Dhru Purohit Show - This Doctor Says Fiber Is The Closest Thing To A Nutritional Holy Grail with Dr. Karan

Episode Date: August 20, 2025

This episode is brought to you by Vuori, One Skin, Momentous, and LMNT. Fiber is one of the most overlooked nutrients in the modern diet, and most of us aren’t getting enough. Lower fiber intake is linked to increased risks of chronic disease, digestive problems, and poor metabolic health, but boosting your intake can be simple and enjoyable. Today’s guest shares the unique benefits of different types of fiber and how gradually increasing intake can support gut health, cholesterol levels, liver function, and other health benefits.  Today on The Dhru Purohit Show, Dhru sits down with Dr. Karan Rajan to unpack the critical role of fiber in our diets and why most of us aren’t getting nearly enough. He shares his personal health journey and how increasing his fiber intake transformed his well-being. Dr. Karan discusses the different types of fiber, their science-backed benefits, and simple, practical ways to work more high-fiber foods into your day. He also explains the hidden dangers of fiber deficiency, its link to chronic diseases like colon cancer, and the surprising potential of fiber to help flush out microplastics from the body.  Dr. Karan Rajan is a doctor and one of the biggest health & science creators on social media. Since 2020, he has amassed over 11 million followers across TikTok, YouTube, Instagram & Facebook with his refreshingly frank medical myth-busting and health advice videos which combine education, entertainment, and generous servings of dark humour. In this episode, Dhru and Dr. Rajan dive into:  The fiber deficiency crisis (00:10) Understanding fiber's role in gut health (1:29) Types of fiber and how to increase our intake (05:55) The evolution of dietary choices (13:23) Navigating fiber sensitivities (17:20) Essential high-fiber foods (25:42) The consequences of low fiber intake (33:10) Fiber and colon cancer risk (37:23) Understanding the role of fiber in removing microplastics (40:06) Fiber's impact on cholesterol and heart health (45:47) Optimizing liver health (50:53) Rethinking the 10,000 steps myth (53:40) Patterns over perfection in health (59:05) The importance of sleep in health (1:00:42) Smart supplementation strategies (1:05:01) Final thoughts and takeaways (1:09:09) Also mentioned in this episode: Dr. Karan’s Blog Post on Pantry Staples  For more on Dr. Rajan, follow him on Facebook, X/Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, LinkedIn, or visit his Website. This episode is brought to you by Vuori, One Skin, Momentous, and LMNT. Right now, Vuori is offering my listeners 20% off their FIRST purchase. Get yourself some of the most comfortable and versatile clothing on the planet at vuori.com/DHRU and discover the versatility of Vuori Clothing.  Right now, One Skin is offering my community 15% off; just go to oneskin.co and use the coupon code DHRU to save 15% and give your skin the scientifically proven, gentle care it deserves. Optimize your energy and mental clarity with the purest form of creatine, made by and used by the best, now available in convenient single-serve lemon flavor packets. Head to livemomentous.com and use code DHRU for 35% off your first subscription. Right now, LMNT is offering my listeners a free sample pack with any purchase. Head over to drinkLMNT.com/dhru today. Sign up for Dhru’s Try This Newsletter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Essentially, I like to look at who else is eating high volumes of fiber or what are other healthy cohorts out there that we can study. And we have studied them. If we look at modern day hunter gatherers, indigenous tribes, and a lot of populations across the world, and what we like to call non-industrialized populations who are eating, you know, whole foods that are minimally processed. So the closest one that we have to our ancient hunter-gatherer ancestors, who are considered a modern-day version of that, is the Hadza tribe in Tanzania.

These guys are eating upwards of 100, 120 grams of fiber a day. I'm not getting anywhere near that, obviously, but they also correlate that fiber intake with probably the lowest comorbidity index across any other populations across the world. They have the lowest incidence of chronic disease, metabolic disease, and the other vices that we associate with modern lifestyle. A lot of that we can attribute down to their lifestyles, their movement, their sleeping habits, community, but also importantly, the fiber as well. Let's zoom out a little bit and help us understand the role that fiber plays in the body.

You talked a little about these hunter-gatherer tribes that are out there. But what about modern day research and what it tells us about fiber and its relationship to keeping us full and even things like GLP, which so many more people are familiar with these days? Yeah, so if you think about fiber at its most basic level, humans physiologically, with the enzymes that we've got and the way that our digestive processes run physiologically, we can't do much with fiber in and of itself. It is essentially just a substrate for our gut microbiome and the microbes and specifically the bacteria which reside in our colon to ferment them. and then produce short-chain fatty acids from the fermentation. So essentially, we thrive on bacterial byproducts. You know, this bacterial poop is gold for us. And the short-chain fatty acids then go and stimulate, you know, L cells or I cells,

all these intra-endocrine cells which line the colon to then produce beneficial outcomes and produced hormones, like you mentioned, GLP-1, GIP, oxyntomodulin, colicinin. There's a bunch of different hormones, appetite regulation and other things that they do, incident sensitivity that are then produced from the downstream effects of fiber fermentation. So beyond just a bulking role, it's a, you know, macronutrient, which stimulates hormones, neurotransmitters eventually, and just beyond even that, it then allows the gut microbes and the gut bacteria to thrive and they go off and they do, you know, their own thing. allow us to unlock more nutrient and mineral absorption, produce important things like vitamin K,

vitamin B12, in a bunch of other stuff that, you know, we could spend a whole podcast talking about what they do. I want to dig in a little bit deeper. Like what actually happens when we are at this chronic level long term of, you know, similar to where you were, eight, 10 grams of fiber. Before we get to chronic disease, right, and we get into, you know, increased rates of, you know, potentially heart disease by having more lipids floating around in our system, colorectal cancer, which you've talked about before. Talk about a day-to-day level. What do you see that people notice when they're not having enough fiber? You know, I can speak to this pretty well because before 2018, I had tried the keto diets

where I, you know, I wanted to lose some weight pretty rapidly, and I did because I wanted to cut out carbs. My personal trainer at the time said, yeah, just cut out carbs. focus on, you know, these sort of high cuts of meat, eggs, kind of high fat, high protein items. And in the short term, I lost weight and I felt, you know, pretty okay probably because of that additional weight loss. But then within a space of a week or two weeks, I started experiencing bloating, constipation, general sluggishness because, you know, fiber, carbohydrates, it's a good fuel source, quick fuel source to help cognition and, you know, I think just to give you that boost of energy, but also, you know, just for that bulking agent ability that fiber does that we mentioned.

