Live Like a Girl with Dr. Mindy Pelz - The Role of the Gut Microbiome in Human Health - With Dr. Will Bulsiewicz

Episode Date: June 13, 2022

For full show notes, resources mentioned, and transcripts go to: www.drmindypelz.com/ep125/ To enroll in Dr. Mindy's Fasting membership go to: resetacademy.drmindypelz.com This episode is all about the role of fiber on our gut microbiome and preventing diseases. Dr. Will Bulsiewicz (or "Dr. B") is an award-winning gastroenterologist, internationally recognized gut health expert, and the New York Times-bestselling author of Fiber Fueled and The Fiber Fueled Cookbook. He sits on the Scientific Advisory Board of ZOE and is the U.S. Medical Director of ZOE, has authored more than twenty articles published in peer-reviewed scientific journals, has given more than forty presentations at national meetings, presented to Congress and the USDA, and has taught over 10,000 students how to heal and optimize their gut health. He lives in Charleston, South Carolina with his wife and children. You'll find him on Instagram as @theguthealthmd, on Facebook as @theguthealthmd, and on his website theplantfedgut.com. Please see our medical disclaimer.

Here's what we do know. We know for a fact that the food that you eat today will already start to cause a shift in your microbiome by tomorrow. So your microbiome is not like lagging by weeks. It's constantly evolving. Resetters, Dr. Mindy here. And I am on a mission to teach you just how powerful your body was built to be. This podcast is about giving you the power back and helping you. you believe in yourself again. Let's jump in. On this episode of The Resetter podcast, I bring you

Dr. Will Bullswitch. Now, let me tell you about this conversation. It was so rich and such good explanations of the microbiome. So Dr. B, as he is known, is a New York Times bestselling author. He wrote a book called Fiber Fueled. So I want to start. stop there for a moment and just point out that a lot of the questions we've had in our community have been around carnivore versus Encebo and fiber and how do you make, put all of the wonders that fiber can create in our microbiome. How do you rectify that with books like the plant paradox or the carnivore diet? And in this discussion, Dr. B really addresses this complex situation that many of you find yourselves nutritionally in.

He really identifies where fiber is such a key part of preventing so many diseases. But he doesn't just stop there. He goes on to talk about what is destroying the microbes in our gut, and it's not what you think. It will blow you away. And the second thing he talked about that really opened my eyes. was how important the microbiome is of the people around you and the connections of the people around you. When I tell you we are going to talk about the microbiome in a new way, I am not

joking. This conversation really left me deeply thinking about all the ways we can bring back the health of our microbiome has me really thinking deeper about how important connection is on so many levels, but specifically on the microbiome. We also really dove into the science and how to break down a study on the microbiome. That was fascinating. So there is so much in this conversation. And I'm hoping that if you're not aware of the importance of the microbiome, that after this conversation, you will understand it.

You will understand how to care for it. And you will know that many of the symptoms you may be experiencing in your life are not in your head. Many of the diagnoses you've been given are not the end all be all, especially when you look at the microbiome. So Dr. B is a gastroenterologist. He is a New York Times best selling author. You're going to hear about a really cool new test that he and a team of people are using to research the microbiome so that we can start to personalize our nutrition. You also are going to hear a lot at the end about hormones in the microbiome. So women, menopausal women, women over 40, that we really talked about the importance of

the microbiome on hormonal health. And he really offered some new insight for me. So again, I can't wait for you all to listen to this discussion. I will be bringing him back. It was that good. And let me know, as always, what you think. Leave me a review. If you want him back, let me know that.

and enjoy. I want to jump into the idea that I have spent a lot of time wondering, which is, what's more important? Are human cells or the bacteria that live in us? It's an interesting question. And it's, so let me start with this and say that I'm speculating no matter what because I don't want to sound like I'm so emphatic that. that it's completely clear, this is evolving science. Agreed. Right? We are constantly learning more.

Yeah. And we're at the tip of the iceberg in a revolution. This is the new frontier. Like, this is where the discoveries are taking place. 200 years ago was like trying to get across the country and discover the West. And, you know, in the last 100 years, there's other things that we've been working on, developing cars, stuff like this. This is the new frontier. And here's what I think. At the end of the day, I truly believe that if we're going to actually separate this, like I don't want to do the

entire human body versus the microbes. That's a little bit of a tricky thing. But if we go organ by organ and we say, what is the most important organ in the body for human health? I mean, obviously to like have consciousness we need a brain right yes and to have a pulse we need a heart right but to have longevity long term health good digestion healthy balanced immune system reducing inflammation optimizing our metabolism balancing our hormones getting having a good mood and our brain health all these things come back to one spot, which is where our diet and lifestyle intersect with our gut microbes, which are not even a part of our body.

But what happens is when the food meets microbes, the food is transformed. The microbes have a functional ability that we lack as humans. They have the ability to do magical things that we're not capable of, which is why we need them. And on the other side of that is them creating new products, like, for example, short chain fatty acids, butyrate, acetate, propionate, I'm sure we'll talk more about those, or, you know, unlocking the value that exists in our polyphenols. Polyphenols are antioxidant compounds. We all think of them as being healthy. People celebrate, you know, Resveratrol, for example. David Sinclair talks about how Resveratrol is the longevity polyphenol.

