300-SYNCpodcast_MarthaCarlin

[00:00:00] Jenny Swisher: Welcome friends to this episode of the sync, your life podcast today. I’m joined by my new friend, Martha Carlin. We’re going to be talking about her story, her journey into learning more about the gut microbiome. We’re going to talk about why the gut microbiome matters. We’re going to talk about glyphosate, all the different things that we probably don’t hear about often enough that really does affect just our overall health.

[00:01:19] Jenny Swisher: So without further ado, Martha, I would love for you to just introduce yourself to my audience and tell us more about what you do and how you got here.

[00:01:26] Martha Carlin: Okay. Great. Thanks so much, Jenny. Um, so I’m Martha Carlin. I founded a company called the Bio Collective, uh, back in 2015 to look at and study the microbiome, but the story actually starts all the way back.

[00:01:41] Martha Carlin: In 2002 and maybe a little bit before that. So in 2002, my 44 year old husband, who was healthy, uh, marathon running, uh, never really did anything bad or harmful or what seemed that way and to see somebody at that young age diagnosed with an old person’s disease, um, just kind of blew our minds and was, you know, It’s devastating.

[00:02:13] Martha Carlin: And prior to that, actually, my career had been, uh, I was, I studied accounting. I went out into accounting, accounting and consulting auditing, which is never believe anything somebody tells you examine the evidence for yourself. And so when we got that diagnosis, I was like, I got to look at this myself and really understand what’s going on.

[00:02:38] Martha Carlin: As I started to look at it, I went back to something I was trained in called transaction flow review, which is how you look at business risk. And in that, you draw a flow chart and you’re showing everything mapping everything that flows through a business. And I was like, well. It seems like that would be smart to do with Parkinson’s.

[00:02:59] Martha Carlin: And of course, the main thing flowing through the body is our food. And so I really started there in that process and threw everything out of the cabinet, tried to go all organic, which was very hard to do in 2002. So then I started studying, okay, what’s in the food. And as I. Kind of made that progress and was looking at how food is genetically engineered.

[00:03:26] Martha Carlin: You know, I’m thinking, okay, they’re like putting all these different genes in the food. You know, can’t that transfer to us, which, you know, back then initially people are saying no, no, no. And then fast forward. 2014. So after 12 years of studying all these different aspects of Parkinson’s, I read a book called Missing Microbes by Dr.

[00:03:51] Martha Carlin: Martin Blazer. And he was talking about the rise of chronic disease and growing up in the age of antibiotics. And he microbiome, which is a term I had not heard, you know, the trillions of bacteria, fungi, and viruses that live in and on our body. And it functions as our internal pharmacy and that really resonated with me because over the years of talking to people with Parkinson’s, I had seen a pattern of, uh, people with Parkinson’s who had had repeated strep infections as children and taken multiple courses of antibiotics or, uh, people who had taken, um, Acne medications, either Accutane or, um, antibiotics for, um, for the acne in their teens and developing it later.

[00:04:46] Martha Carlin: So that really resonated. And then about six months later, the first paper was published, uh, showing, and this was by Dr. Philip Shepard Hans of Finland. And he showed There are 2 primary types of Parkinson’s. The one people are most familiar with is the tremor. The other one is called posture and gait. And that’s where somebody has a stooped posture and trouble walking.

[00:05:11] Martha Carlin: And he was able to divide those 2 phenotypes by the gut bacteria. And I was like, Eureka, the gut is the general ledger. It really translated to my accounting accounting. It’s got a balance. Um, and so I. I quit my job and I invited Dr Shepherd Hans to the States to go to this Parkinson’s conference and we spent a week together and, um, you know, I really started connecting a lot of the research paradigms in Parkinson’s, even to, um, the, the genes and microbes and some of that.

[00:05:49] Martha Carlin: And later that year, I founded the bio collective. To, uh, build out a, a biobank, collecting samples, not of just people with Parkinson’s, but across diseases and healthy states. So that we could provide that for many researchers around the globe to access, but also to do our own work, um, sequencing, uh, the genes in the microbiome and starting to look for patterns across the population of functions we.

[00:06:22] Martha Carlin: Had lost and in a part of the concept of that came from my other two co founders one Jack Gilbert who is a rock star of the microbiome space and the other dr Suzanne Vernon who had spent 20 years studying chronic fatigue and Jack had a son with autism and so We saw these patterns across autism, chronic fatigue, Parkinson’s, of some things that were going on in the microbiome.

[00:06:52] Martha Carlin: And so that really sparked us to dig deeper into the data. We built computational models and started looking at, you know, what’s going on in the population and evolving from the founding of the company in 2015, uh, brought in, uh, Dr. Raul Cano, who is a, uh, microbial ecologist, 35 years professor at Cal Poly, who had studied putting together microbial systems to originally clean up oil spills.

