What if the secret to unlocking the mysteries of our minds, our health, and even our happiness is hiding in the most unexpected place—our own gut?
Could the answers to our most stubborn health mysteries—and maybe even the secret to a longer, happier life—be found in the microbes we’ve spent a lifetime trying to avoid?
How does our microbiome affect conditions like depression, Parkinson's, and autism?
Research from this week’s guest shows that optimizing microbial health can dramatically improve our quality of life, leading to enhanced memory and cognition and reversing symptoms of Alzheimer's. After microbial transplants, some patients even started regrowing their hair!
Our guest today, Dr. Sabine Hazan, is a trailblazer and pioneering specialist in gastroenterology, internal medicine, and hepatology. Dr. Hazan is the Founder & CEO of the Malibu Specialty Center and Ventura Clinical Trials where she conducts and oversees clinical trials for cutting-edge research. She’s also a top clinical investigator for multiple pharmaceutical companies, and an author to boot.
In this episode, you’ll discover:
You can also join Substack as a free or paid member for ad-free episodes of this show, to comment on each episode, and to hit me up in the DM’s. Join at abeljames.substack.com. And if you’re feeling generous, write a quick review for the Abel James Show on Apple or Spotify. You rock.
This episode is brought to you by:
Manukora - Go to MANUKORA.com/WILD to save 31% plus $25 of free gifts.
Troscriptions - Go to Troscriptions.com/WILD or enter WILD at checkout for 10% off your first order.
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Could the answers to our most stubborn health mysteries—and maybe even the secret to a longer, happier life—be found in the microbes we’ve spent a lifetime trying to avoid?
How does our microbiome affect conditions like depression, Parkinson's, and autism?
Research from this week’s guest shows that optimizing microbial health can dramatically improve our quality of life, leading to enhanced memory and cognition and reversing symptoms of Alzheimer's. After microbial transplants, some patients even started regrowing their hair!
Our guest today, Dr. Sabine Hazan, is a trailblazer and pioneering specialist in gastroenterology, internal medicine, and hepatology. Dr. Hazan is the Founder & CEO of the Malibu Specialty Center and Ventura Clinical Trials where she conducts and oversees clinical trials for cutting-edge research. She’s also a top clinical investigator for multiple pharmaceutical companies, and an author to boot.
In this episode, you’ll discover:
- The many unexpected benefits of microbiome transplants
- How sunlight, exercise, and hobbies like gardening actually improve our microbial health and resilience
- How changing the way we think affects our microbiome
- And much more…
- progenabiome.com
- Pick up the book, Let's Talk Sh!t, on Barnes and Noble or progenabiome.com
- Listen to the Let's Talk Sh!t podcast with Dr. Sabine Hazan on progenabiome.com, letstalkshit.org, Apple Podcasts, Audible, YouTube or wherever you listen to podcasts
- Go to microbiomeresearchfoundation.org for cutting-edge information from Dr. Hazen and the Biome Squad
You can also join Substack as a free or paid member for ad-free episodes of this show, to comment on each episode, and to hit me up in the DM’s. Join at abeljames.substack.com. And if you’re feeling generous, write a quick review for the Abel James Show on Apple or Spotify. You rock.
This episode is brought to you by:
Manukora - Go to MANUKORA.com/WILD to save 31% plus $25 of free gifts.
Troscriptions - Go to Troscriptions.com/WILD or enter WILD at checkout for 10% off your first order.
Crowd Health - Go to JoinCrowdHealth.com and use the code WILD at checkout to get started for as low as $80 per month.
[00:00:00]
Abel James:
Hey, folks. This is Abel James, and thanks so much for joining us on the show. What if the secret to unlocking the mysteries of our minds, our health, and even our happiness is hiding in the most unexpected place inside of our guts? Could the answers to our most stubborn health mysteries and maybe even the secret to a longer happier life be found in the microbes we've spent a lifetime trying to avoid? How does our microbiome affect conditions like depression, Parkinson's, and autism? As our body's main point of contact interacting with the outside world, many illnesses start in the gut. Research from this week's guest shows that optimizing microbial health can dramatically improve our quality of life, leading to enhanced memory and cognition and even reversing symptoms of Alzheimer's. After microbial transplants, some patients even started regrowing their own hair. Our guest today, doctor Sabine Hazen, is a trailblazer and pioneering specialist in gastroenterology, internal medicine, and hepatology.
Doctor Hazen is the founder and CEO of the Malibu Specialty Center and Ventura Clinical Trials, where she conducts and oversees clinical trials for cutting edge research. Doctor Hazen also has an impeccable sense of humor. I think you're gonna enjoy this interview. Before we get there, here's a quick plug. Make sure you're subscribed to the Abel James Show wherever you listen to your podcast. You can also get an ad free version of this show with a lot of behind the scenes goodies when you subscribe to my Substack. That's at abeljames.substack.com, abeljames.substack.com.
Look forward to seeing you there. On this episode of the show with doctor Hazen, you're about to discover the unexpected benefits of microbiome transplants, how sunlight, exercise, and hobbies like gardening actually improve our microbial health and resilience, how changing the way we think affects our microbiome, and much more. Let's meet doctor Hazen. Welcome back, folks. Born in Morocco, doctor Sabine Hazen is a pioneering doctor and gastroenterologist of over thirty years and an expert on the gut microbiome. Doctor Hazen, it's an honor to have you with us. Honored to be here.
So one thing that that is obvious in your work is that you use humor as a tool, which as a professional, I'm sure can be, very tricky business, but you avoid the stuffy, kind of joyless stereotype that some doctors may have. So how do you balance this approach using humor with scientific rigor?
[00:09:24] Dr. Sabine Hazen:
I think it probably stems from a balanced microbiome or at least trying to keep a balanced microbiome. I think nothing in life is that serious. I mean, the serious thing are when you really get sick and diseased. So everything else that we try to accomplish, whether, you know, taking an exam in school or whether we're making a deal or, you know, all that is really frivolous. The most important thing is life and health. And so, you know, that's stuff that's really serious to me. You know? Like, a woman with stage four cancer of the breast is really serious to me. A kid that's banging his head on the wall is really serious to me. So how do I offset that seriousness?
You know? I have to balance my life with humor as well, bring on the humor, you know. So I think we take ourselves too seriously as scientists, and I think it's important to not be so serious. I mean, be serious in the research you're doing, but not be serious in how we believe our impression about us, right, our impression about our work. Because I think at the end of the day, science evolves with new technology, science changes. It's important to be objective as objective as possible, as unbiased as possible. And it's important to kind of, you know, be humble to say, you know, I may be right, I may be wrong. And, you know, the way that I did it with, you know, the microbiome anyways is I didn't wanna sugarcoat microbiome.
So I I literally said it point blank. Let's talk s h dot t, you know? I don't know if we can say that on your on your podcast. Okay. Okay. You gotta rip. So, you know, I wanted to say, let's talk shit, you know? And at the end of every one of my conferences, and I think it's my quirky, you know, I think I'm funny. My husband never thought I was funny, but, you know, I think I'm funny. But, you know, in my own mind, right? So I at every, you know, at the end of every talk or conferences, I would say, look, I could be full of it or I could know it. But either way, let's talk about it. And also, you know, I see, you know, this whole path kind of in a way, you know, I have to say God has a sense of humor.
Because to put the mysteries of life in poop, right, to find out that bipolar disorder has a microbiome signature, that depression, anxiety has a microbiome signature, that Parkinson's has a microbiome signature. You know, that's really finding answers in poop. And, you know, that's really, in a way, God's sense of humor to say, look, I know you humans or you're you'll never touch it, and that's something that's really taboo to even talk about. And so it's got humor in itself because here I am a girl that, first of all, I'm super, you know, clean. And here I am playing with poop. You know, my mom raised me, sterile environment, over sterilized everything for me, was super clean, was, you know, practically making me wear gloves and a and a and a hat when I went to school.
So she was, you know, that kind of personality. And so for me to go into the microbiome space and play with poop and, you know, go on a safari and analyze the microbiome of zebras and elephants and literally collected instead of taking pictures, It really has a it's it's there's no other way to say than to say it's kinda funny, you know? And so why not be funny about it, you know? Why not lighten the field? Why do I have to make it so serious, you know? And also, I think with humor, people understand it better. It's been my way of, first of all, removing the haters because, you know, at the end of the day, I'm like, look. If you're gonna talk shit about me, you might as well read my book. Right? Yeah.
So it it's got so much. And so I took it on. You know, this was a path for me that I really wanted to understand. It was a path for me that I really wanted to understand for me first. You know? Like, I it was never my interest to basically start publishing or I'm not a I'm not the girl that publishes articles. I'm not the academic doctor. I'm not the PhD. I'm the girl that basically can run 10 protocols for pharma and bring a drug to market because I have the ability to juggle multiple things, right, at the same time. So because I'm doing that, it's easy for me to see multiple things at the same time, multiple you know, and spinning multiple wheels at the same time.
It really is, in a way, a gift, but at the same time, I'm not the girl that's gonna sit down and find articles and and basically write a whole big dissertation. That's just not me because I'm just too busy running around multiple things. So when COVID hit, I was forced to publish. I was forced to step into that world because I realized there was something in during the pandemic that we weren't told. I realized this research was poorly done. You know, remember, I'm the girl that brought hundreds of clinical trials for pharma to market, me and my sisters. You know, my sister is the leading dermatologist in New York, doctor Carol Hazan.
My other sister, doctor Liddy Hazan, was, you know, the founder of a CRO that basically did hundreds of clinical trials. She brought Harvoni to the market from the first phase all the way to the end. She brought ivermectin to the market all the way to the end. So I was part of that. I was part of all those clinical trials. I was part of the growth of developing product, developing innovations. You know, when my sister Carol was doing Mohs surgery for melanoma, I was seeing that. You know, when she was doing hair transplant, I was seeing that. When she was doing, you know, treatment for improving facial, you know, wrinkles, I was part of that, seeing her work, seeing that firsthand.
So I think I was in a strategic position during the pandemic because I'm in a family of nine doctors, all specialists, and also we've done clinical trials for pharma. So basically, how do you do the research that you wanna see, that you wanna do, and how do you convey it to the public, you have two ways. You can convey it in a fun manner doing these podcasts and talking shit, or you can, you know, convey it scientifically. And trying to do my best to convey it scientifically, remembering I am not the scientist with the PhD that puts out papers.
