Speaker 1: Ready to support your gut health, Try LifeWay Kaffir. It's
Speaker 1: packed with bioavailable protein and it has twelve probiotic strains
Speaker 1: to support digestion. That's double what you'll find in most
Speaker 1: yogurt brands. Visit Lifewayfoods dot com to find delicious LifeWay
Speaker 1: Kaffir near you. Hi everyone, I'm Kitty Kuric and this
Speaker 1: is next question. Hi everyone, Happy International Women's Day.
Speaker 2: By the way, did did we mention that?
Speaker 1: I'm not sure Stantha did Anyway, Hi, I am so
Speaker 1: excited about this panel. I get excited about everything, obviously,
Speaker 1: and gut help has really got me jazzed. So microbiome biome,
Speaker 1: as you all know, is a real buzzword these days,
Speaker 1: but many people don't know what that actually means. And honestly,
Speaker 1: I have learned so much just preparing for this panel.
Speaker 1: And what exactly is your microbiome? What role does it
Speaker 1: play in our overall health? As you're about to hear,
Speaker 1: it's a pretty big one. And could gut health be
Speaker 1: linked to an alarming uptick in colorectal and other digestive
Speaker 1: cancers among young people right now? Not only diagnoses but
Speaker 1: also tragically deaths as many of you may know if
Speaker 1: you were alive in this far back. I lost my
Speaker 1: husband Jay to colon cancer in nineteen ninety eight. He
Speaker 1: was forty two years old, our daughters were six and two,
Speaker 1: and since then, having felt so powerless during the course
Speaker 1: of his nine month illness, I have done everything I
Speaker 1: can to encourage people to get screened, even getting an
Speaker 1: on air kolonosky on the Today Show back in the
Speaker 1: year two thousand, which resulted in a twenty percent increase
Speaker 1: in kolonoscopes nationwide, which was so gratifying. You know, in
Speaker 1: the year since, I've tried to keep this issue on
Speaker 1: the front burner. I took Jimmy Kimmel to get a
Speaker 1: colonoscope a few years ago.
Speaker 2: I'm trying to get Kevin Hart to.
Speaker 1: Let me take him this year because he just turned
Speaker 1: forty five and he hasn't gotten back to me yet.
Speaker 2: But I will keep you posted.
Speaker 1: But over the last couple of decades, I was the
Speaker 1: percentage of colon cancer cases among young people under the
Speaker 1: age of fifty five has doubled. I was particularly struck
Speaker 1: by this sentence in a recent Time magazine cover story.
Speaker 1: Research suggests that today's young adults are about twice as
Speaker 1: likely to be diagnosed with colon cancer and four times
Speaker 1: as likely to be diagnosed with rectal cancer as those
Speaker 1: born around nineteen fifty, and most young patients are diagnosed
Speaker 1: at stage three or four, which makes these cancers even
Speaker 1: more difficult to treat.
Speaker 2: So what is.
Speaker 1: Behind this disturbing trend? What can we do about it?
Speaker 1: Doctor Nancy u is the director of the m d
Speaker 1: Anderson Young on Set Collorectal Cancer Program. Doctor Susan Bullman
Speaker 1: is an Associate professor in the Department of gastro Intestinal
Speaker 1: Medical Oncology. That's a mouthful season at the University of
Speaker 1: Texas m d Anderson Cancer Center. Julie Smolansky is the
Speaker 1: CEO of Life Wave Foods.
Speaker 2: And I want to.
Speaker 1: Get right to it because there's so much important information
Speaker 1: that I hope you all will listen to you really
Speaker 1: carefully and spread the word with all your friends and
Speaker 1: family members because it's so critically important. And we're going
Speaker 1: to turn this into a podcast on my podcast next question,
Speaker 1: so hopefully people can listen to our conversation. Who aren't
Speaker 1: here this morning, So hi, everybody, Well, let's give them
Speaker 1: a round of applause. Another group of kick ass smart women.
Speaker 1: All right, Julie, We're going to start with you because
Speaker 1: I think your family history and business is so an
Speaker 1: extra inextricably linked to gut health. You came to the
Speaker 1: US from Ukraine in the middle of the Cold War
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy five. By the way, i'd like to
Speaker 1: apologize for our president just parenthetically. Your parents had one
Speaker 1: hundred and sixteen dollars to their name. Your mother smartly
Speaker 1: noticed that the food in America was very different from
Speaker 1: the food and the Soviet Union, and she decided to
Speaker 1: do something about that. Can you tell us what she
Speaker 1: did and how this set your family on a path
Speaker 1: to wellness?
Speaker 2: Really? That's right?
Speaker 3: Yeah, thank you so much, Katie, thank you all for
Speaker 3: joining us at this very busy conference. So exactly, my
Speaker 3: parents and I immigrated from the former Soviet Union. When
Speaker 3: we settled, we realized, my mother really realized that while
Speaker 3: they grew up in scarcity in the Soviet Union, the
Speaker 3: foods were very different, and they were you know, typical
Speaker 3: food was a quart of kaffir or kiefer and a
Speaker 3: loaf of bread, very humble, but very nutritious, nutrient dense,
Speaker 3: with a lot of positive attributes so she opened up
Speaker 3: the first Russian deli Ukrainian deli in Chicago's Rogers Park,
Speaker 3: and then opened up five more throughout the country throughout
Speaker 3: Chicago and became an importer and distributor of Eastern European food.
