Microbiome & Host Protection from Mycotoxins

Kiran Krishnan

Well thank you so much for having me. This is a great and very relevant topic, so I’m very excited to talk about it.

Christine Schaffner, N.D.

Great. Well, so many people are realizing that part of their chronic illness is related to mycotoxins, whether this is from food sources or environmental exposures and we’re able to quantify them a little bit more with lab testing being more accessible and less expensive. So we’re really seeing this as a key factor in many of our patients pathologies because of mycotoxins can be, they can be hard on our liver or kidneys, they can, of course be immunosuppressive. They have a huge role I’m sure in how they affect the microbiome. And then I always like how we can flip it around and how the microbiome can really help us navigate and deal with this exposure. So in your research and in your learning through all the people that you reach through your products, what do you really know today about the role of the microbiome and detoxing from mycotoxins?

Kiran Krishnan

Yeah. And so there’s actually a two sided coin here with the microbiome and mycotoxins and we should address both. Like many other things, many other aspects regarding the microbiome, your microbiome can actually be your biggest supporter and friend when it comes to dealing with mycotoxins, whether it’s detoxing or resilience against mycotoxins, but it can also be your biggest enemy. And we can talk about how that happens. And there is a perpetual cycle that starts to occur if your microbiome isn’t healthy and you are exposed to mycotoxins right? And we could talk about how that cycle starts to flow. So on the positive side, there are, assuming your microbiome is healthy, which means you have high diversity, you’ve got good barrier function, so your gut is not leaky, you’ve got low levels of opportunistic pathogens. 

You’ve got good fungus in there as well, because some of the fungal species within your gut like saccharomyces can actually play a very important role in the detoxing aspect. What your microbiome tends to do for you is actually neutralize a lot of the toxins that come in by biotransformation. So it actually converts the toxicogenic version of the mycotoxin to non-toxic compounds. And then the other aspect of it, it can actually convert it, some of these mycotoxins to useful compounds that the microbiome can actually utilize and metabolize to then eventually produce beneficial things for you. The other part of it is the microbiome can also stimulate the immune system to release antibodies that can actually bind and neutralize the mycotoxins. And then the last thing is a microbiome can actually produce compounds themselves that bind and neutralized to the mycotoxin, that bind and neutralize the mycotoxins to take them out. Right? 

So there’s a number of mechanisms that the microbiome has within it in order to protect the host from these mycotoxins. Now,as it turns out, the types of organisms that really play an important role in detoxifying from mycotoxins are ones that A can function in the small bowel, because that’s where a lot of the absorption occurs of mycotoxins right? And B these are micro organisms that you would pick up from the environment. And part of the reason for that is because environmental microbes that also have a capability of living within the GI tract are the ones that typically get exposed to mycotoxins out in the environment, right? So they’ve adapted to being around these compounds and dealing with them and utilizing them in a favorable way. So those are the types of microbes that play a role. 

Now on the other end of the coin, if your gut is dysfunctional, meaning you’ve got higher levels of pathogens, low levels of protective strains, your gut is starting to get leaky. There are actually microbes within your gut that will take a minimally toxic mycotoxin and convert it to something that’s even more toxic. Right? They will also unmask mycotoxins. That’s an interesting aspect. So there are mycotoxins that are considered to be masked mycotoxins. And the reason they’re masked is because they’re actually present within the cell structure of plants, right? They’re not on the surface. You can’t see them, you can’t test for them, they’re inside the cellular vacuoles if you will, within the plants. And the idea is that when you start digesting and breaking down the plants, there are microbes that will actually break down those vacuoles and release the mycotoxin in the gut that normally wouldn’t be released, right? 

So they can do some really egregious things to you if you don’t have the right microbes in place. And then the other part of the perpetuation of the cycle is that when you start getting higher levels of exposure to mycotoxins and you don’t have enough of the functional bacteria to break it down, what can tend to happen is some of those mycotoxins actually have anti-microbial effects. But they will actually themselves start killing off some of your bacteria. And then they can also cause your intestinal epithelial cells to release antimicrobial peptides, which actually kill your beneficial bacteria, which then makes you more susceptible to mycotoxin damage. And as the mycotoxin causes damage, one of the key things that it damages is the intestinal epithelium, the lining, right? Now, your gut becomes leaky. 

