It's Not Yogurt

We've been fermenting HUMAN-SOURCED microbes to generate very high microbial counts and obtain specific health benefits. The end-result looks and smells sort of like conventional yogurt, but it is NOT yogurt. (I called it "yogurt" for lack of a better term.) It's my way of generating high counts of important microbes that most people have lost due to antibiotics and other factors. You can enjoy this unique "yogurt" with some blueberries, nuts, or your choice of natural sweetener. 

Chapters

• 0:00 Redefining “Yogurt” And FDA Rules
• 0:45 Switching To Human-Sourced Microbes
• 1:55 The Case For Lactobacillus Reuteri
• 3:15 From Infant Tablets To High Counts
• 4:25 Why Modern Humans Lost Reuteri
• 5:07 Scaling Fermentation And Pushback
• 6:05 It Looks Like Yogurt, But Isn’t
• 6:44 Fermenting Other Keystone Species
• 8:00 B. Infantis And Child Development
• 10:05 L. Crispatus And Women’s Health
• 11:40 Taste, Acidity, And pH Differences

Transcript

William Davis, MD: 0:00

Let's talk about this thing I've been calling yogurt, but it's important to realize it's not yogurt. Now, if you're already familiar with all my concepts about fermenting microbes as something that looks like yogurt, feel free to skip this video. This is for people who are kind of new to the conversation that uh don't know what I'm talking about when I say lactobacillus rotorite yogurt. So this is kind of a basic background in what I mean by yogurt. So, yogurt, by the FDA's definition, if you're going to sell something in the grocery store called yogurt, it must be fermented with traditional fermenting microbes used to make yogurt, such as lactobacillus vulgaricus, streptococcus thermophilus. Those are the two microbes you must have to ferment the dairy product to call it yogurt. And it must have a pH of 4.6 or less, kind of acidic. And then you can call it yogurt, sell it in the store. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about fermenting dairy. You can ferment other things, but dairy is so easy and forgiving to ferment. We're gonna ferment foods, especially dairy, using human-sourced microbes, not traditional fermenting microbes, but human-sourced microbes. So I chose Lactobacillus rotori kind of randomly, and as it turned out, by sheer dumb luck, lactobacillus rotari is probably the most important microbe of all. It has so many beneficial effects, many of which have been described in animals to a limited degree in humans. But we're experiencing. So here was my rationale. When I first started to ferment lactobacillus rotori, I got it as a commercial product made for infants. And so the quantity of microbes, the dose, was very low. It was a hundred million of two different strains of lactobacillus rotori. Well, a hundred million sounds like a lot, but in microbial numbers, it's almost nothing. It's trivial. And so if an adult took it, you'd experience probably next to nothing. So I asked, how can we increase the number of microbes? Well, microbes go through something called fermentation. That's how they consume nutrients and then they reproduce. They double themselves. They don't have sex, of course, they just double themselves. Asexual reproduction. So one microbe becomes two, two becomes four, etc. And then, of course, there's some death after a few hours. Microbes only live for a few hours. So rotorite doubles about every three hours, two and a half to three hours, at human body temperature. So this is a microbe adapted to the human body. Now uh lactobacillus rotite is ubiquitous. It's in all mammals that have been studied. So mice, moose, deer, uh name a mammal, they have lactobacillus rotori. Indigenous hunter-gatherer populations, these are people who live in the jungle or forest or savannah, not exposed to antibiotics, glyphosate, and other disruptive things, they all have lactobacillus rotori. We don't have it. Almost everybody in the modern world has lost it. The most recent evidence suggests only about one in 25 people have rotorite, so we've lost it. Why? Well, because it's very susceptible to common antibiotics. So if you, for instance, took clorithromycin or augmentin for, say, an upper respiratory infection or a urinary tract infection, it more than likely wiped out all of your lactobacillus rotorite as well as hundreds of other beneficial species. But anyway, so I got the microbe as this tablet made for infants, and I played around with it, and I learned that you had to get about two billion microbes in order to ferment it reliably. So in the beginning, I took 10 tablets of this commercial product, crushed them, and then fermented them, and it worked. I did maybe 30 batches or so. And by the way, I called the manufacturer and I talked to some of the executives there, and they said, Oh, this is impossible. No one has ever done this before. I said, Well, I did it. They said, Well, we don't really care. I was shocked by that. Okay. In fact, they blocked my calls and emails, oddly. So, don't know why. Anyway, so I continued to make this yogurt, and then I started talking about it. People are making it. We found other sources for the microbe. So uh very because very interesting things happen. But what we're doing is not making yogurt, right? It looks and smells kind of like yogurt, but it's not the traditional yogurt fermenting microbial species, it's human-sourced microbes. It also became clear that we can do the same process or similar process with numerous other human-sourced microbes. For instance, we can make a yogurt at a bifidobacterium phantus, and that's very important for childhood development. If a child lacks bifitobacterium phantus at birth, which often happens because mom may not have had it to pass on to the child because she lost it because of antibiotics, the child's often given antibiotics at birth in the first few weeks or months. So many children lack Biophetobacterian phase, a microbe crucial for development, for growth and development, especially neurological maturation. So if a child lacks bifidobacterium phase, it can't properly metabolize the human milk oligosaccharides in breast milk. And that child will not have ideal neurological