Martha Carlins Microbiome Mission: The Research Quest that Could Help Many

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TalkToMeGuy : When Martha Carlin's husband was diagnosed with Parkinson's in 2002, she transformed herself into a self-taught scientist, mastering chemistry, microbiology and genetics to understand the crucial connection between gut health and chronic disease. As founder of the Bio Collective and Biodicquest, Martha has developed groundbreaking research and products that are changing our approach to wellness.

Her work has earned her scientific publications, patents, a $1.2 million NIH grant and recognition as a Colorado Titan 100 CEO. Martha's remarkable journey from concerned spouse to microbiome specialist, exploring the vital connection between so health and our gut ecosystems. She will talk about how environmental toxins that everyday products disrupt our gut bacteria and affect brain health.

And examine the complex relationship between our environment and chronic diseases. Martha will also discuss exciting emerging trends in microbiome research that could revolutionize how we approach health and healing. Martha has spoken at the White House Microbiome Initiative and delivered a compelling TEDx talk, Boulder. Advocating for systems-based medicine, she's been featured in the Scientist Journal as a citizen-scientist making waves in this field. Martha Carlin, a visionary, connecting the dots between the microbiome and human health. Welcome, Martha.

Martha Carlin: Thank you. Glad to be back with you, Richard.

TalkToMeGuy : I have to start out by saying congratulations on the 10th year of biodequests. That just happened. That was a recent anniversary of like, wow, you've made it 10 years and you're thriving.

Martha Carlin: Well, you know, there have been some certainly some ups and downs anytime you start a business and you pivot over time. As you know, if you're at the front end of a market, you have to sort of rethink what you're doing a lot. And so we've had our challenges, but happy to be here after 10 years. So we do have a bit of staying power.

TalkToMeGuy : And you, this is the chicken or the egg question. So was your, you started the bio-collective then, Biodequest came out of the research and information you've got out of the bio-collective?

Martha Carlin: Yes. So we started the bio-collective initially collecting fecal samples from across the population and doing genetic sequencing of that and using computational models to understand things, I'd say from a layer up, you know, we, our society has become very reductionist. So we like to put labels on things and we label diseases. But we had a sense that, you know, down below in the microbiome that there were some common elements across diseases, then we would be able to see, you know, what is shifting metabolically that is shared across diseases and loss of function that we might be able to help restore for people.

And so, you know, we took that, those learnings that we got out of looking at microbiome samples and data and then started to look at the bigger picture of, you know, what are we dealing with? We're dealing with problems with, you know, glucose metabolism or metabolic health. We're dealing with people with sleep problems or anxiety or, you know, people who've been bombarded with antibiotics. And, you know, they don't always, because we're, as humans, we're different. We have different genes.

We've come out of different environments. The effect of an antibiotic long-term on one person's microbiome might be very different than another's. But, you know, putting back some of the microbial systems that have been disrupted by that, you know, can help people kind of across the spectrum.

And so that's how we took our kind of first step into probiotics, which was a product I really just initially made as a sidebar to help my husband, John, and that turned into what became our sugar shift product as we shifted away from fecal sample collection and research-based business. Because, you know, frankly, even today, 10 years later, that field is still pretty new and it's just not a very scalable business because, you know, on the medical side, we were producing reports for people that were 60 pages long of all this information of what's in their gut, and they would take it to their doctor whose eyes would cross. And, you know, there's still not a lot of deep knowledge in how to look at a microbiome sample and think about it from an ecosystem's perspective. And, okay, how am I going to help my patient address what's happening in their microbiome?

TalkToMeGuy : Well, and I've seen you somewhere refer to yourself as the poop queen.

Martha Carlin: Oh, the poop queen. I am the poop queen. You are the poop queen. You are the poop queen. You are the self-proclaimed poop queen. But, you know, a well-earned title because, you know, all those years of dealing, you know, with the stool samples, and we collected whole stools. You know, a small piece that's going in this little tube, and we were collecting whole stools in a little hammock that's set in your toilet. And you learn a lot more from looking at the whole stool. And I mean, looking at your own stool, which it's kind of interesting to me how people don't look at it, but if they have a pet, they know that the daily poop that they're picking up and putting in the bag is really an indicator of how well or not well their pet is.

But they don't translate that to themselves. And, you know, just to give you an example of how powerful a stool sample can be, you know, on the two extremes of the sample, people with Parkinson's will often have chronic constipation 10 to 15 years before they ever get diagnosed with Parkinson's. And that, I know you, we're going to talk about some toxins today.

Well, when that waste is sitting in the body, you're basically holding and recycling any of those toxins that are sitting in the bow. But in our laboratory, in processing all these fecal samples over time, the young women who were processing those samples came to understand that they could diagnose a Parkinson's person just by the consistency of the sample, because it was so unique compared to all the other fecal samples. And it had, you know, some or all of the stool was essentially the consistency of concrete. And then on the opposite side of that scale, we did a collection for Crohn's and Colitis study.

And, you know, one patient in particular was giving us a time series set of samples, and they were almost entirely mucus. So there was no, you know, solid stool material in the stool. So there's a lot you can learn from the, you know, the Bristol stool scale, which is this, you know, one to seven, which I think is helpful. You know, one is that very hard stool. Seven is the diarrhea. And there's, you know, in between and you want to be, you know, roughly a four, which is, you know, smooth and kind of like peanut butter comes out like a banana and does, you know, not a lot of mess. But not that many people have regular daily bowel movements that are in a, in that kind of perfect poo, if you will. And it's, it can really be an indicator of kind of what's going on in your body.

