Dr. Tim Spector
Appearances
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
We always say as MPG it's the biggest breakthrough in my medical career. It has the chance to really save hundreds of millions of lives. The benefits outweigh the risks for people who are obese or have strong reasons for diabetic control to take it. Anyone who's a practicing doctor realizes people who can take it regularly massively reduce their risk of death. heart disease, cancer.
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
I'm not talking about reducing calories, but just compressing it so that you give your gut a rest overnight at least 14 hours is the optimum. But try and do over 12, and it doesn't matter if you don't do it every single day. What's important in all of these rules is that you do it 80% of the time, but you do it for... you can maintain it for years. And that's really what we're trying to build.
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
We're trying to build people's habits so that they're moving in that direction.
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
We did a huge study and about a third of people hated it. So anyone listening, just because some people get on with it doesn't mean everyone does. We're all very individual. And the key is to try it, try these things, but don't beat yourself up if it's not for you. There are lots of different approaches to health.
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
There are certain... I mean, getting for high numbers of microbes, but particularly those with a rich variety of them. So... Most people know, say, yogurts will have typically around three or four, and most of them are just artificially added by the manufacturer. And if they've got too much sugar in them, you could kill off the microbes so that they're not working.
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
So obviously the purity of the product is also important. But I'm a big fan of things that have got like over 20 or 30 varieties of microbe in them, such as the kimchi's.
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
the kombuchas and a new class called tibicos or water kefir which is you know is quite a flexible way of eating these things so but you know they're all good and I think the key is not to get obsessed with one it's to try a small amount of lots of them and try and incorporate
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
them into your regular meals as well in ways we haven't done before so adding yogurt you know onto the side of your plate if you're having a spicy dish or mixing it you know kefir into a curry you know adding sauerkraut to salads you know having kimchi with your cheese you know these things are and
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
in my cookbook there's various ideas we came up with of ways you can introduce it regularly into into your diet so i think it's being a bit more innovative it's not saying i must just sit and you know have my shots otherwise you know i can't go to work um it's trying to in addition to your uh your meals to make them more appetizing i think the whole point is can we make
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
your food and drink more interesting. Um, but yeah, I, so, but I'm a big fan of kombuchas. Uh, you know, I love them and, um, there's lots of ways to have your ferments.
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
Well, what I do is, um, I start, it's always good if it's breakfast, you can get a lot of them in. So that would be, you generally have a full fat Greek yogurt. I have a mixer with dairy, milk, kefir. And I would have, I add a jar, what I call the diversity jar of nuts and seeds. And these are mixed nuts and seeds. And so that often gives me eight to 10 plants because they're different ones.
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
Okay, well, we're diving into the deep end. We're diving right in. You don't mince your words. Okay, let's talk about GLP-1 type drugs, because we always say a Zempig, but actually hardly anyone uses a Zempig now, but it's that big family, and there's about 20 of these drugs now being in development.
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
Each type of seed, you can find all kinds of these things. So that's an easy way. And you add a few frozen berries in there. You've got 10 to 12 plants on a Monday morning. That's pretty good. You don't have to do much else to get up to your 30. It's adding a teaspoon of mixed spices to your dish. That's been shown in clinical trials to actually improve your gut microbiome.
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
So some of these concentrated spices and herbs, you don't need very much of them to have a real impact. So it's about adding more to your plate. It's about adding different colors. So you might... get those Persian carrots that are purple and add those or your different colored eggplants. They all count as different plants for your gut because the chemicals are different.
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
So I think once you get into the habit, it's not that hard. And what is hard is I noticed when I was traveling in the US, if you're away from home, it's pretty tough. So that's why we came up with a a prebiotic supplement called Daily 30, which is 30 – it's actually 34 freeze-dried plants, including seaweed and eight different types of mushroom.
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
It gives you that rich variety of things you can't always get, and you could sprinkle that on top of your peanut butter on toast or on your avocado or – I like it on my yogurt. And that's an easy way to get you not only five grams of fiber extra a day, but you're also getting in a very unprocessed way this variety of real freeze-dried plants and fruits.
