foods are basically like the lab mice. 01:09:29.110 --> 01:09:34.870 Like we aren't giving our microbes the fuels they need and the our bodies the exposures 01:09:34.870 --> 01:09:39.590 they need to build up a really good protective mucus layer in our gut, like that. 01:09:39.820 --> 01:09:39.980 Yeah. 01:09:40.220 --> 01:09:40.700 Interesting. 01:09:40.860 --> 01:09:43.260 So in other words, it's not sugar per se that's bad. 01:09:43.340 --> 01:09:46.220 It's sugar that's stripped of its fibrous content. 01:09:46.460 --> 01:09:46.700 Exactly. 01:09:46.940 --> 01:09:47.340 Which is bad. 01:09:47.580 --> 01:09:47.660 Yeah. 01:09:48.380 --> 01:09:49.900 And it's this oh yeah, sorry, go ahead. 01:09:50.220 --> 01:09:55.980 Like juice versus or like an orange with all the fiber in it versus juice is a really big 01:09:55.980 --> 01:09:56.300 difference. 01:09:56.460 --> 01:10:01.020 Like if you look if you gave a bunch of people a glass of orange juice versus an orange and 01:10:01.020 --> 01:10:06.620 measured their blood sugars, you would see the juice spikes everybody and the fiber um 01:10:07.270 --> 01:10:08.710 buffers the spike. 01:10:09.110 --> 01:10:09.510 Got it. 01:10:09.750 --> 01:10:14.550 So why why are food companies uh stripping sugar of its fiber content? 01:10:14.710 --> 01:10:19.350 Is it just that it give gives a more concentrated dose of sweetness or like what what is 01:10:19.350 --> 01:10:20.310 the reasoning there? 01:10:20.790 --> 01:10:26.390 Well I mean just think about the difference between a croissant made from white flour and 01:10:26.710 --> 01:10:30.630 you know something that's really whole grainy and good. 01:10:30.950 --> 01:10:36.760 And I mean I personally like whole grain like I prefer it um but but it's not the 01:10:36.760 --> 01:10:37.240 standard. 01:10:37.400 --> 01:10:43.320 I mean, if you go into the grocery store and most of the aisles of food, which are 01:10:43.320 --> 01:10:46.600 based on what food companies think people will become addicted to. 01:10:46.680 --> 01:10:50.440 I mean, they have they have done a lot of research on what people like to eat and what they 01:10:50.440 --> 01:10:52.440 will become addicted to and buy more of. 01:10:52.680 --> 01:10:57.000 And they that has landed them on foods that have very little fiber in them. 01:10:57.160 --> 01:10:59.830 So I mean, it's it's just simpler. 01:10:59.990 --> 01:11:04.150 And I mean, actually, the initial reason is kind of interesting because one of the first 01:11:04.150 --> 01:11:09.830 times we started stripping wheat of fiber was around the time of the Great Depression. 01:11:10.070 --> 01:11:15.270 And another and it's it's because the whole wheat it goes bad more quickly. 01:11:15.430 --> 01:11:20.560 And so if you remove the fiber, which of course removes a lot of the nutrients, the fiber, 01:11:20.720 --> 01:11:23.600 um, sorry, the flour will not go rancid as quickly. 01:11:23.760 --> 01:11:29.200 And so during the Great Depression, I remember learning that they were processing a lot of 01:11:29.200 --> 01:11:33.920 the wheat flour and putting it on unrefrigerated trucks and taking it to like the dust 01:11:33.920 --> 01:11:38.080 bowl, basically, and making sure people had food, which obviously was a really good idea. 01:11:38.400 --> 01:11:44.130 But um, but that was uh that was a bit of a turning point, I think, in when 01:11:44.130 --> 01:11:49.570 we started having this like massive industrialized scale fiber removal 01:11:49.570 --> 01:11:51.410 happening of our wheat. 01:11:51.730 --> 01:11:51.970 Yeah. 01:11:52.130 --> 01:11:57.010 And I like I and I keep always having my like Germany experience, but like coming back to 01:11:57.010 --> 01:12:02.050 the US after 10 years away, my my overarching experience is like I feel like we're 01:12:02.050 --> 01:12:07.820 children, like all the bread at the grocery store is enriched or refined 01:12:07.820 --> 01:12:08.380 flour. 01:12:08.540 --> 01:12:13.100 In Germany, none of it is like you can't buy something that has if you read enriched flour, 01:12:13.180 --> 01:12:17.740 it means that they took the fiber out and they're just adding like stuff back, usually. 01:12:17.820 --> 01:12:19.660 Like it's not usually whole grain. 01:12:19.820 --> 01:12:25.010 Um, but the weird thing is when people visit Germany, or like if I like buy German bread 01:12:25.010 --> 01:12:26.610 and I give it to people, people love it. 01:12:26.770 --> 01:12:29.250 And people always say, I wish I could buy this here. 01:12:29.410 --> 01:12:33.170 I've had so many conversations with people across the political divide. 01:12:33.330 --> 01:12:33.570 Yeah. 01:12:33.730 --> 01:12:38.370 You know, like even, you know, like even visiting family back home, like places that where 01:12:38.370 --> 01:12:38.930 you wouldn't think. 01:12:39.010 --> 01:12:41.890 And people like, oh my God, I wish like I could get German bread here. 01:12:42.210 --> 01:12:47.360 I I even wonder like just this is an aside, but I even wonder if like the way people test 01:12:47.680 --> 01:12:52.960 food preferences is wrong in the sense of like it's like what David said is like something 01:12:52.960 --> 01:12:56.560 might taste good in a second, but then like you're like, ooh, do I want to eat more of 01:12:56.560 --> 01:12:56.720 that? 01:12:56.880 --> 01:12:59.280 Or do I want to come back to that or eat it a lot? 01:12:59.520 --> 01:13:03.360 And I actually don't know the answer to this, but like if you just bring people in and 01:13:03.360 --> 01:13:07.600 you're like, give them A, B, C, D, and E, and you're like, which do you prefer? 01:13:08.400 --> 01:13:14.070 That's different than which do you feel better eating day in and day out? 01:13:14.230 --> 01:13:18.390 Which do you prefer coming back to after you've felt the effects of it for a couple of 01:13:18.390 --> 01:13:20.710 hours or a couple of days or a couple of weeks? 01:13:20.950 --> 01:13:22.710 And I don't know if they're measuring that. 01:13:22.870 --> 01:13:28.550 So like even from like a very like market-based capitalist perspective, I actually wonder 01:13:28.550 --> 01:13:32.000 if like the way people are measuring desirability of food is wrong. 01:13:32.160 --> 01:13:35.920 I don't know this, but this but they must also be measuring it based on what people buy. 01:13:36.080 --> 01:13:37.840 I mean, those products would go out of business. 01:13:38.000 --> 01:13:41.840 Like the fact that there is a waterbread section in every store means that people are 01:13:41.840 --> 01:13:42.640 buying wonder bread. 01:13:42.880 --> 01:13:44.720 Like I think, you know. 01:13:45.040 --> 01:13:45.680 Yeah, yeah. 01:13:45.760 --> 01:13:46.240 I don't know. 01:13:46.400 --> 01:13:47.440 I always wonder that too. 01:13:47.680 --> 01:13:51.440 Just as I'm going through the store and I see a whole section of stuff that I'm like, gosh. 01:13:51.920 --> 01:13:52.320 This is garbage. 01:13:52.560 --> 01:13:54.800 I might like yeah, my yeah, my head is like this is garbage. 01:13:54.880 --> 01:13:56.480 You're feeding people garbage. 01:13:56.720 --> 01:13:57.040 Yeah. 01:13:57.280 --> 01:13:57.790 It's garb. 01:13:58.110 --> 01:13:59.630 Like it's literally it's like not food. 01:13:59.710 --> 01:13:59.950 Yeah. 01:14:00.190 --> 01:14:00.430 Yeah. 01:14:00.510 --> 01:14:03.390 But I but also it depends on how you grow up. 01:14:03.470 --> 01:14:09.470 And so you know, you have to respect that, but also figure out how to 01:14:09.470 --> 01:14:12.670 help people eat better, like in every situation, you know. 01:14:13.070 --> 01:14:13.150 Yeah. 01:14:17.070 --> 01:14:18.590 Like whatever that's money. 01:14:18.750 --> 01:14:22.110 I mean, people just to be slightly political, like people talk about redistribute 01:14:22.590 --> 01:14:24.780 redistribute redistribution of wealth. 01:14:24.940 --> 01:14:25.180 Yeah. 01:14:25.340 --> 01:14:30.860 But if you're if you're making money off of selling people unhealthy food, totally. 01:14:31.100 --> 01:14:37.020 I'm paying for somebody that person's profit, I'm paying for that's money coming, 01:14:37.100 --> 01:14:42.140 you know, if they get cancer or if they they're obese or whatever and they have health 01:14:42.140 --> 01:14:47.950 effects and colon cancer or, you know, their kids unhealthy, whatever, we're all paying for 01:14:47.950 --> 01:14:48.510 that, you know. 01:14:48.590 --> 01:14:51.150 So that's a redistribution just as much as anything else. 01:14:51.230 --> 01:14:51.390 Yeah. 01:14:51.630 --> 01:14:52.990 That's a really interesting point. 01:14:53.070 --> 01:14:54.110 I never thought about that. 01:14:54.270 --> 01:14:54.910 Yeah. 01:14:55.790 --> 01:15:01.470 So uh I mean, it could be that um when you strip away the fibrous content, it 01:15:01.470 --> 01:15:05.550 becomes easier for your body to just quickly extract the energy from the food. 01:15:05.630 --> 01:15:09.150 Whereas if there's a lot of fiber in it, as we know, if fiber sits in your gut for a long 01:15:09.150 --> 01:15:12.350 time, it takes a long time to extract all the nutrients from it. 01:15:12.430 --> 01:15:16.220 And so it could be that if you know, maybe we're making calculations where if we need the 01:15:16.220 --> 01:15:21.020 energy right now and we're discounting the future, then more processed foods with less 01:15:21.020 --> 01:15:24.220 fiber content are going to be more appealing to us because we're more concerned about 01:15:24.220 --> 01:15:28.540 getting that energy boost right now versus accumulating a healthy microbiome in the long 01:15:28.540 --> 01:15:28.700 run. 01:15:28.780 --> 01:15:29.180 I don't know. 01:15:29.260 --> 01:15:33.100 I mean, I I'm sure Daniel Nettle has lots of opinions on this because he does research on 01:15:33.180 --> 01:15:39.100 uh how poverty affects uh uh uh temporal discounting and diet choices and obesity. 