Why soil based probiotics are so different, and so powerful – with Katie Ward from Microbz

0:00Katie Ward:This show is sponsored by Primadine, a clean, natural and science-based spermidine supplement that's been a long-time staple in my own longevity stack. Because studies suggest that through autophagy, spermidine increases healthspan and upregulates a range of health markers, from memory and cognitive function to heart health, hormone balance, fertility and even hair growth. Plus, you can be assured that all ingredients undergo rigorous third-party testing. Buy Primadine now at OxfordHealthSpam.com and use the discount code DrSophie, that's D-R-Sophie for 20 % off. This show is sponsored by Microbes, an award-winning liquid probiotic that's now a staple for me, because Microbes, with a Z on the end, is different.

0:47Katie Ward:For one thing, they source directly from the soil on their Wiltshire farm, meaning more diversity, with at least 15 strains of good bacteria in every single shot. it's brewed so it can survive in the stomach and a remarkable 92 percent of customers say it makes a difference plus they offer micro-friendly cleaning gardening and even microbes for dogs buy now at microbes.co.uk and use the discount code sophie20 for 20 off this episode is sponsored by nuance paris the french specialists in next generation anti-aging and one of the best kept secrets over in france now available here in the uk i've recently discovered its award-winning beauty tech with the nuance led masks designed to restart cellular function perfect for this time of year and i'm now trialing its stunning skincare range blending premium natural ingredients with highly concentrated scientifically proven actives the result is an award-winning range that's suitable for all skin types even the most sensitive head to nuance spelt n-o-o-a-n-c-e hyphen paris.com and get 15 % off with the code DRSOPHY.

1:53Katie Ward:This show is sponsored by Microbes, an award-winning liquid probiotic that's now a staple for me because Microbes, with a Z on the end, is different. For one thing, they source directly from the soil on their Wiltshire farm, meaning more diversity with at least 15 strains of good bacteria in every single shot. It's brewed so it can survive in the stomach and a remarkable 92 % of customers say it makes a difference. Plus they offer micro-friendly cleaning, gardening and even microbes for dogs. Buy now at microbes.co.uk and use the discount code SOPHIE20 for 20 % off. This show is sponsored by Primidine, a clean, natural and science-based spermidine supplement that's been a long-time staple in my own longevity stack.

2:40Katie Ward:Because studies suggest that through autophagy, spermidine increases healthspan and upregulates a range of health markers from memory and cognitive function to heart health, hormone balance, fertility, and even hair growth. Plus, you can be assured that all ingredients undergo rigorous third-party testing. Buy Primadine now at OxfordHealthSpam.com and use the discount code DrSophie, that's D-R-Sophie for 20 % off. this episode is sponsored by nuance paris the french specialists in next generation anti-aging and one of the best kept secrets over in france now available here in the uk i've recently discovered its award-winning beauty tech with the nuance led masks designed to restart cellular function perfect for this time of year and i'm now trialing its stunning skincare range blending premium natural ingredients with highly concentrated scientifically proven actives The result is an award-winning range that's suitable for all skin types, even the most sensitive.

3:40Katie Ward:Head to Nuance, spelt N-O-O-A-N-C-E hyphen Paris dot com and get 15 % off with the code DRSophie. Hi, I'm Sophie and this is Age Well with Dr. Sophie Schotter, a space devoted to all things health, wellness and longevity. because for me, aging well is about looking and feeling like the best possible version of ourselves inside as well as out. So together with my producer Fee, I'll be deep diving into the latest research, sifting fact from fiction. I'll also be talking to all kinds of trusted experts tapping into their knowledge, along with bringing you conversations from a range of interesting women and men finding out how they age well.

4:22Katie Ward:So this is my show. Welcome along. And as always, thank you so much for listening.

