The Microbiome Doctor: Doctors Were Wrong! The 3 Foods You Should Eat For Perfect Gut Health!

Transcript from https://podmenti.com/t/14f2cdbb0ce5e7c5

Studies show but if you are flossing you can reduce your risk of dementia by nearly half.
Which is quite impressive. So I started to research the brain much more and it made me realise this link with the brain and the gut is absolutely crucial and how that influences many things in our brain. For example, things like depression, mood changes, fatigue and energy. But for 40 years we've been going down the wrong path. We've got so distracted by treating the
Brain is something so different to the rest of the body. So what do we do about it if we want to have optimally healthy brains? So Professor Tim Spector is one of the top one hundred most cited scientists worldwide, and he's back to reveal the critical role our gut plays with our physical and mental health, our cognition, and the prevention of chronic disease.
we can dramatically improve our lives and our health just by making the right food choices. And I've got eight rules for gut health which work for all health. So first thing, pivot your protein, then there's quality not calories. The whole idea of assessing food by calories is wrong.
Calorie restricted diets have been shown for the vast majority of people not to work, your hunger signals go up and hunger is the main driver of obesity. And we'll get into the other ones.
And what about coffee? So drinking between two and five cups of coffee reduces your risk of heart disease by about twenty five percent. And then what do you think of almonds? So there's lots of studies showing they're good for your cognition and mood. And what about your views on GLP ones like a ZenPeg? I think from a public health perspective, they're gonna transform medicine and we
ought to be taken much more seriously, but I've got two real worries about them. My f first worry is that
Just give me thirty seconds of your time.
Two things I wanted to say. The first thing is a huge thank you for listening and tuning into the show week after week. It means the world to all of us, and this really is a dream that we absolutely never had and couldn't have imagined getting to this place.
But secondly, it's a dream where we feel like we're only just getting started.
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Thank you.
Uh
Professor Tim Specter.
Who is um who's this lovely
Lady.
And how does she tie into the work you're focused on?
Right now.
That's my lovely mum.
June.
Hm.
is still with us, age ninety three.
Uh.
For the last seven years has been
And uh
In a home in London.
after suffering a stroke and uh then developing dementia.
And so um
Yeah, that's
Um changed
Yeah.
s some of my views on life and uh she was
Really
pro uh euthanasia and signed every paper possible that if this ever happened to a you know
she would be able to end her life, but unfortunately that didn't come true and under UK law
It's n not possible to

Capability.
And mobility very early.
Still there, but she doesn't no longer recognises me.
And um

It's it's a reminder of
You know our potential
future life and uh how
So many so many people in the
are gonna end up with dementia.
That wasn't the case.
Fifty. If I can do something to
reverse this epidemic of dementia.
Then that's really
motivating for me and in a way one reason why I've
started
to research the brain much more than I I've done in the past.
So
Is dementia.
Increasing
Or is it
That we know of it more now. So we're
Better at diagnosing it.
It's increasing for a number of reasons. So
Some of it is the age demographic, so we're living longer.
But we know.
Living healthier.
So uh
Health span ha hasn't really increased but a lot.
lifespan has, we're good at keeping
Elder people.
alive longer. That's definitely true, but there's also s stats to show that it is increasing even when you take that into account.
So that's the same.
More people are developing.
uh dimension than ever before, even when you account for the demographics and those other changes. So
It is
a major worry and I think it's one of the
The major fears that
All of us have.
You know, obviously you've got cancer is
one fear, but I think the other really bad one is ending up with dementia because nearly everyone knows somebody
With dementia.
Did this inspire you to go get your own brain scanned?
Yes.
I'd had
As you know, problems with my brain before. I'd had a mini stroke back in two thousand eleven.
And
Never really worked out the causes of that.
I knew I had some white spots in my
Brain.
I wanted to see if
they were still there, if there are any signs of that.
And at the same time I wanted
to get a check up to see was I likely
To end up.
Like my mother.
Or not? And did I have the genetic form of the disease?
Was it
Straight for Alzheimer's or was it more the vascular type that my mother had?
Well probably has.

And so
Yeah.
Motivated out of
My cure my medical curiosity.
And partly for
Self interest.
I went to this specialized clinic.
In London that
Does these
Dementia screens.
So I know if I had the risk genes for Alzheimer's, which luckily I don't, um, but I do have
Bad genes for diabetes and heart disease.
Which predispose you to the vascular side of things. What's vascular dementia?
There's several types of dementia, but the two main ones are Alzheimer's.
where you get these uh protein folds in the brain, you get local inflammation, these protein tangles.
And
That then causes these
damage to the bits of the brain that's a very specific
type of dementia, then you get more generalized dementia which is
usually called vascular dementia, where
You're just getting clogging up of
the arteries supplying the brain.
Just like you do in the heart.
And
Yeah.
Knocks off.
other bits of the brain.
uh in a slightly more random way than happens uh without time, as slightly less predictable. But

uh all dementia is this vascular type.
I'm predisposed to it'cause after my
this weird episode in two thousand eleven, my blood pressure went up.
So anyone with high blood pressure.
generally has slightly stiffer arteries than
Most people and that
impacts the arteries in your brain, so you are slightly more at risk.
And with these.
Diabetes genes that I've got.
Thanks to my grandmother.
I am
more at risk of vascular dementia.
And so what I wanted to do was learn about that in order to
optimise all the things I could do to postpone it.
Or prevent it.
As much as possible.
Over the last five years or so.
Your interest in the brain has increased.
Wha what is the the the variance in your views of the brain?
Now versus five years ago before you started doing research and getting interested in it?
I think I saw the brain as a rather distinct organ.
The
uh was the domain of psychiatry and
That wasn't really part of the major
picture and certainly wasn't within my domain of expertise.
I think I s still believe in this.

difference between the mind and the brain, the mind and the body.
uh the the these two separate entities and you've got this m barrier between them. This
Blood brain barrier.
that was really like an iron curtain. So I I was interested in it, but
I didn't realise this huge connection
I've now discovered really that
um has really excited me.
And I think
The thing that
Triggered it was some of our own experiments.
Which
Happened a bit by chance.
So when w we started Zoe, we did a number of trials.
And
we gave our participants app so they could report.
how they felt.
And
Every study we did, we started getting back these incredible results of people
saying when they w when they started the Zoe diet, for example.
The first thing they noticed was their mood and energy improved and and their hunger uh got less.
And that was before any blood changes, before any gut changes. And so initially we slightly discounted it, but it it happened in every study we did. We'd looked to the menopause.
And again.

Most dramatic change when
people w were improving their gut health through
Food.
with menopausal symptoms was on was on mood and energy. Because originally I'm a rheumatologist, uh and was really interested in inflammation.
I'd never put that connection
between what was inflammation in the body and in your joints
with what was going on in your brain. And suddenly
the latest science when I'm going away and doing my reading.
Is
Making it all so m so much clearer. It's
It's really become.
you know, this this ide new idea of things like depression, things like
mood changes, things like fatigue and energy, which I hadn't really thought about
As
in a way a a malfunction of the brain.
responding the wrong way to signals from the rest of the body.
But it it suddenly all comes.
into focus about
how holistic the whole system is and how really the brain is just another organ.
And
This link with the gut.
is absolutely crucial.
because that's where it gets most of its information from.
Yeah.
Vagus nerve that goes from our
gut to our brain, but the longest nerve in the body, and eighty percent of the signals go
Gut to brain. Only twenty percent go.
Brain to gut.
So all these things together have just
Made me realise how important
what going into our gut is, our diet is, and how that influences many things in our brain that I
Didn't
put together before.
I don't think most of the
most of the medical world have put together before and it
We've all put the brain on a pedestal, I should say, you know? We we think it's this some this unique thing that's driving our bodies, but
Actually it's not. It's just
responding to them just like any other organ.
It made me reflect on the days that I've had like good and bad moods and
How
how much it's linked to my diet.
In the preceding couple of days.
Like how I feel. Uh if I ex sleep is such a big exacerbating factor in how I feel.
But if I'm slept and I still don't feel good, it's typically linked, I think, to
Something I've been eating.
Or something I've eaten very recently, maybe in the last twenty four hours. So when you talk about how there's this holistic picture and how my brain might be I think I can't remember the words you use, but you but it sounded like you said
My brain is receiving signals from other parts of my body and it's kinda malfunctioning based on those signals, which is causing depression, anxiety, bad moods, whatever.
That I think is really interesting. Because
People think of mood as a separate thing. We don't think of mood connected to my gut. No, it's it's your own fault. You're in a bad mood. Why are you in a bad mood? Something happened.
Yeah. Externally, so someone cut you off in traffic or whatever it might be.
All these studies, you know, we've got four studies now
Where we're changing people's diets.
And they're going to be able to do it.
They've been on generally bad diets, we've moved into good diets.
So
mood and ener particular energy levels uh
the first thing they notice they're improving. And they never linked
Just like you, their mood and energy levels.
With things like that.
It was just inherent. They thought
Oh, it's just'cause I'm
you know, my life shit or whatever it is.
An extreme example is some families
We've been working with uh
doing a a channel four series at the moment.
What not to eat and we
visit for families.
And they're got terrible diets.
And we
Transform them, give them up.
Gut friendly.
Makeover diet.
Look at them after six weeks.
The first thing they all notice is their mood.
Um
Energy is
dramatically increased. They were s napping all the time. They were s asleep all the time during the day.
What were they eating?
Crap food.
highly processed crap food and
Snacking late at night.
Bars of chocolate.