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
Yeah, probiotics are always difficult because clinical trials show that it can work in certain disease situations. They've never shown they can prevent anything. So taking them as a sort of preventive has never been shown to be much good, but it's clear that they do work in many clinical situations. And, for example, in depression,
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
Quite a few studies have shown they can have effects that are nearly as good as antidepressants, sometimes more. But so can a gut-friendly diet. So I think we should be, first of all, always thinking of what can I do through diet alone?
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
So I think it's the biggest breakthrough in my medical career, and it has the chance to really save – hundreds of millions of lives. So it's not a trivial thing to knock it. I know a lot of doctors and scientists are a bit, you know, black or white on the issue. You know, it's either great or you should avoid it at all costs.
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
And whether that probiotic should be given as part of a kimchi prescription and a kombucha one, where you're getting 20, 30 different types of microbe, as opposed to trying to select one of those probiotic ones, which may or may not suit the individual, because we have... incredibly different gut microbiomes. So we only share about 20% of our microbes with each other.
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
So picking off and off the shelf probiotic with say two or three strains is not gonna work for everybody. So until we start out, really get to grips with personalizing this, I think, I personally prefer using fermented food as my medicine rather than these probiotics. But it's an evolving field. I think the industry is getting better and they're starting to do proper studies in that area.
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
So once something comes on that's amazing, I'm happy to embrace it because I think we might need all the tools we've got in order to treat some of these problems. Mm-hmm.
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
But I think anyone who's a practicing doctor, as I am, realizes the importance and people who can take it regularly, as in these trials over five years, massively reduce their risk of death, heart disease, cancer, even dementia, Parkinson's disease, autoimmune diseases, reduces inflammation. It has effects way beyond even just the weight reduction as well. But the caveat is that so far the
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
Autoimmune thyroid disease is one of the commonest autoimmune diseases. And I used to be a rheumatologist, so I used to see a lot of crossover of people who had thyroid antibodies and then would present, say, with rheumatoid arthritis or something else. So it increases your predisposition, and it is predominantly in females. But it's the whole family of disease.
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
I don't see them as very different. There's some reason that it turns into some people have a gut colitis, others arthritis, others it attacks the thyroid. But in all of them, there is a gut connection. And that is because most of the immune system, 70% of the immune cells are in the gut. And clearly, they are getting some abnormal signals from the gut microbiome or
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
It's probably a two-way passage, so the immune cells might also be sending out chemicals, disrupting your gut microbiome. And I think we're now much closer to realizing what's going on, that we inherit genes that give us a predisposition to these problems. But we never had as many cases until the last 30 years when something's happened and we're passing these thresholds.
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
And that's why many more people are getting it. Luckily, they're getting it more mildly. So in the past, when I was... Seeing patients 30 years ago, rheumatoid arthritis was rarer, but much more severe. Now it's commoner, but generally milder. And the same, I think, is true for thyroid disease. So there's definitely a connection.
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
And I think no doctors are really addressing is how everyone should, with these immune conditions, be first trying to sort out their gut and get their gut microbiome in the best place possible. Because it acts as a brake on the inflammation.
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
So if you can send those clear messages of calm from your gut microbes by feeding the right thing, your gut microbes are essentially little chemical factories. They're pharmacies. They're like compound pharmacies producing all kinds of things that you didn't know you needed. And your immune system uses those as signals. And the more it gets, the calmer it is.
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
And if it's not getting those signals because you've been on a diet of junk food or you've had all kinds of highly processed foods irritating it and irritating the gut lining, then your body thinks it's under attack, and then that stimulates your body to start attacking itself.
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
And I think that's an emerging theory here, that if we can control the inflammation in our guts, then a whole of our immune system, whether it's attacking your thyroid or your knee joint, is going to be better controlled. And I think...
