This One Gut Microbe Could Decide If Cancer Treatment Works | William Li

0:00William Li:Welcome to Live Well, Be Well, a show to help high performers improve their health and well-being.

0:10William Li:What does Acromantia do? Like, what's the research there? Is that for the brain, mostly, that you're talking about? Oh, okay.

0:17Sarah Ann Macklin:So, Acromantia mucinophila is a bacteria. So, first of all, let's back up one second, because we've tossed around a lot of Latin terms. Bacteria have a first name and a last name, a genus and a species. So Acromantia is the first name. Mucinophila is the last name, so to speak. All right. And then there's subspecies, relatives of all those. And it's actually only recently discovered. Only in the 1990s was this bacteria discovered. So it's not like Charles Darwin had it, you know, Acromantia in his logbook, you know, when he was around the Galapagos Island. This was really, really recent. The fact that we're still discovering new bacteria and identifying new bacteria, it's like going into the Amazon to see what kind of animals are out there.

1:05Sarah Ann Macklin:Well, we got our own Amazon we're walking around with, and it's the jungle of our gut bacteria, right? Amazing to me. I get really excited about this. So acromantia has been termed a keystone bacteria, meaning it's a really fundamental bacteria for health. And it does a lot of things. And it helps to control our metabolism. So it makes our body's cells more sensitive to insulin. So we can absorb glucose more readily, which helps us lower our blood sugars in a better, more consistent fashion. So we have more energy.

1:44William Li:So that could be important for diabetics.

1:45Sarah Ann Macklin:It could be very, oh, it actually is very important for diabetics. In fact, there have been clinical studies done with acromantia showing that you can actually lower hemoglobin A1C by taking this one probiotic. So what I like actually are those - Why did doctors not say that? What I like is when these probiotic companies, which some of them view themselves, portray themselves as biotech companies, they are investing in clinical trials to take a look at what these bacteria do. That's not food is medicine, it's probiotics is medicine. I'm a believer, and I like to see that data. So acromancy has been shown to lower hemoglobin A1C, improve glucose regulation, insulin sensitivity.

2:25Sarah Ann Macklin:That's really great. It's not a great weight loss bacteria, but it can actually help your metabolism kind of like sharpen up a little bit. Newer research shows it actually helps your body release its own GLP-1. So, you know, rather than paying hundreds of dollars for something you have to jab into your belly or your thigh, you know, take a bacteria that's going to also help your body release GLP-1. Now, why is that, why could that be important? Okay, well, that might actually be helpful for weight loss or weight management, let's call it. It's probably a better goal to actually have. But GLP-1, and this is kind of emerging research, is not just for body mass, lowering body mass.

3:12Sarah Ann Macklin:GLP-1 is present, receptors present on every single blood vessel in your body, blood vessel cell. So 60 ,000 miles worth of blood vessels, 400 miles of which are in your brain, blood vessels, they all contain receptors for GLP-1. So now if you think about, again, this theme that we've been talking about, gut-brain, longevity, health span, brain health, think about that. So acromancy not only helps your whole body improve its glucose metabolism, but also can help to trigger blood vessels to be healthier, potentially, in all throughout your body, including your brain, in terms of the circulation of your brain.

3:54Sarah Ann Macklin:So this is, like I said, a new frontier that's out there. The most jaw-dropping data on acromancy that I've seen doesn't have anything to do with metabolism, It has to do with immune system, and it has to do with response to cancer treatment. And in 2017, myself and a group of colleagues across Europe convened a meeting in France called Rethinking Cancer. And this was intended to bring world-leading cancer researchers to the table to talk about their work with one ground rule. And that ground rule is you cannot talk about chemotherapy or drugs. Okay, so what's in a cancer research conference where you can't talk about cancer drugs or cancer therapies, right?

4:49Sarah Ann Macklin:Well, you got to talk about stress, sleep, diet, exercise, social wellness, all of the important things that cancer patients ask about, right? Well, the star presentation of that conference was a woman named Laurence Vogel in Paris who was presenting work that she had done just then on 200 patients with different types of cancer, and they were receiving immunotherapy, which is not chemo. It actually activates your body's own natural immune cells to tackle cancer. and she was explaining her discovery that only about 20 % of people respond positively, meaning they benefit from having their own immune system woken up.

5:38Sarah Ann Macklin:Well, that really sucks if you're a cancer patient to know that immune treatment that could be lifesaving only works in 20%. So she set out to look at the differences between responders where their immune system was woken up and supercharged and then goes after the cancer, whittles it down, in some cases to zero, stage four to stage zero. Okay. Quite amazing. Versus people whose immune system are like duds. They don't do very much to the cancer. What's the difference? So she looked at gender. She looked at age. She looked at comorbidity. She looked at medications. Nothing. She looked at genetics.

6:17Sarah Ann Macklin:Nothing. The only thing that she found that was the difference between responders and non-responders was in the gut, the gut bacteria. And it was one bacteria and it was acromantia. The people who responded to immunotherapy to cancer, lifesaving, were the people who had acromantia. The people who didn't respond were missing acromantia. So when I saw that, I'm sure people sitting next to me heard my jaw drop and hit the floor, like that was just such a bombshell to recognize this is another important dimension of our gut health. It's not a nice to have. It's a must have. It's not makes you a little bit healthier.

6:59Sarah Ann Macklin:It could be the difference between life and death, you know, for a cancer patient. So for me, it sort of changed the way that I approach cancer as a disease, as a medical doctor advising patients and, you know, helping to guide patients. And so these are just examples of the profound discoveries that are being made with gut health, brain health, gut health, immune health. This is an area that if you want to have health span, like you've got to survive cancer. You've got to avoid dodge heart disease. You've got to dodge dementia. You've got to dodge all these other conditions. How do you do that?

7:39Sarah Ann Macklin:And I think it starts with the gut. But your circulation, our circulation is vital because we have the 60 ,000 miles of channels, highways and byways, to bring oxygen and nutrients and blood cells and any medications you take to every single cell in the body. And they also may be kind of a transit. They might actually be public transportation in our body for our healthy bacteria as well.

8:08William Li:So can we get, what food is rich in, I can't even say it now, acromasia? I was literally completely fixated then on that. I literally had a text from one of my oldest friends last night to say that her dad is now going through six weeks of cancer treatment because they found cancer in his glands and his throat. But because it's too close to all the other glands, they can't operate. So he's going through really intense treatment. I'm now naturally thinking I need to tell her about this microbe.

8:39Sarah Ann Macklin:So again, I can't give medical advice sort of on a podcast, but I would tell you that for all cancers, immunotherapy is something that every cancer patient should ask for, should have a conversation with their oncologist about. And the reason is this is the first time in history, modern history, where a cancer treatment has the potential of completely reversing your disease. And if you can reverse your disease, the impossible becomes possible. And I've seen it now time and time and time and again in people receiving immunotherapy. Of course, if you're going to get immunotherapy, you want it to work.

9:26Sarah Ann Macklin:And now we're beginning to realize that what is in your gut, like acromancy, can make that difference. So for example, Should someone we know be recommended to immunotherapy, they should also think very carefully about their gut health because we know organisms, healthy bacteria like agromancia, can play a critical role.

9:50William Li:Thanks so much for listening. To hear the full episode, there's a link in the description.