Resbiotic - The Gut-Lung Axis Explained

Ramon Vela (00:02.37)
Welcome back. I have an amazing show. I have with me C Vivek Lal, who is founder and CEO of Resbiotic. Welcome to the show.

C. Vivek Lal, MD (00:27.861)
Thank you, Ramon. Pleasure to be here.

Ramon Vela (00:29.954)
Well, I appreciate your time. You're busy. You're a founder. You've got different various companies. We'll talk a little bit about all of that. But today we're going to be talking about ResBiotic. And I am fascinated by this topic of gut microbiome and GPL1s and everything else about that. So we're going to dive deep into that. But I like to get started with my sort of signature question. And this I ask of every founder who's on the show. I think it's a great way to start off a topic.

of your journey, but also just to get to know who you are. And I do that because it is easy for a lot of consumers to see brands and products on the market, on the shelf, online, and just simply think there's a, you know, it's a faceless corporation. I like to make sure that we kind of bring this interview down to a very human level and we get to know who are we interviewing so that people realize that there's

real people behind these companies who care deeply about the science, about the product, about the efficacy, about the manufacturing of the products. And this question is just a great way to get to know who you are. So if you don't mind, can you share a moment or a memory when someone did something for you that just made you feel grateful because it meant that they believed in you, your vision, or your potential?

C. Vivek Lal, MD (01:50.037)
Wow, what a way to start the interview. So I think it's a little personal, but one thing which really sticks out in my life is my wife is an entrepreneur, is a doctor like me, and she has an equally busy schedule, if not more. And then we have two kids, twins.

and who are fairly young, still they're just now 10 years old. A few years back, I was a very successful doctor, know, having a good lifestyle, making money. And I went to her and I said, hey, I want to do this, right? I want to...

try to make an impact with what we doing with research and with the clinical side and with now the business expertise that we had. it was a discussion and I asked her, hey, should I do this? And she said, go do it. And I think that moment defines what we are today for the last several years we've been doing it. And I think that was a very humbling moment of gratitude.

because it was unconditional, right? So let's do it. Whatever you do, you do it for us. So just do it. that makes us the strong family we are. That makes us what I am.

Ramon Vela (03:05.581)
Mm-hmm.

He

Ramon Vela (03:18.562)
Yeah. Well, I agree. and I think one of the, one of the secrets of having, of having a, well, happiness in your life too, but, of being a really successful entrepreneur, I think it's having a support network. And that starts with like the people around you, especially your spouse, your partner, your family and all that. not that you can't do it without that, but it just makes it so much easier and so much more enriching when you have someone that's behind you, you know, and then.

You in turn, I'm sure are behind them in terms of their, their entrepreneurial endeavors or their career or whatnot. So yeah, that goes to the heart of question. And I appreciate that. It's a, it's, it's one of those things in entrepreneurship that we don't really talk about too much. You know, we like to talk about all the other cool business and, the, the, lifestyle, but we don't really talk about like, Hey, you know, you need people in your life and it's, and if you have someone like that, it just makes it a lot easier. So thanks for sharing that.

C. Vivek Lal, MD (04:17.739)
Yeah, and entrepreneurship is not easy as you know, right? Like it's a lonely journey, especially for people like me. One thing I wish I would have done would have been like I started this when I was 20, when there was nothing at stake, when there was nothing to lose. But once you're already successful in a career, going the entrepreneurship route, I couldn't have done it without the support of a support system.

Ramon Vela (04:27.886)
Mm-hmm.

Ramon Vela (04:31.864)
Yeah.

Ramon Vela (04:39.202)
Yeah. And it's also, by the way, different when you have kids too. Yeah.

C. Vivek Lal, MD (04:44.651)
Absolutely. Suddenly life is not yours anymore, right? So you have to take calculated risks and you can't do entrepreneurship without risks.

Ramon Vela (04:54.092)
Yeah, well, that's the, know, there's when you do entrepreneurship in your twenties, there's a give and take like you are, you know, if you don't have a family and whatnot, except of course, but you're free, you can lose money, you can lose it all and start over again, because you're still young enough to like do it. So the risk could be, you know, enormous and so forth. But you also lack a lot of the.

experience and the wisdom that entrepreneurs who start later in life do because you already have that. But then of course, you know, there's a disadvantage to starting later in life. You've got a family, you've got, you know, other things going on in your life. So it's a give and take, but, know, I think either way you can make it work. And obviously you've made it work. So let's talk a little bit about that. We're talking today about ResBiotic.

But if you want to mention a little bit about what you've done in the past, I think that will be helpful because what I always like to know is, you know, where did the idea come from? Where was the concept first thought of? Was it in one of these other businesses? Was it in your practice? Was it in clinical? And then let's lead up a little bit to now you starting ResBiotic.

C. Vivek Lal, MD (06:18.539)
So by background, I'm a double board certified physician, ICU physician by clinical training and also a microbiome scientist by research training. I was a pure academician. I was appointed as a professor at University of Alabama at Birmingham. I moved from Dallas, set up my NIH funded lab and got a lot of funding from NIH over the next few years. Was doing a lot of good clinical science in the ICU.

was doing a lot of good research science. I went into med school to make an impact. Soon realized that just seeing one patient at a time, yes, I was making impact, but in order to make a larger impact, I wanted to do research. Started doing research and then realized that I don't want this research to just stay in these citations and publications and in my lab. How do I get it back to the consumers? So the way to get it back to the consumer is either you just give it to someone.