[00:07:26] Martha Carlin: And so we looked at that concept and, um, actually Started making probiotics. The first one, uh, really just a probiotic designed to help my husband based on some data found at a conference and came back and started studying and we put together this team of microbes and then that eventually evolved into our biotic west brand of probiotics.

[00:07:54] Jenny Swisher: That’s amazing. I say this often, but I love when I interview people who really kind of just find their purpose through a struggle. Right. And I know I can say that for myself. Like, I was just telling a group yesterday that I came into hormone health very unfortunately, had I not been having. Chronic migraines and infertility and all the, all the symptoms of hormone imbalances.

[00:08:14] Jenny Swisher: I probably wouldn’t know as much as I do. Right. But when we’re affected by something, especially in our health, I know a lot of us, you and I included that we want to know why, like, why is this happening and what’s going on? So you are the definition of sort of peeling back the onion to see like, what is at the root of this entire thing?

[00:08:30] Jenny Swisher: And how can I. How can I learn more? Number one. And how can I also maybe even create something to help and serve? So I also love that you’ve brought the experts along with you, right? And that’s something that I try to do as well. Like, I don’t know everything for sure, right? But I want to know more. So how can I align with other people who, who know more than I do?

[00:08:49] Jenny Swisher: So I know we can get really sciencey. Um, and I, I know that my audience typically are, are women in that sort of age 30 to 50 plus category. And so what I like to do is really sort of simplify for them. So what I want to do is sort of start with this idea of, you know, how important the gut microbiome is to our overall health.

[00:09:07] Jenny Swisher: And you’re already mentioning how important it is in a lot of these chronic diseases that you’ve mentioned, including Parkinson’s. Um, I know I teach about how it affects hormones, right? I talk about the gut being really the foundation of our four legged chair, which, My listeners know what that is, but the four legged chair is our endocrine system as a whole.

[00:09:24] Jenny Swisher: So if your gut is disrupted, if there is history of antibiotic use, if there’s candida, if there’s all these different things playing a factor in your gut, um, your hormones are most likely going to be sitting, your, your four legged chair will be sitting on a wobbly surface, right? More like sand instead of a sturdy foundation.

[00:09:40] Jenny Swisher: So let’s kind of start with just the importance of the gut microbiome and how it really influences our overall health.

[00:09:48] Martha Carlin: Well, I mean, since it’s come into popular consciousness, I’ll say there’s just been a tremendous amount of research since that, since that first Parkinson’s paper, they’re now published.

[00:10:00] Martha Carlin: Almost 1700 papers on Parkinson’s in the microbiome and the connections to that. But the microbiome is so in order of the magnitude of functions and genes that do those functions, the microbiome has about 300, 200 to 300 times more genes. So it’s a primary driver of a lot of the functions in the body.

[00:10:30] Martha Carlin: 70 percent of our immune system is in the gut. And that’s where we’re coming in contact with these things from the outside. And the gut is sensing and deciding, is this an invader? Is this okay? And it’s Informing our immune system of that. And so that’s super critical. You know, we have this very thin lining of the gut.

[00:10:53] Martha Carlin: And if that gets disrupted, those More problematic microbes can cross over into the bloodstream and cause inflammation. The microbiome is also, again, that internal pharmacy, that factory that’s making hormones, vitamins, neurotransmitters, and many, so the B vitamins, for one, are very critical and are made by microbes in our gut.

[00:11:20] Martha Carlin: And, um, I know we might talk about glyphosate later, but, um, many of the microbes that are involved in making those B vitamins, um, they need minerals to actually do those functions and glyphosate is binding those up. Um, there’s also lots of research now on the gut brain axis and how, you know, the, the neuro chemicals and the loop that goes around.

[00:11:46] Martha Carlin: The stress loop is one where if we get under stress, it changes the micro microbiome and then that starts producing stress signals and you get into this sort of vicious cycle loop of, you know, neuro chemicals that are not beneficial to you.

[00:12:07] Jenny Swisher: Yeah, it’s also fascinating. Um, it, and this is such a, such a random side story, but I feel like I need to share it.

[00:12:14] Jenny Swisher: So when it comes to like, so I started having like, so I’ve always had kind of a history of migraines, right? I had them in high school. They were always around my period. And then in college, after college, they kind of went off into a spiral of. chronic pain for a couple of years until I got that under control with hormone therapy and other things.

[00:12:30] Jenny Swisher: Now I’m 40 going on 41 and now they’re coming back, right? So hello, perimenopause, we’re here. Um, but what I’m learning is like, I really started having, I went from feeling really great to not feeling so great with the migraines and other issues, bloating, like a little bit of acne coming back up, right?

