Ready to support your gut health, Try LifeWay Kaffir. It's packed with bioavailable protein and it has twelve probiotic strains to support digestion. That's double what you'll find in most yogurt brands. Visit Lifewayfoods dot com to find delicious LifeWay Kaffir near you. Hi everyone, I'm Kitty Kuric and this is next question. Hi everyone, Happy International Women's Day.
By the way, did did we mention that?
I'm not sure Stantha did Anyway, Hi, I am so excited about this panel. I get excited about everything, obviously, and gut help has really got me jazzed. So microbiome biome, as you all know, is a real buzzword these days, but many people don't know what that actually means. And honestly, I have learned so much just preparing for this panel. And what exactly is your microbiome? What role does it play in our overall health? As you're about to hear,
it's a pretty big one. And could gut health be linked to an alarming uptick in colorectal and other digestive cancers among young people right now? Not only diagnoses but also tragically deaths as many of you may know if you were alive in this far back. I lost my
husband Jay to colon cancer in nineteen ninety eight. He was forty two years old, our daughters were six and two, and since then, having felt so powerless during the course of his nine month illness, I have done everything I can to encourage people to get screened, even getting an on air kolonosky on the Today Show back in the year two thousand, which resulted in a twenty percent increase
in kolonoscopes nationwide, which was so gratifying. You know, in the year since, I've tried to keep this issue on the front burner. I took Jimmy Kimmel to get a colonoscope a few years ago.
I'm trying to get Kevin Hart to.
Let me take him this year because he just turned forty five and he hasn't gotten back to me yet.
But I will keep you posted.
But over the last couple of decades, I was the percentage of colon cancer cases among young people under the age of fifty five has doubled. I was particularly struck by this sentence in a recent Time magazine cover story.
Research suggests that today's young adults are about twice as likely to be diagnosed with colon cancer and four times as likely to be diagnosed with rectal cancer as those born around nineteen fifty, and most young patients are diagnosed at stage three or four, which makes these cancers even more difficult to treat.
So what is.
Behind this disturbing trend? What can we do about it? Doctor Nancy u is the director of the m d Anderson Young on Set Collorectal Cancer Program. Doctor Susan Bullman is an Associate professor in the Department of gastro Intestinal Medical Oncology. That's a mouthful season at the University of Texas m d Anderson Cancer Center. Julie Smolansky is the CEO of Life Wave Foods.
And I want to.
Get right to it because there's so much important information that I hope you all will listen to you really carefully and spread the word with all your friends and family members because it's so critically important. And we're going to turn this into a podcast on my podcast next question, so hopefully people can listen to our conversation. Who aren't here this morning, So hi, everybody, Well, let's give them a round of applause. Another group of kick ass smart women.
All right, Julie, We're going to start with you because I think your family history and business is so an extra inextricably linked to gut health. You came to the US from Ukraine in the middle of the Cold War in nineteen seventy five. By the way, i'd like to apologize for our president just parenthetically. Your parents had one hundred and sixteen dollars to their name. Your mother smartly noticed that the food in America was very different from the food and the Soviet Union, and she decided to
do something about that. Can you tell us what she did and how this set your family on a path to wellness?
Really? That's right?
Yeah, thank you so much, Katie, thank you all for joining us at this very busy conference. So exactly, my
parents and I immigrated from the former Soviet Union. When we settled, we realized, my mother really realized that while they grew up in scarcity in the Soviet Union, the foods were very different, and they were you know, typical food was a quart of kaffir or kiefer and a loaf of bread, very humble, but very nutritious, nutrient dense, with a lot of positive attributes so she opened up the first Russian deli Ukrainian deli in Chicago's Rogers Park,
and then opened up five more throughout the country throughout Chicago and became an importer and distributor of Eastern European food. And she was like selling food to Brighton Beach or Los Angeles, places where Soviet immigrants were starting to settle through this mass exodus as the Cold War was winding down and Peede Stroka started happening, so that launched them into the food industry. They went to Germany at for a food buying show, trade show, and there my father
bought three bottles of kaffir in the grocery store. In Eastern Europe, in Ukraine and the Soviet Union, the Slavic region, kaffir was something that was passed down generation to generation for over two thousand years. Our ancestors consumed it in
the Caucaus Mountains. It was passed down from Babushka to babushka, grandmother to grandmother, and it was survived by the word of mouth like what we're doing today talking about the benefits, and my ancestors intuitively, in their gut experienced a sense of well being, and they attributed they lived past one hundred years of age, and they attributed their longevity to the consumption of kaffir. And it wasn't until nineteen oh eight which doctor Elie Metchnikoff. He is growing up in
my household. He was like a rock star. He was like Eddie Vedder. My father talked to my father talked about him endlessly. He talked about his research and he was just the father of an immune system.
