The Gut-Brain Connection with Dr. Shawn Talbott, Following Your Gut Podcast #25

Roland Pankewich hosts Dr. Shawn Talbott at the NANP conference, where they dive into the science of the gut-brain axis. Dr. Shawn explores the staying power of peptides, the role of the microbiome in mental health, and the importance of dietary fiber diversity. They discuss how short-chain fatty acids, signaling molecules, and digestion impact mood and behavior. Learn about practical steps for improving gut health, the significance of probiotic strain specificity, and how lifestyle choices influence your overall well-being in this enlightening conversation.

About the Guest:

Dr. Shawn Talbott is a renowned expert in nutritional biochemistry and nutritional psychology, which are fields that explore the impact of nutrition and diet on mental health. With a PhD in nutritional biochemistry, Dr. Talbott has dedicated nearly 30 years to studying the intricate connections between the gut and brain, known as the gut-brain axis, investigating how nutritional elements influence human psychology and physiology. He has also published extensively on the subject and conducts seminars that dive into the interplay of emotions, behavior, and biochemistry.

Explore more of Dr. Shawn Talbott’s insights and education through his website: doctalbott.com, where you can find courses on mental wellness coaching and other free resources.

Episode Summary:

Dive into an enlightening episode of the “Following Your GUT” podcast featuring Dr. Shawn Talbott during the NANP Healcon conference. In this engaging conversation, host Roland Pankewich and Dr. Talbott discuss the rising interest in peptides, the nutritional psychology realm, the gut-brain axis, and how our gut health significantly impacts our mental and physical wellbeing. Dr. Talbott, a leader in nutritional biochemistry, sheds light on how our diet, particularly fiber intake, can either disrupt or enhance this vital connection, reflecting on emerging science and its implications for mental health.

In this episode, you’ll uncover the pivotal role fiber diversity plays in nurturing a balanced gut microbiome and how short-chain fatty acids serve as critical signaling molecules impacting everything from metabolism to immune health. Dr. Talbott emphasizes the importance of dietary variety and strategic supplement use in supporting gut health. He shares his knowledge on the significance of maintaining a gut environment conducive to beneficial bacteria while explaining behavioral and mood disturbances caused by gut imbalances. An exploration of probiotics, enzyme use, and the broader picture of gut-brain interplay awaits listeners seeking to enhance both physical health and mental wellness.

Key Takeaways:

• Peptides are a significant area of interest, and there’s growing research surrounding their uses and regulation.
• The gut is referred to as the “second brain,” where it plays a critical role in producing neurotransmitters that influence mood and behavior.
• Dietary fiber diversity is crucial for microbiome health, impacting mood, metabolism, and immune function.
• Dr. Talbott recommends supplementing strategically to support gut health—such as using enzymes and probiotics with specific strain designations.
• Behavioral changes and gut health are intricately linked, and understanding this relationship can guide better health decisions.

“The microbiome of our digestive tract is like the soil of our body." 

Transcript

0:00:02 Roland Pankewich: Welcome back to the following your GUT podcast live at the NANP conference healcon out here in Bellevue, Washington. And I’m very excited to sit down with Dr. Sean Talbot. Dr. Yeah, Dr. Sean, I got excited there. I fumbled it.

0:00:16 Dr. Shawn Talbott: Thanks for being here. It’s great to join you. Yeah.

0:00:19 Roland Pankewich: And you are one of the speakers at the conference, correct?

0:00:21 Dr. Shawn Talbott: Right, yeah. So this year I’m talking about peptides, you know, a very not interesting, controversial area right now.

0:00:30 Roland Pankewich: It seems to be kind of a, I don’t want to say a flavor of the year, but peptides are here right now, whereas other things are not quite as hotly talked about.

0:00:38 Dr. Shawn Talbott: That’s a great way to think about it. Yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s a little, it’s a little bit like, kind of like fashion. Right. It’s like this is the hot, you know, new shiny thing that everybody’s talking about. Will it last? I like, I think it’s got staying power because, like, there’s some changing regulations and, you know, RFK Jr. Is behind them and, you know, so we’ll, we’ll, we’ll see where it all goes.

0:00:57 Roland Pankewich: I’m with you. I think peptides are going to stay. Maybe they won’t be quite as interesting in five years, but they’re always going to have relevant.

0:01:03 Dr. Shawn Talbott: Right, exactly.

0:01:03 Roland Pankewich: Okay, so, but you’re not necessarily only about peptides. You have a very wide cast net of expertise.

0:01:09 Dr. Shawn Talbott: Yeah.

0:01:10 Roland Pankewich: And you do everything from psychology to physiology. And your focus is something about the second brain, which is music to my ears because we are a digestive health specialist.

0:01:20 Dr. Shawn Talbott: Yes, exactly, exactly.

0:01:22 Roland Pankewich: But when you hear second brain, how do you frame that?

0:01:25 Dr. Shawn Talbott: Yeah, so I frame it from a biochemical perspective. Right. So my PhD is in nutritional biochemistry. The kind of work that I’ve done for the last almost 30 years now is sometimes called nutritional psychology, which didn’t exist when I was in grad school. Right. It’s a whole new field. This idea of your food and your nutrients and your enzymes changing what happens in the gut and that changing your psychology.

0:01:49 Dr. Shawn Talbott: So a lot of what I talk about is the fact that, you know, how you feel is not just in your head, it’s also in your gut. And the gut is a second brain that’s producing 90% of our serotonin for happiness, 70% of our dopamine for motivation, probably 50% of our GABA, the neurotransmitter that relaxes us when we’re stressed out, and a whole, a whole range of other things. Your gut produces peptides. Your Gut produces short chain fatty acids. All these signaling molecules that come from your gut will permeate out into the rest of your body and will have effects on your mood, your stress levels, your sleep quality, maybe even your longevity.

