Seed with Ara Katz | Longevity Optimization Podcast

Today I'm speaking with Ara Katz, the co-founder of Seed, on the Longevity Optimization Podcast. In this episode, Ara shares her personal journey and the inspiration behind founding Seed. She emphasizes the vital role of the microbiome in human health and explains how nutrition shapes gut health from early life through adulthood. Our conversation explores what exactly constitutes a microbiome, how it develops (the “seeding” process), and why a diverse diet is essential for maintaining a healthy gut.

Seed Probiotics is an innovative company dedicated to advancing microbiome science and optimizing human health through next-generation probiotics. Their flagship product, DS-01, is formulated using clinically-studied probiotic strains designed to support digestive health, immune function, and overall well-being. Seed also focuses on education around probiotics versus prebiotics and symbiotics—helping consumers understand their unique roles in gut health. The company leads research into women’s health topics such as the gut-vaginal axis and develops products that address hormonal changes across different life stages.

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Timestamps

00:00 Introduction to Seed Probiotics and Personal Journey

07:12 Understanding the Microbiome: Definition and Importance

15:27 The Seeding Process: How Microbiomes Develop

18:17 The Role of Nutrition in Shaping the Microbiome

27:47 Probiotics, Prebiotics, and Symbiotics: Definitions and Differences

32:10 Understanding Probiotics, Prebiotics, and Postbiotics

34:25 The Development Journey of SEED

35:40 Function Over Composition in Probiotics

41:43 The Importance of Gut Health

44:49 The Gut and Women's Health

46:26 Exploring the Gut-Vaginal Axis

52:33 The Vaginal Microbiome: Basics and Optimization

58:33 Innovations in Vaginal Health Products

Transcript

KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ (00:00.128)

Okay, amazing. So today I am so excited to have one of my new friends, which I've been really enjoying getting to know you, but also the co-founder of seed probiotics on the podcast. So welcome era.

Thank you. Thank you. It's so nice to be here. And likewise, I love, I'm very happy about our new

Same, same. yeah, mean, you know, it's interesting. I'll just have a little preface for everyone listening. I mean, you know, just years of being in the industry. I think I told you this when I first met you at Edemonia, I've been approached by so many different types of probiotic companies and I've just never, never worked with one or like, you know, really felt compelled to dive super deep until I met you and learned more about seed because I think it's just rare that a company puts so much

and investments into the science and putting out an amazing product, which is kind of like a little sad to say, I guess. But I appreciate what you're doing and I'm so excited to dive into all things like microbiomes today, what you're doing with seed, what is a symbiotic, and also getting into female health. So let's get into it. Let's start with just what inspired you to start this company and a little bit of how you got to where you are today.

Sure, you know, see it first of all, thank you for saying all that. It's not without, it's a big part of why we started actually, why we started SEAD and definitely was originally part of the founding vision. started, know, my mom died when I was 16 and I, it's when she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, very young actually. It was when I started reading scientific papers and I started to understand how like clinical trials were done. And I think that really set off

ARA KATZ (01:42.382)

kind of a lifelong obsession with asking a lot of questions, but also being really curious about the way that like, extraordinary science makes its way to humans. And that's inclusive of like information, because you know, I grew up in the antibiotics generation and you know, also the generation where fat was bad and know, cholesterol was misunderstood and so.

You know, I became very interested in the space between like extraordinary science and like human impact. And also how people make decisions for their bodies and their health. And I think at a very young age, you when you watch somebody die, particularly from a disease where your body really kind of decomposes over time and is riddled with a disease, I think you gain a kind of appreciation for biology and what it means when things are functioning well.

Over time, I spent a lot of years, most of my career was in media design and tech actually, and all kind of consumer focused. And when in 2015, I had been running a mobile commerce company that had started a couple of years prior, where we got to launch Apple Pay, we got to do a lot of really exciting things. But I think tech certainly taught me the...

the excitement of kind of being on the front end and the front lines of like new things. And that was actually mobile, which was actually kind of like early for that time, especially since the iPhone had only come out just a years prior. And I had a miscarriage. And it was really interesting. It was just a moment that kind of snapped me back into my body. I actually think miscarriages for the most part are kind of biological miracles. I know I'm an outlier in that, it...

your body like knows what to do. But at the same time, I think it was a reminder to me of what happened, like very similarly to why I was so interested when my mom was dying, which was I just wanted to be back in that like science and that biology. And it really just brought me not just back into my body, but really it was a reminder of like maybe what I was doing wasn't like what I was meant to be doing. know, these pivot moments of life are obviously can be really profound.

ARA KATZ (03:58.398)

And at the same time I had met my co-founder and I was introduced to him because he was working on a project that he was, a really interesting area of science that he was gonna be bringing and wanted to bring to on the consumer side. So I was asked to advise his company, but we got to know each other. And around the same time he had really started to look at the velocity of what was happening in microbiome. He'd been tracking the field since like some 2006 very pivotal mouse studies, which really kind of is like what lit the field on fire.

And I, just because I kind of keep up with this stuff and have always been that person that people text and want to ask a lot of questions to, I kind of had it similarly because I got pregnant very soon, right? I got pregnant, I think, within like three months after my miscarriage, very, very quickly. And I think I was pregnant. so when we met, basically, as I had gotten pregnant, and I started to really think about the microbiome because...

And wow.

ARA KATZ (04:53.132)

I had been tracking it, he had been obviously even more well versed than I, but what was very important was that the microbiome is so critical to shaping these early windows of development for an infant. And so we really bonded over how we could create something that would kind of harness this or steward a field that we felt was gonna be transformative, not just in our understanding of human biology, but actually as a lever of health that gives anybody agency.

which is very different than other fields of science, right? Like, you know a lot about like genomics. We sequence the human genome, but it's not like you can go to Arowan today and buy something for your genome. There's nothing you could do. I could take you through every aisle of an Arowan or a grocery store and tell you something that could impact and positively modulate or, you know, impact your microbiome. And that's extro... That really is extraordinary. There's very few kind of fields of frontier science that are so actionable for anybody, which is really, which is really amazing. And so I kind of felt...

That in itself, where I felt the field was going, I think it was very important to me to what you said earlier in the introduction, that we wanted to create kind of a biotech company that had consumer applications. And that meant having scientific DNA and approaching our science in the same way that like BioFarmer does. And that was really, that was really so both with the stewardship of like a level of scientific rigor combined with the stewardship of like,

what we felt the microbiome was going to be for human health. And not just like from a scientific perspective, but for anybody, the microbiome creates this like new lens. And we always say like, if you understand the microbiome, it's like you're seeing the matrix. It's like, know, and obviously microbes are not visible to the human eye, but when you understand the role that they play in our body, to me, and then I was, as you can imagine, I was growing a human, it was very self-interested, but also very much like, wow, I could make something that

Yeah.