And he won a Nobel Prize for this work.
And he studied the impact of fermented milks kaffir on the body, and he found that there was an important positive contribution to the overall health. And this was really the beginning of the gut kind of science that since then our doctors and doctors all around the world have been adding onto his original research and really bringing us to where we are today. But so that's kind of how it started. And so my dad bought three bottles. He tried a bottle and he said, wow, America has everything,
but it doesn't have kaffir. And my mother said, well, you're an engineer, why don't you design a plant, start making it, and I'll sell it through my distribution system. And six months later, LifeWay Foods was launched in nineteen eighty six.
So LifeWay caffir you can.
Find it all over the country now in every grocery store. And two years later he took it public. You know, it was just the very beginning, but the growth has been exponential, and I.
Think still people don't know that much about cafir or key for how a resaved.
How do you say? We say both, okay, you know, I'll go keep your You.
Say keefer, I say kafir. Let's get the whole thing off. Let's not call the whole thing off. But so, how is keyfer kafir different? What is it exactly? And how is it different from other dairy and probiotic products because it has a little fizziness like what is what is it?
Yeah, so it's a fermented that's a great question. It's got it's fermented dairy. So it's a special combination of twelve unique cultures that we inoculate the milk in for over eighteen hours, could be up to twenty four hours, and it's inoculated at room temperature. Uh, and then it creates the reaction between the probiotics and the mill create a reaction to create this effervescent fermented almost like a bubbly, tangy taste and process and billions over fifty billion live
microbes exist in kaffir. It's significantly richer than any other food products you can buy in those friendly bacterias. Typical yogurt only has about four cultures or less, and most of the yogurt in the United States is ultra processed and pasteurized after fermentation. We pasteurize the milk first, then we culture, and then we bottle, and so when you get it sometimes you might even notice the bottle bloats. That's okay, that means the process is working. You just
open it, let the air out, and drink it. It's fine. Interesting.
Yes, yeah, and you know, I've learned so much about it, and I'm going to go knock a key bottles down.
I've got that. We all shatter this.
Danel So Susan Vohman, our gut health expert. Before we talk more about the value of fermented foods, let's first define the microbiome. So what exactly is it and why is it so important for overall health?
Yes, so when we refer to our microbiome, we're talking about the community or collection of microorganisms that resite on and within our bodies. Most of these are bacteria, but also include fungi, viruses, ur KaiA, and they begin colonizing our body from the moment we're born and remain with
us throughout life. But their composition changes. And if you were to take your microbiome and you are to put it on a waging scale, it weighs several pounds really, so similar to some of our internal organs, like a spleen or a kidney.
Right, So it's scattered all over your body or is most a it located?
Yes, you've got.
Ninety nine percent is within our got largely the colon and it's here where these microbes they set the stage for dynamic interactions in human health, including digestion, production of vitamins, and priming our immune system, and also disease. They're involved in chronic diseases. If you have a shift in what your microbiome looks like, so can contribute to cancer.
And I sort of a screw up in your microbiome can create all kinds of internal problems, but also inflammation, right, and inflammation is a whole other panel which we'll have to do another time.
But that's called dysbiosis.
What are talking about when the microbiome is out of out.
Of wax, Yeah, and creates all kinds of medical issues. Well, I know that ultra So let's talk about how you know all these external things that are affecting our microbiome. And then, of course, Nancy, I'm going to talk to you about early on set colon cancer and other cancers. But you know, we all hear about ultraprocessed food right, it's the big buzzword.
But I still think there's confusion.
What are ultra processed foods versus processed foods versus non process foods?