01:15:39.180 --> 01:15:43.020 And so that that could be playing a role that if you're discounting the future more and and 01:15:43.020 --> 01:15:47.690 you have more of a need for immediate energy and perhaps storing fat for future food 01:15:47.690 --> 01:15:50.330 insecurity, uh, that that could contribute to this. 01:15:50.730 --> 01:15:52.250 Yeah, I totally see that point. 01:15:52.410 --> 01:15:57.610 And I mean, even just in terms of getting through the day, you know, it's more convenient 01:15:57.610 --> 01:15:58.970 to eat processed foods. 01:15:59.050 --> 01:15:59.930 You don't have to cook them. 01:16:00.010 --> 01:16:02.570 I mean, it just all around just takes less resources. 01:16:02.730 --> 01:16:03.450 That's true. 01:16:03.690 --> 01:16:04.090 Yeah. 01:16:04.250 --> 01:16:10.200 Um, but yeah, the the blood sugar, the point about the time for digestion has really 01:16:10.200 --> 01:16:11.720 big blood sugar impacts. 01:16:11.880 --> 01:16:17.640 And so um it's it is a good trick to know that if you include fiber in your meal, 01:16:17.720 --> 01:16:23.000 um it will be much easier for your body to weather the sugar spike storm. 01:16:23.160 --> 01:16:28.410 And so I think a lot of people don't know uh very much about that and that that could could 01:16:28.410 --> 01:16:32.570 help people make decisions because they might not realize what the consequences are. 01:16:32.730 --> 01:16:36.250 If everyone's just addicted to processed foods and not thinking about it from that 01:16:36.250 --> 01:16:40.170 perspective, it's harder to make choices like that. 01:16:40.410 --> 01:16:40.730 Yeah. 01:16:40.970 --> 01:16:45.050 It's it's just it's funny because like it's sort of like cooking, you know, like cooking 01:16:45.050 --> 01:16:48.890 with care and love and ingredients that matter is the solution. 01:16:48.970 --> 01:16:51.480 And that's like a hard thing when people are busy. 01:16:51.640 --> 01:16:54.920 Or I mean it's not that hard, but it you can you can imagine it's just sort of like 01:16:54.920 --> 01:16:55.880 exercise and sleep. 01:16:55.960 --> 01:17:01.960 You know, it's sort of like, you know, it's it's uh it's simple, straightforward, not 01:17:01.960 --> 01:17:05.000 the easiest thing, maybe not the most profitable thing. 01:17:05.320 --> 01:17:05.560 Yeah. 01:17:05.800 --> 01:17:08.760 But but it's but it comes back to like taking an evolutionary approach. 01:17:08.840 --> 01:17:13.000 Like I, you know, we we talk a lot about there's things you just wouldn't think of if you 01:17:13.000 --> 01:17:14.120 don't take an evolutionary approach. 01:17:14.200 --> 01:17:20.050 If you don't take the idea that we're really complicated and we evolved around a lot of 01:17:20.050 --> 01:17:24.690 invariances in the environment, including the kind of food we're eating. 01:17:25.010 --> 01:17:26.610 And there's a lot of ways in which we're better. 01:17:26.690 --> 01:17:27.890 Like we're not killing each other. 01:17:28.050 --> 01:17:32.530 We don't have to like, you know, as you said, like zoonotic infection is much lower. 01:17:33.330 --> 01:17:38.770 Um, but but but it sounds like we just we're learning about this whole new area where we 01:17:38.770 --> 01:17:44.260 can um we might have been doing high, high cost, low 01:17:44.340 --> 01:17:45.780 benefit, dumb things. 01:17:46.020 --> 01:17:51.780 And if we learn more about this new part of our phenotype that we didn't really know much 01:17:51.780 --> 01:17:57.540 about, we still don't know much about, we can do some low-cost, high benefit possible. 01:17:57.940 --> 01:18:01.780 Yeah, I mean, in the same way that we were just popping the antibiotics, thinking that were 01:18:01.940 --> 01:18:04.420 there was only a positive outcome from that. 01:18:04.990 --> 01:18:10.190 eating white flour has consequences we might not have really been aware of as we were 01:18:10.190 --> 01:18:13.310 making that choice, you know, in processed foods without the fiber. 01:18:13.630 --> 01:18:18.830 And I mean, we're I mean, we're PhDs in evolutionary sciences, we're learning stuff real 01:18:18.830 --> 01:18:19.150 time. 01:18:19.390 --> 01:18:23.630 And I mean, most people don't have the luxury of having that training. 01:18:23.710 --> 01:18:24.750 And I mean, why would you think? 01:18:24.990 --> 01:18:26.030 It's like it's bread, right? 01:18:26.110 --> 01:18:27.630 Like bread is bread is bread, right? 01:18:27.790 --> 01:18:27.950 Yeah. 01:18:28.190 --> 01:18:30.510 Calories are calories are calories. 01:18:30.670 --> 01:18:35.140 Um, and the idea that that's not true, you know, most people don't have the luxury of 01:18:35.140 --> 01:18:38.580 learning that's not true, and there's not a lot of incentive right now. 01:18:38.740 --> 01:18:42.020 Yeah, it sounds like to disabuse people of that idea. 01:18:42.340 --> 01:18:47.700 Yeah, the other one that I think is kind of an important um piece of knowledge is the 01:18:47.700 --> 01:18:50.580 difference between mirrorac and metamusal. 01:18:50.820 --> 01:18:55.940 So a lot of people have constipation, and even kids, I know families where the kid is 01:18:55.940 --> 01:18:59.620 getting mirrorac every single day to help with constipation. 01:18:59.970 --> 01:19:02.930 Mirlax it comes is polyethylene glycol. 01:19:03.170 --> 01:19:09.010 It's not uh fiber at all, it's um it's a molecule that causes some goopiness 01:19:09.090 --> 01:19:14.130 the same way that fiber does, it draws the water out of the system, but it also the way it 01:19:14.130 --> 01:19:17.810 impacts your microbiome is actually quite negative. 01:19:18.050 --> 01:19:23.810 And so, for example, if you give mice antibiotics and then you compare mirlax, 01:19:23.890 --> 01:19:28.820 which is polyethylene glycol, versus metamucil, which is made from psilium husks. 01:19:28.900 --> 01:19:30.900 Metamucil is actually fiber. 01:19:31.060 --> 01:19:35.780 Metamucil is like, you know, it's processed a bit, but it's still fiber and it came from 01:19:35.780 --> 01:19:36.340 plants. 01:19:36.580 --> 01:19:42.180 If you give mice antibiotics and then you give them either mirloc miralax or metamucel, 01:19:42.580 --> 01:19:47.540 the mice that get mirrorax will get a terrible infection and very likely die from sepsis. 01:19:47.860 --> 01:19:53.030 Whereas the um the uh mice that get the mirror the 01:19:53.030 --> 01:19:57.350 metamucle, which is the orangey flavored version of psyllium husks. 01:19:57.430 --> 01:19:59.430 And I mean, you can just buy psyllium husks too. 01:19:59.670 --> 01:20:02.390 That's fiber, and those mice will do better. 01:20:02.630 --> 01:20:07.990 So even just like from a treating constipation in the hospital or at home or whatever 01:20:08.230 --> 01:20:13.190 perspective, like you can really change your infection outcomes by knowing that piece of 01:20:13.190 --> 01:20:13.510 information. 01:20:13.670 --> 01:20:15.750 Like a lot of doctors I know don't know that. 01:20:15.990 --> 01:20:16.470 Wow. 01:20:16.790 --> 01:20:22.240 So very very cool stuff, uh uh and and interesting and useful. 01:20:22.480 --> 01:20:28.400 Um I'm curious, I want to go back to this uh brain in our guts, because I 01:20:28.400 --> 01:20:30.080 find this quite mysterious. 01:20:30.320 --> 01:20:34.720 Uh what do we have neurons down there and what are they uh what are they doing? 01:20:34.960 --> 01:20:39.280 Like w what kinds of computations are these gut neurons doing? 01:20:39.440 --> 01:20:41.360 Why do we have so many neurons down there? 01:20:41.440 --> 01:20:43.920 I'm curious uh if you have any ideas on this question. 01:20:44.250 --> 01:20:50.170 I mean, I have mostly questions myself, but you're at UCLA and I can tell you that like 01:20:50.330 --> 01:20:54.970 some of the best people in the world thinking about these questions are also at UCLA. 01:20:55.050 --> 01:20:58.490 So I I mean you maybe you want to invite one of them on and like I want to listen to that 01:20:58.490 --> 01:20:58.890 interview. 01:20:59.050 --> 01:21:00.090 But um Yeah. 01:21:00.330 --> 01:21:04.170 So I mean, what are some reasons we would have neurons in our guts? 01:21:04.330 --> 01:21:06.480 I mean, I don't know. 01:21:06.640 --> 01:21:07.360 I really don't know. 01:21:07.520 --> 01:21:12.960 I mean, I I can feel it myself, like the whole thing about butterflies in your stomach, or 01:21:13.280 --> 01:21:19.280 um, you know, using our guts as part of our intuition for for like how 01:21:19.280 --> 01:21:20.160 we feel about things. 