4:35Katie Ward:Katie, firstly, welcome on board as one of our show's sponsors. This is really exciting. And I want to start by saying to listeners that over the last year or so, I've had several brands approach me, which is always nice. But I knew I only wanted to work with brands that I genuinely love and believe in. And Microbes is certainly one of those brands. And it seems the brand is really having a moment right now. Lots of people are talking about you. So firstly, congratulations on creating such a terrific and credible product. And I know you've also been winning various awards as well. But to get straight into our conversation, I think we can all agree that the whole gut health conversation has been really well socialised and very much immersed into mainstream culture now.

5:14Katie Ward:But what drew me to microbes and the work that you and your team are doing is that you've picked up on something that Fee and I briefly discussed over a year ago and that's soil or spore-based probiotics. I know that these are now getting a lot of attention for their unique properties and health benefits. I think the data is still emerging though but can you explain exactly what soil-based probiotics are and how they differ from lab-based probiotics which are the kind of thing that many of us probably buy and use?

5:42Dr Sophie Shotter:Yes sure. Firstly thank you so much for having me on I really appreciate it. And it's lovely to hear that you like the brand. So soil-based probiotics, I guess the first thing to say is that when you think of soil, you might think of something that is just outside and looks a bit like mud and isn't very useful. But actually, soil is pretty incredible. It is one of the most diverse ecosystems in the whole world. And there's actually more living microorganisms in a teaspoon of healthy soil than there are people on the planet. So it's really incredibly diverse. And this incredible diversity underground also underpins the biodiversity above ground.

6:20Dr Sophie Shotter:So we've been using microbes on our land in Wiltshire for 20 years. And the thing that we've really seen is this burst of life. So the butterflies, the dragonflies, we've been told by the RSPB that we have the biggest bird population in Wiltshire. So we've really come to believe that this microscopic life underpins bigger life. And I find that incredibly exciting. So soil is really alive. It's really a living ecosystem. And this has really big benefits for certain illnesses. I mean, Parkinson's is a big one, and there's so much research about specific strains on specific issues. So we harvest our microbial cultures from that diverse living ecosystem.

6:59Dr Sophie Shotter:And the difference between that and lab-grown strains is that lab-grown strains originally did come from nature. So they have their origins in nature, but they've kind of been separated out from their communities and they've been made in a lab. So separated out and then cultured, so grown in petri dishes. But if you're looking at well-being in the round, the diversity of soil-based microbes adds that breadth of different microorganisms, which I feel is really important.

7:29Katie Ward:Yeah, Sophie did a really interesting episode on pre, pro and post-biotics. And we talked about the fact that prebiotics don't perhaps get the attention they deserve because the latest research indicates that these are equally if not maybe more important than probiotics so what are your thoughts on all of this and what is the latest research telling us when it comes to prebiotics

7:54Dr Sophie Shotter:my thoughts on this and i've actually been ruminating on it a lot is that this whole idea about pre pro and postbiotics is really we're talking about the digestive process here we're talking about how we eat a banana in the morning and by the end of the day it becomes you know our body and our brain and I think that's an incredibly miraculous and marvelous process that we're just beginning to kind of understand so a prebiotic is certain types of food that feed your microbes and now we're kind of coming to understand more that we don't actually eat to feed ourselves we eat food and we feed our microbes which feed us so there's this prebiotic intake and then there's the probiotics that help digest food and make it bioavailable to absorb through a healthy gut lining.

8:42Dr Sophie Shotter:And then we have postbiotics, things like butyrate, which are really essential for building, you know, the short chain fatty acids, really essential for building a healthy body and immune system. So this whole process is digestion and all of it is essential. And we don't yet know if you take a butyrate or a postbiotic supplement, how disrupting that natural process of pre, pro and postbiotic impacts the body in terms of is it better for it to be done naturally through the digestion process or can we take a postbiotic that has the same impact? And I guess you could say the same is true for probiotics.

