AI transcript
0:00:01 When you think about all the probiotics
0:00:02 that are in the shelves right now,
0:00:05 they actually represent a very small fraction,
0:00:08 less than 1% of your entire microbiome.
0:00:10 That means there’s a huge opportunity
0:00:12 to go out and create novel interventions here.
0:00:14 So the pivotal study that we did,
0:00:16 which was published in BMJ,
0:00:19 is a placebo-controlled double-blinded randomized trial
0:00:21 where we took people with type II diabetes
0:00:24 and we showed that compared to placebo,
0:00:27 the people who were on our formulation after 90 days
0:00:30 had a lowering of A1C by 0.6
0:00:33 and a lowering of blood glucose spikes by 33%.
0:00:35 That’s basically how far with,
0:00:37 yeah, if you know those numbers,
0:00:39 that’s on par with a pharmaceutical,
0:00:40 but it was this microbiome intervention
0:00:42 that’s never been made before.
0:00:44 There’s another keystone strain
0:00:47 that is also, if you do a gut test at the top there,
0:00:51 and we are working diligently on that strain,
0:00:53 which appears to play a fundamental role
0:00:56 in how your microbiome interacts with your immune system.
0:00:57 – Oh, wow.
0:00:59 And so we are,
0:01:01 and it’s never been brought to market before.
0:01:07 – Colleen, thank you so much for joining me.
0:01:10 – Thanks so much for having me, excited to be here.
0:01:12 – It’s been a minute since we’ve done
0:01:13 a little podcast together,
0:01:15 so I’m excited to be back together.
0:01:18 You know, I think a good place to start
0:01:22 is for those that haven’t seen you on my show back in the day
0:01:25 or they haven’t seen you on Peter Tia’s podcast,
0:01:27 can you give us just like the quick little,
0:01:28 you know, three, four minute version
0:01:32 of like why your company is so different
0:01:34 and what you’re doing that’s so novel
0:01:36 on the probiotic side that,
0:01:37 and why you started this company,
0:01:39 would you just be fascinating?
0:01:42 – Sure, well, maybe it starts with like my background.
0:01:46 I’m not a probiotics or marketing expert at all.
0:01:48 I’m actually a basic science researcher,
0:01:51 so I have a PhD in biochemistry and molecular biology
0:01:53 from Johns Hopkins.
0:01:57 I did a postdoc at Northwestern in deep basic science,
0:01:59 and then I actually started my career in pharma,
0:02:03 so we were developing drugs for Parkinson’s disease,
0:02:07 and then after that I joined a startup DNA sequencing company
0:02:09 that where I led biology,
0:02:11 so I’ve really just been embedded in R&D,
0:02:13 and that company went through rapid growth
0:02:15 and went public, and on the other side of that,
0:02:17 I started pendulum with two co-founders.
0:02:19 We’re all very technical,
0:02:22 and the reason that we got excited about the space
0:02:25 is really from a more of a data and tech side
0:02:28 than it ever was from the probiotics consumer side,
0:02:30 and what the big opportunity was
0:02:33 was the application of DNA sequencing technologies
0:02:36 to create metabolic maps of the microbiome
0:02:38 that allow you to go out and identify
0:02:40 what are the functions of the microbiome,
0:02:43 and what are some novel target opportunities there are
0:02:45 to help with disease and health.
0:02:46 When you think about all the probiotics
0:02:47 that are on the shelves right now,
0:02:50 they actually represent a very small fraction,
0:02:53 less than 1% of your entire microbiome.
0:02:55 That means there’s a huge opportunity
0:02:57 to go out and create novel interventions here,
0:03:01 and so we spent a short eight years doing R&D
0:03:03 and pre-clinical and clinical work
0:03:06 before we actually came out with any products,
0:03:10 and really the idea was can we leverage the gut microbiome
0:03:13 to improve our metabolism,
0:03:16 and there’s a variety of pathways involved in metabolism,
0:03:18 but that’s really been what’s differentiated about us.
0:03:21 So we’ve really been focused on the gut metabolism axis,
0:03:23 and how do you improve metabolism
0:03:27 through giving people back functions in their gut microbiome,
0:03:28 and that’s what we’ve been doing
0:03:30 for the last almost 12 years now.
0:03:35 – That’s awesome, and I think that you were pretty early on
0:03:37 in discovering some of these strains
0:03:38 that I had absolutely never heard of.
0:03:41 I’d never seen them on store shelves,
0:03:43 and you have a really funny story
0:03:46 that I think is worth retelling where you have these strains,
0:03:47 you want to have them manufactured
0:03:50 because why reinvent manufacturing?
0:03:52 There’s a lot of really high-quality manufacturers out there,
0:03:55 and tell us about what happened there
0:03:56 when you found these targets,
0:03:59 and you’re like, “Okay, let’s go build this.”
0:04:01 – Yeah, well, when we first had the idea for the company,
0:04:05 we said, “Okay, we really know how to create data,
0:04:07 “and then we’ll figure out once we have a product
0:04:08 “that works, how to bring it to market.”
0:04:10 But one thing we don’t have to figure out
0:04:11 is how to manufacture them,
0:04:15 because look, probiotics have been on shelves forever,
0:04:18 and there are global manufacturers of probiotics,
0:04:21 so once we had our strain list,
0:04:23 I thought I was going to hire one microbiologist
0:04:26 just to manage these different contract manufacturers
0:04:28 and call it a day.
0:04:33 We sent these strains to manufacturers around the world,
0:04:38 the US, Europe, China, India,
0:04:41 and every single one of them sent back dead strain,
0:04:42 and we were like, “Oh my gosh,
0:04:44 “if we really want to study these things,
0:04:46 “we have to figure out why can’t they grow them?”
0:04:49 And the primary reason they couldn’t grow them
0:04:52 is because in the gut microbiome,
0:04:53 when we talk about the gut microbiome,
0:04:54 it’s actually the distal colon,
0:04:57 so you think about there’s the stomach,
0:04:59 then there’s the entire GI tract at the very end,
0:05:01 the distant end, there’s the distal colon,
0:05:03 that’s where all the action is happening,
0:05:05 and in the distal colon, there’s actually no oxygen,
0:05:07 so you have these strains that live there
0:05:11 that are really important for our health
0:05:12 that can’t even grow in the presence
0:05:14 of a single molecule of oxygen.
0:05:16 And so what’s happening in these manufacturing plants
0:05:18 is they’re not set up, they’re set up to grow
0:05:20 these other strains which don’t have that requirement.
0:05:23 They’re not set up to keep oxygen out end-to-end
0:05:24 in their entire manufacturing plant,
0:05:28 and it was so crazy that one of the places that we visited,
0:05:29 we said, “How do you keep oxygen out?”
0:05:31 And they said, “Well, we open the pitch,
0:05:31 “you just really fast,
0:05:33 “and we do our thing, and then we close it.”
0:05:35 – That’s amazing.
0:05:36 – I was like, “Are you kidding?
0:05:37 “Is that real?”
0:05:38 But that was real.
0:05:41 That’s how not advanced the field has been.
0:05:43 – Yeah, so I just had a curiosity,
0:05:44 like, when you realize, okay,
0:05:49 we’re gonna have to invent a new manufacturing process
0:05:51 to do this in an oxygen-free environment,
0:05:53 you know, what kind of undertaking was that?
0:05:55 Like, ’cause I’ve, I got a chance,
0:05:58 the reason we reconnected is I was in San Francisco
0:06:00 for one of our partner off-sites,
0:06:02 and I came by your facility,
0:06:05 and you gave me a tour of your whole manufacturing process
0:06:07 and facility there in SF.
0:06:10 And it was just like, I can only imagine,
0:06:11 I mean, it was massive.
0:06:15 I can only imagine how long it took to build that out.
0:06:17 – Yeah, that was about a, well, you know,
0:06:18 we’re a startup, so we have to work fast.
0:06:22 So I think, you know, we, as soon as the paint was dry,
0:06:24 we’re like, “Okay, we’re ready to go with manufacturing.”
0:06:26 But it was almost a two-year process
0:06:27 to build this plant out.
0:06:32 And because the entire way the plant is designed is novel,
0:06:35 we didn’t have a blueprint to go off of.
0:06:37 And so there are few weird things about our plant.
0:06:40 The first is that it’s in the middle of San Francisco.
0:06:42 And the second is linked to that,
0:06:43 which is that there are a bunch of, you know,
0:06:46 PhD microbiologists that built this plant
0:06:50 because there was such an innovation component to it,
0:06:52 but it also has to meet all the requirements
0:06:54 by the FDA of a manufacturing plant.
0:06:56 And so we just needed it close to us.
0:06:59 And so we ended up building this plant here in San Francisco
0:07:01 with these microbiologists
0:07:03 alongside people who understood their regulatory system.
0:07:08 And I think that one of the most important things for us
0:07:13 is that we have to deliver on the promise of efficacy
0:07:14 for people.
0:07:15 And so even the way,
0:07:17 not just the way that we grow the strains,
0:07:20 but even the way that we measure their activity at the end
0:07:22 is way more in-depth.
0:07:25 So like we don’t look at colony forming units,
0:07:28 CFUs is what you normally see on the lead.
0:07:30 The way that works is if you remember back to like,
0:07:31 you know, seventh grade biology,
0:07:32 you’re literally streaking these out on a plate
0:07:35 and you’re counting how many colonies showed up.
0:07:38 Well, that only tells you how many things could form colonies.
0:07:39 What else is in your pill?
0:07:40 What’s all the other stuff
0:07:42 that’s in there that’s not forming colonies?
0:07:43 That’s super important.
0:07:45 And so we actually use an entirely different technology
0:07:47 called flow cytometry.
0:07:49 And flow cytometry has traditionally been used
0:07:50 in cancer research,
0:07:52 where you’re trying to differentiate a cancer cell
0:07:53 from a healthy cell.
0:07:56 And so here you can actually look at everything
0:07:57 that’s in your pill.
0:08:01 So we know what’s alive, what’s dead, what’s partially dead.
0:08:02 And then we also look at,
0:08:03 what are all the other small molecules
0:08:04 that are sitting in this pill?
0:08:07 So I know exactly what’s in every pill that you’re getting.
0:08:10 Moreover, I know how much butyrate those things can produce.
0:08:13 I know what pH thing is at.
0:08:15 And so we are measuring all these different things
0:08:16 about what goes into the pill.
