Show Notes
Welcome, everyone. It is now time for COVID Episode 6.0. We have an incredible special guest this time, of course, I'm Eric Rieger with your host, Dr. Kenneth Brown. But today, we have Aubrey Levitt. She is the CEO of Postbiotics Plus. She's very much into research and an incredible entrepreneur certainly knows a lot of the people in the scientific community that have inspired Ken and I to dig deeper to look further. Without further ado, Ken would you like to say hello to Aubrey, and we'll get started.
So you can imagine my excitement when I found somebody that was discussing postbiotics also. So Aubrey, thank you so much for coming in. Eric, do we have any...we need to shout out to our sponsors real quick?
No, we don't have to do that. We just did that. You're all you're all here.
So Aubrey Levitt. Oh my goodness. This is so cool. I felt like I was alone on an island discussing post biotics and then I have this little routine. I'm a very routine type person. I like to work out and go to the sauna. And I do a little mindfulness meditation. And then I just kind of scroll for the last little 10 minutes on podcasts and I just typed in postbiotics and I couldn't believe it. The CEO of postbiotics plus I'm like, not only does she know about it, she's an entrepreneur. She's smart. And she's got like, and then I went to your website, I'm like, she's got like six PhDs working for her like, holy cow, we have got to track this woman down. So I apologize that I stalked you. But thank you so much for coming on the show.
No I was so happy about that. It's so nice to have somebody else on this island with me. Yeah, we put our stake in the ground like postbiotics and then echoes for a couple years, just looking back but no, it's very...
So we're calling this COVID episode 6.0 because although we're gonna talk about the microbiome I want to let you in on something that you're doing. So congratulations to you and your desire to go through science first, hire these PhDs make something effective because you're going to change the world like I believe that we're helping to change the world. A article just came out this month, discussing the gut, the actual title is this gut microbiota and COVID-19 possible link and implications. And then another one just came out that said a comprehensive review on the effect of plant metabolites on Coronavirus. Plant metabolites means postbiotics and then somebody that we will get you in contact with is a PhD that we're working with her name is Silvia Molino, she did it to get her PhD. Her postdoctoral study is so cool. She actually looked at invitro digestion and fermentation of stable polyphenols. So she was able to do an in and of course, invitro means in a lab. So she was able to show the postbiotic effect once through digestion and then once the microbiome comes in contact with it. Absolutely brilliant and so cool. So COVID you're making a difference!
Yeah. All across the board. No, yeah, I just want to say that one of the things that started this fascination for me was you just look at fermented foods, right, which are full of postbiotics and how much of a role they have played in every culture. And we may not have known why in the past, but when we're looking through the lens of the microbiome, we can see maybe a deeper into what's happening here. You know, I know people know probiotics and they know prebiotics of fiber. But when the probiotics eat the prebiotics, then this magic happens. And that's what's also happening in your gut, right if you have all those elements working.
Yeah, totally.
And I think why and what I've seen also why it directly relates to COVID is, you know, people are getting are at risk for secondary infections. And also people are getting antibiotics and whatnot. And that directly destroys the microbiome as we know, which leaves them vulnerable to being populated by whatever's there. And, and weakens them.
If I'm knowing that kind of research and listening to the PhDs while y'all are constructing the studies, and or the clinical trials to find out what is actually going to work. What are some of the endpoint measures that you that some of your PhDs are examining? Is it because they're looking for what the bacteria will do with the things that you present like postbiotics, as you mentioned before, and how do you measure that, is it like short chain fatty acid stuff or what...
We were looking specifically at one thing and just diversity overall, so we were looking at a point of injury. So the one because we wanted to kind of pare it down to. Okay, we know, we're researching the microbiome, and we're looking all these various things, but it's a complex ecosystem, right. And the one thing we do know is that when there is a lot of diversity that always correlates with health. And so we really pared it back to that of okay, but in our modern lifestyle, we have many, many things that affect that diversity and really, you know, strip it. So we looked at antibiotics first in our first study to say antibiotics is one of the harshest things that wipe out gut diversity and leave us susceptible in this window afterwards to either an opportunistic, you know, pathogen taking over or maybe just not recovering to the diversity that we had before. And so we did a study our initial study was to look at these antibiotics because think about it, also, people are coming in for maybe a sinusitis. So having their gut wiped out is a, you know, side effect that is not intended. It's a consequence that's not intended. So we gave them a fermented herbal product, which is full of postbiotics, because essentially, we put probiotic bacteria with the herbal components and it's breaking them down with we gave them that with some live probiotics as well. And we had a control group and we we took their stool samples to see if we are protecting their diversity. So right when they got the treatment, and then you know, all throughout the treatment and 10 days after, and we saw Yeah, so the endpoint was gut diversity is looking to see if the ecosystem was intact.
