Transcript #431 Myths About Probiotics and the Gut Brain Axis with Tina Anderson

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1. Find out what’s in store on this Myers Detox Podcast with Tina Anderson who joins the show to talk about the gut brain axis and the myths about probiotics. Tina covers so many great topics on gut health, including how your gut flora make neurotransmitters, the best types of probiotics that you should take, how leaky gut causes autoimmune diseases, and so many more amazing tips on how to up your gut health game!
2. Find out why gut health is so important to so many functions in the body.
3. Learn more about the gut brain connection, and how gut health impacts our neurotransmitters and mood.
4. Find out how probiotics improve gut health.
5. Learn about some of the myths around probiotics, like whether or not they need to be refrigerated, or if CFU really matters.
6. Learn more about leaky gut and how it can affects our body.
7. Find out some of the signs and symptoms of leaky gut.
8. Find out about Tina’s amazing JustThrive probiotic supplements and some of the incredible research behind them.

Wendy Myers: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Myers Detox Podcast. I’m Wendy Myers, and you can learn more about my work at myersdetox.com and subscribe to our newsletters or download one of my many free e-guides and we’ll send you out, cutting-edge health information every week.

Wendy Myers: So today we’ve got a great guest on. We have my friend, Tina Anderson on the show talking about the Gut-Brain Axis and the importance and myths of probiotics. So really, really interesting show on gut health as well. I firmly believe you need to focus on gut health before you focus on anything else because you can’t have good health if you have a leaky gut or have gut inflammation or, you know, not enough of a diversification of gut bacteria in your gut. So, we’re going to delve into that in-depth today.

Wendy Myers: So, really interesting show. We talk about, like I mentioned, Miso probiotics, we talk about different types of probiotics, refrigerated probiotics versus spore-based ones, we talk about what’s up with that 50 billion CFUs or a colony-forming units, is that important? Can we talk about refrigeration of probiotics? We talk about just a lot of different aspects of probiotics. We also talk about dues and don’ts of probiotics, and also talk about, you know, what kind of nutrients that your gut flora make that, you know, how they make neurotransmitters, why that’s so important if you have mental health issues. And we also talk about leaky gut, and why that’s such a huge, huge problem today and the symptoms of leaky gut and why most people don’t have any symptoms at all. We also talk about how, you know, leaky gut is the, you know, you have to have a leaky gut in order to have an autoimmune disease, but it’s also the basis and the precursor to mental health issues and too many other issues, food sensitivities, and like histamine reactions and so many other issues that people are dealing with today, and so you got to get the gut right.

Wendy Myers: I also want to mention that it’s Myers Detox’s 10-year anniversary here in April 2022, and I just never really thought that the website would get to where it was. I mean, I started it 10 years ago, my first article I wrote was on Infrared Saunas, I just am really very pleasantly surprised at how myersdetox.com has grown, how the podcast audience has grown, and I just, I really appreciate from the bottom of my heart. All you guys who like followed me from day one, you know,   jumped on the train, you know, midway to the station and have really supported my work and what I’ve been doing. And it’s a passion of mine, it’s very, very important to me to get you guys, you know, correct information so that you can dramatically improve your health.

Wendy Myers: I know so many of you are looking for answers on are really not able have not been able to find it in the past that you’ve been taking on your health journey. So for me, my goal every morning, when I wake up is to give you accurate information and cutting-edge information so that you’re able to meet your health goals. And some of the most important work that I’m doing, I’m just about to launch and that’s called the Emotional Detox Program. And this is a program you can learn more at emo-detox.com, it’s emo-detox.com. And I created this program because in my own life, and also in my practice, I was very frustrated with just doing like, physical things for my health, like taking supplements and diet and, you know, detoxing, which is also incredibly important. But there was always something I felt like was missing that I was doing all these things.