TalkToMeGuy : Well, and I can't, I had to mute because I was laughing so hard for a moment, that just in the early days of when you were creating the bio collective. When you're out, let's say talking to investors. I just can't imagine how big their eyes would get at the idea of what you were, what your goal was of collecting whole stool samples.

Martha Carlin: Yeah, I mean, they really thought, I think they thought we were crazy. Yeah. And I was trying to explain to him, of course, I had this pitch deck and I had, you know, poop emojis, but they were gold and they had clean coming up because it's like, okay, we're going to turn these into samples. You know, and share the samples across the, you know, basically sell the samples to scientists who are doing this early research. And then you'll get more and more data sets off the same sample.

And you'll have this rich body of not only genomic data, but proteomic, lipidomic, metabolomic, you know, you name the omic data. And of course, most of them didn't even know what the omics are. And they looked at me like I was crazy. And I said, well, you know, people today, even back then people were paying more for us, you know, a gram of stool than they did for a gram of gold. And I tried to explain that to people and they just looked at me like I was crazy.

You know, there were, I had a few friends and family who bought in and helped move it forward. But there's a Netflix special, I can't think of the name of it now, but it's about the microbiome and the importance of the microbiome. And there is one of the scientists in there is talking about stool samples being more valuable than gold.

TalkToMeGuy : Well, just by your saying the fact that there's a lot of mucus in that is a, I also along the way got a degree as a master herbalist. So I had a retail herb store where I talked to people every day.

And when you say that to me, that indicates to me that there's irritation to the mucosa because if there's excessive mucus, that's because the body is trying to be as either has an irritation or it's trying to get something out of the system. So just the idea of having all that as a resource. Before that, it's like they were looking at little paintbrushes of stool and trying to figure stuff out. This just makes so much more sense. But it's still there's a there's some sort of, I don't know, there's a South Park on here somewhere.

Because it's just, it's phenomenal. Yeah. I want to jump to this comes from your, your early studies of sugar shift, which we can talk more about, but I have a specific question and a clarification or information for the audience. I want you to talk about in using sugar shift. 100% of the participants had reduced endotoxin levels. Would you talk about endotoxins where they are what they are what's that mean. Please. Sure. So endotoxins.

Martha Carlin: So an endotoxin is essentially an inflammatory cell wall component. So you have both gram positive and gram negative bacteria. So gram negative bacteria have a cell wall that is made of something called lipopolysaccharide LPS for short.

Or I think Peter Atea called it little pieces of shit, which I kind of like that. But the, those cell wall fragments when the gram negative bacteria, you know, they grow and they die off. And so you end up with these cell wall components kind of floating around your system. And if you have leaky gut, that's getting into your bloodstream and it can cause inflammation really anywhere in the body. And the, the gram negative bacteria are, they become more prevalent when the gut is aerobic. So if you think about like your GI tract really shouldn't have oxygen in it. And a healthy GI tract is anaerobic and some of the main bacteria that are really important to that are bifidobacteria and acrimansia and fecaliprosnitia. And those all get lowered when the gut becomes aerobic and you get these endotoxin producing bacteria like H. pylori and E. coli and Klebsiella.

And you know, there's a long list of bad guys that, that produces endotoxin. And if the body can't clear it well, it starts to build up and you get what's called serum lipopolysaccharide or serum endotoxin. And, you know, in the case of sepsis, you know, they do measure it in hospitals when people are septic, but it's not a typical blood marker that gets tested at your annual physical. And it's, you know, it's not an easy test to get, but there is something called metabolic endotoxin. And if you look at the animal models and this was, you know, after I kind of started looking at how to set up our clinical trial and what we wanted to measure is when I went back and said, you know, could we measure endotoxin in this clinical trial, because there's an animal model of Parkinson's, diabetes, depression, you know, you go down the list, there's probably 20 different models that use endotoxin to initiate the disease.

And they do it by, you know, putting the endotoxin in a specific area of the animal's body and it causes the inflammation that initiates the disease profile. And so, you know, I was like, okay, let's measure serum endotoxin in our clinical trial and see if we lower the endotoxin. And so over the first three months, we had statistically significant drop and then we unblinded at the end of that 90 days and kept a smaller population on an open label for another 90 days.

So the total 190 days, we almost completely eradicated endotoxin and we showed the evidence in both the microbiome data in the lipopolysaccharide producing genes, you know, dropping off and also in the blood serum dropping off. And so, you know, while the study was in a diabetic cohort, of course, you know, it would translate across any inflammatory chronic issue that has some component of LPS involved in it, and that, you know, that could be anything from, you know, depression to Parkinson's disease. So we'd like to study some more of that, but, you know, the initial study was done in diabetics. But so we're also exposed to endotoxin in other ways.

We can be exposed to endotoxin in the food supply from the die off of microbes that are present in the foods and there's some testing done around that. But also, you know, a lot of people don't realize that in the pharmaceutical industry, many small molecules or, you know, even the, I think the spike protein in the COVID vaccine are grown in recombinant E. coli to produce, you know, whatever the molecule they want is so they genetically engineer the E. coli. And then it produces whatever they want to produce. And then they clean the endotoxin, you know, from the end product. But oftentimes there is endotoxin residue. And, you know, there have been a number of papers actually published on, you know, problems in different batches with the COVID vaccine related to endotoxin, higher endotoxin levels.

And so the same could happen really with any drug or, you know, molecule that is being produced in a recombinant E. coli or a recombinant organism that has a lipo polysaccharide.

TalkToMeGuy : And is SIBO in this conversation?

