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[00:00] VOICEOVER (Disclaimer): Welcome to Let’s Talk Wellness Now, where we bring expert insights to you. Please note that the views and information shared by our guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of Let’s Talk Wellness Now, its management, or our partners. Each affiliate, sponsor, and partner is an independent entity with its own perspectives. Today’s content is provided for informational and educational purposes only and should not be considered specific advice, whether financial, medical, or legal. While we strive to present accurate and useful information, we cannot guarantee its completeness or relevance to your unique circumstances. We encourage you to consult a qualified professional to address your individual needs. Your use of information from this broadcast is entirely at your own risk. By continuing to listen, you agree to indemnify and hold Let’s Talk Wellness Now and its associates harmless from any claims or damages arising from the use of this content. We may update this disclaimer at any time and changes will take effect immediately upon posting or broadcast. Thank you for tuning in. We hope you find this episode both insightful and thought-provoking. Listener discretion is advised.
[01:22] DEB: The hidden nutritional costs of medication, longevity science, and healthy aging. What if some medications people rely on every day were quietly depleting nutrients their bodies desperately need? And what if the future of healthy aging isn’t just about treating disease, but understanding how nutrition, the microbiome, and cellular health work together to help us thrive. Today we’re joined by Ross Pelton, known worldwide as the Natural Pharmacist, to explore drug-induced nutrient depletion, longevity science, and what it really takes to support health as we age.
[02:04] DEB: Welcome back to Let’s Talk Wellness Now. I’m Dr. Deb, and today’s guest brings a unique perspective that bridges pharmacy, nutrition, and cutting-edge longevity research. Ross Pelton is a pharmacist, certified clinical nutritionist, author, educator, and internationally recognized expert on drug-induced nutrient depletion. He has spent decades researching how medications affect nutritional status, exploring natural therapies, and helping both healthcare professionals and patients better understand the connection between nutrition and long-term health. Ross is also widely known for his work on healthy longevity, the microbiome, autophagy and life extension science. So before we dive in, as usual, grab your cup of tea, coffee, or whatever helps you unwind and settle into an episode of Let’s Talk Wellness Now.
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[03:40] DEB: So, Ross, welcome to the show. I am so excited to hear your journey. You have spent decades bridging pharmacy and natural medicine and are really known as the Natural Pharmacist. And I just love that. Tell me a little bit about what got you started in this.
[03:59] ROSS: I grew up in Wisconsin in a very traditional family that was not health oriented and went to pharmacy school at the University of Wisconsin, got a degree in pharmacy and started counting pills in Walgreens drugstores. And after I got out of college, I moved to Chicago and started working for Walgreens. And I got bored very quickly with pharmacy. Counting pills all day long is one of the most boring, repetitive jobs in the world. And along the way, I stumbled into a yoga class. And in this yoga class, I met people that had a level of health that just knocked my socks off. It grabbed me. So I got involved with yoga and through yoga I met people that not only ate healthy food and exercised regularly, they read health books and health newsletters and health magazines. So I started to get exposed to all of this health related information. And with my background as a pharmacist in medicine and science and physiology and biochemistry, all of this health information just started to make sense. And it has been making sense ever since. So I ended up creating a career as a health care professional. I started writing books. I’ve written 13 books now and I’ve had 24 articles published in medical journals. So I’m a writer. I write about a wide range of health related topics. And today we’re going to talk about my major professional interest, which is the human gut microbiome.
[05:27] DEB: Yeah, that is such an interesting story. And I think, you know, a lot of us kind of stumble into the health world, either we got sick ourselves, someone else got sick, we went on a journey to try to help them. And I love your story that you got introduced to this in such a natural way. And it just excited you and lit you up about that. And to build a whole career around things from that one yoga class is just so amazing to me. Let’s talk about this gut microbiome, right? We talk a lot about it and sometimes I think it’s very nonchalant for us in the health field, right? We talk about the gut and the brain and the connection between the two. But I think the average person listening might not quite understand exactly what we mean by that. Let’s dive in and talk a little bit about what exactly is this gut microbiome.