I couldn't agree more and Brown we've talked about this in the past. And of course, we've seen this in the hospital. Oftentimes when people are given really powerful antibiotics and they come to the hospital. Unfortunately, the end result is often c diff, and it's exactly what it does. It goes through it wipes out all of the bacteria we and it tears down all c diff is all that's left in incredible diarrhea which persists forever so that you're certainly speaking
I think that bringing up c diff is probably the most extreme version of lack of diversity because you wipe out everything but one particular bacteria that then populates so it's almost like having a neighborhood where only one family dominates and they decide what happens well c-diff kills people. It's very serious. I'm a huge as a, as a gastroenterologist, I reluctantly ever try to put anybody on antibiotics and I see So my research was in bacterial overgrowth SIBO, which is, which is a consequence of antibiotics all the time. My classic patient would be somebody that said, I got a sinusitis just like you said, five years ago, took this big round of antibiotics and I've never been right since. And that's that's the patient comes to me as a gastroenterologist.
Yeah. And I was that patient because when I was a kid, I had antibiotics probably every week for years and then I had to go in and have two weeks straight of antibiotics, because I punctured a lung. And so they put you on IV antibiotics. And you know, ever since then it was just sort of this imbalance that couldn't get. I couldn't figure out how to right. And I didn't even know because that was sort of so early on. It was just this uphill battle that I wasn't aware of. So that was one of the things behind of like, you know, I could do everything perfect, but the moment too much stress would come on or whatever else would happen, I would fall back on my resiliency wasn't there, the normal resiliency that you would think you would have.
So I could talk postbiotics all day, but now you just got me super intrigued about Aubrey Levitt. And how I built this, how does a woman this powerhouse CEO doing this? You just said you essentially had a very traumatic childhood, what was going on?
Well, you know, it's a bit of a layered story, but it was I think it started also with this more, you know, trauma when I was a baby of someone had broken in and I actually had a memory of it, which is even weirder, you know, with a gun, but it put me on this hyper vigilant, very stressful response for years after where I was watching the window and the door couldn't sleep. And you know, this leads to an increase in illness where I was having strep throat probably every week. And I'm only putting these pieces together now actually looking backwards retrospectively, but you have these series of illnesses that which lead to pneumonia and then lead to puncturing a lung. And this is all pre second grade, you know, that happened in second grade. So you're on, you know, just a massive amounts of medication, and not compared to maybe some to what some other kids are having, but it was a lot for me at the time.
I mean, I would argue that getting antibiotics that often could be one of the most traumatic things that somebody could do because you will never be able to rebuild this microbiome.
Yeah, it becomes and then you only realize later how much it's really affecting you. It throws off your hormones, it throws off your immune system throws off, you know, all sorts of things that were just out of whack with without a real explanation. You know, you'd go to see these various doctors and they couldn't pinpoint what was the root cause.
Wow, how are your parents through this whole process?
You know, I don't think anybody thought anything of it at the time, right? They were actually very healthy and very conscious of all these things and did their best. But, you know, what are you going to do when your kid has 104 fever every other week? Right? I mean, you just don't really have a choice.
Yeah. Wow.
And that is wild. So I would, I would even couple that did on top of that. On top of the biodiversity that's being eliminated through long term antibiotics, you've also got, I mean, the stress of anxiety, which is obviously something that you're referencing, if you're staring at a door or window as a young kiddo, and it persists for days. I mean, the time to repair is constantly being thwarted by your body's vigilant state of trying to always be in fight or flight, there is no repair time. That's pretty wild.
