Tina Anderson – Gut Health: The Key to Wellness Transcript

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Host:  Welcome to the Lifelong Wellness podcast where we talk to wellness professionals from so many walks of life from around the world and get their insight into living healthier. I’m your host, Wes Malik. In our endeavor to live better lives, we try different things, but it's very important to know that before you try something different in terms of your diet or any kind of supplements that you might be taking that you take them on the advice of a professional and a medical professional at that. Today we’ll be talking about something that a lot of people read about, but they don't know much about and that is probiotics and how important they are to our health. And to talk about probiotics, we have with us Tina Anderson from justthrivehealth.com. Tina, welcome to the show. Now, lately, a lot of articles have been telling us that the gut or our stomach well-being is one of the most important aspects of well-being, is it not?

Tina:   Yeah, definitely. I mean, I think it is just because of the gut that we know now that the gut is more important that is really responsible for virtually every aspect of our overall health. And I think that's why we’re having, you know, there’s everyone’s talking about probiotics it’s because that’s one of the best things we can do to help support our gut health.

Host:  I was reading about how the body processes food and I was under the assumption that our human bodies work individually, but that's not true. Our digestive system actually takes help from nature around us and there are thousands, millions of bacteria and I don't know if there's microorganisms or just bacteria that help us digest the food. And without that, it wouldn't be possible individually to do that and that's what probiotics is, right?

Tina:   Yes. Probiotics are basically live microorganisms like you mentioned that confer a benefit on the host, which the host’s body. So, it's the microorganisms are dictating you now we know that we are more bacteria than we are human cells, even,  and we didn't know this before. Now, with the human microbiome project that was launched about 10 years ago by the National Institutes of Health, we now know that we are more bacteria than we are human. We have to be taking care of these microorganisms on a regular basis and unfortunately, the world we live in is actually destroying a lot of good bacteria. So, you know, between antibiotics and glyphosate and all that kind of stuff. So, there are lots of ways to be taking care of our house and probably Alex is one of the most efficient ways to be taking care of our gut health and probiotics is one of them, you know, most efficient ways and effective ways to do that.

Host:  Tina, I’ll be honest with you while I was researching how the body digests food I kind of shuddered. I was like, “Eww, gross!” (laughing) And it starts not in the gut, but it starts in the mouth. Saliva and then of course food goes on the trick in your stomach than in your intestines and that's where all the magic happens. Why are bacteria not there anymore in our life now? I mean where it goes?

Tina:   Yeah, well, it’s there but it’s out of balance. That's what's happening is that, with this constant battle every day in our gut between the good bacteria and the bad bacteria. So, basically the world that we live in, you know, as I’ve mentioned, antibiotics that we take, antibiotics that we consume in our food, we know that there are antibiotics in our meat products and all a lot of our food products. Glyphosate, which of course  is the active ingredient in round up that is sprayed around our produce, stress, sugar, alcohol. All these things, the toxins in our environment, the air that we’re breathing, all these things are wreaking havoc in our gut in a daily basis. And so it's basically, we’re looking to have a balance of the good bacteria outweighing the bad bacteria in the gut. You know, there are lots of bacteria in the gut that’s actually considered pathogenic, but there it's okay. It’s actually necessary in our gut or, you know, there's yeast overgrowth like for example candida. Candida is a natural part of our gut flora it just becomes overgrown that it becomes problematic for people, the same thing with overgrowing of the bad bacteria. The best way, I’d like to use to describe it is if you envision a garden and that garden has been stepped on and trampled on and there are weeds growing all over it. And we kind of analogized that to our gut where we got these good bacteria and bad bacteria. And that's what happened is that weeds are taking the garden of our intestines and we know now that our gut is responsible for digestion, it's responsible for brain health, mental health, it’s a response to heart health. You know, there is virtually no disease you can think of that's not associated with an imbalance of your gut. And so that's why it's important to just keep balancing. Balancing that gut, making sure the garden is pretty and thriving and it doesn't have all of the weeds taking over the garden.

Host:  Why is it important to think about my gut? And no pun intended, you know, feeling in my gut. (laughing) Why is it important to my overall well-being?

Tina:   Well, that's interesting that you said that about, you know, I should trust my gut. You should trust your gut because there is this, the vagus nerve, we call the communication superhighway.

Host:  Okay.