[06:12] ROSS: Okay. Dr. Deb, this gut microbiome is the estimated 100 trillion bacteria that live in your gut. Over 99.9% of the bacteria in your gastrointestinal tract reside in the colon so your colon in your large intestine is really the primary site of your gut microbiome that’s where all these beneficial bacteria reside. What we’re learning about the gut microbiome, it is one of the most critical health regulating mechanisms in the body. And unfortunately, most people are not doing a very good job of regulating this microbiome ecosystem because it depends on food. You have to feed your beneficial bacteria well or they are not going to thrive and survive. [The basis] of the gut microbiome and the primary job of the beneficial bacteria in your gut microbiome is to digest components in your food in a process called fermentation and turn these food components into compounds we call postbiotic metabolites. And it turns out it’s these compounds produced by your beneficial bacteria that are these master health regulating compounds for the entire body. They’re produced in the gut, in the colon, but many of them get absorbed into your systemic circulation and you’ve got the gut brain axis and the gut heart axis and the gut kidney axis and the gut liver axis. These postbiotic metabolites produced by your beneficial bacteria are influencing every single organ system in your body. So that’s an overview of why this system is so important. So many people are consuming processed foods and high sugar, high fat foods that people are not feeding their gut microbiome and their beneficial bacteria efficiently. And so they end up with what we call dysbiosis, which is a medical or scientific term for bacterial imbalance in your gut microbiome: too many bad bacteria and not enough good bacteria. So let’s ask the question, what’s a healthy gut microbiome? Well, a healthy gut microbiome consists of about 85 to 90% good or beneficial bacteria and only 10 to 15% potentially bad bacteria. And I say potentially because everybody’s gut harbors some strains of bacteria that could potentially be harmful, but when they only exist in small numbers, they’re not causing problems. It’s when people consume bad diets or overuse antibiotics and pesticides and insecticides and herbicides and agricultural farming. These things upset your gut microbiome, and we get bacterial imbalance. And when you have too many bad bacteria and not enough good bacteria, one of the major effects of that is to damage the gut lining, create what we call leaky gut or intestinal permeability that allows harmful things to leak into your systemic circulation and it causes tissue damage and organ damage and it accelerates biological aging. So let me back up a little bit. In June 2019, I wrote an article that was published in a medical journal named the Townsend Letter. And the name of the article that I had published is “Postbiotic Metabolites: The New Frontier in Microbiome Science”. And this is the first time in history that an article appeared in the medical literature with the term postbiotic metabolites in the title. So I’m kind of a pioneer in educating the world about how this gut microbiome system really works. So that’s a little background in history and we’ll post the link to this article that I’ve written in the show notes for all of our listeners. And then a couple of years later, I wrote an article that was also published in a different medical journal titled, “The Microbiome Theory of Aging.” And in that article, I connected all the dots and explained how the gut microbiome works. And when you consume a bad diet or overuse antibiotics and you get this dysbiosis, this bacterial imbalance, then you get all of these harmful things leaking into your systemic circulation and that accelerates biological aging. So just a critical health factor for people to understand and it’s actionable. People can actually control and regulate this, but the way to regulate it is with a healthy diet. And so many people are not eating a healthy diet. So I think this is one of the main reasons why the health of mankind is really in kind of a downward spiral. When I was in high school back in the 1950s and 1960s, there was not an epidemic of cancer and an epidemic of autism and [heart] disease, and all of these age-related diseases are reaching epidemic proportions now. So that’s a sign that the health of mankind is really declining. And I think bad diets and an imbalanced gut microbiome is one of the fundamental reasons behind the decline in human health globally.
[11:21] DEB: I think that’s so true. You know, when I started in this industry almost 30 years ago, we always said, health starts with the gut, right? And now here we are 30 years later and we’re still saying that, but we understand so much more now than we did then. And this idea back then was eat a healthy diet, crowd out the bad bacteria, get rid of the yeast and the candida and put good bacteria back in and things will be better. And it’s so much more advanced than that and so much more difficult than just that. Can you talk a little bit about why that type of foundational thought process doesn’t quite work as well today?