Martha Carlin: SIBO is in this conversation because many of the organisms involved with SIBO are endotoxin producers. So H. polyurea is an endotoxin producer. You can often have Klebsiella, that's an endotoxin producer, E. coli, that's an endotoxin producer. Desulfo Vibrio, which has been published in Finland with a strong connection to Parkinson's. That's an endotoxin producer.

TalkToMeGuy : So, now that's too deep.

Martha Carlin: Well, you know, I will say that one of the things, I had a Parkinson's conference in May and brought researchers in kind of from around the globe to think about Parkinson's from a different perspective. And, you know, some of what we were talking about is, you know, this potential SIBO connection because Desulfo Vibrio is a hydrogen sulfide producer. And Methanobrevebacchar-Smithii, which is also quite prevalent in a number of Parkinson's studies. That's a methane producer.

And, you know, both of them, you can have hydrogen sulfide or hydrogen or methane SIBO. And it's not really looked at from a neurologist perspective. They don't make that connection. And the people who do make the connection are people who are going to a functional medicine doctor or, you know, perhaps a nutritionist or, you know, some kind of alternative practitioner who's actually looking at the gut as a potential driver of what's going on.

But at this conference, I was at this weekend, the A4M conference, you know, one of the things we were talking about is the potential for using microbiome diagnostics and understanding the potential of how you might be able to look at these signatures well in advance and take action to, you know, turn the ship and never get Parkinson's. What a radical idea. What a radical idea.

TalkToMeGuy : Let's just not go there. How about that? Instead of having to back out of it, how about we just don't do that? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Preventative medicine. What a radical concept.

Yes. And we're going to jump slightly here, but it's still, we're, we're going to stick it, stick in the bowels because it can't be helped. You've, you've connected, you've connected COVID's effect on Bifobacteria to both Parkinson's and long, what I call long haul COVID symptoms. How did you, what did you discover about this bacterial connection? And then I have a follow up.

Martha Carlin: Well, actually, I can't take credit for that. Okay. Sabine Hazen, who's a gastroenterologist in California, actually had the foresight at the beginning of COVID because she was doing a lot of microbiome research and she has her own sequencing facility. And so she had the foresight to actually call around and ask a bunch of her doctor friends if they would give her a fecal sample before they took the vaccine. And so she had a cohort of before and after vaccination. And then she had, you know, patients, but kind of before and after having COVID. And so she published a hypothesis paper on this connection.

And of course, a hypothesis is a hypothesis. The, the journal, I don't remember what journal she published it in, but they forced her to retract the paper. And she actually spoke in front of a house committee, I think, or a Senate committee on, you know, what's happening with our science when you can't publish a. hypothesis, but bifidobacteria is really essential to our immune regulation. It's also an important producer of something called plasmolegens, which are important to brain health.

There's a Dr. Dayan Goodnow who's doing a lot of research and having really some nice effects helping people with Alzheimer's and Parkinson's and other things. And ALS using the plasmolegens precursors, but a number of the bifidobacteria actually produce these plasmolegens. So, you know, the lower your bifidobacteria, the lower your production of these important brain health molecules is. And the lower, you know, your, I'll say it's kind of keeps a lot of the guys in check. And the way in microbial ecosystems, it would often within a phyla, you know, there are, I'll say good guys and bad guys, and the good guys will keep the bad guys in check unless you lose the good guys. And it just so happens, the phyla of, of, of actinobacteria, which is where a lot of antibiotics have been discovered from organisms in the actinobacteria. Well, bifidobacteria is in the, in that genus, genus phyla.

And, you know, as you lose it, then those other organisms can have a tendency to take over the ecosystem. I don't know if I went too far afield there, but.

TalkToMeGuy : No, it was good. I felt a little bit like the Woody Allen dog chasing the ball, but no, it was good. And I'll bring this down to a direct question for both of us. So with friends, I have friends who have what they're calling long haul COVID, meaning they're, they don't test for COVID, but they're still having residual effects like this loss of sense of smell. That seems to be a thing. And is there something in the bio-dequest world that I can say, try taking this? I think this will help you because they seem to be, I know at least five people that have lost their sense of smell and still they're functioning. They're in the world. They're healthy. They're vital. But yet that still hasn't happened.

Martha Carlin: So I'll tell you a couple of personal stories that might connect in and help people with sense of smell. But, you know, John was doing really well at his Parkinson's until he had COVID at the end of 2021. And he had a very severe case of long COVID, made some improvements, but I think got exposed again in last summer and started experiencing the long COVID symptoms again.

And of course we lost him to a pulmonary embolism in September. But, you know, going back to the sense of smell, you lose sense of smell in Parkinson's. And I have a friend with a background in Ayurvedic's and he came to visit us once and he suggested to John that he eat. One of those small, you know, about the size of a quarter, pearl onions that you get in the produce department in the little box. Eat a raw onion every morning when he gets up.

And he did that for 30 days and his sense of smell came back. And, you know, these sulfur compounds are very important and they're actually important to something called the Glycocalyx endothelial surface layer. And for people who have heard of that, they think of it as the lining of the blood vessels. But it's essentially the lining of every cell in the body of the blood brain barrier of the gut of, you know, bacteria have a glycocalyx. It's kind of the fuzzy layer that surrounds these things.

And it's a sulfated polymer. So you think about that onion. Onion has a lot of sulfur compounds. So you're eating that onion and providing the body with the sulfur compounds that, you know, my guess is it's helping the glycocalyx inside the nose, which is where those, you know, the sense of smell is coming from volatile organic compounds in the air. And they go into that glycocalyx area in the nose. And the nose is actually a mass spectrometer, which, you know, most people won't know what that is.

