Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais - Why You’re Tired, Anxious & Inflamed I Dr Tim Spector

Episode Date: February 11, 2026

What if one of the biggest nutrition mistakes we’re making isn’t what we eat, but what we’re missing?Dr. Tim Spector is one of the world’s leading researchers on the gut microbiome and how it shapes metabolism, immunity, and even mental wellbeing. In this conversation Tim challenges the conventional nutrition playbook, explaining why calories are a poor guide to health, why most diets backfire, and how ultra‑processed foods can disrupt hunger signals in ways that make “willpower” a losing game.A central theme in this conversation is that many of us are focused on the wrong problem. Tim argues we’ve been sold a story that we need more protein, when what many people are actually missing is fiber, the essential fuel our gut microbes depend on. From there, the conversation becomes refreshingly actionable, focused on diversity over restriction, whole plants that support microbial health, and why fermented foods can punch far above their weight.This episode is a grounded, science‑backed reframing of nutrition. It’s less about rules and more about understanding the system inside you, then feeding it well.__________________________________Links & ResourcesSubscribe to our Youtube Channel for more conversations at the intersection of high performance, leadership, and wellbeing: https://www.youtube.com/c/FindingMasteryGet exclusive discounts and support our amazing sponsors! Go to: https://findingmastery.com/sponsors/Subscribe to the Finding Mastery newsletter for weekly high performance insights: https://www.findingmastery.com/newsletter Download Dr. Mike's Morning Mindset Routine: findingmastery.com/morningmindset Follow on YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, and XSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Did your discovery in gut science? Gut health guru, Professor Tim Specter. If you don't have a healthy gut, you're highly likely to have a whole host of diseases like type 2 diabetes, heart disease, dementia, depression, stroke, cancers and accelerated aging. There's virtually nothing that isn't touched by having poor gut health. What if one of the biggest nutrition mistakes we're making isn't what we eat, but what we're missing? We've really discovered a new organ in our bodies, the gut microbiome. There are 100 trillion of these microbes.

They're like chemical factories. And to produce all these chemicals that are really good for our immune system, metabolism, and our brain, you need them to be fed properly. I'm your host, Dr. Michael Jerva. A high-performance psychologist named Michael Treveh. Who Pete Carroll brought into work with the Seahawks. Famous for his work with Felix Baumgartner when he jumped out of space in the Stratos project. Olympic athletes depend on something more than just training and talent.

They have to stay mentally tough. Welcome back. Or welcome to the Finding Mastery podcast where we dive into the minds of the world. greatest thinkers and doers. The idea behind these conversations is simple. It's to sit with the extraordinarily and to learn, to really learn how they work from the inside out. Today's conversation is with Dr. Tim Specter, one of the world's leading experts on the gut microbiome and its powerful connection to health, nutrition, and even mental well-being. The state of your gut plays a huge role in your mental state. They've done randomized trials of probiotics and gut-friendly diets

that improve people with mild to moderate depression more than antidepressants. We unpack why calories are a poor guide to health, how ultra-processed foods disrupt hunger and metabolism, and why diversity, not restriction, is one of the most important principles for eating well. The big misconception that was out there that's still around is the obsession with the calorie, that if all you have to do to lose weight, exercise a bit more and eat less calories. But 95% of people, it failed miserably. But there was, of course, a multi-billion dollar diet industry, totally. based on that as well. It's what you eat is important, not purely the calories. Tim challenges the

idea that most of us are protein deficient. He argues instead that we've been sold a narrative that conveniently benefits food and supplement companies. The food companies have 60 or 70 different names for sugar that they're allowed to put in there to fool you. It's a war out there. A consumer against the food companies at the moment they're winning. What we're actually facing, he explains, is a widespread and serious deficiency in something most of us barely think about, but our gut microbes depend on to keep us healthy. The average American prey has twice as much proteins they need, but we also know that 95% of Americans are deficient.

So with that, let's jump into this week's conversation with Dr. Tim Specter. Tim, I've been looking forward to this conversation for a handful of reasons. One, the gut brain access is really important to me. And I found that unlocking that connection is really important. really important to vibrance and vitality and performance as well, let alone longevity and whatnot. So there's so many things I want to talk to you about. But first, thank you for making the trip and thank you for being here. I know it's a long haul. It's a pleasure. Yeah, it's really great. So before we get to microbiome and the gut health that you are absolutely at the tip of the arrow about,

can you explain first why you got interested in gut health? Yeah, I first came across gut. health in about 2009, because I'd been doing genetics for about 20 years, and I'd been going to genetic conferences, and I'd begin to get a bit disillusioned with genetics was going to solve all our problems, which we thought in about 2000. That's what Bill Clinton told us, so we believed it. And I went to this meeting, and there was this guy called Marty Blazer talking about these bugs that caused you to have ulcers, and when you got rid of these bugs with antibiotics, you caused other problems.

And this whole suggestion that were the whole series of microbes in that that could actually be doing you some good. As a doctor, you know, been beaten into us that every bug was a bad bug. No such thing is a good bug. They just get in the way of proper tests. We used to call them commensals.

They used to ruin any analysis. And it was a mindset that was completely different. So that sort of blew me away. And then I decided to research that as part of the twin study that I'd been running. So I set up in 1993, one of the world's biggest twin studies of 15,000 twins that we were following for a range of common conditions and traits, mental and physical. It took a few years to arrange that because no one was doing these tests back then, gut tests. And after a couple of years, we eventually got the money, worked with a group in Cornell, got the results and found that the microbiome was,

different in identical twins. And that was, wow. And check the results, however many we did, same findings. So even in identical twins who are clones, live their life together, the species only about 25% similar. 75% were different. Compared to you and I, would be, you know, unrelated to people, about 20%. So it was mainly, you know, random environmental thing. And that rang a little bell my head and said, that could be really fascinating. Could be the reason why one twin gets a disease like cancer or rheumatoid arthritis,

and another one doesn't. Why one gets depressed, one doesn't. Remember these, you know, absolutely these are like laboratory animals. They're genetically identical. Go to this, have the same mother, the school, food, everything. But something's different about them to cause disease. So I thought

this could be the missing link of why, you know, genetics isn't everything and why, you know, we've been able to explain this a randomness of disease to an extent. And the same year, I ended up having a bit of a medical health crisis at the top of a mountain. I was ski touring in Europe and got to the top of the mountain, had double vision, and I'd had a microstroke in my vessel supplying my eye, and I had high blood pressure, and I was sort of off work for three or four months, feeling very depressed and very tired and wanted to sort

out my own life and health. And so suddenly got very selfish about my studies because I'd been trained as an epidemiologist, which is looking at thousands of people, studying populations, not individuals. So suddenly, what advice would I give myself? You know, do I exercise more? Do I change my diet? What do I do. So that is when I said, well, I could combine these two things and spent three months basically researching from scratch. Everything about nutrition, I realized that everything out there at the time, back in about 2011, was complete rubbish. Everything on the internet, you know, the government advice both in the US and the UK. For example, we should be eating low fat foods, cut out any high fat foods, have low fat foods, even if they're highly processed.

First, we should be eating lots of starchy foods. He encouraged things like rice and potatoes and pasta. Across most of the developed countries at the time were saying this, you should keep grazing. You should snack regularly. You should never skip a meal like breakfast. That was fatal. And all this advice missed the point.

And when you looked it up, you saw there was actually no scientific evidence to back this up at all. It was based on very old research that had since been counteracted, but probably the pressure of the food industry had been, you know, forcing these guys in government to just keep saying the same thing, so the food companies could keep selling us crap food

that was low in calories, low in fat. And the other big misconception that was out there that's still around is the obsession with a calorie, that if all you have to do to lose weight, exercise a bit more, and eat less calories. and it's dead easy, you know, you lose weight. Of course, it all sounds good, but for 95% of people, it failed miserably. But there was, of course, a multi-billion dollar diet industry totally based on that as well.

And if somebody wants to lose weight, you probably wouldn't suggest eat more calories and exercise less. What would you suggest? And I know that's not the focus of this conversation, but it's an interesting kind of hot button. Yeah, no, it's what you eat is important. not purely the calories. So it's going for quality food. It's eating food that actually makes you less hungry rather than make you hungrier. If you go for low calorie foods that are highly processed, they're designed to make you overeat. Lots of recent studies now showing that high-risk processed foods will make you overeat by 25%. So they're actually making you hungrier. And so this high-carb-rich

food that's been pushed on us just makes us hungrier, hungrier throughout the day. day. And as we know from the Azempic GLP1 type drugs, hunger is the main driver of this thing, not our metabolism and our sort of balancing process. So that's why this idea that calorie restriction works is basically wrong because people who are calorie restricting are generally not eating the good foods. And even if they were eating good foods and you're only calorie restricted, the body reacts to compensate for that. So you lose weight for six weeks. Then you start to regain it because your hunger signals ramped up. So, you know, we can go on for an hour about what's wrong with this, you know,

calories in, calories out idea. But if you go to obesity research meetings now, nobody believes in this calorie idea anymore. And I think the Azempic type drugs have shown the relative importance of foods that can make you hungry and those that fill you up. Just for somebody who might be confused, you know, we're not quite sure about what an ultra-processed food is. Can you give a couple that are easy to look at, and then some that are more surprising that many people might overlook? That's actually a harder question than it would have been a few years ago. So ultra-processed food, the term came into research use in 2009.