[11:59] ROSS: There’s so much success in food company marketing, fast foods, and highly processed foods. People sort of get brainwashed into thinking that’s okay to eat these foods and they’re not healthy. People are eating themselves into poor health. There was an interesting study done just a couple years ago. It surveyed 50,000 of the most commonly purchased foods in the United States grocery stores. Turns out 73% of the American diet is ultra-processed foods. And on average, these ultra-processed foods are 52% less expensive than healthier alternatives. So I think that’s one of the things that’s behind this epidemic of declining health and the problems in the gut microbiome. Also, there’s multiple studies that document that from 90 to 95% of Americans do not consume enough dietary fiber. And there’s other studies I’ve made slides out of that say that 80 to 85% of Americans do not consume adequate amounts of fruits and vegetables. And the reason I’m bringing up fibers and fruits and vegetables, the two main food groups that your beneficial bacteria require are dietary fiber and compounds called polyphenols. And polyphenols are a huge class of compounds. There’s over 8,000 of them that have been structurally identified. And in the general sense, they’re the compounds that provide color in fruits and vegetables. But again, Americans are not eating enough of these fruits and vegetables and dietary fiber containing foods to support a healthy gut microbiome. So that’s one of the big problems. Now I’d like to introduce something to you and our listeners. I am the director of science and education for a company based in Dallas named Essential Formulas. And we have the sole rights to import a product from Japan called Dr. Ohhira’s Probiotics. And this probiotic product is made in a completely different fashion than every other probiotic in the world. It’s made in a multi-year fermentation process. They have huge 80 gallon fermentation vats. They put in 14 different types of fruits and vegetables and mushrooms and seaweeds and 13 starter strains of bacteria. And the bacteria get to digest these foods and ferment them for three years. And during this fermentation process, the bacteria are breaking down the foods and producing hundreds and hundreds of these postbiotic metabolites. So when you take Dr. Ohhira’s Probiotics, the name is a little confusing because it’s not primarily a probiotic. There are some probiotic bacteria in there, but it’s primarily the highest dose in the world of these postbiotic metabolites. And when you directly consume these orally, they change the whole gut microbiome ecosystem that creates an ecosystem that’s supportive for your beneficial bacteria so they can start producing these postbiotic metabolites. But again, you have to feed your beneficial bacteria well or they’re not going to successfully produce these postbiotic metabolites regulatory mechanism for human health.
[15:15] DEB: What exactly is a postbiotic metabolite?
[15:18] ROSS: Okay. There are hundreds and hundreds of them. These are the compounds that your beneficial bacteria create when they ferment dietary fibers and polyphenols. A big class of them are called antimicrobial peptides. These are natural antibiotics that suppress the growth of harmful bacteria and viruses and fungi. Another class of these compounds are weakly acidic postbiotic metabolites. You’ve probably heard of short-chain fatty acids, butyrate and propionate and acetic acid. These weakly acidic postbiotic metabolites create a weakly acidic environment in the gut microbiome. And a weakly acidic environment supports the growth of your beneficial bacteria and it suppresses the growth of harmful bacteria and fungi and candida yeast and things. So in Dr. Ohhira’s Probiotics, there’s over a hundred of these weakly acidic postbiotic metabolites that re-regulate the gut microbiome ecosystem.
[16:20] DEB: Now, does it only kill the bacteria, viruses and parasites that are living in the gut? Or can it help with somebody who has a systemic infection as well?
[16:29] ROSS: I want to be honest here, we don’t have studies that document this, but we know that many of these postbiotic metabolites get absorbed into your systemic circulation. So I think many of these antimicrobial peptides, these natural antibiotics that are produced by your beneficial bacteria, probably have an effect systemically in suppressing the growth of harmful bacteria.
[16:55] DEB: We do a lot of gut microbiome testing, and there’s arguments all across the board, right? Who’s got the better test? Who’s more accurate? And I don’t think any one of them is perfect. And I say that about every test. There’s no test that we have that’s 100%. It’s a snapshot in time, we’re looking at things and we’re seeing how much good bacteria compared to bad bacteria, what’s the overgrowth, what type of bad bacteria do we have. Certain ones will trigger certain disorders, right? They can turn on autoimmune responses, they can make us sick like H. pylori and things like that. And we can also identify how well the immune system’s working, how our digestive process is working. How does this — microbiotic, post-microbiotic, am I saying that right?
