Gut-Lung Axis 101: How Microbiomes Shape Respiratory Health

In this episode of the Smarter Not Harder Podcast, Dr. C. Vivek Lal gives us one-cent solutions to life’s $64,000 questions that include:

• What is the gut-lung axis, and how do the microbiomes of these systems interact to influence inflammation and disease risk?

• Which bacterial species or metabolites have the most significant impact on lung health, and how do they differ between individuals?

• How could inhaled probiotics, postbiotics, and biologics shape the future of pulmonary therapy and systemic health interventions?

• What role do advanced tools like omics, AI, and lung organoids play in developing next-generation treatments for respiratory health?

Who is Dr. C. Vivek Lal?

Dr. C. Vivek Lal is a physician-scientist, double board-certified in neonatal/perinatal medicine and pediatrics. He serves as the Director of Clinical Innovation at the Heersink Institute of Biomedical Innovation at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), and is also a Professor and Director of the Pulmonary Microbiome Lab at UAB.

In addition to his academic and clinical roles, he is the founder of several companies, including Alveolus Bio and ResBiotic Nutrition, and remains actively involved in startup innovation focused on pulmonary drug development.

What did Dr. Vivek and Dr. Scott discuss?

00:00 The Importance of the Gut-Lung Axis
00:40 Welcome to the Smarter Not Harder Podcast
01:25 Meet Dr. Vivek Lal: Neonatologist, Scientist, and Biotech Innovator
02:12 What Is the Gut-Lung Axis and Why It Matters
05:15 How Lung and Gut Microbiomes Influence Inflammation
08:30 Metabolites, Neutrophilic Inflammation, and MMP9
10:00 Why Inhaled Probiotics May Be the Future of Pulmonary Therapy
12:00 Which Bacteria Help (and Hurt) Your Lungs?
14:00 Why Some Smokers Get COPD — and Others Don’t
17:00 How to Study the Lung Microbiome (Without Contaminating It)
20:00 How the Lung Microbiome Could Change Medicine
22:30 “Air is Medicine”: Inhaled Biologics and Lung Function
25:00 From Lungs to Gut: The Rise of Postbiotics and Systemic Benefits
28:00 Omics, AI, and Lung Organoids—Designing Future Therapies
31:00 Why Supplement Research Must Evolve Beyond Snake Oil
33:00 Can Probiotics Improve Breathing, Endurance, and Recovery?
36:00 Who Benefits Most From ResBiotic’s Lung Support Formula?
39:00 Clinical Trial Insights + Safety of Long-Term Use
42:00 Vivek’s Advice for Living Smarter, Not Harder
44:00 Where to Find Dr. Vivek Lal and What’s Next

Full Transcript:

[00:00:00] Dr. Scott Sherr: Hello and welcome back to the Smarter Noter Not Harder podcast. You're home for 1 cent solutions to $64,000 questions. I'm your host again today. My name is Dr. Scott Scher, and it's a pleasure to be back with all of you. Today's podcast was a super cool one on the gut lung axis. Have you heard of the gut lung axis?

[00:00:25] Well, you will be soon because there's some amazing therapeutics that are happening both directly into the airway, so intra pulmonary as well as into the gut as well. And so I had a really fantastic individual, Dr. Vivek Lall on the podcast today. He's gonna be one of our speakers at the Health Optimization Medicine and Practice Symposium, October 17th and 18th here, just outside of my hometown in Boulder, Colorado.

[00:00:48] So come check him out. Learn all about the gut lung axis and more. And here's a little bit of a bio on. Dr. Lal, just to give you a feel for kinda the breadth of his work. He's a physician, scientist and innovator based in Birmingham, [00:01:00] Alabama. He's double board certified having completed medical school residency training and clinical fellowship in neonatal and perinatal medicine.

[00:01:06] He completed a research fellowship in pulmonary and vascular biology at UT Southwestern and Executive Program in Drug and DeViveke Development from MIT in Boston. He serves as the director of Clinical Innovation at the Marnix E. Heersink Institute of Biomedical Innovation at the University of Alabama in Birmingham, and as director of Pulmonary Microbiome Lab.

[00:01:22] He's a serial entrepreneur. He's founder of Biostack Ventures, through which he launched successful companies such as Resbiotic Nutrition, which we talk about today, which makes consumer probiotics. Alveolus Bio, which his FDA approved pulmonary drug development, and we talked about that too. He co-founded and serves on the board of Urgent Care for Children, a southeast US-based urgent care chain, and he is also the CEO of Resbiotic Nutrition.

[00:01:43] Vivek is a really cool guy. That's the short story. We had a really great conversation, really going through a lot of the questions I had about gut lung axis. I didn't know what the gut lung axis was really. I mean, we talked about how they used to think that the lungs himself were sterile, just like we used to think a lot of places in the body were sterile, but the lungs are not [00:02:00] sterile. They have a core amount of bacteria that live in there, and so there are various ways to modulate the health of the lungs by what types of bacteria are in the lungs and also what types of bacteria are in the gut. How various types of metabolites from bacteria in the gut can help to enhance the inflammatory cascades that are occurring in the lungs in things like COPD, inflammatory, or idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, and other things like asthma, et cetera.

[00:02:27] So Vivik has really been able to develop our therapeutics that go into the lungs directly and also in the gut microbiome. Various strains of lactobacillus specifically that can help repopulate the good types of bacteria in the lungs and the gut. There's so many potential different applications for this, which I'm super excited about things for, like infection or colonization, many issues that we see.

[00:02:48] In acute, conventional pulmonary practice or in, you know, internal medicine practices I have had in the past working as a hospitalist for many years, but also in the performance world, how you can see increases in FEV1 (Forced Expiratory Volume in 1 second), for [00:03:00] example, by using a pulmonary focused probiotic that goes in the gut directly into the lungs itself as a mist.

[00:03:07] I love that Vivek said was, "Air is medicine.". He talks about that and anybody that breathes is one of their clients, and this is not far from the truth. This is a very young and burgeoning science, and this is kind of a window into what is happening in this world. In the very early days of the gut lung axis, understanding therapeutics that affect the lungs that are related to the gut.

[00:03:28] Various things related to all the major aspects that he's developing in his companies and how to implement this in clinical practice and also in our own lives. So without further ado, this is Vivek Lal with Resbiotic Nutrition and some of his other companies. If you like this podcast, don't forget to like and subscribe below so you never miss an episode. Enjoy.

[00:03:45] Vivek. It's really nice to meet you. Thanks for coming on the Smarter Not Harder podcast. How you doing today?

[00:03:49] Dr. Vivek Lal: Good, Scott. Great to be here.

[00:03:51] Dr. Scott Sherr: So I've heard a lot about you already and about the work that you're doing at your companies and. I find it awesome that there's very few people out there that are kind of dovetaisignaling the therapeutic world from the [00:04:00] pharmaceutical side along with the supplement side and then still doing night shifts, neonatology—

[00:04:04] How do you balance it all, man? I mean, is it, you just are super human or do you have like really good teams or, 

[00:04:09] Dr. Vivek Lal: I, I think, you know, you gotta have great people like-

[00:04:12] Dr. Scott Sherr: Yeah.