0:08:17 Because at the end of the day,
0:08:20 in order to promise the outcomes of lowered A1C,
0:08:22 lowered blood glucose spikes,
0:08:24 that’s the level of information you have to have
0:08:25 about what’s in the pill.
0:08:28 – What is butyrate for people that don’t know?
0:08:33 Butyrate is this like incredibly important small molecule
0:08:35 that your microbiome generates.
0:08:37 And it’s been known for a long time
0:08:38 that it plays a really important role
0:08:43 in stimulating your body’s natural GLP-1 hormone.
0:08:46 So a lot of people don’t realize
0:08:48 that the GLP-1 drugs that are out there now,
0:08:51 ozempic, Guagovic, are actually a mimic
0:08:53 of your body’s natural GLP-1 hormone.
0:08:56 And that that GLP-1 hormone is stimulated
0:08:57 by your gut microbiome.
0:08:59 And the way that it’s stimulated
0:09:01 is that your microbiome can produce butyrate.
0:09:03 It binds to these G protein-coupled receptors
0:09:06 in these L cells, and that triggers the release
0:09:07 of GLP-1 hormone.
0:09:09 And so it’s known for a long time
0:09:11 that butyrate has this activity
0:09:16 and can lower A1C, lower blood glucose spikes,
0:09:18 primarily in animal models,
0:09:21 but that if you don’t make enough butyrate
0:09:24 in your microbiome, you actually get a diminished ability
0:09:26 to produce GLP-1 hormone.
0:09:29 And so butyrate is really important from that standpoint.
0:09:31 The other reason butyrate is really important
0:09:35 is because your colon cells are the only cells in your body
0:09:37 that use butyrate as their form of energy.
0:09:39 So every other cell in your body uses glucose
0:09:40 or its energy source.
0:09:43 Your colon cells use butyrate as its energy source.
0:09:45 And so people who are deficient in butyrate
0:09:47 also tend to have things that’s associated
0:09:51 with things like colon cancer and issues with their colon
0:09:53 because they’re lacking the primary energy source
0:09:54 for those cells.
0:09:57 So that’s the other reason, super important.
0:09:58 – Yeah, that’s really cool.
0:10:01 You know, the first time that I was,
0:10:04 because we were investors at True Ventures,
0:10:05 I remember you gave me some bottles
0:10:07 that were like just beta tester units.
0:10:09 Remember back in the day when it was just like beta testers
0:10:11 that were using this?
0:10:14 And I tried it and I remember after like,
0:10:16 I don’t know, maybe it was like 30 days or something.
0:10:18 I was doing continuous glucose monitor back then.
0:10:20 This was like years ago.
0:10:25 And I remember I was just like hitting myself with carbs.
0:10:28 And I was noticing that I would still get a little bit
0:10:30 of elevation, but it wasn’t the crazy spikiness.
0:10:33 So for me, what Peter Tia had me do,
0:10:35 ’cause he’s been my longevity doctor now for like 12 years,
0:10:38 back when he first saw me from the very get-go,
0:10:40 he had me do a glucose tolerance test,
0:10:42 which is, you know, they basically,
0:10:45 for those that don’t know, they draw your blood,
0:10:46 they look at your fasting glucose,
0:10:48 and then they make you drink this super sugary
0:10:50 full-on glucose drink.
0:10:53 They look at the spike, look at insulin levels,
0:10:54 and then they look at the fall-off.
0:10:57 Like, how quick are you, or how able,
0:11:02 how can you dispose, how quickly can you dispose of glucose?
0:11:03 And, you know, ideally you want that
0:11:05 to return to baseline pretty fast.
0:11:08 And I had an issue, we saw it right away,
0:11:10 where it’s just I stayed elevated much longer
0:11:11 than most people.
0:11:13 Now, that’s not pre-diabetic.
0:11:15 You know, I didn’t have a high A1C or anything like that.
0:11:18 I didn’t have high fasting glucose levels,
0:11:19 but I had this issue.
0:11:21 And I remember after, I don’t know,
0:11:22 maybe it was like 45 days or something
0:11:24 where I was taking your product,
0:11:25 and I could throw things at it
0:11:27 that I knew were big offenders.
0:11:28 Like, for me, it was like rice.
0:11:31 Rice was just like no-go, right?
0:11:35 And I was noticing like a reduction in the spike.
0:11:38 And then actually, I was clearing it faster,
0:11:39 which was really interesting.
0:11:43 And so, what was that kind of landmark study and research
0:11:44 when that first product,
0:11:47 and what did you prove out there?
0:11:49 – Yeah, I love your story because I think
0:11:51 that’s an important one for people
0:11:53 who are walking around ostensibly healthy.
0:11:55 And I’ll put myself in that same bucket too.
0:11:58 You haven’t been diagnosed with diabetes or pre-diabetes,
0:12:00 and you’re probably being pretty good
0:12:03 about what you’re eating and exercising and all of that.
0:12:07 But under the hood, there is a part of your body
0:12:08 that’s not optimized,
0:12:10 which is how your body is metabolizing sugar.
0:12:12 And that area under the curve that you’re describing,
0:12:16 you know, if it’s too high,
0:12:18 but not high enough to cross you over into diabetes,
0:12:19 you might never know about it
0:12:22 unless you’re wearing a continuous glucose monitor
0:12:25 or doing this oral glucose tolerance test
0:12:26 that Peter had you do.
0:12:29 And so, there’s opportunity to help anybody.
0:12:31 And for me, I actually saw the same thing.
0:12:34 I don’t have high A1C or diabetes or pre-diabetes,
0:12:36 but when I was on product,
0:12:39 and I got to do a placebo-controlled test on myself,
0:12:44 you know, I saw all my CGM peaks and troughs diminished
0:12:47 and there’s room to move there.
0:12:48 But the key study that we did,
0:12:52 you know, when you’re thinking about metabolic disorders,
0:12:53 you know, you really want to demonstrate
0:12:55 that all the way at this end of the spectrum
0:12:57 where you have metabolic syndrome, you can have impact.
0:12:59 And so we think about metabolism as a spectrum
0:13:01 where it’s like you have a propensity for obesity,
0:13:04 then you have obesity, pre-diabetes and type two diabetes.
0:13:05 We went all the way here
0:13:06 and we said if we can help people
0:13:09 who are all the way at the end of metabolically sick,
0:13:10 they have metabolic syndrome,
0:13:11 then we’ve really got something
0:13:12 because we can really help all the people
0:13:14 at the earlier end of the spectrum.
0:13:16 So the pivotal study that we did,
0:13:18 which was published in BMJ,
0:13:22 is a placebo-controlled double-blinded randomized trial
0:13:24 where we took people with type two diabetes
0:13:26 and we showed that compared to placebo,
0:13:30 the people who were on our formulation after 90 days
0:13:32 had a lowering of A1C by 0.6
0:13:36 and a lowering of blood glucose spikes by 33%.
0:13:38 That’s basically how far with, yeah,
0:13:39 if you know those numbers,
0:13:41 that’s on par with a pharmaceutical,
0:13:43 but it was this microbiome intervention
0:13:44 that’s never been made before.
0:13:46 – Yeah, so I mean, that’s really impressive
0:13:48 and it’s way more like in my mind,
0:13:51 I’m always a fan of like how can nature help us first
0:13:53 before we go to like more heavier hammers
0:13:54 on certain things, you know?
0:13:57 So that’s fantastic.
0:13:59 So that product was obviously a massive success,
0:14:02 but the thing and the reason why we’re chatting today
0:14:03 is, you know, you know, I like,
0:14:05 I saw you on a TV podcast,
0:14:06 I meant to say shoot you a note,
0:14:08 but I forgot to and it was really cool to see.
0:14:10 And then, you know, we hadn’t chatted for a while
0:14:11 and I would see you every once in a while
0:14:14 at a startup founder function or something, you know?
0:14:19 And I saw a friend of mine and, you know,
0:14:20 these days when you run into somebody
0:14:21 that you haven’t seen in a while
0:14:24 and they’ve like, you know, like dropped a bunch of weight
0:14:26 or you’re like, okay, you’re on the sauce,
0:14:28 like you’re taking out a Zempik, right?
0:14:31 Like it’s kind of like a thing, like it’s a thing.
0:14:34 And when I talked to her, she’s like,
0:14:38 no, like I tried that GLP-1 probiotic by pendulum
0:14:39 and I’m like, what are you talking about?
0:14:40 I like, I didn’t even know it existed,
0:14:43 I feel bad, I’m sorry, I didn’t go and see the site.
0:14:45 I was in the middle of my own startup, which was crazy.
0:14:47 But you launch this new thing and I was like,
0:14:48 you got to be shitting me.
0:14:53 Like this actually works with and enhances GLP-1
0:14:56 so people are actually, you know, getting reduced cravings.
0:15:01 And for her, she was like, I, if I see a Chaka bar
0:15:04 and I taste a bite, it’s gone.
0:15:07 And she’s like, that’s my craving, that’s my downfall.
0:15:09 And she goes, it’s the weirdest thing, Kevin.
0:15:12 She goes, I’ll have a bite and I’m good.
0:15:14 And I just walk away.
0:15:18 And so she said it took her like around 60-ish days or so
0:15:21 after taking it to kind of like really get in on it
0:15:23 and feel the effects, but really curious,
0:15:27 what is this product and then what have you seen so far?
0:15:31 – Yeah, the food cravings thing is huge.
0:15:35 So first of all, the product is a subset of the strains
0:15:37 that are in pendulum glucose control.
0:15:39 And so, and it’s the subset of strains
0:15:42 that specifically stimulate the GLP-1 hormone.
0:15:46 And, you know, there are only two strains
0:15:48 that have ever been published to show
0:15:51 that they can directly stimulate GLP-1 secretion.
0:15:54 And one of them is acromance, amusinophila.
0:15:56 The other one is Clostridium butyricum.
0:15:57 Both of those strains are in this product
0:15:59 along with a third strain that we know
0:16:00 functions upstream of it.
0:16:03 And so it’s specifically designed to increase
0:16:07 your GLP-1 hormone via the microbiome.
0:16:10 And what we really focused on was this food cravings part
0:16:14 because we know that one of the biggest issues
0:16:17 that people experience is food noise.
0:16:20 And so, you know, you have, I can’t remember the number,
0:16:21 but it was something like, you know,
0:16:25 85% of women are walking around with food noise,
0:16:28 which basically means you’re thinking about food all the time.
0:16:30 And all the food that you want to eat
0:16:31 that you shouldn’t be eating.
