The Nutritional Outlook Podcast Episode 40: Probiotics for Performance

Sebastian Krawiec: Hello everyone. Welcome to the Nutritional Outlook podcast. I am Sebastian Krawiec, a managing editor of Nutritional Outlook, a multimedia publishing brand and leading informational resource for manufacturers of dietary supplements, healthy foods and natural products. Today, we're joined by Dr Jonathan Scheinman, co founder and CEO of Fitbiomics. Thank you so much for joining us today, Jonathan, thanks for having me. Awesome to be here. It's a pleasure. So kind of start, I was wondering if you can kind of briefly explain your background, and you know how you got interested in the gut microbiome, as well as its intersection with physical fitness?

Jonathan Scheiman: Man, that's a that's a question for the ages, but there's a lot to my history and background. But in another life, I was a collegiate basketball player. I played basketball at St John's, won a Big East Championship. The saying always goes, I didn't make it to the NBA, so I got a PhD in biomedicine as a backup, and that's how I became a scientist like legitimately, you know, I got my PhD in biomedicine, I then went to George Church's lab at Harvard to do my post doctoral fellowship, really with an emphasis on biotech development, genomics, tech development, sequencing, cellular engineering. And it was really there that I fell in love with the microbiome, and sort of metagenomics, and this ecosystem of trillions of microbes in and on our body, and how they greatly impact everything from health, performance, longevity, disease. And it's really there that I married my two great passions, and like performance, athletics and sort of biotechnology and kind of put them together. And Fitbiomics is the result of that.

SK: Very cool. So you know, on your website, the Fitbiomics says that you know the the products are decoded from the microbiomes of the fittest, and healthiest people to inform the probiotic formulation. I wonder if you can kind of describe that process, and how you ultimately kind of determine the correlation between specific probiotic strains and the physical physical fitness of these subjects.

JS: Yeah, I think again, this is a very cool marrying of two seemingly orthogonal industries, right, this notion of human performance and biotechnology. And we're kind of marrying one concept, which is, Be Like Mike. And how can we actually be like Mike, you know, and move that beyond maybe what they wear or drink or eat, the super performers, and actually look at their biology. And then I think if you look traditionally at biotech and translational medicine, typically, what is done is looking at diseased physiology to sort of see what's broken and how we could correct it to promote health. Now, just imagine you're merging Be Like Mike, and sort of understanding what works and is selected for in the most fit people in the world, and now bridging that with translational medicine and a microbiome perspective, and that's the concept of Fitbiomics, really trying to decode what's unique or enriched in the gut of the super performers with optimized exercise physiology, and then translating those insights into these next gen microbes that broader populations could benefit from. And then when you get into sort of elite physiology, there's a broad spectrum of things as it relates to endurance, strength, mental toughness, recovery, and I think from a health perspective, really what that is, is energy metabolism, protein metabolism, neurology, immunology. So again, these health principles being tied into these very unique phenotypes that have quantifiable metrics for what's driving optimal health.

SK: I understand this is kind of a chicken or the egg question, but I guess, like when you're looking at these athletes, looking at their microbiome, and you kind of find these probiotic strains that you correlate with their own fitness, do you think that, you know, this is inherently something they're predisposed to having the better microbiome in these areas, or is it kind of have to do with their fitness regimen and their diet and all that?

JS: I think the tongue in cheek answer is yes. But, you know, I think it's all about natural selection, it's all about competition. And I think what we know, especially with our microbiome, and one of the things that really excites me about the microbiome and metagenomics is just how malleable it is, right? And how much it interfaces with our diet, our lifestyles, our environment, and how we could sort of modulate it, you know, as opposed to, let's say, personalized genomes and genetics, although I guess you have CRISPR cas9 and editing now, but you know, we know diet plays a huge role. But you know, at the end of the day, you also have to think about how diet and lifestyle is impacting our gut. You know, if you look at Western societies, sedentary lifestyles, high fat, salt, sugar, antibiotics, it's completely shaping and manipulating our microbiome, whereas you look at these elite athletes, right? So for instance, we published a paper in Nature Medicine where we discovered a microorganism called Veillonella in ultra marathon runners; these are people that run 100 miles at a time, right, that have elevated levels of lactic acid in their bodies, in their gut, and that, in turn, is shaping their microbiome. And we could get into this, it then becomes this very interesting positive feedback loop right where, if these athletes are producing lactate, now the bacteria are happy, and if the bacteria are happy, they're now making the host happy, because they're creating propionate, which could power mitochondria and muscles. So it's this very interesting positive feedback loop,

SK: Fascinating. That kind of brings me to my next question, kind of going into, you know, your different probiotic strains that you're working with, and you know the mechanisms behind them. So in the case of Veillonella, you're saying that the production of lactate promotes the production of this probiotic, right? It feeds into it and then it continues to grow, right?

