Akkermansia: The Metabolism Microbe Every Woman Should Know

Transcript

If you’re a woman in your 30s, 40s, 50s or beyond and you’ve ever thought, why does my body feel like it’s following a brand new rulebook lately? Today’s episode is going to stop you in your tracks, because what if the missing link between stubborn weight changes, rising insulin resistance, cravings, energy crashes, and that my metabolism is different now? Feeling isn’t just calories, stress, or willpower. What if it’s also happening in your gut at the level of your microbiome, quietly influencing your hormones and your metabolism in ways most of us were never taught to look for? Today on hormones metabolism in You, I’m joined by Doctor Colleen Cutcliffe, PhD, a scientist and founder who has spent decades translating complex biology into real world solutions. She’s the CEO and co-founder of Pendulum Therapeutics, a company at the forefront of the next generation probiotics and microbiome based therapeutics focused on transforming metabolic health, and her path to this work spans academia, biotech, and pharma. Everything from neurodegenerative disease therapies to cutting edge microbiome innovations. But here’s what makes this conversation especially fascinating. Doctor Colleen isn’t just studying the microbiome because it’s interesting. She had a moment this click where it became clear the microbiome could be transformative. And she’s going to take us inside that founder’s story. We’re also going to get very practical and very specific because, yes, there are hundreds of probiotics marketed for gut health.
But Doctor Colleen explains why not all probiotics are created equal. And what’s different about targeted strains? And if you’ve heard the buzzword acromantis, or you’ve been curious why metabolically healthy longevity associated patterns, keep pointing back to acromantis. We’re going to break down what’s so special about this strain, including the conversation around gut barrier integrity. Then we’re going to zoom out to something I think you’ll love. As an endocrinologist, I’m always thinking in hormone signaling terms. So I asked Doctor Colleen whether the microbiome functions almost like an endocrine organ, influencing pathways involving short chain fatty acids, GLP one signaling and insulin sensitivity. And if you’re in perimenopause or menopause, pay close attention because we’re digging into what may be shifting in the microbiome as estrogen declines, what happens to microbiome diversity, and why certain beneficial microbes may become depleted, right? When many women start noticing more glucose variability and metabolic friction. Finally, for anyone who’s skeptical, especially clinicians, we’re talking about what kind of data needs to exist for microbiome therapeutics to be taken seriously. So if you’re ready for a conversation that connects the dots between your gut, your hormones, and your metabolism and gives you a new lens on why your body may be responding differently this season.
Let’s get into it. So this week, I brought to you guys a pretty awesome guest. I’m excited to chat with her. If you’re a patient of mine, you’ve probably used her product and I’ve used it myself for a while. But this is Doctor Colleen Cutcliffe and she is the founder of the product. I use a lot. Pendulum. And so I wanted to bring her on because you guys know how much I love gut health. And I wanted her to talk to us about why she created this product. A couple of other ones she has in the pipeline that would help us with gut health. So thank you for coming and teaching us all the things about Achromasia and the gut grabbing me. So can you start by telling everyone so a little bit of your background, which I told people prior, but you know, you’re a scientist and then you founded this company that makes probiotics and most notably some akkermansia, some other things as well. But tell people, what is your journey like? How did you go from being a scientist to making this amazing product that helps our microbiome, our weight, our longevity, all these great things?
Sure. Well, I think at the heart of product innovation is the scientific background. So thanks for asking that. Yeah. So I have a PhD in biochemistry and molecular biology from Johns Hopkins. I did a pretty traditional postdoc at northwestern and then made my way out to the West Coast, where I worked at a pharmaceutical company as a scientist. We were developing drugs for Parkinson’s disease, and then I joined a startup company that was doing a DNA sequencing instrument and again, still squarely in R&D running biology there. And one of the really interesting things that started to emerge was that DNA sequencing technologies enabled this entirely new science that didn’t really exist before. So probiotics and yogurts and things like that have been on the shelves for a long, long time. But we haven’t really understood the microbiome. And what is all this stuff that’s happening in our bodies, on our bodies, with all these bacteria and viruses and fungi. Until DNA sequencing enabled us to really look at what is the microbiome. And so about a decade ago, scientists started really understanding what is the microbiome. What is it doing to our bodies? What is it doing to our health? And how can we start to leverage it for human health? And so it was an entirely new target of opportunities. And because I had this scientific background and I was in DNA sequencing, and I thought the microbiome was just a fascinating space, I was like, I got to get in on this.
Oh, that’s I mean, I think that you’re probably a great person to help make this right. Help figure out what we need as far as helping fix our microbiome. So tell everyone there are all these products on the market, hundreds of probiotics. So what makes pendulums akkermansia different than other probiotics?
