’70% Of Your Immune System Lives In Your Gut. Look After It!’ - Dr Megan Rossi On Tuning In To Your Gut Health

0:00If you have iron deficiency, I'm not going to go and give you a vitamin D supplement. I would give you the iron supplement, right? That's the same with probiotics. Each different type of bacteria, we call it a strain scientifically, is doing a different thing in the body. So this concept of just taking a generalized probiotic, there literally has never been a clinical trial that's ever supported it. Right, okay. Like no scientist will ever say to do that because it's just, it's a marketing gimmick thing.

0:30Big hearts, big voice, big laugh. A rock star hairstylist who drove a Porsche. He was like a wizard behind the chair. The killers came for Fabio in his own backyard. You can't rationalize it. You can't figure it out. There was rampant speculation about everything. But every wild theory was wrong. Because the truth was even more unbelievable. What? Is anyone hearing what I'm hearing? And even more heartbreaking. The uncertainty of not knowing is a form of agony.

1:28Tharios often behave abominably towards women. Yes, but they don't always behead them or split from the Catholic Church. History's Greatest Fails is the show where we find out why losers make history. Hosted by me, Dan Jones. And me, Elizabeth Day. We're old friends and fellow history graduates. And in this podcast, we're going to dig into failures of historical proportions. Listen to History's Greatest Fails on the This Is History podcast feed or watch on YouTube. Welcome back to The Businessmen. I'm Ben Shepard flying tootsol on my own, solo, because Domit is off in the throes of fatherhood, as selfish as that is.

2:09Of course, it's a very different kind of business altogether. But we are committed, as ever, to starting our own male skincare brand. So the show must go on. We've had some incredible guests on the podcast tell us all about their business journeys and to offer a little bit of advice along the way. Salient advice usually is. To catch up on everything that's happened so far, listen wherever you get your podcasts and remember to subscribe. You can also watch us on the YouTube and subscribe there too. Today's guest on the podcast is no exception. I'm very excited to talk to Dr. Megan Rossi. She's one of the world's leading gut health experts, a dietician, nutritionist, scientist, bestselling author, and the founder behind brands like The Gut Health Doctor, The Gut Health Clinic, Bio and Me, and Smart Straits.

2:52She's brought a career on making science accessible, cutting through wellness noise and helping people feel better from the inside out. She's not just built successful businesses, she's changed the conversation around health, self-care and what it really means to look after yourself. Megan, it's lovely to have you here. Thank you so much for joining me on the podcast. So look, you're Australian. Talk me through your background and where you ended up, how you ended up in the UK. Yeah, look, crazy enough to do it twice, right? So my journey began 37 years ago in a farm in Australia, actually. So very different, obviously, to my London life now.

3:30But, you know, had all those exposures to the good gut microbiome. So my, you know, expertise areas is in gut health. And actually, it was my first conscious encounter with the gut. You know, a really awful one, actually. I lost my grandma to bowel cancer in my final year studying nutrition and dietetics. and my grandma was a really solid person in my life. You know, we lost my sister when I was young. My parents separated. So she was always that person that I really, I would always go to, right? So it was the first person I remember losing. So I hated it, right? You put her through chemo, the surgery obviously took her life and I was like, ugh.

4:08So then I started working as a dietician in the hospital setting, all different types of conditions, diabetes, different cancers, kidney disease. And then I was also really fortunate to be the nutritionist for the Australian Olympic synchronised swimming team. Not because I was amazing as a new grad, but essentially I don't think they could afford anyone who has more experience. But it was a really important observation, right? Very sick people, elite athletes, both coming to me complaining of the gut. And I'm like, what is going on with this organ? Like, it kind of brought back all those memories of my grandma.

4:38So I thought, you know what, I owe it to my grandma, to my patients, clients to find out more about this. It was 2010, so there hadn't been a whole lot of gut health research come to the forefront. So essentially signed away my early 20s to doing poo analysis in the lab, right? Wow. What else would you want to be doing? How glamorous. 21. And it was really that experience, my PhD, where I was like, wow, this organ, our gut microbiome, is game-changing. And I knew I could help people improve their lives in very real but often surprising ways because there's a whole new way in which how looking after our body could have these far-reaching benefits.

