The Wellness Scoop - How to Change Our Relationship With Stress

Episode Date: February 14, 2022

We’re joined by Jenna Hope, a Registered Nutritionist, to talk about stress and how it impacts our bodies and our digestive systems, and how it interacts with our diets.   We discuss:   What stress is on a physiological level How stress affects our overall health What chronic stress is, and why it’s detrimental to our health and wellbeing How what we eat contributes to physiological stress The relationship between stress and caffeine, sugar, and alcohol The link between stress and appetite What to eat to help manage the stress response Breaking the emotional eating cycle Why stress and gut symptoms are related How to manage gut symptoms Stress management tools   Jenna Hope:  @jennahopenutrition https://www.jennahopenutrition.com 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. Hi, I'm Ella Mills, the founder of Deliciously Ella, and this is our podcast, Delicious Ways to Feel Better. Each episode explores various different aspects of our mental and our physical health the founder of Deliciously Ella and this is our podcast Delicious Ways to Feel Better. Each episode explores various different aspects of our mental and our physical health to help you make the small simple changes to your life to help you feel happier and healthier. And today we're going to be looking at the effect that stress has on us, the role of our lifestyles and our diets within that and the power of food to help mitigate that or potentially at points

making it worse. And then actually really right at the end after we finish that episode we're going to have a little short interview with the head of pharmaceutics at UCL about probiotics because we've had loads of questions on that so I hope that will also be very helpful. So it's really important that people think about the way in which their body is responding to stress and associate that with the situations that are going on around them. So for example we may find that we experience rashes, we may find that we are struggling with our hair thinning or our nails, we may get gastrointestinal symptoms, we may also find that we're struggling with weight distribution as well. That can be a huge impact from stress. Before we delve into today's episode I wanted to let you

know about our sponsor and a little note on our sponsor we only work with brands that I actually use and that I truly love we will never promote something that isn't totally authentic or something that I don't believe in. So for the next few months our podcast sponsor is Simproof a supplements company that I've been using to support my gut health for about five years now. I was buying it for years before I even started working with them and I know that gut health is such a prevalent topic right now and something that so many of you are interested in too. The gut microbiome is made up of trillions of bacteria that support pretty much all aspects of both our mental and our physical health from digestion to our immune system, energy production and our mental health and keeping that right balance of good bacteria

in our gut is absolutely essential and whilst our diet and lifestyles play a huge role in that, adding in live bacteria can really help too. The bacteria in Simprove which is a water-based supplement can survive that long journey from the mouth to the gut, where they're then able to multiply and support the microbiome. I truly swear by it and I really hope that you love it too. For anyone wanting to try it, they've shared a 15% off code with us, just use Ella15, which is valid on Simprove.com within the UK. And for any existing customers, they also have a brilliant subscribers package too. Our guest today, Jenna Hope, is a registered nutrition consultant who helps everyone implement smart, sustainable and simple, most importantly, nutrition strategies to show just how nutrition can really change your life.

Jenna is also the co-founder of a company that specializes in nutrition education in schools, colleges and universities. And it's safe to say that making nutrition simple and more accessible is at the very heart of everything that we do at Delicious Cielo. So I'm absolutely thrilled to have Jenna on the Feel Better podcast today to share all her wisdom with us and helping us understand the stress in our lives a little bit better. So welcome, Jenna. Thank you for joining us. Thank you so much for having me. It's such a pleasure. It's so interesting. I was saying to Jenna earlier, it's a really serendipitous conversation we had actually

where we were talking about how important it would be actually to do an episode on stress and Jenna got in touch saying she wanted to do exactly that so it's perfect and that's exactly what we'll be talking about today which I'm sure is something that every single person listening can relate to but we were just talking before we started recording about the fact that I think both of us were a little bit surprised as we started to understand stress in more detail about the way in which it actually impacts on the body. And I wondered if we could start there. Absolutely. So firstly, I think it's really important for people to understand what stress really is. And whilst there are a wide range of definitions really it's when we experience emotional psychological or physical strain which results from an adverse or a demanding

circumstance so essentially we feel like we can't really keep up with the demands of what's being asked of us and therefore that has a negative impact on our emotional well-being, our psychological well-being and our physical well-being as well. And so what happens? So there are a wide range of things that occur but if we break it down into the impact on our psychological well-being well firstly this is probably something that a lot of us can actually relate to. So when we are feeling stressed we might find that we're feeling a little bit more anxious, a bit more irritable. Maybe our behavior becomes a bit more withdrawn. We struggle with things like basic communication and having tolerance for people. That's a really big one.

