00:00:00
Studies showed that if you are flossing, you can reduce your risk of dementia by
00:00:04
nearly half, which is quite impressive. So I started to research the brain much more and it made me realize this link
00:00:11
with the brain and the gut is absolutely crucial and how that influences many things in our brain. For example, things
00:00:17
like depression, mood changes, fatigue and energy. But for 40 years, we've been
00:00:22
going down the wrong path. We've got so distracted by treating the brain as something so different to the rest of
00:00:27
the body. So, what do we do about it if we want to have optimally healthy brains? So, Professor Tim Spectre is one
00:00:34
of the top 100 most cited scientists worldwide, and he's back to reveal the critical role our gut plays with our
00:00:40
physical and mental health, >> our cognition, and the prevention of chronic disease.
00:00:45
>> We can dramatically improve our lives and our health just by making the right
00:00:50
food choices. And I've got eight rules for gut health which work for all health. So, first thing, pivot your
00:00:56
protein. Then there's quality, not calories. The whole idea of assessing food by calories is wrong. Calorie
00:01:02
restricted diets have been shown for the vast majority of people not to work. Your hunger signals go up. And hunger is
00:01:09
the main driver of obesity. And we'll get into the other rules. >> And what about coffee?
00:01:13
>> So drinking between two and five cups of coffee reduces your risk of heart
00:01:17
disease by about 25%. >> And then what do you think of almonds? >> So there's lots of studies showing that
00:01:22
they're good for your cognition and mood. And what about your views on GLP1s
00:01:26
like Zen? >> I think from a public health perspective, they're going to transform
00:01:31
medicine and we ought to be taking it much more seriously. But I've got two real worries about them. My first worry
00:01:37
is that Listen, my my team gave me a script that they asked me to read, but I'm just
00:01:48
going to ask you um in the nicest way I possibly can. Thank you first and foremost for choosing to subscribe to
00:01:53
this channel. It is um it's been one of the most incredible crazy years of my
00:01:56
life. I never could have imagined. I had so many dreams in my life, but this was
00:02:00
not one of them. And the very fact that these conversations have resonated with you and you've given me so much feedback
00:02:04
is something I will always be appreciative of. And I almost carry away a sort of burden of uh responsibility to
00:02:10
pay you back. And the favor I would like to ask from you today is to subscribe to
00:02:14
the channel if you um would be so obliged. It's completely free to do that. Roughly about 47% of you that
00:02:20
listen to this channel frequently currently don't subscribe to this channel. So if you're one of those
00:02:23
people, please come and join us. Hit the subscribe button. It's the single free
00:02:27
thing you can do to make this channel better. And every subscriber sort of pays into this show and allows us to do
00:02:32
things bigger and better and to push ourselves even more. And I will not let you down if you hit the subscribe
00:02:36
button. I promise you. And if I do, please do unsubscribe, but I promise I won't. Thank you.
00:02:48
Professor Tim Spectre. Who is um who's this lovely lady and how does she tie into the work you're
00:02:55
focused on right now? >> That's my lovely mom, June, who is still with us, age 93. Wow. but for the last
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seven years has been in a in a home in London after suffering a stroke and uh then developing dementia
00:03:15
and so um yeah that's um changed some of my views on life and uh she was really pro- uh euthanasia and signed
00:03:29
every paper possible that if this ever happened to her you know she would be able to end her life but Unfortunately,
00:03:36
that didn't come true and under UK law, it's not possible to to help her in that
00:03:42
because she lost capability and mobility very early. So, she's still there, but
00:03:48
she doesn't no longer recognizes me. And um it's it's a reminder of you know our
00:03:55
potential future life and uh how so many so many people in the are going to end up with
00:04:03
dementia that wasn't the case 50 years ago. If I can do something to reverse
00:04:09
this epidemic of dementia, then that's really motivating for me and in a way
00:04:15
one reason why I've started to research the brain much more than I I've done in
00:04:21
the past. >> So, is dementia increasing or is it that we know of it more now? So, we're better at diagnosing
00:04:30
it. >> It's increasing for a number of reasons. So some of it is the age demographic. So
00:04:36
we're living longer, >> but we're not living healthier. So our health span hasn't really increased, but
00:04:44
our lifespan has. We're good at keeping elderly people alive longer. That's
00:04:50
definitely true, but there's also stats to show that it is increasing even when
00:04:54
you take that into account. So that more people are developing uh dementia than ever before, even when you account for
00:05:02
the demographics. and those other changes. So, it is a major worry and I think it's one of the the major fears
00:05:09
that all of us have. You know, obviously you've got cancer is one fear, but I
00:05:15
think the other really bad one is ending up with dementia because nearly everyone
00:05:19
knows somebody with dementia. >> Did this inspire you to go get your own brain scanned?
00:05:25
>> Yes, I'd had, as you know, problems with my brain before. I'd had a mini stroke
00:05:31
back in 2011 and never really worked out the causes of that. I knew I had some white spots in
00:05:40
my brain. I wanted to see if they were still there, if there were any signs of that. And at the same time, I wanted to
00:05:49
get a checkup to see was I likely to end up like my mother or not. And did I have
00:05:55
the genetic form of the disease? Was it a straightforward Alzheimer's or was it
00:06:00
more the vascular type that my mother had or probably has? And so yeah, partly it was motivated out
00:06:09
of my cur my medical curiosity and partly for self-interest. >> And what did you find? I went to this
00:06:17
specialized clinic in London that does these dementia screens, so I know if I had the risk genes for Alzheimer's,
00:06:26
which luckily I don't. Um, but I do have bad genes for diabetes and heart disease, which predispose you to the
00:06:35
vascular side of things. >> What's vascular dementia? >> There's several types of dementia, but
00:06:39
the two main ones are Alzheimer's, where you get these protein folds in the brain. you get local inflammation, these
00:06:47
protein tangles, and that then causes these damage to the bits of the brain. That's a very specific type of dementia.
00:06:56
Then you get more generalized dementia, which is usually called vascular dementia, where you're just getting
00:07:02
clogging up of the arteries supplying the brain just like you do in the heart. And that knocks off other bits of the
00:07:11
brain uh in a slightly more random way than happens uh with Alzheimer's. Slightly
00:07:17
less predictable, but that accounts for about a third of all dementia is this vascular time. I'm predisposed to it
00:07:24
because after my this weird episode in 2011, my blood pressure went up. So anyone with high blood pressure
00:07:31
generally has slightly stiffer arteries than most people and that impacts the arteries in your brain. So, you are
00:07:38
slightly more at risk. And with these diabetes genes that I've got, thanks to
00:07:43
my grandmother, I am more at risk of vascular dementia. And so, what I wanted to do was learn about that in order to
00:07:52
optimize all the things I could do to postpone it or prevent it as much as possible.
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>> Over the last 5 years or so, your interest in the brain has increased. What what is the the the variance in
00:08:06
your views of the brain now versus five years ago before you started doing research and getting interested in it?