It means any food that's been modified to have extra flavorings, additives, or chemicals and color in a way that you wouldn't do in your home kitchen. That's a very broad description of these foods. It accounts for over 60% of the American diet. I love that framing. Like, if you can't make it in your kitchen, it's probably a processed. Like, I don't think I could make a gummy bear. I could kind of get around to figuring it out maybe. But, you know, gummy bear is a little tricky.

And you certainly couldn't make a Pringles, could you know? Couldn't make a Pringles. Hard to figure that one out. I could make ketchup. Yes. If I were to buy it in the UK. Yeah, but ketchup was originally made in people's homes. and it was a fermented food.

Yeah, with vinegar. Vinegar, yeah. It's in my book, the recipe. You can make it. But I don't know how to make high fruit toast corn syrup. No. So I can't do the American version, but I could do the UK version. And you couldn't do anything with a sweetener because you'd need access to the petroleum industry

to get all those byproducts, you know, to make your aspartames and ACEs and sucraloses. So ketchup in the in the U.S. an easy, highly processed food. What are some other ones that you're like, hey, listen, pay attention because if you're consuming these, you're working a little bit against the health care. Yeah, so what I want people to focus on is not the 60% of all these foods, because some of them only lightly processed, right? They might just have a scorbic acid added to it, a preservative, which most people know

is vitamin C. So it doesn't mean they're all bad. And what we think is we've done some research at Zoe, redefining this. anyone's interested, there's a free app you can download that will allow you to scan any food and see how risky the processing is in it. And what we see is that most breads that you buy in a store from Wonder Bread to things that look healthier are highly processed. They've got all kinds of additives and chemicals that are bad for you. And then you've got other ones like most breakfast cereals, that's a 95% of breakfast cereals, are highly processed.

You've got snack bars, cookies, ready meals. Anything that's low fat or low calorie is virtually all ultra-processed. The vast majority of stuff that you see in stores that isn't in the fruit or veg component is ultra-processed. And we think that about a third of all those are high-risk. So Zoe have come up with a new risk score, which to be high-risk, you have to have an additive. that is harmful for you or several additives. It has to be hyper palatable. And this is what the food industry do to make food,

make you overeat the food. So they have something called the bliss point, which certain specific combination of salt, sugar and fat, which you don't find in nature, tickles dopamine bits of your brain to trigger us of addictive urge to keep eating this stuff. And there's a very way to look at foods and see if they've got that formula,

then they're designed to make you overeat them much more than your body would normally want to. And the third thing is that they're often designed structurally to melt in your mouth. It takes no effort at all to eat it, and instantly those calories that is going into your body, you don't even notice eating it. So you finished a whole pack or a whole grab bag or whatever it is

without exercising your jaw at all. and just watching, watching TV, you know, you've consumed enormous amounts and you're going back for a second one. So those three things are what the food industry do to us. Name the three one more time. So salt. Additives, hyper palatibility. Okay, yeah. And this structure are the three things that the food companies are trying to put into food.

And the more they do that, the best, the more they get a bestseller, like a Pringles, like a Cheerios, like a snack bar. that's a healthy protein bar, but it's... Yeah, it can have a healthy label on it. It'll be low calorie, high protein, extra vitamins. They're all signs that these are highly processed foods. Before we go to how to look at ingredient list, let me come back up for error real quick on this.

There's two concerns, I think, that are looming of why we're starting here. One is they're designed to keep you going, to ingest kind of empty calories. It's a little bit like an empty meal. And the second, there's probably a gut issue that happens when you're consuming those. Correct. Okay. So pin those two ideas and then drill down into like helping me understand what to look for

the ingredients. I'll tell you my shorthand of this. It has more than five ingredients. I really pay attention to what is in there. So I'm trying not to eat anything that has more than five ingredients. Is that an old way of thinking? Or would you say, yeah, it's probably about right? And if I can do three ingredients, if I'm buying something that is,

canned or bottled or like I'm probably on the better side of it. Yeah, I'm not sure there's a number because that would depend on the product. A chocolate bar is a good example. You buy a craft chocolate that just has dark chocolate in it, cocoa butter and sugar. So it met my criteria. Right. That would be perfect, right? But you get one that you could add in an artificial sweetener in that, right?

And that's making it very bad for your gut microbes. You add in lesser thin, that's an emulsifier, which is also bad for your gut microbes. So already you've got five, which is better than the ones with 10, but it's still problematic. So it's complex. And the food companies will always be one step ahead. They have the best scientists. They're testing this stuff. They have millions spend on budgets to test this stuff.

So they'll be looking to modify the names of those ingredients. They sound good to you. have 60 or 70 different names for sugar that they're allowed to put in there to fool you. So you think, oh, that sounds okay. Agave, that sounds better than sugar or whatever or reverse dextrose or whatever it is you're talking about. So I think we need tools to understand that. That's why we develop this free app that you scan your food.

You scan this food or the barcode. And it will just tell you, you know, from our research, how many of these criteria it's hitting and you get a, you know, a four scale, zero risk, low, medium and high risk, and you can make your own mind up. Because it's so complicated for us to keep in our heads all these chemicals and products. And you can have three peanut butters, all look identical, all have the same labels. You haven't got the time to go into a store and, you know, with a magnifying glass and look at them all. So use an app that is continuously updated, you know, with new information because it's changing fast and it's a war out there.

You know, it's the consumer against the food companies. And at the moment, they're winning. Finding Master is brought to you by Defender. In the conversations I have with world-class performers, there's this theme that keeps coming up again and again. How we choose to move through the world shapes the quality of our lives. That's about mindset,

the environments that we seek out, the way that we use our tools, and the way that we prepare ourselves, for what's next. And for me, that's what stands out about Defender. Defender is one of my favorite cars on the road. It is engineered for capability. Built to take on the unknown, the off-road, those edge of what's possible kind of days.

With advanced terrain response systems and all-wheel drive and configurable off-road modes, it is designed to adapt to wherever your path leads, even if that path hasn't been paved yet. At the same time, one of the things that I love is that Defender Offer's, offers refined details, intuitive tech, and a quiet, comfortable cabin, supporting you whether you're navigating challenging conditions or simply heading out for the day with family and friends. The Defender lineup includes the Defender 90, 110, and 130 with room for up to eight passengers and the versatility to match nearly any adventure or ambition that you have. You can explore the full lineup and build yours at Land Rover USA.com.

Again, that's land rover USA.com. Bodymaster is brought to you by LinkedIn Jobs. If you've ever hired for a small business, you know the real cost isn't just the salary. It's the time that you lose when the fit is off, the momentum that stalls when that fit doesn't work. And that's the pressure of having to get it right while you're still running everything else. That's why I'm paying attention to LinkedIn hiring pro. It's built for the reality of hiring when you're operating lean.

You describe the role in playing language and then hiring pro. helps you draft the job post, surface the right candidates, and then narrow to a short list without turning hiring into another full-time job. And when applications start coming in, it doesn't leave you buried in resumes. It streamlines screening, including AI-powered interviews for initial conversations. How about that? So that you can spend less time searching, and then more time connecting with the people who match what you need. In fact, nearly 60% of hires, find a candidate to interview within a week. So hire right the first time. Post your job and get $100 off your first job post at LinkedIn.com slash mastery.

Again, that's LinkedIn.com slash mastery. Terms and conditions apply. What are some things that you are really concerned about as you are diving into gut health? Well, I'm concerned about a lot because the state of our guts at the moment is appalling. And I'm hoping this is the turning point when America realizes, and I think we are seeing signs of people, talking about the food, poisoning kids and changing our health, our physical and mental health.

So I'm hoping this is the point people start to pay attention to all those things. And it's everything from overuse of antibiotics. The US uses far too much compared to other countries, pollution, poor state of our food system, and the fact that some kids just go, you know, never had a non-processed meal in their lives. and their guts are being completely starved. So when you compare an American gut with countries, you know, tribes, people in Africa, they're, you know, half the species. The other half have been wiped out.

And you want a healthy ecosystem of microbiome? Yeah, the last 10 years have taught us that, you know, we've really discovered a new organ in our bodies, the gut microbiome. There are 100 trillion of these microbes. They're like chemical factories. And to produce all these chemicals that are really good for our immune system, metabolism, and our brain, you need diversity of species. And to get diversity of species, you need them to be fed properly. And if they're only fed on low fiber, highly chemical food, it's not surprising they're dying out and the good guys have got nothing to eat.

