Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee - BITESIZE | Eat These Foods to Improve Your Gut Health | Professor Tim Spector #326

Episode Date: January 13, 2023

Our gut health, unlike our genes, is something we can influence - improving almost all aspects of our health and wellbeing. Feel Better Live More Bitesize is my weekly podcast for your mind, body, and heart.  Each week I’ll be featuring inspirational stories and practical tips from some of my former guests. Today’s clip is from episode 291 of the podcast with leading expert on the gut microbiome, Professor Tim Spector. In this clip Tim shares some of the latest science, along with his tips for building more gut-friendly foods into your diet. Thanks to our sponsor http://www.athleticgreens.com/livemore Support the podcast and enjoy Ad-Free episodes. Try FREE for 7 days on Apple Podcasts https://apple.co/feelbetterlivemore. For other podcast platforms go to https://fblm.supercast.com. Show notes and the full podcast are available at drchatterjee.com/291 Follow me on instagram.com/drchatterjee Follow me on facebook.com/DrChatterjee Follow me on twitter.com/drchatterjeeuk   DISCLAIMER: The content in the podcast and on this webpage is not intended to constitute or be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your doctor or other qualified health care provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on the podcast or on my website.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today's Bite Size episode is brought to you by AG1, a science-driven daily health drink with over 70 essential nutrients to support your overall health. It includes vitamin C and zinc, which helps support a healthy immune system, something that is really important at this time of year. It also contains prebiotics and digestive enzymes that help support your gut health. It's really tasty and has been in my own life for over five years. Until the end of January, AG1 are giving a limited time offer. Usually they offer my listeners a one-year supply of vitamin D and K2 and five free travel packs with their first order. But until the end of January, they are doubling the five free travel

packs to 10. And these packs are perfect for keeping in your backpack, office, or car. If you want to take advantage of this limited time offer, all you have to do is go to drinkag1.com forward slash live more. Welcome to Feel Better Live More Bite Size, your weekly dose of positivity and optimism to get you ready for the weekend. Today's clip is from episode 291 of the podcast with leading expert on the gut microbiome, Professor Tim Spector. In this clip, Tim shares some of the latest gut health science, along with his simple tips for building more gut-friendly foods into your diet. Why is gut health so important? Even if you feel perfectly normal, you can have poor gut health,

which is going to affect how long you live, how many chronic diseases you get, whether you get allergies, whether your immune system is going to fight off COVID, all kinds of things, your mood the next day, your sleep, all things we hadn't even thought were related. So we have to think much more widely when we talk about gut health. So it influences everything to do with our body, our mood, our brain, and our metabolism, our weight, etc. We know that we've lost half of our gut microbes

compared to perhaps even 50 or 100 years ago. And that's affecting us in many ways. And yet, it's not like genetics that you can't change. It's something that all of us can improve. And all of us needs to understand more about gut health so that we can improve many things in our life very simply just by altering our food choices. So you don't need doctors, you don't need specialists to do it. It's all within our power to really nurture and improve our gut microbes, which in turn are key for our gut health. In terms of practical things,

we mentioned that improving our gut health can improve all kinds of things in the body. we mentioned that improving our gut health can improve all kinds of things in the body. And you mentioned food as a powerful tool to use for our gut health. What are some of the things that people should think about bringing into their diets to improve their gut health? Well, the first thing I think is to realize that we're not really in an obesity crisis we're in a food crisis and that's because we've lost an idea of what good food is and the first thing to do is to realize you know the difference between good and bad food and forget a lot of what we've been told about calories and fats and sugars and the fact that you can really tell a product by its calorie count or its percentage fat on a label. So it's understanding those differences between ready meals and something you do yourself. It's all those nuances that we need to start thinking about. Quality is something