But that's how they identify molecules in science. And there's, there's a, forget the guy's name, but there's a, the book about him is called The Emperor of Scent. And, you know, if you've lost your sense of smell, that's a really fascinating book to read about the nose, its mass spectrometry. So it can, it can differentiate between there's something called chiral molecules.

So you have a left hand and a right hand, you know, that are, they look exactly alike, but they're opposite. And your nose can distinguish just like a mass spectrometer can these different molecules. And so, you know, I think it's kind of a fascinating book if you want to learn about the history of it, but I think those sulfur compounds are really important. And in the lungs, so we also, the lungs are, you know, filled with this glycocalyx, and that's taking in, you know, our oxygen and nitrogen and all of that.

And I've actually, since, you know, probably the last nine months have been working on this glycocalyx paper related to Parkinson's. But, you know, in the last 30 days or so, I started thinking about, you know, this old, I'll say an old folk remedy of breathing hot water, you know, that you boil and steam with garlic in it. So that might also be a way to kind of help support that those nasal passages to be able to restore the sense of smell. I don't know, but if anybody tries it, I'd love for them to reach out and let us know if it works. But I, about two weeks ago, started doing that about three or four times a week. And I've noticed that I can breathe a lot deeper after doing that. So.

TalkToMeGuy : I've had some throat voice issues, and we weren't sure it was, and I've had a full work up and scoped and all sorts of stuff, and we're not sure what's going on yet.

Martha Carlin: I think I, you know, I might, I think it might help with that as well. And then, you know, back to your question about does, you know, anything in our product lineup help with that. What I can say is there is a group of practitioners in Israel who use the sugar shift product and or the heart centered product with their patients with long COVID taking it three times a day. And, you know, if we go back to endotoxin for a moment, there are also some papers that have shown that the plasmid that makes that spike protein can transfer into LPS protein. And so, you know, the sugar shift probiotic helps to reduce those endotoxin producing bacteria, E. coli in the gut and continue to produce those spike proteins. And then the spike protein gets into the glycocalyxin causes this damage. And so, if you think about, you know, the sugar shift probiotic helping to reduce those endotoxin producing bacteria, then you would have fewer of those bacteria for the plasmid to transfer to and less of that production. But, you know, we haven't, we haven't studied that, but I do have anecdotal evidence from this practitioner group who's been using it.

TalkToMeGuy : I like the idea of the either garlic or onion. I think that seems so. I'm quite fond of all of these sort of old people would call old timey cures or benefits.

Martha Carlin: Well, you know, for me, like I tell people that so nitric oxide is another key thing that's, you know, dysregulated after COVID. And I love beet kvass. Very simple to make. Yeah. You know, I have a recipe on the biotic West website.

You can, you know, look that up. It's simple to make and I get up in the morning, you're nitric oxide producing bacteria in your mouth. And of course, brushing your teeth gets rid of them. But I get, you know, I get up in the morning and I'll have a shot of beet kvass or after I brush my teeth, I'll have beet kvass and switch it around in my mouth. And, you know, that, that can be beneficial. And then I like something called fireside or, you know, another folk remedy, but it's, you know, it's full of so many incredible herbal compounds from, you know, garlic and horseradish and ginger and turmeric. And all these things that we know individually have been studied, you know, but in combination, you just have this very rich mixture. And, you know, it's basically a great tool for taking a shot before you eat. It helps with stomach acid production and digestion.

TalkToMeGuy : It was actually Herbalist Rosemary Gladstar, who I know, who was the person who started the firesider phenomena. She really came up with that formula like 30 years ago. And it's a fun, you can make it at home. You can make it at home. And I mean, it's easy to make. It's just a, you know, a vinegar.

Martha Carlin: Some people would call it a tension. I have a YouTube video on that too if people want to, you know, they can go to the Biotic West YouTube channel and there's both the beet kvass and the firesider recipes.

TalkToMeGuy : The firesider is great to have around any time you feel a cold or the flu coming on. Any kind of thing where you want to stimulate the immune system a little bit and get a little heated up.

Boy, firesider is the thing. I used to take it every morning when I lived in a colder part of California in the mornings when it was in the 30s. And I just like take a shot before you go out and boy, it's amazing how it brings up the chi in the body. Love it. Of course you have a recipe on that. That's great. That is great. I love that. I'm tossing a mental coin because I can't tell.

I think we just have to dive in. I want to talk about glyphosate. I never want actually I never want to talk about glyphosate. But glyphosate is just so pervasive, persistent. I've done probably five shows with Stephanie, Stephanie Seneff, toxic legacy author talking about glyphosate. And I just think it's the foundation of so much bad things happening in people's bodies. I can't formulate that into a great question. I'm sorry.

Martha Carlin: Talk about glyphosate, please. Well, I can formulate it into a comment. Thank you. Because I obviously share that. I think there's a couple of pieces of that puzzle. So glyphosate was originally approved because it targets something called the chikamak pathway. And humans don't have that.

So it's not going to be a problem for them. And bacteria have a chikamate pathway and plants have a chikamate pathway. Well, what either was missed or completely ignored, and I would say it was ignored but known, was that in that chikamate pathway is where the three aromatic amino acids, tyrosine, tryptophan, and phenylalanine, which we do not make ourselves, they are made in that pathway. And they're made pretty close to the top of that pathway, which means they are essential for all of these downstream components or bioactive secondary compounds in plants and in bacteria. Well, the bacteria in our gut are making, there are over 3,900 secondary metabolites in the chikamate pathway made by bacteria, and that includes dopamine, which is connected with Parkinson's, melanin, which is connected with so many things. The thyroid hormones, I mean, there's a little book, it's called the chikamate pathway. And I mean, it's basically a book of the chemistry of all these compounds. And so your polyphenols in plants, they're all made in that pathway.

