Welcome to the One Thing Podcast with Dr. Adam Rinde

Adam Rinde, ND: This is the one thing podcast, and I'm your host, Dr. Adam Rindy. The one thing podcast brings together leaders in functional and naturopathic medicine to discuss actionable information that may unlock puzzles in the areas of gut health, brain health, metabolism, and longevity. Please note these episodes do not replace the opinion of your doctor.

Adam Rinde, ND: They are not intended to diagnose or treat any condition. Please discuss this information with your provider and discuss your own unique personal health history before adapting this information. Please subscribe to our episodes so that you can stay on top of the most current information in these areas of medicine.

Introducing Dr. Andrea McBeth: A Deep Dive into Postbiotics

Adam Rinde, ND: Hey everybody, this is Dr. Adam Rinde and welcome to this week's episode of the one thing podcast. I'm so delighted to introduce our guest, Dr. Andrea McBeth, who's a naturopathic doctor, entrepreneur, and activist. She is the co-founder. and [00:01:00] CEO of Thaena® – Thaena Inc.

 which is a female founded Pacific Northwest based company and creator of the Thaena Biotic.

The Revolutionary World of ThaenaBiotic: Unveiling Postbiotics

Adam Rinde, ND: Thaena Biotic is the world's first stool derived postbiotic supplement. It contains prebiotics, heat killed probiotics, and postbiotics. These supplements are being used to address various health imbalances, which we get into in the episode.

The Science and Impact of Postbiotics on Health

Adam Rinde, ND: We talk a lot about what are postbiotics, what are the sources of postbiotics, what are components of postbiotics, which really is a fascinating discussion to understand all the different Small molecules that our microbiome is producing for interacting with our health and balancing our health.

Adam Rinde, ND: We look at the way that Thaena collects donors for their postbiotic supplement and the [00:02:00] tremendous amount of screening they do to acquire donors that can actually provide postbiotic and prebiotic and probiotics that will confer health. And this. Discussion also goes into just general healthy lifestyle tips for the microbiome and I think one of the great takeaways from this episode is the extreme measured and scientific approach that Dr. McBeth is taking towards discovering how postbiotics improve health. As she stated, we know very little about the microbiome at this stage and we know very little how to measure and measure its effectiveness of different treatments. She's really learning from her users and the doctors that are out there that are helping prescribe Thaenabiotic.

Adam Rinde, ND: And so we get into a lot of details [00:03:00] about that, that conversation and how to look at the use of postbiotic. supplements or postbiotic treatments. So I will mention that this episode is dedicated to the nonprofit of choice for Dr. McBeth and she's chosen the nonprofit lesbians who tech and you can find their information Lesbianswhotech.org and with this episode reaching 500 listeners within 30 days of being launched, we will make a donation in honor of Dr. McBeth to her organization of choice, lesbians who tech. org. So, without further ado, I welcome you to the next episode of the one thing podcast, McBeth, welcome to the one thing podcast.

Adam Rinde, ND: It's so great to be here with you today.

Andrea McBeth, ND: Thank you so much for having me.

Adam Rinde, ND: You're welcome. Yeah. So it's great getting to know you offline here [00:04:00] a little bit and I'm catching up. I'm always exciting for me to have a naturopathic physician on with me sharing similar, kind of career trajectories and those types of things.

Adam Rinde, ND: So thank you for being here. We're going to be talking a lot about postbiotics and some of the work you're doing with the microbiome and. Addressing the microbiome It sounds like, and I don't know it entirely, but it sounds like you've had a really unique career trajectory.

From Personal Journey to Postbiotic Pioneer: Dr. McBeth's Story

Adam Rinde, ND: And how'd you get on this path of developing microbiome therapeutics?

Andrea McBeth, ND: Yeah, I'll give you the short-ish version, the podcast appropriate, but I have always considered myself a scientist. And so, I was on a very traditional trajectory towards, work in the off times. I worked in labs starting in high school and through undergrad. I studied biochemistry and biology and then did a few years working as a research assistant getting my way into a PhD program [00:05:00] with, my focus being cancer and cell communication in the molecular biochemistry realm.

Andrea McBeth, ND: What was really interesting is that I was working on a PhD, and my sister was diagnosed with the same kind of leukemia I had been studying for several years. She's in remission and is healthy now, but at the time, it launched me, what we like to say, over the fence. So, from the provider researcher side to the patient experience side and advocate side.

Andrea McBeth, ND: And that experience, like many people who have been on it on the advocate side or on the patient side, it really sucked. I was really disappointed. I'm very grateful she's alive and it was a tough road, but I was really frustrated by not having better tools to support through nutrition primarily, but just, reducing suffering.

Andrea McBeth, ND: So I left that academic career and became a naturopath because I wanted to find tools, partly to never [00:06:00] do that again from a prevention standpoint and also just because I wanted to feel like I had, I was less disempowered. I'm a scientist, I like to understand things and the knowledge base that naturopathic medicine offered felt really good to me.

