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Autism Parenting Secrets
Restore the Missing Microbes
00:42:13
Martha Carlin is a scientist, microbiome innovator, and founder of BiotiQuest who began her research journey after her husband was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. In this episode, she explains why many chronic conditions may begin with the loss of beneficial microbes and what families can do to help restore them. The secret this week is… Restore the Missing Microbes
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- [00:00]
A
This thing called the microbiome, which I had never heard of, and that's the trillions of bacteria, fungi, virus, and protists that live in and on our body. And they function as our internal pharmacy. When things are in balance and we're healthy, they make vitamins, hormones, neurotransmitters. It's an integral part of who we are. And I had never heard of it. And so I, you know, dove headlong into understanding this thing called the microbiome. Six months later, they published the first paper showing they could divide the two primary phenotypes in Parkinson's by specific gut bacteria. And I was like, that's it. Quit my job, founded the Bio Collective, and my co founder, Dr. Jack Gilbert, was at the University of Chicago, and I had funded a study of John's in my microbiome samples with Jack, and he had a son with autism. And we started talking about the overlap that we saw in the Parkinson's and autism microbiomes of sort of missing. Missing microbes.
- [01:02]
B
If you're a parent of a child with autism, you are being called to rise with love, courage, and clarity. This journey isn't easy, and most parents aren't equipped, but you can be. This podcast is your invitation to rise higher because how you navigate matters. I'm Len, and this is Autism Parenting Secrets, where you become the parent your child needs now. Hello and welcome to Autism Parenting Secrets. I'm your host, Lennar Curry, and with me today is Martha Carlin. Martha is a scientist, a microbiome innovator. She's a systems thinker, founder of BiotaQuest and the Bio Collective, and she's the author of a new book, Love Loss, and the Unseen Forces Behind Chronic Disease. But none of that was the plan. When her husband, John, was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, Martha refused to settle for treating symptoms. Instead, she spent years connecting ideas across medicine, microbiology, ecology, and systems science. That journey led to a remarkable realization. Many of the microbes that once helped keep us healthy have disappeared from our modern world. The secret this week is restore the missing microbes. Martha, welcome to the show.
- [02:26]
A
Thanks so much for having me, Lynn.
- [02:28]
B
Well, I am delighted to see you and I have heard so much about you, and I'm glad we're finally having the opportunity to connect, and especially with what I mentioned earlier on about refusing to address symptoms. That is such an important key concept, especially for the parents who are listening, who are. Who have a child with some form of complex condition, and it's easy to get sidetracked by the symptoms. And to ignore getting to the root cause. So I think this is gonna be a dynamite conversation.
- [02:58]
A
Me too.
- [03:00]
B
Now, you did a TED Talk, and I know I watched that. And you talked about the idea that you didn't just go looking for treatments, you really mindfully wanted to look at the entire system, which is preaching to the choir for me. But can you talk more about what that means? And what was your biggest shift in your thinking that allowed you to begin seeing connections, perhaps that other people might miss if they didn't have that approach?