So, therefore, there's gonna be problems of those papers, but it should not stop the message of the papers. So a message needs to be reached to every segment of the population. Right? When you have a discovery and for me, the discovery was losing no one during the pandemic, you know, the protocols I used, Discovering the microbiome, discovering, off label drugs and what they do on the microbiome, discovering what drugs do on the microbiome, what vitamins do on the microbiome, what nutrients or or foods do on the microbiome was a huge part of the pandemic. How do you relay that message?
You have to reach the whole population. It's very difficult to reach the whole population when the population is divided. You know? They're they're divided politically, right or left. They're divided by religion. They're divided by gender. And so we're divided on every front. How do I reach the public to try to heal that divide, to try to heal the public? So it's either through podcast like this using some comedy. It's either through writing the book, Let's Talk Shit. And then it's also conferences to the doctors. You educate 10 other doctors, a thousand doctors. And then pretty soon, they're speaking your words, you know. And then the most important thing is publishing because that's the only way that academics who move the needle get to see the data so they can kind of use that work and then move it to the next level.
[00:18:21] Abel James:
I love that. Now let's talk a little more specifically about your work. It's been so much fun looking into it. So correct me if I'm wrong, but you were looking at C. Diff originally and then noticed that through fecal microbiome transplants, that other things were happening aside from just the C. Diff that that people started, basically displaying that their memory was starting to get a little bit better or regrowing hair or something like that. So, like, fill in the gaps. How did this all happen?
[00:18:53] Dr. Sabine Hazen:
So it's not just me. It's really the work of courageous, brave physicians like me that really were not afraid to play with poop. The whole field of fecal transplants started in the fifties with doctor Einsmann, Fred Einsmann, who was the first physician to say who he had two patients and he basically did enemas on those patients and said, maybe if we restore stools, we can kill off c diff. And what happened was that caught on. Doctor Tom Barodi, who is the father of fecal transplant, who is the coauthor of Let's Talk Shit, basically took it to the next level. He said, maybe there's something in the gut, maybe there's something in the microbiome.
Can we do it for other cases? Then you see the work of doctor Sydney Feingold, who basically is the physician who who guided me in this path to open my lab, to buy the machines that I needed to buy, and was the doctor who wrote the book on anaerobic infections of the gut. And so, you know, he basically wrote an entire book that doctors used for guidance, you know, that infectious disease doctors used. And, you know, he started seeing something with autism. It was a mom and an autistic kid that went up to him and said, you know, I gave my kid vancomycin, and vancomycin improved my son.
And so doctor Feingold started putting his brain together and he said, maybe autism is a microbe problem, microbial problem. Let me collect stools of autistic kids and culture those stools. Remember, we didn't have the technology forty, fifty years ago that we have now to look at microbes. We only had the technology of we're gonna take a petri dish and we're gonna culture the stools and see what goes on. So he had the biggest collection of stools of kids with autism, and he noticed that there were a couple of microbes. You know, he found the sulfavibrio in some. He found clostridium perfringens in others.
And then he basically started collaborating with doctor Tom who came in with the idea of fecal transplant for c diff. And together, they kind of, like, figured out autism. And doctor Barodi then took his ideas to doctors Adams, James Adams, for fecal transplant with autism. At the same time that this was happening, multiple physicians were already doing work using fecal transplants, say, Heel Kona on chronic urinary tract infections. So he was doing fecal transplant for c diff, but he was also noticing that people with chronic UTI, that could help those patients.
Colleen Kelly at Brown University at the time, she was at Brown, she showed two cases of, you know, of hair regrowth with alopecia areata. Of course, you know, these cases are like n of one, n of two, n of eight, n of twenty eight. You know, doctor Berardi showed improvement of Crohn's disease in twenty eight patients with fecal transplant, but his protocols and these cases were not reproduced easily. In other words, other doctors said, well, you know what? Let me do a clinical trial on autism. Let me raise money. Let me do a clinical trial. And and basically, that's the studies you're seeing with doctor James Adams.
You know, other doctors and and even doctor James Adams, when he published the first paper, it was fifty percent of the kids are improving. It wasn't a 100%. So there's something missing there. Right? And when doctor Colleen Kelly showed alopecia areata improving in two patients, others have tried to reproduce that data, were non successful. So it's very important to realize that, you know and so where do I come in? I come in as the girl that basically join all these doctors together to say, let's talk about what we're finding because I found a case of Alzheimer's that improved the fecal transplant. It was an n of one. That's it. Now was I lucky with the donor? Was that the perfect donor? The donor was the wife. Was she compatible to the husband because they were married for forty years, and therefore there was that compatibility where she was stronger and he was weaker, and therefore she gave her microbes to share and therefore kept him alive?
You know, that those were the questions that happened in my mind. You know, we we noticed in fecal transplant that if you use a spouse or a child, fecal transplant is way better. And especially if you use fresh stools, it's way better. But nobody's really looked at that because we went from, hey. We're noticing siblings and family members are improving people, and we're getting a ninety two to ninety, you know, in my case, like, ninety eight percent success rate for c diff using familial or spousal poop and fresh.
You know, when that became, hey. Let's develop a pharmaceutical product. Let's develop a drug. And then we, as the doctors, were basically stop what you're doing. We're gonna develop a drug. And then you can see with the drugs that are coming out, the success rate is not as good as what we were getting with families. And so there's a problem there. Right? So when you're a doctor on the front line taking care of these poor people and I'm not talking about my Malibu clientele celebrities. I'm talking about the patients that doctor Neil Stohlman takes care of in San Francisco that are poor, that cannot afford thousands of dollars of stool testing and picking the right donor. We're talking about these people need a stool bank that can help those patients and it needs to be kind of prepared. Right? So those patients need help.
But when the product that was created doesn't help those people anymore or only helps twenty, thirty, 40, maybe 50%, but doesn't help the other 50. The doctor is still, you know, left with the patient saying, how do I help my patient? Can I go back to doing familial fecal transplant? Can I try to push that? But the problem then becomes, how do I test the stools to make it proper for the FDA to be within the guidelines that the FDA's, you know, created for stool transplant. Right? And then here's the other thing. We've kind of figured out with fecal transplant so I stepped into this to coordinate all the doctors to have that discussion.
What are you seeing? And how I did it is I basically created the Biome Squad, which is a league of doctors that analyze poop, play with poop, and I felt it was kind of, like, appropriate. And, again, it's a bit of a funny title. It's like the x men and women, except it's the Biome Squad. We're playing with poop, saving the microbiome one microbe at a time. You know, so I created the Biome Squad to bring in all these doctors that were interested in understanding the microbiome. I then created the Malibu microbiome meeting because I figured, well, you know what? I'm gonna have some celebrities come and talk at my meeting, and doctors will come in and, you know, will and and I'll invite all these doctors that have done amazing work. And it's not gonna be a pharma driven, you know, product. It's gonna be sponsored by a foundation, which I created or founded.
And from there, we started the microbiome meeting, and we all kinda came and started talking about our results. Non biased, non paid, nobody's paying us, nobody's sponsoring the lecture to sell a product. We just came and basically all shared what we saw. And it was an amazing time, really, because and it was really, you know, all these videos, by the way, are on the microbiomeresearchfoundation.org website. But it was an amazing time to see all these heads of academia that have written books on g NGI and infectious disease come together to speak, that have published numerous papers.
So from there, my job was really to look at the microbiome. What are those guys doing that is improving? Let me look at before and after. And doctor Stohlman will will tell you, as my colleagues, you cannot really have a test out there that's really analyzing the microbiome. The best way to analyze the microbiome is to test the microbiome before and after, but also to have a validated test that's valid, verified, and reproducible. And that's what basically ProgenaBiome was created for, to have that test that can kinda show the world the microbiome. But that is a test that's valid, verified, and reproducible. In other words, I can test my stools today, tomorrow, next year. I'm still gonna recognize me when I see my microbiome.
It's important to have that validation as best as we can. Obviously, the microbiome is not perfect. One, there's a couple of problems. One, we're all different, so therefore, we cannot compare each other. Two, we're eating different foods. Therefore, you know, you're gonna have a variation with so you have to collect the stools as best you can. Three, when you're collecting, are you contaminating the product? Right? Are you adding more microbes? Then when it goes to the lab, are you adding more microbes when you're processing? Are you contaminating your stool sample? Are you mixing your stool samples?
Are you sure this is the right specimen that you did that matches that patient? There's so many variables. And then you get the stool sample, and you're trying to compare two people with the same disease, and you go, wait a minute. Why is this one having high good bacteria and this one doesn't, but they have the same disease? Then you have to go back and say ask the question to the patient. Are you taking probiotics? What probiotics are you taking? Are you vegan? Are you vegetarian? Are you carnivore? What kind of meds are you using? What kind so you really have to take a detailed history. It's not something a patient can write, and I'm gonna say this, you know, being as kind as I can.
Patients are not very good at giving a history on paper. They're very quick at writing the data. I can assure you that people come to me and I write past medical history, and we see nothing on the past medical history in the paperwork. My my secretary puts a chart that's manila folder for normal, healthy, you know, everything else. And then she puts patients with autism blue. Well, I think the history of the patient come to find out the kid is autistic. The family didn't even put that on the family on the past medical history. So asking AI to basically look at medical records that were filled by patients or questionnaires, you've lost the research right there. Okay?
Here's the other thing. You need that doctor to tell to ask the question. Alcohol, we know, impacts the microbiome. One glass of wine, you know, is better is good for the microbiome, but more than that kills the microbiome. It's alcohol. It's a sterilizer. Right? And what does alcohol do long term on the microbiome? Right? We don't know that question yet. Research is needed. Now I can tell you how many times I've asked patients, do you drink? And they say no. Then I have to go back when their microbiome is completely desolate. I have to go back and say, are you sure you're not drinking? Are you sure?
You can tell me. I'm not gonna write it anywhere. I'm gonna just just for my own knowledge. Anyway, sometimes it takes me three visits to get the history of alcohol. And I will tell you, I've seen that over and over as a physician where, you know, a patient comes in and will have pancreatitis, and I will constantly ask, are you sure you're not drinking? And then eventually, after the sixth visit, we'll come in and say, doctor, I have a confession to make. I drink alcohol. It takes persistence at asking the questions that it really medicine is an art to get from the patient the truth. Right?