Tina:   It’s the nerve between your brain and your gut. And basically it's one of the largest, I think it is the largest nerve in your body and it literally sends messages to each other. So, the gut is communicating with the brain and the brain is communicating with the gut. So, that’s why we say when you trust your gut when your gut is really telling something, there's a lot of truths in that, to be honest with you.

Host:   What are the signs or what kind of messages do we received from the gut? I mean, how can we identify them? Because we’re kind of out of tune out of our bodies, you know, in our busy lives. We don't pay attention to what's going on. What kind of messages can we notice?

Tina:   Well, you know, you see that “butterfly in your stomach” thing. You know, that’s, you know, you have “butterflies in your stomach” that's because your gut is sending messages to your…or your brain is sending messages to your gut and as I said the reverse is true. But, you know, it’s interesting because people, like they say like skin health or maybe they have a rash on their skin or they’d been feeling anxious lately or they’d been feeling depressed, you know, and things that you're not thinking about. Most people think of an imbalance in your gut or gut issues with digestive issues. You know, having trouble going to the bathroom or not regular bowel movement, that kind of thing or bloating, gas and those types of things. But people aren’t thinking and those are definitely signs of an imbalance in your gut. But people aren't thinking about a rash in your skin is having a direct correlation to your gut health or being a little bit more anxious or depressed than usual, having a correlation with your gut health. So, it's really almost any type of health condition is you need to start with your gut and that's really kind of a paradigm shift in health and wellness out there. It’s pretty profound and you and you see when people start taking care of their gut what starts to happen. It's pretty incredible.

Host:  I’d like to digress for a moment. This sounds exactly like an episode of Futurama where Fry ingests this egg salad sandwich from a gas station, an intergalactic gas station, and he sees parasites and the parasites, you know, build a little city inside his gut and they start repairing his nerves. Then he feels all better, he gets smarter, gets his girlfriend, Leela to fall in love with him, etc. etc. But, you know, jokes aside, you've explained what probiotics are, you explained why they are important to the gut. You've been involved with probiotics for a long time at least would just thrive your website over 6 ½ years, possibly, 7 years?

Tina:   Yes, exactly, 6 years, yes.

Host:  And you’ve done the research, you’re very, very well versed with the different types of probiotics. I have no idea. Would you mind explaining what different types of probiotics are? And what’s spore-base based probiotics are? What is that?

Tina:   Yes, I’d love to explain that. So, basically the majority of probiotics on the market are comprised of strains called Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium strains. And so, ours are not. So, spore-based are a different category. And so, the Lactobacillus and Bifidobacteria-based probiotics work mostly formulated on what we used to know before the human microbiome project was launched by the National Institutes of Health.

Host:  Okay.

Tina:   So, spore-based probiotics are a very different approach. One of the problems that we’ve seen with the Lactobacillus and Bifidobacter probiotics like I said, those are the ones that you see in the refrigerator, grocery store or wherever the health food store. One of the biggest problems is their very sensitive organisms. We know this because, for example, they need to be refrigerated. But the role of a probiotic is, like I said, to get to the intestines alive and then to start to confer a benefit on the host. The problem with the majority of the probiotics in the market, the Lactobacillus and Bifidobacter type products is that, when you swallow them, you know, many need to your refrigerator to stay alive. And so if they can’t withstand the room temperature of the store shelf, it’s very unlikely that they would survive the body temperature, which is much warmer than, you know, the room temperature. And so once they get to the intestine or once they get to the body, chances are they’re going to die. And even if they don’t die because of the temperature, when they hit the intestines of the stomach, they're probably going to die. I mean not intestine, the stomach. The stomach is very harsh, a very acidic environment. It's known as the gastric barrier to protect us. So, it basically will kill a lot of the pathogens, I mean it kills a lot of bacteria that when they get into the stomach acid and will never make it to the intestines alive. So, that the most important thing is a probiotic need to be alive, not in the refrigerator in the store shelf. It needs to be alive when it hits the intestines. And it has quite a journey to get to those intestines. So, spores are very different type of probiotic bacteria. They have this endospore shell around itself. It's like having an armor-like shell around them and that allows them to survive the environment. It allows them to survive, you know, the store shelves, it allows them to survive your body temperature, which is 98.6. And most important, it allows them to survive the gastric acidic environment in the stomach. And so they get into the intestines alive, which that’s really the biggest, you know, one of the biggest differences is a spore-based actually gets to the intestines a 100% alive. But then when they get there, the other difference is, once they get to the intestines alive, they actually have the ability to read the microbial environment. So, they’re reading that garden that I mentioned before and they’re recognizing, “Oh there's a lot of weeds. We’re going to get rid of those weeds.” And then there are those plants that need to be, you know, helped and nurtured and they go and they create compounds and nutrients to feed those good bacteria that are in your gut. So, spores are very, very hardy. You think of them as hardy bacteria that, you know, they’ve been around for millions of years. They actually were found in our soils. So, we found these bacteria in our soil and they used to be in our foods, our roots, and tubers. Our ancestors used to get them all the time for our roots and tubers, but we're not getting those anymore from our soil. Of course, our soil is depleted from nutrients and, you know, is contaminated with lots of chemicals and things like that. So, these are nature's probiotics. These are the strains that we used to get from our environment and so the Lactobacillus and Bifidobacter strains were created in the lab. You know, they were never found in the environment. You didn’t find  Lactobacillus and Bifidobacter in the environment. And it makes sense, of course, because spores are hardy and this is the way nature intended them. They’re really, really incredible bacteria that really, you know, help to make a true change in the gut flora.