Only the bad ones that feed off the poor quality fats and proteins are left. So the chemicals they're producing to help our immune system are no longer there. And I think once you grasp that so much of our general health comes from our gut, then I think you can convince people to spend more attention, more focus on eating properly for your gut. Because everything else follows from that. And this has been a slow-growing revelation. So I didn't instantly get it, but the science keeps backing it up every year, making it even stronger than when I started the journey back 15 years ago.

I do want to go to like basic model inputs to outputs. High quality inputs tend to not always lead to some security around high quality outputs. And so if the case was like, let's say mental health or if the case was an overall kind of vibrance in life, you would definitely say that part of the input equation would be to ingest foods that will feed your microbiome. Absolutely. And, you know, nutrition is very complicated. And so when I started writing my first book on this,

I tried to find concepts that might make it easy for people to say, well, how do you put all this together? You know, some people are telling me this. And I said, well, just think of it. If you're like this zookeeper or a gardener for this incredible gardener and you want to keep all these different species going, you wouldn't feed them just one, the same food, right? If you're in a zoo, you know, some animals would die if you just fed them all the same.

So you give them a diversity. and you don't want too many chemicals, you want to nourish it, but seeds in there, new stuff, through fermented foods, you can have this concept that if you look at nutrition through the lens of your gut microbes,

what do they want to eat? Everything just about follows logically. That's true. So the foods that we've originally thought were healthy, like orange juice, for example, you know, heavily pushed by Florida and a tropicana and these plates, you know, and Pepsi.

None of that really gets to your gut microbes. The sugar just comes out of that, goes straight into your system, and there's virtually no fiber gets through to your gut microbes. So the alternative would be, we've always thought of coffee as a rather harmful drink, but the epidemiology is now reversed in the last five years and shows it actually reduces heart disease if you have three cups of coffee a day.

Is that because of the polyphenols? It's partly because of the polyphenols, because they're very high in polyphenols. These defense chemicals you get from plants, particularly the bitter ones like coffee or dark chocolate. But it's also due to the fiber itself because you need to remember that coffee, originally was this fermented bean.

It's a plant. When I tell people, like, I don't drink coffee. I drink a lot of tea. So I do want to get to it. But I say, do you really like bean juice? And like, no, that's gross. But they love their coffee, which is bean juice, basically.

But you're saying there's fiber. That's a totally new idea for me. that there's fiber in coffee. Yes. So one and a half grams of fiber, which, you know, is the same as you get in a small banana. Per cup. Per cup. So the average American will have three cups of coffee a day.

It's probably the major single source of fiber in the American diet. I do supplement with fiber. I try to eat a lot of natural food, but I do supplement with fiber as almost like a prebiotic. But I do want to hold back on that. I have to have a word with you about that. Okay, good. let's do that. Because you're going to want me to eat more.

Well, have you tried matcha? That's nearly as much fiber as coffee. And so... I like macho. Yeah. And it's still like, isn't a supplement. I think the supplement I take is like five grams.

And so you're saying a couple cups of matcha, but none in tea. There's, this is not... Green tea, yes, black tea has very little fiber. Yeah. Okay. But match is closer to coffee. So you need five cups of matcha to. get your five grams of fiber, but I'll be buzzing by there are there are easier ways to get your

fiber okay yeah good okay awesome these are gems these are great based on your research the general recommendations to invest in gut health I would love to start with like a big idea because I feel like we're down into like drink three cups of coffee and you're sure we need to go back to the general principles yeah general principles so okay why is gut health important because we can't exist without healthy gut microbes. We've evolved to live with them and they provide key chemicals that our body can't produce itself, key vitamins, the B vitamins, the vitamin K2. They produce some B12 but can't use that, but they also produce many brain neurochemicals, serotonin, dopamine. And they're the key messengers for our immune system. So our immune system can't function normally

without a functioning microbiome. And we're realizing how important the immune system is for our overall health. So the last few years, it's just exploded, understanding that it's absolutely key, not only for autoimmune diseases, allergies, but also fighting cancer, fighting aging, and controlling inflammation and mental health. If you were to say, if you don't have a healthy gut,

you run the increased risk of, How would you finish that thought? If you don't have a healthy gut, you're highly likely to have a whole host of diseases, two or three times the risk of metabolic disease like obesity, like type 2 diabetes, a heart disease, you're more like to get dementia, you're more like to get depression, you're more likely to have a stroke, you're more like to get cancers and accelerated aging, and food allergies. So there's virtually nothing that isn't touched by having a poor.

gut health. And, you know, we know this because at Zoe now, we've done 300,000 gut tests and compared that to health profiles. And so it's obvious that it runs across the board. People with healthy guts just get less of all those diseases. So you have my attention. Okay. And I don't, I didn't need you to say that. But then when you say it that way, it's like, oh, goodness. Okay. Go from a macro position or a model, if you will, about what are the most important factors to think through to invest in a high quality gut microbiome? I think we've got several principles that are worth just going through to remember. The first, and I think the most important, is to eat a diversity of plants.

From our studies, we think around 30 plants a week is the optimum. If you can get to that target, you look skeptical, but to get to 30 plants, you've got to remember what a plant is. So I've said coffee is a plant. Okay, so you're allowed coffee or matcher. you're also allowed nuts and seeds. Each one is different. Herbs and spices.

Okay, so once you start thinking more broadly, it's not as hard as that. And that is a very effective way to do this. The average American has between 9 and 11 plants at most a week. So, you know, there's a way to go, but it's a different way of thinking. Because in the past we've said, well, you can have the same food You know, you just get your banana, your apple, beans and peas, and that's it, you know, that's all you need every day and you're fine. The truth is that doesn't work. People have the same salad every day and not as healthy as people have a different salad every.

So it's embracing diversity, and you do that, that keeps your gut microbes happy more than anything. And I think that's a foundation, really, because you don't have to count fibre, because if you're doing that, you're going to be getting a lot. lot of fiber just automatically. It's very hard not to boost your fiber amounts because we need to be getting over 30 grams of fiber a day. Average American is having less than 15. So we need to double the amount of fiber and that's one way of doing it. The second general principle is to eat the rainbow and that's because colored plants and vegetables as well as bitter ones have these defense chemicals, these polyphenols. Bright-colored berries, dark purple, blueberries, blackberries, lettuces that are, you know, the Rosso-Lolo

letters that have purple leaves, much better than something boring like the iceberg lettuce, which has zero polyphenols. It's just water. Cabbage? All cabbages are actually good, surprisingly they are a slight exception, but always pick ones with the darker leaves. You'll do better. Things like dark chocolate are high in polyphenols, extra virgin olive.

oil, red wine, coffee, all these things where you're getting a slight bitterness and a slight astringency on your tongue. They are signs that these have natural chemicals in them that we used to call them more antioxidants, if you remember that. And that was such a vague term, and it was pretty obvious that scientists were just bullshitting. They didn't really know what it meant. And now we know that they actually feed our gut microbes, their energy for our gut microbes, and they convert that into other products that are good for our immune system. That's what we want. So polyphenols are really important.

And choosing what you eat, partly based on the polyphenol counts, is really important. So beans are another great example of something that are high in polyphenols and in fiber. And there's many sort of foods in those categories, seeds, nuts, all these things are also really good. Let's go back to cabbage for just a minute because I know eventually, we're going to get into fermentation, but raw cabbage, I remember somewhere in my research that like some of these more raw foods are really hard, like hard on the gut, like I think kale cabbage. Is that, is that a misnomer or is that show up to be true? There are always some exceptions, but on average, the nutrient value of raw food is less than slightly steamed.

Slightly steam is a little bit better. Significantly better. And oversteam is a problem. This raw food diet stuff, Yeah. It doesn't stack up scientifically. You can't digest this easily if it's all raw. But at the same time, if you, you know, you boil the shit out of it for two hours, like, then you do destroy it unless you're drinking the liquid. So the sweet spot is this done just for a couple of minutes, al dente, minimum amount of water, just fry it up in oil.

That's the perfect way to... Oh, and fry in oil. You can do it in oil as well, yeah, particularly olive oil. You get actually more nutrients out of it. High heat olive oil? Or you don't want to overcook the olive oil? It's hard to do that, actually, because the smoke point of olive oil is actually, you know, it's above 200 degrees. It's really high.

So unless you're wok frying, you won't get it there. So that was a bit of a myth that you couldn't use olive oil for... frying because it was harmful. The science doesn't support that. Let's stay there for a minute. What about using seed oils for cooking, whether it's avocado or whatever it might be? I think the jury is pretty clear that canola oil is something that's probably not great, but I even read some counter evidence that, no, get over it. Canola oil is fine. What is your position on it? Finding Mastery is brought to you by David Protein. Nutrition is foundational to high performance and well-being.