You will treat a patient, because people come to me for, like, hey, fecal transplant. You will treat that patient with fecal transplant, and you will not succeed in treating the patient because you've missed the history that the patient was abused as a kid, and therefore, the brain is constantly working on the gut, killing the microbiome. You will miss the fact that the girl was raped, and therefore, that's always in the back of her brain affecting the microbiome. So the art of medicine is really getting that history to understand.
So to go back to the c diff question and how I got into this, I'm the girl that analyzed the microbiome of c diff patients. Come to find out, when we do fecal transplant, what we do is we don't kill the c diff. We actually restore the microbiome. What we do when we give antibiotics, vancomycin, you know, flagrol, fidaxomicin, we're killing the microbiome. We need something that restores the microbiome. So when we do fecal transplant, we're giving new seeds, new microbes, and we're reimplanting. It's like a garden that you removed all the weeds and you plant new seeds.
And then you make sure that you're not pouring gasoline on your garden. You know? You make sure that the foods you're taking are not killing the gut. The cheeses you're eating are not killing the gut. The drinks you're drinking are not killing the gut. The alcohol you're drinking, the stress factors, the environment, all that is super important, and then you heal. Okay? So it's a very complex problem because, so that's what essentially the microbiome taught me with c diff. What it then taught me with other diseases, and that's what we're discovering, is that there's a something changing in the microbiome that's restoring the health of the patient. You know, when you're seeing a kid with autism that was nonverbal and all of a sudden is verbal, and you look at the microbiome picture and you look at what you've done, and it doesn't need to be stool transplant. It could be whatever product. You know, the doctor Fry has a protocol where he basically uses a product on his kids with autism, and he restores the microbiome on these kids and but it's only in a percentage of those kids. It's not everyone.
Because, again, everyone has a different microbiome, everyone has different microbes causing the disease, and everyone responds differently to the treatment. And so we have to you know, if we wanna push the answers to the microbiome, we need to understand the microbiome better, and this is my path. I'm the girl that basically, look, I'm constantly questioning myself. Am I right? Is this right? And that's the way we advance science. If we come at, hey, this is the answer. We've lost medicine. We've lost science.
[00:34:51] Abel James:
It makes me think, you know, a lot of people say good bugs, bad bugs, but looking at your work, it's clear that microbes aren't quite that simple. Right? And so when you try to just, like,
[00:35:03] Dr. Sabine Hazen:
make it one thing, it all evaporates. And and I'll tell you, they're not as simple the same as humans. Right? We're all different, and we're not that simple. You know? We're good and we're bad. We can be good and we can be bad. You piss me off and I'll be bad. You give me kindness, you give me love and I'll be good. Right? So it's the same thing with microbes. You you're good to that microbe. You enhance it. It's gonna flourish, and it's gonna do what it's supposed to do. You kill the family of those microbes, and then it's gonna come out at you with a vengeance. Okay? What did we learn from Clostridium difficile is that you killed off all the other Clostridiums, leaving Clostridium difficile to flourish, and now it's coming at you with a vengeance to give you diarrhea and to kill you.
Because the microbiome's purpose is to return the host back into the planet and to the Earth. We're here for a short time to learn something, to do our thing as a reservoir, and to go back to the Earth. You know, to say microbes are leading, yes, they are leading. They are what allows us to absorb sugar. They are what allows us to absorb calcium. You saw during the pandemic, one virus put the population, the planet on standstill. Nobody was moving. Nobody was walking out the streets at the beginning of the pandemic. Whether that was the right thing to do or the wrong thing, I personally think it was the right thing at the beginning because we needed to understand this virus better and how to organize. And when there's so much movement, how do you see clearly?
But the thing is you saw the whole planet was at standstill. There was no movement in Paris, no movement in London. Planes were empty. Nobody was working. Everybody was home. Microbes have that potential. They're powerful. When you get a virus and you're basically stuck in bed, you cannot go back to work. Even though you want to go back to work, you cannot. You're at standstill. So they're very powerful. And at the end of our lives, they take over our bodies, decompose our bodies, and put us back into the earth. So my opinion is it's best to understand them now while we're alive and not interfere with the research that basically is trying to advance the understanding of the microbiome.
Let's all work together to understand the microbiome to see how do we live longer. How do we, you know, live longer but with a quality of life? How do we decrease mental health? How do we decrease chronic diseases? How we decrease cancer? This this is my path, understanding the microbiome.
[00:37:55] Abel James:
In the past few decades, it seems like there's been a a big focus on saying that genetics are really the determining factor of people's health. But as the years go on, we discover more. We, once again, learn that it's not quite so simple, but in I've been doing a lot of writing recently about longevity, and I'm finding that that conversation is changing. But the fact that people have shared outcomes with their families isn't really something that's debatable. The driver of that, though may not be as much genetics as the microbiome and and the fact that that can be shared at least somewhat or or, you know, as as you say, and in your work, very directly shared, then you can really see some some serious things happening.
[00:38:36] Dr. Sabine Hazen:
It's so here's the thing, the it's it's both. It could be both or it could be none. Right? So because that's what science is. It's asking questions and is it am I right or wrong? Could it be both right or wrong? It's both. So progenobion was actually spelled it's a tough name to say progenobion because it's from your genes, your progena, your genes to your biome. It's all interacted. Right? I'll give you an example, and I want you to start thinking about this. Are we passing on microbes that are affecting the genes? You know, there's certainly a huge field of epigenetics out there that certainly agrees with that. You look at, you know, generations that were, you know, persecuted, for example, generations that were, you know, put in camps, for example.
Did that environment harvest some microbes that basically made those people resilient and therefore passed on both the resiliency but also the microbes that could potentially create the disease? Right? Is that why certain populations have a resilience and therefore also are affected by disease? Right? Both. Because it's that balance. Right? Are you balanced enough that you're on the good path and therefore resilient, or are you out of balance and therefore on the bad path getting disease? Right? Because that's the at the end of the day, it's all about the balance. And balance is not something that we've we've figured out. Right? It's not something that we can say with certainty, well, you need this much microbe you know, you need this much bifidiol, you need this much bacteroides, this much firmicutes, this we haven't figured that out yet. Right? And, again, it's probably different in everyone.
Think about the person that lives in Mexico that is in an environment of giardia, and the person that's in Kansas that doesn't that's not exposed to giardia. The person in Mexico, in order to live in Mexico and to drink the water of Mexico is gonna have some giardia in their guts, which now they're resilient to giardia. The person from Kansas who goes to Mexico, drinks the water, does not have any giardia, gets diarrhea. You understand? That's what the microbiome is. It's really I'm exposed to a microbe, I'm strong enough to confront it, and therefore, I'm resilient. And the next time I see this microbe, I'm gonna be fine.
That's the whole concept, by the way, behind vaccines. Right? Everybody's like, oh, vaccines are bad and but think about what we're doing with vaccines. We're giving you a small piece of the microbe to bring on that resiliency. Right? Here's the problem. So that the next time you see this microbe, you're not gonna get sick from it. Here's the problem. The quality of the vaccination, the quality of the microbe you're putting in. Let's say you put in some, you know, viruses with it. Okay? I mean, we've certainly seen with vitamins, there's vitamins that have arsenic in them. Right? So it doesn't help you that you're taking vitamin c to improve your gut, and there's arsenic that's killing your gut. You know? It's like, again, back to my garden, I'm putting gasoline and water on the fire. I'm never gonna turn off the fire or grow any plants. So, you know, it's the same principle when you do, you know, microbiome when you're trying to manipulate the microbiome is really figuring out how do you bring back that balance. And the balance, again, is different for everybody.
[00:42:21] Abel James:
It seems though, you know and you don't really hear this talked about very often. You just hear alcohol. But the difference between sipping one glass of red wine with dinner on a full stomach and taking a shot of vodka on an empty stomach for your microbes, I imagine that I mean, you can literally use it as a as a cleaner for surfaces, vodka. Right? And other it's flammable with the cup. Of course. Of course. So I could only imagine it's causing mass casualties, you know, down the line, even if it's just, like, one shot.
[00:42:52] Dr. Sabine Hazen:
I I I think as you're trying to grow, you know, and I've been doing this a while now trying to grow, it's not easy. You know? And I've been criticized on social media because everybody's like, why isn't she telling us how to grow the bifidobacteria? As if that was easy, and this is where my comic streak comes out. Yes. Why don't you tell me what kills the bifidobacteria and what grows the bifidobacteria? Show me the data. Right? So until it's and and here's the big problem. Until it's published, it's like until it's written, it didn't exist. Right? Until it's published and validated and my peers can say, yes. Sabine is right.
This product killed the bifidobacteria, therefore, should be published and not retracted. And I'm you know, I have a sore thing on that because there's a big retraction, you know, mob right now trying to retract because it doesn't fit their narrative of selling drugs. But, you know, it needs to be published. It needs to be reviewed. It needs to be accepted. When we talked about c diff from doctor Einsman doing fecal transplant for c diff to now it's part of the guidelines, you know, decades passed on. You know? I I'm thinking it's sixty two years, I think, I calculated the other day. From the moment he did those first two cases to the moment it's passed in the guideline, sixty two years have passed.
And a lot of doctors have kinda climbed on other doctors to continue the research. Right? Because science doesn't happen with one doctor. Science happens with other doctors validating the data, reproducing the data, believing that it's true, and seeing continuing to see the benefits of it. When you stop seeing the benefits and you start seeing side effects, you have to question, am I doing the same thing that I was doing fifty years ago? Is the microbiome that I'm giving contaminated? So same with the vaccines. Right? Vaccines, you know, were great until you know, with COVID, we started noticing some problems. We can't just put a a blindfold on it. You know, kids with myocarditis, we need to explore that. Right? And so, you know, maybe there's a contaminant in that. Maybe the concept is good, but there's a contaminant.
Maybe the concept is good, but it wasn't the right part of the virus to utilize. Right? So there's so many I think the moment we stop science and we stop asking questions is the moment we kill hope for people and we kill science. And like I said, it's not right now, the microbiome is not gonna be of my lifetime. It's gonna be the next person that's gonna take on the baton just like I did from doctor Feingold and doctor Barodi. So these guys passed on their knowledge to me to kinda carry it through. And, you know, I think probably no. I didn't want to do this. I had a curiosity.