ARA KATZ (06:48.714)

a brand and also products that had like deep impact and were really like at the forefront of this new field that I felt was going to shape our future. And so we started Seed and the name Seed comes from the biological process of seeding, which is the term that you use for the infant's first exposure to microbes. so it's kind of little bit, so that's where our name came from too.

I love that. Well, I mean, the microbiome is so complicated though, right? Like it's. Yeah, I got microbiome. Okay. So let's get into that. What are, let's talk about microbiome and just the overarching and then the gut microbiome.

The gut microbiome is complicated.

ARA KATZ (07:25.262)

I think let's first define the microbiome. Yes, okay. So the very, very nerdy scientific meaning is it is the collection or community of all microbes that includes bacteria, majority bacteria in the body, but there's fungi and viruses, phages, protozoa, cetera, that end their constituent parts. So really all of them in addition to like what they make. like microbes produce things in the body.

and inclusive of their genes. The very, very like simple layman way of understanding it is it's just all the microbes in your body or in a given environment. And so just to put it into context, you have about half of the cells in your body are not human. So that's really extraordinary. there's maybe approximately 76 trillion, there's about 38 of those are non-human. So it means that

We've co-evolved with these microbes over millions, millions of years to play like really key biological functions in our bodies and almost every organ system of the body, play a role every day. I'm sure by the time we finished this podcast, there'll be 10 new papers published on like some new understanding of like another thing that microbes or the microbiome does in the body, which is extraordinary.

a really quick like very basic question that I've never asked before. So how do we initially get these

Yes. It's a great question. That's seeding. That's the seeding process. very similar to like, you've ever heard of like the critical periods of like language development, we have these like these first five years, these first 60 months of life. There's some, you know, debate if it's the first 36 versus, you know, 48 months of life. But, you know, between three and five years old, up to, you know, somewhere between three and five years old, that is when your microbiome develops into what in science they call a steady state microbiome.

ARA KATZ (09:21.998)

The way you first acquire microbes is a little bit controversial in science because the womb is predominantly sterile from what we understand. However, there's a lot of priming from the mother's gut microbiome that happens prenatally. So the mother's gut microbiome is like making metabolites and metabolizing things that circulate that have impact on the shaping.

And as I said, there's some controversy in science as to whether or not there's exposure to microbes before birth or after birth. But you could think of it as there's probably some good priming that's happening during the prenatal period. At birth is your first real exposure to microbes. in a vaginal birth, it's predominantly the vaginal microbes that the infant is bathed in. They go into the oral cavity.

and then they're all over the skin. We always joke that the vagina is the original barrier, best barrier skincare you could ever ask for. It has a of the ferrin, it has a lot of the compounds you're seeing in skincare today originated in the vagina. is very interesting because it was meant to be, if you can imagine it from an evolutionary perspective, it's the first exposure but it's also a protective. And so the infant begins to swallow some of these microbes and that starts to plant the seed for their microbiome. Many of those are...

Now

ARA KATZ (10:42.286)

predominantly like lactobacillus at the beginning and some bifidobacterium.

My doctor told me once if ever I'd have a c-section that you should like swab the vagina and put it in the mouth.

Yeah, so vaginal swabbing, the FDA is not like a super fan of it. There are people that do it, but I'll tell you that, so just to go back to, I'll get to the answer to that, is in a vaginal birth, that's the first exposure. After that, you'll start to see the mother's, obviously then there's skin to skin, you'll start to see microbes from the skin, microbes from the nipple and the breast area, because of course there, I mean there's,

Our biology is so incredible. There are microbes that evolved to live on our nipples that are good at breaking down lactose. So can you imagine that there's bacteria that lives on your nipple that an infant is swallowing alongside breast milk that helps them, because of course they don't already have some of these microbes and some of these enzymes, break down lactose, is amazing. And then after birth, it's really immediately environmental. So...

Mom.

ARA KATZ (11:47.074)

the dad or the other partner or parent's skin, where you are. Like if you're in a hospital, if you're in home, depending on where they are, if there's a pet in the house. like dogs, for example, are known to increase microbial diversity. In a good way? In a good way, yeah. In a good way. They're bringing in things, there's just like lot of immune training that's happening, right? Because they're bringing it, yes, they're bringing in more microbes you wouldn't normally be exposed to, but that obviously primes and.

kind of tunes your immune system. Then what cleaning products, what laundry detergent, what's on the sheet of the hospital, all of these things make an impact. Whether or not they have antibiotics in the first 36 months of life, for example, can make a huge impact on how their gut microbiome develops. And then of course breast milk and or whatever the nutrient source is. So breast milk as an example, as part of seeding,

is very critical because there are about a third of the carbohydrates in breast milk aren't even digestible by the infant. They're actually food for the microbes that are living. So breast milk is what proliferates those early microbes. They're called HMOs, which people will start to hear a lot more about because adults are starting to take them. They enrich. very, very...

and incredible and a lot of people are starting to synthesize the ones that are in breast milk, but the actual ones from breast milk are also being isolated now as like supplementation. But they're human milk oligosaccharides, so they're sugars, they're carbohydrates that the microbes that are already in there are using to grow and thrive. And so breast milk is a really important catalyst for that developing microbiome. And then there's things, as I said, like whether or not you have exposure and also exposure to nature.

on what your environment you're growing up in, as well as everything from what's happening in your built environment. And really one of the biggest inflection points is whether or not a child is exposed to antibiotics in those first 36 months.

KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ (13:54.744)

Can you give, the stats are a little bit wild, right? Related to antibiotics in young children.

Yeah, I mean, it's beyond just children. Like 85 % of women in the US have an antibiotic by the third trimester, which means if you can think about that, and they now understand, they now can track, and there's some really interesting science around the impact of prenatal antibiotic use and impact on the priming for the infant's gut microbiome, which is really interesting.

In terms of actual infuse, I don't know all the stats of children, but I can tell you that 211 million prescriptions in the US are written every single year for antibiotics, and over 50 % of them are for things that are completely of non-bacterial origin, which means that, I'm sure you've either talked about this on the podcast or heard about it, but of course, antibiotic resistance is one of our probably biggest challenges. But in addition to that, which is a bit more in the future, you have a lot of people who are basically just wiping out

their gut microbiomes for women, you're wiping out your vaginal microbiome at the same time as well. it's not, me, antibiotics are one of the most extraordinary medical innovations, but the overuse of them and the indiscriminate use of them has had tremendous impact. Not to mention, of course, the antibiotics we're exposed to that we don't choose and pick up at a pharmacy that are in our food supply and of course, in the water and other elements of our built environment that we're exposed to. So anyway, so that's where seeding, that's where our, from mode of birth,

Yeah.

