Unlock Your Fertility: The Microbiome Connection

Kiran Krishnan

Hi Carrie, thank you so much for having me. Such an important topic. This whole idea of making other humans and how difficult it can be these days. I’m excited to be able to talk about this from the microbiome perspective.

Carrie Jones, ND, FABNE, MPH

Well, before we get started, why don’t you give the listeners a little background about you and tell them how you got into this? Then I want to just jump into fertility hormones, implantation, sperm health, and how it relates to the gut. I just don’t think a lot of people tie all that together. I’ve heard you do it multiple times, and I can’t wait to ask.

Kiran Krishnan

Yes. For me, I grew up in a house of nerds. My mom is a medical doctor. My dad is a microelectronics engineer. Engineer, biology—all of that stuff is what I lived in. Of course, those are in the sciences, in my bones, in my psyche, and environment. I was a giant nerd from the beginning. But also a megalomaniac, which means that I’m always thinking about the biggest picture I can think of. I could have been tinkering away in a lab, working on one thing by myself, as many scientists and microbiologists do for most of their careers. Or you could take that information and that knowledge and try to scale it in some way. The microbiome became the area for me in which I could scale the knowledge around microbiology and translate that into health and wellness, and hopefully, through work in developing products, doing research, and all that, impact lots and lots of people that way. That’s my drive and why I do what I do every day. Then, being part of programs like this is important because, at the end of the day, we’re empowering people with knowledge and information that they wouldn’t otherwise have. This education also becomes a big part of what I do.

Carrie Jones, ND, FABNE, MPH

I love it because, as you said, we’re trying to make little people or little humans. Let’s jump into the first, most obvious question, which is: What is the microbiome? Then the second obvious: how would that even relate to fertility?

Kiran Krishnan

Yes. The microbiome is defined as the totality of microbes and all the genetic elements as it relates to the host, and the host, of course, being us humans. For those that aren’t familiar, we humans harbor somewhere around 100 trillion microbes. We have more microbial cells in our system than human cells. We have about 150 to 200 times more microbial DNA in our system than human DNA. Our DNA is wholly inadequate to function as anything, let alone this sophisticated species called Homo sapiens. We’ve got about 20 to 23,000 functional genes. Then you compare that to an earthworm that has 32,000 functional genes. We are not that sophisticated, but we do house all those one and a half million plus microbial genes in our system. Whether people understand it or not, at the end of the day, a lot of their functionality and capabilities, including having babies, come down to what types of microbes they’re harboring. 

The microbes are either going to be a help and be very supportive of fertility and reproduction and all of the things that are associated with fertility and reproduction, hormone cycling, the health of the vaginal canal, the health of sperm, and so on, or they’re not only not going to be supportive; they’re going to work against fertility and reproduction if you have the wrong microbes in high abundance. It becomes important to understand the ecosystem that we carry and whether or not that ecosystem is supportive of reproduction. In fact, and I’ll tell you, I’ll tap into this a little bit when we talk about the male side of infertility, which is a very important aspect of it. In some estimates, 50% of infertility among couples comes from the male side of it. But on the male side, especially if your body thinks you’re sick, it reduces your ability to reproduce. Because this is a natural selection phenomenon, we don’t want to reproduce ill-fated children. Those who are ill shouldn’t be reproducing. There are certain signals that your body utilizes to understand whether or not you’re ill or fit for reproduction. Those signals can be triggered by dysfunctional bacteria. We’ll dive into how that happens.

Carrie Jones, ND, FABNE, MPH

I think you just got a lot of people’s ears perked up to think, that could relate to me because I think what a lot of people think of the microbiome, they’re thinking of the main microbiome, which is the mouth through your intestines and then out the other end. But you even mentioned in the statement that you were just making a statement about even the vaginal microbiome or about the male microbiome and the impact it would have on his testosterone and sperm production. We have microbiome on our skin, which I’ve heard you talk about lots of times, and just knowing we have more than one type of microbiome and it plays such a role in our fertility and reproduction is mind-blowing news, I think, for a lot of people. I mean, it’s just hard to wrap my head around it. It’s a field of interest that I just love. Keep going. I love it. 

