917: How Digestive Bitters can Support Digestive Health and Natural GLP-1 Production With Tina Anderson

Katie: Hello, and welcome to the Wellness Mama podcast. I’m Katie from barbaraoneill.online. And this episode covers something I have not yet talked about on this podcast, which is digestive bitters and how they can support many aspects of digestive health, as well as they can support natural GLP production, which is not talked about that much, the natural ways that we can encourage the body’s production of this endogenously. And I’m here so excited to be back with my friend, Tina Anderson today for this conversation.

I will link to our previous conversations in the show notes. We’ve gotten to talk about a lot of aspects of gut health, and I love Tina’s passion for this and all that she does to help people in the world of gut health. She actually began her career as a trial lawyer and she brings that same dedication to research and her passion into now gut health and every other area of health.

And she’s just such a wealth of knowledge. Like I said, bitters are not a topic I had a lot of knowledge about and one that I’m excited to experiment with. So let’s join and learn from Tina Anderson.

Tina Anderson, welcome back. Thank you for being here again.

Tina: Oh, thanks, Katie. I’m so excited to be here with you.

Katie: Well, it’s always such a pleasure to chat with you and get to see your face. We’re in real life friends who I feel like haven’t gotten to see each other in way too long. So hopefully we get to remedy that this year. And since we even last saw each other in person, you are now a grandma, which is so exciting.

And I can’t wait to meet this little guy at some point, but just thank you for being here. You’re always a tremendous joy to have on.

Tina: Oh, thank you so much for having me. I love talking to you.

Katie: And I always learn so much from you. And today I have some very specific questions about bitters, which I’ve never gotten to get into on this podcast. So we’re going to get to that. But before we get into the nitty gritty and get to go kind of nerdy on gut health. I also just would love to have kind of a fireside chat with you about how topics like gut health and topics like the gut brain barrier are entering the mainstream conversation, which I think is so exciting.

I think we’re seeing, at least from my side, we’re seeing more moms, especially than I’ve ever seen entering this dialogue about how these different factors contribute to health. And depending on when you guys are listening, we recently saw Red 3 get banned in food after being banned in cosmetics years and years ago. But personally, I’m so excited to see a conversation happening on a more mainstream kind of stage about things like vegetable oils and things like additives in our food. And I would love to hear kind of your take on that as well. I just feel like the things that used to just be kind of in the fringes and the obscurity of natural health are now actually getting engaged in the mainstream.

Tina: Yes, I could not agree with you more, Katie. I feel like we’ve been talking about this, like, meaning we, our company has been talking about this for 11 years and just trying to scream it from the rooftops about, you know, look at your food, be the CEO of your own health and take control of your health. And you have been such a huge help to so many people out there.

And, you know, obviously anybody listening to this right now is already three steps ahead, 10 steps ahead of most Americans out there because they found you and they hear your message. And I just, I have such a sense of optimism right now that there’s so much awareness going on right now. And I cannot thank you enough for having your platform and for giving people just tools. I think that’s the biggest thing is that you’ve been giving people tools for all these years. And it’s something I, again, a message we’ve been shouting from the rooftops and it’s so exciting to see this on mainstream media. It’s, it’s all over the place. People are talking about like the red dye number three, like you mentioned

Banned from cosmetics for 35 years, almost 35 years, but yet allowed in our food supply. And, you know, you’ve been saying this, you’ve been talking about this for so long. And it’s just really exciting to see this awareness out there. I am feeling really optimistic because even if people, you know, don’t want to make the change, those that do want to make the change, have this, the necessary information out there.

Katie: Exactly. Like to your point, I think we all benefit when we can engage, even if we disagree at times, if we can engage in kind and productive dialogue. And I love to see that. It seems like a groundswell of moms also really leading this conversation from many perspectives, and I think it’s like a net benefit to all of us when we get to have that dialogue. And I think if anything, the one thing I would say is missing from at least the most prominent parts of the mainstream conversation, as I see it right now is just the simple reminder that at the end of the day, while it’s awesome that we’re hearing about this on a wide scale, and maybe we’re even going to see some regulation that makes it more wide scale on our whole food supply. At the end of the day, you call it, you know, being CEO of your own health.

