Cheryl Sew Hoy | Tiny Health: The Missing Link Between Child Chronic Condition Crisis + Healing Family Gut Dysbiosis
Wellness + Wisdom Podcast
Josh Trent
4.8 • 913 Ratings
🗓️ 14 May 2024
⏱️ 96 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Wellness + Wisdom | Episode 638
How is Tiny Health helping parents and children optimize their gut health?
Cheryl Sew Hoy, Founder of Tiny Health, joins Josh Trent on the Wellness + Wisdom Podcast, episode 638, to explain the correlation between parents' gut microbiome and their baby's gut health, why the first months of a baby's life define their health for the rest of their life, and how microbiome testing can prevent chronic diseases in children.
"If your child has poor and imbalanced gut health in the first 6-12 months of life, we can predict if the child is at higher risk for atopic march symptoms; eczema, allergy, and asthma." - Cheryl Sew Hoy
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Learn the best ways to support the gut: Get the tests, tools, and insights you need to improve wellness over time
In This Episode, Cheryl Sew Hoy Uncovers:
[01:30] Healing The Baby Microbiome
- Cheryl Sew Hoy
- Tiny Health - Use code "JOSH20" for $20 OFF all single kits
- The different microbiomes in the human body.
- Why some microbes are beneficial to your health.
- You get the first microbes from your mother through the vaginal canal and then breast milk.
- C-section doesn't allow for the baby to acquire certain microbes.
- How gut microbiome imbalances show up in babies.
[08:45] C-Section Affects The Baby's Gut Health
- The health system is made to make money.
- How breech birth taught Cheryl to advocate for herself.
- The impact of C-section birth on the baby's health.
- How to provide vaginal microbiomes for the baby when a mother gets a C-section.
[17:50] Optimizing The Mother's Microbiome
- A mother should make sure her gut and vaginal microbiomes are healthy before passing them on to her baby.
- Testing can help you optimize microbiome health.
- You can take probiotics and pass them on to your baby through breastfeeding.
- It takes much longer for adults to correct their microbiome.
[23:15] The Journey with Tiny Health
- Why akkermansia is an essential intestinal bacteria.
- The bacterias that are missing in the mother can be passed on to the baby from the father.
- Chewing food for your baby can help their microbiome.
- The infant microbiome development: mom matters
- How Cheryl developed Tiny Health.
[30:15] Nature Heals Your Microbiome
- Contact with animals makes children's microbiome more diverse.
- We used to live 90% outdoors, but now we spend 90% of our time indoors.
- You can intentionally expose your children to different microbes.
- How Tiny Health is helping people to go back to nature.
[35:05] Asthma Prevention in Infants
- 236 Healing The Second Brain: Dr. Michael Ruscio
- Academic research takes 10 years to reach medical practice.
- How asthma can be prevented by healing the microbiome in early childhood.
- Why Tiny Health got casted for Shark Tank but decided not to take the opportunity.
[39:40] The Gut-Brain Axis Connection
- Even successful people can be miserable.
- How stress impacts the gut microbiome.
- The mother's butyrate function affects her baby's behavior.
- It has been proven that the gut influences allergies, eczema, and asthma in babies.
- Why we're in a pediatric chronic condition crisis.
[44:00] New Technology for Microbiome Testing
- Doctors are not taught about the importance of nutrition and the microbiome.
- How the modern medicine is developing.
- Why Tiny Health uses metagenomic sequencing to test the microbiome.
- Each strain of bacteria has a different purpose.
- 048 Nir Eyal: Breaking Bad Habits, Technology Addiction, & Emotional Triggers
[49:15] How to Heal Gut Dysbiosis
- How Tiny Health achieved to make the test affordable.
- Everything changes when you have a child.
- Why Josh's son had gut dysbiosis.
- The adult gut needs different foods than the baby gut.
- You should test, not guess when you supplement.
- What type of probiotics will actually help you improve your gut.
- How Tiny Health is tracking strains of bacteria.
[56:00] Most Supplements Don't Absorb Well
- 616 Alex Wolfe | Legal Psychedelic Microdosing For Anxiety + How To Take Your Sleep/Psyche to The Next Level
- Why the body doesn't absorb most oral supplements.
- Supplementation can get you back to the baseline and a good diet will maintain it.
- Take your health in your hands.
[59:05] Antibiotics VS Gut Health
- How to restore a baby's microbiome if you had a C-section.
- The microbes you want to see in your child.
- Baby can regain the good bacteria within a month of taking probiotics.
- Most children take antibiotics within the first year of life.
- Ear infection doesn't need to be treated with antibiotics because it's viral, not bacterial.
- Understanding what supplements are going to help or hurt your child.
- Do your own research to advocate for your and your child's health.
[01:08:30] Excuses + Fear + Stress
- Unconscious behavior gives people an excuse to say they don't have time and money.
