Well with Arielle Lorre - 118: The Gut-Brain Connection with Dr. Emeran Mayer

Episode Date: July 7, 2021

In this episode I’m talking to Dr. Emeran Mayer—world renowned gastroenterologist, neuroscientist and Distinguished Research Professor in the Departments of Medicine, Physiology and Psychiatry at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA—about the gut, the gut-brain connection and how they influence each other. We discuss why the gut-brain connection is so important; how emotions and stress affect the gut; anxiety and the gut; the truth about SIBO; how food fear contributes to digestive issues; multidisciplinary treatments for IBS; why digestive issues are so prevalent right now; what to eat for a healthy gut and so much more.   www.headspace.com/BLONDE  for a free one-month trial www.blublox.com/BLONDE  for 15% off and free shipping worldwide www.ritual.com/BLONDE  for 10% off during your first 3 months www.Fxchocolate.com  with code BLONDEFILES for 20% off your first order   Produced by Dear MediaSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The following podcast is a dear media production. Hey, welcome to the Blond Files podcast. I'm your host, Ariel Lori, and I'm here to talk all things wellness. From how to achieve optimal health and well-being to the best beauty tips and everything in between, no topic is off limits. I know there is so much information out there, so I'm here to help you navigate it all and live your best life. Thanks for listening.

Let's get into it. Hi, everybody. Welcome to the show. So if you have ever struggled with gut issues, digestion issues, if you feel like you do all the right things, but you still have these issues, I know so many of us fall into that category. Or if you struggle with other things in your life like stress, anxiety, sleep issues, and more, this episode is for you. I just listened back to this episode because we recorded in May.

And it is such a good one. and I just really admire and really like our guest. And I also go on his podcast. So I'll let you guys know when that comes out. But I am talking to an absolute authority on the gut, on the brain, and on the gut brain connection, Dr. Emroner Mayer. He is a world-renowned gastroenterologist, neuroscientist, and distinguished research professor in the departments of medicine, physiology, and psychiatry at the David Geffen's School of Medicine at UCLA. And today we are talking about the gut.

We're talking about the gut brain connection and how they influence each other. We also discuss why the gut brain connection is so important, how emotions and stress affect the gut, anxiety in the gut. We talk about how food fear contributes to digestive issues, multidisciplinary treatments for IBS. We talk about the truth about SIBO, which I think might surprise so many people. We talk about why digestive issues are so prevalent right now, what to eat for a healthy gut, so much more. So make sure you listen to this entire thing. There is so much information in here. And like I said, he really is so knowledgeable. And I'm just going to do this little housekeeping note here while I have your attention instead of at the end of the podcast. But if you enjoy the

podcast, if you have been listening for a while, but you haven't left a rating or a review, if you are not following, I believe that's the new word on Apple, please do so. There is a sea of podcasts out there and I know how many people listen to this podcast compared to the amount that have maybe left a review. It's such a small thing, but it makes such a difference for the show and for the show to stand out and stand the charts and all of that. So please do that if you have not. Keep sharing it with your friends. I really appreciate it. I love seeing you share it on Instagram and tag me and all of that good stuff. So I appreciate you and I hope you enjoy the episode with Dr. Amaran Mayor. Okay, welcome, Dr. Mayor. I'm so so looking forward to talking to you today. Thank you for

being here. Well, thanks, Ariel, for having me on the show. Greatly appreciate it. Thank you. So I don't want to take up too much time on this, but I'm always interested when I talk to an expert such as yourself in hearing about how you came to be interested in what you are and your specialty. So can you just tell us a little bit about how you came to study what you do? Well, I mean, it started really picking the sub-specialty in medicine of gastroenterology because I knew from my clinical experiences from the beginning that, you know, most of the patients that I saw with gut problems also had issues with anxiety and with depression. So I saw that very early on that there's a very close link. And that interested me because I always had had in college times and interest in psychological

issues as well. Then the decision to look at brain gut interactions, you know, was a consequence of that. And this was not a major area within gastroenterology. You know, gastroenterologies are trained to look at the gut exclusively and really not, you know, strangely not look at diet and not look at the brain or the mind. And so that interested me both from a clinical standpoint, but also from from a research standpoint, you know, what mediate these close connections between emotions and gut symptoms. So that's in a nutshell I got there. So we're going to be talking about the gut brain access to start. Can you just define what the gut is and then tell us a little bit about what the gut brain access is? So the gut is obviously one of our organs, the gastrointestinal

tract in medical language. And it goes from the stomach to the end of our our intestine, a large intestine. And it was long thought to be primarily a digestive organ that did all kinds of functions from the stomach grinding food to smaller particles to then absorbing the nutrients from the ingested food and then reducing the volume and storing the waste in the large intestine. That was kind of the main teaching. And like when I was teaching 30 years ago to medical students, that's what we basically said.

