Episode 72: What Color Is Your Microbiome Cloud?
On this Straight From The Gut episode, Andrea Wien and BIOHM CEO, Afif Ghannoum, kick off the episode dreaming up an app that could change the lives of parents everywhere. They also discuss intuitive eating, the pros and cons of Accutane, the color of your microbiome aura, different types of guts, and a new therapy that uses the AIDS virus to cure kids with baby bubble disease.
Questions? Ideas? Email us at themicrobiomereport@biohmhealth.com or reach out on Instagram @DreEats or @BIOHMHealth.
Mentioned On This Show:
- Episode 66: Viruses Are Friends, Not Foes
- BIOHM’s website (Promo Code: POD15)
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Transcript:
Andrea Wien: Welcome to the Microbiome Report powered by BIOHM Health. I'm your host, Andrea Wien. And today is another Straight From the Gut episode with a Afif Ghannoum, the CEO of BIOHM. If you are new to these episodes, these are ones where Afif and I get on, we do a little what if scenario around the world of the microbiome, and then talk about some studies that we have found interesting or articles that we've come across in the last few weeks.
This episode gets into a bunch of different, very wide ranging studies that were done. Very interesting. Maybe one of them sounds a little woo, woo to you. It's about microbiome auras, but I promise you it's very, very interesting. Give the episode a listen and let us know if you have any comments or feedback if you've come across any studies or things that you would want us to talk about on the show. And don't forget, you can save 15% off any product on BIOHM's website, the code POD15. You can also find show notes for this episode on the website at BIOHMhealth.com/pages/podcast. Without further ado, let's get to the show.
Afif, hey, how you doing?
Afif Ghannoum: Good. How's it going?
Andrea Wien: Pretty good. Pretty good. We have some really interesting stuff to talk about today, but I had a what if moment the other day, and people might laugh because this is how it came about. So my kid has been licking everything, which I'm sure most parents can relate to, but lately he's been really into the bottom of his shoes, which is just lovely. And I was thinking, what if we had a Shazam for microbes? So it's like, okay, my kid's licking the bottom of his shoe. Is there anything really harmful on there? Or, yeah, what's in there?
And kind of breaks it down, like, okay, this amount of E. Coli. It's like, he'll be fine. His stomach acid will kill it. But maybe you shouldn't let him lick the left shoe. But even just like broader than that, wouldn't that be such an interesting feature to have? To be able to carry that around with you? Like what microbes are here? Is this something I want to be picking up?
Afif Ghannoum: Conceptually that does exist. Not as turnkey to your point as you'd want it to be. Two challenges, one for something like that where you're like, well, what's on the bottom of this? The problem is you have to analyze every germ and be like, these are the germs we found. But if you're really worried about, like you said E. Coli or some heavy duty bad guys, you could probably make a wand or something that does a rapid sort of test for like a few specific, really bad organisms. But yeah, that would actually be awesome. I remember one time kids really wanted to go to Chuck E. Cheese of all places. And I turned around, and I went with my sister and her kids, and my niece is sucking the carpet in Chuck E. Cheese to the point that there's a giant red or not red, a wet circle around the carpet. And I'm like, oh my God, that's awful. So I think that you would sell a lot of those at Chuck E. Cheese.
Andrea Wien: Yeah. Oh gosh. Chuck E. Cheese was like one of those places that I feel like it was just a cesspool. Every once in a while, there would be an outbreak of, I don't know, some type of horrible conjunctivitis or something from Chuck E. Cheese.
Afif Ghannoum: It was one of those things when we were kids, like in the 80s, it seemed amazing. And now you look at here, like is this the same place?