Ramon Vela (06:59.981)
Mm-hmm.

C. Vivek Lal, MD (07:16.503)
and be at their mercy that they can commercialize it or bring it back to the consumers or take things in your own hands, innovate, incubate, commercialize yourself. Thankfully, I got the platform at University of Alabama to do it. But how do you do it without any business background? So that's where my wife's role comes. So we had started a urgent care, pediatric urgent care company, which we grew from zero to several employees from scratch.

Ramon Vela (07:38.723)
Mm-hmm.

C. Vivek Lal, MD (07:45.703)
raise money and you know, so that's what I learned all the business skills, right? So I wanted to combine that business skill with the research skills and with the clinical skills to create biotech companies. And we founded something called Alveolus Bio, which is a therapeutics drug development company. And we set up all these drug development labs for FDM, know, FDA approved drugs.

Ramon Vela (08:06.574)
Mm-hmm.

C. Vivek Lal, MD (08:13.099)
with the whole preclinical setup, animal studies, in vitro studies, et cetera. So we had all that infrastructure, but in the journey I realized that 60 % of the adult population in the US, especially around early COVID, I realized is on one of the other supplements. And 10 years back as a physician, as an evidence-backed physician, I would have never even neither taken or endorsed any supplements, right? But that was an aha moment that if 60 % of the...

customer base adults in the US is on some kind of a supplement and greater than 95 % of the supplement on the shelf are nothing but snake oil. Isn't this an opportunity to use our infrastructure and try to scientific supplement industry? So that's where ResBiotic or RestorationBiotic came from. So our vision was always not to make any other supplement brand, but to create biotech based proprietary drug

Ramon Vela (08:52.59)
Hmm.

Ramon Vela (08:58.284)
Hmm.

C. Vivek Lal, MD (09:12.587)
level rigor based supplements, know, which are made with the same rigor like any other drug, but it's not a drug, right? It's a supplement. We don't make any disease claims. So that was the general idea. And we want to try to scientific by the supplement industry and take some market share with things which are validated not only preclinically, but also clinically at a product level before going into the consumer's market.

Ramon Vela (09:19.981)
Hmm.

Ramon Vela (09:37.646)
And the the just so that so that the listener has sort of a contrast The issue with a lot of the the stuff on the market the current market Please add to this list, but I'm just gonna start you off it sounds like it's Generally not science-backed or not evidence-based right or not clinically researched and that and

And so that's the problem that you saw, right? That's the problem that you noticed with the supplements that were out there. Is that a good description?

C. Vivek Lal, MD (10:15.669)
That is a good description. To just give some context to the consumers, the regulatory landscape in the US for any product that you consume are so contrasting. So for drugs, like the FDA approved drugs, right from conception to actual approval, it's a 10 year or longer process. So that's a very arduous, very tough process. High rigor, you know, and lot of money goes into that.

At the same time, launching a supplement or food, anyone can launch anything. There is absolutely no oversight. So people have taken advantage of that and put in a lot of marketing dollars into launching anything. And many of the people just by placebo effect feel that, it's working. Let me just take it. And people made billions based on that. So the whole market has been captured by what I call snake oil supplements.

Ramon Vela (10:52.152)
Mm-hmm.

C. Vivek Lal, MD (11:13.643)
Unfortunately, there is no regulatory mechanism preventing that. So I always advocate there has to be a middle ground. We are not required to do these clinical trials. We are not required to do these, know, SANS-VAC supplements. We are not required to spend the money in doing the rigor. But us and some of the brands are now creating this new category of SANS-VAC supplements because we really think it is a responsibility for us to

Ramon Vela (11:21.698)
Yeah.

C. Vivek Lal, MD (11:42.813)
I don't want take anything which my brand puts, I don't want anyone to take anything else, right? We want to, all of our employees try each of our products themselves. All of our employees are our customers. I take each of my product myself, right? So I'm not gonna put out anything which I don't want anyone else to take. So we wanna create that change in the industry.

Ramon Vela (11:54.574)
Mm-hmm.

Ramon Vela (12:05.89)
Yeah. Well, and you know, on this show, I have had some conversations with people who describe sort of the manufacturing process where sometimes the manufacturer or the formulator will say something to the effect where that, you know, what do you want? Do you want the formulation that is the most efficacious or do you want the marketing recipe, which is some of the active ingredient that will

make people feel like something's happening, but not really helping them. Right. And that's, that's the, that's what, what happens with now is that it's so easy. People can go and white label something and it's not efficacious. It might have some of the ingredients that might have shown some, some efficaciousness, but really is not going to help you. And, what they do is they create a really good story around that and a really good marketing campaign.

And then people take it and don't feel anything. And then they get frustrated and, you know, they think, you know, this stuff doesn't work. But in reality, what has happened is that they're not looking for companies like yours that have gone through the rigor and got through the clinical side of it. You know, all these, all these hard things upfront, you know.

That's what I noticed with companies like yours, is like you guys are doing all the hard things up front. People just don't, they're confused. They just don't know which ones to choose. They think they're all might be good, I don't know.