Host:  So, the soil because of pesticides, the way we farm, the way we grow food doesn't have the probiotics that our body, our digestive system needs. Then antibiotics also killed probiotics, is that correct?

Tina:   Oh, yeah. Antibiotics, you know, we know that they kill the bad bacteria which is why we take them and I never dispute that antibiotics save lives, they’re very important. At times, we know that they been overprescribed in recent years, but antibiotics kill the good bacteria but they also kill the bad bacteria. There are studies that show that a single course of clindamycin will continue to recap in your gut for a year. One study was done at a different antibiotic that showed up to two years. It was affected, negatively affected the gut flora. So, we have to be really careful about when we take antibiotics and then what we do at the same time that we’re taken the antibiotics.

Host:  When I go to the grocery store I see in the frozen food section, you know, yogurts, milk, and there's like a probiotic yogurt. Is that Lactobacillus?

Tina:   You know, it is. And then yogurts are made up of Lactobacillus also. One of the problems of yogurt, too, is you know there are same great yoghurt…I’m a huge fan of fermented foods, I think the ferment is great but you got to be careful with yogurt because one of the main ingredients in many yogurts out there is sugar. And sugar is definitely an offender to gut health.

Host:  Really?

Tina:   Yeah. So, people are taking or eating yogurt thinking that’s helping their gut which, you know, it may be a little bit but it's also, you know, it's kind of like eating it all because now you got the sugar that's in there. I mean, unless you’re doing one without sugar which would be, you know, then that would be fine. But it’s still Lactobacillus.

Host:  What does the sugar due to your gut health?

Tina:   Well, it’s feeding the overgrowth of yeast, it’s helping the pathogenic bacteria thrive in the gut so you want to be careful with too much sugar. I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this. (laughing) It’s so funny because a lot of people would actually tell us after they start our product, ”You know what, I have fewer sugar cravings” and I was shocked to hear that, to be honest with you. But then I started thinking and I’m looking at the science and it completely makes sense because, you know, it's getting rid of that yeast overgrowth. And so the yeast-like thrive on the sugar so it does definitely makes sense.

Host:  I'm relatively healthy and our listeners are relatively healthy as well. And I say relatively because we might not know that we might have a condition or not, but I feel fine. Why should I be concerned about the probiotics in my gut? What advantage do I get about being conscious about this?

Tina:   Yeah. Well, that’s a great question. One of the biggest things that is your immune system, over 70% of your immune system is found in your gut. And we know now that our gut like I mentioned is being attacked on a daily basis. I mean, through the lives we lead. There's so much stress, I mean, kids are under so much stress, adults are under so much stress, the antibiotic, the food supply, these glyphosates. Here's the interesting thing, our food…And we all try to eat clean, you know, try to eat organic, try to stay away from glyphosates and the pesticides that are in our foods, but here's the scary thing. I remember I was telling you about the antibiotics kills the bad bacteria and they’re also killing the good bacteria. Glyphosate is different. They only target the good bacteria. They’re not even killing the bad bacteria in our gut. So, that’s actually more problematic. So the world we live in is really so problematic for our gut. And if there's one thing people take a multivitamin because they just, “Oh, just in case I don’t get the number of vitamins I want”. They think that's really good for them and maybe. But, you know, with the probiotic it’s like if it’s insurance. I mean, if there's anything you're going to do for your gut or for your health is to take care of your gut. And a spore-based probiotic is just one of the most effective ways to do it. So, I am in the same exact way, I’m, knock on wood, been very healthy, my family has been very healthy. It’s such a great way to make sure, you know, for your immune system. I hear it all the time like, “Oh, I didn't get sick as often as I did you know in years past” because your immune system, 70% of your immune system is found in your gut. So, we need to be taking care of our gut and as I said, every day it's being attacked by pathogens and toxins and antibiotics and glyphosates, stress, sugar, alcohol, all those things.