Resveratrol is worthless without our microbes. It is activated by the microbes. And so really, I think that the message is this. Let me bring the listeners up to 2022 level knowledge. This is not about individual microbes. And this is not about your microbiome in isolation. This is about what your microbiome is capable of doing with the food, with your lifestyle. what your microbiome is capable of doing because what it produces is what ultimately matters.

The products of the microbiome ultimately are what initiate a cascade of physiologic effects that route your body that affect your digestion, your hormones, your metabolism, your immune system, your brain, your mood. This cascade that is so critical to human health really boils down to the molecules that are being produced by the microbes in our gut. And so why are we not, I know now, I love that part about bringing everybody up to 2022, but why haven't we paid, given it enough credit? Why are we not taking impeccable care of our microbes? Well, I think that there's a historical narrative that we're working our way through.

And it's tough to shift paradigines, right? It's hard to change how people feel about things when they've been pre-programmed to feel a certain way. So, you know, we imagine this. It was, I mean, less than 200 years ago that we, for the first time, discovered the presence of microbes. Prior to that, we thought what caused like disease was this like bad error called miasma. If you look at the civil war, so I'm like, I've turned into my dad. Like, I'm like, it happens. Yeah. So, like, I'm now the guy who's, like, reading history books. Oh, yeah.

If you look at the Civil War, the soldiers didn't want to go to the hospitals. They didn't know why because they didn't understand microbes or bacteria. But they knew that you could get a gunshot wound and survive the gunshot wounds, but then you die when you go to the hospital. And that's because it was the infection that was killing them. It just didn't understand that. Right. And so now fast forward to all of a sudden this, this problem. that starts around that time, but really starts to mature at the turn of the 20th century.

And in that moment, our top causes of death were all infections. Heart disease was not in the top three. Cancer was not in the top three. And the biggest, the greatest discovery in the history of medicine, all of humanity, the greatest discovery in the history of medicine was the discovery of penicillin. Yep. Because basically we knocked the top three. causes of death, boom, like they're knocked out.

And now we replace that with heart disease and cancer. But like, this is where we're coming from is that we have vilified the microbes. They're bad. Bacteria are bad. They're inherently bad. And all of a sudden, in 2006, we have a laboratory breakthrough that for the first time allows us to actually study the microbes in our gut. Prior to this, we were not capable of studying them.

Interesting. And because most of them are not to get super nerdy here, I apologize, but like, you can nerd out with me at any time. Okay, cool. So most of the bacteria that live inside our gut are what we describe as anaerobic, which basically means that they cannot live in an environment where there's oxygen. So our gut actually, because it's so deep inside of us is very, very low on oxygen. And so you can't grow these things on a culture plate.

Yeah. So the vast majority of these microbes, we had no way to grow them, to understand them. The culture plate was our old-fashioned technique that we've been using for 100 years. And all of a sudden, we develop ways to measure their DNA. Okay. That's what happened in 2006. Okay. Their RNA, basically their genetic code.

And you look under the hood and you go, whoa, oh my gosh, there's 38 trillion microbes in there. This is an ecosystem. Yep. densely packed. And, and they're like working in teams, like not individually, working in teams, doing stuff, like unpacking our food. And so initially the first like sort of 15 years has been mostly us sort of describing what we're seeing.

And we're evolving in our understanding where it's like we started with, oh, well, if you have this microbe, it must mean this. Hey, but hold up. There's 38 trillion microbes in there. There's a lot to study. Yeah. And it's way to, it's way, it's far more complicated than, hey, this one microbe does this, therefore you have this effect on a human body.

Right. Yes. So then we're starting to move now more into, in the last few years, understanding the functional abilities of the gut. Mm-hmm. And part of this is now saying, okay, if it's about the function of the gut, like, what is it capable of doing, this organ? then we need to look at the functional outputs and be able to look at these types of things.

Like, is it producing the types of stuff that we need to be produced in order to have healthy humans? Okay. So this is sort of the evolution where it's taken us up to today for us to start to understand that these microbes that live inside of us, they're not there to hurt us. Right. They're our friends. They want to empower us because when we are healthy humans, they get to be a part of that and be a part of our lives. They stick around. The explanation I always say is it's like a pet living inside your gut. And if you feed it the right food, it gives you lots of wonderful chemicals that make you

feel happy and can calm your brain. And yet most people, I love the way you started this of bringing people up to speed because we as a culture, as a society worldwide, I don't think it's just unique to America. We don't give it enough credit. So, just so we don't lose what you just said outside of moods, what else do these microbes do? Like, what are some of the things that they do that we can't, if they're gone, we will see symptoms appear and disease appear? Well, the most clear thing is our digestion. Okay.

We lack the ability to digest many parts of our food as humans. if we were sterile, which by the way, there's never been a sterile human, every human for every second of humanity has had a microbiome. But if we were sterile, then we would lack the ability to process and unpack many parts of our food. We would not get the benefits of the polyphenols and we would not get the benefits of dietary fiber. But because we have this microbiome, we, speaking as a medical doctor, What I have observed is that we, through evolution, clearly trusted these microbes because we gave them critical responsibilities for our health and our ability to function.

So processing and unpacking food, access to nutrients, what's more fundamental than that? That's life. Like without nutrients, we can't exist, right? Right. So digestion is the first place that you see it show up. Like in my work as a gastroenterologist, when people have a damaged gut, they call me. Right. Right.

