325: Is Your Probiotic Harming Your Gut?

More about Dr. Thomas Bayne, DC:

Dr. Tom Bayne is a Chiropractic Physician and public speaker dedicated to understanding and improving the gut microbiome. As the President of Microbiome Labs, Dr. Bayne travels around the world educating healthcare practitioners on the science of the gut microbiome, its relation to chronic diseases, and innovative solutions to improve the health of patients.

Dr. Bayne’s comprehensive understanding of supplement manufacturing and extensive clinical experience have given him a unique ability to formulate integrative solutions for digestive and immune health. In 2013, he worked with an elite group of practitioners and researchers to develop MegaSporeBiotic ® – the world’s first pharmaceutical-grade, 100% spore-based probiotic. This lead to the formation of Microbiome Labs, where his duties include overseeing research studies and creating innovative products to improve digestive and immune health.

In his own clinic, Dr. Bayne has spent over 24 years helping his patients optimize their digestive health, improve autoimmune conditions, and enhance detoxification. Though he is very active in his role at Microbiome Labs, Dr. Bayne continues to see patients at his clinic, PureBalance Natural Family Healthcenter, in Glenview, IL.

 

Check out Microbiome Labs products here! Take $10.00 off per bottle using promo code BIOME10

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Transcript:

Dr. Pompa:
Real immunity starts with the gut, more specifically, the microbiome. In this time of the Coronavirus, this show is so relevant, but you know what, this show is relevant at any time. The reason why is everybody is taking a probiotic. Find out why that can be dangerous actually and what bacteria you actually can take to really make a difference in your microbiome because as this expert has taught us in this episode is taking probiotic actually doesn’t recolonize your gut at all; a matter of fact, it can do more harm. This specific spore bacteria can actually recolonize our guts. Learn what it is, how to take it, what conditions, and even what to do to prevent viruses. We’re all afraid.

Man, what a great show. This is going to be one, and I say this not every time, you’re going to want to share this. People need this information. You know why? Because most people are reaching for probiotics, but after this show, you’re not going to want to take probiotic anymore, I promise. Check it out.

Ashley Smith:
Hello, everyone. Welcome to Cellular Healing TV. I’m Ashley Smith. Today, we welcome Dr. Tom Bayne who is the President of Microbiome Labs. He’s here to discuss the latest science of the microbiome and how it relates to dysfunction and disease. Dr. Tom is a Chiropractic Physician and public speaker dedicated to understanding and improving the gut microbiome. Let’s get started and welcome Dr. Tom, and of course, Dr. Pompa to the show. Welcome both of you.

Dr. Tom Bayne:
Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, Tom, I’m so glad you’re here. This is a topic that I love. I have a very unique approach to fixing the gut via the microbiome and utilizing my diet variation, my fasting, and even the way I use bacteria. I talk about rotation. One of the first things I teach my doctors to do is take somebody off their probiotic that typically they got at the health food store that they’ve been on for many years and rotate it.

One of the first rotations we make is soil organisms, soil type of a bacteria, which you’re an absolute expert in, even developed your own product, which me and my doctors all use by the way, so thank you for that. Hey, being upfront, you have a fantastic line of products every one of us use. I’m not afraid to make that recommendation, especially because you’re our guest on the show. We’ll define what some of those products are.

I want people to walk away from this with a really opposite understanding of what they think of the microbiome, the importance of the microbiome, how to develop a diverse microbiome because, folks, it’s not what you think. It’s not as easy as just taking that one probiotic you’ve been on already. Just break it all down. Then, Tom, here we are, Dr. Tom, in this COVID, Coronavirus time when someone’s going to watch this. I believe this show will be valuable from here on, years from now even from this time that we’re in right now with Coronavirus.

I told you I did a Facebook Live last night. I talked about my fear with the new normal; the new normal being, we’re back to running from bacteria, and viruses, and pathogens. That was something that, look, we—through this last decade of science on the microbiome, we moved away from. You don’t run from these things; you don’t build them; you live comfortably with them. Those of us who have the most diverse, and more bacteria, and these things around us, the healthier we are.

Dr. Tom Bayne:
We really are. Right, exactly.

Dr. Pompa:
Anyways, tell them your story. I set the show stage here for us, but tell them your story about how you became this microbiome expert, especially in this really select topic.

Dr. Tom Bayne:
I met a girl in chiropractic school.

Dr. Pompa:
We’re already way off. Where are you going with this?

Dr. Tom Bayne:
That’s where it all started. It always starts with a girl. My wife now, my girlfriend then, introduced me to functional medicine, the idea of functional medicine in the ‘90s. Natural medicine is really what we were calling it back then.