[00:12:47] Jenny Swisher: Like brain fog and honestly, a really dysregulated nervous system. This was a couple of years ago. And, um, you know, I, I said to myself, like, I’m not doing the over training and under fueling thing that I did in my twenties. I know I’ve sort of mastered my lifestyle and I know what works for me. So why is this happening?

[00:13:05] Jenny Swisher: Right. So I started working with Dr. Meg mill, who I actually had on the podcast last week, a couple of weeks ago, and she was, she does a lot of like root cause diagnostics. So we did food sensitivity testing. We did, um, you know, stool testing, we did all kinds of stuff. And the one thing that kept coming up was I had a little bit of elevated markers of Candida.

[00:13:24] Jenny Swisher: And so, um, what’s interesting is when my youngest daughter was born, uh, she was born with a lip and tongue tie as a result of the lip and tongue tie, she developed thrush in the mouth multiple times, which is candida. And my migraines started happening when she was around two months old. And so. All this to be said, like when I started working with Dr.

[00:13:47] Jenny Swisher: Meg and some other doctors were like, where’s this coming from? Like, I have not been someone who has had like yeast infections or those kinds of things. So like, where is this coming from? And we realized like, this is probably a pretty likely cause of the whole thing. So it’s so crazy to me. You know, I’ve had, and I want to connect you to Chad Minders, he’s the founder of Ripley Cove Farms.

[00:14:05] Jenny Swisher: We’ve had him on here, he’s talked in depth about glyphosate and the impacts on our health and the gut microbiome, but I want to hear your side of it. Right, so I do want to go to glyphosate next, I want to talk about just the different things that are in our environment, obviously, the way we eat. That, you know, whether we eat organic or not, um, lifestyle factors, environmental stressors, like all of these things play a role.

[00:14:26] Jenny Swisher: But also the, the crap that’s being sprayed on our food that we may not know about, right? I was just talking to a woman the other day and she’s like, I eat oats every morning. Is that a good plan? And I said, well, like 99 percent of oats are GMO. So you have, unless you’re really seeking out a non GMO oats and you’re adding in high protein fuel, I don’t know.

[00:14:43] Jenny Swisher: I don’t know if that’s the best idea, right? But we also don’t want to live in fear, feeling like. No, there’s nothing we can eat because everything is messed up. So I would love to just hear you talk more about what we need to know as it pertains to what’s happening to our food.

[00:14:57] Martha Carlin: Sure. I mean, glyphosate really, it started out with a very strong focus on glyphosate.

[00:15:04] Martha Carlin: And that really came in 2014 when I found a paper by uh, Dr. Andre Liu, L L E. You, um, where he was showing the statistical correlation between the increase in the use of, uh, GMO seed for corn and soy and the spring of glyphosate and about I think there’s about 20 different diseases. And the correlations are very, very strong.

[00:15:33] Martha Carlin: And of course, people will say correlation is not causation, but when you have 20 diseases on the rise with the curve that just mirrors the growth of the use of this chemical, um, you know, I think that’s a very, very strong signal. Now he hasn’t. Updated that. But as I started to look at it, um, you know, there are a lot of there are a lot of other organophosphates.

[00:15:58] Martha Carlin: That’s what glyphosate is. And so much of what is used in agriculture, whether it is targeting insects. And frankly, we’re really not that different than an insect or, you know, targeting weeds. Um, are these organophosphates, um, and some other classes of, of chemicals that break various pathways and glyphosate in particular, I think is very insidious because it was originally, um, a product that was used for cleaning pipes.

[00:16:36] Martha Carlin: because of its ability to key light or bind minerals and pull them out of the pipe. And of course, if you think about that, like we need minerals, the minerals are what operate all the enzymes in our body, you know, different minerals needed for different enzymes. And there are thousands of, of, you know, these reactions that need these tiny amounts of minerals.

[00:17:01] Martha Carlin: So if you have something that’s being sprayed widespread in the environment, the way glyphosate is, um, you start to bind up the minerals. You’re binding the minerals in the soil. You’re binding the minerals in the food that’s actually grown. You’re binding Binding the minerals in our, in our body and making them inaccessible or very difficult to access.

[00:17:25] Martha Carlin: And, you know, then fast forward, I think it was 2011, um, they actually filed a patent for glyphosate as an antibiotic, um, and it kills more of the beneficial bacteria than it does the pathogenic bacteria. So it seemed kind of odd to me that you would. You know, file a patent for a microbe that actually does that.

[00:17:51] Martha Carlin: And then many of the fungi are actually resistant to glyphosate. So, we now see a rise in the food supply of, uh, mycotoxins. Because things like Fusarium, uh, which is a mold, um, Are actually resistant to glyphosate. So you have more fusarium on the grains. And so all of these factors kind of contribute to why people are having such difficulty with grains.