And I often reference that we are each our own primary healthcare provider, and none of that depends on anybody being in office or not being in office or laws being passed or not being passed. We get to make those choices every day, no matter what that already lives within us. And I’m really encouraged to see moms, especially kind of taking that responsibility for themselves, for their families and making these choices and not waiting for policy or laws to be enacted to make these changes.

And I think that’s what also is kind of leading at least the conversation and the stepping into more widespread talking of this. So I just love seeing moms like you as well, doing this from a company level, doing this on your family level with your kids and having always been focused on health. I think this is when we really are going to see things shift in a positive way is when we have the moms making the grassroots changes within the families.

And now we have a wider conversation that can help this become understood on a more broad level.

Tina: Yeah, I mean, you hit the nail on the head when it comes to the moms. It is the moms that are making the change right now. And I think moms have just, they’re sick and tired of seeing kids, children being faced with chronic conditions. I mean, even the autism rates, you know, it used to be one in 1500 children in 2000, it was 1 in 1500 children who had autism. And now the rates are 1 in 36 nationwide. And even in California, the rates are 1 in 22. The autism rates are 1 in 22 children. And I think moms are starting to get sick and tired of this. And kudos to all of these people, this grassroots campaign of people getting together and joining and bringing attention to these matters.

And you’re absolutely right. I mean, we could take these things into our own health. But I always say, I do wish like the government would come out with like a campaign. They did anti smoking campaigns. They’d done drunk driving campaigns, you know, things that say like, take control of your health.

We need to take control of our health and we need to focus on the foods that we’re putting in our body and focus on real whole natural foods, and hopefully we’re getting there, but in the meantime, thank goodness we could do it at where our own CEOs and primary healthcare provider, I love that.

Katie: Well I think that’s a perfect springboard kind of into the specifics and what I always think of is like, what are the 80, 20 or the most effective little levers we can pull, especially within our own families that are going to have the maximal impact in our health. And also, especially anytime that they’re simple or not complicated or easy to implement.

I’m especially a big fan of those. And that’s why I talk so much on this podcast about topics like sleep, which in all 900 episodes, I’ve never had one single person say, sleep doesn’t matter or sleep’s not important. I know sleep is elusive for moms, but it’s one I talk about often, because I think that’s a big needle mover.

And in many ways, improving our sleep can be inexpensive or free. So I think that’s a huge ROI area of health. Same with, people are probably even tired of me talking so much about light exposure and sunlight and morning sunlight and how vital that is for our health. But again, I think this is one of those things where simply being more in harmony with nature has tremendous benefit for our health, which makes complete sense when we think about how humans have lived throughout all of history. And then I think another massive area that’s so high ROI is learning and really being aware of and conscious of our gut health, because I feel like studies just continually come out over and over and over about how the gut is connected to every part of the body. But especially we’re seeing the link to brain health and mental health.

There’s a huge component there, which I know you have done massive deep dives on, including ways to specifically support mental health through supporting gut health. But I just feel like gut health is such an important topic. We’re seeing that enter the mainstream conversation as well in various ways and things that both either negatively or positively affect gut health. And I know you and I have gotten to have thankfully many conversations and recorded a few of them about gut health. I’ll link to our previous podcast episodes as well. But it’s kind of a segue into talking about bitters, which we’re going to get to.

I would love for you to just kind of recap some high points related to gut health, specific to things moms can be aware of and do within our own families to really help get that higher ROI benefit of really supporting our own gut health.

Tina: Yeah. So, I mean, you’re absolutely right. Gut health is literally, when you take the 80 20 rule, gut health is so critical to be focused on because it’s literally affecting every aspect of our overall health. I mean, 90 percent of non communicable diseases are attributable to an unhealthy gut. So when we’re talking about overall health, when you have gut health, you have health.

So when you’re talking about overall health, we need to be focusing on our gut health. You mentioned the connection between our gut and our brain, you know, between the vagus nerves, there’s this communication going on between the gut and the brain. So what is going on in our gut is directly affecting and impacting our brain health.

