THE ACCRESCENT™ PODCAST EPISODE 243

Leigh Ann Lindsey (00:01.186)
Well, Cheryl, welcome to the Accrescent Podcast.

Cheryl Sew Hoy (00:04.374)
Hi, Leigh Ann. I’m so happy to be here.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (00:08.47)
It’s fun. This has been a conversation long time in coming. I think we’ve had it on the books for a while. And so I always love to prepare for my guests by listening to previous episodes they’ve done on other podcasts. You guys were so kind to send me the product. So I’ve actually done the gut test now and I’ve gotten my results back, which is really exciting. So we might get to talk to that from kind of my perspective as well. But I think the best place to start, because it’s so fun to hear people’s origin story is

How did you get to a place where you were founding a gut health testing company and beyond that, infant gut health testing?

Cheryl Sew Hoy (00:45.644)
Yeah, for sure. I was a former entrepreneur before I started Tiny Hell. I started another company when I was in New York. I sold that to Walmart Labs in 2013.

And in between the startups, I had two kids. And definitely never imagined that I would start a gut health company because it’s so scientific and I’m not a medical doctor and whatnot. But it came out of two things. One, understanding how important gut health is, so the gut microbiome is to overall health and immune system. And then two, not liking any of the stool tests in the market. Well, I guess that’s a third factor. And then I had a C-section

my daughter about eight years ago. And that led me through my own health journey for my daughter in terms of researching if there were health implications for her post C-section. And I uncovered a whole body of research showing that C-section born babies have a really different looking gut from vaginally born babies. And while C-section is a big factor, even antibiotic use during pregnancy, labor, and in early life, the child’s early life can really

introduce disruption in their gut microbiome. And the most profound thing I learned around this is that the baby’s immune system, and I want to repeat, the lifelong immune system of the child is being trained in the first 1,000 days of life.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (02:13.591)
Hmm.

Cheryl Sew Hoy (02:14.014)
And so if there are any disruptions and imbalances here during this very critical time window, then the child is more likely to have more chronic conditions. So when I learned that fact, I was like, my gosh, like, how can I course correct? Can I course correct to prevent chronic conditions for my daughter? And the answer was yes and yes. And so I decided to start tiny health initially in 2020. In fact, after my son was born, had my second child and then

Leigh Ann Lindsey (02:30.07)
Right.

Cheryl Sew Hoy (02:43.998)
a week later I decided to do to start tiny health because he was vaginally born it was a totally different birth I had my magical birth and it was assigned to me that got was was telling me I needed to do this work to bring this the science to the masses

Leigh Ann Lindsey (03:01.292)
Yeah. And you guys are the first company to test infant, the gut, the infant gut microbiome, which is pretty profound.

Cheryl Sew Hoy (03:08.97)
Yeah, when we started, yeah, so I started a company in 2020 and it took us two years to build our proprietary insights. And we did focus on the mom and the baby connection initially, because that’s where all of us got our gut microbiomes from. It is through the birth canal so that you swallow on a way out from your, mom’s…

labor process, you’re swallowing the vaginal microbes, and then some gut microbes from the mom’s fecal fluid during labor, and then through breast milk, you’re continuing to get mom’s microbes. But also dads contribute about 20 % of their microbiomes to their kids in the first year of life. So while we did emphasize the mom and infant, we’ve always had the adult test, when we did launch in 2022. We just didn’t really market it because we really wanted to focus on that mom-baby connection.

Thank

Leigh Ann Lindsey (04:02.604)
Yeah, you already started speaking to this a little bit, but I want to spend a little bit of time here of…

Why test our infant’s gut health? What difference can this really make? And like I said, you already started speaking to this, but I think we could get into this even more of helping parents understand, yeah, they’re only six months old or a year old, but here’s why it actually could be really powerful to test them this young. Whereas I kind of hear some people maybe on the critical side going, what’s the point of testing that young? Can it really make a difference?

Cheryl Sew Hoy (04:34.526)
Yeah, and it leads back to that chronic condition risk, right? So C-section-born babies or the reason why C-section-born babies have a different gut microbiome at birth is because…

they’re exposed to the mom’s antibiotics during the operation and they’re also not bypassing the basal canal, right? That’s kind of why also infants or kids who do have a lot of antibiotics in early life with the, know, recurring ear infections are a thing, unfortunately. They’re beneficial bacteria and their gut becomes depleted. So if you don’t take care of restoring that intentionally, then it may never come back. And because the baby’s gut is so malleable and at the beginning

I always describe it as, you know, like in the womb, the fetus does not have a gut microbiome.

you’re getting it on the way out. And then when a baby’s born, their guts are so simple. So you think of it as a barren island. There’s maybe a few vegetation on it, a few coconut trees, maybe there’s starting to be maybe a monkey or so. So what the vegetation on island really does matter for their immune training. So some babies are born without coconut trees. There’s just weeds, you know? So, but in early life, because there’s only like, say, 10 species in their guts, like 10 coconut trees, different kinds of coconut trees,

Leigh Ann Lindsey (05:27.747)
Mm-hmm.

Cheryl Sew Hoy (05:54.782)
it’s very easy to change it and course correct versus now our ecosystem is a rainforest, right? Very complex vegetation, like hundreds of species or thousands even versus 10 at the beginning of life. So as the baby grows older with solid introduction, exposure to environments and just, you know, nature and things like that, pets, their gut microbiome diversifies, right? And so it just is not…

impossible, but just harder to shift an adult gut. It’s very possible. It takes maybe three to six months to shift our gut microbiomes with a diet, potentially supplements, lifestyle changes, whereas in babies, it takes one to two weeks. That’s how quickly the gut changes in infancy. Yeah.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (06:28.302)
Hmm.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (06:41.036)
Yeah. Wow. Yeah. And then can you speak a little bit more to some of the illnesses, ailments or chronic conditions that can start to stem from a poor child childhood microbiome?

Cheryl Sew Hoy (06:54.64)
My daughter was never able to nap more than 20 minutes and she cried a lot. She was very colicky. She doesn’t fit the definition of colic, but she was colicky. And then she had eczema at six months, food sensitivities. She was gluten-dairy intolerant. She had a sesame allergy. So all these conditions are under this umbrella called atopic conditions or atopic march where one leads to the other. And ultimately asthma and hay fever are what most

these kids have. They have eczema, first, food allergies, and an asthma hay fever. And so I was really trying to stop it in its tracks for my daughter and prevent it from my son entirely, right? So my vaginally born son had none of these conditions. So same parents, two years apart. My lifestyle didn’t really change as much, but the birth mode was different. So very textbook science. And then what this leads to later in life are potentially

Leigh Ann Lindsey (07:36.43)
and

Cheryl Sew Hoy (07:54.366)
metabolic health issues, autoimmune conditions, and a variety of other GI issues that could…

stem from early life imbalances. So it became really my mission to educate people, parents, scientists, doctors about how crucial this first 1000 days is in the baby’s gut. But so much focus is in the baby and then we as parents forget about ourselves. So guess what? The baby is getting the mom and the dad’s microbiomes. So if our vaginal and our gut microbiomes aren’t in good shape, guess what we’re passing along, right?