But in the meantime, we know the gut is not just this tube that does all these mechanical things and absorptive things, but we know that the majority of our immune system is located in the gut. The gut has its own nervous system, the enteric nervous system or little brain of the gut, and it has a big portion of our endocrine or hormonal system, and they're all sandwiched in a very thin layer that the gut layer makes up. So compressed three main regulatory systems in our body closely together. And then, you know, about 10 years ago with the rapidly expanding microbiome science

that added another dimension to it. So now I would say, yes, the gut is still a digestive organ, but it's much more. You know, and within the brain gut microbiome axis or system, as I've made clear in my books, it is for the most important regulatory system in our bodies. You know, the heart in comparison is a simple mechanical pump. The lungs are a ventilation machine, like a ventilator. The kidneys are filtration and detoxifying system. But the gut is at the center of regulating our mind, our emotion, also, you know, our immune system,

and very important part of it. So even though I'm somewhat biased as a gastroenterologist, it's clearly, there's no question. It is the central system in our body. Yeah, and lately you hear that the gut is the second brain, right? But I'm curious throughout your research, and you did just kind of say that it's the central regulating system. So does the gut influence the mind and the brain

more than the mind and the brain influence the gut? it's clearly it's so that's why I like this this expression the the brain got microbiome system because so in systems biology you have you call a system if you have multiple nodes and they're interconnected in bi-directional fashion and the system behaves in a non-linear way so it's not like when you do one thing at one point we can predict what comes out on the other side so clearly you know we've known for longer how the brain influences the gut. So any like stress, for example, you know, there's lots of studies going back the last 50 years. What stress does to gut function, it basically affects any gut function from contractions to blood flow, to secretion of acid and mucus

and bile. But there's also this other direction, you know, the feedback. So the nervous system has a lot of sensors in the gut. And these sensors encode everything that goes on there. What type of food is there, what chemicals, what, you know, how much it contracts, the temperature, everything is fed back to the brain. Most of these things are subconsciously. We don't really want to know about this. And some people are more sensitive, so they get symptoms, even though you shouldn't feel these events in your gut. time. And it's a constantly ongoing conversation back and forth. So it's a circular regulatory

system. And what's more important, it's hard to say. I think we're still, it's easier to understand if you have a cramp or if you have spasms in your gut, we know exactly what happens. You know, the signal from the brain goes to part of your, the sigmoid colon, the part of your large intestine and we know that that part contracts and if it contracts for a long time it hurts it's a spasm just like a muscle spasm it's harder to say what mechanisms and a multiple influence for example or how anxious somebody is or how if somebody gets depressed is somebody you know now is a lot of interest in these if you have a long-term influence from the gut what the world does this play in in cognitive decline and Alzheimer's disease

So, yeah, we know more from the top down, and we're now just realizing the complexity. And if you imagine, you know, 40 to 100 trillion microbial cells talking to the gut all the time, what chatter that causes in your brain? And to decipher that is clearly, you know, one of the things we're doing at the moment. I kind of know firsthand the complexity, because up until about six years ago, I believe that I had a healthy gut. You know, I had normal digestion. I had no symptoms of anything.

And then it seemed like overnight, I started to have digestive issues. And so the first doctor that I went to thought that it might be anxiety and like IBS-related anxiety. So we tried an SSRI and that didn't work. So then the next one that I went to thought maybe CBO. So we did round after round of antibiotics, which as we know kind of wipes out the good and the bad. And then I went, you know, and it's just kind of like kicking the bull. wall down the field trying to figure out what was going on. And at that time, I really only thought of

solutions as in terms of nutrition, I guess. And I think a lot of people do for things like autoimmunity and SIBO, like I mentioned, in IBS, we look at just the food aspect, right? And I would get some control for a little while and then inevitably things would fall apart. And it wasn't until maybe the past year or two that I really started looking at stress and how that affects me. I'm a very sensitive. person. And so I started meditating and things started changing a little bit and it's still a work in progress. But there are so many factors contributing to the health of our gut. I mean, what you describe is the classical story of patients that I see. You know, they have gone through all of these things before. They've gone through the endoscopy phase, the blood test phase.