0:02:26 Dr. Shawn Talbott: So it’s a really fascinating area that, you know, a lot of what I talk about, it comes back to the gut and we have to make sure the gut is functioning properly.

0:02:35 Roland Pankewich: I mean, it’s everything that we echo in a variety of different ways in terms of what we talk about. And functionally, I think most people nowadays experience gut issues, right? And I would say there’s probably a mirror in some dysregulation of behavioral patterns, emotional dysregulations, even just general satisfaction with the life that they live. How do you start educating people on figuring out what might be going wrong with their second brain?

0:03:00 Dr. Shawn Talbott: Yeah, well, you, you just said it really, really succinctly. You know, when I talk about the gut as a second brain and the fact that it signals your first brain, people will sometimes go, well, this probably isn’t for me because I don’t really have gut problems. You know, people think like, oh, I have to have these big, I have to have heartburn or constipation or diarrhea or irritable bowel syndrome or something like that, right? It’s not these, like these, these big life changing, life interrupting kinds of ailments that you need to have. It could be the fact that if your digestion is not right or your motility is not right, your energy isn’t quite as good as you want it to be, or your mood isn’t quite there, or you’re, or you’re a little bit brain foggy. You know, those are all things that I think a lot of people don’t realize that those problems are emanating from their gut. And they just think, you know, oh, well, I’m not getting enough sleep or I’m not eating a perfect diet. You know, I get too many processed foods and not enough salads or I have a lot of stress in my life, right? And that’s very logical.

0:03:56 Dr. Shawn Talbott: Those things can affect. But if you can get your gut balanced, it can, it can change everything. Or let me, let me, let me say it another way, actually. You can be doing all the right things, right? You can be, you know, eating the salads and not the processed foods and you can be getting your eight hours of sleep and you can be doing all the things that you’re supposed to be doing, moving your body every day, but you’re not getting the effects that you think you should be getting, you’re not getting the benefits. You’re like, why am I spinning my wheels? Why am I stuck?

0:04:22 Dr. Shawn Talbott: It is because your gut is out of balance. You might have leaky gut, you might have poor digestion, you might have poor absorption, you know, so we go and we focus on the gut and then people come back. Like the one. One of the funnest comments that I get back from people is that once we solve their gut issues and we get their gut brain access signaling appropriately, they’ll come back and they’ll go, oh my gosh, I lost weight, or my energy is back, or my brain fog is gone. And I didn’t even know I had brain fog until it went away, you know, and they think that it was just the gut change.

0:04:51 Dr. Shawn Talbott: But what I like people to understand is that once you make that gut change, it gives traction to all the other things that you’re doing, you know, so it really is this like multifactorial kind of a system approach. Yeah.

0:05:04 Roland Pankewich: Because one thing will affect all things in physiology. What’s happening in the gut is not isolated to being problematic, only there.

0:05:12 Dr. Shawn Talbott Right, exactly.

0:05:12 Roland Pankewich: Connected to everything via all of these other axes. Talking about the gut brain axes, I’d be very interested to know, this is, in your opinion, or at least from your observation, how does this gut brain axis dysregulation begin in most people? What do you see clinically, but also from a research perspective?

0:05:29 Dr. Shawn Talbott: Yeah, I think the, I think the main place where it starts for most people is lack of fiber, you know, like, you know. Yeah, so that, that’s probably our biggest nutrient deficiency that most people in the Western world have. You know, the, you know, if you look at, if you look at the recommendations, you know, US, Canada, Europe, it’s, it’s around 30, 40 grams per per day of fiber recommended. Right. So let’s say 30 because it’ll make the math easy.

0:05:54 Dr. Shawn Talbott: In the United States, most people are getting around 15, so half of the recommendation, and a lot of people are getting a lot less than that. And the reason for it is that, you know, we’re not eating fruits and vegetables, we’re not eating whole grains, we’re eating lots of processed food which is devoid of fiber. And if we’re not eating enough fiber, it’s starving our microbiome. The bacteria in our gut want fiber as their primary fuel source. And if we’re not getting fiber, they can’t do their job, so they can’t make short chain fatty acids.

So then we have problems with our metabolism and we have problems with our immune system. They can’t make, you know, all the neurotransmitters that we need. Right. So we’re, we’re not getting enough fiber. We’re starving. Our microbiome, our microbiome can’t make those signals. And so now we feel stressed out, we feel fatigued, we feel brain fog, we feel poor sleep quality. And that’s just sort of cascades.

So is the solution just magically eat more fiber? Yeah, yes and no. You know, there’s also, there’s phytonutrients that we’re not getting. There’s fermented foods that do a whole nother set of things for the, for the microbiome, but it’s, it’s the fact that we’re eating too many processed foods.

0:06:58 Roland Pankewich: Now, in regards to fiber, is it simply about, about quantity or is it about diversity and types of fiber?

0:07:05 Dr. Shawn Talbott: It really is diversity and types.

0:07:06 Roland Pankewich: Can you go into that a little bit?

0:07:07 Dr. Shawn Talbott: Yeah, so, so one of the, one of the funnest things that I do with my students is, is we, is we do what’s called the 30 plant challenge, which I’m sure you’ve heard of. I heard, yeah. So 30 plant challenge is based on this idea that you’ll eat 30 different plant foods in a seven day period. And people always wonder like, where did that number come from? Why, why 30? Why not 35? Why not 25? Big research project called the American Gut Project analyzed the microbiomes of thousands and thousands, hundreds of thousands of people, including mine. Did you ever submit a sample to.