- [03:30]
A
A couple of things in my training, so my degree in college was accounting. It's a system that has to balance me too. And I was trained as an auditor coming out of school. So never take anything at face value. Examine the evidence yourself. So trained as a skeptic. And then we were trained at Arthur Andersen in something called transaction Flow review, which was how you identified risk in a business. And so you would map out in these flowcharts everything flowing through the business. And then you would do these interviews to make sure that what's supposed to be happening is actually happening. And, you know, John's diagnosis, I mean, he's a young, healthy looking. He had just run the San Diego marathon. It just, it made no sense to me. He looked healthy on the outside. How is this young person have an old person's disease? And so I was like, this must be a systems problem. And with my background, I should be able to understand the system and figure out where the breakpoints are. And so I initially started looking into the food supply. Well, I'll say a week after John's diagnosis, I. I had scheduled this yoga retreat in Costa Rica. And John said, I want you to go ahead and go. And while I was there, they had a speaker who was talking about Weston A. Price, who, you know, for people who don't know, he was a dentist who did a lot of research after he started kind of figuring out that the western diet was destroying our health and the facial structure in our dentition and all of that. And so he went around the world looking at traditional diets and people who were still eating a traditional diet and the difference in their health and the westernized diet. And I hadn't really thought about that. And I came back and kind of tossed out everything in the cabinet and started over. I, you know, my mother had been a good cook, so I did know how to cook, but I traveled about 50% of the time for my business and, you know, for my job. And so, you know, John was left attempting to cook for Himself, which involved sleeves of spaghetti and tomato sauce and know, frozen things from schwads. But he had also been drinking soy protein shakes every day for about two years. Our neighbor sold them for some multi level marketing. I don't remember what the company was, but that took me deep down a rabbit hole of looking at soy because of course, you know, when we look at the human body and we look at it as a system, one of the main things flowing through it is actually the food that we're eating. And so that was the first place that I started thinking about that and looking at that and also just looking back at, you know, what John's diet was for the many years leading, leading up into the diagnosis, even before we were married because you know, bachelors also, you know, they don't cook healthy. You know, they're just not really focused on nutrition. And so that got me very interested in nutrition. And then so that was really 12 years of studying food and all the things that we've done to our food, the chemicals in the environment. I got very interested in glyphosate because the connection to soy and to also interested in genetic engineering of the plants and how that might transfer to us. And then in 2014 I read Martin Blaser's book and, and I think it's very fitting for the title of this episode because the title of his book is Missing Microbes. And I knew so he was talking about the rise of chronic disease in the age of antibiotics and this thing called the microbiome, which I had never heard of. And that's the trillions of bacteria, fungi, virus and protists that live in and on our body. And they function as our internal pharmacy. When things are in balance and we're healthy, they make vitamins, hormones, neurotransmitters. It's an integral part of who we are. And I had never heard of it. And so I dove headlong into understanding this thing called the microbiome. Six months later they published the first paper showing they could divide the two primary phenotypes in Parkinson's by specific gut bacteria. And I was like, that's it. Quit my job, founded the Biocollective and my co founder, Dr. Jack Gilbert was at the University of Chicago and I had funded a study of John's and my microbiome samples with Jack. And he had a son with autism. And we started talking about the overlap that we saw in the Parkinson's and autism microbiomes of sort of missing microbes. I also knew that my husband John and many Other people with Parkinson's had either had a lot of strep infections as children, so had many courses of antibiotics or had taken antibiotics during their teens for acne. And, you know, that's often for months, people will take antibiotics. And so this loss of the microbes became kind of the mission of my life since then was understanding the microbiome through the bio collective, which was collecting fecal samples, not just Parkinson's, but across the population and sequencing those and working with scientists around the world to try to understand what are we losing and how can we replace that, and then went on from there to found BioToQuest Probiotics, to put back some of the missing systems in the gut, to address some of these problems that we saw.
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B
All right, yeah, no, there's lots of different areas. I think we can go. I think I'd like to just hover a little bit about when you say there's some commonality or similarities with respect to Parkinson's and autism. Right. I mean, I've heard that before. I've heard the same thing about Alzheimer's, that basically these conditions that are now so prevalent that they're just manifestations, different manifestations perhaps that take place at different stages in life. But the root, if you had to identify where it is, all roads lead back to the gut.
