Healing + Human Potential
Heal Your Gut to Boost Mood, Energy + Focus: The Science You Need to Know | EP 84
Tue, 15 Apr 2025
Could your gut be the real reason you’re tired, foggy, or inflamed? In this episode, we explore the surprising ways your gut health affects your mood, energy, focus, and even long-term inflammation. We unpack the connection between food and emotional wellbeing, how certain eating habits may unknowingly fuel autoimmune issues, and what it really takes to support your microbiome. You'll also hear about the difference between probiotics and fermented foods, why fiber matters more than protein, and how food quality—not calories—can shift your health from the inside out. To help us understand this better, I’m joined by Dr. Tim Spector, a leading researcher, author, and co-founder of the ZOE nutrition project. Tim shares the latest science on gut health, his thoughts on GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic, and the practical tools we can use to support our bodies daily. Whether you’re new to gut health or already deep in your wellness journey, this conversation offers real takeaways you can try right away. === GUEST LINKS ZOE podcast: https://link.chtbl.com/Zm1aRZXU ZOE.com/learn === Have you watched our previous episode titled The Most Powerful 10 Min Meditation: Who Am I? Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/gtZPLZoZX-Q ==== Alyssa Nobriga International, LLC - Disclaimer This podcast is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. It is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, professional coach, psychotherapist, or any other qualified professional. We shall in no event be held liable to any party for any reason arising directly or indirectly for the use or interpretation of the information presented in this video. Copyright 2023, Alyssa Nobriga International, LLC - All rights reserved. === Want 3 Life-Changing Tools you can use on yourself (or your clients) from inside our Accredited Coaching Certification? Click here to get them for Free: https://www.alyssanobriga.com/tools 🎉 === Website: alyssanobriga.com Instagram: @alyssanobriga TikTok - @alyssanobriga Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/6b5s2xbA2d3pETSvYBZ9YR Apple Podcast - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/healing-human-potential/id1705626495
Chapter 1: What are GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic and their effects on health?
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.
Chapter 2: How does gut health influence mood, energy, and inflammation?
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.
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.
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.
Chapter 3: What practical steps can I take to improve my gut microbiome?
What are some grounded or practical ways to make it easy for people to incorporate 30 different plants a week?
Well, what I do is...
Welcome back to the Healing and Human Potential podcast, where today we're going to break down the truth about gut health, what foods can really help you thrive, as well as Ozempic, and if coffee is good for you, we're also going to touch in on alcohol, all the practical ways to help you live more optimally and healthy.
Our guest today, Dr. Tim Spector, is a world-renowned epidemiologist and best-selling author transforming the way we see food and the microbiome. And so whether you're new to the gut health conversation or you're looking to deepen it, today's conversation is going to inspire you with practical things you can do to elevate your energy, your mood, and your overall health. So happy to have you here.
Thanks for being here, Tim. I wanted to kind of dive in to talk about Ozempic because I know this is a really popular topic right now. And I'm curious specifically your thoughts on it in general, but also how it may support our mental and gut health.
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.
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.
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
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.
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Chapter 4: How does coffee support the microbiome and overall health?
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.
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.
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.
Yeah, be interesting to keep finding out and watching that. And I also know that you talk about how coffee supports the microbiome. And I know you're a big fan of that. And I would love to hear a little bit more about that. I personally can't have coffee. My body doesn't break down whatever the gene is that would have it break down. So I'll use dark chocolate.
And so anything you want to plug about dark chocolate being good for you, I'm happy to hear it. But what's your experience or what's the research share about coffee and microbiome?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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Chapter 5: What should we know about probiotics versus fermented foods?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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Chapter 6: How can I easily incorporate 30 different plants into my weekly diet?
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
We're trying to build people's habits so that they're moving in that direction.
Yeah. And for people that are like 14 hours of not eating, you can slowly work your way towards that. I just got off a call with my doctor who I was doing more like 17. And she was based on my hormones was saying to cut it back to more like 12 to 14. So it's good to listen to our bodies and, and to see, but those habits, I think we, I do stop getting hungry after a while, or you have tea and,
and really give your gut a break, essentially.
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.
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Chapter 7: What is the connection between gut health and autoimmune thyroid disease?
Chapter 8: What habits support long-term gut health and overall wellbeing?
No, I love it. I love it. And I feel like it's becoming more and more popular and I think for good reason. And so I want to hear all about how we can be educated and learn about our body and all the different links. So we'll unpack that here. In terms of coffee and emotional wellbeing, what are you seeing in terms of correlation?
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.
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...
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.
Yeah, I noticed that maca, the root, feels like it's almost revving my engine in a deep way, whereas caffeine can feel wiry, more surface and anxious producing for my body. And so just testing different things out, I think is helpful, but I love caffeine. the research you're finding with the microbiome.
And I think a lot of people are going to be excited to hear that coffee does support their microbiome. And I also know that you talk about eating clean and the quality of food in your books. What should we be eating? How can we be more educated about what to eat for our health?
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.
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.
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.
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