[00:04:13] Dr. Vivek Lal: On the team and learn to delegate, I guess. 

[00:04:15] Dr. Scott Sherr: Yes, it's, it's always a work in progress. You're marrying a lot of these worlds together, which I think makes it a lot more powerful.

[00:04:20] So if you're looking at people conventionally or alternatively, like you have a solution and have an ecosystem, and this ecosystem has to do with the gut lung axis, and this is a newer axis. We know about obviously the gut brain axis, the gut microbiota brain axis. How did you get involved in the study of this Vivek?

[00:04:37] And then what is this all about and how should we think about this clinically? From your perspective, maybe high level first and then we could get into some of the details, but I'd love to hear your story on how you got involved in this too. 

[00:04:47] Dr. Vivek Lal: Absolutely. Uh, so my background, I'm a double board certified physician. ICA physician, neonatologist. After my clinical training, I got into studying lung biology. So I was at UT Southwestern in the division of pulmonary and vascular [00:05:00] biology, learning all these individual molecules modulating, uh, lung inflammation, lung signaling—

[00:05:04] After doing all of this, realize that people have made their careers on single molecules, but no therapies do come out of it that often because lungs are complex.

[00:05:13] The bodies are complex, right? So how do you just pick one molecule and expect it to be a magic bullet? So that's when I started studying systems biology. "Omics" approaches, right? This is around like 15 years ago. Microbiomics, proteomics, metabolomics.

[00:05:27] In those days the only "omics", which was a problem was economics. Right? Everything was so expensive, right? All of—

[00:05:33] Dr. Scott Sherr: Yeah. That's funny. I like that. I haven't heard that before. That's good. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:05:36] Dr. Vivek Lal: But after doing a lot of omic analysis on the lungs, we started with neonatal babies, right? So our first hit was, chronic lung disease in prematurity, which is very similar to COPD and other chronic lung diseases, but at different spectrum of life.

[00:05:51] Dr. Scott Sherr: Interesting. Okay. 

[00:05:51] Dr. Vivek Lal: So where we started studying that in, animal models and human samples and consistently found that a change, or a difference [00:06:00] in microbial milieu, either predisposed a baby to a chronic lung disease or, prevented a chronic lung disease. Or even if you're just at all the other factors.

[00:06:10] So that was the AHA! moment. Oh my God. Like what is this? Right? You didn't even know what a microbiome was. So when NIH came up with, the Human Microbiome Project around, I don't know, it was 20- 2006 or 2007. Lung was not a target organ. It was like different organs they came up with. We started studying the microbiomics of the lung, found that lungs are not sterile.

[00:06:27] Found that there is constant signal transaction going on between cells of the lung and the microbiome. Although it's not like gut, that is a huge, immune organ with multiple trillions of bacteria. Lung has bacteria, but it's very low biomass. But low biomass doesn't mean that it's not important, right?

[00:06:47] Dr. Scott Sherr: Right.

[00:06:48] Dr. Vivek Lal: Could be low in number, but could be modulating a lot of things. That's what we found in our clinical studies, that if there was specific kind of bacteria. In the lungs. These infants, you know, were born with that specific kind [00:07:00] of bacteria. They were more likely to either develop a disease or be resilient from a disease. Right. So that was the first sign of there was a lung microbiome.

[00:07:06] Then we started studying how does a gut communicate with the lung? Right? Right. So that is the gut lung axis, essentially the microbiome of the gut. How does it modulate lung inflammation? 

[00:07:16] Dr. Scott Sherr: Yeah. 

[00:07:17] Dr. Vivek Lal: Through the gut lung axis. But how does the gut communicate with the lungs?

[00:07:21] It's through the lymphatics, through the blood vessels. So all these bacteria in the gut produce specific metabolites, which either the blood vessels or the lymphatics travel to different parts of the body, including the lungs. That is a gut lung axis.

[00:07:37] In addition, every minute, we are breathing and we are eating, we do aspirate, some things. Micro aspirations, especially in babies and kids, more so than adults. But we often aspirate these in gut bacteria. So that also contributes to the lung microbiome. Majorly the gut lung axis is modulated by the metabolites which travel between the gut and the [00:08:00] lung. And-

[00:08:00] Dr. Scott Sherr: I see.

[00:08:01] Dr. Vivek Lal: Just in the gut, through the gut microbiome. 

[00:08:03] Dr. Scott Sherr: Understood. Okay. So we're talking about metabolites that are being made by gut bacteria, so. Maybe you can give us maybe just a kind of an overview of some of those that are most important. I mean, we know that there's short chain fatty acids, of course, that are made by gut bacteria.

[00:08:17] My guess is that's involved here, but I'd love to hear more about what kinds of, I mean, as you're talking about signal transduction, right? And I think that's probably what you're describing here, which is that. These are signals coming from the gut via various metabolites that are causing various effects in the lungs.

[00:08:32] Dr. Vivek Lal: Absolutely. So small chain fatty acids is directly said is one of the main ones, right? Like, so the specific gut bacteria can increase SCFAs (Short-Chain Fatty Acids) or decrease SCFAs (Short-Chain Fatty Acids) and increase in SCFA or Small Chain Fatty Acid does decrease inflammation in the lungs. So that is the first finding we— 

[00:08:47] Dr. Scott Sherr: Which specific ones, are there specific short chains that do it more than others or all?

[00:08:51] Dr. Vivek Lal: No, most of these are mostly propionic and there are some others. But the main mechanism i want to point out is through neutrophilic inflammation.

[00:08:58] Chronic [00:09:00] conditions, which happen in the lung are driven by neutrophilic inflammation. Most of have neutrophilic inflammation as a major component. Pathogenesis, right?

[00:09:08] Like COPD, neutrophilic, asthma, cystic fibrosis. Even COVID has, you know, neutrophilic component. Our labs have been studying neutrophilic inflammation in lungs for a while. What we found was all the extracellular matrix does break down and produce small peptides, cleaved by Metalloproteinases (MMPs) and produce a CPGP (Cys-Pro-Gly-Pro), that is a tripeptide, which increases your neutrophilic inflammation further. 

[00:09:31] Dr. Scott Sherr: Sounds like it's cycle? Yeah.

[00:09:32] Dr. Vivek Lal: Cyclic. Cyclic. So if you could reduce MMP9 (Matrix metalloproteinase-9), somehow you could decrease the neutrophilic inflammation. Then we started seeing there were specific bacteria which would down regulate your MMP9 signal like that.

[00:09:45] Dr. Scott Sherr: Yeah. And are these bacteria that are introduced. So they're in the lungs that are causing the downregulation inflammation. So is it that you have to repopulate the lungs with this bacteria, or is it that you have to repopulate the gut with certain bacteria, which is the way, or is it both? 

[00:09:58] Dr. Vivek Lal: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:09:59] Great [00:10:00] question. In the ideal world, I would repopulate the lung and, that's why I'm, I started off with a therapeutic company, called Alveolus Bio, developing inhaled- the world's first inhaled microbiota therapy. We call it ResMet. Which, is a separate, business that is going into clinical trials, hopefully in the next year or so with inhaled back to BA because the gut lung axis is amazing, right?