- [10:27]
A
Yes, yes, absolutely. And in Parkinson's, often chronic constipation will proceed a diagnosis of Parkinson's by 10 to 15 years. And that was interestingly in our lab when we were collecting samples, our team actually figured out, they came to me and said, you know, Martha, we can identify someone who has Parkinson's just by looking at the sample. And that had. Has still never been published. We didn't publish it, but there was a concrete consistency to it that, you know, I've gone on to explain in a paper that I just published in April with Dr. Barry Ninham. But, you know, definitely, I know also in autism there can be either constipation or alternating constipation and diarrhea, a lot of gut related issues. And then there are overlaps between the two of them in, you know, either, I think it's elevated clostridia, there's a metabolite called P creosol that's being produced in the microbiome that is elevated in both Parkinson's and autism. Um, there's a number of different markers, reduced bifidobacteria and kind of shifts in the, the Lactobacillus profile. And these are key organisms that are producing vitamins and neurotransmitters and are very involved in sort of the gut brain
- [11:59]
B
axis as you're talking. I guess there's so many different directions I'd like to go. I do want to talk about testing, like, in terms of how people can understand what's going on in the gut. So I think that's probably the thing that's top of mind for me right now as you're talking, because I think parents, if they want to get a sense of what's happening in their child's gut, there's a whole variety of different testing you can do, particularly stool testing. Everything from a more traditional comprehensive digestive stool analysis, a cbsa, which was when my son was going through his challenges early on, that was like the premier test. But now there's much more advanced stool testing that can be done to give you a picture, and there's not a lack of options. So could you just talk generally about testing and how parents can get a sense of what's going on in the gut?
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A
I think one of the biggest challenges with that is whatever test you do, you need a practitioner who really understands the microbiome. And that can be a bit of a challenge. You know, there are tests, I think Genova Diagnostics, which I think has maybe changed its name to Mosaic.
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B
Yeah, no, Great Plains became Mosaic, but Genova's still operating.
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A
So you have Genova and Great Plains, and they both do comprehensive stool tests that they're, I. I would say more targeted at looking at specific pathogens. They also have some. And you. You typically are getting that through a practitioner that is able to look at it and provide you with some insights and, you know, tools using herbals and things to target some of the pathogens. I mean, one of my concern sometimes is with these tests, you often get an aggressive attempt at killing the bad guys rather than dealing with it as an ecosystem. And, you know, we have an ecosystem out of balance. Part of the reason why the bad guys have flourished is likely because there were antibiotics early on or a lack of establishment of the good guys, if you will. So that's a bit tricky. I like a test now by a company called Tiny Health, and I think they can pair you up with a practitioner who can help read the test for you that does whole genome sequencing of everything that's in the gut. And they have established, you know, markers and characteristics of, you know, areas that are a little bit less dominant or over dominant and giving you, you know, things like, are you producing your B vitamins? Or, you know, do you have proteobacteria that is producing, you know, toxic compounds. So there, there's also, I think there's, well, microbiome labs, many people know them. That's another one that I think is a good test. They actually use the same sequencing company, I think, that we used for all of our genomic sequencing, and that's a company called Cosmos ID. When we first were collecting stool samples for seven years, we used to produce a report that was 60 pages long. And so people would get this report and they would take it to their doctor. And, you know, doctors aren't trained in microbial ecology or understanding what all these different bacteria can use or produce or how they might be involved. And we just found that it wasn't beneficial for people to have a report that comprehensive and take it somewhere to somebody who, who wasn't trained but to use it. So, you know, in some ways I like the tests for identifying some of the major triggers or lack of something like B vitamin production. But I think you, I mean, you really have to have someone who is knowledgeable to help you balance and look at it the right way.
- [16:30]
B
Yeah, it's an art. And so having some information which, from a conventional pediatrician for parents who are listening. Right. They're not going to have many options with respect to tests that might really reveal clues that might be useful. So if you're going to go down this road to have somebody who has more of a functional approach, a systems approach. So, yeah, the right practitioner coupled with a test that's likely to reveal something that's useful is a powerful path forward. Now, I know in terms of where you're focusing in terms of the gut, the fact that they're. Sure you mentioned early on about how important food is. And yes, eating nourishing food, not eating toxic food is a powerful pillar of the strategy. But I guess you found that in terms of what really might be missing, what the gut needs, you need something that's much more targeted.