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>> I think I saw the brain as a rather distinct organ that uh was the domain of psychiatry and you
00:08:21
know perhaps gerontologists who look at dementia that wasn't really part of the
00:08:25
major picture and certainly wasn't within my domain of expertise. I think I still believe in this the cartesian view
00:08:34
of the difference between the mind and the brain the mind and the body that these two separate entities and
00:08:42
you've got this barrier between them this blood brain barrier that was really
00:08:47
like an iron curtain. So I I was interested in it but I didn't realize this huge connection I've now discovered
00:08:56
really that um has really excited me and I think the thing that triggered it was
00:09:02
some of our own experiments which happened a bit by chance. So when we started Zoey, we did a number of trials
00:09:10
and we gave our participants apps so they could report how they felt. In every study we did, we started getting
00:09:21
back these incredible results of people saying when they were when they started the Zoey diet, for example, the first
00:09:27
thing they noticed was their mood and energy improved and their hunger uh got less. And that was before any blood
00:09:34
changes, before any gut changes. And so initially we slightly discounted it, but
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it happened in every study we did. We'd looked at the menopause. And again, the
00:09:44
most dramatic change when people were improving their gut health through food with menopausal symptoms was was on mood
00:09:51
and energy. Because originally I'm a rheatologist uh and was really interested in inflammation. I'd never
00:09:58
put that connection between what was inflammation in the body and in your joints with what was going on in your
00:10:05
brain. And suddenly the latest science when I'm going away you doing my reading
00:10:10
is making it all so so much clearer. It's it's really become, you know, this this new idea of things
00:10:19
like depression, things like mood changes, things like fatigue and energy, which I hadn't really thought about as
00:10:27
in a way a malfunction of the brain, responding the wrong way to signals from the rest of the body. But it it suddenly
00:10:35
all comes into focus about how holistic the whole system is and how really the brain is just another organ. And this
00:10:43
link with the gut is absolutely crucial because that's where it gets most of its
00:10:48
information from. You know, we have this vagus nerve that goes from our gut to our brain, the longest nerve in the
00:10:55
body. And 80% of the signals go gut to brain. Only 20% go brain to gut. So all these things together have just
00:11:06
made me realize how important what going into our gut is, our diet is, and how that influences many things in our brain
00:11:13
that I didn't put together before. And I don't think most most of the medical
00:11:18
world have put together before. And it we've all got the brain on a pedestal, I
00:11:22
should say. You know, we we think it's this some this unique thing that's
00:11:25
driving our bodies, but actually it's not. It's just responding to them just
00:11:30
like any other organ. It made me reflect on the days that I've had like good and bad moods and how
00:11:41
how much it's linked to my diet in the preceding couple of days like how I feel. If I sleep is such a big
00:11:48
exacerbating factor in how I feel, but if I'm slept and I still don't feel
00:11:52
good, it's typically linked I think to something I've been eating or something
00:11:56
I've eaten very recently maybe in the last 24 hours. So when you talk about how there's this holistic picture and
00:12:01
how my brain might be I think I can't remember the words you used but but it
00:12:04
sounded like you said my brain is receiving signals from other parts of my body and it's kind of malfunctioning
00:12:09
based on those signals which is causing depression, anxiety, bad moods, whatever. That I think is really
00:12:14
interesting because people think of mood as a separate thing. We don't think of
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mood connected to my gut. >> No, it's it's your own fault. You're in
00:12:20
a bad mood. Why are you in a bad mood? >> Something happened. >> Yeah.
00:12:23
>> Externally. So someone cut you off in traffic or whatever it might be. all
00:12:26
these studies, you know, we've got four studies now where we're changing
00:12:30
people's diets and they're going, they've been on generally bad diets,
00:12:34
we've moved them to good diets that mood and particularly energy levels, the first thing they noticed, they're
00:12:41
improving. And they never linked, just like you, their mood and energy levels with things like diet. It was just
00:12:49
inherent. They thought, "Oh, it's just cuz I'm, you know, my life's or
00:12:53
whatever it is." An extreme example is some families we've been working with
00:12:58
doing a channel 4 series at the moment called What Not to Eat and we visit four families and they're terrible diets and
00:13:07
we transform them, give them a gut friendly makeover diet. Look at them after 6 weeks. The first thing they all notice
00:13:16
is their mood and energy is dramatically increased. They were napping all the time. They were asleep all the time
00:13:23
during the day. >> What were they eating? >> Crap food. Highly processed crap food
00:13:29
and snacking late at night. Bars of chocolate, you know, sodas, chicken nuggets, pot noodles, rubbish food,
00:13:37
right? So, these were more worse than your average, but still there's millions
00:13:42
of people like that doing this. And they had no clue that it was linked to them feeling terrible and tired all the time.
00:13:50
And again the first thing that improved was what was going on in their brains and they suddenly felt alert again. And
00:13:58
once people realize there's connection then in a way you'd have this feedback
00:14:04
loop to say okay I'm not going to eat this food you know because I know it's making me feel so sick. But until
00:14:12
you make that connection you're not going to know. you'll just be in this
00:14:16
constant state saying, well, you know, I'm just overweight, that's why I'm
00:14:20
tired. Uh, or I'm not exercising, that's why I'm tired. There's a bit of a
00:14:25
vicious cycle here with eating something bad, then being low energy and sleeping
00:14:30
all day, not feeling good. So, you eat something bad and the cycle continues. Cuz if I don't feel good, I probably
00:14:37
want to eat a chocolate bar. In our Zoe studies, we found that people who had a bad night's sleep desperately craved
00:14:44
some sugary crap in the morning. Right? It's the first you don't go for a
00:14:48
healthy breakfast. It's like there's some little evil thing in your brain
00:14:52
saying, "Um, okay, I need a quick fix. I don't care about the rest of the day.
00:14:57
Just get me through the next hour." >> Do you know Do you know what that I had
00:15:01
someone posit on my podcast that um that was because your body's basically under
00:15:06
a form of stress. So from an evolutionary perspective, if if you're waking up in the middle of the night for
00:15:10
some reason or you weren't sleeping properly, it might be because you were under threat. So your brain wants
00:15:16
energy. So there a lot of studies now that stress, which we thought of as a sort of external
00:15:23
psychological event, is actually a physiological one and is actually driving inflammation. It's directly
00:15:28
affecting your immune system, which is then sending these signals to your brain to change your behavior. And this I
00:15:34
think is very much the heart of what seems to be happening, you know, in depression.
00:15:42
What I've been finding out is that it's detecting a change in the immune system.
00:15:47
It's switching on to the stress mode. And the stress mode then triggers these
00:15:52
different behaviors in your brain. And very often it's not, you know, real stress. I mean most of the stresses we
00:16:00
get it every day are not like our ancestors had. Uh we're not being chased by wild animals or um being burnt out of
00:16:08
our village, you know. So the and what really interested me was this whole link between what happens when uh you have a
00:16:17
vaccination. During Zoe, we looked at a million people's responses to the if you
00:16:22
remember the the FISA and uh vaccine and the SK vaccine. And what was really interesting was that uh people were
00:16:32
actually depressed during that time. So you had about 24 hours of depression which was mimicking
00:16:40
um a more constant threat. And this suddenly brought home this idea that you can trigger depression through a little
00:16:48
shift in your immune system. There's a really growing theory about people who
00:16:53
have long-term depression is that these their immune changes are switched on so that they're getting the equivalent of
00:17:00
this constant tickling of the immune system by a vaccine. So that to me is was was a really important thing because
00:17:09
I I have vaccines. I have regular vaccines. I'm big believer in vaccines, but they do make you feel a little bit
00:17:16
down. That makes sense cuz your blood tests will show a spike in your proteins for inflammation. Your immune system's
00:17:24
kicking in. That sends signals to your brain. Your brain says, "Okay, I looks
00:17:28
like I've got an illness coming here." That illness behavior in some people
00:17:32
then gets carried on for months or years. And this is now developing this whole new theory of of
00:17:41
why uh people are depressed which isn't the old theory of it's just due to a
00:17:47
chemical imbalance. It's actually your body responding abnormally to a you know a normal response. It's it thinks
00:17:56
it's under attack. Your brain thinks it's under attack. It should then shut
00:18:00
down and protect you. This I find fascinating that we're now linking so much to the immune system and it's the
00:18:08
immune basis of things of mental and brain diseases is becoming incredibly important. I'm sure you've talked on the
00:18:16
podcast a lot about inflamming and the role of controlling the immune system because if your immune system is out of
00:18:25
control you inflammation levels are high your body can't repair itself. So aging
00:18:30
happens faster in the brain. All of these things are pointing to inflammation being crucial to
00:18:35
everything, but particularly in all aspects of brain health. And when I went and looked, you can really find that the
00:18:44
immune system has a role in every brain disease they've ever looked at. And yet
00:18:49
we've missed it because we've been so obsessed with new, you know, the way
00:18:54
that Prozac works by it just being about serotonin uh or dopamine. And for 40 years, we've
00:19:04
been going down the wrong path and missing this holistic view that actually it's it's about inflammation
00:19:12
paired with metabolism. Because the other big player here is and the reason a lot of people get dementia is blood
00:19:18
sugar is not well controlled and the the energy supply to the brain is not well controlled. So those two things for me
00:19:25
have transformed my view of of brain health. And I used to study genetics as you know
00:19:33
and it was always interesting that in um when we looked at twins which were usually very similar for most things
00:19:40
when we looked at um brain diseases there was very little similarity in the twins. So the genetic component was
00:19:46
always quite small apart from a few diseases. Most of them were really low-level uh what we call heritability.
