The Gut Health Truth No One Talks About Ft. Hannah Kleinfeld Of Omni-Biotic

0:00The following podcast is a Dear Media Production. She's a lifestyle blogger extraordinaire. Fantastic. And he's a serial entrepreneur. A very smart cookie. And now Lauren Everts and Michael Bostic are bringing you along for the ride. Get ready for some major realness. Welcome to the Skinny Confidential. Him and her. Aha! What happens to our gut when we're hungover? So our gut doesn't like alcohol. Alcohol is... Are you surprised? It's inflammatory. And especially if we drink frequently, it can deplete our good gut bacteria. And, you know, with that, because our good gut bacteria are so important for all these different functions in the body, including liver function and detoxification, it can just take a toll on the gut overall.

0:48Okay. So I need to drink up after last night. I had a little too much fun. Okay. This is your second time on the show. When? I don't even remember. I get so confused in the studio, the timeline. When's the last time we saw you? It was June or July of 2024. So about a year and a year and a bit ago. Okay. I want to go back to something that we got a lot of questions about, which is babies. I now have a baby that I want to make sure has the best gut health. And I want to start there because it's a good foundation to start with. The first thousand days determine the foundation of a child's immune system and long-term health.

1:24What does that mean? That gives me, that makes me sweat. Yeah. So, you know, when babies are born, they have essentially an undeveloped gut microbiome. So the first a thousand days is what research has shown really helps their gut microbiome develop and shape not just how their gut and their digestion is doing, but because the gut is so closely related to our immune system, to our metabolism, to our gut brain connection. It also trains the immune system, determines our metabolism and can even impact that gut-brain axis and how it develops over time. So that's why people say those first a thousand days in a child's development is really when the gut microbiome forms and when it makes some of these initial kind of pathways that later can determine things like how the child's immune system develops, how their metabolism develops and even how that gut-brain connection develops.

2:16What are some things that you see are mistakes in the first thousand days? I wouldn't necessarily call them mistakes because, you know, as parents, there's just so many things that are outside of our control. But what research has shown is certain factors determine how that gut microbiome is shaped. So number one is how the baby is born. So whether it's born vaginally or via a C-section, it has been shown over and over again that babies born with a C-section versus vaginally have very different gut microbiome. signatures, so to speak. That changes and evolves over time. That's essentially kind of how they first come into the world.

2:52Another factor that shapes it is whether they're breastfed versus formula fed. And then, you know, other external factors that often are outside of our control, which is antibiotics, stress in early life, and even how their diet evolves once they start solids. What can we do in those first thousand days to support the gut? So if you were just to focus on the positives and let's pretend that the person has to have a c-section. So start there. So one of the most seamless ways to support the gut, of course, is probiotics. You know, there are probiotics for babies. That is just such an easy way to incorporate from the beginning.

3:31Of course, you need to make sure that it is a probiotic actually for babies with the strains that are good for babies in the right dosing. But that's such a seamless way to support the gut microbiome as it develops. Other factors are, you know, if you're able to breastfeed, That's a really powerful way to kind of help balance out the microbiome development. And then also when they start solids, making sure that what you're feeding them is actually supporting their gut. Enough fibers, good fatty acids, just an overall balanced diet versus, you know, the overly processed, high in sugar, high in fillers, foods that, you know, many kids can just find at the grocery store.

4:07What foods specifically support the gut? You mentioned fiber, but what's specific? So when I think about it, fiber is huge. So fiber can be found in whole grains, in your veggies, in your fruits, in avocado. Those are great ways to give the kids fiber, anything that's good and healthy fats. So olive oil, avocado again, fish if they eat it. That's incredible. It's anti-inflammatory as well. And, you know, yeah, basically and then avoiding things that are inflammatory, which is sugar, you know, fillers, chemicals, food diets, all the things that you typically find in foods aimed for children. What's a good amount of time to breastfeed for?

4:45Like, what's ideal? I don't actually know the science on this, but to be honest, the benefits, even if it's just a short period of time, those benefits, they're getting so many good antibodies from the mother's milk. They're getting some of these microbes. They're getting so many messenger signals that are important. So any amount of time is better than none. But that being said, even if you choose not to breastfeed or you can't breastfeed, there are still ways, as we just talked about, that you can support your baby's gut microbiome. I heard like a drop of breast milk has thousands and thousands of nutrients in it.