And I'm convinced that essentially everyone who comes to a gastroenterologist, unless you're there for social reasons. People go to their gastroenterologist for social reasons. I mean, you are a friendly guy. Yeah. Well, I mean, I suppose you could come for your screening colonoscopy to talk about, you know, that. But like, generally speaking, if you are a friendly guy. speaking, if you're there to discuss some sort of chronic digestive symptom,

it's because your gut microbiome has been compromised. But I don't think that's always what happens when you go into a gastroenterologist's office. Is the microbe evaluated? Or is there, because I've talked to a lot of doctors of all backgrounds. And what we're seeing often is that they're still only addressing the human cells and not really highlighting,

or they're looking at the bad microbes that need to be killed and not looking at the terrain or the environment and how to enhance that. Yeah, no, I totally agree with you. This is not, this is not. So they've done research where they look at how long does it take from the day that a publication is put out there into the world for it actually to be widely accepted in clinical medicine.

Oh, interesting. And that period of time is 17 years. What? All right. So what that means is that it's 2022, do our math minus 17. We're functioning in 2005 right now. And what that means is that we haven't really started to discover or understand the microbiome yet because it was 2006 that the technology really started to be used. Got it.

So, no, this is not conventional part of conventional gastroenterology care. Right. It should be. And it will take time for people to adopt this. Yes. And I think that the challenge is that like this, the science is there. Right. It's not the absence of science.

It's that we need to revise our educational paradigms. Yes. And that's not that easy to do. Yeah. Yeah. And outside of digestion, what else would you say, do you think, can you be? a happy person with a depleted microbiome? Yeah.

I mean, so you can have an, the microbiome is complex, very complex, and unique. So like, if you have two identical twins, they only share about 35 to 37 percent of the same microbes. Oh, interesting. Those are identical twins. most of us would only share, like even with a sibling, you might only share 30%. Okay. And there are 8 billion people on the planet. And most scientists believe that there actually are no two people that share the same microbiome.

Interesting. Completely bio-individual. Completely bio-individual. So the reality is that the... the microbiome, because it's so unique to us, it requires us to be, to acknowledge the fact that it's so unique in terms of dietary choices or other parts of our life. And the manifestations, like, we can't just like apply the label unhealthy and therefore you will get all these X, Y, Z disease. That's not true. but what I suspect to be the case is that there's a certain pattern or there's a certain loss of functionality that takes place in the gut microbiome that in the presence of a certain genetic

code that person's human genetic code then they would manifest that specific medical condition got so you won't just like knock down these dominoes of hey now that you have a damaged microbiome you're going to have digestive issues metabolic issues immune issues mood issues is not necessarily going to be the case. Not that simple. But you will see associations. So you will see a person who, like, I look for patterns. How do I know that a person has a damaged gut?

If they come to my office as a gastrologist and they're suffering with digestive symptoms, but then I also see that they have high blood pressure, high cholesterol, type 2 diabetes, by the way, these are all manifestations of a damaged gut. They're overweight, obesity. they have psoriasis and tons of sinus infections and they get migraine headaches. Right. And their period is very irregular. Okay.

Like you're seeing this pattern that's emerging where it's like you go down the line and every single one of these conditions has been associated with disturbance of the microbiome. Crazy. So you don't need to even. I could go beyond that because now I know this is where the, this is where the root of the problem exists. Yeah. So if I get a diagnosis from a doctor and I've told this is, it's just hereditary. You're going to have to live with it. Would it behoove me to also then go and look at my microbial profile because based off of what you just said, you have to have the gene connected with a certain

bacterial balance to actually manifest the disease or the condition. Is that the way I hear that, right? Well, it's almost always negative. It's almost never completely genetic unless it's one of the conditions that we know is literally completely genetic. So for example, you know, you could test a child in utero to determine whether or not they're going to have like cystic fibrosis. Right.

If you have the gene for cystic fibrosis, you're going to have cystic fibrosis. It does not matter what your microbiome is. Right. Right. But these, that is the minority of. medical conditions. Yes. The majority of the things that we deal with are things like, you know, high blood pressure,

high cholesterol, diabetes, heart disease, cancer. You go down the line, where do these things, where do these things come from? Yeah. And the answer is that I think it's this combination of the microbiome and our genetic expression. And if I'm only getting 30, if I look at identical twins who only have 30% of the same microbiome, let's start with this. Is that microbiome passed down from mom? Is that where that 30% comes from?

And where is the other 70% coming from? You don't fully know. This is one of the major questions in the space of the gut microbiome that we would love to try to figure out is like, because so I don't know if you knew this, Mindy, but I have a new baby at home. Oh, congrats. So yeah. I didn't know it.

Okay. So we have a baby girl, Susie. She was born less than two. weeks ago. Oh my gosh. Congratulations. And, um, you know, these are questions that I ponder because I know, uh, the science, perhaps you've seen this, but for the listeners at home, I know the science that says that children that are born by C-section or who are bottle fed or who are exposed to antibiotics, by the way, well, three of these things clearly you could see how they would disrupt the development of the normal healthy gut microbiome and a newborn child, all of these things have

been associated with both metabolic issues downstream. So that could include obesity, childhood obesity, that could include type two diabetes. But they've also been associated with immune mediated issues. So we see a higher incidence of asthma or seasonal allergies or there's different specific autoimmune issues that have been associated. So, So I think about these things. Like where does the microbiome come from? Right. And where I settle on it all, so first of all, there's query an element that is passed down from mother to child.