[00:18:23] Martha Carlin: You know, it’s partly the lack of mineral content. It’s partly the glyphosate residues, which kill the good bacteria in the gut. And then it’s partly these mycotoxins that are, um, in the stored grains that, um. Then can poke holes in our gut and cause that leaky gut and the inflammatory problems that follow from that.

[00:18:45] Jenny Swisher: Yeah. Yeah. We’ve done episodes here on the podcast, even with, um, like Lifeboost coffee founder, Charlie Livingston and some others, like people who are really like, Hey, there’s mycotoxins in your coffee. Like you think that you’re safe just, uh, you know, going to Whole Foods and scooping the beans out of the bin.

[00:19:01] Jenny Swisher: No, like bad idea. Right. So all these little details matter, um, when it comes to our health. And I just think it’s like, if it’s meant to kill bugs and it’s also killing some of the good stuff, we really have to evaluate now. Do you follow like Do you try to buy everything yourself organic? Like, does the organic label really matter?

[00:19:22] Martha Carlin: I do try to buy as much as possible organic, but I will say there’s, there is a dirty little secret in the organic growers world in terms of large scale organic growers, um, because they, you know, for fertilizer purposes, they’re not allowed to use synthetic fertilizers, and so they use manures, but You know, in order to access volume manures, you have to get that from, you know, these feedlot operations or large poultry operations that are typically feeding the animals GMO feed.

[00:20:00] Martha Carlin: And what happens is you end up with glyphosate in that manure. So we actually just. Um, completed a study with Dr. Don Huber that’s in Horticulture Science Journal, and I have an article coming out in the Wise Traditions, uh, Weston Price Journal talking about this, um, because what we found, what Dr. Huber found in this sauerkraut study was that the sauerkraut The cabbage could not maintain the tissue structure of the plant in, in the fermentation process.

[00:20:37] Martha Carlin: It turned soggy, and that was ultimately due to using this conventional manure. on the organic cabbage, which bound up, you know, four of the key minerals that are needed for lignin, which is what makes the strong tissues in the plant. And those same minerals are actually what makes, uh, collagen in our body.

[00:20:59] Martha Carlin: So, you know, there again, is this Connection to, you know, what we’re doing out there. It’s really not out there. It’s also in here. Yeah, that

[00:21:09] Jenny Swisher: makes total sense. Total sense. So you mentioned earlier that your, your company is making probiotics. So are you creating like specific strains of probiotics for certain things or tell us more about that?

[00:21:22] Martha Carlin: So, we actually, we have this, we have a computer model, uh, that we built that enables us to predict how microbes will behave together. And, um, we also identify specific strains that have functions, uh, that are important to, uh, You know what we’re trying to build. So, for example, our first product is a product called sugar shift.

[00:21:47] Martha Carlin: That’s the product that I made for my husband, John, based on some research in Parkinson’s that showed that the sugar alcohol mannitol could stop the aggregation of the proteins and pull them out of the brain in an animal model. And it’s a free radical scavenger. You know, mannitol has a lot of interesting properties.

[00:22:08] Martha Carlin: Humans don’t actually use it like they do other sugars. So it’s generally, it comes out in the urine and feces. Um, so we came up with a concept to put this eight strain formula together that would actually convert

[00:22:31] Martha Carlin: Prebiotic fiber for feeding a broader population of microbes and in that process, um, we had also done work to identify a strain of bacteria that could break glyphosate down and not produce, uh, this other toxic byproduct that a lot of people have. A lot of microbes will produce if they’re trying to break it down.

[00:22:56] Martha Carlin: And we found our lactobacillus plantarum, um, from fermented elderberries. And it was actually able to break the glyphosate all the way down to phosphate, hydrogen, and water. Um, and it has a number of other, you know, can help eliminate, um. Toxic heavy metals like aluminum. Um, and so that’s in all of our formulas, but we put that in the sugar shift formula and we’re in the process of actually publishing a paper on a study that we did with the product that shows an increase of 900 percent in detoxification enzymes, an increase in, um, Some of the key species that are sort of missing from the gut.

[00:23:40] Martha Carlin: So arises in bifidobacteria, uh, organism called roseburia, another one called the bacteria. And then 100 percent of the people that we, in the study had a reduction in serum lipopolysaccharide, which is this inflammatory marker that can cross that leaky gut and get into the blood and has all kinds of immunomodulatory, uh, implications.

[00:24:06] Jenny Swisher: Yeah. Well, it’s interesting, right? That inflammation is really the root of all disease. Um, and so I was just talking about this with someone else on the podcast, but I’m curious, like before all of this, like before your husband’s Parkinson’s diagnosis and all that, like, were you guys interested in like quality of food and that kind of thing?

