Nobody Panic - How to Eat Healthily with Florence Wylde Nicholas

Episode Date: July 7, 2020

Stevie and Tessa speak to nutritional therapist Florence Wylde Nicholas about how eating well is about so much more than kale and smoothies. From lessons about the gut right through to how you poo - here are some basics on how to make sure the way you’re eating is benefiting your body. THIS IS SUCH A FASCINATING EPISODE. Find Florence's website here.Follow Florence on Instagram: @florencewyldeFollow Wylde Feasts on Instagram: @wylde_feastsAlways make sure you consult a professional or your GP before making significant changes to your diet.Recorded and edited by Naomi Parnell for Plosive Productions.Photos by Marco Vittur, jingle by David Dobson.Follow Nobody Panic on Twitter @NobodyPanicPodSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/nobodypanic. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello, I'm Carriad. I'm Sarah. And we are the Weirdo's Book Club podcast. We are doing a very special live show as part of the London Podcast Festival. The date is Thursday, 11th of September. The time is 7pm and our special guest is the brilliant Alan Davies. Tickets from kingsplace.com. Single ladies, it's coming to London.

True on Saturday, the 13th of September. At the London Podcast Festival. The rumours are true. Saturday the 13th of September. At King's Place. Oh, that sounds like a date to me, Harriet. it. And welcome to Nobody Panic with me, Stevie Martin. Full name. And me, Tessa Coates, also my full name. Middle name is Joanne. Named off my grandma, Joan. That's not the same, is it?

Because interestingly, Tessa, on Facebook is Tessa Louise. So for our entire friendship, I've thought her middle name was Louise. Let's not get into that story, because we've got more good stuff. So today we're talking all about how to eat healthily, which is obviously something that, you know, when you Google, you might as well just explode. because there's just no, there's so many facets of it, but we wanted to really like talk to somebody that knows their stuff and also can explain it to us in a simple way, but we can understand. We've got the wonderful Florence Wild Nicholas, who practices in East London.

She's a nutritional therapist at Florence Wild Nutrition. And you can find all about her at florencewild.com. She also runs plant-based supper clubs. Find them on Instagram at wild underscore feasts. By the way, spelling wild, W-Y-L-D-E, not like a wild animal. a wild nutritional therapist. That's the context. Thank you so much for coming in Florence or just sort of being on the lockdown vibe with us. Thank you for having me. Very exciting. How are you doing

in lockdown Florence? How's it going? Real ups and downs. There's some really nice parts of it. I've definitely feel on the whole, I think, more relaxed than I have done for the last few years. I made the decision in the run-up to lockdown to move back in with my parents. So I've been here for four months which is a third of a year, which is quite an extraordinary experience for everyone. Amazingly, there's been no arguments. I have been running around trying to change people's diet and kind of, I've assigned myself head of gut health in the house, which sometimes is well received and sometimes just really pisses my family off

because they're like, I just want to eat what I want to eat and try and survive lockdown without you running around trying to fill us with extra Carrots, whatever. Carrots, okay, I'm making a note already. Carrots. It does feel like in lockdown, there's so few places to get some dopamine that you're like, I guess it'll be just another lovely treat, another lovely meal.

Like, where else am I going to get any sort of joy from? It feels almost harder to try and be healthy and look after yourself when there's so few places to, you know, so few times to feel nice. All I'm doing is looking at the fridge, just staring at the fridge. Yeah, and every time you go there, you expect something in the fridge to have changed. Yes, yes. Yes, that happens constantly. But talking of you being the head of gut health and your family,

what's the most adult thing you've done this week? Absolutely nothing to do with gut health. Well, actually, no, that's not true. It does have something to do. The longer version of the story does have something to get health. I went online to buy something, and this is going to sound very wanky, but I went online to buy myself a kombucha brewing jar.

Don't even know what that is. Wow. Convature is a fermented kind of fizzy drink. It's delicious. There's a meme of a girl. She's called kombucha girl. And she drinks it. And then she goes, well, no.

Could me. I have. Yeah. I have seen that. And it's supposed to be good for you or is it just nice to do. Yeah, yeah, very good for you. Especially if you make it yourself. The ones that you buy in the shops have obviously had to go through

slightly more of a process to get on the shop floor to make them kind of safe. So doing it at home, I think you kind of get a bit more, a bit more. Well, it's not actually bacteria. It's fungus. Oh, fungus drink. It's lovely. It's delicious. Mine's delicious, actually. I bet it is.

But one day you guys can try it when I'm back in London. I promise. Excellent. I'll give you some of my home brew. So that's the adult thing. You've home brewed kombucha. Well, yes. But the thing that I was going to say was I went online to buy this bit of equipment

and they had it on like an independent website. And it was more expensive. And you had to pay for shipping. than it was on Amazon. And I got to Amazon and I got to the checkout and I thought, no, I'm going back to the independent place. Yes. That's great. Good for you.