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
We see this all the time, and it's why in many of these studies where we're changing people's gut microbiomes, one of the first things we notice people when they report back to us is their fatigue and energy levels are improved.
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
And as anyone knows, with an autoimmune disease, one of the first things they notice is how hard it is to get out of the bed in the mornings, how that inflammation slows you down, you get a bit of brain fog, all these other things that are associated. But we can definitely improve that with diet. And This is relatively new.
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
If you said this 10 years ago, people would have just said you're a quack, you're a crazy alternative medicine guy. But now the science is catching up and people are listening. But doctors aren't very good at asking the right questions. So they don't generally say, well, what's your energy level like?
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
But that's the first thing that changes when you improve your gut microbes and you improve your diet. And we've seen that in our ZOE trials recently. or the ZOE program and also with fermented foods and with the daily 30, the thing we all have in common is they're all improving the gut microbes and the first thing you see
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
Well, you're right. There may be none, so there may be no way to tell, but you've got to really sort of focus in on knowing your body. One is transit time and think how long it is from eating to when everything passes through you. And the closer that is to We think between 14 and 18 hours, the more likely you are to have a good gut health.
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
The benefits outweigh the risks for people who are obese, who have a body mass index over 30 or have strong reasons for diabetic control to take it. And it has additional benefits on gambling, drug addiction, smoking, and alcohol. So it's like, wow, this thing does everything, okay? But... Side effect profiles are such that 1 in 1,000 people have serious side effects and end up in hospital.
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
You don't want to have bloating or constipation and diarrhea, particularly after meals. That would be a sign that it's irritated. Having some heartburn at night is a sign that things aren't perfect either. It's quite hard though to know that, but if you combine that with feelings of tiredness and you notice after certain meals how it really affects you, I think that's important.
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
But certainly a lot of patients with autoimmune disease do end up with constipation or... really irregular bowel movements. So there's just no consistency in what's going on. And that's a sign that things aren't good. If they need laxatives or, you know, it's a sign you're really not healthy. And you should be going at least once a day to the toilet. It just means you're not getting enough fiber.
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
And 90% of Americans are deficient in fiber. So even if you're better than average, you're still not likely to be hitting the fiber targets. And that's probably because all the promotion at the moment is for hitting your protein targets. Yeah. I mean, you know, in the US, you know, last month, I couldn't believe how much protein advertising is out there. It's like unbelievable. It's a lot.
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
The hype over protein. And you think, well... No one's protein deficient. The average American has twice as much protein as they need, and yet nearly everyone's deficient in fiber. Who's fighting for fiber? So hopefully you'll fight for fiber, and anyone with any immune problems should be fighting for fiber because...
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
That just in itself is anti-inflammatory and protein doesn't do a thing for your immune system, you know, unless you're in a desperate starvation state. So, yeah, it's focusing on the important things that you can do something about, I think is really important.
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
We're just about to publish a paper about what defines good gut health. And we used to think it was about diversity and just purely counting the number of different microbes. And that's what most gut tests do. But we now know that there are 100 microbes that are related both to the food you eat, so they change, and they're also related to your health outcomes.
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
And it turns out that about a third of them are new. They don't even have names. It just shows you how fast this field is moving. And what we've shown is that as you increase the number of good microbes, you squeeze out the bad ones. So I don't think we need a specific diet to get rid of the bad ones other than to crowd them out
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
by really feeding properly those good microbes with everything they need so that there's no spare nutrients left for the bad guys because they tend to feed off when there's spare sugars around when there aren't enough good guys, so they're not mopping it all up super efficiently.
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
And this allows space for the bad guys to grow, and they like sugars and spare fats and things like this the good guys can't deal with. So I think that's a really important concept. So whatever it takes to improve your good microbes, which again comes back crucially to this diversity. So
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
a lot of people changing their diet they say oh i can't eat too much fiber it makes me bloated you know i've got to just stick to my beige food or whatever it is so realizing you don't have need large quantities of anything you need small quantities of lots of different things Some people say, oh, I gave up beans because they gave me too much gas.