[17:38] ROSS: Postbiotic metabolites, yeah.
[17:40] DEB: Postbiotic metabolites, I gotta get that right. How does that affect a gut test that we would be looking at? Would we be able to see a difference if we put in a product like that versus if we put in a probiotic?
[17:52] ROSS: I would love to have that tested. And so I don’t know the answer to that, but I would speculate and say that it makes a difference because the postbiotic metabolites will make a microbiome ecosystem that’s more favorable to supporting the growth of your beneficial bacteria. But one thing I’d like to emphasize here, Dr. Deb, the acid in your stomach is from 10,000 to 100,000 times stronger acid than the acidity in the small intestine and the colon. So many probiotic bacteria that are taken orally are going to be decimated when they come into contact with stomach acid. These postbiotic metabolites that are produced in Dr. Ohhira’s Probiotics are not live organisms. Live bacteria will be killed by the stomach acid. But these postbiotic metabolites are stable compounds, so they will pass through the gut and get down into the colon where they are meant to be produced in the first place and help to re-regulate this ecosystem. So you can take these postbiotic metabolites orally in Dr. Ohhira’s Probiotics and really it’s one of the most beneficial things in addition to a healthy diet that will regulate your gut microbiome. And for our listeners that are interested in Dr. Ohhira’s Probiotics, you can go to essentialformulas.com. That’s our website, where you can purchase our products. They’re available on Amazon. And most health food stores and vitamin stores carry Dr. Ohhira’s Probiotics. So it’s easy to find these products in most health food stores all around the United States.
[19:27] DEB: I think that’s a good point you’re making with probiotics. I mean, probiotics are probably one of the biggest selling products on the market. Everybody takes them. Nobody knows if it’s the right product they should be taking or not. And there’s several of us in the integrative functional medicine world that believe the overuse of probiotics has now created SIBO, small intestinal bacterial overgrowth. Over the years of using this and putting bacteria into the small intestine where it’s not supposed to be, creates a lot of these symptoms that people get in that upper digestive system. What’s your thought about that?
[20:01] ROSS: Well, I don’t know if taking high dose probiotics is going to promote SIBO. But SIBO is very definitely a bad thing to have. It’s not really created by bad bacteria. It’s created by good bacteria from your colon that have backed up into the distal end of the small intestine. So it’s just bacteria living in the wrong environment in your gastrointestinal tract. And so many of the foods that people digest will get fermented by those bacteria in the distal end of the small intestine and create gas and bloating and pain and discomfort. And it’s, it’s a miserable condition. But I do not know if taking high dose probiotics is going to cause SIBO. I haven’t heard that. It would be interesting to research that. But another point I’d like to make, Dr. Deb: taking high-dose probiotics, even if they are able to pass through the stomach. Maybe they’re enteric coated or they are bacillus type organisms that have a spore based protective coating on them. So they get through the stomach. Okay. In most people when those probiotic bacteria arrive in the colon, it’s like a food desert. It’s an area where there’s no healthy food. We talk about food deserts in the inner city in big cities in the United States where there’s nothing but 7-Elevens and fast food stores. But the colon, for many people, is like a food desert. They’re not eating a proper healthy diet. And one thing I want to emphasize, diversity is critical for a healthy gut microbiome. You have to eat a diversity of different types of fruits and vegetables. Get a wide range of different polyphenols and dietary fibers to support the growth of a diverse range of bacteria. And in most ecosystems, diversity makes a stronger, healthier, more resilient ecosystem. It’s the same in the Amazon rainforest as it is in your gut microbiome. So you want to promote diversity. And in order to get a diverse range of beneficial bacteria in your gut microbiome, you have to consume a diverse range of different foods. So I like to encourage people to try to eat a little bit of as many different types of fruits and vegetables daily as possible. And whole grains are another source of some of these dietary fibers and polyphenols. But fruits and vegetables are the number one source, and I’ve got multiple studies showing 80 to 95% of Americans are not consuming adequate amounts of these fruits and vegetables, dietary fibers, and polyphenols to support a healthy gut microbiome. So that’s the basis of a major health problem in America.
