Gut & Vaginal Health interview with Kiran Krishnan and Coach Sarah Joy
Kiran: Hi, Sarah, how are you?
Coach Sarah Joy: I'm really good, how are you? It's so nice to see you.
Kiran: Nice to see you as well. I'm doing great.
Coach Sarah Joy: Well, hey, thank you so much for coming back. I can't even tell you how many people, like my clients, were asking me all kinds of questions after our last interview. I always tell them to watch it because it’s been so informative. I'm excited to dive in again.
Kiran: Yes, that was super fun.
Coach Sarah Joy: I watched your live with Elisa Song. It was incredibly mind-blowing on many levels. What stood out to me was how antibiotics in the first six months of life can affect the microbiome. It reminded me of how I had to be on an IV antibiotic during the delivery of both of my kids because I tested positive for Group Strep B. My son has struggled with severe seasonal allergies his whole life, and I never connected the dots until now.
Kiran: Yep, and was he a vaginal birth or a C-section?
Coach Sarah Joy: Both, vaginal.
Kiran: Okay, that has an impact because the early seeding is supposed to be heavily bifidobacterium, especially bifantis. Antibiotics or C-sections can prevent the baby from getting a high amount of bifantis early on. The gut starts with facultative microbes that exist in both oxygen and non-oxygen environments. The gut is an oxygen-free environment, but when a baby is born, there's plenty of oxygen. The first inoculum consumes the oxygen, and as the gut becomes anaerobic, the infant grows, changing the stool’s consistency and odor. Antibiotics during birth disrupt this process, leading to issues like asthma and allergies.
Coach Sarah Joy: And there you go, guys, that's why my son has seasonal allergies. I'm definitely going to share this with my nieces who are having babies.
Kiran: Yes, that’s crucial information. Educating people is why I make these videos, to empower them to make better decisions.
Coach Sarah Joy: Right, and you're doing a great job. Your videos break things down so simply. I want to share every single one of them. Now, I want to bring it back to basics because many people are still lost on how to eat properly. Can you speak to the trends of high animal meat diets and how this affects the gut and the immune system?
Kiran: Absolutely. The trend of high-meat diets is partly an overcorrection from past misinformation about meat being bad. People now swing to the extreme of eating only meat. Both extreme meat and plant-based diets can be problematic. Diet and nutrition should focus on balance. Extreme diets reduce gut microbiome diversity, affecting long-term health. Eating a variety of foods, including meat, vegetables, fruits, nuts, and roots, supports the microbiome. If someone feels good on a high meat diet, it might be due to caloric restriction or other temporary benefits, but the microbiome diversity will suffer over time.
Coach Sarah Joy: Right, so it’s important to maintain a balanced diet that supports the microbiome.
Kiran: Exactly. Remove ultra-processed and processed foods as much as possible. A diverse diet with natural foods supports gut health and overall wellness.
Coach Sarah Joy: Thank you so much, Kiran. Your insights are invaluable, and I’m excited to share them with my community.
Kiran: My pleasure, Sarah. I'm glad to be here and help educate.
Kiran: Okay, but you want to try to eliminate or reduce those as much as you can and then ultimately just eat real food, right? That's step one for almost anyone. Then if there are things you really cannot tolerate, meaning you eat even a little bit of Brussels sprouts and you feel bloated and lethargic, fine. Maybe eliminate those to a certain degree and then revamp your system. It's an indication that your gut is messed up and needs to be fixed, and then you want to reintroduce those foods. You don't want to be in a situation where you feel fine as long as you don't eat these 30 things.
Coach Sarah Joy: Amen to all of that. I suffered from hypothyroidism and Hashimoto's for ten years, and one of the hardest things for me was severe food intolerance. Year after year, I was getting sicker, and I couldn't eat. I would stand in my kitchen and cry because I felt like everything hurt. I would get bloated and it just killed me to eat, so I felt like I had to limit my diet. That was a really scary place for me.
Kiran: Right.
Coach Sarah Joy: So, as you said, fixing your system so you can bring these foods back in is crucial. I started repairing my hydrochloric acid, working on my liver, gallbladder, and other gut functions to help me digest my food. In reality, I wasn't becoming intolerant to foods; my body was breaking down and becoming so deficient that I couldn't digest properly. Since I've worked on my system and repaired it significantly, I've brought back beans, lentils, rice, quinoa, and all the things that were really hurting me don't anymore.
Kiran: Yeah.
Coach Sarah Joy: I know we have food intolerances due to the manufacturing and processing of foods like wheat, but there are ways to repair your body so you don't have to eliminate whole food groups because of those symptoms.