Leigh Ann Lindsey (08:25.399)
Yeah.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (08:31.352)
Mm-hmm.

Cheryl Sew Hoy (08:31.54)
And so really that mom-baby connection was strong, but we always reminded dads, know, 20 % of your microbiome also goes to baby. And so we had the adult tests in the background for dads as well. We just never really consciously marketed it until a year ago. But from infancy, know, like CDC says one in two kids today have at least one chronic condition and that’s a crazy high number. That’s insane.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (08:49.058)
Mm-hmm.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (09:00.704)
Isn’t that wild? my gosh.

Cheryl Sew Hoy (09:01.42)
You should not accept that. In adults, guess what that number is? 75%. It’s insane. So even in adults, 90 % of our chronic conditions can be linked back to gut imbalances. the…

Leigh Ann Lindsey (09:08.34)
Yeah. Yeah.

Cheryl Sew Hoy (09:17.29)
Gut is the control system of a lot of major functions, organ functions, 80 % of our immune system is in our gut. It is so overlooked and there’s a lot of research in it though, but it’s just something that is invisible. So it’s really hard to focus on it, right?

Leigh Ann Lindsey (09:35.427)
Yeah, yeah, something I wanna understand better. I get the concept, but I’d like to understand a little bit more of the science of how it’s happening is, what you were saying is, it’s harder to shift an adult’s microbiome than an infant’s.

Cheryl Sew Hoy (09:48.204)
Mm-hmm.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (09:49.551)
I kind of am getting the concept, but I also want to understand this a little better because there’s a part of me that thinks it would almost be reverse, where somehow the adult microbiome would be easier to shift. But can you go a little bit deeper into that? I like there’s something missing here for me that I’m not totally getting.

Cheryl Sew Hoy (10:04.896)
Yes, so the first six months of life, the baby’s only drinking milk, right? So their diet is so simple. The microbiome, which are basically the microbes.

Mostly bacteria, sometimes there’s fungi, hopefully not, parasites, viruses, things like that, right? But most of it is bacteria. When you eat food, most of the time you’re feeding the bacteria in your gut and you’re not feeding yourselves. It’s really incredible. So what diet you eat can influence your gut microbiome majorly? So for infants, if they’re only eating milk.

then they only have a few species really adapted to process breast milk and turn that into energy. In fact, it’s a short-chain fatty acid called acetate. That is what we want to see in a baby’s gut, is high acetate production for gut lining, immune support, immune training, all of that. So when we talk about baby’s gut and modifying baby’s gut,

It’s simpler and low diversity. And so it’s very clear if there’s 90 % E. coli and zero beneficial bacteria, then we would recommend a specific probiotic because we know that child’s gut is missing that beneficial bacteria. And the breast milk is the prebiotic fibers to feed the probiotic and keeps it there. For adults, the reason why it’s so hard to change an adult gut, again, not impossible, it just takes a lot of discipline.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (11:06.574)
you

Cheryl Sew Hoy (11:27.666)
in May to a few months is because the ecosystem is so complex. It’s dictated by a wide variety of diet. We look at, know, if we were 30, 40 years old, 50 years old, we’ve had that much diversity over time. And so, you know, if you want to shift, let’s say if someone was vegan or someone was carnivore and you’re trying to shift a certain thing, that community takes time to shift. It doesn’t shift overnight, you know?

Leigh Ann Lindsey (11:28.324)
Yeah.

Cheryl Sew Hoy (11:53.643)
And the gut lining also regenerates every few weeks. So it takes weeks, and if not months, of, are you gonna add a variety of fiber? What kind of fiber? Not all fiber are equal. Fermented foods, if you have high pathogenic bacteria, certain spices can help lower it. And you need to be disciplined about adding the cinnamon to your breakfast every single day, right, for maybe two months, and then you may see some results. So it takes months, not weeks for adults.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (11:53.793)
Hmm.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (12:19.63)
Yeah.

Yeah, I guess maybe what I’m hearing in that is when we have so much diversity, like, let’s think of these different bacteria and elements as little people. It’s like when there’s, or the island, there’s all this vegetation we don’t want there. And when there’s so much of it, there’s just a lot more that we’re going to have to kind of like hack through.

Cheryl Sew Hoy (12:33.388)
Or the island, right? You think about the rainforest on that island.

Cheryl Sew Hoy (12:44.616)
Unweed, yeah, you’re to have to unweed all that deeply rooted weed versus in the baby the weeds, the roots are so short, right? It’s so easy to unweed the weeds and plot new coconut trees versus an adult, you’re basically trying to deforest something that’s exactly. Sometimes, you know, this is the other approach that we take at Tiny Health is

Leigh Ann Lindsey (12:53.997)
Yeah.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (13:02.243)
You gotta deforest first, then you can get to the plant thing.

Cheryl Sew Hoy (13:10.056)
A lot of what we see, because we have now over four years seen 150,000 samples now approaching, and people with chronic conditions, they’re often missing beneficial functions or bacteria.

So conventional medicine likes to look at bad stuff and then eliminate it, right? Like pathogens, ooh, do you have parasites? do you have, I mean, even some functional integrative doctors are very parasite-focused. I think we take a different philosophy. Like instead of finding something bad and destroying it with antibiotics or antimicrobials, it’s a bit of a terrain theory. If there’s not enough good stuff, then it gives the bad stuff space.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (13:38.541)
Yeah.

Cheryl Sew Hoy (13:54.859)
to grow, Kind of like in your garden. But if you plant it with good stuff and things that balance the ecosystem, then it crowds out the unfriendly. It doesn’t give space for the unfriendly to grow. And so we try to approach it where what kinds of diets can you eat to support that community? What kind of supplements can you take, again, if you don’t have the beneficial functions of bacteria to support it, rather than further destroy it with antimicrobial?

or antibiotics.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (14:27.457)
Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense. And sometimes they have to go hand in hand if there’s something that’s like kind of become so overgrown, totally hearing you where it’s ultimately the question we need to be asking is why are some of these things able to thrive in my system? And if they’re able to thrive in my system, there’s something beneficial that’s missing.