01:21:20.320 --> 01:21:25.680 I mean, I have experienced that myself, but I don't I I also know that societies can be 01:21:25.680 --> 01:21:31.650 very tricked by um what they know about their organs, like you know, maybe you've 01:21:31.650 --> 01:21:35.890 heard how in Egypt everyone thought that their brain was their thinking center was in their 01:21:35.890 --> 01:21:36.370 heart. 01:21:36.610 --> 01:21:36.850 Yeah. 01:21:37.090 --> 01:21:38.770 I always think about what that must have felt like. 01:21:38.850 --> 01:21:41.570 I mean, I don't know what they thought was going on in their brain, but apparently they 01:21:41.570 --> 01:21:47.330 just when they were m um preserving bodies, they would just throw their brains 01:21:47.330 --> 01:21:47.890 away. 01:21:48.690 --> 01:21:50.530 They didn't even think that was important. 01:21:50.930 --> 01:21:55.490 So here we are kind of learning something massive about our own bodies that we have all 01:21:55.490 --> 01:21:58.980 these neurons in our guts, and are they doing? 01:21:59.060 --> 01:22:04.980 I mean, clearly they're gathering information and sending that information 01:22:04.980 --> 01:22:06.420 back to our brains. 01:22:08.980 --> 01:22:14.660 I really like this idea that, or I mean, I think it's really important to understand that 01:22:14.660 --> 01:22:19.380 you have these neuroendocrine cells that are producing hormones that affect your well-being 01:22:19.380 --> 01:22:20.900 in every possible way. 01:22:21.220 --> 01:22:26.990 And so if you are eating foods that promote a healthy microbiome, then you're going to 01:22:26.990 --> 01:22:30.990 promote healthy communication with those neuroendocrine cells. 01:22:31.790 --> 01:22:37.710 One of the biggest discoveries in this area is that we have microbes that 01:22:37.710 --> 01:22:39.870 can transport serotonin. 01:22:40.430 --> 01:22:43.870 And this it UCLA is a center of this research. 01:22:44.030 --> 01:22:46.510 Elaine Shaw's lab has made a lot of these discoveries. 01:22:46.590 --> 01:22:50.990 And we found it, I've done an Alzheimer's disease research project, and we found the same 01:22:50.990 --> 01:22:51.390 thing. 01:22:52.100 --> 01:22:54.820 that these microbes can transport serotonin. 01:22:54.900 --> 01:23:00.580 And in my mind, it could also be that when those microbes are being sustained, 01:23:00.900 --> 01:23:06.420 they are signaling to the neuroendocrine cells to also produce more serotonin. 01:23:06.500 --> 01:23:07.620 So it's like a loop. 01:23:07.860 --> 01:23:13.700 And so I think part of how this is all working, and the reason you have so many 01:23:13.700 --> 01:23:19.590 nervous system cells in your gut is that your brain wants to like have some 01:23:19.590 --> 01:23:24.710 impact on the production of these hormones and the location of their production is your 01:23:24.710 --> 01:23:25.030 gut. 01:23:25.510 --> 01:23:28.070 So it's like a communication system. 01:23:28.390 --> 01:23:28.950 Wow. 01:23:29.190 --> 01:23:35.110 And um, and when you have the right microbe there transporting 01:23:35.110 --> 01:23:37.590 the serotonin, it's probably releasing signals. 01:23:37.670 --> 01:23:42.150 This I don't think this is known yet, but um, you know, it's probably releasing signals 01:23:42.150 --> 01:23:47.720 that tell the neuroendocrine cells like, hey, get get us some more of that serotonin going, 01:23:47.800 --> 01:23:53.720 please, you know, and then that has impact on your well being for lots 01:23:53.720 --> 01:23:55.080 of known and unknown reasons. 01:23:55.400 --> 01:23:58.760 So the gut is a is a hormone factory. 01:24:00.040 --> 01:24:03.320 Or it's the fuel for the hormone factory. 01:24:03.640 --> 01:24:07.560 Yeah, there's other locations of hormone production, so it's not the only one. 01:24:08.040 --> 01:24:09.000 Yes, it is an important one. 01:24:09.480 --> 01:24:10.040 Fuel, right? 01:24:10.120 --> 01:24:11.240 It's yeah, wow. 01:24:11.480 --> 01:24:11.640 Yeah. 01:24:12.090 --> 01:24:15.770 You can think of it as like, you know, the the the trucks containing the materials to build 01:24:15.770 --> 01:24:16.330 the power lines. 01:24:16.570 --> 01:24:16.810 Exactly. 01:24:17.050 --> 01:24:20.970 You know, it's like there needs to be some communication between the power lines and what 01:24:20.970 --> 01:24:24.410 materials they need to sustain themselves and the and the trucks that transport the, you 01:24:24.410 --> 01:24:25.210 know, those materials. 01:24:25.530 --> 01:24:25.610 Yeah. 01:24:25.690 --> 01:24:30.250 And like if the trucks all get flat tires, then somebody needs to like talk about that or 01:24:30.490 --> 01:24:31.530 figure out, or you know. 01:24:31.770 --> 01:24:31.930 Yeah. 01:24:32.090 --> 01:24:33.050 It's a really good metaphor. 01:24:33.130 --> 01:24:37.770 Yeah, doing like the take a step back and be an adaptationist about like if if there's an 01:24:37.770 --> 01:24:42.840 organism, what are the functions that have to be hooked up to the material delivery system? 01:24:42.920 --> 01:24:45.960 And what would you want to know about what materials are being delivered, which ones are 01:24:45.960 --> 01:24:47.480 low, which ones are high? 01:24:47.720 --> 01:24:51.800 I mean, I find the whole thing about like craving food to be magical. 01:24:51.960 --> 01:24:56.120 Like, how does my body know right that I want cantaloupe? 01:24:56.280 --> 01:25:00.680 Like, how does my like what in me sort of knows there's something missing that it's in 01:25:00.680 --> 01:25:05.650 cantaloupe that somehow the system that knows what a cantaloupe is, which is outside my 01:25:05.650 --> 01:25:07.810 body, some part like I find this magical. 01:25:08.130 --> 01:25:12.050 Yeah, I mean that to me, I've always wondered how much truth there is in that. 01:25:12.210 --> 01:25:15.090 I think I've I've also always been very interested in that question. 01:25:15.170 --> 01:25:19.970 And I don't really know how much how much truth is in it, but it's very interesting. 01:25:20.130 --> 01:25:26.020 I mean, we also we s we now have like urban cases of scurvy, for example, where people are 01:25:26.020 --> 01:25:29.380 just like eating toast even of course we do, yes. 01:25:29.540 --> 01:25:33.380 And I mean, of course and maybe they really don't have access to fresh foods and so that's 01:25:33.380 --> 01:25:35.860 like a societal problem and not an individual problem. 01:25:36.020 --> 01:25:42.020 But I mean to me is amazing that p it'll be difficult to diagnose because it's uncommon, 01:25:42.100 --> 01:25:47.950 but um but that actually happens and so yeah yeah I is there is there research like 01:25:48.030 --> 01:25:52.510 this is for all of us does anybody know like the feeling of like I feel good after getting 01:25:52.510 --> 01:25:58.430 exercise or I feel good after eating this kind of food is there's is there research on that 01:25:58.590 --> 01:26:04.590 like it feels like in the Venn diagram of psychology and physiology and microbiology like 01:26:04.670 --> 01:26:09.710 as a psychology professor you know I teach intro psych yeah I mean I I I took a motivation 01:26:09.710 --> 01:26:15.380 class and that talked about like hunger and thirst maybe I'm ignorant but yeah do does it I 01:26:15.380 --> 01:26:16.740 don't know, does anybody know? 01:26:16.820 --> 01:26:21.940 Like, is there is there research on like the feeling good you get when you eat well or you 01:26:21.940 --> 01:26:24.900 get exercise and like what's up with like is is there? 01:26:25.540 --> 01:26:31.300 Yeah, I mean here at UCI we have a physiology department and there's people that work on um 01:26:31.620 --> 01:26:37.140 the post exercise high and like the molecules that are released with exercise. 01:26:37.300 --> 01:26:39.220 So I on that side I definitely know. 01:26:39.380 --> 01:26:42.980 I don't know as much about that on the food side, but I mean there is a lot of food 01:26:42.980 --> 01:26:43.540 research. 01:26:43.700 --> 01:26:44.020 Yeah. 01:26:44.260 --> 01:26:45.390 So I don't know. 01:26:45.470 --> 01:26:46.670 Do you know, David? 01:26:47.710 --> 01:26:49.150 I I honestly have no idea. 01:26:49.230 --> 01:26:49.470 Yeah. 01:26:49.550 --> 01:26:55.550 It's just it's uh there's just so many questions, such a vast field to I mean, 01:26:55.710 --> 01:26:58.750 even just like the subtlety of our food cravings. 01:26:58.910 --> 01:27:03.310 Like I often have like a strong craving for pickles or something or or whatever, and like 01:27:03.470 --> 01:27:08.430 uh and I I feel gross after like eating something that's like really greasy and heavy and I 01:27:08.430 --> 01:27:11.660 just wanna you know get go into a food coma is the is the expression. 01:27:11.820 --> 01:27:14.220 But other foods that they don't have that effect on me. 01:27:14.300 --> 01:27:20.220 And the like just these subtle uh effects that that specific kinds of foods have on 01:27:20.220 --> 01:27:20.380 us. 01:27:20.460 --> 01:27:23.340 I feel like it's such an understudied and important topic. 01:27:23.740 --> 01:27:23.980 Yeah. 01:27:24.380 --> 01:27:29.180 Or just even the difference between cats and dogs, where like cats don't overdo it, and 01:27:29.180 --> 01:27:32.140 dogs are more like us, and they'll just like eat themselves to death. 