development, is more likely to have asthma, allergies, eczema, type 1 diabetes, other autoimmune conditions, obesity, type 2 diabetes as an adolescent, so a major impairment in health. So getting bifitobacterium fantas can be very important. The child will likely even have a higher IQ if it has infantis. Now, so you can give bifitobacterium phantas as a probiotic in breast milk or other foods later on. Uh, or what I like to tell ladies is make yogurt out of the bifitobacterium fantasy, using the same process, 36 hours more or less, 100 degrees Fahrenheit, or human body temperature. When I say 100 degrees Fahrenheit, I say that because it's easy to remember, but it's really 98 to 104 thereabouts. And so, what if mom consumed the yogurt, let's say during the third trimester, so that she passes it on to the child in the way it was supposed to have been? That is, by passage through the birth canal, breastfeeding contact, etc. So that's a real it makes a delicious yogurt, by the way. How about Lactobacillus crispatis? Very interesting microbe, meant to be the dominant species in a healthy vaginal microbiome. And it plays a major role during reproductive years in making a safer and full-term pregnancy. It protects woman all through her life, especially in menopausal years, from vaginal infections like candidate infections. It protects her from urinary tract infections and even incontinence. So lactobusis crispotis, likewise, you can ferment the same process, 36 hours, human body temperature, and it makes a very delicious yogurt, by the way. By the way, all these yogurts have a little different taste profile. They taste a little bit different. You almost pick one, taste, and say, I know what the microbe is by the taste. So rotorite tends to be quite sour, and that's because the lactic acid is producing, which is a good thing, and the pH is 3.5, about tenfold more acidic than conventional yogurt. Recall that the pH scale is logarithmic. So 3.5 is nearly tenfold more acidic than 4.6. So rotorite is very sour because of lactic acid. The crispatis is very, it tastes like kind of heavy whipped cream. Infant is kind of in between. And there are other yogurts you can fertile that you can ferment. I like to ferment Bacillus subtlis. That one you can ferment at 90 degrees Fahrenheit for 24 hours, and it's a fantastic producer of what are called bacteriocids, natural antibiotics that kill unwanted species, particularly fecal microbes. That's one of the things I talk a lot about. That is the overproliferation, the excessive proliferation both in the colon and in the small intestine, small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, or SIBO we say, SIBO, those are mostly due to overproliferation of fecal microbial species. These are species like E. coli, uh Pseudomonas, Proteus, uh Campylobacter, Citrobacter, a whole long list of these things, as well as some of the so-called gram-positive species, enterococcus, streptococcus, staphylococcus. So the bacteriocins of Bacillus subtlis are fantastic, wide-spectrum natural antibiotics. These bacteriocins, that is, natural antibiotics produced by microbes, are smarter than prescription antibiotics, because prescription antibiotics are more or less indiscriminate. Yes, they can kill an infection-causing microbe like E. coli, you know, urinary tract infection, but they also kill hundreds of beneficial species. That's why many people have lost all their lactobacillus species, all their bifidobacteria species, fecalobacterium species, acromancia, rominicacacia, numerous species that you should have. So what we're trying to do is restore these microbes. And one of the ways to do it at very high counts, we can't restore all the hundreds we've lost, but we can at least start with the most important microbes of all that we call keystone or foundational. Because one of the benefits of restoring these keystone species like lactobacillus rotori, it sets the stage that allows the return of many other microbes. It's not quite clear how that happens, but it does. And so, what yes, I call it yogurt, it's not yogurt, you can't buy it in the store. It's nothing like the stuff in the store. We're not gonna add high fructose corn syrup, xanthan gum, gelin, gum, all the garbage that's put into conventional yogurt, and they ferment that stuff very briefly, typically six hours, 12 hours tops, meaning they have very low microbial numbers. We're going to ferment without the junk, right? We're gonna ferment for a prolonged period to get very high microbial numbers because you're gonna go to battle. Those microbes are going to go to battle against the invading microbes, the unwanted invading microbes in your small intestine and colon, of which there are hundreds of trillions. So if you're gonna go to go to battle against those guys, you want to go with a big army, right? You can't go with maybe a couple of billion from a probiotic. We're gonna go with species like Lactobissus rotari and some others that at very high numbers, we typically get about 300 billion per half cup or 120 milliliter serving, and species chosen for specific effects, like the biphyta bacteria infantis for childhood development, like the Lactobacillus crispatis for vaginal health, or bacillus coagulins for better recovery, accelerated recovery after strenuous exercise. We're going to pick microbes for specific purposes. Rotorite, gastride, bacillus subtletis, I choose because of their capacity to colonize a small intestine and produce bactericins. That's my recipe for SIBO yogurt, in case you want that. So, anyway, that's what I mean by yogurt. Confusing to many people, I know. And I kind of regret calling it yogurt. It's because it's not really yogurt, but what do you call it? Fermented dairy, I suppose. But but now you know what I mean when I say yogurt. Now, if you like this idea of fermenting specific human sourced microbes for specific effects, or even broader effects as well, take a look at my super gut book. That's where I introduce all these ideas, including the Lactobassil's Rotorite and SIBO yogurt recipes, as well as my blog, WilliamDavesmd.com, with thousands of blog posts.