Andrea McBeth, ND: And while I was in school, I was trying to juxtapose the two worlds. So my conventional hospital land with naturopathic school was at first really hard, but then I realized that there's this unifying theory, which is the microbiome for me. And the microbiome offers this mechanism of action that we don't understand yet.

Andrea McBeth, ND: It's really a new discovery of an organ system we didn't know existed. And I just frame. the tools I have from the realm of the microbiome and knowing we don't know very much. And so it was a logical step after I became a naturopath to study the microbiome and then have an opportunity to work in fecal transplant.

Andrea McBeth, ND: And then from there, [00:07:00] iterate towards a solution that was accessible and innovative in the realm of postbiotics. That is the very short version, but it is the bridge between how cells communicate and understanding why we eat and drink and think impacts our health in a way we didn't conventionally understand before.

Adam Rinde, ND: Wow. Fascinating.

Exploring the Complexities of Postbiotics and Their Benefits

Adam Rinde, ND: With the postbiotic world do you feel that it overlaps quite significantly? Quite a bit with the work you did with fecal transplant is that sort of a natural bridge?

Andrea McBeth, ND: Yeah, I think, it's part of our, the origin story of Thaena. It's not the same thing. We intentionally took, we went the inverse.

Andrea McBeth, ND: We took the herbal route. You think about herbal medicine and mixing can like complex recipes and things like that, nutrition and herbalism, you're working from a really complex thing, and then you're trying to standardize it as best you can, knowing you don't know all the parts and.

Andrea McBeth, ND: traditional postbiotics [00:08:00] or probiotics are a single strain coming at it from the other direction. So you know the lactobacillus strain, or you know what postbiotic you're using, like butyrate, and you're making a whole bunch of that one thing. And so instead of doing that, we went, what's the most complicated healthy ecosystem mixture of probiotics we can think of?

Andrea McBeth, ND: And that was healthy stool. And then we worked backwards to say, how can we make it sterile and extract the parts we want but not have it have infectious disease risk? And,, bring it to market in an accessible way that's safe but still can modulate the microbiome in a uniquely complicated mixture, in the same way we can't synthesize human blood.

Andrea McBeth, ND: We've been trying to for many decades, hundreds of years, and, the stool is equally complex. So there's just a lot we don't know. So it is, been cool to work reverse and say, let's take the complicated thing we know works in the context of fecal transplant and then step toward something that's standardized and sterilized as opposed to picking out [00:09:00] particular probiotics and going the other direction.

Adam Rinde, ND: Yeah. Yeah.

The Journey of Thaena: Innovation in Postbiotic Supplements

Andrea McBeth, ND: So was there like a model or a pioneer kind of this approach that you you built on or was there did you just go right into standardizing, I guess fecal transplants have obviously been around quite a bit for quite some time. And the, this, what you're doing is so unique compared to a fecal transplant.

Andrea McBeth, ND: Was there a model that you looked at and I wish I could say it was more, I have a lot of really brilliant mentors. And my friend, mentor, microbiology, scientific advisor, and I were having beers in San Francisco, and I said, what if we just sterilize it? Do you think it'll do anything?

Andrea McBeth, ND: And he was like it's worth a try. You don't know until you try it. I think that the reason it seems odd is because the paradigm of fecal transplant and probiotics for a long time [00:10:00] were based on this concept of engraftment and we need a live creature to go in and create a niche and So I think about it like transplanting the trees in the forest.

Andrea McBeth, ND: You have to put a live tree in to change the ecosystem. That paradigm has been challenged and isn't necessarily the complete story. At the time we were doing this, that seemed heretical to kill everything. But now we're learning much more about, the pass through impact that probiotics have and that probiotics don't have to be alive.

Andrea McBeth, ND: There's all this work in pasteurization. If we were going to say we based it on any theory, it would be Louis Pasteur and the concept of pasteurization, but that is still focused on the proteins and maintaining integrity of other components that were intentionally blowing up and the proteins are denatured.

Andrea McBeth, ND: And, I think we were looking at it from cell communication and the way human cells communicate is through [00:11:00] small molecules or endocrine organs. You think about this and then the fact that bacteria have been co evolving with us since the beginning of time.

Lynn Margulis and the concept of endosymbiosis, is a relatively new theory that we. Endosymbiosis: Lynn Margulis - Understanding Evolution

Andrea McBeth, ND: Co evolved with a bacteria in Archaea that became Eukaryotes, multicellular organisms. So we hijacked all the Metabolism and signaling. Our bacteria have been making serotonin a lot longer than we have. So I think conceptually, we're definitely one of the first people to do this and it was very counter to the traditional paradigm at the time, but it doesn't seem so crazy anymore.