Andrea Wien: Yeah. Gross. Gross. The other thing I was thinking of too though, is what if... there was a study done years and years ago where they gave kids a bunch of different foods and then let them.... they were babies, I think it was like six month old babies, seven months. And let them choose what they would eat over the course of, I forget how long, maybe a couple of weeks. And at first, the kids did just go for the sugary, easy carb stuff. But then over time they started to choose things that their body was deficient in. So they were also doing all these bloodworks and things on them during the course of the study. And they started to notice like, oh, when the kids need vitamin C, they'll eat more of the whatever. Or if they need more iron, they'll go for the liver.
And so they really started to be able to intuit what their bodies needed based on what was in front of them. And so then I was thinking, what if our kids not only explore with their mouth, because that's obviously what babies are doing when they're eating all this stuff... but my son's almost two now so he's a little bit past that phase of mouthing everything. What if he's licking the bottom of his shoe because he's like, when I do that, I feel better because I am getting some type of microbe that I'm deficient in?
Afif Ghannoum: I don't even... maybe. Yeah. Well, again, we've talked about this before that we've gone from one utter extreme to the other as far as germ control in especially our kids. So I'm a big believer, it's pretty hard for kids to even, like you said, eating off of a floor for or shoe, is it really that bad for them? I don't know. You know what I mean? That is kind of interesting. I always think of things like iron when you say that, like actually makes them feel better. But yeah. Wild to think.
Andrea Wien: I think we really are born with this intuitive sense of what our body needs. And then as we grow, we get talked out of it or we talk ourselves out of it, or society tells us we should eat this or do that. And we lose touch with that. And I think that is one of the nice things about what's happening. I mean, the wellness industry obviously has a lot of issues, but I think that connection to our body again, and listening to what we intuitively know to be right and tapping into that, I think that's important. And I think that's something that I can see that he does. Right?
Afif Ghannoum: Well, I literally have been struggling with us the last couple of months. So to your point, and a lot of this stuff, it's not even overt, you just internalize it and you really don't realize it. And I started this thing called Heart 75, where it's like, you work out two times a day, you don't do alcohol. It's more of a mental challenge than anything. But what I found was that two thirds of the day would pass and I would be so tired. And I was eating salads, lead this and I was avoiding carbs.
And I, for years, avoided rice and potatoes, anything. Because I just think oh, I'm going to feel bloated. I'm going to feel gross. Someone had said, "Oh, just throw sweet potato into your lunch." So I did that and I found these awesome like Tai packages that have rice and curry on them. But they're pre-packaged so I know calorically what's in them. Night and day. It was funny to think I've literally avoided this source of foods and thought these are not good for me. Just relearning to trust my body saying like, listen, I feel like I need to eat this, really is amazing.
Andrea Wien: I think about, I was a big Friends fan and this is a funny episode, but it's true. I see it in clients too. So Phoebe, when she's pregnant, she was a hardcore vegan on the show and then she gets pregnant and all she wants to eat is hamburgers. And so, in the episode Joey tries to go vegetarian so it equals out. She'll eat the meat and he won't. Obviously it doesn't work, but it's the same thing, right? I have a pregnant client right now and she says like, "I really want to be able to eat X, but you know, my doctor says this." And I'm like, your body is telling you, we have to listen to our body. Of course always listen to your doctors, and question them if you feel like something is off. But I'm not going to ever overrule a doctor's orders, but you should also listen to your body.
Your body knows best. And our little people, their bodies know best. And I think too, now we're getting a little bit off topic, but when we have kids clear their plates or eat everything, they're not really listening to their body telling them when they're full.
Afif Ghannoum: Right.
Andrea Wien: And then what does that turn into, right? This lifelong disordered eating or obesity or whatever it might be. So I think it's important that we understand that kids know themselves better than we know them, in terms of knowing their bodies and tap into that and support that instead of arguing against it.
Afif Ghannoum: Totally.