0:16:33 And so anything that can quiet that noise
0:16:36 becomes really impactful for improving your food choices
0:16:39 as well as how much food that you’re intaking.
0:16:41 And then ultimately, of course, if you have good nutrition,
0:16:44 it shows up in a variety of different health benefits.
0:16:47 And you also note that things like Ozymbic and Wokowi,
0:16:49 one of the main things that people experience
0:16:50 when they go on that is they’re like,
0:16:52 “Hi, I’m not hungry anymore.”
0:16:54 And that’s part of this GLP-1 hormone.
0:16:56 It really is your satiety click.
0:16:59 I mean, it tells your body, it tells your brain,
0:17:01 we’re full, we don’t need to eat anymore.
0:17:02 And so there’s actually a diagnostic test
0:17:04 called the food cravings inventory.
0:17:06 And the food cravings inventory
0:17:09 looks at the four major types of food cravings,
0:17:14 which are sugar, carbs, fast foods, and high-fat foods.
0:17:17 Usually people know those categories as their weakness.
0:17:20 And so if you give people this food cravings inventory
0:17:22 and you give them the product,
0:17:26 we found that after six weeks,
0:17:28 91% of those people had a reduction
0:17:30 in their food cravings inventory score.
0:17:33 And moreover, the higher that your starting score was,
0:17:34 the bigger the drop was.
0:17:37 And so there’s really this huge impact
0:17:38 to people’s food cravings,
0:17:40 which then of course there’s all these other beneficial
0:17:42 outcomes when you’re not having those food cravings.
0:17:44 But that’s really how the product works.
0:17:47 It stimulates your body’s natural GLP-1,
0:17:49 which tells your brain you are not hungry anymore,
0:17:52 particularly for foods that are not doing your body
0:17:53 any benefit.
0:17:55 And through that reduction in food craving,
0:17:57 your friend’s experience is exactly
0:17:59 what people are experiencing.
0:18:01 – That’s fantastic.
0:18:02 But one thing I forgot to ask them,
0:18:03 I’m really curious about is like,
0:18:06 you talked about the oxygen-free environment.
0:18:09 We did skip one piece, which is like,
0:18:11 how the hell are you able to then take a pill
0:18:15 and get it down there and have it be alive still
0:18:18 if it has to be born in this an oxygen-free environment?
0:18:20 – Yes, great question.
0:18:23 And I will say that I know that Tru is one of our investors.
0:18:25 So this is probably a terrible thing to say.
0:18:27 But had I known that it was gonna be this hard,
0:18:30 I probably wouldn’t have started this company.
0:18:32 – The different steps that you have to take
0:18:34 in order to make a product that works
0:18:36 is first of all, you have to be able to get these strains
0:18:39 out of the gut microbiome, the ones that matter,
0:18:41 and knowing which ones matter.
0:18:43 The second thing you have to do is figure out
0:18:44 how to grow them in this–
0:18:46 – Wait, hold on, how did you do that?
0:18:48 How did you get like, ’cause if, yeah,
0:18:50 how would you ever be able to do that?
0:18:53 ‘Cause if they’re past, they’re gonna be dead.
0:18:56 Did you have to go in with what’s that process like?
0:19:01 – Well, that process is you basically have to
0:19:02 buy these anaerobic chambers.
0:19:03 I don’t think you gotta,
0:19:04 oh, maybe you do get a chance to see them.
0:19:06 They’re these– – I saw it, yeah.
0:19:10 – Yeah, so essentially you’re collecting stool
0:19:11 and you’re immediately putting them
0:19:12 in these anaerobic chambers
0:19:15 and then you’re trying to culture
0:19:17 the specific strains out of them.
0:19:18 And then you end up doing,
0:19:21 I mean, it’s basically sort of a classic way
0:19:23 that we do protein purification,
0:19:25 which is that you have this complex gamish of stuff
0:19:27 and then you just continue to dilute
0:19:30 and DNA sequence until you get the well
0:19:31 that has your strain.
0:19:36 So it’s a little bit of a caveman way
0:19:37 to get down to a single strain,
0:19:39 but that’s the way that– – Yeah.
0:19:40 – So you– – And just so people know,
0:19:45 they’re not taking pills of stool, purified stool.
0:19:47 That’s not the case here.
0:19:50 These are grown, these are grown by you, yeah.
0:19:51 – Yes, these are isolates
0:19:53 that are now single strains that are grown.
0:19:56 There’s no stool consumption happening here.
0:19:58 – Well, what’s funny is like they actually,
0:19:59 I mean, I’m sure you’ve heard about this though,
0:20:01 but they actually do that kind of like for people
0:20:05 that have hardcore certain type of bowel diseases,
0:20:08 they can do those stool replacement like,
0:20:09 what are those called?
0:20:10 Do you know what I’m talking about
0:20:13 where they actually, they have a treatment for that now,
0:20:13 which is crazy.
0:20:15 We actually take somebody else’s stool
0:20:18 and repopulate bacteria, which is just insane,
0:20:20 but apparently it works.
0:20:22 – Oh yeah, the fecal microbiome transplants
0:20:27 are extremely effective, and we can get into this,
0:20:30 but C. diff infections are one of the places
0:20:32 where these fecal microbiome transplants
0:20:36 are super powerful, and they’re sort of this weird conundrum,
0:20:38 which is like when people get C. diff,
0:20:40 and clostridium difficile is a strain
0:20:42 that’s in your microbiome, when you take an antibiotic,
0:20:44 what can happen is that that strain can start to now,
0:20:47 it can survive the antibiotic and start to divide,
0:20:48 and it has no competition,
0:20:50 so then it starts to take over your gut,
0:20:53 and the treatment is more antibiotics to try to kill it,
0:20:55 but there’s this other alternative treatment,
0:20:57 which is the fecal microbiome transplant,
0:20:59 where you basically just infuse somebody else’s stool
0:21:04 into your microbiome, and it tamps down that specific strain,
0:21:08 and it is way more effective than the antibiotic treatment.
0:21:09 So anyway, that’s a–
0:21:12 – Yeah, that is not something you provide,
0:21:14 but it’s a fascinating thing to go with Google
0:21:15 if you have the C. diff or something like that
0:21:18 for your loved ones, for sure.
0:21:19 – For sure, yeah, definitely.
0:21:21 And interestingly, there are companies
0:21:24 that are kind of, there’s different delivery modalities,
0:21:26 and so there are companies that have gotten
0:21:27 that down into a pill.
0:21:29 So for us, it was the specific strains,
0:21:31 ’cause we’re not doing the stool transplants,
0:21:32 it’s figuring out how to grow them
0:21:35 in an anaerobic environment where no oxygen gets in,
0:21:37 and then you gotta freeze dry them
0:21:39 because you have to be able to get them into a pill,
0:21:41 and freeze drying means that it’s literally
0:21:43 what it sounds like, you freeze them down,
0:21:45 you dry them, they get into a powdered form,
0:21:47 the cells have to survive that,
0:21:49 so you’re actually trying to help them,
0:21:51 there’s this whole pressure temperature thing
0:21:53 where you’re trying to help them survive freeze drying.
0:21:56 Once they’re in that powder freeze-dried form,
0:21:58 it’s like a mildly dormant state,
0:22:00 and so then they become a lot more stable,
0:22:02 then you can expose them to oxygen, they’re okay.
0:22:04 So you gotta freeze dry them,
0:22:06 then you have to get them into a pill
0:22:09 that is going to deliver them back to the distal colon.
0:22:11 So our pills are enteric-coded,
0:22:12 so it gets through the stomach acid,
0:22:14 and they have a time-delayed release,
0:22:15 so it gets through the whole GI tract
0:22:17 to get to that distal colon,
0:22:19 and then you have to have that pill melt there,
0:22:21 and the strains have to come to life,
0:22:25 so we actually include some prebiotic food for the strains,
0:22:26 and they have to be able to then come back to life
0:22:30 and do their function, which is to help stimulate
0:22:32 gut lining, GLP-1 production, all these different things,
0:22:35 and all of those have to be true,
0:22:37 for you to have this outcome of A1C
0:22:39 and blood glucose spike improvement,
0:22:44 and every one of those steps was an invention.
0:22:45 Wow, that’s crazy.
0:22:47 This is so awesome.
0:22:49 So you’ve got this new GLP-1 product.
0:22:52 The reason why I really wanted to have you back on the show,
0:22:54 and I think this is the very most important crucial piece
0:22:56 to get across to people, it’s like,
0:22:58 it’s not lost on either one of us,
0:22:59 the true ventures where I work at
0:23:00 as an investor in your company,
0:23:04 and the last thing, the most precious thing I have
0:23:06 as a podcaster and someone that gets out on media
0:23:08 is the trust of my audience, right?
0:23:10 Like, that’s the most thing that I cannot compromise
0:23:12 no matter what, otherwise, what am I doing, right?
0:23:14 So it’s important to let people know
0:23:18 that nothing about what we’re about to tell you
0:23:21 has any benefit to me in terms of there’s no payment,
0:23:23 nothing weird happening between the two of us.
0:23:26 I wanted to have you on because I saw benefit
0:23:27 in my own friends.
0:23:30 I personally take the product and love it.
0:23:32 And then, also, these things, like,
0:23:33 to go get a prescription,
0:23:35 you don’t have to get a prescription for this.
0:23:37 To go get a prescription can be very, very expensive
0:23:40 ’cause oftentimes insurance kind of gets flaky
0:23:42 and they don’t cover these GLP-1 shots
0:23:44 and they have side effects that give people nausea,
0:23:45 things of that nature.
0:23:47 And so I just thought to myself, like,
0:23:48 “Huh, I got a tour of the plant.
0:23:50 “This is a really cool thing.
0:23:53 “Is there something that you and I could think up
0:23:56 “and dream up that we offer the audience here
0:23:58 “that shows them the intent,
0:24:01 “which is to see if this works for them, right?”
0:24:03 And so, you know, we were kind of going back and forth
0:24:04 on email and I remember, where was it?
0:24:06 I think it was in London when I emailed you.
0:24:08 I had this idea and I was like,
0:24:11 “Hey, what if we did a trial
0:24:13 “where when we have people sign up for this,
0:24:15 “like, there’s this idea
0:24:17 “and I don’t think you had done this to date
0:24:20 “where there’s like this window of time, like 90 days,
0:24:22 “where they can say, ‘Hey, this didn’t work for me
0:24:24 “‘and I just want my money back.'”