Andrea McBeth, ND: And I think fecal transplant in itself was already pretty groundbreaking in terms Proving the gut is associated with the brain and all these things neurologists didn't think the gut could impact and with fecal transplant and mechanistic studies, we've learned so much. So a long winded way to say, I [00:12:00] do think a lot of our what we built this on is tons of years of biology, but we put two different kind of distinct chemistry, biochemistry of cell communication to the microbiome in a way that wasn't done yet and still, To this day, nobody else is looking at true autoclaving.

Andrea McBeth, ND: I don't, I think it's a matter of time until we even look at autoclaving different bacterial strains. But for now, it's still, the movement from live to viruses to protein complexes. The postbiotics are the lowest denominator of stable. molecules left, and they are one of the most important for communication.

Adam Rinde, ND: Yeah. Fascinating.

Understanding Probiotics, Prebiotics, and Postbiotics

Adam Rinde, ND: So I think it'd probably be good to back up a little bit and craft out how a little bit more how we got here and how we got to this discussion. And so like back when I was first starting out in practice, which. It was 2006 we were so excited [00:13:00] about probiotics, like there was, a lot of researchers, Nigel Plummer, PhD Irish Strength Institute | Dr Nigel Plummer

was like the big probiotic researcher that really brought probiotics to my attention and there was like, we'll give these probiotics and, we could address a number of illnesses, diseases, autoimmune conditions.

Adam Rinde, ND: That, that's been established, and then prebiotics came onto the scene a little bit more in depth and I'm going to ask you to fix this order or fix this for me as we go. And then we started hearing more about the fecal transplants and then postbiotics and now paraprobiotics. Can you organize this story a little bit for us and so that people who are listening to this can understand all these different fancy terms?

Andrea McBeth, ND: Okay, so I think taking us back and saying, The probiotic microbiome space is a multi billion [00:14:00] dollar industry, and whenever you have that much money being spent, language becomes about marketing and communicating ways to sell things to people. Take that with a grain of salt. Probiotics are the foundation of that, and probiotics have a technical definition that, a lot of money was spent on, but in practical sense, probiotics are bacteria that are good for us.

Andrea McBeth, ND: In some shape or form, and they can live in our gut or in our nose or, any commensals, commensal meaning good non pathogenic bacteria. Can be a probiotic. We even eat bacteria from the soil. And they're all considered probiotics. The food that we feed our gut microbiome in particular is a fiber insoluble fiber.

Andrea McBeth, ND: We can debate about definitions of that. The reality is we don't know what to call what, cause we still don't understand the chemistry, but the vegetables we eat and the fiber we eat are the prebiotics. And the idea came from, okay, all this money and. Understanding has been spent teaching [00:15:00] consumers what a probiotic is.

Andrea McBeth, ND: You want to give them the thing before that to help your good bacteria, which is great. It was a very effective marketing and conceptually prebiotics make sense. Postbiotics are one of many terms for what I refer to as the small molecules or bacterial derived metabolites that bacteria probiotics are making.

Andrea McBeth, ND: So you have the food prebiotic, the bacteria probiotic, their molecule metabolites, their poop, essentially, post biotics. There's other words and there's official, definitions and there's ISAPP - International Scientific Association for Probiotics and Prebiotics

 Naming, marketing, science, whatever, and their definition of a postbiotic is preparation of an inanimate microorganism and or their components that confers the benefit.

Andrea McBeth, ND: So that means you take a probiotic and you kill it. Parabiotics mean the same thing. I think where marketing and [00:16:00] science overlap, they're trying to differentiate the nuances of those. But from a consumer or a person. doctor's perspective, postbiotic is the winner in terms of the name referring to the molecules or the heat killed or the inanimate bacteria of the probiotics.

Andrea McBeth, ND: And Bacterial metabolites just isn't a sexy word for selling a supplement, so that's not what we use or what most people use. And I hope that's helpful. It's a marketing meets science and they're a overlapping.

Adam Rinde, ND: Okay. Essentially with a postbiotic. Then, these small molecules and these kind of bioactive metabolites that the probiotics produce is essentially what we think is the reason that probiotics are it's the, as I always describe it, it's like the [00:17:00] end game of, all that we're trying to develop with healthy diets and healthy lifestyles and, and with when it comes to the gut, it's like, what is.

Adam Rinde, ND: What's your microbiome making?

Andrea McBeth, ND: Yeah, and I think there's a couple, if you don't mind me tangenting for a couple minutes, one of the ways that I think helps us to understand this is, our microbiome is sitting in our gut lumen or on our skin, but it's protected from our cells by a mucus barrier. That's very important, and there's this beautiful image made by the Sonnenberg lab out of Stanford that I'll send you, but if when you see it, it makes more sense. https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/hgs404wbiwhdcq4wnp5sh/jelly-bean-sonnenberg-labs.jpg?rlkey=05b0x9ljwx8uzjqyg80liwu45&dl=0

Andrea McBeth, ND: There's bacteria, A mucus layer and our human cells and bacteria aren't supposed to cross that mucus layer and directly come into contact with our cells or the neuropod cells or the immune cells, right? So it makes sense that there's a mechanism evolutionarily for the bacteria in the gut [00:18:00] to communicate with... Us, and those small molecules are the ones that cross that mucous layer.