[00:10:21] It reduces inflammation in the lung. But what if you have a COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease), or you have IPF (Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis), where the inflammation is so severe in the aleolar space that just mere translocation of your metabolized won't work, right? And wouldn't concentrate enough. So you need direct targeting on that area. That's where inhalation comes into play, but the gut lung axis does reduce your inflammation in general. 

[00:10:43] Dr. Scott Sherr: When you're talking about an inhaled therapy here, you're talking about repopulating the lung with certain types of strains of bacteria that you have found with your research and some of the stuff that you've published that have shown to decrease some of that inflammatory neutrophilic infiltration.

[00:10:59] Dr. Vivek Lal: Yes. So, [00:11:00] lungs are not like gut that you give a bacteria and they go replicate. Right? So lungs, innate immunity, they just clear it out. So we find that-

[00:11:07] Dr. Scott Sherr: Interesting.

[00:11:07] Dr. Vivek Lal: in 22 hours, right? All these bacteria are gone. 

[00:11:09] Dr. Scott Sherr: Interesting. Yeah. But there's, there's a core population that's still there, but for the most part-

[00:11:13] Dr. Vivek Lal: And the core population, also the low biomass, I keep saying Right, it's low. Really little, just because. The innate system of the lungs just clear things out. So when we do 16S analysis, or where we do microbiome analysis, it detects not only the live bacteria, but also the dead bacteria.

[00:11:28] Just a signal that this bacteria doesn't mean it's live or dead. Right? So it could be just the bacteria.

[00:11:32] Dr. Scott Sherr: Of course. Yeah. 

[00:11:33] Dr. Vivek Lal: But live bacteria, very few, in the lungs in general. So when we give live bacteria to decrease inflammation, they do die. But the metabolites remain. Right. 

[00:11:43] Dr. Scott Sherr: That's what I was gonna ask you. So it's, this is similar to what we've thought about with the GI system, right? Like you could even have dead bacteria that are causing a trophic effect or polytrophic effect in our lungs itself.

[00:11:54] Dr. Vivek Lal: That's how these postbiotics work, right? So we have seen, even address now a postbiotic line because [00:12:00] these things work, and there are no stability issue. Just that the doses would be higher than what just a replicating bacteria would need. 

[00:12:06] Dr. Scott Sherr: Understood. So like when you're looking at various types of bacteria or strains that have seen to be most effective here.

[00:12:13] Which are the ones have you found have the most research, or the ones that you found most associated with pulmonary disease and also potentially, respiratory health, maybe on the other end of things, right? 

[00:12:22] Dr. Vivek Lal: Absolutely. So, specific lactobacilli at the filer level, bacteria, the ones which are beneficial for the lungs, pharmacos include several like lactobacilli, so specific lactobacilli that we have identified, which we isolated from humans. We have used them as therapy or supplement and they seem to decreases neutrophilic inflammation pretty robustly. And things like bacteria, like the gram negatives; E. coli, Klebsiella, et cetera, seem to be harmful. 

[00:12:50] Dr. Scott Sherr: Yeah, I was about to say it was like that's, they're probably not good for the lungs, was like, okay. Yeah.

[00:12:55] And so you can find, obviously people that have like, so like in- in infants with [00:13:00] premature lung disease or premature lung issues because of, I guess being on respiratory, on like a respiratory, et cetera, you're seeing more prepon preponderance of some of these more negatively associated, bacterial strains with pulmonary conditions then.

[00:13:12] Dr. Vivek Lal: Absolutely. And not- not just after establishment of the disease. Even very early, as soon as they're born, if they have these, quote unquote, "good bacterias", they're less likely to develop the chronic disease. Even if you expose them to the other, you know, the ventilator injury or oxygen injury. Similarly for adults, right?

[00:13:29] COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) is caused cigarette smoke. We all know that, but- but are there things which potentiate this, uh, injury Or why is that you could smoke a pack a day for 30 years and not get COPD? Why is that? I could smoke for- or not smoke and still get COPD, right.

[00:13:43] Dr. Scott Sherr: And still get COP—

[00:13:44] Dr. Vivek Lal: But we don't know the things that we don't know.

[00:13:46] And that's, that's where this microbiome field comes into play. And, and that's why I'm so excited about this because it's new. Yeah. Still finding out things every day and-

[00:13:53] Yeah. Your predisposition or resilience to chronic lung disease depends on your microbial milieu in the [00:14:00] gut and the lungs. 

[00:14:01] Dr. Scott Sherr: So what you're telling me, Vivek, is that there could be a strain—

[00:14:05] I don't even wanna say this out loud, but there could be a strain of bacteria that you could, you know, inhale on a daily basis and like you could potentially like be able to smoke for 30 years and have no problem compared to, you know-

[00:14:17] I mean this is, this is a reductionist kind of way to think about it.

[00:14:20] Dr. Vivek Lal: It is a reductionist way of thinking about it, but that is absolutely what I'm saying. Right. Not that we are proposing— 

[00:14:27] Dr. Scott Sherr: Of course. Yeah. 

[00:14:29] Dr. Vivek Lal: Not propagating bad habits, but. Yes, your predisposition, or your resilience to a disease process, whether it's a lung disease or other disease, is dependent on your microbial milieu or the lungs or the gut, which is very, very under-identified at this time.

[00:14:46] Science does not know anything at this time, and we are all trying to find it up. 

[00:14:50] Dr. Scott Sherr: Got it. Yeah. And I think that's so interesting, right? Because we think about predisposition to almost any condition, like you said. Again, there's a such a significant microbiome angle [00:15:00] here that you know, none of us even knew about when we were in medical school, right?

[00:15:02] Dr. Vivek Lal: We saw this at COVID, right? Like, you know, you and I could look perfectly healthy, but. I got COVID and I could have been in the ICU and you were just walking around with sniffles, right? So why was that? So was it just the genetic predisposition or was it your lung microbiome acting up? Was it your gut microbiome?

[00:15:20] So there are a lot of studies now being done on it, and people are increasingly identifying microbiome to be a major, major factor in all of this. 

[00:15:28] Dr. Scott Sherr: Pardon the interruption. This episode is brought to you by Health Optimization Medicine and Practice Association (HOMeHOPe), a nonprofit organization, training practitioners how to optimize health rather than treat disease.

[00:15:36] This episode, check out our Gut Immune System module. This is how you can learn how to optimize the gut of your clinician. You need to learn this. This is such a big, big part of clinical practice. Now, in this particular podcast, we talk about the gut lung axis. Well, how do you optimize the gut? You actually test it.

[00:15:51] You look for inflammation, maldigestion, metabolic imbalance, infection, and other aspects, pathogenic bacteria overgrowth. You can look at all these [00:16:00] aspects, optimizing them using probiotics, prebiotics, postbiotics. Other types of modalities as well altogether. So check it out at homehope.org and save 10% on this module, or any module of our essential certification. Please encode 'PODCAST10' at checkout.

[00:16:14] Now back to the show.

[00:16:15] Did you see some of those studies looking at how smokers who fared better during COVID and they thought this was related to the nicotine itself. Did you see any?