Yeah. I think first of all, if you’ve ever looked all the shells and shells of probiotics and prebiotics and postbiotics and been confused. You’re not alone. It is a confusing space, mostly because most of the products that are out there are more or less the same. There’s just a lot of great marketing innovation that’s happened. And so when you feel like, gee, these things look the same under the hood, they probably are the same. And so as we start to kind of get into labels and reading labels, if you look at most of the probiotics out there, you’ll see things like Bifidobacterium and Lactobacillus. I know those sound like a foreign language, but basically those are types of bacterial strains, types of probiotics. And so when you start to look at labels, you realize, well, gee, all these probiotics are really having bifidobacteria and Lactobacillus in them. They’re basically the same. And so when we started this company, we were thinking about all that DNA sequencing and that vast microbiome that’s out there. All the probiotics on the shelves right now are really tapping less than 1% of your microbiome. That means there’s a ton of other things that are happening in your body that you can’t even take any supplement for when it comes to probiotics. And so the difference between what’s on the shelves and what we’ve created in our formulations and akkermansia is one of the strains in our formulations is that we are not going after things like digestion and gas and bloating. You get all of those. But what we’re really going after is how can you use your microbiome to help you boost your metabolism? And so we have the only probiotics out there that are really helping your body stimulate its natural GLP one, helping you to increase your the way your body metabolizes all the different foods that you’re eating and metabolize your sugars and your carbs. We have the only probiotics out there that do that, and that’s because we are really trying to approach this from a what isn’t out there yet that can help us with our metabolism, not just our gut health.
I love that. You know, I talk so much about how the gut is so important as far as, you know, if your gut’s not healthy, what happens is you get a lot of dysbiosis or imbalance of good and bad bacteria and those bad bacteria when they eat or just when they’re there. They can produce lipopolysaccharide, which causes inflammation in your gut, which triggers cytokine release and elevated cortisol and elevated insulin over time. Right? And so what I try to tell people that aren’t PhDs in biochemistry like you is that when your gut is not healthy, you’re going to get an imbalance in your hormones because your gut is actually an endocrine organ. So our GI tract is an endocrine organ. It makes hormones. And so we have to make sure that it’s making and giving the right signals to hormones so that our body can function. One of those important hormones is insulin. And insulin is one of the most inflammatory molecules in our body. When it’s in really high levels, it has a job, it has a role, but we don’t want it to be too much just like any other hormone. And so when our insulin is high, it gives the wrong signal to our body of what to do with our food. There’s a big cascade from that. And so a lot of people are struggling with insulin issues and they don’t realize it. You know, the brain fog they have after they eat. The fact that they’re getting weight gain around their abdomen, especially when they’re going through menopause. Is it a combination of hormones, but it’s also their gut and their insulin. So you just mentioned how this is a really good probiotic for metabolic use and targeting insulin. So can you explain to people like the studies or just the information around Akron and why it is so important to weight, like how that all fits together?
Sure. And I would just double down on what you said, that a lot of us go through the day with brain fog or low energy, or GM having cravings for things I know I’m not supposed to be eating, and a lot of those can be tied back to it’s what you said. It’s not necessarily, oh, my hormone levels are too high or too low. It’s that there’s a lot of precision in our bodies about when those hormone levels are supposed to be at what levels, at what time. And so a lot of times your body is perfectly capable of making these hormones. It’s just not making them at the right amounts at the right time. That’s what leads to all these kind of health effects that we start to feel on a day to day basis. And so the microbiome, some of the research coming out of that has really shown that the microbiome plays a really important role in helping to regulate those different hormones, including how much is made at what time. And so that you can start to get back a more optimal hormone levels for your body throughout the day. And so one of the discoveries that scientists around the world have made. So I don’t want to say like, we are the only ones who discovered this, but we are the ones who brought it into from, I think, the bench to actually into product.
We were the first ones to do that. But one of the strains that people have started to realize was really important is this strain called Akkermansia, probably the most important probiotic that you’ve never heard of. And so there’s over 3000 publications around this strain, really tying it to a wide variety of diseases. So the first thing that people noticed was, gee, if I look at healthy people versus sick people, and you can define sick in a variety of ways, people who have obesity or diabetes or undesired inflammatory responses, IBS, IBD, Crohn’s disease. So people were defining sick in a lot of different ways. But if you compared healthy to sick people, you sort of consistently started to find across thousands of publications that people who were sick were low or missing this one strain and people were healthy, looked like they had a ton of it. And so that’s what started this investigation of, well, what is going on here? How could this one strain be low across all these different diseases? And that’s where Akkermansia started to become known as a keystone strain. And what people have realized over the last decade of research of this strain is it has two really important things. The first thing is that it’s one of the only strains that’s known to directly stimulate your body’s GLP one. And that discovery was relatively meaningless until the last couple of years where people now realize, oh my gosh, GLP one is really important.
Glp one helps me stimulate my insulin response at the right time. Glp one helps me with my satiety, so I’m not feeling hungry all the time. So the GLP one hormone is a really important hormone when we think about regulating our metabolism. And your body naturally makes it that pharmaceutical companies and all the drugs out there like Ozempic and Wegovy are making a product that’s mimicking what your body naturally makes. And Akkermansia is one of the only strains known to stimulate that GLP one hormone. So that’s really important. But the other really important thing that Akkermansia does is it plays a fundamental role in your gut lining. So we’ve all seen pictures of the intestine. It looks like all this big tube and that big tube has a lining to it. And so all the things that are happening inside your microbiome are supposed to stay inside, and all the things outside are supposed to stay outside. And the most important thing to making sure that happens is this wall, this gut lining and that gut lining is sort of like a wooden fence where you have all these wooden planks that are held together by glue. And what can happen over time or through wear and tear is that that glue can start to get thin.