Yeah, and I don't think people realize how much stress wears on their, their immune system and their body and just like you're saying, it doesn't give you that rest and digest time to recover, which is very essential, you know, to bounce back. So. And I think also that got me very interested in like the gut brain response and how that vagus nerve talks between the two because you're just always reacting. Right?
Okay, so we're both smiling because this is just right up Ken's ally. This is exactly what
I just think it's hilarious. This is the first time that we've actually talked. And you're literally mimicking everything that we say. We are a kindred spirit here. We've been on the same island...studying the same stuff.
Yeah, exactly. And so, you know, even when we when I created this first product, I think one of the issues that I was finding is that okay, I would take these herbal remedies, I would, you know, eat these great foods, but I still wasn't able to digest them properly or really utilize them properly. And because I wasn't seeing the results I wanted and when I fermented these herbs, what what was very interesting is I actually even felt a focus and a mood difference right away, which is how I got into this post biotic work because I thought, wow, they're like, I think there's GABA or something in here that is different than what was in here when you started with the original product.
So you felt it almost immediately.
Yeah, I did, I did. And I felt the difference. And so then I went and tested and that there was GABA in it. And also too, if I was actually feeling that and because it was a small amount, I mean and I can't be sure that's just a assumption on my part, but that got me really interested. I started talking to these guys out of corp, you know, Ted Dinin, and they were studying this essentially how the gut communicates to the brain through the signaling molecules and these neurotransmitters that are released through this fermentation process, even if it's in your gut. And so I just went down this rabbit hole and ended up partnering with the scientists out of Memorial Sloan Kettering. Now he's at NYU, who, who was also interested in the same thing of these metabolites. And not only they also signal to the other bacteria in your gut, so there's just this constant communication going on between everything. Not not to get too in the weeds,
No, totally because this perfect, this is the conversation I have with my patients all the time, is when pharmaceutical companies and I'm not putting them on blast, but when pharmaceutical companies try and do something they tend to focus on on a molecule that they can patent. And what we're learning is that the microbiome is way too complex, where we're at right now with our, with our research, so you can do these giant stool studies. And so I get all these people that come from functional medicine doctors with these, these gi DNA analysis, and they're like, Yeah, do something like that we can do the test, you don't really know how to manipulate 100 trillion bacteria.
Exactly.
And so what I tell everybody is, we do know that if you can diversify, they will figure it out. Meaning they when you have a proper diversification, a proper signaling mechanism where they will keep control of each other, and they send signals to your brain, we now know Eric and I did a whole episode just on the negative effects of short chain fatty acids, when they're out of proportion, meaning butyrate being real good. But yeah, if you have too much acetate, if you have too much propionic acid out of proportion, that crosses the blood brain barrier and creates that that gut brain situation. So it's all about just let your body let those microbiome, figure it out. We're not going to out think them.
Yeah. And that's, that's also something that really excites me about this whole field is the ecosystem approach, I think is really an opportunity to look at medicine differently than how we've been looking in the at in the past, like this lock and key approach is doesn't work as you're saying. It's sort of the it's very complex, it requires more systems medicine approach of looking at how, if you touch this point, it affects this whole area around it. And I think it's also to me, the one area that's speaking to all different fields, you know, it's speaking to Western medicine, allopathic medicine, speaking to functional medicine, and it's kind of everybody because we don't know exactly what's happening here. But we all agree, it's important, and we all agree it matters. And that that hasn't really happened before. I mean, you guys are the you're the doctor, so maybe you could speak to that more but that's, that's what I see happening. And it's also saying we can't outsmart it. We have to work with it.
Yeah. And that's where the whole, that's where I got really interested in the whole postbiotic thing because that's when I started doing. We started realizing that when, when you start decreasing the inflammatory response in the body by eating a different type of diet, I start asking why. And then that's when I started meeting scientists that said, Oh, it's because you're producing, urolithin or you're producing, you know, now a GABA. I didn't realize the GABA. So that's what's so fascinating. So I'm a doctor. And I imagine you've got what six or seven PhDs that you're in this postbiotic thing. What is how did you end up you were sick and then then you sort of jump forward and said, then I started this company. How did we get from there to here?