So can you help us out?
So? Yes, yes, So these ultraprocessed foods, they're industrially manufactured products. They have little to know whole foods within them. I mean you can usually identify them by their lengthy lists of ingredients. So they'll have things listed like chemical modifiers, additives. You'll see things like a multifiers, stabilizers, artificial flavors, sweeteners, and they have very little nutritional value. They don't look
like they naturally should. And the thing is you'll see them advertiser marketed as convenience.
They're ready to eat.
You know, you can eat them on the go and they're usually hyper palatable, so they're very tasty because they're packed full of sugars and salts.
Right, and that salt fat combo that really can be addictive, addreative.
So things that you would recognize as these ultprocessed foods would be things like sugary drinks. They'd be the snack foods, cookies, candies, crackers, crackers, some crackers as well. Is a bummer for me.
You can have a look at the ingredients.
There's some options doers.
Yeah, there's good options. Look at the list exactly.
And then you know meat, certain meats that you would see and sausages, chicken nuggets even having multifiers and preservatives with it.
They have a lot of nitrates, right, susan exactly.
So this is the thing.
There's there's the nitrates, nitrites and sulfides. They're the preservatives. So you'll see them advertisers as having a long shelf life and they're pretty much bad, got health and permeability with them.
What about processed foods, So you've got ultra process right, and so you don't want to eat those and you kind of don't want to eat processed foods, right, if you can avoid them, what But but what's the difference, So just the fewer ingredients, there's still a lot of that, there's.
A there's a nova score, right, So there's a specific way that they can be cashgorized as ultra process versus processed. So it's got to do with the amount of whole foods within the production for these food types.
What happens to our gut health or microbiome when we consume a lot of ultra processed foods, which I guess are kind of like junk foods, right, but some that you know, they say are healthy and we'll talk about that in a moment, But what what does it do to your healthy but healthy bacteria?
Yeah, so you have to think when you're eating foods, you're not just eating food for your body, but you're also feeding your microbiomes. So these microbes within our got they are relying on you to supply them with nutrients and most of the beneficial microbes they like certain time of carbohydrates so that they can produce short chain, fasty acids.
That help the guts.
So by consuming many of these ultraprocess foods that are typically low and fiber and good sugars. You're not feeding your beneficial microbes and you're pushing it towards an inflammatory subtype. But then that has a knock going to affect on something like a leaky gush or hyperpermeability in the gush, which is money and groups have heard about lately.
Right, this gut permeability is really important because your gut is sort of surrounded by this mucus, right, yes, I know, good morning, Yeah it's like, but it's surrounded by this mucus which protects the bad stuff exactly from permeating into the rest of your body, right exactly. So this this kind of delicate balance needs to be maintained.
Right, So, if you think about your gut, your intestines, what you have is a single layer of tichi packed epithelial cells and they're all the way along your intestines. And between these epithelial cells you have a little gait which is called tight junctions between ourselves, and this controls what nutrients can pass into our circulation, which is very
important when we're digesting food. And then above those epithelial cells, you have a layer of mucus, and this mucus is very important because it separates the bacteria and the undigested food stuffs from actually interacting with those cells. We do not want bacteria to touch the epithelial cells. But what we know is when we consume these ultraprocessed foods that have things like multifiers, so for example polysorbit eighty, that reduces that.
Mucus layer right.
And then also you now have these microbes touching the epithelial cells. You havessed or undigested fruit products touching the epithelial cells leading to chronic inflammation. So that damages that little gate between the cells. It opens up, and now you've got food pieces, You've got pieces of bacteria go into your circulation, and that can lead to not good, not good, not good. That's the problem.
And Nancy, I know that you have been found this trend of more young people getting calling cancer, and I think we'll focus on coorectal cancer for the purposes of our discussion this morning, because you run oversee MD Anderson's Young onset Coorectal cancer program. So every year in the United States, everyone about eighty thousand adults between the ages
of twenty and thirty nine are diagnosed with cancer. People under fifty is the only age group for which the risk of getting cancer is actually rising.
So I know these cases.
I know from personal experience and also from people who have reached out to me as a result of what happened to my husband, how heartbreaking these cases are. Can you tell us a little bit, Nancy about the population of patients you're seeing in your program?