chicken nuggets, hot noodles, rubbish food, right? So these were
More than
Worse than your average, but
still there's millions of people like that doing this. And they had no clue that it was linked.
To
Them feeling terrible and tired all the time. And
Again, the first thing that improved
was what was going on in their brains and they suddenly felt alert again. And
Once people realise there's this connection, then in a way
You'd have this feedback loop to say
Okay, I'm not gonna eat this shit food.
You know, because I know it's making me feel so sick.
But until you make that connection, you're not gonna know.
you'll just be in this constant state saying, Well, you know
I'm just overweight, that's why I'm tired.
Uh or
I'm not exercising, that's why I'm tired.
There's a bit of a vicious cycle here with
Eating something bad.
Then being low energy and sleeping all day.
Not feeling good.
So
You eat something bad.
And the cycle continues.'Cause if I don't feel good, I'm I probably wanna eat a chocolate bar.
In our Zoe studies we found that people who
Had a bad night's sleep.
desperately craved some sugary crap in the morning, right? It's the first you don't go for a healthy breakfast.
It's like there's some little evil thing in your brain saying, um, okay, uh I need a quick fix. I don't care about the rest of the day. Just get me through the next hour.
Do you know what that I I had someone pause it on my podcast that um
That was because
your body's basically under a form of stress. So from an evolutionary perspective, if if you're waking up in the middle of the night for some reason or you weren't
Sleeping properly.
It might be because you were under threat, so your brain wants energy, so
There are a lot of studies now that stress
Which we thought of as a sort of external
psychological event is actually a physiological one and is actually driving inflammation.
It's directly affecting your immune system, which is then sending these signals to your brain to change your behaviour.
And this I think is

What seems to be happening
you know, in depression.
What I've been finding out is that
It's
Detecting
a change in the immune system, it's switching on to the stress mode.
And the stress mode then triggers these different behaviors in your brain.
And very often
It's not
you know, real stress. I mean, most of the stresses we get it every day are not like
our ancestors had.
Uh, we're not being chased by wild animals or um being burnt out of our village, you know. So the
Yeah.
And
What really interested me was this whole link between
What happens when uh you have a vaccination?
During Zoe we looked at a million people's responses to the
If you remember the
The Pfizer and uh vaccine and the SK vaccine.
And
What was really interesting was that uh
people were actually depressed during that time.
So you had about twenty four hours of depression.
Which was mimicking.
um a more constant threat. And it this suddenly brought home this idea that you can trigger depression.
Through a little shift in your immune system.
Really uh growing theory about
people who have long term depression is that
these their immune changes are switched on, so that they're getting the equivalent of
This constant
tickling of the immune system by a vaccine.
So
That
To me is it was
Was a really
Important thing'cause I I I have vaccines. I have regular
vaccines and big believer in vaccines, but they do make you feel a little bit down. That makes sense'cause
You're
blood tests will show a a spike in your proteins for inflammation.
your immune system's kicking in, that sends signals to your brain.
your brain says, Okay, I looks like I've got an illness coming here.
that illness behavior in some people then gets carried on.
For months or years.
And
This is now developing this whole new theory of
Of why

Isn't it?
The
old theory of it's just due to a chemical imbalance. It's actually

Responding
Abnormally to a
you know, a normal response. It's it thinks it's under attack. Your brain thinks it's under attack. It should then shut down and protect you.
This I find fascinating that we're
now linking so much to the immune system.
And it's
the immune basis of
things of mental and brain diseases is
becoming incredibly important. Uh I'm sure you've talked on the podcast a lot about inflammatoring and
The role.
Oh.
Controlling.
The immune system.
Because
If your immune system's out of control you you
inflammation levels are higher, your body can't repair itself, so
Aging happens faster in the brain.
All of these things are pointing to information being crucial to everything, but particularly
in all aspects of brain health.
And
When I went and looked you can really find
Yeah.
The immune system has a role in
Every brain disease they've ever looked at.
And yet
We've missed it because we've been so obsessed with

the way that Prozac works.
By it just being about
serotonin uh or dopamine.
And
For forty years we've been dou going down the wrong path and missing this
holistic view that
Actually it's it's about
Inflammation.
Paired with metabolism,'cause the other big player here is
And the reason a lot of people get dementia is
Blood sugar is not well controlled and the
The energy supply to the brain is not well controlled.
Two things for me of
Mm.
transform my view of of brain health and
I used to study genetics, as you know, and
It was always interesting that in
Um
When we looked at twins.
Which were usually very similar for most things. When we looked at
um brain diseases, there was very little similarity in the twins. So the genetic commandment was always quite small.
Most of them were
Really low level.
uh what we call heritability.
And there was a massive study in um
Sweden they looked at.
several million sibling pairs.
And so
Looked at all their
mental health or brain diseases, I prefer to call them.
And
There was no g gene that really
Came out.
Even in
several million people that explain these diseases other than a a a general tendency
to get any type of brain disease.
So
They called you know
this like factor P. Um if you had this
general susceptibility, you could get any disease, but that could be mania, depression, bipolar, ADHD, it could be Alzheimer's, it could be schizophrenia.
Which
which suddenly s changes your whole view of these m these diseases. We've said these are individual, um, diseases that should always be looked at separately. And if you start thinking of this as
The brain is a
An organ just like anything else, like it was the liver.
It's okay.
we talk about liver disease, you know, how do you prevent liver disease?
We never talk about that in brain disease. We just say, Okay, you gotta t talk about manic
depression differently to uh ADHD or personality disorder or
Epilepsy or whatever it is, but
It turns out that not only have those
Similar genes, but
really similar risk factors as well.
I've heard you say that you
Thing
Parkinson's disease starts in the gut.
Has inflammation in the gut.
Yeah, that's a great um
Example of how
My view of these
Disease is changing.
There's really good epidemiology data now.
Um endemiology data.
Epidemiology data is
Data in large populations.
Um
So you study the cause of disease by studying populations. That's essentially what epidemiology is.
And
What these studies have shown is that
If you follow it.
Susceptible people.
Um
And find out who at the end
ended up with Parkinson's disease.
You will see that
But ninety percent of people who end up with Parkinson's disease had some gut problems ten years before.
And
You might say, Okay, well
might not be related, might be two separate things, but
They've actually
found the same protein changes in the brains in people with Parkinson disease
This uh particular
protein that gets misfolded.
It's a bit equivalent to Alzheimer's, but it's it's separate a separate type of protein, alpha synuclein, and it gets folded and you get this
characteristic thing you can see.
on a postmortem called a a Louis Body, but
It's the protein folding that's important. And if you look in the gut
Not only do these people have constipation and bloating and problems ten years before, really sluggish
uh intestine, but they have the same proteins
that are misfolded that you can find in their gut.
And
They think that it takes ten years for these proteins to go slowly up the vagus nerve.
into the brain and then it causes the problem there. So this is the
The latest.
uh theory behind Parkinson's disease that
It actually starts in the gut.
And it's related to inflammation in the gut.
So these proteins start folding when
The gut is not happy.
Which means that you could potentially prevent

by a gut friendly diet.
It looks like it's the evidence is
building that you know that's gonna be pretty concrete soon.
If that's true, then you should maybe think what other diseases
Might have that.
origin there that we
Um
really don't understand. What about multiple sclerosis that might
happened there first.
And it
Really starts to bring
you know, this obscure oh these brain disease back into the domain of
the rest of the body and what's going on there and these metabolic problems.
Yeah.
Diabetes is
the number one risk factor for so many of these conditions as well.
So
it like if you got tattoo diabetes, you're like four times as more likely to have a brain disease.
Not only depression, but also bipolar schizophrenia.
Epilepsy, all of these ones. So
Clearly they're linked.
But this