And the opposite is true. What’s happening in our brain is affecting our gut health. So one of the things I always tell people is like, try to meditate. When you meditate, And, you know, it brings your cortisol down and the brain is now sending signals to the gut to calm down. And that helps our gut health.

And it was very not, it wasn’t well received early on when I would talk about that because people would be like, what would your brain have to do with your gut? But we now know science is very clear that there’s a connection between our gut and our brain. The other thing to remember is that 90 percent of our serotonin is produced in our gut.

And serotonin of course, is our happy hormone. So this critical important hormone is being produced in our gut, not in our brain. 90 percent of it’s being produced in our gut. GABA, dopamine, all these incredible critical neurotransmitters are being produced in our gut. But then when we talk about like our immune system, you know, 70 to 80 percent of our immune system is found in our gut lining. So if we want our immune system to work properly, we have to have a healthy gut. And then when you talk about different, you know, autoimmune issues, allergies, all of those types of conditions, those are all related to our gut health.

I mean, if you have an autoimmune issue, you have leaky gut. It’s pretty much, you know, understood that if you have some type of autoimmune issue, you have a leakiness of the gut. And, you know, it’s not a bad idea to maybe talk for a second about leaky gut because leaky gut is really the cause of all of these non communicable diseases that we have because.

Leaky gut, of course, is the intestinal cell wall. When it opens up, it develops holes. You know, the name leaky gut is very descriptive of exactly what it is. And basically LPS toxins will seep into the bloodstream and cause this, inflammatory response by the body and that chronic inflammation could affect our brain, it could affect our heart.

It could affect any of our organs. So, you know, it’s so important. And I think what happens is people start to think, well, I have some gas and bloating. That’s normal. Well, when I eat this, it’s normal. I have some gas and bloating, or you know, I don’t go to the bathroom every day, but I go every couple of days, or I go once a day, but I don’t go three or four times a day.

And people have sort ofc ome to this point where like, it’s normal. These are not normal. They might be normal to our community that we’re like, you know, the population now, but it’s not optimal. And, you know, we have to understand that just because your neighbor and everyone in your family has gut issues, this is not normal.

And it’s something, it’s a red flag and it’s a red flag for other diseases that can be out there.

Katie: Yeah, that’s such a good point. I think it’s really important to remember, especially in a world where over 90 percent of Americans have some marker of metabolic dysfunction, that common no longer equals normal. And I think another important factor of this that I think about a lot and certainly don’t have all the answers around, but is simply that I think we can get caught up in the modern world, too, on wanting to sort of, like, override the body’s natural processes or force it to do what we want, rather than learning to speak its language and learning to work with it.

And I know this is a controversial topic when it comes to things like GLPs, and that they can, of course, have their place and be used well, but I worry from the, like, kind of mentality around them. I worry that we’re using them as a way to override what our body is asking for, the way it’s trying to communicate with us rather than trying to understand the natural process of the body.

And I think I also see this sometimes with people doing like more extreme detox type protocols. And again, there’s a time and a place for those, but I think in both cases, it comes from understanding the way the body works and learning how to work with the body’s natural rhythms and processes versus override them.

And I think gut health is really a big part of understanding the natural process of the body so that we can do that effectively and of course, not to say that all we have to do is listen to the body and support its natural processes through just food anymore. I know we’re dealing with more kind of environmental factors than we ever have before, but I think it all still stems from learning to work with our body versus trying to overwrite it.

And again, I think gut health is a tremendous part of this because everything does truly begin in the gut.

Tina: Yeah. Oh, I love that. That is such a great way to look at it. Cause exactly, we do not want to override our natural body. What we’re trying to do is support our natural body’s ability to fight infection. Or, you know, I always say that when my kids had a fever, I would never give them something to bring the fever down unless it was dangerously high. But our body is so beautifully designed to heal itself. Our body is so beautifully designed to process things properly. But like you said, we’ve got environmental factors that are just wreaking havoc on our gut when we’re talking about the toxins that we’re breathing, the personal care products that are loaded with chemicals that are so disruptive to our gut health. Glyphosate, which is the active ingredient in Roundup that’s being sprayed all over our food supply, which is so exciting that that’s actually out there on the mainstream media that people are talking about glyphosate now and like how dangerous it is.