0:07:36 Roland Pankewich: I did not, No. I was rejected because I was Canadian.

0:07:39 Dr. Shawn Talbott: There you go. So looking across all these hundreds of thousands of people, they’re looking at microbiome diversity, which is generally like the thing that we want people to do. Right. More diversity is going to be a better thing.

0:07:52 Roland Pankewich: And diversity is defined as a greater swath of species.

0:07:56 Dr. Shawn Talbott: Yes, exactly, exactly. So think, think of, you think of your, your microbiome being a rainforest instead of a monoculture. You know, that’s a, if you have a, if you have a diversity, you’re going to be producing lots and lots of different signaling molecules and that’s going to be associated with good mood and resilience and mental fitness and things like that. So how do we get that good microbiome diversity?

We eat a diversity of plant foods, which gives us a diversity of different fibers. So when people hear me say eat more fiber and you need 30 grams or you know, we probably actually need more like 50 or 60 or 100. Right. So you know you’re going to want

0:08:30 Roland Pankewich: to slowly, slowly move up crushing Metamucil.

0:08:34 Dr. Shawn Talbott: No, Exactly. Well, that’s what people make, the mistake. They go, oh, I’ll just, I’ll just do some psyllium fiber or I’ll just do some oat bran or I’ll just do some.

0:08:41 Roland Pankewich: You get severely constipated.

0:08:43 Dr. Shawn Talbott: Yeah, you’ll get severely constipated and you will not get the diversity that you’re looking for because each of those gut microbes likes a different kind of fiber. And so if you can, if you can get a diversity of fiber in your diet by eating 30 different plants, you’ll get a diversity of microbes and you’ll produce a diversity of these signaling molecules. If you only eat one kind of fiber, going to grow preferentially the, the one kind or the few kinds microbes that like that fiber. It’s kind of like if you were, if you were a zookeeper, right, and you have to take care of all these different animals.

You know, the zebras eat a different kind of diet than the elephants and they eat a different diet than the lions and they eat a different diet than the chimpanzees and etc. Etc. The microbiome is the same way. So we want to give, you know, we want to give some leafy greens and we want to give some whole grains and we want to give some know, et cetera, et cetera. Those are all different fiber sources that feed different microbes and you get different signaling molecules.

0:09:38 Roland Pankewich: Speaking of signaling molecules, you mentioned short chain fatty acids. Yeah, people know about these things. The scfa, it’s things that get thrown around a lot. Would you be able to go into a little deeper detail in terms of explaining them and how they play a role as a signaling molecule? Because I think this is misunderstood to the degree that it’s actually detrimental not to understand this.

0:09:59 Dr. Shawn Talbott: Right. So short chain fatty acids. So if we have a deficiency of fiber, we have a deficiency of that, of that fermentable substrate, right? The bacteria. So we don’t, we don’t digest fiber. Right. Fiber is not good for us.

0:10:11 Roland Pankewich: We don’t have beta, we can’t keep the beta bonds.

0:10:13 Dr. Shawn Talbott: Right, exactly. But the fiber is good for the microbiome. So you know, and if the microbiome is happy, then, then we’re happy as the, as the host organism. The, the, the side stream, the weights product, if you will, of the, the bacteria working on that fiber is these short chain fatty acids. And so you Know, I also joke with my students, you know, they’ll say, well, what does short chain fatty acids do?

0:10:35 Dr. Shawn Talbott: And I’ll say, well, what do you want them to do? Because they do everything. They help your blood sugar control through, through making your insulin more sensitive. They are good for your immune system, they help improve your gut integrity. So they reduce leaky gut. They just, they have so many effects. And so if you, if you’re deficient in them because you’re not eating enough fiber, you’re deficient in all those beneficial effects. So now your immune system might be overactive or underactive. So there’s a role of short chain fatty acids in preventing autoimmune system diseases and making sure your immune system is resilient enough to fight off the next virus that comes, you know, that comes down the pike.

0:11:14 Dr. Shawn Talbott: They’re. Yeah, so they do, they do lots of different things. So there’s a, there’s this idea in the, in the nutraceutical world that, okay, if short chain fatty acids are so great, why don’t I just supplement with

0:11:24 Roland Pankewich: that supplemental butyrate capsule?

0:11:26 Dr. Shawn Talbott: Yeah, exactly. And you can do that. And you know, you might take the approach of, of taking some short chain fatty acids and eating more fiber, diverse fiber, so you can make more short chain fatty acids. Right. So doing it, doing it from both perspectives.

0:11:40 Roland Pankewich: Interesting. I like that philosophy because if you look at the concept of a supplement,

0:11:45 Dr. Shawn Talbott: it’s in the name. Yeah, Right.

0:11:47 Roland Pankewich: People associate the supplement as the fix. But ideally what you do is you use the supplement to help shore up the weak area.

0:11:53 Dr. Shawn Talbott: Yes, 100%.

0:11:54 Roland Pankewich: And also use the well roundedness of behavioral habitual changes to make your lifestyle more conducive to fixing the thing. It’s really going to have the staying power.

0:12:03 Dr. Shawn Talbott: Yep, exactly. And I’m a huge fan of supplements. Right. When you have good research behind good quality supplements, they can be used like, I kind of describe it as like at the front end of your regimen or the back end of your regimen. Right. So the back end would be, you know, your, your, you’re having a good diet, you’re moving your body, you’re getting your sleep, you’re hydrating, you’re doing all the things.