Yes, so we're definitely, unfortunately seeing more and more young people who are in the middle of building a career, forming relationships, raising children whill get diagnosed with colorectal cancer. What we see reflects national trends, but I think young patients also seek us out, so they actually represent a third of all of our new coloradal cancer cases a
year that we see. We see about six hundred a year. Sadly, most of these patients are already stage three or four at diagnosis, so that means their tumors already spread to the lymphnodes that surround the tumor or unfortunate other parts of the body still totally treatable. But I think a lot of them come to us. We also, what that translates to is that their treatment typically needs a lot of coordination, whether it's surgery plus minus, chemo plus minus
potential radiation and other treatments. So our program really tries to coordinate that for the patient and make a whole program for them. We also know that these young patients are starting their cancer journey with already super packed lives, and so they have a lot of needs. We want to treat the whole person, whether it's fertility concerns, finances, employment, paperwork, and other things, or whether it's does they want to see another young person who's going through this or is
going through this? So our program tries to coordinate these needs altogether and try to treat the whole person.
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perfect substitute for cottage cheese with no blending required. Spread it on a bagel, drizzle with olive oiler jam and in joy, love your guts, and visit lifewivefoods dot com to elevate your snacking. Today, Nancy was telling me that, you know, she was seeing two pregnant women who were in their second trimester who had both been diagnosed with metastatic colon cancer. And that means, you know, stage four,
it's metastasized your liver to other organs. Stage three, as Nancy said, it's gone through your lymph nose, which are kind of the gateway from your colon to the rest of your body. And so tiny microscopic disease can be circulating throughout your body and later lead to metastasizing on
other organs. So, and I think it's important to point out that seventy five to eighty percent of colon cancer cases or what are called sporadic where there is no family history, and in these young people, of course, are things like Lynch syndrome and other familiar polyposes. Don't I sound like a doctor that do make you more likely to be, you know, to have a colon kids. But many of these people have no family history and don't have any of those underlying conditions, right Nancy.
So up to twenty percent of the young patients can have a predisposition syndrome, and so what we say is, if you're young and you have a diagnosis, always get your genetics tested so that if you fall into twenty percent, we know what to do.
We can totally take care of you.
The other eighty percent, though, don't have a known genetic predisposition, and so that's really the question, why are these patients getting diagnosed?
And that's perfect that you.
Don't have a family history doesn't mean that you're immune.
Right, right, And I think some people kind of convince themselves so I don't need to get screened because it's not in my family. But it wasn't in my husband's family. So that's why it's really so critically important to get screened at age forty five. And we'll talk about those guidelines in a moment, but first I want to focus on why this is happening, because it's so upsetting, and I know there are a lot of theories.
Nancy.
Microplastics, right, microplastics are kind of a new focus on a lot of science because we're ingesting so many tiny, tiny hot particles of plastic from things like plastic cutting boards. But they even think it might be getting into some of the crops that we're eating and.
All kinds of things.
They're starting to find microplastics in fetuses and so they're kind of everywhere. Not to freak people out, but this is something that they're studying because it might be permeating that mucus barrier susan that you were talking about. So microplastics is one theory ultra processed foods, which we talked about. The over prescription of antibiotics is something scientists are also looking at. Now, by the way, this is correlation, not causation.
These are just theories. Epidemial logical studies take like decades because you have to follow people their whole lives. But also red meat alcohol consumption leading to obesity, which is also another risk factor. So Nancy, having said that, can you just talk us through some of these theories and what scientists and doctors like yourself are looking at.
I get the hardest question, right.
I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
So the why is definitely the question. We know the cancer is a complex disease, and so it's really hard to pain point one smoking gun, and often it's not one single thing. And so that's kind of where I think it is it's going to be several things that
probably work together. There are non risk fractors to colorectal cancer, and there are things where you talked about a diet that's lowing fiber, high in red meat, high in processed foods, sedentary lifestyle, alcohol, smoking, Those are established risk ractors for colorectal cancer, and the young patient are certainly nodding you, right, So those risk factors that we also face, but likely there are also unknown risk fractors that are yet to
be discovered. And these are some of the things you mentioned bycoplastics, and so I think some of the leading theories on that are all environmental factors, so chemicals, and if we think really about adult bone was talking about,
our good is really the environment too. Right, when the barrier is broken, the stuff that's inside becomes the stuff that's outside becomes inside, and so a lot of it is about environment, but I think ultimately there's also genetic and environmental interactions that work together that probably makes some people more prone to the same environmental insults.