Okay. Right. But if we kind of ignore children for a moment, I'll come back to them. Okay. And we zoom out and we just think about our life as adults. There is evidence that you share more microbes with your partner. I was going to ask about that. Yes.

than you do with your siblings. Right? So if it was purely a maternal thing, then you should share more with your siblings than you do with your partner. Because your partner, you just met at some point in your life. You met there from the beginning and didn't share the same mom. So in this study, though, it was fascinating, is that they looked at how partners shared microbes and they controlled for diet.

And they found that there was more to it than just diet. Like, this is not just that you're eating the same food. Okay. And they dug a little deeper and they noticed that there were some couples that like really were sharing a lot of microbes. And there were some couples that were not. And they found that the, the amount of connectedness in the relationship, like how connected you feel to your partner ultimately determined how many microbes you share with this person. That's crazy. So when you are in a very healthy relationship, and we could speculate, like, is this that you have more intimacy or, you know, but when you are in a healthy relationship, you share more microbes.

And when you are distant from this person, you literally are distant in terms of your microbiome. And so now coming back to kids, what that says to me is that the microbiome is pretty darn malleable. Yes. you're not just predominantly receiving it. Now, percentage-wise, I don't know. I mean, we really don't know. But you're not just receiving it from mom. And so with my, just to share what I'm focusing on as a sort of gut health guy with my

newborn baby is my daughter was born by Cesarian. There was a medical need for that. It's not what we wanted, but it's what happened. But that's okay. We are focusing on breast milk. maximum breast milk. And what's special about breast milk, I mean, there's a lot of special about breast milk. It's amazing.

Yeah. But one of the coolest things about it is that it contains these things called human milk oligalachycerides. HMOs, there's over 200 varieties of HMOs in breast milk, and they have zero nutritional value for a baby, zero. They're not absorbed by a baby. Interesting. Because human milk oligococerides are the breast milk version of fiber. Okay. And there are 200 varieties and they are designed to feed and fuel the babies developing

microbiome. And when babies consume breast milk, you see the emergence of healthy bacteria like bifidobacteria. And it's been attributed to this. It's not. Is it like a prebiotic then? Yeah. So the milk, the legosaccharides, the lego saccharide basically is to get nerdy in biochemical for a moment. Ellego saccharide basically is a term that means multiple different sugars that have been chained together.

They've been linked together. And that's what dietary fiber is. Okay. And so there's not one variety, 200 varieties of effectively the breast milk equivalent of dietary fiber, feeding and nourishing the relationship with microbes from birth. So cool. Mom's breast milk evolved to support not just the baby. Mom's breast milk evolved to simultaneously feed the developing microbiome. Crazy.

That's crazy. And so one thought I had as you were talking about that is if I want to, if I need to repair my gut, let's say I have like, you know, I think more people are learning about autoimmunity and the fact that there is this microbial situation that can can influence. an autoimmune condition. If I'm going to repair my gut, do I need my spouse involved in repairing his or her gut? And if my spouse works on their microbiome, and will it enhance the repair of my microbiome if we're exchanging bacteria like that all the time?

Both you and your spouse could eat the perfect diet and exercise and sleep and meditate. but if you hate each other, then you are not going to have a healthy gut microbiome. So it's oxytocin. Well, it's really what it is is it's on the spectrum of trauma, not necessarily acute trauma like the big T, like the big incident, but instead perpetual stress. And when you have unsettled,

conflict in your life. And it could be at home in your relationship with your spouse. It could be that you have a job that you hate. I'll share a story about that in just a second here. There are many different forms and variations and how it applies and affects you is in many ways individual. But when you have this stress that's ongoing, it's unsettled. What happens is it activates your sympathetic nervous system. And your pituitary gland will release a hormone called corticotropin releasing hormone, CRH. And this CRH initiates a cascade that is that your stress response. Okay. And if you track this waterfall down to the bottom, what you will find at the bottom is that it causes harm and injury to your gut microbiome. This is why in moments of acute stress, like we've all been there, you get stressed, you manifest it in your gut. Right. Right. Could be anything. Gas, bloating, cramps, diarrhea, constipation. That's many of the ways. All right. Well, so what happens if that activation occurs not like as a surge, but instead at a ongoing, nonstop, low grade burn?

Yes. You can do everything right. You can eat the right diet. You can exercise. You can sleep. You can meditate. but if this is happening, that is holding you back and it needs to be fixed. So quick example, quick story. I had a patient with ulcerative colitis and she's in her 20s and she, she'd love to date. She can't. She has diarrhea around the clock. She has to wake up a night to go. I have been working with her for years. I've tried every. everything. Diet, lifestyle, the right medications, she's not getting better. And then one day, she comes to my office and she says to me, like I walk in and I'm like, who is this person?