Cheryl Sew Hoy (14:33.761)
Yes, yes, for sure.

Cheryl Sew Hoy (14:41.675)
Yeah. Exactly.

Cheryl Sew Hoy (14:47.881)
Exactly, and to your point, you know, in some very chronically ill patients with a lot of GI symptoms and

Because the type of technology we use in our tests is called Shotgun Sequencing, we can quantify and basically tell you all the different kinds of microbes in your gut down to 0.01%. And sometimes that feels overwhelming, but you can kind of tell, like for example, usually I don’t have any E. coli in my gut. I went to Bali for a month, a year and a half ago, and then I got one day of diarrhea. So one day of Bali belly, and it resolved. But when I came back two months later, I tested my gut.

I had 32 % of E. coli and I had strain that’s connected to colon cancer. And then for a year and a after that, I had skin flares. I had an autoimmune condition diagnosed. I really did have trouble and I knew I could pinpoint it to that one E. coli bug. And so I needed to take a harsher method of eliminating that and binding using an SBI to bind to the toxin and remove it from my gut. And then at the same time,

Leigh Ann Lindsey (15:31.778)
Yeah.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (15:56.056)
Yeah.

Cheryl Sew Hoy (15:58.025)
with good stuff.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (16:00.301)
Yeah, completely, completely. What a perfect segue into, there’s a couple different places I’m excited to go, but I think it’s a good segue now into what is your test and how is it different from other stool sample tests that are out there? This is something I heard you speaking to on a different podcast that I honestly need you to repeat, because I couldn’t educate someone on it yet of exactly what makes you guys so different.

Cheryl Sew Hoy (16:24.201)
Yum. Have you done any understool tests before yourself?

Leigh Ann Lindsey (16:27.695)
long, long, long time ago. Like I probably couldn’t even tell you what it was years ago. But I haven’t done them since because it just feels so like they’re not really getting the biggest picture. You know, they’re hard and invasive to do.

Cheryl Sew Hoy (16:32.234)
Okay.

Cheryl Sew Hoy (16:38.687)
Exactly. Yes, yes. So you’re hitting the nail on a couple of things. One is, you know, a lot of conventional stool tests use PCR.

methods and you might have heard of PCR through a COVID test for example because COVID is using PCR and what PCR is is you have to have primers for what you want to detect. So most stool panels have maybe 20 or 30 microbes you want to detect, E. coli, salmonella, certain maybe parasites and whatnot and that’s all you get right but the reality is our microbiome has hundreds of species. You and I have maybe between 300 to 500

Now a baby, I mentioned earlier, may have 10, 20, 50 at most, So a difference there. And so we have tests that can tell you all of the species in your gut, not just limited to the 20, 30, because clinically…

Who knows if that represents 1 % of your gut? Is it 50 % of your gut? Really want to see the full community. remember I said your gut microbiome is like an ecosystem, a rainforest that all kind of works together. They should be working together. There’s a lot of beneficial functions that these microbes work in cohorts to protect your gut lining or gut barrier integrity, your immune system, your gut brain axes, your gut skin axes, your muscle axes, your hormone axes.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (17:42.477)
Right, right.

Cheryl Sew Hoy (18:06.735)
Our gut has so many roles to play in all major functions and each micro produces different functions, right? So that’s one, you know, we have the most comprehensive technology that is clinically useful and we give very clinically backed…

action plan that is very easy to use. Everything’s linked to a PubMed article, it’s very evidence-based. And the second point is the collection method. So this is from a conventional stool test. You would have to poop in this french fry container. So you can imagine in your toilet seat, a lot of people, they have a fear in touching poop. And you have to scoop a big scoop in here and milk it to the lab.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (18:39.032)
you

Totally.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (18:48.813)
Yeah, like literally shovel it into the container.

Cheryl Sew Hoy (18:52.171)
That compliance for that is 50%. Now, because we use Shruk and sequencing, that comprehensive method is measuring the DNA of the microbes. So no human DNA, we discard that. It’s measuring the DNA of the microbes. So it’s kind of like a Q-tip like this, and this is how much poop you need. And you sample from a toilet paper or we send you a hammock that you can poop on. You can tape on your toilet seat. And so you sit on it and you poop into this little hammock that you can then flush after sampling. So don’t worry, this is peanut butter.

it’s not real poop. But in case you can see it, this is how little material you need compared to conventional stool tests. So the compliance on our sampling method is 96%, which is crazy, 50%.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (19:34.891)
Yeah. Huge. I mean, that’s such a barrier to entry. And then you kind of, you think about trying to take a stool sample from a child. You know, that can get even more tricky. So to be able to go, if they’re in diapers, maybe it’s a little easier because you just swab the diaper. But when you’ve got a toddler or something, like it can start to get tricky. And so to be able to go, like, I remember doing it going like, wait, is it really this easy? Okay, great. 100%.

Cheryl Sew Hoy (19:48.597)
Yeah, you’re just swabbing from the diaper.

Yeah.

Cheryl Sew Hoy (19:59.509)
Yeah. Yeah.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (20:03.297)
Yeah, what else makes tiny health so unique in this field?

Cheryl Sew Hoy (20:08.397)
Yeah, our team is really into research. So we have published a few papers showing that mostly our work in infants, but we are expanding to adult conditions like IBD, menopause, fertility concerns, a lot of really interesting area of research connecting these conditions to the gut microbiome. But our tests for infants show we published last fall an 83 % reduced odds in

eczema and allergies. If you do do a tiny health test, get educated about what your child may be missing or not, and then take action. So we have a very evidence-backed, clinically useful and actionable test that’s differentiated. lot of the reason why I started tiny health was because I was doing some of these other D2C stool tests and I found that I couldn’t take action. I had a lot of data that was written by scientists and I’m like, I don’t understand this. I want to create a product that’s

Leigh Ann Lindsey (21:03.331)
Right.

Cheryl Sew Hoy (21:08.097)
readable to a regular consumer.

Because again, I wasn’t a PhD, I wasn’t a scientist or a medical doctor. It needs to speak to me as a consumer. But I wanted to have the respect of academic institutions and medical professionals. So I recruited those people, like from Mayo Clinic, Johns Hopkins, UCSF, to my board to make sure that my product is very clinically backed and has all the evidence around it. And I wanted to understand it as a consumer and know what to do about it.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (21:15.684)
Yeah.