Kiran Krishnan

Yes. Let’s talk about how these crazy microbes can impact your ability to have babies. Where’s that coming from? What are the mechanics around it? You mentioned the vaginal microbiome. Let’s start there. That’s a very important component. Women who tend to have an elevation of infertility issues tend to also have severely dysbiotic vaginal microbiota, which means that the ecosystem in the vaginal canal tends to be off more often than not. When I say off and on, what I mean is having the right type of microbes versus the wrong type of microbes. The vaginal canal is a beautiful example of that because it’s far less complicated than any other microbial ecosystem in the body. In fact, in a healthy vaginal canal, most women should have just one bacteria predominating the space which is fascinating because, almost everywhere else, the skin has a little bit more diversity than the vaginal canal does. But areas of the gut, for example, or your brain in different areas have hundreds upon hundreds of species. You want more species. You want more diversity. 

You’ll hear me talk about diversity as we go through today, but that’s related to the gut and digestive microbiome. When it comes to the vaginal canal, most healthy women with a healthy vaginal canal should have one microbe predominating that whole area. If you tend to have higher diversity, you have four, five, or six microbes. You have dysbiosis in the vagina canal, and studies have shown that dysbiosis not only makes you more susceptible to things like bacterial vaginosis, yeast infections, and UTIs, but those are listening. They have experienced a lot of that in their infertility issue. That may be an issue with this dysfunctional vaginal canal. Now, that dysfunctional canal is also heavily related to the ability to not only get pregnant but also sustain a pregnancy. Women with a dysfunctional vaginal canal from a microbial perspective have a much higher rate of miscarriages and other dysfunctions that occur even during pregnancy. Because, of course, getting pregnant is only step one. Having a healthy pregnancy and sustaining it through duration and delivering a healthy baby are the other steps two, three, and four and it gets complicated. 

A healthy vaginal canal is important not only to get pregnant but also to sustain pregnancy. Now we do a lot of things that as humans do that disrupt the vaginal can. Let’s talk about what some of those things are. For example, if you’re trying to get pregnant, you want to make sure your vaginal canals are healthy. The vast majority of personal lubricants say that if you’re trying to get pregnant, you’re probably having sex. If you’re having sex, there’s a chance you’re using a personal lubricant. Most personal lubricants destroy the vaginal can. If you’re buying those at the stores and you’re buying them online and they have heating functions and glow in the dark, whatever they might be, that is exactly what. Flavoring and all of those are harming the vaginal microbiome. It’s reducing your ability to get and sustain a pregnancy.  

Instead of using that lubricant, I would use, I am not aware of any safe lubricant out there because the company just hasn’t done the studies. But there are cleaner ones lubes, and the market is cleaner. I would lean towards those a little bit more, but better than that, I would use organic extra virgin olive oil. I do not use coconut oil. A lot of people talk about using coconut oil. Do not use it. Coconut oil is a strong antimicrobial. It will kill bacteria in the vaginal canal and potentially cause a problem. I would use extra virgin olive oil if you have to use a lubricant.  That’s one thing that we do—we’re not even thinking about driving infertility issues.

The second thing is, if you’re using tampons, tampons have been shown in certain studies to impact the vaginal microbiome in a significant way because of number one, especially if you’re not using organic cotton tampons. You’ve got cotton that has pesticides and herbicides on it.  Those are all strong antimicrobials, so you’ve got chemicals on those cotton-based tampons that now you’re exposing your very sensitive vaginal canal to, and it’s destroying the very sensitive lactobacilli that should be predominating in your vaginal canal. That’s one thing. The other thing is that the tampons pull all the moisture from the mucosal layer of the vaginal canal, which is where the microbes need to exist. If you dry out those mucosal layers, it kills those microbes and makes it easier for things like yeast and so on to take hold. Using tampons in general is not a great thing if you’re struggling with fertility now or if you’ve had long-term issues with the vaginal canal. If you’re going to use a tampon, at least use an organic one, but you’re probably better off using some other form of, say, a pad or something like that.