Yeah, God, it's been a windy road. So I you know, I was a, how do I say this? So i i got obsessed with the science part because I always do have to measure and kind of look at...okay, starting with an idea of something that I may feel in myself or that matters to me, but I wanted to look at, okay, how can we measure this in a larger population? Like, it's not enough for me to I didn't want to go out there and just create a product and see what happens? And I guess Okay, so one step back, I do have a background in pharmaceutical advertising and marketing or whatnot. And so it started there. And I was working those jobs and I thought, okay, I, this is not what I'm going to look back 40 years from now and be happy with what I created. I wanted to go out there and solve a problem. And then once you create that solution, then I have to go back and measure and make sure it works. So that's what led me down the science path. And it just it wasn't necessarily the intention of starting a company. It was always coming from solving a problem and wanting to find the answer that didn't already exist. And if you're looking for an answer that doesn't already exist, then you have to test that answer multiple times before you go out there and offer it to somebody else. So, that's sort of the windy road there, I guess.
Well, I'll tell you what that is, is that's you've when we you've said several times, allopathic and naturopathic boy, if there's ever anybody who I would not believe would somebody with a marketing background in pharmaceuticals that came up with a novel idea, usually its market first we'll worry about the science later. We're going to make cash on this thing.
I've gotten a lot of flack for that.
No, not flack at all. I'm giving you so much props you lead with science first. I mean, that is amazing. Especially because you come from a marketing background, holy cow.
But to me the best marketing is truth and honesty. Right? And that speaks for itself. And so I was not interested in this...okay, you have this end product and you put a shiny package on it, and you hand it over somebody it's like how many of the layers can peel away so that you really have a clear understanding of where something starts and what the thought process is behind it and you and you just communicate that clearly at the end of it. And that's that's where I think things are going even on a marketing standpoint, but he you're just telling a clear story of why you did it and then what it is and why it works.
I could not agree more I think the most stable marketing is knowing that your story is true, can be proven, can be reproducible. Generally, those who just flash in the pan the the charlatans are always revealed over time and then it's just it's just a trend or a fad that fades away but what you're doing is very much in line with what what drew me to work with Ken it's this is what I believe we'll figure out how to tell people about it later, but this is what's working and that made a lot of sense to me.
And and even if it does, if it works the other way, do you is that something you really want to be a part of or like is that like I would lose interest over time. So doing it for me more than anything. And then I had to turn around and be like, okay, now how do I find a business story around that that other people get behind? Because I want to do the science for me, because that's what I need to move forward. So it really came from that place, read more than anything else. And to say, Okay, how do I get scientists that are smarter than me that are gonna think they're gonna challenge me? And then we're going to do the research around it and find some answers.
There's so much similarity here. You being a CEO now, I had no business background, and now I'm in the throes of essentially, you know, I mean, it's a five year startup and I realized that Apple was a 20 year startup and
Right, exactly
20 year startup and all this other stuff. So you you get that that side of it. I was super impressed with your team. I mean, you are just filled with PhDs and a couple MDs.
Yeah, yeah, we got really lucky of and at this point, everybody's kind of donating their time. Like they've got on board out of passion. And that's what I think is even more exciting is that they believed in the process and we just kind of found scientists that were really obsessed with what they call this ecosystem science and looking at how these interactions happen in the microbiome. And
I love the idea of ecosystem science that encompasses so much and it actually flies in the face of what Ken and I both kind of find challenging with, unfortunately, the pharmaceutical world which is just trying to find that one little bitty active molecule to try to solve all of the issues with that because it doesn't generally work that way. That being said, what are the goals with the company and utilizing ecosystem science? Where do y'all want to go? What what is what are some some pinnacle finish lines for y'all?