Wendy Myers: And a lot of you guys listening are doing all of these things and doing it perfect, but you still wake up feeling just kind of blah, or you don’t wake up feeling joy, or you just don’t feel like it, you don’t feel as good as you could or should. And that was me for a really long time. And so I’ve done a lot of research over the years and put everything that I’ve learned into this emotional detox program. It’s a 30-hour course, it’s a lot to it, and there’s, it goes all into the basis of what emotional trauma is, how that affects our health, and how it, emotional trauma causes 67% of physical health issues, and it’s you probably higher than that, much higher, and using sound therapy that you can do easily at home to get rid of all your emotional trauma, which will then ameliorate your physical health issues.

Wendy Myers: So, it’s really groundbreaking work, and it’s also, I have all the scientific research to support everything that I’m talking about in this course. So, it’s really some of the most important work that I’ve ever done. So, check it out at emo-detox.com. So, our guest today, Tina Anderson, her journey into the world of health had a unique start and some unusual terms. So, she began her career as a trial lawyer who specialized in settling cases by bringing both sides together, which is a personal passion of hers. But once her second child arrived, Tina left that high-stress job behind so she could focus on her family, and luckily she was still able to use her considerable legal skills to point her career in a new direction as an in-house counsel for a family pharmaceutical company, but what Tina saw there made her change her direction again.

Wendy Myers: So, frustrated by the many abuses in the pharmaceutical industry, Tina turned toward the field of natural health and found her life’s work. So, she channeled her energy into learning all that she could about disease prevention and good health maintenance, and that led her to discover the importance of gut health and how connected and crucial it is for overall health and wellness. And so Tina, along with our husband, Billy, created a unique settlement that contains the superior probiotic strains of renowned researcher, Dr. Simon Cutting, and by promoting gut health and probiotics, Tina shares her passion for wellness and helping others with their best physical and emotional lives. You can learn more about Tina and her supplement line at justthrivehealth.com. And just for our Myers detox listeners, you can get 15% off of Tina’s products or Just Thrive line of supplements using coupon code DETOX15. Tina, thank you so much for joining the show

Tina Anderson: Oh, thanks for having me, Wendy, I’m so excited to be here.

Wendy Myers: Yeah, so let’s talk a little bit about gut health and why it’s so important for overall health.

Tina Anderson: Yeah, so, you know, for years people would associate gut health as being, you know, gas and bloating, diarrhea, constipation. Or the lack of gut health being gas, or bloating, or constipation, or diarrhea. Of course, those are signs of having some imbalance in your gut. But what we’re just starting to understand is that skin issues are associated with an imbalance in your gut bacteria, heart disease, cancer, diabetes, allergies, autoimmune issues. Of course,  these are all stemming from an imbalance in your gut, you know, mental health disorders are a huge one, you know, anxiety, depression, Alzheimer’s, all these different types of mental health disorders and mood issues also are associated with an imbalance of our gut bacteria.

Tina Anderson: So, it’s really hard to find any noncommunicable disease that is not associated with some type of imbalance going on your gut health. Our immune system, you know, over 80% of our immune system is found in our gut lining. I mean, during the last couple of years, it’s like we had been preaching this for years, you know, we need to first take care of our gut health. And so it’s so foundational to overall health, there are so many other things that we should be doing to support our overall health and wellbeing, but we all need to start with our gut health first and foremost.

Wendy Myers: I know, and you can’t find a top scientific journal out there without some article or research study on the microbiota, I mean, it is so foundational to health, and like you mentioned, if you have leaky gut, that’s a precursor total autoimmune disease. You can’t have an autoimmune disease without a leaky gut or issues in your gut, you can’t make proper amounts of neurotransmitters and short-chain fatty acids and B vitamins, and there’s just so many things our gut flora do. Can you talk a little bit about the gut-brain connection a little bit more in-depth as well?

Tina Anderson: Yeah, so I’m so glad you brought that up about the neurotransmitters. 90% of our serotonin, which is our happy hormone, is produced in our gut. So, if our gut is in balance and we’re heavy mood issues, that’s exactly why, and so dopamine is produced in our gut, GABA is produced in our gut, GABA, the calming neurotransmitter. So, these are all being produced in our gut, and so there’s a huge connection between the gut and the brain. So, there’s something that we call the gut-brain access, and I’m sure you’ve talked about this before many times, but the vagus nerve is actually the nerve that connects the gut in the brain. So, there’s this constant communication going back and forth from the gut, is signaling to the brain, and the brain is signaling to the gut. And when you have an imbalance in your gut bacteria, you tend to have more mood disorders like anxiety, depression, those types of issues.