But the thing with fiber, we've had studies that show that your gut microbiome can adapt and take advantage of fiber in as little as time as 24 to 48 hours. They've done studies where they've compared low fiber and high fiber diets and you see a spike at 24 to 48 hours where beneficial bacterial species start to spike. So even if you can't feel the benefits of a higher fiber intake, you know, if you go and eat a high fiber meal right now, there is something happening invisible inside your body on a microbiome level, on a microscopic level, there's some, you know, magic happening there. And then over a week, you might start to see improvements in bloating regularity. Over a few weeks, you might just start seeing improvements in mood via the gut brain

axis, clarity in the skin, gut skin access, over months and years, you then start to see those huge changes in metabolic health and risk reduction from chronic disease, such as bowel cancer, heart disease, dementia risk even, and a ton more. Break down the different types of fiber that are out there. There's so many different types of fiber. And one thing that you're really good at helping people understand is that, especially there in this place, that they have not been having a lot of fiber regularly, you know, You don't want to go from like zero to 100, right? You might want to start small.

So break down the different fibers out there, what they do inside of the body, specifically in the gut. And then a bonus part is let's explore, like, how somebody might want to be ramping up on these with the most well-tolerated fibers, especially if they don't have a lot of fibers inside of their diet right now. It's August. It's hot. And if you're like me, you want clothes that are light, breathable, and still look good.

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people, you know, you hear all these terms, prebiotics and insoluble, soluble, whatever. You know, fiber is an umbrella term. And under that umbrella, you have soluble fiber, insoluble fiber, and resistant starch, which is not technically a fiber, but, you know, it's kind of like a pseudo fiber, which will come to explain. And within those types, you have prebiotics is another subsection of fibers. So, you know, prebiotics are a specific type of fiber or prebiotic fiber, which directly modulates and influences the microbiome, right? So a lot of people have heard of inulin. Inulin, which you find in artichokes and a lot of these gut health sodas and gut health bars, inulin directly modulates the microbiome and increases the diversity and helps

positive or good bacterial species to thrive. And a lot of prebiotic fibers are generally soluble fibers, but you can get them in insoluble as well. So soluble fiber, something that you'd find in oats or barley, for example, beta glucan is that type of prebiotic fiber in soluble fibers. So oats, legumes, beans, the flesh of fruit and vegetables, they often have a high proportion of soluble fiber. The insoluble fiber, typically harder to dissolve and, you know, insoluble. It doesn't dissolve in water, things you find in the skin of fruit and vegetables, a lot of seeds and nuts as well. And then the resistant starch. Now, this is made waves in social media because a lot of people talking about how you can cook, cool, carbohydrate.

like potatoes, rice, pasta, any carbohydrate source, and you can increase the resistant starch content of that. And resistant starch, resist digestion in the small intestine, makes its way to the colon where it can act as a prebiotic fiber and feed the gut bacteria. So an easy way to do that if you didn't want to cook anything is just having a slightly greener banana that has high resistant starch or cassava or plantins.

And actually polyphenols, which you get in, brightly colored or dark fruits and vegetables, you know, in, you know, like dragon fruit or pomegranate or whatever. Polyphenols also act as a prebiotic fiber as well. So all of those things are important. And just very quickly, your other point about ramping up, 100%. You know, ramping up, you can definitely overdo fiber. And that's not something that no one should try if they are fiber naive. So generally increasing by five grams a week of your total intake. So if you're used to eating 10 grams a day like I was. Week one should be you increased to

12 or 15 grams, week two, up to maybe 20, week three, 25, and then week four going to that 30 grams and then you can take it off from there. That actually, why you're doing that is that allows your colonel to adapt colonic adaptation and modulation,

your bacteria getting used to this increased fiber load and, you know, becoming more efficient at fermenting the fibers you're giving them. And, you know, They also need to get used to that increased workload as well. Yeah, that's great. A couple thoughts for you or a couple topics that I would love for you to sort of get your idea on.

You mentioned, and you've written about this in your newsletter, which is great, by the way. We'll link to it in the show notes. You've mentioned that you came from a history of trying some more restrictive diets. I think a lot of people in the health space, including myself, have been down that journey. At one point in time, I was doing like the raw food diet was a very popular thing, especially here in America. and then like, you know, some version of a ketogenic diet that people were doing, putting like butter in their coffee and all sorts of things like that, right? And that space of, let's call it like the paleo carnivore, the keto world, it's been interesting to see that sort of space evolve

a little bit where a lot of the people that were following these very restrictive diets, if they're still playing with some of those themes of clean food, a lot of them have significantly added back in things like fruit in particular, right? Do you have any thoughts and commentary on that? And it seems to be that that is one way that they're getting access to all this incredible polyphenol content, not that this is a diet that you're recommending, but in a way that they've maybe made their diet a lot healthier by bringing in a ton more fiber from consuming a lot more fruit, carbohydrates, and therefore,

or also too, some fiber along with it. Any thoughts on that? Yeah, I mean, you know, again, I've changed my mind so much on what people do because when you give people restrictive diets, it's generally not good for, you know, your relationship with food as a whole, and that can have consequences on how you yo-yo in weight and your diet. But also generally, our bodies thrive on diversity, right? Even from a gut microbiome level, you want your food,

sources to be as diverse as possible. Beyond vegetables, just what you eat day to day, you know, so you get a variety of nutrients and minerals and vitamins and fibers. We talk about fiber, but it should be fibers plural because there are so many types. If you thought about fiber like multivitamins, there are so many different types, you know, inulin, beta glucan, you know, there's so many various types like, you know, xylacolidocytic saccharides, fructolycaryxaccharides. So it's not just one type of fiber. So, When it comes to those restrictive diets, keto, carnivore, etc., yeah, sure, fine. If you want to take a lot of protein, meat, whatever it is, you know, you've got to do what you've got to do according to your lifestyle.

But the fiber, I think, is a bit that shouldn't go. So I've got nothing against someone saying they feel good and feel better and they can back that up with the medical data if they're on a keto or carnivore diet. But I still think some way they should have fiber. Because, you know, a lot of the argument these camps have made over the years when they say they want this ancestral primal diet or paleo diet or caveman diet that they're trying to replicate what our ancestors would have had. You know, a lot of people may not like to hear this, but our ancestors ate and foraged a lot of root vegetables and weeds and whatever they could get their hands on. Meat was a luxury. If they came across a rotting carcass that another predator had eaten, they would try to scavenge that.