Speaker 3: And she was like selling food to Brighton Beach or
Speaker 3: Los Angeles, places where Soviet immigrants were starting to settle
Speaker 3: through this mass exodus as the Cold War was winding
Speaker 3: down and Peede Stroka started happening, so that launched them
Speaker 3: into the food industry. They went to Germany at for
Speaker 3: a food buying show, trade show, and there my father
Speaker 3: bought three bottles of kaffir in the grocery store. In
Speaker 3: Eastern Europe, in Ukraine and the Soviet Union, the Slavic region,
Speaker 3: kaffir was something that was passed down generation to generation
Speaker 3: for over two thousand years. Our ancestors consumed it in
Speaker 3: the Caucaus Mountains. It was passed down from Babushka to babushka,
Speaker 3: grandmother to grandmother, and it was survived by the word
Speaker 3: of mouth like what we're doing today talking about the benefits,
Speaker 3: and my ancestors intuitively, in their gut experienced a sense
Speaker 3: of well being, and they attributed they lived past one
Speaker 3: hundred years of age, and they attributed their longevity to
Speaker 3: the consumption of kaffir. And it wasn't until nineteen oh
Speaker 3: eight which doctor Elie Metchnikoff. He is growing up in
Speaker 3: my household. He was like a rock star. He was
Speaker 3: like Eddie Vedder. My father talked to my father talked
Speaker 3: about him endlessly. He talked about his research and he
Speaker 3: was just the father of an immune system.
Speaker 2: And he won a Nobel Prize for this work.
Speaker 3: And he studied the impact of fermented milks kaffir on
Speaker 3: the body, and he found that there was an important
Speaker 3: positive contribution to the overall health. And this was really
Speaker 3: the beginning of the gut kind of science that since
Speaker 3: then our doctors and doctors all around the world have
Speaker 3: been adding onto his original research and really bringing us
Speaker 3: to where we are today. But so that's kind of
Speaker 3: how it started. And so my dad bought three bottles.
Speaker 3: He tried a bottle and he said, wow, America has everything,
Speaker 3: but it doesn't have kaffir. And my mother said, well,
Speaker 3: you're an engineer, why don't you design a plant, start
Speaker 3: making it, and I'll sell it through my distribution system.
Speaker 3: And six months later, LifeWay Foods was launched in nineteen
Speaker 3: eighty six.
Speaker 2: So LifeWay caffir you can.
Speaker 3: Find it all over the country now in every grocery store.
Speaker 3: And two years later he took it public. You know,
Speaker 3: it was just the very beginning, but the growth has
Speaker 3: been exponential, and I.
Speaker 1: Think still people don't know that much about cafir or
Speaker 1: key for how a resaved.
Speaker 2: How do you say? We say both, okay, you know,
Speaker 2: I'll go keep your You.
Speaker 1: Say keefer, I say kafir. Let's get the whole thing off.
Speaker 1: Let's not call the whole thing off. But so, how
Speaker 1: is keyfer kafir different? What is it exactly? And how
Speaker 1: is it different from other dairy and probiotic products because
Speaker 1: it has a little fizziness like what is what is it?
Speaker 3: Yeah, so it's a fermented that's a great question. It's
Speaker 3: got it's fermented dairy. So it's a special combination of
Speaker 3: twelve unique cultures that we inoculate the milk in for
Speaker 3: over eighteen hours, could be up to twenty four hours,
Speaker 3: and it's inoculated at room temperature. Uh, and then it
Speaker 3: creates the reaction between the probiotics and the mill create
Speaker 3: a reaction to create this effervescent fermented almost like a bubbly,
Speaker 3: tangy taste and process and billions over fifty billion live
Speaker 3: microbes exist in kaffir. It's significantly richer than any other
Speaker 3: food products you can buy in those friendly bacterias. Typical
Speaker 3: yogurt only has about four cultures or less, and most
Speaker 3: of the yogurt in the United States is ultra processed
Speaker 3: and pasteurized after fermentation. We pasteurize the milk first, then
Speaker 3: we culture, and then we bottle, and so when you
Speaker 3: get it sometimes you might even notice the bottle bloats.
Speaker 3: That's okay, that means the process is working. You just
Speaker 3: open it, let the air out, and drink it. It's fine. Interesting.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, and you know, I've learned so much about
Speaker 1: it, and I'm going to go knock a key bottles down.
Speaker 2: I've got that. We all shatter this.
Speaker 1: Danel So Susan Vohman, our gut health expert. Before we
Speaker 1: talk more about the value of fermented foods, let's first
Speaker 1: define the microbiome. So what exactly is it and why
Speaker 1: is it so important for overall health?
Speaker 4: Yes, so when we refer to our microbiome, we're talking
Speaker 4: about the community or collection of microorganisms that resite on
Speaker 4: and within our bodies. Most of these are bacteria, but
Speaker 4: also include fungi, viruses, ur KaiA, and they begin colonizing
Speaker 4: our body from the moment we're born and remain with
Speaker 4: us throughout life. But their composition changes. And if you
Speaker 4: were to take your microbiome and you are to put
Speaker 4: it on a waging scale, it weighs several pounds really,
Speaker 4: so similar to some of our internal organs, like a
Speaker 4: spleen or a kidney.
Speaker 1: Right, So it's scattered all over your body or is
Speaker 1: most a it located?
Speaker 2: Yes, you've got.
Speaker 4: Ninety nine percent is within our got largely the colon
Speaker 4: and it's here where these microbes they set the stage
Speaker 4: for dynamic interactions in human health, including digestion, production of vitamins,
Speaker 4: and priming our immune system, and also disease. They're involved
Speaker 4: in chronic diseases. If you have a shift in what
Speaker 4: your microbiome looks like, so can contribute to cancer.
Speaker 1: And I sort of a screw up in your microbiome
Speaker 1: can create all kinds of internal problems, but also inflammation, right,
Speaker 1: and inflammation is a whole other panel which we'll have
Speaker 1: to do another time.
Speaker 2: But that's called dysbiosis.
Speaker 3: What are talking about when the microbiome is out of out.
Speaker 1: Of wax, Yeah, and creates all kinds of medical issues. Well,
Speaker 1: I know that ultra So let's talk about how you
Speaker 1: know all these external things that are affecting our microbiome.
Speaker 1: And then, of course, Nancy, I'm going to talk to
Speaker 1: you about early on set colon cancer and other cancers.
Speaker 1: But you know, we all hear about ultraprocessed food right,
Speaker 1: it's the big buzzword.
Speaker 2: But I still think there's confusion.