00:19:54
And there was a massive study in um Sweden. They looked at several million sibling pairs and s looked at all their
00:20:04
mental health or brain diseases I prefer to call them. And there was no gene that
00:20:10
really came out even in several million people that explained these disease other than a general tendency
00:20:19
to get any type of brain disease. So they called you know this like factor P. Um, if you had this general
00:20:29
susceptibility, you could get any disease, but that could be mania, depression, bipolar, ADHD, it could be
00:20:36
Alzheimer's, it could be schizophrenia, which which suddenly changes your whole
00:20:41
view of these these diseases. We've said these are individual um diseases that
00:20:46
should always be looked at separately. And if you start thinking of this as the brain as a an organ just like anything
00:20:52
else like it was the liver, you'd say, okay, we talk about liver disease, you
00:20:56
know, how do you prevent liver disease? We never talk about that in brain disease. We just say, okay, you got to
00:21:03
talk about manic depression differently to uh ADHD or personality disorder or epilepsy or whatever it is. But it turns
00:21:11
out that not only have the similar genes, but really similar risk factors as well.
00:21:17
I've heard you say that you think Parkinson's disease starts in the gut as
00:21:23
inflammation in the gut. >> Yeah, that's a great um example of how my view of these diseases changing.
00:21:31
There's really good epidemiology data now. Um >> epidemiology data. >> Epidemiology data is data in large
00:21:40
populations. Um so you study the cause of disease by studying populations. That's essentially
00:21:47
what epidemiology is. And what these studies have shown is that if you follow susceptible people
00:21:56
uh and find out who at the end ended up with Parkinson's disease, you will see
00:22:02
that about 90% of people who end up with Parkinson disease had some gut problems
00:22:07
10 years before. And you might say, okay, well, might not be related, might be two separate
00:22:15
things, but they've actually found the same protein changes in the brains in
00:22:21
people with Parkinson's disease, this particular protein that gets misfolded.
00:22:28
It's a bit equivalent to Alzheimer's but it's it's separate a separate type of
00:22:31
protein alpha sinuclean and it gets folded and you get this characteristic thing you can see
00:22:39
postmortem called a a louisi body but it's the protein folding that's important and if you look in the gut not
00:22:45
only do these people have constipation and bloating and problems 10 years before a really sluggish uh intestine
00:22:52
but they have the same proteins that are misfolded that you can find in their gut
00:22:58
And they think that it takes 10 years for these proteins to go slowly up the vagus nerve into the brain and then it
00:23:06
causes the problem there. So this is the the latest theory behind Parkinson's
00:23:11
disease that it actually starts in the gut and it's related to inflammation in
00:23:16
the gut. So these proteins start folding when the gut is not happy which means that you could potentially prevent
00:23:25
Parkinson's disease by a gut friendly diet. It looks like it's the evidence is
00:23:32
building that you know that's going to be pretty concrete soon. If that's true
00:23:35
then you may think what other diseases might have that origin there that we um really don't understand. What about
00:23:44
multiple scerosis that might happen there first? And it really starts to bring, you know, this obscure of these brain
00:23:53
disease back into the domain of the rest of the body and what's going on there
00:23:57
and these metabolic problems. You know, diabetes is the number one risk factor for so many of these conditions as well.
00:24:05
So like if you got type two diabetes, you're like four times as more likely to
00:24:10
have a brain disease. not only depression but also you know bipolar, schizophrenia,
00:24:17
epilepsy, all of these ones. So clearly they're linked. They're this what goes
00:24:22
on in your body, what you're eating, what what your immune system is doing has this amazing knock-on effect.
00:24:32
>> So what do we do about it? What does the average person do about it? You know,
00:24:35
because the average you know what the average diet looks like in the western world. Um, if we want to have
00:24:42
optimally healthy brains and avoid dementia, Parkinson's, and some of these other disorders that are linked to the
00:24:48
gut, what is what is the most important thing the listener right now should be thinking about and doing? Well, I like
00:24:55
to think we got I've got a list that's getting longer, but it I've got now
00:25:00
eight rules for gut health, which pretty much work for all health because we you to treat
00:25:07
the brain. It's no really different to treating the rest of your body. If you
00:25:12
treat that well, you're going to be fine. So, the first thing is to be mindful of what you're eating. Don't
00:25:18
just put any old in your mouth, you know? I mean, stop for a bit and saying, "Is this what's in it? Is it any good
00:25:26
for me? How's it going to make me feel?" >> You mean checking labels and stuff?
00:25:30
>> Checking labels or even just taking a second to think, you know, gosh, don't just blindly eat in front of the
00:25:37
TV without thinking what you're eating as we most of us do. Second, and probably the key thing is, I think, is
00:25:43
to eat a diversity of plants. 30 plants a week. These 30 plants give you the diversity of chemicals to act as
00:25:53
fertilizers for getting as many good bugs as you can into your system. >> How can you explain that to someone that
00:25:59
doesn't know much about the gut? >> When I'm talking about your gut, I'm
00:26:01
talking about gut microbes. And there are 40 to 100 trillion of these guys in your mainly in your large intestine that
00:26:11
are many pharmacies. And there we have thousands of different species, all of which highly selected to
00:26:21
eat only certain foods. There's one that only likes coffee, for example, called
00:26:26
Lorenabacta. >> A bug that only likes coffee in my belly. It's >> just waiting for you to drink coffee.