5:16So you've realised that actually you've got this passion for trying to understand a little bit more. When did you realise that actually you were going to have to leave Australia and come here to the UK? Yeah, look, it was just one of my PhD supervisors, and she was like, you know what, if you really want to establish yourself in the research world, right, you need to go abroad just for a year, right? So I was like, okay, who's doing the most cool gut health research? It was King's College in London. So I essentially begged them for a job, told my family I'd be back in a year. Always, yeah. And over a decade.

5:47And you're still here. Yeah, I still work as a research fellow at King's. And I love the research side of things, right? Like we're always looking at how different types of nutrition and food can impact our gut microbiome, whether that's for people with IBS, mental health issues, all of these sorts of things. But I think it was about a year being into the UK where I started to just get, I guess, frustrated has to be this word, right? So that's why all of this incredible research being done in the lab, it wasn't being translated to the general public. So I was working full time as a researcher.

6:18In the evenings, I had a clinic on Harley Street a couple of nights a week just to make sure I could continue being a clinician, keep my hand in the research and what people actually wanted to hear. So I was seeing really high-flying CEOs and things looking about their gut health. and they were going on crazy diets because they'd heard it was good for them when it was literally the opposite of what we're learning in the lab. So I was like, okay, I need to do something more. And that's when I got more into science communication as a gut health doctor. So is it at that point you realised you've got to move out of just the academia and reach into public sphere and start looking at what are the things that I could bring to market even that are going to help people with their gut?

6:56Yeah, well, I mean, initially it was just about education. I just wanted to translate that science. But then the more I got into it, the more I was like, well actually you know seeing people in clinic who are like well what do I eat I'm like well you have to make everything from scratch and I'm like no one's going to do that right busy people they need convenience foods and I was like you can have convenience that also tastes good we just need to make a few tweaks and I had what I thought was some amazing opportunities with big brands I'm sure Ben you've kind of had the similar opportunities where you're like oh my god this is amazing I can impact all these people you know with with these different you know brand deals in terms of what's going into their body.

7:32But actually, the more we got into contract negotiation, it was quite clear that they just wanted me to brand slap and I couldn't change any of the ingredients. And I'm like, I couldn't look my community in the eye who've given me this opportunity to have a voice right and be like, this is good for your gut. Eat this. When I was like, it's just not, I wouldn't make it this way. That's when I was like, I know I want to get into food industry first of all, because I knew that at that point, none of the big guys would listen to me. And I wanted to have that science translated. Having that idea and then getting that idea to market are two very, very different things as we're discovering.

8:07How was that part of your journey, the adventure of going, I've got this great idea to actually sort of turning it into a physical product? Yeah, look, I think my first venture with Biome, there was a lot of luck involved, I would say, right? My second venture, Smart Strains, was a little bit more of a challenge, a lot more rejections, I would say. So yeah, when it came to, um, like, you know, tackling food industry, I was really fortunate to work with Leon restaurants, um, on developing health menu ranges. So that was my first taste in the food industry. And I was like, wow, okay. If you nail, you know, the health benefit, but also the taste was really important.

8:42People aren't going to sacrifice. You're going to have a winning product. Um, but it was actually through that experience. I met my co-founder, um, John Walsh, and he was that person in the room where And he was really quite annoying, but really persistent. And I knew that he had all the skills that I didn't. And I was like, this is the guy that's going to help me, you know, do the sales, get in the manufacturing. You know, I'm a scientist. I don't know how to do all that stuff, right? So, yeah, I approached him 2018, went for a coffee and said, hey, do you want to do something together? And he was like, this is crazy.

9:17And it was just fortuitous timing. He'd actually just been bought out of, you know, a project he was working on. And a year later, we'd launched by me. It was like all in crazy experience, right? But so lucky that I'd found that right co-founder who's just like, you can just trust, right? You know, it's like a marriage, I'd say. Like the number of things that you go through together, it's a lot. So you have to really make sure you're choosing that right person. What were some of those challenges, do you think, when you look back at them now and how did you get through them? Yeah, I think, you know, one of the key things is just knowing that they're in it as much as you.