Speaker 1: What are ultra processed foods versus processed foods versus non
Speaker 1: process foods?
Speaker 2: So can you help us out?
Speaker 4: So? Yes, yes, So these ultraprocessed foods, they're industrially manufactured products.
Speaker 4: They have little to know whole foods within them. I
Speaker 4: mean you can usually identify them by their lengthy lists
Speaker 4: of ingredients. So they'll have things listed like chemical modifiers, additives.
Speaker 4: You'll see things like a multifiers, stabilizers, artificial flavors, sweeteners,
Speaker 4: and they have very little nutritional value. They don't look
Speaker 4: like they naturally should. And the thing is you'll see
Speaker 4: them advertiser marketed as convenience.
Speaker 5: They're ready to eat.
Speaker 4: You know, you can eat them on the go and
Speaker 4: they're usually hyper palatable, so they're very tasty because they're
Speaker 4: packed full of sugars and salts.
Speaker 1: Right, and that salt fat combo that really can be addictive, addreative.
Speaker 4: So things that you would recognize as these ultprocessed foods
Speaker 4: would be things like sugary drinks. They'd be the snack foods, cookies, candies, crackers, crackers,
Speaker 4: some crackers as well. Is a bummer for me.
Speaker 5: You can have a look at the ingredients.
Speaker 2: There's some options doers.
Speaker 5: Yeah, there's good options. Look at the list exactly.
Speaker 4: And then you know meat, certain meats that you would
Speaker 4: see and sausages, chicken nuggets even having multifiers and preservatives
Speaker 4: with it.
Speaker 2: They have a lot of nitrates, right, susan exactly.
Speaker 5: So this is the thing.
Speaker 4: There's there's the nitrates, nitrites and sulfides. They're the preservatives.
Speaker 4: So you'll see them advertisers as having a long shelf
Speaker 4: life and they're pretty much bad, got health and permeability
Speaker 4: with them.
Speaker 1: What about processed foods, So you've got ultra process right,
Speaker 1: and so you don't want to eat those and you
Speaker 1: kind of don't want to eat processed foods, right, if
Speaker 1: you can avoid them, what But but what's the difference,
Speaker 1: So just the fewer ingredients, there's still a lot of that, there's.
Speaker 4: A there's a nova score, right, So there's a specific
Speaker 4: way that they can be cashgorized as ultra process versus processed.
Speaker 4: So it's got to do with the amount of whole
Speaker 4: foods within the production for these food types.
Speaker 1: What happens to our gut health or microbiome when we
Speaker 1: consume a lot of ultra processed foods, which I guess
Speaker 1: are kind of like junk foods, right, but some that
Speaker 1: you know, they say are healthy and we'll talk about
Speaker 1: that in a moment, But what what does it do
Speaker 1: to your healthy but healthy bacteria?
Speaker 4: Yeah, so you have to think when you're eating foods,
Speaker 4: you're not just eating food for your body, but you're
Speaker 4: also feeding your microbiomes. So these microbes within our got
Speaker 4: they are relying on you to supply them with nutrients
Speaker 4: and most of the beneficial microbes they like certain time
Speaker 4: of carbohydrates so that they can produce short chain, fasty acids.
Speaker 5: That help the guts.
Speaker 4: So by consuming many of these ultraprocess foods that are
Speaker 4: typically low and fiber and good sugars. You're not feeding
Speaker 4: your beneficial microbes and you're pushing it towards an inflammatory subtype.
Speaker 4: But then that has a knock going to affect on
Speaker 4: something like a leaky gush or hyperpermeability in the gush,
Speaker 4: which is money and groups have heard about lately.
Speaker 1: Right, this gut permeability is really important because your gut
Speaker 1: is sort of surrounded by this mucus, right, yes, I know,
Speaker 1: good morning, Yeah it's like, but it's surrounded by this
Speaker 1: mucus which protects the bad stuff exactly from permeating into
Speaker 1: the rest of your body, right exactly. So this this
Speaker 1: kind of delicate balance needs to be maintained.
Speaker 4: Right, So, if you think about your gut, your intestines,
Speaker 4: what you have is a single layer of tichi packed
Speaker 4: epithelial cells and they're all the way along your intestines.
Speaker 4: And between these epithelial cells you have a little gait
Speaker 4: which is called tight junctions between ourselves, and this controls
Speaker 4: what nutrients can pass into our circulation, which is very
Speaker 4: important when we're digesting food. And then above those epithelial cells,
Speaker 4: you have a layer of mucus, and this mucus is
Speaker 4: very important because it separates the bacteria and the undigested
Speaker 4: food stuffs from actually interacting with those cells. We do
Speaker 4: not want bacteria to touch the epithelial cells. But what
Speaker 4: we know is when we consume these ultraprocessed foods that
Speaker 4: have things like multifiers, so for example polysorbit eighty, that
Speaker 4: reduces that.
Speaker 5: Mucus layer right.
Speaker 4: And then also you now have these microbes touching the
Speaker 4: epithelial cells. You havessed or undigested fruit products touching the
Speaker 4: epithelial cells leading to chronic inflammation. So that damages that
Speaker 4: little gate between the cells. It opens up, and now
Speaker 4: you've got food pieces, You've got pieces of bacteria go
Speaker 4: into your circulation, and that can lead to not good,
Speaker 4: not good, not good. That's the problem.
Speaker 1: And Nancy, I know that you have been found this
Speaker 1: trend of more young people getting calling cancer, and I
Speaker 1: think we'll focus on coorectal cancer for the purposes of
Speaker 1: our discussion this morning, because you run oversee MD Anderson's
Speaker 1: Young onset Coorectal cancer program. So every year in the
Speaker 1: United States, everyone about eighty thousand adults between the ages
Speaker 1: of twenty and thirty nine are diagnosed with cancer. People
Speaker 1: under fifty is the only age group for which the
Speaker 1: risk of getting cancer is actually rising.
Speaker 2: So I know these cases.