What you're eating.
What what your immune system is doing.
has this amazing knock on effect.
So what do we do about it? What does the average person do about it? You know,'cause the average you know what the average
diet looks like in the Western world.
Um if we want to have
optimally healthy brains and avoid dementia Parkinson's and some of these other
Disorders that are linked to the gut.
What is the most important thing?
the listener right now should be thinking about and doing.
Well I like to think we've got
Yeah.
I've got a a list that's getting longer, but it it
I've got the eight rules for gut health, which
Pretty much work.
For all health.
We
Yeah, to treat the brain it's no really
different to treating the rest to be a body.
If you treat that well, you're gonna be fine.
So
First thing.
is to be mindful of what you're eating. Don't just
But
Any old shit in your mouth, you know? I mean stop for a bit saying is this
What's in it? Is it any good for me?
How's it gonna make me feel?
You mean checking labels and stuff?
Checky labels or even just
Taking a second to think, you know, gosh.
Yep.
Don't just
Blindly eat in front of the T V without
Thinking what you're eating, as we most of us do.
Second probably the the key thing is I think is to eat a diversity of plants.
Thirty plants a week.
These thirty plants.
give you the diversity of chemicals.
to act as fertilisers for as getting as many good bugs as you can hand into your system.
How can you explain that to someone that doesn't know much about the gut? When I'm talking about your gut, I'm talking about gut microbes. And there are
Forty to a hundred trillion of these guys
In your
mainly in a large intestine.
That
Uh
Yeah.
Mini pharmacies.
And
Mm.
There's
We have thousands of different species, all of which highly selected to eat only certain foods. There's one that only likes coffee, for example.
Called Lawsonobacter. A bug that only lacks coffee in my belly.
Just waiting for you to drink coffee. And when I drink coffee, what happens?
It uh has a party, has sex, has babies, multiplies, and then produces
certain chemicals in response by breaking down that coffee into other ingredients which might then
help your immune system and
Um in some way.
Explain why coffee is good for your heart.
So
You gotta imagine that you've got lots of bugs like that that are highly specific.
Waiting for you to have
Uh
Not eat coffee, but
you know, maybe it's seaweed, or maybe uh it's baobab, or maybe it's things you don't often have.
Uh so that we can
Expand our list of good bugs.
So if I stop eating
A particular
food like coffee. If I stop having coffee, will that bug die?
It
probably goes down to very s low levels.
Because action it was interesting is even if you stop drinking coffee, you're surrounded by coffee drinkers.
And
They're
Droplets of saliva and
Kisses and uh greetings mean that you'll be getting
Uh some of that.
Either those bugs themselves.
Or you'll be getting um some
bits of coffee in the air, a coffee aroma. Okay, so the bugs go up and down in population. Yes. So even in non coffee drinkers we do see tiny amounts of this uh this lowcinobacter.
Um but in countries that don't drink coffee at all.
There are a few African countries, for example, where it doesn't exist in tribes, you don't see it at all.
Um so it's that's but the
I think it's important to imagine your
It's a bit like having a rare animal, you know.
y you've got a feed in your zoo.
You don't wanna give them all the same food, you've gotta give them this diversity so that
All the rare animals can
And we know that.
The more
Good bugs you've got.
the better your immune system, the more you dampen inflammation.
the more you can prevent all these problems that we're we're seeing. So our
Our aim is to build up the good bugs.
And
the more you build them up, they squash out the bad bugs, the ones that like eating the burgers and the the bad food and the and the
Terrible quality fats.
And the artificial
Substances. So
You're squashing them out by starving them and you do that by
feeding them properly.
That's the concept, if that makes sense. And on that point of coffee.
Doesn't it restrict blood flow to your brain?
No.
Not as far as I know.
Oh yeah.
Um
I'm talking about
I know about coffee at the epidemiological level, so they've been
Multiple studies, like I was saying.
I mean coffee drinkers, non coffee drinkers, seeing what happens to them.
Twenty, thirty years later.
And
Drinking
Between two and five cups of coffee reduces your risk of heart disease by about twenty five percent.
So
There may be other studies showing it does something

But generally
Everything I've seen is beneficial. I've not seen anything negative.
Although there are some people who react to caffeine badly, so there's always a
a personalised element to it.
Sleep disruption and stuff.
Yes. So you you might be a a metabolizer. It doesn't metabolize quickly in you, so that caffeine is hanging around longer. So they're the only
Um
Can it make you more anxious?
Um I think can make some people more anxious, yes.
Um that's
Uh that's why things like matcha are are better than coffee.
'Cause they have a an extra chemical in there that can calm you down. So like anything it
And any food, it's all personalised.
And so when we talk about epidemiology, we're talking about
The average person.
Um
Doesn't mean there aren't.
aren't exceptions. So I'm not saying that everybody in the world needs to have coffee, but
Coffee used to be demonised.
As
Something that would give you heart attacks and arrhythmias, and in fact the opposite.
Is true.
epidemiologic speed you you can actually you get less
heart abnormalities, uh arrhythmia's when you drink coffee. For reasons we
still to understand.
So the first point of the eight was mindful being mindful about what you eat.
Second was
Yeah.
eat uh thirty different plants and that's
That was the basis of our
Oh, Zoe product the uh Daily Thirty, which has thirty four
Uh mainly freeze dried.
Uh hold plants in it.
And we've recently
added some more. So we added some seaweed, some algae and uh some kombucha in there. So
They're rare ingredients and we've got seven different types of mushroom that you wouldn't normally have.
It's worth me saying that I'm an investor in Zoe. Um and
Let me take a look. So
You just you take this out and you sprinkle it on top of your food typically.
Yes, you add it to food, um and it's
Six.
It's different.
to most of the other sort of supplements you might see. Uh
It's not instead of food.
It looks more like food than
Nice.
uh o of the of the common supplements out there that look like green powders.
We we did a big trial of this.
With about three hundred and forty people.
Comparing it to a probiotic
And a um a dummy one.
And over six weeks.
You get really good.
quite dramatic improvements in your gut.
uh microbes with with eating this. So the
You really push up the good bugs.

About
Several times more than you would get just by having a a traditional probiotic.
So this fertilizer approach.
Uh does seem to work.
This is the study where we also showed the improvements in mood after a few days.
Which um
Yeah, it surprised me.
I wasn't
even thinking about that when we wro we we plan the study.
So the key reported findings in that study were a gut microbiome improvement.
an average increase of five points in there Zoe Cup Microbiome score.
Digestive systems, seventy percent of people reported improvements in overall digestive systems.
Symptoms.
Um
And it increased fullness by forty one point five percent.
Satisfaction by twenty one point six percent.
and energy by forty three point three percent and reduced hunger and desire to eat versus
The meal alone.
About half reported increased energy and forty five percent record.
reported improved happiness in the main study.
So we weren't expecting that. That was that was my my point really on these.
'Cause we thought it would just be gut it would like okay.
Do I get
Do I go to the toilet more often? Is it improving my gut microbes?
And so it was a real bonus to see these.
These brain effects.
And did you do stool tests on those people to see the the change in the bugs in their stomach over that period? Was it six weeks?
It was around six weeks, yeah.
What did you see?
Changing that
The gut bugs.
So we've got a new scoring method for gut bugs which we published
Last month in in in nature.
And
So we used to talk about diversity.
And
in previous podcasts I think we've talked about diversity, which is
the number of different species.
But we've got a better way of looking at that now, which is to take
Um

change with diet that everybody's got.
'Cause we're all different. It's very hard to compare your your bugs with my bugs,'cause w we're only share twenty percent.
So this looks at a hundred common bugs that we've both got, fifty good and fifty bad.
And
What we want in an intervention is to see the
The good bugs are associated with good diet and good health outcomes, good blood tests.
I
Uh going up.
the bad bugs associated with inflammation.
Uh poor diets.
and uh bad health outcomes uh going down. And that's exactly what we saw
We saw it in pr a change in roughly forty of these microbes with
the prebiotic the daily thirty.
Whereas with the probiotic, which we know works from other studies, we s show a change in about four or five of the bugs.
Okay.
So they both worked, but
Yeah.
the prebartic was working better than the probiotic.
Which has sort of changed my mind about
What's more powerful?
So prebiotic being what and probiotic being what?
Prebotic is like a fertiliser for gut microbes. It's the it's giving them food.
Yeah. So that and i in an indiscriminate way because we're giving out a wide variety of foods.
In these thirty four plants.
Each of them has a
hundreds of chemicals. So there's thousands of different things for them to feed on.

was a probiotic
We used Lactobacillus ramnosus, which is a well known one that's been studied
you know, hundred of ti in hundreds of trials, it's a live microbe that lives
generally in in foods like yogurt and things like this.
In a concentrated form in a capsule.
You give that
And
It's
improved uh the gut microbiome but much less than the food
Probotic actually just puts bugs in there.
It put bugs in there and we used to think it was like a seed.
Uh so the uh it was the s you know, so fertilizers and maybe seeds.
But we now know that.
that bug will never really seed in your in your gut microbiome.
And so the science is and our thinking has changed. We think the probiotic is is really tickling
your immune system as it's going down.
Okay. So it's
Probably working higher up in the the small intestine, which is um
Further up in the gut.
Where where is Where is the gut?
Yeah, so most people if you ask
People to point to the gut, they they always think of their stomach.
Yeah.
Uh yeah. Well that's not your stomach, you see, that's
That's your they're the i intestines. So your your stomach is up here.
Um
Your liver.
If you imagine we've got uh a body, hair, you mouth
Food goes in there.
through the esophagus which is
uh a tube that leads
To the stomach.
And this is the stomach here, which is highly acidic, and that leads into the duodenum through a uh a little valve and that
Is we've
food starts getting mushed around into little balls and then it goes into the small intestine here, which is
badly named because the small intestine
is really the largest bit of the gut.
And it's
Endless coils as
Of uh
guts, there are lots of crypts, there's little nooks and crannies everywhere. And so the surface area is really huge. It's it's several tennis courts if you laid it out, just one uh
uh in one human. And that's because that's where most of the nutrients get absorbed.
Uh they get extracted from the food and absorbed that way so that all the
trace elements and things, we're recycling. We're like a recycling factory. And then from the small intestine, it then goes into the large intestine, which is also called the colon. And that's where most of the gut microbes are.

