This was a great conversation with Tyge Blomberg of OrthoMolecular about how to fix the gut using one of our most popular gut-health supplements, Clear SBI Protect.
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Transcript
Dr. Conners
Hello again, this is Dr. Kevin Conners with another episode of Conners Clinic Live. Today I have a very special guest. Tyge Bloomberg comes to us from Ortho Molecular Products, a product line that we carry. They’re based out of Wisconsin, which is nice, we appreciate getting our products quickly. They have a great reputation of science based in their product line. A lot of research goes beyond just regular supplements, and we also really appreciate that. Tyge, tell us a little bit about you and how you got into nutritional supplements and promotion.
Tyge
I won’t spend too much time on my history, but at the time I was working at Boston Scientific and for those that don’t know, they’re a medical device company in Arden Hills, Minnesota, formally Guidant. I worked with pacemakers, defibrillators and heart therapy devices, so I was kind of an expert in that area of medicine. In the meantime, personally, my younger brother who was 25 at the time, ended up getting cancer. He called me and said he had a backache. I told him to go see his chiropractor, which is sound advice typically, but he said “it’s a different kind of pain and I don’t know what’s going on”. So he went and got checked out by his regular doctor and they ended up finding a tumor on his spine. He went to Mayo for a workup, which included an RPLND surgery. They cut him open, removed all of his organs and 23 lymph nodes – a major surgery. That got me looking into functional medicine. That’s how my journey started. I thought there must be a better way, or a preventative way, so that nobody has to go through such a traumatic thing. That is what got me interested in functional medicine. That is when I reached out to Ortho Molecular Products. I get to work with around 600 clinics in the state and it’s been a phenomenal journey for the last seven years. I wouldn’t go back for anything.
Dr. Conners
Great! With Ortho Molecular Products, you have numerous supplements that we like, and when you’re dealing with functional medicine, one of the first things that we have to work on is trying to heal the gut. You have a very unique product that we use a lot in our office: Clear SBI Protect. Describe SBI Protect and why a person would use that.
Tyge
This is a product that was new to us in 2018. We’re lucky because we’re a large enough nutrition company where we get certain exclusive products that are only offered through Ortho Molecular Products, which is nice for a few different reasons. This one in particular is good because we believe that the GI system is at the center of a lot of the other systems in the body. Taking care of that first, as you mentioned, is paramount to the path of healing. This product is crucial. The SBI portion stands for serum-derived bovine immunoglobulins. Where do we usually get immunoglobulins from? It’s from colostrum. This is a serum-derived version, which makes it dairy-free. The reason that’s important is when you’re trying to heal someone’s gut who might have leaky gut syndrome, or hyperpermeability, you don’t want to introduce potential allergens like dairy into their system because that will cause inflammation.
We have the only dairy-free IGG product on the market, and you mentioned you use a lot of it. That’s a very good thing because its mechanism of action is very simple and it’s safe for anyone to take. You can give it to an infant or a child, an adult, someone who’s chronically ill, and there are no known side effects. There is no taste to it, so you can mix the powder into anything from apple sauce to almond milk, to water, or anything.
Dr. Conners
The first thing people would probably ask is: “What is an immunoglobulin? Why do I need immunoglobulins?” How does it bind microbes and pathogens in the gut?
Tyge
It has a really cool mechanism of action. Again, the reason I think it’s cool is because it’s so simple. The gut lining can be sub-optimal if you’re a standard, chronically ill patient. Altered gut microbiota, an unbalanced or dysbiotic state in your gut, means there are more harmful things than there are good things. It means that balance has shifted in the wrong direction. In this case, you have increased antigen penetration, which means that those “bad things” are going down through the gut lining and they’re stimulating a response.
This is increased immune activation. There are specialized immune cells called macrophages which are gobbling those bad things at a rate that they can handle typically. They turn into an APC, or an antigen presenting cell, which allows the immune system to safely test fragments of whatever that bad thing is, to see whether the immune system needs to respond or not. In the case of hyperpermeability or severe leaky gut syndrome, there are too many pathogens making their way through, and the immune system can’t keep up. It’s sounding the alarm such that whatever is making its way through is considered “bad”, until the body knows what is going on. When this happens, it can be dangerous as far as autoimmunity and the potential for different allergies to develop, etc.
What is SBI doing to help that? First is microbial balance. SBI does a really good job binding to pathogenic organisms, or those bad guys in your gut microbiome. It binds to them and makes that structure larger than it initially was, and it makes it much harder for them to travel through these channels in between your epithelial cells and stimulate that immune response. So we can think about it like clustering up on those “bad guys” and then they’re forced out through stool. They can’t elicit an immune response any longer. The other thing that SBI does is blocks receptor sites for zonulin, a chemical that unlocks the door for these channels to develop inside the gut.
The more of that you can stop, the better. Examples of things that cause zonulin release are pathogenic organisms – things like gram negative bacteria, E. coli, and salmonella. Also, gluten, because it sits on the gut lining and turns into a substance called gliadin. Gliadin then creates zonulin, which unlocks the door for more hyperpermeability/leaky gut syndrome. As described above, SBI is helpful for the gut from a mechanism of action standpoint. Again, this is safe for everybody to take and is very effective. As you can imagine, SBI is taking the burden off of the immune system. For those with autoimmunity or any sort of immune challenge, this is very helpful in order for the immune system to play catch up, in essence.
In addition, SBI not only blocks zonulin at the gut level, but it also blocks zonulin in the blood brain barrier. This is important. The blood brain barrier is less permeable, however, may still allow some things to pass through that don’t belong there. When that happens, you may experience symptoms such as brain fog, memory issues and also early onset Alzheimer’s. These things progress over time, so it’s important to keep neuroinflammation at bay by keeping that barrier strong. The three actions mentioned are what the crux of SBI is doing from a mechanism standpoint.
Dr. Conners
It would be hard to argue that this product would not be good for everybody. It is one of those products that we tend to recommend, as it can be beneficial for everybody. It makes no difference whether you have cancer, lyme, thyroid issues or headaches. Inflammation in the gut could equate to inflammation everywhere in your body. Therefore, decreasing that initial source of inflammation is key in our book. SBI Protect is a great product. Ortho Molecular is the only company that carries this product, is that correct?
Tyge
That is correct, yes. The parent company has signed an exclusive agreement with us, so it’s available as a pharmaceutical and then also as a nutraceutical only through our company.
Dr. Conners
Great. Yeah, we’re really excited about it. Well, thanks so much, Tyge, I’d like to have you back again on another episode. I want to talk about the next step of using immunoglobulins to bind microbes and pathogens and also to bind inert substances with SBI production, help clear that out of the body and clear that out through the gut. Next step is, how do we reinoculate the gut? What probiotics are good probiotics to use to help reinoculate the gut and to deal with that systemic inflammation? So I’d love to have you back again. Would that be okay?
Tyge
Yeah, I would love to talk about that. Talk about how to heal those tissues and how to get that gut microbiota back on the right track again.
Dr. Conners
All right. Thank you so much, Tyge.
Tyge
Wonderful. Thank you for having me on. I appreciate it.
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Dustin has been passionate about holistic health since he met his wife, Dr Mallory Ranem (Conners) almost 20 years ago. As the Digital Media Manager, he coordinates content across Conners Clinic’s large online presence, including written, video, and audio.