And, but all of these things are wreaking havoc on our gut and, and our overall health. And, and we’re faced with them. We are, we’ve got these environmental factors that are really, unfortunately, standing in the way of our body, protecting itself. And I agree that the key is to support our body’s natural ability to digest food and break down nutrients and absorb nutrients.

Katie: Yeah, exactly. I think, like, understanding that we can see how you talked about leaky gut, how when we have problems in the gut, there’s now a lot more understanding about the negative cascade that can happen and how that can be connected, like you said, to autoimmunity, to brain issues, sleep issues, to so much. And the positive side of that is that when we really kind of hone in on gut health and support our gut and heal that leaky gut, that by supporting it, we can develop so much more resilience. And I’ve heard from so many people who have done that. They had all these health struggles and when they really got aware of their gut health and made that a priority, they not just recovered from that maybe acute thing that they were working on, but they developed so much more resilience.

So maybe a lot of other foods didn’t bother them and they didn’t have skin issues. Like it seems like it ripples in so many ways that we don’t even necessarily always think of it. And in our past conversations about this, you and I have gotten to talk about probiotics, which thankfully I feel like a lot of people understand the importance of things like probiotics now.

Even though you guys have such unique ways of really targeting specific strains of probiotics to help the body and the gut in very specific ways, including with, like I use the focus and memory one all the time or the calm one which really seems to improve sleep. But you guys have gotten so detailed and nuanced with how we can support our gut in specific ways to kind of help the body in various other ways that we may not even initially understand and connect until we learn that process.

But today I’m really excited cause I’m going to learn from you on something I don’t actually know much about. And it’s something that I’ve not gotten to talk about on this podcast, which is pretty rare this many episodes in, and that is the topic of digestive bitters. And I think this actually perfectly builds on what we were just talking about in supporting the body and its natural processes. Um, but like I said, this is a new topic for me. So to just gentle entry, can you explain what bitters are?

Tina: Yeah. So digestive bitters are actually have been used for centuries. Um, you know, they were a traditional food and there are herbs and plants that are actually helping aid in our digestion. Um, it is, and they have been pretty much they’ve disappeared for from our modern diet. Um, its really crazy because we’ve kind of, our food now has been engineered to be like salty and sweet, but the whole bitter tastes have been largely removed from any of our foods that are out there.

So they’re basically herbs and plants that are helping aid in our digestion and we just don’t see them anymore. One of the big things, you know, when we launched our flagship product, our spore based probiotic, we always talk about that probiotic as being something that our ancestors evolved with. Our ancestors evolved with those types of strains in the soil.

They would eat eat roots and tubers off the land, and they would get these type of strains. And those are the same type of strains that are in our probiotic. Well, bitters, same thing. We evolved eating bitters, and we just don’t, as in our modern diet, just does not have bitters, we don’t like the taste of them.

You know, if you go to Asian cultures in this day and age, they are eating bitters and they’ve been incredibly beneficial to, you know, their health and wellness. One of the biggest, or some of the biggest benefits of bitters are that their ability to increase stomach acid. And that’s so funny, it’s so important because so many people will think, well, why would I want to increase stomach acid?

You know, I’m taking Tums or I’m taking Pepsit or things to reduce stomach acid. Well, it’s always important to remind everybody that, you know, our stomach acid is incredibly important to us. It’s job is to, it’s the gastric barrier. It’s meant to protect our intestines from pathogens and other unwanted pathogens to enter into our intestines.

And so we want more stomach acid. We want to, and as we age, we start to lose stomach acid, but it’s super important. So we know that bitters actually increase the body’s ability to increase stomach acid, also increases digestive enzymes production. So we know that digestive enzymes are critically important to break down food.

And then we also know that they help support bile production. So it’s incredibly supportive of the liver and fat metabolism. So a really important facet to bidders is just their ability. Oh, they also, one of the most important trending topics right now is that it increases our natural GLP one production.

You know, we know that these GLP ones, like you said, our bodies are being overridden by a lot of the pharmaceutical types of, you know, Ozempic, Wegovi, this is a much gentler approach. So it’s helping with satiety as well and having that feeling of fullness longer. So lots of really important things with bitters.