Tina Anderson: And then when, you know, one of the things I always tell people when they’re saying, “What should I do for my gut health?” I say, you know, one of the things I would say is meditation or deep breathing just to calm yourself down, because if your mind and, you know, your brain is more at rest, it’s sending those calming signals down to your gut. And so you will have some, you know,  you will have some improvement in your gut bacteria when you start to like, calm yourself down. It’s amazing, It’s an amazing communication superhighway between the gut and the brain. They’re talking to each other all the time, that’s why we have, you know, butterflies in our stomachs. That’s real, I mean, those are true signals that are being sent down from the brain to the gut.

Wendy Myers: And so, tell us the role of probiotics and the role that probiotics are playing in gut health and improving gut health.

Tina Anderson: Yeah, well, the probiotics strains that we work with are considered spore-based probiotics. They’re a completely different category of probiotics that, we were disruptors of the market. We brought these spore-based probiotics, that are very different in that they have an endospore shell around themselves and that allows them to get to the intestines alive. And so, these spore-based probiotics actually have the ability, the best way I can describe it is if you envision a garden and this garden has been stepped on and trampled on, and there’s weeds growing all over that garden, we know that the spores go into the garden are going to your intestines, and they attached to the intestinal cell wall, they attach to the soil in the garden, they have the ability to get rid of those plants or the weeds that are in the garden, they have the ability to get rid of the pathogenic bacteria in their gut.

Tina Anderson: And then they have the ability to take those plants that have been stepped down and trampled on, and help bring them back to life. So, in your gut, they have the ability to take bacteria that it’s already there and help it flourish and thrive in the gut. So, it’s really, the spore-based probiotics are really a unique type of delivery system for a probiotic. So, and the probiotics are going in, these spores are actually going in and making a 30% change. We’ve tested this, we’ve studied this, within two and a half weeks, they’re actually staying there for about 21 to 28 days where they’re making a true change in that gut microbiome. So, it’s a really, really effective approach to overall health and gut health by just taking a spore-based probiotic.

Wendy Myers: Yeah, and so, you’re the founder of Just Thrive Probiotics, just a groundbreaking product, for sure, and, but there’s a lot of myths around probiotics as well. Can you talk a little bit about those?

Tina Anderson: Yes, thank you, yeah, one of the biggest myths I’d love to talk about is it needs to be refrigerated in order to stay alive, you know, so if a probiotic needs to be refrigerated to stay alive, it means it can’t even withstand the room temperature of the store shelf. So, then how in the world would it ever survive your body temperature, which is 98.6 and much hotter than the room temperature of the store shelf? So, I always am so happy when I hear doctors saying, “Oh, take a probiotic.” That’s a great first step in conventional medicine that they’re even telling you to take, you know, a probiotic, but then they’ll say, oh, take what makes sure you take one of the refrigerator because those are live microorganisms. And that is true that they may be live in the refrigerator, but the definition of a probiotic is to be alive in the intestines. It’s not to be alive in the refrigerator, it needs to be alive by the time it gets to the intestines.

Tina Anderson: So, all these refrigerated probiotics actually have a lot of difficulties surviving your, first of all, your body temperature, let alone the acidic environment in the stomach. So, the stomach is meant to be the gastric barrier, very acidic, most probiotics have a lot of difficulties surviving the gastric system and actually make it to the intestines dead on arrival. So, that is one of the biggest myths out there, it needs to be refrigerated to stay alive, I would not fall, you know, fall into that trap.

Tina Anderson: One of the other myths I love to talk about is that the one where, you know, 50 billion CFUs, the colony-forming units, which are always on the label of a probiotic, is better than 5 billion or a hundred billion is better than 50 billion or 250 billion is better than five billion.