And what causes that? What's happening within our bodies, within our brains when we perceive that excess demand that starts to trigger this? So essentially we go into what's called the fight or flight mode and this is where we activate huge amounts of cortisol which is the stress hormone and other stress hormones such as adrenaline noradrenaline and all of this essentially floods the body which can disrupt the processes in the brain which can have an impact on how we respond and psychologically how we deal with those issues. We then have the physical side of things and that's where we experience things like if we think about in the short term you know when we're stressed we may experience a racing heart maybe

sweaty palms we might find that we break out a little bit if we are stressed but then in the long term it can have a negative impact on things like eczema, on muscle tension and bone health. It may have an impact on aches and pains and the way in which we perceive our body changes completely. It can also have a long term impact on how we start to store fat as well. That can be a huge thing. And I think it's really important that people can understand the impact of stress and look at how their body may be changing and start to maybe associate that with stressful things occurring in their lives. It's interesting because as you said I think there's lots of symptoms on that list that perhaps

you wouldn't initially associate with feeling very very stressed at work or going through an emotionally complicated time at home for example just really feeling the pressures of everything at the moment I think as you said starting to understand how perhaps that perceived mental stress could impact the body is so important and I wondered if we could get a little bit more detail there so when we are having that sense of perceived stress and we start to go into that sympathetic nervous system that fight or fly why is it that our normal systems are disrupted and therefore we can get these kind of pathological consequences? So essentially what happens is we go through the fight or flight mode as I said we increase things like cortisol our stress hormone and that is what really has that negative impact

on our overall well-being and I think it's really important for people to understand that that fight or flight mechanism can increase things like inflammation in the body, which can have a knock on effect in terms of pain. It can increase our dysbiosis in the gut. So that's a really big one that we find that when people are stressed, we can experience very high levels of pathogenic bacteria. And that's essentially the bad bacteria. So we want to focus on more of the good bacteria but high levels of stress essentially draw oxygen and blood away from the gut which can disrupt the way in which we digest food and as a result give rise to things like pathogenic bacteria. Does that then link into digestive challenges as well and IBS? Absolutely and that's one of the reasons why we find that people do experience you know

gastrointestinal symptoms, IBS. When people who suffer with IBS are very stressed they may find that that really does flare up and I think also trying to understand that we all have a different response to stress as well. So some people may find that it comes out in their hair and their nails and their skin. And one of the reasons that this can be is when we are synthesizing that cortisol, there are a few key nutrients which we require. So for example, magnesium and zinc are crucial for the synthesis of cortisol. And if we don't have adequate stores in the body, essentially what happens is we start to draw those stores from other areas which is why we can find that you know maybe our nails are becoming a bit flaky our hair's thinning our skin's not in the same

condition that it was before and that's because those nutrients are being utilized to produce the stress hormone and as a result we're feeling depleted or we are being depleted in those nutrients so keeping up those stores is really important during times of stress and you mentioned the word depleted there and I know low energy is one of the number one things that you see within your own practice what's the link there obviously between low energy and stress so again I think it comes back to a number of things often people aren't necessarily eating well when they're stressed they're necessarily eating well when they're stressed. They're not sleeping well when they're stressed.

We all know how much of an impact a poor night's sleep has on our overall well-being, our diet, emotionally. And as a result, that's also going to have a knock-on effect on our physiological health and our energy levels. But also the fact that if we are feeling depleted in nutrients our body's almost working overtime to be able to deal with this fight or flight response and therefore it doesn't have the ability to be able to handle everything else that's going on in the body. So do you think it's fair to say that chronic stress can basically disrupt everything that's going on? Yes I think chronic stress can have a huge impact on our overall well-being. Absolutely. And how would you define chronic stress? Because as far as I understand

from what you're saying and everything I've learned is that that's really where the problem comes in because I feel like it's important to emphasize if you're in a stressful meeting or you're late for work and you feel stressed for 30 minutes, that's okay. You can absolutely rebound from that. It's when you constantly feel very stressed. There are some kind of permanent stresses in your life and it creates that chronic state of stress. And that's where we start to see the challenges. Definitely. So firstly, just before we touch on chronic stress, I think it's really important for people to understand that stress isn't necessarily a bad thing. And actually, every morning we secrete a certain amount of cortisol and that cortisol should drop throughout the day. But that stress hormone in the morning

allows us to get up and go. So it's not all bad. And like you say, sometimes feeling a little bit stress enables us to get through difficult situations you know tough meetings etc but chronic stress if you're experiencing stress over a prolonged period of time three plus months and it's having a negative impact on your overall day-to-day well-being if you're finding that it's impacting your sleep if it's impacting your ability to communicate your appetite that's a big one as well then at that point you may think that it's worth you know looking into really how you can either support your health and well-being or how you can get support to manage that stress and as you start to look at that support from a nutritional

perspective where do you start to look because I presume it's not just diet, as you said, it's also looking at sleep and that kind of cycle between stress making sleep worse and then worse sleep making stress worse. Yeah, exactly. So firstly, you know, we can all sit here and say, well, we want to have a really healthy, balanced diet. And in the grand scheme of things, that's absolutely great. But really, sometimes it's also about looking at those habits that might be contributing to stress in the body so for example if we think about caffeine that's a really big one that people who are stressed find that consuming excess caffeine can heighten that stress and this is because a it contributes to the secretion of cortisol so if you're feeling stressed already you're already going to be secreting cortisol

and adrenaline and if you increase that through the consumption of caffeine that can heighten that response. Secondly it does two other things to our neurotransmitters so firstly we have something called adenosine which is released slowly throughout the day and it leaves us feeling quite tired which is kind of why around three o'clock three four o'clock people start to hit you know that afternoon slump and caffeine binds to adenosine to prevent it essentially working and as a result we're left feeling quite wired we're not feeling tired we're not feeling calm. Secondly it also impacts GABA. Now GABA is another neurotransmitter which leaves us feeling very calm and the combination of inhibiting adenosine and GABA can have that impact where we're feeling more stressed

more wired and more anxious so I would say to anyone who is experiencing chronic stress or feeling as though stress is impacting their life potentially think about looking at reducing your caffeine consumption now I'm never popular when I recommend this but really it can have such a such a big impact that's the first thing secondly you want to look at your sugar consumption now you know the average recommended intake for sugar or the maximum recommended intake for sugar is 30 grams a day and I'm not suggesting that we should necessarily be hitting that but many of us are consuming far more sugar than we should be. And when we increase our sugar consumption, not only do we create that spike in blood glucose, which contributes to the blood sugar roller coaster and leaves us feeling very energetic and then absolutely crashed of energy.