9:57And that might be financial. For some people, that might be credibility. So I knew my credibility was going to be on the line and reputation. And I was like, I need to have the final sign off on these recipes, right? I can't have anything in there, even if it makes cheaper, easier. That's going to be something that I wouldn't want to feed, you know, to my future kids. At that stage, you didn't have any kids. So I think that was a really important point that we got clear. And John was like, okay, I respect that. We even built that into our contract together, right? To be like, I get the final sign off.

10:32And I think that was a really important one. Megan, tell me what you think to somebody who isn't really across the realities of your gut and how that connects to your mental health, your physical health and everything and beyond. What are the basics that you think they're missing that they don't really appreciate the difference it can make? Yeah. I mean, Ben, our gut health is literally game-changing to whatever your health goals are, right? Or even life goals in a way, right? We're discovering, when we talk about gut health, right, there's this nine-meter-long digestive tract, so it delivers food from entry all the way to exit.

11:05So nine meters coiled up. So that is gut health by the scientific definition. Yeah. Three reasons that's really important, right? The first one is digestion, not a groundbreaking new discovery. We've known that forever. If you don't have a good gut health, no matter what you put into your body, you can't get it from that hollow tube into your blood to feed things like your skin and your hair, right? Yeah. Obvious. The other one is the fact that 70 % of your immune system lives in your gut, right? So if you want less sick days, more resilient immune system, you have to have good gut health. And that's where SmartStrains also comes in.

11:38But it's really this third one of these trillions of microbes, the gut bacteria, that literally are talking and impacting the health of every organ in the body. From things like our mental health to our heart health, even our skin, right? so our gut and our skin are constantly communicating so we don't just have these you know trillions of bacteria in our gut we've got you know billions on our skin so the science really has highlighted that you can make very very significant improvements in maybe it's your mental health and the stats show one in four of us likely to have a mental health event each and every year maybe you've got a family history of you know um heart disease again significantly reduce your risk there maybe actually you you just want to really support your skin from the inside out you know and obviously with um foreskin it's kind of the outside in you know it works both ways then again targeting this community is is like a a very science-backed way to achieve that yeah and you're and that's the success of bio and me in six seven years yeah nearly seven yeah i mean it's extraordinary how fast it's grown yeah to the status that it has now harry kane's an investor yeah he is yeah yeah i mean you know love a footballer or a high profile supporter i mean it's one of those things isn't it when somebody's going this is a great product this is a great business and i want to put my name to it i want to invest in it because he has a reputation he has a brand as well i mean that's sort of that's a really um brilliant sort of credit to all you guys the Brits essentially are quite skeptical right so they really do respect credibility in the health sphere I think it's a really important element that we found that we you know thankfully you know have have got so what so I mean it sounds like it's all been sunshine and rainbows certainly not talk me through some of the issues you've had I mean there's you know loads of things so when we initially launched um we were meant to go first with Sainsbury's and they were incredibly supportive.

13:44And Lauren, the buyer still remember, like buyers don't realize like how important they are to a founder, right? Like they give us our first opportunity. So she believed in us. So if you're listening to this, Lauren, thank you very much. But actually COVID hit, right? And their range review when they would take it. So even though she'd agreed, but yeah, this is a great product. It wasn't for several months. That's another thing to watch out for is when is the range review? When can they actually take your product? I see. So they'll say, yeah, we really want it. but you might not get it for six months, right?

14:11And others might actually have a range of review coming up in a month's time, right? So there's all these and every supermarket is different. And then COVID hit and we were like, oh my God, our biggest listing, like we're going to have to delay it. We were relying on that as an income to keep us in the business afloat. But thankfully we had just launched into Waitrose literally a couple of weeks before and turns out people panicked by granola at that point. So I was like, oh, my God, thank God we're saved for that short period of time. That's amazing. So they were stockpiling toilet paper and granola.

14:43Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's just, and there's just, you know, always going to be things like, you know, working with the manufacturers, all that sort of stuff. I think, you know, when it comes to smart strains, the amount of stress, I would say, that by me has caused me has made me kind of psychoanalyse myself. Why would I do this again? Right. and I obviously did with SmartStrains, which again has been even more of a headache because I've been a sole founder, which has been a completely different experience. Right, okay. So talk me through SmartStrains. Yeah, so essentially clinically proven live bacteria, did the PhD in probiotics, right?