So I had to do this for me first because I I felt, what if I'm that patient with Alzheimer's? Then I'm always gonna go back and say, I coulda, shoulda, woulda, and I didn't. I could've analyzed the microbiome, and I didn't. Shame on me. Now I can't remember my daughter's my my daughter's name. You know? So that's the fear. That's the that's why you advance. That's why you move. You don't look at the money. You just go, what if I'm that person, and therefore, I should be advancing the science? That doesn't mean it's in the microbiome either. Right? It could be in the brain, primary. It could be in the connection between the brain and the gut. But we need to continue science until we have a cure for that disease.
And until that cure and I always tell people because people you know, there's always, you know, overconfident physicians that come at me or scientists. And I always say, when you figure out how to live forever, then I'll believe what you're doing and I'll follow your path. Until then, it's it's a free for all. Anybody's a scientist. Anybody's a physician. Anybody can have their own hypothesis.
[00:47:08] Abel James:
Given that and being informed by your research experience, but you don't have to directly comment on that being, you know, scientific proof, What are the lifestyle practices that that have carried over for you in terms of things that you do or things that you avoid?
[00:47:23] Dr. Sabine Hazen:
Well, the first thing is I don't take myself too seriously. You know? I that's the first thing. I don't necessarily focus on me, me, me. I mean, the we have to focus on me, me, me for half, like, you know, when I'm sick, I kinda slow down and I'm like, okay, you know what? It's not if I have a gut problem, if I have digestive issues, I focus, hey, There's something going on. What did I do? What did I eat yesterday? I go back to my diary of what I eat. It's important to take a diary of what you're eating. I think that's the first advice I would give people because then you can kinda trace it yourself to say, wait a minute. I had beans yesterday, and beans don't agree with me. Time to get off the beans. For whatever reason, maybe those beans are contaminating.
Maybe those beans you've lost the microbes that breaks down those beans. Right? So that's the first thing. The second thing is as stressful as my life is, I decrease the stress, you know. I watch stupid movies, romantic comedies, funny movies. I don't watch anything that's bloody, gory, horror because killing. Why? It's just gonna upset me, and I don't like to see blood. I see enough blood as a gastroenterologist that the last thing I need to see is blood, you know. And so I wanna see, you know, fun things that make me happy, that make me laugh, that, you know, musicals, you know. I'm always listening to the same songs, you know. It's usually songs from musicals.
Preferably not Jekyll and Hyde, but, you know, usually fun musicals. Hamilton and Les Mis, etcetera. So I decrease my stress by listening to fun songs. You know, Glee had a lot of good songs. You know? So all that, you know, makes me happy. I try to stay positive. I try to forgive people that harm me because I always go, you know what? God will take care of them. I don't need to worry about it. You know, a a secretary stole $4,000 from me. I'm like, you know what? Let god take care of it. I'm not gonna go after that person. I'm not gonna hit them. You know? I'm not gonna put dark energy on that because then it comes back to me. It's best to leave vengeance as vengeance be.
So that's my personality. I'm not a I used to be the person that believed an eye for an eye, but I changed that. And I think, you know, my faith in god and, you know, surviving the pandemic and and praying, you know, got me to that peace, you know, where it really is a peaceful microbiome, one that prays, that reaches and it doesn't have to be prayers. It could be meditation. It could be yoga. Looking into yourself and seeing, okay. Well, what did I do that could have stopped that behavior of that person on me? What was my fault? You know? What did I do that got that person so mad at me that they came at me with a vengeance? Right? And trying to appease that behavior and recognizing it because realizing, look, I I don't wanna stress about it. I don't wanna, you know, be angry, and then I end up myself in a disease. Then what would have I accomplished? You know? That whole attitude of, you know, action leads to a reaction. Yes. But, you know, at any point, we can stop the action and we could stop the reaction. Right?
I always say, you know, if a roller coaster makes you nauseous, it's time to get off. It's no longer fun. Right? So get off the roller coaster, focus on another path, and keep moving, you know, because none of us have answers to life or death. We're all trying to do our best, keep moving. Sunlight is very important. I think doctor Jack Cruz talks about, you know, the morning sun. I I really you know, that's something that resonates with me. Vitamin d increases bifidobacteria, good bacteria. We need sun. You know? I think we've gone over crazy with the sunscreens and all that. And, also, again, we have all these sunscreens that are contaminated, that have other products in there that possibly could cause us harm and not good. Again, the whole SPF protection might be good up to a level.
You know, what population should be protected, what population shouldn't be protected. So there's a lot of questions on that. Exercise is always good. You know? Go to the gym, run, you know, get out, hiking, you know, playing in the garden. That's my big thing. I'm a big, you know, play in the garden, grow vegetables. I love seeing them grow. I love the fact that I create I, you know, I was part of that. Enjoying nature, I, manage, like, 10 beehives. Wow. If you have a backyard, start, you know, having beehives in your backyard. Save the bees and save the BIF. You know, I'm all about preserving the bees.
They have a huge role in the development of our fruits in the in the planet. You know, they have a huge role in our ability to absorb sugar, and not necessarily just the honey, but the function that the bees do on the fruits and the vegetables and how they create these fruits and vegetables, how they fertilize, how they help pollen, you know, all that. So that's my my big thing. Swimming in the ocean once in a while, you know, if you're in balance and you're healthy, keep doing what you're doing. You know, you're the surfer that's been healthy your whole life. Keep surfing. Keep doing what you're doing. If you're sick and you have diseases and you have signs of diseases, your skin is not healing, you've got some horrible acne, psoriasis, you're losing your hair, you're having GI problems, you're having neurological problems, Parkinson's, MS, Alzheimer's, ALS, etcetera, then, yes, that's the time to start, you know, looking into gut health, looking into your microbiome, trying things that could help restore that balance and and removing the stress factors. So stress is a big thing, you know, stress, anxiety.
Medicine is not a one doctor solution. It's not a one pill solution. I work with a lot with my patients. This is why I don't say, how do you increase the bifidobacteria? Because too often, that bifidobacteria doesn't increase unless you incorporate a therapist to help your patient, a psychiatrist to help your patient, you know, a neurologist to help your patient, a dietician to help your patient, a mold evaluation of your house, you know, an environmentalist to to so there's so many people that I use in my plate in a way. You know, it's like colors on a plate when you're coloring a beautiful painting. There's so many colors. There's so many people that I use that help me heal.
It's not just Sabine Hazen. And it's not just a one pill, and it's not just a one protocol. So and it's it's definitely not one pill. I'm not the person that's gonna tell you take this pill and you're gonna heal your problem and take it forever. No. I'm not that. I'm the girl you're gonna come to and you're gonna say, hey, doc. I my kid has autism. I'd like to do research. Can you help me with doing the research on my kid? Can you help me write a protocol with the FDA? Can you help me innovate? Can you help me guide me to where I should go with my kid? You know, is my kid a neurological problem? Is my kid a microbiome problem? You know, if I don't see something in the microbiome, I'm not gonna push a kid to just focus on the microbiome. I'm gonna say, look, your microbiome of your kids are identical. I looked at the sibling that's neurotypical and I looked at your kid that's autistic, and they're both identical.
In my opinion, and I always say my humble opinion, I don't think it's a microbiome issue. So I'm not gonna go the route of, hey. Let's do an expensive IND with the FDA to submit that protocol. I'm gonna go the route of, hey. Maybe it's time to see this doctor or this doctor or this doctor, you know?
[00:55:53] Abel James:
Quickly, I I was wondering if you you could talk a little bit more about the signatures that you brought up at the beginning in terms of disease or health. What does that look like?
[00:56:02] Dr. Sabine Hazen:
Well, it doesn't look like anything because it's not published. So right now, it's all in my brain that I see. We need to raise at least half a million dollars to develop a bioinformatics pipeline to see if what I see in my brain is actual factual. Because if I see what's in my brain, how do I explain to a doctor or scientist, hey, this is what I see, because he's not seeing it. Right? So if I show you a painting that's all blurry, and you don't see numbers in that painting, and I can't make you see those numbers. You understand? The microbiome is a huge canvas full of colors, and you have to kind of dissect, see it.
And I can see it, but nobody else can see it. Right? So when nobody else can see it, that's not science. Science is, okay, Sabine Hazen sees something. Now we need to bring on some funding for Sabine Hazen to hire the team of bioinformatics that's independent of Sabine Hazen that sees what Sabine Hazen put on a little piece of paper and put it in a safe for them to say, hey. We found this, this, and that, and then I take my piece of paper out of the safe and I say, guess what? That's what I saw. That's how science needs to be. If I come out and say, well, the microbiome of Parkinson's is this, this, and that, that that's ridiculous. That's just Sabine Hayes isn't seeing that.
But I gotta convince, you know, the head of the National Institute of Standards that Sabine Hazen saw this and he has to see it. Otherwise, I'm full of shit. No offense. So guess what? I don't wanna be full of shit. So right now, it's all in my brain. It's gonna stay there. Nobody can crack my brain. And until we develop that pipeline and those guys say Sabine Hazen is right, then it stays in my brain. But that's the future in my opinion, my humble opinion. Again, I think that's the future. You have to develop markers in the microbiome space to understand the microbiome and then from there to develop products that can match that signature microbiome. So to say we're at mile 10 of 10,000 miles in a marathon is probably generous.
We're the beginning. But again, we cannot stop this beginning and we gotta support this beginning because otherwise, we don't advance science.
[00:58:39] Abel James:
It it may be early, but at least we're moving forward. Thanks to people like you and the work that you're doing. So, let's talk a little bit more about that. Where can people find your book, your work, and all of the other incredible things that you're doing? You're I don't know. You must have clones running around for yourself because they're just
[00:58:56] Dr. Sabine Hazen:
That is one thing I do not wanna, you know I watched I watched the X Men yesterday and I watched Dark Phoenix. And I was like, you know, I do not wanna have a clone because, you know, who knows? I will tell you that you can find the book on Barnes and Noble and the Projena Biome website. Progenobiome.com has all the publications, has all the podcasts. Even your podcast will be on there. Every podcast, I kinda leak something, and I kinda do it intentional so people can keep following what we're doing. A lot of the stuff is still not published. We need funds. The microbiomeresearchfoundation.org has all the meetings of the the Biome squad, so I invite everybody to go listen to these meetings. Those are as cutting edge as possible, you know, when you hear this the lecture from doctor Tom Barodi for the first time on a meeting, Neil Stohlman, Scott Jackson, who is the head of the National Institute of Standards.