Cheryl Sew Hoy (21:40.631)
So that’s the other part and I specifically did not want to start a supplement company around it. I did not want to give you a test and then sell you more product. Subscribe to my supplement XYZ and then make money from that. So that is not what we do. We do not even make a commission from recommending supplements.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (21:58.448)
Walk us through that phase of the process because I in the intro I’ll probably share more like when I go back and record the intro I’ll probably share more of like my test results and get into that like I don’t have it in front of me right now so I can’t speak to it so I’ll definitely be able to speak to that from a personal experience but to your point of how consumer friendly it is let’s walk the audience through you order the test it arrives you take it you ship it back what can they expect when the test results arrive

Cheryl Sew Hoy (22:25.855)
Yeah, you get a text message usually about two, three weeks after the lab receives it and then you get an overall gut score. We call it the microbiome summary score, which just summarizes the results. You could be if you’re in the 80s and above, that’s I would say pretty good. On the low end, you could be in as low as 30s or 40s, 50s. That means you may have a lot of imbalances in your gut. And then if you scroll down to report, you will see a section that highlights the top three most important things for you to focus

on because you may have like right now I actually like I heal for my belly belly and but I recently had a diarrhea issue so my gut is back to being terrible so I have 12 things that are flagged red and 11 things that are flagged yellow which is like the next thing to focus on so I need to focus on the 12 things in red first but off the top things then they we also highlight the top three to focus on first I have a lot of good information right now high pathogenic

bacteria, so I’m back on my protocol to reduce that. But everyone is different. Everyone has microbiome is unique. And I always say I’m surprised how much travel has impacted my gut and stress has impacted my gut health. Yeah.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (23:39.266)
Yeah, yeah

Completely. Well, this is what I love about it because it is so clear on the consumer end to your point, right? Because it’s I especially I think with my audience we are so used to having to do the at-home tests or all of the special integrative testing that the conventional doctors aren’t going to do and then the results come back and it’s still like what do I do with this information? It’s almost too much or too overwhelming or given in a way that’s not really designed for the patient or the consumer. So you’re just

is lost until you could get an appointment with your doctor or your practitioner to really review it. And not that that’s not still important, but what I will say is I think Tiny Health does an amazing job of presenting the material in a way of you don’t need to get a practitioner involved to be able to know what’s up and know some immediate steps you can start to take, which I think is really empowering.

Cheryl Sew Hoy (24:33.389)
Exactly. It comes with a full action plan. So like I said, we have the top three things to focus on. And then with it, you have that action plan for one to step one in the first maybe say month or two, do this, this set of items. And then step two, most of the time it’s about

If you have gut inflammation, then lowering that gut inflammation and then boosting the beneficial synuremicubium, there’s some sort of like approach and a protocol that way. And everything is, you can link, we link to permit articles. We link to the science behind why we tell you, if we tell you this SBI binder binds to toxins in your gut and removes it, we link to like seven permit articles showing that. So clinicians, like doctors, a lot of doctors are not exposed to gut tests, right?

even being comfortable because they can see the evidence behind that recommendation. Now for the user, of course, if you do spend time reading everything, will probably like, you know, it’s pretty self-sufficient. You don’t need a doctor in between, but we do, I want to say we do offer a free consult, a group consult with the single kit purchase. The single kit purchase, I believe is $2.50 and it’s a group consult of six people over an hour. You don’t need to stay the full session and you do get 10 minutes

dedicated to answering your questions and everything is HIPAA compliant and protected and all that and your coach has looked into your file beforehand. But you get to stay back and learn from other people’s questions and results as well. people love the group session. We have a membership called Tiny Plus in which you get one-on-one calls with a functionally trained practitioner to just walk you through your results and tell you what to do, know, kind of provide that

Leigh Ann Lindsey (26:03.8)
Yeah.

Cheryl Sew Hoy (26:20.923)
guidance and membership. So we do have that available because again I wanted to make this so accessible and when I was looking for my own integrative and functional medicine provider I had to wait months to I didn’t even know where to look you know where to begin and when I did find a few there

was a weight and was really expensive. So I wanted to make sure this works for both B2C. And I should mention, we also have an HCP arm, a healthcare practice arm, where we support other practitioners who are interested in integrating gut and vaginal microbiome testing for their patients as well, and we provide free education to them as well.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (26:40.804)
Yeah.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (26:57.108)
Mm-hmm. It’s amazing. There’s like a couple places I want to get into. A little bit I want to understand.

Now maybe more broadly, what else is negatively affecting a child’s microbiome? Maybe in utero, right after they’re born and as they go through toddler. And then yes, generally what can parents do to support the child’s microbiome? Maybe preconception, during conception and some of these different phases. I have like three other questions, but let’s start there. What are some general things that negatively?

Cheryl Sew Hoy (27:29.493)
Yeah, yeah, so early life. Yeah, because it’s so like longevity truly begins in early life and nobody really focuses in this area, right? It’s a huge passion of mine. And I’m so happy you asked about preconception because again, it goes back to the mom and dad, even through a vaginal birth. Now we have a lot of consumers, not a lot, but consumers who vaginally birthed their child and

breastfed for years and then their child has eczema and allergies and they’re like why? When they test their child, they…

the children didn’t have any beneficial bacteria. And then when we have mom and dad’s gut, we’re looking for bifidobacteria. This one specific strain of bacteria that’s really important for the baby’s immune training and parents didn’t have it. So even though you might think you did everything right, again, if we had any sort of antibiotics in our lifetime, and we’re sure at some point we did, and we didn’t consciously restore that, bifidobacteria and arcumensia, this other bug that’s really important for metabolic health, just goes away.

and doesn’t come back, you know. So this is what’s happening with our society now, unfortunately, is an overuse of antibiotics. And you might think, wait, I don’t really take antibiotics, but it’s in your food too, from your supply chain, depending on where you source your meats or your produce, herbicides and glyphosate can also impact the gut microbiome, right? And you focus on mental health and emotional health, stress also impacts the gut microbiome. There’s so many of these

factors that I think all adults, everyone, if you’re trying to conceive later or if you’re pregnant, if you’re not even thinking about kids, you should do a gut microbiome test because you need to see what’s there, what do you need support, do you have those bacteria, archimisia, do you have high pathogenic bacteria or parasites or butyrate function, all these things that support your overall health.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (29:30.99)
Yeah, I guess a part of that question is, are the parents’ microbiome affecting the child in utero before birth? Or is it really that the state of the mother’s microbiome at birth is when the child really picks up the majority of that? So, okay, it’s both. Okay.