15:22So I knew probiotic research inside out, right? And I know that certain probiotics, so when we think of probiotics as a live bacteria, right? But each different type of bacteria does a different thing. So, for example, if you have iron deficiency, I'm not going to go and give you a vitamin D supplement. I would give you the iron supplement, right? That's the same with probiotics. Each different type of bacteria, we call it a strain scientifically, is doing a different thing in the body. So this concept of just taking a generalized probiotic, there literally has never been a clinical trial that's ever supported it.

15:56Right, okay. Like no scientist will ever say to do that because it's just, it's a marketing gimmick thing. So I obviously knew all this stuff about the science. People would come to see me in clinic. Some of them are struggling with their immune system. High-flying CO, super stressed. And I knew that there was robust clinical trials that showed that two strains, two types of bacteria, LGG and B12 combined together significantly reduces the duration of cold and flu by two days compared to placebo. Placebo being like a fake intervention, really high-quality study, as well as severity by like over 30 percent so i would say i have lgg and bb12 strains and they're like yeah but what brand i'm like that formulation literally didn't exist i'm like we have like all of this really robust clinical evidence these like guidelines and um and it just didn't exist and i was like i can't go through this again like it's so stressful to create a business but i couldn't i couldn't let it rest i went to some of the probate companies i'm like here these are formulations, science supports, please just do them so I can recommend to my patients, right?

17:00They just didn't want a bar of it. They were like, we're making more money this way. I'm like, that short side of thinking because people aren't going to get results, all that sort of stuff. So I kind of, yeah, did some psychoanalysis and I was like, why is this? Why can I not let this go? And I mentioned earlier that I lost my grandma to bowel cancer, but I also lost my sister when I was young, she was five, I was three, to a medical mistake, right? And I don't remember her. Obviously I was three, but, you know, I grew up around that trauma. And it being that medical mistake, I think I've always had this like deep sense of responsibility that if we've got the science to do better, we need to use it.

17:40And it was that, you know, that area of robotics where I'm like, we've got the science to do better. Why are we not using it? That I just couldn't let it rest. So I was like, oh, this is so frustrating. I'm going to have to do it again. I'm going to have to like, you know, start something. But couldn't find that right co-founder. Did a lot of dating. Right. I feel like there needs to be like a Tinder app for co-founders. For founders. That's interesting. But again, I knew it. That could be the third business. No, no, no. I am done. Don't worry. My husband's like, I will divorce you if there's any more to this.

18:14yeah I mean the science again got me through like some of the clinical trials showing like for example I had my little my little girl and my two boys had kind of colicky symptoms and I knew this formulation so this strain is BB12 I knew that being shown are these randomised control trials to actually increase sleep duration compared to baseline by like over an hour a day right by reducing fussing and crying in babies so the BB12 strain I mean, that's a gift to a new mum as well, right? Exactly. Or for a new baby. I was like, I am not having another baby until I've got this launched. So that sort of stuff kind of keeps you going.

18:51And yeah, I would say, though, definitely co-founder Root is my preferred because you don't feel as alone. Yeah. So smart strains is here. And so how does it work? I mean, what are we going to get if I get smart strains? And what are people going to experience? So, I mean, it really just follows the science, right? Like each different strain does a different thing. So for people who just want to improve their general gut health, I say don't have a probiotic, right? Have your fermented foods. Have your kimchi and your sauerkraut and your plant diversity. That's how you're going to get generalized good gut health.

19:26But like I said, there's areas where there is really convincing evidence. So in terms of smart strains, we've launched with the four different indications, right? The first one has got incredible – in fact, these international scientific authorities literally had this in their print that says if anyone goes on antibiotics, they should take the LGG strain of bacteria during the antibiotics and for a week after to significantly reduce gut upset that, you know, I think like one in three people experience on antibiotics, right? So that's one of them. So if you go on antibiotics, you should be taking that formulation.

20:00So on the pack it says, you know, smart strains, four antibiotics. Nice. The other one is for your immune system. Okay. So I mentioned about that. Yeah. Again, it's using the exact live bacterial formulation shown in these placebo-controlled trials to reduce duration by two days and decrease severity by over 30%. Then we've got the baby one. And again, decreasing fussing and crying by twofold compared to the placebo one. And then the one for your vagina microbiome. So obviously not relevant to you. No, not particularly. I mean, you know, 75 % of women will experience a vaginal infection at some point in their life.