And being consistent with whole food choices, it's really important. Sometimes that's tricky, especially when you're on the go. One small practice that helps me on those types of days is having a smart, reliable nutrition option, ready when I need it. And that's why I'm a big fan of David Protein bars. The gold bar is their flagship product. It's seriously impressive ratio. It's got 28 grams of protein, just 150 calories, zero grams of sugar, and it's formulated

with precision, high protein density, great texture, and, flavors that make it easy to stick with. The team here at Finding Mastery, they love it. They're just ripping through them in the Finding Mastery Lab. Chocolate chip cookie dough and peanut butter seem to be their favorite go-toes. And for those who don't want to compromise performance, just because you're on a short time or in between meals, this is a solution that's worked incredibly well for me and the team here at Finding Mastery. They've built something with rigor and alignment that really stands out in a crowded, sometimes ambiguous space like nutrition. David bars are now available in major retailers like Walmart and Target.

And if you'd like to try them directly and get a special offer for being a Finding Mastery listener, head to Davidproteen.com slash Finding Mastery, where right now, if you buy four packs, you'll get the fifth for free. You also get free shipping and then 10% off every order. Again, that's Davidproteen.com slash Finding Mastery.

I hope you'll check them out. This anti-seed oil campaign is massively hyped, right? by a few influencers who are not scientists. I think most of the evidence doesn't support anything really deadly about seed oils. It doesn't mean that I use them myself. I would much rather have extra virgin olive oil, which I know is the healthiest oil on the planet. Why would you use anything else unless you couldn't afford it?

There are good seed oils and there are bad seed oils. There are down the bottom end, highly refined, the food companies are mixing them all up, adding all kinds of industrial processes to that, you know, that's a problem of the processing, not the seed. So high-quality seed oil, I'm sure is fine. I don't personally use it. I just use extra virgin olive oil for everything.

But if someone said, I'm got any, here's some avocado oil or some high-quality rape seed oil, canola, I would use it. Yeah, okay. And when I go shopping for extra virgin olive oil, I use the same thing. I don't know which brand to trust. So I'm kind of going down and looking for labels that look like, I don't know. You know, like it's a little bit of a mess for me to choose. So I choose a dark bottle and from Italy.

So I'm not even sure how I got to those two ideas. But can you give me us, me, but take a little bit more guidance? Italians would never buy their olive or from a giant store or supermarket, right? They would have their supply, their guy, they know. Right. Because they know all kinds of trickery goes on in olive oil, right? And by the time it's imported to the US, there's lots of contamination, you know, labels get switched. And there have been some surveys showing that often it's not good.

So the most important thing is to check the date of the olive oil because it goes off. Okay? So each year there's a harvest. It's in October and November. and it will normally last about 18 months. And very often by the time it gets shipped over from Europe to the US, they say, well, the US, they don't mind, they don't know much about Oliver,

we'll just give them the old stuff. So there might be two or three years out of date. It's lost a lot of its punch, it's polyphenols. You lose a lot in the first 12 months. So you want something that's really been harvested recently. it's in a dark glass bottle and when you you drink it and have a bit raw taste it

just put it in a teaspoon it should have a bitterness and it should make you cough you know it should sort of I always thought it was like a spice that I would taste yes yeah right so but the key is to get a supplier you trust I think that's the way to do it most of the mass brands are mixtures

and they're not very good you want to get you know single like you would a wine don't want to get a wine from 20 vineyards mashed together. You know, you want to get something that's real that you know comes from a single estate. And they're the really good ones. But once you start tasting, you know what's a good one. Great.

Diversity, colorful plate or colorful foods. Yeah. And there's many other examples, really, of, you know, that's what I love about this idea. It's not about restriction. It's about adding. And, you know, we're so used to talking about food and nutrition and diet as you can't have this, you can't have that, you know, exclude this. whereas what we're trying to do is to get more on people's plate and try new stuff

and you know every time you go to a restaurant you're eating out oh i haven't had that plate before or that you know it makes you more adventurous try and get some new plant you've never seen before and just try it you know what different colored ones are the same ones why always orange carrots when you can have purple persian carrots that have nine times the polyphenol count You know, it's a whole new world. Once you start thinking in those terms of adding more and new different things, because, you know, A, it's going to help your taste buds, but also it's going to help the microbe guys down there. One of my favorite things. My wife and I, Sunday mornings, we've got a local farmer's market.

I do a little fitness. She does a little fitness. We meet at the farmer's market. You know, both of us are, you know, just kind of the glow after fitness or exercise. And we're shopping down. And it's like, it feels like it's a, it's a treat. for the, you know, gut biome because there's so many different things to choose from. Yeah.

And it's the place we also get sourdough bread. I don't know exactly, but it's like an artist in sourdough bread, which I know you're high on sourdough as a fermented food. Would you suggest that on the diversity bit that if there's a bread, you would stick with sourdough versus other breads, or would you expand the types of breads beyond sourdough? There's a lot of fake sourdough around. So supermarket sourdough is not controlled at all. they just can sprinkle a bit of sourdough flour in there

or spray it with something gives a sourdough smell or slightly acidic lactic acid smell and it passes a sourdough. Be wary of those cheap brands that say they're sourdough, they're just exactly the same. They're not of any health benefit at all. If you have a sourdough white loaf, it's still generally not good for you.

It'll be slightly better than the equivalent white loaf. What's a sourdough, non-white loaf? What do you mean by that? Well, the stuff I make and I eat regularly would be asado made with at least 50% rye and 50% whole grain wheat. So it's not containing any refined flour in there. So it's full of fiber. It's very dense. It fills you up.

And it's a completely different taste. It doesn't have that sort of instant sugar burst that most breads do. What do I ask the person that I'm supposed? buying my bread from. What's why I ask him to know if I'm getting a properly fermented sourdell? Well, you ask him, you know, how long it's fermented for, where is the fermentation process take place? He's going to look at me sideways, but how long is the fermented process? Usually should be at least, you know, 12 hours. Okay. And they can do longer ones. And is it all done on the premises? Does it come in frozen? Okay. You know, these are sort of, you know,

These are sort of questions you can ask. But bread itself is one of the things that we all eat, but one of the most unhealthy things we can eat because most of it is sugar. So even if you sourdough it up, which means that the gluten particles are slightly smaller, you've got some dead microbes in there, you're still having a lot of sugar.

So if you can go towards grains that are whole grains, so it's made with the whole grain, not the refined grain, and it's got more rye, or spelt in it, then it's going to fill you up much quicker, give you less of a sugar spike and be much healthier. So I'm worried about everyone saying, oh, it's sourd or therefore it's healthy. That's not the case.

It's definitely not the case. How many slices of bread do you have a week? Oh, that's a tricky question. One a day, probably. One slice a day, yeah. And then do you put corn tortilla and flour tortilla in the same conversation? The same principles apply in that whatever your flour is, is a huge difference. And this is the same for rice, for pasta, for all these things.

If you're having the whole grain version of it, rather than the refined white version of it, you're getting more fiber. It's harder to digest. It's helping your microbes. And it will fill you up more. So across the board, it'll always be the better option. That's a general rule that people should be looking at.

Do you eat corn tortillas and flour tortillas? Rarely, yeah. I mean, I eat most things occasionally, but I wouldn't be having them regularly. Yeah. And I was in Guatemala and it was very hard to avoid having tortillas. Yeah, that's right. Southern California, there's lots of options. And then kind of stay in this Southwest diet, if you will, here for just a moment. What about like tortilla chips that are, quote, organic? There's only like two ingredients in it or whatever, you know, back to that idea

that we're talking about earlier. Danger food or it's okay. They're a treat. They shouldn't be a regular thing that they're still going to give you a big sugar spike. They're not really going to give you any significant fiber. So they're of no great benefit to you. And yeah, the best ones may not have many additives, but, you know, you go for the average tortilla chip. It's got 20 ingredients that you really don't want to know where they are. Yeah.

And so these should be rare treats. Definitely not part of a regular diet. Okay. Principle number one, diversity. Eat with lots of different types of people. 30 plants. A second, read the rainbow. Third would be have regular fermented food.

So try and get three fermented foods in a day. And the science is backing this up now. Is this the 4Ks? Includes the 4Ks, but not restricted to the 4Ks. There's many more fermented foods than the kefayr, the khrusha, the kraut and the kimchi. You've also got all the misos. So miso paste, the soy sauce, yeah. The nattoes, if you're brave, which is the fermented soy sprouts.

Water kefias called Tibikos, which is a drink. I haven't seen much of it in the U.S., but it's... I've never had it, yeah. It's quite big in the UK now, which, again, is made with grains a bit like milk kefah grains. And you've also got some things like Worcestershire sauce, which are actual ferments, Tabasco. Tabasco, when you mentioned that, it really surprised me. So, Tabasco sauce is a ferment.