I had the opportunity to move back to Belgium with her and work in her father’s supplement company. At a young age, I cut my teeth in the supplement industry. We were distributors in Europe for Jeffrey Bland and all of his Healthcom products in the mid-90s. I really did every aspect of the company.

I was in product development; I was in marketing; I was in doctor education. It was a great experience. We sold that company to Metagenics in the early 2000s and I moved back to the US.

What I got a taste for in Europe was research. I really felt like coming back to the states that I wanted to maintain—I felt like it was missing. I felt like in the nutrition industry that research was missing. I wanted to start a company where I could go into Xymogen, Metagenics, these different companies, and offer them the ability to do turnkey clinical trials for them like I’d been doing in Europe. I’d been working with a couple of groups here doing things like that. Luckily, I didn’t quit my day job because none of those companies wanted to do any of that. They weren’t interested in spending any of their profits on research that benefits the physicians who use their products.

At one point, we were hired by a large company in a professional space to do a deep dive on probiotics. We spent about nine months going through the science of probiotics. What’s interesting is that there’s really not a lot of science on probiotics. There’s very few human clinical studies that are done on the finished formulations. The thing in the industry today seems to be—take five to ten different strains, each with their own clinical trial based on small, low numbers of the bacteria being used in a single dose for a single symptom. Let’s put them all together and say we treat all ten of these symptoms.

That’s not science. We tried explaining that to some of the companies, they weren’t having it. Too much invested in the process so they didn’t—they weren’t willing to change. This one company was interested. It took us nine months to explain our findings. We found some spore-based bacteria at the University of London that really had some interesting data on it.

Dr. Pompa:
Explain a spore. I don’t want people just to get lost right there.

Dr. Tom Bayne:
Yeah, there’s types of bacteria that as part of their defense to their environment, they can dehydrate themselves, form a tough protein outer coat, and go into essentially an inert state while they wait for their environment to change. When their environment becomes more conducive to what they’re looking for, then they come out of their spore state and they are active again. There’s a difference between spore-based bacteria and soil organisms, though. A soil organism is actually a functioning bacteria that does most of its work in the soil. Now, a spore-based bacteria, they use the soil as a vector to move from host to host, but they themselves are actually, they’re actually human bacteria. They’re actually commensal bacteria, so there’s a slight difference.

You do see some spores in products that are marketed as soil-based organism products, but that’s their misuse of the term. These are gut commensal organisms. That means they’re active when they’re in the gut. We have data that shows that they function in the gut of insects, amphibians, reptiles, mammals, everything. It’s not just a question of is it okay? Does it live there? We’ve actually been able to show that there are receptor sites in the GI tracks of all of those organisms specific for these Bacillus-based spores.

It’s a whole different way of looking at probiotics. We’ve been taught we’re going to reseed your bowel with good bacteria. There’s zero science that supports that notion. Many of the probiotics that are in the marketplace are dead on the shelf, but that’s okay. They’re okay being dead because they’re really cell signaling molecules.

They’re not probiotics. They don’t go into your digestive tract. They don’t change the microbiome. They may trigger a symptom; they may trigger your immune system to correct a symptom like bloating or gas, but you’re not shifting the microbiome.

Our goal was what if we could really shift the microbiome? What would happen? That was a question we built the company around. You’ll see us as we’ve gone through, it’s been an interesting process and not one I could have even dreamed of as far as the doors that have opened up and the research possibilities have dropped on our laps.

What spores do is they recondition the bowel. They’re transient organisms. They spend three to four weeks, 21 to 27 days in your digestive tract. While they’re there, they’re just kicking butt. They use quorum sensing to talk to the bacterial environment. Then they get rid of the bad guys. Sometimes the bad guys are actually the good guys; they’re just in the wrong place like small intestine bacterial overgrow.

Dr. Pompa:
That’s right.

Dr. Tom Bayne:
They have the ability to communicate with the bacteria. If they can’t coax them into doing what they should be doing, they’ll kill them off. They have the ability to produce 25 different antibiotics. They use very specific competitive exclusion techniques against yeast and bacteria. What they do is that by getting rid of the bad guys, and then in the process of doing that, they make waste products that feed the good guys. That’s science. That’s changing the microbiome.

I’m going to give you this bacteria and it’s going to go live in your—thank God that doesn’t work, right, because we would be killing people. We would be creating redundancy in their microbiome. We would be creating—instead of having thousands of beneficial bacteria in their gut, they would be having ten.

Dr. Pompa:
I call it monoculturing.