C. Vivek Lal, MD (13:35.957)
So our marketing involves first education and then sales, right? Other sides marketing involves just sales. So it's double the cost, but I think that's the only way you could educate a brainwashed population because we have been brainwashed, our consumers have been brainwashed for years by conglomerates throwing millions of dollars into snake oil products, right? So we have to educate. And the good part, what I've seen in the last several years is

Ramon Vela (13:58.946)
Mm-hmm.

C. Vivek Lal, MD (14:04.789)
people are getting educated with the advent of podcasts or self literacy through the internet or even what COVID taught us, right? People are taking charge, people are getting educated about labels, about their health, where things come from. And I see light. even in the last four years, we have seen a journey which is telling us that the consumers want this now.

Ramon Vela (14:16.558)
Mm-hmm.

Ramon Vela (14:33.378)
Mm-hmm.

C. Vivek Lal, MD (14:33.833)
Next few years, think the time, you know, it's time for products which are clinically bad, products which are validated ingredients, which have clean sources and could be traceable.

Ramon Vela (14:46.862)
Yeah, and I always tell people that one of the ways that you can look at a company and sort of determine whether they're worth looking into is companies that do clinical trials. Now, I realize that not every company, there's companies out there who want to do clinical trials but just don't have the funding to do it because it is like an extra cost and so forth. So I understand that there are people like that where that happens, but

I always tell people, you know, look to see if they have clinical trials and if they are sharing the results of those clinical trials. And then also look to see, you know, are they, you know, are they doing the clinical trials or other people, you know, there's all sorts of various ways to kind of like filter out, you know, the, bad actors in a way. But for the audience, why don't you describe like, is it so, why is it so important that you

conducted some clinical trials and why people should look at clinical trials in general.

C. Vivek Lal, MD (15:49.195)
Absolutely. So there is this concept of association and causation, right? Anything could be associated with anything. If you Google, what am I breathing and is it causing a disease? Invariably, you'll find something associated with some disease, right? The only way to determine if it is causative is robust preclinical gain of function or loss of function studies.

Ramon Vela (15:54.798)
Mm-hmm.

Ramon Vela (16:06.968)
Thank

C. Vivek Lal, MD (16:18.819)
or randomized controlled trials, a double-blind placebo controlled randomized controlled trials. So there is something called evidence pyramid. So at the top of the pyramid are highest evidence literature, right? So randomized controlled trials exist at the top of the evidence. The lowest part of the evidence, which is also evidence is expert opinion. I'm a doctor, can tell you, hey, this works. Because I feel so, that's anecdotal experience. But it's not evidence, if that makes sense.

So most of the industry works on expert opinion or anecdotal experiences. That doesn't make it causation, it's all association. So that's a big difference of why clinical trials are important, both at the ingredient level, but now more importantly at the product level. So many ingredients could be clinically validated, but have they been tested at the product level? That is extremely critical.

The product you're taking could be a mix of several ingredients and some excipients and fillers and whatnot. Is the product being tested or not? Clinically validated or not? So I think that's where the industry is moving to. Very few brands have invested in product level clinical testing and product level third party testing. We have one of them. It's not easy. As I said, it's not easy. It's a lot of capital which goes into it. It's a lot of effort which goes into it. It's a lot of thankless efforts which...

Ramon Vela (17:39.662)
Mm-hmm.

C. Vivek Lal, MD (17:46.857)
Because consumers don't really realize what has gone behind the scenes. at the corporate level with the investors, you sit and discuss, I've spent so much money doing the right thing, but I'm making only as much as the other one is making, at least initially. But later, if you keep doing the right thing, I think you do see the results.

Ramon Vela (17:47.107)
Mm-mm.

Ramon Vela (18:01.923)
Yeah.

Ramon Vela (18:08.962)
Yeah, I think so too. Actually, this is a different industry, but I interviewed a founder from a different type of brand. I think it was skincare, but she was very adamant about evidence-based products. And she early on in her and the founding of the company, they decided to pay for this clinical trials, clinical research done on the product.

Everyone says she was crazy. Her investors said she was crazy. They're like, why are you spending it like a waste of money so early and so forth? But she did it and now the company has grown and it's, you know, it was hard. It was the hardest work upfront, but they did it and it paid dividends later. You know, it's one of those things where they were able to create a story around it, but based off this evidence, you know, based off this, this research, multiple research studies that they had done.

So anyhow, I think it's worth it. And, uh, and by the way, I appreciate you talking about the evidence pyramid and kind of putting it that way because honestly, I think with so much information out there and so much misinformation, there's a lot of people who use a lot of experts, uh, that use anecdotal, almost like storytelling, you know, like I'm fond of talking about my, my grandmother who lived to be 99 years old and, you know,

and how she lived and then, you know, all of this, but that's really just anecdotal. Like I'm just, I don't know what the causation is.

C. Vivek Lal, MD (19:41.675)
But Raman, I think that's a very important concept to discuss also, right? That not all anecdotal experiences are false. Just that the science has not been created for those, right? So like probiotics, we have been using yogurt for centuries, right? In traditional societies, et cetera. And my grandmother would tell me, okay, this does this or this does that. But now you use it as a probiotic, you've done the clinical trials.

that anecdotal experience has been scientifically. So it's not that all, I'm not saying that expert opinion or anecdotal experiences are wrong, but they are still associations until causation is found by the clinical trial. That's why doing a clinical trial is extremely important. Yeah.