When you hear Sahil Khanna from Mayo Clinic, Colleen Kelly, Paul Feuerstead from Yale, you know, all these doctors have kind of brought in lectures that Alex Kurutz, who basically started, in my opinion, the only good stool bank out there, you know, the best stool bank out there anyways. Alex is there giving a lecture on the on the microbiome and the the challenges of keeping a stool bank going, right, and investing in that investing money into that into his foundation as well, to keep that going. So I think that's how they find me, microbiomeresearchfoundation.org and progenobyome.org, and the book is on both the website and Barnes and Noble's if they want to.
[01:00:46] Abel James:
Wonderful. Doctor Hazen, thanks so much for joining us. Thank you so much. Hey. Abel here one more time. And if you believe in our mission to create a world where health is the norm, not sickness, here are a few things you can do to help keep this show coming your way. Click like, subscribe, and leave a quick review wherever you listen to or watch your podcasts. You can also subscribe to my new Substack channel for an ad free version of this show in video and audio. That's at ablejames.substack.com. You can also find me on Twitter or x, YouTube, as well as fountain f m, where you can leave a little crypto in the tip jar. And if you can think of someone you care about who might learn from or enjoy this show, please take a quick moment to share it with them. Thanks so much for listening and we'll see you in the next episode.
Hey, folks. This is Abel James, and thanks so much for joining us on the show. What if the secret to unlocking the mysteries of our minds, our health, and even our happiness is hiding in the most unexpected place inside of our guts? Could the answers to our most stubborn health mysteries and maybe even the secret to a longer happier life be found in the microbes we've spent a lifetime trying to avoid? How does our microbiome affect conditions like depression, Parkinson's, and autism? As our body's main point of contact interacting with the outside world, many illnesses start in the gut. Research from this week's guest shows that optimizing microbial health can dramatically improve our quality of life, leading to enhanced memory and cognition and even reversing symptoms of Alzheimer's. After microbial transplants, some patients even started regrowing their own hair. Our guest today, doctor Sabine Hazen, is a trailblazer and pioneering specialist in gastroenterology, internal medicine, and hepatology.
Doctor Hazen is the founder and CEO of the Malibu Specialty Center and Ventura Clinical Trials, where she conducts and oversees clinical trials for cutting edge research. Doctor Hazen also has an impeccable sense of humor. I think you're gonna enjoy this interview. Before we get there, here's a quick plug. Make sure you're subscribed to the Abel James Show wherever you listen to your podcast. You can also get an ad free version of this show with a lot of behind the scenes goodies when you subscribe to my Substack. That's at abeljames.substack.com, abeljames.substack.com.
Look forward to seeing you there. On this episode of the show with doctor Hazen, you're about to discover the unexpected benefits of microbiome transplants, how sunlight, exercise, and hobbies like gardening actually improve our microbial health and resilience, how changing the way we think affects our microbiome, and much more. Let's meet doctor Hazen. Welcome back, folks. Born in Morocco, doctor Sabine Hazen is a pioneering doctor and gastroenterologist of over thirty years and an expert on the gut microbiome. Doctor Hazen, it's an honor to have you with us. Honored to be here.
So one thing that that is obvious in your work is that you use humor as a tool, which as a professional, I'm sure can be, very tricky business, but you avoid the stuffy, kind of joyless stereotype that some doctors may have. So how do you balance this approach using humor with scientific rigor?
[00:09:24] Dr. Sabine Hazen:
I think it probably stems from a balanced microbiome or at least trying to keep a balanced microbiome. I think nothing in life is that serious. I mean, the serious thing are when you really get sick and diseased. So everything else that we try to accomplish, whether, you know, taking an exam in school or whether we're making a deal or, you know, all that is really frivolous. The most important thing is life and health. And so, you know, that's stuff that's really serious to me. You know? Like, a woman with stage four cancer of the breast is really serious to me. A kid that's banging his head on the wall is really serious to me. So how do I offset that seriousness?
You know? I have to balance my life with humor as well, bring on the humor, you know. So I think we take ourselves too seriously as scientists, and I think it's important to not be so serious. I mean, be serious in the research you're doing, but not be serious in how we believe our impression about us, right, our impression about our work. Because I think at the end of the day, science evolves with new technology, science changes. It's important to be objective as objective as possible, as unbiased as possible. And it's important to kind of, you know, be humble to say, you know, I may be right, I may be wrong. And, you know, the way that I did it with, you know, the microbiome anyways is I didn't wanna sugarcoat microbiome.
So I I literally said it point blank. Let's talk s h dot t, you know? I don't know if we can say that on your on your podcast. Okay. Okay. You gotta rip. So, you know, I wanted to say, let's talk shit, you know? And at the end of every one of my conferences, and I think it's my quirky, you know, I think I'm funny. My husband never thought I was funny, but, you know, I think I'm funny. But, you know, in my own mind, right? So I at every, you know, at the end of every talk or conferences, I would say, look, I could be full of it or I could know it. But either way, let's talk about it. And also, you know, I see, you know, this whole path kind of in a way, you know, I have to say God has a sense of humor.
Because to put the mysteries of life in poop, right, to find out that bipolar disorder has a microbiome signature, that depression, anxiety has a microbiome signature, that Parkinson's has a microbiome signature. You know, that's really finding answers in poop. And, you know, that's really, in a way, God's sense of humor to say, look, I know you humans or you're you'll never touch it, and that's something that's really taboo to even talk about. And so it's got humor in itself because here I am a girl that, first of all, I'm super, you know, clean. And here I am playing with poop. You know, my mom raised me, sterile environment, over sterilized everything for me, was super clean, was, you know, practically making me wear gloves and a and a and a hat when I went to school.
So she was, you know, that kind of personality. And so for me to go into the microbiome space and play with poop and, you know, go on a safari and analyze the microbiome of zebras and elephants and literally collected instead of taking pictures, It really has a it's it's there's no other way to say than to say it's kinda funny, you know? And so why not be funny about it, you know? Why not lighten the field? Why do I have to make it so serious, you know? And also, I think with humor, people understand it better. It's been my way of, first of all, removing the haters because, you know, at the end of the day, I'm like, look. If you're gonna talk shit about me, you might as well read my book. Right? Yeah.
So it it's got so much. And so I took it on. You know, this was a path for me that I really wanted to understand. It was a path for me that I really wanted to understand for me first. You know? Like, I it was never my interest to basically start publishing or I'm not a I'm not the girl that publishes articles. I'm not the academic doctor. I'm not the PhD. I'm the girl that basically can run 10 protocols for pharma and bring a drug to market because I have the ability to juggle multiple things, right, at the same time. So because I'm doing that, it's easy for me to see multiple things at the same time, multiple you know, and spinning multiple wheels at the same time.
It really is, in a way, a gift, but at the same time, I'm not the girl that's gonna sit down and find articles and and basically write a whole big dissertation. That's just not me because I'm just too busy running around multiple things. So when COVID hit, I was forced to publish. I was forced to step into that world because I realized there was something in during the pandemic that we weren't told. I realized this research was poorly done. You know, remember, I'm the girl that brought hundreds of clinical trials for pharma to market, me and my sisters. You know, my sister is the leading dermatologist in New York, doctor Carol Hazan.
My other sister, doctor Liddy Hazan, was, you know, the founder of a CRO that basically did hundreds of clinical trials. She brought Harvoni to the market from the first phase all the way to the end. She brought ivermectin to the market all the way to the end. So I was part of that. I was part of all those clinical trials. I was part of the growth of developing product, developing innovations. You know, when my sister Carol was doing Mohs surgery for melanoma, I was seeing that. You know, when she was doing hair transplant, I was seeing that. When she was doing, you know, treatment for improving facial, you know, wrinkles, I was part of that, seeing her work, seeing that firsthand.
So I think I was in a strategic position during the pandemic because I'm in a family of nine doctors, all specialists, and also we've done clinical trials for pharma. So basically, how do you do the research that you wanna see, that you wanna do, and how do you convey it to the public, you have two ways. You can convey it in a fun manner doing these podcasts and talking shit, or you can, you know, convey it scientifically. And trying to do my best to convey it scientifically, remembering I am not the scientist with the PhD that puts out papers.
So, therefore, there's gonna be problems of those papers, but it should not stop the message of the papers. So a message needs to be reached to every segment of the population. Right? When you have a discovery and for me, the discovery was losing no one during the pandemic, you know, the protocols I used, Discovering the microbiome, discovering, off label drugs and what they do on the microbiome, discovering what drugs do on the microbiome, what vitamins do on the microbiome, what nutrients or or foods do on the microbiome was a huge part of the pandemic. How do you relay that message?
You have to reach the whole population. It's very difficult to reach the whole population when the population is divided. You know? They're they're divided politically, right or left. They're divided by religion. They're divided by gender. And so we're divided on every front. How do I reach the public to try to heal that divide, to try to heal the public? So it's either through podcast like this using some comedy. It's either through writing the book, Let's Talk Shit. And then it's also conferences to the doctors. You educate 10 other doctors, a thousand doctors. And then pretty soon, they're speaking your words, you know. And then the most important thing is publishing because that's the only way that academics who move the needle get to see the data so they can kind of use that work and then move it to the next level.
[00:18:21] Abel James:
I love that. Now let's talk a little more specifically about your work. It's been so much fun looking into it. So correct me if I'm wrong, but you were looking at C. Diff originally and then noticed that through fecal microbiome transplants, that other things were happening aside from just the C. Diff that that people started, basically displaying that their memory was starting to get a little bit better or regrowing hair or something like that. So, like, fill in the gaps. How did this all happen?
[00:18:53] Dr. Sabine Hazen:
So it's not just me. It's really the work of courageous, brave physicians like me that really were not afraid to play with poop. The whole field of fecal transplants started in the fifties with doctor Einsmann, Fred Einsmann, who was the first physician to say who he had two patients and he basically did enemas on those patients and said, maybe if we restore stools, we can kill off c diff. And what happened was that caught on. Doctor Tom Barodi, who is the father of fecal transplant, who is the coauthor of Let's Talk Shit, basically took it to the next level. He said, maybe there's something in the gut, maybe there's something in the microbiome.