Not only does that allow the mycotoxins to leak through and get into circulation easier, but it also causes all these bacterial toxins and all that from the now abundant pathogenic organisms to leak through. Now, you’ve got systemic effects of the mycotoxin, so when that cycle starts, then you start to really feel the long-term degenerative effects of these mycotoxins. And it becomes harder and harder and harder to start detoxifying from them, right? Until you start really utilizing the microbiome trying to reverse it.

Christine Schaffner, N.D.

And thank you for sharing all that. And as you talk, it just kind of reinforces my practice of medicine, where I really talk about the terrain. And I’ve learned from, of course, my naturopathic mentors and biological medicine mentors that it’s all about how the host response, right? And how no matter what we encounter in life, some people, we see this all the time with mycotoxins, right? There’ll be a partner who’s perfectly healthy in a home and doesn’t understand why their loved one is sick. And then someone who’s completely debilitated by that same exposure, not to say it’s not affecting the other person, maybe in other ways, but that huge response that that individual’s having within a exposure to inhaled mycotoxins. 

And so many people who are listening are probably in that boat. And so let’s walk through like, what do you know? And again, because a lot of the mycotoxin patients might have already also been treated for Lyme and co-infections or looked at other pathogens that other practitioners may be focused on and used antibiotics or used other antimicrobials. And so there’s kind of that piece. And then of course, living on planet earth right now, right? There’s so many assaults to our microbiome. So what’s kind of the profile of a dysbiotic microbiome for those who are most effected by mycotoxins?

Kiran Krishnan

Yeah. So one of the easiest ways to identify a dysbiotic characteristic that makes you less resilient to dealing with mycotoxins. And that’s an important way to think about it, because as you pointed out, two people can be exposed to the same thing and one person gets almost no effect, and the other one, it can be absolutely devastating, right? So that resilience is dictated in large part by what your microbiome looks like. And there’s lots of work in the feed industry on this, which I’ll touch on as well, because there’s some learnings there that are important. And so the biggest thing so far is diversity in the microbiome, right? So there are lots of genuses of microbes within the gut that actually protect us from mycotoxins, things like the bacillus, bacillus plays a really important role in detoxifying us from mycotoxin exposure there’s eubacteria, mycobacterium. 

There are even some of the pseudomonas species which are kind of pseudo pathogens that can play a role in detoxifying from mycotoxins. And a lot of these organisms you pick up from the outside environment, right? And so if we have gone through antibiotic therapies long-term antimicrobial therapies, if we have remained relatively closed off from the outside environment, then we have diminished our diversity, and we have really diminished our population of microbes whose job it is to actually protect us from these mycotoxins. Studies on farmed and raised animals have really revealed a lot because in the feed industry, one of the things they realize is when they start making feed for pigs and chickens and so on, one of the biggest egregious factors of the feed is the level of mycotoxins in the feed, right? And that has huge impact on the growth and health of the animals. 

And in fact, a huge impact on the fertility of the animals and the gestation and the survivability of the young. And this is especially true in pigs, and pigs have similar digestive tracts as we do. And pigs tend to be very susceptible to mycotoxin exposure, right? So lots of work has been done in this area comparing pigs to cows, because cows happen to have high resistance to mycotoxins. Right? And in part is because the cow is a ruminant animal and has a ruminant component within the digestive tract before it enters the small intestine where there’s lots of microbes in the ruminant part of the digestive tract that break down the mycotoxin before it can ever enter the small gut of the cow, right? So the cows have picked up all of these organisms and they have the opportunity in that ruminant component to break it down before it ever becomes an exposure. So then the question is, okay so pigs don’t have the same capability. 

Can we pre-treat the feed with microbes in order to reduce the mycotoxin exposure? And sure enough, lots and lots of data has been produced in the agricultural industry showing that if you use microbes like bacillus to pretreat the feed so that the bacteria break down the feed, break down the mycotoxin in the feed, then you feed it to the pigs, then they have no negative impact at all. Right?  So at the end of the day what that’s telling us is these microbial exposure from the environmental microbes become really important, and that has a huge impact on the diversity. So all of the things that we do to deal with chronic illness, or lots of the things that we do impact diversity in a significant way, right? We do elimination diets. 

