The Wellness Scoop - Bite-Sized: How to Improve Gut Health

Episode Date: January 26, 2022

Ways to improve our gut health with nutritional therapist Alice Mackintosh. An increasing body of evidence is demonstrating that the health of our gut microbiome affects the health of numerous other systems in the body and mind. In this bite-sized episode we look at how we can improve our gut health from the importance of fibre-rich plant foods and probiotics, as well as the role of processed foods and stress. Here’s a brief recap: Prioritise increasing fibre intakes, but go slowly Aim for 30 different whole plant foods each week Include more herbs and spices Add in fermented foods little and often Consider probiotic supplements Try to reduce highly processed foods and burnt foods Address managing stress levels Alice Mackintosh: @alicemackintosh_nutrition See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Visit BetterHelp.com today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P.com. Actuaries are truly global. Wherever there's risk to manage, they use their math skills to solve real-world problems. The Society of Actuaries has the designation for any destination. Hi, I'm Ella, the founder of Deliciously Ella, and this is our podcast, Delicious Ways to Feel Better. Our bite-sized episodes are all about making health and well-being easy and digestible so that each week you can feel a little bit better and to help you implement those learnings we update our app also called feel

better every week with tools across nutrition mindfulness sleep and movement you can download the app from the app store google play or our website and across january we've got 25 off the annual subscription making it just 1.75 a month and the discount will be applied automatically on the app store and Google Play. And on the website, just use the code PODCAST25 so you've got a couple more days left to use it. So this week on the app, you'll find a beautiful sleep series with Holly Hustler.

Holly combines these beautiful, soothing meditations with music from Crystal Singing Bowls to create the most unbelievable sleep support. All you have to do is get cosy and bread, press play, close your eyes, and then you just drift off into the most unbelievable sleep support. All you have to do is get cozy and bread, press play, close your eyes, and then you just drift off into the most beautiful, peaceful sleep. They are so soothing.

I've genuinely never slept better. My go-to is the full body relaxation practice. It's complete magic, but the most popular so far is the 30 minute deep sleep release if you wanted another recommendation. And I'm really pleased to say, actually next month,

our Bite So series is going to look at sleep more closely. But first, we've got another brilliant episode with Alice McIntosh, our resident expert for January on eating for gut health and why that is just so important for our overall well-being. Alice is a brilliant nutritional therapist who also has a degree in biomedical science and she is the founder of the supplements company Equi London. So Alice, I know we touched on gut health a little bit last week when we were talking about how we can eat in a way that supports our mood, but can we just start with the overall, why gut health is so important? I'm sure our listeners have heard about it everywhere, especially this January. Yeah, absolutely. I think we're hearing more and more about it

all the time, aren't we? We know that our gut is responsible for digesting food and breaking our food down and absorbing our nutrients is a critical role of the gut. And of course, that's really, really important. We could all be eating the best diet in the world, but if we're not breaking our food down and absorbing the nutrients properly, then we might not be getting all the benefits of all the vitamins and minerals and fats and protein that's in there so that's a really really big role that the gut plays but we also know now and this is again what i feel like we're just at the tip of the iceberg with this the gut is linked with so many other things and other body systems our hormones our skin is closely linked to our gut our immune system 80% of our immunity is found in

the gut and it provides a first line of defense against viruses and bacteria and the seasonal sniffles that this time of year are rife in the office or being brought home from nursery and we know that a healthy gut is essential for strong immunity and And we touched on this last week, but the gut contains 80% of our serotonin, plus all of the other neurotransmitters in the body. So not just serotonin, dopamine and GABA and all the other ones that are important for keeping us happy. And the gut is lined with neurons that communicate with the brain. And gut health is so important for keeping our brains and our mood positive and happy we also know that people who have a compromised gut can be more inflamed and have more inflammation in the body

in general often inflammation can actually begin in the gut so basically it's almost like it's at the center of our health sometimes you know every organ has its role but we know that the gut has so many links with the rest of the body and is such an important organ to keep healthy and how can we start to eat in a way that supports the optimal health of our gut so that has that positive knock-on effect across our skin hormones immune system inflammation etc all of that stuff's quite complicated but actually supporting your gut doesn't need to be really complicated i I think let's talk about fibre first. And I know this is something that people have heard about before, but we have to talk about it because we're not getting enough.