Kiran: Totally. One of my health goals, and what I tell anyone who asks for advice, is to work towards resilience. Resilience means you can handle lots of stuff. Your body and your system are designed to handle lots of stressors and good things too. Humans are unique in the animal kingdom in that we have been able to survive in almost every kind of climate and region on Earth.
We have this ability because of our nomadic behavior, walking on our feet and roaming, which gave us a diversified microbiome. This diversification of the microbiome gives us the ability to adapt to almost any environment. The animals that have microbiomes most similar to humans are baboons, who are nomadic and eat a diverse diet. This diversification allows us to adapt globally.
If we forget to support the diversity of our microbiome, even for short-term gain, we will pay some sort of price down the road. It becomes disingenuous to tout a lot of short-term gains from dramatic diet changes. For example, some people become vegan after watching a documentary, but then they start becoming nutritionally depleted. Hair falls out, teeth become more brittle because they’re not getting all the nutrients they need.
Just because you see some influencer online saying they only eat keto, vegan, or carnivore, doesn’t mean it’s the best approach for everyone. Without enough knowledge of what nutrients you’re eliminating and not replacing, you’re likely getting yourself into trouble. From a health perspective, I feel nervous for people who don’t understand the implications of these extreme diets.
Coach Sarah Joy: As a coach, I use all of your testing—biome tests, gut tests, vaginal tests. It’s amazing when I get my clients' test results back. It’s never about eliminating food; I tell my clients I’m not here to starve them or put them in scarcity. In fact, I want to encourage you to eat more and more kinds of food. I educate them on diversity and nutrient intake.
Kiran: Exactly. There’s an amazing example in the literature from a study published in 2018 about going gluten-free. It followed thousands of gluten-sensitive individuals, and in the first two years after going gluten-free, their all-cause mortality and disease risk went up. This is because, in the US, almost 90% of people’s fiber intake comes from wheat. When they remove wheat, they don’t replace it with other fiber, increasing their disease risk.
Removing both macro and micronutrients in a dramatic fashion can have huge, devastating effects. People need to understand that just because they’re removing something doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be replacing it with something else that provides similar nutrients.
Coach Sarah Joy: The side effects are real. People come in after being on extreme diets with thyroid issues, severe fatigue, hair loss, brittle nails, insomnia, mood disorders, and more. It’s a long road to repair the damage without proper supplementation and nutrient intake.
Kiran: Absolutely. Extreme diets without understanding and addressing nutrient needs can lead to serious health issues. It's crucial to maintain a balanced and diverse diet to support overall health and resilience.
Nutrient Deficiency and Narrow Diets
Kiran: You got to do a full micronutrient analysis and all of that stuff, right? If you eat a very narrow diet for a while, you're going to be starving yourself of certain key nutrients, especially if you don't know what to replace. That's unfortunate.
Coach Sarah Joy: So I had to confront her and say, "I'm willing to work with you, but only if you're willing to change your diet. We can't continue the carnivore-only diet." I’m going to give her the nutrition support based on her test results and what her bacteria need, but the current diet is really doing a lot of damage.
Kiran: And then, we're seeing severe bad bacteria, like gram-negative bacteria, which come along with this. We have to spend all this time trying to kill or suppress them and then rebuild the gut. It's a lot of work.
New Terminology: Keto Crotch
Coach Sarah Joy: I saw an article the other day about a term called "keto crotch." Have you heard of it?
Kiran: No, what is that?
Coach Sarah Joy: Basically, when people eat a high animal-fat diet, it throws off the vaginal biome, making it alkaline. This can lead to issues like Gardnerella, BV, and odors.
Kiran: That makes sense. It's because the gut microbiome influences the vaginal microbiome. If your gut is messed up, it can cause problems in the vaginal area too, like an increased risk of infections and odors.
Connection Between Gut Health and Overall Immunity
Kiran: The gut is like a central command center that dictates how the rest of the immune system functions. When the gut is messed up, the immune system may fail to recognize harmful bacteria and allow their proliferation elsewhere in the body, like in the sinuses or vaginal canal, leading to chronic issues.
Coach Sarah Joy: That’s amazing. Almost all my clients have chronic sinus infections and then yeast infections from the antibiotics. I didn’t realize how connected this is to the gut.
Kiran: Yes, all mucosal surfaces in the body are interconnected. Issues in one area can cascade and cause problems in other areas, like chronic sinusitis, bronchitis, or BV. Treating these often involves antibiotics, which further disrupt the gut microbiome, creating a vicious cycle.