And then the supplement is like the last piece of the puzzle to sort of bring it all together. It can also in some cases be the first piece of the puzzle where you have somebody who is really stressed out or they’re not sleeping well, or they’re, they’re, they’re not eating a good diet. Right. Because they’re you know, they’re, they’re getting stress eating and they’re drawn to fast food and things like that. So sometimes you can use a supplement at the front end of that to help them feel better.

You know, you can lower their stress. And if you lower their stress, maybe they’re more inclined to eat better or you can increase their energy and they’re more inclined to move their body or you can relax them at night and they’re more inclined to get a good night’s sleep. Right. And so if you do that the right way and do it strategically, right. So you’re not saying take this supplement and it’s going to solve all these problems.

You’re saying take this supplement and it’s going to make you more likely to make the lifestyle choices that we all need, we’re supposed to make. Right. And, and this is like gives you more bandwidth, so to speak, to make that choice. Then you, you know, you use it, you use it in that fashion. So now people are making better choices.

0:13:22 Roland Pankewich: I like that concept of strategic use because I’ve worked with people in the past and I’m sure you’ve had the scenario too. They come in with like 13 bottles

0:13:31 Dr. Shawn Talbott: of something different things.

0:13:33 Roland Pankewich: And my question is always, I don’t say this out loud, but in my thoughts, how do you know which thing is doing what in this context? Relation. But if you have these things that you’re just gathering together, Right. What’s the outcome of one plus one plus all those things? Maybe it might not be what you think it does.

0:13:51 Dr. Shawn Talbott: Right, Exactly.

0:13:52 Roland Pankewich: Having some modicum of strategic.

0:13:55 Dr. Shawn Talbott: Yeah, exactly.

0:13:56 Roland Pankewich: And understanding. Okay, I’ve added this variable. I’m going to look at the outcome. Did it get better? Did it get worse?

0:14:02 Dr. Shawn Talbott: Do I need to tweak here? Do I need to tweak there? Yep, exactly.

0:14:05 Roland Pankewich: And that’s not too dissimilar from the approach to fiber.

0:14:07 Dr. Shawn Talbott: Right.

0:14:07 Roland Pankewich: It’s like vary the different foods. There’s fermentable and non fermentable fibers and different foods. Getting a variance in the diet is probably going to help the body in its development of what you’re wanting as an outcome.

0:14:20 Dr. Shawn Talbott: Yep. And one of the places where I think like enzymes fit right in there. Right. Because then what we’re trying to do with people is say like, hey, we need you to eat more fiber. We need you to eat these 30 different plants. Right. And probably you’re eating three plants right now. We need you to eat more protein. We need you to eat all these foods that you’re not Used to. Sometimes you’ll get people who, who will get very enthusiastic about it and they’ll make those dietary choices and they’ll come back and they go, you know, I actually felt worse. You know, I got constipated, I got diarrhea, I got some bloating, I got. Because they don’t have the machinery there to digest all these wonderful nutrients and absorb all these wonderful nutrients that we’re recommending.

That’s where sometimes enzymes can sort of help them ease into the program, so to speak. Right. So they can get more, more bang for their buck.

0:15:07 Roland Pankewich: Well, that’s a very nice segue because I wanted to ask you, you know, we did the, the fiber, the short chain fatty acids and the signaling. I would imagine digestion plays a huge role of the second brain dysregulation. What is that mechanism that you see dysfunctional digestion creating inside of the gut that then creates the access dysregulation?

0:15:23Dr. Shawn Talbott: Yeah, exactly. So, so where to start? If you’re not, if you’re not digesting appropriately, if you’re not absorbing appropriately, if you’re not moving the food through the digestive tract with the right speed, right motility, you’re not going to, you’re not going to get the nutrients that you need, right. And that’s going to change the transit time of the food going through is going to change the bacterial profile, it’s going to change the inflammatory context.

I talk about the environment of the gut. Enzymes can be really good for helping to set the environment of the gut. So think, think of the gut now in this, in the sense of it’s a greenhouse, right. Where you’re trying to grow these plants, the microbes, and you need to have the right environment, you need to have the right level of acid, you need to have the right level of base, you need to have the right atmosphere, so to speak, so that you grow the good bacteria and you maybe not necessarily kill off the bad bacteria, but, but at least you make it less hospitable for E. Coli and salmonella and things like that.

0:16:27 Roland Pankewich: It’s like a terrain theory.

0:16:28 Dr. Shawn Talbott: It’s a terrain theory, exactly. Yeah.

0:16:31 Roland Pankewich: Interesting, because a lot of people have this perspective in, I don’t like using the word alternative medicine, but it’s functional naturalistic practices that if there’s things there, you just gotta kill em.

0:16:44 Dr. Shawn Talbott: Right.

0:16:44 Roland Pankewich: Gotta drop carpet bombs on the critters and get rid of them. You’re advocating that might not be the best approach. Yeah, I’m interested in knowing the philosophy behind that. I’m not agreeing or disagreeing with you. I’m genuinely interested.

0:16:56 Dr. Shawn Talbott: Yeah. So, so when we say good bacteria and bad bacteria, that’s a, that’s an oversimplification, Right?

0:17:01 Roland Pankewich: Contextual statement.

0:17:02 Dr. Shawn Talbott: Yeah. So it’s not that like, you know, the reason we call the good guys the good guys is because they’re producing the signaling molecules we want. Right. They’re producing serotonin, so we’re happier, and short chain fatty acids that we talked about. Right. So we want, we want more of those. Right. The bad guys. The reason we call them bad guys is because they tend to produce inflammatory markers. Right. They’re producing a cytokine that we don’t want that’s going to either block one of our neurotransmitters or it’s going to cause an inflammatory issue on its own.

But sometimes we want some of those quote unquote, bad guys because they will take a place that will displace a really bad guy. So you might have a bacteria that isn’t great. It’s not doing anything good for you, but it’s not really doing anything really detrimental. Right.