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
Well, again, it's about cutting down the quantities of that to tiny amounts and building it up so that you can build up those good microbes. So small portions of variety. And if you're really struggling, then you might want to add in things like that prebiotic mix I was talking about. If you then layer in the fermented foods as well, that's another way that you can stimulate
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
And quite a few, you know, it varies, but, you know, it's somewhere between 1 in 6 and 1 in 10 will have some side unpleasant side effects that mean that they get vomiting or nausea and quite a few find it hard to keep going. And of course, most of the people in the US are getting it from compound pharmacies or online without any supervision. And
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
the good guys to improve. And we've seen those changes in our studies as well. And yeah, there's no magic bullet. Again, it's giving your gut a rest if you can, not late night snacking particularly, and avoiding antibiotics. Nothing we haven't talked about. The average American takes three or four times as many antibiotics as the average Scandinavian.
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
The amount of antibiotics used dropped dramatically during the pandemic. So, and, you know, People survived. So that's a real damaging factor to your good guys. So keep any course down to a minimum. Take fermented foods around the time you're taking it is another useful tip as well. Yeah, so I don't think there's anything specific.
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
Mood and food are very tightly linked and the second biggest collection of nerves outside the brain is in our gut. We believe that quite a lot of anxiety and depression is actually caused by what's going on in your gut. Probiotics can have effects that are nearly as good as antidepressants, sometimes more. But so can a gut-friendly diet.
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
that you need to do and everyone needs to find out what they can eat and avoid, you know, the worst highly processed foods. They are going to have really negative effects. So things like the emulsifiers, the artificial sweeteners, they can really impact your gut microbes in a bad way. So stick to whole foods if you possibly can.
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
Well, good quality fats. Okay. So remove bad – so realize that all fats are not equal and that we shouldn't demonize fats and we certainly shouldn't be demonizing seed oils just because they're seed oils. There's no hard evidence that in clinical trials, you know, they do you any harm and they're certainly better than eating beef tallow, which is being promoted politically now.
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
But, you know, extra virgin olive oil – You know, massive Spanish studies for eight years show that people who have that regularly, you know, cooking with it, having it on salads, get less of all these kinds of diseases. So, yeah, so it's trying to feed the good guys, squeeze the bad guys out, not focus on these diseases. this concept of detoxing, because I think that's the big difference.
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
I'm sure most people who come on here will be talking about ways to get rid of the toxins from your body and et cetera. So I don't believe in any of that. You know, we've got kidneys and liver, which have had millions of years to evolve to be the perfect detox vehicles. Yeah. We want to stop getting more toxins in us. Definitely. You know, if you want to have organic foods and, and,
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
Avoid glyphosate and all these kind of things that can irritate your immune system. But it's about really building up the good guys. And that's what the science is telling us, that that's really important. And I think that's a positive message. It makes it sort of easier for people.
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
to go out and, you know, enjoy richer foods because a lot of, a lot of my patients I remember when I, you know, years ago were frightened of eating because they'd read, oh, you know, eggplants are going to make me worse. I can't have tomatoes. They're terrible, you know, and it's, it's, it's, it's a terrible thing to be frightened of food.
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
Clearly, if it has the supervision of a nutritional therapist or a sort of health professional, you're going to do much better and still stay on it. So many people are trying it in the U.S. Many people are seeing if they can come off it because it's too expensive, and then they generally fail and have side effects. So that's the sort of playing field.
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
And I want to make sure that people aren't, there really is nothing out there that people shouldn't be eating in small, moderate amounts. What are your thoughts about the food sensitivity tests? Most of them are rubbish, is the quick answer. When you speak to allergy consultants, they'll tell you, yeah, most of them are not repeatable. There's no common standard.
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
And the only way to do it is a real food challenge test. where you actually challenge someone in a clinical setting. So again, that whole industry is there just often ends up fright, making people frightened of foods. And if they realize that, you know, it's the opposite, you would just want to have more of everything. But if you have everything on your, you know,
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
by definition, you're not gonna have too much of anything.