I try to be limited in how much I speak about that because I don’t have experience with it. But I do know the tampon thing is an issue. With detergent, if you’re washing your underwear in this common harsh detergent with the residue that they leave on there, the microplastics and all the things that are present in those detergents and end up on your clothing can also have a lot of impact on your vaginal canal. Some of these, you see these videos on these forever chemicals that are now added to the yoga pants, the bottom of yoga pants, and so on. If you’re exposing your vaginal canal to those things without underwear, especially if there isn’t a barrier, those can also harm your vaginal canal. I wouldn’t sit in chlorine-based hot tubs and pools too much. You’re trying to get pregnant because the chlorine sitting there for a long time can hurt your vaginal canal as well. There are many things to think about. That’s maybe an area that you haven’t even looked at as an area that may govern some of your fertility capabilities. But the vaginal microbiome is a very, very important one to think about. 

Then you go on to the gut microbiome. This is where it gets even more complex,? Now, one of the primary ways in which a dysfunctional gut microbiome can impact fertility is by causing something called a leaky gut.  Your intestinal lining is supposed to be selectively permeable. It’s supposed to let nutrients through, but not toxins, microbes, viruses, etc.  But when you think that permeability is governed by beneficial bacteria in your digestive tract. If you have a dysfunctional type of bacteria, you typically will have some digestive symptoms. You may have IBS symptoms, maybe food sensitivities, or maybe you get a lot of bloating or cramping when you eat. Maybe you have some immunological issues. You have allergies and sensitivities. Maybe you get a skin rash when you eat food. All of these things can be indicative of a GI issue going on. Those GI issues are going to be predominated by a dysfunctional microbial environment, which also means you probably have a leaky gut. The majority of people we tested in several studies were 55–60% of what we call healthy young individuals. These are individuals with no chronic disease, not on any medications out of normal body weight, an average age of 20 to 23, and prime of life. 55–60% of them have severe leaky guts. 

Carrie Jones, ND, FABNE, MPH

That’s a huge percentage.

Kiran Krishnan

Huge.  It was surprising to me because, to me, they have no symptomology for it. They’re not; they seem to sleep well. Yes, they don’t have the greatest lifestyle because a lot of these were college students. We’ve been testing. But they’re fine. They sleep well. They work out. They’re doing some healthy things and lots of unhealthy things as well, but they don’t have any impact from those unhealthy things. When you see them and you look at them and you look at their BMI and you look at other parameters, you go, Okay, they’re probably healthy in general. They’re resilient still. Then you look at their guts, and their guts are severely leaky. This means that every time they eat food, or when they go to sleep, they get a massive amount of inflammation scorching through their body. Inflammation largely comes from the translocation of toxins that are present in the lining of your gut. If that lining of the gut is compromised, in the case of a leaky gut, when you eat food and all of that churning and volatility is going on with the process of digestion, a lot of those toxins leak through, and you can measure them directly in the blood. Those toxins in your blood, in circulation, dramatically increase inflammation to the point where your body thinks you’re sick.

This goes back to the original point I made that if your body thinks you’re sick, there are some counteracting things that it does to reduce your ability to reproduce. Because from a natural selection perspective, it’s all about ecological fitness. Ecological fitness is the healthiest with the best genes moving forward. Those with disrupted genes and who are unhealthy inherently don’t get to move forward. Those aren’t the genes we want to concentrate in the population. Your body has some counteracting things. Let’s start with men and talk about them. 

Men are in a scary situation, I think. If you look at it, there have been several studies on this topic that were meta-analyzed, which means that it looked at, I think, 200+ studies on this topic since 1973. There’s one study, and the other has been following male sperm counts since 1973. We know that in the last 40 years, the average sperm count has dropped 50%. That’s an amazing amount. The crazy thing is that they were measuring until 2011, and since then they’ve been measuring as well. It’s dropping at a rate of around 1% per year, which means that the average sperm count in another 50 years is going to be zero. That means half the men will have above zero, slightly above zero, and then the other half will have zero. Or I don’t know how you can have negative sperm counts, but the average is going to be zero, which is crazy. We were just talking about off-air, but you’ve seen that in battle.

Carrie Jones, ND, FABNE, MPH

Yes.