Can we do it for other cases? Then you see the work of doctor Sydney Feingold, who basically is the physician who who guided me in this path to open my lab, to buy the machines that I needed to buy, and was the doctor who wrote the book on anaerobic infections of the gut. And so, you know, he basically wrote an entire book that doctors used for guidance, you know, that infectious disease doctors used. And, you know, he started seeing something with autism. It was a mom and an autistic kid that went up to him and said, you know, I gave my kid vancomycin, and vancomycin improved my son.
And so doctor Feingold started putting his brain together and he said, maybe autism is a microbe problem, microbial problem. Let me collect stools of autistic kids and culture those stools. Remember, we didn't have the technology forty, fifty years ago that we have now to look at microbes. We only had the technology of we're gonna take a petri dish and we're gonna culture the stools and see what goes on. So he had the biggest collection of stools of kids with autism, and he noticed that there were a couple of microbes. You know, he found the sulfavibrio in some. He found clostridium perfringens in others.
And then he basically started collaborating with doctor Tom who came in with the idea of fecal transplant for c diff. And together, they kind of, like, figured out autism. And doctor Barodi then took his ideas to doctors Adams, James Adams, for fecal transplant with autism. At the same time that this was happening, multiple physicians were already doing work using fecal transplants, say, Heel Kona on chronic urinary tract infections. So he was doing fecal transplant for c diff, but he was also noticing that people with chronic UTI, that could help those patients.
Colleen Kelly at Brown University at the time, she was at Brown, she showed two cases of, you know, of hair regrowth with alopecia areata. Of course, you know, these cases are like n of one, n of two, n of eight, n of twenty eight. You know, doctor Berardi showed improvement of Crohn's disease in twenty eight patients with fecal transplant, but his protocols and these cases were not reproduced easily. In other words, other doctors said, well, you know what? Let me do a clinical trial on autism. Let me raise money. Let me do a clinical trial. And and basically, that's the studies you're seeing with doctor James Adams.
You know, other doctors and and even doctor James Adams, when he published the first paper, it was fifty percent of the kids are improving. It wasn't a 100%. So there's something missing there. Right? And when doctor Colleen Kelly showed alopecia areata improving in two patients, others have tried to reproduce that data, were non successful. So it's very important to realize that, you know and so where do I come in? I come in as the girl that basically join all these doctors together to say, let's talk about what we're finding because I found a case of Alzheimer's that improved the fecal transplant. It was an n of one. That's it. Now was I lucky with the donor? Was that the perfect donor? The donor was the wife. Was she compatible to the husband because they were married for forty years, and therefore there was that compatibility where she was stronger and he was weaker, and therefore she gave her microbes to share and therefore kept him alive?
You know, that those were the questions that happened in my mind. You know, we we noticed in fecal transplant that if you use a spouse or a child, fecal transplant is way better. And especially if you use fresh stools, it's way better. But nobody's really looked at that because we went from, hey. We're noticing siblings and family members are improving people, and we're getting a ninety two to ninety, you know, in my case, like, ninety eight percent success rate for c diff using familial or spousal poop and fresh.
You know, when that became, hey. Let's develop a pharmaceutical product. Let's develop a drug. And then we, as the doctors, were basically stop what you're doing. We're gonna develop a drug. And then you can see with the drugs that are coming out, the success rate is not as good as what we were getting with families. And so there's a problem there. Right? So when you're a doctor on the front line taking care of these poor people and I'm not talking about my Malibu clientele celebrities. I'm talking about the patients that doctor Neil Stohlman takes care of in San Francisco that are poor, that cannot afford thousands of dollars of stool testing and picking the right donor. We're talking about these people need a stool bank that can help those patients and it needs to be kind of prepared. Right? So those patients need help.
But when the product that was created doesn't help those people anymore or only helps twenty, thirty, 40, maybe 50%, but doesn't help the other 50. The doctor is still, you know, left with the patient saying, how do I help my patient? Can I go back to doing familial fecal transplant? Can I try to push that? But the problem then becomes, how do I test the stools to make it proper for the FDA to be within the guidelines that the FDA's, you know, created for stool transplant. Right? And then here's the other thing. We've kind of figured out with fecal transplant so I stepped into this to coordinate all the doctors to have that discussion.
What are you seeing? And how I did it is I basically created the Biome Squad, which is a league of doctors that analyze poop, play with poop, and I felt it was kind of, like, appropriate. And, again, it's a bit of a funny title. It's like the x men and women, except it's the Biome Squad. We're playing with poop, saving the microbiome one microbe at a time. You know, so I created the Biome Squad to bring in all these doctors that were interested in understanding the microbiome. I then created the Malibu microbiome meeting because I figured, well, you know what? I'm gonna have some celebrities come and talk at my meeting, and doctors will come in and, you know, will and and I'll invite all these doctors that have done amazing work. And it's not gonna be a pharma driven, you know, product. It's gonna be sponsored by a foundation, which I created or founded.
And from there, we started the microbiome meeting, and we all kinda came and started talking about our results. Non biased, non paid, nobody's paying us, nobody's sponsoring the lecture to sell a product. We just came and basically all shared what we saw. And it was an amazing time, really, because and it was really, you know, all these videos, by the way, are on the microbiomeresearchfoundation.org website. But it was an amazing time to see all these heads of academia that have written books on g NGI and infectious disease come together to speak, that have published numerous papers.
So from there, my job was really to look at the microbiome. What are those guys doing that is improving? Let me look at before and after. And doctor Stohlman will will tell you, as my colleagues, you cannot really have a test out there that's really analyzing the microbiome. The best way to analyze the microbiome is to test the microbiome before and after, but also to have a validated test that's valid, verified, and reproducible. And that's what basically ProgenaBiome was created for, to have that test that can kinda show the world the microbiome. But that is a test that's valid, verified, and reproducible. In other words, I can test my stools today, tomorrow, next year. I'm still gonna recognize me when I see my microbiome.
It's important to have that validation as best as we can. Obviously, the microbiome is not perfect. One, there's a couple of problems. One, we're all different, so therefore, we cannot compare each other. Two, we're eating different foods. Therefore, you know, you're gonna have a variation with so you have to collect the stools as best you can. Three, when you're collecting, are you contaminating the product? Right? Are you adding more microbes? Then when it goes to the lab, are you adding more microbes when you're processing? Are you contaminating your stool sample? Are you mixing your stool samples?
Are you sure this is the right specimen that you did that matches that patient? There's so many variables. And then you get the stool sample, and you're trying to compare two people with the same disease, and you go, wait a minute. Why is this one having high good bacteria and this one doesn't, but they have the same disease? Then you have to go back and say ask the question to the patient. Are you taking probiotics? What probiotics are you taking? Are you vegan? Are you vegetarian? Are you carnivore? What kind of meds are you using? What kind so you really have to take a detailed history. It's not something a patient can write, and I'm gonna say this, you know, being as kind as I can.
Patients are not very good at giving a history on paper. They're very quick at writing the data. I can assure you that people come to me and I write past medical history, and we see nothing on the past medical history in the paperwork. My my secretary puts a chart that's manila folder for normal, healthy, you know, everything else. And then she puts patients with autism blue. Well, I think the history of the patient come to find out the kid is autistic. The family didn't even put that on the family on the past medical history. So asking AI to basically look at medical records that were filled by patients or questionnaires, you've lost the research right there. Okay?
Here's the other thing. You need that doctor to tell to ask the question. Alcohol, we know, impacts the microbiome. One glass of wine, you know, is better is good for the microbiome, but more than that kills the microbiome. It's alcohol. It's a sterilizer. Right? And what does alcohol do long term on the microbiome? Right? We don't know that question yet. Research is needed. Now I can tell you how many times I've asked patients, do you drink? And they say no. Then I have to go back when their microbiome is completely desolate. I have to go back and say, are you sure you're not drinking? Are you sure?
You can tell me. I'm not gonna write it anywhere. I'm gonna just just for my own knowledge. Anyway, sometimes it takes me three visits to get the history of alcohol. And I will tell you, I've seen that over and over as a physician where, you know, a patient comes in and will have pancreatitis, and I will constantly ask, are you sure you're not drinking? And then eventually, after the sixth visit, we'll come in and say, doctor, I have a confession to make. I drink alcohol. It takes persistence at asking the questions that it really medicine is an art to get from the patient the truth. Right?
You will treat a patient, because people come to me for, like, hey, fecal transplant. You will treat that patient with fecal transplant, and you will not succeed in treating the patient because you've missed the history that the patient was abused as a kid, and therefore, the brain is constantly working on the gut, killing the microbiome. You will miss the fact that the girl was raped, and therefore, that's always in the back of her brain affecting the microbiome. So the art of medicine is really getting that history to understand.
So to go back to the c diff question and how I got into this, I'm the girl that analyzed the microbiome of c diff patients. Come to find out, when we do fecal transplant, what we do is we don't kill the c diff. We actually restore the microbiome. What we do when we give antibiotics, vancomycin, you know, flagrol, fidaxomicin, we're killing the microbiome. We need something that restores the microbiome. So when we do fecal transplant, we're giving new seeds, new microbes, and we're reimplanting. It's like a garden that you removed all the weeds and you plant new seeds.
And then you make sure that you're not pouring gasoline on your garden. You know? You make sure that the foods you're taking are not killing the gut. The cheeses you're eating are not killing the gut. The drinks you're drinking are not killing the gut. The alcohol you're drinking, the stress factors, the environment, all that is super important, and then you heal. Okay? So it's a very complex problem because, so that's what essentially the microbiome taught me with c diff. What it then taught me with other diseases, and that's what we're discovering, is that there's a something changing in the microbiome that's restoring the health of the patient. You know, when you're seeing a kid with autism that was nonverbal and all of a sudden is verbal, and you look at the microbiome picture and you look at what you've done, and it doesn't need to be stool transplant. It could be whatever product. You know, the doctor Fry has a protocol where he basically uses a product on his kids with autism, and he restores the microbiome on these kids and but it's only in a percentage of those kids. It's not everyone.
Because, again, everyone has a different microbiome, everyone has different microbes causing the disease, and everyone responds differently to the treatment. And so we have to you know, if we wanna push the answers to the microbiome, we need to understand the microbiome better, and this is my path. I'm the girl that basically, look, I'm constantly questioning myself. Am I right? Is this right? And that's the way we advance science. If we come at, hey, this is the answer. We've lost medicine. We've lost science.