5:19Yes, and immune cells and, you know, information from the mother's immune system that is so beneficial for the baby. Taylor, don't get any ideas. I want to switch gears for a second here because we talk a lot about gut health on this podcast. We've talked about it with you. I highly recommend people go back and check out Hannah's other first episode back in 2024. But since then, GLP-1 medication has become very popular, not just in the world, but in this country in particular. And we have not had a discussion around what the effects are on the gut with GLP-1s. I don't know if you have a perspective on that.

5:52Yeah, absolutely. It's actually really interesting. So first, I guess two things. First, we have to realize that our body makes a GLP-1 hormone by itself, and that is produced with the help of our good gut bacteria. So we can do things naturally to help boost our own GLP-1 production. That being said, when we take GLP-1s, the thing that they do just by how they work is they slow our gastric motility. So it basically means they slow down how quickly food moves through our digestive tract. And that keeps us full longer, which is essentially the main mechanism behind it. However, what that also means is our waste product sits in our intestines a lot longer.

6:33and that essentially can lead to things like nausea, extra gas production, bloating, constipation, all these side effects that come along with GLP-1s. The other thing that happens is because you now have these things fermenting in your intestines instead of being moved out efficiently is it can lead to dysbiosis. So that essentially means an overgrowth of unwanted or potentially harmful bacteria and inflammation in your intestines. And that in itself is also an issue because especially once you wean off of GLP-1s, if that dysbiosis is still there, you're essentially left in worse gut health than when you started.

7:08And we know that dysbiosis is also often the precursor to low-grade inflammation through the body, which is, you know, implicated in things like insulin resistance, metabolic syndrome, and, you know, other kind of chronic conditions that we're facing today. So the GLP-1s leading to this potential dysbiosis and with that one causing us these severe GI side effects in some cases that mean that people often either are really struggling while on GLP-1s or stopping before they're ready to. And then when you're weaning off of them, that idea that potentially if you still have dysbiosis, you're actually leaving your gut and therefore your whole body in a worse spot than before.

7:49So based on what you know, if someone is going to move forward using GLP-1 medication, what would your advice be to them in order to combat some of those effects that aren't great? Yeah, so definitely supporting with a good probiotic. Actually, Omnibiotic Hetox, one of our probiotics, it was tested in a clinical study where patients were given GLP-1s. And the researchers found that, one, taking Hetox dramatically reduce the GI side effects and that risk for dysbiosis, which in itself is huge. But secondly, they actually found that if you pair a lower dose of GLP-1 with omnibiotic ketox, you're getting similar results to taking a high dose of GLP-1 without the omnibiotic ketox.

8:34What's a low and high dose? That depended on that drug. But essentially, typically, you know, if you're taking the regular dose, they could take a much lower dose of that specific drug. So essentially it means the high doses usually come with higher side effects. You know, people are struggling more, whereas on the lower dose you're having fewer side effects. And then if you're adding omnibody heat talks, you're having even fewer side effects and you're seeing the same results as on the high dose. What's the biggest misconception about the gut? Something that you see on social media that drives you batshit crazy?

9:08I still think people think about the gut as just digestion. and you know that is so far from the truth when you look at the science and more and more science is coming out about this the gut is connected to so many important processes in the body one of my favorite topics to talk about recently is low-grade inflammation because the you know low-grade inflammation we hear about it so much it's connected to so many of our modern day illnesses including cardiovascular disease insulin resistance diabetes cognitive decline And a lot of that low-grade inflammation can actually start in the gut. Let's say there's someone who's listening that eats a lot of Panda Express Chinese chicken, orange chicken.

9:52Let's say they also eat a lot of Cheetos, the flaming hot ones. Let's say they drink a lot of kumquat mojitos and they're not taking care of their gut. Where would you tell them to start? What are some tangible tips they could do today? Yeah. So number one, just taking kind of a bigger picture, zoom out stock of your life. You know, what are the habits? What are the habits? Try not to make eye contact. Don't make eye contact with them. What are the habits, you know, on a daily basis that are supporting your overall health and with that also your gut? And what are the things that maybe the things you're putting into your body or the habits that you're doing that are creating inflammation and things that just don't love you back.