So we really reduce the number of foods that we consume. That has an impact on your diversity. We isolate ourselves. We can’t go out as much because we don’t feel well, right? So we’re not out, we’re not running through the parks and we’re not going on hikes and so on because we don’t feel well, so we’re inside lot more that impact your diversity. You’re not sleeping well. So that impacts your diversity. You might have gone through a course of antibiotics and antimicrobials that impacts our diversity. And ultimately it’s that diversity that is what you need to recover from this. So that’s the catch 22 in what a lot of people are going through.

Christine Schaffner, N.D.

No, thank you for sharing that. And I just wanted to share that you guys have a test, right? You have a microbiome lab GI test to look at biodiversity, so that could be of people are thinking, oh my gosh I don’t even know what my gut microbiome is. Does your test kind of give a good read on like where, if people have a good spectrum of different diversity and then if they’re too high in one pathogenic or dysbiotic bacteria versus another? I’d love this to be solutions oriented too, so please share your test, yeah.

Kiran Krishnan

Yeah, I’m glad you brought that up because it’s really hard to understand where you are within microbiome, right? And how resilient you are. And to me, that’s always the biggest aspect of health is we have to be able to be resilient, because we can’t be perfect in our choices and our behaviors, right? We have to have some leeway in being able to be resilient to things that may impact us. So the biome FX test, that’s what it, it’s called the biome FX, really gives you a very strong picture of what your microbiome looks like from a number of aspects. The first part of the test really goes through all of these resilience factors. 

Things like your diversity, and it tells you exactly how many organisms were identified. And how does that compare to healthy populations of which there are thousands upon thousands of samples already collected. And then it looks at your resistome, which is how, not only your diversity, but it looks at how stable your population is. How susceptible is it to significant changes should you introduce something that could be disarming to the microbiome, like an anti-microbial antibiotic of some sort. Or travel even, like if you go overseas, that can be impactful to your microbiome, right? In some cases, in a negative way. 

So it does go through all of these parameters and gives you a really strong handle on where your microbiome is. And the best part about it is everything that we test also will give you action steps for what you can do to improve it. And these are lifestyle action steps, dietary action steps, supplemental action steps, and so that you can actually do something about it. So I’m glad you brought that up because that’s really the one way to know where you are with your microbiome. If you’ve been dealing with chronic mycotoxin issues and you’re having a hard time making progress, it’d be great to understand where your microbiome is and there are likely things you need to do within your microbiome to start detoxifying properly.

Christine Schaffner, N.D.

Yeah. I think that’s a really tangible action step, and a lot of us know of course the importance of the microbiome, but we’re in clinical practice and we’re like focusing on, okay we got to quantify the mycotoxins and then we got to know what other gut bugs to treat, or to kill rather. And then sometimes, I mean, as you pointed out beautifully in the beginning of our interview, like this whole spectrum of the microbiome is there to help support us. We don’t have to make this hard. If we can get the microbiome in balance, it really serves our health and our resilience. And so, no, I don’t think about that enough with a mycotoxin patient to look at microbiome diversity. 

So I’m taking that pearl with me. And you mentioned, I mean how we’ve gotten to know each other, Kiran, is through MegaSpore that probiotic that I use and I love, and that has bacillus spores. And so it seems like what you shared with the feed piece, I’m just thinking like, we have a lot of, of course we deal with a lot of inhaled mycotoxin exposure, but there’s the food aspect too. So just like having maybe digestive enzymes with your food, but having MegaSpore potentially with foods that might be higher in mycotoxins potentially could help to decrease that potential assault or stress to the body. Do you think of it in that way? Or am I wrong?