You know, the thing is the probiotic is really helping the entire digestive tract primarily the large ball. With the bitters it’s supporting our stomach and the stomach is largely overlooked and it’s overworked, frankly. And so this is something that’s really supportive of our stomach and our small intestine and just helping us with, you know, increasing stomach acid, aiding digestion, helping with GLP1 and then also digestive enzyme production.

Katie: Yeah, that’s huge. And I think that makes sense to me that this is something we haven’t, we don’t choose to consume a lot of in the modern diet, especially with the prevalence of all these like hyper palatable foods available everywhere. It makes sense we wouldn’t naturally choose to eat the things that maybe don’t taste as quote unquote good. But also you mentioned that a lot of Asian culture cultures still eat more bitters than we do. And of course, like correlation doesn’t equal causation, but I know many of those countries also have much better health outcomes than we do and don’t rank nearly as high as we do in all these chronic disease issues and or obesity. So that’s an interesting factor, obviously not that it’s the cause, but it might be one of the factors that contributes. And I think this stomach acid point is really important as well. I’ve seen some info on this and it’s seemingly, with our modern food supply, this is something that at least in the United States, we are seeing kind of a decline in average stomach acid and also the problems that are associated with that. And I feel like you explained it so well, but our stomach acid is needed to break down the foods that we eat to get the maximal benefit out of them. So even if we’re eating super healthy, it’s not just what we’re eating, but what we’re digesting. And then further from that, what we’re absorbing. So seemingly this is an area where you could be eating on paper, like a, you know, quote, perfect diet. And if you’re not making the enzymes and stomach acid and have a healthy enough gut to digest it, you still may not be getting the benefits that you could from this diet that you’re, you know, being so intentional and careful to consume. So I love that it’s able to do that. I think that’s an area that’s just not talked about that much.

And I love that bitters are a natural way to support our stomach acid. And I’d love to hone in a little bit more on the GLPs because I did use that as an example of, you know, a lot of people are taking massive amounts of these to override the body’s natural process. But like you said, it’s important to remember the body does make GLPs as well.

This is something that is endogenous to our body that were meant to do make. And I’ve had guests on that kind of explain how the modern diet doesn’t set us up for success in making kind of the correct physiological amount of GLPs. That we have a lot of factors in the modern diet that sort of suppress our body’s ability to make GLPs naturally.

And to your point, I think that the solution is learning how to sort of retrain the body and support the body in making it endogenously versus just immediately jumping toward taking exogenous amounts of it. Especially I had one guest explain, you know, it’s not that GLPs are bad, of course, because they’re made by the body, but when we take, they’re meant to kind of cycle and to go up and down throughout the course of a day in a natural rhythm. And when we take this massive exogenous dose, we’re losing that rhythm of the body, which can impact sleep potentially, which can impact food absorption, which can impact a lot of other things. And I know we’ve even seen concerns when we override the body’s natural amount. We’re now starting to see people who have been on this for a longer time, they’re maybe seeing bone loss is a big concern. I’ve seen talks about they’re seeing muscle loss, which I know as like a woman I’m very concerned with increasing my muscle and keeping it as I get older, not losing muscle. So I feel like anytime we have a way to support the body’s endogenous production of something versus override it and bypass the body’s ability, that’s so beneficial. I would guess a lot of people don’t know that bitters are one way to do that. I certainly didn’t until we talked about it.

Tina: Yeah, it’s very exciting and it’s a much gentler approach. That’s the thing. Like you had said, it’s just so aggressive the way it’s being treated in some of these pharmaceutical products out there. But this is a much gentler approach to help our body do what it’s supposed to be doing. And you had brought up the word resilience before.

And I think that is such an important word when we’re talking about gut health is like our goal is to become resilient. And you know, this is another way. And when it comes to GLP ones, or when it comes to increasing stomach acid or digestive enzymes, all of those things are going to create more resilience in our body.

And we’re going to be able to deal with issues that come, you know, we’re going to be able to eat that burrito that’s got spicy stuff and be able to handle it better because we’re becoming more resilient. Or we’re going to be able to deal with some virus that we’re faced with down the road just as we take care of our gut health and our immune system. So, I love when we talk about resilience, cause that’s one of our biggest goals is to be able to be resilient and support our body’s natural ability to produce these very important factors.