Then probably their doctor told them it's psychological or just have IBS not serious. And then you know, you deal with the situation that most doctors and really don't understand what IVS is, you know, the whole sensory part is hypersensitivity and how stress interfaces with that. Then the CBO part of the story, always there, you know, in my opinion, that is just basically, you know, so my career, I've seen at least, I would say, at least seven different schools of thought that have changed every few years so somebody comes up with a new idea

and then everything is so then they try to explain IVS I think SIBO is just the same thing it's not an it's not an entity that causes these symptoms you know too small intestinal bacterial overgrowth is something that we see

in a small number of patients that have that have major structural either damage like the vagus nerve doesn't work to their intestines. So things are not moving through enough or, you know, this housekeeper of the gut, this contractile wave that happens during sleep.

It doesn't work properly. But now, you know, there's an epidemic of sebel. And as you experience itself, it's not the answer. If anything, I think it's a terrible thing that how many people unnecessarily undergo antibiotic treatments, which is the worst thing you can do for gut health, and that this is done repeatedly, it is a shame. You know, I would say it's then all of a sudden, you know, a new diet came up.

When I was in training, it was the high fiber diet was recommended for IBS. Now it's the opposite. Now it's the low FODMap diet or fiber has been taken out of it. Just to give us this idea, this has been a sort of very strange area of medicine, you know, were people have not known the answers, the explanation. So they try different theories over time. Along the way, a lot of people make a lot of money with, you know, with the antibiotic treatments.

So I think what you have realized yourself is something that, that I try to instill in my patients to make them aware. Many of them today are, I would say, more like yourself, that have a, they don't have a resistance to use anything psychological to explain. But like 20 years ago, nobody wanted to hear that. There's something with the brain. And we know from studies that the great majority of IBS patients, for example, have a low grade increase in anxiety level.

And often it's food-related or symptom-related anxiety. It's not free-floating, but people are worried about this. Is this food going to cause my symptoms to get worse? or when I get these symptoms, I can't think straight. So it's disease related to symptom related. We also know today that IBS patients have the stress system in the brain that normally kicks in when we're faced with a threat. There's a lot of causes that trigger that stress response system in the brain.

But I think for a lot of patients with IBS, we know they have an increased sensitivity and responsive. of that system. So what doesn't stress somebody else stresses that person because the system in the brain is set, the gain is set to a degree that it's more responsive. And so you will go through life and probably you will, that system will be triggered more often

than in somebody else who does not have that. And every time that happens, we know that a mirror image of that stress or that anxiety is created in the gut, in terms of contractions, secretions, blood flow, and then that information is being reported back to the brain and reinforces the anxiety. And to break that cycle, I think, is sort of key.

And when I see patients and treat them, that at first, there has to be a comprehension of this brain-up microbiome system. Secondly, there has to be, I recommend it why I decide on a particular therapy that is always multidisciplinary. It's targeted at the brain. could be anything from mindfulness-based stress reduction to diaphragmato abdominal breathing to short-term cognitive behavioral therapy, depending on how severe the mind aspect is. But there's also the diet component. I have a different perspective. I think that I'm convinced that the largely plant-based diet is beneficial for everybody, regardless of what disease you have. IBD, inflammatory

balacies or IVS. And then I teach the patient with IBS, keep a diary, and when they're on this diet, to make sure if they can identify something that consistently gives them more symptoms in their

food. So first they have to pay attention to, is it stress that triggers my symptoms? Secondly, is there a particular item in their food, a particular vegetable like artiress? or broccoli that does it. Then stop that particular vegetable or fruit for a while for two weeks,

see if the symptoms significantly get better. And if yes, then eliminate or reduce the intake of that particular thing. So that gives the patient a personalized diet and a personalized treatment. So depending on what they decide, what's best for them in terms of the mind, stress, the diet. And sometimes in more severe cases, if somebody has severe anxiety or severe depression, then I do use the medication, you know, the antidepressant. But it's always, and patients like this kind of concept, that they are in charge of designing their own therapy. And yeah, so that's sort of a short version of that. Yeah, so it's multifactorial, right? And I think that a lot of people fall into the

camp of thinking myself included in the past that food is the cause and food is the cure. And maybe in some cases it is. You're eating something that's triggering some kind of inflammatory response. But once you go down that route, then food fear creeps in, right? And it's like what you think about the food might affect you more than the actual food itself, kind of like you were saying. So I like that approach of having, you know, the different components. And I remember somebody saying to me, like, well, turn the TV off when you're eating and chew your food. And I was so offended, you know, I chew my food and then when I started being aware of it, I was not chewing my food and these things, being more mindful and bringing awareness can really help. Let's talk about