JS: Yeah, exactly.

SK: So, I guess when it comes to supplementation with Veillonella, does this work best on on its own or combined with diet, with physical fitness? If I take Veillonella, is it working best if I start working out and also feed that bacteria with my own lactate?

JS: Yeah, there's actually a couple of things to sort of consider here. One is, I think perhaps maybe, you know, lactic acid, or lactate might be one of the most misunderstood sort of metabolites in our bodies. You know a lot of people, I think, assume that it's what causes fatigue. It doesn't necessarily cause fatigue. It actually is a natural energy source for cells all over our body, whether it's our muscles, or our brains. But you know, it's something that's produced in response to intense exercise. It increases in the blood, and actually it kind of saturates and reaches this lactate threshold when it's produced faster than our body could utilize it, and that's when you sort of reach this fatigue threshold where our bodies kind of shut down. What's also misunderstood about lactate is, traditionally, it was thought that pretty much all of it goes into the liver, where it gets converted into glucose. What we found is that actually a significant portion of lactate in the blood, as it accumulates, goes into the gut, and there it serves as this carbon source for microbes like Veillonella, who could eat it for food and survival, and then sort of convert it into thing, into short chain fatty acids like propionate, which in turn now could go back and power our mitochondria in muscles as an alternative fuel source. A lot of what I said, even though it was long winded, just like I'm an ultra marathon runner and I keep going, but to your point, yes, if you are active and exercising and producing copious amounts of lactate, now, if you take a Veillonella probiotic, you'll have something that loves it and converts it to propionate. But to the same extent, because lactate is already naturally present in our body, you don't have to be an athlete to actually benefit from something like Veillonella, because it's going to continue to eat lactate, and even if, let's say, you take it in conjunction with lactobacillus probiotics, which produce lactic acid in your gut. So there are ways that Veillonella functions, with or without exercise to improve metabolic health and physical activity.

SK: Does [Veinella] increase endurance long term when you start kind of like incorporating this into your diet?

JS: Absolutely. So what's really amazing, when we published [about Veillonella] in Nature Medicine, back in 2019, you know, within that sort of five to six year time horizon we've translated from this academic discovery at Harvard into a real world, clinically validated commercial product that's actually, you know, produced at scale. And the important thing is that you know, clinically validated. So we've actually run multiple preclinical studies as well as human clinical studies to show that, you know, whether it's animals or humans consuming Veinella, they're showing improvements in run till exhaustion and VO₂ Max. We also have a study that's not yet published, but we're preparing it now where you know participants, people that consume villa, just show reduced fatigue across the board. That could be general fatigue. It could be just how tired people are feeling. So this opens up just a new broader application beyond performance, but even just like energy, right? And sort of just not necessarily athletic performance, but human performance.

SK: Very interesting. You also have nella, which is a combination of three probiotics and that's kind of more it's focused on sleep, right? Kind of, but then kind of energy as an extension of being rested. That's the impression I got of it.

JS: So it's a similar premise, and I'd say something like Veillonella, you know, as you know, when you think about probiotics, obviously, this 100 billion dollar global industry, I think 90% of probiotics on the market are Lactobacillus, Bifidobacterium, and then the last 10% might be spore formers like Bacillus. So something like Veillonella is an entirely novel genus of you know, beneficial microbes to hit the market. What nella is actually it's, you know, generic variations of Lactobacillus species. However, they're still sourced from what we call the finest microbiomes on Earth. They're still sort of derived from these elite performers. And you know, they've sort of evolved to meet their physiological needs. And to your point, nella has also been clinically validated in several studies. But nella what really it's doing is it's improving sleep health and gut health as well. So you know, V and L is more so about fatigue and energy, whereas nella is more about sleep and gut health.

SK: Very interesting. Yeah, you don't hear when it comes to gut health, you don't hear a lot about sleep, right? I always hear about gut immune, gut brain, stuff like that, sometimes even gut heart. But I have never, kind of seen much of a relationship expressed between gut health and sleep health. Can you kind of unpack that relationship?

JS: Yeah, well, actually, I think it's tied into what you just mentioned, and what we're seeing in terms of mechanism, you know, if, when I think of sleep, to me, that is like brain health, right? But actually, what you pointed out, a lot of the mechanisms we're uncovering with nella is tied into the immune system. So nella story is pretty interesting. Like, literally, in the middle of the pandemic, we did an open label study with 250 participants. They consumed nella on a daily basis for two weeks, and we thought that the primary benefit would be just gut health, bowel movements, digestion. And people noticed that. But actually, empirically, the number one benefit that that was reported was sleep. We then followed that study up with a blinded, placebo, controlled study with a professional soccer club in Italy that included not just questionnaires on sleep and gut health, but also we looked at stool and blood to identify biomarkers that might be relevant. And what we found is nella, amazingly, is doing a bunch of cool things. One, it's reducing inflammation markers like IL-6. Two, it's reducing reactive oxygen species. Three, it's reducing free cortisol to testosterone ratio. So just think about that in the context of inflammation and stress, and what we're seeing is now that is tying into the ability to improve sleep health. So there's a lot of other cool things it's doing, but I love how you tie this together, right? We just think of the gut, but when we tie it into connection to the immune system, into the brain, it can impact things like sleep