01:27:32.540 --> 01:27:38.310 Although, although I had a cat who is a main part main coon, and boy, she would eat the The 01:27:38.310 --> 01:27:41.270 vet was like, it was like, yeah, you can't give her all the food she wants. 01:27:41.350 --> 01:27:42.630 Like, you can't do outlips. 01:27:43.590 --> 01:27:48.710 Um, we before uh um, you know, we were we're not at the end yet, but we're getting closer 01:27:48.710 --> 01:27:49.030 to the end. 01:27:49.110 --> 01:27:53.910 I do want to ask you, you mentioned something about phages and amazing work you're doing on 01:27:53.910 --> 01:27:54.070 that. 01:27:54.390 --> 01:28:00.060 Can you talk a little bit about what is a phage and what are you doing with them to uh 01:28:00.060 --> 01:28:01.020 help people? 01:28:01.580 --> 01:28:02.140 Yeah. 01:28:02.540 --> 01:28:03.020 Thank you. 01:28:03.180 --> 01:28:06.700 Um, so phages are viruses that infect bacteria. 01:28:06.780 --> 01:28:11.420 And so basically, every cell on the planet has viruses infecting them. 01:28:11.500 --> 01:28:16.140 So we hear about the famous viruses like HIV and COVID, but they're rare. 01:28:16.300 --> 01:28:19.820 Most viruses are not pathogens, but there are viruses everywhere. 01:28:19.980 --> 01:28:23.660 So every single one of these bacteria that we've been talking about in our microbiomes 01:28:23.900 --> 01:28:26.300 probably has about 10 viruses infecting it. 01:28:26.730 --> 01:28:27.050 Wow. 01:28:27.370 --> 01:28:29.610 That's very comp it's things are complicated. 01:28:29.850 --> 01:28:30.170 Yeah. 01:28:30.490 --> 01:28:32.890 We're just we're just Russian dolls of things inside of things. 01:28:33.210 --> 01:28:33.690 Oh my God. 01:28:34.010 --> 01:28:34.250 Exactly. 01:28:34.410 --> 01:28:39.610 Russian dolls of sometimes it's almost like I wish I wasn't a Darwinian worldview person. 01:28:39.770 --> 01:28:44.250 Just like everything is simple and like it's like, oh my God, like the have the bacteria 01:28:44.250 --> 01:28:47.210 have this whole world of yeah that's crazy. 01:28:47.290 --> 01:28:47.850 And that's wonderful. 01:28:47.930 --> 01:28:52.810 But yeah, please well it's I mean it helped it's viruses like really help make the world 01:28:52.810 --> 01:28:53.050 work. 01:28:53.130 --> 01:28:58.400 You know, viruses can evolve quickly, they can like bring new traits really quickly. 01:28:58.560 --> 01:29:03.840 Like if you give antibiotics to somebody and then you measure all the antibiotic resistance 01:29:03.840 --> 01:29:08.560 genes that have emerged out of that system, a lot of them come from viruses moving between 01:29:08.560 --> 01:29:10.080 cells and sharing that trait. 01:29:10.240 --> 01:29:13.840 And then it's like that trait became pretty important right then because the antibiotic is 01:29:13.840 --> 01:29:15.600 coming through and gets selected for. 01:29:15.760 --> 01:29:20.480 And so then all of a sudden every bacteria that could take on a virus that could help it 01:29:20.480 --> 01:29:22.400 get that trait is the one that would survive. 01:29:22.480 --> 01:29:26.510 You know, so you could see how there's like sweeps of selection pressures where the viruses 01:29:26.670 --> 01:29:30.670 bring traits that are like the money move that makes them survive, you know. 01:29:31.070 --> 01:29:31.230 Yeah. 01:29:31.310 --> 01:29:35.950 So viruses are like the closest thing to like pure natural selection almost. 01:29:36.030 --> 01:29:41.470 They're just like this like really uh supernaturally selected minimal phenotype things, 01:29:41.550 --> 01:29:41.870 like almost. 01:29:42.110 --> 01:29:45.150 Yeah, I mean maybe they literally they're just selfish genes, that's all they are. 01:29:45.630 --> 01:29:45.950 Yeah. 01:29:47.390 --> 01:29:53.040 So as a result, I mean, just there are all these viruses, bacterial viruses, 01:29:53.440 --> 01:29:57.600 and um and they are the enemy of our enemy sometimes. 01:29:57.680 --> 01:30:03.040 So if you have an infection with a pathogen and antibiotics aren't working anymore, you 01:30:03.040 --> 01:30:06.720 could use a virus, a phage, to kill that bacteria. 01:30:06.880 --> 01:30:08.160 And it's not a new idea. 01:30:08.320 --> 01:30:11.520 It's actually been known since before we had antibiotics. 01:30:11.680 --> 01:30:16.310 And so before we had antibiotics, people were using phages to treat infections. 01:30:16.790 --> 01:30:21.590 When Elizabeth Taylor was filming Cleopatra in England, she got a staph infection and they 01:30:21.590 --> 01:30:24.150 treated her infection with a phage and she survived. 01:30:24.470 --> 01:30:26.470 And there's like a lot of stories like that. 01:30:26.950 --> 01:30:31.750 And actually, in the former Soviet republics, that type of treatment continued. 01:30:31.830 --> 01:30:36.950 And so when antibiotics became big in the US and Europe, there was less access in the 01:30:36.950 --> 01:30:40.280 USSR, and people kept going with phages. 01:30:40.440 --> 01:30:46.040 So, for example, at the Eliava Institute in Tbilisi, Georgia, phages are produced to treat 01:30:46.040 --> 01:30:50.520 infections, and that's like the most normal way to handle bacterial infections in that part 01:30:50.520 --> 01:30:51.080 of the world. 01:30:51.240 --> 01:30:52.680 So it's like really continued. 01:30:52.760 --> 01:30:57.320 We have some evidence, or I mean, kind of a lot of evidence, but it's not been formally 01:30:57.480 --> 01:31:01.160 clinically researched from all of that activity. 01:31:01.650 --> 01:31:07.170 And then as more and more antibiotic resistant infections have started to emerge in our 01:31:07.170 --> 01:31:10.850 part of the world, there's been a resurgence of interest in the phages. 01:31:11.410 --> 01:31:15.650 And so I started studying them more like from an ecology perspective, like what kind of 01:31:15.650 --> 01:31:20.050 viruses are there in people, like probably 10 or 15 years ago. 01:31:20.530 --> 01:31:25.010 But then I started getting requests from people who had terrible infections, like, can you 01:31:25.010 --> 01:31:28.450 find a phage that will infect my bacteria? 01:31:28.690 --> 01:31:34.120 And so the student the students here at UC Irvine are very enthusiastic about the prospect 01:31:34.120 --> 01:31:36.040 of helping someone in a wonderful way. 01:31:36.120 --> 01:31:42.040 And so basically, I've had this team of students hunting phages against infecting pathogens 01:31:42.040 --> 01:31:43.800 for like more than 10 years. 01:31:43.960 --> 01:31:49.560 And so we get wastewater samples from local SoCal wastewater 01:31:49.560 --> 01:31:50.760 treatment plants. 01:31:51.000 --> 01:31:56.870 And wastewater actually is a wonderful summarized source of 01:31:56.870 --> 01:32:01.910 information about all of the human infections and bacteria. 01:32:02.310 --> 01:32:05.110 So there's tons and tons of phages in wastewater. 01:32:05.190 --> 01:32:07.590 And this is a this is a common approach. 01:32:07.750 --> 01:32:10.390 There's dozens of labs around the world doing this. 01:32:10.630 --> 01:32:15.990 And so we'll get the pathogen from the clinical microlab, we'll hunt a phage out of the 01:32:15.990 --> 01:32:16.870 wastewater. 01:32:17.110 --> 01:32:21.860 We're usually able to find a phage, and now we have several hundred in our freezers from 01:32:21.860 --> 01:32:23.540 all this year, all these years of searching. 01:32:23.700 --> 01:32:27.380 So now when we get a new isolate in, we check our freezers first. 01:32:27.460 --> 01:32:30.260 And if none of those work, then we'll go hunt a new phage. 01:32:30.500 --> 01:32:34.820 And now we also I have a cold room with like a collection of wastewater, and the same way 01:32:34.820 --> 01:32:38.900 some people collect wine, we did wastewater. 01:32:39.780 --> 01:32:42.580 And we know Riverside 2020, right? 01:32:42.740 --> 01:32:43.540 Or something like that. 01:32:43.620 --> 01:32:43.860 Yeah. 01:32:44.180 --> 01:32:44.820 No, for real. 01:32:44.900 --> 01:32:50.830 Like there's this one sample from Escondido in 2020 that always has 01:32:50.830 --> 01:32:52.510 stenotropomonas phages in it. 01:32:52.590 --> 01:32:55.550 So when we can't find a stenophage, we're like go back to that one. 01:32:55.710 --> 01:33:00.910 And then, you know, the students have sometimes the students have connections to different 01:33:00.910 --> 01:33:02.190 wastewater treatment plants. 01:33:02.270 --> 01:33:05.470 Like one of them had a dad who worked at one, or another student. 01:33:05.870 --> 01:33:06.190 Amazing. 01:33:06.430 --> 01:33:06.590 Yeah. 01:33:06.670 --> 01:33:10.030 And then they'll like know how to get a new kind of wastewater into the system for us. 01:33:10.350 --> 01:33:11.950 So you're like a phage sommelier. 01:33:12.110 --> 01:33:13.470 You're like, you're like, yeah. 01:33:13.840 --> 01:33:17.120 I think we should do Escondino 2020 for this. 01:33:17.200 --> 01:33:18.400 Maybe that's a good place to start. 01:33:18.480 --> 01:33:18.640 Yeah. 01:33:18.880 --> 01:33:23.520 And actually we had when the pandemic hit, we had wastewater from the Orange County 01:33:23.520 --> 01:33:28.240 Sanitation District that we had collected every two weeks for the year before the pandemic 01:33:28.240 --> 01:33:28.720 started. 01:33:28.880 --> 01:33:34.160 And it got us into a whole wastewater sequencing project, um, which is a different story. 