Generally in the UK, people are not getting enough fibre in their diets. And it's one of the most important things you can do for your gut. Fibre is actually only found in plant-based food. And it's basically the portion of a plant that can't be digested by the gut and so once you've absorbed all the vitamins and minerals and nutrients from that food the fiber is left behind in the gut and this is really important because it can then ferment and provide food for our gut microbes our gut microbiome so our gut is full of bacteria and our microbiomes are one of the most important

components of a healthy gut. They help us break food down, absorb nutrients, eliminate toxins, they keep our gut pH balanced, they produce chemicals that support our immunity such as short-chain fatty acids which are so important for the health of our gut and the rest of the body and basically our microbiome is essential for the health of the gut and the rest of the body and basically our microbiome is essential for the health of the gut and fiber is the key to supporting that so what this comes down to is eat different types of fiber because these feed different types of bacteria and what we really need to remember is that the more diverse our diet the more different types of fiber we have hopefully the more diverse our microbiome is

which is a really important thing for the gut so what this means is and we mentioned last week didn't we getting 30 different sources of plant-based foods a week that's really what this comes down to get a wide array of fiber from plants lentils beans nuts seeds nut butters flax vegetables of all colors fruits fruits. It does sound overwhelming, but it's actually quite doable on a plant-based diet. And you can also think about ginger and garlic and spices and herbs. They all are included as well. And hopefully if you're doing our seven days to plant-based diet plan, then you'll definitely be getting 30 sources of vegetables and fruit and fibre a week. The one thing i would say about fiber actually

though is if this is new to you and you don't eat much fiber at the moment introduce it slowly because when you change your diet quite radically your microbiome is immediately impacted and so if you're quite sensitive gut wise go slowly introduce a couple of new things a week and make sure you drink plenty of water as well really important when increasing your fiber level and alice you mentioned the different types of fiber at the start of that what are the different types that we should be looking out for and making sure we're including each week well put simply and broadly speaking we're aiming to just get the different types from different vegetables different fruits different types of lentils, different types of beans, different types of nuts and seeds. If you're getting a whole array of those, then you should be getting all the different types of fibre. You can break fibre down into soluble and insoluble

fibre, and they have different roles in the gut. Soluble will dissolve water and insoluble won't, and they will have different positive impacts on how the gut functions but broadly if you're getting lots of different types of fiber as we're recommending getting your 30 different types per week then you should definitely be getting enough of both types the fiber will help to keep your gut moving so you'll get gut motility so basically you can poop every day which is so important for a healthy gut. They help to keep the stools soft. They help to ensure that we can absorb the nutrients from our food properly. And they help to reduce inflammation. They just have so many important roles within the gut, but also for the rest of the body as well. So if you're getting that 30 a week, you should

be getting lots of different types of fiber that will feed lots of different types of bacteria and aside from fiber are there any other specific things that we should be looking at eating or perhaps eating a little bit less of to support gut health yeah well we just talked about the gut microbiome this microbiome is linked with our brain and our metabolism and our immunity our skin just our longevity in general and fiber helps here but so do eating fermented foods and also considering probiotic supplements as well so fermented foods like kefir and kimchi sauerkraut yogurt kombucha all of those they actually deliver beneficial bacteria to our guts and help to support the balance of our microbiome. And you can also think about adding in a probiotic as well.

On top of that, if you want to, you can get vegan probiotics and aiming for sort of 2 billion, make sure there's lactobacillus and bifidobacterium in there. And so that can make a real difference too. But I think when it comes to what we should be reducing again we've talked about inflammation quite a lot haven't we over the last couple of weeks anything that creates inflammation in the gut is not going to be benefiting it so really burnt foods charred foods white processed grains alcohol processed meats not good for the gut because they contain certain chemicals and additives that are not great for our gut bacteria choosing grains that are fiber rich are obviously really really important and i would say though i don't think gluten is a problem