0:17:46 Roland Pankewich: It has a neutral commensal bacteria.

0:17:48 Dr. Shawn Talbott: Exactly right. So it can, in the, in the, in the context of that entire diversity, it’s not doing you anything bad, but it’s blocking a really bad guy that could come in and completely decimate everything.

0:18:00 Roland Pankewich: You know, just give it to my head as an analogy. You know, in like a neighborhood, a person who doesn’t participate in the, the garage sales, like they don’t participate in the community, but they’re to themselves, they keep their house clean, they’re that person.

0:18:12 Dr. Shawn Talbott: Yes, yes, exactly.

0:18:13 Roland Pankewich: That’s just Joe down the road. He’s waves.

0:18:15 Dr. Shawn Talbott: But Joe’s not going to mug you,

0:18:17 Roland Pankewich: you know, running a meth lab.

0:18:18 Dr. Shawn Talbott: And it basically. 100%, that’s a great way to think of it.

0:18:22 Roland Pankewich: Okay, so that’s what the placeholder of those commensals are essentially doing.

0:18:27 Dr. Shawn Talbott: Right.

0:18:27 Roland Pankewich: They’re stopping the potential, the real pathogen from coming in and wreaking havoc within the gut.

0:18:33 Dr. Shawn Talbott: Right, right, exactly.

0:18:35 Roland Pankewich: Interesting.

0:18:35 Dr. Shawn Talbott: Exactly. And when you have the right environment in the gut, your, your gut is more likely to have that diversity, you know, and you know, microbiome is a very confusing area of science right now. The one thing that we, that anybody who studies the microbiome agrees on is the fact that more diversity is generally a good thing.

0:18:54 Roland Pankewich: Yeah.

0:18:54 Dr. Shawn Talbott: Right. So like, that can. That always is sort of my guiding light when I’m making recommendations either to my students or my clients to say you know what? 30 plant challenge. You know, get a diversity. Make sure you have the right environment. You know, make sure you’re doing your fiber and your fermented foods and your flavonoids. And when you just take, like, a few little principles like that, you can really make a lot of wonderful benefits in the right direction.

0:19:18 Roland Pankewich: And to the point that you made about eradicating bacteria potentially being detrimental, the thing that I always think about is, so you want to kill some bacteria with herbs, antibiotics, whatever. How do you know which guys are getting wiped out?

0:19:32 Dr. Shawn Talbott: You don’t always. Right. Yeah.

0:19:34 Roland Pankewich: What if you’re wiping out some of the keystones that really anchor the community in there?

0:19:38 Dr. Shawn Talbott: Yep.

0:19:39 Roland Pankewich: I would assume based upon a little bit of studying the speed of replication of certain strains, the ones that are more fragile and susceptible, which might be the ones you want to keep. Theoretically, if you go on a killing rampage, you might do more detriment than benefit in the long run because pathogens seem to be a little bit more adaptable.

0:19:59 Dr. Shawn Talbott: Yeah. That’s why the pathogens, they’re. Exactly. Yeah. They’re a little more resilient in certain ways. Right. And the fact that we like the world that we live in right now where there’s so much processed food, if you go through, you know, an antibiotic, you know, regimen, you kill off, you know, let’s say. Let’s say that it’s just even. Right. It kills off the good guys and the bad guys at the same time. Right. So you’ve just killed off, you know, 50% of your. Of your diversity.

0:20:25 Dr. Shawn Talbott: The world that we live in and the processed food that we’re exposed to, you will preferentially grow the kinds of bacteria back that we don’t want. Right. Unless you’re very persistent and precise about saying, oh, I just went through this antibiotic regimen. Now I really need to make sure that I’m getting my 30 plants and I’m getting my fermented foods and I’m putting my enzymes back, and I’m, you know, getting all the phytonutrients that I need. Right. If you’re not.

0:20:49 Dr. Shawn Talbott: If you’re not dialed in on that, you’re gonna. You’re gonna. You’re gonna have a. A problem with your diversity, problem with your signals, problem with your mental wellbeing.

0:20:58 Roland Pankewich: I. I think a lot of people, after a course of antibiotics, can create insidious problems like candida and yeast overgrowth or parasitic.

0:21:08 Dr. Shawn Talbott: Yep.

0:21:08 Roland Pankewich: Because the terrain isn’t all that resilient in that moment. And then, like, Oh, I want something sugary. Oh, I want something.

0:21:16 Dr. Shawn Talbott: And it’s. And that creates a, this vicious cycle. If you want something sugary and then you grow a population of bacteria that thrives on sugar, and then when they get hungry, they’ll send a signal to the brain that you interpret as something sugary would be great right now, you know, and it just, it perpetuates itself task.

0:21:31 Roland Pankewich: Who’s really in control?

0:21:32 Dr. Shawn Talbott: Totally. Yes. 100%.

0:21:34 Roland Pankewich: That’s wild. So do you have a antibiotic protocol as a guideline that you suggest to your patients or your students or anything? Not some strategies?

0:21:43 Dr. Shawn Talbott: Yeah. So, so an antibiotic protocol is to use a lot of spices, you know, so spices count in your, in your 30 plant challenge. So if you’re, if you’re liberally using spices, you know, oregano and basil and garlic, and, you know, all the things that are probably already in your spice cabinet, those have, how can I say this, like, light antibiotic effects, but probably not in the way that most people think right there. You’d have to take a pretty big dose of, of these spices to have a killing effect.