01:33:34.320 --> 01:33:36.640 But um and that really has persisted. 01:33:36.800 --> 01:33:41.210 Now there's actual wastewater surveillance happening at a national level with like real 01:33:41.290 --> 01:33:42.570 relatively good infrastructure. 01:33:42.650 --> 01:33:43.210 It's pretty cool. 01:33:43.450 --> 01:33:43.610 Wow. 01:33:43.690 --> 01:33:48.330 And just to clarify, so all this, the main mechanism is just differential reproductive 01:33:48.330 --> 01:33:48.570 success. 01:33:48.730 --> 01:33:53.690 So you basically expose something, you're like, this is the um the thing, the bacteria we 01:33:53.690 --> 01:33:54.970 want to destroy. 01:33:55.130 --> 01:34:01.130 Um we sort of just see uh if there's something that sort of can differentially infect it 01:34:01.130 --> 01:34:02.090 or affect it. 01:34:02.660 --> 01:34:02.820 Right. 01:34:02.980 --> 01:34:08.420 Like if you if you have a bacterial community, an infection growing in your body and the 01:34:08.420 --> 01:34:10.500 antibiotics are not are not working. 01:34:10.580 --> 01:34:15.620 So the bacteria is resistant to the antibiotics, but you find a phage that can infect that 01:34:15.620 --> 01:34:21.540 bacteria, you treat the person with that phage, the virus will infect the cells and pop 01:34:21.540 --> 01:34:22.580 them open and kill them. 01:34:22.870 --> 01:34:23.030 Right. 01:34:23.190 --> 01:34:28.390 And even if it doesn't kill all of them, what what I hope for is just like a bit of a 01:34:28.390 --> 01:34:28.710 boost. 01:34:28.870 --> 01:34:33.510 So like sometimes we find that there's synergy where when you combine the antibiotics and 01:34:33.510 --> 01:34:36.310 the phages, the antibiotics work a little better too. 01:34:36.470 --> 01:34:39.750 So maybe like as a team, they can do the infection better. 01:34:39.830 --> 01:34:41.430 And then you've got your immune system. 01:34:41.590 --> 01:34:41.830 Yeah. 01:34:41.990 --> 01:34:47.680 So between the antibiotic, the phage, and the immune system, you now have like a new handle 01:34:47.680 --> 01:34:48.640 on the infection, basically. 01:34:49.040 --> 01:34:49.440 Dream two. 01:34:49.760 --> 01:34:50.240 Yeah, exactly. 01:34:50.400 --> 01:34:56.160 How do you how do you so you have a sample of the bacteria and you have wastewater, how do 01:34:56.160 --> 01:35:00.960 you tell which phage is or how do you get the how do you go from wastewater and your 01:35:00.960 --> 01:35:01.360 sample? 01:35:01.520 --> 01:35:01.920 What's that? 01:35:02.160 --> 01:35:03.200 Yeah, great question. 01:35:03.440 --> 01:35:07.680 So we grow up the bacteria that we want to be able to infect. 01:35:07.950 --> 01:35:10.910 And then we add a little bit of wastewater to it. 01:35:11.150 --> 01:35:16.190 And then we it we filter the wastewater so there's less bacterial cells and there's more 01:35:16.430 --> 01:35:18.030 smaller viruses in there. 01:35:18.270 --> 01:35:22.670 And then we pour an agar plate that you've probably seen an image of before. 01:35:22.750 --> 01:35:27.070 And there's like some details that you have to like kind of change the texture of the agar 01:35:27.230 --> 01:35:29.230 to make the phages be able to show up. 01:35:29.470 --> 01:35:34.270 But then what you'll end up with if you succeed, the next day you'll come in and you'll 01:35:34.270 --> 01:35:40.020 find a white bacterial lawn that has little clearance zones, little circles, and those 01:35:40.020 --> 01:35:43.060 represent a phage eating the white bacterial background. 01:35:43.540 --> 01:35:45.220 So if you come in and we call it a plaque. 01:35:45.300 --> 01:35:49.620 So if you come in and you've done your plaque assay and you see some plaques, some little 01:35:49.620 --> 01:35:53.140 clearances where the phage killed the bacteria, that's your phage. 01:35:53.460 --> 01:35:58.740 And it's usually like a big mix the first t time, and then you have to like purify it a 01:35:58.740 --> 01:36:01.220 bunch of times to try to get it down to being one phage. 01:36:01.460 --> 01:36:01.620 Right. 01:36:01.700 --> 01:36:03.540 So you're it's art it's artificial selection. 01:36:03.620 --> 01:36:08.970 So you're basically just saying, like, look, here's the victim hopefully yeah the bacteria 01:36:09.130 --> 01:36:13.850 and you're just making little battlefields and then you're just sort of like is there 01:36:13.850 --> 01:36:19.610 something that is I'm gonna look to see that actually kills this that's replicating 01:36:19.690 --> 01:36:23.530 based on the fact that it's killing it and that's how you discover it. 01:36:23.850 --> 01:36:24.970 Yes, exactly. 01:36:25.210 --> 01:36:25.450 Cool. 01:36:25.530 --> 01:36:26.760 So you're artificially selecting. 01:36:26.840 --> 01:36:26.920 Yeah. 01:36:27.240 --> 01:36:31.320 And then from there, I mean, the amazing part is that there aren't just like companies 01:36:31.320 --> 01:36:32.920 manufacturing phages right now. 01:36:33.000 --> 01:36:36.360 And it and antibiotics have a weird economics to them. 01:36:36.520 --> 01:36:38.440 Um, they're not chronic medicines. 01:36:38.520 --> 01:36:44.040 Like blockbuster meds are like statins or you know, Ozempic, something people will need for 01:36:44.040 --> 01:36:44.600 a long time. 01:36:44.680 --> 01:36:47.480 So the they're chronic and can be profitable. 01:36:47.640 --> 01:36:51.800 Antibiotics are these acute treatments and pharma has not been investing in them because 01:36:51.800 --> 01:36:53.890 they don't pay back the RD. 01:36:54.370 --> 01:36:57.330 And the government hasn't really been investing in them very much either. 01:36:57.490 --> 01:37:01.490 So there's been a real lag in antibiotic discovery in the last couple of decades. 01:37:01.890 --> 01:37:04.690 Meantime, the infections are getting worse and worse. 01:37:04.770 --> 01:37:08.370 And so like the predictions for how many antibiotic-resistant infections we're going to 01:37:08.370 --> 01:37:11.090 have in the next couple of decades are like staggering. 01:37:11.170 --> 01:37:15.820 Like more people will die from antibiotic-resistant infections than cancer by the next 01:37:15.820 --> 01:37:16.700 decade or two. 01:37:16.940 --> 01:37:20.220 So there's like a lot of motivation to find alternatives. 01:37:20.300 --> 01:37:24.460 And the phages are an alternative, but they're still a little bit homemade. 01:37:24.540 --> 01:37:26.860 Like we don't have them at an industrial scale at all. 01:37:27.020 --> 01:37:31.580 So literally, labs like mine, like academic labs, I am not a pharmaceutical person. 01:37:31.660 --> 01:37:35.020 I'm like a I normally teach undergrads micro, you know what I mean? 01:37:35.500 --> 01:37:39.050 And um people in my lab will produce the phage. 01:37:39.450 --> 01:37:43.690 Um, and we'll follow we you each phage will be really finicky and we'll have to come up 01:37:43.690 --> 01:37:47.610 with a kind of specific protocol that that particular phage will cooperate with. 01:37:47.770 --> 01:37:53.130 And then we'll write down our method and send it to the FDA and ask them if they approve us 01:37:53.130 --> 01:37:54.010 to use this treatment. 01:37:54.090 --> 01:38:00.010 And we also take the phage and send it for third-party sterility and endotoxin testing so 01:38:00.010 --> 01:38:03.690 that it's not just our lab saying, like, yep, we think it's sterile, you know. 01:38:03.850 --> 01:38:04.170 Yeah. 01:38:04.400 --> 01:38:09.440 Um, and then and then that's in the United States, there's three or four labs doing this. 01:38:09.520 --> 01:38:14.400 And I'd say in the last five or ten years, like less than a hundred people have received 01:38:14.400 --> 01:38:15.360 treatment like this. 01:38:15.600 --> 01:38:20.880 Um, but we have we've we did one case last year and we have like about 20 cases that were 01:38:20.960 --> 01:38:23.360 like in the middle of trying to produce phages for people. 01:38:23.760 --> 01:38:28.080 And a case means like what's the one case like it's literally somebody who is like, I have 01:38:28.080 --> 01:38:33.550 a a disease or an infection that I can't I that I don't know that the yeah, what is can you 01:38:33.710 --> 01:38:35.070 yeah, what is Yeah, definitely. 01:38:35.150 --> 01:38:39.710 So um it a case is we we asked for the cases to be more chronic. 01:38:39.790 --> 01:38:43.790 Initially, we were taking on these really acute cases where someone was about to die from 01:38:43.790 --> 01:38:48.030 an infection, and then my students would stay all weekend to find a phage and they would 01:38:48.030 --> 01:38:51.070 find one and then the person would die and nobody helped anybody. 01:38:51.230 --> 01:38:55.550 And it we did isolate phages that way, but I just realized this made no sense that we 01:38:55.550 --> 01:38:56.750 weren't actually helping anyone. 01:38:56.830 --> 01:39:01.260 It was like we were giving false hope to the family, and the students were like over 01:39:01.820 --> 01:39:02.220 heartbreaking. 01:39:02.300 --> 01:39:02.780 It's heartbreaking. 01:39:03.100 --> 01:39:04.620 Heartbroken at the end of it, exactly. 01:39:04.780 --> 01:39:10.300 So I changed tax about a year ago and I said that we would accept chronic cases. 