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
There is certainly a large gut-brain connection that is equally important. So the second biggest collection of nerves outside the brain is in our gut as well. So you've got the immune system there, you've got the nervous system there. And just like we're talking about the immune system, it's also interacting with the nervous system. And if you've got inflammation in your gut,
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
those signals are going to go straight to your brain. And we believe that quite a lot of anxiety and depression is actually caused by what's going on in your gut because your brain is getting the wrong signals. It thinks it's under, you know, it's ill and it should be shutting down and, you know, going back to bed and, you know, not going out with your friends and, and isolating.
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
So there's increasing evidence that there's a crucial two-way link between the brain and the gut and that food, as I said, in these clinical trials has been shown to actually work as well as antidepressants. So mood and food are very tightly linked. And I say in all our studies, Mood is the first thing that changes.
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
So if anyone is considering changing their diet, do try and think, what's my mood like? What's my energy level like? How does this make me feel? And this can be as soon as three hours after a meal. We've shown that some people, like myself, are rather sensitive to sugar spikes. So if you have a high-carb meal, so say, you know,
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
traditional granola breakfast, which we used to be told was healthy, or oats. You might, three hours later, notice a bit of a mood dip. You're fatigued, you're not feeling great, and you end up searching out maybe more chocolate or carbs, or a sugar matcha in McDonald's, whatever it is. And just listen to yourself and say, well, maybe that was my breakfast that did that.
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
And there's also a lot of people are taking it who don't really need it. They're just – what I call a little bit chubby, and they just want to look good in the gym in a few weeks. And for those people, I think there is a risk, which we don't really know about yet.
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
It's trying to be mindful about what you're eating and try and listen to your body. I mean, obviously, you know, we do offer people things like these glucose monitors and all this technology and apps and things that will tell you what to do. But it's good to start with the basics and see if you can pick up these clues yourself. for free before doing all that.
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
And it's not something I ever thought was possible, you know, 10 years ago. So I'm very much learning what makes me feel good and bad. And there's no doubt that what I eat definitely affects my mood. And my mood has definitely improved since I quite radically changed my diet.
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
When you say I'm pro-dairy, I write my books. These are the epidemiological studies on dairy. I'd like to draw a difference between fermented dairy and non-fermented dairy. Okay, so milk and cream, there's no evidence they are good for you. I like to say that. So I would say I'm neutral on dairy. You're really not going to be any worse off if you don't have non-fermented dairy in your life.
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
And I'm not impressed by the studies of raw milk. although it does have some microbes in it, they're a bit random, the ones that are, and no real evidence, unless you live on a farm, that you're healthier, but it might be just living on a farm makes you healthier rather than milk. So I wouldn't spend huge amounts of money on raw milk, especially as there's a risk of illness.
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
And the data around drinking milk for women – There's no evidence it helps their bone health now. That was a myth probably propagated by the industry. It doesn't help fractures, although I used to tell my patients it did because that was the common belief. Excess of it will give you a bit too much saturated fat.
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
Now, the evidence for things like cheese eating and yogurt, which are dairy products, is actually more beneficial. So the science does support they are useful and that maybe just they're good carriers of microbes that are helping our inner gut. But there are probably limits to it. I mean, I probably have too much cheese myself. I'm a bit of an addict. And that does contain saturated fat.
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
And people should be aware this is quite a drug that really does affect your whole body, and it particularly affects bits of your brain. which is, I think, what you're getting at is it affects the appetite centers in the brain, but that also can affect your addiction centers, which may, as well as good stuff in stopping your smoking and drinking, may just subtly change your personality so that
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
So, you know, you have to place some balance there. But, yeah, so that's it. Fermented dairy, fine. Non-fermented, take it or leave it. And if you don't like it or your lactose intolerant like most of the world is, yeah, don't eat cow's breast milk. Sometimes we forget where it comes from, but yeah, it is kind of weird that we do that. It's pretty terrible for the planet as well.