Yeah. So a lot of these, original, these condiments were made by fermentation and then offer. Often that they got like the ketchup, you know, Heinz took it over and it's no longer fermented. It's just chemically made. But some of these have kept those ferments. And, you know, most people don't realize that high-quality soy sauce, you know, is fermented. I watch my salt intake. So when miso soup comes around at like a Japanese restaurant per se, I tend to pass from the salt intake.

On the sodium or on the soy sauce, I tend to go low sodium. And I was reading your book, it's like, man, I need to maybe be rethinking this. you talk to me about salt and soy and salt and miso. And salt in all fermentes, really. So, I mean, kimchi is the one a lot of people avoid because they think, well, this tastes really salty. Salty, yeah. And, you know, I ferment and I'm adding a lot of salt to this stuff, 2% of everything you go in, it's salt. And if you're making miso paste, I make my own miso, you put in like 6% salt.

So you'd expect people who have fermented foods a lot to have high blood pressure. and it turns out the opposite is true. In Korea, they've done studies of 30,000 sort of kimchi addicts compared to 30,000 strange Koreans who don't have any kimchi, and their blood pressure of the kimchi guys was actually lower than the others. With higher salt intake. Yes. But the way it works with the gut biome, it's the offsetting.

Well, clearly, it must be the benefits of these fermented foods outweigh any negative effects of the salt. And I think I've re you know, we were always taught in medical school that, you know, salt is bad for everybody. We should all avoid it. But the research is really quite controversial. It's suggesting that there are some people are salt sensitive. People from African background, for example, are much more likely to be salt sensitive. But overall, only about 20% of people in the US and UK are really sensitive to salt.

The others, yeah, makes only a tiny difference. a few percentage difference if you had really high salt intake. That's interesting. So the reason I was... It's overstated. It's a nice easy thing. Okay, your doctor says, don't have any salt, you know, don't have any fat, don't any salt, sorted. But the science doesn't tell us that.

And what it does tell us is that if you have lots of plants, for example, that contain potassium. And many of the things we're talking about, the plants we're talking about have high potassium levels. That is having high potassium or potassium supplements. is three times more effective than stopping salt. So it could be that all these plants you get in by having kimchi's or even the ferments in miso, the soybeans, are reducing your blood pressure, and that far outweighs any bad effect of the salt.

I believe that fermentation itself, plus eating high potassium foods, is actually good for your circulatory system, and that has been far underplayed by the medical world who are obsessed with just salt and a very simple solution. And it's actually clear from a lot of the data that, yeah, some people suffer, they do need to pay attention to their salt. I'm not saying that's not true.

Correct. But the majority of people are much better off having more forgetting about salt, having, you know, as long as they're not eating junk food, because a lot of the salt, most of the salt comes from packaged goods. Packaged goods. Yeah. If you're eating fresh food, you know, life isn't worth living without adding salt to your food. You're saying, yeah.

But if you're opening a package, there's so much salt in those things, right? But if you're doing your own stuff, you know, you should be adding salt to it to taste. You know, meat, for example, without salt, there's no point in eating it. It's totally tasteless. And we've evolved to have salt. You know, I stayed for a week with the Hadza tribe in Tanzania, and the one thing they used to trade for. They didn't need anything, but salt was the one thing they wanted when they met any other tribes. That's all they wanted.

And you can understand why it's so precious. I think the easy button is potassium banana. What are some of the other things that you think about for potassium enriched foods? Things like kiwi fruits, virtually all leafy vegetables, binich, kale. They all have high potassium levels. Most fruits do. So it's, again, it fits into this idea of this wide variety of plants. You'll naturally get high potassium levels.

if you do that. And I don't like to obsess about one particular plant or fruit because I think, you know, because everyone's trying to say, what's your super, what's your super food? What's this one thing that's going to do it? It's getting this diversity of richness. You will naturally get the things that your body needs. Yeah. It's. And stop thinking, oh, well, you know, I was told I mustn't have this. And so you cut out all this range of things from your diet. They're really useful. I mean, Beatroot, you know, is an amazing vegetable. And I do a fermented beetroot. That's what I'm eating, yeah.

And it's wonderful. Yeah. That's been shown in trials to have three times more effect on lowering your blood pressure than stopping salt. How about it? Yeah. I tripped on it by accident. And the Romans said it was good for your sex life. So they had beetroot in all the brothels.

Oh, did they? Really? Yeah, right. Yeah. That's funny. Money Master is brought to you by Momentus. It's the start of the new year. And it's an invitation to it. set, to refocus, to realign with the habits that support long-term health and high performance.

For me, that begins with the fundamentals, including how I fuel my body. And that's where supplements can play a powerful role if you choose the right ones. That's why I trust Momentus. In an industry that is lightly regulated and really confusing, Momentus has become the high trust brand in a low trust category. They were not satisfied with the status quo. So they created what they call the Momentus standard. Every product is built with science-backed ingredients and then is third-party tested with NSF or informed sport certifications. That means no guesswork. Just straightforward quality that we can count on. My personal staple is what they call the Momentus 3, protein, creatine, and omega-3. Simple. These foundational nutrients support recovery and energy and mental clarity, and they're part

of my daily rhythm. I also really like their brain drive, turmeric, and Ashwaganda. So if you're looking to start the year grounded in quality and intention, I'd encourage you to check out what Momentus has created. Head to livemometus.com slash finding mastery and use the code finding mastery for 35% off your first subscription order. That's live momentus.com slash finding mastery and use the code finding mastery. Finding mastery is brought to you by Fatty 15. Over the years, we've had a lot of great conversations about optimizing the aging process. And one of my favorites was the conversation I had with Dr. Stephanie Van Watson, an applied scientist and the co-founder of Fatty 15. Stephanie's background is extraordinary.

He's a veterinary epidemiologist, a former Navy scientist, and now a longevity researcher. In our conversation, we dug into the science of aging. The connection between dolphins and human health and how a surprising discovery led to the identification of a new essential fatty acid, C-15. That discovery, it became the foundation for Fatty 15, the daily supplement, and it's designed to support long-term cellular health. What I love about it is how it works at the foundational level by strengthening your cell membranes and supporting your body's natural resilience.

It helps you feel more energized, focused, and resilient over the long haul. I love it, I use it, my wife uses it, it's become a central part of my routine because it aligns with the core principle that I believe in. When we take care of our internal systems, we can show up more fully in everything we do, our careers, our relationships, our hobbies, and anything else we choose to invest our time in. If you're curious about the science behind it, I highly recommend you checking out our conversation. It's episode 473. And if you're ready to give it a try, head to fatty15.com slash finding mastery.

And use the code finding mastery for 15% off your first 90-day starter kit. That's Fatty 15, F-A-T-T-Y-15, FATT-Y-1-5, Faddy-15.com slash finding mastery, and use the code finding mastery for 15% off. Okay, so what do you say to the influencers that say, stop eating kale? It's giving you gas, it's a problem for your gut. That narrative, we just had somebody on that went pretty wild about that idea. Cale's fine, but I wouldn't have it every day. I mean, you know, it's like everything in moderation. If you like kale, eat it, but you don't have to.

There's plenty of other, you know, we have 30,000 other edible plants on the planet. We just get obsessed with a few we think are the only healthy ones. And this is this, we're in this culture of, you know, what's the latest superfood? You know, I'm in L.A. What's the, you know, what's 2026 superfood I'm going to have? Is it going to be this Icelandic seaweed? You seem like you have an attitude about L.A. a little bit. It's great.

This is where all the food trends happen. Is that the case? Interesting. It is. A lot of food trends happen here. A lot of food myths happen here as well. So, you know, it's the good and the bad often starts here. Then it goes often to London as the next big food influence place.

And then if it's big in London, then it will come back to East Coast, US, and other things happen that way. It's really interesting. But generally, L.A. is still behind Europe in gut health. that's something I've noticed. I think your warm beer is probably winning. Okay, keep going. So we got diversity. We got lots of colors.

We digress. Yeah, we digress. Number three is... We've done number three, which is have three ferments a day. Three formats a day. And studies have shown that that will reduce your levels of inflammation. Right. Which we all know is crucial.

Linked to chronic disease. It's linked to everything, right? Mental health, it's linked to, it's linked to physical health. it's linked to longevity, heart disease, immunity, you name it. You know, in the Western world, we have levels, low levels of inflammation. They simply don't have in underdeveloped countries. Low levels of chronic inflammation. And what do you, on the blood, a nutritional blood draw, what do you look for for a marker

for inflammation? There's either one called a high sensitive CRP level. That's C-reactive protein. C-reactive protein. That's often not sensitive. enough. And the other one is something called glycai, which is a metabolite. It's not very well known. It's only used in research. But that's what we did in our Zoe studies. And that's why we used as when we see like what happens after you eat some carbohydrates or you have too much fat in your

blood, your glycate will go up progressively after these meals. So you're getting these little peaks of inflammation after bad food. And that builds up over time so that. that you're getting these low levels. But we know that many things contribute to inflammation, including stress and past trauma and pollution and everything else. So it's a pretty good marker of your environment and what you're doing. So get your fermented foods, you can get three fermented foods a day. And don't forget, we haven't discussed cheese.