Or if they killed something, they would hunt and eat. So they wouldn't be eating meat on a regular basis, like, you know, the Victorians or, you know, in the medieval period, the lords and ladies would eat meat, right? Our ancestors just would forage and eat whatever they had, sometimes wild mushrooms to their detriment. They would maybe either hallucinate, or dives. So actually, you know, a lot of their diet was actually plant-based. And so when I think about

all of these different camps, eating vegetables is part of human evolution. Even our kidney system, our renin, angiotensin, aldosterone system evolved to excrete potassium. And that is actually a byproduct in an evolutionary terms of a high plant intake. You know, one thing I've noted, just anecdotally. I'm not a medical professional like yourself. I'm not even subject matter expertise. I just get a chance to ask great questions to people like you who know what you're talking about. But one thing I've anecdotally notice is that if somebody has had a history of being on a little bit more of a restricted diet in whatever form and they haven't had a lot of fibers, certain types of fibers are much more likely to end up causing them trouble. And certain fibers

are an easier place to start off with. Have you noticed this and how has this shaped your recommendation of how people ramp up their fibers? In particular for me, I noticed that, you know, I also come from a South Asian Indian background like yourself. I grew up eating things like lentils and chickpeas and other things. Granted, they were pressure cooked, made at home by my mom, a lot easier to digest than sort of, you know, getting sort of industrial made. and then I stopped eating a lot of those foods for a long time

and for different sorts of reasons. And as I increased my fiber intake, I did great with berries. I did great with things like maybe etamame, but certain lentils and beans and other things, I still to this day don't really do that great with including them in my diet. So have you noticed this and how do you help people navigate this?

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composition of gut bacteria to me. And a lot of that is shaped in the first few years of life. And, you know, it can fluctuate as well. So, you know, a period of time where you went away. away from that home-cooked food that was rich in lentils and, you know, other fiber sources, maybe there was some shift in your microbiome, which then, you know, you lost some of those bacterial species that were super efficient at digesting those fibers, right? Those keystone species, which preferred the highly soluble fiber that you found in beans, that liked that to digest and ferment that type of prebiotic. And then, you know, you move to a more Western diet.

And, you know, South Asians usually don't have, you know, natively, a high consumption of berries. You know, it's not a fruit that is very common in South Asia. It's more of a, you know, European, American type of diet, fruit related. And so your composition changed to adapt to that sort of diet. and lifestyle. And I truly believe that if you were to expose yourself to beans on a regular basis, there may be some teething problems and you experience some cramping and bloating in the early phases. But our gut bacteria are very malleable and adaptable. And I truly believe that over time

you would adapt to that. It's similar to what we experience when you expose someone whose lactose intolerance to kaffir and other low lactose level products like aged cheese. Over time, the bacteria become more efficient at digesting lactose and increase the amount on concentration of the enzyme lactase in the bacterial population to digest lactose. So you can, in some cases, proven in the literature, you can reverse lactose intolerance through daily regular consumption of kifir.

Same principle with the beans that you're describing. But yes, there are certain types of fibers which may be difficult for people. me personally I have a huge problem with inulin for example right personal problem myself but also the way it's been integrated into a lot of these beverages like these gut healthy beverages for me inulin is one of the worst fibers that you can have because it ferments rapidly causes bloating rapidly as well it ferments in the early part of the colon the ascending colon and you get a lot of gas and bloating because of you know that so

of bacterial digestion. So I, some people may do better on slower digesting fibers, like oats, for example, the beta glucan, it's a bit more gentle. And you can get into the weeds in this, right, like low FODMAP, high FODMap fibers, the amount of fructans in them, how quickly they digest. Also depends on your sensitivity levels as well. So 100%, you need to find what fibers work for you too. Well, you had a fantastic blog post recently where you were highlighting things that you do in your life that are part of your transformation in your own health of going from a place where you previously had mild fatty liver, your lipids were high, and what are the fundamentals that you've been doubling down on to take you in the direction that you're heading in now?

And fiber obviously was a cornerstone of that. And you also made a list of, I think it was like 14 different food essentials that you keep in your pantry at all time. And I want to talk about a few of them that are related to this fiber conversation. Because one thing that I've seen is that even for a lot of folks that are healthy, anytime you go into a new food category, people can experience this with, you know, protein. Sometimes people even experience this with drinking more water. They struggle to imagine how to get it regularly at a level that works for them in a practical way. So I'm going to to give you a few of your foods that were on your list and have you talk about why you like these foods for fiber but also for overall health as well too. So one of the first ones that you

had on there was these high fiber fruits, two in particular. And I think you know what I'm talking about. I'm talking about pears. And also the other one was, I forgot the other one actually. It was pears and something else. Do you remember which one? Kiwi. Kiwis. So talk about these two fruits in particular. Why are you such a huge fan of them? Yeah, I love pears and kiwi, you know, from the taste perspective, but also the benefits it can provide as well. So, Kiwis, you know, it's a good combination of both insoluble and soluble fiber from a medium-sized kiwi. You can probably get, you know, four, four and a half grams of fiber if you eat it with the skin. And there's also some, you know, limited evidence that it could help with sleep as well, but that's

not why I take it, but just I think it's it's a tasty fruit and you get a good fiber hit from that. And it also contains this enzyme called actinidein, which can help with gut motility. So as a singular fruit, it's pretty good for a bunch of those health benefits, easy to add to yogurt as well. And with regards to the pears, again, very easy to eat, high soluble fiber concentration in that. And importantly, it has one thing in that called sorbitol. And a lot of stone-based fruits like apricots and peaches and dates and you know prunes as well can have high sorbitol content but that that is a sugar alcohol and a sugar alcohol basically acts as a natural osmotic laxative to help you go basically so for me pairs and kiwis just not the fiber

but the other benefits it can have for GI health yeah all right the next one that we had on the list was frozen berries, which we chatted about a little bit. But tell us a little bit more about frozen berries, right? Why do you like them so much? And why are they part of your staple? Yeah, I mean, when berries are expensive, you know, certainly in the UK, most of the year, berries are expensive. You know, in fact, I recently went raspberry and strawberry picking with my wife in a farm near us. And I get sick when I think about how much I paid for that picking session. They're so expensive. So if I can have something all year round at a low cost, frozen,

and it still has the same nutritional value pretty much as the fresh stuff, it's easy. So frozen berries, antioxidants, polyphenols, high fiber content, tasty, low calorie, high volume. You can throw it in your overnight oats into yogurt. Just eat it like that. It's such a great snack or part of a meal, like an adjunct to a meal. And again, I think maybe, what, 40, 50 grams of berries, like maybe 30 berries. You can get about five, six grams of fiber in that, plus all those polyphenols. And polyphenols, as we mentioned, also gives you that antioxidant hit and also acts as a prebiotic.