Ramon Vela (20:25.248)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, you know, and I agree with that. But unfortunately, I think like that's all there is on a lot of the socials and things like that. You know, people telling you don't do this or don't do that or try this or try that. And listen, I'm sure that, you know, like my my grandmother, when I was a kid, taught me she used to use herbs and stuff like that for teas. Like and I had a stomach ache. She'd say, go have some mint and everything like that. I know that's been researched now. mean, people that's well known fact now, but.

But back then it was very much for her, there was no science. was just like, hey, we tried this and it's good for you for your like upset stomach and whatnot and so forth. But there's so much out there in social media where there's a lot of stuff that's just not proven and not, know, very anecdotal. But anyhow, I appreciate you sharing that. We don't have to go down that rabbit hole because we can talk for long time on this. I want people to know more about the product itself.

So walk us through a little bit of, before we get into the product itself, walk us into some of the challenges. So you did the clinical trials, and at this point, you have the, were you trying to decide which products to create and how to formulate them and then where to source the ingredients?

C. Vivek Lal, MD (21:48.491)
So we let data lead us. Thankfully, we were doing the science on the gut x-axis, or how the gut communicates with different parts of the body. X in algebra is any unknown part of the body, right? That x-axis, I call it, for the last 10 years, 15 years in my lab, so in the academic lab. So we had some background. Out of that, we found

Ramon Vela (21:52.526)
Mm-hmm.

Ramon Vela (22:04.91)
Mm-hmm.

C. Vivek Lal, MD (22:16.359)
strong signals and we were one of the first ones in the world to identify that the gut-lung axis is important, that the gut communicates with lungs, the lung functions or lung inflammation could be affected by the gut. We were also the first ones to find, or one of the first ones to find that lung actually has a microbiome, right? Everyone talks about the gut, even the NIH when it came up with the NIH microbiome project in, I think, 2006 or 2007.

Ramon Vela (22:37.858)
Mmm.

C. Vivek Lal, MD (22:45.823)
they didn't have lung as a primary organ to study initially because everyone thought that lungs are served, right? But later our group and some other groups found that no, lungs also have a microbiome, which is very low biomass, but it doesn't mean it's not important. It's very important. So that's how my lab started studying the lungs with context to the microbiome. And we did it for several years and found specific organisms which were helpful in decreasing lung inflammation. So

Ramon Vela (22:51.48)
Mm-hmm.

C. Vivek Lal, MD (23:15.243)
The problem was there was not even a concept which existed calling probiotic helpful for lungs, right? So respiratory probiotic or lung probiotic or the gut lung access. There was in the research community for the last five, six years, but not in the consumer or, you know, industry, right? So we had to create a category. So when we first launched our first product, which is ResB Lung Support in 2022, it was January of 2022 and

Ramon Vela (23:21.645)
Hmm.

Ramon Vela (23:33.101)
Yeah.

C. Vivek Lal, MD (23:45.331)
In my head, being a scientist founder, I was like, okay, this is the best thing which has ever happened, right? And this is path breaking and whatnot. And we'll just tell the consumers, this is a new thing and it'll be done. I quickly found out that this category doesn't exist. If a category doesn't exist, the consumers not only are skeptical about it, but you have to spend twice the money to educate them and convince them that this is real. So it took a long time.

Ramon Vela (23:50.446)
Mm-hmm.

C. Vivek Lal, MD (24:14.987)
For the first six months, we were just thinking, hey, what have we done? We have invested so much money and effort into this. And people think that we're fools. But soon, with persistent education, we started targeting the educated people. People who understand what clinical trials are. So that's what we started focusing on and then spread the word after that.

Ramon Vela (24:27.352)
Hehehe.

C. Vivek Lal, MD (24:44.139)
actually understood it. So we had to do actual category creation for respiratory probiotics. now many have launched many things after that, but we still are the OG of respiratory probiotics. That was the first product.

Ramon Vela (24:56.044)
Hmm.

Yeah, and that's actually when I was going over your site, which by the way, let me just make sure everybody knows. You can go to resbiotic.com, resbiotic.com, which is R-E-S, bi, I'm sorry, B-I-O-T-I-C.com, resbiotic.com is the website. To me, was one of the interesting things, because I've covered other brands that focus on gut microbiome.

of gut health, probiotics, but I've never seen that connection. I've never seen the gut microbiome and the lung connection. I'm wondering, are the, like I don't wanna make this scary for people, but like what are the problems associated with that? You mentioned inflammation, which is a big one, right? Because inflammation is at the heart of so many different diseases and so forth.

But is that what you, is that some of the, I don't know, the things that you discovered in your research?