Katie: And based on how you talked about stomach acid, especially,I’m curious if there’s a place for bitters and or other gut support. I know you guys have a whole range of ways to support the gut that you offer, and I’ll link to those in the show notes, but are there a way that we can use these more natural solutions to replace some of these really common over the counter things?

Like I know the last data I saw on like antacid use, for instance, it’s massive. This is like a huge industry of people taking antacids and based on what you explained about stomach acid, I can’t imagine that taking an antacid is a good idea if we need more stomach acid to properly digest our food. So I just wonder if there are things that people are looking for relief from and taking maybe over the counter things to remedy that actually could be solved by learning to support the gut and kind of removing the problem versus just masking it.

Tina: Yeah, I’m glad you brought that up again cause I think it’s so important to talk about this stomach acid issue again, because when people are taking these antacids, they are literally, like we said, reducing the stomach acid, and that is now contributing to the problem. So it’s only treating the symptoms and it’s now contributing to the problem.

So people are on it. I mean, it’s a beautiful business model for many of these antacid companies because they literally are on these and it’s now making the problem worse and they’re just consuming more antacids. And, you know, I think that’s another point to what I had mentioned before was, we become normalized to it. Like, oh, take this Tums or take this, you know, antacid, whatever it might be, we became normalized to it and it’s absolutely not normal.

And so we want to make sure that we are focusing on increasing our stomach acid, because that’s going to be further supportive of our gut health, of the way we’re absorbing our nutrients. And yeah I would definitely caution people to stay away from a lot of those products that are bringing down down our stomach acid because our stomach acid is so protective of us.

Remember, it’s helping us get rid of the pathogens that are going into our gut and we have to make sure that we’re continuing to support that.

Katie: Yeah, and I would guess that also would apply even more so potentially to things like proton pump inhibitors. And I know there’s a whole host of medications that I don’t even know their names or understand them, but related to kind of supporting that kind of acid problem, which you just explained isn’t actually the problem at all to begin with.

What about people who struggle from things like just indigestion or gas? I know you’re a gut health company, so I’m sure you talk to these people often. Bitters I would guess are helpful here as well, but what else can people do in concert with bitters to sort of address that problem at the root cause?

Tina: Yeah, no, exactly. That’s the time when you know, those people that have that burning of feeling in their esophagus, that’s exactly what the bitters are meant to do is they’re meant to support that and help that relieve some of that. Not only are they going to help relieve some of the symptoms associated with that, but they’re actually helping to get to the root cause of the problem as well.

So, and definitely gas and bloating. So, you know, things like the indigestion that you mentioned, gas and bloating, those are the types of things you’ll notice just in ease in digestion. Those are the things that people will notice. And the interesting thing is like with the probiotic, it usually takes a little bit of time to get, we’re really fixing up the stomach and the way our intestines are and we’re absorbing things. But with the bitters, it seems to be a little bit more fast acting. So we recommend taking it 10 to 15 minutes before a meal. And hopefully you’ll start to see some relief from things that you’re experiencing.

Katie: Well, that’s awesome for people to know that there’s like a short term thing that provides relief quickly while you’re also hopefully still addressing the longer term balance, like with the probiotics. I’m a huge fan of them. I will say that they actually live on my nightstand and they’re one of the few things I take really consistently. Almost everything I cycle, but I absolutely love the things that you guys create. I would guess bitters is something, again, I was not super well versed in these, but I did a little bit of research for this episode and I feel like it’s important to also touch on what makes yours different than maybe just like kind of the average bitters someone might find if they were in a health food store.

Tina: Yeah. Well, the biggest thing is that so many people don’t take bitters because of the bitter taste. And so they don’t, they just, there’s no compliance. People won’t take it. So we developed our product in a capsule and it’s a full spectrum. It’s got 12 different bitter herbs in there from bitter melon to dandelion root, gentian root.