If you can find real cheese, right, not the craft slice or the cheese whiz or the, you know, the stuff in the tubes. Yeah. You get fermented from that. Hard or soft, does it matter to you? It doesn't matter as long as it's real and it's, you know, it has microbes in it and it's going to go off. Parmesan versus Brie. They both have high levels of fermentation.

In my book, I surveyed lots of foods and even Philadelphia cream cheese, one of the most popular ones, you know, has three microbes species in it. So most cheese is actually healthy for you. And despite the fat content, despite what we've been told, that should be part of your, you know, people's diet if they want to. to get another ferment. Real cheese, not packaged cheese for the most. Nothing that comes too hyper-packaged that has a shelf life of two years. You know that that's not real. And low-fat cheese, the processed low-fat cheese.

No fat. You don't want that. You don't want frozen cheese. You don't want most frozen pizza cheese. That's analog cheese. It's fake cheese. Yeah. So it's real stuff.

You may have to pay a bit more for it. It's very hard to get it in the U.S., but raw milk cheese has even more microbes. Sheep versus cow. Doesn't matter. They're both great. And goat is also good. So it doesn't matter what the original... Sheep and goat work way better on my gut than God. I don't... Maybe I'm just... You look at me like I'm crazy, but like... Well, yeah, well... I like the look. You know, like, oh, I've heard this before. Everyone, yeah. Did I tell you we're in L.A.? Yeah, you're in L.A., so you can say whatever you like. Everyone's got some allergy, so I know that. Or intolerance. I'm used to it now.

That's fine. But, you know, we weren't designed to eat cow's milk for the rest of adulthood. 80% of the world's population can't drink milk. But you ferment it, you break it down to small bits. It's most of the world can eat fermented milk. When would you recommend kids stop drinking milk? If they're growing fast enough, then probably they don't need it. It's quite good for promoting growth.

But if you give too much, there are some evidence that, Like the Dutch kids are growing too quickly and too tall, and they're having lots of fractures when they're older. So sometimes these... I'm drinking too much milk? The Dutch is? They drink, yeah, three times more than any other country. Is that right?

Yeah, you go to a university campus there, and they have it on tap behind the bar. I find the consistency to be nauseating. So I don't think adults should be really drinking milk. There's no evidence now that it is healthy. We used to believe it was good at women at the menopause and all this kind of stuff, but all the latest science shows that's not true.

So it's only good when it's fermented. And I only have it when it's in a fermented form, like a yogurt or a cheese. Let's go back on the fermented food. The kraut, is it like one scoop, like one spoonful, one forkful? Like how much are we talking about throughout a day? We don't really know.

There isn't the science yet to say, what's the minimum amount you need? The studies that have been done have used portions like a small bowl or a cup. So it's not a huge amount. Right, yeah. And it's something you can add to your meal rather than it being the meal itself.

I put it on top of things, you know, right? That's all you need to do. Just add a bit of color to your plate. That's what I do. That's what I do. Okay. So a little cup in the corner, that's my, add a bit of kraut to it,

that's my portion. My breakfast is a mixture of Greek yogurt and kifa. Oh, you blend the two together? I blend the two together because I find Greek yogurt a bit too solid and I find the kiefer a bit too runny. And I recommend that to anyone who thinks kiefer is a bit too sour as well. It sort of softens it. And so I put that together with some nuts and berries.

That's my breakfast. But I've got my two ferments and I've got a really good start to the day. Throw a little chia on there. Now you've got another superfood. Yeah. We're in L.A. Okay. I do that.

A little chia on there is good. Some nuts. I put my daily 30 on there, actually. Do you? Yeah. I like trumps your cheese. I can't wait to get to the Daily 30. Okay.

And then kombucha, per your book, not all kombuchas are the same. And so I'm not making my own kombucha. I am buying one that's artisanal, if you will. But then like I said, we've got on tap here at the Mastery Lab, we've got a kombucha tap. And I mean, this is one that you buy kind of off the shelf that I'll have you take a look at it. But should we be wary of the kombuchas that we buy off the shelf at like a, in the U.S., like a Whole Foods or one of those markets that has slues of kombut. Yeah, I think it should be wary, but at the same time realized, well, is this better than what I was drinking before?

So is this better than a regular soda? Probably yes. Does it have too much sugar in it or does it have artificial sweeteners in it? Oh, yeah, maybe it does. So it's all relative. Most mass-produced kombuchas that, you know, can go all over California or over the US, have to have long shelf lives. So you think how does a live microbe and yeast producing CO2 gas exist in a bottle or a can, you know, when it can't be refrigerated all the time? It can't.

So they've either killed them. Say most commercial kombuchers are either have dead microbes in them or they're filtered out. So they have this microfilter so none of the actual little bugs can get through. And so they've just got the soup they're in. they'll still be giving you some benefits. So all the recent studies show that dead microbes, whether it's in dead kefere or in dead kombucha or any other form, still have some health benefits for individuals.

And they've done the same with probiotics. They've killed some of them, and given people dead microbes as capsules. And amazingly, they work. In some cases, better than the live form, which is really strange. but in most cases not quite as well. And I think we have to still say we don't know the evidence here.

But suddenly this opens up this idea that dead fermentes could be good for us and could be why sardough bread has some advantages. So we're going back to the sado. Of course, it's baked in an oven. Everything's killed because if you heat anything above, you know, 65 degrees centigrade, everything's dead. But eating these dead bugs can provide some benefits. and what is really interesting is how do they work?

How does a dead bug help you? It's a bit like a dead vaccine. You think it goes into the small intestine and then tickles your immune cells and that sends signals the rest of your body to lower inflammation and calm things down. So I think we have to keep an open mind on these products and if you can't get the very artisan one that's local to you,

you have the mass-produced one. It will still probably be giving you some benefit. oddly like it sparks the idea that again back to your book, Ferman, is that if you are partners with somebody that drinks coffee, which my partner, she's Cuban, she drinks plenty of coffee, and you give her a kiss, that somehow you might be getting some of that in your gut as well. Yes, you'll be getting the microbe. Microbe that's called Lorsenobacter.

That is a very fussy microbe that only eats coffee. So if we did the Zoe Stools test on you, we likely to find reasonable levels of lorcinobacter because you have a partner that has coffee. But your partner would be five or ten times higher. Yeah, right, okay. Because your one doesn't get a lot to eat. I don't know how many kisses you're getting,

but it's probably not as much as drinking three cups of coffee a day. Yeah, okay. And so we do transmit our microbes between ourselves, our partners, our family, even our dogs to some extent. So there's a, there's much more crossover than we think. It's, it's quite a flexible system. Since we're talking about poop, scooping your poop, that's kind of the kind of classic test for gut biome.

I think it's probably worth, before we finish off the other main factors, we got three of the main kind of principles. When I first came across that research where they were inserting feces into mice, and you'll do a better job of explaining it. And that was changing their health profile. I was like, whoa. That was a remarkable groundbreaking bit of research. Can you set up that research and what the findings were if they were interesting to you as well?

Yeah, so this really, a lot of the breakthroughs, as you said, in the microbiome came from the ability to take a stool sample from diseased or healthy humans and put them into special mouse models that were these so-called sterile mice that have been raised in a microbial vacuum, very clever systems. and these mice didn't develop very well, but they could keep them alive. And they gave a transplant of these microbes into these mice that had nothing in there at all. So suddenly they're getting these human microbes in them, and you could observe what happened to those mice. And the first experiments they did, they took some twins. One was obese, one was skinny, and they gave those to the mice. And sure enough, the one that got the obese.

Obesst microbes got fatter than the other one. It's wild. Same with anxiety. Same with depression. But anxiety. I don't think depression was one of them. They find it hard to get a perfect model of mouse depression. Yeah, but anxiety.

Anxiety definitely. And the effects are even bigger compared to the obese model. So we think the effect actually on the brain is bigger than on weight. They've replicated those anxiety studies in mice multiple times. Just to be clear, you take stool from an. An anxious person. And you put that stool into a sterile environment, call this mouse in particular,

that mouse becomes anxious. Correct. And then you can actually transfer from that mouse to another mouse and make it anxious. And you can reverse, if you then give them antibiotics, you can actually reverse it as well and calm them down. Is that also the case where if you took a stool from

a very calm, grounded person, I'm using grounded as a non-medical term, and then had an anxious mouse and then inserted the stool from the calm person. Would that alone do it? Yes. Yeah. And I haven't read that research.