00:26:30
>> And when I drink coffee, what happens? It uh has a party, has sex, has babies,
00:26:36
multiplies, and then produces certain chemicals in response by breaking down that coffee into other ingredients which
00:26:43
might then help your immune system and um in some way explain why coffee is good for your heart. So, you got to
00:26:51
imagine that you've got lots of bugs like that that are highly specific waiting for you to have uh not only
00:26:58
coffee, but you know, maybe it's seaweed or maybe uh it's baobob or maybe it's
00:27:03
things you don't often have uh so that we can expand our list of good bugs. >> So, if I stop eating a particular food
00:27:12
like coffee, if I stop having coffee, will that bug die? It probably goes down to very low levels because actually
00:27:21
what's interesting is even if you stop drinking coffee, you're surrounded by
00:27:24
coffee drinkers and they they're droplets of saliva and kisses and uh greetings mean that you'll
00:27:33
be getting uh some of that either those bugs themselves or you'll be getting um
00:27:40
some bits of coffee in the air, a coffee aroma. Okay. So, the bugs go up and down
00:27:45
in population. >> Yes. So, even in non- coffee drinkers, we do see tiny amounts of this uh this
00:27:51
Lorsonacta. Um but in countries that don't drink coffee at all, there are a few African
00:27:57
countries for example where it doesn't ex um so it that's but I think it's
00:28:04
important to imagine your it's a bit like having a rare animal. You know, you've got to feed in your zoo. You
00:28:12
don't want to give them all the same food. You've got to give them this diversity so that all the rare animals
00:28:17
can get out there. And we know that the more good bugs you've got, the better your immune system, the more
00:28:25
you dampen inflammation, the more you can prevent all these problems that we're seeing. So our our aim is to build
00:28:32
up the good bugs. And the more you build them up, they squash out the bad bugs, the ones that like eating the burgers
00:28:38
and the the the bad food and the and the terrible quality fats and the artificial
00:28:45
substances. So you're squashing them out by starving them and you do that by
00:28:50
feeding them properly. That's the that's the concept if that makes sense.
00:28:54
>> And on that point of coffee, doesn't it restrict blood flow to your brain?
00:28:59
>> No, not as far as I know. >> Oh, really? Um I'm talking I know about
00:29:04
coffee at the epidemiological level. So there have been multiple studies like I was saying between coffee drinkers, non-
00:29:10
coffee drinkers, seeing what happens to them 20 30 years later and drinking between two and five cups of coffee
00:29:18
reduces your risk of heart disease by about 25%. So there may be other studies showing it
00:29:25
does something to your brain, but generally everything I've seen is beneficial. I've not seen anything
00:29:32
negative. Although there are some people who react to caffeine badly, so there's
00:29:36
always a a personalized element to it. >> Sleep disruption and stuff. >> Yes. So you you might be a a
00:29:43
metabolizer. It doesn't metabolize quickly in you. So that caffeine is hanging around longer. So they're the
00:29:50
only downsides to it for some people. >> Can it make you more anxious? >> Um I think it can make some people more
00:29:57
anxious. Yes. Um, and that's that's why things like matcha are better than
00:30:03
coffee because they have a an extra chemical in there that can calm you down. So, like anything, it any food,
00:30:10
it's all personalized. And so, when we talk about epidemiology, we're talking
00:30:14
about the average person. Um, doesn't mean there aren't aren't exceptions. So,
00:30:19
I'm not saying that everybody in the world needs to have coffee, but coffee used to be demonized as something that
00:30:25
would give you heart attacks and arrhythmias. And in fact the opposite is true epidemologically speak you can
00:30:32
actually you get less heart abnormalities arrhythmias when you drink coffee for reasons we still don't
00:30:39
understand. >> So the first point of the eight was mind being mindful about what you eat. Second
00:30:44
was uh eat uh 30 different plants. And that's that was the basis of our our Zoey product, the daily 30, which has 34
00:30:55
uh mainly freeze-dried whole plants in it. And we've recently added some more.
00:31:01
So, we added some seaweed, some algae, and uh some kombucha in there. So, they're rare ingredients. We got seven
00:31:08
different types of mushroom that you wouldn't normally have. >> It's worth me saying that I'm an
00:31:11
investor in Zoe. Um, and let me take that back. >> So, you just you take this out and you
00:31:18
sprinkle it on top of your food typically. >> Yes. You add it to food. Um, and it's so
00:31:24
it's it's different to most of the other sort of supplements you might see. Uh,
00:31:30
it's not instead of food. It looks more like food than most uh of the of the
00:31:36
common supplements out there that look like green powders. We we did a big trial of this with about 340 people
00:31:44
comparing it to a probiotic and a um a dummy one and over 6 weeks you get really quite dramatic improvements in
00:31:53
your gut uh microbes with with eating this. So the you really push up the good bugs and squash out the bad bugs about
00:32:02
several times more than you would get just by having a traditional probiotic. So this fertilizer approach
00:32:10
uh does seem to work and this is this is the study where we also showed the improvements in mood after a few days
00:32:17
which um you know surprised me because I wasn't even thinking about that when we
00:32:24
we we planned the study. So the key reported findings in that study were a gut microbiome improvement,
00:32:30
an average increase of five points in their Zo gut microbiome score, digestive system, 70% of people reported
00:32:36
improvements in overall digestive systems symptoms. Um, and it increased fullness by 41.5%.
00:32:46
Satisfaction by 21.6% 6% and energy by 43.3% and reduced hunger and desire to eat versus
00:32:55
the meal alone. About half reported increased energy and 45% reported improved happiness in the
00:33:02
main study. >> So we weren't expecting that. That that was my my point really on these because
00:33:09
we thought it would just be gut it like okay do I get do I go to the toilet more
00:33:13
often? Is it improving my gut microbes? And so it was a real bonus to see these these brain effects.
00:33:20
>> And did you do stool tests on those people to see yes the change in the bugs
00:33:24
in their stomach over that period? Was it six weeks? >> It was around six weeks. Yes.
00:33:28
>> Yeah. And what did you see change in their their gut bugs? >> So we've got a new scoring method for
00:33:34
gut bugs which we published last month in in in nature. And so we used to talk about diversity and on previous podcasts
00:33:43
I think we've talked about diversity which is the number of different species
00:33:48
but we've got a better way of looking at that now which is to take um 100 most
00:33:53
important bugs that change with diet that everybody's got because we're all
00:33:57
different. It's very hard to compare your your bugs with my bugs because we only share 20%. So this looks at 100
00:34:05
common bugs that we've both got, 50 good and 50 bad. And what we want in an intervention is to see the the good bugs
00:34:13
are associated with good diet and good health outcomes, good blood tests are going up and the bad bugs associated
00:34:21
with inflammation, uh, poor diets and bad health outcomes going down. And that's exactly what we
00:34:29
saw. We saw an a change in roughly 40 of these microbes with the prebiotic the daily 30 whereas with the probiotic
00:34:38
which we know works from other studies we saw only a change in about four or five of the bugs.
00:34:44
>> Okay. >> So was it so they both worked but the the prebiotic was working better than
00:34:49
the probiotic which has sort of changed my mind about what's more powerful. >> So prebiotic being what and probiotic
00:34:56
being what? Prebiotic is like a fertilizer for gut microbes. It's there. It's giving them food.
00:35:02
>> Yeah. >> So that and in an indiscriminate way because we're giving a a wide variety of
00:35:07
foods. In these 34 plants, each of them has hundreds of chemicals. So there's
00:35:12
thousands of different things for them to feed on. Whereas a probiotic, we used Lactobacillus ramnosis, which is a
00:35:19
well-known one that's been studied, you know, hundred of time in hundreds of
00:35:24
trials. It's a live microbe that lives generally in in foods like yogurt and
00:35:29
things like this in a concentrated form in a capsule. You give that and it improved uh the gut microb but much less
00:35:38
than the >> so prebiotic gives them food. Probiotic actually just puts bugs in there.
00:35:42
>> It puts bugs in there and we used to think it was like a seed. Uh so the it was the you know so
00:35:48
fertilizers and maybe seeds but we now know that that bug will never really seed in your in your gut microbiome.