And I think the data suggests that it's good for the gut, but also the gut brain as well. Yeah, I'm a huge fan of frozen berries. A lot of people underestimate, you know, especially if they have that, like, sweet tooth. and they want to get off of maybe like regularly having ultra-processed desserts, a bowl of frozen berries, a couple pieces of dark chocolate, goes such a long way into making you not only feel full, but also giving you a nice little dose of fiber. But there's one that you talk about that a lot of people sleep on

or sort of forget about a little bit, and it's frozen vegetables specifically frozen peas and etamame. Can you talk about that? Yeah, I love garden peas, green peas and edamame because, you know, when you come to this conversation about fiber and protein, they're often, you know, at loggerheads with each other. Fiber versus protein. It doesn't need to be fiber versus protein. You should conscientiously be thinking about fiber and protein. And if you want that, green peas and edamame gives you a very decent hit of both high fiber. and high protein, right?

And obviously plant protein, it gives you the additional, you know, gut health benefits of that and other nutrients. And it's a side dish to something else, right? You can add it to your curries, your soups, your stews, your rice dishes, in wraps, in salads. They're just very versatile, functional food

that are high in protein, high in fiber, and a ton of other stuff, and they're frozen. So you can literally have them any time of the year. and they're so easy to cook. You know, you literally, the things I have as a staple are things that I don't need to cook. When I feel lazy and I might want to order takeaway, I'm like, no, I got all this stuff in the freezer, in the cupboard that I can literally make within five minutes.

Do you have a recipe or what you throw frozen edamame in? Is there a favor of yours? I, so there's like this takeaway place near me that usually does edamame. It's like an Asian fusion place. So when I'm trying to be good and I don't order from there, I literally just like to cook etymarme, literally in a pan. You can steam it or in a microwave and then just put some chili, salt and pepper on it. And it is an incredible snack just like that.

But, you know, if I do make a stir fry, you can just throw it in a stir fry. And it just gives you that additional texture as well. It's great. Yeah. For those that are in America listening to this, There's a, I don't know what the brand name is. I'm not affiliated with them, but there's regularly in a lot of health food stores. There's a dried edamame, organic edamame that you can get that's lightly salted.

And that is one of my favorite high fiber snacks. I think like a half a cup is like four to six grams of fiber that you can get from there. And it's so easy to eat, not crazy amounts of sodium. And they even have like a wasabi flavor. And I like this. especially if I have a lot of friends who are like, hey, what are easy ways to get fiber in addition to the recommendations? I'm like, just keep one of these packets in your bag and keep it in your office. You can just snack on that. And that's an easy way to just get that dose of fiber

so that you don't feel like you're trying to make up for all your fiber at the end of the day eating too much fiber at one meal when you're not used to it. And now all of a sudden you're bloated or you're farting all the time. Yeah, I think that makes people scared of fiber, right? Everyone says, eat more fiber and then one day they decide to just have a ton of fiber and then they get bloated, they get cramps, they may even become constipated, you know. Overdoing fiber in the short term, if you're new to it, can cause paradoxical constipation. And maybe it's sort of, that's their first experience of high fiber and they're like, oh, I'm never doing this again.

You made a video that did really well recently. I love your Instagram content, by the way. If you're not following Dr. Curran, you do these incredible things where you sort of observe these viral trends, and then you add in your commentary. And you did this on one of the staples that you actually include in your pantry, and that was chia seeds. Tell us why chia seeds are amazing. And also the hack that you can include in with chia seeds to potentially make them even more potent. Yeah, I think, again, chia seeds, in addition to the green peas and edamami, again, another very versatile functional food that is not only high fiber, but high protein as well.

I believe two tablespoons of chia seeds, you know, you get around 10 grams plus of protein or 10 grams of fiber and, you know, over 5 grams of protein as well. Like it's a very powerful food from that side of things. And it's a combination of soluble and insoluble fiber. You can, again, add it to anything. You can add to yogurt. You can add it to overnight oats. You can just have the seeds like that in your salubalibular. The thing with chia seeds is the fiber component in there, or certainly the soluble fiber

component, it comes out as mucilage, you know, the kind of slimy bit you get in aloeira or the slimy bit you get in okra when you have that. It's the same sort of concept with chia seeds as well. When they are added to water or are exposed to any water, they expand and you get an activation of the outer surface of the chia seed, which is that mucilage layer. layer and that mucilage layer acts as a prebiotic and causes, you know, beneficial outcomes to our gut bacteria and our health in general keeps us satiated and it's fermented in the colon. So you can eat chia seeds just like that.

You know, it's a myth or it's an overblown fear-mongering thing that you should never have chia seeds unless it's, you know, soaked in water. You do need to make sure you have enough water with it. but I generally like to soak them overnight in overnight's oats, so you maximize its soluble capabilities and its expansion, and you activate its sort of magical properties, which is that mucilage? There's this thing that happens in the gut,

and I'd love for you to explain to our audience, that if you don't have enough food for these bacterias, and you start to lose them, you'll start to, you can end up in a situation where your bacteria and your body starts eating, at the gut as food. And that's something that we want to avoid. Can you explain this phenomenon?

Yeah. So, you know, our gut bacteria. So first of all, yes to anyone who's asking, you can survive without fiber, right? Just like you can tell someone you can survive without exercise. You can survive with a ton of things. But then survival and thriving and being optimal health are two different things. And so our bacteria natively like to ferment fiber.

They're sacrilytic species. They like to ferment fiber. When you deprive them of a fiber source, they can switch into this sort of, you know, hibernation mode almost where they don't have fiber. They know that. And they switch to proteolytic or putrefactive. And they start digesting protein,

which is the gut lining because that's where they reside. And so that is to the detriment of our health because when they start this proteolytic or protein breakdown stage of evolution, once they switch from fiber to protein fermentation, they start to chuck out, you know, things which are not so beneficial for health and we want to limit, things like ammonia and phenols and LPS and other endotoxins. And that can erode the gut barrier integrity and you get this sort of leaky gut or intestinal hyperpermability, the gaps between the cells.

of the intestine start to become wider. And this can have downstream consequences for metabolic health, immune health, gut brain health. And so it's really important that we do expose them to fiber on a regular basis. One other tangent I want to touch on. I'm sure you've seen the statistics, but colon cancer, especially amongst young people, I believe, is on the rise. And there's so many layers that are part of it. But let me ask you a pretty provocative question. Do you feel like one of the biggest drivers of colon cancer in our modern day life is the fact that people are so fiber-deprived? So colon cancer, I think, is not just due to low fiber. And it's one component. We know that low fiber intakes is a major risk factor for colon cancer. And we know that based on a bunch

of meta-analysis, which are studies of studies, where we've seen that if you increase fiber intake, you lower your colon cancer risk because it replenishes and rejuvenates the colonocytes, the cells in the colon, and the gut bacteria are healthier. So we know that. And we also know, based on a bunch of other studies, that increasing fiber intake can reduce the production of harmful endotoxins released by bacteria. For example, there was a recent study which looked at higher fiber intakes that was associated with lower production of colobacteria. which is an endotoxin produced by E. coli. And E. coli is not always bad.