10:38And so tactically, you know, once you have that, I would then really look at one, how can you further support your gut? A probiotic is such an easy, seamless, literally one minute ritual to do on a daily basis to support that overall. And you're not just supporting your gut, you're supporting your overall well-being. Number two, adding things into your diet that are high in fiber, anti-inflammatory, just to really support your overall gut health. And then three, stress management so important because the gut-brain connection, we know that stress dramatically impacts our gut microbiome and increases inflammation.

11:12And then I would say, you know, if you really feel like something is persistently wrong, get tested, get a good stool test, work with a practitioner who knows about gut health and really make sure you get to the root cause. There's a statistic I want to read you. And there's, you know, on this show, actually of recent, but I think not just this show, a lot of shows and just people in general are talking about ADHD, right? It's like, you see all these viral clips. We've had a few ourselves. And it makes sense when you read the status as ADHD diagnosis hit 11.4 % of US kids. Studies show dysbiosis is linked to attention, mood, and neurodevelopment.

11:49I wonder your perspective. Yeah. I mean, even if there was another study that showed that in the last nine years, This ADHD diagnosis in kids has gone up by 15 percent from six to seven million, which is really staggering if you think that that's basically in one decade. And we also know that so many teens, I think in a recent study, almost 21 percent of teens reported anxiety and 17 percent of teens reported symptoms of depression. The gut is so closely connected in all of this because of that gut brain connection. Kids these days, they're exposed to so many environmental stressors Stress at school, performance stress, nervous system dysregulation from all the devices that they have Toxins in their food, toxins in their environment So it's no surprise that the gut is suffering and because of that connection We're seeing that increase in ADHD As with many conditions, it's all multifactorial But many healthcare practitioners, especially in the functional field will tell you they always also look at the gut in children and teens with these mood or attention deficit disorders because the gut plays such a huge role.

13:00I will tell you when I take my children to a birthday party and they have that cake that all the kids have that's from like Ralph's that's died with the fake balloons on it and they eat that and then they have the pizza the Domino's pizza, whatever it is, I let them enjoy and we come home. It is a totally different child. It's almost unbelievable to see how they act after eating certain preservatives or coloring or whatever. I don't know if it's too much gluten, whatever it is. It's like a different child. So you are right. The things in the food have such an effect. And then you mix that with screen time yeah i mean it's it's it's almost like the adhd how could it not go up absolutely but what i think what this stat is telling me and especially like a lot of adults now in a prominent adults are diagnosing themselves with adhd but you know if this statistics right that means like one out of every 10 kids will have this diagnosis and if it's if dysbiosis is a big contributor and if the food, then I wonder like what you would prescribe to these people in order to combat this effect.

14:18Yeah. I mean, many functional medicine doctors and practitioners in that space, they will also look at, you know, what are people eating? How can you reduce inflammation in the body? Because we know that that increased state of inflammation in the body can also drive neuroinflammation, which is linked to a lot of these conditions. I know you also wanted to talk about how our gut health evolves over time. Like you mentioned, you know, you have your first child, your gut health changes. What do adults need to know and be aware of in order to manage that and those changes? Yeah, I mean, the more I learn about the gut microbiome, the more I really see that it is such an ally.

15:00I call the gut a control center for health for us. And that really can be applied to any stage of life. and especially when I became a mom, for me, the question no longer was just how can I support my health and feel my best, but what can I do for my whole family? My daughter, my husband, my dog, my parents, my parents-in-law as they're aging. The gut just has so much to do with it. So if you think about it, we talked about it as babies, those first thousand days, the gut microbiome becomes, it gets shaped and it really trains our immune system and has an impact on how our metabolism develops.

15:35Then kids, you know, the stress, the environmental factors, those are all extremely depleting for our gut microbiome. They decrease our good bacteria. They increase inflammation in the gut. And with that, we often increase inflammation in the body. It starts this vicious cycle. That only gets worse when we're adults, we're continuing some bad lifestyle habits. We're chronically stressed. Stress in the U.S. has gone up by a significant amount. more and more adults in younger age brackets are starting to show metabolic issues insulin resistance and so on and then you know as you get into old age really like seniors the gut becomes even more important because microbiome diversity goes down as we age with that it directly impacts our immune system it impacts how we're absorbing our nutrients it impacts how strong we feel in old age and also just actually a recent study in the Journal of Aging or Research of Aging came out that was looking at the effect of the gut microbiome on the development of Alzheimer's disease and the researchers concluded that this was the first kind of study that really showed that there's a strong connection between the gut microbiome and how it influences the start and the progression of Alzheimer's.