- How the medical system is making you react out of fear.
- Join The Liberated Life Community - LiberatedLife.Me
- Stress and emotions impact your gut.
- 581 Healthspan Revolution: Game-Changing Biomarker Blood Testing (SiPhox) | Michael Dubrovsky
[01:14:50] Healthy Microbiome = Healthy Lifestyle
- How Tiny Health mixes the knowledge of academic professionals and holistic practitioners.
- Why women should start restoring their microbiome before they start trying to get pregnant.
- A healthy microbiome is a lifestyle, not a one-time thing.
- Why Cheryl's family's gut health got worse when they moved to Austin.
- Why people often ask Cheryl about children's eczema and sleep.
[01:23:50] Tiny Health for Wellness
- Why Tiny Health's reports are easy to understand for anyone.
- How household cleaning products can negatively impact your baby's gut health.
- Why Cheryl picks a different aspect of wellness to focus on during each season.
- The social constructs we're facing in the world.
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Power Quotes From The Show
Check Your Baby's Gut
"A baby's microbiome is very malleable which is why in the early days it's so important to check and make sure that they have the right balance." - Cheryl Sew Hoy
Pregnancy Diet Affects The Child After Birth
"There's a connection between what the mom's diet is during pregnancy and her butyrate function. The mom's butyrate function during pregnancy affects the child's external behavior by 2 years of age which defines how extroverted or introverted they are and how they are able to express their feelings." - Cheryl Sew Hoy
Test, Not Guess
"We should test, not guess when you supplement. There is a danger of over supplementing a child or even adults with. If it colonizes, it may hamper the natural diversification that you want in a kid who's eating solids and exposed to a lot of different environmental microbes." - Cheryl Sew Hoy
Links From Today's Show
- Cheryl Sew Hoy
- Tiny Health - Use code "JOSH20" for $20 OFF all single kits
- The infant microbiome development: mom matters
- 236 Healing The Second Brain: Dr. Michael Ruscio
- 048 Nir Eyal: Breaking Bad Habits, Technology Addiction, & Emotional Triggers
- Join The Liberated Life Community - LiberatedLife.Me
- 581 Healthspan Revolution: Game-Changing Biomarker Blood Testing (SiPhox) | Michael Dubrovsky
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About Cheryl Sew Hoy

Cheryl Sew Hoy is an accomplished founder of multiple companies including the non-profit #MovingForward, as well as a successful consumer software startup that was acquired by Walmart Labs in 2013.
In 2014, she was head-hunted by the White House to become CEO of MaGIC, an agency to spur the innovation ecosystem in Malaysia and Southeast Asia.
In 2020, Cheryl founded Tiny Health to take charge of her family's microbiome health after giving birth to her two children, when she realized that early-life microbiome imbalances are linked to many chronic conditions later in life.
Cheryl has extensive expertise in building consumer brands and has raised a total of $34M. She is an angel investor and advisor to many startups. Cheryl earned her master's degree in Engineering Management and Data Mining, and her bachelor's degree in Operations Research and Industrial Engineering from Cornell University, NY, both on full scholarships.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | We are in a pediatric chronic condition crisis right now. |
| 0:03.2 | Almost one and two kids have at least one chronic condition in the US. |
| 0:07.0 | We can't let that be the new normal. It is the new normal, but it doesn't mean it's okay. |
| 0:11.4 | 80% of our immune system is in our gut. |
| 0:15.0 | There's so much signs pointed to the gut linking to these chronic conditions. |
| 0:19.0 | The initial colonization is at birth during labor, and that's how the baby gets their first flesh of my groups. |
| 0:26.0 | C-section-born babies have higher risk of this progression of allergic disease called atopic March, eczema, allergy, and asthma. |
| 0:35.0 | There's this world we just don't see, but it's so fascinating, it controls so many things. |
| 0:39.0 | If you do have poor gut health and really imbalanced gut health in the first six months first one year of life. |
| 0:45.0 | We can in a way predict if the child is at higher risk for these at-topic March symptoms. |
| 0:52.0 | My son Nova was having all these GI issues. |
| 0:55.0 | We were looking for the answers and we could not find them in the traditional medicine community. |
| 1:00.0 | I literally stumbled across tiny health. |
| 1:02.0 | We thought we were feeding him healthy, |
| 1:04.1 | but we didn't know that he needed more fermented foods. |
| 1:06.6 | A baby's microbound is very malleable, |
| 1:09.2 | and that's why in the early days it's so important to check and make sure that they have the right balance. |
| 1:15.0 | Does stress impact the microbiome just like food? |
| 1:20.0 | Absolutely. |
| 1:22.0 | How so? |
| 1:23.0 | How so? Hey it's Josh before we get into this episode. I have a small yet powerful favor to ask of you. |
| 1:35.6 | The community has been growing by thousands lately and the bigger the tribe, the bigger names of |
... |
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