9:21Dr Sophie Shotter:So we should in theory be getting all of this from our food and if we add in billions of strains of a couple of different types of lab-made probiotics, different people will react to those in different ways. So the whole thing is an incredibly complicated system. And added to that, mirrored by the human process, is the process of growing food. So within our soils, growing plants has the same process. So within soils, there is a prebiotic, which is organic matter and minerals. And around the plant root is something called the rhizosphere, which is a kind of external stomach for a plant. So it's the area around which microbes, again, make the prebiotic or minerals from the soil bioavailable to absorb into the plant through the root system.

10:12Dr Sophie Shotter:and then the postbiotic within the carrot or the whatever you're growing is the availability of polyphenols and all the nutrients and zincs and things that we need in food to be healthy so I just want to widen the lens as well from the human gut to the way that we grow our food and it's a similar biological process I just think both of them are absolutely fascinating and both of them are really important to think about in terms of health as a whole system. Thank you,

10:44Katie Ward:Katie. It'd be great to also hear more about the physical process of how you actually produce microbes and these 15 strains you talk about. I loved hearing you on the Gutology podcast talk about microbes and we heard you say, and I quote, most microbes are swing voters. Can you explain this? And again, introduce us to the specific microbes you work with and how you ensure that only the good guys, so to speak, go into the product. And I also have seen that you test in various ways and for various things. So it'd be great to hear more about your testing.

11:16Dr Sophie Shotter:Yes, certainly. Okay, quite a few little bits. So I'll try and make sure I get all of those. In terms of our physical processes, what we do is every couple of months, mainly during the summer, because the ground gets a bit cold during the winter, we go down to the edge of our forest land, which has never been industrially used and is far away from motorways, is quite wild. And we go to the edge of the forest and we dig a big hole and we put down a starch-based material, which is a food source for the microbes, and we leave it down in the ground for about two weeks, depending on the soil temperature at the time.

11:49Dr Sophie Shotter:And when we pull it out, what we see is this kind of, looks a bit like microbial matter or kind of rainbow. It has this kind of translucent but iridescent colour to it. And it smells a bit like the forest floor. So it smells like kind of really good earth. So we pull that up and we go through a four-step fermentation process. So the first step is molasses and spirulina. And basically we're just kind of keeping the microbes warm, feeding them, multiplying them. And in every stage we see an increase in CFU count as we multiply them out. And in the last stage of that fermentation process for our gut health products, We then add in traditional herbs and minerals.

12:28Dr Sophie Shotter:So all of our products are the same in terms of that first three-step process. But in the fourth step, we work with a medical herb list and things like Detox. We have a product which is Detox, and that has herbs in it like milk thistle and artichoke, things that are really good for supporting the liver. Things like Sleep have lavender and chamomile, things that are good for calming the nervous system. So there's these micro doses of herbs which interact with the microbes. We call them like a lunchbox. So a bit like your prebiotics, they support the microbes to help have something to deliver to the body.

13:02Dr Sophie Shotter:So that process of kind of herbs is really important. And what we've learned actually over time is that it's really important that those herbs are natural in origin. We made the mistake once of putting in a vitamin D that we thought was from a natural place, but actually was synthetically made. And it really had a big impact on the microbes. So there's a learning there for us in terms of the chemical interaction with the natural process of the microbes. So that's the kind of how we do it. And then this principle of dominance. So we really strongly believe in this idea of balance. So from what I've seen for the last 15 years kind of working with microbes, they seem to be very good at balancing, at kind of breaking down waste into its component parts, making bodies through kind of bioavailability.

13:47Dr Sophie Shotter:availability, but in total kind of balancing situations, so out-competing pathogens and creating balance. And looking more into this, we stumbled across the principle of dominance, which is this idea that basically 10 % of microbes are pathogenic, so that you're kind of really bad guys, don't really want to have too many of them around, and 10 % of your microbes are really beneficial and quite a lot of them or the 80 percent in between are like swing voters they go to whoever is in the biggest majority and that's part of the reason why when you get food poisoning you get really sick really quickly because the bad bugs are introduced and then all the swing voters head in that direction and there's a physical implication to that the vomiting and the diarrhea and stuff so and we've been researching this for a while and all we know is kind of what's out there, but it seems to be true in terms of the environments we see, which are kind of, if you look at a compost pile, for example, if it's not kind of decomposing properly, it turns into, it starts to rot, it starts to have a bad smell.