Andrea Wien: All right. So another article that I came across, I have two really fun ones actually. So there was an article in Newsweek and the title is, Your Microbiome Extends in a Microbial Cloud Around You like an Aura. So essentially all of the microbes on your skin and your body, they're projected out. And let me see if I can find how far. I wanted to say it was like six feet around you. So the air surrounding 11 different people in a sanitized room, they've spent four hours in a room together. Yeah. Basically they found that these people were throwing off their bacteria all around themselves, which sounds disgusting, but also is so interesting. And you start to think, when people are talking about auras and energy, getting a little bit woo, woo, but is it this? Is it that actually we are having an interaction with the energy because there's a microbial component that's going out around us> I don't even know where to start with this discussion, but it's like, how cool is that?
Afif Ghannoum: I start thinking about almost your microbiome fingerprint, you know what I mean? Can you actually track people? Have you ever heard of... this is again a little bit of a sidewinder off of this, but have you ever heard of these things where they're like, oh, there's a dog that can detect cancer?
Andrea Wien: Yes.
Afif Ghannoum: And you can just smell it. And it's like, I wonder if that, 100 years from now is where we end up where it's again, this mechanisms going on in our body, literally we can detect. You know what I mean? And it makes sense because we know on the infectious disease side that you definitely will project out viruses. We've obviously been talking about with COVID and stuff. So it makes sense you would project out other organisms that are native to you, but I wonder how unique of an identifier it is to you.
Andrea Wien: Right. Well, this is saying that it's incredibly identifiable, even to the point where you could use it as a fingerprint for security reasons. This article gets into that. And then, well, what happens if you take a round of antibiotics? Is it altering it in that sense enough that your devices wouldn't recognize you or whatever? So I think it's pretty identifiable.
Afif Ghannoum: That's wild.
Andrea Wien: They were able to tell the difference between individual peoples, they're calling them cloud signatures. And they were also able to identify if it was a man or a woman in the chamber because the microbes in the air changed around her. So they were more lactobacillus because they are intuiting that it was because of the vaginal aspect.
Afif Ghannoum: Wow.
Andrea Wien: Crazy.
Afif Ghannoum: That is wild.
Andrea Wien: Yes. So obviously we always link to all of these in our show notes, but I'll definitely put this one up. And then you think too, to your point about dogs being able to smell something, it also happens with a stroke person, there's all these other or like seizures. So is that like a quick shift in the microbial makeup of someone?
Afif Ghannoum: Right. What are they actually detecting?
Andrea Wien: Right.
Afif Ghannoum: Because I've always heard it in the context of smell, but is it smell or is it actually micro organisms they're picking up?
Andrea Wien: Yeah. It's very, very, very interesting.
Afif Ghannoum: I feel like we're going between a deep discussion and a discussion you have after buying stuff at Spencer's Gifts.
Andrea Wien: Yeah. Well, the whole article it was just, I saw it and I'm like, this cannot be real. And then it's like a very legit study with Martin Blaser who was a very reputable scientist. He actually was not involved in this study, but he is talking about it. He says just like the detectives today are dusting a room to look for fingerprints, maybe in the future they'll take a big vacuum and see what microbes are there. It's certainly not tomorrow, but it might be possible.
Afif Ghannoum: That's wild.
Andrea Wien: Yeah. All right. The next one I pulled up that I thought was interesting. A lot of the times we will say that microbiome and gut health is tied to so many different aspects. And Mind, Body, Green did an article with the five gut types. And I just liked how they were broken down. And I think it's a good way to think about it. So I'm just going to read through them. So the first one was the digestive gut. This was an issue with like bloating, constipation, IBS, SIBO, candida, heartburn, GERD, nausea, those types of things. The second one was the immune gut. So these are more skin breakouts, auto-immunity, allergies, asthma, sinus congestion, and frequent colds. The third one was the toxic gut. So this is mast cell activation, chemical sensitivities, mold, Lyme disease. This is also like the nothing helps people, like I keep doing stuff and nothing seems to be helping. Then they have hormonal and metabolic gut. So-
Afif Ghannoum: Sorry to interrupt, but what's the context of this? Is this their vibe around different guts or is it based on science? What are they using to categorize these?