0:24:26 Which, to me, feels fantastic
0:24:28 because then I would feel like I’d never tried
0:24:30 to convince someone to buy something, you know?
0:24:32 Like, that’s the last thing I want people to think is like,
0:24:34 “Oh, he’s just doing this to prop up his venture
0:24:36 “or whatever it may be.”
0:24:38 So, we came up with something pretty cool,
0:24:39 which I’m excited about.
0:24:41 Do you want to talk a little bit about that?
0:24:43 – Yeah, I’m super excited about it too
0:24:45 because for us as a company,
0:24:48 we invest in a lot of clinical trials and studies
0:24:50 where we give people product,
0:24:51 we give them all these tests
0:24:53 and we are looking for outcomes,
0:24:56 but then we don’t bring that into the marketplace.
0:24:59 And so, this is the first time
0:25:03 that we are offering a cohort of people
0:25:06 the full experience of basically kind of being on a trial.
0:25:10 And so, the idea here is that it takes 90 days
0:25:14 to see the improvement of food cravings at, you know,
0:25:15 many people see it before.
0:25:17 Then, as I said, our previous study was six weeks,
0:25:20 91% of people saw an improvement.
0:25:23 But what we’re going to do is we are going to,
0:25:26 there’s going to be a special page on the Pendulum website,
0:25:27 which is going to be Kevin’s page.
0:25:29 And if you come through that page,
0:25:30 what you’re going to get access to
0:25:32 is of course all the information
0:25:33 that everybody else gets access to
0:25:37 about the GLP-1 probiotic and how it works.
0:25:41 But you are also going to get access to a 90 day trial
0:25:43 where we will give you
0:25:45 the food cravings inventory diagnostic test,
0:25:46 that diagnostic test that I told you about.
0:25:49 You’re going to get it at baseline,
0:25:52 you’re going to get it at 45 days,
0:25:53 and then you’re going to get it at 90 days.
0:25:55 I want to share that data back with you
0:25:58 so that you can see what is my starting food cravings inventory
0:26:00 across those four different types of cravings,
0:26:03 and then how does it change over time.
0:26:05 And if you get to the end of that 90 days
0:26:08 and you haven’t had an improvement in your food cravings,
0:26:09 you’re going to get all your money back.
0:26:13 And we’ve never, never run anything like this before.
0:26:16 And I’m super excited to get the real world data
0:26:18 and to see what people are experiencing.
0:26:22 You know, if on the other hand you do see improvement,
0:26:23 then we’re going to give you a 20% discount
0:26:25 off your next order.
0:26:27 And so that kind of helps,
0:26:30 hopefully lower the barrier to keeping people in.
0:26:33 And then moreover, within our company,
0:26:35 we have customer service like everybody else does,
0:26:38 but we have a team of actually registered dieticians
0:26:40 who are microbiome specialists.
0:26:42 And so the other thing we’re going to do
0:26:47 is that if you buy through this particular mechanism,
0:26:49 if you have a question,
0:26:51 you’re not going to go through the regular customer service
0:26:52 to get escalated.
0:26:53 You’re going to go directly to a microbiome specialist.
0:26:56 So any of these questions you have about like,
0:26:57 how is this product really working?
0:26:59 What’s happening to my microbiome?
0:27:00 What if I’m taking these 12 other things?
0:27:02 You’re going to go right to a person
0:27:03 who’s going to be able to answer those questions for you.
0:27:06 And so by giving you all of the tools
0:27:09 and the information and the data
0:27:10 and the diagnostic test,
0:27:13 we’re hoping that everyone will be able to see very clearly,
0:27:16 is the product working for me or not?
0:27:17 – Yeah, I love that.
0:27:19 And it’s a way, I mean, this is going to be valuable data.
0:27:21 Like to get back to you, obviously we’re always,
0:27:23 you’re always evolving the science here.
0:27:26 Like the more data you can have, the better.
0:27:28 And it’s a fantastic way to say,
0:27:30 hey, I know there’s so many of my friends
0:27:31 that have been like, hey,
0:27:33 do you know any like compounding pharmacies
0:27:35 where I can get a Zampic or whatever?
0:27:36 They’re always trying to hit me up
0:27:37 for like an angle to get one of these.
0:27:41 And this is like such a more like no shots,
0:27:42 way more healthy.
0:27:46 And like for me, like, and I’m just speaking in a one here,
0:27:48 like I’ve always, and I haven’t said something
0:27:49 in this publicly, but I’ve always had stomach issues.
0:27:51 It’s always kind of like weird grumbly stuff.
0:27:54 And like it’s mostly like stress of a founder or whatever.
0:27:56 And I’ve always, you know,
0:27:58 appreciated your line of products
0:27:59 because they’ve helped dramatically
0:28:01 with all of that stuff.
0:28:03 I was just telling my wife, I got back from this trip
0:28:05 and, you know, I was doing so much travel.
0:28:07 Normally my stomach’s like at least one or two days,
0:28:09 it’s like, I’m not happy, you know?
0:28:11 And it’s like, I didn’t have any of that.
0:28:13 And granted that who knows it could happen tomorrow.
0:28:15 But, you know, it’s one of those things
0:28:18 where I know that there’s multiple people
0:28:19 that are personal friends
0:28:20 that have had great positive experiences
0:28:22 from the products we’ve created.
0:28:24 And that’s a really strong signal.
0:28:25 And let’s see how many more people
0:28:26 we can bring through this.
0:28:30 And, you know, obesity is a massive issue.
0:28:32 It’s a massive issue that impacts people
0:28:33 on so many different levels.
0:28:35 They don’t, you know, tend to think of it as like,
0:28:37 oh, you’re overweight, you might have more heart disease,
0:28:39 but there’s cancers that are linked to obesity.
0:28:41 There’s a whole slew of things.
0:28:44 And then also on the glucose side, I mean,
0:28:46 they’re calling, you know, Alzheimer’s
0:28:47 like type three diabetes.
0:28:49 Like there is definitely some links there
0:28:53 around elevated glucose diabetes and dementia as well.
0:28:57 So, a lot of reasons to go after this
0:28:59 and you have a great product line.
0:29:02 So thank you for trusting our audience here
0:29:04 and for doing this fun trial with us.
0:29:05 – Oh, I’m super excited.
0:29:07 And thank you for coming up with the idea
0:29:08 to run this experiment together.
0:29:11 And I really can’t wait to see the data.
0:29:12 – Yeah, same.
0:29:14 I’m super, super excited to see what comes out of this.
0:29:18 And yeah, anything else you can hint at product-wise
0:29:19 that you have coming out with?
0:29:21 Like, I mean, I’m curious, like, what is the,
0:29:26 you mentioned 1% of the, you know, microbiome has been mapped.
0:29:29 Are you like 2% now, 5%?
0:29:30 Like, do you even think about it like that?
0:29:32 Like, are there other strains that you’re like,
0:29:36 oh, shit, this could be something new and novel and exciting?
0:29:39 – Yeah, I think one of the things that has kind of emerged
0:29:40 from all the publications,
0:29:42 and this isn’t something that I can take credit for,
0:29:44 but all the publications that have been happening globally
0:29:46 is that in the microbiome,
0:29:48 there appear to be these keystone strains,
0:29:52 meaning that they play a sort of fundamental role
0:29:53 in the microbiome and in our health
0:29:56 that if you’re off on those strains,
0:29:58 it actually shows up in a wide variety of symptoms.
0:30:00 And an acromancemucinophil is one of them.
0:30:02 So if anybody does a gut microbiome test,
0:30:05 you’ll know that no matter which microbiome test
0:30:07 you’re doing, acromancemucinophil is always
0:30:08 at the top of the list there,
0:30:11 telling you whether you’re low, high, or medium,
0:30:13 we can get into the pros and cons of those tests.
0:30:16 But that is a keystone strain.
0:30:18 And the reason is because it plays a role
0:30:20 in the structure of your gut lining.
0:30:22 And so when you’re low or missing it,
0:30:25 it shows up as I have GI issues,
0:30:27 I have metabolism issues,
0:30:30 I have actually even neurological issues,
0:30:32 cardiovascular issues.
0:30:34 And so it’s been associated with all these other diseases
0:30:35 because it’s a keystone strain.
0:30:39 There’s another keystone strain
0:30:42 that is also if you do a gut test at the top there.
0:30:46 And we are working diligently on that strain,
0:30:48 which appears to play a fundamental role
0:30:51 in how your microbiome interacts with your immune system.
0:30:52 – Oh, wow.
0:30:54 – And so we are,
0:30:55 and it’s never been brought to market before.
0:30:58 And so just stay tuned, that’s coming out.
0:31:00 And then the other big thing that’s coming out
0:31:03 is really thinking about the prebiotics
0:31:06 that feed these probiotic strains
0:31:08 and specifically our strains.
0:31:09 So there’s a lot of prebiotic formulations out there.
0:31:13 You can get fiber in a million different ways.
0:31:15 But we have a formulation that is specifically designed
0:31:17 to increase these keystone strains
0:31:21 and we will be coming out with that next year as well.
0:31:23 So I’m really excited about both of those.
0:31:24 – Awesome.
0:31:25 Well, thank you for doing all this amazing research
0:31:28 and it’s great to have you back on again.
0:31:30 Excited to do this
0:31:32 and I’ll be reporting back on the website
0:31:33 once we get the results.
0:31:34 I’m assuming you’ll do a follow up kind of post
0:31:39 on the website once we figure out what all came back.
0:31:40 It’s super exciting.
0:31:41 – Absolutely.
0:31:43 Thank you so much and thanks for having me.
0:31:46 – Yeah, and for everyone that’s listening in,
0:31:47 where do you get the links?
0:31:49 Definitely check out the show notes.
0:31:51 I’ll have all of the links there.
0:31:52 Make sure to use that link though
0:31:54 because that’s how you get in,
0:31:56 jumped into this special private crew
0:31:57 just for this audience.
0:32:00 And yeah, so that’ll be the central place
0:32:03 to find it at over@kevinrose.com.
0:32:06 All right, we’ll talk again soon.
0:32:07 – I can’t wait.
0:32:08 Thank you.
0:32:08 – Thank you.
0:32:11 (upbeat music)
0:32:15 (upbeat music)
0:32:25 [BLANK_AUDIO]
0:00:02 that are in the shelves right now,
0:00:05 they actually represent a very small fraction,
0:00:08 less than 1% of your entire microbiome.
