Patchwork Podcast #09 Martha Carlin: Nobody is engineering probiotics properly
by Kevin Danielson April 06, 2025
In this episode of the Patchwork podcast, Martha Carlin, CEO of BiotiQuest, shares her transformative journey from the tech industry to a microbiome & Parkinson's researcher due to her husband getting Parkinson's at an early age. She discusses the critical role of the microbiome in health, particularly in relation to Parkinson's disease, and the disconnect between medicine, science research and microbiome research. Martha highlights the impact of glyphosate on health, the interconnectedness of food systems, and the importance of probiotics. She also introduces her product, Sugar Shift, which aims to help regulate sugar cravings and improve metabolic health.
09 Martha Carlin: Nobody is engineering probiotics properly by Mac
And how Parkison's is intimately linked to gut function
Let’s be completely honest: When was the last time you actually looked inside the bowl before you flushed? If your immediate reaction is to cringey-laugh and say, "Ugh, never," you are throwing away the single most valuable health report your body produces daily.
A chronic diagnosis is almost always delivered as a final sentence, completely devoid of hope. In the conventional medical model, patients are given a label—whether it’s Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, or chronic fatigue—and told, “There is no cure. This is progressive. Take this pill.”
The path to vibrant health is rarely a straight line. Often, it takes a deeply personal disruption to force us to look at the human body through a completely different lens. For Martha Carlin, a former corporate auditor and turnaround expert, that disruption came in 2002 when her healthy 44-year-old husband, John, was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease.
A chronic health diagnosis is almost always delivered as a rigid, downward equation. In the conventional medical model, when a condition like Parkinson’s disease presents itself, it is frequently treated as an absolute finality—a steady downward slope accompanied by a prescription and a lack of baseline options.