00:35:56
And so the science is and our thinking has changed. We think the probiotic is is really tickling your immune system as
00:36:03
it's going down. >> Okay. >> So it's probably working higher up in
00:36:08
the the small intestine which is um further up in the gut. Where where is where is the gut?
00:36:16
>> Yes. So most people if you ask people to point to the gut they always think of
00:36:20
their stomach. >> Yeah. >> Uh that's not your stomach. You see that's that's your there the intestines.
00:36:28
So your your stomach is up here. U take away your your liver. If you imagine we've got a body here,
00:36:36
you got a mouth. Food goes in there through the esophagus, which is a tube that leads to the stomach. And this is
00:36:45
the stomach here, which is highly acidic. And that leads into the geodenum through a a little valve. And that is
00:36:53
where food starts getting mushed around into little balls. It goes into the small intestine here, which is badly
00:37:01
named because the small intestine is really the largest bit of the gut. And it's endless coils as of u guts there.
00:37:12
Lots of crypts. There's little nooks and crannies everywhere. And so the surface
00:37:17
area is really huge. It's it's several tennis courts if you laid it out just
00:37:22
one um in one human. And that's because that's where most of the nutrients get
00:37:28
absorbed. They get extracted from the food and absorbed that way. So that all the trace elements and things we're
00:37:35
recycling. We're like a recycling factory. And then from the small intestine, it then goes into the large
00:37:42
intestine, which is also called the colon. And that's where most of the gut microbes are. So, so 99% of the gut
00:37:52
microbes are in that final part, the large intestine, which uh is a a couple of meters long and varies widely between
00:38:02
people. And this is the spot where fiber uh goes, things that hasn't been digested in the early part of the the
00:38:11
gut uh is and that's because the microbes mainly feed off fiber. And so that's where they do the good.
00:38:20
They convert that fiber into products such as short- chain fatty acids, which are the really beneficial chemicals that
00:38:28
are good for our immune system. And it's important to realize that across both
00:38:32
the small and the large intestine, you've got ner huge amounts of nerves. You've got what's called the interic
00:38:39
nervous system, which is our second brain and is it was actually the first brain to be formed. So when we were
00:38:48
little embryos uh we started as a little tube and the nervous system that formed around our
00:38:55
intestine was actually the first bit first brain of our body and in a way we developed the second one on our head as
00:39:01
a oh bit of an afterthought. Uh which is quite fun way of thinking about it but just shows how important the nerves are
00:39:09
in our in our gut to our the way we function. And as we were talking earlier about this this connection between the
00:39:15
two and there's also immune cells. So 70% of our immune cells are uh in the gut. Most of them in in the large
00:39:23
intestine but also in the small intestine. So our immune system is here and a huge amount of our nervous system
00:39:29
is here. >> Why? Presumably the the bugs are all through the body. >> They're everywhere. So they're also in
00:39:35
your Yes. So I should point out we're covered in bugs. So every bit of the human body uh has uh some bugs in it.
00:39:44
The second biggest place where we have them is in our mouth. So the oral microbiome in our in our saliva and in
00:39:52
our teeth and uh our gums. And that's why poor uh hygiene if you're not flossing properly, you double the risk
00:40:02
of getting dementia as well. Interestingly, because there's a a real link between microbes here that if
00:40:08
they're eating plaque and other stuff that you're leaving around in your gums
00:40:12
gets inflamed, that creates an environment where nasty microbes that love inflammation live.
00:40:19
And for reasons we don't know, they seem to pass into from from your mouth into
00:40:25
your brain and trigger inflammation in the brain, which then uh increase your risk of dementia. if you're not
00:40:32
flossing. >> Yes, this is really new science showing that just how important these getting
00:40:38
the right bugs in the right place and avoiding the ones who are in the wrong place really is.
00:40:43
>> Why do we need these bugs? Why didn't evolution design us so that we could
00:40:47
just do all this stuff without the need of these little workers, these little bugs in our bodies? It it seems super
00:40:54
weird to me that you know you think of the human body as being this one organism but actually it's appears to be
00:41:00
many millions and millions and millions of organisms. >> Well, you've got a sort of humanentric
00:41:04
view of the world. So um we we evolve from microbes. >> We are one. We we used to be one.
00:41:10
>> We used to be one and um it it turns out that most of our body is are remnants of
00:41:19
microbes. microbes obviously fused to cause to cause uh human cells. So that was the whole origin of of how
00:41:29
multisellular creatures came together. These single-sellled microbes, some of them fused to to do that, others
00:41:36
stayed as single cells. There was always this link between the single-sellled guys and their multisellular
00:41:44
ancestors, if you like. And so as we co-evolved into more complicated beings, the the two were always together. And it
00:41:54
turned out that again as like as we're formed as embryos, the gut is the first
00:42:01
thing that you know this this cylind this tube is the first thing that comes out um of the design system. And it's
00:42:10
designed to have microbes in it that serve a crucial purpose in training our immune system to recognize what's out
00:42:19
what's harmful and what's beneficial. And it's also shown to be crucial for
00:42:24
our brain development. But it it is fascinating when we start think about our origins and think of it that you
00:42:30
know we essentially start as microbes because also we don't think of our body
00:42:35
you know we've always historically thought of you know God's creation this
00:42:39
body had nothing to do with anything else we were the masters of the universe and I think it's quite humbling to
00:42:44
realize that so much of us comes from microbes and I learned something recently that was that also blew me away
00:42:51
is that all ourselves have these powerhouses in them called mitochondria. And it turns out they do much more than
00:43:00
just supply batteries for the cell. They they fighting inflammation. They're
00:43:05
important for gene expression. They're good for metabolism. And it turns out
00:43:10
the origin of these things is little microbes that got trapped in our bodies. They are essentially uh microbes that
00:43:20
were good at making creating energy. And um at some point in our distant past, we fused um our multisellular
00:43:32
um microbes that were were going around doing stuff. They said, "Oh, we could do
00:43:36
with some more energy." And so by chance they fused with these energy microbes
00:43:42
and slowly and slowly became incorporated into our bodies so that we now have these mitochondria all of our
00:43:48
bodies which whose ancestors are also uh microbes >> and we have them in every cell of our
00:43:53
body. >> Yes, we do. And they're turning out to be quite crucial as well in in brain
00:43:58
health. Do you do you do you spend much time wondering or have there been periods in your life where you've
00:44:03
wondered about the meaning of all of this and why there's living organisms? Because it doesn't appear to be a great
00:44:09
need for living organisms. You know, you could just have rocks and water on these planets. I don't know why
00:44:16
you need humans necessarily in as it relates to the contribution we make to the um the environment. Well, I think as
00:44:27
soon as you had life, whether it was plant life, I mean, you're you're thinking perhaps of animal life, but you
00:44:34
know, things like lyken on rocks were one of the first forms of life and something that was needed to
00:44:46
get, you know, energy, nutrients from the rock and then they for some reason just wanted to survive, you know, and I
00:44:54
think that's the the point that life is about getting enough nutrients so you can uh
00:45:02
keep living or pass you know your genes on to someone else. It's this uh that
00:45:07
concept once that was started maybe it was lyken everything else came from that and that could have just been a chance
00:45:13
event. So I but I you know it is always humbling humbling to think that you know
00:45:20
we've probably come back from some lowly point like this uh as we emerge from
00:45:25
emerge from rocks and and water but um uh yeah I philosophy is not my strong suit but I I just get so much pleasure
00:45:34
from finding new facts uh that are all around us and I think it's fascinating
00:45:39
that we've spent so long as humans looking up at the stars whereas looking inside us at things like
00:45:47
microbes and their origin is to me far more exciting >> and maybe explanatory
00:45:55
>> as to like you know we're looking at the stars in France. >> Yeah, we look at the stars oh where do
00:45:59
we come from? You know where what about the big bang all this kind of stuff whereas actually studying what's in
00:46:05
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to get started for free. And you can find that link to whisper flow in the description below. So that was the
00:48:13
second point of the eight, which is eat 30 plants. And uh so daily 30 is a is a easy way to
00:48:20
do that and a tasty way to do that. What's the third one? I'd go for eat eat
00:48:25
fermented foods and try and get three portions of fermentss in your diet >> every day.