Kiran Krishnan

Yeah. No. And that’s absolutely right. So, like you mentioned, those inhaled mycotoxins is ones that come in through the diet, through the digestive tract, right? And there is a deep connection between the two, right? So, and how they’re connected is through your immune system, because of course your digestive tract is the largest sampling site of your immune system. And so what you may inhale, even if it doesn’t go through your digestive tract, but if your immune system learned about it in the digestive tract, it can deal with it in the respiratory tract, right? So that’s a part that’s really important. So one of the key aspects of the bacillus endo spores that are found in MegaSpore is that not only has been bacillus been shown to be able to directly break down and neutralize mycotoxins that are coming in, they also enhance the expression of T cells and B cells in your digestive mucosa, which is the biggest sampling site for your immune system. 

So if you’ve gotten mycotoxins coming in through the digestive tract and you’ve got a probiotic in there enhancing immune response, then you have a better shot at building antibodies, neutralizing antibodies against those mycotoxins that then get translated throughout the rest of the body. Right? The immune system uses the digestive tract as a training ground for dealing with everything else that enters the body in different locations. And so being able to support your immune system’s ability to identify and learn about the mycotoxins that are coming in, and then mount antibody responses against it will help you deal with the same mycotoxins that you get exposed to through the respiratory tract, through your skin, through your urogenital tract, any other way that it enters into the body. So that part is really important, because that’s the immune sampling, oral tolerance component of dealing with these things systemically.

Christine Schaffner, N.D.

As you’re talking kind of taking a little detour into the nasal microbiota, because that is obviously on top of a lot of people’s minds who’ve been in unhealthy homes and in the CIRS and mold illness community, there’s a lot of looking at different types of bacterial overgrowth that can be a hallmark sign of mold exposure. And then also fungal overgrowth and biofilm and all the things that can be, just like how we have dysbiosis in our gut, right. We can get dysbiosis in the nasal microbiota. So what have you learned around that piece specific to mycotoxins and even mold?

Kiran Krishnan

Yeah, so one of the things is the opportunistic microbes love anything that enters into the system that disrupts normal immune function, right? And hence their name, opportunistic. They’re looking for those opportunities for them to express their virulence factors. So when you have elevated levels of opportunistic microbes in any part of the body, including the sinuses, and upper respiratory tract, anytime you’re exposed to anything that’s inflammatory like a mycotoxin, those microbes will actually make things much worse because they see that now as an opportunity to start increasing virulence factors production, right? So one example of that is both staph and strep. So people with chronic sinusitis or rhinosinusitis tend to have an overpopulation of staph and strep in their sinuses and in their upper respiratory tract. 

They may even have some pathogenic mold in there as well, Which compounds everything else. So now you get exposed to a mold toxin, a mycotoxin that will then initiate an inflammatory immune response in that tissue, the opportunistic bacteria will see that inflammatory response and use that as an opportunity to start enhancing its virulence factors. So now you’ve got the mycotoxin component of it driving inflammation and tissue damage, and then you’ve got this bacteria that goes, hey this is a great time for us to start creating havoc. And then they start enhancing their toxigenic compounding production and exposure as well. So now you’ve got this double whammy going on and it becomes really hard for your immune system to deal with both at the same time, right? And so that is the part that really creates to me a compounding factor in people. And that’s one of the key factors of bringing down resilience and being able to be exposed to things and walk away from it without all of the damage, right? So that’s a big key. So if you’ve had chronic sinus issues and then you get exposed to respiratory mycotoxins, you’re going to be in a lot more trouble than somebody who has not had chronic sinus issues, right? Because they’re not colonized by these opportunistic organisms.

Christine Schaffner, N.D.

Clinically, we’ve had people actually use the bacillus spores in MegaSpore in netipot solutions and irrigate the sinuses. Is that still good clinical thinking as a tool to help reregulate the immune system in that tissue or any other pearls for helping with this, the sinus piece that’s so often affected with these patients?

Kiran Krishnan

Yeah. So actually that’s really a great way to do it. And when, in fact, we’ve been working on setting up a really nice clinical trial with the ENT group in British Columbia to study this specific nasal irrigation with the bacillus spores, because there is already data showing that the bacillus spores do compete against those opportunistic organisms and enhance the immune response against those organisms when they enter into the sinus mucosa. And then there’s also real world relevance to that where studies show that we inhale these kinds of positive, beneficial organisms all the time. In desert dust that blows from the Sahara desert across Europe and much of Asia, this high levels of these spores in them, right? 