Kiran Krishnan

Which one is amazing? Now, sperm counts and the quality of the sperm have dropped dramatically, which means that the ability of the male to impregnate the female is significantly reduced.  Because when it comes to the male side of things, we have two things that we contribute. One is the quality of our sperm. How well do they swim? Because they’ve got a long journey, To get there, from where? They release into the egg. They’ve got a long way to go. What percentage of your sperm have high fitness and capabilities? That’s number one. Number two is the volume, and this counts because it’s a numbers game. Every time you ejaculate, if you’re trying to get your partner pregnant, you’re putting up trillions of sperm.  With the hope that one makes it there. That’s a numbers game we’re trying to play now. Instead of a trillion, you’ve got 500 billion. That’s going to reduce the statistics quite a bit. Then you go to 500 million, and then you go to 50,000. You keep reducing the chance of one of those sperm getting there and penetrating through. and fertilizing the egg becomes minuscule. 

Then the question is, okay, why is our sperm count dropping so significantly? Well, there are several explanations,? It’s not just one thing. A big thing is our environment. Of course, we are exposed to all of these. hormone disruptors, and so on in our ecosystems—very microplastics.  

We know phthalates; for example, in plastics, we know have an impact on sperm count. We know that herbicides and pesticides can have an impact on sperm counts. But one big thing is this issue of a leaky gut. The reason is that when you see an increase in toxins leaking into circulation from men, there’s something called the gelding principle that shows that when you have an elevation of endotoxin, you get a reduction of sperm production, and you get a reduction first, you get a reduction of testosterone. Then, as a result, you get a reduction in sperm production. 

Now, why do you get a reduction in testosterone? When we can say that testosterone levels have dropped significantly in the double digits over the last couple of decades as well. If you look at the average testosterone levels in men, you see that men in their late 20s normally have 40-plus-year-old testosterone levels.  That’s also dropping quite a bit. so sperm counts drop by that potential reduction in testosterone. Why is it that testosterone will go down if your gut is leaky? Well, as I mentioned earlier when you’ve got a leak, toxins leak through, and inflammation goes way up. Your body has a system where, if your inflammation is high, it negates the production of testosterone from the testes.

You’ve got a gland in your brain called the pituitary gland. The pituitary gland is a plane that normally sends signals to the testes to produce testosterone. But the pituitary gland is also observing things like inflammation, stress, and so on. If there’s elevation and inflammation, it fails to send a signal to the testes because it doesn’t want you to be sexually active. A sick male is supposed to be sleeping in the cave. generally, and trying to get better. Running around with an erection, trying to impregnate people. This is a natural selection for fitness. If your body thinks you’re sick, it’s going to shut down the production of testosterone, which is the thing that gives you that virility and energy to go out and hunt and gather and fight and defend and all that stuff, and then also give you the ability to gain erections, be sexually active, and do all the things that humans are supposed to do. But if you’re sick, you’re supposed to lie down and try to recover, right? Your body shuts those components down,? In the case of men, that elevation in inflammation has a direct impact on reducing testosterone production, which then has a direct impact on reducing sperm counts, which then has an impact on male fertility. That’s one way in which a leaky gut and the resulting dysfunctional microbiome that drives leaky gut can impact fertility.

Now, on the women’s side, it does something similar for women. It also elevates inflammation. Chronic inflammation from leaky guts has been shown to disrupt hormone cycling quite significantly. You’ve got periods that are all over the place. You’ve got issues with estrogen dominance, and you’ve got all kinds of other complications around hormonal cycling that I’m sure other people in the summit would talk about, but hormone cycling is an important part of fertility. There’s got to be a natural component to that. Hormone disruption occurs due to a leaky gut. Now, the other thing that gets disrupted is the inflammation from leaky guts, which has been shown to directly impact the ovaries themselves. It can cause things like polycystic ovarian issues. You can get cyst formations, and you can get inflammatory damage to the eggs. 

You can have issues with releasing the eggs appropriately. You can have issues with the eggs traveling appropriately down the fallopian tubes. Inflammation can inhibit all of those functions. Allergies: that same inflammation has also been shown to reduce the probability of the implantation of the egg in the lining of the womb. That is another huge issue that women tend to suffer from. Then, of course, that inflammation will also lead to inflammation in the vaginal canal, which can disrupt the vaginal microbiome as well. Then here’s one of the craziest aspects of this: pregnant women who are already pregnant, and let’s say they’re carrying a female fetus. If a baby has female reproductive organs, if the mom has a leaky gut, endotoxin exposure to the infant can disrupt the development of her reproductive organs in utero.