0:00:10 That means there’s a huge opportunity
0:00:12 to go out and create novel interventions here.
0:00:14 So the pivotal study that we did,
0:00:16 which was published in BMJ,
0:00:19 is a placebo-controlled double-blinded randomized trial
0:00:21 where we took people with type II diabetes
0:00:24 and we showed that compared to placebo,
0:00:27 the people who were on our formulation after 90 days
0:00:30 had a lowering of A1C by 0.6
0:00:33 and a lowering of blood glucose spikes by 33%.
0:00:35 That’s basically how far with,
0:00:37 yeah, if you know those numbers,
0:00:39 that’s on par with a pharmaceutical,
0:00:40 but it was this microbiome intervention
0:00:42 that’s never been made before.
0:00:44 There’s another keystone strain
0:00:47 that is also, if you do a gut test at the top there,
0:00:51 and we are working diligently on that strain,
0:00:53 which appears to play a fundamental role
0:00:56 in how your microbiome interacts with your immune system.
0:00:57 – Oh, wow.
0:00:59 And so we are,
0:01:01 and it’s never been brought to market before.
0:01:07 – Colleen, thank you so much for joining me.
0:01:10 – Thanks so much for having me, excited to be here.
0:01:12 – It’s been a minute since we’ve done
0:01:13 a little podcast together,
0:01:15 so I’m excited to be back together.
0:01:18 You know, I think a good place to start
0:01:22 is for those that haven’t seen you on my show back in the day
0:01:25 or they haven’t seen you on Peter Tia’s podcast,
0:01:27 can you give us just like the quick little,
0:01:28 you know, three, four minute version
0:01:32 of like why your company is so different
0:01:34 and what you’re doing that’s so novel
0:01:36 on the probiotic side that,
0:01:37 and why you started this company,
0:01:39 would you just be fascinating?
0:01:42 – Sure, well, maybe it starts with like my background.
0:01:46 I’m not a probiotics or marketing expert at all.
0:01:48 I’m actually a basic science researcher,
0:01:51 so I have a PhD in biochemistry and molecular biology
0:01:53 from Johns Hopkins.
0:01:57 I did a postdoc at Northwestern in deep basic science,
0:01:59 and then I actually started my career in pharma,
0:02:03 so we were developing drugs for Parkinson’s disease,
0:02:07 and then after that I joined a startup DNA sequencing company
0:02:09 that where I led biology,
0:02:11 so I’ve really just been embedded in R&D,
0:02:13 and that company went through rapid growth
0:02:15 and went public, and on the other side of that,
0:02:17 I started pendulum with two co-founders.
0:02:19 We’re all very technical,
0:02:22 and the reason that we got excited about the space
0:02:25 is really from a more of a data and tech side
0:02:28 than it ever was from the probiotics consumer side,
0:02:30 and what the big opportunity was
0:02:33 was the application of DNA sequencing technologies
0:02:36 to create metabolic maps of the microbiome
0:02:38 that allow you to go out and identify
0:02:40 what are the functions of the microbiome,
0:02:43 and what are some novel target opportunities there are
0:02:45 to help with disease and health.
0:02:46 When you think about all the probiotics
0:02:47 that are on the shelves right now,
0:02:50 they actually represent a very small fraction,
0:02:53 less than 1% of your entire microbiome.
0:02:55 That means there’s a huge opportunity
0:02:57 to go out and create novel interventions here,
0:03:01 and so we spent a short eight years doing R&D
0:03:03 and pre-clinical and clinical work
0:03:06 before we actually came out with any products,
0:03:10 and really the idea was can we leverage the gut microbiome
0:03:13 to improve our metabolism,
0:03:16 and there’s a variety of pathways involved in metabolism,
0:03:18 but that’s really been what’s differentiated about us.
0:03:21 So we’ve really been focused on the gut metabolism axis,
0:03:23 and how do you improve metabolism
0:03:27 through giving people back functions in their gut microbiome,
0:03:28 and that’s what we’ve been doing
0:03:30 for the last almost 12 years now.
0:03:35 – That’s awesome, and I think that you were pretty early on
0:03:37 in discovering some of these strains
0:03:38 that I had absolutely never heard of.
0:03:41 I’d never seen them on store shelves,
0:03:43 and you have a really funny story
0:03:46 that I think is worth retelling where you have these strains,
0:03:47 you want to have them manufactured
0:03:50 because why reinvent manufacturing?
0:03:52 There’s a lot of really high-quality manufacturers out there,
0:03:55 and tell us about what happened there
0:03:56 when you found these targets,
0:03:59 and you’re like, “Okay, let’s go build this.”
0:04:01 – Yeah, well, when we first had the idea for the company,
0:04:05 we said, “Okay, we really know how to create data,
0:04:07 “and then we’ll figure out once we have a product
0:04:08 “that works, how to bring it to market.”
0:04:10 But one thing we don’t have to figure out
0:04:11 is how to manufacture them,
0:04:15 because look, probiotics have been on shelves forever,
0:04:18 and there are global manufacturers of probiotics,
0:04:21 so once we had our strain list,
0:04:23 I thought I was going to hire one microbiologist
0:04:26 just to manage these different contract manufacturers
0:04:28 and call it a day.
0:04:33 We sent these strains to manufacturers around the world,
0:04:38 the US, Europe, China, India,
0:04:41 and every single one of them sent back dead strain,
0:04:42 and we were like, “Oh my gosh,
0:04:44 “if we really want to study these things,
0:04:46 “we have to figure out why can’t they grow them?”
0:04:49 And the primary reason they couldn’t grow them
0:04:52 is because in the gut microbiome,
0:04:53 when we talk about the gut microbiome,
0:04:54 it’s actually the distal colon,
0:04:57 so you think about there’s the stomach,
0:04:59 then there’s the entire GI tract at the very end,
0:05:01 the distant end, there’s the distal colon,
0:05:03 that’s where all the action is happening,
0:05:05 and in the distal colon, there’s actually no oxygen,
0:05:07 so you have these strains that live there
0:05:11 that are really important for our health
0:05:12 that can’t even grow in the presence
0:05:14 of a single molecule of oxygen.
0:05:16 And so what’s happening in these manufacturing plants
0:05:18 is they’re not set up, they’re set up to grow
0:05:20 these other strains which don’t have that requirement.
0:05:23 They’re not set up to keep oxygen out end-to-end
0:05:24 in their entire manufacturing plant,
0:05:28 and it was so crazy that one of the places that we visited,
0:05:29 we said, “How do you keep oxygen out?”
0:05:31 And they said, “Well, we open the pitch,
0:05:31 “you just really fast,
0:05:33 “and we do our thing, and then we close it.”
0:05:35 – That’s amazing.
0:05:36 – I was like, “Are you kidding?
0:05:37 “Is that real?”
0:05:38 But that was real.
0:05:41 That’s how not advanced the field has been.
0:05:43 – Yeah, so I just had a curiosity,
0:05:44 like, when you realize, okay,
0:05:49 we’re gonna have to invent a new manufacturing process
0:05:51 to do this in an oxygen-free environment,
0:05:53 you know, what kind of undertaking was that?
0:05:55 Like, ’cause I’ve, I got a chance,
0:05:58 the reason we reconnected is I was in San Francisco
0:06:00 for one of our partner off-sites,
0:06:02 and I came by your facility,
0:06:05 and you gave me a tour of your whole manufacturing process
0:06:07 and facility there in SF.
0:06:10 And it was just like, I can only imagine,
0:06:11 I mean, it was massive.
0:06:15 I can only imagine how long it took to build that out.
0:06:17 – Yeah, that was about a, well, you know,
0:06:18 we’re a startup, so we have to work fast.
0:06:22 So I think, you know, we, as soon as the paint was dry,
0:06:24 we’re like, “Okay, we’re ready to go with manufacturing.”
0:06:26 But it was almost a two-year process
0:06:27 to build this plant out.
0:06:32 And because the entire way the plant is designed is novel,
0:06:35 we didn’t have a blueprint to go off of.
0:06:37 And so there are few weird things about our plant.
0:06:40 The first is that it’s in the middle of San Francisco.
0:06:42 And the second is linked to that,
0:06:43 which is that there are a bunch of, you know,
0:06:46 PhD microbiologists that built this plant
0:06:50 because there was such an innovation component to it,
0:06:52 but it also has to meet all the requirements
0:06:54 by the FDA of a manufacturing plant.
0:06:56 And so we just needed it close to us.
0:06:59 And so we ended up building this plant here in San Francisco
0:07:01 with these microbiologists
0:07:03 alongside people who understood their regulatory system.
0:07:08 And I think that one of the most important things for us
0:07:13 is that we have to deliver on the promise of efficacy
0:07:14 for people.
0:07:15 And so even the way,
0:07:17 not just the way that we grow the strains,
0:07:20 but even the way that we measure their activity at the end
0:07:22 is way more in-depth.
0:07:25 So like we don’t look at colony forming units,
0:07:28 CFUs is what you normally see on the lead.
0:07:30 The way that works is if you remember back to like,
0:07:31 you know, seventh grade biology,
0:07:32 you’re literally streaking these out on a plate
0:07:35 and you’re counting how many colonies showed up.
0:07:38 Well, that only tells you how many things could form colonies.
0:07:39 What else is in your pill?
0:07:40 What’s all the other stuff
0:07:42 that’s in there that’s not forming colonies?
0:07:43 That’s super important.
0:07:45 And so we actually use an entirely different technology
0:07:47 called flow cytometry.
0:07:49 And flow cytometry has traditionally been used
0:07:50 in cancer research,
0:07:52 where you’re trying to differentiate a cancer cell
0:07:53 from a healthy cell.
0:07:56 And so here you can actually look at everything
0:07:57 that’s in your pill.
0:08:01 So we know what’s alive, what’s dead, what’s partially dead.
0:08:02 And then we also look at,
0:08:03 what are all the other small molecules
0:08:04 that are sitting in this pill?
0:08:07 So I know exactly what’s in every pill that you’re getting.
0:08:10 Moreover, I know how much butyrate those things can produce.
0:08:13 I know what pH thing is at.
0:08:15 And so we are measuring all these different things
0:08:16 about what goes into the pill.
0:08:17 Because at the end of the day,
0:08:20 in order to promise the outcomes of lowered A1C,
0:08:22 lowered blood glucose spikes,
0:08:24 that’s the level of information you have to have
0:08:25 about what’s in the pill.