[00:24:25] Jenny Swisher: Or did this really shift your own perspective on it from the get go?

[00:24:29] Martha Carlin: You know, I wasn’t, I mean, I really wasn’t focused on it. You know, my kids were eating boxes of Kraft macaroni and cheese. Like, um, you know, I was a very busy executive. I traveled about 50 percent of the time. And so convenience foods and my husband didn’t cook.

[00:24:47] Martha Carlin: So, you know, we weren’t really thinking about where our food came from or the quality of the food. And even I’ll say it took me many more years. To really also think about when you’re eating out in restaurants, what’s actually at the restaurants, because sometimes you think you’re making a, you know, a healthy choice, but really sort of the whole supply chain in, um, the industrialized food that goes into a lot of these restaurants is problematic on a lot of different levels.

[00:25:22] Martha Carlin: And I, I do try to it. Yeah. Help people understand what’s going on, but not be afraid to eat because I mean, we need to eat food. So we need to be mindful. And I, I think sometimes just our intention of telling our, the body has so much intelligence, like, whether you can just talk to your body about, like, what’s coming in and Recognizing what’s beneficial and what’s not and just stopping for a moment to think about that when you eat.

[00:25:56] Martha Carlin: And, you know, our mouth is really this amazing sensor. Same as our nose. And, I mean, that’s another way the food’s kind of been messed up is with all these. artificial scents and flavors to entice us. Uh, but when you’re chewing your food, you’re sending all these signals to your brain about, you know, what’s coming so that the body will know, okay, what have I got to work with?

[00:26:20] Martha Carlin: What can I use here? So just being mindful of, okay, what’s coming into my body? What can I use? And anything I can’t use, let’s get rid of it.

[00:26:32] Jenny Swisher: Yeah. Well, it’s interesting because I teach a lot of, I like to share glucose goddess with a lot of my women followers because we want to stabilize blood sugar, right?

[00:26:40] Jenny Swisher: So we’re usually working with women on increasing their protein because most are under eating protein and increasing our fiber and, and all that kind of stuff. But she talks about even just the order in which you eat your food. Affects higher body response from like a blood sugar insulin perspective.

[00:26:55] Jenny Swisher: So, you know, eating the veggies, eating the protein and then eating the starch carbohydrate at the end, um, can make a huge difference. Like if you think about that, I’ve also heard, you know, significant, uh, evidence about just actually. Handling your food right like when you’re actually preparing your food and you’re cutting the vegetables and you’re touching the food it creates almost this bond with with your body like your body knows what’s coming and it’s just a difference.

[00:27:20] Jenny Swisher: I know when I did this like three week cleanse years ago. Um, it was really focused on eating more whole food right and I it was a. I remember being so frustrated because I was like, I’m spending so much time in the kitchen, like cutting stuff up. And I felt so frustrated, but at the same time, my body felt so good.

[00:27:37] Jenny Swisher: And I really believe it was because I was really literally coming in contact with the food I was eating. I wasn’t eating on the go. I was putting intentionality behind it. And I know we don’t all have time for that, like every single day in our, our busy lives, but it’s funny too. Like I have a similar story to where my husband and I were like the King and Queen of like, Hamburger Helper when we first got married.

[00:27:56] Jenny Swisher: We were like Hamburger Helper, you know, like we’d go down the aisles at Meijer and just all the box foods. Um, and now I worry about what my food eats. Like, wait, did my food eat grass? Did my food eat, you know, um, the crops? What kind of crops were they eating and that kind of stuff. It’s, it’s not about like becoming obsessive over these things.

[00:28:18] Jenny Swisher: It’s just awareness, right? It’s awareness. And then doing the things that you can, when can you cook at home? When can you choose the grass finished beef or the wild caught fish? Like those types of choices matter. And you’re right. Like the restaurants, yes, we need that social aspect to, of eating, right?

[00:28:33] Jenny Swisher: Because there is a social, emotional aspect to being in good community with other people and going out to dinner and those kinds of things. I don’t want to get rid of that for the sake of, um, you know, The grass finished steak or whatever, but at the same time, those cook, those foods, we have no idea where they’re coming from.

[00:28:49] Jenny Swisher: They’re most likely not grass finished or wild caught. They’re most likely cooked in inflammatory oils. So just understanding that in moderation for those things is key. So, okay, so let’s I, one thing I want to ask you about is I know I follow, you know, like, I know the EWG puts out like their dirty dozen and their clean 15 and those kinds of things, but I’m also interested in any perspective you have on just seasonal foods.

[00:29:11] Jenny Swisher: I had, I had a hang on one second.