A plank can start to fall, or you start to get gaps between your planks. And that’s really bad for your fence. Your gut lining is exactly the same structure. You have these epithelial cells. Those are the planks. And you have this glue. It’s called mucin. And that glue can start to get thin over time. And as we age. And when that happens you start to get gaps between your epithelial cells. And that is something you definitely don’t want because now things are leaking across that lining and you don’t have a strong gut barrier. And that’s where you get these unwanted inflammatory responses, unwanted signaling for hormones, unwanted immune responses. And so akkermansia is the only strain that we know of. It lives in that glue. And what it does is it takes away the old glue when it gets old and it puts up new glue. So it makes sure that your fence and your gut lining is fortified and strong, and keeping all the things inside, inside and all things outside, outside. And so that’s why akkermansia is so fundamental, because if you don’t have a strong gut lining, you have all kinds of other problems that emerge out of that. And so it’s important for our gut lining and it’s important for stimulating GLP one. And that’s why I say it’s the most important strain that no one’s ever heard of.
Yeah, I love that analogy. The fence. So I use that a lot with people too, like a water slide or a fence. And so I like how you talked about how the boards break apart. The mucin breaks apart when our gut isn’t healthy or we have too much bad bacteria or whatever’s going on. I love that explanation. But Akkermansia yes, to your point, like if you look at most probiotics, they’re not going to contain akkermansia. Is that correct?
Well, and I would say too, if you go on to Amazon and you type in akkermansia, you’re going to get a bunch of different romances that pop up. And what’s really important to note is that the study will come out. But a professor at Cornell sequenced all of those different Akkermansia was that coming off Amazon? And most of them don’t actually have Akkermansia in them. So just buyer beware that if you go onto Amazon, they’re not actually regulating whether these things have what they say that there’s truth in bottle. So you want to make sure that you’re looking for a reputable brand. You want to make sure that you are really reading the labels and not necessarily just looking at price alone, or trusting that when someone says they have akkermansia that that’s actually what’s in there. So just a little note of caution because we’ve had a lot of people ask us about that.
Yeah. And I think that’s so true. You know, I’ve done two podcast episodes with Shawn Wells. I don’t know if you know, Shawn, but like the supplement guru formulator and we talked about that, like he actually buys supplements on Amazon and he tests them. And most of what he buys is not what they say. And so unfortunately, although Amazon is easy, I would never buy a supplement on Amazon. And so yes, to your point, you got to make sure that you get an actual good product that has what it says it has. So, you know, and I’ve, and I’ve taken pendulum necromancy for probably about two years now. I’ll take it, you know, on and off. But I do notice like a huge difference as far as like appetite suppression, right? Or just like satiety, I guess not even suppression, but like, you know, when you’re not maybe eating the best and you get a little off track and it’s like, oh, you know, it’s been the holidays. And, but then if you’re taking it like, whenever I start retaking it, like, oh, when I eat, I’m actually getting more full. Like it really does help. And so I think it’s important for people to know, like it’s because you’re getting the right strain of bacteria that’s really helping you maintain making your insulin correctly, making sure that GLP one is being made, you know, making sure that your satiety is, is actually functioning how it’s supposed to, right? So we have all the pieces that we need so that our, you know, puzzle of hormones in our gut can actually work. Some of the other studies I’ve read about, though, and I want you to talk about this, you kind of talked about glucose, insulin, but what about achromasia and longevity? So there’s some things out there about, you know, achromasia longevity, things like that. What can you speak to that?
Sure. Well, springboarding off of the role of metabolism in longevity, I think we know that one of the keys to healthy aging, or one of the keys to feeling healthy as you’re aging, is actually your body’s ability to metabolize sugars properly. And so I think at the core, akkermansia is important for longevity because good metabolism is important for longevity. But there have been some really interesting studies out there actually looking at, you know, what happens as we age. And so there’s been several studies where they look at centenarians. So people who’ve made it to 100 years old plus, and they’re like, what’s going on in their microbiome? And what they showed is that those people who make it to 100 plus years old, they have an outsized amount of akkermansia in their microbiomes. And so there’s something very interesting about, well, gee, if you can maintain really strong gut health and a really strong metabolism that linked to longevity and healthy aging, I think we’re just at the cusp of starting to understand. But it starts with, you know, well, let’s look at people who are making it to old age and they’re feeling really good and they’re really healthy. What is it about their microbiome that is distinct and what really pops out is akkermansia. And, you know, this comes back to all the other research showing that healthy people appear to have a ton of it. And all these different diseases are associated with being low in it. And so I think if we think about aging as something that is, you know, kind of a disease that we can prevent, that we can improve, that we can optimize instead of just something that we all have to go through. And it is what it is, then you really have an opportunity here to improve your longevity potentially through Akkermansia.