SK: When you embarked on this journey initially, of kind of doing this research and stuff, you know, did you have in mind, kind of, like, you know, what's kind of missing in terms of, like, kind of digestive health support in the performance space? Is that something you had in mind? Because, like, when you think of performance sports nutrition, you don't think too much about gut health unless it's like, maybe in kind of the digestibility of, like, protein products, stuff like that, at least in my experience.

JS: When we started Fitbiomics, and just, let me just be real, this crazy idea. Yeah, but the only thing crazier is that it's actually working, right? It wasn't really about sports performance. It never, candidly, was about that, you know, honestly, this was more about, again, translational medicine and biotechnology. And, you know you have a system, right? A model where you know it takes billions of dollars and a decade to create a drug with a less than 10% success rate, right? That's our model for healthcare and for medicine, right? And think about where we are today as a society. 60% of all US adults have at least one chronic disease, right? You know, it costs the US government up to $4 trillion a year in healthcare costs, right? Chronic disease is the number one leading cause of death, so from our perspective, is like, how can we recorrect this system? How can we really develop novel health solutions to address critical needs in society and do it in a fraction of the time with orders of magnitude less capital. And really it was like, Well, maybe if we're going to sort of promote health to broader society, we should understand what health really means from a molecular perspective, and look at these super performers. So that, honestly, was the foundation for Fitbiomics, and now it's led to these microbes and probiotics that are delivering these out of the box benefits compared to traditional supplements.

SK: I wonder if you could talk about kind of the versatility of nella or Veillonella. Right now, I see it's available in capsules. Can it be incorporated into functional foods and beverages, powder formats; is a shelf stable?

JS: Well, what's really amazing, especially with Veillonella, it's a strict anaerobic microorganism, and we have amazing 24 months stability. And this is sort of as a powder in various sort of formats. We've already developed sort of protein powder prototypes of Veillonella. And I think that's something that's very interesting. We're doing some clinical studies with beverage companies. We are also interested in looking into how it gets incorporated into, you know, other food formats, yogurts, kefirs, things of that nature, which, again, let's face it, that particular food format utilizes probiotics and bacteria already. So there's a natural, I think, integration there. You know, I think anytime you're just putting into a straight up beverage, I think that's going to be challenging, because moisture really affects these live microorganisms. But, you know, the last thing I'll say along those lines are, is just even opportunities to develop postbiotic versions of these microbes. But even if you think about the postbiotics in terms of the metabolites they produce and taking off sort of extracts or supernatants, and looking at those health benefits as well. So whether it's the microbe themselves or the things they produce, there's a lot of versatility.

SK: So when you're talking about postbiotics, you're talking about the metabolites of the heat treated probiotic, right? So, would that be propionate? Essentially, like, would you be supplementing a propionate?

JS: It could be, it could be a range of things. So, you know, I guess the from what I you know, it's still evolving, right? So for me, I think a postbiotic could be a couple of things. One, it could be a heat killed version of the microbe itself, or the thing it's producing, like a propionate or short chain fatty acid. I think for something like Veillonella, both have their benefits. Certainly, the short chain fatty acids. But you know, even, like what we spoke about with nella and sort of reduction of inflammation oxidative species, a lot of times, these microbes are interfacing with the immune system through, you know, these molecules that are present on the microbe surface. So even in sort of like a heat killed format, they could still deliver these interesting immune benefits. So we're exploring both of those opportunities, and then, of course, exploring just the live microbe going into these various food formats as well.

SK: Wonder if you talk about the relationship between, kind of, like, Nella and Veillonella in terms of prebiotics, kind of a symbiotic formulation, like, what are the what is the potential there? I mean, venal is an interesting thing, because it's kind of like female is fed by lactate but like, imagine Lactobacillus, you know, would benefit from prebiotics.

JS: I'm really glad you brought this up, because I forgot it. This is so mind blowing. You just hit it on the head. For Veillonella, lactic acid is the prebiotic. That's such a wild concept. What's so cool about Veillonella is that it's naturally feeding on things your body already produces. Like that is crazy, right? And then the more you produce it with physical activity, the more that food source is coming in. Like it's just, it's this built in performance booster that these elite performers have through selection and training, that we're now translating and providing to everyone. Like that is just this notion of lactic acid as a prebiotic is so cool. And then, of course, you know, you hit it on the head, Lactobacillus species, like nella, produce lactic acid. So then merging them together, there's this cross talk and, like, reinforcing each other.