Speaker 1: I know from personal experience and also from people who
Speaker 1: have reached out to me as a result of what
Speaker 1: happened to my husband, how heartbreaking these cases are. Can
Speaker 1: you tell us a little bit, Nancy about the population
Speaker 1: of patients you're seeing in your program?
Speaker 6: Yes, so we're definitely, unfortunately seeing more and more young
Speaker 6: people who are in the middle of building a career,
Speaker 6: forming relationships, raising children whill get diagnosed with colorectal cancer.
Speaker 6: What we see reflects national trends, but I think young
Speaker 6: patients also seek us out, so they actually represent a
Speaker 6: third of all of our new coloradal cancer cases a
Speaker 6: year that we see. We see about six hundred a year. Sadly,
Speaker 6: most of these patients are already stage three or four
Speaker 6: at diagnosis, so that means their tumors already spread to
Speaker 6: the lymphnodes that surround the tumor or unfortunate other parts
Speaker 6: of the body still totally treatable. But I think a
Speaker 6: lot of them come to us. We also, what that
Speaker 6: translates to is that their treatment typically needs a lot
Speaker 6: of coordination, whether it's surgery plus minus, chemo plus minus
Speaker 6: potential radiation and other treatments. So our program really tries
Speaker 6: to coordinate that for the patient and make a whole
Speaker 6: program for them. We also know that these young patients
Speaker 6: are starting their cancer journey with already super packed lives,
Speaker 6: and so they have a lot of needs. We want
Speaker 6: to treat the whole person, whether it's fertility concerns, finances, employment, paperwork,
Speaker 6: and other things, or whether it's does they want to
Speaker 6: see another young person who's going through this or is
Speaker 6: going through this? So our program tries to coordinate these
Speaker 6: needs altogether and try to treat the whole person.
Speaker 1: Want to support your gut health and microbiome. Try LifeWay
Speaker 1: cafear packed with bioavailable protein and fifty billion CFUs of
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Speaker 1: the bottle, blended into smoothies, or use it in recipes.
Speaker 1: It's delicious and versatile, and for a quick and healthy snack,
Speaker 1: try lifeweight Farmer cheese. It's loaded with protein and the
Speaker 1: perfect substitute for cottage cheese with no blending required. Spread
Speaker 1: it on a bagel, drizzle with olive oiler jam and
Speaker 1: in joy, love your guts, and visit lifewivefoods dot com
Speaker 1: to elevate your snacking. Today, Nancy was telling me that,
Speaker 1: you know, she was seeing two pregnant women who were
Speaker 1: in their second trimester who had both been diagnosed with
Speaker 1: metastatic colon cancer. And that means, you know, stage four,
Speaker 1: it's metastasized your liver to other organs. Stage three, as
Speaker 1: Nancy said, it's gone through your lymph nose, which are
Speaker 1: kind of the gateway from your colon to the rest
Speaker 1: of your body. And so tiny microscopic disease can be
Speaker 1: circulating throughout your body and later lead to metastasizing on
Speaker 1: other organs. So, and I think it's important to point
Speaker 1: out that seventy five to eighty percent of colon cancer
Speaker 1: cases or what are called sporadic where there is no
Speaker 1: family history, and in these young people, of course, are
Speaker 1: things like Lynch syndrome and other familiar polyposes. Don't I
Speaker 1: sound like a doctor that do make you more likely
Speaker 1: to be, you know, to have a colon kids. But
Speaker 1: many of these people have no family history and don't
Speaker 1: have any of those underlying conditions, right Nancy.
Speaker 6: So up to twenty percent of the young patients can
Speaker 6: have a predisposition syndrome, and so what we say is,
Speaker 6: if you're young and you have a diagnosis, always get
Speaker 6: your genetics tested so that if you fall into twenty percent,
Speaker 6: we know what to do.
Speaker 5: We can totally take care of you.
Speaker 6: The other eighty percent, though, don't have a known genetic predisposition,
Speaker 6: and so that's really the question, why are these patients
Speaker 6: getting diagnosed?
Speaker 2: And that's perfect that you.
Speaker 6: Don't have a family history doesn't mean that you're immune.
Speaker 1: Right, right, And I think some people kind of convince
Speaker 1: themselves so I don't need to get screened because it's
Speaker 1: not in my family. But it wasn't in my husband's family.
Speaker 1: So that's why it's really so critically important to get
Speaker 1: screened at age forty five. And we'll talk about those
Speaker 1: guidelines in a moment, but first I want to focus
Speaker 1: on why this is happening, because it's so upsetting, and
Speaker 1: I know there are a lot of theories.
Speaker 2: Nancy.
Speaker 1: Microplastics, right, microplastics are kind of a new focus on
Speaker 1: a lot of science because we're ingesting so many tiny,
Speaker 1: tiny hot particles of plastic from things like plastic cutting boards.
Speaker 1: But they even think it might be getting into some
Speaker 1: of the crops that we're eating and.
Speaker 2: All kinds of things.
Speaker 1: They're starting to find microplastics in fetuses and so they're
Speaker 1: kind of everywhere. Not to freak people out, but this
Speaker 1: is something that they're studying because it might be permeating
Speaker 1: that mucus barrier susan that you were talking about. So
Speaker 1: microplastics is one theory ultra processed foods, which we talked about.
Speaker 1: The over prescription of antibiotics is something scientists are also
Speaker 1: looking at. Now, by the way, this is correlation, not causation.
Speaker 1: These are just theories. Epidemial logical studies take like decades
Speaker 1: because you have to follow people their whole lives. But
Speaker 1: also red meat alcohol consumption leading to obesity, which is
Speaker 1: also another risk factor. So Nancy, having said that, can
Speaker 1: you just talk us through some of these theories and
Speaker 1: what scientists and doctors like yourself are looking at.
Speaker 5: I get the hardest question, right.