16:51So it really is this ally of yours at every stage of life. And it can be so powerful when you support your gut to support your entire well-being through that. Not all probiotics are created equal. What are the ones that are just bullshit? Yeah. So probiotics, you have to realize different strains do different things in the body. So it's really hard to say this is a probiotic with one strain or with two strains And it's just going to do everything like support your immune system support your gut health Help you if you have like constipation or diarrhea like it's just really hard to do that with one strain So really you want formulations that have multi-strain and multi-species So multiple different strains multiple different species and that are formulated with specific health outcomes in mind Because that allows you to be targeted in what you're actually working on And then you need to make sure that those probiotics also get into your intestines alive and metabolically active.

17:52Because even if you have the best probiotic combination, if it reaches your gut dead, that's really it's not going to do anything. So that's why, you know, our powder delivery mechanism, it is designed in a way to help reach the gut alive and active. We tested this in a GI simulator. 83 % of omnibiotics bacteria get into the gut alive and active versus an average of 7 % across leading U.S. brands. My facialist, Stacey Christie, was telling me the other day, she's like, you have to be careful of the capsules on a lot of these supplements because they actually give you acne. I was getting hormonal acne and she's like, you got to stop the capsules.

18:32And I was like, whoa, this is so interesting. She's like, they can cause breakouts. So that's interesting that it's powder form. Yeah. I mean, the capsules from a probiotic perspective, most probiotics are freeze dried. So probiotic bacteria are live little beings. So they get freeze dried, which means all the liquid is being taken out of them to kind of put them in this dormant state. When something is freeze dried, the first liquid it gets in touch with, it will just soak up like a sponge. In many capsules, that happens in the stomach. The stomach is extremely acidic. The role of that acid is to kill bacteria that we take in through our environment, through our food.

19:11So if our good probiotics are in the stomach and that capsule opens, they will soak up that acidic juices of the stomach and basically either die or just get kind of damaged in a way that they just won't do the same work as a resilient, viable probiotic. Why do so many women in particular have gut issues compared to men? And I'm basing that off of nothing other than I talk to a lot of women on this podcast that talk about gut issues. And I talk to very few men that lead with that. I mean, maybe the men are having it. I feel like you're getting this from that one podcast where it was like the IBS.

19:47No, but a lot of women do, and tell me if I'm wrong, you probably have the stats, but a lot of women do complain about gut health issues. And in my personal experience, and again, I could be wrong, it's not meant to be sexist, I don't hear that complaint as often from men, whether they're having the issue or not, maybe men just aren't as vocal about it. But in my personal life, I don't hear it as often from men as I do from women. And on this particular podcast, there's been many women that come on and say, hey, I had gut issues and it led to X, Y, and Z. So I wonder why. Yeah. First of all, there are stats that support that women are two to three times as impacted by gut issues.

20:24It's two times as many women than men have IBS, two times as many women suffer from constipation than men. And I think generally speaking, that is true. Okay. So for every hundred men that have an issue, it could be two to three hundred women that have it. Exactly. Okay. So I'm not that wrong, right? No. Okay. And why? I think that really is kind of where there's a couple of different theories. One is women's entire… metabolism is just different because of our monthly hormonal changes and the gut is very connected to this hormone balance. So there's just that that's at play. The other thing is, you know, I think maybe there's also something around the mental load and how women carry stress versus men.

21:05And we know that stress is so detrimental to our gut that I could also imagine that there is just a connection there. Meaning like the women carrying that stress, they carry more stress than men? I don't know. I just think sometimes women maybe like deal with stress differently. Like men bitch about it and women just like internalize it. Yeah, maybe. And just tough through it. I don't know. But just I could see how there is a connection between just how we're processing stress. And because stress impacts the gut so much that there is also that connection between, and we're just feeling stressed and maybe internalizing that more or dealing with it differently and it comes out as gut issues.