So ninety nine percent of the gut microbes are
In that final part.
The large intestine.
Which uh is
a a c a couple of meters long and varies widely between people and
This is the spot.
Where fiber
uh goes. Things that hasn't been digested in the early part of the the gut is and that's
Because the microbes mainly feed off fibre.
And so that's where they do
the good they convert that fiber.
into products such as short chain fatty acids, which are the
really beneficial chemicals that are good for our immune system. And
It's important to realise that across both the small and the large intestine you've got
The
Huge amounts of nerves.
You've got what's called the enteric
nervous system, which is our second brain.
And
Is it
It was actually the first brain to be formed. So when we were little embryos
Uh we start it as a little tube.
And
the nervous system that formed around our intestine was actually the first bit first brain of our body and in a way we developed the second one on our head as a oh a bit of an afterthought.
Which is quite fun way of thinking about it. But just shows how important
The nerves are
in our in our gut to our the way we function. And as we were talking earlier about this this connection between the two.
And there's also immune cells, so seventy percent of our immune cells
Uh
uh in the gut, most of them in in the large intestine, but also in the small intestine. So
Th our immune system is here and a huge amount of our nervous system is here.
Why
I'm presumably the the bugs are all through the body.
They're everywhere. So they're also in your Yeah, so I should point out
We're covered in bugs.
So every bit of the human body
uh has uh some bugs in it.
place where we have them is in our mouth, so the oral microbiome.
in our in our saliva and in our
teeth and uh gums and that's why
Cool.
Uh hygiene
If you're not flossing properly, you're double the risk of getting dementia as well, interestingly,'cause there's a a real link between
microbes here that if they're eating plaque and other s stuff that you're leaving around in your gums

That
creates an environment where nasty microbes that love inflammation live.
And
for reasons we don't know, they seem to pass into from
From your
mouth into your brain and
trigger inflammation in the brain which then
uh increase your risk of dementia. So you're not flossing.
Yes, this is really new science showing that
Just how important these
Getting the right bugs.
in the right place and avoiding the ones who are in the wrong place.
Really is.
Why do we need these bugs?
Why didn't evolution design us so that we could just do all this stuff without the need of these
Little
Workers.
It's it seems super weird to me.
That you know, you think of the human body as being this one organism, but actually it's

Millions and millions and millions of organisms. Well, you've got a sort of human centric view of the world, Steem Sure.
We we evolve from microbes.
We are one. We we used to be one.
We used to be one.
And
Um
It it turns out that
Most of our body is
Uh
remnants of microbes. Microbes obviously fuse to cause uh to cause uh
Human cells.
So that was the whole origin of
of how uh multicellular creatures came together, these single celled microbes

To do that, others stayed as single cells.
there was always this link between the single celled guys
And they're multicellular.
Ancestors if you like.
And so
As we
co evolved into more complicated beings, the the two were always together.
And it turned out that it's not a
Again as
Like w as we're formed as embryos
the gut is the first thing that you know this this cylinder this tube
is the first thing that comes out.
Um
of the design system and it's designed to have microbes in it.
that serve a crucial purpose.
In
training our immune system.
to recognize what's out what's harmful and what's beneficial and
It's also
shown to be crucial for our brain development.
It is fascinating when we start thinking about our origins and think of the you know
We essentially start as microbes'cause
Also we don't
Think of our body, w we've always
historically thought of you know, God's creation of this body had nothing to do with anything else. We were the masters of the universe.
I think it's quite humbling to realise that
So much of us comes
And
I learned something recently that was that also blew me away is that
All ourselves have these
Uh
powerhouses in them called mitochondria.
It turns out they do much more than
Just supply batteries.
For the south they
They're fighting inflammation, they're important for gene expression, they're good for metabolism.
And it turns out
The origin of these things is
Little microbes that got trapped.
In our bodies.
They are essentially
Uh
Microbes that
We're good at making creating energy.
And
Um w at some point in our distant past we fused
um are multicellular.
Um
microbes that were g were going around
doing stuff. They said all we could do is some more energy and so
by chance they fused with these energy
Microbes.
And
slowly and slowly became incorporated into our bodies so that we now have
These mitochondria all are our bodies which whose ancestors are also
Uh microbes. And we have them in every cell of our body.
Yes, we do. And they're turning out to be quite
crucial as well in in brain health.
Do you do do you spend much time wondering?
Or have there been periods in your life where you've wondered about the meaning of all of this and
Why there's living organisms.'Cause it doesn't appear
To be
A great need for living organisms.
You know, you could just have rocks.
And water.
on these planets. I don't know why you need
Humans.
necessarily in as it relates to
the contribution we make to the um
The environment.
Well
I think as soon as you had life.
whether it's plant life
I mean you're you're thinking perhaps of animal life, but
Yeah.
Things like lichen.
On rocks.
Forms of life.
And

It needed to
Get in energy f
nutrients from the rock and then they
for some reason just wanted to survive. And I and I think that's the
the point that life is about
Mm.
Getting enough nutrients so you can
Uh
Keeping or passed.
you know, your genes onto someone else. It's this uh that concept. Once that was started, maybe it was lichen, everything else came from that. And that could have just been a chance event.
So I but I
Yeah, it's always humpling humbling to think that, you know, we've probably come back from some
Lowly point like this.
Uh as we move from
emerge from rocks and and water.
But um
Uh yeah I
Philosophy's not my strong suit, but I I I just get so much pleasure from finding new facts.
Uh
That are all around us. And I think it's fascinating that we've spent
So long as humans looking up at the stars.
Where's
Looking inside us.
uh at things like microbes and their origin.
is to me far more exciting.
And maybe explanatory.
As to
Like you know, we're looking at the stars in South France. Yeah, we look at the stars, so where do we come from? Wh what about the big bang, all this kind of stuff. Whereas actually studying
What's in our cells and
Where do they come from?
we could learn a h a hell of a lot more about ourselves.
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So that was the second point of the eight, which is eat thirty plants.