Dr. Tom Bayne:
Right, fortunately, it wasn’t what we were telling people it was because if it was, we would have been creating—we would have been doing harm. There’s no harm in giving those dead bugs, but you’re not changing the microbiome; you’re treating symptoms. That’s okay. I don’t have a problem with people who choose to treat symptoms. It’s not my choice; it’s not what I do. I want to get to the source. I want to change the situation and see—then see what heals when the microbiome changes.

Dr. Pompa:
Again, the difference between the probiotic that someone buys in the store, typically, it’s dead. It still acts as a signal in some respects, but it’s not changing the microbiome. The spore type if you will do change the microbiome and even survive the gut acid.

Let’s say you were lucky enough to actually get a very active colony of product. Most of that is killed. Explain that because the spores, they survive it. They can deal with the high acid; they can deal with high temperatures. You don’t have to keep them in the refrigerator. They can deal with the stress out here and in here. Explain that.

Dr. Tom Bayne:
Yeah, the spores are—they’re so resilient to their environment. We coevolved with these things. The human immune system is actually dependent on early exposure to spores for the development of the immune system. It’s a fascinating thing.

When you look at the lack of bifido-based products that are in the market, if they’re alive—as you say, oftentimes, they’re not. If you get a good one that’s alive—and many in the professional market, they are alive when we analyze them on initial testing, but the minute they hit the stomach acid, they’re dead, with a few exceptions. Lactobacillus acidophilus, it likes acid. It’s dead instantly when it hits bile salts.

When we see some of the survivability studies on Lactobacillus, they just show you the stomach acid. It will live in the acid environment in the stomach; Bifidobacterium will not. If it hits just the bile salts, it’s just dead within seconds.

There’s data out there that shows in some cases, the research shows that the dead bacteria actually performs better than the live bacteria. It’s the DNA from those bacteria that are getting to the Peyer’s patches, it’s getting to the [00:13:23] triggering a symptom in the immune system and then changing a symptom. There’s good data on Lactobacillus rhamnosus GG and the treatment of chronic urinary tract infections in women.

Swear to God, this is a great story. A rep comes in and starts talking to be about the study. I’m like, well, how does this work? He goes, well, let me tell you. He’s like the Lactobacillus rhamnosus GG goes down and then gets into the vaginal tract.

Whoa, where’s that tract? I missed that anatomical tract from mouth to vagina. He’s telling me that the bacteria go live in the vagina and then they fight off the infections of urinary tract infections. Now, in no way, shape, or form do I want anybody to hear me disputing the findings of this study, but I vehemently dispute the mechanism they’re telling me why it worked.

Dr. Pompa:
See, that was what was marketable because people could process that. They go, oh, yeah, that makes sense. It’s here and it goes there, okay, got it. In reality, it’s not so simple.

Dr. Tom Bayne:
It’s not that at all. Those dead bacteria, they get to the Peyer’s patches. It triggers an immune reaction. Downstream, that shifts the PH of the vaginal tract. That prevents it from being an infectious receptacle.

Dr. Pompa:
Just these Peyer’s patches that you’re talking about in the gut, that’s where you make macrophage, which, first line of immune system to the point of why it works. It affected that, which we knew bacteria affects that. Then it produces these white blood cells.

Dr. Tom Bayne:
Reduce the system, which is great. In situations where I’ve got somebody with an acute urinary tract infection, go to Whole Foods, go to Walgreens and get some Lactobacillus rhomnosus GG while we give you the MegaSpore so that we can recondition your microbiome to [00:15:14] out in the first place and we’ll get to the source of why you’re having chronic urinary infections; in the meantime, let’s treat the symptoms so you’re feeling more comfortable.

With the spores, when they get through the stomach acid, they’re in a 100% spore form, so they survive through. Within six minutes of being in the small intestine, they come out and they start reconditioning. In the lower part of the small intestine, they re-sporulate.

We don’t know why this is, but we do know that process is what triggers the stimulation of the Peyer’s patches in the gall. It creates that immune reaction that we’re looking for. That’s that long-term exercise to our immune system that we want to give it with the probiotic.

Dr. Pompa:
You had brought up SIBO earlier. That’s when you have—bacteria are very important in the large intestine; they can even be bad guys for that matter. Some of these bacteria end up in the small intestinal tract. We call it SIBO, small intestine bacterial overgrowth. Do these spores affect those though; meaning, if they don’t activate until maybe the large intestine or the lowest part of the small intestine, can they still be effective against that condition, which by the way, is perhaps 80% of irritable bowel syndrome?

Dr. Tom Bayne:
It’s the most underdiagnosed condition, in my opinion, in clinical practice. First of all, the answer is yes, it’s the best probiotic that you can use for small intestine bacterial overgrowth.