[00:16:23] Dr. Vivek Lal: Yeah. Which is so strange, right? And people don't talk about these things, but I did see that. I don't know whether, believe it or not, but yes, it is out there, right?

[00:16:32] So could it be that your smoking was affecting your microbiome in a certain way, which was protective? I don't know. And again, let's not make any public comments about it, but there are things which modulate your microbiome. Smoking, eating, some specific things. 

[00:16:47] Dr. Scott Sherr: Sure. 

[00:16:48] Dr. Vivek Lal: Protective. So it's an indirect effect also.

[00:16:51] Dr. Scott Sherr: Yeah, no, I think that's super interesting. So like, one of the things I would wonder and like in studying lung microbiota is how can you do it [00:17:00] easily? Like in the sense that, like is it easy to sample lung microbiota like without contaminating in other locations? Like how do you do that from a practical perspective and how do you address that, like in your lab when you're doing testing and stuff?

[00:17:12] Dr. Vivek Lal: That's a very good question. It's not easy is a short answer, because anything which is low biomass is more prone to contamination. The ideal way of doing it would be, if I have to check your lung microbiome, I'll do a biopsy and do it right. I'll do a lung biopsy or i'll, I'll, you know, uh-

[00:17:26] Dr. Scott Sherr: A bronchoscopy, yeah. 

[00:17:27] Dr. Vivek Lal: Yeah, a bronchoscopy. And then take a biopsy from there. Or expectorated sputum as what people use as a surrogate. And people have done comparison between upper airway and lower airway with the same patient at the same time, and they're different. Then you have to control for contaminants based on algorithms and microbial analysis, analytic tools.

[00:17:48] Dr. Scott Sherr: Yeah. So it's is, this is probably something you had to pioneer as far as how to be able to do this in a- 

[00:17:53] Dr. Vivek Lal: Yeah. Not just us, you know, course First Labs to do it, but there are several other labs in Michigan and New York Hawk and other, other places around the world, [00:18:00] who are increasingly studying this for the last 10 years and have come up with methods of, you know, you always have to have a negative control.

[00:18:07] So whenever we sample, you have to have negative control in the same even the air. Right,

[00:18:12] Dr. Scott Sherr: Exactly.

[00:18:13] Dr. Vivek Lal: So you have to have an empty bottle with air and then you sample that and show that. Okay. There was nothing there. 

[00:18:17] Dr. Scott Sherr: So, yeah, I mean, yeah. It's funny, I was just listening to a podcast recently about looking at like old, like, um, extinct animal, DNA.

[00:18:25] Yeah. And like, and for like a long period of time, really what everybody was finding was just like the people that were just hanging out and actually getting the DNA from the ground and it was like their chicken that they're eating for lunch or something like that. So like it, it seems like a very difficult proposal.

[00:18:41] So you have to sample the air and then the gold standard would then be like a bronchoscopy or it would be like a lung biopsy.

[00:18:45] Dr. Vivek Lal: Well, it started with your bronchoscopy and get a deep sample. Right, but not usually possible. So you use surrogates such as expectorated sputum in adults. In a infant you would take a tracheal aspirate.

[00:18:55] You know, when they're intubated, you take Right. Little tricky to aspirate from that. Yeah. Uh, [00:19:00] people have start you know, tried to compare oral microbiota with lung microbiota. Assuming that, oh, it might be the same and you'll just use that as surrogate, but it's not true. It's like different.

[00:19:10] Dr. Scott Sherr: Yeah, it's very, I would imagine it's very different, right? Compared to the- yeah.

[00:19:14] Dr. Vivek Lal: Even nasopharyngeal is different.

[00:19:16] Dr. Scott Sherr: And from a- so this low biomass. But it's a very powerful biomass, is what it comes down to. And there's a lot of dead biomass there that's also causing a pleiotropic effect. 

[00:19:27] Dr. Vivek Lal: Yeah. And problem metabolites, which we don't study enough. Right? Like which- which are causing the effect.

[00:19:32] You know, things like, we keep hearing what cystic fibrosis and pseudos. Right. But why pseudo? Why so there are genetic predispositions to certain microbial. Milieu two, and uh, we just don't understand it enough. You know, it's just a 10-year-old field, you know? 

[00:19:50] Dr. Scott Sherr: Yeah, that's, that's what I think. It's so interesting. That's why I don't know a lot about it. Obviously a lot of people don't. That's why I'm having these kind of maybe curious and maybe very basic questions, but when, when it comes down, yeah. [00:20:00] When it comes down to like the metabolic activity of the microbiota in the lungs? Like are, when you say pseudomonas, for example, are you sort of alluding, well maybe there are certain metabolic products that are being made by the lung micro, but microbiota that are causing certain types of bacteria to kind of colonize more than others? Is that what your thought is, or It, 

[00:20:18] Dr. Vivek Lal: it is possible. And you know, when we talk about microbiome, we just talk about bacteria. But what were the, yeah. What about the fungi? Yeah. What all the other, you know, bacteria, you know, microbial kingdom we haven't even reached it, so there is a crosstalk going on, right?

[00:20:32] So we have I dunno, X number of cells in the human body, but we have more than 10x of microbial cells. 

[00:20:38] Dr. Scott Sherr: Yeah. And you-

[00:20:39] Dr. Vivek Lal: I think, what a bunch of bacteria there, you know?

[00:20:41] Dr. Scott Sherr: That's all- yeah. Yeah. We have a, like bacteria, fungus, and virus that basically are, you know, they outnumber us vastly. And we call us- we call ourselves human, but like we're really. 

[00:20:52] Dr. Vivek Lal: What a bunch of bacteria, which-

[00:20:54] So point being, they're talking every second with our human cells and [00:21:00] changing it, right? So if you. Just change the iOS by just giving extra of something or decreasing something that would change your human- cell activity. Wouldn't- wouldn't you, you know?

[00:21:10] Dr. Scott Sherr: Yeah. Bacterial, I mean, interkingdom crosstalk is well established. I think somebody got the, the Nobel Prize in science for that several years ago. Like you can these vesicles that can like, you know, transfer like information between fungus, virus, archaea, like everything else, right? So like, it's what you said.

[00:21:25] Dr. Vivek Lal: Use these exosomes, even bacteria, these exosomes and you know, they go to another cell and crosstalk and do the signaling. It's, it's exciting. Very exciting. 

[00:21:33] Dr. Scott Sherr: Yeah. Yeah. Um, so from the therapeutic perspective in the lungs, we can start there. So you inhaled. Probiotic strains is what it sounds like you're doing as far as the therapeutic company, like what have you been able to see, at least in like preclinical data? I know you said you're kind of early on in the process, still looking to go to trials, but what have you seen happen?

[00:21:52] What are the things that you've seen change as a result of taking the inhaled side? 

[00:21:56] Dr. Vivek Lal: Absolutely. So, we are, we are done with the preclinical side of at least a couple of disease [00:22:00] models and very potent downregulation of MMP9 signaling, PGP signaling and neutrophilic inflammation. 

[00:22:06] Okay, so I don't say that we are a microbiome company, Alveolus Bio, because it's a bacteria used as a drug here.