C. Vivek Lal, MD (26:06.859)
Absolutely. every second, there's constant communication between the microbes in our gut and our human cells, right? We have 10 times the number, or more than 10 times the number of bacterial cells in the body than human cells. So we are nothing but a bunch of bacteria and that's my... But they're doing something every minute. They're producing a lot of metabolites in the gut. All that metabolite...

gets absorbed into the blood and the lymphatic circulation in the gut and goes to different parts of the body, right, through the blood and the lymphatics. So the specific bacteria in the gut which produce specific metabolites which go from the gut to the lungs through the lymphatics or through the blood vessels and decrease the lung inflammation. There are specific pathways in the lung which are, you know, which increase neutrophilic inflammation, which are pathognomic for

know, COPD, asthma, chronic inflammation in the lung, cystic fibrosis, and all of those pathways are affected with these bacterial metabolites, okay, which go down. So that is a gut-lung access and how the lung inflammation is reduced. In addition, you know, not just for deceased population, but you and I, we see our gut function pretty easily. Hey, I have some diarrhea, I have some constipation, but how do you assess the bowel function?

Ramon Vela (27:31.448)
Mm-hmm.

C. Vivek Lal, MD (27:32.949)
You're not doing a treadmill every day and assessing, hey, I can run only two miles in 30 minutes and then I did 2.1, not all people do that, athletes do that and specific population does that. But we consider food as medicine and we eat three times a day and we breathe 30 times a minute. So what we breathe and what happens to the lung innately is important. So why is it that you and I could have the same COVID or same disease and you could end up

Ramon Vela (27:42.606)
Mm-hmm.

C. Vivek Lal, MD (28:02.793)
walking absolutely fine with the same disease and I could be in the ICU, even if we look alike. So innately, our lungs are either resilient or susceptible to a second hit, whether it is an infection like COVID or whether it is infection like a pneumonia or whether it is just exposure to smoking or whether it is exposure to what we inhale on a daily basis or whether it is just exercise tolerance, athletic performance, et cetera, et cetera, right?

Ramon Vela (28:08.749)
Hmm.

Ramon Vela (28:31.63)
Hmm.

C. Vivek Lal, MD (28:32.361)
What we don't realize is there is inflammation in the lungs innately. There is resilience or predisposition to a second hit innately. How do we optimize that? So when I categorize the population who we target, of course, the easy one is the deceased population, someone who has a CFPD or asthma. You can't make deceased claims with supplements, but we have done those rigorous trials. But a lot of from those chronic lung diseases do take these supplements.

Ramon Vela (28:51.214)
Mm-hmm.

C. Vivek Lal, MD (29:01.737)
The other big category was the smokers, people who smoke. Anything proactive to reduce their lung inflammation. So I did not know that was a category until we started getting calls. Hey, every time I've talked to a doctor, they've just told me how to quit. I don't want to quit. What can I take in the meanwhile? I'm endorsing smoking here, but you can try this. And that became a big category.

Ramon Vela (29:05.357)
Mm-hmm.

Ramon Vela (29:11.757)
Hmm.

C. Vivek Lal, MD (29:22.955)
Third was people who were breathing in this wildfire smoke and people who were in polluted areas. Like I'm getting calls from China and India and Mexico and hey, we have so much pollution, what can I take to decrease my lung inflammation? So that became a huge category. And the fourth big category was athletes or regular people like us who just want to have better exercise performance, who want to breathe better. So then my running joke became anyone who breathes is a customer, which actually is true.

All my family is on it and we have been on it for like four years and we see such good retention. People, we thought that, okay, we'll have a lifetime value. You know, I was learning these fancy things in e-commerce and we'll have an LTV of this and that, but our lifetime value is really good. People just get on it and don't stop it, you know, because they start feeling better gut wise and lung wise and they just make it a lifestyle thing.

Ramon Vela (30:08.568)
Mm-hmm.

Ramon Vela (30:12.918)
Yeah, well, mean, so you actually mentioned a couple of things, like, for instance, like sleep apnea, you know, like people have sleep apnea. Will this help with people who have these type of things like sleep apnea or what is the other ones? COPD, things like that.

C. Vivek Lal, MD (30:32.501)
So I am not going to use this platform to make any disease claims because we can't. We are just a supplement, right? So we can't say that this would be useful for any disease like COPD or sleep apnea or asthma, et cetera. Do we have a lot of consumers from disease population who are on the supplements and anecdotally give great testimonials? I think the answer is yes.

Ramon Vela (30:38.968)
Yes.

Ramon Vela (30:56.206)
Mm hmm. Yeah. You know, and I remember during the pandemic because I'm a previous smoker. So I was really concerned about that component of it, because I remember reading about how it seemed to be attacking your lungs and things like that. So I was I was very, concerned in that. And so, yeah, I can understand that. And then in terms of like people who have been smoking, obviously, it's better to just stop smoking, too. But.

you know, to help repair any damage and anything like that. I'm sure that this sounds like it's a pretty good deal. Yeah, and I don't think people realize how important I've actually just been learning this recently, but I just how important breathing and the oxygen levels and all of that is so important to you. And some doctor was telling me that, you know, many people don't even like we we we think about breathing because it's like

We all breathe because we would die if we didn't, but not all of us really breathe correctly or the way that we should be doing. our lungs are just not being attention to as much as like other things. know, like we all worry about heart disease. We all worry about, you know, all these other diseases, but our lungs, unless you're a smoker or something, like you don't really think about it, right? Like you don't even, yeah.