ARA KATZ (15:27.254)

mode of nutritional, whether breastfeeding or formula, and then of course your environment and the skin of caregivers for the most part. And those are the early priming and shaping. And then by between three and five years old, you have what's called more of a steady state microbiome. It's a bit of your blueprint for life. And that window, that early window is directly correlated

to the health trajectory of a child over their lifetime.

Yeah, wow. For your kids, did you like try to put them outside in nature quite a bit? did you do this intentionally?

Absolutely. I mean, we're kind of a nature family anyway, but yes, absolutely. I think, you know, we do live in a urban environment, so you have to make a little bit more of an effort to do so. But yes, every single chance we got, I think also just being really mindful of it's okay for them to play in the dirt and the sand. you you think a little bit of it as like kind of fine tuning their immune system through exposure.

So actually, exposure is a good thing. When you travel, your microbiome changes. I think within 30 days, I remember there was a really interesting paper about Chinese immigrants to the US. I think it was in Michigan. And within 30 days, their whole microbiome had changed.

KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ (16:39.47)

Yeah.

KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ (16:51.635)

Wow. The better or the worse? not?

had changed. think, you know, obviously the American diet is not awesome. So I would imagine that there was probably some negative outcomes. But even when you just travel for even like five to seven days, they can see like shifts in the microbiome, which is really interesting. And so, you know, everything from, you know, from travel to exposure, of course, to nature, which I think is really, important, to just being really mindful of, you know, of, I think a lot of

Yum.

ARA KATZ (17:22.338)

finding pediatricians that just don't rush the antibiotics if it's not really needed or if you don't know if it's needed. Sometimes a bacterial infection will also resolve itself. But I think the area that I'm probably the most maybe crazy about is food. outside of all the other levers we're talking about, food is probably one of the most extraordinarily impactful to the shaping, priming, maintaining, and like

Yeah.

ARA KATZ (17:49.998)

kind of cultivating of resilience of the microbiome.

I love that. That was actually going to be my next question. I interviewed Dr. Kara Fitzgerald yesterday. So she's amazing. She's amazing. And it was just fun to talk through again, like, you she did this study on reversing biological age over the course of eight weeks with nutrition, but she said the biggest lever was also nutrition, right, for improving the epigenetic expression. So we kind of walked through what the ideal diet was. So let's talk a little bit about.

what, yeah, how food impacts the microbiome and like what might be some of the optimal foods for the microbiome.

Yeah, so I would say that there's nothing that you're gonna hear that's gonna be mind-blowing for Because I think a lot of us, whether you know about the microbiome or not, I think many of us intuitively know, obviously, when you get into biohacking or you get into maybe different levels of nutrition or performance optimization, there's nuance. But for the most part, you're not gonna be mind-blown, because I'm gonna say...

eat a lot of plants and plant-based foods. Now that doesn't mean all the crap that says it's plant-based in packages that has like oils and is processed, but the thing with the microbiome that's very interesting is that while it is very complex, there's a few markers that we do know that are, that kind of equates you and are well accepted to be the healthier microbiome. the, and two of them are kind of what they call alpha richness.

ARA KATZ (19:19.842)

and alpha diversity. Richness is how dense is your rainforest, basically, right? Like you can imagine like a sparse, poorly populated like rainforest that looks like it was just like scorched is not gonna look as healthy as like lush, multi-species, multi-layered rainforest. And so to just to think about it in terms of the gut, you want a really diverse.

and kind of dense microbiome, or rich microbiome. so those are two. The NIH did a study called the Human Microbiome Project. was like $173 million and big project. And really, it's set out to say, what is the healthiest microbiome? And the answer wasn't, this is the healthiest microbiome. The answer was, these are the couple markers that we believe are important. And so when you think about diversity and density, then you can relate that to food.

which is then the American Gut Project, which was done at UCSD, looked at diet and looked at diversity and richness and really saw that people who, you it's very easy when you're really healthy to like get into a lot of habits. So you end up eating a lot, even though you're eating very cleanly, which is of course still better than going to McDonald's every day, obviously, but if you really want to be optimal, what the American Gut Project saw was eating a diverse,

over 30 different types of plants over the course of a week, equaled more diversity in the gut. And I think that that's important, as I said, just because I think a lot of us get into like these habits where we like have the same spinach every day, have this in so which is of course healthy and much healthier than many, many alternatives. But in terms of like really dialing it in and looking at where the science is, the diversity of plant sources equaled the diversity in

Interesting. That used to be me. I used to be like I was eating the same thing every morning and every night because it was easy, right? It's like I love to be very regimented. But when I married my husband, he like loves diversity or like variety, he says. He called me a mono eater. So I kind of built in something that just forced me to have diversity. So I started getting the actually Flamingo Estates. Yes. So every week it's like something different. And some of these things have never been seen before.

KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ (21:41.644)

never cooked with. So it's not only been like great hope for my gut microbiome, also it just it's forcing something kind of because to have to like think through like, what different plants am I going to get? I think maybe just like going to a farmer's market or like ordering some sort of CSA can be helpful.

And I think it's nice that it forces you, depending on where you live, into seasonality. Yeah. To some extent. I also think that you can get a lot through frozen. There's actually some interesting science articulating that even frozen berries are actually better because it better preserves the anthocyanins.

Yeah, because they're like flash frozen right after.

some of the So I think that there's a lot of ways to go about it, particularly if you don't live near farmers. A lot of people live in food deserts, part of our country doesn't have access to all kinds of diversity of produce from a seasonality perspective, but there's many ways to do that. And that can include nuts and seeds and other plant-based foods. I think that diversity, so I'd say the diversity of plants is like, and making that majority of intake is really important. And then there's

There's a lot of, there's a lot of kind of, and particularly starting to think about that also from like a fiber intake perspective, which I think we're starting, that wasn't cool to talk about like five years ago, but I think everybody like is fairly up to speed on like how critical fiber is. But if you think about it, one of the reasons that these plant sources are so important is because not only are they the food source for your microbes, the reason that certain fibers are not digested by the human body and that why they bulk stool is because they make it all the way through

ARA KATZ (23:19.798)

your GI tract, they are in the colon and then they're being utilized by these microbes either for growth or to be metabolized into like incredibly important compounds like short chain fatty acids, for example, for so many different biological functions. And they also like just use that as one example, like it really is like a help them help you scenario. Like it's a great way to like think about it. So when you're eating these...

these plant sources that can be turned into a short chain fatty acid, example, like a butyrate, that is the fuel for your cells that line your epithelial, your gut, and that fuel all of those cells so that you can have a healthy barrier. And so there's this really beautiful domino effect that happens from all of these plant sources that are absolutely critical to maintaining health and also resilience.

we were talking earlier, like no one's healthy all the time. But the more you kind of nurture this aspect and diet, as I said, is I think one of the greatest levers we have. You have the ability that even when something happens, it's really the resilience of it that's so important. And that's kind of my more definition of health is really much more about resilience, which is how quickly you kind of can come back to stasis.