Studies have shown that this leaky gut that comes from a microbiome disruption can create what they call transgenerational fertility issues, where its mom’s messed up gut bacteria is now creating infertility issues in the fetus who isn’t even born yet. When they are eventually born and reach reproductive age, the damage that occurs in utero impacts their ability to have babies at reproductive age. Mind-blowing if you think about that. There are studies about how transgenerational fertility is impacted by a leaky gut. At the end of the day, the right message is that you have to be cognizant of the ecosystem in which you’re trying to have a baby and build a new human. The microbes will play a significant role in your ability to get pregnant, your ability to sustain the pregnancy, and then how healthy the developing fetus is during the gestational process, and how healthy the birth process is as well. 

Just another example of that: the tie between microbes and the health of the fetus. Arguably one of the most important things we want to happen to a healthy fetus in the womb is to develop the brain appropriately. The brain, the central nervous system, controls so many things in the body. We want the baby to have full development of the brain and all of the regions of the brain. We’ve outsourced a lot of that development of the brain to microbes in the mom’s gut. The mom doesn’t have enough of these beneficial microbes in her gut. There is a risk that the baby will be delivered with an underdeveloped brain. This is part of the reasoning behind the increase in babies being born with attention deficit disorder, mood disorders, or spectrum disorders. In the case of autism, and so on.  There’s a developmental issue that’s occurring in utero itself. Now, some big studies show that the biggest risk for neurological development disorders in babies comes from moms who have a lot of gestational stress and gestational obesity. High gestational stress. High gestational obesity increases the risk of delivering a baby that has central nervous system or brain development issues. 

Then the mechanism wasn’t quite understood. One of the mechanisms that has been elucidated now is that those moms who have high levels of stress and high obesity tend to have dysfunctional microbiomes, which is part of why they’re so stressed and part of why they have issues with weight. Then because they don’t have enough beneficial bacteria. These are certain types of bacteria that contain a carbohydrate called peptidoglycan. If mom has enough of these bacteria, what tends to happen is that mom’s immune cells reach across the lining of the gut, grab these bacteria, take them across the lining of the gut, take them to the placenta, and release those bacterial carbohydrates into the placenta. The placenta has binding proteins for those carbohydrates that bind them, bring them across the placenta, and then carrier proteins. Take those bacterial carbohydrates to the baby’s brain, where the baby’s brain has receptors for those carbohydrates. They bind it. That triggers the development of the different parts of the brain. That triggers the development of the blood-brain barrier, the synaptic genesis, the formation of all the different neurons, and the myelination of the central nervous system that’s putting the insulin insulation, if you will, on the central nervous system. 

All these important things are triggered in part by this bacterial byproduct that the baby’s supposed to get exposed to from the mom’s gut. But if the mom inherits a dysfunctional gut, she’s not going to have enough of those microbes to pass them on to the baby. If you’re listening to this, you’re thinking about getting pregnant and sustaining a pregnancy, but you have to think about the next step: are you giving your baby the best shot at full development, appropriate development through the course of gestation, and then through delivery as well? In all of those steps, a healthy microbiome becomes a key component as well.

Carrie Jones, ND, FABNE, MPH

A massive component. I know a lot of people listening now are probably thinking, I have IBS symptoms. I got leaky gas or bloating. I have multiple food sensitivities; I have constipation, diarrhea alternating, and not even chronic vaginal issues. Yeast infections, and infections every time you have sex, urinary tract infections, etc. I think this has been eye-opening and mind-blowing to a lot of people, not just the women, but to the men who are listening as well. The next question is, What do we do? Kiran, save us. What can we do?