It's a bacteria that everyone has that lives in their gut microbiome. And sometimes it can spit out colobactin, which can actually mutate DNA and be oncogenic, cancer-causing. And so we know that fiber is a risk-reducing intervention. There's so many other things, you know, like non-modifiable and modifiable risk factors. I think fiber deficiency can contribute to someone's increased risk, but there's a ton of other things, including obviously genetics as well. I mean, sometimes we are beholden to the fates and what life throws us in terms of a lottery ticket in our genetics.

That is a huge component. But there's a ton of lifestyle things we can do to reduce our risk. So, you know, I think it would be very unfair of anyone to say that someone has colon cancer because of X, Y, Z, you know, and blaming someone's lifestyle for something like that. but we have clearly defined risk factors like low fiber diet, smoking, alcohol, etc. And we have other risk factors as well, like, you know, age, family history, genetics, etc., which no one can do anything about. So, you know, there are things we can do and things we can't do. Yeah, well said.

Sedentary lifestyle, explosion of ultra-processed foods, the environmental toxins that we still don't understand how they all play in. And then of course, the genetic factors, which would increase somebody's risk of, you know, getting any disease that's there. You know, microplastics are all the rage in terms of people talking about them, talking about how to avoid them. You did a really interesting video about some emerging science that's out there that shows that maybe fiber could help us flush out microplastics that were all inadvertently exposed to, not just in our food, but in our air and in our water. water as well. Can you chat about that? Yeah, I mean, I will caveat this by saying the studies so far we have on fiber and the interaction with microplastics and nanoplastics as well, you know, it's emerging evidence on in vitro studies, animal models, rodents, some limited human trials as well

that are short term. So we don't have very super high quality data, but we still need to assess the data that we have, right, and how applicable it is and how practical it is to our daily lifestyles in terms of applying it. So the mechanistic hypothesis or postulation by scientists who've studied the role of fiber in microplastics and how they can flush them out, soluble fibers particularly like the beta glucans you find in oats or cillium husk as well, they can form this sticky matrix which can trap bile acids, which can then obviously trap cholesterol and microplastics and essentially form this net or barrier to stop the microplastics crossing the gut barrier and entering the bloodstream and then entering

systemic circulation. So essentially it's like a sponge which can absorb a tract and block microplastics in this kind of stickiness and we can exclude them via poop. And that's the sort of mechanistic link. Now is it a guarantee that you can improve your composition of microplastics or concentration with fiber? Maybe, maybe not. What impact is that going to have in your health? Probably beneficial because you're just increasing your fiber intake. So as an intervention, it's low risk, it's relatively low cost as well, and you should be eating fiber anyway. So it's like an additional bonus which may or may not exist. So just do it anyway. I love that. I love that. You know, we talked about it previously, but help us really understand the connection between

how increasing fiber in your diet. I did this with myself. I actually wrote a newsletter today where I talked about all of the different risk factors that I had genetically, as well as family history, when it came to having a higher risk for heart disease. And I went through and I talked about some testing, some genetic testing that my cardiologist did

and how one of the recommendations that he brought in, that also the literature of course supported was the idea that if I wanted to lower my LDL and APOB, that there would be an opportunity to potentially do that through increasing my fiber intake. Can you explain a little bit about how that sort of mechanistically works inside of the body? Yeah, I mean, for me as well, similarly, like, you know,

my fatty liver disease was because of the high cholesterol. You know, the high cholesterol needs somewhere to be deposited and, you know, the liver's a handy storage tank for excess cholesterol. And the thing with cholesterol is, our body excretes cholesterol through bile, right? And so the bile is released from the gallbladder, makes its way to the intestines, and it carries that cholesterol alongside it. So actually, you know, the fiber can actually prevent the reabsorption of some of that cholesterol in the bile acids. So if you think of your gall bladder, your gallbladder is releasing bile, which has some of this cholesterol,

the bile enters the intestines. As the bile is traveling through the intestine, the colon can sometimes reabsorb some of that cholesterol into systemic circulation. So as it's leaving, you know, the body says, hang on, I want to take some of that back, right? And that's called entohepatic circulation. That happens with cholesterol.

It happens with estrogen as well. If you add fiber to the mix, the fiber obviously increases the digestive speed or the transit time, it speeds things along, and prevents some of those hormones and cholesterol to be reabsorbed. So you actually, you know, excrete more cholesterol if you increase your fiber intake. That's sort of one of the mechanisms.

And it's really effective at doing that. Yeah, it's super interesting because there's, for the audience that doesn't know, there's people that genetically are actually hyper-reabsorbers of cholesterol. And I heard from my cardiologist that he said that, a large percentage of people from the part of the world that we're from, India, fall into that area. There's, of course, hyperproducers, people who overproduce lipids, and there's hyper-reabsorbers. And I fell into the hyper-reabsorption category through genetic testing that I saw. So anything that supports the idea of helping to flush out some of those lipids like fiber, I've also written

about how I chose, even though I had a very clean CCTA scan, you know, for my age and everything like that, even beyond my age, I still chose to take a medication personally. In the U.S. we call it a Zetamide. I don't know what's called over there. Maybe the same thing, Zetia. And these are all things that help with the re-uptake of these lipids that just continue to circulate. But if you're not interested in medication, obviously you've got to make that choice with your doctor, fiber is one of those ways to get that natural flushing out of those lipids that are there. Yeah, 100%. I mean, it's an easy intervention. That's one of the buckets it targets. And, you know, when it comes to just optimizing liver health, because I truly believe, like, everyone talks about

the gut, but the liver for me also as, you know, a GI surgeon and being so, you know, deep professionally into digestive health in general. The liver is a huge engine of our body. And it's very underrated in cholesterol, metabolism, and function. And there are such easy little lifestyle bonuses you can do to also optimize your liver health, just to keep it purring and to reduce your risk of chronic liver disease. As someone with a history of mild fatty liver disease, I never used to like coffee, but I've implemented coffee into my ritual. because there's a ton of studies showing it's beneficial for liver health, a gut liver axis, and reduces your risk of chronic liver disease.