Yeah, I mean, what's so there's two things that we have really exciting on the horizon and one we we are working now. We just talked to a doctor at Memorial Sloan Kettering and what the research they've done at Memorial Sloan Kettering is a cancer hospital. And they really looked at how diversity affects cancer patients. And that's been something that was, you know, a long term almost impossible thing for me and and the fact that we're actually pursuing being able to do that is exciting. And what they found is that so they did some FMT studies there. And they really found that if a patient comes in and they have higher diversity, then you know, when they go through their chemotherapy, and then their antibiotics and the most severe treatments, for the third, specifically working with bone marrow transplant patients, the patients who have the higher gut diversity do better. They surv...they're more likely to survive, it actually affects survival rate, and it reduces complications. And so this has sent them down the path of really looking into what can they do to protect the gut diversity and help these patients and so one of the questions they asked which I found fascinating is okay when you receive high doses of chemotherapy and antibiotics is there really anything you can do, or is your gut so destroyed at that point that it doesn't matter? And what they found was actually even a little bit helps these patients and helps their survival rate. And what that means is even if there's no intervention, so they may just happen to be someone who bounces back better than somebody else. And so, and they bounce back to a just slightly higher level than the other patients whose guts destroyed that slight increase in diversity, they do better. So that means even if they eat a better diet, they're potentially going to do better, which is to me huge because you can come in with something that is a more dietary or intervention and improve their outcomes. And so again...
Very, very interesting and very congruent, Brown, with what, what you've been talking about even back to the inception of Atrantil. We, we have what we think are these incredible polyphenols this polyphenolic blend to feed bacteria. But, you know, the opposite needs to be true. Also, if if the correct bacteria aren't there to be fed in the right ratios, then we're just not going to have the byproducts, the postbiotics that we need for the body.
Yeah. So Aubrey, so I'm sitting here listening to you, and I'm thinking, okay, so we talk about bio diversity and all this stuff. But the reality is, is that the bio diversity leads to this complex cascade of things that happen.
Yes.
And if I've got in my world, gastroenterology, I've got patients that have their colons taken out due to ulcerative colitis, due to cancer, due to different things. And we've actually talked, we've got one of my graduate students, actually, Angie will be very excited to know that you came on. I've got a graduate student that Eric and I work with carefully, and we started discussing this that well, what happens nobody's talking about If you don't have your microbiome, how can you make sure they have sufficient amounts of butyric acid? How can you make sure that there's urolithic come out there? How can you make sure that now Gaba and now we know that are they getting the appropriate amount of vitamin K, are they getting the glutathione things that we know that the bacteria break down, nobody's talking about that. And the ability to say, okay, during this acute process of getting chemotherapy, I would almost think that your particular product should be the protocol to ensure that there is something.
Well, and that's what I think we got passionate about if there's nothing done to support the body to recover better when certain treatments or therapies are given and why not. So it's, you know, I mean, I think it brings me back a little bit to this COVID situation, what what's your best defense, your immune system, your own body, you know, and I think that no matter what you have, no matter what treatment you're given, your own body's going to be doing some of the legwork to get you back to where you want to be, or at least even to be able to handle the treatment better because a lot of these treatments are so harsh that they're also taking a toll on your own immune system or your own body in various ways. So, and we're not doing anything to help mitigate that or support the body as it's recovering. And that seems like an easy place to intervene and have because it's, it's gonna fall back on that on your body anyway.
You know, I'm sitting there thinking about you as a young girl looking out the window, being hyper vigilant with the sympathetic nervous system, and then I'm thinking about a cancer patient that wakes up and goes, oh, shit, I have cancer. That thought sympathetic nervous system goes up.
Exactly.
Then a nurse comes in says, Remember you have chemo. Oh my God, I'm gonna have diarrhea, and nausea and vomiting. And I mean, you cannot think of a worse scenario, then and my, I mean, we've treated a ton of cancer, and the thought of the sympathetic nervous system going overboard the worries that are going on the financial stress, all this other stuff, it's very similar to the COVID situation. So similar,
And that's our lifestyle these days, is this a high, heightened, stressful situation is we're constantly under stress. And so, and I think why, until you get something more severe, a lot of times, we're not thinking of what the effects of this are. But really the goal would be anytime you're sort of hitting a heightened stress, how do you balance that with also protecting yourself? And we're not really ingrained to think that way yet. You know, because it's having one round of antibiotics, we should be doing something to build ourselves back up to protect our gut microbiome. So that's why we looked into that in the study of like, how do you protect the diversity and make yourself and help yourself bounce back, right? Because that directly affects your immune system, which is suppressed during that medication and it's going to need to bounce back, you know, the microbiome helps with that. So that should be when you're in a stressful period when you get you know, because then we may not have it cascade into these larger problems, we start looking at it early. But then again, when you have the most extreme problem even then it helps you bounce back. And I, I just keep seeing this also vision in my head of the COVID situation of what happens when the whole world takes a break for a little bit. You saw how even like nature bounced back so quickly, right? Like the amount that we can all bounce back is actually incredible. If you just give a little bit of help...for a second.