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
Yeah, it is dropping in most countries, actually, and there's a generational change as well. So I think it does depend on a lot of this is driven by young people rather than older people giving up necessarily. The evidence, I mean, certainly for gut health, Alcohol is generally bad for gut health. We did some studies on this. There are a couple of exceptions.
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
We did find that drinking one to two glasses of red wine had a beneficial effect on your gut health, whereas drinking white wine or spirits or beer did not. There's probably a sweet spot where just drinking a little bit of it is a bit like drinking concentrated grape skins. And we know that they have very high levels of polyphenols.
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
And it's even more than grape juice because the fermenting process actually increases the number of these helpful defense chemicals. I've been criticized for actually telling people to drink. If they want alcohol, go for something that is healthier for your gut.
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
And that might explain the so-called French paradox of red wine drinkers having less heart disease, which does seem to be fairly consistent in the literature. So overall, it's bad for your health. But if you're interested in heart health and you feel you have, you know, you...
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
you like a drink or it's the social norm where you are in order to get you out socially that's also important then red wine is the thing to go for and if you can't get that artisan cider So apple cider, it's fermented. If it's the real stuff rather than fake ones, we'll have the apple peel on it. And when that's fermented, that's another healthy source. So, yeah, but you're right.
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
I think we're going to sing... There's some really good low alcohol alternatives on the market now, certainly big in Europe, in Germany and Spain, all kinds of really good low alcohol beers. And, of course, as kombucha and tibicos are getting more common, people are drinking these as alternatives, and it's great to see it in New York and L.A. at least.
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
you are getting these often many restaurants having these as choices. So I think people do want something else other than water or something really sweet. And that's where alcohol filled the gap. But if we can fill it with other things, they'll be much healthier for us. Yeah.
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
Well, if you're aware that it's probably making the US gut even worse than the average European gut. In our studies so far, we've seen much worse levels of good to bad bugs, less good bugs in the US than in the UK. You could say that is diet related. We don't know how much that is, you know,
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
the fats and the sugars and the lack of fiber, or it's specifically these, these chemicals and these additives, but certainly we should be phasing these out. And, you know, it's still a problem in Europe. It's not like to think, you know, there's, there's some, you know, we live in a magical land of, uh, milk and honey where, you know, everyone's healthy.
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
If, like me, you're a bit of an entrepreneur, you don't mind taking some risks, it's possible that this might just dial it down a bit so that you're not quite the same person personality-wise as you were. Now, like all traits, they come with gambling or risk-taking. There's always a good and a bad side, but it just might change people in ways they hadn't thought.
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
Um, obesity rates are virtually the same in the UK. Now we're, we're catching up the U S so, um, uh, And we have nearly as much of this highly processed foods as they do in the US. But yeah, I think in every country, we should be outlawing these additives, calling them out, calling for research.
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
And neither in Europe or in the US does any manufacturer have to show that these additives are not harmful to gut health. And you think about it, you've got these emulsifiers that glue your microbes together and they stick onto your gut lining, cause leakiness.
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
You've got artificial sweeteners which disrupt your gut microbes and make them send off really weird signals, increasing your risk of diabetes. And these other ones that may potentially lead to cancers. And I just think we've been far too soft on the companies doing this.
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
And it's good to see it start finally being mentioned in the US because we've been talking about it in the UK really for at least five years now. And it's interesting it took a political campaign to start the discussion. But we need to get much more wary about all these things, but also not get rid of every single processing of food because they're not all harmful.
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
And that's one reason we've come up with this tool But I think from May, people in the US will be able to use in a beta version. They can download. And I think we'd love to see how your listeners get on with that when they go to a store and they can actually get these five grades of processing and in terms of risk.
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
So, you know, they look at an aisle, they can see different breads, and you should have the full range. They all look the same because they make the most terrible claims. They all say they're healthy, they're full of vitamins, they're packed with protein, you know, all this nonsense.