[00:22:14] So irrespective of your microbiome. Irrespective of where that neutrophilic inflammation came from, we are claiming that we are downregulating the neutrophilic inflammation, you know, and the only other thing on the market which deduces in neutrophilic inflammation is steroids. 

[00:22:27] Dr. Scott Sherr: Yeah. Steroids. 

[00:22:28] Dr. Vivek Lal: What steroids do right to avoid all these inhaled steroids for asthma, for COPD, et cetera, that people use.

[00:22:34] In addition to the La Lama regimen. So my vision there is how do we use air as medicine? How do we use inhaled lactobacilli to reduce use of steroids or as a complementary adjunct to steroids? Right? The downregulation of neutrophilic inflammation is a primary mechanism, but we see reduction in all different kind of inflammation.

[00:22:54] Also, similar to steroids we have done head-to-head comparison with steroids in all kind of animal models. [00:23:00] We have done smoke animal models. We have done you know, hyperoxia animal models. We have done pancreatic lipase animal model. Several animal models were presented to FDA and they like what they saw. And the data.

[00:23:12] Dr. Scott Sherr: The- you said pancreatic lipase model, what model would that be corresponding to? 

[00:23:16] Dr. Vivek Lal: So, it's, it's essentially, it is essentially elastase model- pancreatic elastase model, not lipase model. 

[00:23:21] Dr. Scott Sherr: Okay.

[00:23:22] Dr. Vivek Lal: Elastase essentially breaks down your, you know, tissue, lung tissue right. Versus injury.

[00:23:26] Dr. Scott Sherr: Right. Understood.

[00:23:27] Okay. I apologize, I didn't hear that correctly. Has there been any sort of interest in looking at pulmonary infections aside in, in this case as well? I, maybe that's maybe something down the line.

[00:23:38] Dr. Vivek Lal: So infections are a huge open pan box, right? Like, it's essentially a function of biofilm.

[00:23:44] All these biofilms are, yeah. So we have not specifically looked at infections, you know, honestly but we have some collaborators who want to use our thing for infections. 

[00:23:54] Dr. Scott Sherr: Yeah, I can imagine. This is a huge, I mean, just like we're talking about now for [00:24:00] the gut, which we'll get to in a minute, but like the idea is that you can use certain types of strains of biobacteria in this case to actually work on an actual gut infection. Right. I would imagine there's a lot of interest. I mean-

[00:24:15] I mean we know that the sort of the overall burden of pulmonary disease, pulmonary infection, and how often this could become such a huge issue. Like if you could take something more prophylactically, for example, if you have CF (cystic fibrosis) and you, and you're preventing pseudomonal colonization or something like that, that could be huge.

[00:24:34] It is a huge field, man, like- 

[00:24:37] Dr. Vivek Lal: ...field. Yeah. Even starting at the upper airway, you know, sinus. Okay. Chronic sinusitis is probably, everyone has it, right? Like, and people don't have a treatment for it. People keep inhasignaling the steroids and antibiotics. This stuff always comes back. So one of our indications is sinusitis, you know, could be used as for chronic sinusitis.

[00:24:56] So a wide open field, huge prospect, and we are just getting [00:25:00] started there. 

[00:25:00] Dr. Scott Sherr: Yeah, I love it. It's, I can see like a million potential applications for this being just because of working for as a hospitalist. Yeah.

[00:25:06] Dr. Vivek Lal: I keep looking like, uh, one day air is medicine. All our air conditions could have a probiotic chamber, right?

[00:25:12] Dr. Scott Sherr: Oh, I dig it. I dig it. Right.

[00:25:14] Dr. Vivek Lal: If we could inhale the good stuff, we inhale the bad stuff all the time.

[00:25:18] Dr. Scott Sherr: Oh, I love it. Like your air condition comes with. Oh, that's perfect. This is like, it's like, or like microbiome health is like oral microbiome health is like your toothbrush. Like you have your, you know, your floss is all microbiome optimized and then your air conditioning air, so you're gonna have your- your air purifier with like a canister in there with like-

[00:25:35] Dr. Vivek Lal: Absolutely.

[00:25:35] Dr. Scott Sherr: I love- yeah. Air is medicine's fun. I love that as it- i'm sure you're using that a lot and it sounds, it's great. I mean, you're not going as so far to say as that, you know, have you heard of a 'Breatharian' before? Do you know what Breatharians are? 

[00:25:46] Like? The, these, these are people that think that you can live just on air like you, it's a so prana like the energy from the air.

[00:25:54] So I don't think you're going that way, Vivek, but I think that what you're saying is that, you know, air is medicine [00:26:00] and what's in the air. We can use this and to leverage for not only pulmonary health, but also sys- systemic health. Yeah. Yeah. And, and that, that goes into my next question, I guess is in related to like your study and like omics in general.

[00:26:14] Like you, you- you've kind of thought about the omics, you've gone through all these sort of multiple system as like, how do you put it all together? Like in the sense of, of looking at it from like an omic perspective. Along with the gut lung axis. 

[00:26:26] Dr. Vivek Lal: So, uh, so just doing omic is a bunch of data we sit on and don't do anything with it. Right? But that's okay. Yeah.

[00:26:31] You have to know how to integrate these omics. So, pathway analysis pathway analysis in a organized fashion is what you have to do. So IPA analysis, you have to look at big picture signals and then validate it at a smaller level. So what omics helps me in is from.

[00:26:49] Millions of data points, it gets me to maybe 10 or 15 hits. But those 10 or 15 hits now have to be integrated with each other and then proven at a, you know, gene [00:27:00] level or a cellular level, RNA level in traditional methods, right? Research methods and gain of functional loss of function experiments.

[00:27:06] So gain of functional loss of function and experiments. What people used to do is they would just pick any of their favorite molecule and they do gain of function, loss of function, and show that, okay. This is happening. But what omics has done is it has just shortlisted that in a unbiased fashion and give us- given us the talk- talk rates and then you take that to the traditional method. That's how I use omics. 

[00:27:26] Dr. Scott Sherr: And just to be clear, we're, you know, gain of function has also gotten a little bit of a bad rep. Since COVID, so lemme just make, I'm making sure you're not doing it crazy. It's a lot. You're not doing anything crazy in your lab, right? Vivek. We're not talking about nothing like the new COVID coming in. Are we good?

[00:27:42] Dr. Vivek Lal: That was shortcut to being famous there, but yeah- 

[00:27:44] Dr. Scott Sherr: Infamous, maybe.

[00:27:45] Dr. Vivek Lal: Infamous, yes.

[00:27:47] Dr. Scott Sherr: Yeah. So you're creating like these models, are you using a lot of, has artificial intelligence come into the model, or into play for you? 

[00:27:53] Dr. Vivek Lal: Absolutely. So when you get all this data, you use AI, train them. Then, you know, just essentially come up with your top molecules [00:28:00] based on that.

[00:28:00] Right. In the future, I think in the drug development space, FDMI, in FD modernization, people might move from all these animal research, et cetera, and then do organoids and cellular models with use of AI and unbiased omic analysis. 

[00:28:14] Dr. Scott Sherr: Organoids. So you're talking about like just an artificial lung. Or not artificial like, you know, a human lung. 