And I love how you're saying that because there's I have so many patients that when they they do something that let's say that they are...well, we've seen this. So Eric and I, we've we launched a program, Aubrey that we call the frontline program, because we believe so strongly that gut health, you cannot have a healthy immune system without a healthy gut. Because health begins there. And so we have launched a program where we're just giving away Atrantil because I know that it increases diversity. I know that it actually has anti pathogenic activity. I know this and we discussed it as a company, that we have a moral obligation to at least help the people that I'm with like I could, the thought that I could go to my hospital and find a nurse that maybe, you know, if somebody died, that maybe we could have just given them something to help, then that, that really that that drive starts getting me thinking about all the stuff that you're talking about, which is like, why can't we start doing protocols at a hospital that are essentially harmless, which is what you're talking about. There, the risk to benefit ratio, and it's insane the hurdles you have to go through. Like you had to find somebody at Memorial Sloan Kettering, you had to sit down, you had to go through meeting after meeting after meeting he had to then get passionate enough to go to the IRB to go to that. I mean, I've been there. And you're like, for God's sakes!
Right.
I mean, we're on the cardiac floor. The cardiac diet is pancakes and syrup and...
Right, right. Yeah. I in and it's, it's kind of like Why not? You know, it's as you're saying it's why not do something that is going to do now it may help it may not in some situations, but why not?
Yeah, we're going so far as we're giving away. I mean, we're losing a ton of money doing this just trying to make sure that if it does, if it can help, and we learned that it helps later, then I would look back at myself at this time and go you're a jerk for not at least trying to tell people.
That's really great. That's really great.
But it brings a question to my mind, Aubrey with your PhDs and we kind of set the stage here a little bit. So medicine in its early day was all it's all predicated. All the information we have is predicated on people doing experiments it's how we, we came to find everything and then ultimately which seemed like that we're at this intersection where innovation which might occur outside of, you know, the small little nucleus of companies or a handful of doctors is just summarily rejected until finally, over time, it's finally accepted because it happens to work for for someone else, or it's disproven and it doesn't work at all. But what inspires your PhDs to work with a company that's essentially helping challenge the status quo by using natural solutions? Because I know what works for Ken and I, it's because we see people smile and get real relief after trying for so long. So that's an easy one. But what is it about the PhD at that level who's like, you know what, I'm going to go to work today and keep challenging this because why?
You know, that's great question. So I think a couple things I do think the microbiome has really opened the door to it's almost looking at it through the lens of the microbiome being complex, and not necessarily as much what the input is, because when you're looking at postbiotics, it kind of takes it one step away from like whether it starts as a natural product or not. I also think this next generation of scientists is they're very, the ones I'm meeting now are very interested in how can I make a difference? How can I not just stay in the lab? And how can I put something into the world and see that research be realized? And I think I happen to meet scientists that were passionate about, okay, this approach of taking the one missing bacteria, or this group of missing bacteria is not going to work. And they were willing to kind of stand on the edge and say that and my co founder who I work directly with, he did some research in Japan and you know, overseas, so I think it really opened up his eyes to hey, there are these things that have been studied for a long period of time that have been used with patients, but it just wasn't under a scientific rigor. So what happens if we look at that information and we start putting it under the lens that we look at other scientific remedies, what will we find? And it's more of just an openness to asking that question, and not really saying, okay, let's pick something more natural. It's more just like, okay, let's open our door to this wider range of things, whether it's natural or not. Let's look at what works.