All of these critical, important bitters are in this one capsule. So and it’s just easy to take. And there’s a better compliance, people will be taking it more. And the other thing to remember is that we think of digestive bitters as only affecting our intestines and our gut health, but really we know that there are bitter receptors in our lungs.

There’s bitter receptors in our brain. So while the primary benefit will be digestion, we also know that it’s also helping our lungs and our brain as well. But yeah, the biggest thing is just the ability to swallow the capsule and not have to deal with the bitter taste and just that we have this full spectrum product available that you could get all of these really beneficial bitters that are helping digestion, helping with satiety. So that feeling of fullness, in supporting our bile production and our ability to produce digestive enzymes. So a lot of really exciting things for our stomach. And again, the probiotic is focusing primarily on the large bowel, which obviously we know is critically important to our overall health and the bitters think of it as supporting our stomach and our small intestines.

Katie: Yeah. And I know things like gallbladder removals have been on the rise actually for a long time. So it seems like that supporting our natural bile production would be like an important thing in, and that’s not an area of digestive health that gets talked about as much. So I love that it has a role there.

And I also wanted to circle back to talk a little bit about protein and fat digestion because I am really excited and encouraged to hear so many women talking about supporting their muscle tone and eating enough protein and really nourishing their bodies versus dieting. I think this is super awesome and exciting that we’re seeing this kind of in a widespread way.

And I know firsthand as someone who under ate for a decade and then tried to start eating enough protein, that there was a little bit of an adjustment period there to kind of put it gently. And that I had to like sort of retrain my gut to be able to digest enough food to actually nourish my body. But especially for people who have under eaten that breaking down and really absorbing the fats and proteins can take some time and adjustment. And it sounds like gut support in general, of course, but bitters especially can help our gut with that transition. And since I see so many people talking about consuming enough protein, I feel like this is something that maybe could really help with that that’s not often in the conversation.

Tina: Yeah, no, that’s a great point because we know that the bile production is helping with fat metabolism, which is important when we’re consuming all of the protein. So yeah, absolutely. It’s great for that purpose as well.

Katie: And I also didn’t know you said there were bitters receptors in the lungs. That’s fascinating, I had no idea about that. And it sounds like everything in the bitters you guys have is like these natural herbal compounds that are supportive of the body in other ways. For instance, a couple of the ones you’ve mentioned, I’ve seen studies on those for benefits for skin health, for instance, or for, you know, other areas as well.

Not to mention if we’re digesting our proteins and fats better, we’re also making hormones better. We’re also making muscles better. I would love to just hear a little bit more about how there are receptors in other places of the body besides just the gut for these.

Tina: Yeah, I was doing a lot of research on the bitters also and have found so much. We’re not really thinking about our bitters because it’s been so understood that digestive bitters are focusing on our digestion, but they actually are in our gut and in our lungs and our brain and you know, supporting our gut and our brain because when we have the bitters in there, it’s going to support those organs as well.

Katie: Well, I also couldn’t help but notice in researching for this and like the 12 different ingredients that you guys have of like, oh, I’ve seen that one, for instance, mentioned in a study on hormone health before, or I’ve seen that one mentioned in a study on supporting sleep. So there’s like actually these herbs in conjunction, I’m sure like so helpful for the gut, but also I’m thinking there are ways these are supporting the body in various other ways.

And what also really stood out to me is that none of these are plants that we are just consuming in large amounts to your point in our modern diets. Like I would, you know, guess that most people consume zero out of 12 of those ingredients regularly. So, to be able to integrate those in a way, and especially the taste aspect, because I will say probably 10 years ago when working with some practitioner, I did have this spray bitters that I was supposed to use in my mouth a few times a day and I did not comply because it tasted terrible. And so even though I was trying so hard to heal, I still could not make myself do the bitters. So kudos to you for putting it in a capsule.

Tina: Yes, that we’re super excited about that because the bottom line is you want to take a supplement that you’re going to take that’s going to actually work and that you’re going to do on a regular basis. But if you have this negative association with it, you’re not going to be consuming it.

So I’m really excited to bring this to the market. You know, that’s the biggest thing is we’re always trying to find things that are missing and needed in the market. And we don’t bring products that are, you know, like Vitamin C is a really important nutrient, but we don’t bring that because there’s lots of companies that are doing that beautifully.

