Does Your Daily Probiotic Actually Work, or Is It Just Hype? with Kiran Krishnan, PhD | MGC Ep. 122

But let me start with the missing microbes hypothesis.

So you've talked about the fact that we have lost soil-derived spore-forming bacteria that our ancestors constantly ingested.

And that loss of these bacteria, this regular intake of these bacteria is the cause of many of the problems that we are encountering.

How good is the evidence for compromised microbial soil health and what are the main drivers behind it? Because obviously, missing hypothesis has to do mainly with the fact that we have not consumed food that contains these bacteria.

And if you can expand on that topic, that would be great.

Yeah, well, and also, thank you so much for having me.

It's a pleasure to be able to have this conversation with you.

And at a larger level, I want to thank you for all your contributions to the work.

research in the world of the microbiome, which is such an exciting place to be, I think, for all of us.

But this is a really important topic.

So the way I look at the story of the spores, and their role in the soil, and then as a result, their potential role in our gut microbiome as well, because they have this unique quality of being able to exist in both of those environments, right? And for the average person that's listening, they probably don't appreciate how different those two environments are.

The analogy I usually use is like, it's like a human existing at the depths of the ocean versus on land, right? You know, the pressures and the air and everything is different about those two environments.

So given that there's a microbe that has a potential life cycle in both of those different environments, probably means something, you know, from an ecological and nature perspective.

So I always use the spores as a good surrogate.

to define the dysfunction that we've created in our overall ecosystem.

They're certainly not the only organisms that are missing from our food source.

I think they act as a good surrogate and a good marker.

But it exemplifies what we've done with monoculturing, with modern day agriculture, with really if you will, for lack of better term, kind of killing the ecological effect of the soil, which then, of course, has a direct effect on the food that we eat because the food is now, has changed composition, right? We know that when we compromise our microbes in our gut, it compromises our outcomes.

Just the same with the plants when we compromise their soil microbiology and their endothelium or epithelium, which is the parts of the roots that function a lot like our own gut lining, that we compromise the health and the structure of the plant.

So now the food that we're eating is compromised and doesn't have the same nutritive quality.

And at the same time, we're not gaining the exposure to the natural microbes in the environment.

supposed to be in constant osmosis with the outside microbial world, right? We're picking up microbes.

Most of them don't survive and colonize.

They pass through, but even passing through has some benefit.

And then we're constantly shedding microbes into the outside environment.