Andrea McBeth, ND: There are some proteins and cell fragments and things that aren't specifically secondary metabolites, but these are the best candidates and the best set of evidence around. Things like neuroimmune modulation, because they're made to travel across and bind receptors in our human cells. And many of these postbiotics, butyrate, acetate, propionate, but even things like, we talk about tryptophan derivatives, or I just read an article about spermidine and putrescine.

Andrea McBeth, ND: We also make them human cells, but the microbiome is acting as a reservoir for a lot of the foundations of these. It's super important foundational housekeeping precursors, vitamins, we think about vitamins and minerals and what happened with scurvy, our microbiome contributes to our ability to make these [00:19:00] basic cofactors that we need.

Andrea McBeth, ND: And it just makes sense that the simplest solution is probably one of the more important answers. That said, the microbiome itself is modulating each other, and so these small molecules or postbiotics are also changing the niche and environment of the microbes themselves. So, there's bacteriocins, which are antimicrobials against each other, antifungals, there's all kinds of cool chemistry happening.

Andrea McBeth, ND: that we're just at the tip of the iceberg of understanding. But when you think about bacteria, mucus layer, human cells, the postbiotics or metabolites are the ones that are crossing to, to communicate and modulate the rest of our body in a way that is probably how eating yogurt or fermented foods, you get that combination of Pre, pro, and post all together in sauerkraut.

Andrea McBeth, ND: Yeah. [00:20:00] Yeah. It's that is such a great way to, to describe it. I've never thought about that as, these are the signal, these are the signal signaling molecules that through and interface with the immune system. And it's it's really fascinating. When you think about, some, someone.

Andrea McBeth, ND: Taking like a postbiotic versus one or the other can, is there like a lot of people run into this thing like I don't know, should I take pre, post, probiotics and when, and is there a distinct advantage of one or the other? Are they supposed to be layered together and used in conjunction or do all we need to take is postbiotics?

The Unique Approach of Thaena and Its Impact

Andrea McBeth, ND: The world, according to me, as a biased person working with postbiotics, is that the answer is you have to look at it individually. We all have different [00:21:00] ecosystems, microbial ecosystems, and the underlying cause for My constipation or diarrhea or your brain fog or the other person's insomnia related to their gut is going to be different and what the problem we've seen so far is it's really hard to predict what's going to work and Sometimes the right probiotic can be super effective But we don't have a clear picture yet of who needs what when and just sequencing the microbiome is missing some of the more important undertones of mechanism of what the microbes are doing.

Andrea McBeth, ND: In, I think fiber and prebiotics are one of the most important things. If you have an ecosystem that's diverse, that can turn them into the right postbiotics. We've seen many patients over the years, I'm sure you like me, that people just can't tolerate fiber because their baseline ecosystem is so disrupted.

Andrea McBeth, ND: They're missing whole. swaths of [00:22:00] guilds to do this metabolism. And so for them, probiotics or postbiotics are going to help them get to a place where they are then able to eat the fiber. We evolved eating a hundred grams of fiber. The average American gets six or eight a day, right? We wouldn't tolerate a hundred grams of fiber, but even 20 grams of fiber, which is recommended is a big lift for most Americans.

Andrea McBeth, ND: And for people who have a disrupted microbiome, that much fiber will make them acutely ill. and miserable. So whether or not the right approach to your health, whatever that is, is a prebiotic, a probiotic, a postbiotic, or all of the above, depends where your baseline is. And unfortunately, for most people, I say you are your own scientist, because even with all the testing and information we have, there's still an [00:23:00] amount of trial and error.

Andrea McBeth, ND: And We don't know what we don't know. And I get asked a lot which GI testing I run and the answer is I just don't yet because I haven't found something in most cases that gives me a broad enough scope. I definitely use GI testing for infectious disease and stuff like that. But yeah.

Adam Rinde, ND: Yeah, I was just thinking about, that as far as a lot of times You get, you can run GI testing and get back short chain fatty acid levels such as total short chain fatty acids, butyrate propionic acid, acetate these markers of postbiotics.

Adam Rinde, ND: And I've been doing a lot of research reading about research. Meaning reading and studying about how there's this correlation between low short chain fatty acids and unchecked inflammation. And I know that you just [00:24:00] said that you don't do a lot of testing, but is that sort of a low hanging fruit of being able to evaluate whether or not someone would be a strong candidate for postbiotic supplementation is to stool short chain fatty acids.