vitamins. There are so many now. It can be so confusing when it comes to what to take, why, and when. And I get asked all the time what supplements I take and I keep it really simple. I love ritual the most for a few reasons. First, they have nine nutrients that help three. They have nine nutrients that help fill the gaps in my diet. And that's their philosophy that supplements are meant to fill in where our diet may be deficient, kind of like what we're talking about in this episode. They really believe that we can get most of what we need through our diet and nutrition. And I really appreciate that. They also use the highest quality ingredients. They are all traceable so you know exactly what you're putting in your body. They are really clean. There's no artificial colorants or fillers.

They're vegan friendly and gluten-free. And they have a minty flavor. So, I'm not getting that weird supplement aftertaste, especially with omega-3s. Ritual vitamins also have a delayed release, so I don't get nauseous when I take them. This has always been my big problem with supplements, and it's one of the reason why I don't load up on a bunch of other pills during the day. So with ritual, I take them and I'm fine, and they just have everything I need. You deserve to know what's in your multivitamin. That's why Ritual is offering my listeners 10% off during your first three months, just visit ritual.com slash blonde, B-L-O-N-D-E to start your ritual today. This podcast is brought to you in part by my friends over at Blue Blocks.

You have heard me raving about them for the past year and for good reason. I am on a screen pretty much all day, usually, as most of us are. And I seriously struggle with digital eye strain, but my blue blocks, blue light blocking glasses, make it so much better. I'm sure you are familiar with the symptoms, dry, water, eyes, increased anxiety, insomnia. We probably all work on our computers and our phones to some degree, or we are on them for entertainment. We watch TV and we are around artificial light all the time, so blue blocks really helps to counteract that. These glasses are the best for a number of

reasons. They're made in optics laboratory conditions, exactly in line with the suggested peer-reviewed academic literature. They have lenses for daytime, nighttime, and for color therapy, and they come in over 20 stylish frames. My favorites are the crystal. And they come in prescription, non-prescription, and readers. And unlike other companies, Blue Blocks are backed by the latest science and research. And as I said, they also have other great products. I have their red light installed in my bedside table lamp. And it really helps me to fall asleep and stay asleep. So if you want to get your energy back, if you want to sleep better and block out the unhealthy effects of blue light, check out BlueBlocks today and get free shipping worldwide and 15% off with the code blonde,

B-L-O-N-D-E, or go to blueblocks.com slash blonde. That's B-L-U-B-L-O-X.com slash B-L-O-N-D-E. Again, blueblocks.com slash blonde or use the code blonde for 15% off and free shipping. I'm Anisha Ramakrishna and I'm an Indian entrepreneur and TV personality with Big Dick Energy. You may know me from Bravo TV's family karma and of course social media. I grew up in a very conservative Indian family, but I have always forged my own path and live life on my own terms. I recently left my successful career in New York City and my long-term relationship to pursue my own fashion business.

I'm single in my mid-30s and I live with my parents. I'm currently cringing and I know you are too. Join me as I spilled a chai on my own cringeworthy personal life experiences every Thursday, anywhere you listen to podcasts. Yeah, I could give you one example. You know, so a patient always remember, he came to me with supposedly food triggered symptoms of his IBS. An executive had lots in downtown, L.A.

had to go to lots of meetings. So whenever he had to go to a restaurant in town, the first thing was always he checked it out where the restroom is. and the whole time driving to the restaurant, he was thinking and worried about, am I going to be close enough to a restaurant? So the symptoms didn't start when he was sat down or ate something. It started when he left his office.

And then I asked him, you know, what about if you have your lunch in your office? He said, oh, I never have symptoms, you know. What if you are at home and have dinner? No, I don't have the symptoms. So you only got them. It's this fear of food, as he said, that permeated his brain.