C. Vivek Lal, MD (32:15.211)
You don't think about it. It is such a passive thing. We don't think about it at all until we actually get something or actually you're in problem. And it's usually pretty late by then. Right. So proactively thinking about lung is difficult, which we realized in the pandemic. Right. How is it that everyone was dying and ending up in the ICU if they were so healthy? Right. Innately, they did have something in the lungs. Who knows? Right. Which was potentiated by an infection.

Ramon Vela (32:36.834)
Mm-hmm.

Ramon Vela (32:45.196)
Yeah. Well, and does having a healthy lung and gut microbiome connection, does that help with all the things that we're breathing in nowadays? You know what mean? Because we don't even think about it anymore. mean, people were talking about plastics. People were talking about pollution. When I was growing up here in Los Angeles, Los Angeles, I mean, we have bad smog days.

But now, but back then it was really, really bad. There was a whole crisis around it and, you know, the Brown air, you you, you'd go look at the mountains. I remember, this is, think back in the nineties, I was driving from Santa Monica back to the Pasadena area. And, all of a sudden I saw the Hollywood sign, off to 10 freeway. You can see it sort of in the distance.

And I just, for some reason, just like, whoa, look at, there's a sign right there. Like, I mean, I know it's a sign there, but it just appeared almost out of nowhere. And then I realized like, wait a minute, my, have become so accustomed to seeing nothing but smog. Like you don't see the mountains, you just see this brown, you know, like air. And, and so we're breathing all this stuff in. Does having this help with, you know, with all the things that we're breathing in every day?

C. Vivek Lal, MD (34:06.891)
What we are breathing in is extremely important. We just don't realize it. If you look at statistics, people who breathe in polluted air have much higher incidence of chronic lung diseases, much higher incidence of exacerbation, much higher incidence of other chronic conditions also. It's just that it doesn't happen acutely. It happens over a period of time, over a period of years, similarly with smoke, similarly with smoking and other things. It's the same thing. It doesn't happen immediately, but over a period of time.

So these things do break down different particles in the lungs and produce an inflammatory cascade, right? So it does increase neutrophilic inflammation. Our product does decrease neutrophilic inflammation over a period of time. Yes. So the short answer, yes.

Ramon Vela (34:53.038)
Yeah, no, no, I mean, I just, think that's one of the areas I think people really need to think about. you know, I often hear that so many people in, know, whether they're dealing with certain issues, that having healthy air is great for you and so forth, you know, being out in nature and whatnot. And there's a reason for all of that.

Walk us through some of the other products that you have, because I noticed that you also had some products that had to do with like GPL one and so forth. But before that, let's talk about like maybe your basics. Like what's the foundational products?

C. Vivek Lal, MD (35:29.61)
Yeah.

C. Vivek Lal, MD (35:37.013)
So the foundational products, we don't launch like 20 products, like we could launch 20 products in a year, but we try to launch one or two selected clinically trial validated products. So our first product was a gut lung access product called ResB lung support B for breath. The next product we launched was a prebiotic, which is a prebiotic fiber for microbiome and energy.

We wanted to stay away from caffeine induced energy. So we launched a product which has beats in it, know, which is your nitric oxide signaling, you know, so non-caffeinated energy with prebiotic clinical trial prebiotic. And then we launched the first gut and GLP1 axis postbiotic product. Okay, so postbiotic is essentially a probiotic, which is heat inactivated. Okay.

Ramon Vela (36:11.267)
Mm-hmm.

C. Vivek Lal, MD (36:32.863)
So the stability of the probiotic increases a lot, especially if you're mixing it with other ingredients. So our third product was a GLP-1 postbiotic. It was the first GLP-1 postbiotic launched ever and clinically validated in the clinical trials here. So yeah, that was our most recent product and we are getting great reviews on that and people are really liking it. Not just because

it gives them the metabolic boost. But also because it suppresses their appetite. It has a couple of other ingredients like chromium picolinate, which does suppress their appetite and they feel immediate effects.

Ramon Vela (37:07.47)
Mm-hmm.

Ramon Vela (37:18.67)
And just to clarify, why is it called a post-biotic? Is it something that you take, do you take it in conjunction with the other product or is this something that you take after or like, yeah.

C. Vivek Lal, MD (37:33.783)
That's great. So there are probiotics, prebiotics and postbiotics. Okay, so in the microbiome industry, microbiome field, probiotics are any live bacteria. Prebiotics are essentially food for the probiotic or the live bacteria. The prebiotic are like fibers and others which boost the production of probiotics.

Ramon Vela (37:56.15)
Mm-hmm.

C. Vivek Lal, MD (38:03.039)
Post-biotics are essentially either metabolites of the probiotic or just inactivated probiotic. So we use an inactivated probiotic. So they don't replicate, but they're essentially heat inactivated. And why is it important? Because the stability of the product increases, just that they need to be in a little higher dose, because they're not replicating inside your body.

Ramon Vela (38:29.39)
Okay. And I would just also mention that, like I'm looking right now at the pre-beats, the energy prebiotic and that is gluten-free, non-GMO, vegan, sugar-free, low FODMAP. Low FODMAP, my daughter suffers with that issue. So I know how important that is for so many people dealing with that, with IBS and so forth.