You're not who I remember from the past. That's awesome. You got a huge smile on your face. You look amazing. You're glowing. She says to me, Dr. B, I'm, I'm all the way better. I actually feel like myself again and my ulcer of clitus is not dominating my life. And I said, okay, amazing. What happened? Yeah, what did you do? Let me learn. So, and she says, you know, I never told you this, but I hated my job. And every single day, I would wake up and dread getting into the car to go into the office. My boss was verbally abusive. And he, He would publicly humiliate me in front of my peers. And she said it was not easy for me to leave this job.

It took a lot of courage. But I left. I found a new job. They treat me with respect. And all of a sudden, my ulcer of quidus is in remission. That's crazy. So she turned off the stress response, the low level stress response. And that gave the microbes a chance to proliferate.

Yeah, because you're suppressing them with this ongoing stress response that you can try to overcome with a perfect diet. But we know these people exist. We know there are listeners right now who say, you're right. I have tried everything. And it's not getting better. And what I'm here to say is that this is you are a whole person. You are more than just like enzymes mixing with carbohydrates, fats, and proteins.

Yes. And that this whole person, that this soul, the spirit of a person, it affects the entirety of you. including your gut microbiome. And if there is something in your life that is unsettled, again, like I use the word trauma, not necessarily meaning trauma with a big T, but instead meaning that there is something that is troubling you. And if that is the case,

these are the people, these are the people who I would actually describe as the greatest successes of my career because to change a person's diet, relative to this is easy. These are the people who have been to six or seven different doctors and failed with all of them. And the solution is not their diet. The solution is actually to turn towards this thing that's unsettled and figure out, it's,

you know, it's like Mindy you mentioned flipping a switch. And it is flipping a switch, but the problem is, obviously, when you're dealing with something that's unsettled, it's generally not that easy is flipping a switch, right? So it's like creating a plan to something that you don't want to deal with. you've been running away from and actually creating a pebble. Yeah, it's like a pebble in your shoe. It's just in your gut. It's like low level annoyance that is destroying the whole terrain in there.

But you don't even realize that it's necessarily connected. That's the issue. It's important for people to understand that. Yeah. So talk to me a little bit about fiber. And before we started recording, I mentioned that fiber was controversial. And you were shocked. And let me tell you why, there's a lot of, like, people out there talking about the carnivore diet.

You've got Stephen Gundry. We've had him on this podcast talking about the plant paradox. I've had Dave Asprey here talking about how much he hates kale. And as I've, like, unpack this, I have decided that, yes, we can look at plant toxins and agree that they're there. But it's not that that's the problem. It's the terrain that's in the gut. that is the problem. And Stephen even, Gundry even said to me, he agreed with that. I love this idea of people needing more fiber, but fiber has been a little villainized as far as some of those,

you know, health leaders have portrayed it. Dave, don't eat kale if you don't want to eat kale. It doesn't bother me. So, yeah, all right. So I think that we have to start with that. We have to first agree that there has to be some source of, like, it's not the whole truth. The truth is evolving. But there has to be some source of truth that exists. Right. And what is that? And if it's observation, like, oh, I saw this happen.

Well, observation is science. You are piecing together observations, like an anecdote. We could call that a case report. Right. And a couple observations, like, hey, there's a couple people. This happens. those observations, that's a case series. Like this is science.

And so when we think about science, we have to lean into science. This is our compass. This is what allows us to guide us closer to the truth. And it is imperfect, but it does allow us to start to understand more the way that the universe works. Right. If I throw a ball in the air, that ball will fall back to the earth. It's reproducible. It's never going to fly into the sky.

Right. Right. So there are rules that govern the way the world works. And our responsibility as scientists is to try to understand them. We have to allow the science to do the talking. And so when we think about science, we think about fiber, right? Okay. So fiber is controversial.

I'll come back to why fiber is controversial. Great. But I want to start by first acknowledging one study. And this study was published in the Lancet in 2019, February of 2019. And the author, his name was Dr. Andrew Reynolds. He's from New Zealand. And basically he compiled all of the available data about dietary fiber. How does it shake out?

So when we compile all of the available data, we do what's called a systematic review and meta-analysis. If you go to Google, and I'm saying this not for you, Mindy, but for the listeners, because it's important for people to understand this. If you go to Google and you Google the hierarchy of science, there is an agreed upon hierarchy in science. Certain studies are more powerful than others. And at the absolute top, above randomized controlled trials are systematic reviews and meta-analyses. These are the most powerful studies. Absolutely. And at the bottom, are test tube studies.

Because if we took test tube studies at face value, we would do some really quacky stuff. We have to verify test tube studies, which are not good representations of what happens in a human, by actually looking at what happens in humans. We have to verify it. They can give us guidance, but we need to go further. And by the way, to be fair,

like no one study proves anything, okay? But when I say a systematic, review and meta-analyses, then basically what I'm saying is that this author compiled all of the available studies, pulled them all in. And we know that because there was more than 120 person years of data, 120 million person years of data. Wow. Okay. So that is like we have existed on planet Earth for three million years. This is the entirety of human history 40 times over in one study. Okay. And when they compiled the data, here's what they found. Okay, so prepare yourself, everyone, talk about dietary fiber. So people who consume more dietary fiber, they're less likely to have a heart attack.

