BiotiQuest® Gut Health & Probiotics Blog with Martha Carlin

160: Your Gut Health Affects Your Brain, Sleep, and Stress More Than You Think With Martha Carlin

Martha Carlin | Feb 04, 2026 | podcast

In this episode, we explore gut health and how it impacts overall well-being. Martha Carlin, founder of BiotiQuest, shares her journey into gut health science after her husband was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. That experience led her to leave her to build a science-driven company focused on gut health and chronic disease.

The conversation examines how gut health is connected to chronic conditions such as leaky gut, Parkinson’s disease, diabetes, and inflammation. We also discuss how everyday lifestyle factors can either support or disrupt the gut, including:

• Diet and the impact of the Western food system
• Antibiotics and gut recovery
• Exercise and gut resilience
• Sleep, stress, and nervous system balance

With gratitude,

Martha Carlin photo Martha Carlin, is a “Citizen Scientist”, systems thinker, wife of Parkinson’s warrior, John Carlin, and founder of The BioCollective , a microbiome company expanding the reach of science and BiotiQuest, the first of it’s kind probiotic line. Since John’s diagnosis in 2002, Martha began learning the science of agriculture, nutrition, environment, infectious disease, Parkinson’s pathology and much more. In 2014, when the first research was published showing a connection between the gut bacteria and the two phenotypes of Parkinson’s, Martha quit her former career as a business turnaround expert and founded The BioCollective to accelerate the discovery of the impact of gut health on all human disease. Martha was a speaker at the White House 2016 Microbiome Initiative launch, challenging the scientific community to “think in a broader context”. Her systems thinking background and experience has led to collaborations across the scientific spectrum from neuroscience to engineering to infectious disease. She is a respected out of the box problem solver in the microbiome field and brings a unique perspective to helping others understand the connections from the soil to the food to our guts and our brains.

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