from the minute he had to leave his office, safe space. And so it's an extreme example, but something like this goes on probably in many patients' minds. Another thing I saw, you know, once it was a meeting in Spain, and we flew back from Spain to Munich. And I was sitting next to a couple that had this delicious sandwich that they picked up there. And so they started to take that sandwich apart, like to put the table down, took this sandwich apart and pulled out this part and this part and then I asked them why do you do this and said oh I'm we're sensitive to this we're sensitive to this this gives the symptoms at the end there was nothing left of the and they this couple was permeated by fear

of food so it's yeah I think that's underestimated I mean you seem to have a lot of insight in this already you know so it's been living it for quite a few years and like just living in L.A. and kind of being in the wellness space online, you hear all kinds of different things. And, you know, I think gluten-free, dairy-free, soy-free, refined sugar-free, everything free, I mean, grain-free, nightshade-free, legume-free, you get to the point where it's like, well, what's left? And once you see enough people, and I'm very vocal about this, when I started going through

my gut issues, I was trying these different diets because, like I said, I wanted the food to be the cause and the cure. And so I was everything free. And I believed that I was doing the right thing. And when you're desperate and you're looking for information, you might see an influencer or somebody, you know, public figure doing this and it works for them. And then you want to do the same thing. Once you get that in your head, that seed is planted, then, you know, you are very hyper aware of what is in everything.

And eating becomes so stressful. I mean, I couldn't say it better. You know, like, I mean, if you were in my office, you would be the best. the spokesperson to tell patients that and they would probably, you know, believe it. It's really been, it's very easy, actually, for me to take care of IBS patients. You know, it's because it's not the thing that you learn to treat somebody with who is hepatitis, who or who has a kidney problem. You just have to sort of have this different model that multiple components are connected,

mainly the gut, the digestive organ and the brain that creates the mind. Once you take this into account, it's kind of easy. And I think times have changed. I think people have become much more open and accepting of the mind in general is a very important factor in their health, which is a great thing. And, you know, there's been so many articles about the brain and Time magazine on the front page. So things have changed, I would say, in the last 20 years, then younger people also embrace is totally natural to incorporate the mind because, you know,

the mind has become like a key part of our daily life and conversations. Right. We were talking before we started recording about how it seems like everybody has a gut issue now, though. And this is something that I talked to. So my parents about who have never experienced, quote, unquote, gut issues, you know, maybe the occasional disturbance, but nothing like what. I've experienced and you speak to people from different generations, even different places,

and it's not really an issue. And it seems like here it really is. I don't know what is contributing to that. We were kind of talking about the past year. I would love to hear about how and if trauma is part of that. If it's just the stress of our lifestyle here in this country, the food, what do you think contributes to that? So I would say it's really a combination. In my new book, I read a lot about this period the last 75 years since after World War II. Just looking at pictures of people, you know, they were all slim and physically fit. And I mean, obviously, they did other things like smoking, you know, which wasn't that healthy. But it was a very different world.

And so then the things that have changed is clearly our diet has dramatically changed to what's not called the standard American diet, with tons of sugar in it. We don't know if sugar is the main thing or if it's the lack of fiber, which has happened at the same time, or if it's all the processed food. So the diet and the food and the quality of the food has changed dramatically.

I see this sometimes when I have patients, students who have a lot of symptoms here in college, then they go to do a semester abroad in Italy or France. and the symptoms disappear and they come back at the airport restaurant, the first meal really creates the symptoms. That could be partially having a great time in Italy or in France, but I think it's equally likely that the quality of the diet

has a lot to do with it. So that's one thing. The stress level, I think, has been increasing continuously. We've always had a baseline stress that people have been exposed to, but that has increased significantly the competition, you know, with several billion more people today than 75 years ago, competition for jobs, for college placement, and particularly for young people, it's phenomenal. I mean, the way the stress has increased. I would imagine being on a phone 16 hours out of the day. That's why. Yeah, this and, and now we have,

you know, we have the Zoom situation. Nobody knows exactly what that does. I have, I have, to say, you know, in some ways it saves me a lot of time because I don't have to commute. I don't have to go from one part of the university to the other for a meeting. But on the other hand, it does affect your brain. I mean, it's affected my sleep. It's affected just the way I think about the week. The week flies by so much faster. And then you get.

So something happens in our brain for sure. You know, that is just dealing with an uninterrupted flow of information exchange. then obviously the whole situation that kids or younger generations spent so much time on their iPhones with a barrage of very brief episodes of information this is no longer the same kind of the kind of information that our brain have evolved to process it's bombardment of these little bits and pieces at a phenomenal pace I mean I can tell this my wife can tell it that the speed that our the sun's brain works and gets irritated if anything takes longer than two seconds is amazing. You know, so it's a different brain.

And then we have the, you know, we have the pandemic. And it's kind of the silent cost of this social isolation and staying at home and not being in a workplace with other people. That I think is creating a lot of anxiety, particularly in individuals that we talked about earlier, to have a greater stress responsiveness. And then there's also the anxiety that they lost a year in their career, looking for a job. They may have lost their jobs.