And I'm by the way, everyone, I'm on resbiotic.com, resbiotic.com. That's res, R-E-S, biotic, B-I-O-T-I-C.com, resbiotic.com. And, and again, it's, it's, you make it so easy for people to kind of see all these results. Cause I'm on one of the product pages. You go to it and you see what the instructions are, how it works, the science, you see the ingredients.

then you also see the clinical results on there as well. And the GPL-1 metabolism supports, that's the post-priotic. So that also has the same things, non-GMO, gluten-free, vegan, all-natural, probably made in the United States. And it kind of goes over, you know, some other things about it. Yeah, I mean, the GPL-1 is obviously one of those things that are just like taking

taking the health world by storm. Everybody has seen like the, I guess, the results of some of the things that are taken. So they're looking for things for that. I know for me, I appreciate some of the products like your type of products, because my biggest issue is cravings. So I already know like when I got stressed out and so forth, I feel like I wanna...

eat more and so forth. I think a lot of people are gonna feel that way too. And products like yours, they help subdue some of those cravings. So you don't feel like you wanna go on and have a huge big meal or anything like that. Or even like when you're stressing out, I've noticed that some of the products like that don't kind of help out with that issue in terms of cravings. So that's pretty cool. Anything else you wanna...

Ramon Vela (40:53.202)
talk to us about anything. you know, I was actually going to ask you this. As part of your marketing campaigns and building awareness, it also is you mentioned these different groups that you're going after, but do you also go after the doctors? you is that an audience for you to kind of like because, you know, they're they're out there, you know, recommending things to people to.

C. Vivek Lal, MD (41:12.693)
Yeah.

C. Vivek Lal, MD (41:20.767)
Yeah, and you know, we are one of the very few doctor and scientist found supplement companies, right? And most of our advisory board, our chief medical officer are all board certified physicians and scientists. We in our marketing and you know, not just not just, you know, because we want to win trust, but we strongly believe in it that your physicians or health care providers or your nurse practitioners

or even your holistic practitioners, et cetera, should be a part of your health journey, right? And so we try to educate them. We have a whole healthcare practitioner program because we are investing so much in clinical validation, because these are all clinically validated supplements with clinical results. We are targeting them not only for marketing and sales, but also for educating the rest of the population. If you go on our product pages, you will see that we mentioned

vehemently, right? Okay, these many clinicians have shared ResBiotic to other patients of theirs and none of them have been paid by us. So I think we use that pretty predominantly in our marketing campaign because we want to build trust and we want people to understand what goes behind the scenes here.

Ramon Vela (42:28.812)
Mm-hmm.

Ramon Vela (42:39.682)
Yeah, well, is there anything else coming up that we should know about? you you have these core products here. Anything else that, or any other areas that you're going to be using some of this research, past research to create products for?

C. Vivek Lal, MD (42:54.335)
Yeah, we have a whole pipeline. As I said, I want to target the gut x-axis. X in the body is any unknown. We have a whole pipeline of proprietary ingredients, proprietary strains, and we making patented products. Res B was launched to target breath. Res G was launched to target gut and energy. Res was launched to target metabolism. We have a Res O and Res W.

Ramon Vela (43:17.646)
Hmm.

C. Vivek Lal, MD (43:21.021)
launching this year and I'll leave it there for your audience to figure out what Respo and ResW would be. They're coming Q3, Q4 2025.

Ramon Vela (43:23.886)
I'm going to a

Ramon Vela (43:30.158)
Oh, there's W. All right, I have to think about that one, but I'm sure it's probably obvious and I'm just not thinking about it right now. So this is amazing. A couple more questions. I just want to make sure, given that the education part is so important and some of these, obviously, like I mentioned, I cover a lot of products and products in the gut microbiome area, gut health, but I've never seen a product

like yours in terms of the, you know, the lungs, the connection between the lungs. And you explained why that is, but it's still new. like, you know, I'm excited about it. Like I'm going to, I'm going to let any, all the people who I know who still smoke, I'm going to let them know about this product because I'm like, listen, you should stop. of all, second though, you should probably be taking something looking like this. Um, but I mean, uh, I just think it's fascinating. With that said,

Is there anything that you want to leave with the audience in terms of these products, any one of them or all of them in general, that you want them to leave with? Like if they're going to walk away from this, what is it that you want them to know about this?

C. Vivek Lal, MD (44:46.251)
think one thing which people don't realize and we don't even communicate enough is all these supplements, even though they are supplements, but if they are coming out of our brand, the rigor behind them is drug level. So whatever rigor goes behind creating FDA approved drug, we have the resources for that, for preclinical testing, animal testing, organoid testing, human cellular testing, then the clinical trial testing at the product level.

have all our products formulated in that way, which is impossible to explain to our consumers. But if something is being put out from a brand, it goes through drug development level rigor in production. Of course, we cannot make any disease claims. We should not make any disease claims, not only from the regulatory perspective, but also from the ethical perspective, just because we are a supplement brand. But I do want everyone to understand that

Ramon Vela (45:21.454)
Mm-hmm.

C. Vivek Lal, MD (45:44.907)
If something is being put out from res barric nutrition, it would undergo this kind of scientific and R &D rigor. Otherwise it doesn't go to the market from our brand.