And then I think the last.
Area that people are really paying attention to is is there a vulnerable phase in our lifespan that make these exposures more impactful to us. Right, is there what, sorry, a vulnerable time period in our lifespan, because when we look at our own generation, all of you here, you're very health conscious, right, you take care of your body and so you know, and yet we're still getting diagnosed.
Yeah, well every time we take an antibiotics.
First of all, our medical model, the doctors are trained to cut and to prescribe drugs. They have not been trained to incorporate foods to heal. And food can either be the greatest medicine or the fastest poison.
I always say, live dirty, eat clean. We're really we are. Yeah, I knew you like that one.
Yeah, because we have become afraid of all sorts of bacteria.
We are clean freaks.
The h for colling cancer screen, I don't know if anybody was here yesterday. I'm like the nagging fish wife with the you know, rolling pin. The age has been reduced, it was reduced, like in twenty twenty one. You now need to get screen for colon cancer at age forty five because of this reason. But I keep thinking about the young patients Nancy, like you're seen, who are in their twenties and thirties, So A, should the h be lowered even more? Should young people get some kind of tests?
And are the symptoms in your young patients different than the symptoms and older individuals, And can you talk about the symptoms that we all need to be aware of, especially certainly everyone, but young people because they're not being screened.
Yeah. Absolutely, So we know that the young patients are disproportionately being impacted by rectal cancer than colon, and the rectal cancer is being closer to the outside, can be more symptomatic. So some of the symptoms are bloody stools, you can see stools, pain when you pass a stool, abdominal bloating, cramp, being But I think the thing to remember is that sometimes it's actually asymptomatic, and that's where screening.
So when we talk about screening, we're talking about subjecting a whole population of patients who are asymptomatic to a particular test. And that's why the age to start screening is such a hard thing to move right because it impacts the whole society and the whole population. But while the policy makers are working on that, I think there's so many things that can work on. I always distinguish diagnosis from screening. So if you can have a symptom at any age, the key there is, if you have
a symptom, we're not talking about screening. We're talking about diagnosis. Whatever age do comes, don't delay, don't wait. I think as a as a culture, we need to be less shy about talking about our poopo apology.
And then on their set children's book, everybody poops, Everybody poops, and you know we yeah, it's gross to think about it, but it's true poop and bugs.
Yeah.
Yeah, So I think that's number one and number two. If there are symptoms, don't brush it off. Right.
We are all so busy.
I think we're probably more likely to go to a coffee with a friend than call a physician to look in the blood that's in our stool. And so don't delay and really be our advocates. I think in addition, sometimes when people do get enough courage to present to a physician, sometimes the first one you see pooh poos it and says, oh, don't worry about it.
Yeah, I'll say it's just hemorrhoids. You know, you see blood in the toilet.
And so be persistent.
We are doing a lot among the professional societies to educate. The mass media is raising awareness. You're all helping, so I think the whole culture will change. But there are going to be people, unfortunately who may dismiss you, and so be yourself advocate and really push for the diagnostic test.
That's a different question than us.
And I know that only twenty percent of people because I just came from the Coli Guard Classic and I did some interviews there, that only twenty percent of people eates forty five to forty nine are actually getting screens. So we need to really spread the word that the age has been lowered. And I think one of the interesting things, Susan, we were talking about before we came
on stage was that Nancy's patients are incredibly healthy. You know, these people in their twenties and thirties and forties are like marathon runners.
They are super.
Health conscious, and I thought it was really interesting. Another thing that scientists are looking at, Susan, that me you all don't mind them calling you by your first names that may contribute or that people are wondering about. Can you talk about that? And it has to do with protein, like everywhere. I don't know about you all. But I'm so sick of seeing people on my Instagram feed talking about like eating grams of protein almost equal to my weight. And it's like what, And I don't know, am I
the only one that's getting all these things right? It's like protein craze Central exactly.