00:48:32
>> Every day. >> And I wouldn't have said this three years ago because the science wasn't
00:48:38
really strong enough to support this, but a study three years ago by a group in Stanford of 28 people showed
00:48:48
the giving. They gave them five portions a day for about a month and showed that
00:48:55
you can get a reduction in blood inflammation levels about 25% in that time compared to a fiber diet.
00:49:03
And that, you know, blew me away because this this was the first really good study in this
00:49:10
because there have been lots of studies but they're not good quality. Suddenly
00:49:14
someone doing daily bloods, you know, they would looked at 20 odd proteins in the blood and suddenly you've got this
00:49:23
link between a a food and directly affecting inflammation in the blood, which as we've been talking
00:49:30
about has big knock-on effects on the brain and the rest of the body. >> That's like kimchi and stuff like that.
00:49:35
Fermented food is any food that's been transformed by microbes into something
00:49:40
better, which means it it tastes better. It's more complex. It lasts longer, so
00:49:47
you don't need a fridge. That's why our ancestors did it. And it it's been
00:49:51
chemically transformed and is generally more nutritious. >> Give me some examples.
00:49:56
>> So, um, yogurt from milk. All you're doing is adding >> uh >> zero fat. Zero fat Greek yogurt.
00:50:06
>> Oh, I'd never have zero fat Greek yogurt. Why do you want to drink that?
00:50:09
>> I don't know. I just I was just >> No. Uh no, >> that that means it be Yeah. heavily
00:50:13
processed. You don't want that. But there's still good microbes in it. And
00:50:18
um you know, all you're doing is transforming something rather average like milk, which adults don't really
00:50:24
need. It's not particularly beneficial milk. And just by adding the microbes to
00:50:29
it, you make it something healthy for the for the body. And that's now been shown by uh by these these kind of
00:50:36
studies. >> Which what do you mean by what's what's wrong with this zero fat Greek yogurt?
00:50:40
It says zero fat. So that's sounds like it's >> there's nothing. Well, we we need fats
00:50:45
to live. So fat is good. And in fact, the just a few days ago, the USDA have changed their all their guidelines,
00:50:56
which used to be about saying don't have fat and and have lowfat products to
00:51:00
saying actually fat is good. All that advice we said in the past is wrong. >> So why do they label things zero zero
00:51:07
fat still? >> Because public still believe they're healthy and the companies that make them
00:51:14
save money by calling it by having zero fat. they replace the fat with starchy artificially made um fillers basically.
00:51:23
So it's usually more sugary uh by having zero fat in it. But if it says zero fat,
00:51:29
it's a sign it's unhealthy. You should avoid it. >> So what are those fermented foods then?
00:51:33
You were going to say you said >> well I should I just give you a quick list of all them so people know what I'm
00:51:37
talking about. So we've got yogurt, >> we've got cheese, and virtually every
00:51:41
cheese has live microbes except American cheeses. The more artisan the bigger the
00:51:47
number. Uh milk keir which is like a super yogurt often has 10 to 20 types of micro in it. The krauts. So I think of
00:51:58
the 4ks. So we got we've done keier. The kraut is like a sauerkraut. So we got
00:52:03
fermented cabbage. Cabbage is pretty boring on its own. You ferment it. The tastes are amazing and it has these
00:52:10
health benefits. Then you've got kimchi, which is a a spicy uh kraut and the
00:52:17
staple diet of Korea. And they're pretty healthy. And even though it's got salt
00:52:21
in it, people who have kimchi have lower blood pressure than people that don't
00:52:25
have kimchi, and I love kimchi. Now, I hated it at first, but I'm now a real
00:52:31
addict. Then you've got kombuchas. Um you see those in in most supermarkets and stores. Uh that's fermented tea and
00:52:42
the good ones can have 30 or 40 of these. There's other another type water kefir which isn't as popular but I think
00:52:49
we're going to see more of it. Tibikos is the other name for it. It's grains
00:52:54
with lots of microbes in it. A bit like milk keir but with fruit added. And then
00:52:59
you got miso all the misos you get in Japan. miso soup, uh, miso paste, tempes, all the all these, uh, fermentss
00:53:09
around the world. There's hundreds of different fermentss in nearly every continent has their own type of ferment.
00:53:15
In Africa, there's all kinds of fermented beers and porrides. And of course, we got the these are the live
00:53:20
ones, but they've also got lots of dead ferments. Obviously, bread is a dead
00:53:25
ferment. Everybody makes sourdough. Then you've got wines and beers. And interestingly,
00:53:34
um, again, very new science, dead fermentss actually have some health benefits. So, I used to be very
00:53:43
dismissive of uh products like kombuchas that you would see in in stores in America that
00:53:50
say lightly pasteurized. And I'd say, well, that's a load of rubbish. Be
00:53:54
nothing good about that. But it turns out that even dead microbes when you do a randomized trial have some benefit for
00:54:02
the host. >> You're looking a bit skeptical. But I these against placebo uh studies and
00:54:08
enough of them now that you uh definitely believe I know some of the researchers that they they were
00:54:14
surprised but it's it's genuine. >> Why is that? What's going on? We think
00:54:18
again if you go back to the vaccine um discussion we we were having it looks like although it's not alive the micro
00:54:29
still has a cell wall and it has proteins in the cell wall. So it's like the debris of these dead bodies that
00:54:37
you're ingesting. We think they're tickling your immune cells as they go
00:54:42
through the uh small intestine. >> Okay. And it it's it's giving a signal
00:54:48
to your immune system to calm down, reduce inflammation. That's our best understanding of what
00:54:56
this phenomenon is about. So live microbes are best, but it looks like dead microbes, which are called
00:55:03
postbiotics or zombie biotics, are probably also good for you. So, I think all fermented foods, even those that,
00:55:13
you know, I I would have dismissed 3 years ago, are probably good for us. And that's really the best way to reduce
00:55:21
your inflammation levels. We did a big study in Zoey of we asked 9,000 people who are Zoey members who weren't taking
00:55:31
fermentss to try and see how they get on taking three fermentss a day. How do they feel?
00:55:38
I think about 3,000 dropped out. Didn't didn't fancy it, but nearly 6,000
00:55:44
continued and did the the two weeks taking it after a oneweek run-in period. And around half of them noticed
00:55:52
improvements in mood, energy, and had less hunger. So, anyone out there who hasn't tried
00:56:00
this, I think it's a great simple way to u see what you can improve just by changing what you're eating and and
00:56:08
going for some of these fermentss that you might not have thought about. >> What's number four?