So we know how important polyphenols are to our health, but if all the plants are constantly exposed to glyphosate, it's going to have some kind of effect on the polyphenol production in the plant. And recently, I sort of connected a dot to, you know, there's a lot of people talking about the importance of light and different light spectrum and all of that. Well, those three amino acids, the aromatic amino acids are the only amino acids that are fluorescent. They carry light. The other amino acids do not carry light.

So I feel like there's some important piece that's kind of missing there. And then I'm going to jump back over to Bifidobacteria for a second, because Bifidobacteria is typically destroyed by glyphosate. And Bifidobacteria is fluorescent, and it is very powerfully fluorescent.

So I don't know where light all fits in there, but somehow I think light is important. And then if we go back to the compounds like Roundup, where the glyphosate is mixed with what's called a surfactant, and a surfactant is to basically attach it to the leaf structure and keep it on belief, those surfactants are actually very, very problematic in and of themselves, and they are immunosuppressant. So, you know, as we continue to get exposed to more and more and more of glyphosate in these broken pathways or altered pathways, and surfactants, which are immunosuppressant, is kind of a double-edged sword that is very problematic.

And anyone with, you know, I'd say an hour or two to look at the science, especially with AI, could easily see the problem. And the really web of problems that these organophosphates can cause. But, you know, that said, I was at the conference yesterday, and Robert Roundtree was talking about, I think you've used this term too, total toxic burden. And he said, you know, it's important not to get too focused on a single toxin, whether that's glyphosate or a surfactant or whatever. It's this tremendous burden of all of these toxins now that we're exposed to, you know, many, many, many more chemicals than we were exposed to 100 years ago.

And that's the PFAS and the PFOS and the organochlorines and organophosphates and organohalides and all of these ingredients that people who don't have a chemistry degree have no idea what it is or how it's affecting their system. But we are under a tremendous toxic burden. And sometimes when I look at that, I'm just amazed at how resilient the human system is that we're all still standing.

TalkToMeGuy : Yeah, pink sacks of water, as I said backstage, that still feel, I mean, we're pretty delicate really. So it's amazing that we are still moving forward. I think that one of the things, and this was a backstage conversation, was it's the, I think one of the pervasive things, I mean, I think Roundup is pervasive. And it wasn't really till we were talking backstage that I that I solidly got how evil surfactants are.

And I come from that. And I was, I've come from it, observing that in what it does in nature, how it screws up how literally how the water flows in a stream, that there is, there is structure, there's a nature structure, I'll call it, to how water, unpolluted water, untouched, unscathed, fresh for the mountain's water, is coming down the stream and how it interacts with the rocks in the stream. There's a surface tension to that that has benefit to how the stream oxygenates and works. So when you add surfactants to that, which causes things to be, I'll call more slippery, you'll use a good term. But it's how that, just that alone, just that effect alone of surfactants, and they're just everywhere, they're used willy nilly, like people would add salt to a dish to eat. They're just used like, Oh, let's put some surfactants in there.

Martha Carlin: I can add into question. I mean, your, your stream analogy and the structure and shape of the flow of the water in the stream and oxygenation is a perfect analogy to the work of Dr. Barry Nenum, who I've been working with for almost two years now. We have a Parkinson's paper we, we're looking to get out here soon. But his body of work, so he, he founded the Department of Applied Mathematics at Australia National University. He's a physical chemist, colloid chemist, surfactant chemist, understands all of this. And one of the areas is self assembly and the dynamic structures of the world, I'll say, but also, you know, the physiology of the body and this kind of misconstrued concept that there's a cell membrane.

And that's it. And really, we are kind of like self assembled goo. And that's not a very technical term, but we're basically a self assembly of molecules that are shifting and going through phase changes from a laminar phase to a cubic phase to, if you look at images of the back to the glycocalyx for a moment, you can see changes in that structure. And when you look at diagrams of mitochondria or different cellular structures or groups of cells together, they are dynamically moving and self assembling into different forms.

And so when you add a surfactant to that, you're changing how, how the structure and flow works. And one of the early, probably it was a microbiota for health in Miami, probably in, I don't know, 2016 or something, so it's been a while. One of the early researchers there was talking about emulsifiers in salad dressings. And so, you know, for people to think about what is surfactant, it's, you know, these things that, like if you're mixing oil and water and you want them to stay in suspension together, instead of, you know, if you mix your own oil and vinegar at home and you whip it up, it stays mixed for a minute or two, and then it separates again. Well, when you add a emulsifier or surfactant type, it's going to like keep it in solution, the fat and the water together instead of separating. And this researcher was showing some of the early work on how damaging emulsifiers are to the gut microbiome. And of course, the lining of the gut. And that was, you know, nine years ago. And of course, we still have tons of emulsifiers in the food spot.

TalkToMeGuy : And I've almost used bad words. So we're just adding all of these, this goes back to round trees and my thing with total toxic load. We're just exacerbating everything with something as what seems to be benign, and boy, there are big air quotes around that, like an emulsifier or surfactant, because they just throw that sort of into everything to get a, there's a gentleman who wrote a book, Sugar, Salt, Fat, maybe not in that order, but he's basically the guy that taught the fast food industry how to make a food addictive. Now that's not anything they're saying, but that's really the bottom line is get just the right mix of sugar, salt, fat, and people, that will be then called craveable. And once you got that, you got a product, you got a Cheeto. I'm not anti Cheeto, I'm very pro Cheeto actually. But I mean, you get a food that just or a thing, and we're just putting this in out and everything and stuff we eat and stuff we drink and stuff we apply.