And uh
So day thirty.
Is a is a easy way to do that and a tasty way to do that.
What's the third one?
I go for eat eat fermented foods.
And try and get
Three portions of ferments.
In your diet.
Uh every day. Every day.
And
I wouldn't have said this three years ago.
Because the sci wasn't
really strong enough to support
This but
a study three years ago by uh a group in Stanford of twenty eight people
showed giving they gave them five portions a day
for about a month and showed
that you can get a reduction in blood inflammation levels about twenty five percent.
in that time.
compared to a fiber diet.
And
That
I mean, it blew me away'cause this w this was the first really good study in this verse, because there've been lots of studies, but they're not good quality. Suddenly
Someone doing daily bloods.
You know, they were looked at twenty
Odd proteins in the blood.
And
Suddenly you've got this link between a a food
and directly affecting inflammation in the blood, which
As we've been talking about, has
Big knock on effects on the brain and the rest of the body. That's like kimchi and stuff like that. Fermented food is any food that's been transformed by microbes.
into something better, which means it
it it tastes better, it's m more complex, it lasts longer.
So you don't need a fridge. That's why our ancestors did it.
And it it's been
chemically transformed and is generally more nut nutritious. Give me some examples. So um
You're good.
From milk.
All you're doing is adding
Uh Zero Fat.
Zero fat Greek yogurt.
Oh, I never have zero fat Greek yogurt. Why do you want to drink now?
I don't know, I just I was just No, uh No.
But that means it be yeah, heavily processed. You don't want that. But there's still good microbes in it.
And um
You know, all you're doing is transforming something rather average like milk, which
Adults don't really need it's not
Particularly beneficial milk.
And just by adding the microbes to it.
You make it something healthy for the r for the body and
That's not been shown by
Uh by these these kind of studies. What do you mean by what's what's wrong with this zero fat Greek yoga? It says zero fat, so that's
Sounds like it's
There's nothing well, we we need fat to live. So fat is good.
And
In fact that
Just uh a few days ago the USDA
have changed their
all their guidelines, which used to be about saying don't have fat and you and have low fat products, to saying actually fat is good, all that advice
We said in the past is wrong.
So wh why did they label things zero?
Because
public still believe they're healthy and the companies that make them
save money by calling it by having zero fat. They replace the fat with starchy artificially made
Um fillers, basically. So it's usually more sugary.
Uh by having zero fat in it.
But
If it's a zero fat, it's a sign it's unhealthy, you should avoid it.
So what are those fermented foods then you were going to say you said Well I'll should I just give you a quick list of all of them so people know what I'm talking about. So we've got yogurt.
We got
Cheese and virtually every cheese has live microbes except
American cheeses.
The more artisan
Um
bigger the number. Milk Cafe.
Which is like a super yoga.
Often has ten to twenty types of microbe in it. The krauts.
So I think of the four K. So we got
We've done cafe. The kraut is like a sauerkraut.
So we got fermented cabbage.
Cabbage is pretty boring on its own. You ferment it, the tastes are amazing, and it has these health benefits. Then you've got kimchi, which is a
A spicy
Uh crowd.
And the staple diet of Korea and their
Pretty healthy. And even a goat's got salt in it.
People who have kimchi have lower blood pressure than people that don't have kimchi.
And I love Kim China. I I hated it at first, but I'm now uh a real addict.
Then you've got kombuchas.
Um you see those in in most supermarkets and stores.
Uh that's fermented tea.
And
The good ones can have
thirty or forty of these. There's other another type, water cafe, which isn't as popular, but I think we're gonna see more of it. Tibicos is the other name for it.
It's grains with lots of microbes in it, a bit like
milk caffeir, but with fruit added.
And then you've got mis all the miso you get in Japan.
Me so soup.
Uh miso paste.
Tempe.
All the all these uh
Around the world there's
hundreds of different ferments in nearly every continent.
has their own type of ferment in Africa. There's all kinds of fermented beers and porridges.
And of course we got the these are the live ones, but they've also got lots of dead ferments.
Obviously bread is a dead ferment.
Then you've got
Wines and beers.
And
Interestingly.
Um
Mm.
Again, very new science.
Dead ferments.
actually have some health benefits.
So I used to be very
Dismissive of
uh products like kombuchas that you would see in in stores in America.
That say lightly pasturised.
And I'd say, Well, that's a load of rubbish.
But
It turns out that's the thing.
Even dead microbes.
When you do a randomized trial.
Have some benefit for the host.
You're looking a bit skeptical, but uh these against placebo uh
uh studies and there enough of them now that you
Uh definitely believe it. I know some of the researchers. They they they were surprised, but it's it's genuine. Why is that what's going on?
We think
Again
If you go back to the vaccine.
Um
discussion we w we were having.

Although it's not alive.
The microbes still has a cell wall.
And
It has proteins in the cell wall.
So it's like the debris of these
Dead bodies that you're ingesting.
We think they're tickling your immune cells as they go through the
Uh a small intestine.
Okay.
And
Mm.
It it's
It's giving a signal to your immune s system to calm down, reduce inflammation.
That's

this phenomenon is about. So
Live microbes are best.

Which are called
Post biotics.
Or zombie biotics.

Oh
Mm-hmm.
probably also good for you. So
I think all fermented foods, even those that you know
I
I would have dismissed three years ago are probably good for us.
And that's
really the best way to reduce your inflammation levels.
We did a big study in Zoe of
We asked nine thousand people.

who weren't taking ferments to try
and see how they get on taking three ferment a day, how do they feel?
I think
About three thousand dropped out.
Didn't fancy it.

But nearly six thousand continued and did
They
The two weeks.
taking it after a one week run in period.
And around half of them noticed improvements in mood.
energy.
And had less hunger.
Say
Anyone out there who hasn't tried?
I think it's a great
simple way to
Uh see what you can improve.
just by changing what you're eating and and going for some of these ferments that you might not have thought about.
What's number four? Number four is pivot your protein.
At the moment
Proteins.
All in the news. Everyone wants to have more protein. Big controversy about whether you need more.
Uh
Most studies showed ninety percent of us are getting enough protein.
probably doesn't do too much harm other than it's really hard to get lots of protein.
in your diet. And most people are focusing on eggs and me meat when they think about protein.
So what
I think
people should focus on is the many other sources of good quality protein like beans, like legumes, like mushrooms.
Yeah.
uh like uh whole grains like quinoa and po barley instead of rice. That if you're thinking about it
You can get your protein and get your fibre.
Because
Ninety percent of us are deficient in fibre and
If you want to look after your gut microbes.
you really need to uh be giving them the fibre, otherwise you're starving them just by having a a protein drink.
Next one, which one are we now to number five.
Is
Think
Quality not calories.
The whole idea of
Assessing food by
Calaris is wrong.
We've discussed this in the past. You should never really
Go for low calorie products.
You should go for ones that are whole foods, that uh have their initial structure in them.
Yeah.
uh have all those original nutrients. It's all
Focusing really on high quality foods that haven't been tampered with and why why not calories? Because
It's not a good way to assess food.
Uh calorie restricted diets have been shown
for the vast majority of people not to work.
And
We know
Particularly.
through GLP one drugs that
As you
restrict your your diet and calories, your hunger signals go up and
Hunger is the main driver of obesity.
So all you're doing is
losing some weight short term, long term it will bounce back as your as your body does that. So
Um calories should be ignored on any labels.
really you should be looking to get high quality food.
that supports your gut. And that's an important
Change in mindset.
For many people.
But
The next point is is is the crucial one which links to that, which is avoiding high risk processed foods.
Because
They

Damage your
your gut and your body in in in a number of ways.
The first obvious one is that they have lots of additives and chemicals to transform them into something edible.
And those ones.
Um
Things like
Emulsifiers, preservatives.
Uh
Gums.
Uh colourance, flavorings.
Artificial sweeteners.
Oh.
all things made by the food companies to
Check you.
body into thinking these are tasty and they often are.
But
They will damage your gut microbes who
in their billions of years of evolution have never come across these products'cause
They
Don't exist.
in nature in that form.
So like the serial bar I have here.
Yeah, so this has got um
Flavored fillings, whatever that means. Glucose syrup.
Glycerin.
Uh wheat, fruit, juice, concentrate
Vegetable fiber, natural flavourings.
Oatmeal.
And Sawyer.
Oh this one.
Doesn't look
Too bad.
Whatever I'm not quite sure how flavored filling is though. Flavoured filling.

Was that cornflakes or something? Cornflakes, yes. So they would be uh something I would regard as
uh highly processed
And uh
Probably yet.
a moderate risk.
Uh and Zoe we've created a new scale'cause in the past would have
grouped all of these together as the same, but I think
We now need to think of these as
Zero mild.
Moderate high risk.
Depending on whether they have them.
That that would be high risk.
Okay, because
This is designed by
Uh.
The people that make them.
It's got preservatives in it, that so this will be the same in a week's time, right? We can still be playing with it. It's not gonna change or get moldy.
Um it's got uh
Yeah.
It's uh got extra sugar in it.
It have the
Uh really.
Amount of salt in there probably and and sugar and
I got some fat in here.
It'll be hyper palatable.
Uh what does that mean?
That means that
You can eat a lot of it before you
Get
Four.
So it makes you overeat. For anyone in that country, we're talking about white bread, just normal white bread that you'd probably get in the supermarket. Yeah. And it's it's got a special structure that's different that also means that it it it takes very little chewing.
All right. So you put this in your mouth, you don't really have to chew it. It's like baby food.
Whereas you know, a real bread
made with high fiber, you you know, it takes
Several chews to get it down here.
There's lots of features of these foods that
Um alert you to them being
Uh unhealthy. So not only ingredients which are bad for your gut microbes and
Disrupt them. The additives.
Uh you've got the fact that it
Makes you overeat.
So
A lot of those potato snacks and things you get. They just dissolve in your mouth. They're designed
You can eat them so fast.
Is there a good bread?
Or preferable bread.
Yeah, there are. There's not many.
Things like rye breads and spelt bread.
Ideally sourdough.
Um
the German style breads, the you know the Scandinavian breads.
They're pretty good for you.
Because they still have the whole grain intact.
And that means it's got the nutrients.
Also means it's harder to eat them quickly.
And they fill you up.
These if you eat this bread
It just doesn't makes you hungrier.
I used to have this all the time when I was a a junior doctor.
Every ward had
Toasters and uh cheap
Bread.
Curtis of the NHS. And you eat them they're not going to be a
Give you a little kick, but you just feel just as hungry an hour later, having eaten, you know, four of them.
And I think this is the problem many people don't realise that this food is
is not only making them sick, making their gut microbes sick, but it it's actually making them overeaten.
Study show it makes you overeat by about
Twenty five percent.
Which