They don't know how to get back into the workforce. So there's a big, and then people that were actually threatened, you know, by getting the virus and potentially dying and had the relatives that have one co-worker from India and, you know, several of their relatives have already died and they that that family expects just could happen to anybody in the family

any day you know somebody dies so there's a i think in terms of and there will be many studies coming out on that you know what impact that has and what lasting impact this may have but um because the brain and the mind and the stress are so closely connected to our digestive system it has affected the whole system not just the brain you know these stressors yeah it's It's going to be interesting to see if when studies come out, you know, how many people have noticed a worsening of their GI symptoms. My guess is significantly increased, but the exact numbers, you know, I couldn't tell you right now. So, yeah. Once somebody begins to experience like a dysbiosis of some sort, can they ever return to homeostasis, whatever? I don't know what you call it.

So, you know, the system is programmed early in life. There's a couple of key points in this development. One is the first three years of life where the microbiome develops and is programmed in its basic architecture, which will stay the rest for the life. The second one is the age of 18 to 25 where the brain fully develops, you know, the prefrontal cortex. And so the programming goes on really for quite some time. in the beginning. And the system is definitely compromised in developed countries. So if you take a healthy person today that doesn't have either anxiety or gut symptoms,

you look at the microbiome and you compare that microbiome diversity and richness with person the same age that lives on the Orinoco River, Life of Hunter Gatherers, then our system is already significantly diminished. And that means a lot of species and strains have disappeared permanently. Some have just gone into very low levels of abundance, but some have disappeared. So our health standard is already a somewhat non-optimal system. Right now, even if you eat the healthiest diet and do the most sophisticated, you know, mind-calming interventions, you will not get back to where our ancestors were in terms of the diversity

and their guttales. But you can increase or improve it significantly to, if you do all the right things and then you would compare yourself with a person who does not do the right things, who takes antibiotics, who lives on the unhealthiest diet, who is constantly stressed, you could create a system for yourself that is much, much better, better, you know, and you will probably avoid or minimize most symptoms.

So the system is flexible, is adaptable, and, you know, I see some of the most severely affected patients, and some of them I actually have to say from the beginning, often say it on the phone, I'm most likely not going to be able to help you. You know, this is just, it's too much has affected compromise the brain and the mind and And it's just too much. But that's the exception. You know, I would say 90% of people, I can honestly say, yes, you can have a significant improvement in your brain cocktails. If you guys have ever seen me make my delicious dessert, that's a date with almond butter and chocolate.

I do it on Instagram stories all the time. Then you probably know my love for FX chocolate. FX chocolate is my go-to, especially at night, because it combines chocolate. obviously, and supplements, particularly those that target, yes, this is the theme for the day, stress and anxiety, among other things. So close your pill drawer, skip the daily drudge of gulping down pills, and upgrade your routine with FX chocolate. They've created six different supplement variations. They have exhale, focus, thrive, defend, superfood, dream, and zen, and their latest edition, Sunshine, which is a vitamin D formulation. So each one,

Lens targeted support to a specific need. They have nutraceutical ingredients like Aschwaganda, Rishi mushrooms, CBD, Gaba L-thianine, melatonin, and more. And it's all expertly packed into a handcrafted square of sugar-free, keto-friendly, dark chocolate. So chocolate is not only a more enjoyable way to take your supplements, but it also increases your body's ability to absorb supplements, making it more effective. FX chocolate is offering blondefiles listeners 20% off their first order. Just use the promo code blonde files, B-L-O-N-D-E-F-I-L-E-F-I-S at checkout to get 20% off your first order. So go to F-XChicelet.com, F as in Frank, X as in X-raychocket.com, and use the code blonde files for 20% off. Since we're talking about the mind and the gut and how they're interconnected and learning just how

much things like stress and anxiety affect our overall well-being, there's no better time to begin a meditation practice than right now. This is your sign. And Headspace is the perfect place to start. When it comes to meditation, one of the great things about it is that there really is no right way. Your meditations don't have to be super long. You don't have to be sitting in silence. You can make it whatever you want it to be. And Headspace has a massive library with all kinds of guided meditations that you can choose from. So they have like one to three minute breathing meditations, which are really good. They have a 10 minute letting go of stress one, which I love. They have like three to 10 minutes sleep meditations and longer ones, which are great too.