[00:28:19] Dr. Vivek Lal: We use it a lot.

[00:28:19] So we have a end-to-end facility, right, with using cells, which is 2D cells or 3D organ. We grow lungs essentially as organized and then test, you know, specific bacteria on it, or a group of bacteria on it. And then we go to the animal models, you- you know, check. So we had all of these models and infrastructure before going to clinical trials and that's when I thought, oh my God, this supplement industry is-

[00:28:42] a bunch of snake oil. Why doesn't someone try to sanctify the supplement industry? Right? Why don't they do drug development level research in supplement industry? And after doing some diligence, understood that it's a cost thing, putting the infrastructure for all these preclinical work and then go into the clinical trials, it's extremely expensive.

[00:28:57] And they don't get the ask. They said, that's why people don't do [00:29:00] it. They just take the shortcuts. Yep. I realized I already have the infrastructure while doing the drug development company. Right? So why not use it in a cost effective way and try to create supplements, which are like drugs but not drugs, you know, 

[00:29:14] Dr. Scott Sherr: The rigor's there, and then you're also have the sort of the pharma quality to the products as well. So are using, so using the same strains that you're developing on the pharmaceutical side, but you're just. Using them now in just a different route of delivery. Talking about the gut, is that the major difference or is there any 

[00:29:31] Dr. Vivek Lal: Uh, there are some other differences.

[00:29:33] So we do have a strain bank that we have created, you know, for pharmaceuticals. Uh, side, we are calling them LBP, Live Biotherapeutics product, right? So the production quality is. Similar, but they have to go through several other checks. Okay. Especially for the ones which would be inhaled, and FDA has those requirements, but in our case, we are kind of doing the same thing for supplement side, you know, just that it's like two ends of the spectrum.

[00:29:57] Drug is so difficult through an FDA— [00:30:00] supplement is so easy. Right. I hope- there needs to be a middle ground for— 

[00:30:03] Dr. Scott Sherr: Yeah. Yeah. Actually, I love that you're mentioning that because actually something that's when we've been trying to develop at- at our company, it's called Trocriptions and we make a pharmaceutical grade products in the form of a buccal troche. Yeah.

[00:30:13] And we always, we always complain about the same thing, which is that, you have your pharma and then you have your supplement companies, which have no regulations at all. They can self-regulate and- and then some companies do. We do- we do all of our- we get all of our certificates analysis done, third party with, you know, different third parties, and the manufacturers give us for the ingredients.

[00:30:31] We're doing all of our batch testing, we're doing all of the microbial, doing everything every single time. I mean, there are a couple supplement aggregators out there that I know that Karen knows, and that you probably know as well, that, that are doing more work to try to do the legwork of what compounds are on their platforms.

[00:30:47] But you- you're right, in general, it's, it's very easy. And I do think there needs to be a middle ground. And so maybe we can figure out what- what we need to call that, Vivek.

[00:30:54] Is that we've been kind of- we play around with it. For us, we have, you know, in internally we call it fun pharma. Where we're like, we're [00:31:00] having fun.

[00:31:00] We have products that can really help people, but we're And you, but we're also pharmaceutical grade, so maybe if you- if you like that, we can talk about it, you know? 

[00:31:07] Dr. Vivek Lal: Yeah, yeah. Let's, let's talk about that.

[00:31:09] Dr. Scott Sherr: Pardon the interruption. This episode is brought to you by Troscriptions, makers of precision-dosed, physician formulated, and pharmaceutical grade form is in the form of a buccal troche. 

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[00:31:34] So check it out at troscriptions.com, and SAVE 10% on your order by using code POD10 at checkout. Now back to the show. 

[00:31:41] Dr. Vivek Lal: You know, I refer to Resbiotic Nutrition as a biotech CPG company, essentially, right? All our products are patented. We, you know, our ingredients, proprietary, and we are doing the same amount of rigor from the preclinical perspective and then the clinical trial.

[00:31:54] So might as well create a new category on that. 

[00:31:56] Dr. Scott Sherr: Yeah, let's, let's do it. But, so- so from a gut perspective, how do you [00:32:00] think it's working to give some of these strains that you've studied? Like how's it working to give it in the gut? Make sure it gets to the right place, and then how is it causing this sort of more tropic effect in the lungs from there, as far as you can tell.

[00:32:12] Dr. Vivek Lal: So it's, you know, mainly because of the metabolites they're creating and overwhelming the system with the beneficial bacteria so that you overwhelm the system with the beneficial metabolites, which not only go to the lungs, but go to the other things or other organs also. Right? But. If they're useful in the lungs, they would decrease their inflammation in the lungs and improve breathing.

[00:32:32] So for our lung product, resbiotic lung support, we had to create a category. No one knew the probiotics could, you know, work for the gut lung axis or lung. So, we had to essentially create a category because we were seeing benefits in people who had chronic lung issues, right?

[00:32:49] Dr. Scott Sherr: Mm-hmm.

[00:32:49] Dr. Vivek Lal: Diseases, we can't make disease claims with supplements, but a lot of our customers would call us that, "Hey, I have this, and now I'm, you know, doing better. My pulmonologist doesn't believe it." [00:33:00] Right? So that was-

[00:33:00] Dr. Scott Sherr: Right, right.

[00:33:01] Dr. Vivek Lal: And the second category was, people who were just exposed to bad air, whether it is pollution, wildfires, or smoking. Hmm. I did not know smoking was a category. And then people started saying that, "Hey, every single time I've met a doctor, they've just. You know, ridiculed me and told me to stop quitting. I have made a decision not to quit. What can I take to reduce my inflammation?" Right.

[00:33:24] Dr. Scott Sherr: Interesting.

[00:33:24] Dr. Vivek Lal: What kind of comments started coming in and-

[00:33:26] Dr. Scott Sherr: Interesting.

[00:33:27] Dr. Vivek Lal: Workers or people who are trying to quit became a category. And then athletes who wanted to improve their FEV1 (Forced Expiratory Volume in 1 second), or just vital capacity, became a category.

[00:33:36] Dr. Scott Sherr: Have you seen- have you seen some benefit there on the endurance athletic side? 

[00:33:40] Dr. Vivek Lal: Yeah. Endurance, and swimmers. And again, these are all, you know, anecdotal experiences.

[00:33:44] Dr. Scott Sherr: Sure, sure.

[00:33:45] Dr. Vivek Lal: Feedback, testimonials. I've not done an RCT on athlete.

[00:33:48] Dr. Scott Sherr: I understand. I understand. Yeah. 

[00:33:50] Dr. Vivek Lal: You know, we have done our RCTs like, we have done, you know, two or three clinical trials already on resbiotic lung support, but you can't do it for every indication.

[00:33:57] But these are the testimonials we get. And, so our running job- job became that anyone who breathes is a customer. 

[00:34:03] Dr. Scott Sherr: I love that. I love that. Yeah. I mean, look- that's, that's probably not that far off, but, so the, the clinical trials that you have done so far using it, what- tell me a little bit about the- the conditions or indications or, and study results that you've seen.