- [17:22]
A
We need to put back a whole foods diet. And that can be very difficult in children with autism. Yes, I mean, you know, frankly, it's also difficult in adults and particularly with Parkinson's, where, you know, you may have an older couple who lives either someone who lives by themselves or an older couple. And cooking fresh, nutritious food requires some effort. And, you know, for a parent with a child with autism, that's also, you know, when you've got a, you know, shop and chop and do all the things to, to, you know, put together these healthy meals, that can also be difficult from time constraints. And all the things that you're juggling. There's a, there's actually a Dr. Terry Walls who had. Had, I'm going to say had, but has ms, who reversed. Got herself out of a wheelchair by following this protocol she's developed called the Wahls protocol. And it's a very nutrient dense diet, but it does require some effort to cook these nutritious foods and to understand the difference between food in the grocery store that's been on the shelf or that's taken two weeks to get to the store, versus going to the farmer's market and getting something that was just picked this morning and has more vitality in the food. But also, you know, it's gotta be something your kid wants to eat or your spouse wants to eat. And retraining the taste buds to real food can also be a challenge. So, you know, I'm not ignorant to the fact that it, it can be quite difficult to get a shift in the, in the palate, the taste palette of, of, you know, our children or our spouses.
- [19:21]
B
Right. Yeah, no, it's, it's. And that's so relevant for my son and what my, my wife Cass did, especially focusing on food, which I was reluctant somewhat because it is inconvenient. It's, it's to spend more time in the kitchen and it may not be small in terms of the extra effort that's required. And I think the only way anybody can ever make that shift is if they really understand the potential benefit that we're talking about here from prioritizing a more nutritious diet, which cuts against all what society is pushing us toward, you know, convenience and the like. But, but no, it's, it was, that was a really important shift, at least in my own mind, early on.
- [20:02]
A
So, you know, another kind of piece that a lot of people miss when you go to the packaged fresh section. So in the produce section, there is now a lot of pre chopped, prepackaged food. But one of the things people are not aware of is in order for all of this food to have a shelf life, it's got preservatives on it. And those preservatives are either anti enzymatic or antibacterial. And what digests and breaks down our food is enzymes and bacteria. And so they're in our system to break down the nutrients and deliver them to us in a bioavailable form. So when we eat a lot of food that has preservatives on it, that is actually stopping all the processes inside us as well.
- [20:59]
B
Right, right. Right, right. Yeah. No, I think we can talk for at length about food and strategies and the like. I guess one thing that pops into my head though, because you talked about the idea of toxins, chemicals, et cetera. When I hear Parkinson's particularly, I know my mom suffered from Parkinson's before she passed. And I looked at it, I'm like, okay, well what drove it, right? And I think the conventional thinking now, and correct me if I'm wrong, at least in circles of people who focus on toxins, is that there's a real strong link between pesticide exposure, particularly in Parkinson's. Do you find that to be. Does that hold water? Or how would you look at what's behind particularly the explosion of all these conditions? Parkinson's, autism, et cetera, that does hold water.
- [21:48]
A
There's actually a new book out last year called the Parkinson's Plan. And they talk extensively in that book about toxin exposure either through herbicides, pesticides, dry cleaning, fluids, is one that's been, been. It's called trichloroethylene that's been tightly connected to Parkinson's. In our paper that we published in April called Gut Brain and Gut Brain, Glyco and Glycocalyx A Portrait of Parkinson's, we show how a lot of these different chemicals can affect something called the glycocalyx, which lines all of the cells in our body and is kind of a communication network so that you end up, depending on what you're exposed to, slightly different profile and symptomology. And I think that holds true also for autism. People have a basket of things. Every child is unique. And the same is very true in Parkinson's. And one of the things I also worked on over the last two years that we haven't released yet is a docu series called Voices of Parkinson's. And that is, was actually asking people with Parkinson's to tell us their life story. And in that process, you know, we found many people who grew up on farms or near farms, played in puddles, you know, were under the, the plains that were spraying herbicides and pesticides, you know, or people who worked in hospital settings or things where they're exposed to a lot of cleaning products and the cleaning products are quite, quite damaging. So you can sort of pick up if you look at the whole story, these exposures and the cleaning products is actually I learned about that from my, my co author of this Parkinson's paper is Dr. Barry Ninham from Australia National University. He's 90 years old. He's the world's Expert in colloid and surface chemistry. But he did research back in the 1980s showing that these cleaners, these quaternary ammonium compounds or surfactants that are in a lot of our household cleaners, you know, conditioners, some of our toothpastes, things like that, are actually im immunosuppressant and they're cumulative because the more we're, you know, using the Clorox wipe or the same product on our hair, our mouth, they have at least a nine month life based on their research. And so if you're using it every day, it's accumulating and, you know, causing some of these pretty dramatic problems. Because if you don't have an. If your immune system has been suppressed by these things, then you can't kick out the problem guys, Right?