Cheryl Sew Hoy (29:46.433)
both. Yes, it’s both. Yeah, so there are some papers showing butyrate. I mentioned earlier, it’s a short chain fatty acid that’s really important for adults. And babies acetate a different kind of short chain fatty acids really important for their gut health. And there are papers showing that butyrate

function during pregnancy. think first or second trimester impacts the child’s behavioral health at year two. So how external or introverted they are is dependent on mom’s microbiome status. There’s two papers showing that. Yeah, so you can influence even your child’s personality. How crazy is that during pregnancy? And then at birth is when, again, a lot

Leigh Ann Lindsey (30:13.946)
Wow.

Cheryl Sew Hoy (30:31.853)
some interventions happen. So if there are a lot of interventions like antibiotic use or c-section, just things like that, that may or may not be medically necessary. Unfortunately, 50 % of the c-sections done in the US are not actually medically necessary. It’s, you know, for a variety of reasons I won’t get into on this podcast, but it does happen. And then it affects the colonization from mom to baby. And that’s

Leigh Ann Lindsey (30:51.896)
Yeah.

Cheryl Sew Hoy (30:59.807)
introducing unfortunately that potential imbalance.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (31:04.398)
Yeah, think part of the short answer, I think the hopefulness in your message with tiny health is it’s never too late to start to improve our microbiome. So even though we’re talking about, there might be a really ideal scenario, which is mom and dad test before they even conceive. And then they may be tested again during pregnancy and then they test at birth. But that’s the ideal. And I think also a part of the message is, and if you haven’t done that, it’s OK. It’s never too late.

Cheryl Sew Hoy (31:31.648)
Okay.

Yes, it’s never too late. Even I have a lot of people coming, oh, but my child is eight years old or teenager now, can I help his condition or her condition? I’m like, yes, it’s never too late. I know I say the immune training window is that first 1,000 days. That certainly from a scientific perspective is the most crucial period. And an upstream of that is the preconception period, right? But it’s never too late because if 90 % of chronic conditions are linked back to gut imbalances,

then if you course correct the gut imbalance, then the symptoms are going to come down. Now we may not be able to prevent or reverse, but we could put certain things in remission. For example, we have done that for conditions people never thought they would get out of. For example, one case study, this one lady, her name is Violet, we have a case study on her on our blog. She had chronic diarrhea for 15 years and she went from conventional medicine to functional integrative medicine.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (32:29.286)
my gosh.

Cheryl Sew Hoy (32:32.245)
in Cleveland Clinic, all that, and nobody could help her solve her chronic diarrhea. She literally shared it with me. had to run from, you know, she had to find places where bathrooms are close by. It was really challenging for her. She came to us and it turns out she was taking the wrong probiotic. We told her what her gut needed and she switched and she was low in butyrate function. Remember that butyrate I told you earlier? So she cross-corrected the butyrate and then her chronic diarrhea disappeared.

And so her doctors were like, what did you do? And she was like, tiny health, you know? So we do have a lot of doctors now coming to us wanting to learn more about our insights and how we help recommend action plans and how do we help their patients who have all these chronic conditions that are really hard to fix through just medication. know, medication’s putting a bandaid on the issue, not fixing the root cause, right?

Leigh Ann Lindsey (33:02.732)
my god.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (33:31.074)
Yeah, yeah. What are some things that mom and dad might be doing, preconception during pregnancy, after birth, that might negatively affect? You know, is it, I’m going to like play the devil’s advocate, but is it just diet? Like, well, we just need to eat a better diet. Or are there other factors that might be affecting mom and dad’s microbiome that are then affecting baby’s microbiome?

Cheryl Sew Hoy (33:53.377)
Yeah, like, you know, from a diet perspective, obviously ultra processed foods and emulsifiers and all the additives, coloring dyes and all that are really harmful to the microbiome. So that’s one thing to be aware. then…

the converse of that is making sure you’re eating a diversity of fiber, fiber protein balance in fermented foods and all that stuff. But again, I think we have the insights to really help you specifically understand what diet would your gut microbiome needs, right? And then beyond that, antibiotic use, as I mentioned earlier, kind of, you know, we’re so trained to, you know, when you have flu or a sneeze, you go to the doctor and demand antibiotics. I mean, I don’t think you’re, I don’t know if your audience are that type

Leigh Ann Lindsey (34:21.71)
Yeah.

Cheryl Sew Hoy (34:35.573)
of consumers, but I know, you know, I’ve just met a lot of folks who jumped into antibiotics quickly, right, medication. So a lot of pharmaceuticals have side effects, right, and they may cause microbial imbalances too. So that’s one thing to be aware of, but other things, I mean, microplastics are becoming a thing and the connection to the gut isn’t super clear, but I suspect there’s a connection there. All these chemicals in our society

Leigh Ann Lindsey (34:42.042)
Very common, Totally.

Cheryl Sew Hoy (35:05.423)
probably are impacting, you know, like for example, even using Clorox, we don’t use harsh chemicals to clean anymore. We don’t use hand sanitizers. Soap, water is even more effective in removing bacteria, you know, from your hands than hand sanitizers because you just don’t know. You might lick, you know, those things and that gets into your gut. So kind of being more aware of what you’re ingesting in the air and like the food and…

Leigh Ann Lindsey (35:16.357)
Yeah.

Cheryl Sew Hoy (35:32.621)
cleaning supplies all can impact your gut microbiome. And then exposure to nature, that’s the last thing I’ll say, the sun, vitamin D, exposure to nature and pets. we are spending 90 % of our time indoors now when we used to spend 90 % of our time outdoors. So that has greatly impacted the diversity of our guts and will impact our kids too. So even though we’re like, fixated on helping our kids, well then get them outside and you have to get outside too.

So that’s kind why people with pets actually have fewer allergies than people who don’t.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (36:08.816)
Because they’re getting exposed to the pet’s microbiome a little bit, which helps diversify their own. Yeah, they’re getting outside. Yeah, they’re going on walks more. Yeah. What would be, not that this is a one size fits all, but what would be your most ideal scenario of, you know,

Cheryl Sew Hoy (36:13.375)
and nature, like they’re going for walk, right? Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (36:30.448)
precon, like you do a test preconception and then maybe you spent, I’m making something up totally, but then maybe you spent three months supporting your gut before you even try to get pregnant. And then maybe we test once, what would be like an ideal kind of pacing?