we should be talking about and we should absolutely stop talking about calories in this country in the u.s people are often swapping calories for quality and manufacturers of foods use calories to disguise the poor quality of the ingredients all the other chemicals there affect the highly highly the highly processed that's going to have lots of other negative effects on your body. We know that these other products of food, understanding what's in ultra processed foods, is actually will drive your hunger, drive your cravings, make you more tired, all kinds of things that they're not supposed to do, because we're just supposed to think about calories and fat content and so it's driving people down the wrong direction and that's why

we've got it so wrong over the last 50 years that's why obesity rates are going up diabetes rates are going up and ultra processed food rates are still going up in the US and the UK which are the two top countries in the world. In terms of those foods or the types of foods that you would love people to be focusing on more, what are they? Well, gut-friendly foods. So, you know, I'm hoping one day we'll have a nice label on the food that gives it like a calorie score, a gut a gut friendly score and you are seeing some of the some of the companies starting to you know have these labels on it but they're it's the wild west they can anyone can put anything on at the moment you don't trust it so what you've got to

think of is what do your microbes want to eat when you're when you're when you're picking them out and generally if you pick foods that your microbes are going to be happy eating, they're going to be good for you, and they're also going to be good for the planet. So as a very general rule, that's a pretty good one. And what microbes like to eat is they like to eat predominantly plants. They like to eat high-fiber plants that are complex, and they like a variety so there's no point

only eating one type of salad every day even if you love it do mix it up because we've done studies showing that the sort of sweet spot for the number of plants you should eat in a week is around 30 that's not a precise number but you should be aiming for at least 30 plants, different plants a week. So bear in mind that's so you're generating as many species of microbes that can feed off all the chemicals in each of those plants. So it's like the perfect nourishment for them is to get that variety across the week. The 30 includes nuts and seeds and herbs. We don't know exactly how much, but increasing studies are showing that just adding spices, spice mixes to your diet at least,

you know, a couple of times a week can enhance your gut microbes. So increasingly the evidence is building. The people who have the more diverse diets do better. So snap yourself out of your routines, whether it's for your salad or your breakfast, and try and work this in. So you mentioned out of those 30 that you recommend as a ballpark figure, out of those 30 that you recommend as a ballpark figure fruits vegetables nuts seeds herbs spices lentils and things like beans as well black beans chickpeas all those sort of things yes i mean because suddenly the 30 when you include all that it doesn't sound quite as daunting as when it just

are what 30 vegetables no exactly you think of a, and I've got to get 30 different vegetables on my plate every day. No. I mean, you know, I cheat. And for my, you know, my usual breakfast, which doesn't mean I have it every day, and I do vary it depending on where I am. I start now with a, you know, a full-fat yogurt

with kefir, which is fermented milk, kefir, as it's pronounced in the US. So there's two probiotics in that. We think about 15 to 20 microbial species between them, if you're lucky. So that's also, I've got a probiotic start as well. And then I will have a bowl full of mixed nuts and seeds, and that gives me eight straight away. So you start the day with eight. Yeah. And then if I've got something in the fruit bowl, I chop up whatever's in the fruit bowl, a pear or an apple,

and so I might start with 10. So if that's Monday morning, I've only got to you know find another 20 um and that's just one meal so i have that with a uh a double espresso uh which is also um people should know of a very good source of polyphenols and fiber and is very good for your gut and coffee drinkers are healthier and live longer and have less heart disease so cough so it's it's completely that's a great study to refer to if we like coffee isn't it yes if you don't like coffee it's a bit tough for you but are you a coffee drinker i am very much so but most people don't realize that there's more fiber in the average cup of coffee than in a glass

of orange juice and we all know what orange juice does to your blood sugar. So for people who do like breakfast, do like eating, it's the one, we can all change ourselves. Generally in our home, we're in control of the situation. And we've got into a rut because most of us have a very similar breakfast every day. And it's the one that's easiest to change and change all our habits and if you change that i think it sort of sets you up your mentality for the rest of the day the rest of the month the rest of the year you've just got that in your mind that first thing you wake up i'm going to get my microbes off to a good start uh one way or another and for me it it works so i