- [24:43]
B
Right. Yeah. Your body has an innate ability to do what it needs to do. But. But if it's being bombarded from toxic exposure of all kinds, and that can be overwhelming when you think about all the toxins that are out there. But it's this combination between limiting your exposure to toxins and then also ensuring that you're leveraging what the body needs, giving the body what it needs, like nutritious food, et cetera. So there's this equation of play better defense and give the body what it needs to let the body do what it's designed to do. And I think for a lot of the people who are listening, you may have signs that your child is more sensitive, is more compromised and more prone to harm from these kind of things, which is why it's really important to play better defense and to avoid and minimize exposure. But sometimes somebody doesn't present where they are obviously compromised in some way, but it doesn't mean that the harm isn't happening anyway. And it's going to be cumulative exposure day after day. So that's all to say that it's worth your time and effort not to get freaked out about it, but to consciously look at your environment, play better defense, give more what helps. And I know one thing that would help a child, a young child, is something that I know was relevant for my son, which I know you talk about, which are C section births. Because, you know, from that standpoint, I know, especially 20 years ago, it was definitely then kind of a fashionable thing where a lot of women were choosing it just because it's in some ways easier or whatever. It became kind of more of a trendy thing. In our case, it was an emergency C section. It wasn't a choice. But whether it's a choice or not. Can you talk a little bit about the impact if it is a C section birth and that child doesn't have the benefit of going through the natural process?
- [26:44]
A
Sure. So, I mean, there's been a lot of research on this, and the evidence is when a child is born through the vaginal canal, there is a colonization of microbes through the mother's vagina. And also, I'll say a little bit of a poop transplant, you know, when the baby's coming out. And these are microbes that help colonize the baby. And, you know, I tell people nowadays, you may not understand it, but you're actually more microbial than you are human. In terms of cells, it's about two microbial cells to every one cell. In terms of genes and functions, it. It's anywhere from a hundred to three hundred times more from the microbes. And there's a researcher, Dr. Rodney Dietert, and his wife Janice, who I think their book is called, was called Superhuman Organism, or I can't. I don't remember the exact name of the book, but part of what they've proposed is that, you know, Caesarean birthday and some of the things that we've done have prevented us from that second part of development of the whole human, and that the microbiome and the setting of the microbiome in place is the part of the complete human because we are more microbial than human. So. And what the evidence has shown is a cesarean birth will often colonize the baby with what are called nosocomial microbes or, you know, hospital microbes that are often more pathogenic. And so there's a process of attempting to restore that. There's still some debate back and forth about doing a vaginal fluid inoculation of the newborn baby. There's still some argument over that. There's a couple of companies, one called Persephone and the other one called Evivo, that both make bifido infantis. That is a key organism that babies are supposed to be colonized with from birth. And it feeds exclusively on human milk oligosaccharides, so breast milk. But we also have effects on our mother's breast milk from these cleaning products and, you know, from herbicides and pesticides that mom is exposed to. So what we're finding is our babies are not colonized by this bifidobacteria like they used to be. And so that is altering the training of the immune system. Bifidobacteria is very important for neurotransmitters. And I think B vitamins as well, and. And folate. So we know there's a. There are some issues with folate as well. So this is a very important organism that it. That we're losing out of the Western population. Cesarean birth is part of that. Antibiotics are part of that. Is very susceptible to antibiotics. And having an aerobic gut is also part of that because the gut is supposed to be anaerobic and bifidobacteria do not survive well in oxygen.