Including.
have gone through their life thinking
That because when they eat this stuff.
They get stomach pains.
And sometimes they have gas or they'll have like
I don't know.
Toilet related issues.
Um that they are gluten.
Free.
Like they are gluten intolerant or whatever.
I was one of those people. I thought'cause w if I eat this if I was to eat this piece of bread, I'd feel it for the next two days.
So I assumed I was gluten free.
But when I think we spoke last time you told me that almost nobody is gl is gluten intolerant.
T has a gluten. What's the term?
Well there's yeah, gluten intolerance.
Yeah.
But that that's not directly. I mean there are some
Uh but most people who think they are are not.
And
That's because generally
When you eat a sandwich.
in the US or the UK.
Uh
You're getting
Crack bread.
A terrible feeling.
uh all kinds of other additives and chemicals.
which are probably disagreeing with you. So when you give up
Eating sandwiches.
You might feel better.
So roughly up to thirty percent of people believe
Gluten is a problem for them, but only one percent actually need to
Strictly avoid it.
I think it's a great example of
We love to have a simple solution. So gluten came in, said right, everyone can think about gluten.
That's just
get rid of that and all our problems are solved.
R thinking w what are all the other things in a
In a
cheap bread sandwich that you might be reacting to. It also could be the emulsifier.
There is uh
gluing that bread together or is in the mayonnaise.
That you're having. Uh it could be
some of these uh colourants.
the uh you know making the bread white or cha making that sauce bright yellow that you might be
intolerant of.
B the more things that they these manufacturers add to these foods, the more likely there is one
It is
Disagreeing you with you.
and your favorite sandwich suddenly, you know, becomes your worst enemy. Because
You know
They're just created by m
brilliant scientists to all they care about is you find it irresistible and keep eating it.
If you eat the healthy stuff, you don't have these problems.
What about these these almonds? Um walnuts in there, so what do you think of almonds?
I love almonds. Um
Uh
They're good for you and lots of studies showing they're good for your
Cognition.
Even some mild effects on
Other aspects of brain health and uh
These are
Uh good for gut health.
They've got.
All kinds of really good fats.
in them. These omega threes and et cetera are i are in nuts. So
They're a fantastic snack that um do fill you up.
and generally recommend them. More data about walnuts than almonds for brain health.
That uh that I've read about. So there are you know studies of people take a lot of walnuts. They help. But I I think the idea
shouldn't be there's only one type of nut that you should eat that's gonna help your brain. We should
again go back to this concept of diversity. And so
mix nuts really are your best way of um
helping your your brain health by eating these things. And we used to demonise nuts because they had fat in it.
Snyd when I was
uh you know, twenty years ago, you can't have peanuts and nuts, they're really bad for your heart.
No we've totally reversed us. And I just think it
It just
Shows.
how much has changed in this field in in a in a relatively short time.
What's number seven? So that number six was avoid high risk processed foods.
Important when you're picking food to try and
Get as many colours.
on your plate as possible because that's a sign that they contain these chemicals called polyphenols. Natural colours.
Mm-hmm.
Yes. Yeah, exactly. Not the uh the blue colours you get uh that we really want to avoid, which
Are bad for you. So natural colours are
a sign that they these foods are good for you. So we're talking bright berries. We're talking raspberries, blackberries, uh strawberries, we're talking
Um
Rossololo lettuce, we're talking about uh cabbages that are purple.
Uh
We're talking really all those bright colours, because
They
contain chemicals that are from this family.
Broadly call the polyphenols.
Which act as
fuel for your gut microbes.
And
That allows them to then in turn.
Uh produce.
things like short chain fatty acids and and keeps them healthy.
So it's a sign from nature that
We're eating these these foods.
And it's a signal probably your ancestors knew.
And the other sign which we can't tell from looking at it, but
you we get to know is bitterness.
So bitter.
uh plants tend to be m much healthier than uh
That's the
Broccoli story.
That's um
Why extra virgin olive oil is so good for us.
Why uh
Coffee is also good, why?
uh red wine and and
uh dark chocolate.
It's p there's polyphenols in there.
But
Тому
really giving us our microbes a boost.
And the eighth one?
Last but not least.
Last but not least, give your gut a rest.
First.
Yes. So time restricted eating.
This has
been shown to help your uh gut recover.
in a proper circadian rhythm.
It's a bit like getting a good night's sleep for your gut.
So we can we all know the benefits of sleep for us, but we often disregard our gut.
Many people have a late night snack.
uh a kebab going home from the Pab or whatever it is
It's completely the wrong thing to do.
for your gut health.
Um overnight fast.
trying to restrict your eating time to uh ten hours.
really has been shown to have metabolic advantages for you.
Uh
And
Improves your gut lining so it
It's less likely to to leak and cause inflammation. And
Allows the cleaning team and your microbes to come out and
And clean up your gut.
The number of studies now.
um showing that it it does have these metabolic advantages. But
I'm not pushing it so hard these days'cause we did do a
mass another massive
A citizen science study was uh with over a hundred thousand people.
Doing this.
Um we asked them to do fourteen hour time restriction eating.
A third.
gave up. They said I I can't do this.
I feel hung too hungry all the time. I need to be snacking something like almonds.
Uh a third loved it.
And they're still doing it two years later. And a third was sort of Yeah, I'll do this sometimes. I feel better on it.
So I think there's a personalised element to it, but
Uh if you can do it.
It is really important. And I would urge even the people that find it tough.
If you can avoid that.
unhealthy late night snack. That can have a really big impact.
On your guard.
And your brain.
You know, every once in a while you come across a product that has such a huge impact on your life that you'd probably describe it as
A game changer, and I would say
For about thirty five to forty percent of my team.
They would currently describe this product that I have in front of me called Ketone IQ, which you can get at ketone.com.
as a game changer. But the reason I became a co owner of this company and the reason why they they now are a sponsor of this podcast is because
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Game changer.
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If there's anything we need, it is connection, especially in the world we're living in today. And that is exactly why we created these conversation cards because on this show, when I sit here with my guests and have those deep, intimate conversations, this remarkable thing happens time and time again. We feel
Deeply connected to each other. At the end of every episode, the guest I'm interviewing leaves a question for the next guest, and we've turned them into these.
Conversation cards. And we've added these twist cards to make your conversations even more interesting. And there are so many more twists along the way with the conversation cards. This is the brand new addition, and for the first time ever, I've added to the pack this gold card, which is an exclusive question from me, but I'm only putting the gold cards in the first.
Run of conversation cards. So get yours now before the limited edition gold cards are all gone. Head to the link in the description below.
You've become more open to keto in recent years.
Yeah.
Um and ke I'd say I'm keto curious. You're keto curious. What's made you keto curious?'Cause I don't think you I don't think you were very um
Keen on Keto before.
No, I think when we discussed it I was I was pretty anti it, you know.
But
Reading about the brain.
how important metabolism of the brain, brain energy is.