Andrea Wien: So it was a functional medicine specialist is what they're called, that basically has been able to put people in their practice anecdotally into one of these categories. And it just gives a place for them to start in terms of treatment. So if someone's exhibiting symptoms of more of a hormonal gut, what is the treatment look like in terms of healing the gut versus someone that's dealing with constipation? So that was the context of-
Afif Ghannoum: Got it.
Andrea Wien: It says you can certainly experience symptoms from all gut types. However, your primary type is what I use to identify the body's default tendency. It's so funny. So you had me download this plugin called Toucan. And so it changes [crosstalk 00:14:33] some of the words in my thing to Spanish. It is amazing. If anyone is trying to learn Spanish, get Toucan, is a little plugin that will change some of the words on every webpage into Spanish. And sometimes they don't know them. So I had to roll over your body's default tendency [inaudible 00:14:51].
Afif Ghannoum: Well Toucan, not to go into the languages now, but it is super cool. Basically, you're reading an article and five words will change, right? And the idea is that's how you actually learn through osmosis. And, yeah. It's funny though, once in a while, I have a DocuSign up or something and it's changed a couple of words. I'm like, why is it? Oh, Toucan.
Andrea Wien: Yes. The same thing happened. I actually took a screenshot of something and sent it to your dad recently. And he was like... it was the BIOHM gut test that I did for Miles, my son. And he was like, "Oh my gosh, we have to talk to the BIOHM team because some of these words are in Spanish. They shouldn't be in Spanish." And I was like, no, no, no, no. But you've told me about that. It's not, the BIOHM test is fine, I promise. So funny.
Anyway, the fourth one was hormonal and metabolic gut. And then the fifth one was brain gut. So anxiety, depression, ADHD. And I just thought it was a nice breakdown of, when we talk about every symptom can be related to gut health, this was like, okay. Yes, that's true. But you probably have dominance in one of these different types of guts, if you're having issues. And it was just the first time I've seen it broken down like this, really. And I appreciated the article. I think it can be helpful for some people.
Afif Ghannoum: Yeah and we have definitely seen this, when we do talk about the microbiome is a fingerprint, a lot of times we assume everybody's going to have absolutely everything unique to them. And we've actually seen in our testing database that it is more similar to this. We don't use these names, but that people do cluster. So, there's a lot to this being about feel, like you're saying a functional medicine physician saying, listen, this is how I'm seeing people divide up. So, a lot of times it comes down to like, what's actually useful to help you get to where you need to go, right? Because 99% of time, you don't actually care what's in your gut. You want to know, I don't feel well or I'm stressed and if it does have a tie to your gut, you want to understand what you can do.
Andrea Wien: Well, and I think too, when we start talking and people don't understand that so many things can be tied to their gut, to have a framework like this, where it's like, well, no, no. A lot of people have this issue and they are seeing hormonal or they're seeing acne, let's say, and that could be tied to gut. And these are the reasons why, and here's that bucket that you might fall into. And it gives you places to start exploring. Rather than jumping to like, well, I'm just going to go take Accutane and try to tame the symptom, you know? So it just gives people another holding on point, if that makes sense.
Afif Ghannoum: Accutane class of 1996, by the way.
Andrea Wien: Hey man, me too. I was Accutane, let's see, class of 2010. And it didn't work fully. Like it did and then it didn't. And I actually am working with a client right now who came to me and said, "I'm going on Accutane again." And I said, no, no, no, no. We can work on this. And she's 23. It's like, no, let's just get a couple things under control. I said, "Give me a month. Give me a month and if you're not seeing any improvement, we can talk about it." But I know that she will. So it's just, don't mask the symptom because it's just going to pop up elsewhere. And it might not pop up in the form of acne, right? But if you're not healing that underlying root cause of why that acne is there in the first place, it'll pop up somewhere else. Auto immune disease or another type of skin thing or cancer. So it's not the answer to just try to tamp down the one symptom.