- [30:08]
B
Got it. Yeah. Especially with bifidobacteria. I know that's something that Dr. Sabine Hazen is talking a lot about. She's going to be on a future episode. And I think in terms of. Let's focus now on the concept of probiotics, because at least from a personal standpoint, when I started going to conferences almost 20 years ago, it was around that time that probiotics were kind of like the new thing. And it was almost where, you know, if you're a parent of a child with auto, you had to be giving your child a probiotic that was like, kind of recommended if you were taking a more functional approach. And then it seemed, at least for me, that things shifted a little bit. And even where, you know, there was a concept, okay, well, maybe probiotics aren't needed, because if you just really focus on food, you don't have to, like, throw something specific into the gut that might create a monoculture. So. So when you're talking about probiotics with the depth that you've studied this, tell me about what you've learned about. And I'm sure it's going to include bifidobacteria to some degree, but there's some bacteria that we just can't get from food that finding some way to supplement and to bring it in there really is a strong case for that.
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A
Well, so, I mean, there are a lot of assaults happening to the gut, but. And, and probiotics have been around for a long time. And fermented foods, one of my favorite things. But people are. Can be sensitive to fermented foods as well. And that's a flavor that probably most kids with autism are not going to be particularly attracted to. But, you know, sauerkraut actually is one of the highest things in vitamin C, and that is. So all of these fermented foods are teams of microbes. And the first probiotic that I made for my husband John came out of going to a world Parkinson's Congress. And they were showing that the sugar, alcohol, mannitol, could Stop the aggregation of the proteins in an animal model and pull them out of the brain, clear them. And I came back and started, got this little mannitol chemistry book and started studying this amazing molecule. And found in the first chapter of the book, they were talking about the fermentation of mannitol from glucose and fructose. And of course, we have a lot of sugar in our diet. Glucose and fructose, it's hidden everywhere. People with Parkinson's I knew, were addicted to sugar, many of them. And so it made a lot of sense to me. And so I looked at, could we put a factory back in the gut? And I had an advisor who had spent 20 years in the probiotics industry and was a fermentation chemist. And I say, can we build a team that puts this function back into the gut that does this conversion? And he said, I think we can. We prototyped the formula and gave it to John. And we had all this data from sequences, his microbiome before. And as he started to take the formula, we saw it moving back closer to a healthy human microbiome. And before he started it, he had been walking with a cane. Within a month, he was no longer walking with a cane. Four months later, he was able to navigate a large crowd at our daughter's college graduation. And, you know, we kept measuring up through 120 days, we could see it was continuing to remodel and he was getting better and better. And there's something called a UPDR score, which rates how advanced your Parkinson's is. And that improved by 40% and stayed stable for four years until he had Covid. And so that gave us this concept of building teams. So if you look at probiotics on the market today, the vast majority of them are coming from just three suppliers. There's about 12 strains. And, you know, they kind of combine them based a little bit on, you know, what a single strain's capabilities are. And you get a lot of argument about colony forming unit counts or does it survive the gut or all of this. There's a real lack of understanding about how microbes work because, you know, the microbes in our gut as well as a probiotic, the same cell wall component of the microbe is a big part of immune stimulation and communication in the body. So that's when the microbe dies. That cell wall component is sending information to the body. So the gram negative bacteria that are more prevalent in Parkinson's and autism, they produce something in their cell wall called lipopolysaccharide that is Highly inflammatory. And the good bacteria, like, say, a bifidobacteria or a Lactobacillus, in their cell wall components, they make something called muramyl dipeptides. And we know there's a peptide craze that's these little short communicating. So it's not just a live organism, but also, you know, when we're building teams, we're building a team that can help sustain each other to do the conversion and produce something downstream that we want it to produce. So this formula that I made for John, it's called sugar shift. And what we found was not only was it doing this sugar conversion, but it was increasing something called butyrate, which is low in both Parkinson's and autism. And butyrate is a short chain fatty acid that helps feed the cells that line the gut. So it supports your tight junctions or, you know, a. A barrier that is not allowing those, those lipopolysaccharides to cross over and cause inflammation. And it was also increasing other species of bacteria that are not in the formula but are very important keystone species to our health. And, you know, there's one called Roseburia and another called the Kaliprosnitzia, but it also increased the bifidobacteria. So we did a clinical trial, not in Parkinson's, we did our clinical trial in diabetes because it had easier markers. But we could see that the whole ecosystem was returning to an anaerobic state and, you know, was producing butyrate. We were reducing those inflammatory markers, the lipopolysaccharide, and kind of returning the overall system to a homeostatic state that's able to deal with things. And that was very exciting to us, but also kind of going back to John's soy story, one of the things I wanted to make sure was that we had organisms that weren't going to be killed by glyphosate. And so we have, in that sugar shift formula, we have three of our own strains of bacteria, and they're all resistant to glyphosate. And we ended up studying the formula for the breakdown of glyphosate. So some bacteria or some probiotics can partially break it down, but they break it down to something that's more toxic. And what we found is our formula, studying it in the lab at a thousand times the level of glyphosate that's allowed in a single ingredient in food, that we were breaking down 27% of the glyphosate in 24 hours. So, you know, we're designing a team that has a lot of different functionality and a healthy gut has a lot of that different functionality.