00:56:12
>> Number four is pivot your protein. At the moment, proteins all in the news. Everyone wants to have
00:56:20
more protein. Big controversy about whether you need more. Uh most studies showed 90% of us are getting enough
00:56:26
protein. Probably doesn't do too much harm other than it's really hard to get
00:56:30
lots of protein in your diet. And most people are focusing on eggs and meat when they think about protein. So what I
00:56:39
think people should focus on is there many other sources of good quality protein like beans, like legumes, like
00:56:45
mushrooms, uh like whole grains, like quinoa and pole barley instead of rice. That if
00:56:52
you're thinking about it, you can get your protein and get your fiber because
00:56:57
90% of us are deficient in fiber. And if you want to look after your gut microbes, you really need to uh be
00:57:04
giving them the fiber. Otherwise, you're starving them just by having a a protein
00:57:07
drink. Next one. Which one are we on? >> Number five. >> Number five is think quality, not
00:57:15
calories. The whole idea of assessing food by calories is wrong. We've discussed this
00:57:22
in the past. You should never really go for low calorie products. you should go for ones that are whole foods that are
00:57:30
have their initial structure in them that uh have all those original nutrients. So, it's all focusing really
00:57:37
on high quality foods that haven't been tampered with. And >> why why not calories?
00:57:42
>> Because it's not a good way to assess food. Uh calorie restricted diets have
00:57:48
been shown for the vast majority of people not to work. And we know particularly through GLP-1 drugs that as
00:57:58
you restrict your your diet and calories, your hunger signals go up. And hunger is the main driver of obesity.
00:58:08
So all you're doing is losing some weight shortterm. Longterm it will bounce back as your as your body does
00:58:15
that. So um calories should be ignored on any labels really. You should be looking to get high quality food that
00:58:23
supports your gut. And that's an important change in mindset for many people. But the next point is is is the
00:58:31
crucial one which links to that which is avoiding high-risisk processed foods because they
00:58:39
damage your your gut and your body in in a number of ways. The first obvious one
00:58:45
is that they have lots of additives and chemicals to transform them into something edible.
00:58:50
And those ones um things like emulsifiers, preservatives, uh gums, uh colorants, flavorings,
00:59:01
artificial sweeteners are all things made by the food companies to trick your body into thinking these are tasty. and
00:59:10
they often are, but they will damage your gut microbes who in their billions of years of evolution have never come
00:59:18
across these products because they don't exist in nature in that form. >> So like the cereal bar I have here.
00:59:28
>> Yes. So, this has got um flavored fillings, whatever that means, glucose
00:59:33
syrup, glycerin, uh wheat, fruit juice concentrate, vegetable fiber, natural flavorings,
00:59:42
oatmeal, and soya. Well, this one doesn't look too bad. Whatever. I'm not
00:59:48
quite sure how flavored filling is, though. Flavored filling anything. >> Was that corn flakes or something?
00:59:55
>> Corn flakes. Yes. So they would be uh something I would regard as uh highly
01:00:01
processed and uh probably a moderate risk. At Zoey we've created a new scale
01:00:08
because in the past we'd have grouped all of these together as the same but I
01:00:12
think we now need to think of these as zero mild moderate high risk depending on whether they have them.
01:00:20
>> What about this? >> That that would be high risk. Okay. because this is designed by uh the
01:00:27
people that make them. It's got preservatives in it that so this will be the same in a week's time, right? We can
01:00:32
still be playing with it. It's not going to change or get moldy. Um it's got uh
01:00:38
emulsifiers to keep it together. It's got extra sugar in it. It'll have a
01:00:44
really amount of salt in there probably and and sugar and got some fat in here. Um, so it'll be hyper palatable. And
01:00:54
>> what does that mean? >> That means that you can eat a lot of it before you get full. So it makes you
01:01:00
overeat. >> For anyone that can't see, we're talking about white bread. Just normal white
01:01:04
bread that you'd probably get in the supermarket. >> Yeah. And it's it's got a special
01:01:08
structure that's different. That also means that it it it takes very little chewing. All right. So you put this in
01:01:14
your mouth, you don't really have to chew it. It's like baby food. Whereas,
01:01:18
you know, a real bread made with high fiber, you you know, it takes several chews to get it down you. So, there's
01:01:25
lots of features of these foods that um alert you to them being uh unhealthy. So, not only ingredients which are bad
01:01:32
for your gut microbes and disrupt them, the additives. U you've got the fact
01:01:37
that it makes you overeat. So, a lot of those potato snacks and things you get, they just dissolve in your mouth.
01:01:46
They're designed so you can eat them so fast. >> Is there a good bread or a preferable
01:01:51
bread? >> Yeah, there are. There's not many things like rye breads and spelt breads,
01:01:58
ideally sourdoughs, um the German style breads that, you know, the Scandinavian breads, they're
01:02:05
pretty good for you because they still have the whole grain intact and that means it's got the nutrients. also means
01:02:12
it's harder to eat them quickly and they fill you up. These if you eat this bread, it just doesn't makes you
01:02:19
hungrier. I used to have this all the time when I was a a junior doctor. Every ward had toasters and uh cheap bread
01:02:29
courtesy of the NHS and you you eat them, they give you a little kick, but you just feel just as hungry an hour
01:02:35
later having eaten, you know, four of them. And I think this is the problem. Many people don't realize that this food
01:02:41
is is not only making them sick, making their gut microbes sick, but it it's
01:02:46
actually making them overeat. And studies show it makes you overeat by about 25%, which you know really adds up
01:02:53
every day of your life. A lot of people, including me, have gone through their life thinking that because when they eat
01:03:00
this stuff, they get stomach pains and sometimes they have gas or they'll have
01:03:05
like, I don't know, toilet related issues. um that they are gluten free, like they are gluten intolerant or
01:03:13
whatever. >> I was one of those people. I thought because if I eat this, if I was to eat
01:03:16
this piece of bread, I'd feel it for the next two days. >> So, I assumed I was gluten-free. But
01:03:21
when I think we spoke last time, you told me that almost nobody is is gluten intolerant to has a gluten what's the
01:03:28
term? >> Well, there's Yes. >> Gluten intolerance. >> Gluten intolerant.
01:03:32
>> Yeah. But that that's not >> when you test them. Yes. Directly. I
01:03:35
mean there are some u but most people who think they are are not and that's because generally when you eat a
01:03:45
sandwich in the US or the UK uh you're getting crap bread terrible filling uh
01:03:54
all kinds of other additives and chemicals which are probably disagreeing with you. So when you give up eating
01:04:00
sandwiches you might feel better. So roughly up to 30% of people believe gluten is a problem for them but only 1%
01:04:08
actually need to strictly avoid it. >> I think it's a great example of
01:04:15
we love to have a simple solution. So gluten came in said right everyone can think about gluten. Let's just get rid
01:04:22
of that and all our problems are solved. rather than thinking what are all the other things in a in a cheap bread
01:04:30
sandwich that you might be reacting to. It also could be the emulsifier that is uh gluing that bread together or is in
01:04:38
the mayonnaise that you're having. Uh it could be some of these colorants that
01:04:45
are, you know, making the bread white or ch making that sauce bright yellow that
01:04:50
you might be intolerant of. The more things that they these manufacturers add to these foods, the more likely there is
01:04:57
one that is disagreeing you with you and your favorite sandwich suddenly, you know, becomes your worst enemy because,
01:05:05
you know, they're just created by brilliant scientists to all they care about is you find it irresistible and
01:05:13
keep eating it. If you eat the healthy stuff, you don't have these problems.
01:05:17
>> What about these these almonds? >> Um, some walnuts in there as well. What
01:05:20
do you think of almonds? I love almonds. Um they're they're good for you and lots
01:05:25
of studies showing they're good for your cognition, even some mild effects on
01:05:31
other aspects of brain health and uh and and mood. These are uh good for gut health. They've got all kinds of really
01:05:40
good fats in them. These omega-3s and etc. are are in nuts. So, they're a fantastic snack that um do fill you up
01:05:50
and generally recommend them. Probably more data about walnuts than almonds for brain health that that I've read about.