Impact of Diet and Lifestyle on Microbial Health
Kiran: It’s important to maintain a diverse diet to support a healthy gut microbiome. Narrow diets, like strict keto or carnivore, can negatively impact fertility and other health aspects by reducing gut diversity and misinforming other mucosal tissues.
Coach Sarah Joy: Combining gut and vaginal health approaches seems essential now. Clients often come to me for one or the other, but after what you’ve said, it’s clear they need to be addressed together for better outcomes.
Importance of Solid Foods
Coach Sarah Joy: Many of my clients are coffee addicts or consume a lot of energy drinks and soda because they're exhausted. They often substitute these drinks for meals. Can you talk about how this affects the gut and immune system?
Kiran: Even if the drinks are nutrient-rich, your digestive system needs the exercise of breaking down solid foods. This exercise is crucial for maintaining a healthy digestive
Kiran: Let’s dive into the complexity of digestion. It’s not just about the food we eat; it’s about the entire digestive process involving enzymes, the microbiome, muscles in the digestive tract, peristalsis, the release of hydrochloric acid, bile salts, and pancreatic enzymes. All of these elements are crucial for proper digestion and nutrient absorption.
When you reduce solid food intake dramatically, your body’s ability to produce enzymes and other digestive functions falters. This can lead to uncomfortable digestion, reduced release of hydrochloric acid and bile, and less efficient detoxification. Essentially, you’re putting yourself into an energy-deprived state and neglecting the fermentation process in the large bowel, which is vital for producing short-chain fatty acids and other compounds necessary for human health.
By not consuming enough solid foods, you risk atrophying your digestive system, similar to how muscles atrophy from lack of use. Your body tries to adapt to whatever stimuli you give it, but this adaptation can lead to further issues when you reintroduce solid foods.
Coach Sarah Joy: Wow, I had no idea that happened. That’s really serious.
Kiran: Yes, our bodies adapt to various stimuli, even negative ones. For example, people who are severely overweight have bodies that have adapted to that condition, making physical activity risky. Similarly, if your diet is primarily liquid, your digestive system adapts, making it difficult to handle solid foods later.
Coach Sarah Joy: We do not want to adapt to that. Thank you for that insight. I think many women need to hear this. It's huge.
Kiran: Remember, just because your body can adapt doesn’t mean it’s good for you. Poor habits, like insufficient sleep, can lead to adaptation that isn’t healthy in the long term.
Coach Sarah Joy: For everyone making comments, if we haven’t answered you, feel free to ask your questions after we post this. We’ll both try to respond.
Kiran: Yes, tag me in your questions, and I’ll do my best to reply as well.
Coach Sarah Joy: Now, for some personal questions. As a certified transformational nutrition coach, I use your programs and products with my clients, who often have issues like herpes, Epstein-Barr, and cytomegalovirus. Can you explain what MegaViron is and whether it’s safe to use alongside lysine and monolaurin?
Kiran: MegaViron is designed to enhance the immune system’s ability to monitor and respond to viruses. It supports the immune system’s monitoring cells like macrophages and dendritic cells and helps transition the immune response from the acute phase to the adaptive phase, which is non-inflammatory. It’s safe to use with lysine and monolaurin, as it supports overall immune function rather than targeting specific viruses.
Coach Sarah Joy: Great, so it’s safe for clients on long-term protocols?
Kiran: Absolutely, it’s designed for prolonged use to support immune function.
Coach Sarah Joy: Thank you. Lastly, can you explain the difference between the GI Map test and the BiomeFX gut test?
Kiran: The GI Map test uses PCR (polymerase chain reaction) to amplify genes of specific pathogens, which can make the results appear overly pathogenic. This approach is useful in acute infectious disease scenarios but not for mapping the microbiome accurately. The 16s sequencing used in GI Map has low resolution at the species level, making it error-prone.
BiomeFX uses whole genome sequencing, which is high resolution and provides accurate species identification and relative abundance of microbes. This approach focuses on functional groups of microbes, such as those involved in producing short-chain fatty acids, vitamins, and neurotransmitters, providing a comprehensive view of the microbiome’s health.
Coach Sarah Joy: Thank you for that explanation. I’ve found that BiomeFX gives a much clearer picture of my clients’ gut health compared to the GI Map, which often shows misleading pathogen levels.
Kiran: Yes, BiomeFX offers detailed insights into the microbiome's functionality, which is crucial for long-term gut health.
Coach Sarah Joy: Thank you so much, Kiran. This information is invaluable for anyone looking to improve their gut health.
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