Kiran Krishnan

Okay, so you have to think about your system as an ecosystem. There are a lot of variables that impact your ecosystem, and we can break it down to a few: a handful of things that you should be cognizant of doing and not doing that will continue to support your ecosystem. Not only through the process of trying to get pregnant but also through pregnancy and birth delivery. The first thing for people to think about is, what not to expose their system to. We have a whole host of antimicrobial things that harm the ecosystem on your skin, in your gut, in your vaginal canal, and all that. We talk about the vaginal strategy; the cotton tampons, the lubricants, and all that. Keep those in mind and utilize those sets of strategies for the vaginal microbiome. For the gut microbiome, what you want to do is start dramatically reducing your consumption of processed foods. All of these processed foods contain the additives that they contain, the growth inhibitors from microbes, and the preservatives.  The antimicrobials, the coloring, the flavoring—all of those things have never been tested on the human microbiome. It doesn’t require testing them for the human microbiome to approve them for sale in the public space.  Our system of proving that food is safe is archaic. It’s based on stuff from the 50s and 60s before we knew that this microbiome even existed, and the system of testing whether something is safe has not evolved around our updated understanding of biology. 

We now know, and we start to see this. We start to see that, Okay. Where people have been using sucralose and it’s better than sugar. Because it’s not sugar. Diet Coke has got to be better than regular Coke. Well, no, in fact, Coke in general is not good for you. But if you’re going to drink one, you’re better off drinking the regular Coke because the sucralose, the artificial sugar, is way worse for you.  Then a diet with more sugar than real sugar has all of the negative impacts of real sugar and then some more. All of these things that additives, that food science, that whole world of food science tries to come up with to enhance flavor and improve color and make things never expire and can sit in a plastic container for ten years on the shelf. All of those things are bad for your microbiome. The more you can stay away from heavily packaged and processed foods, the better, and most people know that already and just don’t think about it. Think of it in the context of their existing health problems.  But if your existing health issue is fertility, and that’s why you’re watching this program, know that eating those processed foods is having a huge negative impact on your ability to have a child. A true dismantling of your microbiome. Go as much as you can to clean normal food.  You don’t have to have a crazy diet. You don’t have to be a carnivore, vegan, paleo, or do any of this crazy stuff. We are omnivores as a species. We eat a huge variety of things to try to get a variety of food into our system but just eat real food. That’s the best way to think about diet: eating actual, perishable, real food. Don’t worry about all the macromolecular balancing and all that stuff. All that stuff is for the biohackers of the world. I don’t want to get obsessed with it. Just eat real food. That’s the first thing. 

The second thing is to diversify your food as much as you can, eating a good variety of foods that you can. I know when women are pregnant, they start to narrow down what they can eat because they no longer eat most fish. There are lots of things about which you’re concerned about eating fine. But within the categories of foods that you can eat and eat comfortably, try to expand the diversity as much as you can. That’s one category of things. Food, clean that up and try to get real food in. The second part of it is your engagement and relationship with the outdoors. This makes a significant difference in how much time you spend in natural environments outdoors. I don’t mean just sitting on your porch; that’s still better than not doing it. But I’m talking about going for a walk in a natural environment. Near me, there’s all this forest reserve, beautiful trails, bike rides, and walks. If you’re on the coast, you can go to the beach, get your feet in the sand, and just engage with nature as much as you can. That has a huge impact on the diversity of your gut microbiome, which can work against a leaky gut. The other thing is cleaning up your personal care products in your home environment. When I say cleaning it up, I don’t mean sterilizing it. Exactly the opposite.  You don’t need to clean most surfaces in your home with any antimicrobial or sterile cleaner. 99% of the surfaces in my home are clean with just water and a couple of drops of essential oil for some smell, and you just wipe it down. But if you bring a raw chicken, you get chicken juice on your counter. Sterilize it. If you want to sterilize your toilet, do that; if you want to clean your showerhead of mold, do that. That’s fine. But most surfaces shouldn’t be sterile. As much as you can have the doors and windows open so you let microbes into your system and your household.

The other aspect of it is your personal care products. go through and start thinking about cleaning up some of the personal care products. Start with aluminum-free deodorant. Then try to go to a lotion that has the fewest number of clean ingredients, like some basic shea butter or something like that.  You just think about all those personal care products. The reason is that all those things will get absorbed into your system one way or another; even though you’re putting them on the outside, they do go through the barrier of your skin. It can get absorbed into circulation and impact your overall microbiome. Stress management is another tip. Stress is one of the biggest drivers of dysbiosis, which is an imbalance in your microbiome. Stress is one of the biggest drivers of leaky gut and stress-induced symptoms of leaky gut are the number one killer worldwide, according to a team publication in the Frontiers in Immunology.  This is a meta-analysis, meaning a study that looked at lots of different studies, stress-induced leaky gut drives, and more deaths worldwide than anything else.