So it’s a very normal and natural to be inhaling when you’re outside to be to increase your exposure to these beneficial microbes, that then help combat against the opportunistic microbes. And so there’s that empirical real world application that’s been tied to big data already. And then you guys already know from clinical practice that that can be very beneficial to people. And that’s exactly the key, right? That’s a lot of what we need to do in dealing with things like chronic mold exposure and chronic mycotoxin syndromes is we have to change the terrain in which the mycotoxin is present, because the terrain will dictate what the impact of that variable is, right? Whether, like you might get exposed to a virus but one individual is perfectly fine and the other one gets sick for weeks on end, right? And the big difference is not the virus, the virus is exactly the same, it’s what terrain did that virus enter into. 

And I think one of the things that we really need to start helping with these individuals is how do we reform their terrain so that they have a chance of really actually dealing with this and building more resilience against future relapses? Right? Because that’s another thing that I’ve seen too. And I don’t see patients the way you do, but I interact with lots of people that deal with chronic problems is that they may go through a period where they can control it but then they relapse very quickly, right? A single exposure to something that they weren’t aware they’re being exposed to and now put them back on their back for the next couple of months. So we want to continue to build that resilience. And I think these kinds of tools like the right probiotic, and then we should talk about the immunoglobulin as well. And then also understanding what your microbiome looks like through a test, like the biome FX can really help build and modulating the terrain.

Christine Schaffner, N.D.

Yeah. And I think there’s this great, I understand when people are suffering, they’re trying to do the best that they can, but yeah there’s this, in our community, this desire to like have the perfect home or the perfect environment, and while there can be place for healing in that space, it’s not reality, right? And it goes back to that resilience idea. And so with everything you’re sharing, it gives, I’m hoping people feel really empowered that we can really support this part of our body and let that do the work, right? And now we’ve co-evolved with the system and we’re more microbes than human cells. 

So, I mean, we have to take this into account. I want to go into some more tools and therapeutics especially that you’ve created, but before we do that quickly, I remember even when I first listened to you lecture about MegaSpore years ago that you were starting to see this histamine connection, right? And this mast cell connection. And so a lot of our patients, and I think it’s knowledge and awareness, but there’s this increased sensitivity. I treat a highly sensitive patient. So I treat though that community, so I’m always looking to how to support them. And when we think about, on one spectrum there’s mast cell activation syndrome, right, that’s the fullest expression, but there’s, I see this as a spectrum and I see mast cells are in the matrix and all in the gut and everywhere. And so a lot of us see that there are these triggers right? There are these things like molds, mycotoxins even parasitic infections that can make our mast cells more excitable to not only release histamine, but all the other things they release, and create this sensitivity in the system. And so any like new insights or insights to share how we can look at the microbiome as a solution for mast cell activation?

Kiran Krishnan

Yeah. In fact, there’s a lot.

Christine Schaffner, N.D.

We could do a whole lecture of that.

Kiran Krishnan

Totally.

Christine Schaffner, N.D.

Maybe I’ll do another interview with you, ’cause I’m super curious, ’cause it’s literally my patient population every day, so.

Kiran Krishnan

Yeah. Yeah. And here’s a really interesting thing I’ve learned from the research and the work we’ve even done over the last few years is that mast cells and eosinophils and all that, that perpetuate this histamine IgE type of response in the body, your immune system goes to that as a default if other systems aren’t functioning as well, right? So one of the first and the main ones that if it’s dysfunctional defaults to the mast cell IgE type of response, is if you’re a secretory IgA levels are low, right? So it’s really quite interesting. And that’s your immune system actually trying to protect you because it’s trying to get some sort of antibody population out throughout the system, right? It’s trying to create this antibody abundance and concentration in your secretions, in your mucosa and all that, so that you’re protected against incoming viruses and bacteria and all that. 