01:39:10.460 --> 01:39:14.860 So we would accept cases where it would be okay if it took us a year to produce the phage, 01:39:14.940 --> 01:39:16.940 because in reality, that's what it takes. 01:39:17.180 --> 01:39:22.860 And so um, so the case we did, we actually made it all the way through and actually got to 01:39:22.860 --> 01:39:28.550 help someone last year was um a woman who had sinusitis and nose infection for 10 01:39:28.550 --> 01:39:28.870 years. 01:39:28.950 --> 01:39:30.470 And actually, your sinuses are amazing. 01:39:30.550 --> 01:39:32.150 They like go way back into your head. 01:39:32.390 --> 01:39:35.030 And she had staph in there for 10 years. 01:39:35.190 --> 01:39:36.710 She kept getting fevers. 01:39:36.870 --> 01:39:41.350 So she would just, she was living her life with like getting a terrible fever every week or 01:39:41.350 --> 01:39:41.590 two. 01:39:41.750 --> 01:39:45.510 And the antibiotics weren't really, they would maybe help a little, but then the fever 01:39:45.510 --> 01:39:46.630 would be right back. 01:39:46.870 --> 01:39:52.860 Um, and so the infectious disease doctor identified her as a good candidate because 01:39:52.860 --> 01:39:55.500 it was chronic, but it was really affecting her life. 01:39:55.820 --> 01:39:58.940 And so it was worth the risk of trying something new. 01:39:59.180 --> 01:40:02.780 And so we got the staff isolate from the clinical microlab. 01:40:02.860 --> 01:40:05.180 And actually, this that was a really hard phage to find. 01:40:05.340 --> 01:40:07.980 Like I think we looked for about six months unsuccessfully. 01:40:08.060 --> 01:40:12.780 And I have this one star student who trained a new medical resident one week. 01:40:13.050 --> 01:40:17.210 And on that medical resident's first try, she found the phage. 01:40:17.370 --> 01:40:21.130 So they're either she was lucky with whatever piece of wastewater she was using, or she 01:40:21.130 --> 01:40:24.250 just had slightly different technique, or you know, we'll never know. 01:40:24.410 --> 01:40:30.330 Um, and we named the phage Ludmilla, and then we spent about six months coming 01:40:30.330 --> 01:40:35.130 up with all the methods for producing it and getting it checked and everything, and then we 01:40:35.220 --> 01:40:39.220 submitted paperwork to the FDA, and that was a couple months. 01:40:39.380 --> 01:40:44.820 Um, and then we had to get approval from the hospital here at UCI and the ethics board, and 01:40:44.820 --> 01:40:45.540 that was a couple months. 01:40:45.700 --> 01:40:49.140 So I don't know, it's like it's hard to see where a year went, but I actually made a 01:40:49.140 --> 01:40:52.580 timeline and you can see just like what dates things happened. 01:40:53.220 --> 01:40:55.620 There were just months between a lot of these steps. 01:40:55.860 --> 01:41:00.420 But finally in July, we had permission, and I remember the day the student who had produced 01:41:00.420 --> 01:41:02.740 the phage Ritwick is his name. 01:41:03.510 --> 01:41:08.390 He like went and bought a fresh cooler and he he got fresh lab coats and anytime he opened 01:41:08.390 --> 01:41:12.390 the fridge that we bought a special fridge that only this phage could go into and he he 01:41:12.390 --> 01:41:14.470 only opened it twice, I think. 01:41:14.630 --> 01:41:19.030 And he'd put a fresh lab coat on and get the phage out of that fridge and put it into the 01:41:19.030 --> 01:41:19.750 brand new cooler. 01:41:19.830 --> 01:41:22.390 We were like trying to just be really clean about everything, you know. 01:41:22.940 --> 01:41:28.060 And uh and he drove it over to the hospital, and the pharmacist uh mixed up the right dose, 01:41:28.140 --> 01:41:33.820 um, which was actually another whole project of getting the pharmacy to be okay with how we 01:41:33.820 --> 01:41:34.380 were doing things. 01:41:34.460 --> 01:41:37.740 So each step just took a lot of organization. 01:41:37.900 --> 01:41:43.580 Um, but then the person finally got to try this phage, uh, she put it into her um 01:41:43.900 --> 01:41:49.100 nasal rinse every evening, like essentially with a neti pot, but with distilled water, and 01:41:49.100 --> 01:41:54.470 added the phage to that, and then she rinsed every night for six weeks. 01:41:54.630 --> 01:41:58.390 And then the treatment ended last September. 01:41:59.030 --> 01:42:04.470 And I just learned on like two days ago that the fevers have remained gone. 01:42:04.630 --> 01:42:06.150 Like the fevers have not come back. 01:42:06.310 --> 01:42:10.870 So that to me is like I wasn't like a month later, I was glad she was doing better, but I 01:42:10.870 --> 01:42:12.310 wasn't like sure we had helped. 01:42:12.870 --> 01:42:18.200 But now that it's been almost half a year and she still doesn't have the fevers, it feels 01:42:18.200 --> 01:42:22.040 like that was just really good news that I mean, of course, I understand the infection can 01:42:22.040 --> 01:42:25.320 come back, but it'd be nice if this effort had some impact. 01:42:25.640 --> 01:42:31.000 And um and yeah, so I think that she hasn't had to take antibiotics again and her 01:42:31.000 --> 01:42:34.120 inflammation is much better and she hasn't had the fevers come back. 01:42:34.280 --> 01:42:35.960 She went on a trip to Italy, I heard. 01:42:36.210 --> 01:42:36.610 Amazing. 01:42:36.850 --> 01:42:38.130 So really live in, that's good. 01:42:38.530 --> 01:42:44.210 You got to have some of the the better uh uh uh flour is is the difficulty it sounds like 01:42:44.210 --> 01:42:49.410 it was it was it sounds like you're taking on a lot of costs to do this that you wouldn't 01:42:49.410 --> 01:42:55.330 need to is that because there's not infrastructure to 01:42:55.650 --> 01:43:01.600 do this and because you're basic because you're a basic scientist in a good way, like we're 01:43:01.600 --> 01:43:02.960 big we're basic scientists too. 01:43:03.120 --> 01:43:05.200 Yeah, you're you're doing this extra. 01:43:05.440 --> 01:43:09.120 This is like you're at the the the pointy end of innovation. 01:43:09.360 --> 01:43:15.360 And ideally in the future, there would be mechanisms to offload 01:43:15.360 --> 01:43:20.890 this regulation work and the production work, but it's just because you're so new, this is 01:43:20.890 --> 01:43:23.530 so early days that you have to do everything. 01:43:23.930 --> 01:43:24.810 Yeah, in some ways. 01:43:24.970 --> 01:43:27.130 In other ways, we've known about this for a hundred years. 01:43:27.290 --> 01:43:30.010 And so why are there not companies doing this? 01:43:30.170 --> 01:43:35.290 That just has to do with the way our medical system is organized, that there isn't really 01:43:35.290 --> 01:43:36.730 room for an operation like this. 01:43:36.890 --> 01:43:38.330 I mean, it's it's a bit crazy. 01:43:38.410 --> 01:43:40.250 It's not going to be profitable. 01:43:40.490 --> 01:43:46.090 Um, the reason I'm able to do it mainly in this case is because of this amazing student who 01:43:46.090 --> 01:43:48.040 cared so much about doing it? 01:43:48.200 --> 01:43:52.200 He's he he started working in my lab as a high school student and he's about to graduate 01:43:52.200 --> 01:43:52.600 college. 01:43:52.680 --> 01:43:55.240 So he had a lot of time to learn all these skills. 01:43:55.480 --> 01:43:59.400 And to be honest, he is the driving force that the reason that this happened, because it 01:43:59.400 --> 01:44:00.760 was a lot of work for him. 01:44:01.000 --> 01:44:05.160 Um and it's the kind of work where if I tried to hire someone to do that work, it would 01:44:05.160 --> 01:44:09.080 cost a lot more money than I could ever get to pay them because there aren't like research 01:44:09.080 --> 01:44:10.920 grants to pay someone to do this. 01:44:11.400 --> 01:44:17.230 But um, but most of the labs doing this have some secret source of money that they figured 01:44:17.230 --> 01:44:21.390 out because it's not a typical research grant, or they're just kind of using their research 01:44:21.390 --> 01:44:24.030 grants on the side to get this kind of work done. 01:44:24.190 --> 01:44:26.510 Um, so that yeah, it's hard to get funding for it. 01:44:26.670 --> 01:44:32.190 We just applied for a big ARPA H grant um to build a network across the country that would 01:44:32.190 --> 01:44:35.710 help um give phages to people more quickly. 01:44:35.950 --> 01:44:40.510 And we'd be, you know, we we would like to figure out how to build a network like that 01:44:40.510 --> 01:44:40.910 better. 01:44:41.460 --> 01:44:46.980 Do you feel like the regulations are reasonable given the 01:44:47.300 --> 01:44:52.980 costs, or or is it just that the regulations are unwieldy and 01:44:53.220 --> 01:44:58.500 designed for larger entities that might have more money than you? 01:44:58.820 --> 01:44:59.540 You know what I mean? 01:44:59.700 --> 01:45:05.460 Like yeah, I honestly the the FDA's compassionate exemption route is 01:45:05.460 --> 01:45:07.460 functioning pretty well, in my opinion. 01:45:07.620 --> 01:45:13.010 And in fact, um, yeah, we had an experience in the middle of all those amendments where 01:45:13.010 --> 01:45:17.250 they disagreed with one of the steps in one of our protocols, or I don't know if disagree 01:45:17.330 --> 01:45:19.330 is the right word, but they were like not gonna approve it. 01:45:19.490 --> 01:45:22.930 But then they just like had an alternative suggestion that worked great. 