Host:  Immune or autoimmune disorders might be more common than we think. Things like skin conditions like eczema or dandruff, psoriasis, you know, they erupt from the immune system…

Tina:   Yes.

Host:  …allergies, even all these things.  Can probiotics help with that? And what other things do probiotics help with like diseases or common symptoms we might have from time to time?

Tina:   Well, I’m definitely glad you brought up the autoimmune issue because basically we did a study on our strains on leaky gut. Are you familiar with leaky gut at all?

Host:  It’s going to be my next question. What is leaky gut?

Tina:   Okay. (laughing) Leaky gut is actually exactly what it sounds like. It's basically, you know, you have like holes in your intestines and toxins that are not really problematic in your gut seep into your bloodstream and they become extremely problematic. And now you have this constant inflammatory response by your immune system. So, these strains, these pathogenic bacteria like one of the biggest offenders is LPS which stands for Lipopolysaccharides. So, Lipopolysaccharide is a toxin that can seep out of your blood service, seep out of your intestines into your bloodstream and causes an inflammatory response. So, if you have food sensitivities, food allergies, an autoimmune disease, almost guaranteed you have a leaky gut. And then people who have…There was actually a study that was done on Alzheimer's patients that said, “One of the number one drivers of Alzheimer's is a heightened LPS level in your bloodstream.”

Host:  Okay.

Tina:   So, we know LPS is measured for people who have heart disease, cancer, diabetes. LPS is an incredible measure of whether or not you felt a leaky gut. Now, the thing is we actually did a study. Everything we do is based on research and science and, you know, we’re trying to bring a different level of awareness and a different level of credibility to the supplement industry because we feel very strongly that supplements are such an important, they can place such an important role in people's health. And so we actually did a double-blind human clinical trial on our strains and it showed that the strain after 30 days reduced that LPS level in the bloodstream by 42% with no other dietary or lifestyle modifications. But what was really interesting about that study is, this was done on college students that were otherwise healthy.

Host:  Okay.

Tina:   They were not on any medication, they were not on any type of, you know, they have no outward symptoms. The initial group was 100 hundred subjects, 55% of them had a leaky gut and they didn't know it. So, there are some estimates out there, they’re saying 80% of the adult population has a leaky gut. And people don't necessarily have symptoms right away. It’s like that leaky faucet, you know? This little drip, drip and then one day it just, you know, it overflows. And that is the best way to describe what leaky gut can do is all these toxins start seeping in slowly and then all of a sudden it just creates this disease form estate in the body.

Host:  Is there a test or how can we know if we have a leaky gut or not? You’ve mentioned the symptoms. Do we go to a doctor and is there a blood test or what?

Tina:   There is a blood test where you can measure your LPS toxins. The problem is that it’s not readily available. You can’t go to quest or some of these other types of places, so you could always ask. But a lot of times, as I said, If you have food sensitivities or allergies or any type of autoimmune disease you pretty much guaranteed to have a leaky gut. And then otherwise, you know, your intestinal lining is getting attacked with all the different offenders out there in this world.

Host:  So, the FDA regulates medicine supplements, all these items. What is probiotics categorized at? Is it medicine?

Tina:   No, it’s a supplement.

Host:  It’s a supplement. So this is something we can get over the counter and or health food store, am I correct?

Tina:   Yes or online, yes. Exactly.

Host:  What are a different kind of…So what does a probiotic look like? Is it a pill?