[00:34:51] Abel James:
It makes me think, you know, a lot of people say good bugs, bad bugs, but looking at your work, it's clear that microbes aren't quite that simple. Right? And so when you try to just, like,
[00:35:03] Dr. Sabine Hazen:
make it one thing, it all evaporates. And and I'll tell you, they're not as simple the same as humans. Right? We're all different, and we're not that simple. You know? We're good and we're bad. We can be good and we can be bad. You piss me off and I'll be bad. You give me kindness, you give me love and I'll be good. Right? So it's the same thing with microbes. You you're good to that microbe. You enhance it. It's gonna flourish, and it's gonna do what it's supposed to do. You kill the family of those microbes, and then it's gonna come out at you with a vengeance. Okay? What did we learn from Clostridium difficile is that you killed off all the other Clostridiums, leaving Clostridium difficile to flourish, and now it's coming at you with a vengeance to give you diarrhea and to kill you.
Because the microbiome's purpose is to return the host back into the planet and to the Earth. We're here for a short time to learn something, to do our thing as a reservoir, and to go back to the Earth. You know, to say microbes are leading, yes, they are leading. They are what allows us to absorb sugar. They are what allows us to absorb calcium. You saw during the pandemic, one virus put the population, the planet on standstill. Nobody was moving. Nobody was walking out the streets at the beginning of the pandemic. Whether that was the right thing to do or the wrong thing, I personally think it was the right thing at the beginning because we needed to understand this virus better and how to organize. And when there's so much movement, how do you see clearly?
But the thing is you saw the whole planet was at standstill. There was no movement in Paris, no movement in London. Planes were empty. Nobody was working. Everybody was home. Microbes have that potential. They're powerful. When you get a virus and you're basically stuck in bed, you cannot go back to work. Even though you want to go back to work, you cannot. You're at standstill. So they're very powerful. And at the end of our lives, they take over our bodies, decompose our bodies, and put us back into the earth. So my opinion is it's best to understand them now while we're alive and not interfere with the research that basically is trying to advance the understanding of the microbiome.
Let's all work together to understand the microbiome to see how do we live longer. How do we, you know, live longer but with a quality of life? How do we decrease mental health? How do we decrease chronic diseases? How we decrease cancer? This this is my path, understanding the microbiome.
[00:37:55] Abel James:
In the past few decades, it seems like there's been a a big focus on saying that genetics are really the determining factor of people's health. But as the years go on, we discover more. We, once again, learn that it's not quite so simple, but in I've been doing a lot of writing recently about longevity, and I'm finding that that conversation is changing. But the fact that people have shared outcomes with their families isn't really something that's debatable. The driver of that, though may not be as much genetics as the microbiome and and the fact that that can be shared at least somewhat or or, you know, as as you say, and in your work, very directly shared, then you can really see some some serious things happening.
[00:38:36] Dr. Sabine Hazen:
It's so here's the thing, the it's it's both. It could be both or it could be none. Right? So because that's what science is. It's asking questions and is it am I right or wrong? Could it be both right or wrong? It's both. So progenobion was actually spelled it's a tough name to say progenobion because it's from your genes, your progena, your genes to your biome. It's all interacted. Right? I'll give you an example, and I want you to start thinking about this. Are we passing on microbes that are affecting the genes? You know, there's certainly a huge field of epigenetics out there that certainly agrees with that. You look at, you know, generations that were, you know, persecuted, for example, generations that were, you know, put in camps, for example.
Did that environment harvest some microbes that basically made those people resilient and therefore passed on both the resiliency but also the microbes that could potentially create the disease? Right? Is that why certain populations have a resilience and therefore also are affected by disease? Right? Both. Because it's that balance. Right? Are you balanced enough that you're on the good path and therefore resilient, or are you out of balance and therefore on the bad path getting disease? Right? Because that's the at the end of the day, it's all about the balance. And balance is not something that we've we've figured out. Right? It's not something that we can say with certainty, well, you need this much microbe you know, you need this much bifidiol, you need this much bacteroides, this much firmicutes, this we haven't figured that out yet. Right? And, again, it's probably different in everyone.
Think about the person that lives in Mexico that is in an environment of giardia, and the person that's in Kansas that doesn't that's not exposed to giardia. The person in Mexico, in order to live in Mexico and to drink the water of Mexico is gonna have some giardia in their guts, which now they're resilient to giardia. The person from Kansas who goes to Mexico, drinks the water, does not have any giardia, gets diarrhea. You understand? That's what the microbiome is. It's really I'm exposed to a microbe, I'm strong enough to confront it, and therefore, I'm resilient. And the next time I see this microbe, I'm gonna be fine.
That's the whole concept, by the way, behind vaccines. Right? Everybody's like, oh, vaccines are bad and but think about what we're doing with vaccines. We're giving you a small piece of the microbe to bring on that resiliency. Right? Here's the problem. So that the next time you see this microbe, you're not gonna get sick from it. Here's the problem. The quality of the vaccination, the quality of the microbe you're putting in. Let's say you put in some, you know, viruses with it. Okay? I mean, we've certainly seen with vitamins, there's vitamins that have arsenic in them. Right? So it doesn't help you that you're taking vitamin c to improve your gut, and there's arsenic that's killing your gut. You know? It's like, again, back to my garden, I'm putting gasoline and water on the fire. I'm never gonna turn off the fire or grow any plants. So, you know, it's the same principle when you do, you know, microbiome when you're trying to manipulate the microbiome is really figuring out how do you bring back that balance. And the balance, again, is different for everybody.
[00:42:21] Abel James:
It seems though, you know and you don't really hear this talked about very often. You just hear alcohol. But the difference between sipping one glass of red wine with dinner on a full stomach and taking a shot of vodka on an empty stomach for your microbes, I imagine that I mean, you can literally use it as a as a cleaner for surfaces, vodka. Right? And other it's flammable with the cup. Of course. Of course. So I could only imagine it's causing mass casualties, you know, down the line, even if it's just, like, one shot.
[00:42:52] Dr. Sabine Hazen:
I I I think as you're trying to grow, you know, and I've been doing this a while now trying to grow, it's not easy. You know? And I've been criticized on social media because everybody's like, why isn't she telling us how to grow the bifidobacteria? As if that was easy, and this is where my comic streak comes out. Yes. Why don't you tell me what kills the bifidobacteria and what grows the bifidobacteria? Show me the data. Right? So until it's and and here's the big problem. Until it's published, it's like until it's written, it didn't exist. Right? Until it's published and validated and my peers can say, yes. Sabine is right.
This product killed the bifidobacteria, therefore, should be published and not retracted. And I'm you know, I have a sore thing on that because there's a big retraction, you know, mob right now trying to retract because it doesn't fit their narrative of selling drugs. But, you know, it needs to be published. It needs to be reviewed. It needs to be accepted. When we talked about c diff from doctor Einsman doing fecal transplant for c diff to now it's part of the guidelines, you know, decades passed on. You know? I I'm thinking it's sixty two years, I think, I calculated the other day. From the moment he did those first two cases to the moment it's passed in the guideline, sixty two years have passed.
And a lot of doctors have kinda climbed on other doctors to continue the research. Right? Because science doesn't happen with one doctor. Science happens with other doctors validating the data, reproducing the data, believing that it's true, and seeing continuing to see the benefits of it. When you stop seeing the benefits and you start seeing side effects, you have to question, am I doing the same thing that I was doing fifty years ago? Is the microbiome that I'm giving contaminated? So same with the vaccines. Right? Vaccines, you know, were great until you know, with COVID, we started noticing some problems. We can't just put a a blindfold on it. You know, kids with myocarditis, we need to explore that. Right? And so, you know, maybe there's a contaminant in that. Maybe the concept is good, but there's a contaminant.
Maybe the concept is good, but it wasn't the right part of the virus to utilize. Right? So there's so many I think the moment we stop science and we stop asking questions is the moment we kill hope for people and we kill science. And like I said, it's not right now, the microbiome is not gonna be of my lifetime. It's gonna be the next person that's gonna take on the baton just like I did from doctor Feingold and doctor Barodi. So these guys passed on their knowledge to me to kinda carry it through. And, you know, I think probably no. I didn't want to do this. I had a curiosity.
So I had to do this for me first because I I felt, what if I'm that patient with Alzheimer's? Then I'm always gonna go back and say, I coulda, shoulda, woulda, and I didn't. I could've analyzed the microbiome, and I didn't. Shame on me. Now I can't remember my daughter's my my daughter's name. You know? So that's the fear. That's the that's why you advance. That's why you move. You don't look at the money. You just go, what if I'm that person, and therefore, I should be advancing the science? That doesn't mean it's in the microbiome either. Right? It could be in the brain, primary. It could be in the connection between the brain and the gut. But we need to continue science until we have a cure for that disease.
And until that cure and I always tell people because people you know, there's always, you know, overconfident physicians that come at me or scientists. And I always say, when you figure out how to live forever, then I'll believe what you're doing and I'll follow your path. Until then, it's it's a free for all. Anybody's a scientist. Anybody's a physician. Anybody can have their own hypothesis.
[00:47:08] Abel James:
Given that and being informed by your research experience, but you don't have to directly comment on that being, you know, scientific proof, What are the lifestyle practices that that have carried over for you in terms of things that you do or things that you avoid?
[00:47:23] Dr. Sabine Hazen:
Well, the first thing is I don't take myself too seriously. You know? I that's the first thing. I don't necessarily focus on me, me, me. I mean, the we have to focus on me, me, me for half, like, you know, when I'm sick, I kinda slow down and I'm like, okay, you know what? It's not if I have a gut problem, if I have digestive issues, I focus, hey, There's something going on. What did I do? What did I eat yesterday? I go back to my diary of what I eat. It's important to take a diary of what you're eating. I think that's the first advice I would give people because then you can kinda trace it yourself to say, wait a minute. I had beans yesterday, and beans don't agree with me. Time to get off the beans. For whatever reason, maybe those beans are contaminating.
Maybe those beans you've lost the microbes that breaks down those beans. Right? So that's the first thing. The second thing is as stressful as my life is, I decrease the stress, you know. I watch stupid movies, romantic comedies, funny movies. I don't watch anything that's bloody, gory, horror because killing. Why? It's just gonna upset me, and I don't like to see blood. I see enough blood as a gastroenterologist that the last thing I need to see is blood, you know. And so I wanna see, you know, fun things that make me happy, that make me laugh, that, you know, musicals, you know. I'm always listening to the same songs, you know. It's usually songs from musicals.