Thank you. You stick it. You hear that, Jeff? He listens. His only escape from his daily work. Well done you. Now, I don't have an adult thing. I just wanted to very quickly give an onion update.

The people are, the people are clamoring to hear about what's happening. No one is clamoring. A couple of episodes ago, you might have heard. And if you haven't, fine, I'll just update you very quickly. I just got an onion and I planted it. And I, because it shot little shoots. And I was like, well, it's trying to live. I'm not going to throw it away.

And I looked up, Google. It was very confusing. There's those different ways to do it. And so I sort of picked one and then just did it. And Tessa was very, understandably, was like, I think, you think an onion's going to grow out of that. And it won't. And I was like, Tessa, come on.

Give you a break. I'm trying. Anyway, it's basically gone rotten and died. I really thought you were going to be like, and here it is to show. Show you the onion. No. I think we even had a bet on it.

So I owe you an onion. I don't know what we bet on. Oh, I'm really sorry to hear that. My adult thing is three days on the trot. I've attempted to walk to home base to buy a cordless orbital sander. First time got there, it was shut. Second time, I've misjudged the closing hours. Shut again.

Third time, got bored in the park. Halfway through. Stopped. Stopped the journey. Today's the day. You wait till you hear the end of it. I'm going to try and make some shelves. So I've got some old scaffolding that I got out of a skip.

Look, I've been on Pinterest. I've seen how people do it. I'm going to buy the Sander. I've got big dreams, Stevie. We're all very adult and we're all trying. Let's get in, because this is my dream to have somebody explain to us about your gut health, because I think I speak for both of when I say, we're not well. We're not well.

Why always think I speak for a lot of people who just like quietly take in, just quietly roll with the fact that they are sick. quite a lot, that something makes them unwell, they don't really know what it is, and then they're just like, yeah, I guess, I just have this response, and I just get on with it. People just really take that for granted and be like, yeah, this happens. But also, at the very least, even if you're not ill,

I know that for years, you just put food in your mouth, it pops out. And you're like, yes, I suppose it's a wizard. Like, you have no idea what is going on. And it's probably beneficial to everyone to understand a bit of what is happening in your own body every single day, every hour of every day. So please, if you will, take it away with leaders on this gut journey. Imagine that's a wizard. Imagine that's the answer. It's a witch. Oh, of course. So the patriarchy. Once again, your internal misogyny, Stevie.

So I think the best place to start is a brief run through of what actually happens when we digest food. So digestion begins in the brain. So when we smell food or even, think about food, our brain releases certain hormones which send a message to your mouth to start secreting saliva. So when you put the food in your mouth, there's saliva and teeth to start to kind of break down the food. And that's one of the most fundamentally important parts of digestion is breaking down food in the mouth, which is a thing that nine times out of ten, most of the people that I work with, they aren't chewing their food properly. And I think our generation especially, there's this huge culture of eating on the go, eating in the world.

front of the computer, in front of Netflix, eating on the phone. So already by not chewing food properly, what happens is you're swallowing particles that are too big. So once the food passes through the mouth, it goes down the esophagus and into the stomach, where it's greeted with stomach acid. Stomach acid, again, really important for digestion and it has two, well, quite a few roles, but two main roles. One of them is to break down food even more into smaller particles. And the second one is a kind of beginning of what is kind of quite simple to think of as like a digestive domino effect basically. So what happens when we secrete stomach acid is the presence of stomach acid sends a message to our small intestine, which is where the food goes next to secrete

bicarbonate. And bicarbonate carries on this digestive process of breaking down the food, but also we begin to then absorb nutrients in the small intestine. And then from the secretion of bicarb that then sends a message to the liver and the gallbladder and the pancreas to keep secreting these digestive juices, as it were. So there's digestive enzymes, there's bile, lots of other kind of constant enzymes and liquids that are being released to help us break down food with the main and most important goal of being able to absorb it. So if you're not breaking down your food properly, then you're not getting the best out of nutrients that you're eating or drinking or supplementing. And what I think is quite a big thing to acknowledge is that

if this stage isn't happening, but you're eating wonderful foods, you could be eating the best diet in the world, you could be having, you know, delicious, organic, able and cold foods washed down with the best kombucha and a handful of millions of pounds worth of supplements. But if it's going straight through you, basically you're getting as a very expensive poo. Oh, it's depressing, isn't it? So in order to be any help, it has to be incredibly small. So that the gut can absorb it, our body can absorb it. and it can go around the body where it's supposed to go. So we've done the mouth, we've gone down the esophagus, we've gone through the stomach, we've gone through the small intestines,

and then it passes from the small intestines into the large intestines. And the large intestines is home to our microbiome, which is, and we can come onto this in a bit more detail, but basically we have trillions of different bacteria living inside us at any one moment, not just bacteria, bacteria, parasites and fungi, all on the whole, living there harmonious. and not just harmoniously, but actually they pay a hugely important role to overall health and are massively involved in loads of different processes. So breaking down hormones,

sleep, weight gain, weight loss. We are all completely individual in terms of our bacterial makeup. We've got more bacteria than we do genes. And our bacteria can communicate with our genes, which I think is like the most inspiring, fantastic things. to know because we can influence our bacteria. So although we can't change our genes, we're stuck with them on the whole, we can change our bacteria. So that kind of communication between the two is

something that can be manipulated. What are they saying when they're communicating with each other? They're definitely northern. Great, yeah, of course. Makes sense. Of course they are. And what are they managing to communicate? Like, what can they say?