Tina:   That’s a great question. (laughing) It’s actually capsule and ours is a capsule. And the great thing is ours is so hardy that you can actually open the capsule and mix it with food or drinks. So for those kids that don't necessarily, you know, like to know how to swallow or even adults who don't enjoy swallowing pills. You can open the capsule and mix it with food. Otherwise, you just take the capsule, just one a day with food. Of course, other companies do it all different ways, you know, they have capsules, they have chewable, they have different things like that. It's really important to us that we have the cleanest product possible, you know, with no fillers or anything like that or it’s gluten-free, dairy-free, which is a lot of probiotics to have dairy in it. So gluten-free, dairy-free, nut-free, soy-free, everything, all that kind of stuff.

Host:  So are probiotics only available in capsule form or are there other forms as well?

Tina:   You know what, there might…Yes, some people may have it like in a powder form.

Host:  Okay. So, it’s something that we add or a capsule that we ingest or we can add to food like a drink or something else.

Tina:   Exactly.

Host:  Would you know how probiotics are manufactured or made?

Tina:   Yeah. Actually that's a great question. So one of the big things, a lot of…There are so many myths out there about probiotics. One of them is that you need to have 50 billion CFUs or, you know, the countenance would be 50 billion or 100 billion, I mean, somewhere around 250 billion. And you need to have lots of different types of strains. And one of the reasons they say that is that diversity. In order to be a healthy gut, you need a diverse microbiome and that is true. You know that garden, you need lots of different plants and beautiful different plants to make it a really diverse microbiome. So, what companies are doing is they’re throwing 15 different strains, 20 different strains of probiotics in their products.

Host:  In one capsule? Wow.

Tina:   Yes and what they're doing is they're throwing it in and that. These need to be fermented in a huge manufacturing vat. So, they throw all these different strains in one vat. But what’s happening is that one strain can take over another strain or two strains come together and create a whole different strain that’s not even on a label. What we do is very, very different. We have four strains in our product. Each of our strains is grown in their own separate vat and they're not mixed together until they are encapsulated, which prevents any cross-contamination or, you know, one strain taking over another strain or two strains creating a whole new strain. We also have our DNA verified which ensures that what we say is on the label is in fact in the capsule. And I know that sounds like, “Well, doesn't everybody do that?”, but we actually…There was this independent third-party lab that took 16, well it was actually a study that was done by the University of California, Davis. They took 16 different probiotics out of California store shelves and some online and they found that only one of the products and the shelf met label claims. Because what’s happening is they’re throwing all these strains in a vat and they’re growing and so the ones that were list on the label are no longer in the product itself, and even worse, the ones that are in the product on the label and we don't even know what they are. You know, they’re just these new little probiotic strains that have come because two strains came together. So, ours are manufactured in four separate vats and then they’re encapsulated.

Host:  You talk to a little bit about myths and it's hard to go through all the information available on the Internet. Where are the correct sources of information about probiotics? And what are the myths that we should be aware of and stay away from?

Tina:   Well, one of the biggest myths that I mentioned in the refrigeration. I mean, you hear that all the time, “My doctor said make sure you get one in the refrigerator” because the refrigerator is, that means that they’re live microorganisms. And like I said, yes, it's important that they’re alive. It’s not important that they’re alive in the refrigerator. It's important that they’re alive when they hit your intestines. By the fact that they need to be in the refrigerator, it shows us that they're sensitive and they aren’t able to withstand the room temperature, the store shelf, they won't survive 98.6 in your body. So, that is one of the largest myths out there is that a good probiotics needs to be refrigerated. The other one is just this 50 billion CFUs. You know like, “My doctor said to take one that's got 50 billion or 100 billion CFUs.” And that's only true if you know that those 50 billion or 100 billion are actually surviving. And studies out there, there’s an independent third-party lab also that took all of these probiotics out there showing that most of them are dying. In fact, we did a study on one of the largest selling probiotics in the marketplace. It was a 50 billion count product, it died 99.99% by the time it gets into the intestines. So, where ours survived 100%. And so it's really important that you focus on, I mean, getting us spore-based probiotic is the key because you need probiotics that survived and gets the intestines 100% alive. And then a lot of people will say one of the biggest myths out there is that “Oh, well mine’s enteric-coated”, meaning it’s got this coding on it so it will survive that temperature, it will get through the gastric system. The problem is they’re going to hit the bile salts and the bile salts will destroy them before they get into the intestines, too. So, you know, companies know that you know, people know that probiotics are sensitive. They know that and there are studies that even dead bacteria will confer some type of benefit on the body so people will say, “Why they’re taking probiotics and it’s not a spore-based.” It did make me feel better and will give you some symptomatic relief, but they're not going in there and actually getting to the root of the problem. They're not going in there and actually rebalancing the gut flora or sealing up that leaky gut and they’re not actually staying there and going through the entire intestinal tract. Oh my God, there are so many different myths out there about you need to rotate probiotics to create diversity. That's another one that they say, “Oh, we need to switch up of your probiotics so you get different probiotic strains.” The thing with the spores that so unique is they actually, they are a universal strain. So, they actually have a binding site for every living species and so they will go into everyone's intestines and they’ll have a binding site and they actually will help create diversity by feeding your own venture and it already belongs to you, which is the way to really create diversity in your microbiome.