But they help set up the environment of the gut. So that environment is, you know, the right acid base levels and the right integrity and things like that. This is also where enzymes can come in. Where, you know, we’re using combinations of enzymes and motility enhancers and things like that to make sure that the food is moving through the right way. And as a result of that, you’re, you’re preferentially growing the good guys and, and, and dissuading the growth of the bad guys.

0:22:37 Roland Pankewich: Yeah, you want to make the environment inhospitable for the bad guys. I mean, it’s a simple concept. And, and what I agree with what you said is we know a lot about microbiome science, but we don’t know as much as I think people make it out to be from a microscopic activity level.

0:22:54 Dr. Shawn Talbott: Right.

0:22:54 Roland Pankewich: Don’t have the sensitivity of diagnostics to go in and say this plus that equals this out.

0:22:59 Dr. Shawn Talbott: Right.

0:23:00 Roland Pankewich: The same for everyone.

0:23:01 Dr. Shawn Talbott: And part of, part of the reason is, you know, you think about the trillions of bacteria that are there, it. They’re not just doing one thing. You know, you might have a bacteria that is making something that it doesn’t. Look, we don’t use, but one of the other bacteria uses to, to fuel their metabolism, and then they’ll make something we do use. So all the different permutations of how they’re communicating with each other and facilitating the growth or, or Interfering with the growth of their, their, their community members.

Right. That like, we are, we are years away, even using AI, we are years away from understanding all those communication permutations.

0:23:42 Roland Pankewich: Yeah. I always think about it being like its own little universe.

0:23:45 Dr. Shawn Talbott: It is. Very much so.

0:23:47 Roland Pankewich: We don’t understand how our universe works, let alone one shrunken down to a small model.

0:23:52 Dr. Shawn Talbott: Yep.

0:23:52 Roland Pankewich: It’s fascinating stuff.

0:23:54 Dr. Shawn Talbott: Exactly. And then even, even just inside the body, you know, it’s, you know, I specialize in, in the, in the gut brain axis, but there’s a gut lung axis and a gut liver axis and a gut skin axis. And, and it’s all these signals that are going to and fro and it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s fascinating. As a scientist, it’s a great place to be in learning.

0:24:14 Roland Pankewich: Yeah.

0:24:15 Sean Talbot: You’re learning something new every day, it seems like. But it also can be very confusing from a consumer perspective of like, okay, what do I even do?

0:24:23 Roland Pankewich: You know, when people are overwhelmed, they end up doing nothing.

0:24:27 Dr. Shawn Talbott: Nothing. Yes.

0:24:28 Roland Pankewich: Do what they’ve always done because habit is easier to maintain. I want to shift gears on you here, and I want to ask something that I’m genuinely interested in. And I hope if it’s beyond the scope of what’s able to be answered, please be forthright. But when it comes to the gut brain axis and connecting into the behavioral science, do you observe any patterns that exist where it connects from functional disturbance to behavioral outcome? An example might be if someone suffers from anxiety. I see these patterns in them. If someone suffers from dopamine deficiency syndrome, I see these. What are things that you found?

0:25:02 Dr. Shawn Talbott: Yeah, so as a, as a biochemist. Right.

0:25:04 Roland Pankewich: Yeah.

0:25:05 Dr. Shawn Talbott: One of the things that I say to my students all the time is that biochemistry drives behavior. So if somebody is, is presenting with some sort of a psychological disturbance, right. They’re depressed, they’re, they have anxiety, ptsd, you know, garden variety brain fog. Like any of those things that they’re experiencing, there’s a biochemical reason for it. And so that’s why like in my, in my seminars, I’m always saying, like, okay, what’s underlying that? What’s underlying that? What’s underlying that? So an example is like, you know, you could be, you could be depressed, right. You have someone with depression and the knee jerk reaction would be, oh, serotonin problem. Right, Serotonin problem. Let’s give them Prozac or one of those style drugs, increase their serotonin and they’ll, and they’ll feel they’ll feel less sad.

That only works for 20, 30% of people. Why is that? Is it because serotonin is not involved? No, it’s because serotonin is only one piece of this overall communication network that goes all the way from your brain all the way down to the gut. So it could be a serotonin problem. And if you solve that problem with a prozextile drug, hooray. Right. There’s people who benefit from that. But it could be that, that serotonin is fine, but it’s being blocked by a cortisol signal or an inflammatory signal.

So your serotonin is fine. Increasing your serotonin is not going to solve your problem. Your problem is to lower your cortisol or lower your inflammatory molecules and then the serotonin hits its target and you, and you feel happier. Well, what’s driving that cortisol or what’s driving that inflammation? It could be your immune system is out of balance. You could have some autoimmune system thing going on. Your immune system is agitated. It’s increasing your inflammation, and that’s the problem.

0:26:45 Sean Talbot: So, okay, let’s get your inflammation down. We could, you know, give someone fish oil or curcumin or, you know, any variety of anti inflammatory things. Well, what’s, where’s that inflammation coming from? Maybe it’s coming from your immune system. So maybe we can do immune system balancers, we can do beta glucans or something. Well, what’s, what’s causing your immune system to be agitated? It could be that you have leaky gut.

So maybe we need to, you know, solve something there with your tight junctions. Well, what’s causing your gut to be leaky? It could be the environment of the gut which we were talking about. It could be you have too many of the bad guys, not enough the good guys. It could be your, you know, you have, you have, you know, too much inflammation in your gut. So it’s, it’s this idea of root cause, root cause, root cause, root cause. And the thing that one of the reasons I talk about the microbiome so much, that’s about as root as we can get right now, you know, and five or 10 years ago, we weren’t talking about the microbiome. Five or years, five or 10 years from now, we might be talking about something else that’s, you know, underlying the microbiome that we don’t know about yet.