Yeah, I love that. What is your favorite plant source for butyrie?

that's a good question. Let's put that in the show notes.

KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ (24:44.206)

Okay, great, so we're gonna include a link in the show notes just to have like some interesting plant foods that can correlate potentially to different microbes because I think, I mean, I am such a protocoled person. I wanna say, okay, I need to eat X vegetable for this specific outcome ideally and it sounds like the science is kind of developing there.

Yeah, mean, one of the things that's the most exciting, in our work as well as in the field in general, is that it kind of started off saying in the last, like, let's say the last decade or the last five, six years is eat plants. They're great. There's fiber. And then we know there's like very specific compounds that do very specific things. I'll give you like a great example. You've probably heard of urolithin A. Yeah. Okay. So in DSO-1, which is our daily symbiotic, the inner capsule is probiotic, which I'm sure we can...

speak a little bit about the outer capsule is a compound that comes from pomegranate. If you want like a really perfect protocol, this is why I'm eating it. My kids eat like, we eat like pomegranate. like, it's our second job. And actually me and my co-founder bonded over pomegranate. It's a beautifully, beautiful, not only for many other human, our human biology, but so interesting for the microbiome because...

There is a, so our exterior capsule uses what's called punicalgan, which is actually comes from pomegranate and pomegranate skin. Ours comes from this specific type of pomegranate in India, for example. Our, your gut microbes don't necessarily use that as a prebiotic, that's in the sense of how people usually think about prebiotics, which is just food for good bacteria. It is actually a compound that your microbes take and metabolize.

nice.

ARA KATZ (26:29.45)

into ureolithin A. And so that's just really interesting. And obviously ureolithin A has gained a tremendous amount of traction in the wellness and well-being world recently, both topically as well as taken. But it's just a great example to show you that there's a lot of things that you can do. And a lot of people don't know that the microbiome, like you wouldn't be able to make any of the K vitamins, for example. You wouldn't be able to make folate without microbes.

There's no, that's where vitamins and some of these really key, your gut is where some of these key compounds are actually produced. And so the plant compounds are what give the microbes the compounds that they then break down and metabolize into both very key vitamins for health, but also things like compounds like urelythin A as well as short chain fatty acids.

amazing. Yeah, I also have pomegranate for that reason. And then I'm having you know, I'm always trying to think of like foods

I some of the skin too. I know it's a little...

Well, throwing it into a smoothie is pretty helpful. then also having things like natto for like the spermidine or something, know, even though it tastes absolutely horrible. Okay, so let's talk about prebiotics, regular probiotics, and then there's also postbiotic. This is a symbiotic, so can we break it all down?

ARA KATZ (27:47.982)

Sure, so the way that we think it would, the easiest way to think about it is a probiotic has like a really specific definition. Actually our original kind of head of our scientific advisory board, Dr. Gregor Reed, who's kind of known as the grandfather of probiotics. He's one of the most, I mean, he is the most published scientist in the field of probiotics. He likes to remind me he's well over 530 papers now. And he defined, he chaired the UN panel that...

first defined probiotics back in, I think, in the little early 2000s. And the actual definition is that a probiotic is a live organism that when administered in an adequate amount, confers a health benefit to the host. And the reason that that's so important is if you just break that down into three parts, a probiotic is a live organism. That means to be a probiotic, you must demonstrate that it comes alive in some capacity and survives. The second is that adequate amount, which means that dose matters. So most people

For example, when you go to grocery store and you see probatic tortilla chips or you see probatic yogurt or probatic kombucha, probatic term on kombucha, the term probatic is not regulated the way it is in the EU and in Japan and other places where they have more stringent regulatory. So the term probatic can basically be thrown around in the US in a way that it cannot be in other parts of the world. which is why...

say on a tortilla chip which I've not even heard of this is wild okay but obviously it's not gonna be in alive anything

How many? on Amazon.

ARA KATZ (29:15.114)

No, and it's not going to do anything because how many tortillas, you know, it would be like saying take Advil, it doesn't really matter how many you take. You know, it's like there's doses to, how much of something can impact whether or not it has an impact. And then the last piece which says to the confers benefit on the host, that's the last part of the definition means in a clinical and human clinical research, this strain, not the species, a lot of people also only put the species on the labels.

Sometimes there's hundreds of strains just in one species. the strain specificity is very important as well as... Sure. So lactobacillus would be the species... I'll take everyone back to like sixth grade bio.

Give us an example real quick.

KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ (29:59.118)

Hi guys, I'm going to interrupt this episode for a brief announcement. As you may or may not know, I started a community for females, by females, and it's a female longevity optimization community. This is a place that you can connect with like-minded women. We are all here to support each other, and there's a variety of different benefits to being a member. You get a monthly Ask Me Anything, so submit your questions and I'll answer them directly. We also have an entire library of courses on

all of the important components of longevity such as labs, nutrition, exercise, sleep optimization, longevity optimization protocols that I'm doing along with real time updates to my personal protocols. There are so many benefits of being a member of the community. We'll also be doing in person live events here in California and virtual events for anyone that can't attend. But if you're interested in joining the community, I would absolutely love to see you there and I will include a link in the show notes.

Lactobacillus would be the genera. Lactobacillus plantera would planterum would be this species and then lactobacillus planterum.

five, five, four, six, like depending on who strain it is, would be the strain. So a lot of people only say the species and they are not specific about the strain and two strains of the same species can have opposite effects in the same body. And then the last piece which I was mentioning is like, the definition is, can have an impact on the, has an impact on the host or benefits the host.

means that in human clinical research, a specific strain in this dose has an impact on the human host that's measured, ideally published, ideally peer-reviewed, but that's obviously the definition, it doesn't say that. A prebiotic, which also ISAP, which is the International Society of Probiotics and Prebiotics is the kind of governing body internationally of these definitions. And a prebiotic kind of can be defined in a couple of different ways, but the easiest way to think about it is that a prebiotic, which could be

ARA KATZ (32:10.67)

again, like a compound from plants that's isolated and then put into some sort of supplementation or can just be, you know, consumed through diet, is either a food substrate. So think about it as simply like just food for good bacteria to thrive and grow and proliferate or a compound, as I was saying earlier, that bacteria use to metabolize to make something else.

on it, okay?