Martha Carlin: It just seems like it's, go ahead. You know, taste and aroma. Yeah. There are these natural molecules in food and in the air that are signals to us. They're signals to our body about what we're taking in or about the environment we're in.

And they have synthesized or made synthetic analogs of all of these different scents and all of these different tastes. And of course, you go to the potato chip, let's go to the Cheetos aisle. And now it's not just Cheetos, but it's 20 different flavors of tequila, lime, and you name it.

I can't even think of it because I don't go down that aisle, but I know there are just tons of flavors. Well, there's actually a nonprofit. It's called Manel. It's in New Jersey. It's mostly funded by the food industry. And they, I believe, know more about the taste and smell receptors in the body and how they work than probably anyone on the planet.

Because they have studied it all these years to learn how to make these or take these synthetic molecules or make these synthetic molecules to trick the senses into wanting more.

TalkToMeGuy : Yeah, that's why I don't eat Cheetos. I used to love Cheetos. I used to love Cheetos, but they're just, you get that it's sort of like when a dog gets loose and eats food, you know, is eating food directly out of the bag, when you rip them out of the bag, their eyes are bulging.

I mean, really bulging like, wow, man, I can't believe I got that. That's amazing. And that's how I feel. I look in the mirror when I'm eating Cheetos, like just slowly the addictive quality.

Well, that's the visual I have in my mind. So it makes me not eat Cheetos, but it's just that it's an addictive, junky like thing. I've been around people who have done needle-based drugs and there's just a, there's a high to it. And the trick with a high is, is always a crash. Yep.

Martha Carlin: There's always a low.

TalkToMeGuy : So at some point at which you stop eating Cheetos and then you're thinking, wow, man, I just need one more Cheeto. That's all just one more Cheeto. And it's like going nowhere. You're eating an empty food.

Martha Carlin: Well, I wonder too, you know, if part of what they've learned is how to trick those dopamine receptors. And, you know, we go back to, you know, one of the main problems in Parkinson's is with dopamine.

So, you know, I haven't looked at that in a long time, but I would suspect that part of that research is looked at how to trick the dopamine receptors, which, you know, they've also done with these magic phones we carry around in our hands all the time that are very addictive as well. Yeah. Yeah.

TalkToMeGuy : Addiction is a good thing to sell if you make it into an industry.

Martha Carlin: Well, yeah, it's, you know, causes the repeat purchase, which, you know, who doesn't want that, right? Exactly. I mean, it's hard when you're in, I mean, you got to make a living, but, you know, there's making a living and there's making a killing. Yeah.

TalkToMeGuy : That's a different show. I'm going to jump slightly. We're still on glyphosate, but I want to ask about, you have a blend or a formula, I would call your products formulas, called paleo plur that breaks down glyphosate in soil and restores respiration in the soil. Is that a, are you in the ag business also now?

Martha Carlin: Question? So we have, I'll call it a sister company. So the bio collective, which is my primary company, is an investor in ancient organics, bioscience, which my partner, Raul Kano, and his business partner he had from years earlier that had developed a strain bank that has a lot of these capabilities, Robin Steele. So Raul and Robin do most of the day-to-day operations for ancient organics, bioscience. I, you know, I talked to farmers and I worked on some of the publications with Don Huber and Raul, but the product paleo power is sold through ancient organics, bioscience.

We do have essentially what is paleo power in a, in small home gardening size on our website, and it's called yield and shield. And that not only remediates glyphosate, but it restores soil respiration. We've also shown in a small study in grapes that it can reduce the amount of glyphosate that's taken up actually into the fruit. And pretty much all of our studies have shown an increased yield in whatever crop we've tried it on. And in fact, I think one of the highest yield increases was in a cotton study we did where they had a 25% increase in yield. And I think there was a vegetable that had a 40% increase in yield. I can't remember what that it's been a while.

TalkToMeGuy : And, and you're doing this, I'll use the word only, you're doing this only by really neutrifying the soil. Is that correct? Is that really true?

Martha Carlin: Well, what you're doing is you're putting in a set of microbes, a team of microbes, kind of same concept where we make teams to restore function to the gut. We put a team of microbes back into the soil you know with their prebiotic matrix that they're in. And that enables those microbes to flourish, and they produce metabolites that then feed a broader profile in the soil. So you get a richer microbiome back into the soil. And then those microbes are able to liberate the nutrients that have been locked up in the soil. So glyphosate, we know is a, is a metals key later. So it's locking up a lot of the nutrients when it's, when the residues are in the soil, it's locking up those nutrients.

And when you can break that down with these microbes, and then you have microbes that can help liberate or you know have a nitrogen fixer that's pulling nitrogen from the air and making that available, or you know a microbe that is liberating the the phosphate, or you know liberating the the the micronutrients like copper and zinc, and putting those back into the plant, then you know you're getting a complex action from this little ecosystem that you're putting back.

TalkToMeGuy : I know I, I currently live in wine country. I've lived in Northern California for quite a while. I lived formerly in the town of Sonoma surrounded by vineyards. And I live now west of that, still surrounded by vineyards. And there's a vineyard, I can't remember their name currently, that has been producing biodynamic wines for 30, more than 30 years, metal award-winning wines.

And it's a very complex system of how you treat the soil, how you create your fertilizers, how you, it's all organic, it's bigger than regenerative, because the whole, the whole thing is regenerative. But they have begun to observe glyphosate in their vines. And it's not them, it's coming

Martha Carlin: from water, it's coming from the water table. It's in the air, it's in the water table. Away from it. And the same thing has happened to, there's a grain, a large-scale grain farmer in Montana who has not been able to sell some of his grains to Europe now, because glyphosate is showing up in the grains. And that's coming from, you know, the, you're watering from the streams and the guy next door is using glyphosate, it's flowing in the stream. Or it's coming down in the rainfall.