They're less likely to die of heart disease. That's our number one cause of death in the United States. That's more deaths than COVID. They're less likely to be diagnosed with three specific types of cancer. One is breast cancer. That's the number one cause of cancer death than women. One is colon cancer. That's the number two cause of cancer death in men and women. The third is esophageal cancer, and esophageal cancer has increased literally tenfold in the last 40 years. You've decreased your risk of those three specifically. You decrease your risk of dying of cancer. That's the number two cause of death in the United States.

You decrease the likelihood of having a stroke. That's the number five cause of death in the United States. And you decrease the likelihood of being diagnosed with type two diabetes. That is the number seven cause of death in the United States. No surprise, people who consume more dietary fiber, they live longer. So meanwhile, if I walk out on the street, 19 out of 20 people that I come into contact with are deficient in fiber. Yep.

Not mildly deficient, wildly deficient. The recommended amount for men is 38 grams of fiber. The average man is consuming less than half of that. Interesting. And what about for women? Yeah, what about for women? Recommended amount for women is 25 grams of fiber per day. Okay.

The average woman is getting about 16. Wow. Still substantially deficient. Okay. So we are going to take this thing that I have just told you that science looking at more than 120 million person years of data in a systematic review and men analysis that sits at the top of the food chain in terms of quality science can reduce our risk of our number one, number two, number five and number seven cause of death. And we're already inadequate in our consumption of this.

And rather than us going on the news, which we should be every single night and saying, we need more fiber in our lives, right? Because this will fix many of the health-related issues that we see in the United States. We are instead going to write books about why fiber is the problem. Yeah, right. I hear you. It defies logic. But let me take the little further if it's okay.

Yeah. All right. So let's talk about Stephen Gundry for a moment. Now, I don't like taking on personal. This is not personal in it anyway. I don't know him and I'm not here to attack him. But I am here to have discourse about the recommendations that he has put out. So first of all, he eats a predominantly plant-based diet.

Yeah. If you follow him on Instagram, you will see that for sure. Right. Yeah. And he consumes legumes. Yes, yes. And so, but he has vilified lectins. Yes.

Okay. First of all, if you go to systematic reviews and med analyses of lectins, specifically, legumes, and whole grains, you will find, like, check me on this, please do. You will find in systematic reviews and meta analyses that people who consume more legumes and more whole grains have less risk of having heart disease. disease that is our number one killer and have less risk of developing cancer. That is our number two killer. And they live longer. If you look at the five blue zones, heavy consumers of legumes and whole grains, all five. And if you think about just being pragmatic, like could this be the problem?

Could legumes actually be the cause of all of our issues in the United States? let me just put this out there. The average person in the United States consumes more than their body weight and meat on a yearly basis. Okay, 220 pounds of meat. But the argument that we're making is that the six pounds of legumes that they consume is the problem. Right, right. Six pounds. Our parents, the generation before us, if we go back 50 years, they ate eight pounds of legumes per year.

So we're consuming less legumes, yet this is the source of all of our problems. Interesting. It does not make sense. Yeah. Yeah. Well said, and I actually, that was one of the reasons I brought him on my podcast was to just have a collaborative conversation about that. He's definitely evolved some of his thinking on it.

But very well said. Talk to me a little bit about menopausal women and where the microbiome comes into play when we're dealing with hormones. In my own menopausal journey, I really started to look at the microbiome and found out that we have a whole set of bacteria that breaks estrogen down. And I thought, why did nobody tell me that? Like, that should have been like a note card that was handed to me at 40. And that should have said, hey, you're going into menopause.

Remember this set of bacteria. So talk a little bit about the importance of the microbiome in hormonal breakdown and and utilization of hormones. Yeah. Well, so we actually call this the astrobolome. Yep. And the astrobolome really refers specifically to the parts of our gut microbiome that are involved in estrogen metabolism.

And so the gut microbiome is deeply involved and produces an enzyme beta glucauronidase that is involved in basically activating estrogen and recirculating it. So basically what we're saying, saying is that estrogen balance within the body is affected by the gut microbiome. And this goes beyond menopause, but as a step towards trying to demonstrate that this is legit and not just a theory, if you look, the gut microbiome has been associated with a number of estrogen mediated health conditions, including endometriosis, including endometrial hyperplasia, and also hormonally motivated cancers.

The gut microbiome has been associated with breast cancer. By the way, I just mentioned a moment ago that dietary fiber reduces our risk of developing breast cancer. So, I mean, now we're starting to see the pieces that are coming together here, right? Because dietary fiber affects the gut microbiome and can help us to rebalance these things. But breast cancer, ovarian cancer, endometrial cancer have all been associated with injury to the gut microbiome. and all of them are associated with estrogen hormone excess. So, or not even necessarily excess, but I guess exposure. So anyway, I think that when you think about menopause,

menopause is more than just hormones. Menopause is the intersection between hormones and metabolism. And we know this because crue, first of all, women's bodies change. And second of all, there actually, if you look like it affects your insulin sensitivity. People tend to become more insulin resistant as they go through menopause. So we don't, Mindy, have all the answers to these questions because, unfortunately, the reality is, and I hate this, but women's health is not adequately funded for research. Yeah, thank you.

It makes no sense to me because, like, first of all, half of the people in the United States are women. And second of all, the other half, we love women. So we should be spending more money on women's health. Yes, amen. So there's a company that I'm involved with. You and I were speaking for a little bit offline about this, but to bring it forward here. So I'm involved with the company that's called Zoe. and we are a personalized nutrition company.

