The Dr. Tyna Show
Can You Catch Chronic Disease? The Truth About Contagious Microbiomes | Quick + Dirty
Thu, 17 Apr 2025
EP 206: In this quick and dirty, I’m diving straight into one of the most controversial things I’ve said recently - and trust me, it stirred up some serious heat on a recent social media post. After appearing on Codie Sanchez’s podcast and dropping a bomb about how certain chronic diseases might actually be contagious (yeah, you read that right), the internet went wild. I’m breaking down why I stand by it, what the data shows, and how our microbiomes, social circles, and even online interactions might be influencing our health way more than we thought. On This Episode We Cover: 00:00:00 – Introduction 00:03:43 – Can Microbiomes Be Contagious? 00:04:44 – What Drives Chronic Disease Risk 00:06:40 – How Proximity Impacts Your Health 00:08:29 – Root Causes of Chronic Illness 00:09:57 – Why This Matters for Public Policy 00:13:49 – Rethinking the Hygiene Hypothesis 00:16:21 – The Danger of Microbiome Loss 00:17:17 – Your Inner Circle Affects Your Health Show Links: Dr Tyna on Codie Sanchez Are Noncommunicable Diseases Communicable? The Hygiene Hypothesis, The Covid Pandemic, And Consequences For The Human Microbiome Impact Of Obesity On Influenza A Virus Pathogenesis, Immune Response, And Evolution Obesity-Related Microenvironment Promotes Emergence of Virulent Influenza Virus Strains Transfer Of Gut Microbiota From Lean And Obese Mice To Antibiotic-Treated Mice Further Listening: EP. 172: GLP-1 Agonists and the Gut Microbiome: Unveiling Their Role in Metabolic Health | Solo Sponsored By: Puori | Go to Puori.com/drtyna and use code DRTYNA to get 20% off LVLUP | Head over to LVLUPHealth.com and use code DRTYNA at checkout to get 20% off your order sitewide. Timeline | Timeline is offering 10% off your order of Mitopure Go to timeline.com/drtyna. Disclaimer: Information provided in this podcast is for informational purposes only. This information is NOT intended as a substitute for the advice provided by your physician or other healthcare professional, or any information contained on or in any product. Do not use the information provided in this podcast for diagnosing or treating a health problem or disease, or prescribing medication or other treatment. Always speak with your physician or other healthcare professional before taking any medication or nutritional, herbal or other supplement, or using any treatment for a health problem. Information provided in this blog/podcast and the use of any products or services related to this podcast by you does not create a doctor-patient relationship between you and Dr. Tyna Moore. Information and statements regarding dietary supplements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration and are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent ANY disease.
Chapter 1: Can microbiomes be contagious?
If you're looking for real targeted gut support, this is it. Head over to leveluphealth.com and use code DRTINA at checkout to get a whopping discount of 20% off your order. That's L-V-L-U-P health.com. And don't forget to use code DRTINA for your exclusive discount.
Chapter 2: What drives chronic disease risk?
And if you want to deep dive into the science and hear more about this formulation, check out episode 200 of the Dr. Tina show, where I was honored to interview the founder and formulator of Level Up Health, Kyle Vanderfleet. On this week's episode of the Dr. Tina Show, it's a quick and dirty and it's a very controversial topic.
So let's jump in without any hesitation whatsoever because I actually believe this and I'm going to share with you something that stirred quite a controversy the past few weeks. I was on the awesome Cody Sanchez's podcast. I flew to Austin. I got to be on her show. She's such a rad chick, you guys. You got to check out her pod. I hope to get her on mine.
Chapter 3: How does proximity impact your health?
But she asked me a question based on something that I had said in the past, which was that our disease processes beyond the ones that are known to be contagious are actually contagious.
Things like high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, what are considered non-communicable diseases are potentially indeed communicable, meaning contagious, meaning you can catch them from proximity to somebody else who has them. And She made a reel about it, she shared it, she's got millions of followers and boy, oh boy, was there some heat back on me.
Chapter 4: What are the root causes of chronic illness?
And I wanna say this first, correlation is not causation, meaning just because two things are correlated does not necessarily mean one caused the other, right? But that said, I'm going to share with you some data. And I think that what's been emerging is more recent. I really started hearing about this in 2020. I had heard about it in the past.
Chapter 5: Why does this matter for public policy?