0:08:28 – What is butyrate for people that don’t know?
0:08:33 Butyrate is this like incredibly important small molecule
0:08:35 that your microbiome generates.
0:08:37 And it’s been known for a long time
0:08:38 that it plays a really important role
0:08:43 in stimulating your body’s natural GLP-1 hormone.
0:08:46 So a lot of people don’t realize
0:08:48 that the GLP-1 drugs that are out there now,
0:08:51 ozempic, Guagovic, are actually a mimic
0:08:53 of your body’s natural GLP-1 hormone.
0:08:56 And that that GLP-1 hormone is stimulated
0:08:57 by your gut microbiome.
0:08:59 And the way that it’s stimulated
0:09:01 is that your microbiome can produce butyrate.
0:09:03 It binds to these G protein-coupled receptors
0:09:06 in these L cells, and that triggers the release
0:09:07 of GLP-1 hormone.
0:09:09 And so it’s known for a long time
0:09:11 that butyrate has this activity
0:09:16 and can lower A1C, lower blood glucose spikes,
0:09:18 primarily in animal models,
0:09:21 but that if you don’t make enough butyrate
0:09:24 in your microbiome, you actually get a diminished ability
0:09:26 to produce GLP-1 hormone.
0:09:29 And so butyrate is really important from that standpoint.
0:09:31 The other reason butyrate is really important
0:09:35 is because your colon cells are the only cells in your body
0:09:37 that use butyrate as their form of energy.
0:09:39 So every other cell in your body uses glucose
0:09:40 or its energy source.
0:09:43 Your colon cells use butyrate as its energy source.
0:09:45 And so people who are deficient in butyrate
0:09:47 also tend to have things that’s associated
0:09:51 with things like colon cancer and issues with their colon
0:09:53 because they’re lacking the primary energy source
0:09:54 for those cells.
0:09:57 So that’s the other reason, super important.
0:09:58 – Yeah, that’s really cool.
0:10:01 You know, the first time that I was,
0:10:04 because we were investors at True Ventures,
0:10:05 I remember you gave me some bottles
0:10:07 that were like just beta tester units.
0:10:09 Remember back in the day when it was just like beta testers
0:10:11 that were using this?
0:10:14 And I tried it and I remember after like,
0:10:16 I don’t know, maybe it was like 30 days or something.
0:10:18 I was doing continuous glucose monitor back then.
0:10:20 This was like years ago.
0:10:25 And I remember I was just like hitting myself with carbs.
0:10:28 And I was noticing that I would still get a little bit
0:10:30 of elevation, but it wasn’t the crazy spikiness.
0:10:33 So for me, what Peter Tia had me do,
0:10:35 ’cause he’s been my longevity doctor now for like 12 years,
0:10:38 back when he first saw me from the very get-go,
0:10:40 he had me do a glucose tolerance test,
0:10:42 which is, you know, they basically,
0:10:45 for those that don’t know, they draw your blood,
0:10:46 they look at your fasting glucose,
0:10:48 and then they make you drink this super sugary
0:10:50 full-on glucose drink.
0:10:53 They look at the spike, look at insulin levels,
0:10:54 and then they look at the fall-off.
0:10:57 Like, how quick are you, or how able,
0:11:02 how can you dispose, how quickly can you dispose of glucose?
0:11:03 And, you know, ideally you want that
0:11:05 to return to baseline pretty fast.
0:11:08 And I had an issue, we saw it right away,
0:11:10 where it’s just I stayed elevated much longer
0:11:11 than most people.
0:11:13 Now, that’s not pre-diabetic.
0:11:15 You know, I didn’t have a high A1C or anything like that.
0:11:18 I didn’t have high fasting glucose levels,
0:11:19 but I had this issue.
0:11:21 And I remember after, I don’t know,
0:11:22 maybe it was like 45 days or something
0:11:24 where I was taking your product,
0:11:25 and I could throw things at it
0:11:27 that I knew were big offenders.
0:11:28 Like, for me, it was like rice.
0:11:31 Rice was just like no-go, right?
0:11:35 And I was noticing like a reduction in the spike.
0:11:38 And then actually, I was clearing it faster,
0:11:39 which was really interesting.
0:11:43 And so, what was that kind of landmark study and research
0:11:44 when that first product,
0:11:47 and what did you prove out there?
0:11:49 – Yeah, I love your story because I think
0:11:51 that’s an important one for people
0:11:53 who are walking around ostensibly healthy.
0:11:55 And I’ll put myself in that same bucket too.
0:11:58 You haven’t been diagnosed with diabetes or pre-diabetes,
0:12:00 and you’re probably being pretty good
0:12:03 about what you’re eating and exercising and all of that.
0:12:07 But under the hood, there is a part of your body
0:12:08 that’s not optimized,
0:12:10 which is how your body is metabolizing sugar.
0:12:12 And that area under the curve that you’re describing,
0:12:16 you know, if it’s too high,
0:12:18 but not high enough to cross you over into diabetes,
0:12:19 you might never know about it
0:12:22 unless you’re wearing a continuous glucose monitor
0:12:25 or doing this oral glucose tolerance test
0:12:26 that Peter had you do.
0:12:29 And so, there’s opportunity to help anybody.
0:12:31 And for me, I actually saw the same thing.
0:12:34 I don’t have high A1C or diabetes or pre-diabetes,
0:12:36 but when I was on product,
0:12:39 and I got to do a placebo-controlled test on myself,
0:12:44 you know, I saw all my CGM peaks and troughs diminished
0:12:47 and there’s room to move there.
0:12:48 But the key study that we did,
0:12:52 you know, when you’re thinking about metabolic disorders,
0:12:53 you know, you really want to demonstrate
0:12:55 that all the way at this end of the spectrum
0:12:57 where you have metabolic syndrome, you can have impact.
0:12:59 And so we think about metabolism as a spectrum
0:13:01 where it’s like you have a propensity for obesity,
0:13:04 then you have obesity, pre-diabetes and type two diabetes.
0:13:05 We went all the way here
0:13:06 and we said if we can help people
0:13:09 who are all the way at the end of metabolically sick,
0:13:10 they have metabolic syndrome,
0:13:11 then we’ve really got something
0:13:12 because we can really help all the people
0:13:14 at the earlier end of the spectrum.
0:13:16 So the pivotal study that we did,
0:13:18 which was published in BMJ,
0:13:22 is a placebo-controlled double-blinded randomized trial
0:13:24 where we took people with type two diabetes
0:13:26 and we showed that compared to placebo,
0:13:30 the people who were on our formulation after 90 days
0:13:32 had a lowering of A1C by 0.6
0:13:36 and a lowering of blood glucose spikes by 33%.
0:13:38 That’s basically how far with, yeah,
0:13:39 if you know those numbers,
0:13:41 that’s on par with a pharmaceutical,
0:13:43 but it was this microbiome intervention
0:13:44 that’s never been made before.
0:13:46 – Yeah, so I mean, that’s really impressive
0:13:48 and it’s way more like in my mind,
0:13:51 I’m always a fan of like how can nature help us first
0:13:53 before we go to like more heavier hammers
0:13:54 on certain things, you know?
0:13:57 So that’s fantastic.
0:13:59 So that product was obviously a massive success,
0:14:02 but the thing and the reason why we’re chatting today
0:14:03 is, you know, you know, I like,
0:14:05 I saw you on a TV podcast,
0:14:06 I meant to say shoot you a note,
0:14:08 but I forgot to and it was really cool to see.
0:14:10 And then, you know, we hadn’t chatted for a while
0:14:11 and I would see you every once in a while
0:14:14 at a startup founder function or something, you know?
0:14:19 And I saw a friend of mine and, you know,
0:14:20 these days when you run into somebody
0:14:21 that you haven’t seen in a while
0:14:24 and they’ve like, you know, like dropped a bunch of weight
0:14:26 or you’re like, okay, you’re on the sauce,
0:14:28 like you’re taking out a Zempik, right?
0:14:31 Like it’s kind of like a thing, like it’s a thing.
0:14:34 And when I talked to her, she’s like,
0:14:38 no, like I tried that GLP-1 probiotic by pendulum
0:14:39 and I’m like, what are you talking about?
0:14:40 I like, I didn’t even know it existed,
0:14:43 I feel bad, I’m sorry, I didn’t go and see the site.
0:14:45 I was in the middle of my own startup, which was crazy.
0:14:47 But you launch this new thing and I was like,
0:14:48 you got to be shitting me.
0:14:53 Like this actually works with and enhances GLP-1
0:14:56 so people are actually, you know, getting reduced cravings.
0:15:01 And for her, she was like, I, if I see a Chaka bar
0:15:04 and I taste a bite, it’s gone.
0:15:07 And she’s like, that’s my craving, that’s my downfall.
0:15:09 And she goes, it’s the weirdest thing, Kevin.
0:15:12 She goes, I’ll have a bite and I’m good.
0:15:14 And I just walk away.
0:15:18 And so she said it took her like around 60-ish days or so
0:15:21 after taking it to kind of like really get in on it
0:15:23 and feel the effects, but really curious,
0:15:27 what is this product and then what have you seen so far?
0:15:31 – Yeah, the food cravings thing is huge.
0:15:35 So first of all, the product is a subset of the strains
0:15:37 that are in pendulum glucose control.
0:15:39 And so, and it’s the subset of strains
0:15:42 that specifically stimulate the GLP-1 hormone.
0:15:46 And, you know, there are only two strains
0:15:48 that have ever been published to show
0:15:51 that they can directly stimulate GLP-1 secretion.
0:15:54 And one of them is acromance, amusinophila.
0:15:56 The other one is Clostridium butyricum.
0:15:57 Both of those strains are in this product
0:15:59 along with a third strain that we know
0:16:00 functions upstream of it.
0:16:03 And so it’s specifically designed to increase
0:16:07 your GLP-1 hormone via the microbiome.
0:16:10 And what we really focused on was this food cravings part
0:16:14 because we know that one of the biggest issues
0:16:17 that people experience is food noise.
0:16:20 And so, you know, you have, I can’t remember the number,
0:16:21 but it was something like, you know,
0:16:25 85% of women are walking around with food noise,
0:16:28 which basically means you’re thinking about food all the time.
0:16:30 And all the food that you want to eat
0:16:31 that you shouldn’t be eating.
0:16:33 And so anything that can quiet that noise
0:16:36 becomes really impactful for improving your food choices
0:16:39 as well as how much food that you’re intaking.