What would be other things, since we're on this topic of liver, and you have so much understanding about it, what would be some other top most damaging things that people are doing? Again, let's consider that the audience that's largely listening today are people that are not smoking. and they are aware of excessive, even what typically would have been called, maybe moderate alcohol intake in the past. They're understanding the challenges that come along with it.

Outside of those, what are the most damaging things that people are doing besides not having enough fiber when it comes to their liver health? Yeah, it's a really good question. So I've seen this more times than I would like to see. But I think you guys call paracetamol acetaminopin, right? The maximal dose for an adult, you know, you should be carefully looking at that dosage and not overdosing. Because if you take acetaminophen and you're also taking, you know, coffin cold remedies, you can easily go beyond, you know, what is like the safe limit for paracetamol or acetaminopin,

which can be toxic to the liver. Other things which people think are healthy. So green tea is healthy in moderation. Just by the way, for those that, just to cut you off, we would commonly be calling that like Tylenol. Oh, right. Okay, okay. Yeah. Tylenol, yeah.

Green tea is considered healthy in moderation. If you drink green tea. Now, a lot of supplements have green tea extracts in very high doses. That can actually cause liver damage in high doses. You know, these EG-CG extracts and other green tea. extracts you can get in a lot of herbal remedies, that can be, you know, quite detrimental. And we're seeing a rise in supplement-related liver injury because of things like that. And also high-dose turmeric as well in a lot of supplements.

That can also, you know, cause liver damage. And if you look at the, you know, what is it called? I forgot the name. Toxbase. If you look at Toxbase, it's a database of various supplements and additive. and ingredients which have been linked to liver injury cases. And so, you know, that's sort of being mindful of those things. And if you're taking a new herbal supplement, check with your doctor if it interacts

with any other medication that you're taking and check on Talkspace to see if there's any high risk of liver injury, right? Things like black cohosh, red rice, yeast, cavosh, I think, green tea extracts. There's a ton of stuff which, you know, you should be keeping an eye on. Another thing which is very sneaky and, you know, people know you need to get a hold of your high blood pressure. But hypertension long term can cause liver damage as well. You know, because everything is interconnected as you'll see. You know, if you have hypertension over a long period of time through the portal vein, hepatic arteries,

that can also cause liver damage long term. And so there are many things to be mindful of there. And the gut liver axis as well. If your gut is in a chronic state of dysbiosis and disrepair and there's low-grade inflammation in the gut, via the gut liver axis, you get the transmission of harmful metabolites and the inflammatory cytokines from the gut, translocated and passed via circulation to the liver where it can cause problems as well. So there is that gut, liver, bidirectional relationship. So everything is interconnected.

One thing I didn't hear you talk about, and I'd love to get your opinion on it, just because my audience would be familiar with it from the past. We've had some kidney specialist on the podcast from the Cleveland Clinic. I believe his name was Dr. Hannaway. And one of the things he was saying is that, yes, fat is a part of it. But we have to also understand that our sort of modern industrial diet that has a lot of high fructose or fruit juice or other things, things that these things are also drivers of fat, of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease.

Like these excessive carbohydrate intakes that people fall into. Not that carbohydrates are bad, but excessive carbohydrates. And do you feel like that also plays a role inside of this? Yeah, definitely, actually. It's a very good point to make. And, you know, this is why, and if you look at the studies out there on this specific thing about like, you know, consumption of juices and things like that, if someone is regularly overconsuming, even fruit juices,

like, you know, if you buy cranberry juice or whatever, and you're drinking three or four glasses of that a day for years, that is a risk factor for non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. You can get increased fat production in the, or increase fat deposition in the hepatocytes, the cells of the liver. So you do need to be mindful of consumption of that. If you're having a glass of fruit juice now and then, it's not a problem. But again, the sort of, you know, the detail is in the dosage that you're taking.

So absolutely agree with that. You know, ultra-processed foods generally higher in sugar, easy to over-consume. And when someone has mild fatty liver disease, as I did, or even, you know, moderate fatty liver disease, one of the things to first look at, to reduce that fructose load is looking at the amount of carbohydrate someone is taking. and that's what a lot of people will do. I mean, I've been involved in a ton of liver surgeries in the past, and we would often put patients who'd had a bit of fatty liver disease either before their liver surgery because we need to handle the liver, and if the liver is very fatty, it's also actually harder,

and it could bleed more when you're handling it. And even for gallbladder surgery, so these patients who'd had liver surgery or gallbladder surgery or were due for it, who had fatty liver, we would put them on some sort of liver shrinkage diet and get them to cut down on their carbohydrate intake in the run-up to surgery so we can reduce the amount of fat on the liver. I want to pivot from the topic of fiber and gut health specifically and of course the liver, which thank you for that. Those are really great insights and thoughts. And I want to zoom out a little bit big picture on health.

I referenced that your recent newsletter, you were talking about various things that you were doing, fiber being a cornerstone, to really transform your health and continue to age in a healthy direction as you get older. One of the areas that you had chatted about was how for your audience you want them in particular to know that it might be time to rethink a little bit of the 10,000 steps. Can you chat about that? Because I know our audience has heard me talk about with multiple different experts all around the world about why we want to avoid being sedentary. and yes, how 10,000 steps was made up from a Japanese pedometer company, I believe, were the origins.

And yet still, we should be shooting for some number that might be out there. So give us your thoughts on the 10,000 steps. Yeah. So 7,000 steps is the new 10,000 steps. And this is based on meta-analysis. We've had 10,000 steps is great, right? But we have data suggests that a sweet spot is probably 7,000 steps where you see those big reductions in cardiovascular disease risk. So if you're doing 7,000 steps a day, you're getting probably that 47% reduction in, you know, cardiovascular disease risk and benefits for dementia, benefits for gut health, mood, a ton of stuff, right?