Dr. Pompa:
By the way, because small intestine bacterial overgrowth, regular probiotics makes it worse typically.

Dr. Tom Bayne:
Typically, right. That’s a histamine reaction usually. The spores because they re-sporulate in the lower part of the small intestine, this gives the immune boost which is good for the small intestine bacterial overgrowth patient, but you’re not getting any competitive exclusion where it’s in spore form. If you’ve got the rare type of SIBO where you’ve contracted an infection and it’s living in your small intestine, MegaSpore will destroy it 100% of the time.

The only problem is that’s probably 1 out of every 1,000 SIBO patients that you see. The other 999, it’s an ileocecal valve issue where the good bacteria is crawling back into the small intestine from the large intestine. In that scenario, we do recommend that patients still use an antimicrobial, especially in the beginning, because there is no competitive exclusion at that large—at the lower part of the small intestine where the bulk of that infection is.

Dr. Pompa:
Right, yeah, it is. It’s typically right there. Okay, that was a great answer. These spore types of bacteria, they can last the stomach acid.

I’ve been asked this question many times, can I take them with my antibiotic if they’re more resistant? Other bacteria, antibiotic, you might as well not even wait. You might as well just wait until you’re done. What about these with the antibiotics?

Dr. Tom Bayne:
First of all, we’ve been working with the Cal State, Sacramento. They’ve got a microbiome laboratory at the university. We did a contribution to them last year. We’ve been working with them. We have been doing some actual specific antibiotic studies. We hope to have it though sometime in the fall, although, obviously, certain things right now have slowed down, but we’ll have specific information about the different antibiotics.

Here’s the thing; what we’re seeing in the small-scale things that we’ve done is there’s no destruction of the spores with antibiotics whatsoever. They actually produce antibiotics on their own. Some of the patients just can’t get past that, even some of the docs can’t get past it. We’ll say, all right, fine, take it at a different time of the day then the antibiotic. In our experience, we don’t see any issues one way or the other. You’ve got both of them in your hand at the same time; you take them in the same mouthful.

Dr. Pompa:
I clinically have experienced the same thing. I wanted to ask the question because I get asked the question.

Dr. Tom Bayne:
It would be like if you’re producing something; you’re producing an enzyme or something like that and then dying of an enzyme. It can’t work that way. The spores make single antibiotics that are very specific and very geared toward specific types of bacteria. It’s not a broad-spectrum antibiotic like what is typically used as a drug.

We’ve tested it. Like you say, your own clinical experience, my own clinical experience too, it works, but we’re working to get the type of data that we need so that we can definitively say that. We should have that by the fall.

Dr. Pompa:
I rarely do Cellular TVs where I sell a product; it’s about bringing information. In a case like this, we have to tell them about the product because right now, if I were viewing this, I’d be like, okay, this is just a bunch of information. What is the product? I’m not afraid to do that right now. I’m selling you a product right now, folks. It’s called MegaSporeBiotic is the product you created.

I’ll even give you an opportunity. Again, I hate sales shows because this is an information show, but you have several products that I utilize clinically, so do all my doctors. I want to give people a chance to understand each one of them because these are products that are very different from what you’ve ever used. Let’s talk about the MegaSporeBiotic.

You already said why it’s different than a probiotic. There’s other spore products coming out on the market. Why’s yours different? Okay, I’ll give you the chance to say that.

Then I want people listening to be able to utilize it. Then I want you to say, here’s how you dose it for certain conditions. To be clear, you’re not treating any condition, but let’s help the people understand how to use it for certain conditions and then use some of the other products that will complement it. I want people to walk away with something here. Why’s your product better than the other spore products that are coming out?

Dr. Tom Bayne:
It’s simple. It’s very simple. It’s a really cool story. You’ll love the story already, even if you’ve only heard a little bit of it. It’s a great story.

If the spores aren’t in spore form, they don’t survive the stomach acid; they don’t survive bile salts. They are useless and just nothing worth—not useless, but they’re nothing more than a cell-signaling molecule like your typical lacto-bifido-based bacteria. We perfected the science of keeping the spores in spore form. We are the only product that is 100% spore form.

What we do is we take products off the shelves and we test them. Some of the probiotic spores that are in the marketplace, some—there’s some single spores that are in the retail brand. We’ve tested them at times and they were actually 0% spore form.

What happened when the whole spore thing became part of the supplement industry, a couple of companies just ran and started distributing products. They initially were selling it as Lactobacillus sporogenes. They just made up a name with it, okay, but they did not work on stabilizing the product.