It also contributes to that cortisol production as well. So if you are struggling with that I would say try to look at your afternoon snacks I think that that's really where sugar tends to come in a lot and also evenings as well so after dinner people find if they are very stressed they may find themselves grazing on higher sugar foods so be aware of that and then I would also say the other habit that's quite common that people struggle with when they're dealing with stress is a high alcohol consumption. Now, there's a narrative in our society that when you are feeling, your stress levels, your cortisol production, and essentially leave you feeling worse after consuming alcohol. And we know that alcohol

also has a knock-on effect on sleep as well. So it's, you know, a negative cycle. You touched on a narrative there. And I think there is this narrative, especially for anyone who lives in a busy city like London and obviously our listeners in Berlin and New York and Sydney and all over the world where it's like if you are kind of running on empty you're juggling a lot of things a high pressure job maybe children family demands etc as well that you don't sleep that well so then you can have lots of coffee and you don't have breakfast and then you get some sugar to keep you going and you get to the end of the day and you're just exhausted and you just need to unwind so you have some wine or whatever it is and you just kind of go

on and on and on and actually just I guess it's trying to pull back from that and look at what we can start to implement to I guess soften the impact of the stress as opposed to almost adding more fuel to the fire and worsening the cortisol situation. So I wondered within that, if we could start beginning with our appetite and stress, because it seems that some people stop eating almost when they're stressed and then other people, and I'm certainly in the latter camp, when I'm stressed, all I want to do is eat. Definitely. And this is really normal. You know, people often come to me and they say, oh, no, I find myself eating when I'm stressed, you know, to manage my emotions.

And they think they're the only one. And as you say, you know, people tend to fall into two camps. And more often than not, people do change their appetite in relation to stress. So let's start with people who find themselves turning to food when they are feeling stressed. Essentially, what happens is we tend to go for those highly palatable foods. So, you know, as much as we love vegetables, we never say, oh, I'm so stressed. I really want some broccoli. Right. It always comes down to I'm really stressed. Where's the chocolate? Where's the cake? Those higher sugar, higher fat foods and that's because these high sugar high fat foods

essentially dampen down the activity of the hypothalamic adrenal axis which is responsible for secreting that cortisol so in that time that you are eating those highly palatable foods physiologically you are feeling so much calmer and as soon as you stop eating your brain says to you do that again do that again because I felt calm when I was eating so you're more likely to find something else to satisfy that craving and to reduce the stress and naturally we learn that that's how we manage our stress levels so that's what happens in those people who find themselves turning to food. It's so interesting that and I know we touched on it just before we started recording but i think it's so great to just stop and acknowledge that as well because i think we

can be so down on ourselves and especially in stressful periods where we're probably not feeling our best anyway we can be so down on ourselves for not having good willpower not being the person we want to be etc and actually just showing that it's a really biological physiological response it's not on you no moral failings and I think we associate far too much of that with food and we really oversimplify the concept of food in our minds I think and why can't I just go for the broccoli it's so true and if we think back to childhood, we are conditioned from a really young age that when we cry, we're given food. And therefore we are taught that food is a way to soothe our emotions or a way to communicate our emotions. And so it's very hard to break that

cycle. And if you are looking at breaking that cycle kind of on a practical level for someone who says you know what I really relate to that and I know we do get quite a lot of questions from listeners who struggle with a kind of binge cycle as well are there snacks and meals that we could start to think about making not necessarily specific recipe but things that we could put on our plate that would really help support our body at that moment instead? Definitely and there's sort of two parts to this answer. Firstly in terms of the food side of things we do want to make sure that we are going for protein rich foods, fibre rich foods, foods that do contain these nutrients such as magnesium, zinc, omega-3 all to support that

stress response but also to help to manage blood sugar levels. So for example, you know, if we're thinking about snacks, we might be looking at a handful of almonds, some boiled eggs for those who eat them, potentially, you know, some hummus with some crackers is a really good option as well. Maybe some roasted chickpeas. They're the sort of foods that would be really great for, you know, helping to manage our stress. But ultimately, in order to break the cycle, we really need to be able to identify those triggers. And one thing that I often use with clients in clinic is a food and mood diary. And this is where they record what they've eaten.