We’re looking to really bring things that are researched and missing in the market. And bitters is a brand new, you know, you’re right. You haven’t done an episode on it because people haven’t really been talking about it, yet the research is so profound on how impactful bitters are for our stomach and being able to absorb nutrients, being able to increase our stomach acid and being able to produce more of the digestive enzymes, support the GLP1 production. Just all of these really important things to help our support our stomach.

Katie: And you mentioned they work quickly. I’m curious because so many of the things you guys offer are part of my like sort of normal daily routine. Are bitters a thing that get added to the normal daily routine or are they used kind of as needed or is both. How do you use them? And how do people commonly use bitters?

Tina: I’ve been using them just before dinner for some reason. So it’s like I said, 10 to 15 minutes before a meal. I think it all depends on what you are experiencing. And so I just think it’s, I don’t have any digestive issues, obviously, because I take, I have never had digestive issues, but I’ve obviously supported my gut health for many years with the probiotic.

But now with the bitters, I’ve been taking them because I see the research. I see how supportive it is. I’m aging, I want to make sure I’m increasing my stomach acid. I want to make sure I’m absorbing a lot of, creating more digestive enzymes. And so I take it usually before dinner, but you could take it before every meal.

You could take it before one meal a day. You can take it every other day. It’s really what you feel like. But I would definitely would suggest taking it on somewhat of a regular basis because again, that’s how our ancestors evolved. They were eating these bitter foods on a regular basis.

Katie: Got it. And then, like I said in the beginning, I’ll of course link our other episodes in the show notes. We’ve gotten to go deep on several gut health related topics, especially probiotics. I feel like a highlight there is understanding the difference between the different types of probiotics and how yours like actually survived to get to the part of the gut they’re needed in.

Whereas a lot of just general probiotics don’t necessarily. And I loved you pointing out that if you have to keep your probiotics in the refrigerator, for instance, how do you think they’re going to handle your harsh stomach acid and the heat of your body and everything else? But anything else? I know you’re constantly doing research on that health and also doing constant experimentation on your own health like I do. Anything related to that, to gut health or to your routine or tips that you want to leave the audience with today?

Tina: Yeah, I always recommend people eating a diverse group of foods. You know, we’ve kind of come to this point where we’re on these like certain strict diets and we’re eliminating foods. And unfortunately that’s not super beneficial to our gut. Of course, if we’re eliminating ultra processed foods that’s wonderful.

We should definitely do that. But trying to eat a mix of foods. I always recommend people going to like ethnic grocery stores and getting a diverse group of foods trying to switch up, you know, we’re such creatures of habit. We eat the same foods over and over again. Our ancestors used to eat 300 to 400 different types of foods a year and we’re like 15 or 16 different types of foods a year. So we really want to try to create a diversity in our gut by eating lots of different foods. We want to be calm. We want to do everything we can to just be calm and walking in nature, spending time outside, those things really do help our gut health.

And I would say gut health is definitely having its day. There’s so many products out there right now. I mean, people are talking about gut health and I’m thrilled about that. Even though it’s created more competition for us. I’m okay with that because our bigger focus is to create awareness of gut health and make people focus on it and to get away from the pharmaceutical hamster wheel that people get on.

So I’m excited when people are talking about gut health. I know that eventually they’ll come to ours because they’ll start doing research and they’ll realize that survivability is important and they’ll see the differences that this product is making in them. But, I’m just excited to see that gut health is really making its day and people are talking about it and the awareness is out there.

Katie: I love it. Well, like I said, I’ll link to all the things we’ve talked about as well as you guys have educational resources and amazing products. All that will be linked in the show notes. But Tina, it is always a great day for me when I get to have a conversation with you and even better when we get to record it. I am so grateful for your time and for all the work that you do to help so, so many people. Thank you so much for being here today as always and for everything that you’ve taught us.

Tina: Oh, thanks, Katie. So great to see you and be here with you.

And thank you as always for listening and sharing your most valuable resources, your time, your energy, and your attention with us today. We’re both so grateful that you did, and I hope that you will join me again on the next episode of the Wellness Mama podcast.