You know, I love how you say that. Let's open the door. Because what I've run into, which I'm sure you have run into, is what I I call cognitive dissonance. If somebody believes something, and they don't want to think about anything else, you described it as opening the door, just look outside and see and keep an open mind about that. That's really cool that you found people like that because when you get up a team, one thing that has been really neat about this whole COVID-19 issue is the collaboration of the scientists around the world. People are running with...people are just sharing data. And they're just saying, hey here, just what can you do with this? And this is, I think that the collaboration that's going on right now with you and your team is so cool, because this whole idea of opening the door and saying natural solutions and what is natural the most, you almost it has this implication that, oh, I'm going to try something unusual. And what you're saying is no, we're going to use our body and we're just going to feed it what it wants and allow the bacteria to do what they do, which is the most basic fundamental thing you can do for your health. I love that.
And it's also not looking at the two extremes, right? I think, you know, just because something's natural doesn't mean it's healthy either. I think that's that's pretty clear as well, I you know, that there's, we can't jump to an extreme on either side of this. It's like okay, we can have a wider array of what we're looking at to support the body and then we test it and that's it. So what got the scientists I'm working with fully on board was our first study, we had a control group and we had results that were surprising to all of us because we went in saying, we don't know, maybe this could work. And then we got the results from the first study. So that's really what sealed the deal. Not not any kind of hope around it. Right?
Yeah. Let me pin you down a little more. I know that Eric poked you a little bit here. But I'm going to take you one step further. So well, I want to know the because I'm, I'm much like you I'm into the science, but also own a company. And so I'm curious where Aubrey sees the business side of this. Where do you see that going? And you already said that science. You're correct. You're helping people. So morally, you're on the right place, but you also have to pay these six PhDs you also have and, and the beauty of having a successful company is that you can hire more people, more people can can can get insurance more people can, you know, there's nothing wrong with taking a beautiful scientific idea and turning it into a successful company.
Yeah, yeah. And I and I tend to think of I prefer building a company where maybe there's a bigger hurdle upfront. And then hopefully, once you get over that, you're gonna have an easier time rather than sort of getting out the gate and meaning if you do the science, you get the credibility and you'll get people behind me and that could be your marketing that you go out the gate with. So what we're hoping is to get this next study done, which we hope we can get this study done with these cancer patients, which is more extreme scenario, right, and then we could put it as a medical food and that would be the hope and then you can also use it as an adjunct when these other medications are given because it's essentially 24% of medications affect your gut microbiome negatively, right. So really want to pay attention to when you're taking these medications, how do you protect it and I think also in these stressful situations, so the idea would be to get it as a medical food and then also take it when you take antibiotics and other things. And so it's not kind of it's when you need it right now like an ongoing every day sort of thing.
Well, I see it as a not to have death by 1000 cuts, because I'm seeing going to my company, digestive health associates of Texas, I think that you have a relationship to Dr. Rogoff, one of my partners.
Yep.
Don't you?
Yes, I do. He's a great guy. Yes.
So we've got a Research Division that does pharmaceutical research. My background was in pharmaceutical research. That's how I went from that's how I discovered a a hole that they were missing and that a natural solution could fail. And that's very similar to what you did pharmaceutical marketing. Well, it would be really interesting that you got me thinking that I'm like, wow, we could easily do an inflammatory bowel disease study. And people that have had colectomies and see how they feel just a quality of life scale something super easy. Now you really got me thinking like, are they? Are they living their life with one hand tied behind their back? Because we took out their colons?
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, that would be that would be very interesting to do. I would love to do that. And I think, you know, here's the other side of it if we find something really interesting in one of these studies too to be able to take a collection of metabolites to say to really look at what are what are the predominant ones that are sort of the this lever for the inflammatory or the immune response is is a way to go, you know, because I think we can dig even deeper into so my interest is not looking at okay, these bacteria are the ones that are responsible but which metabolites are responsible in which collection metabolites that can potentially trigger the system?
Yeah, fascinating that you say that because I've met with scientists that are actually working for pharmaceutical companies trying to get the one metabolite. And they're trying to get the patent on that. And I just laugh because I'm like, so you get this so does it survive in the gastrointestinal tract? Does it is it the actual one that the bacteria can you have, like we talked about on our show, Eric, you can have too much of a good thing. Your everything has to be in balance. Eric frequently will hyperventilate when I work with him because he thinks that air is good for him, and he'll just do too much. He doesn't do that.