think there's 30 rules some people say immediately oh that's terrible it feels like a burden but it can be so easy and you know just by preparing big jars of stuff and buying berries when you see them and freezing them or yeah you know a new seed or not you just add it to your mix it's incredibly easy what i know is that people really enjoy the conversations i have with you they feel really inspired to change and I think hearing that you get eight to 10 plants in a breakfast, I think may be super helpful for people. So for someone who may be on zero or five at the moment and they hear 30, what does the research show in terms of, yeah, look, from wherever you are, even if you go from five to ten a week, you're going to get an improvement, aren't you? You're going to improve the quality and the

diversity of your microbiome. 30 may be the ultimate target, but for some people who can't achieve that, I guess we don't want to feel bad about that. It's a case of, look, start where you're at and just see what you can do. Absolutely, yes. The 30 was just where we saw on the curve in the population that people sort of reached the maximum diversity. Oh, so it goes to 40. It didn't really give them much more diversity. On average, no. On average.

I mean, of course, as we've talked about before, it's all individual. So there's lots of individuality here. So some people might be fine on 20, others might need 40. We don't know yet. So we're setting a rough bar. So don't knock yourself out if you're only on 28 one week and you feel like you're a total failure. You know, it's fine. I think it's an aspirational goal. The more important is to just keep it in mind, your mentality, you're looking for that. Everyone has weeks where it's hard, they're working,

you know, they're having to travel, they're not prepared. We live in a practical world. And yeah, just on average, have that as an aspiration and see how you get on. Yeah. Just to finish off this conversation, Tim, could we just briefly go through what are polyphenols? Why should people think about getting more of them in? How can they do that? And then potentially the same for fermented foods as well. So polyphenols used to be called antioxidants, and they are a group of well over a thousand different chemicals that are in plants, in all plants to different levels. And they're defense chemicals that plants use to defend themselves against sun or

predators. And they are in brightly colored foods. They're in slightly bitter foods. And they're in complex foods. And so they're in things like coffee, dark chocolate, red wine, extra virgin olive oil, nuts, seeds, berries particularly. And these polyphenols we now know are useful for us because they feed our microbes. And those microbes then convert them into other healthy chemicals. We can't really use them ourselves. So it's quite interesting. They really are like specific fish food that we're eating that provides us. Then these chemicals then get back into our bloodstream

and dampen down inflammation and keep us healthy. So polyphenols are really good. Fermented foods are anything that has live microbes in it. So it's like probiotics naturally occurring in food. So by the time you're eating it, it's actually got live microbes that can still replicate and produce chemicals. And so everyone knows yogurt has that, but kefir has several times more microbes than yogurt. Kombucha, which is fermented tea, which is becoming more popular, which has even more than kefir in it and has different fungi and yeasts. So often up to 30 different microbes you can find in a proper kombucha.

Then sauerkraut used, know in central and eastern europe which is fermented cabbage and of course going one level above that you got kimchi one level above that in terms of the number of microbes number of microbes and diversity because you've also got as well as cabbage you've got uh you've got garlic you've got chilies uh you've got garlic, you've got chilies, you've got onions and other peppers and things. If you like Japanese food, of course, anything with miso in it is really important because miso is fermented soy. So fermented food is really big, and having a small amount every day is what I try and do. We know that these things die out, so for practical reasons, try and have a small shot of one or two of these every day is what I try and do. We know that these things die out. So for practical

reasons, try and have a small shot of one or two of these every day. And that's why if you have it at home in your fridge, you're near for breakfast or your first meal, you've got it. Or you have it, you know, at night when you come back. So I think it's about mixing it up. It's about trying new stuff. And it's about enjoyment in food as well. Hope you enjoyed that bite-sized clip. Hope you have a wonderful weekend. And I'll be back next week with my long-form conversation on Wednesday and the latest episode of Bite Science next Friday.