They record how they felt, but they've also recorded what's happened in the run up to eating those foods. And over time, you can start to create a picture of those triggers that are causing you to eat. And for some people, it might be stress. For other people, it might be joy. And for other people, it might be sadness. And once you can start to identify those triggers, you can then start to say, okay, going forward, I'm going to work really hard to be able to notice those emotions or notice those situations that lead me to eat. And then instead of eating, I'm going to do something else that helps me to manage my emotions. So often people use the food in order to either suppress the emotion or to manage them because they're not being released elsewhere. So having a conversation with a friend, journaling, gratitude,

even sitting down with a cup of tea and processing can all be really, really helpful in order to process those emotions and process that stress rather than just turning around saying, right, you know what, I'm not going to stress it anymore. I'm just not going to do it because we know that it's so hard to do it that way and often it doesn't work and then when it doesn't work you almost feel worse don't you because it's like you failed which I think is something again a lot of people can relate to and I think it's really important to kind of remove that moral element and I think within that absolutely not what we're saying is that you

shouldn't sit down and enjoy that piece of cake it's just that you should sit down enjoy the piece of cake for being a delicious piece of cake as opposed to a way of I guess slightly hiding from or suppressing difficult emotions because if we start to do that day in day out over long periods of time it doesn't help us respond to that because there are these physiological effects of stress in our body and we're potentially making them worse which isn't going to help us in the long run absolutely and you know it's not about saying never eat the cake you're right you know it is about saying I'm going to eat the cake I'm going to enjoy it I'm going to accept it and then I'm going to move on but noticing the drivers to eat the cake so are you eating it because you are feeling super stressed

and is this something that is occurring on a regular basis and impacting your overall well-being because afterwards you're starting to feel guilty because you know that you ate the cake because you were stressed or actually is it because you know you're in a social environment or you're at home and you've made a delicious cake and you just want to sit down and have a slice of cake that's absolutely fine and we should all definitely enjoy that yeah I think that's so well said so then looking at the other side what about people who do the opposite so those people who find that they withdraw from food or they reduce their appetite essentially what happens is is you know we stimulate this fight or flight mechanism and as part of that blood sugars

release from our cells into our blood and that gives us the energy to keep going and supports the production of the adrenaline and the cortisol and naturally the body dials down the need for food dials down digestion dials down things like reproduction because during that stressful period all it's focusing on is fight or flight so it thinks oh well I've got enough energy to deal with this situation because I've got sugar in my blood now that's been released from the cells therefore I don't necessarily need to eat and that's why we find that some people do withdraw and over a long period of time that can have a really negative impact on nutrient status, weight management as well, energy, sleep.

So obviously we've talked a little bit about the kind of key things such as caffeine that can impact stress. And kind of slightly moving away from that narrative of go, go, go and just reaching for coffee, etc. all day long. If people are listening to this and thinking do you know what actually I am feeling really stressed or I periodically feel quite stressed I probably should just be gentler and kinder to my body and kind of nourish it and feed it regularly instead what would you suggest that people start to think about that would create a bit of a buffer to help them process those high levels of stress so firstly I would say think about smaller components of the diet rather than trying to overhaul everything all at once and some people

find it easier to look at that in terms of certain meals so they might say okay I'm really going to focus on having a nourishing breakfast I'm going to have a nutrient-dense bowl of porridge or a vitamin-packed smoothie or some toast with some peanut butter and just focused on breakfast for a short period of time and once you've nailed breakfast and you feel better off the back of that then you can move on to lunch okay I'm going to work on having a salad or a vegetable packed omelette or a stir fry for lunch and then you can move on to afternoon snacks and dinner etc other people find it easier to say actually I'm going to focus on components of the diet so for example I'm going to focus on getting

in more omega-3 and whether that is increasing things like their flaxseed their walnut intake seaweed maybe those people who do eat fish if they're going to increase their oily fish other people might say I really want to focus on my vegetables and therefore I'm going to say you know at lunch and dinner I'm going to make sure that I add two extra portions of vegetables to my plate it is very much about working on an individual basis and finding something that works for you and something that's achievable as well you know the last thing that we want to do and we were saying this before is make nutrition an added stressor so it really needs to feel achievable and if it takes you a little bit longer to get there, that's absolutely fine. Yeah, I think that's such sage advice to

start slowly and build up over time. And one of the things we also wanted to touch on is stress and IBS or a sensitive gut, because I know that's something that's relevant to so many people and so many of our listeners and what is the link there between stress and IBS? So firstly IBS is often diagnosed for a process of elimination and I think it's really important for people to understand that because the number of times that people say oh I'm experiencing bloating you know I've got IBS and actually there may be another cause for it I think it's important that people if you are experiencing chronic gut symptoms for a period of three months plus that you go and have it checked out by your GP just to sort of caveat that but in terms of the link between stress and IBS so we know that often when people are stressed they may be more inclined to eat

faster and when you eat faster you're not necessarily producing adequate digestive enzymes to break down your food. As a result of that, you can get bits of partially digested food that enter the gut. And that can give rise to things like bloating, flatulence. It can also have an impact on the gut lining and how we absorb our nutrients. And it can also contribute to things like tiredness because we're not going to be you know absorbing our nutrients so that's the first thing secondly if we are feeling stressed we may find that blood flow around the gut and the digestive tract is actually decreased so therefore we don't have enough oxygen to be able to work within the digestive tract to break down the food