Andrea McBeth, ND: Thanks. Thanks. I wish it wasn't that simple. Tell me why it's not simple. Yeah, so short chain fatty acids are interesting. Butyrate, propionate acetate. They are highly recycled. Their energy, they're basically like the foundational energy for our endothelial cells in our gut. And our microbiome makes a lot of it.

Andrea McBeth, ND: And we do see in all these studies that when people have low short chain fatty acids in their serum or their stool, it correlates with disease. They're not making enough. But I think that is more a proxy for a dysbiotic ecosystem globally, like the whole ecosystem is just deplete in its basic [00:25:00] foundations, right?

Andrea McBeth, ND: If you think about, it's really hard for our body to function without calcium, the right calcium balance or potassium balance. And if we see. That out of whack on a CBC, it's a bad, you're really sick. I think a similar thing is happening in the microbiome where if you are so out of whack that your microbiome short chain fatty acids are out of whack, you have lots of other problems.

Andrea McBeth, ND: I don't necessarily know if I feel like it's the causative and you can't supplement your way out of it. From the what we've seen with right butyrate, right? You can't just take enough butyrate to undo It doesn't seem to fix the autoimmune diseases and chronic diseases. So I think the trick is as You heal the ecosystem and are able to eat those prebiotics that can get converted or you have the species that are missing Replaced like Akkermansia, which can produce butyrate, but there's lots of others that can produce butyrate too.[00:26:00]

Andrea McBeth, ND: You can start to rebalance and probably make other molecules that are less known, but probably have other impacts on that immune leaky gut dysregulation. So I, we originally started thinking, okay this is a really cool short chain fatty acid supplement. And then we dug into the literature and looked at it and this is a hundred milligrams total.

Andrea McBeth, ND: So micrograms, there's no way that this is replacing. your butyrate. But what we think it is doing is stimulating the whole ecosystem, like compost, to shift the metabolism globally so that it's healthier. And there's probably some other smaller components we don't know about that are having large impact as well.

Andrea McBeth, ND: And even just shifting the environment of the phage and, metabolism of the innate. I do think fundamentally we've shifted from thinking [00:27:00] you can replace stuff to, you have to take the niche that's there and make it a healthier environment and shift the metabolism.

Adam Rinde, ND: That makes complete sense to me.

Adam Rinde, ND: Yeah, it reminds me of a conversation we had, I had on one of my other podcasts with Dr. Lucy Mailing, who does a lot of research in microbiome space. And she was really like you said the environment of the ecosystem and pH levels, the oxygen status of the lumen, what bugs are able to survive, all these things come into play.

Adam Rinde, ND: And it'll be fascinating to learn more about, with with Thaena and what you're doing is that you're putting, you're helping the body reestablish the ecosystem more complex in a more complex way than, just like simply dropping butyrate in and hoping it's going to work.

Adam Rinde, ND: That's great that you pointed that out that really connects so with, we think about this [00:28:00] concept of donors with fecal transplant and how I remember I was a donor for a while back for someone who was a child who was a dialysis patient who was having recurrent C.

Adam Rinde, ND: diff. And I had 30 tests that I had to do at Seattle Children's before they would let me, become the donor. And that was like remarkable to me. I was like, wow thank goodness that they're so careful. And you're in a similar way, you are getting donors for your products or for your supplements.

Adam Rinde, ND: Can you talk about that? What is, what does that involve in?

Andrea McBeth, ND: Yeah. It's like one of the most interesting parts of this project because. We had to define health, right? So we were part of this early evolution of fecal transplants, dual banks. And, the goal was to test for everything, including the things we didn't know, we didn't know.

Andrea McBeth, ND: And, we have learned lessons. About, COVID was a good example. We couldn't test for COVID. We didn't know it was there. That was part of the impetus for us. Sterilizing it [00:29:00] really was to take that component away, but for our donors, we early on were like, okay, we want to. Meet the requirements of infectious disease screening, because that is a baseline that's easy to do and important for health.

Andrea McBeth, ND: And then we want to define microbiome health, which is not an easy thing to do. So we scrubbed the literature, and luckily I really like reading microbiome. Stuff. . And starting to think about all the things that would go into a healthy microbiome. Vaginally born, breastfed for six months, no antibiotics or, in the case of our donors, our threshold is five in their lifetime.

Andrea McBeth, ND: And now within the immediate, timeline of their donation, never been sick, never had a diagnosis, intakes as thorough that we can suss out have you. Anxiety or depression, functional diagnoses that would be relevant medications and what people consume is really important.

Andrea McBeth, ND: What was great, what was crazy to us in the early days was that, most of these stool [00:30:00] banks didn't ask what the donors ate, they didn't ask their diet. They were happy to have them not have infectious disease risk, but they didn't ask for a diet diary. And, we care a lot about what our donors are eating and what they've eaten over their lifetime.

Andrea McBeth, ND: We do environmental. So just even plastic exposure is relevant to us. There's obviously things we can't do, but we try to think about as much as we possibly can. And, less than 1 percent of the people who apply. Qualify it's taken us years to find the donors we do have. And we, we really feel like they're special.