and then from 7,000 to 10,000, you will still yield more health benefits, but it's diminishing returns. It's not a linear rise in, you know, if you do 14,000, you get double the benefits of 7,000. It doesn't work that way. As with most things, you know, you get diminishing returns. We've even seen this in extreme athletes. If someone is, you know, doing ultramarathons or elite level sports people, you get diminishing returns in a longevity setting. There's a sweet spot always for exercise, right? Not to say that people shouldn't be doing more if they can do more, but just, you know, some exercise is better than no exercise, is the bottom line. 7,000 based on newer data, seems to be a sweet spot for people to aim for so they don't need to worry themselves silly with

this magical 10,000, you know, target goal. And anything, beyond the baseline, if you're doing zero steps or 500 steps a day and you aim for 2,000, that's great. You're already going to see some incremental benefits. And then over the next few weeks, get to 3,000, 4,000, 5,000, whatever you can do. And it's all about that sort of small improvements which those benefits accrue over time. So, you know, I do try and aim for more than 10,000 a day just because, you know, it makes me overshoot that target, right? If you start telling people just aim for 7,000, maybe they go below. So I think it's okay to have like high ambitions and a high target, but just to be reassured if you just clock 7,000 steps today and you

didn't hit your 10K target, you've got most of the crumbs from the table. So much of the health conversation is really a mindset conversation. And one of the things you've been talking about recently is this mental framework of patterns over perfection. I think our audience would really benefit from hearing about it. Talk about it and what's the origin in it from your own life. Yeah, I mean, you can get so obsessed with the nitty-gritty of optimizing every aspect of your life. And I think it's a valiant thing to want to improve one's health across different aspects. But it can get overwhelming if you try to, you know, shoot for the moon and you don't get there.

And it can be quite toxic for the end of the world. individual for yourself. And I found this if you're trying to get 10 out of 10 sleep from day one. Like, you know, I bought this aura ring several months ago and I wanted to get a hundred percent sleep or 100 out of 100 the day I got it. If you don't achieve that, you know, the wagons, the wheels can come off the wagon and you think, you know what? I didn't do it. Forget it. I'll just completely zombie out, you know. If you miss your calorie target, ah, I'm just going to eat a pizza now. So that's what it can lead to. And I think small wins are better than, you know, nothing, but also it builds you towards the target that you're achieving at the end,

because it's constant iteration, their data points that you gather. And for me, I think something sustainable over a long period of time is much easier to adhere to your goals. And if we take it back to the 10,000 steps or even the fiber chat, if you're not walking at all, you're not moving at all, or you're not eating enough fiber, aiming for the end goal as your first goal is not sustainable, because then you'll just be demoralized. Instead, just setting mini goals along the way is better.

Like, hey, I'm going to aim for 15 grams of fiber every day for a week, or I'm going to aim for 5,000 steps a day every day for a week. And, you know, the dopamine reward system and the circuitry, neurologically speaking, if you can hit the small targets and tick them off, you're more likely to build momentum, psychologically speaking, and neurologically as well, to allow you to achieve those additional targets over a period of time. Yeah, that's a huge and great insight.

And I think the other thing is that, sure, you could rapidly progress in one area of life. But if it's not sustainable, how long are you going to keep it up? And how long is it before you end up backtracking? Yeah, correct, correct. And I found that in my life with yo-yo dieting and putting restrictions on. like, hey, I'm going to lose some weight. I'm going to eat no more than 1,500 calories a day. And actually putting restrictions and targets in your head, I mean, everyone's individual and some people love those sort of targets. But I think long term, you know, health is long term.

We want to live for 80, 90 years, right? You can't stick to targets every day for that many years. You need to build patterns, as we were speaking before, and dietary patterns, health patterns over months and years, not just days or weeks, right? It's like, hey, I need to go to the gym, you know, 75% of the days this month instead of saying, oh my God, I didn't do anything, you know, this week, you know, and so actually building those long patterns over a period of time. Like, I want to overhaul my diet over months. How can I sustainably do that? Rather than, oh my God, I didn't have any olive oil today.

You know, diet's gone. I think having that wider lens and a longer term vision goes a long way. And I can speak to that because of my own health journey I'm on and just having, you know, guardrails in place, but not minutiae every single day or every single meal. Well, let's use that framework to other areas of our life that are the basics that make a huge, huge difference in chronic disease, how we age, or happiness or mental health. And there's probably no bigger category out there than sleep. So how has been your own personal journey with sleep?

A lot of doctors have been on this podcast talking about how for many years their sleep was thrown off and it's been hard to sort of reel it back in. And what have been the one, two, three things that have made the biggest difference for your own sleep quality on your journey. Yeah, I mean, I had insomnia when I started as a doctor, my first year, just like I couldn't balance like the busy shifts and the night calls and all that kind of stuff. So I did suffer and it took a lot of research and learning and experimenting to, you know, get to a somewhat decent pattern. And it's lifelong experimentation to see what works for you and then sticking to something that works. The biggest things for me is keeping a cool, as cool a

room as you can. So around sort of the 19, 20 degree mark. I don't know what that is in Fahrenheit, but 19 or 20 degrees Celsius equivalent in Fahrenheit, you know, allows you to be induced to sleep faster. The sleep induction time drops because physiologically our core body temperature drops when we drift off to sleep. So the faster you can allow that, you know, turning point, the better it is for your sleep. The other thing I found is, My sleep was worst when I went to the gym in the evening or I did some exercise in the evening. So when I was doing long shifts, after the end of the long shift, I wanted to go to the gym, right? And I'll go to the gym at 8 p.m.

Do an hour session. It's now 9 p.m. I'm going to bed in the next hour. You know, my heart rate is still up there. It's slowly coming down. So I'm in bed. My heart's still racing and slowly coming down and I'm like feeling hot as well. So two things which are not conducive.

So my heart rates up that is not, you know, conducive to an ideal sleep at all. So actually trying to shift your patterns if you can exercise at a different point of the day or try to rapidly reduce your heart rate with some meditation, stretching, yoga, whatever it is you need to do, that needs to come down as well. And, you know, there's other factors which you can't really control. You know, I mentioned recently that my wife doesn't snore. and it's a blessing because you don't have someone who's disturbing your own circadian rhythm, right, and causing those awakenings. And it can be troublesome because you're sharing a bed with someone, you're exposed to more heat, movements, potentially snoring, sleep wake times.

My wife goes to bed slightly before me and wakes up earlier than me as well. She's a bit of a, you know, a supreme morning lark or whatever you want to call it. Sometimes that can affect me as well. But, you know, you need to look at all these different buckets when it comes to sleep. And I know people who are happily married who actually sleep in different beds and they have a very loving relationship. And, you know, both of them can speak to amazing sleep patterns. So just putting it out there. Probably one of the most controversial topics in marriages that are out there.