A symbiotic is there's kind of two different types of symbiotics. There's one where the probiotic and the prebiotic just exist together. They're called synergists, that's called complementary. So they're taken together and they each have specific impacts and biological functions, but they're not necessarily like working together. And then there's what's called synergistic symbiotics, which is when...

Probiotics and prebiotics are actually selected and formulated because they actually together work to do something specific in the human body. And then postbiotics are really, and the definition of them in the consumer landscape is used fairly loosely, but it's kind of the, there's two ways of thinking about it. Some people refer to the term more from the dead organism.

Because even dead microbes can have some signal, they've seen some signaling effect from even a dead microbe moving through the GI tract or having an impact depending on where it's being applied. But typically a postbiotic is what the microbe made. So for example, like we were talking about earlier, like butyrate, for example, is kind of considered a postbiotic. So something that microbes can make. So post, think about it as like something post-life. So something that...

ARA KATZ (34:00.098)

the microbe created or metabolized. Yeah, course, absolutely. Now I say all that, and then when you look at like in the United States, especially, these terms are used in wild ways and often really indiscriminately and with very little data to support them that would satisfy the ISAP definitions, for example. But those are what they technically mean.

Amazing. Well, thank you.

KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ (34:25.515)

on it. Well, yeah, thank you for that. So when you were developing seed, you and the team were developing seed, kind of like walk us through that process. Like obviously the goal was to, I'm assuming, optimize a micro or got microbiome function, right? And how did you guys get to doing that?

So when we started SEED, think, actually we started SEED to reinvent infant formula, actually. interesting. We actually really started SEED to think about the optimization of that early window of development. That's where our name had come from. We also, course, I mean, I would say that we started it with the vision to really optimize the microbiome at every stage of life. But we really started knowing that the formula would take the longest. And that has informed a lot of our actually early, like, infant

probiotic work that is underway and ongoing. But where we started was, how can we create the most compelling answer to why would I take a probiotic every single day, even as a healthy adult? So that was kind of the design framing that we gave ourselves for our first product, which is DSO-1, which is now the number one probiotic in the United States, which is crazy. Crazy to think. Yeah, no, mean, it's, mean, it's, it's,

I mean, you are just crushing it.

ARA KATZ (35:40.588)

I think part of it is, of course, because of what I'm about to explain in terms of the origination story of DSO-1, which came from, as I said, that question. also looked at, were, know, a lot of the field looks and is obsessed with kind of composition, which means like which microbes and somehow you're gonna like, you're missing some and you're gonna put some back, which is actually not how microbiome works. We very early on were much more interested in function.

which is what are they doing? Because not everyone's, no one's microbiome, what you learn from that human microbiome project and most of science today is no one's microbiome is the same, not one person's. And it changes and it's dynamic and it's an ecosystem, so it's constantly changing to some, within some degree of itself, depending on disruptions. And so what we said was, what,

because we look at function, we are also one of the earliest to think about genomic diversity. And we always, and I know my co-founder's hypothesis was genomic diversity was more important in thinking about how it was going to be applicable across a really large, broad, heterogeneous population. And so I'll break that down a little bit. When we said to ourselves, how could we create a product that didn't require personalization, but could be...

have impact and efficacy across a huge diversity of people and different microbiomes. It wasn't about like just, yes, we have a lot of strains, but it wasn't putting them in as if we were kind of somehow replacing what somebody's missing. It was looking at what are these, what are they doing? And we have the most genomically diverse, this DSO-1 is the most genomically diverse probiotic that's sold today.

And that's part of why our hypothesis is that's part of why it has such broad efficacy across such a large population, a large diverse population, because it doesn't matter what microbiome you have. Probiotics work by moving through your GI system and carrying out very specific functions. And so that's it's a bit of a misunderstanding of how probiotics like mechanistically work. Sometimes they're just signaling to other human cells. Sometimes they signal to other microbes. Sometimes they're

ARA KATZ (37:59.956)

know, working on different axes. So for example, they'll signal like a number of our strains come out of, two of our strains come out of like the work that was specifically looking at dampening the inflammatory response on the gut-skin axis as an example. So it's very similar to like, people are always like, well, don't my probiotics need to be personalized? And our answer to that was not if you, I mean, of course, for certain applications in the future and certain conditions and diseases, of course there'll be.

that kind of customization and personalization and that's coming and there are certain examples of that even today. But to take something on a daily basis, we believe that it was much more about function and was much more about genomic diversity. And it was about looking at multiple biological functions and saying, how could you put this kind of all of these GI health, gut barrier, integrity, looking at the gut-skin axis, looking at cardiovascular health.

looking at gut immune function and put that all into one product. And that was really like very important to us. And then of course, was then the next piece was how can you deliver that and get that like the majority of that payload of probiotics through the GI system and into the colon. And that was our technology, have a capsule technology called BioCAP technology, which houses our probiotic capsule inside of, as I was saying earlier,

the prebiotic capsule. And the prebiotic is very interesting. Not only does that compound from pomegranate, that puna calgon, shield and help retain moisture, shield from heat and oxygen, but it also is part of what breaks down along the GI tract and gets fermented by microbes also along the GI tract, which is then, again, as I said, it's producing ureolithin A, but also other positive benefits.

And then the, and we have the data for this, the inner capsule of microbes is then delivered directly into the colon. And so the first was the most genomically diverse formulation, looking at various organ systems and biological activity. I think when we started SEED, most people were only thinking about probiotics for just like pooping, which of course is one of the best things about DSO-1 that people will talk about. But obviously we wanted to look much more holistically at systemic health. That was the formulation. The second was...

ARA KATZ (40:19.458)

capsule delivery technology, and then the third was science. So he'll do go do double-blind placebo randomized control trials and publish in top journals and work with some of the greater and best KOLs, best scientists and researchers working in the space to understand and characterize this formulation, looking at various aspects of human biology and making sure that we really satisfied that last part.

of the definition, which is, confers a benefit to the human host. And so, you in many ways we took, as I said, that kind of biopharma approach and also really wanted to ensure that we could answer that question. Because, you know, supplementation scientists, I think, particularly the scientific community, kind of have maybe a little less now, but have always looked down on supplementation, I think, partially because there's very little science sometimes, but also, you know, because there's sometimes not a lot of rationale for why a healthy individual would take something on a daily basis.

And I think we really wanted to answer that question because there's nobody living in the built environment who doesn't, we were just talking about that earlier, who's not exposed to some aspect of disruptions on a daily basis, no matter how healthy you are. Just walking through an urban environment, you're gonna be exposed to things and compounds, whether or not you can eat as healthy as you want. You get on an airplane, you travel, you get an infection once in a while, you have antibiotics once in a while. These things just happen.