0:16:41 And then ultimately, of course, if you have good nutrition,
0:16:44 it shows up in a variety of different health benefits.
0:16:47 And you also note that things like Ozymbic and Wokowi,
0:16:49 one of the main things that people experience
0:16:50 when they go on that is they’re like,
0:16:52 “Hi, I’m not hungry anymore.”
0:16:54 And that’s part of this GLP-1 hormone.
0:16:56 It really is your satiety click.
0:16:59 I mean, it tells your body, it tells your brain,
0:17:01 we’re full, we don’t need to eat anymore.
0:17:02 And so there’s actually a diagnostic test
0:17:04 called the food cravings inventory.
0:17:06 And the food cravings inventory
0:17:09 looks at the four major types of food cravings,
0:17:14 which are sugar, carbs, fast foods, and high-fat foods.
0:17:17 Usually people know those categories as their weakness.
0:17:20 And so if you give people this food cravings inventory
0:17:22 and you give them the product,
0:17:26 we found that after six weeks,
0:17:28 91% of those people had a reduction
0:17:30 in their food cravings inventory score.
0:17:33 And moreover, the higher that your starting score was,
0:17:34 the bigger the drop was.
0:17:37 And so there’s really this huge impact
0:17:38 to people’s food cravings,
0:17:40 which then of course there’s all these other beneficial
0:17:42 outcomes when you’re not having those food cravings.
0:17:44 But that’s really how the product works.
0:17:47 It stimulates your body’s natural GLP-1,
0:17:49 which tells your brain you are not hungry anymore,
0:17:52 particularly for foods that are not doing your body
0:17:53 any benefit.
0:17:55 And through that reduction in food craving,
0:17:57 your friend’s experience is exactly
0:17:59 what people are experiencing.
0:18:01 – That’s fantastic.
0:18:02 But one thing I forgot to ask them,
0:18:03 I’m really curious about is like,
0:18:06 you talked about the oxygen-free environment.
0:18:09 We did skip one piece, which is like,
0:18:11 how the hell are you able to then take a pill
0:18:15 and get it down there and have it be alive still
0:18:18 if it has to be born in this an oxygen-free environment?
0:18:20 – Yes, great question.
0:18:23 And I will say that I know that Tru is one of our investors.
0:18:25 So this is probably a terrible thing to say.
0:18:27 But had I known that it was gonna be this hard,
0:18:30 I probably wouldn’t have started this company.
0:18:32 – The different steps that you have to take
0:18:34 in order to make a product that works
0:18:36 is first of all, you have to be able to get these strains
0:18:39 out of the gut microbiome, the ones that matter,
0:18:41 and knowing which ones matter.
0:18:43 The second thing you have to do is figure out
0:18:44 how to grow them in this–
0:18:46 – Wait, hold on, how did you do that?
0:18:48 How did you get like, ’cause if, yeah,
0:18:50 how would you ever be able to do that?
0:18:53 ‘Cause if they’re past, they’re gonna be dead.
0:18:56 Did you have to go in with what’s that process like?
0:19:01 – Well, that process is you basically have to
0:19:02 buy these anaerobic chambers.
0:19:03 I don’t think you gotta,
0:19:04 oh, maybe you do get a chance to see them.
0:19:06 They’re these– – I saw it, yeah.
0:19:10 – Yeah, so essentially you’re collecting stool
0:19:11 and you’re immediately putting them
0:19:12 in these anaerobic chambers
0:19:15 and then you’re trying to culture
0:19:17 the specific strains out of them.
0:19:18 And then you end up doing,
0:19:21 I mean, it’s basically sort of a classic way
0:19:23 that we do protein purification,
0:19:25 which is that you have this complex gamish of stuff
0:19:27 and then you just continue to dilute
0:19:30 and DNA sequence until you get the well
0:19:31 that has your strain.
0:19:36 So it’s a little bit of a caveman way
0:19:37 to get down to a single strain,
0:19:39 but that’s the way that– – Yeah.
0:19:40 – So you– – And just so people know,
0:19:45 they’re not taking pills of stool, purified stool.
0:19:47 That’s not the case here.
0:19:50 These are grown, these are grown by you, yeah.
0:19:51 – Yes, these are isolates
0:19:53 that are now single strains that are grown.
0:19:56 There’s no stool consumption happening here.
0:19:58 – Well, what’s funny is like they actually,
0:19:59 I mean, I’m sure you’ve heard about this though,
0:20:01 but they actually do that kind of like for people
0:20:05 that have hardcore certain type of bowel diseases,
0:20:08 they can do those stool replacement like,
0:20:09 what are those called?
0:20:10 Do you know what I’m talking about
0:20:13 where they actually, they have a treatment for that now,
0:20:13 which is crazy.
0:20:15 We actually take somebody else’s stool
0:20:18 and repopulate bacteria, which is just insane,
0:20:20 but apparently it works.
0:20:22 – Oh yeah, the fecal microbiome transplants
0:20:27 are extremely effective, and we can get into this,
0:20:30 but C. diff infections are one of the places
0:20:32 where these fecal microbiome transplants
0:20:36 are super powerful, and they’re sort of this weird conundrum,
0:20:38 which is like when people get C. diff,
0:20:40 and clostridium difficile is a strain
0:20:42 that’s in your microbiome, when you take an antibiotic,
0:20:44 what can happen is that that strain can start to now,
0:20:47 it can survive the antibiotic and start to divide,
0:20:48 and it has no competition,
0:20:50 so then it starts to take over your gut,
0:20:53 and the treatment is more antibiotics to try to kill it,
0:20:55 but there’s this other alternative treatment,
0:20:57 which is the fecal microbiome transplant,
0:20:59 where you basically just infuse somebody else’s stool
0:21:04 into your microbiome, and it tamps down that specific strain,
0:21:08 and it is way more effective than the antibiotic treatment.
0:21:09 So anyway, that’s a–
0:21:12 – Yeah, that is not something you provide,
0:21:14 but it’s a fascinating thing to go with Google
0:21:15 if you have the C. diff or something like that
0:21:18 for your loved ones, for sure.
0:21:19 – For sure, yeah, definitely.
0:21:21 And interestingly, there are companies
0:21:24 that are kind of, there’s different delivery modalities,
0:21:26 and so there are companies that have gotten
0:21:27 that down into a pill.
0:21:29 So for us, it was the specific strains,
0:21:31 ’cause we’re not doing the stool transplants,
0:21:32 it’s figuring out how to grow them
0:21:35 in an anaerobic environment where no oxygen gets in,
0:21:37 and then you gotta freeze dry them
0:21:39 because you have to be able to get them into a pill,
0:21:41 and freeze drying means that it’s literally
0:21:43 what it sounds like, you freeze them down,
0:21:45 you dry them, they get into a powdered form,
0:21:47 the cells have to survive that,
0:21:49 so you’re actually trying to help them,
0:21:51 there’s this whole pressure temperature thing
0:21:53 where you’re trying to help them survive freeze drying.
0:21:56 Once they’re in that powder freeze-dried form,
0:21:58 it’s like a mildly dormant state,
0:22:00 and so then they become a lot more stable,
0:22:02 then you can expose them to oxygen, they’re okay.
0:22:04 So you gotta freeze dry them,
0:22:06 then you have to get them into a pill
0:22:09 that is going to deliver them back to the distal colon.
0:22:11 So our pills are enteric-coded,
0:22:12 so it gets through the stomach acid,
0:22:14 and they have a time-delayed release,
0:22:15 so it gets through the whole GI tract
0:22:17 to get to that distal colon,
0:22:19 and then you have to have that pill melt there,
0:22:21 and the strains have to come to life,
0:22:25 so we actually include some prebiotic food for the strains,
0:22:26 and they have to be able to then come back to life
0:22:30 and do their function, which is to help stimulate
0:22:32 gut lining, GLP-1 production, all these different things,
0:22:35 and all of those have to be true,
0:22:37 for you to have this outcome of A1C
0:22:39 and blood glucose spike improvement,
0:22:44 and every one of those steps was an invention.
0:22:45 Wow, that’s crazy.
0:22:47 This is so awesome.
0:22:49 So you’ve got this new GLP-1 product.
0:22:52 The reason why I really wanted to have you back on the show,
0:22:54 and I think this is the very most important crucial piece
0:22:56 to get across to people, it’s like,
0:22:58 it’s not lost on either one of us,
0:22:59 the true ventures where I work at
0:23:00 as an investor in your company,
0:23:04 and the last thing, the most precious thing I have
0:23:06 as a podcaster and someone that gets out on media
0:23:08 is the trust of my audience, right?
0:23:10 Like, that’s the most thing that I cannot compromise
0:23:12 no matter what, otherwise, what am I doing, right?
0:23:14 So it’s important to let people know
0:23:18 that nothing about what we’re about to tell you
0:23:21 has any benefit to me in terms of there’s no payment,
0:23:23 nothing weird happening between the two of us.
0:23:26 I wanted to have you on because I saw benefit
0:23:27 in my own friends.
0:23:30 I personally take the product and love it.
0:23:32 And then, also, these things, like,
0:23:33 to go get a prescription,
0:23:35 you don’t have to get a prescription for this.
0:23:37 To go get a prescription can be very, very expensive
0:23:40 ’cause oftentimes insurance kind of gets flaky
0:23:42 and they don’t cover these GLP-1 shots
0:23:44 and they have side effects that give people nausea,
0:23:45 things of that nature.
0:23:47 And so I just thought to myself, like,
0:23:48 “Huh, I got a tour of the plant.
0:23:50 “This is a really cool thing.
0:23:53 “Is there something that you and I could think up
0:23:56 “and dream up that we offer the audience here
0:23:58 “that shows them the intent,
0:24:01 “which is to see if this works for them, right?”
0:24:03 And so, you know, we were kind of going back and forth
0:24:04 on email and I remember, where was it?
0:24:06 I think it was in London when I emailed you.
0:24:08 I had this idea and I was like,
0:24:11 “Hey, what if we did a trial
0:24:13 “where when we have people sign up for this,
0:24:15 “like, there’s this idea
0:24:17 “and I don’t think you had done this to date
0:24:20 “where there’s like this window of time, like 90 days,
0:24:22 “where they can say, ‘Hey, this didn’t work for me
0:24:24 “‘and I just want my money back.'”
0:24:26 Which, to me, feels fantastic
0:24:28 because then I would feel like I’d never tried
0:24:30 to convince someone to buy something, you know?