Carrie Jones, ND, FABNE, MPH

That’s huge.

Kiran Krishnan

It’s huge. It’s the foundation of chronic illness. It’s the number one cause of chronic low-grade inflammation. Inflammation is all the things we talked about earlier that drive infertility in men and women, and so on. You need to manage stress now. There are a few different ways of doing that. Number one is, of course, that there’s lots of mindfulness work you can do: download the apps, do meditation, try to get some yoga, and whatever else helps you balance all of that. But note that your diet also impacts your stress. There are psychobiotics now. These probiotics are probiotic bacteria that impact your mood in a very dramatic way. Look up psychobiotics, like the Zenbiome, for example. They can have a huge impact on your overall mood and manage inflammation associated with stress. Stress is one of the biggest things. Keep a really clean mind and clarity when talking about stress. You cannot minimize its impact on your overall health and your ability to sustain a pregnancy. 

The final thing is getting adequate amounts of prebiotics and fiber into the diet. I aim for 25 to 30 grams of fiber a day in my diet, which is, to me, the base amount for a healthy microbiome. Then prebiotics, which are normally different than fiber. Fibers are these more or less general insoluble or soluble roughages that go through your system. Prebiotics tend to be things like oligosaccharides like Inulin. Some people I’ve heard of specifically feed certain classes of bacteria. You want to Google and look for good prebiotics in foods that are rich in prebiotics, as well as foods that are rich in fiber, and then try to increase the intake of those in your diet. Last but not least, a good probiotic can certainly help. We worked a lot with the spore-based probiotics that can reduce leaky guts dramatically. That’s at least at a base level. You should be taking a good probiotic daily. If you add all those things up, including all the things on the vaginal side of it, to improve the vaginal canal, you’re transforming your ecosystem and making your ecology much more suitable for reproduction. Then, of course, the delivery of a healthy baby.

Carrie Jones, ND, FABNE, MPH

Which is the goal. What I so appreciate about talking to you is that it’s all very practical and tactical. It doesn’t break the bank. It’s not set for the very elite, higher-earning folks. Anyone who can do it can make these changes today. They could write them down on a list, search for some of these things, and be off on their way to super-wonderful outcomes when it comes to their fertility. This is fantastic.

Kiran Krishnan

It’s the culmination of all of those things. Each one of the things I describe is a little step in the right direction. It’s the additive effect of all of those things that will revamp your ecosystem, and you keep that up. Once you get pregnant, you keep that up until gestation so that you have the healthiest system to build this human. Then you keep that up through post-delivery as well, because your system is going to go through a jarring thing as soon as you deliver. I can’t even fathom the things that women go through when delivering this baby. Jolene discusses that post.

Carrie Jones, ND, FABNE, MPH

The fourth trimester.

Kiran Krishnan

Yes, the postpartum fourth trimester is just a very complex situation for a lot of women. Having that resilient, diverse microbiome will help you get through that. So keep that up, and then, of course, embed some of those practices in your child because their microbiome early on is going to, in many parts, dictate their future health outcomes as well. your microbiome that you impart to the child, because the child is largely getting their microbiome from you, from mom, and then close interaction with dad as well early on. Once they’re born, you’re imparting a very healthy microbiome, hopefully to a child, which will help them address your lives, or you can impart an unhealthy microbiome, which will negatively impact them for the rest of their life.

Carrie Jones, ND, FABNE, MPH

Well, this has been fascinating. For everyone listening, where can they find you? Where can they learn more?

Kiran Krishnan

Yes. I try to put out as much of this information as I can. If you’re on Instagram, follow me @kiranbiome. On Facebook. I think it’s just Kiran Krishnan. If you look that up, I think you’ll find me and a lot of my stuff, and you can reach out to me in those settings. I try to engage with people as much as I can to provide them with some direction on things to look into and talk to the practitioners about. But yes, I’m always happy to do that as much as I can.

Carrie Jones, ND, FABNE, MPH

Well, thank you. You are always a wealth of information. I always learn so much from you. Thank you so much for being at the summit today.

Kiran Krishnan

It is my pleasure. Thank you for having me.