Cheryl Sew Hoy (36:42.825)
yeah. I would say, test definitely before conception ideally. So you give at least three months to course corrected, course correct if needed. I would do vaginal and gut for the women and gut for the men. Right. And then during pregnancy, I would do

Again, it’s all sometimes the function of how much you can afford. You know, we have a membership where subsequent kits are cheaper. If you do get a membership, it’s two for the first membership and then 169 for each kit after that. If you can, I would do every trimester. But if not, I would do one the first trimester and then.

you know, course correct and then maybe one in the late second trimester or early third trimester. See how that’s improved because we want to detect four strains of bifidobacteria in the pregnant women or preconception so the mom can pass it on to their baby. And we want to see if that has the either of the four strains of bifidobacteria as well. That is the single most important microbe for the infant’s health and frequently what is missing from the infant’s health. So then when the baby is born,

ideally second month. So by then the mom’s breast milk would have come through and seeded the baby’s gut, whatever happens through birth, whether C-section or vaginal birth.

born, we want to see the two month gut just to see what that status is. Six to nine months is another period where solid introduction is being done and the gut changes dramatically post solids, right? So you want to check in then maybe at one year and then after one year, I would say every six months. Yeah.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (38:30.2)
Yeah, and just being able to keep on talking. And I think a part of that, this is kind of me following the A to B, a part of that is also continuing to check parents’ gut health because we think about, you know, mom, not only is mom breastfeeding, but…

You know, mom and dad are kissing baby and holding baby and, you are, you know, transferring microbiomes via that way. you, whatever, like you touched your face or you touched your mouth and then you held your baby and you pinched her cheeks or something. so also continuing to support.

Cheryl Sew Hoy (38:58.367)
Yeah. So you know how like, it’s so funny, like people don’t realize this, but when we get together in person, and let’s just say there’s like four of us, right? And we’re just speaking, we’re spitting saliva, we just can’t see it. We are literally sharing microbes when we meet in person. But this is how nature’s intended for us to be. And this is why we get a diverse microbes. Actually, so human connection and…

Leigh Ann Lindsey (39:18.704)
Great.

Cheryl Sew Hoy (39:22.975)
All that in-person connection is actually valuable, not just for our health, but also our gut microbiome health, because we’re exchanging microbes and that’s actually healthy. may, some people, because of COVID, whatever germs, they’re afraid of that, but frankly, it strengthens your diversity.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (39:31.662)
Yeah.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (39:42.511)
Yep. Yes. Well, exactly. And to your point, I think there’s plenty of studies to support that now that the more we’re exposed to, the more diverse and resilient our immune systems become versus the more we start isolating ourselves from things, like actually really the less resilient our systems become.

Cheryl Sew Hoy (40:01.293)
Correct, because we actually have a gut resilience score in our test. And basically the definition of gut resilience is the redundancy of beneficial functions in your gut. So for example, if you have a lot of redundancy, you get hit by COVID or a flu or like, I don’t know, like just belly belly, your gut should be able to bounce back because you have redundancy in the beneficial functions. But if you don’t have that, then if you get hit, then you might be down for a long time. So when I mentioned

I was down for a year and a half, it was because I didn’t have a very resilient gut before I went on that trip. So now it’s kind of like, I want to build a really high resilient gut to make sure I can withstand anything, And I have an excuse, I’m running this company, it’s really stressful. So for me, sleep and stress, unfortunately, affecting my gut.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (40:51.056)
Totally, Gosh, I mean, what a fun study that would be to do, right? Is like test the gut. No interventions are made except sleep or stress management. And like, what does that do to the gut? That would be fascinating.

Cheryl Sew Hoy (41:02.4)
Yeah. Yeah.

Cheryl Sew Hoy (41:07.403)
Yes, yes. I mean, you’ve heard of the gut-brain connection, right? Yeah, so…

Leigh Ann Lindsey (41:11.6)
Uh huh, oh yeah, oh yeah. mean, 90, 95 % of our serotonin is made in the gut.

Cheryl Sew Hoy (41:16.493)
Yeah, 90%, which is crazy, right? And the gut is connected to the brain through something called the vagus nerve, right? And that is such an important mechanism. So when we say, oh, gut feeling, or what does your gut tell you? Literally, the gut is communicating to the brain, and the brain is communicating to the gut. There’s a two-way highway here. it is truly like, I think the gut sends 90 % of the message to the brain, and the brain sends 10 % of message to the gut. So who really is your first

brain? Is it really truly your brain or your gut? You know, some may argue your gut is your first brain.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (41:50.415)
Yeah.

Yeah.

completely. I mean, it’s really profound. I think everything is interconnected. So we can’t ever look at anything exclusively. And that’s the whole point of integrative holistic medicine is everything is affecting everything. But I’ve had, I’ve had clients who came in with IBS and when we did deep trauma work, the IBS cleared because there was all of this fear getting stored in their system and affecting their gut microbiome. So it’s not that every anything is ever in isolation. I always am so

Cheryl Sew Hoy (42:06.828)
Mm-hmm.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (42:24.004)
careful to tell my clients like in this room we’re here to look at emotional contributors to disease but you also need to be looking at physiological contributors to disease and when we do both together so much magic can happen.

Cheryl Sew Hoy (42:38.165)
And sometimes there’s a bidirectional effect, right? So when it comes to gut brain, gut sleep, these two we know as far as what the science tells us now, if you have a bad gut or, you know, gut imbalances, it may impact your sleep, emotion, serotonin production, melatonin production, everything, right? And the same is true in reverse. If you do sleep poorly, if you are stressed or have mental health concerns, that could impact your gut, right? But that means, but if you kind of just

focus on fixing the gut that you can probably feel better and vice versa, right? That’s not the same for every sort of axis like the gut, skin axis like eczema and all that stuff in infancy is a bit more.

I would dare say even causative. can show that if your child has a bad gut to begin with, they’re more likely to have eczema. So it’s a causative effect. I can’t say that for everything. But yeah, for the gut brain, gut emotion is two ways.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (43:39.896)
Yeah, I mean, do you have any data on child gut health and things like, you know, ADHD, stress, anxiety, hyperactivity?

Cheryl Sew Hoy (43:49.773)
Yes, there’s a lot of evidence. And so my chief medical officer, Dr. Lisa Song, speaks to that so much. you know, I’m not like she sees a lot of kids with mental health issues. And most of the time, she’s finding major imbalances in the gut. I don’t have the stats in front of me. But a lot of it, if you again, double tap into root causes for why these kids’ guts are so imbalanced, antibiotic use comes back to that.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (44:03.62)
Yeah.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (44:08.175)
Yeah, yeah.

Cheryl Sew Hoy (44:19.727)
And I want to say one thing quickly about ear infections that again, we’re so trained to bring the child to the doctor, which is fine. And then doctor prescribes antibiotics for an ear infection. But most of the time, ear infections are viral. They’re not bacterial, you know, and you can test for that. So one tip I will say is really ask the doctor if this is a do you know if it’s actually a bacterial infection, ear infection, or is it viral? Most of the time,

Leigh Ann Lindsey (44:20.282)
Mm-hmm.