properly and effectively which can contribute to things like the increase in pathogenic or bad bacteria in the gut and that's why we may experience things like bloating, flatulence, constipation, diarrhea, all different types of changes in stools as well. So with what you're saying there actually it's so important with IBS it's not just looking or digestive challenges it's not just looking at what you're eating but also how you're eating and looking at those stress management tools not just as our diet we can't look at diet alone when it comes to alleviating stress type symptoms absolutely and I've seen so many times in clinic where someone comes to me they're feeling stressed they've got gastrointestinal symptoms and they present me with a food diary that is really nutrient rich you know it looks as though they they should be feeling feeling great and actually

when you get down to the bottom of it and you understand well how are you eating these meals it turns out that they are shoveling it down whilst they're in the middle of emails or they are consuming their afternoon snack between meetings whilst they're running from one to one place to another and what we find there is when we are eating mindlessly we skip something called the cephalic phase of digestion now this is the very first phase of digestion where essentially the brain engages with the digestive tract and sends those chemical messages to say you know what we are going to be expecting food so prepare yourself so essentially when we skip that phase the digestive tract is not ready to receive that food so the food hits the stomach the stomach has not secreted the digestive enzymes it's trying to

work overtime to break down the food which is where as I said before you get those bits of partially digested food entering the gut because it just can't work fast enough and a knock-on effect on that is also that that has an impact on our appetite related hormones so we'll find that it takes longer for leptin to be secreted which is our satiety, and we're more likely to overeat as well. And so in terms of looking at those nutrition strategies to feel better, what do you find are the most common obstacles for people? So firstly, I think education is a big issue. Sometimes people just feel so overwhelmed that they just don't know where to go with it. So they start to try one thing and then that doesn't work for a day. So they try something else.

And it's almost as though they try to combine everything all at once. And it's too overwhelming. It doesn't work. So I would say start slowly. Focus on actually what you want to change. And try not to get caught up in any miracle cure or miracle pill. If it's too good to be true it probably is on that i was just going to ask because i think it's absolutely right which is and i certainly know

for myself when i've struggled with periods of ill health that you see one thing's working for someone one thing's working for someone else and it's so easy to try something for a day for a week for two weeks and be like it's not working for me i'm gonna move on to what they're doing and obviously there's so many different conflicting ways in which you can live your life and approach nutrition and general wellbeing, whether you're looking at keto and then you're doing intermittent fasting

and then you're doing a 5-2 and then you're vegan and then you're, you know, it's overwhelming. How long would you recommend people try something for before they, you know, as you said, start slowly, start gently, start with something you feel really does work in your life. How long would you do that for? So again, it's kind of how long is a piece of string because everyone is so different.

But I would say you want to give it at least three months to see if something is going to work for you. Obviously, if it's making you feel worse, then, you know, there's a time to stop and say, well, this isn't right for me. But if you're just not seeing an improvement improvement you do need to allow it that time and that sort of brings me on to the next barrier I suppose that people really struggle with and that is consistency and patience and we live in a world today where whatever we want we can have it on demand you know if we want to order something and it should arrive the next day we can if we want to order a takeaway and it arrive in 10 minutes we can and with our health there is nothing that will speed up the process of working to better health and therefore we have to give it that time and we have to be patient and we have to be consistent we cannot

expect to do something for one two three days and see drastic changes and you know people really need to remind themselves of that and say okay I'm on this this path or this journey because I know that over time it will help I think that's what surprised me when I 10 11 years ago was looking to change my health was first of all it wasn't linear you know you'd feel like it was getting a bit better and then you'd have other periods and then you get a bit better and then back again and over time you know really was an upward journey but it wasn't linear by any stretch of the imagination and second that it was slow for sure I mean it wasn't there was no quick fix there was no take one thing and you'll feel different tomorrow which I think is quite hard to reconcile ourselves with. Definitely and that point about it not being linear

is so true and so important and you know if we take for example a situation of someone trying to support their gut health they may find that one day they can eat certain foods and the next day they eat the same meal but actually it contributes to gut symptoms and that may be because they're more stressed that day and therefore there's less blood flow to the digestive tract so they can't break the food down properly so it is about being kind to yourself and saying okay well just because it hasn't worked this day doesn't mean it's not going to work stop sitting on your aeroplane points and get big savings so you can be somewhere you actually want to be, like on a beach. Right now, you can save up to 25% in aeroplan points

when you book a trip to one of 180-plus Air Canada destinations worldwide. So stop sitting on your next trip and start saving on one. Don't miss out. Your chance to save in points ends February 23rd. Book at aircanada.com. Conditions apply. 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. Email bob at libsyn.com to learn more. That's b-o-b at l-i-b-s-y-n dot com. And if people are starting to look at implementing those strategies for stress. Where would you start from an overall health perspective? So I would start with the basics and probably the things that can make the biggest difference. And that would be firstly looking at caffeine consumption.