Andrea McBeth, ND: We call them unicorn poopers because they are a very unique cohort of people living in the US that still maintain as much of this diversity and, all the things that could go into having a healthy life style to support a healthy microbiome. So the donor thing is fascinating. We're always changing it and as new information comes [00:31:00] out, we do a quarterly assessment of all the things we've looked at and try to improve it, but it's a moving target and, I.

Andrea McBeth, ND: I am always amazed to learn more about how we can improve the donor system because we definitely exclude people with infectious disease, but that's just like the first bar. There's so much more than that to define health.

Adam Rinde, ND: Sounds like it. Wow.

Adam Rinde, ND: And besides like combing the campuses of naturopathic medical schools for your donors, where are you finding your donors?

Andrea McBeth, ND: That was a lot of our early days I would, we were lucky to have a pretty baseline healthy community. And then from there, we have, we have a couple hundred people apply through our website and once, a couple hundred people who've applied through our website and met the minimum criteria in our surveys media around fecal transplant helps us.

Andrea McBeth, ND: And then we just really make an effort to. Put the [00:32:00] word out. So if your listeners think they could be a super pooper, we pay per poop so they can apply on our website at Thaena. com. That's so great. And I think it's just such a public health service that people are doing. It's yeah, so cool.

Andrea McBeth, ND: You donated for C diff. It's such an incredible thing to have cure. You feel, when you're doing it, you just feel like, wow, such little effort on my behalf, and it could save someone's life or manage help manage.

Andrea McBeth, ND: Fascinating that it can, I just taking a step back and being like, really a poop smoothie from you.

Andrea McBeth, ND: Healthy. You could save the life of somebody who would otherwise. It's not be able to fight their infectious disease. C. diff kills people. It's so crazy. It was really fun to be a part of that in the early days. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I think everybody should donate or get their poop tested at least once in a lifetime.

Andrea McBeth, ND: It's a good humbling [00:33:00] experience. It's, you, it's something in once you do it, you can bond with everybody else who, you who has done it before. Yeah. And same with bone marrow. I worked in bone marrow transplant. Be the match tests for bone marrow donation blood donation, all these things.

Andrea McBeth, ND: Again, we can't manufacture. So yeah, it's cool to think about. Yeah.

The Future of Postbiotic Research and Application

Andrea McBeth, ND: Getting into the applications. of postbiotics and specifically what Thaena has been able to see, as far as like shifts in physiology, shifts in pathology or just general therapeutic outcomes that you're seeing.

Andrea McBeth, ND: What I know that for me, like the people I'm recommending it to these days are people with, unchecked GI inflammation that's, really not responding to other therapeutics. I'm also recommending it in just people who have functional bowel disorders [00:34:00] dysbiosis disorders, but how far is it like the literature says postbiotics.

Andrea McBeth, ND: in general can be an answer to cholesterol, can be answer to hypertension, can be answer to, to glucose issues possibly autoimmune issues. Like how far are we going with this as a therapeutic?

Andrea McBeth, ND: So we, And we are trying really hard to collect data, meaningful. We have a couple providers collecting registry data, meaning they're just tracking patients pre and post, and we're hoping to deploy a really cool decentralized clinical study app by the end of the year, so that anybody who wants to collect and give feedback on citizen science in exchange for, a discount will be able to do that.

Andrea McBeth, ND: Because. This is not fecal transplant, and it's not some of the other postbiotics. So we don't know what we don't know. We have been collecting lots of anecdotal data, and obviously providers like you give us [00:35:00] feedback. What is fascinating is, if you were going to ask me when we started if this did anything, I would be like, I don't know.

Andrea McBeth, ND: And then when it, people started giving us feedback that it helped. them with loose stools, I would be like, okay, that kind of makes sense. And then other people who were like, Hey, I really want to have a bowel movement every day, but I can't without like enemas and, magnesium and really tough cases, and then they're like this thing totally.

Andrea McBeth, ND: changed my ability to poop every day, which is cool. Yeah. From there, other things that have been interesting is people reporting stuff like, it helped me sleep when I'm stressed out, or it really helped my brain fog, or my fatigue. We were tracking fatigue scores. None of, it's a dietary supplement, and so none of this has, we don't have claims on any, specific treatments.

Andrea McBeth, ND: We're really looking at it. It's very early stages, but we're looking at it for, like you mentioned, balancing that dysbiosis. [00:36:00] And so it's distinct cohorts of people who seem to respond versus non responders. And we're really, I am perplexed at who are going to be the responders and non responders and the people that are like, this is the greatest thing ever don't have some unifying short chain fatty acid depletion.

Andrea McBeth, ND: But there is a correlation between people who have a lot of antibiotic use or are coming out of antibiotics or coming out of things that have caused a lot of it. dysbiosis that makes sense. We offer a money back guarantee cause we finally just got to the point where it was like, we think it can really help some people, but we don't know who.