And so, and it's not that we're all sitting here very healthy either, which is 80 % of Americans in the US have a GI event every single week. 15 % of the United States is diagnosed with IBS. That's just diagnosed. Let alone the people who are not diagnosed. And so we're really suffering. And I think this was our answer to say, why would anyone in the general population take something on a daily basis?

That is great. I mean, I believe obviously you guys do too. Like the gut is the foundation of health because just in, you know, having a clinical practice, I've seen so many times like there are a variety of different issues, whether it be skin or energy or brain fog. Once the, know, of course not every condition, but many conditions improving once you do optimize the gut through.

ARA KATZ (42:28.754)

Yeah, I mean, not to give away some of our next products, but many things, many things, there's of course the localized impact of digestive and I think immune health, is kind of people I think kind of think know now, which is like the gut, you're right, gut is like air traffic control for the body. But you are right that like to call out things like, you know, fatigue.

know, even sleep, mean, the microbiome has its own circadian rhythm and it plays a role in your circadian rhythm, which is fascinating. They'll see, for example, that like shift workers. people who work at night or have disrupted sleep schedules or asynchronous sleep schedules, you know, on erratic sleep schedules on an ongoing basis, their microbiomes absolutely are dysbiotic, meaning like kind of like out of whack. And...

And it's really interesting. then you mentioned energy and you mentioned brain fog. mean, the gut brain access, you know, which is both along the, the vagus nerve, which is like truly the actual, actual direct physical connection, which is kind of this like two lane highway by which they speak to each other as well as their signaling that happens because the gut is creating these metabolites that circulate in your blood and then signal to the brain. it's, it, it really, I think, as I said, we'll get off this podcast and there'll be 10 new papers about all the ways that them.

the gut plays a role in our health, it is really, think, not to, like, if I could triple underline that somehow in audio, I would, because I think we don't fully, and I think particularly for women's health, just to bring it to maybe what you always speak about, we're also starting to understand what the astrabalone, which is the relationship between the gut and estrogen, and the role that the gut plays in women's health, particularly as we age.

And also, as women age, of course, even menopause, like your motility, your ability to poop. I mean, so many things, your skin change. I mean, there's many, many things that happen. But I think you're going to start to hear a lot more about the gut and women's health specifically as we move through different stages, particularly from reproductive ages into perimenopause and menopause and the changes in the gut and how that's going to become a really interesting lever for...

KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ (44:49.804)

Yeah, I could imagine. you are you recognizing anything so far like moving from traveling into perimenopause?

Well, I think from an estrogen perspective, we're looking a lot at strains that... So there's these genes, they're called the GUS2 genes in the gut that are responsible for estrogen recycling in the body. And so we're starting to look at what are some of the strains, like probiotics, that could potentially... And actually some of the strains we've found even in DSO-1 have work on this mechanism. And so I think we're starting to look at what would it look like to...

use microbes to impact aspects of what's happening during menopause that could play a role in how estrogen is, for example, is upcycled into the body or not.

Right, well I mean I'm familiar with beta glucuronidase. I have an interesting quick story. So when I went on antibiotics from the X-Plant, it was I got a first row seat of watching a gut test go from being really, really great to wiping out the gut microbiome. And when that happened, it gave the ability to, the disruption really like jacked up my beta glucuronidase, which then increased my estrogen, which then led to the first time in my entire adult life.

having any PMS symptoms, right? Because then I had estrogen dominance. And you know, I'm super blessed to be able to figure this all out, right? Because it's not super common, but I can clearly, like I saw it firsthand that got dysbiotic gut led to this excess estrogen. And it's it's so sad that like a lot of people can't get that level of granularity and understanding, but that's a really exciting area because I

ARA KATZ (46:26.306)

really exciting. then there's the gut vaginal axis. So when that happened, taking a course of antibiotics doesn't just impact your gut, it impacts your vaginal microbiome. And unlike the gut, your vaginal microbiome can't be repopulated through diet. And so it's a kind of a different approach because the gut has, there's many lifestyle factors that can impact the modulation of the gut microbiome.

you know, the vaginal microbiome is truly the opposite of the gut microbiome. The gut microbiome, as I said, is this like lush, you want this to be this kind of lush rainforest, whereas in the vaginal microbiome, you do not want any diversity. But estrogen plays a huge role in the health of the vaginal microbiome. And so when your estrogen goes out of whack in addition to antibiotics, you can have dysbiotic vaginal microbiome. And when you have a dysbiotic vaginal microbiome, which kind of just to put in layman terms is like,

kind of out of balance or not having the right microbes there. You your pH is off, the environment is off, and you're really wide open to infection, as well as other gynecological reproductive, urogenital, know, implications. And so it's really interesting because these things, we're starting to understand this like vaginal access. We're starting to understand the estrabalome, as I said, which is like the estrogen, kind of the estrogen's role in the microbiome. And we're starting to understand

the vaginal microbiome as another key lever of women's health, which I think is incredibly exciting and really one of the more frontier aspects of microbiome.

Yeah, that's so exciting. You'll have to keep us updated on that in general. And before we get into vaginal microbiome deeper, I wanna go back real quick to the DSO-1. So what are the strains or what is in there that you guys are so excited about?

ARA KATZ (48:20.568)

I mean, there's 24 different strains of probiotics, which we can list in the show notes. you can list the whole formulation. So there's 24 strains of probiotics in the inner capsule. Those are multi-species, multi-strain, and sometimes strains of the different strains of the same species, which is really that goes back to that diversity I was talking about earlier, that genomic diversity, which is really important to understand because it is part of the reason why DSO-1 is so effective.

And so different strains do different things in the body. So there's very specific strains, just to, I'll just call it a few examples, that for example, trigger the neurotransmitters, like serotonin, that trigger motility. So think awesome pooping. like motility is something that I think people don't appreciate until it's not working.

Or it get slows down for any number of reasons. I think a lot of women experience it around their periods just because like some like for a few days you can sometimes can experience You know because of because of hormones you experience, know what people refer to as period poop on and so and so There's like very specific strains from a digestive health perspective that are literally are directly related to motile neurotransmitters that actually you know trigger the

the motility so that stool can move through your GI tract easily and be expelled really easily and quickly. You're not supposed to sit on the toilet for supposed to be able to have like very fast bowel movements. So that's one example. There are other strains, as I mentioned earlier, that work on the gut skin axis. So strains that dampen that inflammatory response that can sometimes kind of express on the skin.

And then there's other strains that these actually came from originally out of a Harvard lab, that was very cool last year. The scientists that worked on these strains won the Nobel Prize. His name is Gary Ruffkin. We had originally got these from his lab because they had really high what's called like NRS2 expression. it was put in very lame in terms.