The group that we work with, when they got the information, this was at the same time everybody got the information, they took the bacteria and they were like, holy cow, these are so unstable. We can’t sell this product. It took them almost seven years to figure out how to get them 100% in spore form.

You have to be able to grow the bacteria under fermentation. It’s got to be viable. It’s got to be in its vegetative state. It’s got to be functioning, making babies, doing what bacteria do. Then you have to shock them back into spore form. We have a proprietary tensed up process to shock them into spore form. That’s the difference.

What happens is maybe when you start, maybe you’re only 30% non-spore form, but as it sits there and they sit next to the other ones that are in spore form, it triggers the other ones to come out of their shell. Then by the time that patient gets the product to take it, it’s almost no spore form. That’s the main difference.

The other thing is we have the worldwide exclusive distribution rights for Bacillus Indicus. That’s a very unique product. That product actually produces RDA levels of carotenoid antioxidants in your intestinal tract right at the sight of absorption. Carotenoids like Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium are also very sensitive to the stomach acid.

The RDA of beta-carotene is 800 milligrams. That’s actually with the hope that eight are going to slip past your stomach acid and be absorbed. We’re actually producing 800 milligrams of beta-carotene at the site of absorption, a very unique strain. That’s another—

Dr. Pompa:
You sell a product, you can say the product’s name, the HU58, which is specifically that one strain. That’s how incredible it is.

Dr. Tom Bayne:
Actually, the HU58 is the Bacillus Subtilis.

Dr. Pompa:
Okay, the Subtilis, yeah.

Dr. Tom Bayne:
The Subtilis is the biggest, baddest, competitive excluder and immune modulator in the formula.

Dr. Pompa:
That’s the one I was thinking. The other one is only—I don’t want to get people confused with my mistake. The MegaSporeBiotic is your main flagship product. That contains the first one you said.

Dr. Tom Bayne:
It contains five strains.

Dr. Pompa:
This is one of them.

Dr. Tom Bayne:
Indicus, HU58, too; it contains clausii, Bacillus clausii, Bacillus coagulans, and Bacillus licheniformis. It’s a five-spore blend. HU58, it’s interesting how that came about. HU58 is a massive ammonia devourer. It eats the bacteria and the ammonia itself. We created a high dose of just that product that we use in patients with liver failure and excessive amounts of ammonia in their system.

We did a clinical trial with that in 2018. We’ve got another study that’s going on. There’s parts of the United States that have very high levels of unemployment and alcoholism and there’s lots of liver failure. The treatment for those patients is almost as bad as the disease itself. We’ve got some good leverage with a couple of GI centers that are doing research for us on liver failure, hepatic encephalopathy, with the HU58 strain.

Dr. Pompa:
You have another product, the ProFlora. Explain that one. Let me back up though before you do that. Let’s talk about the flagship product, the dosing.

Where would somebody start with the MegaSporeBiotic because we typically have to start low because oftentimes, they can get a die-off, right? Then we work up to higher doses. How high for certain conditions? Go ahead.

Dr. Tom Bayne:
You know what’s funny is that I probably had 100 to 125 people on the product before I saw anything negative. Here I am, I get the first 50 on, and all I’m seeing are the results. I’m not getting anybody who’s complaining of anything bad. I’m giving them the full dose right out of the gates.

I got on a call with the people, the scientists who created the product. I’m like, hey guys, I don’t see any negatives here. I hang up the phone and the next three people that walk in the door are all having really significant die-off reactions. I’ve come to the conclusion—in all of my experience, I’ve come to the conclusion that about 15% of the people have a problem with the product. Of those 15%, 80% of those people, it’s a very mild thing.

Dr. Pompa:
It’s mild, yep.

Dr. Tom Bayne:
A little bit of a loose stool, crampy thing maybe, that’s about it. With those other 20%, they’re the ones that keep you up at night. They’re the ones that are having really strong detox reactions: lots of explosive diarrhea, intestinal cramping. Those seem to be the big ones, but we’ve seen everything that you would see with Herxheimer reaction from rashes to headaches and everything else.

What we recommend across the board because I can’t muscle test it, I can’t look in their eye and see who’s going to do it, I can’t take a blood test and see who’s going to detox, I can’t figure out who it’s going to be, so we just put everybody on the titration schedule. The full dose is two caps a day taken with a meal. The titration schedule is take one cap every other day for a week; then the next week, take one cap a day for the week; then the next week, you go up to your full two week—two cap a day dose.