Andrea McBeth, ND: So try it for 30 days and we will give you your money back. No questions asked if it doesn't. And then beyond that, we're really excited. and curious about what this gut brain access component is. Because that is a complicated story that we're [00:37:00] just starting to understand. And I'm not the best salesperson because even with clinicians I caveat this to say, I think if you have sick patients where you feel like you've tried most tools, This is worth a shot.

Andrea McBeth, ND: If you think that they are coming out of, or, are taking antimicrobials or antibiotics, this is a good tool in the same paradigm as probiotics, but it's nice because you're not killing anything. You can take it with antimicrobials cause it's already dead and it's very gentle. And then the other place that's really cool is it seems to help people absorb nutrients and get their health back there.

Andrea McBeth, ND: So taking it in conjunction with. the antimicrobial and on the other side, taking it in conjunction with reintroduction of nutrients or powders or, I love the metagenics powder suite. this can help people tolerate some of that stuff in ways that we've seen anecdotally tolerate it, that they didn't before, which is really cool.

Andrea McBeth, ND: So [00:38:00] motility and brain, gut brain access are our two areas of focus. Huh. That's great. I really like your kind of measured approach and how your, you're just following the science and following the data, like instead of, making these claims and you're being. intellectually honest with your approach.

Andrea McBeth, ND: That's, it feels really safe to me hearing it from my end because, we're, I think in the world of nutraceuticals and supplements, it's like, There's so much hype and so much that's proved promised, and it's really nice to hear a company that, is really just taking like you said, like the citizen scientist approach, like learning, adapting, fine tuning, coming from a place of wonder and awe and discovery.

Andrea McBeth, ND: Will it help you? We don't know. But there's hope. It's worth a [00:39:00] shot. Yeah. I think, it's that's a very humble to say for me, it's it just feels from everything I've studied about microbiome so far, it just makes a lot of sense. It's not. It's just, it's not like this magical thing.

Andrea McBeth, ND: It's like what you're, what you're doing and the way you're going about it seems really aligned. If it helps people, they know, like they know, in the first month, in the first 30 days. It sometimes takes a little bit longer. They need to take it for three to nine months, depending on what's going on.

Andrea McBeth, ND: But the nice thing about having, thousands of people try this and give us feedback is that, at least at a minimum, it does seem to have a really Discrete improvement for some tricky patients and we feel really good about the safety and the safety profile. It's a hundred milligrams super healthy poop.

Andrea McBeth, ND: It's been homogenized and tested and, autoclaved and pH adjusted and proteins are denatured and all that [00:40:00] stuff. And, as a clinician, It's nice to have tools in your toolbox. Sometimes there's, sometimes it's the right therapist or the acupuncture or the right herb.

Andrea McBeth, ND: This is just another one of those tools that isn't, it hasn't existed yet. I think it's really important to use this measured and in conjunction with your toolbox and help patients understand that they are all unique snowflakes and. We have to wear continuous blood glucose monitors to see how your blood sugar is going to react to food.

Andrea McBeth, ND: We know nothing. We know nothing about the microbiome. Yeah. Yeah.

The Importance of Microbiome Health and How to Protect It

Andrea McBeth, ND: I'd love to finish with a few things and then hand over for a couple take home messages. But since you're microbiome connoisseur and you're searching out the elite of the elite donors in the space. Space would you say what would you say your top three [00:41:00] disruptors of the microbiome are in this current world?

Andrea McBeth, ND: And like when you hear or you read that one of your donors has is partaking in one of these disruptors, it's like an automatic. This would not be a good source for my customers or patients. Okay. I'll do, I'll answer that kind of two directions. So there's four legs to the stool, right? What we eat being the food quality.

Andrea McBeth, ND: Every time I put a thumb, I get a little thumbs up emoji. So food is huge. Definitely one of the most important quality of food system itself is broken, it takes a lot of privilege and money and, intention to navigate that. It doesn't always have to be super expensive, but you have to be working against a really big machine to outcompete the marketing to eat healthy, simple food that's not toxic and not full of preservatives.

Andrea McBeth, ND: Water quality matters. And I don't want to get down the route of plastic water bottles and all the terrifying things, but like things you're consuming every [00:42:00] day. So the water you're drinking and then the things you're putting on your skin, so skincare products and the quality of water in your home that you're showering in, or etc.

Andrea McBeth, ND: And then our brain modulates a bi directional. So for example, we had a donor whose parent passed away. We put them on grief leave because microbiome during those, We checked in and said, okay, three months out, six months out. How are you doing? Same with having a baby. One of our donors had a baby.

Andrea McBeth, ND: We put them on baby leave, past just because sleep deprivation and how our brains are working around stress matters. And then air quality matters too. And that's another one where like air purification and being in a place can impact your health. So those are things that impact the microbiome, we have an ability to screen out different components of that through environmental screening and stuff.