[00:29:23] Jenny Swisher: I had a recent podcast guest who was talking about, she was talking about the gut microbiome and we were talking about fermented foods. So we were talking about pickling and all these different things. And one thing that she mentioned was really focusing a lot on the seasonal varieties of foods, right?

[00:29:37] Jenny Swisher: And this is something that we’ve tried to do. My kids love spaghetti squash this time of year. Like we’re kind of transitioning over to like the soups, you know, soup season in our house, as opposed to maybe the grilled season. So I would love to hear your perspective on that and what you’ve learned from just your research.

[00:29:52] Martha Carlin: Well, one of the things I think food really is, is it’s information, and this is something we’ve,

[00:30:09] Martha Carlin: it’s providing you information about the environment you’re living in, and what your body needs to know about that environment. And, you know, we’ve gotten into this, food system where, you know, we could get strawberries 365 days a year or, you know, whatever fruit we want from some other part of the world, but there are lots of pieces of information that go into making that food as it grows.

[00:30:39] Martha Carlin: And if it’s coming from someplace else or from another season, It’s not giving your body the information that it needs to know about the environment and the season that you’re living in. And so I think that’s a really important element that’s kind of missing, missing from our thinking about food. I love there’s a book, uh, Barbara Kingsolver has a book, Animal Vegetable Miracle from quite a few years ago, but she actually spent a year eating only what they could grow or get locally.

[00:31:15] Martha Carlin: And And so it’s got, you know, a chapter for each month of the year. And it’s, it’s really kind of interesting.

[00:31:24] Jenny Swisher: Yeah. That sounds so cool. I, um, we don’t grow a whole lot of our own food, but we do have a summer garden. And I’ve always wondered like, if we could do more of that, you know, like how would it impact our health?

[00:31:34] Jenny Swisher: Cause I know, you know, as we’ve discussed, like if, if what, if we are what we eat, right. And if we are focused on really just wanting to live with as. Strong of an immune system as possible, then we have to, we have to pay attention to that. And eating seasonal foods can be, you know, a difference maker for some.

[00:31:51] Jenny Swisher: So what do you see as far as like, I mean, obviously you’re, you’ve really gotten into this. I just kind of picture you as like, okay, this happened to me. And then now all of a sudden I become a science nerd because I want to figure out all this stuff. I’m the same way. I actually just keynoted yesterday and I was like, listen, I’m going to sound really nerdy here.

[00:32:08] Jenny Swisher: But I am just your average mom. Like I’m just your average person who has literally just wanted to know more. And when I say, when women know the, why they can apply and when we know better, we do better, right? Like for me, when I learned about greenwashing products, I was like, I can’t go back to using these products now that I know better.

[00:32:24] Jenny Swisher: Right. And so that’s the whole purpose of this podcast. That’s the purpose of what you’re doing is really just out, be out there educating people, and I know you’ve spoken at the white house, you’ve done Ted talks, like, I would love for you to just kind of tell us, what do you foresee here, because. One of my biggest questions underneath the surface has been, why, like, I love that you’re doing this, but why are you the first, you know, to be doing this?

[00:32:45] Jenny Swisher: Like, why has, why hasn’t this been done already? Or, or what, you know, what advancements are being made in this space?

[00:32:52] Martha Carlin: Well, I think a lot of it has to do with the way the system of science is set up and the way people are trained. So, if you’re trained down the sort of traditional path of science in your education, um, you go into narrow and narrower and narrower spaces.

[00:33:17] Martha Carlin: To find your specialty so that then, you know, you can go and get funding in your very narrow specialty. And then people get very busy with their specialty. And there’s very few scientists who really step back to get this full picture. That’s actually what my talk at the White White house was about, because it was to all these different science groups in the government and that.

[00:33:45] Martha Carlin: You know, the answers are probably already out there. If we would just bring all these disciplines together, take a big picture perspective. And I, I, I like to use the image of a pointless painting because you get people trained in science and they’ve got their 1 color that they like that. They’re kind of standing there on the canvas.

[00:34:07] Martha Carlin: And if you can get everybody. Together like painting with all the different colors and then stepping back, you can see the full picture. And that, I think, is like a gift that, um, I have that I’m able to look at those tiny little details, but really kind of pull it back to this larger perspective. And because I lived for so many years with somebody with a chronic disease, I’m observing on a daily basis where, you know, when you go on the medical side, you know, they’re seeing the patient 2 to 4 times a year for, you know, 15 minutes.

[00:34:52] Martha Carlin: If most people are lucky, if you’re in a university system, sometimes you can get an hour, but they don’t. They don’t see the person in their daily life and really start to connect. You can start to connect dots with somebody you live with about how food and lifestyle and things are having an impact on them.