necessarily for everyone but not relying overly on gluten so don't have bread for breakfast and lunch and then also have pasta at dinner you know try to get a variety of different types of grains that aren't just gluten-based that makes a lot of sense and I think also with fermented foods when you mention them there they're also so much easier to make than you think I mean I absolutely love kimchi I think it adds so much to almost anything so delicious but things like sauerkraut again they're super super easy to make we've just put up some recipes for them as well if anyone wants to try them on the app but don't be kind of overly intimidated because I think they sound really complicated but that

actually almost one of the most basic things to make and also a brilliant way to use up kind of leftover veggies and that random carrot that's sitting in the back of your fridge and you don't really know what to do with it but Alice in terms of our overall lifestyle also supports our gut health doesn't it as well kind of our sleep managing stress I mean it's critical absolutely I mean you could be doing all of this but if you're really stressed and not sleeping properly then of course that needs to be addressed as well nutrition as with everything is just one piece of the puzzle but But we know that managing stress, both in terms of our lifestyle, but also eating to combat stress,

making sure you're getting magnesium and B vitamins and balancing your blood sugar, also does have an impact on your stress levels and can support your gut. And it's also been shown that people who take probiotics have been shown to have improved responses to stress and improved mood there was a study done at the university of oxford recently with 70 participants and the people that took a probiotic had a 50 improvement in their mood versus placebo after only a month so obviously more research is needed there but it just shows that how we look after our gut can impact our stress levels, but also our stress levels can impact our gut.

So it's all working together. Absolutely. And how about things like coffee and alcohol and those other stimulants in our lifestyles? Well, I think they're not going to be the most beneficial things for our gut. But I think it's also important to remember that this isn't about restriction and about cutting out. I mean, I know it's January, but even so, like it's sometimes that sort of extreme cutting out everything that's in inverted commas bad. Can in the end just lead to extreme you falling off the wagon a month later and eating too much of those things. And I think it's important to get a balance, a bit of alcohol and the odd meal, which has been charred or burnt or it's not disastrous for the gut. It's just that the foundations should be good. And I think it does come back to this idea of positive nutrition,

adding things in rather than taking them away. I absolutely love that. And I love the word foundation there as well, which is, I think if you can build a positive foundation on a day-to-day basis, I know that's certainly what I saw. And I actually worked with Alice one-on-one about, gosh, it was about five, six years ago now, wasn't it? It feels like for a lifetime, but it was, it was building up my gut health and creating that really stable foundation that totally, totally transformed my health and if anyone hasn't listened to it before that's where delicious yellow started was 10 years ago now I was very very ill and I changed my diet and my lifestyle as a way of really really

supporting that and changing my gut health did create a foundation that totally transformed my health which was extraordinary and as you said it's about positive nutrition adding it all in instead of getting overly concerned about whether something's technically good or bad and I absolutely love that but Alice if there's one thing that listeners could do to boost their gut health and really really support it what's the one thing we could do going forwards? I would say it's got to come down to fiber try to get as much diversity get those 30 different plant-based foods in a week even making changes for two weeks to your diet and eating more fiber has been shown to affect the balance of our microbiome in just two weeks now obviously this does require consistency and i think just following on what you were saying this is about lifetime you know long-term changes

that it's consistency that makes the difference but even just adding in a few more types of fiber per week is hopefully going to be supporting your gut microbiome and getting your gut working better so hopefully just get started with something like that and it doesn't need to be a lot start slow one or two sources per week and that's already a fantastic change. Yeah. And I know we've got listeners all over the world, but I think across the West numbers are quite similar, which is that in the UK, the average is only 17 grams of the 30 we should be aiming for each day. So there is, as you said, kind of quite obvious ways in which we can start to make a change there. Well, Alice, thank you so much. Thank you for being our expert across

January. I hope you have all enjoyed all the episodes with Alice. If there's any questions we can answer, any other bite-sized topics you'd like us to cover, please do email us, podcast at deliciouslyella.com. Otherwise, we will see you back here next week for our introduction to our February guest. Thank you so much for listening and we will see you soon. You're a podcast listener, and this is a podcast ad heard only in Canada. Reach great Canadian listeners like yourself with podcast advertising from Libsyn Ads. Choose from hundreds of top podcasts offering host endorsements or run a pre-produced ad like this one across thousands of shows to reach your target audience with Libsyn ads.

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