So anyone who is really stressed, and I explained earlier what caffeine does to us, but I would say really try to reduce your caffeine intake. And sometimes this can have a double benefit because sometimes we find people are consuming five cups a day and adding sugar to that as well. So that combination is really having a negative impact. So switch that caffeine to herbal teas. And for some people, you know, they say, no, I love the taste of coffee. I have to have it. I say, OK, we'll switch it to decaf and it

might be that you switch one a day to decaf to start with and then two a day we're not expecting you to cut caffeine out overnight that is very hard and it is a slow process so that would be the first place that I would start the second place I would start is trying to increase more fruits and vegetables into your diet because we know they're so rich in things like magnesium, vitamin C that can really help to support the production of the stress hormone and that is essentially fundamental when we are dealing with stress and if our body's going to produce cortisol anyway then we need to make sure that we've got adequate amount of stores to be able to support that. And I would also say look at your hydration as well it sounds so basic but people often mistake that thirst for hunger and when you get into that pattern of mistaking your thirst signals for hunger

signals you almost retrain the brain that that is how you respond to thirst and so really make sure that you are staying hydrated regularly. That will help too. And then, you know, you can look further afield at other micronutrients such as omega-3, making sure that you've got adequate amounts of vitamin D. So whether that's looking at supplementing during the winter months, making sure that you're stocking up on your zinc as well. All really important.

But I say start with the basics. And as you said, with fruit and veg there I always think it's the cheesy line of eat the rainbow but it's so true like if you are trying to get all those different vitamins and minerals in the best thing you can do is just eat a massive variety fruit veg beans seeds nuts legumes and you'll you'll naturally get that in but not eating the same thing every day because that's not going to help us. Absolutely. And that diversity is really important as well.

So, you know, making sure that we do have a wide range of those nuts, seeds, fruits, vegetables, everything you just listed will really help to support the gut bacteria. And we haven't really touched on it in this podcast, but the link between the gut and the brain is huge. And, you know, they're interlink gut and the brain is is huge and you know they're interlinked by the vagus nerve and I know you've talked about it in on podcasts before but

really making sure that you can support the gut will help you to deal with any of that psychological stress as well and so to finish if there were three take-homes that our listeners could tell their friends family colleagues three things you wish everyone knew about stress, its impact on the body and the role potentially the diet plays within that. What are those three things? So the first one would be that when you are finding yourself stress eating, know that that is not an issue with you. That is a physiological response. And it's really important to remember that because then you can be kinder to yourself. The second thing I would say is to be aware of the impact of caffeine. And also one thing that we haven't really mentioned is consuming it later on in the day can have a knock-on effect on your sleep.

And if you have a disrupted sleep, that can have a negative impact on your dietary choices the next day and also energy and general well-being. And the third thing that I would say is to be more aware of the impact that stress has on your body so hopefully from this conversation now listeners will understand that stress is not just an emotion that we feel stress has really huge impacts on our aches our pains our skin health nail health our mental well-being, our gut health, our weight management, so many different things. And sometimes if you're struggling with one of those issues, it might be helpful to come back and think about the stresses in your life and be

able to deal with it and tackle it through that way. Absolutely. And it's perhaps not that you can remove all those stresses today, but starting implementing stress relief strategies to help you do that. And Jenna, we always ask all our guests just on a personal reflection, obviously the podcast is called Delicious Ways to Feel Better. What is it that you do for you every day to help you feel better? So for me, it's always prioritizing lunch I think that we have such manic days and if we have that break for lunch a it's going to help with the mindful eating and help to digest our food properly and it's going to fuel you for the afternoon and also it provides that mental break in the day where actually you can say for this period of time I'm not focusing on emails work I'm just going to sit here and

have lunch so for me it's a big important factor is making sure that I stop for lunch I love that one I think there's probably a lot of people who'll be nodding along thinking I need to do that just sit somewhere different in the office while I eat it even well thank you so much Jennifer joining us today it's been so insightful I hope it's been really practical full of loads of take-homes that will support you better in your lives and we look forward to seeing you back here later in the week thank you so much for listening so we're gonna just move on now to a more bite-sized segment about probiotics because i know that the world of gut health and probiotics can be so incredibly confusing so to join us for that i've got professor simon

gazeford and sim Simon is the head of the department at Pharmaceutics at the University College London School of Pharmacy. Simon has been conducting independent research for years now on the viability of different probiotics, what works and what doesn't work and why it's important, and the role that it can potentially play. So I wanted to invite him in to do a bit of a probiotics 101, but also to touch on Simprove, because we've had lots of different questions about our current sponsor, how it can potentially help listeners. So we'll tap that on right at the end. But Simon, first of all, thank you for joining us. And I wondered if we could just start in a nutshell, why does our gut health matter? And what is the role of probiotics within that?

So firstly, thank you for having me it's very nice to be here. Gut health is an interesting thing so there's a phrase that I like to use death begins in the colon and so one way of thinking about gut health is to think about it in terms of if your gut is in good order everything else follows from that. So we have a lot of things living in our gut, microorganisms, usually bacteria, but they can be fungi and some other things. And we have a massive mix of bacteria. And it's really important we have a healthy mix of those bacteria. The reason it's important is because like all living creatures, bacteria can eat things and then they produce waste compounds. So rather than pooing out faeces like

we do, they produce metabolic byproducts. If those bacteria produce compounds that are useful for us, then our body can absorb them and we gain benefit from those bacteria. If the bacteria produce something which is bad for us, so maybe it's harmful or toxic, then what will happen is our body is going to react to that. So a lot of gut conditions, for instance, are autoimmune and they're triggered by something. They may well be triggered by bacteria producing harmful compounds. So in a general sense, the way to maintain good health is to consider your gut bacteria, consider the balance of good to bad bacteria, and try and maintain as many good