And one of my personal favorites, the three minute SOS meditation for when I am freaking the F out. Headspace's approach is advancing the field of mindfulness and meditation through clinically validated research, and it can seriously help to reduce stress, improve sleep, boost focus, and improve your overall sense of well-being. And in this episode, you will hear other ways that meditation and mindfulness can really affect your overall well-being. You deserve to feel happier. And Headspace is meditation made simple. Go to headspace.com slash blonde, B-L-O-N-D-E. And you'll get a free one-month trial with access to Headspace's full library of meditations

for every situation. This is the best deal offered right now. So make sure you head to headspace.com slash blonde today. So obviously there are components like we were talking about mindfulness and stress management. And I think most, if not all, research shows that diversity is important for the gut. how effective are things like supplementation or probiotics or eating things like fermented food

in providing diversity for the gut? Yeah, so the main point for diversity is that you feed your microbiome, and I also emphasize this in my book, I said if you just look after what's best for your microbes, for your microbial health, then you do all the best things for yourself automatically. You don't even have to worry about

feed enough protein or enough, you know. So that means a large variety a large amount and a large variety of fruits and vegetables on a regular basis and a small amount of the things that we know are probably not so good for your gut so that's usually animal products from red meat to fat from animal sources that's kind of basic so then the question is can supplements or additional things you know can make it even better and so I like to start with the fermented foods. That's the easiest to address.

So humans have fermented foods for 40,000 years, mainly as a ways of preserving food, not for health reasons. And that's been enough time for our gut to adapt to that constant influx of microbes from the environment, healthy microbes. And that could be either from fermented foods, naturally fermented, could be dairy, could be vegetables,

would be fish. I mean, there's a whole range of products that I usually recommend. That could also come from consuming, like as the French do, a small amount of high quality cheeses. Each cheese has a different constellation of microbes living on them. They usually live on the surface, the rind of the cheese. So you don't have to eat a pound of cheese and increase your cholesterol, but you eat a small amount after dinner,

which most Mediterranean countries do, you know, as a part of it. So then the question is, is it, when I should say, if you look at, for example, the Koreans, you know, or this intake of fermented food is part of the national character. And it's interesting, they do it from earliest childhood on. So you would still have an impact on the development of the microbiome. I've not seen or followed rigorous studies that have looked compared, for example, example, you know, Koreans that live in Korea and strictly adhere to that diet as opposed to, you know, American Koreans that have adapted and eat a lot of meat. And my guess is it would be

quite different. The microbiomes would be very different. And so this is my recommendation rather than taking pills with probiotics. And, you know, now supplements, other supplements, And it's obviously a constantly increasing number of supplements with extracts from superfoods, all kinds of berries. And I don't have a final word on this. I've slightly changed it myself. So, you know, we live on the west side of Los Angeles, easy access to markets and we can do it online to all these products. But what if you live in the food desert and you don't have access to the actual fruits and berries? then you know you might be better off really to supplement your your intake of healthy

molecules from like this particular these polyphenols slash antioxidants from from pills you know and the same holds true like the if you happen to be an Inuit living in Alaska you know you probably don't have access to to all these fairies that we can have here I mean in our household, you know, our first meal of the day is a bowl where this has like six different types of berries in it and they rotate, you know, which ones we, not everybody has that luxury of doing that. So I would say in a limited amount on a certain conditions, I would say, yes, supplementing your healthy diet with certain supplements is, I wouldn't reject that, you know. I like how you say that if you focus on taking care of the bacteria, you end up taking care of

yourself as a whole because I think there is such an emphasis on macronutrients. Eat this much protein and this much fat and this many carbs, you know, and it doesn't matter what it is as long as you're staying within those parameters. Which is amazing, which is amazing that even after all these years that people talk about, you know, how healthy plant-based food is, people still stick to these concepts when they eat a Mediterranean diet. Well, do you get, so the first question is, do you get enough protein if I don't eat my meat every day.

You know, which is, yes, you do get enough protein from the beans and all the, you know, the plant sources of protein, probably better quality of protein anyway, you know, that for you. But, yeah, our world has an obsession with the macronutrients. And dietitians are trained that way at my clinic. So we have now a wellness program at UCLA with dietitians. and wellness coaches. And, you know, whenever I listen to the dietitians, I kind of smile because they're still stuck

in what they're trained in, you know, the macronutrient thing. This is the first thing that they assess. So, yeah, writing the book, the more I wrote on it and did the research I came to this conclusion, there's almost nothing else you need to worry about. If you feed enough fiber, varied fiber,