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
But actually, they can be really different in terms of the ingredients and how they affect you, your overall health and your gut health. And also... The other factor that hasn't been featured before about these foods is they're constructed to make you overeat them, the so-called hyperpalatability.
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
I don't know if you've heard of that term, but it's what the food chemists use to mix the fats, the sugars, and the salt to trick your brain into just overeating it. And so that's another feature we've put in there, as well as how quickly it dissolves in your mouth so you don't even notice you're eating it in front of the TV. You just finished a whole bag of chips without...
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
you know, even realizing you've eaten anything. So it's, you know, we're trying to combat the really clever guys who have been developing these foods for 50 years now with some devices to help poor old consumers.
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
Well, this is all through this science and nutrition company, Zoe, that I co-founded eight years ago that's been doing really well in the UK, and we're bringing it to the US. There's various levels of it. So for free, we have a podcast called Zoe Science and Nutrition, which just invites scientists on to talk about nutrition, which is doing very well. We've got...
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
newsletters and other free things, just you can subscribe to the ZEI website on that.
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
So I'd get people to think twice about taking it if they don't really need it.
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
Oh, it's great to chat. See you in person soon, I hope.
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
The experts I've seen who've been treating like 20,000 people on this aren't seeing anything clear because they've been dealing mainly with the obese patients. The people who don't really need it are not going to their medical practitioners. So we're not really getting good data on on what's happening. So that's why it's a really unclear picture at the moment.
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
But if you do suffer from an addiction, then it's probably one of the best ways to get off alcohol or drugs at the moment that we have. And so for those people, that personality change is a bonus. All I'm saying is there's a red flag around this other idea It could long-term change you, but there just isn't any hard data that I've been able to find about that.
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
And there's hardly even any stuff on how it affects your gut microbes. We do know that gut microbes can produce small amounts of this gut hormone, GLP-1 themselves. and we do naturally produce it. So some of these microbes might enhance it. And there's many companies claiming they've got products that naturally produce it. Most of these are in tiny amounts that probably don't have any real effect.
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
We should be, first of all, always thinking of what can I do through diet alone. If we can control the inflammation in our guts, then the whole of our immune system, whether it's attacking your thyroid or your knee joint, is going to be better controlled.
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
We don't know of any major disturbance to the gut on regular users as yet, but the numbers studied have been tiny. And this is something that With my company, Zoe, we want to look at, because we think we've got probably a couple of thousand GLP-1 users who have done the Zoe nutritional program, that we could look at their gut microbes.
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
And so that's an ongoing project, which I think will be really fascinating to see what what other effects there are of this drug. Because it seems to do much more than just weight, you know, and the effect on the immune system, et cetera, seems to be quite marked.
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
Well, coffee is a great example of sort of nutritional fads and myths. So over the last 30 years, it's been seen as, you know, the most evil thing you can drink and suddenly it's had a revival and suddenly it's the best thing you can drink. I've seen this in my career and I've published on it. I published a paper recently over about 30 years ago saying it caused cancer.
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
It didn't, by the way, but it was a typical sort of scare story that I'm not proud of today. But now we definitely know from the epidemiology that regular coffee drinkers have less cancer and less heart disease than people who do drink, that drink, say, tea. And not that tea is unhealthy, but there seems to be something extra in the coffee. And we wondered why that was.
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
No doctors are really addressing how everyone with these immune conditions should get their gut microbiome in the best place possible because it acts as a brake on the inflammation.
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
And we think it's related not to the caffeine because you get similar effects with decaffeinated coffee. So I don't know whether you... you can have decaf coffee or not. We did discover that there's one microbe in the guts. So we studied about 100,000 people's gut microbes in the US and the UK from the ZOE studies. And there's this one particular microbe that's very fussy, only drinks coffee.
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
And it's called laucinobacter. named after a Dr. Lawson. And it's specialized and it's waiting around, hanging around, it's probably in you in tiny amounts, just waiting for you to have a drink of coffee and then it's going to explode and reproduce, have babies and become a really big deal.