Yeah. And I think if you think of disease like as a whole and health. So when your gut is not functioning correctly, it’s pretty crazy to think that you can be healthy. And, you know, even if you look at Hippocrates, the father of medicine, thousands of years ago, he was talking about let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food, and talked about the gut so much. And then somehow in 2026, in traditional healthcare, we just totally negate the gut. The only medical school training you get about the gut is from a GI tract perspective, and it’s just like indoctrinated into us that if you have this disease, it’s because you had this physiologic issue and you treat it with this drug. And it’s just crazy to think, you know, we have over a hundred times more genetic material in our gut than we do in our body, but we don’t really go back and focus on how do we keep our gut healthy, right? And people just don’t know this information. And so it makes sense that if your gut, which has 100 times more genetic information than the rest of your body is healthy, then you’re going to be healthier. And you explained how your gut is held together by mucin. And those planks in the fence are held really tight. And if those planks fall apart, if our fence starts to break, then obviously we’re going to start to have disease processes. We’re going to have again, it’s going to it messes with your hormones because all of this is signaling your gut is talking to every organ in your body all day long through the vagus nerve and through hormone signaling.
And so it makes sense when you start to put holes in that gut that, hey, our cortisol regulation is going to be bad, our insulin regulation is going to be bad. We’re not metabolizing our estrogen the same. Now, we’re not converting our thyroid hormone. And it just kind of spirals. We’re not making as much growth hormone. And so it’s just I think it’s really important for people to understand because a lot of times people hear us talk about this, they’re like, these people are crazy. My doctor’s never talked about this. I don’t see anything about this on TV. Nobody’s advertising this. Is this real? I think we’ve got to do better and make sure that people understand how important this is from a just a longevity perspective, a disease management perspective. But it is very interesting that people that live the longest typically have the lowest amount of chronic disease. Most of these people over 100 have zero chronic disease. They’re not taking medication in their gut, to your point, is very healthy with a ton of akkermansia. So like obviously something there is leading to longevity, right? So my next question to you would be, can people do anything naturally to keep their aquamania high? Like, is there something they can eat or do they have to actually take the strain? Like, why is this strain dying in some people?
Yeah, that’s a great question. I’ll just caveat with a lot of the reasons that this isn’t taught in medical school or taught in PhD programs is because it’s a relatively new science. You know, you quoted Hippocrates, and I feel like we have all these phrases and sayings like, oh, that’s my gut instinct. Or, oh, I have butterflies in my stomach. It feels like we have known that the gut was tied to our feelings, our emotions, our hormones, all of these things. But the science is finally catching up to, you know, what we’ve always known for forever. And so I think that’s why this is such an exciting time to really be in the world, because we’re discovering all these things and actually figuring out how do you tap into that and how do you leverage that to be healthier? And so I’ll just caveat that because it’s a new science has only really been studied for about 20 years, which when you think about thousands of years knowing that the gut was important, we only now are discovering this like really Keystone strain. But one of the things about Akkermansia that has been really elusive is, well, what foods have it like, how do you get it? Where does it come from? And it actually hasn’t been found to date on any foods or in any beverages. So when you’re eating your kimchi and your yogurts and all your fermented foods, which are really great for your gut health, akkermansia is not in any of those.
So you actually can’t get it from any foods. As far as we know, it’s only been discovered in one place and that is mother’s breast milk. So the current theory is that you get it when you’re born from your mother’s breast milk, and then you spend the rest of your life trying not to lose it. But there are a lot of things that can cause us to lose Akkermansia. So first of all, if you go onto an antibiotic, that is one of the quickest ways to decimate your microbiome, including akkermansia. I want to be clear, I’m not an anti antibiotic. So if you had to go on antibiotics you have a bacterial infection. You should definitely do it. But just be aware that you are killing off your strains and including your akkermansia. When we don’t eat foods that are high in fibers and polyphenols, you’re not feeding your akkermansia. And so that’s another way that you can start to lose it. We know we start to lose akkermansia through just aging. We know we lose akkermansia when we go through periods of intense stress. So if you’ve ever been stressed out for an intense period of time, you’re likely depleting your microbiome. When we travel, our circadian rhythm changes. So day becomes night and night becomes day. That causes our microbiome to become depleted.
And so all of these things that are just part of being a human being can cause our microbiome to become depleted. It can cause us to be depleted in akkermansia. And since you can’t find it in any foods or beverages directly, one of the only ways to actually supplement it is to actually grow it is to supplement it with live akkermansia. Now, that being said, all of those things that I just mentioned can cause you to become depleted in Akkermansia, but you might not be all the way at zero. So if you have some akkermansia in your microbiome, there are other ways that you can help Akkermansia grow. So if you eat a diet that’s high in fiber and a diet that’s high in polyphenols. So think about in the grocery store, your produce section with all your fruits and your leafy greens. When you go to your beans section, so lentils and beans, these are all really great sources of fibers. And polyphenols come in our fruits. They come in our spices. They come in green tea. So there’s lots of natural ways through food that we can start to feed akkermansia and help it grow. But I always say like, the fastest way to get it back is to supplement with live acompsia and then eat those foods, and then you’re going to be able to see your levels come back up to healthy levels.
So basically what you’re saying is you can’t eat it, you have to feed it. You can’t just eat it though.
You can’t just eat it. You can’t get it from your kefir or your kombucha. Those are giving you different probiotic strains, but not akkermansia.