So we are bacteria in our gut. when we eat fiber, it feeds our bacteria and they then create something called short chain fatty acids. And it's the short chain fatty acids that kind of jump between bacteria and our cells and communicate and link things up. So it's also these short chain fatty acids that are thought to be really involved in the link between our gut and our brain and in terms of that communication and our immune system. So over 80% of our immune system is located in the gut. It's made, located and maintained by the environment within the gut. And this is really new science has only been in the last kind of 15, 20 years that the research has really ramped up.

So there are lots of studies and findings that support a lot of this information in these theories, but there's no kind of exact concrete knowledge as to how this mechanism and this communication works. We just know that it does. You know when, because I remember reading a lot about how people with, they're looking into like, maybe looking into a kind of actual like antidepressant. rather than taking the sort of SSRIs or whatever that we're used to now, that they're looking at the gut because there's such a strong between IBS and your brain, because obviously people, there's only people have IBS and they have IBS. Absolutely dreadful.

But like the doctors have all sort of said that it's, well, limit your stress. And you're always like, eh, shut up. But actually they think it's so linked that they might start treating or attempting to start treating depression through your stomach, which blew my mind. Yeah, well, I think it's over 80% of serotonin is created in the gut. Oh my God. So if there's poor gut function, which again we can come on to, so even just very, very basic things like not being able to digest food properly,

that has an impact on how our whole gut as a whole, the whole system is working. So if there's kind of issues somewhere along the chain of digestion, then serotonin may not be able to travel up to the brain as efficiently as it should be able to, and then we may be met with depression. But also there's quite a lot of evidence now to suggest that, I mean, this is certainly the way that I practice, that depression is a result of inflammation. And again, thinking about the immune system in the gut,

over 80% of our immune system is within the gut. And if there's inflammation within the gut, then that can quite easily go up to the brain as well. So there's quite a lot to suggest that the reason why certain antidepressants work is because accidentally and as a byproduct of the way that they were created by the pharmaceuticals, they also work as an anti-inflammatory. And it could be the anti-inflammatory mechanism that helps with the depression rather than the, you know, complicated SSRI serotonin re-uptake inhibitor mechanism of the drugs. This is a very exciting time then for research.

We're kind of moving towards a new phase, aren't we? Maybe they're completely understanding your gut in a different way. It blows my, it absolutely blows my mind that that is a thing. It is fascinating. And what we're finding more and more is that we are all so, you unique and individual. So one thing that works for someone won't necessarily work for someone else, and that's probably to do with the environment of the gut and different bacteria levels and kind of what's going on within the gut. So it's hugely exciting, and it's definitely the way that I practice and the way that I work. I focus on the individual as a whole and their individual makeup. But when you look at that in terms of NHS and Western medicine, it's tricky

because that's not how health and people are dealt with. Generally, it's kind of something to treat a symptom rather than looking at the root cause of what it is that's driving that symptom in the first place. So I have a question, please. I get offered a seat on the tube constantly because people think I'm pregnant and then I take them because they're so embarrassed and I'm too embarrassed. I got handed around various doctors who didn't know what to do with me and I had a colonoscopy camera and they were like you've got the little, I want to say that the little bits in your tummy, the villa I think. they were like, you're a celiac a bit and then they just die

and so you're, you just bloated all the time. So basically my tummy is just massive all the time and I can't really get it to go down. And then occasionally I have these terrible flare-ups in which I'm dripping in sweat from head to toe and I have to take all my clothes off in the bathroom. What's the diagnosis doctor? So wait, have you been diagnosed as a bit celiac?

Is that what you're telling me? A bit and then they did, yeah, and then I would get handed to another doctor who would say you can't be a bit celiac. and then they would also test me and then they'd be like, oh yeah, and then they'd hand me on again. Okay. So celiac is an autoimmune condition. Do you know that? Yes. So that is when the body mistakes self-tissues, a normal tissue as a foreign invader and starts to attack it,

particularly in relation to eating gluten, that can kind of antagonize that process. So in terms of thinking about it like that, there is an inflammatory process that is happening in your body, your immune system is overreacting in a certain way. So I don't really see how you can be a bit celiac if there is an autoimmune condition at play. So if you were my client, then what I would do is I would want to do some testing with you, so I work a lot with stool testing. I don't have anything to do with the poo.