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
And we think some of the chemicals that it produces as a side effect are healthy for your heart and the rest of your body. So it's a great example of how we need to feed our gut microbes in a very diverse way because they're such super specialists that they're not going to be content with just having kale salad every day. They want a big variety.
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
And so this is just the tip of the iceberg of what we're going to be able to find, all these new microbes that we didn't know about, all these specialists. And this is very much part of our ongoing research. Now we've got a database of, Of 250,000 people we can study with all their data information, all their health data and all their gut microbes.
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
And these are all the ZOE members that have consented to do research as well. So it's really a really cool, exciting time to be studying the gut microbes. So sorry if I get overexcited by it all.
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
I've not seen anything in our data on that. No real difference between tea and coffee. And of course it's difficult because tea has some benefits. particularly green tea may be as powerful as coffee. And the data do suggest that, although it's mainly in Asian green tea drinkers rather than in sort of Europeans or Americans. Matcha looks, it's like you're having a bit of a revival.
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
Well, what I do is...
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
Saw quite a lot of matcha in LA recently, although usually it's with so much vanilla and sugar, I can't drink it. But yeah, Very hard to find unsugared matcha. But if you do, that's concentrated green tea. And we think the evidence is building that that's very high in these defense polyphenols, which are good for your gut microbes. And it's also got...
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
some caffeine, but other calming chemicals in there. So we're gonna hopefully look at that next and see if we can find if there's a particular matcha microbe that likes it and is converting the green tea into these good chemicals for your body and your immune system. So for people like you who don't like coffee, I would say try matcha as a health drink that's also quite tasty.
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
As a general principle, you should start thinking about the quality of your food, not the calories or the quantity. And that's a really major step. And that's something I talk about in my books. And that's what the Zoe principle is. We do not discuss calories because calorie counting really doesn't work for the vast majority of people.
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
And it distracts you from the quality of the food and encourages big food to sell you crappy products. So yeah, I think we ought to be banning the C word, really, from nutrition. And think about quality, not calories. I think generally thinking about food from the point of view of your gut microbes is a really helpful thing to do.
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
So we've always thought of food as fuel, as if we were some empty furnace. just burning it up and using it and seeing what was left over. And I think that is very much the wrong analogy was if we think of ourselves as, you know, we're gardeners and what fertilizer we put in is really important for our inner garden.
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
And so this is why things like the diversity of the plants you put in the, you know, getting, and we've come up with this slogan about 30 plants a week. which is based on some old research we did about 10 years ago that said that was the sweet spot. It's probably not exactly 30, but it sort of works as an idea.
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
And of course, plants are nuts, seeds, herbs, spices, different colored plants, they all count. It's not as hard as you think to to get the 30. It's about eating the rainbow, getting the polyphenols in. We used to not know why the rainbow was good, but now we know it's these defense chemicals that actually act as fuel for your gut microbes.
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
So your body can't process them, but your microbes can, the majority anyway. And the other one is eating regular fermented foods that feeds your garden. And increasing studies show that having at least three portions a day within a week can actually improve your immune system.
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
And we did a big study with Zoe of 10,000 citizen scientists who volunteered, who weren't on fermented foods, said, I'll try it for a couple of weeks, taking at least three portions. And over 50% of them got significant improvements in mood and energy and appetite within a week. So I think these are real effects that everyone can try. Then it's, you know, just thinking about cutting out those
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
highly processed foods, you know, and with, you know, how to spot them. Well, we've got a new score out. We're just about to publish and roll out in a beta of a free app that should help people. say what they are, but we're surrounded by them in the US. But not all processed foods are bad.
Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
So I think we have to work out what the worst offenders are and what still the jury's out on, because you can't easily get rid of 60% of all food. It's just not practical. So it's that. And then finally, I think another tip is time-restricted eating, which I'm a big fan of. Changing when you eat your meals.