Right? That’s important for people to understand is like, there’s not a food you can eat per se, to just magically make it appear there’s not a magic pill. You can eat things to help feed it and help regrow it, but sometimes you just you have to take it. And I think some people get flustered or very frustrated when that happens, but this is just one of those things. And then answer this like, I wasn’t breast fed, I was bottle fed. So then I just got no acromantis. How does that work?
Well, it’s one of the things that people are really looking into, which is if you were formula fed and you didn’t get any of it through breast milk, are you low or depleted in it? I mean, for you, for example, I don’t know if you did any testing to look at your levels of akkermansia, but I think that there are some correlative studies showing that even the way you’re born can impact your microbiome. So if you are C-section versus vaginal birth. So there’s a lot that we’re learning about how does the microbiome get seeded in the first place. And those studies are hard to do because you’re talking about in utero, like when you’re in your mom’s womb, how do we really know what’s happening in there without some of these really invasive studies? But I think that for all of us, whether you were breastfed or not, or whether you were born vaginally or via C-section, or whether you’ve been a terrible eater your whole life and you’re just starting to clean up your act. The beauty of the microbiome is you can change it. You are completely in control of this. You can feed your microbiome with certain types of foods, with certain types of supplements, and you can change your health trajectory through your microbiome. And so no matter what happened in the past, you can change it today and change the way things go in your future.
Yeah, I love that. That’s one of my favorite things about the gut. That’s what I tell everyone. If you’re in a terrible place today, in 30 days, we can be in a different place because it’s just it repopulates and it your cells turn over and your gut tries to heal itself. So I think that’s a really important point for people to understand. Tell me about menopause. So a lot of people in menopause or perimenopause or as hormones change, they notice a lot of different issues they’re having obviously hormonal symptoms night sweats, hot flashes, things like that. But a lot of people notice they get this inner tube around their stomach. They’re gaining weight. A lot of times when you look at their labs, they’re insulin resistant. Tell me how acromantis or how the gut is changing during menopause. Like what is happening from a biochemical perspective as far as gut goes, what’s going on?
Yeah. Well, first of all, I’m so glad that the conversation around menopause is continuing to grow and people are really talking about it because if you don’t talk about it and people don’t acknowledge there’s any issues, we don’t really have solutions. And so one of the I’ll just give a plug for scientific research here. One of the most egregious things is that there’s hardly any research about menopause, and there’s hardly any research about different interventions that can help us through menopause. And so the more that we talk about it, the more those things will get funded, the more we’ll learn about how we can help ourselves get through menopause a little bit more smoothly. And so two of the big things that we experience when we go through menopause are a change in our metabolism. Nobody, you don’t need a blood test to tell you that you know that. Oh my gosh, I’m getting cravings I didn’t used to have. I’m eating the same foods I used to eat, but now all of a sudden I’ve got this ring around my belly or I’m holding fat in places that wasn’t happening to me before. So our metabolism definitely changes as we go through menopause. But also the other big hormone that changes is our estrogen levels. And those really start to become depleted as we go through menopause. And so one of the most interesting things about the microbiome is that if you look at a woman between puberty and menopause. So before we go into menopause, I can tell you just by looking at a microbiome, what did that come from, a man or a woman? We women have different looking microbiomes than men.
But as soon as we go through menopause, our microbiomes start to look like men microbiomes. And so if you look at a woman post-menopausal, you can’t tell is that from a woman or a man just by looking at their microbiome. And what happens when we go through menopause is that things that make us uniquely women in our microbiome are starting to get depleted and go away. And those are some of these strains that are involved in our hormone health. And so we know that as we go through menopause, that some of these key microbes that are involved in our metabolism start to become depleted. But also there are key microbes that actually help us increase our free estrogen. This is actually brand new science that’s out there that nobody has capitalized on yet. But there are microbes in your gut. None of these exist on the market today. These are entirely new discoveries, and they can help your body increase free estrogen. And before we go through menopause, we have a ton of these things. It’s one of the most distinguishing factors about our microbiome that make us women identifiable as women. And after menopause, they’re completely depleted. And so one interesting idea is as we go through menopause, and we’re trying to not have this dramatic cliff of estrogen that creates all of these things like night sweats, hot flashes, inability to sleep, hormonal issues is can we leverage the microbiome to help us increase that free estrogen so that it’s a little bit more steady as we go through menopause. And I think that that research is really interesting and really cool targets are going to come out of that.
Yeah. So if you’re listening to this and you’re very frustrated as you’re going through menopause, know that some of these things are changes that are happening even at a microbiome and a gut level. And so there are changes that are really happening. And you know, the things that you’re noticing are real. And so first of all, don’t let somebody tell you that they’re all in your head, but then know that there are things too, that you can do to help negate this or make it better. One of which is fixing your gut, which is why I wrote my book. I mean, it’s so important for hormone health, but then making sure that we’re fixing it up with the proper things that we need to fix our gut and making sure that what we’re taking is actually a good strain of what it says it is, is very, very important.