You poo in a few pots and send them off. And then I would get the results and it would come back with all sorts of information about your microbiome, about your good bacteria, whether there's any overgrowth or undergrowth, or there's any parasites. But also what would be key for you is looking at your inflammatory markers. So whether there's something that you're eating that's causing major inflammation or mild inflammation or something in between within your gut, which then means that your immune system is constantly in a state of alert and kind of fighting off whatever it is that you're eating that it doesn't like. So yes, that's probably is gluten if you've been told that you're a bit celiac.

but also it could be something else. It could be that you're very sensitive to particles that are similar to gluten or that may have been cooked or prepared in a similar environment or in the same environment as somewhere else that's gluten. So there's a kind of cross-reactivity thing that can go on. So even if you don't eat gluten, you may still be sensitive to certain proteins or foods or something that may have come into mild contact with gluten. So I'd kind of want to look at that.

And then it would also tell us how you were breaking down your fats, proteins and carbohydrates. So kind of going back to what we were saying before about the very initial fundamental process of digestion and what happens when you eat food. So it's possible that you're not secreting enough of some of the digestive enzymes that we mentioned before. And therefore, large particles getting through and causing bloating and causing discomfort and causing your immune system within your gut to say what is going on here. why are these large particles getting through and where they shouldn't be? And will all that be, because I would absolutely, when you said your immune system is just

constantly fighting, like that is exactly how I would describe my body. It's just constantly, we're constantly on edge. Who are we fighting? Nobody knows. And all that you can tell from a piece of poo, can you? Can you tell us? Yeah, a huge amount of information. It wouldn't tell us, there are certain tests that tell you or indicate if there are specific

foods that you're reacting to. so you've already had the gone down the NHS route of testing and you've been found to be a bit celiac. So it would be a kind of carry on from that with quite a lot more information to work with and then go in and directly walk on things down through diet and then begin to kind of make changes to the environment in your gut, particularly thinking about your microbiome and getting those levels up to where we want them to be because as I said, the microbiome is so crucially important for immune function and this release of short-chain fatty acids and then that would then calm everything down

and hopefully get you feeling a bit more comfortable. That's kind of top line summary. I was going to say, what's normal bloating and what's abnormal bloating? Like, as in what can people look out for? I'm always amazed by what people get used to and think is normal in terms of bloating. You shouldn't feel uncomfortable and you shouldn't feel in pain after eating a meal.

You should feel... Unless you go out and eat five pizzas and wash it down with six beers, but, you know, day to day, you should be eating until you're full and feel, know that you're full, but not feel uncomfortable and your clothes shouldn't be restrictive or... That's fascinating, because I think most meals, you just get so used to being bloated. You're like, that's normal. The diet and lifestyle that we are all surrounded by, particularly in the Western world, it's a lot of heavily processed food that we're not necessarily built to be able to digest

and to be able to eat in the huge quantities that we do. It makes sense when you think of what humans were like, geologically, not long ago and now what we're eating now, even just fake cheese or like... Yeah, totally. And then on top of that, if you think about people probably get completely sick of me going on and on and on about, but slowing down eating. food properly, chewing each mouth for about 25 to 30 times, which is quite a lot. And when you first say that to people, they're like, oh, God. And that in itself, sometimes I'll send someone off and just say, just do that.

I don't want to give you anything else to do until you've mastered the basics of chewing your food. And it can come down to stomach acid, because if you're eating quickly, or if you're at work and you grab something and eat it at your desk, you haven't smelt the food, you haven't thought about the food. So you haven't had that basic chemical message begin to begin to secrete stomach acid. The brain hasn't told your gut to get ready for digestion. So you're not in, there's, there's two different size to our nervous system. There's the parasympathetic nervous system and the

sympathetic nervous system. The parasympathetic is also known as the rest and digest. So it's when everything kind of calms down and our body sends blood flow to certain parts of the body. So rest and digest, so digesting. But the opposite to that is fight or flight, which we are constantly in a state of fight or flight when we're at work or when we're on the computer or when we're multitasking, lots of things going on. So if you go from that environment straight into trying to eat, the very basic digestive processes aren't in place because your body's not expecting.

