Soaking Grains and Seeds Overnight in Sugar Shift: A Simple Solution for Supporting Glyphosate Remediation
Martha Carlin
| May 21, 2026 |
For years, I’ve been fascinated by the invisible relationships that shape health.
Not just what we eat, how our food is grown and what residues are left. And how those residues might be changing the environment inside our bodies.
Glyphosate is one of those compounds I’ve given a huge amount of attention to over the years. It was one of the first things I started looking into when John was diagnosed with Parkinson’s.
As the most widely used herbicide in modern agriculture, glyphosate shows up far beyond farm fields. Studies have detected glyphosate residues in foods, water, and even human urine samples. In fact, recent research showed glyphosate in 4 out of 5 people sampled. While researchers continue to study the full implications of long-term exposure, many scientists are asking important questions about how glyphosate interacts with the gut microbiome, nutrient availability, and overall metabolic resilience. Read more about my thoughts on glyphosate here.
One of the simplest practices I’ve adopted to reduce exposure to glyphosate and help break it down in things like grains and seeds is an overnight soak using Sugar Shift™.
Why Soak?
Overnight soaking is not a detox gimmick.
It’s a way to create time and conditions for beneficial microbes to begin interacting with nutrients and bioactive compounds before you consume them.
Sugar Shift was designed to support metabolic health through targeted probiotic strains. But many people also use it as part of a broader lifestyle approach aimed at reducing environmental burden and supporting gut resilience.
We recently studied our Lactobacillus plantarum TBC036 and the Sugar Shift formula’s ability to break down glyphosate in the lab, using 1000 times the allowable limit for a food ingredient. And it broke down 27% of the glyphosate in just 24 hours.
The idea isn’t that Sugar Shift “removes” glyphosate directly but it can help break it down during the soaking process.
The goal is to lessen the impact of any remaining residues and support the microbial ecosystem that helps maintain healthy gut function, healthy metabolism, and the body’s natural systems for processing and eliminating what doesn’t belong.
Whatever you’re planning to eat, whether it’s dried beans, quinoa, steel cut oats, barley, flax, chia, or any other type of grain or seed, soaking them in Sugar Shift overnight can help.
Overnight Sugar Shift Soak Recipe
This has become one of my favorite morning breakfasts. It’s simple but effective, and you can make it your own.
Ingredients:
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12–16 oz remineralized filtered water (using BEAM minerals)
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1 capsule of Sugar Shift™
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1/4 cup organic buckwheat groats
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Optional: ½ teaspoon cinnamon, organic berries, squeeze of fresh organic lemon, Sugar Shift yogurt, etc.
Instructions:
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Place the buckwheat groats in a glass jar or bowl and cover with remineralized filtered water.
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Open one Sugar Shift capsule into the water and stir gently.
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Leave on the counter overnight.
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Add your favorite toppings: cinnamon or other herbs, fresh organic berries, Sugar Shift yogurt, etc.
A More Helpful Question Than “How Do I Eliminate Glyphosate?”
People often ask me how to get glyphosate out of the body.
I think a more useful question is: How do I create an internal environment that is more resilient to modern exposures? That question changes everything.
It leads us toward:
- prioritizing whole foods
- choosing organic when practical
- supporting microbial diversity
- reducing unnecessary chemical load
- eating more fiber and fermented foods
- creating daily habits that are sustainable
No single food or supplement can offset every environmental exposure. But small practices repeated over time can become powerful in breaking it down.
With gratitude,
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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