When we get to two caps a day, the dosing is at the same time; we don’t split it. The reason is that stimulation of the Peyer’s patches in the immune system of your gut, that’s a numbers game. Until we get to that second capsule, we’re really only getting competitive exclusion and nutrient production; we’re not getting that immune-modulating benefit that we’re looking for. In many autoimmune patients and things like that, that’s critical, so we’ve got to get to that. If we separate the dosing, we do one in the morning, one at night, we don’t get that stimulation because it’s not a high enough dose. When it comes to—there’s that dose, two caps a day. That’s it. I keep it at that.

If I get into a situation where I feel like I need more help, I add one or two caps of just the straight HU58 because if I need help, I need help with competitive exclusion and immune modulation. That’s what the HU58 does. Rather than increasing all five of the strains—I’m already getting RDAs of the antioxidants; I don’t need more of that. What I need is I need more competitive exclusion and more immune modulation. In those cases where I’ve got somebody on two a day, I’ll then start to add one a day of the HU58, and then two a day of the HU58.

This gets into the conversation about dosing. Tom, your products only got 4 billion per serving; my lacto product has got 50 billion, 100 billion, 900 billion. That’s all marketing. There’s no study that shows 50 is better than 20 or that 900 is better than 100. There’s never been a study that shows that.

It’s about an effective dose. You’ve got 100 trillion bacteria in your gut. If you’re going to drop 100 billion Lactobacillus in there, it’s like a drop in a pond. Right now, if you don’t take any of the spore-based probiotics, you’ve got about two million spores in your gut.

When you drop four billion and you’re giving 2000 times the native population, that’s what creates a stimulation of the Peyer’s Patches. If you could get a Lactobacillus Bifidobacterium-based product and you supplemented it in those terms, you would have to give people ten bottles of the product a day to get that magnification of the dose that’s already there. I’ve gotten off track a little bit there.

Dr. Pompa:
No, you got it. On the dosing, you explained it really good actually. Just two; listen, work up to two, two of the MegaSporeBiotics at the same time because you need that number hitting the Peyer’s Patches at the same time. If you’re a chronic case, instead of increasing more MegaSpore, then add the HU58. Now, what about the RestorFlora, which is another product that has I think three of those five? When do you use that?

Dr. Tom Bayne:
It’s got three of the five and then it’s got some boulardii in it. Full disclosure, I’m just warning the [00:31:37]. I’m a chiropractor and I’ve got this functional medicine practice. I’ve got this great product of MegaSpore.

I’ve got this clinical study going on the HU58 with hepatic encephalopathy. For the first time in my career, I’m starting to see in my practice people with C. diff. I’m seeing older patients that have gone in for hip replacement, a knee replacement, and now they’ve got C. diff.

I start going, what can I throw at this? The first few seemed to response pretty well just to the MegaSpore, but I was seeing relapses, so I started working with the HU58 and the MegaSpore in combination. There’s a lot of good data on boulardii and C. diff. I put together the RestorFlora. Those three products are my C. diff protocol.

If somebody’s on C. diff I give them—well, first of all, I encourage everyone to intermittent fast, so I try to keep them at two meals a day. What I do is I give them two caps of the MegaSpore in the morning, two caps of RestorFlora in the afternoon, two caps of HU58 in the evening. The spores function better when there’s protein and sugar around.

Dr. Pompa:
By the way, that’s what I wanted to talk about too is your recommendation is taking these after meals which is really different than other probiotics also.

Dr. Tom Bayne:
Exactly, right. We found that the spores function about 20% more when they’re in the presents of sugar, in the presence of protein and sugar. When they get in the small intestine, there’s food for them, they get all excited. They function with a higher degree.

Again, ultimately, it comes down to studying your product. If you don’t study your product, you can’t say what it does. I can tell you what my product does in the ascending colon, in the transverse colon, in the descending colon. I can tell you what it does in the small intestine. I can tell you everything about it. Nobody else can tell you those things because they don’t do just the basic research to show you, hey, here’s a clinical model of a human intestinal tract. Let’s observe what happens when your probiotic is in that intestinal tract.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, no, I couldn’t agree more. It’s why I love your product: it’s studied. You really help people with when and how to take it. That’s why I wanted to cover it.

All right, let’s hit the 800-pound Gorilla in the room at least this time of year: the COVID, the Coronavirus. I have been doing a webinar and like I said, my Facebook Live that I did. It had major—at least 150 and some thousand, it might be 200 now, I don’t know, views on it just in the last 24 hours, but because I talked about real immunity.

I talked about this new normal of now running from bacteria, spraying everything, wearing masks is my concern that this can go on, this new fear of bacteria, viruses, pathogens in general. Everyone’s sterilizing when the last decade has shown us that we don’t kill these things; we live with them, an immune system that is around more bacteria. I even quoted some studies: kids growing up on farms being basically—the more microbes they encounter, especially as children, the more stronger their immune system. This Corona thing can take us far off that, Tom. Ten years of all this research and now everyone’s going to be running from this. What are your concerns about that?