Your brain hasn't told your body to expect to receive food. And that can cause bloating and discomfort massively. That's so interesting because your body's like, we're trying to fight off a tiger. I'm ready to eat. Exactly. So the blood flow goes into your muscles and into your brain and to kind of be ready for ongoing danger,

which obviously, yeah, used to be a tiger, but these days, you know, it's a bloody email or something. Actually, it's a real tiger for me. I'm constantly fighting tigers. This is my life. She lives in Jumanji. I do. Would you say that's why, like,

sometimes you go on holiday and you feel so much more well and you're able to, like, just sit because, you know, you've just sat and had dinner very slowly and had time to, you know, there's nothing else on and you just ate your meal? Totally. So I think, I hear people saying, that when they go on holiday to Italy and they eat all the pizza and all the pasta,

they don't get uncomfortable. And then often people will say, oh, it's because it's better quality, which I think probably it is. But that's such a like, you think it's that, and you're like, it's because our stuff is correct, like it's not, it's so much more. Yeah, I think it's much more likely to be being away and relaxed and being in that rest and digest mode. It's so hard in modern day to actually make time to be restful and I can't imagine having, like, in the middle of the day being like, and now I will look at this sandwich for 20 minutes just to show my brain. To get the saliva going, how long before, how long smelling do we need before we're allowed to eat? Well, another quick win that really

helps with stomach acid production is having a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar in a little bit of warm water. Having that about 15 minutes before a meal, the bitterness will basically stimulate your stomach to produce more stomach acid. So that's quite a nice habit to get into. No excuses in lockdown. Oh yeah. Is there anything nicer that's a variation of that? We've got to do the apple side of it. No, there are things.

So bitter herbs, rocket, watercress, mint, oh yeah. I could eat some mint. Ginger. What about a mehito? Mejito before every meal. Yeah, there you go. Mejito before every meal.

Yeah, so something slightly bitter, whether that's a drink of something bitter or a bittery tasting food, that will begin to stimulate digestion as well. Liquorish is quite good. You can chew, you can get kind of, licorice sweets. Are you basically just trying to prepare the channel basically so your whole body is ready for this.

Like screaming down. Like, come on, guys, get ridgerie. If it comes. I've had the licorice root. Come on, what more do you want? And there all the bios in there have been like, Jesus Christ, there's a licorice coming. That's your, I'm doing an impression of your wobbly things,

Tessa. The villi, is that true? There's villi? Are they villi? Yeah. They wobbly, aren't they? Yeah. And I used to go to the, I used to say, the doctor tried to explain to me.

And I was like, listen, here's what I'm hearing. Have you seen the little mermaid? And he was like, get out of my office. Get out. I have five minutes on the queue of a million people. I don't want to talk to you about this. We're on the NHS schedule, please. And I was like, okay, so you know when she turns the mur people into souls?

And then they're like, but he just made me get out. So I don't know for sure if that was correct. And you mentioned stools, which is, look, it's my favorite topic. It's not. but it's fun to talk about. And I know that there's a, you know, this is Bristol Stool Charm. We did an episode of this podcast ages ago before we were called Nobody to Panic. We were the debrief podcast.

You can get back and listen to it where we found out about pooing for people listening. I want to, well, I want to frame the question as, what poo is okay? What poo is bad? What do we'd be looking out for? Well, poo actually is one of my favourite topics. So a good poo is sausage-shaped, smooth, round the edges. comes out easily without any pain or discomfort and would be a kind of medium brown. Sorry, pause, pause, pause on the good poo.

When you say smooth, what we're talking there? Are we talking like a gloss? Are we talking like a, what's the, how do you do, what are you saying? Oh my God. Sometimes it can be kind of clumped together. So it's like pellets that have been stuck together and it sort of becomes kind of quite jaggy on the outside. Clay?

Yeah, yeah. When you just plopped all your clay together? Yeah. So if it's kind of clumpy and a bit jagged and normally will feel a bit harder, that's slightly on the constipated side. But it can still be fully formed, but kind of perhaps a bit dehydrated if it's a bit more kind of clumpy. Okay. Well, thank you. That's helped.

I think that is a question from a woman who's never had a smooth poo. Yeah. So if you're seeing bits of undigested food in the stool, then again, that's quite an obvious indication that the digestive functions further up aren't. happening in the way that they should be. I mean, sweet corn and the odd bits of nuts and seeds. I mean, that's kind of normal. So are nuts normal? Question. The seeds, I would say. So small seeds. But if you start seeing a great walnut or, yeah, a whole peanut, I'd maybe be a bit concerned. But I'm concerned because what's happening though? Because you're not breaking it down. Because you haven't chewed the peanut. Understood.

Maybe less relatable with you, Tessa, because you are a medical marvel. Your body seems to be unable to cope with a lot of food. And also, you eat quite slowly. I eat, like, incredibly quickly. I did find myself the other day putting in a mouthful as they're already a mouthful. And I was like, girl, what are you doing? I used to work with this lady, this wonderful Polish lady. We worked with this catering company.

And so obviously, especially when you're catering, you're only allowed to eat every like 12 hours or something. And you've got to be quite quick about it because someone's going to shout at you to go back to work. Anyway, she once said to me, she was like, in my country you say that you can tell how someone makes love from the way they eat their food. And I was like, go on. She was like, with you, very greedy, very enthusiastic, don't really know what you're doing.