Speaker 2: I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
Speaker 6: So the why is definitely the question. We know the
Speaker 6: cancer is a complex disease, and so it's really hard
Speaker 6: to pain point one smoking gun, and often it's not
Speaker 6: one single thing. And so that's kind of where I
Speaker 6: think it is it's going to be several things that
Speaker 6: probably work together. There are non risk fractors to colorectal cancer,
Speaker 6: and there are things where you talked about a diet
Speaker 6: that's lowing fiber, high in red meat, high in processed foods,
Speaker 6: sedentary lifestyle, alcohol, smoking, Those are established risk ractors for
Speaker 6: colorectal cancer, and the young patient are certainly nodding you, right,
Speaker 6: So those risk factors that we also face, but likely
Speaker 6: there are also unknown risk fractors that are yet to
Speaker 6: be discovered. And these are some of the things you
Speaker 6: mentioned bycoplastics, and so I think some of the leading
Speaker 6: theories on that are all environmental factors, so chemicals, and
Speaker 6: if we think really about adult bone was talking about,
Speaker 6: our good is really the environment too. Right, when the
Speaker 6: barrier is broken, the stuff that's inside becomes the stuff
Speaker 6: that's outside becomes inside, and so a lot of it
Speaker 6: is about environment, but I think ultimately there's also genetic
Speaker 6: and environmental interactions that work together that probably makes some
Speaker 6: people more prone to the same environmental insults.
Speaker 5: And then I think the last.
Speaker 6: Area that people are really paying attention to is is
Speaker 6: there a vulnerable phase in our lifespan that make these
Speaker 6: exposures more impactful to us. Right, is there what, sorry,
Speaker 6: a vulnerable time period in our lifespan, because when we
Speaker 6: look at our own generation, all of you here, you're
Speaker 6: very health conscious, right, you take care of your body
Speaker 6: and so you know, and yet we're still getting diagnosed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well every time we take an antibiotics.
Speaker 3: First of all, our medical model, the doctors are trained
Speaker 3: to cut and to prescribe drugs. They have not been
Speaker 3: trained to incorporate foods to heal. And food can either
Speaker 3: be the greatest medicine or the fastest poison.
Speaker 2: I always say, live dirty, eat clean. We're really we are. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I knew you like that one.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because we have become afraid of all sorts of bacteria.
Speaker 2: We are clean freaks.
Speaker 1: The h for colling cancer screen, I don't know if
Speaker 1: anybody was here yesterday. I'm like the nagging fish wife
Speaker 1: with the you know, rolling pin. The age has been reduced,
Speaker 1: it was reduced, like in twenty twenty one. You now
Speaker 1: need to get screen for colon cancer at age forty
Speaker 1: five because of this reason. But I keep thinking about
Speaker 1: the young patients Nancy, like you're seen, who are in
Speaker 1: their twenties and thirties, So A, should the h be
Speaker 1: lowered even more? Should young people get some kind of tests?
Speaker 1: And are the symptoms in your young patients different than
Speaker 1: the symptoms and older individuals, And can you talk about
Speaker 1: the symptoms that we all need to be aware of,
Speaker 1: especially certainly everyone, but young people because they're not being screened.
Speaker 6: Yeah. Absolutely, So we know that the young patients are
Speaker 6: disproportionately being impacted by rectal cancer than colon, and the
Speaker 6: rectal cancer is being closer to the outside, can be
Speaker 6: more symptomatic. So some of the symptoms are bloody stools,
Speaker 6: you can see stools, pain when you pass a stool,
Speaker 6: abdominal bloating, cramp, being But I think the thing to
Speaker 6: remember is that sometimes it's actually asymptomatic, and that's where screening.
Speaker 6: So when we talk about screening, we're talking about subjecting
Speaker 6: a whole population of patients who are asymptomatic to a
Speaker 6: particular test. And that's why the age to start screening
Speaker 6: is such a hard thing to move right because it
Speaker 6: impacts the whole society and the whole population. But while
Speaker 6: the policy makers are working on that, I think there's
Speaker 6: so many things that can work on. I always distinguish
Speaker 6: diagnosis from screening. So if you can have a symptom
Speaker 6: at any age, the key there is, if you have
Speaker 6: a symptom, we're not talking about screening. We're talking about diagnosis.
Speaker 6: Whatever age do comes, don't delay, don't wait. I think
Speaker 6: as a as a culture, we need to be less
Speaker 6: shy about talking about our poopo apology.
Speaker 1: And then on their set children's book, everybody poops, Everybody poops,
Speaker 1: and you know we yeah, it's gross to think about it,
Speaker 1: but it's true poop and bugs.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Yeah, So I think that's number one and number two.
Speaker 6: If there are symptoms, don't brush it off. Right.
Speaker 2: We are all so busy.
Speaker 6: I think we're probably more likely to go to a
Speaker 6: coffee with a friend than call a physician to look
Speaker 6: in the blood that's in our stool. And so don't
Speaker 6: delay and really be our advocates. I think in addition,
Speaker 6: sometimes when people do get enough courage to present to
Speaker 6: a physician, sometimes the first one you see pooh poos
Speaker 6: it and says, oh, don't worry about it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'll say it's just hemorrhoids. You know, you see
Speaker 1: blood in the toilet.
Speaker 2: And so be persistent.
Speaker 6: We are doing a lot among the professional societies to educate.
Speaker 6: The mass media is raising awareness. You're all helping, so
Speaker 6: I think the whole culture will change. But there are
Speaker 6: going to be people, unfortunately who may dismiss you, and
Speaker 6: so be yourself advocate and really push for the diagnostic test.
Speaker 5: That's a different question than us.
Speaker 1: And I know that only twenty percent of people because
Speaker 1: I just came from the Coli Guard Classic and I
Speaker 1: did some interviews there, that only twenty percent of people
Speaker 1: eates forty five to forty nine are actually getting screens.
Speaker 1: So we need to really spread the word that the
Speaker 1: age has been lowered. And I think one of the
Speaker 1: interesting things, Susan, we were talking about before we came
Speaker 1: on stage was that Nancy's patients are incredibly healthy. You know,
Speaker 1: these people in their twenties and thirties and forties are
Speaker 1: like marathon runners.