Dr. Tom Bayne:
Undone in one month, all that good progress, undone.

Dr. Pompa:
Undone in one month, yeah.

Dr. Tom Bayne:
It’s dangerous. It’s a dangerous slope we’re on. It feeds the vaccine industry. That’s really who benefits from the story, that’s it. Patients don’t benefit.

The interesting thing, in 2017, we published our first study. That was the human leaky gut study. We built a model for how to create a leaky gut in healthy people. Then we fixed it with our probiotic. Awesome, cool study.

This is the thing because my story hasn’t changed; the world around me has. What that study shows is that the amount of LPS, lipopolysaccharides, circulating in the bloodstream at five hours after a meal was reduced dramatically in patients that took the probiotic. In patients who did not take the probiotic, it actually increased over time. The difference between the people taking the probiotic and the people not taking the probiotic was huge.

The LPS is the—this is essentially the low-grade septicemia that happens after every time we eat. What happens is the LPS spills out and then there’s a cascade of cytokines that are created in response to that. That’s how our innate immune system deals with the really bad thing of septicemia. That’s that process. Eating creates a low-grade septicemia in just about all of us.

What happens? We eat, LPS goes out, and there’s a short increase in the cytokines for a period of time. That process is at the root of everything you want to talk about right now: any autoimmune disease, any digestive disorder.

Dr. Pompa:
It drives inflammation.

Dr. Tom Bayne:
It drives inflammation. What we’re seeing with the COVID-19, what we’re seeing with the people who end up on ventilators, we’re seeing this cytokine storm. What that means is that there has to be an underlying cytokine activity going on before they get the virus. In that scenario, leaky gut is the Number One cytokine producer across the board. When you look at people like, oh, this guy who’s 30 years old, and oh man, he was really healthy. No, he wasn’t.

Dr. Pompa:
That’s right.

Dr. Tom Bayne:
He was not healthy. Sorry, I’m sorry to say this, but healthy people don’t have the existing cytokine levels that trigger the storm.

Dr. Pompa:
Absolutely.

Dr. Tom Bayne:
Even though he looked healthy, even though he was a fit guy or whatever, he was not healthy. Was it the leaky gut? Maybe. Was it early-onset autoimmune disease that was really being driven by a cytokine storm from leaky gut? I don’t know, but there was something going on.

The story doesn’t change. Here we are, the best thing that you can be doing to improve your immunity is to have—fix your leaky gut. It’s to reduce the cytokines that are associated with the spillage of LPS after a meal. That’s the Number One thing that people should be doing.

Dr. Pompa:
Simply put too, people today—it’s so funny, you have to use media to help educate; meaning, you go, oh—you’ve seen those yogurt commercials, 70% of your immune system starts in the gut. Oh, yeah, you’re right. It’s like, okay, great, we’re going to piggyback on that now because that’s—that allowed people to get this before, before those darn yogurt commercial. It was very difficult for many people to understand that your bacteria here affect your immune system. Don’t understand that, but now yogurt companies have made it a little bit easier for people to get that.

Obviously, you’re explaining a much better scientific approach to why this would be good to prevent a virus of any sort, obviously, the Coronavirus, because it really is affecting a very select group of people. When you look at diabetes, heart disease, older people, obese people, they have one thing in common. It’s overproduction of inflammation to your point.

Dr. Tom Bayne:
Exactly.

Dr. Pompa:
Then that creates this overreaction in the lungs, the cytokine reaction. That can obviously, lack of oxygen, shut you down and kill you. Again, when looking at all these things to do to build immunity, real immunity actually starts with your microbiome. Again, that’s my problem because there’s studies showing this microbiome here affects and communicates with this microbiome here, or this microbiome here, here. Therefore, we’re destroying it Number One with all the hand sanitizers. Then we’re not getting—we’re trying to be sterile, which we know long-term is a fail as far as improving our immune system, so a lot of problems here.

Dr. Tom Bayne:
Big time. It’s interesting, from that one study, from that one leaky gut study, we were contacted by over 30 different researches. The reason we were contacted by them is because each of those researches in their own specialty had run into a wall. The wall that they ran into was how to we reduce LPS in the circulation because that’s the cause of the autoimmune disease that I’m doing research on. That’s the trigger that takes somebody from hyperglycemia to diabetes.

These aren’t my [00:41:01]; that’s the American Diabetic Association that’s saying that. They’re saying the Number One thing that we should be looking for diagnostically is LPS. That’s the main driver taking somebody from hyperglycemia to diabetes.

