How to Select a Probiotic and the Future of the Microbiome with Raja Dhir

Episode 841 1h 21m

Overview

Your gut microbiome is your inner garden—the more good bugs you have in it, the more likely it is to flourish. Our gut bacteria regulate many bodily functions, from creating vitamins to controlling our immune system, brain function, and, of course, our metabolism and weight. They are critical to our long-term health. But even if you’re eating the right things, you may need outside assistance to maintain plentiful and diverse gut bacteria. Probiotics help populate your gut with beneficial bacteria, improving your sleep, daily elimination, brain health, and so much more.

On today’s episode of The Doctor’s Farmacy, I’m excited to talk to Raja Dhir about the gut microbiome's important role in our overall health, its connection to various diseases, and what can be done to fix our gut. We start our conversation by reviewing the specific ways our gut microbiome influences our health and its connection to autoimmune and neurodegenerative diseases, mood disorders, heart disease, diabetes, and cancer. Raja also shares the three main drivers of microbiome health: what you eat, the medications you take, and your lifestyle.

We dive deep into akkermansia, a bacteria I’ve been very interested in since using it to heal my gut several years ago. Raja explains how to get the most out of taking akkermansia and the surprising effect it can have when eating a diet of ultra-processed foods. Raja also shares his thoughts on the explosion of research on the gut microbiome, the need for a deeper understanding of the microbiome in medical practice, and the challenges in navigating the complex field. Probiotics have gained immense popularity for supporting the microbiome. However, there’s also confusion and misinformation about them. We discuss what probiotics are, whether or not we should be taking them, and the importance of purity, potency, and efficacy when choosing a probiotic.

Raja shares insights into Seed’s approach to probiotics, including using a broad spectrum consortium of bacteria. Raja also talks about the impact that antibiotics have on the gut microbiome and the potential benefits of using probiotics to support your body after using antibiotics. We are in an era of discovery when it comes to the gut microbiome and its connection to our overall health, and this is a fascinating conversation that you won’t want to miss!

Sponsors

This episode is brought to you by Rupa Health, Fatty 15, ARMRA, and Sweetgreen. The Doctor’s Farmacy podcast works with a select group of sponsors to allow for ongoing production and allow it to be zero-cost to anyone who wishes to listen to and watch the podcast.

Topics Covered

  • The central role the gut plays in our overall health

    (4:50)

  • How the makeup of our gut microbiome comes to be

    (11:25)

  • Why fiber is critical to reaping the benefits of akkermansia

    (12:59)

  • The explosion of research on the gut microbiome

    (20:22)

  • Microbiome testing

    (29:09:00)

  • What are probiotics and should you take them?

    (33:41:00)

  • Selecting a probiotic

    (42:45:00)

  • Prebiotics, synbiotics and postbiotics

    (53:19:00)

  • How antibiotics affect the gut microbiome

    (58:38:00)

  • The future of microbiome data

    (1:14:34)

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Host & Guests

Transcript

Automatically generated. Please forgive any typos or errors in the following transcript. It was generated by a third party and has not been subsequently reviewed by our team.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Coming up on this week’s episode of the Doctor’s Farmacy,

Raja Dhir:
Research has connected gut microbes to virtually every organ system. And we’re in the halfway mark of making sense of this data.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Welcome to the Doctor’s Farmacy. I’m Dr. Mark Hyman, and this is a place for conversations that matter. And as a Functional Medicine doctor, I’ve seen over and over again the central role that our gut microbiome plays in every aspect of our health. And today my guest, Raja Dhir and I dive deep into the science of the microbiome. We explore the current state of probiotics as well as research currently underway that will lead to the creation of even more targeted and..

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Ep. 841 - How to Select a Probiotic and the Future of the Microbiome with Raja Dhir