You know, there was some data that I saw back in 2017 actually surrounding the topic of obesity and how even if you have a friend who becomes obese on the Internet and you have an increased risk of becoming obese yourself just by interacting with them even on the internet. And I was like, that's crazy. So I don't know how true that is. And I don't know if that's been disproven.
But in 2020, there was an article that came out. And at the same time, I was talking to some microbiome expert friends at a conference. And they shared with me a study where one person in a family took an antibiotic and everybody else's microbiome, gut microbiome in the family shifted, even though they didn't take the antibiotic, just the one person did. And I was like, whoa, that's crazy.
Our microbiomes are contagious. It's not just fungal infections and skin things that we can share, but truly our microbiomes are contagious to the point of our metabolic health being contagious. And I know that is tough for some people to hear and they want to get really angry about it, but we have mice studies to show this.
Chapter 6: What is the hygiene hypothesis?
They took mice and they put an obese mouse in with lean mice and the lean mice became obese. And conversely, there's some data points to support that when an obese person, and I think even in the mice, are surrounded by or sort of more than not of their friend's cohort or their surroundings are lean, they may tend towards more becoming lean. So this is not made up, this is happening.
I'll find the mice study and I will put it in the show notes and you can look at it. It's crazy, there's pictures. So anyway, in 2020, this was written up in Science Magazine and the question was, are non-communicable diseases communicable? Numerous non-communicable diseases could have a transmissible microbial component.
The abstract reads, the past century has seen a profound decrease in mortality across the world accompanied by a marked shift from communicable diseases such as infectious microbes to non-communicable diseases. They call these NCDs, such as cardiovascular diseases, cancer, and respiratory diseases.
Chapter 7: What are the dangers of microbiome loss?
NCDs, defined as diseases that are not transmissible directly from one person to another, account for more than 70% of all deaths globally. That's 41 million people. The definition of NCD rules out any microbial involvement and instead focuses on genetic, environmental, and lifestyle factors. Data increasingly show that the microbiota is dysbiotic, altered in individuals with various NCDs.
Chapter 8: How does your inner circle affect your health?
In animal models of NCDs, transplantation of dysbiotic microbiota into healthy animals results in disease. So they did microbial transplants, probably fecal transplants. And microbiota composition is shaped by close contact with others. Therefore, we propose that some NCDs could have a microbial component and if so, might be communicable via the microbiota.
Some would say that it is just proximity and it has nothing to do with microbiota sharing, right? They say that it's shared behaviors and norms. So if you're living with someone who's obese and they're overeating, you might snack with them. You might overeat with them. Household or community environments, maybe it's shared toxicity. Maybe it's shared beliefs and norms around food.
In certain families, you go over and they overfeed you. They're like, you're too skinny, eat more. So who knows? Socioeconomic factors, obviously a huge component here. I'm not going to negate that. But all that said, The microbiota theory is proving itself very potent. And so we're gonna talk a little bit about it more.
So the implications for public health is that understanding the social environmental factors contributing to NCDs, non-communicable diseases, highlights the importance of community-based interventions, programs that promote healthy behaviors across social networks and improving environmental conditions can be effective in reducing the prevalence of these diseases.
However, when we bring in this 2020 study and some of the other data that has gone around, It gets interesting, right? This article summarizes showing that non-communicable diseases like obesity, heart disease, and type 2 diabetes might in fact have a communicable element. I mean, it makes sense, right? They are microbiota. They're bugs. We're sharing our bugs. I'll give you an example.
I had a patient. He was full of intestinal worms, and he was dealing with obesity and some heart disease. He was very Caucasian, very, very pale, blue-eyed, light-skinned man. His wife was from Jamaica, and she was black. And she had some extra weight on her, but very healthy. Her labs were great, wasn't showing any metabolic disease, just a curvy lady. And
Usually when I treat one patient for worms, I tell them to bring their spouse in because we're going to treat both of them because we can't get rid of the worms in the one and the parasites in the one without treating the other because that is how much we share our bugs.
Even if they're bugs that are fecal oral, you know, not that these people are in any way, shape or form trying to expose themselves to their partner's fecal material, but it just happens. Like you flush the toilet and it aerosolizes out or you share a bed and you shed.
So being in proximity with people definitely can, especially if you're intimate, can definitely lead to sharing and shedding of certain things. All right. So. Non-communicable diseases, including heart disease and diabetes, and even some of the inflammatory bowel diseases, perhaps, may be transmissible and spread among people in close contact, much like infectious diseases.
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