With Master Herbalist Paul Schulick
This video discusses microbiome health and it’s role in our immunity.
Andrea:
Paul I’d love to start with your story back in 1986, what inspired you to formulate one of the first fermented supplements on the market?
Paul:
Well, I had a natural food store in 1979. I’ve always been attracted to, or as long as I can remember, attracted to whole foods. In my health food store, customers were coming in and they were taking in 1979, started taking vitamins and minerals much like I did. But like them I had an experience where I had kind of a queasy stomach after I took the vitamins and minerals. Having seen that now or then, hundreds if not thousands of times, I was moved to create a vitamin and a mineral that the body could utilize. It was a common sense thing, in that vitamins and minerals the way they were commonly used were in their isolated or more chemical form. What I did was turning the vitamins and minerals into a highly utilizable fermented food form. That was really at the root of the success of the company New Chapter.
Andrea:
That sounds so interesting Paul, thank you for sharing that. Given that you’re an expert on gut health, why is gut health so important to you and really for all of us?
Paul:
Well, I think it goes way, way back in that back to the Greek physician Hippocrates, he said, “All diseases begin in the gut.” There’s immense truth to that. We’ve known that forever, and we each experience it, you get that queasy stomach and we know we haven’t eaten something that’s good for us, or it doesn’t nourish us properly. For me, it was very clear that if you can get good digestion, you are not only what you eat, but you are what you absorb. Those food elements that we either digest or don’t digest, that will to a great extent determine whether we’re feeling healthy and vibrant, or whether we’re feeling nauseous and not so good. You do that over a period of time Andrea, what happens is you’re not listening to your body. Over time, six months, a year, five years, the body comes back with a disease. That’s what ultimately why Hippocrates said diseases begin in the gut. Being in this field it’s been a primary target of interest.
Andrea:
It makes a lot of sense. I think many of us understand that gut health is important, but we hear the word gut, we hear the word colon, we hear the word microbiome. What is the microbiome for those who are maybe new to the term?
Paul:
We’re learning virtually every day a better and more complete answer to that question, Andrea. But approximately there’s close to a hundred trillion cells, that’s a big number, right?
Andrea:
A lot.
Paul:
At least 500 species that are living on us and in us. That those are composed of bacteria, fungi, protozoa, viruses. All of these elements make up our microbiome. It’s considered by many scientists to be the forgotten organ. That forgotten organ some say is the most metabolically active organ of your body. Let me just give you a little frame here. Think of your body as human genetic activity. We count about 23,000 human genes. Contrast that to the microbiome that we walk around with in us and on us, that’s about three plus million genes. Whoever we think we are, we must include this microbiome that’s in us and around us, and is creating a host of compounds, vitamins, important enzymes, and a critical part of our immune system.
Andrea:
One of the first things that comes to mind for myself when I think of the microbiome is I think probiotics. Probiotics I mean a term that it’s been around for a very, very long time. Can you explain please why probiotics are so good for our immune system? What’s that tie in?
Paul:
Probiotics are creating literally, according to one reference, hundreds of thousands of compounds. When they’re creating these compounds, they’re basically doing it for their own, they take the food that we eat and they help in our digestion. There’s a synergistic, friendly relationship between us and our microbiome. The degree to which there’s friendship there determines to a great extent how healthy we are. When those fungi and bacteria and viruses are all in harmony and are all connected, what’s happening is they’re producing a host of important enzymes and vitamins and anti-microbial substances that go by a big word called bacteriocins. Those compounds are what’s so critical for maintenance of a healthy balance in our microbiome.
Then what happens is, they’re also creating a healthy barrier between determining what’s going from your digestive system into your bloodstream. If they form a healthy barrier again, the body will then determine good stuff going in and bad stuff moving along. Probiotics also are able to activate key immune cells that release important anti-inflammatory cytokines. That’s another big word, but those compounds, those cytokines can have significant anti-inflammatory potential.