Of course, the downside of the antibodies and the antibody in histamine producing cells like mast cells and eosinophils is that it creates massive inflammatory responses. So what tends to happen is if you have low diversity in your microbiome, you have low IgA production, right? Because IgA production is dictated in large part by the diversity in your microbiome. Because it’s the microbes sitting on the top layer of your mucosa that send the signals down and activate something called toll-like receptors that then create the excretion of secretory IgA. Right? So now if you have low diversity, your microbiome’s impacted, it’s a dysbiotic gut. And because of that low IgA production your immune system sees that and goes, oh we have to overcome that. And so your immune system actually produces more mast cells and more eosinophils and then creates a higher population of IgE rather than IgA to make up for it. Right? 

So one of the ways to really combat that and shift it back towards a more protective IgA is to increase the diversity within the microbiome. And that will bring the IgA levels up. And when the IgA levels come up, then the mast cell and production and then thereby activation actually comes down. And those are contradicting pathways for the immune system, right? So when one one is down the other one’s going to be up. And one of the only ways to bring the other one down is to get the first one up. And if we were using conventional medicine, what we would do is create drugs to just go and beat this one down, right? But then both of them are down and now you’re susceptible to all kinds of other things, right? So in our world where we look at root causes and all that, we know that, okay, this is down. So then the mast cell, eosinophil, IgE type of response is up, so we need to just bring this one back up so it goes back to normal. 

That to me is one of the most interesting aspects of people. And a lot of times this sensitivity of the patients we deal with come secondary to other issues, right? It started with something else, and then all of a sudden they become more and more and more sensitive over time. And that’s because of the loss of oral tolerance, a lack of IgA production, the lack of mucosal sampling through the production of secretory IgA, which is actually a tolerance antibody. And then this over expression of eosinophils, mast cells, and histamine. Now, the other aspect of histamine is your microbiome can actually produce quite a bit of histamine as well. Right. And it does so in response to chronic and latent infections. 

So if you’ve got lots of latent viruses, for example in your system, your microbiome is trying to signal your immune system to go, Hey you got to deal with this. And it does it through the production of histamine and indole. And those are the two main compounds that your microbiome will produce to try to signal to your immune system of this chronic viral infections as well. So a lot of times in the very sensitive patients, at some point, a latent virus has set up shop and it’s continuing to drive more histamine production but this time through your microbiome. So working in dealing with perhaps a chronic viral infection could also help things like Lauricidin may be useful?

Christine Schaffner, N.D.

Yeah. That’s a great clinical pro cause we, a lot of the mast cell type patients, we’ll do a total IgE and see that that being an elevated as a clue. And stool tests often look at secretory IgA. So that’s again, a great clue. And the body is so wise, right? So it’s like the body isn’t confused or just doing something random right? There’s some intelligence. And so I think always looking at it from that perspective is always enlightening. So no, that’s great.

Kiran Krishnan

And keep in mind the body’s the, ultimately the body’s goal is survival, right? It’s not necessarily quality of life.

Christine Schaffner, N.D.

True.

Kiran Krishnan

Right? These fault systems that may suck but will keep you alive to a certain degree, right? But the body’s thinking, Hey, you don’t have IgA, you’re better off with IgE than no antibiotics, right? So that’s the way the body goes, but it sucks to have this elevated IgE histamine production from a quality of life standpoint. And so yeah, it’s super interesting. And so much of that is dictated by the microbes.

Christine Schaffner, N.D.

Yeah, no, that’s yeah, a great pearl too. Cause yeah, I mean the you see our patients quality of life and they suffer way too much, right? So, but yeah, this is a great perspective to alleviate the suffering, right? And so we’re talking about immunoglobulin and I wanted to talk about your Mega IgG as a tool in this picture, so can you just share with us what that is and the role it plays and everything we’re talking about here.

Kiran Krishnan

Yeah. I mentioned earlier that ruminant animals are highly resistant to mycotoxin exposure, right? And in part, because they’ve got all these microbes in that ruminant and component of their digestive tract that will break down the mycotoxins and neutralize it and then they get a lot of immunological response in that ruminant component of the digestive tract as well, which is, for those animals where the largest sampling tends to occur. So, with cows, they have this amazing capability of getting high exposure to mycotoxins, but then getting good immunological response against them while their microbes are breaking them down and allowing those mycotoxins to not be a problem for the animal. And so when you look at IgG in cows and in ruminant animals, they have a really amazing array of antibodies that neutralize mycotoxins, and a full array of mycotoxins. 