0:24:32 Like, that’s the last thing I want people to think is like,
0:24:34 “Oh, he’s just doing this to prop up his venture
0:24:36 “or whatever it may be.”
0:24:38 So, we came up with something pretty cool,
0:24:39 which I’m excited about.
0:24:41 Do you want to talk a little bit about that?
0:24:43 – Yeah, I’m super excited about it too
0:24:45 because for us as a company,
0:24:48 we invest in a lot of clinical trials and studies
0:24:50 where we give people product,
0:24:51 we give them all these tests
0:24:53 and we are looking for outcomes,
0:24:56 but then we don’t bring that into the marketplace.
0:24:59 And so, this is the first time
0:25:03 that we are offering a cohort of people
0:25:06 the full experience of basically kind of being on a trial.
0:25:10 And so, the idea here is that it takes 90 days
0:25:14 to see the improvement of food cravings at, you know,
0:25:15 many people see it before.
0:25:17 Then, as I said, our previous study was six weeks,
0:25:20 91% of people saw an improvement.
0:25:23 But what we’re going to do is we are going to,
0:25:26 there’s going to be a special page on the Pendulum website,
0:25:27 which is going to be Kevin’s page.
0:25:29 And if you come through that page,
0:25:30 what you’re going to get access to
0:25:32 is of course all the information
0:25:33 that everybody else gets access to
0:25:37 about the GLP-1 probiotic and how it works.
0:25:41 But you are also going to get access to a 90 day trial
0:25:43 where we will give you
0:25:45 the food cravings inventory diagnostic test,
0:25:46 that diagnostic test that I told you about.
0:25:49 You’re going to get it at baseline,
0:25:52 you’re going to get it at 45 days,
0:25:53 and then you’re going to get it at 90 days.
0:25:55 I want to share that data back with you
0:25:58 so that you can see what is my starting food cravings inventory
0:26:00 across those four different types of cravings,
0:26:03 and then how does it change over time.
0:26:05 And if you get to the end of that 90 days
0:26:08 and you haven’t had an improvement in your food cravings,
0:26:09 you’re going to get all your money back.
0:26:13 And we’ve never, never run anything like this before.
0:26:16 And I’m super excited to get the real world data
0:26:18 and to see what people are experiencing.
0:26:22 You know, if on the other hand you do see improvement,
0:26:23 then we’re going to give you a 20% discount
0:26:25 off your next order.
0:26:27 And so that kind of helps,
0:26:30 hopefully lower the barrier to keeping people in.
0:26:33 And then moreover, within our company,
0:26:35 we have customer service like everybody else does,
0:26:38 but we have a team of actually registered dieticians
0:26:40 who are microbiome specialists.
0:26:42 And so the other thing we’re going to do
0:26:47 is that if you buy through this particular mechanism,
0:26:49 if you have a question,
0:26:51 you’re not going to go through the regular customer service
0:26:52 to get escalated.
0:26:53 You’re going to go directly to a microbiome specialist.
0:26:56 So any of these questions you have about like,
0:26:57 how is this product really working?
0:26:59 What’s happening to my microbiome?
0:27:00 What if I’m taking these 12 other things?
0:27:02 You’re going to go right to a person
0:27:03 who’s going to be able to answer those questions for you.
0:27:06 And so by giving you all of the tools
0:27:09 and the information and the data
0:27:10 and the diagnostic test,
0:27:13 we’re hoping that everyone will be able to see very clearly,
0:27:16 is the product working for me or not?
0:27:17 – Yeah, I love that.
0:27:19 And it’s a way, I mean, this is going to be valuable data.
0:27:21 Like to get back to you, obviously we’re always,
0:27:23 you’re always evolving the science here.
0:27:26 Like the more data you can have, the better.
0:27:28 And it’s a fantastic way to say,
0:27:30 hey, I know there’s so many of my friends
0:27:31 that have been like, hey,
0:27:33 do you know any like compounding pharmacies
0:27:35 where I can get a Zampic or whatever?
0:27:36 They’re always trying to hit me up
0:27:37 for like an angle to get one of these.
0:27:41 And this is like such a more like no shots,
0:27:42 way more healthy.
0:27:46 And like for me, like, and I’m just speaking in a one here,
0:27:48 like I’ve always, and I haven’t said something
0:27:49 in this publicly, but I’ve always had stomach issues.
0:27:51 It’s always kind of like weird grumbly stuff.
0:27:54 And like it’s mostly like stress of a founder or whatever.
0:27:56 And I’ve always, you know,
0:27:58 appreciated your line of products
0:27:59 because they’ve helped dramatically
0:28:01 with all of that stuff.
0:28:03 I was just telling my wife, I got back from this trip
0:28:05 and, you know, I was doing so much travel.
0:28:07 Normally my stomach’s like at least one or two days,
0:28:09 it’s like, I’m not happy, you know?
0:28:11 And it’s like, I didn’t have any of that.
0:28:13 And granted that who knows it could happen tomorrow.
0:28:15 But, you know, it’s one of those things
0:28:18 where I know that there’s multiple people
0:28:19 that are personal friends
0:28:20 that have had great positive experiences
0:28:22 from the products we’ve created.
0:28:24 And that’s a really strong signal.
0:28:25 And let’s see how many more people
0:28:26 we can bring through this.
0:28:30 And, you know, obesity is a massive issue.
0:28:32 It’s a massive issue that impacts people
0:28:33 on so many different levels.
0:28:35 They don’t, you know, tend to think of it as like,
0:28:37 oh, you’re overweight, you might have more heart disease,
0:28:39 but there’s cancers that are linked to obesity.
0:28:41 There’s a whole slew of things.
0:28:44 And then also on the glucose side, I mean,
0:28:46 they’re calling, you know, Alzheimer’s
0:28:47 like type three diabetes.
0:28:49 Like there is definitely some links there
0:28:53 around elevated glucose diabetes and dementia as well.
0:28:57 So, a lot of reasons to go after this
0:28:59 and you have a great product line.
0:29:02 So thank you for trusting our audience here
0:29:04 and for doing this fun trial with us.
0:29:05 – Oh, I’m super excited.
0:29:07 And thank you for coming up with the idea
0:29:08 to run this experiment together.
0:29:11 And I really can’t wait to see the data.
0:29:12 – Yeah, same.
0:29:14 I’m super, super excited to see what comes out of this.
0:29:18 And yeah, anything else you can hint at product-wise
0:29:19 that you have coming out with?
0:29:21 Like, I mean, I’m curious, like, what is the,
0:29:26 you mentioned 1% of the, you know, microbiome has been mapped.
0:29:29 Are you like 2% now, 5%?
0:29:30 Like, do you even think about it like that?
0:29:32 Like, are there other strains that you’re like,
0:29:36 oh, shit, this could be something new and novel and exciting?
0:29:39 – Yeah, I think one of the things that has kind of emerged
0:29:40 from all the publications,
0:29:42 and this isn’t something that I can take credit for,
0:29:44 but all the publications that have been happening globally
0:29:46 is that in the microbiome,
0:29:48 there appear to be these keystone strains,
0:29:52 meaning that they play a sort of fundamental role
0:29:53 in the microbiome and in our health
0:29:56 that if you’re off on those strains,
0:29:58 it actually shows up in a wide variety of symptoms.
0:30:00 And an acromancemucinophil is one of them.
0:30:02 So if anybody does a gut microbiome test,
0:30:05 you’ll know that no matter which microbiome test
0:30:07 you’re doing, acromancemucinophil is always
0:30:08 at the top of the list there,
0:30:11 telling you whether you’re low, high, or medium,
0:30:13 we can get into the pros and cons of those tests.
0:30:16 But that is a keystone strain.
0:30:18 And the reason is because it plays a role
0:30:20 in the structure of your gut lining.
0:30:22 And so when you’re low or missing it,
0:30:25 it shows up as I have GI issues,
0:30:27 I have metabolism issues,
0:30:30 I have actually even neurological issues,
0:30:32 cardiovascular issues.
0:30:34 And so it’s been associated with all these other diseases
0:30:35 because it’s a keystone strain.
0:30:39 There’s another keystone strain
0:30:42 that is also if you do a gut test at the top there.
0:30:46 And we are working diligently on that strain,
0:30:48 which appears to play a fundamental role
0:30:51 in how your microbiome interacts with your immune system.
0:30:52 – Oh, wow.
0:30:54 – And so we are,
0:30:55 and it’s never been brought to market before.
0:30:58 And so just stay tuned, that’s coming out.
0:31:00 And then the other big thing that’s coming out
0:31:03 is really thinking about the prebiotics
0:31:06 that feed these probiotic strains
0:31:08 and specifically our strains.
0:31:09 So there’s a lot of prebiotic formulations out there.
0:31:13 You can get fiber in a million different ways.
0:31:15 But we have a formulation that is specifically designed
0:31:17 to increase these keystone strains
0:31:21 and we will be coming out with that next year as well.
0:31:23 So I’m really excited about both of those.
0:31:24 – Awesome.
0:31:25 Well, thank you for doing all this amazing research
0:31:28 and it’s great to have you back on again.
0:31:30 Excited to do this
0:31:32 and I’ll be reporting back on the website
0:31:33 once we get the results.
0:31:34 I’m assuming you’ll do a follow up kind of post
0:31:39 on the website once we figure out what all came back.
0:31:40 It’s super exciting.
0:31:41 – Absolutely.
0:31:43 Thank you so much and thanks for having me.
0:31:46 – Yeah, and for everyone that’s listening in,
0:31:47 where do you get the links?
0:31:49 Definitely check out the show notes.
0:31:51 I’ll have all of the links there.
0:31:52 Make sure to use that link though
0:31:54 because that’s how you get in,
0:31:56 jumped into this special private crew
0:31:57 just for this audience.
0:32:00 And yeah, so that’ll be the central place
0:32:03 to find it at over@kevinrose.com.
0:32:06 All right, we’ll talk again soon.
0:32:07 – I can’t wait.
0:32:08 Thank you.
0:32:08 – Thank you.
0:32:11 (upbeat music)
0:32:15 (upbeat music)
0:32:25 [BLANK_AUDIO]
Renowned artist, author, and CreativeLive founder, Chase Jarvis, reminds us that creativity isn’t a skill—it’s a habit available to everyone: beginners and lifelong creators, entrepreneurs to executives, astronauts to zookeepers, and everyone in between. Through small, daily actions we can supercharge our innate creativity and rediscover our personal power in life.
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