and as few bad as possible. And so where do probiotics fit into that and what's the role that they play in supporting those good bacteria and our overall health and do they have an impact on that bad bacteria as well? Sure, so that's really what we've been looking at in my own research group is to try and understand what is the mechanism of action behind a probiotic and why should we take them. So in simple terms the World Health Organization defines a probiotic as a bacterial species which when ingested in sufficient quantity provides a health benefit to the host. That's a pretty vague definition and it's really difficult to work out what the actual health benefit is so that's what we've been looking at so the way we think it works is the majority of probiotics on the market

belong to a special group of bacteria called lactic acid bacteria they're called that because the waste product they produce from eating food is lactic acid and And that's really important. One reason is because lactic acid, and the clue is in the name, is an acid. And so as the probiotic bacteria eat food in your gut, they produce lactic acid and that acidifies the gut content. Now you might think that's not good, but actually what our research has shown is that those bacteria that are not very good for you are not very tolerant to acid conditions. So right from the get-go you can swallow a probiotic, it can produce lactic acid and one of the net results of that is that the bad bacteria struggle to survive because the acid is increasing. The next thing that you might say to me is, hang on a minute

I don't want to acidify my gut. That sounds like a really bad idea in the long run. And I agree with that. And so the other thing we've been discovering is that all of the good bacteria in your gut, not all, but most, can actually eat lactic acid as a food substance. So they eat lactic acid, that takes the acid away. And as as a consequence they produce a series of other compounds called short chain fatty acids so the net result of all of that is it might start with a balance of bacteria which is not very good too many bad you swallow a probiotic the probiotic bacteria arrive in the gut they produce lactic, the acid helps kill off the bad bacteria, and then it

encourages the good bacteria to flourish. And in that way, you rebalance your gut flora. And so Simon, obviously, it sounds like probiotics can be incredibly helpful in readdressing that balance of bacteria. Does that then complement and sit alongside the various different dietary and lifestyle interventions because I'm sure one of people's main questions is if I'm addressing my diet and I'm eating lots of fiber-rich foods for example and I'm addressing my stress levels and the various different modifications of my lifestyle that support gut health do probiotics continue to support do they still play a role that's a very good question. So I think

the thing about diet is really important. Everybody's heard the phrase, you are what you eat. I think a better version of that phrase is you are not what you eat. And the reason I say that is because you might eat some food and think that your body is digesting that food directly. Some of that food, it will directly absorb, such as the fats and simple sugars. The rest of it, your body is digesting that food directly, some of that food it will directly absorb, such as the fats and simple sugars. The rest of it, your body can't absorb. And so it ends up in your colon and your gut bacteria eat that food for you. And if you're following from what I said earlier, all of those different bacteria, they can all eat the food stuff that arrive in your colon, but each one will produce a different compound as a

result. And so the way to think about this is you might eat something relatively plain, let's say shredded wheat for breakfast. The complex carbohydrates in that shredded wheat, which you can't absorb, end up as a food substance for your gut bacteria, and they produce a myriad of different compounds that your body can use for different purposes. So in that way, you've got symbiotic relationship. The bacteria are benefiting because they're eating some of the food, but you're benefiting because they're turning a simple foodstuff into this myriad of compounds. So what that means is when you change your diet, some people feel like they get an upset tummy for a while. It's not surprising because you've got thousands of different species of bacteria

and they're all used to the diet you've been eating. They've all primed every day for that food substance to arrive. All of a sudden, you switch diet. Let's say you haven't eaten a salad for five years and then you suddenly start eating a salad. Your gut bacteria don't know what's hit them because they're expecting one thing, but they get something else. So it's not uncommon that when you start to change your diet, there is a concomitant change in your gut bacteria because they are responding to what you're eating.

I think in general, if you know a healthy diet and then trying to reduce stress are always good things for your overall health. The thing about your gut, when people say I've got a gut feeling or I've got bad gut feeling, 10% of your autonomous nervous system is wrapped around your gut. So like we sense things with our fingers, we also sense things with the lining of our guts because it's the primary place where anything we ingest is going to interact with our body. And so the whole thing about being stressed, that stress is going to raise cortisol levels, that's going to impact your gut bacteria and vice versa. So in general, I think healthy diet and try and reduce stress, you can't do any more than that. Do I think you

should take a probiotic on a regular basis? I don't see a reason not to. All of my testing has shown that by taking a probiotic, you encourage the good bacteria to do even more good work. And I don't see a reason why you wouldn't want that. Even if you felt fine, you changed your diet, you minimised your stress. I don't see why you wouldn't take something which would make your good bacteria work even harder. It almost feels like a kind of multivitamin for your bacteria as well on those days where you're really busy you know really overwhelmed and eating as well or kind of looking after yourself becomes a bit more challenging and you've almost kind of given them that little bit to get going and so

obviously just talking about Simprove as far as I understand you got to know Simprove because you were actually doing independent research that involved them, but totally independently, which I think is so important to just shout out. And actually, I got to know Simproof totally independently of working with them as well and became a huge fan the more I got into the research. But I just wondered if you could tell us a little bit more about the research on them specifically. How do they sit within the market of probiotics for people thinking about probiotics? What should they look for? Because obviously gut health is such a buzzword. The shelves of all kinds of shops are filled with things shouting probiotics.