So basically what that means is that we believe that we can do better than talking about population averages. We can actually provide recommendations for food that are tailored to your unique microbiome, your unique biology, the way that your body works, not the way that the average person's body works. And one of the things that we've discovered with Zoe, So just to kind of lay the foundation, we collect people's microbiome. They wear a continuous glucose monitor. They give us a blood specimen for blood lipids.

And they enter into an app what they're eating and how they're feeling. Love it. And when you take enough of these people, all of this data, this is data, and you put it into a supercomputer, it can run complex. complex machine learning algorithms that instead of saying, oh, well, the average is this, it can instead say, hey, Mindy, this is what we've noticed about you. And this is why this is probably a good choice. Now, if you had 10 people, it would be worthless. But what if you have 10,000 people? Yeah. Well, we have 20,000 people. Amazing. And so we're building this robust network where every single person who partakes in this, you are contributing to science.

right? Like, Mindy, you do this and I may be the person who benefits or maybe a person in the UK who benefits, but on the flip side, like that person in the UK does it and then like you and I benefit. I love it. So we all are working together to contribute to this. But what we've discovered is that women are trying to understand what they're supposed to eat as they move into perimenopause and menopause. And these questions have not been answered. But we have the ability to do that because we have a lot of women who are between 40 and 60 who are moving through this period in their life and they're providing us with this information. Amazing.

So we released our first publication at the end of March. One of my colleagues, her name is Sarah Berry. And she is literally a world-class researcher at King's College London, like not being hyperbolic to say, of the best in the world and what she does. And she is pioneering a lot of this research because it's affected her life. Right. She wants solutions to this. And so we're starting to look at, okay, so how can we create dietary recommendations that will help people to reduce the hot flashes, the fatigue, right, the digestive symptoms. Go down the line. There's a lot that happens. during that period of time.

And at the same time, how can we maintain balance within the metabolism to not allow the blood sugar to get out of control and to not allow the weight gain to get out of control? Right. And that's what we're working on right now. It's super exciting. You were telling me about that before, and I definitely want to give it a try because that, there have been many stool tests before. And I love how you're pairing it with the CGM and the blood lipid.

I mean, that's brilliant. So it's like a puzzle. Yeah. We're looking at a puzzle. And the thing is that each one of these pieces is relevant to bringing the, the puzzle into clarity so that you know what you're looking at. And so if you had the microbiome by itself, it's cool. Or if you had the CGM by itself, it's cool.

But when you combine them and then the blood lipids and then the, and then like the data of like, okay, what are you eating? Right. This becomes super powerful because they're all actually synergizing. And once you, when you get like a list of these are the foods that your microbiome would best benefit your microbiome. And once you eat those foods, how quickly does it take to make that change in the microbiome? Well, so that's a really good question.

Let me say this. Here's what we do know. We know for a fact that the food that you eat today. will already start to cause a shift in your microbiome by tomorrow. So your microbiome is not like lagging by weeks. It's constantly evolving. Most of the available science has suggested to me that you can cause a shift in the microbiome over about four weeks.

That's at least significant and worthy of note. That's not to say that a person with Crohn's disease can like, emerge from their Crohn's disease and put themselves into permanent remission in four weeks, that's a very different question. But four weeks to me seems like a substantial enough amount of time that it seems like you can cause a really big shift. But this is also not just about, so you can't fully separate the microbiome from your diet. Right.

You can't fully separate the microbiome from exercise or sleep or mood, right? So this is why you have to take these things. It's not just about like, hey, build it up. What it is, it's about optimizing your diet and sleep and exercise and all these things. And that will reflect in your microbiome. And then your microbiome will amplify the beautiful, wonderful things that you're doing with your dino lifestyle. So I think what's exciting, Mindy is that we have the ability to shape and take control of many of these things. we are not born with a stagnant, rigid part of our body that cannot change.

We have the ability to make these choices. So let's bring attention to the choices that you can make that can be transformative and beneficial to you. And in the case of Zoe, what we can bring attention to is more than just me saying, hey, in a randomized control trial, this is what we saw, average is this. I can now say, hey, forget the randomized control trial. I can do better. Yeah.

This is what works for you. Yeah. And how often do you have to do it? Do you do it once a year? Is it once a quarter? So right now you do it once. You do it once and it basically sets the, it's like getting your compass.

I like the word compass as opposed to a map because a map is very precise. Whereas a compass is like you got to kind of roll with it a little bit. I like that. But you get the compass pointed in the right direction. And then you know where to move. And one of the one of the technologies that we're in the process of developing, because we are, we are an evolving, growing company that is looking to make a difference in terms of human nutrition.

Like not this is not a commercial product. I mean, we're a commercial company. Don't get me wrong. But like, we're not here to make a fast buck and then get out. We're here to revolutionize nutrition. That to us, like we're scientists. That to us is the more exciting idea. Yeah. And so we're continuing to evolve. And there will be a time where we have like the ability to come back and test again. Yeah. We don't offer that yet. It's not there yet. But we will have that probably in the next year is my guess. Well, I cannot wait to learn more. And for those of you listening, I will leave a link on where you can get Zoe and dive into this. I think it's brilliant. I have been watching microbiome testing for the last few years. I've done a lot of microbiome testing trying to figure out where the right rhythm is.

and I cannot wait to test this. So appreciate what you're doing. That's really exciting. Yeah. So, and I love chatting with you. I'm going to have to have you back. I probably could have asked you about two hours more worth of questions. So I appreciate your thorough explanations and your visuals were great.