20:36So super common. We don't talk about it. It's very taboo. But again, the clinical trials have shown that it can reduce recurrence of things like vaginal thrush by threefold compared to placebo. So that's kind of the core initial range. And we're working, obviously, as the research comes out to extend that. You know, there's really cool research looking at the psychobiotics. So one's for your mental health. So, yeah. It's extraordinary listening to you. You've clearly got such a wealth of knowledge and passion. but at the same time you are creating a commercial opportunity, right? You are building a brand that you want people to invest in and buy and come back to.

21:13How do you navigate that sort of reputation and the importance of what it is that you represent but also face up to the commercial reality of selling a product to people that you need to make money from? Yeah, I mean it's always that battle, right? And I think I've had to like sit myself down from day dot and be like, hey, where are my morals? Where is like my red line? But ultimately, I think what I've learned is that credibility actually is a very smart business strategy, right? Because it's why essentially Smart Strains has literally gotten to Tesco straight away. We launched with Tesco. We're in Holland Barrett.

21:52We're in Boots. Within a year, we're now in Sainsbury's. Like that's really hard to achieve because there's so many loopholes to go through. But the buyers and the retailers really back credibility because they know that that's actually ultimately what's going to get people coming back because it's going to actually work. So I think that's how I've explained to my investors of like, I know you want to do all these things that's going to earn loads more money. But ultimately, we need to play the long game here. And this is the best way to do that. Yeah, that compromise isn't going to be worth it long term.

22:26Exactly.

22:35have you been surprised um megan that some of the things that you've maybe clipped up for your social medias media accounts wherever they might be the traction that some of them have got you kind of go i never thought that that was going to really excite people or get them really engaged talk about poo right who would have thought right let's talk about let's talk about poo i think you know historically it's very taboo and I think still for a lot of you know people it it still is rather taboo in fact um you know I reflect back on my grandma obviously had early signs of of symptoms via her bowel habits and and wasn't confident enough to speak up and I you know still believe if if she was she would still be here to this day right so I think I've got a personal passion to be like getting people to look in the toilet bowl not obsessively I don't need to share over dinner.

23:26I'm not going to be like, Ben, what type of stool did you have? I'd be happy to share though, Megan. I'm very generous like that. We'll do a clinic appointment after. There's essentially seven different types of stool, right? So it's called the Bristol stool chart. Anyone who's looking at this, check it out. The Bristol stool chart. Bristol stool chart. So you've got type one, which is like hard Maltesers at the very top. Type seven is like liquid diarrhea. It's about, you know, what we know is healthy as type three, four or five. And so some of the social posts have been talking about literally, what type of bowel habits are you having?

23:57And it's gone crazy, right? Millions of views. And you're just like, wow, actually, people secretly do want to know. Oh, my days, yeah. And, you know, again, it's not about needing to share with other people. But if I can get a few, you know, influencers being brave enough to open up and then reaching their communities and being like, actually, it's a cool thing to be aware of what your bowel habits are doing because there's so much information that's telling you about your gut. I mean, getting those conversations happening literally will save lives, right? Whether that is through things like bowel cancer, also mental health, like you mentioned.

24:31There is robust clinical trials out there showing that if you increase the fertilizer for the gut, and the key fertilizer is fiber, right? We get it from all our plant-based foods. Then actually, you can significantly improve your mental health. So there's, again, any nerds listening, check out the SMILES trial. It was people who had moderate severe depression, had loads of fiber, not through a supplement, through whole food, 50 grams a day. In the UK, we're getting less than 18 grams a day. So really fertilized the gut bacteria, fed them what they wanted. And those in the diet group actually had a significant improvement in their depression scores, which actually would have classified them as no longer clinically depressed.

25:09Is that right? Just by increasing the fiber to 50 grams a day? Yeah, through whole foods, right? So we think of foods, I call them the super six, there's six different plant-based food groups. Ben, not going to put you on the spot, even though we have chatted about on this morning. So I should quiz if you still remember them. So you've got your whole grains, things like your oats, your quinoa, your barley. You've got your veg. You've got your fruits. You've got your legumes, things like your chickpeas, your butter beans, nuts and seeds in there. Yeah, the fifth one. And then the sixth one is your herbs and spices.