We’re talking about aflatoxin, DON, ZEA, all these really egregious mycotoxins. And so these ruminant animals, when you can pull their serum and isolate their antibodies, and utilize them from a dietary standpoint can be a huge help in binding, neutralizing, and inactivating mycotoxins in the system. And so, and that’s one of the big applications of our Mega IgG product which is a high concentration of bovine immunoglobulins. And it’s all IgG immunoglobulins. There’s some IgM in there and some IgA as well, but we’ve worked with a lot of clinicians, we use that quite a bit for their high mycotoxin patients because those antibodies bind and neutralize mycotoxins because the nature of these animals is that they’re super resistant to it. And so we can utilize their capabilities to really help us with reducing the mycotoxin load.

Christine Schaffner, N.D.

I love that. And many people are going to be like, okay I’m sensitive to dairy, can I take the colostrum? What is your input on that?

Kiran Krishnan

Yeah. So this one, the good news is it doesn’t come from the colostrum portion. This is a serum from the animals. So there’s no dairy component of it at all. It doesn’t come through the milk, it comes directly out of the blood.

Christine Schaffner, N.D.

Perfect.

Kiran Krishnan

Yep, through the serum, yup.

Christine Schaffner, N.D.

I knew it was dairy safe, but I confuse that. So that’s great. That gives me more confidence to everyone, right?

Kiran Krishnan

Yeah. Yeah. So then there’s no issue for them at all.

Christine Schaffner, N.D.

Yeah great. No and I use it in clinical practice and I’ve seen it work, while I haven’t really put the pieces to exactly this mechanism. And so can we think of this as a mycotoxin binder? I mean, you’re saying when we think about binders we’re thinking about charcoals and fulvic and humic acid and all of these things. So would you classify this as just kind of, obviously different mechanism, but at the same effect to reduce the mycotoxin load?

Kiran Krishnan

Yeah. That’s absolutely a great way to look at it because the other part of it is that not only is it a mycotoxin binder it’s highly specific to mycotoxins and bacterial toxins and bacterial components and so on. So it actually does a number of things, including binding and neutralizing mycotoxins. It can actually bind to mold. It can actually bind to whole bacteria, bind to viruses, because again, anything that the cow has developed immunity against being out in the world, now you’ve got that protective antibody in your GI tract from taking the product. And it’s very specific. That’s a really good part about it, right? Because there’s the secondary side of using things like other binders that can actually bind good stuff too. And the benefit here is that you’re really only going after the things that are potentially problematic. 

So, and then there’s also studies on mucosal integrity, leakiness in the gut with the IgG, which shows that even in cases like HIV enteropathy, in these HIV positive patients that go through a really severe leaky gut process called HIV enteropathy, they’ve been able to show that you can actually rebuild a mucosa even under that condition using just the IgG. So not only is it going to play a role in binding and neutralizing the things that are causing the toxic response and the inflammatory response in the body, but it’s also going to support the rebuilding of the gut lining. And we know with high certainty that 100% of people with mycotoxin exposure have leaky gut, and it just goes hand in hand, right? And the leaky gut is perpetuating a systemic response that is really not helping their system. And so if we can deal with both at once, that could be a real big benefit.

Christine Schaffner, N.D.

Yeah, no, it’s like doing everything we need for these patients. What kind of dosing do you recommend? Like if someone has, well, I guess two questions as we’re wrapping up, like, are there, some clinicians get really specific, they see like, ochratoxin A, you need to use cholestyramine or like really specific with what kind of mycotoxin and what type of binder, do you have that type of information? Like what mycotoxins we should really be thinking about to use the Mega IgG product for?

Kiran Krishnan

Yeah. So that’s the beauty of the array of immunoglobulins, it binds over 15 different types of mycotoxins.

Christine Schaffner, N.D.

Awesome.

Kiran Krishnan

Yeah. So it actually takes care of the full array of what is commonly part of the exposure. And so you don’t have to think about it that specifically and then the patients don’t have to take many different things based on understanding what their mycotoxins are, right? And then, so it provides more broad spectrum protection for the patients. And so the dosing, when it comes to people with high mycotoxin load and exposure would be around four to five grams a day, and it’s done so in capsules. So we would recommend them doing something like four capsules in the morning, four capsules in the evening. 