Preferably not Jekyll and Hyde, but, you know, usually fun musicals. Hamilton and Les Mis, etcetera. So I decrease my stress by listening to fun songs. You know, Glee had a lot of good songs. You know? So all that, you know, makes me happy. I try to stay positive. I try to forgive people that harm me because I always go, you know what? God will take care of them. I don't need to worry about it. You know, a a secretary stole $4,000 from me. I'm like, you know what? Let god take care of it. I'm not gonna go after that person. I'm not gonna hit them. You know? I'm not gonna put dark energy on that because then it comes back to me. It's best to leave vengeance as vengeance be.
So that's my personality. I'm not a I used to be the person that believed an eye for an eye, but I changed that. And I think, you know, my faith in god and, you know, surviving the pandemic and and praying, you know, got me to that peace, you know, where it really is a peaceful microbiome, one that prays, that reaches and it doesn't have to be prayers. It could be meditation. It could be yoga. Looking into yourself and seeing, okay. Well, what did I do that could have stopped that behavior of that person on me? What was my fault? You know? What did I do that got that person so mad at me that they came at me with a vengeance? Right? And trying to appease that behavior and recognizing it because realizing, look, I I don't wanna stress about it. I don't wanna, you know, be angry, and then I end up myself in a disease. Then what would have I accomplished? You know? That whole attitude of, you know, action leads to a reaction. Yes. But, you know, at any point, we can stop the action and we could stop the reaction. Right?
I always say, you know, if a roller coaster makes you nauseous, it's time to get off. It's no longer fun. Right? So get off the roller coaster, focus on another path, and keep moving, you know, because none of us have answers to life or death. We're all trying to do our best, keep moving. Sunlight is very important. I think doctor Jack Cruz talks about, you know, the morning sun. I I really you know, that's something that resonates with me. Vitamin d increases bifidobacteria, good bacteria. We need sun. You know? I think we've gone over crazy with the sunscreens and all that. And, also, again, we have all these sunscreens that are contaminated, that have other products in there that possibly could cause us harm and not good. Again, the whole SPF protection might be good up to a level.
You know, what population should be protected, what population shouldn't be protected. So there's a lot of questions on that. Exercise is always good. You know? Go to the gym, run, you know, get out, hiking, you know, playing in the garden. That's my big thing. I'm a big, you know, play in the garden, grow vegetables. I love seeing them grow. I love the fact that I create I, you know, I was part of that. Enjoying nature, I, manage, like, 10 beehives. Wow. If you have a backyard, start, you know, having beehives in your backyard. Save the bees and save the BIF. You know, I'm all about preserving the bees.
They have a huge role in the development of our fruits in the in the planet. You know, they have a huge role in our ability to absorb sugar, and not necessarily just the honey, but the function that the bees do on the fruits and the vegetables and how they create these fruits and vegetables, how they fertilize, how they help pollen, you know, all that. So that's my my big thing. Swimming in the ocean once in a while, you know, if you're in balance and you're healthy, keep doing what you're doing. You know, you're the surfer that's been healthy your whole life. Keep surfing. Keep doing what you're doing. If you're sick and you have diseases and you have signs of diseases, your skin is not healing, you've got some horrible acne, psoriasis, you're losing your hair, you're having GI problems, you're having neurological problems, Parkinson's, MS, Alzheimer's, ALS, etcetera, then, yes, that's the time to start, you know, looking into gut health, looking into your microbiome, trying things that could help restore that balance and and removing the stress factors. So stress is a big thing, you know, stress, anxiety.
Medicine is not a one doctor solution. It's not a one pill solution. I work with a lot with my patients. This is why I don't say, how do you increase the bifidobacteria? Because too often, that bifidobacteria doesn't increase unless you incorporate a therapist to help your patient, a psychiatrist to help your patient, you know, a neurologist to help your patient, a dietician to help your patient, a mold evaluation of your house, you know, an environmentalist to to so there's so many people that I use in my plate in a way. You know, it's like colors on a plate when you're coloring a beautiful painting. There's so many colors. There's so many people that I use that help me heal.
It's not just Sabine Hazen. And it's not just a one pill, and it's not just a one protocol. So and it's it's definitely not one pill. I'm not the person that's gonna tell you take this pill and you're gonna heal your problem and take it forever. No. I'm not that. I'm the girl you're gonna come to and you're gonna say, hey, doc. I my kid has autism. I'd like to do research. Can you help me with doing the research on my kid? Can you help me write a protocol with the FDA? Can you help me innovate? Can you help me guide me to where I should go with my kid? You know, is my kid a neurological problem? Is my kid a microbiome problem? You know, if I don't see something in the microbiome, I'm not gonna push a kid to just focus on the microbiome. I'm gonna say, look, your microbiome of your kids are identical. I looked at the sibling that's neurotypical and I looked at your kid that's autistic, and they're both identical.
In my opinion, and I always say my humble opinion, I don't think it's a microbiome issue. So I'm not gonna go the route of, hey. Let's do an expensive IND with the FDA to submit that protocol. I'm gonna go the route of, hey. Maybe it's time to see this doctor or this doctor or this doctor, you know?
[00:55:53] Abel James:
Quickly, I I was wondering if you you could talk a little bit more about the signatures that you brought up at the beginning in terms of disease or health. What does that look like?
[00:56:02] Dr. Sabine Hazen:
Well, it doesn't look like anything because it's not published. So right now, it's all in my brain that I see. We need to raise at least half a million dollars to develop a bioinformatics pipeline to see if what I see in my brain is actual factual. Because if I see what's in my brain, how do I explain to a doctor or scientist, hey, this is what I see, because he's not seeing it. Right? So if I show you a painting that's all blurry, and you don't see numbers in that painting, and I can't make you see those numbers. You understand? The microbiome is a huge canvas full of colors, and you have to kind of dissect, see it.
And I can see it, but nobody else can see it. Right? So when nobody else can see it, that's not science. Science is, okay, Sabine Hazen sees something. Now we need to bring on some funding for Sabine Hazen to hire the team of bioinformatics that's independent of Sabine Hazen that sees what Sabine Hazen put on a little piece of paper and put it in a safe for them to say, hey. We found this, this, and that, and then I take my piece of paper out of the safe and I say, guess what? That's what I saw. That's how science needs to be. If I come out and say, well, the microbiome of Parkinson's is this, this, and that, that that's ridiculous. That's just Sabine Hayes isn't seeing that.
But I gotta convince, you know, the head of the National Institute of Standards that Sabine Hazen saw this and he has to see it. Otherwise, I'm full of shit. No offense. So guess what? I don't wanna be full of shit. So right now, it's all in my brain. It's gonna stay there. Nobody can crack my brain. And until we develop that pipeline and those guys say Sabine Hazen is right, then it stays in my brain. But that's the future in my opinion, my humble opinion. Again, I think that's the future. You have to develop markers in the microbiome space to understand the microbiome and then from there to develop products that can match that signature microbiome. So to say we're at mile 10 of 10,000 miles in a marathon is probably generous.
We're the beginning. But again, we cannot stop this beginning and we gotta support this beginning because otherwise, we don't advance science.
[00:58:39] Abel James:
It it may be early, but at least we're moving forward. Thanks to people like you and the work that you're doing. So, let's talk a little bit more about that. Where can people find your book, your work, and all of the other incredible things that you're doing? You're I don't know. You must have clones running around for yourself because they're just
[00:58:56] Dr. Sabine Hazen:
That is one thing I do not wanna, you know I watched I watched the X Men yesterday and I watched Dark Phoenix. And I was like, you know, I do not wanna have a clone because, you know, who knows? I will tell you that you can find the book on Barnes and Noble and the Projena Biome website. Progenobiome.com has all the publications, has all the podcasts. Even your podcast will be on there. Every podcast, I kinda leak something, and I kinda do it intentional so people can keep following what we're doing. A lot of the stuff is still not published. We need funds. The microbiomeresearchfoundation.org has all the meetings of the the Biome squad, so I invite everybody to go listen to these meetings. Those are as cutting edge as possible, you know, when you hear this the lecture from doctor Tom Barodi for the first time on a meeting, Neil Stohlman, Scott Jackson, who is the head of the National Institute of Standards.
When you hear Sahil Khanna from Mayo Clinic, Colleen Kelly, Paul Feuerstead from Yale, you know, all these doctors have kind of brought in lectures that Alex Kurutz, who basically started, in my opinion, the only good stool bank out there, you know, the best stool bank out there anyways. Alex is there giving a lecture on the on the microbiome and the the challenges of keeping a stool bank going, right, and investing in that investing money into that into his foundation as well, to keep that going. So I think that's how they find me, microbiomeresearchfoundation.org and progenobyome.org, and the book is on both the website and Barnes and Noble's if they want to.
[01:00:46] Abel James:
Wonderful. Doctor Hazen, thanks so much for joining us. Thank you so much. Hey. Abel here one more time. And if you believe in our mission to create a world where health is the norm, not sickness, here are a few things you can do to help keep this show coming your way. Click like, subscribe, and leave a quick review wherever you listen to or watch your podcasts. You can also subscribe to my new Substack channel for an ad free version of this show in video and audio. That's at ablejames.substack.com. You can also find me on Twitter or x, YouTube, as well as fountain f m, where you can leave a little crypto in the tip jar. And if you can think of someone you care about who might learn from or enjoy this show, please take a quick moment to share it with them. Thanks so much for listening and we'll see you in the next episode.
Opening: The gut as the key to mind, health, and longevity
Meet Dr. Sabine Hazen: humor, humility, and microbiome science
Finding answers in poop: taboos, safari samples, and taking the heat
From pharma trials to the pandemic: why publish and who to reach
History of fecal transplants and early clues beyond C. diff
Case reports, mixed replication, and an Alzheimer’s n=1
Building a community: Biome Squad and Malibu Microbiome Meeting
Measuring the microbiome: validation, variability, and pitfalls
The art of medicine: real histories, alcohol, trauma, and truth
C. diff insights: restoring the garden instead of killing weeds
Microbes aren’t simply good or bad—context and balance
Genes, microbes, epigenetics, and shared resilience
Seeking balance: vaccines, contaminants, and scientific rigor
Daily practices for a resilient microbiome: stress, sun, movement, nature
No silver bullet: multidisciplinary care over one-pill fixes
On disease ‘signatures’: seeing patterns and needing funding
Closing thoughts and where to find Dr. Hazen’s work