[00:34:16] Dr. Vivek Lal: We used it in healthy, in smokers, and in asthmatics. We saw again- I have to be careful in what I say here- but we saw benefits in pulmonary functions. We saw benefit in inflammatory markers. We saw benefit in microbiota. Similarly, we did a double plan RCT on COPD patients. And you know, held the placebo control and found benefits there in quality of life and, you know, sleep, and in various markers- biomarkers. So we were very happy.

[00:34:57] Dr. Scott Sherr: Yeah. I can imagine. And so question for me is I [00:35:00] know that, you know, microbiotic can change very quickly within a couple hours, a couple days at the, at the least. Uh, it can happen very quickly. So what are you seeing as far as how long it takes once you start inoculating, you know, the- the gut with, you know, these strains or inoculating the lungs?

[00:35:16] Maybe it's a different time course, but what are you looking at? Are you looking at days, weeks, months, years? What's the, the time course for people to see a benefit typically? 

[00:35:23] Dr. Vivek Lal: Yeah. So, uh, so these are probiotics. Which show gut benefits within a week, like better digestion, your pooping well, you know, those kind of things, within a week.

[00:35:33] But the lung inflammation, bringing down the inflammation and, lung benefits do take time. I've seen reports within a week, which I don't believe, but yeah, people call us, "Hey, I'm better in a week." Right? Yeah. Usually most of the feedback is in the three to four week period, our clinical trials were done for, um, you know, a month, two months, so, three to four week period.

[00:35:56] So we recommend people be on it for at least three months. [00:36:00] But you know, most of our customers don't leave it because they start seeing the benefit and they just continue. On it. Like my family has been on it for like, what, four years now? Right. So sure. Didn't have any lung issues. 

[00:36:12] Dr. Scott Sherr: Yeah. Yeah. I was gonna ask you about engraftment.

[00:36:15] I guess maybe that's part of it. Like, which is like, do you think what's happening here in the lungs or in um, in the gut is. Cause because the bacteria and maybe actually can just delineate which ones you're actually using. Does, I don't, I don't, you said the lactobacilli strains, but- 

[00:36:31] Dr. Vivek Lal: ...using specific lactobacilli strains.

[00:36:33] One planter, one acidophilus, and one rosis. These are RSB strains, which are specific, uh, proprietors. 

[00:36:40] Dr. Scott Sherr: Right, right. These are proprietor strains. And so do you, do you see it as an grafting or you see it more of like, this is something that causes the pleiotropic effect, and then as a result you have the change?

[00:36:49] Dr. Vivek Lal: Yeah, I think it is a pleiotropic effect, reducing or increasing metabolites, which are anti-inflammatory. And uh, yeah, so I've not [00:37:00] encountered patients who come and say that, "Hey, I've stopped it for six months and- check me again." So we have not dealt with that. 

[00:37:07] Dr. Scott Sherr: Right. Got it. Yeah. 

[00:37:08] Dr. Vivek Lal: So the people just continue it, you know, uh, because they're seeing the benefit, they don't wanna quit.

[00:37:12] Dr. Scott Sherr: Would there be any detriment to you think, continuing it in the sense that, you know, and sometimes we have different types of bacteria that, like- like for example, it's- it's really a good idea to cycle things like spores, like spore biotics. We talk about from a, a gut perspective, bacillus species tend to be better, you know, one month to three months on and then, you know, three months off.

[00:37:32] Like, do you have any sense of that at this point that it'd be required or helpful? 

[00:37:36] Dr. Vivek Lal: I think it's because these are lactobacilli, which I've been well established to be very safe and I see are, and the, you know, we, uh, extracted these from humans, right? So they're part of our natural. Uh, immune system and, uh, so no, we have not had any issues.

[00:37:54] Dr. Scott Sherr: Okay. So there's no concern anywhere from-

[00:37:55] Dr. Vivek Lal: ...a bacteria overgrowth or anything? Yeah, we have not seen anything. 

[00:37:58] Dr. Scott Sherr: Yeah. Okay. I mean, yeah, you're right. I mean, lactobacillus [00:38:00] bacterium are your two. Most common species. I know, I know. Often times lactobacillus has also been associated with the, the vagus nerve and GABAergic, uh, yeah.

[00:38:10] Trans transmission signaling. Have you seen any of that and how that might relate to the lungs or, I know it relates to the brain, but I don't know if there's any lung. 

[00:38:17] It does relate to the brain, uh, because the metabolize, which are produce in the gut that go to the brain also, right. Or vagus or just to the bladder lymphatics.

[00:38:23] Dr. Vivek Lal: It does go to the brain. And, uh, uh, yeah, again, anecdotal and um. Customer feedback. They sleep better, they feel better. Uh, I know at least a few people with, you know, rheumatic issues or mm-hmm. Major inflammatory issues who have gotten back to us that they're on that for, on resB lung support for that.

[00:38:49] Yeah. So our clinical trials are done on lung issues. That's why we don't claim anything else. But it doesn't mean that other things Yeah. Are not helping. [00:39:00] 

[00:39:00] Dr. Scott Sherr: Yeah, I mean, I'm just thinking about in combination. You know, we have, we use something called Methylene Blue at our company Troscriptions, which is a, it's a compound, been around a long time.

[00:39:07] You probably have heard of it from like a, from a rescue perspective in septic shock or, and things like that. Maybe in the nicu they use it in babies, I don't know. But, um, but there's also some indication that it helps with. Hypoxic stress. And so when people come to altitude here in Colorado where I live, I'll often give them some methylene blue before they go- before they get on an airplane because it help with that hypoxic stress.

[00:39:28] And you have a lot of people in my neck of the woods that are here in Colorado training, high, so that they can go and, you know, compete back at, at, at C level. So, um, I wonder if, you know, some of these teams, if you're saying like, it, this is increasing FEV1 (Forced Expiratory Volume in 1 second) you like, it would be a nice, interesting, uh, interesting combination.

[00:39:46] Dr. Vivek Lal: Yeah, absolutely. It might be. It might be, you know, and there's so many things like that which people have just, uh, as physicians have, you know, kind of written off right? All these years claiming science, I- I feel this. Science just was not done [00:40:00] enough. It doesn't mean that it doesn't work, right? These kind of things, you have to do the science on it to prove that it works.

[00:40:07] Just that you're not done, it doesn't mean that. Doesn't work. Exactly. 

[00:40:10] Dr. Scott Sherr: Yeah. And it's hard, right? As you, as you mentioned, most of these companies, like supplement companies do not have the funds to be able to, to- to fund a study on a randomized clinical trial on COPD and a gut bacteria strain to use. It's- it's, it's a novel position to be in, to be able to do that.

[00:40:26] Dr. Vivek Lal: It is, and it's, it's not that they don't have the funds, but if they spend a million dollar on marketing, they'll make 5 million out of it. But if they spend a million dollar on a clinical trial, you have to start from zero again. Spend that million dollar for market. So that is the catch right people.

[00:40:42] Look for the short term result. 

[00:40:44] Dr. Scott Sherr: Yeah. How did you end up, how did you end up convincing your investors to do it? Like, was it a, or was it, you know, another sort of route? 'cause it's hard. You know, I, I guess I'm sort of selfishly asking this because, you know, as a company we would love to do more studies, but we don't do them at least yet.