And doing more research. Uh has slightly changed my mind because
What we discovered is how amazing it is for childhood epilepsy.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
it is still used as
The main trainment for
uh drug resistant childhood epilepsy.
The keto diet. The keto diet.
So what for people who don't know what
what we're talking about here is y you're changing
Mm.
the energy supply of the brain from glucose
to keatan bodies.
Which is a switch that we've always had ever in evolutionary terms when we couldn't get food.
So after about
Two days.
Of not having food.
We've used up our glucose reserves. We've used it up from our
uh muscles
and you switch to this other form uh of energy.
And
It's a survival mechanism.
tends to do is reset the brain.
And so
In epilepsy, that's what they think. It's a bit of a
Uh
Like rebooting your computer.
Epilepsy's rather strange.
Because
And it used to be thought of as a
Mental illness.
As as I said.
Because you can get
Hallucinations, delusions.
Um it's associated with depression.
Mm.
All the same.
you can have all the same symptoms, you get all mental illnesses, interestingly.
And it can be cured by the by keto. So that made me
curious as to what else is going on. So in theory some of
the other mental health issues could be improved by ketos. At the moment there isn't
sufficient good evidence. There's lots of anecdotal stories.
Studies of seven patients.
Open label.
not convincing enough for me to say, let's do it.
But I think definitely worth
doing some real studies, but also suggesting
Even if you don't go as far as Keto, just
by improving the metabolism.
And
Yeah.
how the brain is getting its energy could be really important. I think um the interesting thing about the ketogenic diet
Um, as someone that kind of cycles in and out of it, I actually I showed you earlier I have this ketone monitor on my arm, which is monitoring my uh
ketone levels at all times and connected to my phone.
Um
I think the interesting thing is in the in the world we live in
Where there's a lot of food noise, as they call it.
Everywhere you go there's temptation to eat something bad. You're going down the high street, there's
Takeaways and
Junk food stores and stuff like that.
What I think Keto
Does which you're probably never gonna see in a study, or I don't know if you would
Is
It helps the craving.
It like dampens the food noise.
So this is part of why I think cycling in and out of it's quite useful for me because it means
I have m several moments in the year
where my cravings for like
Djunct food, some of which we have on this table.
Just appear to vanish for a while.
Even if it's just for a week or two weeks or three weeks or four weeks.
And that allows me to kind of reset and kind of take back control of the steering wheel.
Whereas it's very easy, especially in modern life, when you're working really hard or you're traveling, you've got sleep disruption.
To get into that exact spiral we talked about where you get like
cravings for sugar and then you eat sugar so you feel a bit more tired and you lay down a bit more and then you're not you miss the gym.
And then you kinda y you have the same like downward spiral.
Um Keto continually snaps me out of
The probability the chance of that.
How long for that?
Hmm.
Probably the longest I've done it is maybe six weeks or eight weeks.
But even get even
Doing it for
Let's say one week for me.
Will then mean the preceding
Full
Eight weeks.
Are much healthier in every regard.
So even when I come off it.
I'm much healthier.
You know what I'm saying? That's why what's interested me,'cause I I think
Being on a long term keto diet
is never gonna work, right? It's just too brutal.
And it's

Incompatible with
Keeping your gut happy.
Mm-hmm.
To me.
That's
I mean, very few people can tolerate it anyway.
As you know, it's tough.
If we can come up with a regime that every three or every six months
You had a few days of going into keto just enough to reset
your body and your brain.
And at the same time you
Protected your gut, say by
You know, taking daily thirty or other things that weren't gonna get you out of keto but could keep your
your gut in a in a in the right place. Then I think we could
Potentially we have a
Uh something.
Of practical use.
For
brain health issues.
And I I'd love to you know
do more of that. I I'm I'm planning at some point later in this year to
Deux
To test myself, see if I can
Uh do a week of keto whilst keeping my gut microbes happy. Have you ever done keto?
Uh not properly, no.
you know, if you've done a twenty four hour fast, for a colonoscopy, you are just about getting into keto.
at the time you're doing it, but you're not ri you've got other things to worry about without going to the toilet to uh distract you.
I think this is really it,'cause you we talked about how holistic the the whole picture of the body is and how it's so interconnected.
and how the brain is so connected to the gut and all these things and
There's something about
doing the ketogenic diet, which just it feels like I get control back.
Mm.
in a r in a way that then has this bigger holistic effect on
Mm my life.
my ability for everything in my life, like my ability to
articulate myself as a podcaster. I had actually Joe Regan say the same thing, had him say that
Words to the effect of the fact that when he's in ketosis, it's so profound his ability to articulate himself and think
as someone that does four hour podcasts, that he would almost stay in it forever just for that particular cognitive benefit of like mental clarity. And I always say to my team that when I'm in the kids who don't diet, I feel like I'm looking at the world like this.
Like everything's high definition.
And my mouth and brain are like I always say my mouth and brain are connected suddenly.
Yeah, well I've had other people say this, that they do get this sort of clarity.
Which which could be a in a more exaggerated way of
feeling the benefit of a long overnight fast.
Um
when you come in after fourteen hours.
Without eating and you're doing a podcast like this.
Yeah, I definitely do feel better than if I'd had a big English breakfast uh just before.
But
I think the danger is that
Mm.
you know, if people disregard their gut microbiome and do this, th the any advantage would be wiped out so quickly.
by the the problems of
what's happening to your immune cells and everything else in your body. So
If we can find this.
intermittent middle way.
Well you can still
Look after your gut.
Then I I agree that would be cool, but I couldn't find any good data.
Um
on this, apart from anecdotes of
You know.
Fanatics who
Well obviously um

say it's great for their patients, but without any control group.'Cause must be a big placebo effect as well.
Um it's pretty you very hard to not have a
placebo effect when you're doing that.
and you're when you're struggling so hard to do things that
As I say, you know, people get keto headaches and they get all you know, as you go into it.
People say it's
So
You can't
double blind yourself. But I think it is fascinating that
In the same way that
Reversing type two diabetes, you know, improves your mental health.
it makes sense that if you're switching energy levels in the brain, you could also do things and let's not forget things like E C T
Still an effective
Treatment. That's a that's a brain reset.
sometimes you know, we may end up going back to the the old
era of um psychiatry to where, you know, before we got into this obsession with neurochemicals.
to have this holistic view, which I think is is really fascinating.
And when you did that brain scan.
You've
Found that
You're in the highest twenty percent for levels of environmental microplastics.
Mm.
In your blood.
Yeah, that was a bit scary.
They divide the microplastics into into two groups, the sort of
depending on the dimensions of them. I was p concerned, am I e was I eating a lot of microplastics. And it turned out that
the higher levels I had were actually the the smaller ones that you get through the lungs.
Which
probably means a life
Hab having lived a life in London.
Um you know, six decades in London.
Probably wasn't very good.
for
Getting
all this dust and and and uh things in there. That was a bit of a worry and that's probably'cause I cycle round London a lot in the last
Thirty years.
Have you changed anything in that regard?
I still cycle. I don't like wearing a mask. I know I sort of probably should.
And I've put a new water filter in my home.
Uh
Yeah.
Take out.
some of these chemicals and and at least some of those plastics. I'm still not totally convinced
And the science.
I don't think really we've resolved that issue yet. But it's it's something I'm I'm looking at closely and I think if there's something easy you can do.
I try and avoid plastic containers, I try and avoid plastic bottles.
And I think that's good for the planet as well.
Is there a way to take these microplastics out of our body once they're in there?
They
Anecdotally they say things like plasmapharesis. Um you know, you can go to a spa in LA and and get your uh
plasma taken out and filtered and put back into your body. This is from your blood.
But
Uh I don't think there's any real clinical trials that
And they cost
I think that's of ten thousand dollars ago. So it's not not a cheap process.
To have that done. So I wait and see.
But at the moment
Yeah, it's it's it's a worry, but I
I think there are them.
Uh
Other things in the environment are probably worse.
You know
Dust, pesticides. Is it better to have organic food rather than worry about plastics?
Um
We don't know the answer to these these problems.
How was your views on
GLP ones like Zempek and Gov whatever it's called, these these um
injections and I think now tablets people are taking for weight loss. How has your views on those evolved? Are they good, bad, and different?
They're gonna be a part of our life anyway. So
They're gonna transform medicine and uh
obesity.
in a way we can't imagine at the moment, especially now this year that the pills are available.
And
It's coming off patent in many countries.
So it'd be much cheaper.
I
think for people who really need them, they're an um incredible drug.
Uh the only problem is you can't really come off them.
So that
Pretty much for life.
My f
First worry is that a lot of people take them without supervision.
And
they are not told to change their diet.
I'd love people to
Go take the drugs.
their hunger signal gets switched off. They can then be mindful about their food. They could do something like
you know, have the Zoe app or
some other educational program to
Change their food habits forever.
in that w in that window of opportunity.

where we should be doing and it that that's been completely ignored at the moment.
Virtually nobody's getting
That
lifestyle advice as well as the drug. And so
They're failing, they're going back and it there's
You know, yo yowing.
And they're getting the worst of the world. The other the other slight worry we need to keep an eye on is
The
Long term effects on the brain.
So far the data suggests that it does reduce your chances of getting dementia, even
Beyond
Yeah, red.
Reversing diabetes.
So
It looks like it's brain protective.
Probably'cause it might have anti inflammatory effects.
It reduces things like gambling and uh
Addictions.
So we don't really know how it does that.
But
If it takes away some of Yo's drives.
There's basic drives to say, I like to take risks.
You know, I like I like to take drugs, I like to smoke, I like to gamble on horses.
Is it
In some way.
changing you as a a person long term.
In uh
you might be less good as an entrepreneur, for example.
Mm-hmm.
So that is something I think that's
Really interesting to follow, but
In general.
I think from a public health perspective
This could save
Mm-hmm.
Ca you know, health systems.
Hundreds of billions.
long term and we
ought to be taking it much more seriously and integrating it into
Holistic and educational advice.