14:55Dr Sophie Shotter:And if you add a lot of microbes into that process, you can turn that process into a fermentation process, into a process of breaking things down much more naturally. And the way that you know that's done is by its smell, It doesn't smell bad and it breaks down much more quickly. So there are kind of very tangible ways that you can see this kind of balance working. So that's the principle of dominance. When we come to testing, people rightly ask us, is it safe? And so we test regularly and we're learning a lot as we go. But we test the mother culture for pathogens. That's the main thing. We definitely don't want any of those in before we do any fermentation.

15:36Dr Sophie Shotter:and also any heavy metals. And in 15 years of producing microbes in the way that we have, we've never had a positive test for either of those. So it feels really stable as a process. And then we bring it into our factory here and we ferment it out and we also test along the way there. And we have something called good manufacturing processes, which is a regulatory system which makes us assess the hazards of each step and make sure we're putting into place kind of good ways to keep it really safe. And then we also test for the 15 strains. But bearing in mind, soil scientists only really are aware at the moment of about 1 % of soil microbes that have been kind of catalogued and indexed.

16:17Dr Sophie Shotter:So we can safely assume that there are more than the 15 strains in there. We just aren't aware of them yet. So our process of testing becomes really important. And making sure, so the 15 are in there, we get very low levels of other stuff coming through in our testing. but it's something that we're kind of hoping that AI, I guess, will come in the next couple of years and really help us to accelerate that process and come to understand more about the different microbes that are present in there. So that's the testing bit. That's amazing. And one more thing to add on to the testing thing is it's a bit like the Wild West.

16:57Dr Sophie Shotter:It's a bit of a struggle sometimes. You can send something off to one lab and you come back with one result. You send something off to another lab and you come back with another result. So it's quite difficult to figure out what's going on. And we're actually having our products tested at the moment to see if they work as a prebiotic and a postbiotic because of the way that they're made to see if they are more kind of symbiotic in nature. But we did just test our products as an antioxidant. And Sustain, which is one of our main gut health products, just came back as 86 % effective as an antioxidant.

17:27Dr Sophie Shotter:which basically means that if you have lots of free radicals which are these kind of unstable cells antioxidants support them by making them more stable and these they come about due to oxidative stress over kind of forever chemicals and stuff like that so this is a whole different topic and a massive one but obviously very prevalent in the conversation about forever chemicals at the moment but it's encouraging to see that microbes can also support the body in this way.

17:55Katie Ward:Yeah and 86 % is absolutely huge and that's in the Sustain product.

18:01Dr Sophie Shotter:Yes partly because I think it has quite a lot of juices in as well but not as many as would get that result so it's the combination I think of the microbes and the kind of juices and herbs.

18:11Katie Ward:Yeah wow well the testimonials on your website speak for themselves there's a great post that you did in July for example last year with the customers before and after photos of the eczema on their hands is just one example. I do have to say with complete truth and authenticity, my gut health has transformed since taking it, as has my sons, by the way. And I have tried quite a few different brands, including a couple that are very buzzy and mentioned in the media a lot. I'm sure they're great too. But what stories and testimonials have you found most moving or interesting? Can you bring some of these stories and testimonials to life for us?

18:48Katie Ward:I know you can't mention names probably, but it would be good to hear from your perspective because you must get a lot of people contacting you.

18:54Dr Sophie Shotter:Yes, we do. I'm delighted to hear that you've also seen a change. And, you know, it just makes my heart glow to know that it's making a difference in people's lives. And it really is part of the foundation of why we're doing what we're doing. And yeah, we get a lot of, it's really important to me that we have a phone line here that people can call up. And we also have a nutritionist as a free service that people can just call and talk to about their personal symptoms. But So we have quite a lot of contact with our customers, which I love. And we hear lots of stories all the time about people's lives being impacted.