So let's talk about that.
If you go into the grocery store, you're seeing these protein drinks, you're seeing the protein powders, there's protein pasta, protein cereal, and protein bars, right, But.
They're ultraprocessed foods.
So these are the foods that have the emulsifiers, they have the stabilizers, all of those harmful chemicals that are disrupting our GOT barrier. But they're being marketed to the health conscious individual. So someone who's not going to grab a twinkie because they're like, this is not healthy, but oh, a protein bar is a healthy alternative.
So that's where it's concerned. So they are ultra processed.
And the thing here, and I was I was selling you KD before we came on, and all of the studies and the dietary studies that look at a healthy microbiome, protein should only be like fifteen percent of what you're consuming so it's carbohydrate sixty percent, protein about fifteen percent, and good fats so these and these pula so the PUFAs,
the polyosaturated fasciocids another fifteen percent. So carbohydrates feature microbome complex carbohydrates, fiber you know, things like they're called fibers, that these microbes will actually use the nutrient source to produce these short chained fasti acids that lead to.
That gulth barrier. So this is a challenge for protein.
And you are saying, Julie that you know this this sort of ultra processed protein, like because I was like, oh, I should be putting protein powder in my smoothies because I want to have strong bones and muscles. Right, But all this ultra processed protein isn't even the right kind of protein, right, right.
You want to look for high quality bioavailable protein which is naturally occurring, like in a product like LifeWay to fear.
Shameless fluch, shameless lud. But it's real, it's true.
You know.
Again, this is something passed down for generations for two thousand years. There's a reason why it survived for two thousand years, you know. I think also one of the things that has happened in the last ten year is this plant based movement which has really done us a
lot of harm. These are ultraprocessed, lab created plant based ingredients and they have unfortunately really messed with our minds and all these influencers and people who go on social media to talk about doing this and that with plant based, anti dairy, I'm anti dairy, don't do dairy, evil dairy. That is so untrue because really dairy for men to dairy is not the same as just regular dairy. For men to dairy creates this natural effervescent probiotic combination and
it's able to survive. So probiotics not only do you want it to take you know, to have a probiotic, but you want it to be encapsulated in the dairy because the gut is very acidic and it needs to the probiotic has to survive the entire digestive track and out of UC Davis, doctor Mara found that when it comes from a saurce, that probiotic can actually go through the entire digestive system, through the rectum and really.
Do what it's supposed to do.
What all these the science is saying that it will do so that's critical that not all probiotics are the same, and it really is important to get it from a dairy source.
So susan it drinking milk is better than drinking almond milk, well, fermented milk, Well, but what about regular milk versus like almond milk or soy milk. I drink regular milk because I just don't like almond milk in my coffee. But I do drink protein added milk. Is that mer ermented milk? And then okay, that's all right, all right? Drinking beer, all right? But there are other good things that are fermented in addition to kafir at, kembucha, kin chi, yogurt.
Those are very healthy. Talk about the fermentation process and why that's good for a microbiome. I don't like I'm going to start drinking kombucha. My daughter loves it. I think it's as funky, but I'm going to learn to like it exactly.
So, these fermented foods, they actually contain live microorganisms. Right, They're often referred to as probiotics, and they can be bacteria and they can be yeast, but these are generally beneficial microbes for your gods. So these are very good microbes that help maintain that gut barrier, helped in the production of the mucus and help in production of short chained, batty acids that builds those epithelial cells to be strong
and prevent things from moving through. So the fermentation process itself is that these live microbes acting on you know, say, sugars and starch to produce organic acids that within the food. And that's often you talked about that little acidic bubbly favor, right. It's these little acids that are being produced by the microbes, but they ate in digestion. It eats in digestion and it repopulates and balances your gots. So what you want to look for are these fermented foods that would have
a range of different microorganisms. You don't want to do just introduce one. You want to increase diversity. So there's been numerous demonstrating having a diverse GOD microbiome is linked with beneficial health aspects for chronic diseases, even treatments for cancer. Having a diverse GOT microbiome.
I was going to ask ask Nancy, do you recommend that some of your patients eat fermented food or has that not really been established.