Stephanie has, I think, published some papers on, you know, the content in rainfall. So it's not like we're separated by these containers where, you know, our next door neighbors spraying roundup or having the chemlon people come and, you know, our yard is separate. I mean, you can smell it in your backyard when they come over to spray the chemlon.

So, you know, the same thing holds true in agriculture. There is, though, I was talking to, you know, my co-founder Robyn last week, and there's a group in Napa that is really moving to get glyphosate use removed from the wineries in the Napa area. And I can tell you, like, I will not drink a California wine. We did a, you know, we did a study in grapes for a vintner out there. And, you know, we did show that we could remove the glyphosate from the soil and actually reduce the glyphosate in the grape.

And I don't know if it's, you know, we'll go anywhere, or maybe it'll be part of this Napa study, which would be great. But I just know if I drink a wine from California, I'll get a horrific headache. But I can drink wines from Europe, and I don't have a problem. So it's kind of the same thing with the grains here in the U.S. You know, people who say, well, I go to Europe and I can, I can have the pasta, I can have the wheat, you know, the bread.

I don't have a problem, but I have a problem here in the States. Well, people don't realize how much of our grains are actually dried at the end of harvest with glyphosate. And of course, that's going to have an even higher residue. And there's now 60 crops that are dried down with glyphosate. Now, I think there is, you know, some consumer movement to pressure some of these companies not to do that. And you, you know, I would encourage any of your viewers to just call people like Bob's Red Mill or you know, King Arthur or whoever you're getting, if you're getting flour or you're getting a whole grain from somebody, like call them and ask them, do your farmers dry down the crop with glyphosate? Because the more people who call and ask that question, the more they're going to realize, okay, we've got to start making sure our farmers are not doing this. Because the farmers are being sold by the chemical companies, you know, you can harvest your grains faster and get them to market faster. And it's like, okay, you know, if I save myself three days or a week or whatever, you know, they're translating that somehow into dollars saved. Right, right.

TalkToMeGuy : Okay, we're going to stop the glyphosate talk for this moment, because it could go on so long. I'm going to ask you a question that could take us a few minutes long. And if that's okay with you, that's okay with me. That's okay.

I, micro plastics. What? Another piece of madness. We were talking, I think that was backstage we were talking about, or maybe we talked about it earlier, about the idea of now we go to the grocery store and all our fruit, all of our produce is wrapped in plastic because we're not getting enough plastic in our lives. They like seal it in plastic.

So you have to buy those four tomatoes or the whatever. It's just like we have so much it's it's found in the Glimp system. It's found in everything it's found as an article I will post as show notes that it's found in the fluids, female fluids, male fluids. I mean, it's just it's everywhere micro plastic and we just can't seem to throw enough waste into the ocean. But that's a separate angry show. Is there something you have that can help us with micro plastics?

Martha Carlin: It's not something that I specifically have at the moment, but I will say it is something that Raoul and I have talked about on the ag side. You know, there are known microbes that can break down plastics. And there's, you know, you can go out and just kind of Google it and you'll see some of the stories about microbes that can break down plastic.

I mean, I love microbes because you can make just about anything from a micro, I mean, microbes make just about everything and they can break just about everything down. The problem comes with in the breakdown process, in that metabolic process, you may get something that's even more toxic than the original plastic molecule in one of the intermediate steps. And so in designing something, so say you were going to design a microbial cleanup system, you would want to design something where, you know, that initial breakdown, you understand what those secondary metabolites are and if they are toxic that you have another layer of microbes that can then break those down so that you're getting a system that can take it all the way back down to the basic elements that are less toxic, you know, environmentally up the food chain and you would need to do the same thing in the human body.

And so that's something we've talked about, but, you know, we haven't, we haven't done a specific formula on that yet, but Raoul's doing quite a bit of work right now on mold toxins and we have some new formulas coming out for the coffee industry that could potentially have use in some of the grain industry as well in kind of altering the microbial ecosystem to dampen down the the mycotoxin producing organisms and things like that. But, you know, the the microplastics, certainly there are bacteria that can break it down. So I find it interesting they call these things forever chemicals when I know that microbes can break everything down. So I'm not sure that I would really call them forever chemicals, but I the thing that's really important to understand is what microbes you have in your ecosystem and how they are breaking them down or how long it takes them to break it down. So there are rays of hope.

There are always rays of hope. And, you know, I talked to my kids a lot about, you know, I'm always sending them things about toxic this or toxic that or something. They're like, you know, my mom or other people say, it's just overwhelming. And how do you get up and have a, you know, sunny attitude every day? And I say, you know, I get up, I have a sunny attitude every day, because I'm doing something about it. I'm doing something about it with our products in ancient organic bioscience.

And I'm doing something about it with our biotics, probiotics. Is it going to, you know, fix every problem we have? You know, probably not. But is it going to have an impact? I know it has an impact on people because they let us know, oh, you know, this changed my life or, you know, this really improved my yield on my farm or, you know, whatever it is.

So, and because I have learned so much about the microbes, you know, I'm very blessed with how much Raoul has taught me, is that, you know, I have infinite hope in the microbes and their ability to help us if we take a more life-based ecosystem perspective about it and move away from our killing mentality of, you know, trying to think about how we're going to kill everything, whether it's killing the insects or killing the microbes, or when you start to kill off pieces of a complex system, you really, that's what causes the chaos.

TalkToMeGuy : Well, yeah, you start creating chaos. It's like I said about the stream. You alter how that water flows over the rock and you're messing things up. And it's not complicated. Stop doing that. And you have like the happy Disney characters of microbes on your side. Yes. I think cinematically.