19:27Dr Sophie Shotter:For me, what I love is when people come and they say, well, I tried this because of my digestive issues or my IBS, but what's really happened is my skin's cleared up or I'm sleeping a lot better or I don't feel as anxious. And that really gives people this tangible idea that their gut health is not just about their digestive process, but it leads into inflammation, mood, sleep, so many other different aspects of their lives. I had one customer, one of my favorite testimonials was a customer who said, I can't believe it. I've had these itchy ears for years and I just didn't think anything would ever help me, you know, kind of quite ferocious itching in her ears.

20:06Dr Sophie Shotter:And she took the microbes for a couple of months and it really helped and it stopped that itching. And she just was so grateful that we these little things that we kind of live with was changed and for me this is evidence that you know I couldn't have engineered that kind of impact for somebody and I think that there's a natural intelligence of this kind of ancient microbial system you know we've evolved with microbes since the whole of our evolution we've never been separated from these microscopic beings that really help us in many different ways so the intelligence of that and the intelligence if the body is kind of left to its own devices in many senses can have this whole system healing effect potentially.

20:49Katie Ward:We know we can access microbes in the soil through either direct contact so for example the skin as well as in direct pathways so food but do we share any microbes in common with the soil?

21:01Dr Sophie Shotter:Yes we do we do share microbes in common with the soil so there's a number of different ones that are in our products that are similar in gut health and in soil. So for example Bacillus subtilis which is also one of my favourite microbes, it's used and found around that kind of resosphere in plant roots and it's also found in human and gut systems. Lactobacillus planetarium is associated with plants and soils and also found in the human gut microbiome. Lactobacillus fermentum again found in both areas lactococcus lactis widely present in soil and plants and also found in the human tract so that we do kind of share these microbes in common and you know there's this idea that when you take a probiotic in order for it to get to where it's needed in the small and large intestine it needs to kind of have a niche in order to take hold you can't throw a pot plant into the rainforest and expect it to take hold.

22:02Dr Sophie Shotter:But perhaps because we've evolved with these soil-based microbes and they're very diverse, that there's more chance of it actually reaching the stomach and small intestine, going through the stomach acid, reaching the small and large intestine and being able to populate there, which is really key. You asked a question before about kind of exposure to soil. So it's been proven that gardeners have, because of their kind of daily exposure to soil or more regular exposure to soil, that has been proven to help with depression. And we know that people who rub their hands with soil every day, there's an impact on the immune system because participants were given an immunization after being in contact with soil and their immune response was favorable.

22:51Dr Sophie Shotter:So being in touch with nature in this way has an impact on our guts. And I love this because it means that we're really not separable from nature. And some scientists say in order to recover our health, we also need to recover soil health. So there's this kind of direct link between human gut health and soil health, which I think offers a huge opportunity for ecological regeneration and human health if we can kind of reconnect that nature-human pathway, I guess.

23:30Katie Ward:Which sort of links on to our next question. We're also interested in the fact that you offer microbes for the soil itself. So this is a great idea for any gardeners listening. I've actually bought some for my husband's birthday, he doesn't know this yet, which is coming up later on this month. Tell us about the inspiration behind this, which you kind of already have, but maybe can you talk to us more generally about regenerative farming, which I know is something very close to your heart. And also, do you want to give us a quick overview of the entire range as well, just like super quickly?

24:02Dr Sophie Shotter:Yes, for sure. So I see every day from our reviews that the probiotics that we're making are having a big impact on people's health and gut health. And that shows me on one level that, you know, what we're doing is basically harvesting soil microbes and adding them with some herbs and minerals. And the difference it's making in people's lives to me shows that there's a kind of a disconnect between soil microbes and humans at the moment. So I see our human range as my success in life would be if the human range could go extinct, you know, because we should be getting these microbes and these minerals from our food and farming systems.