It Wasn’t a Cleaning Problem — It Was a Resilience Problem.

My Story -Yassir Laarais, founder of Spöretz

From 2023 till end of 2024, I had lived through 6 staph infection and 4 rounds of antibiotics. I’m going to tell you exactly what I went through, what I tried, what didn’t work, and the shift in thinking that eventually led me to build Spöretz MB40.

The Struggle

If you train jiu-jitsu or wrestle long enough, you know the drill. Skin issues show up, you knock them out, and then a few weeks or months later — they’re back. For me it was never really about any single flare-up. It was the recurrence. The unpredictability of it. I never knew when it was going to show up again, and that uncertainty started living rent-free in my head every time I stepped on the mats.

So I did what any of us would do. I attacked it from the outside. Showered multiple times a day, sometimes right after training and again before bed. I used chlorhexidine washes religiously. I went through prescription topical antibiotics. I did full courses of oral antibiotics, more than once. I was doing everything a reasonable, disciplined person could do.

And I kept getting reinfected anyway.

That stopped me cold. If this were purely a hygiene problem, a mat problem, a “you-need-to-shower-more” problem — how was she dealing with it too, when I didn't train at a period of time? She also had MRSA, a different strin of staph, while I didn't. That was the moment I realized I had been fighting the wrong battle. This wasn’t only about what was happening on the surface of my skin. Something deeper was going on with the body’s internal terrain — the immune system, and the microbiome that helps regulate it.

The Rabbit Hole

Once I stopped thinking about this as a cleanliness problem, I went down a research rabbit hole. Between my background in science and biotech and my work with Quorum Biome, I started digging into anything I could find on the skin and gut microbiome, and that’s where I came across research on a specific probiotic organism: Bacillus subtilis MB40.

The more I read, the more one theme kept repeating: a healthy, well-balanced microbiome seemed to be central to all of it — skin, gut, immune function, the whole system working together. I remember thinking, this could actually be the piece I’ve been missing as back then I was way more focused on macros than the quality of food I was putting into my body

“I wasn’t trying to sterilize my way out of this anymore. I was trying to rebalance my way out of it.”

Part of what I found genuinely interesting: Bacillus subtilis produces a natural compound called fengycin, and researchers — including NIH-supported work — have been studying how it interacts with the signaling that Staphylococcus aureus uses. I want to be careful here, because I’m not a doctor and this isn’t medical advice: this is an area researchers are actively studying, not a claim about what any product does for you. But it was enough to convince me the microbiome angle deserved a real shot.

Here’s the research that reframed the whole problem for me:

The Protocol I Followed

Here’s the honest version: I didn’t run this as three tidy, separate stages. I ran all three at once — Remove, Repair, and Restore, together, across three fronts: my skin, my gut, and my environment. What actually changed over the weeks was the intensity. I started heavy and finished light — blunt and aggressive in the first week or two, then slowly easing off the harsh stuff and leaning into rebuilding. This is what I personally did — not a prescription, and everyone’s situation is different.

The cheat sheet — everything I did, on one grid:

How it actually unfolded — start heavy, end light

Of the three fronts, the gut was the biggest lever by far. I think of it as the headquarters — everything else seems to take its cues from what’s happening there.

What Changed

I set out to solve one problem: my skin. What I didn’t expect was how much else shifted along the way. Less bloating. More energy throughout the day. Better stamina on the mats, later into hard rounds. I felt like a new man — and honestly, most of that came from cleaning up my gut, not disinfecting I put on my skin.

I want to be clear this is my personal experience, not a promise of what you’ll feel. But it’s exactly why the gut piece — supporting a healthy gut, everyday digestion, and normal immune function — became the center of what I built next.

The Invitation

The skin routine, the diet changes, the fasting, the time outdoors — those were all things I could piece together myself. The one part that was hardest to get right, and stay consistent with, was reliably reintroducing Bacillus subtilis into my gut in a way that actually held up to my training schedule, travel, and everything else.

That’s why I created Spöretz MB40 — to hand grapplers the “inside” half of this equation in one shelf-stable capsule. It’s the piece of my own protocol I wanted to make simple for the next person going through what I went through.

These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.