Yes, yes. And so if you have access to full script and places like that, I think that’s helpful because they really do a lot more quality control checking than places like Amazon. And then I’ll also give a plug for a new company that’s emerging called Supco. And the reason I think Supco is so interesting is they are literally going through all the supplements out there and they are ranking them, and they are giving badges to supplements that are really high quality. They are what they say they are, and it’s going to be a way for us to be able to know what’s legit and what’s not legit. In a world where we have a lot of fly by nighters, we have a lot of junk that’s out there. And so having a company that is completely independent, they don’t sell any supplements or anything like that. But to be able to have them come in and tell you like, this is legit and this is not legit, I think that’s going to become really important.
I do too. It’s called Subco.
Subco S yup. So supplements supplement company Subco.
Okay, so another thing I meant to ask you too, when you’re talking about Akkermansia, you talked about the polyphenols and the things that feed Akkermansia. I believe there’s something that I take from you as well. That’s like a polyphenol blend that you take with your akkermansia, You know, to be honest with you, I took it because you told me to. But I’m assuming it’s because it’s feeding the acromantula, right? It’s helping keep it alive. So can you kind of explain that a little bit more? Like the other supplement that you have and why it’s important with Akkermansia? And then I think you had one that you said was coming out as well. That’s going to be newer. I’m interested to hear about it too.
Yeah. So polyphenols have been known for a long time to be really important for you because of their antioxidant properties. So think of like pomegranates, blueberries, green tea. Everyone has sort of known polyphenols for that particular role or maybe not. But if you know polyphenols, that’s what you’ve been hearing about them. But one of the other things that polyphenols have been shown to do is to help you increase your akkermansia levels. So if we take a step back and think about like this complicated world of the microbiome, there are probiotics. That’s actually the strains themselves. So we’ve been talking about akkermansia here. And you’ll see on probiotic bottles, Lactobacillus, Bifidobacterium, those are probiotics. Those are the strains, the bacteria actually in your gut. Then there’s things called prebiotics. That’s the food that those guys live off of. And prebiotics are things like fibers and polyphenols. And you get those from the foods. So think about the food you eat is the food that you’re feeding to your microbiome. And so it’s the same stuff. And so polyphenols are prebiotic. And what we discovered is that there are very specific polyphenols that can help these strains of akkermansia grow. And so we just created a formulation of polyphenols that have been shown to help akkermansia to grow. And so you can take these two things together, but you can also get polyphenols straight from foods. And so the more that you’re able to do of that, the better. But if you can’t have fresh fruits every meal, and it’s hard for you to get all these polyphenols in a really easy way, is to just sort of supplement them and add them. So that can kind of closure polyphenol gap and help you get the prebiotics. They’re going to help those strains grow, especially akkermansia.
Okay, that is wonderful. So tell me from your perspective, do you feel like from a microbiology perspective, is the gut really an endocrine organ? Like, do you think it’s something that should be included in medical school training? Is it something that we should be talking to patients more about? Is it really from a microbiology signaling perspective, doing all the things that we say that it does?
Yeah, 100%. The microbiome is an incredibly important part of our biology, and it is linked to varying degrees. And we’re going to discover all of that stuff, but it is linked to our hormonal health, our metabolic health, our cardiovascular health, our brain health. It’s linked to all of those things. I mean, that is becoming a little bit undeniable. Now, when is it going to enter medical school textbooks? I think it’s going to enter medical school textbooks. Once we have more knowledge about how do you intervene here? And that’s literally the science and the discovery that’s happening right now. And so I think, you know, I didn’t go to medical school, but my husband’s a physician. And I think in medical school, you maybe get a little bit of information about nutrition, which we know is really important, but it’s certainly not the major part of what you learn in medical school. But I think that what we’re going to find is that that nutrition part is linked to the microbiome, and the microbiome is linked to all of our bodily systems. And so it’s going to have to be at least a chapter at some point here that we all learn about.
So I think if you’re learning about the microbiome right now, you’re listening to this, you’re learning about the importance of gut health. You have experienced yourself that when you improve your gut, you improve all these different health systems. You’re really at the cutting edge, you’re really advanced, you’re learning things that aren’t taught in medical school and that doctors are just now starting to learn about. So 100% the microbiome is going to continue to emerge as an incredibly important part of our bodies as we learn more about how to intervene on it and start to build these products that can change people’s health, it will make its way into medical textbooks. And already right now, the best way that you can get your doctor educated is just to ask them about it. Hey, I’m taking these supplements. What do you think? Hey, what do you know about Akkermansia? And I think that’s really important that we as patients and we as consumers and we as people worried about our own health, are forcing our doctors to learn about this stuff.
I completely agree. Did we miss anything that we should have talked about? If somebody is listening to this and they’re kind of skeptical, whether they’re a provider or a patient and they’re like, yeah, I just don’t know that there’s really good data that this matters, that my gut is that important. Like, what would you say to those people that are still kind of skeptical?