Yeah, no, it works both ways. It works both ways. And it is remarkably consistent, these effects on the brain. So let's stay here. One more turn, is that if somebody is struggling with anxiety, depression, a mental health condition, of the such and we are missing. Or if you, I'll speak to the listener of viewer right now,

if you have anxiety or depression and you're feeling those symptoms, whether you're in a medical diagnosis of it or not, take a look at your gut health. 100%. This is something I'm researching deeply at the moment, and the research is overwhelming that the state of your gut plays a huge role in your mental state. And this is borne out by numerous studies comparing

people with mental health conditions against normals, looking at their gut health, virtually all cases, there's abnormalities. And we know that they've done randomized trials of probiotics and gut-friendly diets that improve people with mild to moderate depression more than antidepressants.

It's a remarkable bit of research. It doesn't mean that there's not a place for traditional medicine for folks that, like, however, and I'll take a strong position with you, I think on this is that if you are not investigating gut health as part of a mental health condition, you are missing a massive, massive contributor to overall function. Yeah, it doesn't matter whether you respond to antidepressants or not. If you can improve your diet and your gut, you're going to improve your outcomes massively.

And you remember about at least a third of people don't respond at all to standard antidepressants or don't respond to talk therapy. So I think this should be a part for everybody, regardless of whether they're on drugs or not or on therapy. And, you know, my view has been hardened on this because of some trials we've been doing with Zoe. We're unusual in terms of a direct-to-consumer company that actually does science. So we've done three trials. One was a trial of just going on the sort of Zoe program diet where we get personalized nutrition and they improve their diet along these principles.

And we saw big improvements compared to the control group in terms of mood and energy and hunger, right? And they happened before anything else. We did a study I was going to talk about where we gave our prebiotic, this daily 30 mix that's now commercially available, and compare that to a control and to a probiotic arm. And before we saw any changes in the gut microbiome,

After a few days, mood and energy improved significantly. Self-report. Yes, it was self-report, but there was a dose response effect as well, so the people that dropped out had much less effects. You can't really measure any other way in psychiatry. But that really supports all this animal data that one of the first effects of changing your gut health is actually on mood and energy. And as you know, energy is particularly a sign of neuroinflammation. When you say energy, what do you mean by energy?

It's a perception of how much fatigue you have. Whether you're dozing off, you know, at the end of the day, you need a nap, you just not motivated to get out of your chair and go to the gym or, you know, meet friends. You know, it's hard to separate that from mild depression. They do go together. But it's a common complaint and it's not something that most physicians, really ask patients about, but it's something I've got interested in because it's so striking in our trials. Finding Mastery is brought to you by AG1. One of the through lines and high performance is

consistency. Finding routines that support your mind and body day in and day out. And for me, AG1 has been one of those routines for over a decade now. Since day one of finding mastery, they've supported our show, our full team, and have fueled us in reaching dozens of milestones along the way. And now they've taken it a step further. AG1 just released their newest generation, AG1 NextGen. It's the same one scoop in a glass of water, but now with an even better formula. A pretty unique fact about AG1 and why I've come to respect them so much. They've gone through over 50 different iterations of their product, constantly upgrading ingredients, optimizing nutrient forms for better absorption and utilization, and adding in what modern humans need to thrive

in today's stress environments. And they've continued to uphold some of the most rigorous, standards and comprehensive testing in the industry, including third party, NSF Certify for Sport Certification to ensure quality with every scoop. If you haven't tried them yet, there's no better time than right now. This is their best formula yet. In the difference, it's felt. Go to drinkag1.com slash finding mastery to get started. With your first order, you'll get a free bottle of AG1, D3K2, a welcome kit, and five AG1 travel packs. Again, that's Drink AG1. dot com slash finding mastery to get started. I want to take a second here to tell you about a morning routine that I've been using

for years. For me, it's a great way to switch on my mind, to ready myself to take on the day. So before I check my phone, my emails, market updates, or text threads, I choose how to start my morning. That's always in my control. That's always in your control too. This is the same morning mindset routine that some of the world's top performers across sport, business, and the arts are using.

The best part, it only takes about 90 seconds to do. So just head over to finding mastery.com slash morning to download the audio guide for free. Again, head to finding mastery.com slash morning to get your morning mindset routine. There is one solution which is like eat more diversity, eat more color. And Skittles doesn't mean color. M&Ms is not color, right? Real color. Yeah, we're talking about the real color.

Okay. So that's going to solve it. You're going to eat less packaged foods if you're eating. eating more real foods, there's going to be a gut health, which is going to have, for most people, I should say, I think it's 50 plus percentage would be an easy number, a net positive impact on brain and mood, correct? Yeah, roughly. Okay.

So there's one indicator. The second is knowing how to modulate and work with stress, stress is always part of the human condition. When, and there's different types of stress, acute stress, moderate stress, chronic stress. and we're really talking about the inability to meet acute stress with high skill. So when there's an acute stressor that takes place and a person lacks the ability to meet that demand, then it kind of slides eventually over to moderate slides over eventually to chronic stress.

And what we're really talking about is chronic stress is an underlying factor for so many conditions. And breathing, meditation, exercise, smiling, laughing, laughing, laughing, laughing, and laughing, holding hands, being in nature, magnesium baths. Okay, lots of things that you can do to modulate stress well. Optimism, training, and, and, and. Okay. So if you did some of those training recommendations,

you would also have a gut health without a benefit, I think, a net positive increase in gut health. If you did both together, quality food, quality psychological, kind of buffering with acute stress, I think there's a win. combination in that. Yeah, I think you've got to see this as a two-way, you've got inflammation in your gut, which can make brain disorders worse, and you've got things like stresses which can make your gut inflammation worse. So it's a two-way street, and it's hard to know in a way where to start this idea, because you've got to try and come up with some holistic

view of everything from, you know, some people believe that childhood traumas caused long-term stress and there's some evidence you know more than I do but there's you know that this is the case that can cause physiological stress levels which means your immune system is just primed more so that it's going to react more to things than it would sympathetic dominance as we say so you know if you had this whole history of these traumas and then you got a bad diet on top of that which may be trebling those rates that you would have had because of those incidents you're just stacking up all these features that continue to drive this physiological inflammation, which is the signal to your brain to be stressed.

That's right. Right. So it's all rather circular, and they do connect up. And it does start to, I think this is really important because it starts to link, you know, psychological theory with something hard physiological that you can measure. And this is, and the gut is probably reflecting a lot of this stuff. that, you know, as well as transmitting stuff to the brain, it's also sensing what the brain is telling it as well.

It's such a wonderful emblem for the interaction between what we would call a top down and a bottom up approach. The bottom up, meaning the gut, in this case, is telling the brain some stuff and influencing the psychology. And psychology is going to tell the brain some stuff that influence the gut. And the choices that you're making about how you're framing a situation and the choices you're making about what you're ingesting. into the ecosystem, you know, it's a beautiful harmony.

I've been really interested in nutrition for all of those reasons. And I think it's near negligent to not talk about optimization or becoming your very best, let alone lifespan, health span, longevity. Of course, those are great topics without including gut health, nutrition and psychology as part of the narrative. No, it's clear now that once you start to think about what's going on in your gut and that incredible axis, you know, to the brain that goes in both directions. And the fact we've evolved millions of years to have these microbes that are in a way

telling the brain what's going on, you know, and if we see that that way, and the brain sometimes, in a lot of our common mental health problems, I think, are the brain misinterpreting what's going on. It says, hey, I should be depressed or stressed because my gut tells me I'm ill. Maybe the brain can't say whether I've got the flu or I've just been eating lots of junk food and crap for the last six months. Flipping through your phone. If I'm on social media for, I don't know, longer than 15 minutes, I feel something. I feel like, this is a nauseous feeling that I have.

You've had too many big Macs. Is that the similar feeling? Yeah, right. Yeah. Okay, let's see Principle 4, which is intermittent fasting. Yes, and what we're talking about here is time restricted eating, where the evidence is all piling up for this. is really beneficial for people because it is eating the same amount of food but in a limited time. It's not about dieting or anything else.

It's just saying, okay, I'll just be careful when I have my first and my last meal of the day. And if you can do that in a 10-hour window, ideally, you know, could be a bit flexible around that, but leaving 14 hours overnight, that seems to be pretty optimum in terms of how you can do it, but also helps your gut. And the reason that it helps your metabolism helps some people lose weight. A lot of that is due to the fact that it's helping your gut repair itself. And getting us out of this cycle of late night snacking, doing what the food companies want us to do,

eat seven, eight times a day. So you're not giving your gut time to rest, repair the gut wall, and realize that there's a whole other defense team comes out at night from your gut microbes, completely different set of species. and they just clean up and they clean your mucus layer and they smarten everything up. And the better that is, the better your metabolism.