[00:40:58] because we don't have the funding to be [00:41:00] able to do it. Right. So how did you, did you create like a whole system where everything is getting funded through the same verticals or do you have different funding depending on the situation for your projects? 

[00:41:09] Dr. Vivek Lal: So we have a CRO of our own called Able Bio Labs, 

[00:41:14] you know?

[00:41:14] Dr. Scott Sherr: Okay. 

[00:41:15] Dr. Vivek Lal: uh, we, uh, subsidize all our studies there, uh, clinical trials, et cetera, uh, and we can do it for a fraction for us, and we don't advertise it, you know, it's kind of boutique for us and friend and family. So we do it for lower cost than anywhere else you'll find, but it's still some cost, you know, and that, uh, you have to show the vision to the investors.

[00:41:36] Convince them that this is the future because I firmly believe this is the future. Even from the supplement industry, like in five years from now, people will get educated. They're already getting educated, uh, about the science and what you should take and what should not take inside your body, right? So people are getting educated.

[00:41:51] All these legacy marketing snake, all brands would wean out and Ian actually, or wean out or adopt, [00:42:00] uh, these newer science-based formulas. 

[00:42:02] Dr. Scott Sherr: Yeah. Well this is super cool, Vivek. I mean- I think it's really exciting for me too, because on October 17th and 18th here in Boulder, Colorado, you're gonna be speaking at our symposium, it's called the Health Optimization Medicine and Practices (HOMeHOPe) Symposium.

[00:42:16] So I'm guessing you're gonna talk about something related to these topics, right? 

[00:42:20] Dr. Vivek Lal: I will, I will. Hopefully, yeah. We can talk about other things also, but yeah, I, I think we'll stick to something around these. 

[00:42:27] Dr. Scott Sherr: Yeah, so I would love you to talk about, you know, this intersection of the, the gut lung axis and sort the multiomics approach.

[00:42:33] And- and the whole conference is really about what's on the forefront of- of medicine, but from a health perspective, which is unique. Most of the time you. And it's super important what you're doing with, you know, with COPD and advanced lung disease and, and, but if we can keep people healthy, like you're taking your product, I take my products all the time to, you know, optimize health.

[00:42:56] Like, it's so much easier to address something that might go [00:43:00] wrong if your system's in a better place ahead of time. 

[00:43:02] Dr. Vivek Lal: Absolutely. We have a role in our company. Nothing goes out, which we can't consume or we won't take, right? So we are the first Guinea pig for all our clinical trials, and uh, that's the way to do it, right.

[00:43:15] Dr. Scott Sherr: I'm a hundred percent with you. And we always say that at our a nonprofit as well is that, we wouldn't give you a supplement that we wouldn't have tried ourselves. Now there might be some- some exceptions. So if I am male, I may not give myself estrogen, for example. Or if, you know, if I'm female, I'll be like high doses of testosterone.

[00:43:33] But, but, so there are exceptions, but in in general, yes. If, you know, you gotta walk the talk, you know, and walk the walk, right. And so, I think it's great. So, have you been to Boulder, Colorado before? 

[00:43:43] Dr. Vivek Lal: I have- I have, but now I have a better reason to go- come. 

[00:43:46] Dr. Scott Sherr: Yeah, so it's gonna be fun October 17th and 18th.

[00:43:49] Hope some of you that are listening will join us. Vivek is gonna talk all about the gut lung axis and much more, and hopefully give us some samples to try. I'm sure you will. Or I'll make Kara bring some with her [00:44:00] if she can from Colorado. But, um, at the end of the podcast, Vivek, I, I also ask everybody like the same question, which is the name of the podcast is called The Smarter Not Harder podcast, and

[00:44:10] The reason why we call it that is that, you know, we try to live "smarter, not harder". And I, we've talked about various ways that you think about this already, probably from a gut lung axis perspective, but in all sort of walks of life, in all the aspects of your experience up until now, neonatology, dad, husband, you know, whatever else you wanna say.

[00:44:28] What are three ways that you feel, uh, people can live Smarter, not harder? 

[00:44:35] Dr. Vivek Lal: I think the first way is they have to take control of their own health. 

[00:44:39] Dr. Scott Sherr: Hmm.  

[00:44:39] Dr. Vivek Lal: There is a lot out there, you know, whether from your peers, whether from the internet, whether from, uh, you know, legacy, health advisors, right? So you have to educate yourself.

[00:44:52] I think, unless people start educating themselves, no one can help that. So that is the first thing. Second, [00:45:00] I think incorporating healthy habits in life. As early as possible in life. Hmm. We all spend our teens and twenties and thirties, not caring about the forties and fifties and sixties, but I feel that it doesn't matter.

[00:45:16] So educating the new generation that earlier you take control of your health, the better it is. Right? And, I think third is what we eat and what we breathe is important. 

[00:45:30] Dr. Scott Sherr: Yes. I love it. Those are simple, yet, super powerful, man. So thank you. Um, so for those that are listening, please let them know where they can find out more about you, more about your companies, the products that you have in brief websites.

[00:45:43] Anything else you'd like to share? 

[00:45:44] Dr. Vivek Lal: Absolutely. So Resbiotic Nutrition is our biotech CPG company. Hands back supplements, Resbiotic, R-E-S-B-I-O-T-I-C dot com biotic, uh, stands for [00:46:00] Restoration Biotic. We make supplements to restore health from chronic issues or to prevent chronic issues.

[00:46:06] You can, you know,find me there or, you know, my, you know, email would be info@resbiotic.com. 

[00:46:15] Dr. Scott Sherr: I love that your customer base is anybody that breathes. That's good. I dig it. 

[00:46:20] Dr. Vivek Lal: Anybody that breathes is, uh, is the right, uh, customer base. Yes. 

[00:46:24] Dr. Scott Sherr: Well, cool. I, I'm really excited to meet you in person in October.

[00:46:27] Thanks so much for spending some time with me today. 

[00:46:29] Dr. Vivek Lal: Wonderful, Scott. Likewise. Wonderful talking to you today. 

[00:46:31] Dr. Scott Sherr: Thanks so much for tuning into another episode of the Smarter Not Harder podcast. This is a fantastic episode. I learned so much about the gut lung axis, the multiomics approach that it took to get there.

[00:46:41] And Vivek's companies and how he's doing various things from an aeration perspective and from a gut perspective to optimize pulmonary health. This is such a big deal and so many potential implications. You guys are hearing it first probably. This is the first I've learned, learned about this is a new field that hasn't been around that long and there's so much more to come.

[00:46:59] So check out [00:47:00] Vivek at our symposium coming up October 17th and 18th. In Boulder, Colorado. Check it out at homehope.org. If you like this podcast, don't forget to like and subscribe below so you never miss an episode. Share with your friends and family and we'll check you next time on the Smarter Not Harder podcast.

[00:47:13] Take care.

Find more from Dr. C. Vivek Lal:

Resbiotic Nutrition: https://resbiotic.com/

LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/c-vivek-lal-md-faap-20183913

Instagram: https://instagram.com/dr.viveklal/

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