Yeah, so we haven't.
I don't do any in practice, but we've been talking about maybe we should actually do a study to look at that.
Yeah, definitely.
I have had scientists tell me that try not to recommend taking a probiotic, for example, because that actually reach stricts the diversity of the microbiol.
Yes, if it has one organism. So there are studies done in melanoma patients that we're receiving immunotherapy, and they looked at patients that were given a probiotic, so a single microbe, versus patients that were given fiber, and they gave patients up to fifty grams of fiber, so they saw that it was actually fiber that helps the patients respond better because it increased the god microbiome diversity, whereas the single probiotic didn't.
Well, I'm glad you brought that up because I've often wondered. And I talked to Jay's gastro entrologists, who I'm still close friends with, and I asked him should I be taking a probiotic pill? And he was like, sure, it can't hurt. And I do think that there are a lot of people supplements that are taking advantage of like this new interest in microbiome and gut health and are selling probiotics. What do you think of those versus get getting probiotics in your diet.
Food is always best, go with the food because if it's something that you can so for example, with Kiefer, you're not just getting these microbes, which you're also getting nutrition for your gosh. You know there's there's sugars within Keefer that will help other microbes within your gotten. A key problem with these probiotics is engraftment, so them staying
around right. If you think about your gosh as primarialist, there's already microbes hanging out there, so you want to make sure you've got the right ones moving into your neighborhoods. So if you're drinking Keifer regularly, you're ensuring not that you've got the right population in your neighborhood hanging out and preventing the bad octors from setting up shop.
I think of them as little pac men, you know, in your body, and they're eating all the healthy stuff that you're putting in there exactly, and you want to keep them there right and not we're feeding them and keeping the good ones exactly, Like giving them good food good, right, it could rounds.
Out the bad ones.
So keifer crowd the good bacteria and kafir and we have twelve different strains fifty billion CFUs preserving.
And they and there's was a study, right, another study that showed that it was really more on yogurt, right, well, fermented foods, fermented food, but yogurt will tell us about that study. Yeah, So a study out of Massachusetts found that they studied one hundred and third thousand patients over thirty years, and they found that people who consumed for mented dairy every day or every week, two times a week head of reduction in colon cancer.
And this is something that we're so excited about. It's just the beginning of understanding. But really keyfer helps you grow a good gut garden. It keeps those bacteria replenished every day. Our modern lifestyle, like we talked about, antibiotics, the processed food, stress, social media, travel, all of that disrupts your gut biome and leads to dyspiosis.
So you could be the healthiest person.
You could eat very nutritiously what you think is nutritiously, but if you're not replenishing the gut biome. You are creating a dysregulation and the gut biome, and then we know that it's contributing to all sorts of things from mental health even you know there's a gut mind connection to talk about that, Yeah, a gut skin connection. You know, we're really learning the gut is the number one brain.
It leads to every part of your immune system. Yeah, ninety percent of your immune system is controlled in the gut.
Yeah, And Susan, I wanted to ask you, so fermented food that includes is cottage cheese fermented? Because I love cottage cheese and I eat a lot of cottage cheese. And oh, I mean enough with the cottage cheese recipes, am I?
Right?
Is anyone like constantly scrolling food things on Instagram? Obviously know how I'm spending my spare time, but what aout? What about cottage cheese?
Yeah, that's a great a great source of cheese, right, and dairy and it is includos it is the organisms within us are not as diverse, for example, for what you would see in Kiefer, but absolutely it's a great choice.
Okay, I want to just we're almost out of time.
We have a little bit more time, and I do want to talk about this gut brain connection, which is so fascinating that what is happening in your microbiome actually affects your mental health.
Can you talk more about that.