Host:  What inspired you to study probiotics and get into this field? And you started a company based around probiotics called Just Thrive and your website is justthrivehealth.com. How did this all start?

Tina:   Great question. I actually haven’t filled an interesting journey. I started out as an attorney, I mean, I still am an attorney, but I was in litigation doing civil defense and just through a desire to stay home, you know, have more work-life balance, to be home more with my children. I went into a family pharmaceutical business and I was like, this great. It’s so much fun to be able to help people and give life-saving drugs to people. And after being in business for a while, my husband and I are business partners and we started to notice that there are so many abuses in the industry. We had one bid were one of the largest bids, one of the largest hospital systems in the country and basically, we won this huge bid and the pharmaceutical rep came in and said, “Oh, this is great. We won this now. My job is to go in every doctor in the system and have them lower the number that they prescribed this medicine for.” Like in essence, they’re giving false information to try to sell more of their product. So, I was like, “This is crazy”.  And then we started seeing this with our own family members. You know, we have this one aunt, she had one issue like joint pain and then she was on medication and then she started developing skin conditions and then the skin conditions caused stomach issues. Before you know it she was on a dozen different medications within six months and not getting any better. And so we started seeing the abuses and like people just take there, you know, doctor’s words for everything. And, you know, doctors are wonderful people but they’re being educated…I mean, medical schools a lot are being funded by big pharma and, you know, the natural solution is really not as open and out there. So, one of the biggest reasons, I want to get into something that I can help empower people and help empower them to take health into their own hands. It may be questioned, you know, a pharmaceutical or prescription medication that they're being told to go on and say, “Is there a natural alternative? Is there something I can do with my diet? Is there something that I can do with nutrition and exercise that could maybe mitigate some of my issues and maybe not have me take medication or maybe take less of the medication.” And we knew, we started researching, we knew that gut health was paramount to virtually every aspect of our overall health. Again, it was after the Institutes of Health have launched the human microbiome project. It was really out of just a desire to really do something that meant something to us that was more in line with who we were, the way my husband and I lived our lives with our own children. We weren’t big pharma people. We try to avoid antibiotics as much as possible with our children and with ourselves. It was really just about empowering people to take control of their health and really take control of, you know, what they're doing every day by looking at nutrition and the food that they eat and that kind of thing.

Host:  Here’s a question I ask of every single guest on our podcast and that is, what does living well mean to you?

Tina:   What is living well means to me. Really, it starts with health. Health and happiness are really the biggest things. I mean, I am living well is when I have my children are older now and have them in my house again and just having everybody around us is really what living well is, being surrounded by the ones that you love and for being healthy number one. I mean, really I feel like being healthy you can’t do anything else unless you’re healthy. So really being healthy and living your life to the fullest with those that you love around you.

Host:  Brilliant. Thank you so much for being on our podcast today, Tina Anderson. Do you provide any articles or, you know, help to individuals? Do people reach out to you?

Tina:   Yes. Really the best thing to do is…I mean our blogs have, we have research on our site. We have our leaky guts study that was published by a huge period journal and then we have a ton of different blog posts that have, they’re all research-driven that have sites to different studies. So, that would be the best thing. If you have questions about the product you can always email us at [email protected] or look at our website at justthrivehealth.com and just start taking care of your gut and doing your own research and empowering yourself to take care of yourself. Eat healthily, eat clean, exercise, you know, do deep breathing, meditate and do whatever it is that really makes you live a stress-free, calm and happy fulfilling life.

Host:  Tina, thank you so much for shedding light on the subject, which is on the top of mind for a lot of people who are searching for better health. Generally, thank you so much for doing that for us today.

Tina:   You bet. Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it.