Yeah. Well, I would say, as any good scientist or skeptic is that you should just test it. I mean, honestly, I think the best way to know whether it’s I mean, maybe the question to ask yourself is like, do I think it’s going to hurt me if I try it? And if the answer to that is no, then you only have upside by trialing it. And so I would say, give yourself 90 days try either by itself or in the formulation. So metabolic daily is sort of your daily go to for gut and metabolic health. Ramp up your fibers and polyphenols or throw in the polyphenol to add on to it. But try it for 90 days. And I would say like, you know, you ought to feel something that improves in those 90 days. And so whether it’s your GI health, whether it’s your metabolic health, if you wear a continuous glucose monitor, you know, all of these things are ways for you to test. And I’ll just say that if you’re a practitioner or somebody who reads medical journals, pendulum glucose control, which is the first and only probiotic, which is for people with type two diabetes, the placebo controlled, double blinded, randomized trial for that was published in BMJ. And so go read that paper. But if you are worried about is there anything legit? I think that a peer reviewed publication and a journal that is of the caliber of BMJ, if you can’t be convinced by that, like, I don’t know what to say, but I think the best thing I can say is try it for yourself. And if it doesn’t work, maybe your gut microbiome is in great shape, but you know, best way to know if something works is to try it.
I would agree. And so for the people that are listening to, is this something that we stay on forever? Is this something you take for 90 days and then cycle off of it for a month? Like, how would you recommend taking Akkermansia, especially if you know you’re low.
I think one of the things to think about is why your microbiome is depleted. And you know, for most people that could be because you just took an antibiotic. It could be because your nutrition like, oh man, I can’t get all these fibers that I need into my diet. I can’t eat mountains and mountains of cranberries and kale all day long. And so if those are some or lifestyle, like I have a very stressful lifestyle or I have to travel all the time, or I love traveling all the time, if these are the things that could be causing your microbiome to become depleted, then it’s possible that, you know, you can take supplement your microbiome, get it back to a healthy state, and then probably go off for a second. But it’s possible that you’ll get depleted again, because these things in your life are not necessarily going to change. So we are all individuals. So I can’t really give a blanket statement of, oh, you probably have a microbiome where you’re going to want to be on this for a long, long time, or you have a microbiome, or you just need a supplement for 90 days and then go off of it.
It’s really dependent from person to person. But I will say for myself, I’m a relatively healthy eater. I mean, I’m no saint. I do bad things, but I do definitely try to get fibers and polyphenols into my diet. And I am on I’ve been on pendulum glucose control. I don’t have diabetes or prediabetes, but I wore a continuous glucose monitor. I saw the impact that that had on me. It created all my sugar spikes and crashes were minimized. And so even if you don’t have diabetes or prediabetes, as we age, we know that our ability to metabolize sugars gets worse. And so for me, seeing that data was really key. And I also feel like, hey, man, it’s easy for me to take a pill every morning. So I’m gonna pop this every morning. I’m going to start my day knowing that I gave my gut the best chance of being healthy that day and spend the rest of my day trying to be good too. But it’s an easy way just to like, make sure you’ve got your gut microbiome in a good place, I agree.
Can we take it with our other supplements or should we take it separately?
No, you can take it with all your other supplements. There’s nothing that’s shown that it’s going to negatively interfere with anything else. And I’d say the most important thing is take it when you can remember to take it. So if you’re like every morning, I take all my supplements, throw that guy in there and take it there a few, you know, in the evening, right before I have dinner, that’s when I take all my supplements that, you know, just get it in when you can get it in. I take my pendulum every morning with my coffee because I never miss my coffee.
I completely agree, you know, I tested my gut initially a couple years ago, and I knew my akkermansia was low. And that’s when I got all interested and I was researching and I found you guys. And so I started taking it. And for the most part, I take it pretty much every day, but I’ll get in these little spells, you know, I’m human where I’m like, I don’t want to take any supplements for like a month. And then after a month, I’m like, dang, why did I do that? You know, you can tell like with myself too. I think what I’ve noticed, like I said, it makes, I know I get full, I feel full, just and more just satiated. Like just, I don’t want to eat a bunch of crap when I take it. But the other thing I noticed too, interestingly, I feel like is it makes my skin look better. Maybe it’s all in my head, but I feel like it makes my skin just like brighter and better. I don’t get as much acne. Some of that is probably the way that you eat too. So if you’re not craving a lot of bad foods, you’re not going to have as much acne. But I noticed a big difference when I take it to. So now I’m just going to take it every morning with all my stuff, right?
I’m so glad you said that, because we have a bunch of dermatologists who’ve actually been using these strains to help their patients that have adult acne or eczema or atopic dermatitis. And I think one of the things that when we have those sort of skin blemishes, we are constantly buying things to put on our skin. And actually a lot of it is stemming from internal inflammation. And so, I mean, it’s great to use all those topicals, but if you don’t solve what’s inside, it’s sort of like when you’re driving your car in the check engine light comes on. It’s like putting tape over that check engine light and being like, well, now I’ve solved the problem because I don’t see that light anymore, but you should probably check your engine. And so a lot of dermatologists have used this. Use this because it can help you with the inflammatory responses that could lead to skin issues 100%.
Well, I know when I’ve like done too much, I’m a little stressed. I’m not eating great. I can start seeing it on my face, you know, But you can feel it too. So. Okay, I want to ask you before we go, three questions I ask every guest this. Don’t overthink it. It’s easy questions. First thing that comes to your brain. People love this. What is one food that is most beneficial and why?