21:47And do those poor gut issues, I wonder if you have any information on this, manifest in basically different kind of challenges for men versus women? Meaning like, I've never had a guy come to be like, well, my gut was off and then it led to this acne and I had like, meaning, you know what I mean? Yeah, interesting. I wonder if a woman and a man both have the same gut issue, if they both will then deal with the same negative repercussion of that gut issue. I don't know if there's any information. I'm not sure about that. Yeah, that's an interesting question though. And I'm only basing this and asking this because we have so many of these conversations.

22:18And again, women will come and tell a story and they say, well, I fixed my gut and that led to whatever issue I had to resolve. But I've never had a man come and be like, I had this gut issue and then it was dealing with these other things. So I wonder if like men just kind of, if the end result of poor gut health is a different manifestation in terms of the challenges that we have to deal with as genders? Yeah, I wonder. That's a good question. I mean, one thing could just be awareness too, you know, how aware are we of kind of how we're feeling and how our whole body is doing. And then also, again, you know, the physiology of a man is just different than the physiology of a woman.

22:55So there's, I mean, again, the gut is so connected to our metabolism, our hormones, how we metabolize hormones, our hormone balance, that it makes sense that it kind of comes out maybe in different ways or it shows up in different ways. I want to tell you about the charity that I am so passionate about, and it is called I Stand With My Pack. They are committed to getting dogs fostered and adopted. I have been a fan of this specific charity for about five years. when my daughter was born, I met a woman named Lucy and she was helping me with Zaza and she told me all about this incredible charity, I Stand With My Pack, where they helped animals find homes that were in really bad conditions.

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24:24It's almost like kind of gaslighting. I know for me with my own thyroid situation, I went to the doctor and I was just told, oh, this is normal. But then when I looked under the hood, I realized that something was off and I was able to fix it. So this is why I'm obsessed with superpower. It feels different. So superpower sends licensed professionals to your home or you can visit a nearby lab and it's one simple blood draw, okay? You get over 100 biomarkers, including detailed hormone testing, which is so important for women because our bodies are changing, especially if we're postpartum or you're navigating menopause or maybe you're in menopause.

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25:41Not only did Superpower reduce their price for just$199, but for a limited time, our listeners get an additional$20 off with code skinny. Head to superpower.com and use code skinny at checkout for $20 off your membership. After you sign up, they'll ask how you heard about them. So make sure to mention this podcast to support the show. That's superpower.com code skinny. With your Lyme disease, what were the most helpful things to get you to the other side? Yeah, my Lyme journey was interesting. I mean, obviously, the first was to just get rid of the Lyme and that we did through a lot of rounds of antibiotics.

26:23Right. Actually, in the last few years, there's been a lot of really interesting herbal protocols that came out that very successfully helped with tick-borne illnesses. So maybe if I went through it now, I might have been able to avoid the real antibiotics, but who knows? And then the second part for me was just my whole, so many systems in my body were depleted and out of balance because of that whole journey with my antibiotics and even from the Lyme itself. So then it really became about repairing and restoring balance in those systems. A big part of that was also my gut. That's actually how I found Omnibiotic.

26:57You know, the products weren't in the U.S. at that point. I was at a point where I had gotten rid of the Lyme, but I still felt I still felt like I was at a point where I was like surviving or like barely getting by versus actually thriving. I still had so much brain fog, nutrient depletions. My adrenals were out of balance. My thyroid, like pretty much every system that you can think of was somehow struggling. I was working with an amazing team of doctors here in the U.S. And of course, they had also already told me we have to work on your gut and we have to reduce inflammation in the gut. Then actually, when I went to Germany, my family is originally from there.

27:33I was talking to a doctor friend in Germany and talking to her about my whole journey. And she said, Hannah, you have to try Omnibiotic. They're taking the market here by storm. They have this entirely new approach to probiotics. And I tried them. And that's really when my gut health and with that also my brain fog, my energy and my whole recovery made a huge step change. When I go on antibiotics, I always do aloe vera, silver and omnibiotic, all three, not mixed together, but separate. And I do it for like 20 days. And I think that that makes a big difference than if I did nothing, then I try to eat Greek yogurt.