Sleep divorce. Yeah. Dr. Kern, while we have you here, you know, one area that we've seen an explosion in that I'd love to have you just touch on briefly as we're winding down, the wellness industry has gotten bigger than ever before. And there's a lot of great that comes along with that. And like any industry that grows, there's a lot of other stuff that is maybe not as helpful downright, you know, full on scams or misinformation or misleading.

information that's out there. And no area is that more prominent than the topic of supplementation. And you have this approach of smart supplementation. So I'm just curious from your end of it, what are some of the basics that you incorporate that are built on top of this lifestyle that you've already described to us of not being sedentary, having enough fiber. We didn't go too deep into it, but you did mention in the beginning having appropriate amounts of protein. We've done many episodes on that. I don't know if you want to add anything to that protein. conversation and some of the other fundamentals that we've talked about. So how do you approach supplementation and what are your biggest areas that you focus on there? Yeah, I mean, I'm very

open to supplementation and even people experimenting as long as it's safe within reason and they've done their due diligence, make sure things are third party tested, do they need X, Y, Z supplement, is there enough human trial data to support such a supplement? And even if there isn't, if you want to try something as an n-equals-one study, I think that's fine, you know, if you can afford it and it's not going to interfere with your lifestyle. As long as those core basics are there and they're not crutches for a bad lifestyle, right? And so for me, and I'm counting protein supplements, you know, like protein shakes and drinks as a supplement because, you know, I try to get all my protein from my diet, but I also take additional protein and just, you know, to add my two cents to the protein

thing. If you're an active adult, the data suggests having between 1.2 to 1.6 grams per kilo per day seems to be optimal for muscle protein synthesis. So if you can't achieve that through just your food alone, things like protein shakes if you're on the go or protein powders are great. So that's kind of protein as one thing. Creatin, a lot of people talk about that. And, you know, I don't need to add too much to this extensive discourse online. I try to take it every single day. Sometimes, you know, I do forget if I'm particularly busy, but, you know, three to five grams of creatine is something I strive for for recovery and strength. I previously had vitamin D deficiency. If you are blessed with melanin, you're also blessed with an increased risk of vitamin D deficiency,

especially if you live in northern hemispheric countries. I live in the UK. It's not so great for vitamin D production. So I supplement year round with vitamin D. And the vitamin D for me, it comes with vitamin K2 because it's an important co-factor in redirecting the vitamin D that you're taking and the calcium into bones and not being deposited into arteries. So, you know, getting that D3K2 mix as a supplement for me. I am not a huge fan of fish.

I do eat it on occasion if I'm on holiday somewhere by the seaside. And for that reason, you know, governments usually across the world recommend two plus portions of oily fish or fatty fish per week. I don't do that. So I take algal oil as algal omega-3 oil, which can get me my DHA and EPA, those omega-3s and the ALA as well, into my diet. And fiber as well, prebiotic fiber. You know, I take that religiously to top off my high fiber intake as well. And sometimes I've experimented with magnesium to good benefit. If my sleep is especially wonky, I do find personal benefit from magnesium.

I mean, I wouldn't say the data is wildly convincing or wildly strong, but there is something to suggest that there's, you know, some plausible mechanism as to why it might help relaxation and help with sleep. And there is some evidence that suggests it does help, you know, albeit sort of, you know, smaller evidence. But, you know, for me, I like to take that on occasion as well. And to be honest, that's pretty much it. I don't take anything else.

I know people take a ton of other stuff. And if it works for them, it works for them. But I find this is a nice stack, if you will, for me. as we're winding down on this interview, are there any final thoughts you want to leave with the audience, especially in the sort of the state of where wellness is today, where it's more popular than ever, some people feeling very excited about their routine, some people feeling more overwhelmed, and some people are just feeling super confused about where to put time, effort, and energy? What would be your final thoughts that you want to leave the audience with?

You know, one of the biggest changes for me was you need to have fun with it, right? And that's how it becomes sticky. Like, health shouldn't be a chore. It should be fun because you're improving your body. You're making your life easier so that you can live healthier for longer and do the things that you enjoy for longer. If you enjoy running or playing squash or hanging out with your kids, the healthier you are, the longer you can sustain those things. So, you know, I don't want to see going to the gym as like, I've got to go to the gym and get my steps in or get my hours in.

I need to eat fiber. Make it fun. Like, even with the fiber thing, I'm constantly trying out new recipes, you know. Like, I wouldn't say I'm an amazing cook. I do like to dabble, but I'm looking at new ways. Like, my Instagram and TikTok feeds are filled with just these cooking pages and who give these awesome recipes of how I can use five ingredients to make this, you know, dark chocolate, nutty, high protein, high fiber snack. And I'm always trying stuff like

that. So you need to find a way to make health fun, whether it's on the nutrition side of things, whether it's on the exercise side of things and even the social side of things. You know, so if we can change our lens from health being tasks to being fun buckets in your life, that can go a long way to just organically make your life a ton better. I love it. Fun buckets. That's what we should always strive for. It doesn't have to be such a serious thing.

That's a great reminder. Dr. Curran, this has been fantastic. I know that later on this year, we're going to get the opportunity to do a part two in person. So I really look forward to that. For a lot of our audience who may not be familiar with your work, you know, you have a YouTube channel. You have a podcast. We'll be linking to those below. anywhere else you want to send our audience to after-sox-so?

Yeah, I mean, unfortunately, I'm everywhere. You can't escape me. But, yeah, Instagram, TikTok, all those places. Awesome. Well, we'll have the links to all those in the show notes below. Thank you again for getting us excited about the basics and doubling down on something that a lot of people can easily forget. It's not the sexiest, you know, nutrient that's out there, fiber.

But when we really dig into it, it can do wonders. for our life. So we really appreciate you reminding us about that. Yeah, I'm trying to make fiber sexy again. Or sexy for the first time. Hi, everyone, Drew here. Two quick things. Number one, thank you so much for listening to this podcast. If you haven't already, subscribe, just hit the subscribe button on your favorite podcast app. And by the way, if you love this episode, it would mean the world to me. And it's the number one thing that you can do to support this podcast is share it with a friend. Share it with a friend who would benefit from listening. Number two,

Before I go, I just had to tell you about something that I've been working on that I'm super excited about. It's my weekly newsletter, and it's called Try This. Every Friday, yes, every Friday, 52 weeks a year, I send out an easy-to-digest protocol of simple steps that you or anyone you love can follow to optimize your own health. We cover everything from nutrition to mindset to metabolic health, sleep, community, longevity, and so much more. If you want to get on this email list, which is, by the way, free and get my weekly step-by-step protocols for whole-body health and optimization, click the link in the show notes that's called Try This or just go to Drew Perot.com. That's D-H-R-U-P-U-R-O-H-I-T dot com and click on the tab that says, try this.