ARA KATZ (50:36.974)

really interesting from a gut barrier perspective. So gut immune functions. So we have strains that, or I should say as a whole the formulation, strains that also very specifically work on gut barrier integrity. So what they're doing is they're signaling to the tight junctions cells as they move through your GI tract. And you literally can see the tight junctions are like, you really, I'm sure we kind of joke at CIP, we say like, keep it tight. But you want your tight junction cells to be really tight because you don't want anything

you know, when your barrier is disrupted, of course, that's when things can kind of flow in and out that aren't meant to actually leave your GI tract. And so you want a really tight barrier. And so we have strains that kind of signal to those tight junction cells to stay tight.

How long does it take to repopulate or kind of like optimize a microbiome? Obviously we'll have like individual variation, bio individual, but.

Yeah. It's a great example. The microbiome can shift pretty quickly. It really, it's a shitty answer because the second part of what you said is probably more true, which is it depends on the person and it depends on the disruption. So somebody sitting in a hospital on 20 days of antibiotics is going to have a different answer than somebody who is relatively healthy, went to another country, got a

got an infection, had to take antibiotics, and then kind of came right back to kind of real life and able to be healthy again and continue to eat the way that they were. It really does depend, but I would say that the microbiome, I mean, you can see the microbiome shift within dates sometimes. So that's how dynamic it is. And so I think it's, and as I said, a really interesting aspect of health because there's really very few biomarkers, as you know, that you can shift that quickly.

ARA KATZ (52:28.748)

Yeah. That make that much of an impact on other biomarkers also.

Yeah, that's wonder.

KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ (52:33.696)

Yeah, yeah, definitely. Okay, now let's get into the vaginal microbiome. So I'm so excited you guys are doing a lot of research on this and you have a relatively, I think, new product that came out, the vaginal probiotic. So let's just talk about, yeah, basics of vaginal microbiome and how we can potentially optimize it how we also might know if there's something going wrong with the vaginal microbiome.

So as I was saying earlier, the gut, and you said it perfectly at the beginning, the gut is really complicated. You say complicated, complex, complicated. it is, we know a lot, but it's a really dense ecology that we are learning much more about every day. The vaginal microbiome is really interesting because it's the opposite. It is an ecology that is not that complex.

it you actually don't, you don't where you don't actually in its healthiest state want diversity. And where we actually know the specific microbes that should be there and that are the most protective and defensive against any any disruptions. So Dr. Jacques Revelle, who's really, I think, one of the leaders and originating scientists of the whole, he was the first NIH grant ever for for vaginal microbiome, which by the way,

was turned down a number of times because the NIH said that women wouldn't know how to swab themselves. So just to show you how research in women's health stalls from stupidity. Anyway, nonetheless, he persisted. Thank God. Yeah, totally. He would do many other things. So nonetheless, he persisted, thankfully. And 15 years of research, he built the largest vaginal microbiome strain bank at the time. Now there's others. Largest gene catalog in vaginal microbiomes. Again.

and for

ARA KATZ (54:20.834)

just to go back to what I was saying earlier, the genes matter. looking at them genomically really, really matters. He also was one of the scientists that first discovered what are called CSTs, which are community state types. And most vaginal microbiomes fall, I'll be reductive because there are some subtypes and other nuance to this, there's like four, five.

primary community state types, which just basically means that a CST-1, for example, is what we learned from looking at these types and what microbe kind of dominated or which types, like a type 3, I believe, is where there's no microbe dominating, which is actually not, as I said before, not what you want. But what he saw was that a CST-1, which is a vaginal microbiome that's dominated by Lactobacillus crispatus, that species.

I'll get to the strain part after, is the healthiest, the most protective, the most resistant to infection, HIV, HPV, BV, E. coli or UTIs, that had best reproductive outcomes, best IVF outcomes, lowest preterm birth, best urogenital outcomes, was a CST that was dominated by L. chris badus. And the reason that that's so important to understand is because, as I saying with the gut, you have so many levers you can pull.

You can be in nature, you can have a dog, you can eat really well, you can do many things, you can sleep well, you can do many things. Most of the things you do for just being healthy are typically also really good for your microbiome. Vaginal microbiome, if you don't have the right microbes in there, there's no way to get them in there. And I think that's really one of the key takeaways for vaginal microbiome, and that was the basis of, since almost the beginning of seed.

basis of one of our major R &D programs for the vaginal microbiome, which was how could you, for women who are not a type 1 and are more susceptible to infection, which our preterm birth rates in the United States are crazy. 54 % of women experience some sort of urogenital vaginal health problem every single year. And these are problems, just to take UTIs as an example, it's a top reason for a telemed visit in the United States.

ARA KATZ (56:43.736)

These are things that the antibiotics to our conversation earlier are no longer working for. So you have women who are just in like cycles and cycles of recurrence and suffering. I you could just go, you could spend three minutes on Reddit and you will see that women like seriously suffer. BV, mean, BV, women suffer for decades with BV. I mean, there really are in some cases and it's a whole other podcast episode as to why there's no.

solutions and innovations in women's health for some of these things, and why there's plenty for erectile dysfunction, but that's a different episode. But there was, at least until we launched this product, and many others are now coming, and there's great science happening in the whole field of vaginal microbiome, there's no way to reintroduce lactobacillus crispatis unless you put it there. And so very similar to DSO-1.

and using Dr. Ravel's work and his gene catalog and all of the 15 years of research that he had done and the 3,000 plus women who had participated and obviously contributed their samples to be able to even know what we know today. We said, very similar to DS01, what is the, if we were making a t-shirt, the question would have been, what is the one size fits all?

where we could take very specific strains of L-chrispatus, Lactobacillus chrispatus, and create a formulation that we believe, no matter what your vaginal microbiome, starting vaginal microbiome is, we could convert that vaginal microbiome into a CST1. And that took looking at their genomes and kind of looking, as I said, to create that like what we call pan-genome coverage, which is a fancy way, as I said, of saying it's a one-size-fits-all.

That's amazing.

ARA KATZ (58:33.402)

which is we found three strains that gave us the most together, gave us the most amount of genomic coverage. So that no matter who was taking it, we had the best chance of being able to change and optimize that vaginal microbiome and make L-chrispata as the dominant microbe. And then in our clinical trial, which was really exciting, it was presented at IDSAG last year, which is like really prominent, like obstetric gynecological conference.