[00:35:13] Martha Carlin: And through that, you know, I’ve just been able to pick up all these pieces, but then like you said, pull in experts who know about things that I don’t know who are open minded and would say, you know, sometimes they would say. Like, why are you talking to me? I’m, I don’t have anything to do with Parkinson’s.

[00:35:32] Martha Carlin: And I would say, well, actually it does. And here’s why. And then they would end up in my orbit. And so, you know, I think it’s, you know, partly just the unique way of approach the problem. And. You know, my openness to sharing every piece of information I’ve come across that might be relevant. Sometimes I just am sharing things with scientists who may never follow up with me, but, you know, maybe I’ve given them something that will change their perspective and, you know, And how they do their research.

[00:36:04] Martha Carlin: So

[00:36:05] Jenny Swisher: I love that. I love what you just said. And honestly, there are so many parallels to what you just said to the health space that we’re currently living in. Every doctor has a specialty and they’re so zeroed in on the specialty that there’s hardly anyone taking a step back to look at the big picture.

[00:36:21] Jenny Swisher: Right. And I, I see the same thing in my own health. I saw 14 different neurologists for my migraines. So they only wanted to look at me from the here up from here up. Right. Like they finally factored in my neck, but from, it was like from the neck up, like we said, we did brain MRIs, CT scans, all the things nobody wanted to look at anything else.

[00:36:38] Jenny Swisher: It wasn’t until I started getting like more of a functional approach to my health from a functional perspective, a functional medicine doctor who was like, Hey, let’s, let’s look at endocrine health, like let’s look at your lab work. Let’s do some things. It’s like some root cause issues. Right. Um, but I was in that hamster wheel for a really long time feeling like I needed that specialty.

[00:36:57] Jenny Swisher: And when you can take the step back and you can have a bigger picture, I mean, your body’s connected, right? So why are we only looking at the head when the head hurts? Um, it makes total sense. And so, so many parallels with what you’re saying. I also think about the time that I interviewed Dr. Michelle Jorgensen, who’s a functional dentist.

[00:37:13] Jenny Swisher: We talked specifically about Um, the mouth, right? Like the oral health has as root cause. And she talked a lot about like root canals and, um, small airways. And we talked about all these things. And then the very next week I interviewed, uh, actually a gut microbiome, Dr. Dr. Laura Brown, she’s written beyond digestion.

[00:37:31] Jenny Swisher: She also filmed a course with me on the gut. And when we were having that interview, she’s talking about the gut. And so I asked in that interview, like what role does the mouth play? And she was, she had a, like, kind of a general answer and I love her dearly, but after the call, I said, I want to get you guys together because I want to hear how, and obviously food goes through our mouth to get into, you know, when it comes to our gut.

[00:37:53] Jenny Swisher: So, like, we need to make this connection. So I actually, uh, the interview that I have with them is in our functional wellness virtual summit, which I’ll link up with people in the show notes. It was a fascinating interview just to bring two different specialties together that have never really looked at each other.

[00:38:07] Jenny Swisher: And to have them almost like interview each other and learn more, like you were saying, like people don’t, you know, a scientist out there may not think that this necessarily correlates to Parkinson’s until you make that connection, in which case then they’re like, Oh, they see the bigger picture. So I love that.

[00:38:22] Jenny Swisher: I think that’s amazing. And clearly you’re calling. Um, and so that’s amazing. So what do you see then as sort of the, the most promising advancements to come with microbiome research?

[00:38:33] Martha Carlin: So, well, I’ve, I have been doing quite a bit of work, uh, and working on a publication with the Australian scientist who’s a physical chemist, colloidal chemist, um, and has, uh, done a lot of, uh, work related to the glycocalyx, which is, um.

[00:38:53] Martha Carlin: Something like most people probably haven’t heard of and is generally thought of as the lining of our blood vessels. But it turns out it’s probably the lining of all the cells in our body. So we’re doing a lot of, uh, connecting the dots to the whole Parkinson’s picture and the gut microbiome and the battle that’s going on there so that you can start to see how these pieces fit together, including How different drugs work.

[00:39:20] Martha Carlin: And so in that process, we were actually working to have a meeting next May. That will be bringing people from all different fields and we’re also including some, some patients and doing a documentary of patients telling their stories so that people will start to see how all these things connect and our premise is, uh, what if everything we think we know is actually wrong and taking that step back to say, okay, we’ve had this paradigm.

[00:39:56] Martha Carlin: We’ve been thought. Thinking about the gut and this glycocalyx are really, really important. And there’s a huge battle and interface going on there. That’s affecting the whole body. The inflammatory cascade or immune system, everything. And really, I think. We’ll see an incredible acceleration of connecting those dots and being able to help people earlier in the process.