Cheryl Sew Hoy (44:49.667)
with viral, can wait and it does resolve. Now, if you look at the guidelines, the official pediatric guidelines tell you to wait three days before you administer antibiotics, but most doctors are not updated on that guideline and most parents aren’t either. So they kind of want to give antibiotics right away. But I would say because it really impacts the child’s gut and hence also future potential mental health issues. Pause. It’s really hard. And this is what Elisa

song does so well if you follow her Instagram she gives you alternative treatments for ear infections that you can do because parents ultimately want a tool kit to like I want to feel like I’m doing something for my child right so antibiotics is easy to jump to but there are other things like I do garlic oil for my kids and like vitamin G and vitamin C and all kinds of stuff that works and if we’ve never had to give them antibiotics

Leigh Ann Lindsey (45:31.012)
Yeah.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (45:45.744)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, to that end if there is a moment where you do have to give your child antibiotics, how soon would you want to test the gut after that? Or is there like a waiting period?

Cheryl Sew Hoy (45:54.625)
yes. Yeah, there is. Great question. We asked that you wait three to four weeks. There has been people who don’t adhere to that because we have it in the manual. I like pause. They do it at one week, two weeks, and nothing comes back. Zero. Like it shows that estimated and they’re like, set. They’re like, but this is we told you and then, you know, they just wanted to see. Now, there are other people on

Leigh Ann Lindsey (46:11.44)
Because it’s just decimated everything. Yeah.

Cheryl Sew Hoy (46:20.141)
prophylactic antibiotics every single day for a condition that they have. And we do see them. We do see some microbes. So sometimes your gut, we are such resilient human beings that your gut adjusts to things, right, that are chronic or whatnot. And so we do let in that the few customers who send that in, you know, of course it’s not an ideal community, but we do see something in these, yeah.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (46:43.596)
Mm-hmm. Okay, so three to four weeks after. Wait to test.

Cheryl Sew Hoy (46:46.253)
weeks. you’re you should bounce back and you know, again, it depends on your status before. So I actually like this is why I think longitudinal tracking is so important to get your baseline. So just

wherever in your journey you are now, would say get a gut test now to just understand what your baseline is. And you don’t know what your baseline is until you get a couple of samples, right? And you can see what shifts, what stays. I know my baseline really well now, and I know when my gut changes, what are the factors around it, and then I really track my symptoms or what diet, what supplements I’m changing and all that. And so, yeah, I think baseline tracking is so important. And then once you have that and

you get, know, sometimes antibiotics are very medically necessary, right, for sure. And then you can see how to support it to bring it back to its, or like restore it to the original state.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (47:43.212)
Yeah, any other I hear the alarm going off. Totally, totally,

Cheryl Sew Hoy (47:46.463)
Yeah, sorry, could I pause and go turn off? Thank you.

Cheryl Sew Hoy (47:56.461)
accidentally turn it on. I’m sorry about that. Yeah. Yes, yes.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (47:59.377)
No, no, it’s okay. I just wanted to check. Do we have time for a couple more questions? Otherwise, I can kind of land this plane pretty quickly.

Cheryl Sew Hoy (48:06.656)
Yeah.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (48:12.096)
I there’s a couple places we could go. I’m really interested in you guys having tested so many people, so many families, and the research and the data analysis you’re doing in the background. Is there anything you guys have discovered as a company that’s been really exciting or encouraging with all of this now data that you have?

Cheryl Sew Hoy (48:34.829)
I mean so many and we, some of them we are.

publishing so I maybe can’t say too much because we want to be the kind of company who is giving back to the scientific community and what we uncover and do it as speed quicker than academic institutions can, right, for example. And also partner with other companies to do research, wearable companies or companies focusing on menopause and whatnot. But as far as like maybe something, yeah, like I mentioned earlier, we

we see a pattern of people who have chronic conditions having a lot of missing beneficial functions. So it’s not necessarily the presence of pathogenic bacteria or parasites. It’s really the missing beneficial functions that’s impacting our gut health, which impacts our overall health. And the other thing I want to say is, I know you see a lot of cancer patients and whatnot.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (49:24.367)
Yeah.

Cheryl Sew Hoy (49:33.232)
Colorectal cancer or CRC has been in the news a lot lately, right? And it’s now suddenly become the number one leading cause of cancer death in men under 50, which is kind of a really unfortunate news. then they thankfully just lowered the reimbursement for colonoscopy from I think 50 to 45 now, but people younger than that are being impacted, right? So when we dive into the literature around this, we did find that

Leigh Ann Lindsey (49:55.664)
Hmm.

Yeah.

Cheryl Sew Hoy (50:02.319)
toxin called colibactin is implicated in the findings. In fact, it’s when found in kids’ infants, again, leading back to our work in infants, it does manifest into CRC later in life. So our scientists are working to add this to our tests as an insight, and we may be launching that sometime in the summer. So that is an exciting feel, I think a little bit scary obviously to receive a result that have that, but

what we’re trying to do here is, again, we need to do a lot of tests, obviously a lot of studies around it, is can we then predict disease before it happens? You know what I mean? Allow for earlier screening before it becomes too late. Not to say like, know,

Leigh Ann Lindsey (50:43.652)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Cheryl Sew Hoy (50:50.731)
I mean, the what do you do about it is the piece that I don’t know yet. And this is the piece I really care about. And sometimes if it does lead to antibiotics, then it may have to, right? But we need enough proof and evidence before we can get to that point, right? So we will be working hand in hand with clinicians and academic partners to tease that part out.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (50:57.198)
Yeah.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (51:15.278)
Yeah, I think part of it is we have to not be afraid of the truth and the data, which is if this is going on, it might have some potentially scary implications. But I think the whole part of preventative medicine is, and actually if we catch this early, it doesn’t need to be scary.

Cheryl Sew Hoy (51:19.585)
data.

Cheryl Sew Hoy (51:32.525)
Exactly.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (51:34.137)
It doesn’t need to go anywhere. I actually interviewed a cancer doctor from Arizona earlier this year, and she was like, we’re honestly at a place now where if we catch cancer at stage zero, one or two, it is night and day different than when we catch it at three and four. And she works a lot with firefighters and early detection of cancers. And she’s like, we’re even at that place where even a stage zero, one, two cancer doesn’t really need to be as scary as a stage three or four, but we can’t be afraid of that data.

Cheryl Sew Hoy (51:55.917)
Yeah.