Speaker 2: They are super.
Speaker 1: Health conscious, and I thought it was really interesting. Another
Speaker 1: thing that scientists are looking at, Susan, that me you
Speaker 1: all don't mind them calling you by your first names
Speaker 1: that may contribute or that people are wondering about. Can
Speaker 1: you talk about that? And it has to do with protein,
Speaker 1: like everywhere. I don't know about you all. But I'm
Speaker 1: so sick of seeing people on my Instagram feed talking
Speaker 1: about like eating grams of protein almost equal to my weight.
Speaker 1: And it's like what, And I don't know, am I
Speaker 1: the only one that's getting all these things right? It's
Speaker 1: like protein craze Central exactly.
Speaker 2: So let's talk about that.
Speaker 4: If you go into the grocery store, you're seeing these
Speaker 4: protein drinks, you're seeing the protein powders, there's protein pasta,
Speaker 4: protein cereal, and protein bars, right, But.
Speaker 5: They're ultraprocessed foods.
Speaker 4: So these are the foods that have the emulsifiers, they
Speaker 4: have the stabilizers, all of those harmful chemicals that are
Speaker 4: disrupting our GOT barrier. But they're being marketed to the
Speaker 4: health conscious individual. So someone who's not going to grab
Speaker 4: a twinkie because they're like, this is not healthy, but oh,
Speaker 4: a protein bar is a healthy alternative.
Speaker 5: So that's where it's concerned. So they are ultra processed.
Speaker 4: And the thing here, and I was I was selling
Speaker 4: you KD before we came on, and all of the
Speaker 4: studies and the dietary studies that look at a healthy microbiome,
Speaker 4: protein should only be like fifteen percent of what you're
Speaker 4: consuming so it's carbohydrate sixty percent, protein about fifteen percent,
Speaker 4: and good fats so these and these pula so the PUFAs,
Speaker 4: the polyosaturated fasciocids another fifteen percent. So carbohydrates feature microbome
Speaker 4: complex carbohydrates, fiber you know, things like they're called fibers,
Speaker 4: that these microbes will actually use the nutrient source to
Speaker 4: produce these short chained fasti acids that lead to.
Speaker 5: That gulth barrier. So this is a challenge for protein.
Speaker 1: And you are saying, Julie that you know this this
Speaker 1: sort of ultra processed protein, like because I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: I should be putting protein powder in my smoothies because
Speaker 1: I want to have strong bones and muscles. Right, But
Speaker 1: all this ultra processed protein isn't even the right kind
Speaker 1: of protein, right, right.
Speaker 3: You want to look for high quality bioavailable protein which
Speaker 3: is naturally occurring, like in a product like LifeWay to fear.
Speaker 2: Shameless fluch, shameless lud. But it's real, it's true.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 3: Again, this is something passed down for generations for two
Speaker 3: thousand years. There's a reason why it survived for two
Speaker 3: thousand years, you know. I think also one of the
Speaker 3: things that has happened in the last ten year is
Speaker 3: this plant based movement which has really done us a
Speaker 3: lot of harm. These are ultraprocessed, lab created plant based
Speaker 3: ingredients and they have unfortunately really messed with our minds
Speaker 3: and all these influencers and people who go on social
Speaker 3: media to talk about doing this and that with plant based,
Speaker 3: anti dairy, I'm anti dairy, don't do dairy, evil dairy.
Speaker 3: That is so untrue because really dairy for men to
Speaker 3: dairy is not the same as just regular dairy. For
Speaker 3: men to dairy creates this natural effervescent probiotic combination and
Speaker 3: it's able to survive. So probiotics not only do you
Speaker 3: want it to take you know, to have a probiotic,
Speaker 3: but you want it to be encapsulated in the dairy
Speaker 3: because the gut is very acidic and it needs to
Speaker 3: the probiotic has to survive the entire digestive track and
Speaker 3: out of UC Davis, doctor Mara found that when it
Speaker 3: comes from a saurce, that probiotic can actually go through
Speaker 3: the entire digestive system, through the rectum and really.
Speaker 2: Do what it's supposed to do.
Speaker 3: What all these the science is saying that it will
Speaker 3: do so that's critical that not all probiotics are the same,
Speaker 3: and it really is important to get it from a
Speaker 3: dairy source.
Speaker 1: So susan it drinking milk is better than drinking almond milk, well,
Speaker 1: fermented milk, Well, but what about regular milk versus like
Speaker 1: almond milk or soy milk. I drink regular milk because
Speaker 1: I just don't like almond milk in my coffee. But
Speaker 1: I do drink protein added milk. Is that mer ermented milk?
Speaker 1: And then okay, that's all right, all right? Drinking beer,
Speaker 1: all right? But there are other good things that are
Speaker 1: fermented in addition to kafir at, kembucha, kin chi, yogurt.
Speaker 1: Those are very healthy. Talk about the fermentation process and
Speaker 1: why that's good for a microbiome. I don't like I'm
Speaker 1: going to start drinking kombucha. My daughter loves it. I
Speaker 1: think it's as funky, but I'm going to learn to
Speaker 1: like it exactly.
Speaker 4: So, these fermented foods, they actually contain live microorganisms. Right,
Speaker 4: They're often referred to as probiotics, and they can be
Speaker 4: bacteria and they can be yeast, but these are generally
Speaker 4: beneficial microbes for your gods. So these are very good
Speaker 4: microbes that help maintain that gut barrier, helped in the
Speaker 4: production of the mucus and help in production of short chained,
Speaker 4: batty acids that builds those epithelial cells to be strong
Speaker 4: and prevent things from moving through. So the fermentation process
Speaker 4: itself is that these live microbes acting on you know, say,
Speaker 4: sugars and starch to produce organic acids that within the food.
Speaker 4: And that's often you talked about that little acidic bubbly favor, right.