Tina Anderson: And there’s actually no science to that. There’s never been a study showing that more is better, that is really, it’s really in large part now, become a marketing tool. It’s also become, I think companies have done this because they know the majority of their strengths aren’t ever surviving, they aren’t getting to the intestines alive where the spores, for example, what we need to focus on is the quality of the strain, and we know with the spores in our product, for example, we have three billion CFUs and they cause a 30% favorable shifting in two and a half weeks. I mean, that’s unheard of, you know, I don’t know of a study of its kind on any other type of probiotic out there. So, this whole idea of having 50 billion and a hundred billion is really not based in science. So, that’s another myth that I love to debunk.

Tina Anderson: And then another one I love to talk about is the diversity, you know, we know that having a diverse microbiome, having a diversity of bacteria in our gut is very beneficial to our gut health and our overall health. We know, if we have a diverse microbiome, we have health. So, what companies will do is they’ll say,, your doctors will say “ Take one that has 15 different strains or 25 different strains.” And really that’s not making a change, what we really need to do is take a probiotic strain that’s working with your own bacteria in there, and now it’s affecting all of the, you know, hundreds of different, thousands of different strains that are in your gut bacteria. When you take a probiotic that has 15 different strains, it’s like equivalent to taking a penny and throwing it into a pool filled with quarters, you know,. it’s not making any type of significant change in the gut microbiome.

Wendy Myers: Yeah, that always never really made sense to me when, you know, you’re taking some Probiocsin have one or two strains, and how is that going to make any kind of effect? When you have trillions of bacteria in your body, you have more bacteria than you do cells in the human body so, it just that never really made any sense to me. And so, when people start losing that diversity, their microbiome and there’s so many things working against our gut, you know, antibiotics, and stress, and cigarettes smoking, and pollution, and glyphosate, and pesticides. There’s just so many things working against our gut flora and fauna, and that can eventually lead to leaky gut. So, what is leaky gut and why is it such a huge problem?

Tina Anderson: Yeah, the nice thing with leaky gut is that it’s exactly what it sounds like, you know, your gut is leaking, there’s like intestinal, you have this intestinal cell wall that is this barrier between the inside to the outside, and so, you know, we consider the inside of the gut as the outside. So, we’ve got this intestinal cell wall that is protecting us, and when it starts to degrade and holes start coming in, and so now the LPS toxins, so the Lipopolysaccharide toxins that are in our gut that are really problematic, start to seat into our bloodstream and it causes this inflammatory response by our immune system. So, you had said earlier, if you have an autoimmune disease, you definitely have leaky gut and that’s absolutely correct, but now they’ve estimated 80% of the adult population has a leaky gut and they don’t even know it.

Tina Anderson: And so, one of the exciting things about our company is that there was a double-blind human clinical trial done on leaky gut with these strains that are used in Just Thrive, showing that after 30 days, it saw a 42% reduction in LPS toxins seeping into the bloodstream. These LPS toxins are causing an inflammatory response, you know, they could be causing inflammatory response to your heart, too, you know, your liver, to your brain, to all kinds of organs in your body. And so, we need to stop that, you know, leakiness of the gut, and so we’re really excited about the findings of the first of its kind, it’s the only double-blind human clinical trial I know of that has been published on a probiotic or any type of product for that matter on leaky gut. And so, we have to be really aware of that leakiness of the gut, because it is the cause of, you know, 90% of diseases out there.

Wendy Myers: Yeah, I  hundred percent agree with you, I mean, leaky gut is much more prevalent than people are aware of, and especially if you have food, and what are some of the signs of leaky gut? I know like, having food sensitivities and autoimmune disease. Are there any other signs that people should be aware of?

Tina Anderson: Well, here’s what’s scary, the study that was done on leaky gut on our strains was done on college students and these college students had no symptoms whatsoever. They had no symptoms, they were otherwise healthy and out of the hundred college students that were tested, 60% of them had a leaky gut and didn’t know it. So, that’s, what’s scary is that of course, yes, allergies, autoimmune disease are telltale signs that you have a leaky gut. But it’s that drippy faucet, you have this leakiness, you have this leaky gut, and there’s a slow drip for many years and many years, and one day that faucet just overflows and then you get this autoimmune issue, you get eczema, you might get anxiety, mood disorders, heart disease, whatever it might be.