- [37:57]
B
Right, right. You know, that's impressive, especially since glyphosate as an antibiotic just destroys everything. So to have something that can survive it is pretty impressive. And that's why parents would want to entertain the idea of a more organic diet to try to limit their exposure there. Because it's glyphosate can't not do harm. Right. I mean, it's that insidious.
- [38:17]
A
Well, and I have a. I have a substack, if anybody looks on substack called Martha's Quest. And I just started a series on glyphosate and something called the shikimate Pathway. But my next piece in that series is about the bifidobacteria and folate production and how all of that works.
- [38:35]
B
Works great. Well, yeah, I'll include in the show notes, links to your substack, a lot of the references that you made. And again, I know we could talk for much longer. There's so many topics that we could go deeper on. But I guess the one thing I'll ask you as a final question is I know in terms of even how a parent's looking at what's possible and what they might look to do for their child. I know you've touched on it already, but there's kind of a key shift of looking not at your child as a human as much as as an ecosystem. Can you just expand on that shift a little bit?
- [39:12]
A
Well, it's, you know, it's just we are in large part microbial, and we have moved away from being outdoors. You know, we're on screens, we're inside, we're under artificial lights. And when we're out in nature, we are in contact with this other part of ourselves. We're being colonized with it. We're communicating with it. And I think that's another big missing piece of the puzzle is getting out in nature and getting exposed, like not being afraid of. Of the earth and the plants and the things around us. And that big part of nature is a big part of who we should be.
- [39:56]
B
Right, Right. And it's just the whole approach that you might take, you know, it is more complex. But this concept of looking at it not just as an isolation, this is a problem, this is a diagnosis. It's looking at that complete picture, and it is systems thinking as we talked about before. So I think that that mindset shift to even look at what's happening differently, looking at not what diagnosis your child has, but what is going on within their gut, within their body. And then having that approach is a much more powerful way of unveiling ultimately what are the moves that might make the biggest difference. So people want to find out more, particularly about with respect to the probiotic formulations. Can you just share where people can go to learn more? Sure.
- [40:45]
A
People can find me on or find the products on biotaquest.com that's B I O T I Q U E S T dot com. It's also on Amazon but we have a lot more information on our website. I write a blog there and there's a lot of gut brain information. You can also find me on my substack, which is Martha's Quest, if you're interested in substack. And I have a Parkinson's blog called MarthaSQuest.com and then, you know, the book tells the story connected that we talked about. And I do have. If you're interested in poop, I have another little book on Amazon called My Search for the Perfect Poop.
- [41:29]
B
All right, perfect. Well, we'll include all that in the show notes. And again, I'm delighted to have this conversation with you. Look forward to having you on down the road. There are so many other aspects of what you teed up that would be, I think, great topics for future episodes. So good luck with the book and thank you so much for sharing this with our audience.
- [41:49]
A
Thanks so much for having me. I look forward to seeing you again soon.
- [41:52]
B
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