I love Josh Gitalis, who we've had on a couple of times, he always says that symptoms are the language of the body. So that's your body trying to talk to you. So don't just try to silence it. Try to tune in and listen.
Afif Ghannoum: Well, as a 16 year old taking it, I would do it again.
Andrea Wien: You would?
Afif Ghannoum: It worked for me. I didn't have-
Andrea Wien: But now, knowing what you know now, if you could have someone come in and say, it is your gut health and it's this, let's do it from a holistic perspective.
Afif Ghannoum: Well, I will say this. I would not do it as a woman because there is super strong side effects for women. When you're talking about a 23 year old, I'm actually surprised they would even consider it because there's such serious side effects if there's pregnancy and stuff.
Andrea Wien: Yeah. You have to go on birth control. You have to go on birth control. And you have to sign a waiver that if you do somehow end up getting pregnant, that you'll terminate the pregnancy.
Afif Ghannoum: Yeah. It's like severe deform-... it's a very bad situation. So, and again this is many moons ago now, but I don't remember having any issues, but it worked.
Andrea Wien: Well. I would still caution anyone who's thinking about going on Accutane to look for the root cause, even though it might work.
Afif Ghannoum: Agreed. Fair enough.
Andrea Wien: Thank you.
Afif Ghannoum: 16 year old Afif would not agree, but.
Andrea Wien: I'm actually surprised that your dad knowing so much about the microbiome wouldn't think, oh, maybe there's a gut component here.
Afif Ghannoum: Well this is like, jeez, we had just moved to Cleveland.
Andrea Wien: Yeah.
Afif Ghannoum: This is a long time ago.
Andrea Wien: He was still early in his research too.
Afif Ghannoum: Totally.
Andrea Wien: Because you're so old now.
Afif Ghannoum: Yeah. I'm 2000 years old now. I had a birthday the other day and my daughter who is four, how old do you think I am? She goes, "62." I'm like, ugh.
Andrea Wien: You're like, no, try again.
Afif Ghannoum: Not quite.
Andrea Wien: That's funny. All right. We have another one. So just because we're all in this world of viruses now, and we just did a whole episode on the virome with Dr. Keesha that's really interesting. It's just a mini episode, a quick 15 minute one so people should go back and listen to. But this popped up and another virus that has garnered so much attention, obviously for the last 40 years, the AIDS virus. And they've found that when used in gene therapy, they were able to use the AIDS virus to fix bubble baby disease. And bubble baby disease is that condition where literally the child's immune system doesn't work. And so they put them in a bubble, like a sterilized bubble, so nothing can hurt them, which is obviously a horrible way to live. And so they've found that by altering the AIDS virus, they were able to give an immune system. It was 48 babies and toddlers in this study and all but two of them were able to go on and have normal immune systems and healthy lives.
Afif Ghannoum: When I hear things like that, first of all, I can't even wrap my mind around that. Dealing with that as like a parent, as a child. But yeah, again, we say this a lot, but we're in a nano second of our medical history. Realizing how all these things impact each other, you know? So it really is always, to me, eye-opening of how things, like you said AIDS, which I feel our entire adulthood has been just petrifyingly scary. The idea that it actually could be used for good, isn't that wild?
Andrea Wien: Yeah.
Afif Ghannoum: It's just amazing.
Andrea Wien: I mean, obviously I think overall people would prefer the AIDS virus didn't exist, but it is interesting when you start to look at, okay, how can we work with these things? So basically how they did this, they removed some of the patient's blood, used a disabled AIDS virus to insert a healthy version of the gene that the kids need and return the cells through an IV. So it was pretty minimally invasive. It's just wild. That's like, the answers right there. And who was the researcher that thought, Hmm, let's try to inject some disabled AIDS into these kids and see if that works?