And that is really important for your immune health. And you can get to that atophageal process within a 10-hour window of restricted eating? I thought autophagy didn't happen until like, I don't know, 36 hours in. We're not talking atopathy here. We're really talking basic cleaning operations that the microbes are essentially eating your mucus layer. and so they're tidying up this, and your body is able to sleep, and it's all about circadian rhythms,

so that your gut is in the same circadian rhythm as you are. And the more we look at it, the more important it is, is everything is aligned. If you, just before going to bed, you have a Snickers bar or some cookies, you're totally confused. You're not letting your gut sleep at all. And so, you know, you're getting the effects of insomnia in your gut. That's the way to be thinking about it.

So it's a much more holistic view than, this concept of autophagy, which is a bit reductionist, because it's just one of the many. It's one of the many, yeah, right. Systems we have for being healthy, but. Which is the clearing out of the senescent, the, the, the, quote-unquote bad cells. But we know that, you know, the better you sleep, the better your circadian rhythms are, the more you can control this kind of repair processes of the body. And it's repairing all the cells in your body, you know, whether senescent ones or cancerous ones.

It's allowing your immune system to be optimally surveying everything. So I think it all fits in. And in those studies, you know, we did a study on 140,000 people who are Zoe members in the UK. And they just said, hey, I'll give it a try. And a third of people loved it. And they're still doing it, you know, two years later. A third hated it and said, I don't want to do this. You know, I want to, I can't control when I, you know, stop eating.

And about a third are in the middle and are still doing it a bit. So it's not for everybody. But I think it's definitely in there that if you can. do it, you will feel a lot better, and it can definitely shift your mood and energy levels. I intermittently do intermittent fasting, and I search for that 12 to 14 hour restricted zone. I like it. Like, I really, I think that I feel better when I do it, but I intermittently do it. It's not seven days a week.

It's more like three or four. All the things I'm talking about, you shouldn't, you try for 80% of the time, right? Yeah, there you go. Because what you want to do is sustain this for decades, not just for a few weeks in January, you know, when you're changing habits. We've made that mistake so often as humans that we just try and be good for a few weeks, and then we break it once because, you know, some friends come around and you, you know, and take you out for a meal or whatever, and it's all over.

So it's really important to have a social life, really important, to not be too restrictive in your habits. And I think we can get too obsessed with this. 80% of the time's fine. You know, if you fall off the wagon for a couple of weeks, it doesn't matter. Go on and do it. You know, I find, you know,

if I've got something important, like a podcast and it's at 11 in the morning, much better if I haven't eaten. Me too. Yeah. I'm sharper. And, you know, and as long as you're engaged,

it's easy to do. If you're hanging around on a Sunday by the fridge, it's quite hard, right? So I've got three things left. I want to hit the last principle. I want to talk about alcohol. And then I want to hit us on probiotics. Okay.

Let's get the last principles out the way, shall we? Yep. So it's quality, not quantity. Ignore calories and go for a whole plant foods, avoid ultra-processed foods. That's a pretty clear one for the reasons we've already discussed. The other one is pivot your protein. Everyone is obsessed with protein at the moment. It's still see that trend, you know, continuing for another year or so.

but let's try and focus not on total amount of protein, but get quality protein. The average American prey has twice as much protein as they need, but they're not getting enough for the right protein. And by the right protein, I mean, let's get things like legumes, which are packed with protein, and they're also really high in fiber, because we also know that 95% of Americans are deficient in fiber. Get those protein goals in, but also be sensible and switch, rather than just having it as powders,

start getting, you know, get those beans in the system. So I think these are some general principles that are really helpful in thinking about everything that you can do to help your gut health. Awesome. I love principle-based approaches to everything. So thank you for those. Hit us on alcohol really quickly. Your take on alcohol in general,

there's a fermentation involved in it, which I'm sure you're, you like that. But there's also so much concern about kidney. and other organ health, including brain health, when it comes to alcohol? Yes. There's no doubt that alcohol is bad for us. Okay? You know, it's a neurotoxin.

It's bad for our brains. Increases our risk of cancer, etc. Many populations do have alcohol as part of their culture, and some of the most long-lived populations in the planet have a culture of drinking wine, for example. Lots of centenarians will drink lots of wine and be healthy. So there's a slight mismatch here. I'm someone who does drink alcohol.

I drink 10 to 14 units a week, mostly wine, mostly red wine. What is a unit? A glass. A glass. A small glass. I'm a European-sized glass, not an American-sized glass. 12 ounces of wine. You can have half a bottle and a glass in some bars here, I've been. And the reason is that red wine is actually healthy for your gut. So it might be overall bad for your health slightly. but it does because the grape is the grape's skin is in contact with water,

those polyphenols come out and they're very high polyphenol foods. So generally red wine drinkers have healthier guts than non-drinkers. So we did a study on this. But I do think we need to be careful when we say, so I think drinking one glass of wine a day is fine. There are risks involved, but I worked it out in my book. You get far more risk by driving an hour a day in your car. And if you're drinking one glass of wine, you need to be drinking about a million bottles

before one person's going to die because of that. So when people talk about there is an increased risk, there's no safe level of drinking. They never say compared to what. Driving. Which I think is a pretty good thing to say. You don't have to drive. You know, you could take, you know. Right, yeah.

But you don't have to drink, but you could do. So I think we have to be sensible and realize that, yeah, it's dangerous for many people. Alcohol is a drug. But for many people, it's important for their social cohesion. Going out in Mediterranean countries, a lot of social contact revolves around it. It makes them more sociable, makes them live longer. So there are other advantages. So I attract a lot of criticism when I say this, but I think it is important to get perspective.

I'm an epidemiologist, so I do talk in terms of. risk. It's something I do know about. Red wine versus gin versus wine versus tequila. Spirits are bad. So they have no benefits on gut health. Less sugar in, call it a gin versus red wine. Yeah, but the difference is not that important. And so just having that distilled spirit means it's got nothing really beneficial in it. And interestingly, we were talking about postbiotics, these dead microbes. There are some beers that have yeast in them that dead yeast in the bottom of sediment, some Belgian beers, etc. And Guinness could actually have some health benefits to counteract the alcohol.

They're going to love you if you find some of that. That's really funny. Well, they are doing some studies now because of this new idea. And interestingly, because this post-biotic thing is, I mean, real, these dead microbes, it's one reason we put dead kombucha into our daily 30. We added it recently. So I think we're going to see many more dead microbes, dead fermented foods added to normal food because it's so much easier to deal with a dead product

than that's something that's live. So this is, I think, a big trend for next year. Dr. Spectra, I could talk to you for a long time. I'm getting a hook from our producer that we are way over time. So thumbs up or thumbs down on probiotics versus prebiotics. Or both. They both work, but our studies show that prebotics like Daily 30 have a much bigger effect on the gut microbiome. I love the approach you're taking that is principle-based, evidence-informed, research-backed, and very practical. So thank you for carving out the time. I'm wishing you the flat-out best on your book. It's a great read. I've really enjoyed it because it also teaches like how to do fermenting, you know, the benefits, a position on gut health, and super practical,

like low alcohol content wines, red wines included, you know, and and and and so I just say thank Thank you for your contribution to human health. And I've really appreciated your work. That's right. I love it. And it's been fun. Yeah, thank you. Next time on Finding Mastery, we're joined by Dr. Angela Duckworth,

psychologist and best-selling author of Grit. In this conversation, Angela and Mike go beyond perseverance to explore what it really takes to sustain effort over time. How purpose shapes resilience, when pushing harder helps or harms, and why passion is something we develop. discover. They also dig into thoughtful insights on parenting and how to support growth without pressure. Join us Wednesday, February 18th at 9 a.m. Pacific. All right. Thank you so much for diving into another episode of Finding Mastery with us. Our team loves creating this podcast and sharing these

conversations with you. We really appreciate you being part of this community. And if you're enjoying the show, the easiest no-cost way to support is to hit the subscribe or follow button. wherever you're listening. Also, if you haven't already, please consider dropping us a review on Apple or Spotify. We are incredibly grateful for the support and feedback. If you're looking for even more insights, we have a newsletter we send out every Wednesday. Punch over to finding mastery.com slash newsletter to sign up. The show wouldn't be possible without our sponsors and we take our recommendations seriously. And the team is very thoughtful about making sure we love and endorse every product you here on the show. If you want to check out any of our sponsor offers you heard about in this

episode, you can find those deals at finding mastery.com slash sponsors. And remember, no one does it alone. The door here at Finding Mastery is always open to those looking to explore the edges and the reaches of their potential so that they can help others do the same. So join our community. Share your favorite episode with a friend and let us know how we can continue to show up for you. Lastly, as a quick reminder, information in this podcast and from any material on the Finding Mastery website and social channels is for information purposes only. If you're looking for meaningful support, which we all need, one of the best things you can do is to talk to a licensed professional. So seek assistance from your health care providers. Again, a sincere thank you for listening. Until next episode,

be well, think well, keep exploring.