Let me, let me finish up on this. The Resetter podcast has a theme every year. And our theme this year is gratitude. So two questions for you. One is, do you have a gratitude practice? And if so, what it is? What is it? And I think I'll know the answer to this one, but name one thing you're really grateful for today

in this day and age. Okay. So I am an imperfect human being and I believe that we should have a gratitude practice. There are many parts of my life that I wish that I did have and I believe that we should have and I don't even do it myself yet I will like write a book about it. Right. So and that's just me being humble and coming clean. Yeah, of course.

You know, we're all just doing our best. Yeah, I agree. I love that answer. Actually, I think you do have a gratitude practice. It might be holding that newborn baby of yours. Well, and that's the thing. I'm so grateful for my family. I am who I am because of the people that surround and support me.

And they lift me up and they make me a better man. And they make me capable of things that I would never be capable of myself. Well, Dr. B, I love, I love everything you said. And again, I'm going to bring you back because we talk a lot about the microbiome in terms of fasting and breaking a fast. I'd love to bring you back and talk about some of my theories about how we combine everything you just said with fasting because there are microbiome changes that happen there. But the refeed is so important. And this is why I love conversations like this. I think the repeat should be fiber, but anyway. And that's actually one of the choices I give is that what I call the three P's, polyphenol, prebiotic and probiotic foods. Well, so now what's interesting is that polyphenols and prebiotic. So not to hijack the ending of the episode.

No, no, no, I love it. More juicy information. There's three types of prebiotics. There's three main types of prebiotics. Prebotic. Prebotic basically means it is food for the mic. microbiome that has been demonstrated through clinical research to have benefits to human health. Okay.

So it's not just something that changes the microbiome. Antibiotics change the microbiome. It has to be something that changes the microbiome in a way that has also been demonstrated to benefit human health. And there are three main forms of prebiotics. Fiber. Resistant starches, which by the way, you can basically think of as fiber. It behaves the same way as fiber. And then the third are polyphenols.

So effectively what you're saying is that you need more plants. Now, the other thing that I will add is that there's new research out of Stanford University. A couple of my friends, actually. So one is Professor Christopher Gardner, who's on this scientific advisory board for Zoe with me. But it came out less than a year ago. And in this study, they recommended that people consume fermented food because when they added fermented food to their diet, which, by the way, no one's eating fermented food. So in this study, people started with none or almost not, like maybe some yogurt.

That's it. And by the end of the study, they were having multiple servings per day. A serving, by the way, is a very small amount. Okay. And after 10 weeks, increased diversity within the gut microbiome and reduced measures of inflammation in the body. Amazing. And what's exciting is like, so you can, part of why this works.

with the fermented food is that you're right. You can get the probiotics and the pre-botics and the polyphenols all in one place. Yeah. But it has to be a fermented plant. And that's, you know, that's what sourcrout and kimchi and all these different fermented things are. So if you came into my refrigerator right now, you'd see about 10 jars of sourcrout and kimchi and fermented yogurt. So I love it. I love it. Well, this was this was great. Again, I'd love to bring you back and dive into this more. It's such an important topic. How do people find you? Your work is really important and I'd like to get it out into the world. So how do people find you? I appreciate that, Mindy. So you can find me. My website is theplantfedgut.com.

I have an email newsletter where like when there's breaking news research, it's hard for me to put on Instagram. You know, nuance doesn't exist on social media. Well said. So I, I do it to my email list. So for those who are interested, go there. If you're interested in learning more about Zoe, I actually have an entire sort of almost like a course that I created to explain what Zoe is for people. So you can find that at my website, the plant fed gut.com. And then social media, I'm on Instagram and Facebook as the gut health MD.

And my new book is called the Fiberfield's cookbook. Oh, you got a cookbook now. Oh, did it, when did that come out? Well, it actually comes out on May 17th. Perfect. Yeah. Love it. I've beat it up quite a bit already.

But the Fiberfield's cookbook, what is exciting is that like this entire conversation that you and I have been having fits with what this cookbook is. This is more than just recipes. This is a roadmap to better gut health. Love it. And there's 11 chapters. I don't even actually get into recipes until the back end of chapter four because I'm actually teaching about food intolerances.

So the book has two. food-based protocols for food intolerances. One is low Fodmap. One is low histamine. Okay. But then we talked about fermentation. I'll teach you how to ferment. Ooh.

Yeah. Teach you how to sprout. Yeah. Love it. Okay. And is that on Amazon right now? It's available wherever bookstores. All books.

Yeah. All bookstores. So like Amazon is great, but if there's a bookstore in your local community, I always say I'd rather you hand to the $20 bill to that person. Agreed. Like the guy who owns Amazon. Agreed. Agreed. Support your locals. Thank you so much for joining me in today's episode. I love bringing thoughtful discussions about all things health to you.

If you enjoyed it, we'd love to know about it. So please leave us a review, share it with your friends, and let me know what your biggest takeaway is.