[00:40:23] Martha Carlin: I think we’ll start to see, um, microbiome biomarkers, um, that we can start to address and turn people back from getting some of these chronic diseases. And I really think we’re going to see a change in the food supply. And. You know, I don’t think it’s going to happen overnight. Um, but I think there is a rising awareness of how the terrain what’s inside us is Basically, the terrain is built by what we’re putting down the pipe, and so there’s this rise in consumer education about food, and that’s starting to drive, uh, policy, I think, or will start to drive policy, um, in the coming years, and so, My, my vision is that we are going to start to see a healthier population and we’re going to turn back the trajectory of growth and things like Parkinson’s and diabetes and all of that because we’re going to be able to connect those dots and stop the problem earlier and, you know, take control for ourselves.

[00:41:35] Martha Carlin: Right. Food food as

[00:41:38] Jenny Swisher: right. So I love that as you were talking, like maybe everything that we’ve learned is wrong or maybe everything we’ve been thinking is wrong. It’s like, maybe the world isn’t flat, right? Maybe the world is. Yeah, exactly. I’ve got to get you connected to my good friend, Chad over at Ripley Co Farms, because he’s doing all this extensive work on nutrient density testing of his beef and the crops that they’re eating.

[00:41:58] Jenny Swisher: He’s he, everything you were talking about with the manure is all in his territory. So I would love to get you guys connected as well. And I know you’re not geologically far from each other. So that would be perfect. This has been amazing. I mean, I’ve taken so many notes, um, for my listeners, you know, yes, we talk hormone health specifically to things that you know about, right.

[00:42:16] Jenny Swisher: Menstrual cramps and migraines and all these things, but the gut microbiome really is, like I said before, the foundation of your four legged endocrine chair. And, uh, just recently, I wish I had the statistic in front of me, but I was, I want to say it was somewhere around 40%. Um, the microbiome changes up to 40 percent in women over 40.

[00:42:34] Jenny Swisher: So we don’t, they’re, they’re, they don’t know why just yet, but as women age and get closer to menopause, um, we start to see changes and shifts in our microbiome, which of course affects our health. And I also just shared this yesterday that 20 percent of, well, actually 20 percent of a woman’s lifespan.

[00:42:50] Jenny Swisher: Lifetime. So 20 percent of your life will be spent in poor health. And so when we take a look at things like alzheimer’s disease, cardiovascular disease, which is the leading cause of death in women, osteoporosis and bone density, like there are so many different, you know, I know we’ve talked a lot about Parkinson’s, but these chronic diseases that are, Really wreaking havoc on our longevity.

[00:43:09] Jenny Swisher: Um, we’ve got to dial it back to the food we’re eating and the chemicals that we are hopefully no longer going to ingest. I love what you just said about the future, because I know right now on my social media, Food Babe and Max Lugavere and all these big influencers are now like stepping into the government and saying, Hey, these dyes need taken out of our food.

[00:43:27] Jenny Swisher: Like these were not, these are not here in the same products that are in Europe, right? Fruit Loops does not have red dye in Europe. And so people are starting to create this awareness, which is making a lot of Americans say, wait a minute, I didn’t know this was in my food, right? Because we’ve never been taught.

[00:43:41] Jenny Swisher: We’ve never been educated on that. And we trust, we trust the sources. So I think you’re right. I think the tides are turning. I think it’s exciting. And I love the work you’re doing. So I just want to say thank you for being here on the show. If you want to tell people, like, where can they find out more about you and what you’re doing or connect with you, tell us all that.

[00:43:59] Martha Carlin: Sure, there’s a few places you can find me. Um, I actually write a Parkinson’s blog, uh, called Martha’s Quest, um, where I cover the microbiome and alternative health things that can help you lead a more optimal life with Parkinson’s, um, and cover the latest research. And then our products, you can find our products on our BiotiQuest website, and that is b i o t i q u e s t dot com.

[00:44:28] Martha Carlin: Um, and, um, and then if you want to know like the deep nerdy science of some of the things that we’ve done and collecting poop, you can look at the bio collective website and that’s, uh, kind of the early story of all the things we did to get to where we are. Amazing.

[00:44:46] Jenny Swisher: Amazing. Okay. So we’ll link all this up in the show notes.

[00:44:48] Jenny Swisher: You guys, I also made lots of notes on making sure you get the link for Ripley Coke Farms, making sure you get the link for the Functional Wellness Virtual Summit. So there’s going to be lots of resources for you in the show notes. So make sure you swipe up to get those. Awesome, Martha. Well, thank you so much for being here with us today.

[00:45:02] Jenny Swisher: Let’s keep in touch. Thanks so much for having me. I appreciate it.