They can do it, four capsules is the first thing that they do on an empty stomach is fine. And then four capsules in the evening before bed or five and five. Five and five would give them five grams of the immunoglobulin. That’s a really good dose for patients who are acutely dealing with mycotoxin exposure. And then if they want to go to maintenance, once they get much better, a great maintenance dose is just four total per day, rather than four in the morning, four the evening. And you can do that anytime of the day.

Christine Schaffner, N.D.

Nice. And it seems like beneficial to be away from food but it’s not going to have all those other effects that other binders have to be away from the food for binding to other nutritional products or medications or that sort of thing. It’s safe to take away from food and might not interact with as many things. Is that what I’m hearing?

Kiran Krishnan

That’s exactly right. Because it’s so highly specific in its ability to bind just that the toxigenic compounds, you really don’t have to separated from food intake and so on. And in fact, if you’re concerned about food being a source of micro-toxins right, which is a huge source of mycotoxin exposure for people, then taking it with the food can actually be beneficial because it’s going to bind up any mycotoxins in the food.

Christine Schaffner, N.D.

Nice, nice. I kind of have this visual of like, okay of course we want the happiest healthy cow and the grass fed pasture and all of that, because of of course that’s the natural habitat. And then I’m like, and then we want the cow in the really toxic environment because whatever it’s surviving through, that’s gonna help us survive right too.

Kiran Krishnan

Absolutely, yeah, cause then it just increases what the resilience of the cow is, right? And then improves the array of immunoglobulins that the cow has. And so all of that provides us with additional protection.

Christine Schaffner, N.D.

Well, Kiran, I always learn so much from you and I’m taking notes and I’m going to go to my office today and prescribe a lot of these things from this lens. I’ve used your products obviously, but it’s always good to have these tips and tools to help shift people more quickly. And as we wrap up, is there anything else you want to share about what you’re excited about or what you’re wanting people to know who are listening to this summit?

Kiran Krishnan

Yeah. I mentioned diversity a number of times, right? And really at the end of the day, when you look at all the microbiome research, if you have high diversity, that is probably one of the biggest markers of overall health and wellness, and in fact, longevity, as well. There lots of data now coming out that shows that diversity in your microbiome dictates how long you live. So it plays such an important role. But it’s a very difficult thing for people to figure out how to increase, right? And so in order to help them with that, we’ve recently developed and we’re launching this Good Biome Foods product line which the whole focus of this is simple, convenient, delicious foods that take a minute to prepare. 

And if you consume one every day, you’re going to dramatically increase your diversity over relatively short amounts of time, two, three weeks. So we want to make diversity an achievable feature for people in the U.S. because one of the biggest factors in our increase in chronic illness over time over the last several decades is a loss in diversity in our microbiomes, in our Western population. If you look at our most closely related hunter gatherer tribes that still exists today, like the tribes in Papa New Guinea or the Hadza tribe in Tanzania, they tend to have double the amount and species of bacteria than we do, right? So over the last several decades, we’ve lost half of our resident microbes, which is a very very scary notion because our microbes conduct 80, 90% of all our functionality, right? 

So, and if we lose the microbes, we lose function and we lose the protective features. And so for us, it becomes paramount as a microbiome company to illuminate, educate and make people understand how important diversity of the microbiome is and to maintain at least what we have now, so that we can pass it on to our next generation. Because each generation is being born with less and less diversity within the microbiome. It’s like losing organ systems. So, so we want to maintain that diversity and just I would stress you out to your audience that’s listening to keep in mind that diversity is really important. Test your microbiome, see what your diversity is like, utilize the tools that we’ve talked about to increase diversity, and then the goodbye foods should really help as well.

Christine Schaffner, N.D.

 I’m going to check those out and see if my three-year-old will eat them as well Yeah, absolutely. So, well, it’s always a pleasure and thank you so much for this awesome information and all the hard work that you’re doing to innovate in our space. And yeah, thank you for being part of the summit.

Kiran Krishnan

 Yeah. Thank you. It’s my pleasure. Thanks for having me.