Ramon Vela (45:55.82)
Yeah. And that's great to know. I'd actually probably create a little explainer video on that for your website, because I think that's important. Honestly, you know, when you were talking earlier about the evidence pyramid, I always tell people, and you're right, anecdotal evidence is still evidence and it's there and it could, it's, there's, there's a place for it. But really for me, it's like, I, I, that stuff is helpful, but I really want to see.

C. Vivek Lal, MD (45:57.193)
Thanks.

Ramon Vela (46:22.946)
data. I really want to see some sort of data that is leading me into that causation of like, this is happening, this is going to help me, et cetera. And so I really feel like what you described was really, really interesting and good for consumers to know, not just about your product, but also about other products too. And that the clinical data is just huge, huge, huge, you know? And I think people need to understand the importance of it with that, along with what you just said in terms of the

the type of testing you do and the rigor that you take for this product. So thank you for sharing that. I think actually, like I said, I think that's helpful not only for your product, but for people to keep in mind with other products as well. So before we go, I have one more last question. This is going to be a little bit not on the product side, but entrepreneur side. I don't want to let you go because you've already built a couple of companies. So I want to ask you just one last question in terms of entrepreneurship.

Doctor led brands and founders who are interested in starting, you know, maybe they're like you, they're deep in their research, they want to make an impact, they want to do something. Do you have any advice for those folks who are thinking, who are doctors and scientists who want to become entrepreneurs? Is there anything that you would share with them that maybe might save them some headaches?

C. Vivek Lal, MD (47:47.042)
Don't do it if you don't have a good purpose or reason. Don't do it for the money, for sure, that is the number one thing. But if you have a real purpose, if you have a real reason, then get behind it and be as resilient as possible because the whole world would be against you. You'll have to just go till the end and be resilient.

Ramon Vela (47:48.462)
Thank

Ramon Vela (48:09.44)
Right. That's good. Actually, I thought when you were going say don't do it, was like, that's he's going to say.

C. Vivek Lal, MD (48:15.531)
Don't do it if you don't have a purpose because I think many people do the mistake of just doing something for the sake of doing something because it's cool and others are doing it and they just see the gram and glitter of it, right? But all the money of it, right? Like, but unless there's a real purpose or a real problem you're solving and you're passionate about it and you're ready to work for it tirelessly over a long period of time, they shouldn't.

Ramon Vela (48:41.678)
Yeah, yeah, I got it. Yeah, that's good advice. All right. So before we let you go, where can people buy it? Like, where do you want them to go? Is this direct to consumer? Can we find it in retail shelves or other places?

C. Vivek Lal, MD (48:56.149)
So we are on our own website, resbiotic.com, R-E-S-B-I-O-T-I-C.com. You could also find us on our brand store at Amazon. So all the products are available on Amazon. And for the last couple of months, we have rolled into Walmart stores nationally. So you can find us at Walmart, your neighborhood Walmart stores. We really wanted to make these products accessible to the larger US population and we've launched at Walmart and

you can find it at your local stores.

Ramon Vela (49:27.726)
great. All right. Well, that's fantastic. This has been a great conversation. I've learned things that I've never covered before. So thank you for that. And I really feel like your product is one that we can endorse that falls into our category, our tagline, which is products worth buying, brands we're supporting, because I love this whole scientific rigor, clinical research based type of product, evidence based type of products.

And I prefer to really recommend that to people. So thank you for that. And it looks like it's a great product. Any last words that you want to leave? And by the way, thank you so much. I appreciate your time for this,

C. Vivek Lal, MD (50:12.095)
No, thank you so much, Raman, for your time, for this platform. I think it's important for us to convey to the audience the importance of science-backed food and supplements, I think, for a healthy future for us and for our kids, for the future generation.

Ramon Vela (50:28.556)
Yeah, no, I agree. So everyone out there, we have just had C Vivek Lal, who is founder and CEO of Resbiotic. You can go to resbiotic.com. by the way, social media channels, is there one in particular we want them to go?

C. Vivek Lal, MD (50:45.195)
So yeah, Instagram or Facebook, we are at the redress by Rx on both.

Ramon Vela (50:51.136)
Okay, great. So we're going to have those links that he mentioned on our podcast description, which you can find on Google, Spotify, Apple, all the places that you listen to podcasts, simply type in the story of a brand show and you should be able to find it. Beyond that, everyone, I always tell you, stay sane, stay safe, stay healthy. Well, in this case, best way to do stay healthy is going to check out ResBiotic, go to the website, sign up for their newsletter. You know, at least that way you keep in touch with them and you find out what products are going to come out with and you, you know,

see what discounts, promos, you know, all that good stuff. Just follow them on their newsletter. I'm sure you'll get some good information, but go check it out. I really feel like if you have trouble breathing, you've been a smoker like I was in my past, all these areas, go take a look. And then of course, GPL1 is another big one that we're all looking into. A lot of us need to lose weight. I need to lose a little weight myself. So go check it out and be healthy.

Beyond that, everyone, one last thing. We've all been going through a lot of stuff in the last few years, the pandemic, the geopolitical wars, politics, everything, tariffs, everything else. Let's do ourselves a favor and just remember that everyone is going through something. And if we could just be a little kinder to each other, doesn't really take that much to be kinder to each other. I know we can make this human experience a better one. Beyond that, thank you from the bottom of my heart for listening to another episode of the story of a brand.