Afif Ghannoum: Exactly. That's what's amazing about science is, that's where the innovation is. Talking about thinking outside the box of utilizing something. But it's like this mRNA for COVID vaccine. That was utilizing this thing that had been around for decades conceptually. And they're like, well, the hand was forced to find something quickly. It's just amazing when they actually push what they can do, you know?
Andrea Wien: Yeah, absolutely. And you wonder like how much of this was stumbled on by accident? I was thinking about too, the researcher who's brand new to the field who has no preconceived notions of what will and won't work and just maybe suggest something off the cuff and then it does work. That's so exciting. So the title of this one is Food Supplements that Alter Gut Bacteria Could Cure Malnutrition. So essentially they're saying that to save starving children, healthcare workers obviously have used food to help malnourished children, but now they're finding that feeding their gut bacteria might be as important or more important than feeding their stomachs. So they have started to develop foods that have different microbial properties that help their body unlock the nutrients of what they're eating.
Afif Ghannoum: So they're basically, whether it's probiotic or not, adding that to the food? Is that just as simple as it sounds?
Andrea Wien: Yeah. It says to combat malnutrition, health clinics often administer pre-packaged ready to use supplementary food, which is easy to store and turns into goo after eating. But malnourished children's health improvements are rarely permanent. So basically they don't have what they need in their gut to be able to have this be long lasting.
Afif Ghannoum: Got it.
Andrea Wien: And so now they're developing these foods that really help to feed the gut bacteria and grow the microbiome. And then these malnutrition supplements and all those types of things are more effective.
Afif Ghannoum: Yeah. It makes sense. It's almost like if you have depleted soil in a farm, it doesn't matter what you put after a while, it's just not going to grow. So conceptually, it's kind of the same idea. You've got to rebuild that ecosystem to be able to get all the short chain fatty acids, all the metabolomes off those organisms. So, that's pretty interesting.
Andrea Wien: Yeah. It is interesting. And I think this is the type of stuff that we'll just start to see more of as we start to understand. Because I'm sure for a long time people were feeding kids food and then they're like, well, why aren't they getting better? Why isn't this working? I guess you could probably liken it too, to like celiac disease. So like the Celia in celiac disease, the actual things in your small intestine that pull in the nutrients, that's what gets blunted off and destroyed when people eat gluten that have celiac disease. So I'm sure there's something similar happening in a malnourished child where those are just so, like a muscle that doesn't get used, they're so weakened that they just can't pull in all the nutrients that they're taking in. So the microbes must have some impact in breaking that down and making it more accessible.
Afif Ghannoum: On a related note. Did you know my dad got supplementation from UNICEF as a kid?
Andrea Wien: Oh, really? No I did not know that.
Afif Ghannoum: Yeah. He went to a refugee school in Beirut when he was little. And they would give the kids fish oil and milk every morning to supplement. Yeah. UNICEF actually wrote about it. I'll send you the article. But because of that, we actually just implemented this round-up thing on BIOHM to donate. If someone's order is $20.80 to take it to $21 and the difference we send to UNICEF because they helped my dad out as a kid.
Andrea Wien: That's amazing. Well maybe we can give them credit for feeding him fish oil because his brain obviously is working optimally.
Afif Ghannoum: Yeah, yeah.
Andrea Wien: All the research he's been able to do. So it was probably their help with those supplements.
Afif Ghannoum: Yeah. They literally wrote an article about it. I just shared it in the chat. It said, "What led this renowned scientists to give back through UNICEF."
Andrea Wien: Amazing. We'll link to that in the show notes too.
Afif Ghannoum: Yeah.
Andrea Wien: Yeah. All right. The last one here, Ohio State Researchers Identify Changes in the Gut Microbiome After Spinal Cord Injury. So this is the first time that they've been able to show that gut bacteria and viruses change after injury. And this was in mice, so I have to preface it with that. But I think this has really far reaching implications for so much. It's almost so big to even start to talk about, but I'm curious your initial thoughts on that. And then we can dive into it a little.