Speaker 1: I can't help it. But you really do. I love the microbes. Me too. And I'm very pro microbes. I think I've always been a probiotic person. You know, I just think it's amazing what they can do. And before we go, I want you to announce this newest release, because this is the perfect time for perfect peace. Boy, could we use some of that. You used a new sleep aid.

Martha Carlin: Well, we just, so we just released our perfect peace probiotics. So this was something, but I mean, Raul and I worked on these formulas back five or six years ago, but, you know, we have 20 different formulas and we've, excuse me, we've only brought a handful of them to the market. But we were looking and thinking, okay, what does the world really need right now? And they need some peace of mind. And so we had this product to support stress and anxiety, and it's called perfect peace. And you know, I would love to hear from people who try it, who have some kind of either heart rate variability or stress management. I mean, I don't personally wear one and I don't actually recommend that people wear them because they're Bluetooth and they're disruptive to your system in themselves. But if you happen to have one and you're, you're wearing it, my son tried it and within 30 minutes he saw a dramatic lowering of his stress. And so anyway, the perfect peace product is now on the market and would just love to hear from people what their experience, what it is.

TalkToMeGuy : I'll have to get some and try it with, I wear an HRV device. I mean, it's a monitors everything, steps and all that. And I'm aware of the other side, the other effects shall we say of it. But it's worth it for me to have the sleep data because sleep has never been my friend.

Martha Carlin: So I think this would also help with sleep. But of course, we do have a sleep specific product called Simple Slumber. But you know, I think that like for me, I had a couple of days last week where I was, I had a lot going on and I could just feel the tension building over the course of the day. And I was like, okay, I'm going to try one of these. And I took it and within 30 minutes, I was like, oh, you know, I just feel much calmer. Couldn't really, you know, I don't, you know, I didn't have a measurement device, but I definitely noticed that the building stress had dissipated. Right.

TalkToMeGuy : I'm laughing because I'm thinking, oh, you mean you just paused and observed? What a radical idea.

Martha Carlin: You didn't have to consult your watch. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Well, and that's actually, so, you know, we'll have to do a whole nother thing on this, but the pause and observe or the, you know, taking the pause throughout the day just to take a couple of deep, calm breaths can just do so much for your nervous system.

And I think there's a, you know, that's a key piece of the puzzle in Parkinson's is that there's this constant state of stress and alert and just teaching people how to pause and observe and take a few deep breaths could have a just, a tremendous impact on people's health.

TalkToMeGuy : That is all another show. I've interviewed that person. That was Ed Harold, who's a breath worker who that's exactly what he teaches people to do, like pause, look at nature. Hey, that's kind of it. There's no, there's nothing to be sleeve.

Martha Carlin: Well, we've been doing a documentary or docu series of interviews with people with Parkinson's and we're seeing this pattern of stress, trauma, you know, some kind of triggering event that was very stressful that preceded the diagnosis. And I think just understanding that could be a real key to helping people. Yeah, wonderful.

TalkToMeGuy : Okay, I'm not going to ask you another question, but there are so many possibilities. I am going to ask you another question. Where can people find out more about your work and you don't consult with individuals, you're too busy working with it, consulting with the microbes.

Martha Carlin: Well, I mean, I don't professionally. I do, I take phone calls from people with Parkinson's all the time. So anybody with Parkinson's who just wants to reach out and talk to me or tell me their story or ask me questions, I am more than happy to do that.

And do that maybe not weekly, but kind of goes in spurts when I tell people how to get in touch with me or they find one of my podcasts where I did tell people how to get in touch with me. But I have, so of course, the Biotic West website is where you find all our products. If you want to know the history of the poop queen, you can go to the bio collective, but most of the information on there is older because we don't do the sample collection or any of that anymore. And then I have a Parkinson's blog called Martha's Quest, where there's a lot of alternative health related stress management diet and gut microbiome blogs that I write there. And so you can sign up there for the email update.

Anytime I write a new blog, I send out an email for that. And then I have in the last three months started a sub stack and that's also called Martha's Quest. And I read about a lot of these things here. And I think that may have, you know, some of those articles you may have seen. And I also do a newsletter on LinkedIn. You know, that's not where everybody is, but you know, there's an audience there as well. And so I write about these sort of interdisciplinary science and the bigger picture connections, not just to Parkinson's, but to other things in the microbiome and our environmental health in all of those places.

And so there's plenty of places where you can find me. Probably the easiest email to give you is martha at marthasquest.com because my other email is way too long and people type it wrong.

TalkToMeGuy : And it is, it is really long.

Martha Carlin: I won't give you my phone number. But if you, you know, if you write me in an email and you do want to talk to me, I'll give you my phone number. Okay.

TalkToMeGuy : Wonderful, Martha. That was great. Thank you.

Martha Carlin: Well, thank you for having me back. I really enjoy our conversations and our shared passion for helping the world to be a healthier place.

TalkToMeGuy : I think there's an AI, we're going to be working on a project for a song by Martha's microbes. I can't quite get it yet, but it just seems like such a great animated piece for you. Okay.

Martha Carlin: Well, I'll have to talk to my son. He's the, he's the master of music and oh cool. AI tools.

TalkToMeGuy : Wow. Okay. Good for him. I can talk about it, but I don't necessarily know it very well.

Martha Carlin: I'll see what he can whip up and I'll send it to you.

TalkToMeGuy : Thank you. All right, everybody. Have a great rest of the week and we'll see you next week. Bye-bye. Thanks again, Martha.

Martha Carlin: Thank you.