Tina Anderson: This is a very slow process. So, and the thing is, there’s really not a lab test, we can’t go to a quest and find out if we have a leaky gut. So, I always say, you know,  we assume we live in this world that is so offensive to our gut health like you had mentioned earlier. So, I almost assume the majority of us have a leaky gut and don’t even know it, or at least it’s starting to, you know, It’s that drippy faucet that’s happening, and one day it just will over, you know,  explode. But there are so many things that we do in our day-to-day life that are just so offensive to our gut health.

Wendy Myers: Yeah, and I personally believe that, you know,  you need to be focusing on your gut health before, what type of diet you’re eating best, like the paleo, or the gaps or the this, you need to be focusing on gut health and balancing your blood sugar control, that’s the most important things that you have to do because gut health is so integral and there’s such a domino effect that can happen and you can get other health issues as a result of not having, your gut intact. And so what are some of the other research-based supplements that Just Thrive makes that are also really helpful for your gut?

Tina Anderson: Yeah so, we have our probiotic, which is the spore-based probiotic that we were talking about, and then we have our prebiotic, which is the fertilizer for that garden that I was talking about. So, it’s the food, and one of the unique features of our prebiotic is its ability to only target the beneficial bacteria, like I said, the prebiotic is food for the garden, but it could also feed the weeds and we don’t want it to feed any pathogenic bacteria. So, these prebiotic fibers, it took years for us to launch a prebiotic because we didn’t want to put something out that was going to make a problem worse for people. So, these prebiotic fibers actually only target the beneficial bacteria and do not, you know, feed any of the pathogenic bacteria in the gut. So, we kind of say like, the probiotic reconditions the gut, the prebiotic reinforces what the probiotic is doing.

Tina Anderson: And then we have our Gut 4-tify product, which is really exciting. That actually is a mucosal support product. So, the mucosal lining is so important for also, you know, we’ve got our gut lining, then we’ve got our mucosal lining, really important. That’s made up of some amino acids, some polyphenols that are helping rebuild that mucosal lining, so really, really exciting. That’s a great system that we use, you know,  It’s like we got the Probiotic to recondition, the Prebiotic to reinforce, and then the Gut 4-tify to rebuild the mucosal lining. So that’s, I mean, we’ve got about 10 products. We’ll never be a product that, our company, that has 200 different skews. We are focused on only products that are missing and needed in the market, you know,  we have been disruptors on many products that we brought, but probably one of my most exciting products that I’m really excited about right now that we are just about to launch by the time this airs is hopefully, it will have launched, but we have a probiotic strain that is focusing on mood health.

Tina Anderson: This is called a psychobiotic. And so psychobiotic, you know,  it’s a new term, It was coined in, gosh! I think in like 2013, so fairly recently, and it’s basically the probiotic strains that are helping support your mood, and it’s really exciting. So, when I had talked about the LPS toxins that are leaking into your bloodstream, you’ve got this inflammatory response that could shoot up to your brain. And so that is one of the biggest problems with, you know, brain inflammation. We know that mood disorders are based on brain inflammation and that one of the biggest causes of it is that the LPS toxins going into the bloodstream.

Tina Anderson: The other big cause of, you know, brain inflammation are these external stressors that we deal with on a daily basis, you know, getting cut off in rush hour traffic, the deadlines that you miss, the fight with a loved one, whatever those things may be. And so we know that, and that, of course, activates the HPA access, and then it starts to create and produce all this cortisol, which is not good for us, or most people, it’s not good for, and excess of cortisol is not good. So we have a strain that we have just started to work with, called Bifido longum 1714, and this is a very unique Bifido longum strain that has this exopolysaccharide around it that helps protect it and get it through the stomach acids.

Tina Anderson: So, this actually helps with the external stressors, I mean, and we know it’s been very well studied, it’s bringing down cortisol levels, increasing theta wave activity. So, it’s helping us get into that flow state, so it’s really, really exciting. So, now we know with the probiotic and this new to ours called Just Calm, we know we’re dealing with, you know, both causes of that inflammatory response from the LPS side and then from the external stressors side.