Andrea McBeth, ND: But, for us, the lifetime of health and a resilience to perturbation as exhibited by the fact that they've never been sick or needed medications is really [00:43:00] important. For me, I'm not resilient to stressors. I'm chronically ill. So I pay attention to my air quality and water quality and what I eat and what I think, because that's going to protect me as best as I can in a different way than the donors.

Andrea McBeth, ND: That we're screening but that kind of gets to both points like microbiome is complex, but it's really just an environment So it's ecology.

Andrea McBeth, ND: Yeah, that's great. I love that because here You're expanding the view of what we think about such, and I think the textbook answers, always did they have antibiotics?

Andrea McBeth, ND: How much fiber do they eat? Which are all probably on your list somewhere, but it's really nice to see what kind of rose to the top and water and kind of stress. And stress resilience and stress being up there and personal products that those are, and obviously food quality. That's really fascinating.

Andrea McBeth, ND: Just to wrap your head around that and make that a priority. [00:44:00] It's good for all of us to hear.

Andrea McBeth, ND: Yeah. It's I try not to be overwhelming when you talk about the microbiome because it's really about empowering you to make the canary in the coal mine. It's our canary and it will help us make a decision about limited resources.

Andrea McBeth, ND: No matter who is in what space, you will always have a, like a question about, do I spend money on this thing or this thing? And if you can look at it through the lens of the microbiome, you can sometimes make decisions on resource management that don't make us feel so disempowered. Like it's a black box.

Andrea McBeth, ND: I prioritize chia, yogurt, kefir, nuts. berry breakfast, because I think it's the most resource efficient use of some money and time for me to take care of my microbiome. Would I do that if I wasn't thinking about my microbiome : heck no!. Yeah. No way. Exactly. Yeah, just today I saw something in the market that [00:45:00] was a basically like the actual broth of ferments.

Andrea McBeth, ND: So it's being just sold as a broth that you just sip on. Yeah. It's not the actual sauerkraut. It's not the actual kimchi, but it's the juice that came off it. And so I thought that's pretty cool. That's going to be my morning. It's a post biotic mixture, essentially. Yeah it's really exciting to see that we're understanding this.

Andrea McBeth, ND: And we given us a lot to think about and a lot of good words of wisdom. Is there any sort of take home messages you'd like to leave us with?

Closing Thoughts and How to Connect with Thaena

Andrea McBeth, ND: And also if you could just tell us like more about Theena, like where people can follow your work or how they would get access to your work.

Andrea McBeth, ND: Kind of trying Thaena. Yeah, so we're a provider. Thaenabiotic is the supplement It's a hundred milligrams in a capsule with citric acid. It's enteric coated and it's

Andrea McBeth, ND: Provider only so you have to have a provider to gain access to purchase it [00:46:00] your provider can be

Andrea McBeth, ND: Chiropractor and acupuncturist or nutritionist or a naturopath or an MD but they have to make a provider account and we have to verify them and then they can refer it. So you can ask your providers or you can go on to our find a provider on the Thaena. com website. We also have lots of resources and education.

Andrea McBeth, ND: I care a lot about educating about the microbiome and the team. Check out the blogs I write every month and our continuing ed microbiome 101 videos And then if you're a provider we have an additional 30 hours of continuing ed if you sign up for the an account We're a small but mighty team.

Andrea McBeth, ND: We're really passionate about this. You know contact us contact Reach out. We have, we're happy to answer questions as much as we can and work with people. And we're gonna be, I'm gonna be at [00:47:00] IFM and A4M and Functional Medicine Conferences in the next, few months. So come find us at those.

Andrea McBeth, ND: Check out the website to see where we're going to be and then yeah, reach out if you have questions. We're happy to chat. I really, I think the take home for me is it's about having tools and access to care and Thaenabiotic is one tool in the toolbox and if you want to give it a try. We will help you facilitate to make that happen, but also don't forget that we're part of this broader ecosystem and nothing is an isolation and there's no magic bullet.

Andrea McBeth, ND: But if you've never tried poop before, it might be one of the tools you need. Awesome. Thank you so much for your time, Dr. McBeth. And it was great chatting with you today. Yeah, thank you so much. It was a pleasure. Thank you so much for tuning into this week's episode of the one thing podcast.

Andrea McBeth, ND: Please share these episodes with your friends, loved ones, colleagues, patients, health care providers, anyone who you feel might benefit [00:48:00] from hearing these informative interviews. We tend to learn best from people sharing things with us. That's often the first time it's introduced. So don't hesitate if these, the content of these episodes reminded you of someone that might benefit.

Andrea McBeth, ND: From it for the episode to them. And I'm sure they'll either appreciate it or be appreciative that you've thought of. So once again, we'll look forward to seeing you next episode on the one thing podcast. And again, much appreciation for you being here with me.