I was in my office one day with a patient and my phone rang. It was unusual for my—for somebody to get through, but this guy somehow made it past my front desk. It turns out, he’s one of the leading researchers in the world on melanoma. He does checkpoint therapy, immunotherapy.

He spent his entire life, Harvard undergrad, Harvard Med school, Yale post-doc, Stanford post-doc. The guy is the man. From the beginning, he’s been saying the only difference—checkpoint therapy works 20% of the time, so 20% of the time, people with Stage IV cancer take this therapy and they are healed from Stage IV cancer; it’s pretty remarkable. There’s only a few types of cancer it works on, but none the less, it’s pretty remarkable.

His question was when he was in post-doc was, why? Why is that? He’s done 35 years of research and the only thing he can figure out is that people that it works in have high levels of short-chain fatty acid producing bacteria in the microbiome. People who don’t, it doesn’t work. People that have none, it actually makes them—the medication actually makes them worse. That’s about 10% of the population that takes—

Dr. Pompa:
Just so people understand, certain bacteria, obviously, these spore types that we’re talking about help us produce more of these, but they actually poop out if you will. There’s a waste they produce that produces a short-chain fatty acid that I’ve read can make up to be like 30% of our energy, period. If you don’t have—

Dr. Tom Bayne:
One hundred percent of the energy of the colonocytes of your colon.

Dr. Pompa:
I’m talking about just your cellular energy.

Dr. Tom Bayne:
The cellular energy, yeah, at least. I think that’s an understatement.

Dr. Pompa:
Okay, yeah, but people don’t get that. It’s like if you’re not producing these bacteria, you’re not making these short-chain fatty acids that Number One also feed your other bacteria, so it’s a food donor bacteria, helps the mucus linings being stronger. That’s a stronger immune system. Creates more diversity, and obviously, gives us this immediate cellular energy which, man, there’s a lot there.

Dr. Tom Bayne:
Yeah, exactly. His feeling is that if we can get the same type of change in cancer patients that we saw in healthy patients, then in his specialty, the survivability rate should go over up over 50%. That would be an initial loading period before the immunotherapy starts, then the immunotherapy with the probiotic and prebiotic in combination, and then monitoring their improvements. It’s fascinating.

I had no idea what doors were going to open when we did that study showing the reduction in endotoxemia, but it’s been quite remarkable all of the things that have come about. We’ve got 15 studies that are going on right now. We’ve got 14 studies that are done waiting for publication. We’ve got five studies that are published. There’s nobody in our space doing that stuff.

When I go into a conference and I’m at A4M, there’s all these other companies there. I can stand there and say no one in this room is doing the level and the types of research that we’re doing. We’re doing it at Cleveland Clinic, NYU. We’re not doing these in our garage; we’re doing this in high-level teaching universities and teaching hospitals throughout the US and Europe. It’s the real deal.

My thing is I go to these industry-wide meetings. That’s all I say. They’re like, hey Tom, can you say something else. I’m like, no. Can you start doing some research? Can you stop feeding me marketing and give me something that I can definitively show my patients is going to change their life? Until you do that, you’re not really doing anything for me.

Dr. Pompa:
No, Tom, that’s why you’re on this show, man, because I’ve been through what’s real, what’s not, the marketing versus real, science around something. When I started reading the science, I immediately was convinced. I immediately became more critical of the garbage that’s out there around probiotic and just the deception that’s around it.

Look, these bacteria are important. This is real immunity we’re talking about today. Everyone’s jumping on the bandwagon at this time right now with the Corona. Everyone’s hocking a product one way or another, but what you’re talking about, Tom, the science supports. This is real immunity here.

Dr. Tom Bayne:
Exactly.

Dr. Pompa:
Listen, I appreciate it. We have the links. I’m sure Ashley has already put out the link on how to get MegaSpore and the products that you mentioned every time you mentioned them. We’ll have it in the show notes as well how to get the product. Tom, thank you for coming on. Just a wealth of knowledge on this subject I appreciate you bringing, especially at this time.

Dr. Tom Bayne:
Hey, I love what you do. I love supporting you in any way I can, too. Keep up your good work. We need more people like you. We need to get the truth out there. Thank you for everything you do, too.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, appreciate it. Thank you, Tom.

Dr. Tom Bayne:
All right, take care.

Ashley Smith:
That’s it for this week. We hope you enjoyed today’s episode. This episode was brought to you by CytoDetox. Please check it out at buycytonow.com. We’ll be back next week and every Friday at 10 AM Eastern.

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