Wendy Myers: Yeah, that’s so interesting, I mean, that makes perfect sense to have a psychobiotic because, you know, like you mentioned, our neurotransmitters are made primarily in our guts, we want to do everything to support that.

Tina Anderson: Yeah, no, it’s really, really exciting. The studies are so profound. They basically have studied people that have more of that 1714 strain in them and are just able to handle, you know, stressors so much better, improve mood, all of these, you know, re-markers of stress and mood are people who have high amounts of the 1714 strain are seeing, you know, have just an ability to handle stress better and are more in that flow state, and God knows who wouldn’t want that. And we know that people would say, “Oh, the gut is the second brain.” In our opinion, the gut is the first brain, over here at Just Thrive. We feel that gut is the first brain, and so we need to be really focusing on our gut and using probiotics to help our mood, I mean, the core problem with mood disorders is really the gut. It’s not as much the brain, it’s really the gut. And so having a probiotic, one that helps with LPS and then another probiotic strain that with these external stressors and reduces cortisol is really, really exciting.

Wendy Myers: Yeah, I mean, that’s so important I think to do everything you can, to be resilient to stress because we have so many different stressors in our environment. I think people don’t realize how stressed they are. I think people are so revved up today from, you know, caffeine, and sugar, and their diet, and EMF or electromagnetic fields, and just pollution. And people just don’t realize how many stressors our body is dealing with, and they just are in this constant state of fight or flight.

Tina Anderson: Yeah, and I think psychiatrists out there are very, they have their hands tied, because they really are just looking at SSRIs and looking at different anti-anxiety meds, and they’re not having luck. I mean, we’ve seen that in our country, people are just not having success with those types of medications and yet, and they’re getting under so much stress than they ever have been, and so what’s out there right now is not working. We really need to focus on the root cause, the root cause of a lot of those disorders is all stemming from our gut, and so I agree and it’s just, and I’m particularly passionate about children, the amount of children who are under so much stress is just, it’s so sad, I’m a mother of three children, It’s just so hard to watch young kids having so much stress in their lives, and we really need to focus on gut health for kids as well.

Wendy Myers: Yeah, I’m a huge fan of probiotics, you know, I had my daughter through cesarean section and I felt guilty that, cause I know that when they passed through the vaginal canal, that’s when the children get all the bacteria that they need to populate their gut and whatnot. So, I fed my daughter probiotics and I think because I did that at such a young age that she didn’t have any allergies. Like I went to an allergist and had her tested and the allergist had like never seen that, someone that had no allergies or no food sensitivities at all. And it was because I had modulated her immune system with probiotics. So, it’s so important for people to focus on taking probiotics. So, thank you for the work that you’re doing. Is there anything that we’ve left out of the conversation?

Tina Anderson: No, I just always want to stress to people to just focus on your gut. You had mentioned one thing about being on certain diets and I think that was such a great point because if our gut is inflamed at all, we’re not absorbing nutrients. So you could be eating this really clean and great nutrient-dense product, but if your gut is inflamed in any way, imbalance, you’re not absorbing all of those important nutrients. So I can’t stress enough that is where you start is with your gut health.

Wendy Myers: And do you have any special offers for our listeners?

Tina Anderson: Yes. I would definitely recommend people going to our website at justthrivehealth.com, and you could use the coupon code DETOX15, and that will give you a 15% off discount on anything and the whole store. So.

Wendy Myers: Okay, fantastic. Fantastic. Well, I really appreciate you doing that. So you guys definitely go check out, justthrivehealth.com. These are amazing probiotics, I highly, highly recommend them and I’m very, I’m a supplement snob. I’m very picky about my supplements that I take. I love the Just Thrive probiotics and I think it’s really important to take score-based probiotics, so check those out. Well, thank you so much, Tina, for coming on the show and everyone, thank you so much for tuning into the Myers Detox Podcast, where I have such a good time doing these interviews and learning so much myself, but also, more importantly, I want to bring you all these experts around the world to help you up-level your health because you deserve to feel good. So thank you for tuning in and I’ll talk to you guys next week.