We were able to demonstrate in a double-blind placebo control trial and publish now that over 90, we were able over 90 % of the time to modulate and change a vaginal microbiome into that lactobacillus crispatus dominant, basically optimal vaginal microbiome, which is really exciting and sustain that through multiple months, which is really another important kind of point to it. And so that was, again, it's a great example of going back to my,

my kind of pivot moment in 2015, a beautiful example of how you can take frontier science and like really translate that into extraordinary human impact because we now, and it's really important because it gets us solutions like the SO1, which is our vaginal symbiotic, that really gets us out of that mindset of symptom-based treatment and reacting to problems. you can say, I can do this,

I can use these vaginal tablets and I can actually maintain an ecology that actually is the most protective. It's like, you know, it's kind of like bolstering, you your vaginal microbiomes, like your vaginal, your vagina's immune system. And so when you have lactobacillus crispatis as a dominant microbe, that is the CST that in Dr. Ravel's work, you were able to show was the most protective, defensive, but also supporting of the best reproductive outcomes.

the best gynecological outcomes, the best urogenital outcomes. And so that's really like, we kind of say it's source versus symptom. And that's obviously an incredibly exciting thing because it's a future for women with no side effects. You're not treating something. You're actually just like tilling the soil, right? And making it the healthiest environment so that those other problems actually can't happen. And I think that's like just a really important, I think that's part of

ARA KATZ (01:00:56.334)

If there was a take-home message about the future of probiotics and why we care so much that people use the term correctly and we understand it is because probiotics and other applications like what I'm talking about with vaginal, you know, our vaginal symbiotic will be one of the future pathways or modalities for fixing and really like preventing some of the conditions that today are what we kind of would call like on net needs.

Yeah, wow, I mean, that's so powerful. I feel like I need like a bunch to just have and then I can give them to women as gifts.

I just put on you all day. I can't handle it out like candy.

Yeah, I mean, that's like what we need to be doing. going back to how long the results lasted, because I'm kind of thinking like, mean, prophylactically, like I should just be, I don't, I'm very fortunate that I don't have any issues with like, you know, vaginal disuse in general, but how long did that last after using it? Because what would the ideal protocol be for?

So as you know, unless we wanted to fund the most expensive clinical trial in the world, we went through three months, is very important. We went through two additional menstrual cycles. And the reason that's very important to understand is that menstruation, a lot of women don't know this, is that one of the single biggest disruptors of the vaginal microbiome. So blood, obviously, changes your pH. So you'll see women who are non-CST1 on charts. They get their period.

ARA KATZ (01:02:22.786)

and then their entire microbiome goes haywire. That's why a lot of women get infections right after their period, actually. And so if you see the CST-1, you see the vaginal microbiome take a dip during menstruation, and you see it rebound immediately back to stasis. so again, we have it through those months. There's not really a reason to believe that, and maybe I should just stop and just tell you what the protocol is with VSO-1, because it's kind of an important way of understanding and the way we designed the product.

Month one is what we call a reset. And that's six tablets. And it's taken on day one, four, seven, 14, 21, and 28. So it's basically, you start it right after your last day of bleeding. And then you do this kind of like intensive for one month. After that, it's just two tablets a month on day one and 14. So it's literally two tablets a month basically once you've done that kind of bigger reset.

Okay.

ARA KATZ (01:03:20.95)

A lot of women, don't have, I wanna be careful, we don't have data for this, but a lot of women use VSO1, like they'll have a disruption or infection, they'll take antibiotics and then they kind of do the reset again. Or I think women, you know your bodies very well, and you just like, we have a lot of women who just like do the reset when they're feeling off, maybe twice a year, three times a year. There's a lot of things in longevity that you kind of don't do every day, but you do like kind of once in a while. And I think there's some women who have just anecdotally, as I said.

Like, as I said, we didn't do a long-term trial on this specifically, but we'll use that reset intermittently and then just use the two tablets a month on an ongoing basis.

Well, that's so helpful, thank you. Going back or just like further discussing women's microbiomes, vaginal microbiomes, both of them, I don't think we quite got to finish. in terms of like moving throughout, know, the perimenopause, endomenopause, what are the main shifts that we're seeing? And then are there any shifts in the vaginal microbiome?

Absolutely, because so estrogen plays a really important role in the vaginal microbiome because estrogen is has plays a big role in like the presence of glycogen and glycogen is a food switch that's on the epithelial layer is a important food source for the lactobacillus to be able to thrive and so when estrogen goes down glycogen goes down and when there's no glycogen

there's no food source for lactobacillus. And so that's why you hear a lot about like dryness. You also have a lot of women who are entering perimenopause or menopause who get UTIs all the time. And that's partially because their vaginal immune system is not thriving. so that is absolutely the vaginal microbiome changes. actually, just to go back to early life, just because you asked the question of where our gut microbiome comes from.

ARA KATZ (01:05:16.568)

there's a lot of unknowns around like where these lactobacillus actually, or where these microbes first even come from. It's unclear because they're not really, right when the child is born, you'll see microbes in the vagina. And that's just through birth and through you know, through exposure. They go away because there's no estrogen. There's no food source for them. They go almost entirely away until puberty, until there's estrogen again.

which is really interesting. So it's very unclear. It's a great question and it's one that like even Dr. Ravel doesn't have like a great answer to. But we do know that is when the vaginal microgram kind of like begins again in terms of its function. And then it changes again, like it doesn't change, but like obviously during reproduction and prenatal period, you see some shifts.

Where do they come from?

ARA KATZ (01:06:12.942)

postpartum, you see a huge shift in vaginal or your estrogen like plummets, right? So you see a huge shift in postpartum, which is why a lot of women also, again, can sometimes get infections like UTIs, et cetera, postpartum. And you have to remember, go back to that stat also that I said about like 85 % of women by the third trimester in the United States have taken an antibiotic. So not only have they wiped out their gut microbiome, they've wiped out their vaginal microbiome. And yet the vaginal microbiome is critical to healthy birth.

So, you know, so we, it's not just, you know, you can talk biology and evolution, but there's things that we're exposed to that are also really deeply impacting, you know, the health of this ecology during these periods. And then, as I said, during perimenopause and menopause, have these estrogen changes. And then, of course, that's changing the availability of the food sources that then lactobacillus can or can't thrive in. we're starting to look at the vaginal microbiome and menopause, and that has impacts, of course, for producing...

you know, some of the acids that are important for like hydration, which is why you see a lot of women who have in menopause who are experiencing vaginal dryness as an example.

Well, I'm so excited about this product and we're going to do, I'm going to do a little bit of vaginal mygiasm testing and then I'm going to do the new seed probiotic and then we'll do a retest. So I can't wait to do that. And yeah, I'm just so excited about the products that you're making. I they're so beautiful and you know, great. Yes, I do. So that's also a great draw. Well, it's been such a pleasure to have you and I do have a code that I'm going to include in the show notes.

I know you like good design.

KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ (01:07:47.694)

think it's Caleb Barnes 25, but we'll make sure that that's in the show notes. And yeah, I mean, it's just, it's been such a blessing taking the product and I'm excited to see where you guys take the science.

So thank you. I appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you.

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