01:45:23.010 --> 01:45:24.530 So it wasn't it didn't stop us. 01:45:24.610 --> 01:45:26.530 So I actually felt like that was pretty functional. 01:45:26.690 --> 01:45:29.970 Like I was worried that we were gonna do all that work and then it was just gonna be 01:45:30.040 --> 01:45:32.280 rejected and down the drain or something. 01:45:32.440 --> 01:45:34.760 So I actually thought they worked pretty well with us. 01:45:35.000 --> 01:45:35.400 Agreed. 01:45:35.720 --> 01:45:39.320 But I think science funding in general is in a bit of a crisis right now. 01:45:39.480 --> 01:45:42.920 Like it's kind of a strange system that you guys are obviously very familiar with. 01:45:43.080 --> 01:45:45.000 But you know, you get a job in a university. 01:45:45.160 --> 01:45:47.160 If you're lucky, your own salary is paid. 01:45:47.240 --> 01:45:53.240 But to actually do any science, you need funds to support staff and re resources for your 01:45:53.240 --> 01:45:58.450 lab and like where those funds come from is those sources are like all 01:45:58.450 --> 01:46:00.050 disappearing all the time. 01:46:00.370 --> 01:46:00.770 Yeah. 01:46:01.010 --> 01:46:05.650 So you know it's just it's hard to get to do stuff with science these days. 01:46:06.210 --> 01:46:06.370 Yeah. 01:46:06.530 --> 01:46:11.330 And it's just but it's and just to put the period on it, you literally change somebody's 01:46:11.330 --> 01:46:11.570 life. 01:46:11.730 --> 01:46:14.690 I mean, doing this basic science, it's really amazing. 01:46:14.770 --> 01:46:15.090 Yeah. 01:46:15.440 --> 01:46:15.760 Yeah. 01:46:15.920 --> 01:46:20.640 That is a really cool thing about this about the microbiome field in general, that it's 01:46:20.720 --> 01:46:25.360 like right at the edge of translation and like we know enough to be able to do things that 01:46:25.360 --> 01:46:29.200 are actually directly causing a treatment for someone. 01:46:29.440 --> 01:46:29.680 Yeah. 01:46:29.840 --> 01:46:33.920 So yeah, that is pretty cool because a lot of basic science you don't get to see the 01:46:33.920 --> 01:46:34.960 outcome for decades. 01:46:35.200 --> 01:46:35.360 Yeah. 01:46:35.600 --> 01:46:38.000 Do you have a good John Patton story? 01:46:38.550 --> 01:46:41.110 Oh gosh, what a good question. 01:46:41.510 --> 01:46:43.350 Oh, I probably have a lot. 01:46:43.510 --> 01:46:47.910 Um well, I mean, maybe I'll just leave, I'll just share one. 01:46:47.990 --> 01:46:52.790 Like he would often come by our lab and talk, and he'd stick around for hours and we loved 01:46:52.790 --> 01:46:52.950 it. 01:46:53.030 --> 01:46:54.150 It was very fun to talk to him. 01:46:54.310 --> 01:46:58.870 In fact, he came to one of my students' defenses, the student who worked on Chicha, Andrew 01:46:58.870 --> 01:47:02.020 Oliver, and he was full of so many stories. 01:47:02.100 --> 01:47:07.540 But I guess one thing I'll just say is that John Patton invited my graduate student Andrew 01:47:07.540 --> 01:47:11.620 Oliver down to Canambo to help collect the samples. 01:47:11.700 --> 01:47:13.700 And I was really, you know, I was encouraging. 01:47:13.780 --> 01:47:17.140 I was like thinking about if I could do it myself, but I had little kids at the time and 01:47:17.140 --> 01:47:17.460 stuff. 01:47:17.700 --> 01:47:20.740 And if you go there, you're like remote for the whole summer kind of thing. 01:47:20.820 --> 01:47:22.660 It's like yeah, Brenda made it very clear. 01:47:22.820 --> 01:47:25.700 Yeah, like it's a it's a serious thing. 01:47:25.780 --> 01:47:26.020 Yeah. 01:47:26.100 --> 01:47:27.620 To it's a serious commitment. 01:47:27.950 --> 01:47:28.190 Yeah. 01:47:28.350 --> 01:47:30.350 At minimum, that's a that's an understatement. 01:47:30.430 --> 01:47:30.750 Yeah. 01:47:30.990 --> 01:47:31.950 Yeah, exactly. 01:47:32.110 --> 01:47:37.550 Um, and so and so John was describing the chicha and how it's like kind of 01:47:37.550 --> 01:47:42.750 fibrous and you'd get like chunks of it stuck in your teeth, and you know, how it had a 01:47:42.750 --> 01:47:44.350 really strong flavor and stuff like that. 01:47:44.510 --> 01:47:47.870 But that if you go into someone's house, you have to drink the chicha. 01:47:47.950 --> 01:47:53.950 I mean, you you really um there's no there would be no polite way to decline chicha without 01:47:53.950 --> 01:47:58.020 causing like some serious um, you know hurt feelings. 01:47:58.180 --> 01:48:03.940 And so anyway, he's like both trying to convince Andrew Oliver that he should come, but 01:48:03.940 --> 01:48:09.940 also sharing all these like stories that made it seem like it was gonna be pretty tough to 01:48:09.940 --> 01:48:10.740 survive. 01:48:11.700 --> 01:48:17.060 So Andrew declined to go down there after hearing all about 01:48:17.630 --> 01:48:19.870 flavors and chunks in the chicha. 01:48:20.270 --> 01:48:20.670 Yes. 01:48:20.910 --> 01:48:23.310 The downstream consequences of offending people. 01:48:24.030 --> 01:48:28.430 David, I don't know if you m remember this differently, but my memory is the the cheerful 01:48:28.430 --> 01:48:33.470 greeting from the canoe to somebody's house is I'm not gonna kill you in the night, you 01:48:33.470 --> 01:48:35.070 know, something to that extent. 01:48:36.110 --> 01:48:40.350 Like that's the best case, that's the best communicative event. 01:48:40.430 --> 01:48:42.590 That's like a friendly communicative event. 01:48:42.750 --> 01:48:44.670 I'm not gonna kill you in your sleep. 01:48:45.040 --> 01:48:46.480 I feel like I want to use that. 01:48:46.560 --> 01:48:47.360 That's really funny. 01:48:47.680 --> 01:48:47.840 Yeah. 01:48:48.080 --> 01:48:50.800 It's it's it's actually more alarming than saying nothing. 01:48:52.560 --> 01:48:53.360 Well, maybe. 01:48:53.520 --> 01:48:54.080 Maybe not. 01:48:54.240 --> 01:48:56.560 Maybe if you like, oh, was there a possibility that you would? 01:48:56.640 --> 01:48:58.960 Oh yeah, if you were actually worried about that, that would be a good idea. 01:49:03.840 --> 01:49:04.880 But yeah, no, for us, right? 01:49:04.960 --> 01:49:06.560 That's like I didn't even think of that. 01:49:06.650 --> 01:49:06.890 Yeah. 01:49:07.050 --> 01:49:09.930 So uh is there anything we should have asked you? 01:49:10.010 --> 01:49:11.850 We we usually have to ask that question before. 01:49:12.250 --> 01:49:13.210 Oh, that's nice of you to ask. 01:49:13.290 --> 01:49:14.650 No, you guys asked great questions. 01:49:14.730 --> 01:49:18.010 I got to um be on my fiber soap box for sure. 01:49:18.090 --> 01:49:18.410 Thank you. 01:49:18.730 --> 01:49:18.970 Great. 01:49:19.050 --> 01:49:19.290 Yeah. 01:49:19.370 --> 01:49:20.090 It's incredible. 01:49:20.250 --> 01:49:21.770 I literally, yeah, I just cannot. 01:49:21.930 --> 01:49:27.770 I mean, yeah, there's there's uh there's a small category people whose talks like forever 01:49:27.770 --> 01:49:32.170 change the way I think about the world, and and you are in that category. 01:49:32.330 --> 01:49:35.370 Um and it's just it's incredibly cool work. 01:49:35.640 --> 01:49:41.400 It's a bonus that it's, I mean, you could from a basic perspective, it's a bonus that 01:49:41.400 --> 01:49:46.200 there's this incredible real-world consequences to like what should you buy at the store 01:49:46.200 --> 01:49:48.600 this week to like possibly help people. 01:49:48.760 --> 01:49:51.880 And then from the applied perspective, it's cool that it's an evolutionary thing. 01:49:51.960 --> 01:49:57.320 Like, you know, this is an evolutionary podcast, and it's nice that um this is uh the kind 01:49:57.320 --> 01:50:02.090 of thing you wouldn't think of if you weren't coming from an evolutionary deep time 01:50:02.410 --> 01:50:03.610 perspective. 01:50:03.770 --> 01:50:06.730 Um so no matter how you look at this, it's just really cool work. 01:50:06.810 --> 01:50:07.850 So thank you for doing it. 01:50:07.930 --> 01:50:13.770 And I I hope that um people just rain more funding on this because unlike so 01:50:13.770 --> 01:50:19.610 many things, it's so useful basically, but also really helpful um in 01:50:19.610 --> 01:50:20.810 an applied perspective. 01:50:20.970 --> 01:50:23.930 So just thanks for coming on and and thanks for doing this. 01:50:24.250 --> 01:50:24.490 Yeah. 01:50:24.730 --> 01:50:26.090 Thanks so much for inviting me. 01:50:26.320 --> 01:50:26.560 Yeah. 01:50:26.640 --> 01:50:31.600 And thank thank you for restoring my my faith and my sense of inspiration and hope about 01:50:31.600 --> 01:50:36.480 the power of science to help us uh understand the world and actually help people. 01:50:36.960 --> 01:50:37.760 So Yeah. 01:50:37.840 --> 01:50:42.640 Uh and eat some beans this week or lentils or or um or fruit or uh berries. 01:50:42.960 --> 01:50:43.040 Yeah. 01:50:43.360 --> 01:50:45.120 Yeah, get get that fiber or the chia seeds. 01:50:45.200 --> 01:50:45.840 I'll have to take it. 01:50:48.970 --> 01:50:49.370 All right. 01:50:49.530 --> 01:50:49.770 All right. 01:50:49.850 --> 01:50:50.650 Thank you, Katrina. 