And as it relates to brain health.
You
Also have
A sauna routine as part of your brain health regime?
Yeah, I've been im impressed by some of the science.
Uh coming out of this.
the fact that I quite enjoy just actually enjoy it from a hedonistic
uh point of view. So I try and have a sauna twice a week if I can if I can do that. Uh
Ideally with a cold plunge afterwards, but
The science isn't sure whether that
makes a big difference.
It's like a just a work out for your
Your blood vessels in your in your body and your brain.
So um
I think the the science is quite compelling and
Yeah, it makes me feel good, which um
It's always should be part of anyone's health routine. Something you enjoy doing is always easy.
And regular socialising.
As part of your brain routine.
Yeah.
the happiest long lived populations on the planet.
They will
Got really good social lives.
I
You're always dining with friends, going out.
Often that
Does involve a little bit of alcohol in most of these societies.
But that doesn't seem to adversely affect them. The idea of having a a a key group of core friends you see regularly, I think is really good for your mental
And brain health and
Loneliness has got to be one of them.
the worst things uh for your brain health. So
really important to maintain
your uh your good friends.
What is uh what is the most important thing as it relates to
Brain health or overall health that we haven't talked about that we should have talked about.
I think we haven't talked about uh early life experiences and stress.
What trauma?
Yeah, so
One thing.
Um
And we haven't talked about talk therapies and um you know conventional
Treatments.
So if you look at all these brain diseases, virtually all of them
If you
Go back in time.
If you've had
uh emotional, physical, sexual trauma.
in in early life.
you're much more likely to have
Brain diseases later in life.
And
This is across all of them. Again
coming up with the idea that they're all related in some way. And so we've moved on from the Freudian idea that
Yeah.
the mind is different and from the brain if you take this holistic idea. How does this fit into this inflammatory m
Metabolic.
Um
Theory of brain health.
I think it
It now does because they've done studies showing that
uh following trauma or stress
you can trigger your immune system to be permanently raised.
So
Again you get this
Uh
Consistent.
uh stress that
The thermostat doesn't go down to
Baseline.

a period of a year as a terrible period as as a kid.
they do tests later in life you'll f they'll find your
Inflammation levels in your blood.
uh raised from people who had a a nice
Gentle, quiet childhood.


different components together. And these cross all these early life traumas
You see the same thing in people with chronic pain.
Um chronic back pain, fibromalgia. Um
Irritable Bow syndrome.
Epilepsy, schizophrenia. It it
Everything. But it it doesn't really matter where the s source of the stress was, it's caused some physiological problem. So I think
That
That is really interesting. So that
we could pick up people who if we had better tests of that stress and inflammation.
We could start to
help those people earlier on before
the brain started to uh struggle.
I think that that's
Really interesting.
And of course.
We want to do most to reduce
The problem in the first place.
They've also done studies on talk therapies, so
Obviously psychiatry is compartmentalized into the talk therapists and the and the drug therapists.
And
There's quite a lot of evidence that talk therapy
does reduce inflammation levels and help your immune system?
So just
In the same way possibly that's the same.
Talking to friends has that effect.
So
uh talking to your therapist long term.
uh will reduce your stress
And you can see that in blood markers as well.
The whole thing is starting to come together that
Uh all these different ways of treating it.
can be working through similar pathways that look so different.
Through our you know, the fact that we've
Got so distracted by
Descartes.
um Freud. Um
s treating the brain as something so different to the rest of the body.
We have a closing tradition of this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next, not knowing who they're leaving it for. And the question uh for you
Is what are you
Uncontainably.
Excited about.
I'm
Uncontainably excited.
About
The idea that
We can
dramatically improve our lives and our health.
Just by making
The right food choices.
This is really driving me to talk about it so much to
Do the studies, to do the science.
To spread the word because
Yeah.
We're seeing all the time
the dramatic effects and I was talking about the T V programme was doing with these
Yeah.
These these families that are really suffering.
It just shows you what
You can do if you start
treating food like you would treat medicine. You know, taking it really seriously.
And
Experimenting with it and

Noticing those those
differences and um you know I get the feedback all the time because I
Because
The books and the media.
People tell me how
their lives have been transformed. And so
That feedback keeps me excited on this topic.
And so um
I've never had that in my career before.
And it's
Super exciting.
It's um it's really hard though, isn't it? And this is I guess the the part we don't talk about much, which is the psychological part of
Yeah, what some might call discipline.
in a w the world we live in where you go into like a I don't know, a gas station or a petrol station, whatever you call it in in different parts of the world.
And the options are very
Ultra processed.
Um, and you've you live a stressful life, you're on your phone all day, you're getting you
you dopamine fried by watching short form videos back to back to back to back to back.
You may be
You know, people are lonelier than ever before.
So
Making the right choices when we're controlled by our
neurology and our hormones and how we feel.
Is is often easier said than done.
So even in the case of that family that you met.
Do you think much about the
psychology part of like
Discipline.
When it comes to making the right choice.
Is there any advice there on
How to be more
disciplined with our food choices? Or do you just think that
Knowledge is power in this regard.
Well knowledge is power, but it's not the only thing.
Tricks.
Um
We're fighting a food environment.
you know, multi billion dollar industry wants us to eat this crap food.
your gas station, they're being bribed to fill their everything around you.
With the worst foods.

pay the supermarkets to have it.
in a point where you're gonna buy it.
So
you need to have tricks to counteract that. And not going to a supermarket is is often one way to avoid

Doing that. If my house was filled with crap food, I would probably be
Snacking it.
I find it really hard to throw stuff away.
You know, you you go to workplaces and you see people
piles of biscuits and uh Ms uh there you know they should be banned.
Um so there's certain things you say.
We need to fight back by changing the rules a bit.
Um just like you wouldn't have
You know, glasses of vodka in an office.
Uh for people to just have a swig if they fancy it.
You shouldn't have
candies and sweets and these things. Um in the current environment where you know we're fighting a battle. They used to have cigarettes w that were free everywhere, you forget.
Um and they change that environment. So the cigarettes are now really hard to get at.
That makes it easier for
people to fight the habit.
And we we often beat ourselves up'cause we think of ourselves as being weak.
Because of this, we think ourselves being like ill disciplined because we end up reaching for the wrong things. But it is really, really hard. And it's really, really hard. Even you know, I sit here all day, every day speaking to people that are experts on these subjects, and you'd think that would mean
that I made perfect decisions. Because I've probably interviewed, you know, more people
than the average ninety nine point nine percent of the population on this subject.
But
I'm a human with
emotions and hormones in life.
And
And so even I have to, um, regardless of how much I know about this stuff now, I still have to like
give myself the best possible chance by
thinking proactively about my environ my food environment at home.
And even like in the car and even at the office, like I have to think really proactively, put systems in place.
to avoid the possibility that I get really, really hungry.
Really, really late at night.
And my only options are shit.
For example.
Yeah.
Um which has been a b the big change. But it's forming habits, and that's the other thing. So it's
Yeah, so it's n you got knowledge.
Then you got these tricks, tricks to avoid often the the
the worst offenders and then you've got to come up
with these these new habits that you you make that are gonna break the old ones. So
Yeah, rather than reaching for your breakfast cereal in the morning, you've got a different one ready to go and
Uh
often we've found that if you can change that first meal of the day
it it becomes a lot easier.
'Cause that's the one you're mainly in control of.
and realise when the other risky events are.
Tim, you've written many, many books. I'm gonna link them all below. This is the the newest one. I know you're working on one specifically about the brain, but I'm very excited for that one. But this is the newest one called Ferment.
Um
Unsurprising a number one bestseller yet again.
Um but there's a whole stack of books here, the diet myth, real science behind what we eat.
Um spoon fed why almost everything we've been told about food is wrong.
And this book which has been extremely successful, um, the Food for Life cookbook with a hundred recipes created by Zoe. I'm gonna link all of them below for anyone that wants to
Check them out.
And uh
Thank you so much.
Once again, been a pleasure. As always. I've kept my audience very, very healthy and they're very appreciative of that. I
I I remember um uh just the amount of people that come up to all over the world and cite the conversations we've had in the past and how that's ha been the thing for them.
has helped them to change their life and it's pretty remarkable. It's really remarkable how many people you you must have
fundamentally caused to create different food and dietary decisions through the work you've done yourself, through the books, through Zoe. Um, and that's a really special thing. So thank you on behalf of all of them.
Hopefully we can do millions more.
I hope so.

If there's anything we need, it is connection, especially in the world we're living in today. And that is exactly why we created these conversation cards. Because on this show, when I sit here with my guests and have those deep, intimate conversations, this remarkable thing happens time and time again. We feel
Deeply connected to each other. At the end of every episode, the guest I'm interviewing leaves a question for the next guest, and we've turned them into these.
conversation cards. And we've added these twist cards to make your conversations even more interesting. And there are so many more twists along the way with the conversation cards. This is the brand new addition, and for the first time ever, I've added to the pack this gold card, which is an exclusive question from me, but I'm only putting the gold cards in
The first run of conversation cards. So get yours now before the limited edition goal cards are all gone. Head to the link in the description below.