And I was like, very, that's it. That's pretty own brand. But no, I definitely, yeah, I went through, I basically heard that, like, caches were good for you. So I bought this massive bag of cashews from little, and I ate the whole thing, and I gave myself food poisoning. So, look, I've done myself. health no favours. There's a lot going on. Sorry, also we keep interrupting the bad poos.

And then constantly having constipation or diarrhoea, again, suggests that there's not something, there's something not quite right going on with digestion. So I've got IBS, and I don't want to make it very specific because I want, obviously, it's for people listening to be able to go like, oh, you know, fine. But I think IBS is such a common problem, and I'm basically always going from one to the other. And I think quite a lot of people have that and when you are told that you have ibs well i mean maybe other people have had better experiences but it's mainly just like oh well off you go and you're like fine that that's my life this is my life now have more water and um don't get so stressed hey yeah the thing about ibs is it's

ibs syndrome and what syndrome means is um you're given the diagnosis of ibs syndrome when they've ruled out anything more sinister so it doesn't really give you any answers as to as to why you're getting your symptoms it's basically just like he go ibs syndrome nothing really to worry about off you go and on your way but actually it's really unhelpful because really all you can be given is something to bung you up or something to speed you up they either give you laxatives or something to bulk you up um but again it's it's thought that i think last time i checked it was like over it was around 70% mark of ibs is linked to bacterial overgrowth. So this could be an overgrowth of bacteria in the small intestines. There shouldn't

really be much bacteria in the small intestines. It's the large intestines that's home to the abundance of different bacteria. So when we start to grow or cultivate bacteria in the small intestines, when we eat certain foods and they reach the small intestines, they start to ferment in the small intestines. And that fermentation process causes bacteria living in small intestines to release certain gases. And it's generally on the whole those gases that cause the problems in terms of IBS like presentations. So there's there's three largely different gases that I would look out for. One of them would be bacteria producing methane and one of them would be bacteria producing hydrogen. They're the two most common ones. And so methane is commonly

associated with constipation and maybe kind of some altering in stalls and hydrogen. is more associated with loose tools and bloating and burping after meal and just kind of general pain and discomfort. And so the way that I would tackle IBS is to rule out or kind of get a closer picture as to what's going on on a bacteria level within the gut and then start to manipulate that through whatever came up on testing. So for some people that would be kind of working towards reducing the bacteria levels in the small intestine, whether that's through kind of supplementation of antimicrobials, which are kind of more herbal-based antibiotics, or by nourishing the whole environment of the gut and thinking about good bacteria and thinking

about stomach acid and kind of getting the body to start to heal itself and begin to slowly alter the environment. Or it's kind of quite helpful to think about it as a garden, really. We've all got our own different garden with lots of different things growing in it. And if we can get it harmoniously growing with the right bacteria and the right places and not too much of some and not too little of others, then encouraging that harmony of your own garden can be, can really, really help with IBS, Amig. If you're going at it solo without the aid of, you know, a chief gardener like yourself to help you through it, if you're solo gardening, would something like an elimination diet be something

that you recommend? Yeah, so keeping a food diary would be a really good place to start. So writing down everything that you're eating and recording how you're feeling. and then whether that's how you're feeling in the gut or how you're feeling in your mind or just generally energy levels, mood, and beginning to kind of pick out certain foods that you might be eating that are causing issues. There's a food plan which they might have suggested that you try it out called the low fod map. Absolutely not for me. Sorry. Like can't eat onions?

It's very restrictive. It can give immediate or quite quick symptom relief. It's not something that's not something that. should be followed long term. So I think that's the mistake that people make they go on it and they start to feel better and then they become terrified of anything that's high FODMAP. So FODMAP is basically the range of how fermentable a certain food is and by removing those foods, you're removing fermentable foods and then removing kind of trigger for bloating and discomfort. So it works very nicely as a way of providing symptom relief, but then you'd need to kind

be thinking about the environment in your gut and strengthening it and getting the body to kind of support itself and so that ultimately you can get to a point where you can have quite a varied diet and not have issues from what you're eating. So thinking about stomach acid again, thinking about chewing food, this idea of bitters before meals or apple cider before a meal that helps with your stomach acid production. And again, a really important job of stomach acid is to kill off bacteria. So a food that would otherwise ferment too high. up in the digestive chain, having adequate stomach acids is going to help with this process. We actually haven't talked about the actual food that you're putting in your body.