01:50:50.810 --> 01:50:51.930 Yeah, thank you very much. 01:50:54.810 --> 01:51:00.730 So David, uh to sum up the ratio of carbs to fiber, um, don't 01:51:00.890 --> 01:51:02.330 what uh what which is the one? 01:51:02.410 --> 01:51:06.090 The poly don't polyethylene glycol, which doesn't sound good. 01:51:06.170 --> 01:51:08.650 It actually sounds like um antifreeze. 01:51:08.730 --> 01:51:10.090 Antifreeze, that's what it is. 01:51:10.280 --> 01:51:11.640 It's ethylene glycol. 01:51:12.040 --> 01:51:12.920 Um okay. 01:51:13.080 --> 01:51:18.920 But polyethylene glycol is the stuff that uh you should not 01:51:18.920 --> 01:51:23.000 use, but the psyllium husk or the derivatives are. 01:51:23.240 --> 01:51:24.440 I'm just sort of reviewing. 01:51:24.600 --> 01:51:28.680 Oh, the other thing to say is like berries often are very high in pesticides, so it's good 01:51:28.680 --> 01:51:32.120 to get organic berries if you can, if you're gonna feed them to kids, especially. 01:51:32.430 --> 01:51:33.470 Yeah, berries are great. 01:51:33.550 --> 01:51:34.270 Beans are great. 01:51:34.590 --> 01:51:36.110 Chia seeds to get some fiber. 01:51:36.910 --> 01:51:42.830 Avocados high in so we're we're sponsoring all those uh whole foods and then Yeah, 01:51:42.910 --> 01:51:46.270 this episode is brought to you by uh avocados. 01:51:46.750 --> 01:51:47.870 Yeah, uh exactly. 01:51:48.030 --> 01:51:49.310 Oh yeah, and Miralax. 01:51:49.550 --> 01:51:53.550 We're I we're um we're not um uh Miralax Boo Miralax. 01:51:53.710 --> 01:51:57.340 Yeah, boomerlax, we're we're unadvertising Muralaks, which I mean. 01:51:57.580 --> 01:51:58.940 Yeah, and what was the the the good one? 01:51:59.100 --> 01:52:00.380 Was Metamusil, right? 01:52:00.460 --> 01:52:01.740 Yeah, I think it's Metamusil. 01:52:01.820 --> 01:52:04.780 We're we're we're really I never metamusil I didn't look. 01:52:05.580 --> 01:52:06.620 We know what we're talking about. 01:52:06.700 --> 01:52:08.060 I think it's Metamusle. 01:52:08.620 --> 01:52:11.340 Like, yeah, I mean really it's just psyllium husk. 01:52:11.580 --> 01:52:14.700 It just gets some organic psyllium husk and yeah, psyllium. 01:52:14.780 --> 01:52:17.100 Yeah, just doum Murphy. 01:52:17.180 --> 01:52:18.300 Uh is a great actor. 01:52:18.620 --> 01:52:19.660 I don't know who that is. 01:52:19.980 --> 01:52:24.220 Oh, he was the uh the scarecrow in uh Batman Begins. 01:52:24.630 --> 01:52:24.950 Okay. 01:52:25.430 --> 01:52:27.110 He's in a lot of things, but that's what I'm saying. 01:52:27.270 --> 01:52:27.830 Oh, that guy. 01:52:27.910 --> 01:52:28.390 Oh, yeah, yeah. 01:52:28.790 --> 01:52:30.150 He's got like a creepy face. 01:52:35.350 --> 01:52:36.230 Yeah, he's Oppenheimer. 01:52:36.310 --> 01:52:37.030 Yeah, he's Oppenheimer. 01:52:37.350 --> 01:52:40.710 That's probably more relevant, but my memory for some reason is is more tuned to one of 01:52:40.710 --> 01:52:40.870 those. 01:52:41.110 --> 01:52:42.150 What did you think of that movie? 01:52:42.310 --> 01:52:44.230 Oppenheimer I thought it was a little boring. 01:52:44.310 --> 01:52:44.550 I don't know. 01:52:44.630 --> 01:52:45.830 I thought it was overrated. 01:52:46.070 --> 01:52:46.390 Okay. 01:52:46.870 --> 01:52:47.180 All right. 01:52:47.580 --> 01:52:47.980 Personally. 01:52:48.380 --> 01:52:49.740 I mean, I watched it on the plane. 01:52:49.820 --> 01:52:52.620 I don't really have time to watch movies except when I'm flying. 01:52:52.940 --> 01:52:54.620 Yeah, that's a good airplane movie. 01:52:54.860 --> 01:52:55.340 Yeah. 01:52:55.580 --> 01:52:56.460 Yeah, I don't know. 01:52:56.700 --> 01:52:57.020 I don't know. 01:52:57.100 --> 01:52:59.740 I my expectations were high and they were not met. 01:53:00.140 --> 01:53:03.900 I appreciated that it wasn't super unidimensional. 01:53:04.140 --> 01:53:08.780 I appreciate movies that at the end of the movie you don't think, oh, I wish I was that 01:53:08.780 --> 01:53:11.020 person or I lived at that time. 01:53:11.820 --> 01:53:15.420 Yeah, I definitely don't wish I was Oppenheimer. 01:53:15.660 --> 01:53:16.490 Yeah, Yeah. 01:53:16.650 --> 01:53:20.730 There's some original recordings of Oppenheimer that are worth listening to. 01:53:20.890 --> 01:53:24.490 Um one of the good things about YouTube and the internet is you can actually listen to 01:53:24.490 --> 01:53:24.650 people. 01:53:24.810 --> 01:53:28.010 Norbert Wiener, too, like the original cybernetics guy. 01:53:28.090 --> 01:53:30.650 Like you can actually listen to some of these people talking. 01:53:31.050 --> 01:53:31.290 Yeah. 01:53:31.530 --> 01:53:32.010 That's cool. 01:53:32.250 --> 01:53:34.570 I wish I could listen to a recording of Charles Darwin. 01:53:34.650 --> 01:53:35.690 That would be awesome. 01:53:37.210 --> 01:53:37.850 Yeah, maybe. 01:53:37.930 --> 01:53:38.170 Yeah. 01:53:38.810 --> 01:53:40.810 Maybe he had a bluegrass band or something. 01:53:42.090 --> 01:53:44.010 Charles Darwin on the steel guitar. 01:53:44.090 --> 01:53:44.490 Yeah. 01:53:44.810 --> 01:53:46.520 I I mean, I bet he'd be very good. 01:53:46.840 --> 01:53:47.080 Yeah. 01:53:47.320 --> 01:53:48.680 Would you is that Darwin? 01:53:48.760 --> 01:53:51.960 Is that one of your um if you can meet a historical figure? 01:53:52.520 --> 01:53:52.920 Oh yeah. 01:53:53.560 --> 01:53:53.960 Absolutely. 01:53:54.200 --> 01:53:55.000 Top of my list. 01:53:55.240 --> 01:53:55.880 Okay, really? 01:53:56.360 --> 01:53:56.920 Oh yeah. 01:53:57.080 --> 01:53:57.320 Okay. 01:53:57.480 --> 01:54:02.040 I mean, to just tell him like all the stuff that's happened since he wrote on the origin of 01:54:02.120 --> 01:54:06.840 species, and like tell him all the evidence that has confirmed and uh deepened and enriched 01:54:06.840 --> 01:54:09.800 his theory, like just to watch his eyes light up, that would be awesome. 01:54:09.960 --> 01:54:10.280 Yeah. 01:54:10.490 --> 01:54:12.010 And he's just like he's just a great scientist. 01:54:12.170 --> 01:54:17.210 If you read On the Origin, you know, descent of man, like expression of emotions in man and 01:54:17.210 --> 01:54:18.890 animal, like he he's a really meticulous thinker. 01:54:18.970 --> 01:54:22.810 I mean, yeah, he got a lot of stuff wrong, but like I don't know, just uh he's a great mind 01:54:22.890 --> 01:54:24.250 and and a beautiful writer too. 01:54:24.330 --> 01:54:25.210 Like Yeah, yeah, yeah. 01:54:25.530 --> 01:54:29.210 That last passage of On the Origin, the the grandeur in this view of life. 01:54:29.370 --> 01:54:29.770 Yeah. 01:54:30.010 --> 01:54:31.690 It's a beautiful passage. 01:54:32.840 --> 01:54:33.240 All right. 01:54:33.320 --> 01:54:37.400 Well, on this note, um, I don't know, you know the spiel, you know. 01:54:37.640 --> 01:54:43.480 Please like and subscribe and tell some about this podcast and Yeah, Patreon, 01:54:43.640 --> 01:54:46.600 send us an email, write a review, all that all that bullshit. 01:54:46.840 --> 01:54:52.680 Does Darwin do people um do leave reviews of like on the origin of species? 01:54:53.150 --> 01:54:53.950 do you think? 01:54:54.190 --> 01:54:55.070 Um, I don't know. 01:54:55.150 --> 01:54:56.830 I haven't checked the the Amazon list. 01:54:57.390 --> 01:55:00.270 Has there ever been a biopic about Charles Darwin? 01:55:00.590 --> 01:55:01.710 Not that I'm aware of. 01:55:01.790 --> 01:55:04.030 I would love to see a biopic of Darwin. 01:55:04.270 --> 01:55:05.550 I think there's a voyage of the Beagle. 01:55:05.630 --> 01:55:06.990 I think the BBC did something. 01:55:07.230 --> 01:55:07.870 Oh, really? 01:55:08.030 --> 01:55:08.670 Yeah. 01:55:08.990 --> 01:55:09.790 Anyway. 01:55:10.030 --> 01:55:10.430 All right. 01:55:10.590 --> 01:55:16.480 Well, I mean, I my one of my favorite um books is uh back in the 01:55:16.480 --> 01:55:16.720 day. 01:55:16.800 --> 01:55:19.280 I read uh The Moral Animal by Robert Wright. 01:55:19.760 --> 01:55:24.240 Uh that's a lot of people's intro gateway drug to Yeah, a lot of their gateway drugs. 01:55:24.480 --> 01:55:29.680 Um and uh what the best shtick of that book is he weaves in a biography of Darwin 01:55:30.400 --> 01:55:35.520 with with the chronicling of evolutionary psychology, and he sort of psychoanalyzes Darwin 01:55:35.520 --> 01:55:37.040 through the lens of evolutionary psychology. 01:55:37.200 --> 01:55:38.080 It's a really great shtick. 01:55:38.400 --> 01:55:40.400 I as you can tell, I actually never read that one. 01:55:40.560 --> 01:55:42.330 I was one of the ones I did not read. 01:55:42.810 --> 01:55:43.290 It's really fun. 01:55:43.450 --> 01:55:46.650 I mean, you know, there are a few few parts that don't hold up so well, but like it's it's 01:55:46.650 --> 01:55:47.290 a really fun read. 01:55:47.530 --> 01:55:47.690 Yeah. 01:55:47.850 --> 01:55:52.890 No, many of the evolutionary psychologists that I respect very highly uh got got their it 01:55:52.890 --> 01:55:55.130 got it got their hooks into them through that book. 01:55:55.210 --> 01:55:55.690 So yeah. 01:55:55.850 --> 01:55:57.930 Aaron Sell, I think was another one. 01:55:58.170 --> 01:55:58.410 Yeah. 01:55:58.570 --> 01:55:59.370 No, it's a great book. 01:55:59.530 --> 01:56:00.010 Yeah, cool. 01:56:00.250 --> 01:56:00.490 All right. 01:56:00.570 --> 01:56:01.370 We'll see you guys next week. 01:56:01.530 --> 01:56:02.010 See ya, David. 01:56:03.210 --> 01:56:03.690 Bye.