0:27:46 Roland Pankewich: There’s this term called the psychobiome that’s been emerging over the last little bit. And I think these New frontiers of science are exciting, but we’re at the point of like, oh, that’s a thing. Where do we start with it? Yeah, but I agree with you, in five or 10 years, it could be that you’re being able to influence the behavioral aspect of a person through shifting the microbiome patternistically.

0:28:08 Dr. Shawn Talbott: Yes, exactly, exactly. Yep. And, and you know, we are getting to the point now where we can point to specific strains of bacteria. We can say, this one we know makes a lot of gaba. So this could be an anti stress bacteria, this one makes a lot of serotonin, this one could be an antidepressant bacteria and start to, you know, combine those and you know, you know, they might look good in a petri dish, they might look good in an animal model, they might may or may not work in a human model. You know, so that’s, we’re still early days in all of this.

0:28:38 Roland Pankewich: I love that you said that because that’s one of the hallmarks of what we do with our probiotics. We have a strain designation on every micro we put in our bottles. And even at this conference people are asking, so what makes you guys different? I always go there first. There’s nothing else to talk about our deep delivery technology, but at the very least in isolation, we know what the microbes characteristics are.

0:28:56 Roland Pankewich: And I always use strain designation as an example of giving someone a true identity because I know you as Sean, but you’ve told me you’re also a scientist, a researcher, a clinician. So the strain designation gives that microbe a true identity. Whereas if you’re taking something that only goes to the genius level.

0:29:12 Dr. Shawn Talbott: Yep.

0:29:13 Roland Pankewich: How many Lactobacillus acidophilus.

0:29:15 Dr. Shawn Talbott: Right, right, exactly, exactly. That’s, that is a, that’s a soapbox. I get up on a lot. And if you don’t know the strain identity. Right. Strain specificity, you really don’t know what that bacteria is supposed to do. So an example that I’ll use is Lactobacillus rhamnosus. Right. There are some Lactobacillus rhamnosis strains that are good for constipation. There are others that are good for diarrhea, there’s others that are good for anti stress, there’s others that are good for recurrent vaginal yeast infections.

And if you just said, I’m gonna get a Lactobacillus rhamnosus and you don’t know which of those strains you’re getting, you might be getting an opposite effect. You might be getting some Sort of an effect that, that is completely different than what you’re looking for. Or you might not be getting any effect at all.

0:30:00 Roland Pankewich: You know, washing money burn up in the air.

0:30:02 Dr. Shawn Talbott: Yep.

0:30:02 Roland Pankewich: And then being discouraged and then say,

0:30:05 Dr. Shawn Talbott: all probiotics don’t work.

0:30:05 Roland Pankewich: Exactly. Tell everyone. Yeah, it doesn’t do anything.

0:30:08 Dr. Shawn Talbott: Exactly.

0:30:08 Roland Pankewich: I love that we went down that rabbit hole. I love the happy accidents just falling into places.

0:30:13 Dr. Shawn Talbott: Okay.

0:30:13 Roland Pankewich: I want to end with some aspects of practicality, if we can can. So people who listen to this, they’re hearing everything. They’re going, I love what this guy’s talking about. Where do I, so how do I know if I’m dealing with something behaviorally? How do I get something assessed? What can I do to determine a baseline? What can I do next? How would you guide people into terms of taking their own action here?

0:30:34 Dr. Shawn Talbott: Yeah, so the, the easiest thing for people to do is going to be to eat fewer processed foods. Right. Easier said than done. In the world we live in, do what I call the three Fs, which is eat more fiber, flavonoids, fermented foods. And that can be really easy. It can be really fun for people to just sort of like. It’s easier for people to add things into their diet than to take things away. So I would rather somebody add a handful of blueberries than to take away something that they, you know, that they’re currently taking. Right. So, you know, try to do those three Fs. And then from there, you know, if you’re gonna go into the supplement realm, which I, which I, you know, I’m a big advocate of, make sure that when you’re looking at a supplement, you’re asking the companies that produce it, what strains are you using and why?

How are you extracting this particular herb and why? Because the companies that are doing it the right way and doing strain specificity or using research validated herbal extracts, they will go out of their way to tell you why this is, you know, and, and you can do it. You can do it from, from two perspectives. You can say, here’s this thing. What does it do? And where’s the research? What’s the proof?

Or I’m trying to look at this benefit. What do you have that delivers that benefit? You know, so if you’re looking for probiotic strain that helps with mood, there are several psychobiotics that will do that. And the companies that are, that are purveying those will, will, will tell you, excellent.

0:31:59 Roland Pankewich: And what about when someone wants to

0:32:01 Dr. Shawn Talbott: do deeper and the companies that don’t yeah, we’ll try to dance around it.

0:32:05 Roland Pankewich: Yes.

0:32:05 Dr. Shawn Talbott: Right. So like a good point.

0:32:07 Roland Pankewich: We are very proud of what it is we do and we like to talk about it. And the opposite is also true.

0:32:10 Dr. Shawn Talbott: Yes.

0:32:11 Roland Pankewich: Like, oh, you just poked on a wound.

0:32:12 Dr. Shawn Talbott: Yeah. There’s no deflect. There’s no such thing as a generic probiotic. So if you’re seeing Lactobacillus acidophilus and you’re not seeing the strain designation, which is usually a combination of letters and numbers, you know, depending on the company, if you’re not seeing that, you should go choose something else. Right. If you’re seeing an herbal extract that is not standardized to a particular bioactive ingredient, you should go look for a different one because there are better options out there.