Cheryl Sew Hoy (52:03.949)
Yeah, and now there’s all kinds of MRI scans or blood tests that you can do to detect cancer early and all that. I’m maybe biased. like data a lot, which is kind of why I started the company. To me, data, especially about our own health, is empowering, right? Because you know what? You can choose to do something about it or just be more conscious that…

Leigh Ann Lindsey (52:04.05)
Thank

Leigh Ann Lindsey (52:17.305)
Yeah.

Cheryl Sew Hoy (52:29.035)
hey, maybe you’re predisposed to XYZ a little bit more, and so you might change your lifestyle a little bit more to lower your risk, right? Like, this is really not meant to frighten people or be like, you know…

sort of get you in a state of paranoia because that’s not healthy for your mental health either, right? But I think to a certain extent, for me, the way I treat data is like, great, I now can control my own health and my destiny for my kids specifically. I knew that the window was so small to course correct for them. I just really wanted the data to help.

In fact, when I have that data, feel like, wow, I have this data and I can course-cry for my kids. And what if I didn’t have this data? my gosh, I would feel so hopeless and helpless.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (53:18.754)
Right, and overwhelmed and unsure, which leads me to the last question I want to sit with, which is a quote unquote good thing, like a good supplement that your gut doesn’t need isn’t helpful.

Cheryl Sew Hoy (53:33.133)
Yeah.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (53:33.937)
which is why like this level of testing, you gave that really short example of the woman who was taking a probiotic that actually she didn’t need. And so she was having this chronic diarrhea and when she just shifted it to the one, and I think this is really important for us over here in the integrative medicine world, and I’m raising my hand with this too, like I’m a part of this is, you know, sometimes we collect supplements like they’re Pokemon and just like, gotta collect them all because this is good and this is good and this is good, but just because it’s

Cheryl Sew Hoy (53:41.537)
Yes, correct.

Cheryl Sew Hoy (53:57.272)
you

Leigh Ann Lindsey (54:03.89)
kind of quote-unquote, if it’s not something my body is needing, it is just one more thing my system needs to process and excrete.

Cheryl Sew Hoy (54:13.599)
It could overwhelm your system too if it’s not something you need, right? Exactly. Yeah. And so my motto here is test, don’t guess in terms of what you really need, right?

Leigh Ann Lindsey (54:17.572)
Yeah.

Yeah. I think to that end, like it’s just so powerful to go, it’s so easy to run over to Sprouts or Whole Foods or go online and just go, I hear probiotics are good. I’ll just buy this random probiotic.

Cheryl Sew Hoy (54:36.521)
Not all strains are equal. It really depends what you need. Do you need bifidobacteria? Is it archimensial? Lactobacillus? Bacillus? There are many different strains, right? I do not take a daily probiotic and I don’t recommend that people do. mean, some people do it for general health, which is fine. But again, you’re spending that money. It’s not cheap. Sometimes it’s 30 bucks a month.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (55:00.624)
yeah.

Cheryl Sew Hoy (55:01.823)
I would spend money doing a test because it’s a, you know, I would say one time, you know, at least once a year, right? And then it guides you on what supplements you really do need.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (55:11.888)
Yeah, which is just a little place of where I wanted to close that I also think helps this make sense even more for the consumer of, you you could keep spending and honestly, supplements I see they’re like, you know, $70, $80, the fancy pansy probiotics or, you know, $90. And so to be able to go.

I don’t, I might not know if I actually need this. So I’m spending X amount of dollars every single month versus I could spend X once a year to get a test to know exactly what I need and then parse back all of these things I’m not really taking. I think you’re still gonna be net positive.

Cheryl Sew Hoy (55:49.291)
Yes, for sure, for sure. But yeah, it comes back to, believe, long-term tracking too and baseline setting, you know, is really where it’s at. So when your microbiome do diverge and map to a condition, then you kind of know the root cause and you can target what you need to address, right? So yeah, from that end, I think that is a really powerful tool.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (56:05.07)
Yeah.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (56:12.75)
Yeah. I also think it’s just a general reframe of, know, sometimes we want to go, well, when am I never going to have to test my gut again? And I think the reality of life, like a little bit of that reframe is we are ever changing. You know, I might go on a trip or I might get exposed to someone somewhere that picks something up. So also doing that reframe of, I really like, live for the day when the yearly health check-in is just so much more comprehensive rather than like I go in, they stare down my throat.

they listen to my horror and then they send me off.

Cheryl Sew Hoy (56:45.227)
Yeah, I do think companies like Function Health is making it easier, right? So it’s inaccessible, so I’m grateful for that crop of companies and all the wearables are also trying to do something similar.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (56:49.594)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (56:56.578)
Yeah, exactly. But just that reframe of, honestly, we should be testing our gut at least once a year, just in general, even if nothing really severe is going on, to be able to track and check in. Because we are, we’re just, ever changing, we’re ever growing. And so to be able to support that diversity within ourselves.

Cheryl Sew Hoy (57:03.223)
Yeah.

Cheryl Sew Hoy (57:13.744)
100%. I test my gut and my kid’s gut more often. My husband, I test him once a year because his gut is so consistent and so stable and so resilient. I’m like, I don’t need to test you more than that. It’s okay. So it really is individual. It really depends. I have a less resilient gut. So I need to check in more often.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (57:21.433)
I’m

Leigh Ann Lindsey (57:27.043)
Yeah.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (57:32.816)
Totally. Well, anything really important that you feel we didn’t cover or that you want to add in.

Cheryl Sew Hoy (57:38.013)
No, I mean, I think just to re-emphasize that we do, if you do have a practitioner audience, we do have, you know, poweredbytiny.com slash practitioners is where we do support practitioners. So even if you have a doctor who, you know, sort of you want to work with on our tests, because sometimes it helps to have a doctor understand your blood biomarkers and then add the component of the gut, which influences nutrition and supplements. We can meet with your doctor to help them understand and interpret the results for you with the,

larger scheme of things. And then we also have an enterprise track where we support other enterprises in powering their stool tests and vaginal tests as well.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (58:17.392)
Absolutely. I’ll make sure it’s linked in the show notes, but just so the audience can hear it, tell them where they can go to learn more, buy a kit.

Cheryl Sew Hoy (58:24.801)
Yeah, tinyhealth.com, so tiny represents a tiny invisible microbes in your gut and vaginal microbiome, and I would highly recommend a Tiny Plus membership.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (58:34.577)
Thank you so much Cheryl.

Cheryl Sew Hoy (58:36.461)
Thank you, Leigh Ann. It was a pleasure. I had a fun chatting.