Yeah, So it's a fascinating area of emerging research and it's called the microbiome got brain access. So if you think about your gut, you have your enteric nervous system, which we often call our second brain, and this is packed full of nerves, more nerves than in your spinal corridge. And what we know is that there's microbes in the gut that help in the production of certain chemicals called NORD transmitters. So, for example, serotonin, ninety percent of that
is produced in your gut. That's our happy chemical. Then there's also GABBA, which is gamma minobuteric acid, and that helps you deal with anxiety and stress and dope mine and other chemical that is your motivation chemicals. So we know that the gut microbes, beneficial gut microbes are involved in the production of those important NORD transmitters that signal through this vagus nerve back to our brain and then
these can control your mood, how you're feeling. But there's studies linking it to depression and to a range of Alzheimer's even right, but they're emerging studies and most of the functional work is in mouse models or wrap models, and the correlative work are in humans, so we're still learning from that. So that god brain access. But there
was an also outside of that. There was a recent study published in Nature Medicine that looked at and they characterized an older microbiome versus a younger microbiome in patients over the age of fifty. And they saw this older microbiome this patients had increased risk for cardiovascular disease, and when they repopulated the microbiome through a fecal microbiota transplant to this younger looking microbiome, it could reverse some of these effects.
So it's a fountain of youth.
Yeah, I read about that.
That weird, Like, I'm sorry, the idea of a fingle transplant. It's not as all this, but it's I think it's so interesting. So what you eat, you know, when do they say you are what you eat? But what you eat is really you know, going to be can affect your mental health so significantly. Well, I think we should close by maybe just going down the line. I'm pretty sure I know what Julie's going to say, but what can we do to make sure that our gut health
is in tip top shape? I mean, And what advice I guess specifically for calling cancer and early on set cancers for you, Nancy, would you have for everyone in this audience? And I hope again they're going to spread the word.
Sure.
My take home will be look at your poop and forty five is a new fifty.
That was simple? Okay, good? All right?
Yeah, So my take home is the beauty of the microbiome is that it's modifiable. We can manipulate us, so we can take control by eating healthily, avoiding the ultraprocessed foods, incorporating whole foods and fermented foods into our.
Diet and fiber, by the way, fiber is huge.
Fiber is huge.
And then also exercise is a role to play in maintaining our microbiome, so we have control to some degree.
How does exercise affect your microbiome?
The links have been on increasing alpha diversity. So there's certain microbes that like aerobic exercise. So the links have all been correlated with increasing alpha diversity, which is what you want to train your immune system to identify cancer, because you know, when cancer arises, it actually is a failing of your immune system to recognize that. So if you can train your immune system to be strong and having those microbes interaction with the gut beneficial microbes with
your immune system. This is the hypothesis as to how all of these factors come together. So it's not a single thing, it's multi factorial.
We're going to say a lot about prebiotics coming. You don't really need to take an extra prebiotic.
It's in your food.
Every time you eat berries, banana, you know, kale, salads that you're naturally getting those prebiotics, so you don't need prebiotics.
As I said, the industry that you know, supplement and health food industry, I think is going to take advantage of this, you know, great awakening about gut health and probiotics. They're better to get them from natural sources instead of like in pill form, is basically what I heard. I'm going to stay away from protein bars and protein powder honestly because it's just not as good as getting real
protein from real food. I'm going to be drinking my kafear, but I think this is so important because I just think, you know, I never knew quite that, I never understood the importance of gut health when it comes to almost every aspect of your physical health, and now we're learning of your mental health. So I've had so much fun with this panel. Nancy, Susan, Julie, thank you all so much, and I hope you guys well practice what you've heard about.
Thanks for listening everyone. If you have a question for me, a subject you want us to cover, or you want to share your thoughts about how you navigate this crazy world, reach out send me a DM on Instagram. I would love to hear from you. Next Question is a production of iHeartMedia and Katie Kuric Media. The executive producers are Me, Katie Kuric, and Courtney Ltz. Our supervising producer is Ryan Martz, and our producers are Adriana Fazzio and Meredith Barnes. Julian
Weller composed our theme music. For more information about today's episode, or to sign up for my newsletter, wake Up Call, go to the description in the podcast app or visit us at Katiecuric dot com. You can also find me on Instagram. And all my social media channels. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Want to support
your gut health and microbiome. Try LifeWay Kaffir, packed with bioavailable protein and fifty billion CFUs of probiotics to support your digestive system. Enjoy it straight from the bottle, blend it into smoothies, or use it in recipes. It's delicious and versatile. And for a quick and healthy snack, try Lifewaightfarmer cheese. It's loaded with protein and the perfect substitute for cottage cheese with no blending required. Spread it on
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