I guess I would say I’m a huge fan of oranges. First of all, they have all that fiber. So as a gut microbiome expert, it’s going to be something that has fiber in it. And so not orange juice, but actually the oranges. So you’re going to get good fiber from that. And it’s packed with vitamin C. And I mean, I think that’s just such an important part of our general health. And so if there’s one food that that’s probably and you get all your like natural sugars and things like that, good for you.
I love that nobody has ever in over 100 episodes, said an orange. So that’s good.
Really.
Okay. Yeah. And some people I know this because we get analytics. Some people literally download my podcast and rewind like forward to the end just to hear this, and then they’ll go back and listen to it. What is one thing that anyone listening to this podcast can do right now that would benefit their health and let’s say their gut health? That is 100% free.
100% free. Oh, man, that’s a tough one. Well, let me say this. If you 100% free won’t be. If you have a dog already, or you can actually get a dog from the shelter, I think it’s like 40 bucks. So not 100% free. There have been studies showing that dogs can actually increase the diversity of your microbiome, which is really good for you. And so if you have a dog, go hang out with your dog a lot more. Don’t be afraid to snuggle with it. Hang out with it. It goes out of plays in the dirt. It’s bringing all these great microbes back to you and helping you diversify your microbiome. And if you don’t have a dog, you know, go to your local shelter and get one. But dogs are great for your microbiome.
My husband’s going to love that because we have a dog and I was very anti dog sleeping in bed with me forever just because that’s how I was brought up, like as a kid. And of course our dog sleeps in our bed now. She’s like the little pug. But we used to have fights over this like early in our marriage. And so he’s going to just love that.
Oh yeah. Now he’s got some ammo there.
From your microbiome. Cassie. I can already hear it. Okay. And then what is one thing you wish you would have known about your health 20 years ago that you would have done differently?
Well, I mean, I wish we’d known more about the microbiome, and I wish that we had known more about these next generation strains so that I could start going after my metabolic and my gut health 20 years ago. The earlier you start it, the better, you know? But again, you know, just to reiterate what we said, which is that no matter what’s happened in your past, you can change it today and moving forward. But, you know, that’s what I would have liked. And my kids are getting the benefit of having access to these things now so they can have better lives than we did.
Perfect. So doctor Colleen, thank you so much for coming on. Also, thank you for all the time and energy and resources that you put into creating this brand. And obviously, you know, doing the studies and I appreciate what you do because I know it’s hard work and somebody has to do it and it’s not always glorified. And sometimes, you know, people are like, you’re crazy, especially when you’re the first one to do it. So I appreciate that you believe in it and keep doing it. Tell everyone we’ll link stuff in the show notes as well, but where can they find you? And do you have anything in particular you want us to tell them about? Like what socials are you on? Do you have anything coming out? Anything you need to promote?
Sure. If you go to pendulum Life.com pendulum Life.com is our website where there’s all kinds of information about the microbiome, about our products. And we also have on there different foods. And to speak of all the free things that you can be doing to help improve your microbiome. We have all of that content on there because we’re really trying to help people improve their gut health, not just through our products. So go check out pendulum Life.com. And I will say that one of the new products that we have coming out that I’m super excited about is called gut fuel. And gut fuel is not in pill format. It’s in powder format. And it is a series of prebiotics. So fibers and polyphenols that feed all these next generation strains and help you with both your gut and metabolic and cardiovascular health. And the really unique thing about gut feel is we handpick these different fibers that are in there because they help us with our next generation strains. But most of us are really, I think only 5% of Americans are getting your daily dose of fiber. You’re supposed to be eating a ton of fiber. So if you ever look up like, how much fiber should I be eating every day, you’ll be mortified.
It’s a ton. And most of us are not even close to getting that in. But by closing your fiber gap, you’re really, really improving your gut health. And so I think we’re going to see fiber really making a comeback as super important for our health because it’s important for our gut health. And so we’re launching gut fuel with these curated diverse fibers. And this is for sensitive stomachs. It’s low Fodmap because we want to make sure that if you have a sensitive stomach, that’s one of the reasons a lot of people don’t eat a lot of fiber. So if they eat a ton of fruits and vegetables, they start to get GI distress. So this is to help you close that fiber gap. And it’s really it’s for sensitive stomachs if you have that issue, it can be used with your kids. If you have kids that you have a hard time getting vegetables into, which that definitely was my experience and my children were little. This is something you can throw into their food, into their yogurt, into their smoothies, and you’re helping them close their fiber gap in a way that’s tasty. So that fuel is our new product coming out.
What’s the flavor profile?
It is unflavored, so you can add it to any of your foods, add it to your cooking, add it to your shakes, add it to your oatmeal. It’s not going to change the flavor profile of anything that you’re eating. So that’s deliberate so that it’s not like you have to mix it in water and drink. It’s not just, you know, sprinkle it into anything you’re eating and you’ve just turned your food into a superfood.
I can’t wait to try it. I’m so excited for you.
I’m so excited for everyone to try it too.
Yeah. So you said it’s coming. Well, by the time this airs, it will be out, so we’ll make sure that we have the link to all that in the show notes as well. But thank you so much for coming on and for all your expertise and your time.
Yeah, thank you so much for having me.