[22:34] DEB: Well, and we have a lot of challenges with that when we’re promoting a ketogenic diet or a carnivore diet for people who are really sick and have gotten to the point where they don’t tolerate fruits and vegetables anymore. And we’re trying to heal the gut lining. And so we can fix one piece with one part of the diet, but then we create another problem by eliminating something in every category. And then, as we talked about earlier — and we can talk a little bit more about this too, is not having access to good, healthy, organic fruits and vegetables. If we’re eating fruits and vegetables that have been grown on soil that’s been contaminated with pesticides and herbicides and things like that, then what does that do to the gut microbiome? So are they better off not eating any fruits and vegetables if that’s the only access they have to it?
[23:21] ROSS: It’s a conundrum. It’s really a problem because a lot of fruits and vegetables and other crops grown in commercial agriculture are on depleted soils, which weakens the microbiome in the soil and that ends up weakening the plants. And so they put pesticides and insecticides and herbicides on there to try to suppress the insects and it’s just a downward spiral that is really very, very serious. And so we’ve got to get these pesticides, insecticides, and herbicides out of the commercial food supply. And there’s a lot of money involved here, so it’s hard to get the public to understand this.
[24:01] DEB: And then we would have to not grow on those soils for several years for them to be clean. You know, we’ve got a timeframe that that is there. And some people will argue it may never be clean soil again. You know, we don’t know. And then you have to add back nutrients and a lot of farmers, their profit margin is so small already for them to add back these nutrients to the soil to make it a healthy soil again is really becoming a problem with this commercial industry that we created for our food supply.
[24:29] ROSS: Yeah, it’s just not financially viable. And now the tariffs have made farming much more expensive. And I mean, you touched on something just a moment ago. I’ll express my opinion. I think we may be beyond the tipping point in damaging planet earth. I mean, we’re destroying the oceans and the rainforest and the food supply, and the health of mankind is really, I think, on a downward spiral. And I don’t want to give up. I think you and I are doing, and many healthcare professionals are trying to do what we can to educate people and promote not only a healthy diet, but also a healthy planet. But there’s a lot of work to be done.
[25:07] DEB: Yeah. Yeah. Our industrial progress has created a lot of problems for us that people didn’t foresee. And now if we want to continue to maintain on this planet in a healthy way, we have to give back to the planet what we’ve stripped from it. And I think this is a really good argument for us to say, you know, buy locally, buy from your local farmer, find an organic farmer or somewhat natural, maybe they’re not truly 100% organic, but they’re pretty close. They’re not, you know, they didn’t pay the big money to get certified organic, but they’re doing all the right things. There are ways that you can find these foods sustainably and locally. And I think that’s really important to support those small farmers in this way.
[25:50] ROSS: I totally agree. Support regenerative farming and regenerative agriculture and grass-fed cattle, and, I mean, there’s so many things that we can do. It’s an educational effort. You have to get people to understand the importance of eating a healthy diet.
[26:08] DEB: Yeah. I mean, I often think about if our foods are grown in other countries, a lot of our fruits and vegetables are, right? Especially with us that live in the north. We don’t have the luxury of having that all year round. And it’s harvested before it’s ripened so that it can get to us. And then there’s all kinds of things that it has to sustain to get to us to be healthy or so we call it healthy. I’ll argue that. And it has to look nice. And then by the time you get it, how much nutrition has actually ever been put into that product? Because we harvested it too soon. It sat on a ship for how long? Now it gets to the grocery store and we’re still saying this is healthy. Yet I can pick an apple from my orchard and leave it on the counter. And in a couple of days, it does not look healthy anymore. So what are we really consuming in these fruits and vegetables? It’s so important to know what you’re actually consuming.
[26:59] ROSS: Yeah, it takes effort to be healthy these days. You have to work at good health.
[27:03] DEB: Yeah, you really do and you have to really educate yourself, I think, in knowing what’s considered healthy and what’s not considered healthy right now. And maybe instead of watching some brainless TV, we should be educating ourselves a little bit more, right? I know it’s fun to unwind a little bit and not think. But honestly, if we want to live to an age that’s healthy, there is some effort that has to be put forth because I think there are some statistics that show that our generation is not going to outlive our parents’ generation at this point. And that’s scary to think that the young people of today might not outlive their parents. And it has a lot to do with what they’re being exposed to.