I've never been more surprised in my life than being at a trade show in the US. This must have been about three years ago, pre-COVID. And probiotics was the word of the moment. And there was, for example, probiotic pop tarts, which I was quite obsessed with. I felt if you deep fried something, which they had been, and then you put them in a toaster, it was hard to believe there was a huge number of live bacteria left. But it's really overwhelming as a consumer to know how to kind of navigate this market. Yeah, I agree with you completely. So when we started

our research, obviously I work in a school of pharmacy and all of our students are going off to be pharmacists. And so we started the research because we wanted to be able to give advice to pharmacists. If a consumer came into the pharmacy and they said, I'd like to try a probiotic, which one should I buy? We wanted to be able to give them some knowledge to recommend the best product. And we simply went to the supermarket and bought a number of different types of products, solids and liquids in the main. They can be yogurts, they can be yogurty drinks, they can be capsules and tablets and things like that. Then what we did is we simply said, what happens to these products after you've swallowed them? And the answer is they end up in your stomach,

which is quite acidic. And then they transfer from the stomach into your small intestine. So we tried to simulate the stomach in the laboratory and we just added the products to that, let them sit for a bit. And then we measured how many bacteria were alive after they'd sat in stomach acid for a while. And the answer was some products performed better than others. And in the main, liquid products do seem to come out better than solid products in my testing, which is in vitro. I have to put that in so that the lawyers for those companies don't come round to my office and have a go at me. It's not surprising really that liquid products perform better than solids because in a solid product, you have to desiccate the bacteria,

which means take all the water out of them. And that's difficult. If we were to remove all the water from our own bodies, we would be a pile of biochemical powder and bacteria are essentially the same thing. So you've got to get them to recover before they can grow in your body. So essentially, we always recommend the liquid products as being better than a solid one. The reason we got involved in Simprove simply because we had seen that Simprove had been used in a clinical trial at King's College, and it had quite positive clinical outcomes. And so we thought, oh, I wonder how it would fare in our test. And so we thought, oh, I wonder how it would fare in our test. And so we added it to our stomach acid. We left it for half an hour. When we tested it, almost none of the bacteria had died. It was as if they didn't care about

being in acid in the first place. And so we simply got hold of Simprove. And we said, oh, we've been testing your product. And it seems to be quite acid tolerant. And so they invited me down to talk about some of the science that we've been doing. That was probably in about 2013 or 14. And since then, we have been investigating how and why Simprove seems to work against a number of disease states. And could you tell us a little bit more about that? How and why does it seem to work? So the how is a bit like what I said already it contains four species of lactic acid bacteria so when they arrive in the gut they all produce lactic acid. Lactic acid helps to lower the number of bad bacteria and it stimulates the production of the good bacteria. So that's the universal mechanism by which I

believe most probiotic products work. The reason Simprove in particular seems to be quite effective is because in all of the testing that we have done, more than 99.9% of all the bacteria that are in the product at the start arrive in the gut alive. And is that highly unusual, Simon? That is kind of unusual, I would have to say. So in my testing, we haven't seen another product which has got quite that level of survival. And so I think that's one of the reasons why when you use Simprove in some sort of clinical trial in a particular disease group, we see quite good clinical endpoints because the bacteria are actually arriving in the gut alive. I've spent a long time looking at clinical

trial reports for probiotics in various disease states and what you'll find is the authors make a very good argument about which probiotic bacteria they've chosen to use and what the aim of the study is but they don't pay any attention to how the product is actually formulated and in my experience more than nine out of 10 in clinical studies involving probiotics use solid probiotic products because most patients are used to the idea of taking a tablet or a capsule. It's just that in this particular instance, I don't believe that a tablet or a capsule is the best vehicle to be delivering bacteria. Bacteria are living, they like to live in water and therefore a water-based product is going to be the most

effective at delivering live bacteria to the gut. And what sort of disease states are you looking at? So we've done a number of studies. So we've looked at liver cirrhosis parkinson's disease there's some big results on parkinson's disease going to come out this year ulcerative colitis and then personally i'm running a trial looking at the use of probiotics improve in children with down syndrome and the reason for that is because almost all children with Down syndrome suffer from lifelong chronic constipation. And that constipation can be very serious in terms of their quality of life. And so we did a small trial last year where we gave Simprove to one child with Down syndrome. And within four weeks, his bowels had returned to a normal function.

So we're about to do a very wide national study with four Down syndrome partner charities to see whether we can manage constipation better in children with Down syndrome compared with, say, laxatives. Amazing. God, it's incredible work. Well, Simon, we so appreciate your time today. It's unbelievable in 15 minutes how much confusion you've cleared up because, as I said, I think the world of probiotics and gut health it's amazing it's become such a mainstream part of conversation but it can be phenomenally confusing and really difficult to know how to navigate it what you need and what you certainly don't need so really appreciate your very concise very clear information on that and good luck with the study

thank you very much I hope that was really helpful for everyone listening. We will be back again on Wednesday with our mini episode focusing on sleep. Otherwise, have a lovely week, everyone 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. Email bob at libsyn.com to learn more. That's b-o-b at l-i-b-s-y-n dot com.