Because also, of course, we, I feel like we are told a lot, you know, focus on whole foods, focus on non-processed foods, and we sort of all know this and then we all don't do it. But it'd be interesting to know, realistically, obviously, in an ideal world, we would all only eat whole foods. Realistically, that's very, very difficult in the current. And also it's very privileged because whole foods are often more expensive and all of that. Is there a realistic thing that we should be looking at like a percentage thing or basically anything that you can help with that? Well, first of all, I just think it's like absolutely appalling in this country that it's more of a privilege to be able to eat healthy in terms of affordability when actually peasant food

in so many countries all over the world is fruit and vegetables and kind of very basic whole foods. I mean, that's something that I'm always trying to kind of help people to find easy, cheap ways of eating well, because it can be done. It's just, there's just been so much marketing gone into all sorts of superfoods and things blown over from Peru, which we don't need. The question about what to eat in terms of percentages, I generally advocate for an 80% of the good stuff, 20% of the not so good stuff. A thing to bear in mind is that the government guidelines, when they created the five-a-day strap line. Apparently, there was a conversation that happened

where it was suggested by, I don't know, whoever was part of the group decision, that actually the best guidelines would be between 10 and 12 servings of fruit and vegetables per day. But apparently, there was a conversation where they said, oh, no, no one will do that. Let's just lower it down to five. But of course, what happens is people will have two or three

and go, oh, well, nearly at five. But the thing is, we should be eating a lot more. fruit and vegetables than that so we should really be aiming for kind of 10 to 12 so when you've got that in mind that changes the plate quite a lot and when you're adding adding in more fruit and vegetables you're kind of naturally then kind of cutting back on some of the less nutritious stuff but you know a balanced plate is about 50% vegetables a small amount of protein some good fats and by good fats I mean fish avocado olive oil olives eggs lean meat and then carbohydrates, so grains, rice, potatoes.

And that's funny when you think of the, you know, you've got your pasta meal and it's an entire plate of pasta and then a tiny bit of sauce on top and then cheese. And you're like, oh, now that doesn't quite fit into, but there are things you can do obviously like swaps in, like red lentil pasta, but it's like 70,000 pounds. So it's very, very difficult. But that gives you at least a visualization of what you should be aiming for, I suppose. So you can be like, right, well, maybe I'll have some salad with must pasta. on the plate. So then that's also automatically less room for pasta. I don't think that lentil pasta is very nice. So I don't really eat it. But I like the, I like rice pasta. I like brown rice pasta. And I think that that tastes almost exactly the same

as wheat pasta. And it's generally not as expensive. So that's quite a good swap. And then, yeah, just adding in an extra portion of veg, whether that's a side portion of cooked vegetables or a salad, automatically that means you're going to be eating slightly less of the pasta. a bit more of the veg. So it's just kind of altering quantities. If you feel like you're starting from a place where you have no idea, then I think just like having a quick look online at the general guidance based around age and gender and size in terms of protein intake, potentially quite helpful, what we find time and time again is that people aren't eating enough fibre. So in the Western world, people just don't eat enough fiber. And that becomes problematic because

the fibre is what feeds our microbiome and our good bacteria. So by not feeding them, then a lot of the goodness and positive impacts that they have on overall health, they're not really able to do their job. So fibre is also a prebiotic. So there's probiotics and there's prebiotics. So I think that there's quite a lot of a buzz and interest around probiotics, but actually prebiotics are more important. A probiotic is a lab produced pill that contains live bacteria. So it's your opt-back, your biocult. Those are the kind of the biggest high street names that you'd see. So a probiotic capsule, it has been produced in a lab and has different strains of bacteria in it that are very well researched and there is a lot to support their efficacy and their

benefits in the body, but what they do is they kind of help with signaling and communication between our existing bacteria. They don't necessarily, by taking a lactobacillus supplement, you're not suddenly fueling your whole body with lactobacillus, which I think is a common misunderstanding. Whereas prebiotic, so fibrous food, is basically the sunshine for your garden. So it's what they need to grow. It's what they eat.

It's how they survive. It's how we get the best out of our bacteria. What are the best fibre foods? What are the best ones? Some big hitters. Come on. So whole grains. So brown rice,

legumes, lentils. chickpeas and then um hummus yeah i love hummus but the best the very best is the sancho um root vegetables so coming back to the comment i made earlier about carrots so root vegetables um carrots hamlets walis yeah there you go stevie we were right all along carrots beetroot sweet parsley sweet potato even even your regular your humble white potato but the best thing to do and what um changes that the fiber content of ruth really vegetables is to cook them and then let them cool. Oh, great. It increases their fibre content. Well, I always do that anyway because I cook it and then my food's always cold and I'm ruined it. Actually, you're doing the best thing for your microbes. So great. And then there's fermented food. So kefier and kombucha and sauerout and kimchi

and miso, all those kind of fizzy bacteria live foods that people seem to love or hate. they contain lots of different bacteria that have come about through a process of fermentation. And by eating those, you're kind of, someone, a colleague said this to me, and I really like it. She said, what they do is they kind of keep your immune system on its toes in a good way. So it's kind of like exercise for your immune system within your gut, because you're putting in all these different bacteria that maybe the body's never been exposed to before. And it's basically keeping your immune system, yeah, exercising really and being like, oh, what's this? Is this okay? Oh, this is this fine?

kind of processing it. Yes, light exercise for the gut immune system. A little jog. And I've heard that wine, you ferment wine, wine, wine ferment, thoughts? Thoughts? Um, red wine has quite a lot of polyphenols in it. So polyphenols are plant chemicals and what give red wine it's beautiful, lovely dark colour. And that has been shown in moderation to be, again, pretty good for your microbiome. Hello. And also in terms of eating and sleeping. There's a lot of people saying, you know, there's the times of the day that you eat, do you eat a massive breakfast, a smaller lunch, a tiny dinner, which is my least favourite way around, but a lot of, and also the way that societally, we kind of don't really do that.