[27:48] ROSS: You’re right. One of the things, I’ll offer all of our viewers and listeners today, Dr. Deb, is a link to a little book that I wrote called Dr. Ohhira’s Probiotics and Postbiotic Metabolites. And you can go to my personal website, naturalpharmacist.net/ohhirabook. That’s O-H-H-I-R-A-B-O-O-K. So people can get free access to this little booklet. It will introduce them to Dr. Ohhira’s Probiotics and the concept of postbiotic metabolites. It shows pictures of the large fermentation vats that are used in the multi-year fermentation process to produce Dr. Ohhira’s Probiotics in Japan. And a reminder, people can go to essentialformulas.com to have access and order Dr. Ohhira’s Probiotics. And so that’s just some resources for people.
[28:39] DEB: That’s awesome. So Ross, I always love to end the show with one question, and it is this, if you had one thing that you could do to change healthcare today, what would it be?
[28:51] ROSS: That’s a big question. That’s a big one. I think I would probably lobby for improving agricultural farming and access to a healthy food supply.
[29:01] DEB: So it’s so important, right? It is the foundation of everything. We don’t need to create a new drug that’s going to fix a symptom that somebody has. We need to create a healthy foundation and go back to that healthy foundation we had 100 years ago or even 50 years ago. You know, it’s changed so much. I like that. I think lobbying for agriculture is so huge and having healthy food has got to be the beginning. One of my guests that I interviewed last week, he had said the same thing. He would lobby for children and pregnant mothers to have access to organic food and have the government help fund it because it’s so expensive. But he thought that that would really change a lot of our healthcare system because we wouldn’t have people so sickly in our system if they had access to good organic food. And I think that’s a profound statement too.
[29:57] ROSS: Probably number two on my list is the pharmaceutical industry has got so much power. And one of the books I wrote a number of years ago is titled Drug-Induced Nutrient Depletion Handbook. I teach people, physicians and pharmacists and whoever will listen, what nutrients are being depleted by the drugs you take. And then you can take the appropriate nutritional supplements to try to minimize or correct these nutritional imbalances. And for our listeners, I’ll offer access to a free copy of my quick reference guide to drug-induced nutrient depletions. You can go to my website, naturalpharmacist.net/DIND, which stands for drug-induced nutrient depletions. That’s another freebie for our listeners.
[30:41] DEB: That’s awesome. And we’ll have all these links in the show notes, so in case you’re driving or walking or doing whatever you’re doing while you’re listening, you don’t have to write them all down. We’ll have them right there for you and give you a direct link to Ross’s [website]. Ross, thank you so much for being with me today. Huge thank you for sharing your knowledge and your research and your passion for helping people better understand this connection.
[31:04] ROSS: I appreciate all you do and thanks for having me on as a guest.
[31:07] DEB: Thank you so much.
[31:08] DEB (Outro): To our listeners, thank you for spending this time with me. If this conversation sparked new ideas about your health journey, share it with someone who wants to take a more proactive approach into wellness, health, longevity. And remember, wellness isn’t just about avoiding illness. It’s about creating the conditions for a vibrant, energetic, and fulfilling life. Visit us at serenityhealthcarecenter.com to learn more about our integrative approach or check out Venaari — that’s V-E-N-A-A-R-I — which is our functional medicine [app] where you can take control of your own healthy healing journey. It is replacing ChatGPT as the number one functional medicine app available. It doesn’t hallucinate. It doesn’t give you unusual context. And it doesn’t just scrape the internet for generic information. It has been trained with 30 years of my knowledge, my protocols, and all of the people that I’ve had the pleasure of learning from. People like Dr. Mark Hyman and Dr. [Horowitz] and so many others, Dr. Perlmutter, just so many other great people that have taught me along the way. And this allows you 24/7 access to our brains and you can ask whatever questions you want. Until next time, I’m Dr. Deb, reminding you to take care of your body, mind and spirit. Be well, and I’ll see you on the next episode.