One time I realized that shoes made my feet more comfortable. So I just I just covered myself in shoes. Really, really bizarre. Well, hey, I think that, undoubtedly and away from even just this, this, this COVID interview that it's obvious that we could find some synergy between efforts, but for everybody who's listening, anybody else who's interested in postbiotics plus, how can someone else become involved, get in touch with and possibly even help you find what your goals are as well?
Yeah, I think the easiest way is the websites postbioticsplus.com and send an email through there and anybody that's interested in helping us move this research forward, that's that's sort of our biggest goal right now or yeah, that's that's the easiest way to do it. I think we're trying to do it in an organized way with a formal study and then we'll go from there, so
We will try our best to do that I have an ask of you though.
What...oh no
There's gives and asks, I don't remember his name, but you've got some badass person at Baylor that's head of virology and micrology, microbiology on I saw that on your team on his page. I would love to get in touch...
Oh Joseph. Yeah, okay. Okay. Yeah.
You've got, I mean, from an academic standpoint, you've got a pretty heavy hitter page. That was a...
We've got a good group.
Yeah, I mean, like, I'm a I'm a nerd through and through. And so I was like, oh my gosh, look at this. Oh, yeah. And I start looking at the research. I'm like, oh my gosh.
Yes, yes, we can. We can make that happen. We can make it, have you talk to him, so...
Cool. Cool.
That is awesome. Aubrey. For those of y'all who may not know she's the hardest working woman in postbiotics because we're talking on Memorial Day morning. So.
Oh, yeah. Thank you so much for doing this.
Yeah. Thank you so much for carving out time to visit with us. This was an incredible discovery of synergy between efforts and it's I mean, to me, it's just it's not only a relief, it's exciting to find somebody else who also realizes that there isn't just one solution and to find solutions, it takes a team effort and it's different than
Now we have a club.
This is awesome. So so let's start a Facebook group and other things that clubs do I'm not much into social media, but okay, we'll try it. It'll just be awkward staring at each other.
Secret handshake.
How did this work again? Yeah. Awesome. Thank you guys for having me.
I love the work you're doing. Thank you so much for everything Aubrey Levitt postbiotics plus. We're gonna try we're gonna stay in touch. We're going to collaborate like crazy. I've got some scientists you need to meet around the world, some crazy smart people doing very similar things. I'd like to meet some of your scientists, so on and so on. And I don't think that I think that maybe a collaboration between us could probably help out this crisis that we're going through right now eventually. Not in a not in an arrogant way. But yeah, I believe that you see it also that immunity starts in the gut.
Yeah, can it can I say one last thing? I know we're, but there's a study. I mean, when you think of collaborating, there's a study. I think it's at Columbia right now that's looking at fiber and inulin, of how it can prevent secondary infections in this COVID thing, and I think there needs to be one in postbiotics of how we can look at.
Well, the article that, that that that Sylvia did was really wild because she showed the increase in butyric acid, and it was tenfold. It was 100,000 fold, it was nuts, that I had no idea when you start looking at this where you can actually show this and then we start to I've got this, do you have a Mandalay account, the repository of literature?
No.
I'll hook you up with this. In fact, we probably team up I've got a I've got an enterprise level Mendeley account where you can just put literature, download literature and put it into files so that you you can search your what you want. So I could like go right now and type in postbiotic you know Sloan Kettering and your your stuff would pop up. It's really it's just it's just a way to collaborate with other scientists that I've really enjoyed so that we can do stuff like this.
Great, great. Sounds good.
Ladies and gentlemen, that's, that's COVID Episode 6.0 Aubrey Levitt postbioticsplus.com thank you so much for joining us and thanks to our sponsors atrantil.com of course ilovemytummy.com KBMD health and unrefinedbakery.com Aubrey, thank you so much. Ken-any last words?
No, thank you so much for taking the time and and on Memorial Day you know not being out on a boat using proper social isolation taking the time to do a podcast.
Thank you guys.
Have a good one.
Bye. Bye.
Talk to you soon, bye.
Oh, she she jumped out.