Speaker 4: It's these little acids that are being produced by the microbes,
Speaker 4: but they ate in digestion. It eats in digestion and
Speaker 4: it repopulates and balances your gots. So what you want
Speaker 4: to look for are these fermented foods that would have
Speaker 4: a range of different microorganisms. You don't want to do
Speaker 4: just introduce one. You want to increase diversity. So there's
Speaker 4: been numerous demonstrating having a diverse GOD microbiome is linked
Speaker 4: with beneficial health aspects for chronic diseases, even treatments for cancer.
Speaker 4: Having a diverse GOT microbiome.
Speaker 1: I was going to ask ask Nancy, do you recommend
Speaker 1: that some of your patients eat fermented food or has
Speaker 1: that not really been established.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so we haven't.
Speaker 6: I don't do any in practice, but we've been talking
Speaker 6: about maybe we should actually do a study to look
Speaker 6: at that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 6: I have had scientists tell me that try not to
Speaker 6: recommend taking a probiotic, for example, because that actually reach
Speaker 6: stricts the diversity of the microbiol.
Speaker 4: Yes, if it has one organism. So there are studies
Speaker 4: done in melanoma patients that we're receiving immunotherapy, and they
Speaker 4: looked at patients that were given a probiotic, so a
Speaker 4: single microbe, versus patients that were given fiber, and they
Speaker 4: gave patients up to fifty grams of fiber, so they
Speaker 4: saw that it was actually fiber that helps the patients
Speaker 4: respond better because it increased the god microbiome diversity, whereas
Speaker 4: the single probiotic didn't.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm glad you brought that up because I've often wondered.
Speaker 1: And I talked to Jay's gastro entrologists, who I'm still
Speaker 1: close friends with, and I asked him should I be
Speaker 1: taking a probiotic pill? And he was like, sure, it
Speaker 1: can't hurt. And I do think that there are a
Speaker 1: lot of people supplements that are taking advantage of like
Speaker 1: this new interest in microbiome and gut health and are
Speaker 1: selling probiotics. What do you think of those versus get
Speaker 1: getting probiotics in your diet.
Speaker 4: Food is always best, go with the food because if
Speaker 4: it's something that you can so for example, with Kiefer,
Speaker 4: you're not just getting these microbes, which you're also getting
Speaker 4: nutrition for your gosh. You know there's there's sugars within
Speaker 4: Keefer that will help other microbes within your gotten. A
Speaker 4: key problem with these probiotics is engraftment, so them staying
Speaker 4: around right. If you think about your gosh as primarialist,
Speaker 4: there's already microbes hanging out there, so you want to
Speaker 4: make sure you've got the right ones moving into your neighborhoods.
Speaker 4: So if you're drinking Keifer regularly, you're ensuring not that
Speaker 4: you've got the right population in your neighborhood hanging out
Speaker 4: and preventing the bad octors from setting up shop.
Speaker 1: I think of them as little pac men, you know,
Speaker 1: in your body, and they're eating all the healthy stuff
Speaker 1: that you're putting in there exactly, and you want to
Speaker 1: keep them there right and not we're feeding them and
Speaker 1: keeping the good ones exactly, Like giving them good food good, right,
Speaker 1: it could rounds.
Speaker 2: Out the bad ones.
Speaker 3: So keifer crowd the good bacteria and kafir and we
Speaker 3: have twelve different strains fifty billion CFUs preserving.
Speaker 1: And they and there's was a study, right, another study
Speaker 1: that showed that it was really more on yogurt, right, well,
Speaker 1: fermented foods, fermented food, but yogurt will tell us about
Speaker 1: that study. Yeah, So a study out of Massachusetts found
Speaker 1: that they studied one hundred and third thousand patients over
Speaker 1: thirty years, and they found that people who consumed for
Speaker 1: mented dairy every day or every week, two times a
Speaker 1: week head of reduction in colon cancer.
Speaker 3: And this is something that we're so excited about. It's
Speaker 3: just the beginning of understanding. But really keyfer helps you
Speaker 3: grow a good gut garden. It keeps those bacteria replenished
Speaker 3: every day. Our modern lifestyle, like we talked about, antibiotics,
Speaker 3: the processed food, stress, social media, travel, all of that
Speaker 3: disrupts your gut biome and leads to dyspiosis.
Speaker 2: So you could be the healthiest person.
Speaker 3: You could eat very nutritiously what you think is nutritiously,
Speaker 3: but if you're not replenishing the gut biome. You are
Speaker 3: creating a dysregulation and the gut biome, and then we
Speaker 3: know that it's contributing to all sorts of things from
Speaker 3: mental health even you know there's a gut mind connection
Speaker 3: to talk about that, Yeah, a gut skin connection. You know,
Speaker 3: we're really learning the gut is the number one brain.
Speaker 3: It leads to every part of your immune system. Yeah,
Speaker 3: ninety percent of your immune system is controlled in the gut.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And Susan, I wanted to ask you, so fermented
Speaker 1: food that includes is cottage cheese fermented? Because I love
Speaker 1: cottage cheese and I eat a lot of cottage cheese.
Speaker 1: And oh, I mean enough with the cottage cheese recipes,
Speaker 1: am I?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: Is anyone like constantly scrolling food things on Instagram? Obviously
Speaker 1: know how I'm spending my spare time, but what aout?
Speaker 1: What about cottage cheese?
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's a great a great source of cheese, right,
Speaker 4: and dairy and it is includos it is the organisms
Speaker 4: within us are not as diverse, for example, for what
Speaker 4: you would see in Kiefer, but absolutely it's a great choice.
Speaker 2: Okay, I want to just we're almost out of time.
Speaker 1: We have a little bit more time, and I do
Speaker 1: want to talk about this gut brain connection, which is
Speaker 1: so fascinating that what is happening in your microbiome actually
Speaker 1: affects your mental health.
Speaker 2: Can you talk more about that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So it's a fascinating area of emerging research and
Speaker 4: it's called the microbiome got brain access. So if you
Speaker 4: think about your gut, you have your enteric nervous system,
Speaker 4: which we often call our second brain, and this is
Speaker 4: packed full of nerves, more nerves than in your spinal corridge.