Afif Ghannoum: So doesn't entirely shock me because there's been studies showing that when someone's admitted to the trauma ICU, their microbiome changes. And a lot of times it's related to just that instant stress that's put on our bodies, that it totally adjusts the microbiome. So the idea that obviously, if you're you have a spinal cord injury that is so severe that your body would instantly be thrown into shock. So it doesn't shock me. But it would be interesting to know is it related to spinal cord fluid? What are they attributing it to? But yeah, there's a big link between, again and you can tie it back to inflammation and all sorts of things, but you're talking on obviously a very severe level with a spinal cord injury. But yeah.
Andrea Wien: And I wonder how it changes, maybe this is where this goes next, when someone has... I guess it would be really tough to do this, because you couldn't guess who was going to get the spinal cord injury. But if you had some database where, are you better off if you have a balanced microbiome going into a severe injury like that versus a dysbiotic one? Is your recovery time better? Do you have better prognosis?
Afif Ghannoum: That's interesting. Yeah. I would say you are definitely in a better state if it is balanced, because as we've talked about, when your gut is dysbiosis, the problem is some of the really aggressive pathogenic guys can start to spiral out of control. So if you're already imbalanced and now you become severely immunocompromised or an injury like this, one more thing your body has to battle. You see what I'm saying? So as opposed to if you have a really strong microbiome and yeah, it could be thrown out of whack, but strong basis, any really aggressive guys are already probably under control. That's where my head goes, is that you're probably going to have an easier time if your microbiome is in balance.
Andrea Wien: Yeah. I mean, that's essentially what they found is that several beneficial bacteria decreased and potentially pathogenic ones increased and the same thing with viruses. And then this was very interesting too. Microbial genes and coding proteins for tryptophan, vitamin B6 and folate, the essential pathways for central nervous system function were also reduced. So I guess this would be more talking about the postbiotics and what these microbes are able to help finagle while they're in there, the different pathways of things that they're creating. Which makes sense because obviously if the microbes are decreasing or increasing, the output is different. But yeah, it's just every time we do this show, it's just tied to literally everything.
Afif Ghannoum: Oh yeah. It's almost becoming cliche.
Andrea Wien: It is, right.
Afif Ghannoum: But again, like we've said before, we're in inning one of figuring all this out. Especially as fungi and viruses come more to light and they start getting research dollars. Because again, it's still probably 25 to one, research dollars go to study bacteria versus fungi and viruses in the gut. As those numbers start to creep up, we'll just see more and more ties, right?
Andrea Wien: And that's just the major three, right? There's even more microbial activity [crosstalk 00:31:28] that's happening that's even smaller. But as we've learned, smaller doesn't necessarily mean less effective or less impactful. So again, yeah we're at the very tip of like, okay, we're just learning what the bacteria do and now, okay, let's add virus and fungi in. Okay, now let's add proto-... it's such a deep well. I don't even think we'll realize in our lifetime.
Afif Ghannoum: Just mind blowing. That was an awkward silence. I'm sorry. I'm staring at my Spencer's Gift poster.
Andrea Wien: Oh no.
All right. Well, we'll end there for the day. Afif, thank you so much as always. And everyone can find the show notes with all the links to everything at BIOHMhealth.com/pages/podcast. Again, BIOHM, B I O H M. And the podcast also for every listener is 15% off with the code pod15 on BIOHM's website. So a Afif, thank you so much as always. We'll talk to you later.
Afif Ghannoum: All right. Take care. Bye.
Andrea Wien: As always, thanks so much for listening. If you are enjoying the show, I'm going to make another urgent plea, please, please, please go leave us a rating and review on iTunes. Or if don't have iTunes and you're listening some other way, please share the episode with a couple of friends or family members who you think might enjoy it. Again, the show notes are on BIOHMhealth.com/pages/podcast. I'm Andrea Wien, and we will catch you next time.
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