Dinner is such a big thing. Is there any sense in that? And does it matter when you eat your food or does it matter more what you're eating? So yeah, the time restricted eating is a really, really important part of thinking about overall digestive health because again we're not we weren't built to be constantly exposed to food because we now have light and fridges and electricity and you know a very different life to how our ancestors did where they would when the light ended the food would end whereas now there's fast food culture and they're snacking and so in addition to eating later, we're also eating between meals. And that digestion in itself is quite an inflammatory process on the body.

It's a huge ask. And it's what our guts are there for, and it's an important part of basic human existence. But it takes up a lot of energy. So by stacking between meals and extending the time that we eat, it is putting a certain amount of strain on the body and the energy resources and the gut as a whole. so cutting, being aware of that and cutting that down, so trying to eat all your meals starting off aiming for within a 10-hour window is quite a good place to start so that your body's got time to break, you know, break down the food, absorb it, process it

and get you ready for the next meal overnight. Final thing that I wanted to say was just about how important and to get your thoughts on how important it is not to become obsessed with it because obviously things like orthorexia like being obsessed with healthy eating is a real problem and it's a real problem and it is an eating disorder. Yeah, totally. And that's why I'm kind of keen to like avoid giving direct measurements and suggesting that anyone weighs their food or anything like that

because I think that is just a warm way to get a slippery slope. Yeah. I mean, yeah, if you're counselling plans or if you're beginning to feel anxious about your next meal, not having necessarily a positive reaction to when you think about food, that's not a great thing either. and just being kind to yourself and if you do go out and end up drinking too much and having a McDonald's or whatever,

just you don't need to then be furious with yourself and it's not, you haven't messed everything up because we can easily get back onto a path of eating the right foods the next day, just have what you had the day before that felt good for you rather than going, oh well, I've messed it all up now, I may as well, just let myself spiral, which does seem to be a kind of common thing that people do.

But we have the power to influence our microbiome and our good bacteria and we can change that within within a number of hours so if you go off hours yeah depending on what you eat so if you go if you go away on a stag or a hen or a party weekend and you booze too much and you eat all the wrong things and you come back feeling awful which inevitably you do that there's a whole host of things going on there as a result of overindulging but one of the reasons why you won't feel so great is because you'll gut bacteria hasn't been fed the right foods but you can then rectify that like you can just change your diet and go back to eating the right foods that you know work for you and that and that generally will

kind of rectify the the situation for yourself and also for your right of bacteria. That's marvellous to know to use your gardening analogy it's not just like everything's ripped up and everything's ruined forget it it's like hey look one plant pots down we'll just put him back up yeah pick it up although with you tessa and with the autoimmune picture there is something kind of a bit more complex to consider there. It's a bit more than a few people who are up and down. Yeah, in relation to foods, particularly, obviously, wheat and gluten, that is a more advanced health picture.

Sorry. No, it's funny. You've got to say. Yeah. Yeah, I've got it. I've got some real gardening to do. You've got to get a landscape gardener in to help you. We've got to get a landscape gardener in.

I don't think I can do this one on my own. Yeah, I got to get something. Thank you. This has been so fascinating. So interesting. I feel like an idiot. Yeah, we're so good at just being like, oh, I put it in my mouth. I taste it for a bit and then it's gone.

It's gone. Whereas actually it's, you know, we're all one big connected piece, one big, you know, constantly moving train system. Sniff the food, take your tie. And put your knife and fork down in between each mouthful. That's quite a good, good way to start. Thank you so much for coming in. Pleasure.

Absolutely brilliant. Thank you so much. And please do find her Florencewild.com.com. UK. If you're listening and being like, yes, I would like some advice and help. This is the person to speak to. Do you check out the supper clubs as well on Instagram at Wild underscore Feasts. Also, do please follow us at Nobody Panic Pod. You can like and subscribe, leave us a review. Write to us at Nobody Panicpodcast at gmail.com. Lovely. And this week, just be nice yourself, 80-20. Eat some good food. Get that apple cider vinegar in. Smell, smell, smell, smell. Yeah. And remember that you're,

be well. You're never eating on your own. You're eating it's you and the trillions. So you're eating for the many, not the few. Yes, I've taken that from Corbyn. It's you at the trillions. You're feeding your little mermaid from the little mermaid people in the case. That's what you're doing. Oh, well you guys all like and subscribe and have a great week. I'll see you next week. Bye.