Speaker 4: And what we know is that there's microbes in the
Speaker 4: gut that help in the production of certain chemicals called
Speaker 4: NORD transmitters. So, for example, serotonin, ninety percent of that
Speaker 4: is produced in your gut. That's our happy chemical. Then
Speaker 4: there's also GABBA, which is gamma minobuteric acid, and that
Speaker 4: helps you deal with anxiety and stress and dope mine
Speaker 4: and other chemical that is your motivation chemicals. So we
Speaker 4: know that the gut microbes, beneficial gut microbes are involved
Speaker 4: in the production of those important NORD transmitters that signal
Speaker 4: through this vagus nerve back to our brain and then
Speaker 4: these can control your mood, how you're feeling. But there's
Speaker 4: studies linking it to depression and to a range of
Speaker 4: Alzheimer's even right, but they're emerging studies and most of
Speaker 4: the functional work is in mouse models or wrap models,
Speaker 4: and the correlative work are in humans, so we're still
Speaker 4: learning from that. So that god brain access. But there
Speaker 4: was an also outside of that. There was a recent
Speaker 4: study published in Nature Medicine that looked at and they
Speaker 4: characterized an older microbiome versus a younger microbiome in patients
Speaker 4: over the age of fifty. And they saw this older
Speaker 4: microbiome this patients had increased risk for cardiovascular disease, and
Speaker 4: when they repopulated the microbiome through a fecal microbiota transplant
Speaker 4: to this younger looking microbiome, it could reverse some of
Speaker 4: these effects.
Speaker 5: So it's a fountain of youth.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I read about that.
Speaker 1: That weird, Like, I'm sorry, the idea of a fingle transplant.
Speaker 1: It's not as all this, but it's I think it's
Speaker 1: so interesting. So what you eat, you know, when do
Speaker 1: they say you are what you eat? But what you
Speaker 1: eat is really you know, going to be can affect
Speaker 1: your mental health so significantly. Well, I think we should
Speaker 1: close by maybe just going down the line. I'm pretty
Speaker 1: sure I know what Julie's going to say, but what
Speaker 1: can we do to make sure that our gut health
Speaker 1: is in tip top shape? I mean, And what advice
Speaker 1: I guess specifically for calling cancer and early on set
Speaker 1: cancers for you, Nancy, would you have for everyone in
Speaker 1: this audience? And I hope again they're going to spread
Speaker 1: the word.
Speaker 2: Sure.
Speaker 6: My take home will be look at your poop and
Speaker 6: forty five is a new fifty.
Speaker 2: That was simple? Okay, good? All right?
Speaker 4: Yeah, So my take home is the beauty of the
Speaker 4: microbiome is that it's modifiable. We can manipulate us, so
Speaker 4: we can take control by eating healthily, avoiding the ultraprocessed foods,
Speaker 4: incorporating whole foods and fermented foods into our.
Speaker 2: Diet and fiber, by the way, fiber is huge.
Speaker 5: Fiber is huge.
Speaker 4: And then also exercise is a role to play in
Speaker 4: maintaining our microbiome, so we have control to some degree.
Speaker 2: How does exercise affect your microbiome?
Speaker 4: The links have been on increasing alpha diversity. So there's
Speaker 4: certain microbes that like aerobic exercise. So the links have
Speaker 4: all been correlated with increasing alpha diversity, which is what
Speaker 4: you want to train your immune system to identify cancer,
Speaker 4: because you know, when cancer arises, it actually is a
Speaker 4: failing of your immune system to recognize that. So if
Speaker 4: you can train your immune system to be strong and
Speaker 4: having those microbes interaction with the gut beneficial microbes with
Speaker 4: your immune system. This is the hypothesis as to how
Speaker 4: all of these factors come together. So it's not a
Speaker 4: single thing, it's multi factorial.
Speaker 3: We're going to say a lot about prebiotics coming. You
Speaker 3: don't really need to take an extra prebiotic.
Speaker 2: It's in your food.
Speaker 3: Every time you eat berries, banana, you know, kale, salads
Speaker 3: that you're naturally getting those prebiotics, so you don't need prebiotics.
Speaker 1: As I said, the industry that you know, supplement and
Speaker 1: health food industry, I think is going to take advantage
Speaker 1: of this, you know, great awakening about gut health and probiotics.
Speaker 1: They're better to get them from natural sources instead of
Speaker 1: like in pill form, is basically what I heard. I'm
Speaker 1: going to stay away from protein bars and protein powder
Speaker 1: honestly because it's just not as good as getting real
Speaker 1: protein from real food. I'm going to be drinking my kafear,
Speaker 1: but I think this is so important because I just think,
Speaker 1: you know, I never knew quite that, I never understood
Speaker 1: the importance of gut health when it comes to almost
Speaker 1: every aspect of your physical health, and now we're learning
Speaker 1: of your mental health. So I've had so much fun
Speaker 1: with this panel. Nancy, Susan, Julie, thank you all so much,
Speaker 1: and I hope you guys well practice what you've heard about.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening everyone. If you have a question for me,
Speaker 1: a subject you want us to cover, or you want
Speaker 1: to share your thoughts about how you navigate this crazy world,
Speaker 1: reach out send me a DM on Instagram. I would
Speaker 1: love to hear from you. Next Question is a production
Speaker 1: of iHeartMedia and Katie Kuric Media. The executive producers are Me,
Speaker 1: Katie Kuric, and Courtney Ltz. Our supervising producer is Ryan Martz,
Speaker 1: and our producers are Adriana Fazzio and Meredith Barnes. Julian
Speaker 1: Weller composed our theme music. For more information about today's episode,
Speaker 1: or to sign up for my newsletter, wake Up Call,
Speaker 1: go to the description in the podcast app or visit
Speaker 1: us at Katiecuric dot com. You can also find me
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Speaker 1: podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
Speaker 1: wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Want to support
Speaker 1: your gut health and microbiome. Try LifeWay Kaffir, packed with
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