and enough polyphenols to your microbes, everything else will fall into, place, you know. So let's talk about the gut and immunity connection. I'm sure that kind of coming, hopefully we're at the tail end of the pandemic. I think a lot of people are much more aware of immunity. And did you start writing the book during the pandemic or how did that come about? Yes, this was interesting. It started before the pandemic started. Then, you know, being homebound helped. She had more time to work on it. But it also, the target. changed. You know, it was a moving target during the pandemic. I added sections about the pandemic

into it and not as much because it was, the writing was finished sort of, you know, last fall, I would say, and then it was all editing and things. And so I didn't dramatically change it, but certainly this distinctly became apparent that people were most vulnerable to, um, first of all, catching the virus, getting sick from it, having complications, developing the long COVID, were the people that had other words called comorbid conditions. These comorbid conditions now, or what we call them, these chronic non-infectious diseases, like type 2, like all the metabolic diseases and cardiovascular and they're all, like you can relate them all to the immune system, to an overactive immune system. system. And since this overactivity of the immune system starts in the gut, there's clearly this link, you know, between gut immunity, gut health, systemic immune activation, these chronic diseases. And then the question was, since if these people get the most serious form of COVID-19, could there be a link between, you know, the immunity that starts in the gut and nutrition and this, this scenario. And the answer, I would say is probably yes, you know, that one characteristic of these most more severe cases of COVID-19 were these, it was called the cytokine storm,

so this exaggerated reactivity of the immune system. And that's kind of a hallmark of that whole dysregulated, you know, microbiome immune interaction. And make a long story short, is probably a lot more complicated. But what I've concluded, the unhealthy diet leads to a diminished diversity and decrease in the abundance of certain microbes to play a role in either producing anti-inflammatory molecules like the short-chain fatty acids or that are involved in the regulation of your mucus layer in the gut, which is the barrier, one part of the barrier that prevents the development of a leaky gut.

So if you have a compromised gut microbiome, it will make it much more likely that you have a leaky gut situation, which means your microbes have more access to the immune system and cause this chronic low-grade activation. And if that's severe enough, then the microbes actually can get through gaps in the lining of the gut and circulate in the... in the systemic circulation.

So, yeah, that is something, I mean, also for the future, you know, how can people protect themselves from definitely switching to a, what we now think is pretty good evidence for a gut-friendly diet will be the best thing you can do for your immune system. If you need all these other supplements that are being sold under that umbrella now, you know, we have to do something for immunity. I don't know. I think if you consistently stick to that diet,

I think you do for the most already, you know. There's a saying that all disease starts in the gut, right? You have heard that a lot lately. Do you believe that to be true? Yeah, I believe this to be true more than ever because, you know, with this, so the thing that we're dealing with the most today in increasing in the last 50 years are these non-infectious chronic diseases. You know, the pandemic was a blip of an infectious disease that happened every few years.

It will happen again, almost certainly. But in principle, the infectious diseases have sort of gone into the background, really in terms of impact on the healthcare system and health of people. Whereas the other ones have constantly increased. And I believe after doing the research for the, book, I do believe that all these chronic non-infectious diseases start in the gut. It's, in some ways, I'm resistant as a scientist to a simplistic idea like this, but the evidence is pretty overwhelming. Yeah, and I have to say, I mean, these are really insightful questions.

You know, it's like talking to somebody, it's like talking to somebody already knows all the answers and asks specifically to confirm them. So it's, yeah, so you're definitely an expert in this field, I have to say. Well, coming from you, that's a huge compliment. So thank you so much. I really appreciate that. And I really enjoyed talking to you. Where can everybody find your book, find information about you, all of that?

Yeah, so the simplest way, you know, since they can find me everywhere on the social media, all the social media channels or on YouTube, but the simplest way to getting the best access is really through my website, amaranmayer.com. and when you click there, we'll open up, are you interested in receiving our newsletter, our free newsletter. That provides up-to-date information on all aspects of mind, gut, and nutrition, written by different contributors, you know, experts in the field. But you also will have access to all the previous hosts and blogs and everything is there.

So I would say, yeah, go to AmeranMayer. that will be the best simplest way of doing it. I'll link that in the show notes so everybody can get to it easily. And thank you again for coming on. You'll have to come back when you write your next book. Yeah, so hopefully we won't have to be written in another epidemic. Yeah. Thank you so much, Dr. Mayor.

Thanks. Nice talking to you. Bye-bye. I hope you enjoyed that episode. If you liked it. And if you like the show in general, please take a second to rate, review, and subscribe. It goes a long way, and it's actually the best way to support the show. Also, if you want to see more about each episode, you can head over to The Blonde Files podcast on Instagram.

I'm always posting about each episode there or over on my personal page at Ariel Laurie.