0:32:38 Roland Pankewich: And what about addressing behavioral change? Because you have a coaching course too, as well, mental coaching course. Do you suggest that someone starts on purely the physiologic biochemical side, or should they do concurrent strategies with maybe coaching themselves through models of thinking behavioral.

0:32:56 Dr. Shawn Talbott: Yeah, yeah. So in our, in our coaching course, we, we have 11 modules. So there’s a module on the gut, there’s a module on the microbiome, there’s a module on the inflammatory balance and immune system and et cetera, et cetera. But then there’s also a set of modules that are around mindset and moving your body and exposing yourself to nature and grounding and being around people that have the same energetic vibe and things like that. Right. So, you know, and there’s, and some of it’s very hardcore science, some of it is very hardcore psychology.

And some of it gets a little woo because, you know, some of it, it’s. We don’t have the science for it right now. Right. And one of, one of the, one of the, one of the funny stories I tell is like, I’m old enough to remember when I was in graduate school, we used to poo poo the idea when like our hippies, right. Natural products, people out there in the world would say, you know, all disease begins in the gut. Right? And we go, oh, isn’t that cute? Right? You know, Hippocrates said 2,000 years ago.

0:33:55 Roland Pankewich: Original.

0:33:56 Dr. Shawn Talbott: Yeah, yeah. And we’re like, that’s ridiculous. There’s no research to show that all the gut does is your digestion and absorbs your nutri what it’s there for. And now fast forward 30 years and we go, well, disease does begin in the gut and it’s because now we have the science to say it’s this bacteria and it’s your leaky gut and it’s inflammatory cascade and it’s these signaling molecules and it’s, you know, science has finally caught up to what people had, you know, intuitively felt and observed. You know, so that’s, that’s what I love about this industry is that you, you get to bring both of those worlds together and you know, they all

0:34:31 Roland Pankewich: have benefits and it’s ever evolving rapidly. I mean, two things, one to talk about.

0:34:36 Dr. Shawn Talbott: Woo.

0:34:36 Roland Pankewich: We have a little frequency generator device right now. So I’m on that train because to me you talked about how biochemistry drives behavior and the hierarchy of science, which I’m super excited about the future. So physiology is dictated by biology. Biology is dependent upon chemistry. Chemistry is pulled to do a physics. As we get deeper in this world, it’s going to be super exciting knowing how to pair right. Frequencies plus supplements plus the behavioral strategy changes plus the lifestyle stuff.

0:35:07 Dr. Shawn Talbott: Exactly. At this conference last year, I gave a talk about the microbiome and the gut brain axis. And there was a, there was a woman in front and I could hear, she said it kind of under her breath. Right. I was talking about all these signals and kind of the hierarchy you just went through. And she went, it’s all energy. And I, and I heard her because she was right there. And I went, it is, it’s all energy.

0:35:27 Dr. Shawn Talbott: And it’s like, you know, sometimes that energy is a biochemical, it’s a, it’s a cortisol molecule or it’s a, you know, we, we can name them now, but it’s all energy.

0:35:36 Roland Pankewich: I remember reading a book by a gentleman named Dr. Fred Bell. And I’ll never forget, in the first part of this chapter it said hormones are the first molecules with consciousness in the body.

0:35:46 Dr. Shawn Talbott: Yeah.

0:35:46 Roland Pankewich: And it’s interesting because you talk about how powerful things like hormones and neurotransmitters are to drive our behavior. Right. There’s, there’s something to these statements. It’s just I think science is catching up to what people have intuitively known.

0:35:58 Dr. Shawn Talbott: Right.

0:35:59 Roland Pankewich: So we could say woo.

0:36:00 Dr. Shawn Talbott: Woo.

0:36:00 Roland Pankewich: Might be also just common sense that we don’t have the mechanism.

0:36:06 Dr. Shawn Talbott: Exactly. Yeah.

0:36:06 Roland Pankewich: I love that.

0:36:07 Dr. Shawn Talbott: Well said.

0:36:08 Roland Pankewich: Dr. Sean, where can people find more about you, what you’re doing? If they are practitioners, you have a course. But people who just want to learn more about their health, can they also take these courses?

0:36:17 Dr. Shawn Talbott: Oh yeah, yeah, definitely. So our course is, it’s not just for health professionals. So it’s called the certified Mental Wellness Coach course. It’s, it’s if you’re if you need continuing education units, it’s approved by lots of organizations including NANP for 16 CEUs. But lots of people just take it for themselves. They take it to learn more about their bodies and how they can perform better and feel better and they use the principles with their families and things like that. So that course is at, at my website, doctalbot.com

and so people can find out all the information right there. And you know, we’ve got a lot of free stuff. If you don’t want to do the full 16 hour course, you can, you know, do a three hour course about cortisol or the gut brain ax or something like that.

0:36:56 Roland Pankewich: I so hope people start taking this personal responsibility of investing and knowing about how the thing that they go through their life with works.

0:37:04 Dr. Shawn Talbott: Yeah.

0:37:04 Roland Pankewich: Because that’s going to create the shift.

0:37:06 Dr. Shawn Talbott: Yeah.

0:37:07 Roland Pankewich: No one’s coming to save you. You can’t rely upon.

0:37:09 Dr. Shawn Talbott: No one’s coming to save you. One body, one life. You got to take some responsibility. Right.

0:37:13 Roland Pankewich: You want to live your best life, you gotta, you gotta invest 100%. I love that. So I love your systems thinking approach. There’s so much alignment with what you said in terms of the things that I and we as a company talk about. So I, I really want to thank

0:37:25 Dr. Shawn Talbott: you for taking the time.

0:37:26 Roland Pankewich: I know you’re busy. Thanks for great conversations and thank you everyone. We’ll see you next time. Thanks again. Take care.