01:05:58
So, there are, you know, studies of people take a lot of walnuts, they help, but I I think the idea shouldn't be
01:06:03
there's only one type of nut that you should eat that's going to help your
01:06:06
brain. We should again go back to this concept of diversity. And so mix nuts really are your best way of um helping
01:06:15
your your brain health by eating these things. And we used to demonize nuts because they had fat in it. Certainly
01:06:21
when I was uh you know 20 years ago, oh you can't have peanuts and nuts. They're
01:06:26
really bad for your heart. Now we've totally reversed this. And I just think
01:06:30
it it just shows how much has changed in this field in in a in a relatively short time.
01:06:38
>> What's number seven? So that number six was avoid high-risk processed foods.
01:06:42
>> Important when you're picking food to try and get as many colors on your plate
01:06:47
as possible because that's a sign that they contain these chemicals called polyphenols.
01:06:52
>> Natural colors. >> Yes. Yeah. Exactly. Not the uh the blue colors you get that we really want to
01:06:59
avoid which are bad for you. So natural colors are a sign that they these foods are good for you. So, we're talking
01:07:08
bright berries, we're talking raspberries, blackberries, uh, strawberries, we're talking um, rosolo
01:07:15
lettuce, we're talking about uh, cabbages that are purple. Uh, we're talking really all those bright colors
01:07:22
because they contain chemicals that are from this family broadly called the polyphenols which act as
01:07:31
fuel for your gut microbes. and that allows them to then in turn uh produce things like short- chain fatty acids and
01:07:40
and keeps them healthy. So, it's a sign from nature that we're eating these
01:07:46
these foods and it's a signal probably your ancestors knew. And the other sign
01:07:51
which we can't tell from looking at it, but you we get to know is bitterness.
01:07:56
So, bitter uh plants tend to be much healthier than uh bland ones. That's the
01:08:03
broccoli story. That's um why extra virgin olive oil is so good for us. Why uh coffee is also good. Why uh red wine
01:08:14
and and uh dark chocolate. It's those polyphenols in there that are really giving us our microbes a boost.
01:08:24
>> And the eighth one, last but not least, >> last but not least, give your gut a
01:08:28
rest. >> Fast. >> Yes. So timerestricted eating, this has been shown to help your uh gut
01:08:38
recover in a proper circadian rhythm. It's a bit like getting a good night's
01:08:42
sleep for your gut. So we can we all know the benefits of sleep for us, but we often disregard our gut. Many people
01:08:50
have a late night snack, uh a kebab going home from the pub or whatever it is. It's completely the wrong thing to
01:08:58
do for your gut health. 12 to 14 hour uh overnight fast trying to restrict your eating time to 10 hours really has been
01:09:08
shown to have metabolic advantages for you uh and improves your gut lining. So it it's less likely to to leak and cause
01:09:18
inflammation and allows the cleaning team and your microbes to come out and and clean up your gut. the number of
01:09:25
studies now um showing that it it does have these metabolic advantages, but I'm
01:09:32
not pushing it so hard these days because we did do a mass another massive uh citizen science study with Zoe with
01:09:39
over 100,000 people doing this. Um we asked them to do 14-hour timerestricted eating. A third
01:09:47
gave up. They said, "I can't do this. I feel hung too hungry all the time. I
01:09:52
need to be snacking something like almonds. A third loved it and they're still doing
01:09:57
it two years later. And a third was sort of, yeah, I'll do this sometimes. I feel
01:10:01
better on it. So, I think there's a personalized element to it. But, uh, if you can do it, it is really important.
01:10:08
And I would urge even the people that find it tough, if you can avoid that unhealthy late night snack, that can
01:10:14
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01:12:06
Head to the link in the description below. >> You've become more open to keto in
01:12:11
recent years. >> Yes. Um, and >> I'm ke I would say I'm keto curious.
01:12:17
>> You're keto curious. What's made you keto curious? cuz I don't think you I
01:12:21
don't think you were very um keen on keto before for >> No, I think when we discussed it, I was
01:12:27
I was pretty anti it, you know, but reading about the brain, how important metabolism of the brain, brain energy is
01:12:38
and doing more research has slightly changed my mind because what we discovered is how amazing it is for
01:12:44
childhood epilepsy. >> Mhm. It it is still used as the main treatment for uh drugresistant childhood
01:12:54
epilepsy. >> The keto diet. >> The keto diet. So what for people who
01:12:59
don't know what what we're talking about here is you're changing the the energy
01:13:04
supply of the brain from glucose to ketone bodies, which is a switch that we've always had ever in evolutionary
01:13:11
terms when we couldn't get food. So after about 2 days of not having food, we've used up our glucose reserves. We
01:13:19
used it up from our our muscles and you switch to this other form uh of energy. And it's a survival mechanism, but what
01:13:29
it tends to do is reset the brain. And so in epilepsy, that's what they think.
01:13:34
It's a bit of a like rebooting your computer. Epilepsy is rather strange because and it used to be thought of as
01:13:43
a mental illness as as I said because you can get hallucinations, delusions um it's associated with depression all
01:13:53
all the same you can have all the same symptoms you get in all mental illnesses interestingly
01:13:59
and it can be cured by the by keto. So that made me curious as to what else is going on. So in theory, some of the
01:14:06
other mental health issues could be improved by keto. At the moment, there isn't sufficient good evidence. There's
01:14:13
lots of anecdotal stories, studies of seven patients, open label, not convincing enough for me to say
01:14:23
let's do it. But I think definitely worth doing some real studies. but also suggesting that even if you don't go as
01:14:30
far as keto, just by improving the metabolism and what how the brain is getting its
01:14:37
energy could be really important. >> I think um the interesting thing about
01:14:41
the ketogenic diet um as someone that kind of cycles in and out of it, I actually I showed you earlier I have
01:14:46
this ketone >> monitor on my arm which is monitoring my uh ketone levels at all times and
01:14:52
connected to my phone. Um, I think the interesting thing is in in the world we live in where there's a lot of food
01:14:58
noise as they call it. Everywhere you go, there's temptation to eat something
01:15:02
bad. You're going down the high street, there's takeaways and junk food stores
01:15:08
and stuff like that. What I think keto does, which you're probably never going
01:15:12
to see in a study, I don't know if you would, is it helps the craving. It like dampens
01:15:20
the food noise. So, this is part of why I think cycling in and out of it is quite useful for me because it means I
01:15:26
have several moments in the year where my cravings for like this junk food, some of which we have on this table,
01:15:33
just appear to vanish for a while, even if it's just for a week or two weeks or
01:15:36
3 weeks or four weeks. And that allows me to kind of reset and kind of take back control of the steering wheel.
01:15:42
Whereas it's very easy, especially in modern life when you're working really
01:15:45
hard or you're traveling, you've got sleep disruption to get into that exact
01:15:48
spiral we talked about where you get like cravings for sugar and then you eat sugar so you feel a bit more tired and
01:15:54
you lay down a bit more and then you're not you miss the gym and then you kind
01:15:59
of you have the same like downward spiral. Um keto continually snaps me out of the probabil the chance of that.
01:16:06
>> How long for though? H probably the longest I've done it is maybe six weeks
01:16:12
or eight weeks. But even get even doing it for let's say one week for me will then mean
01:16:20
the preceding four 8 weeks are much healthier in every regard. So even when I come off it, I'm
01:16:28
much healthier when I you know what I'm saying? >> That's why what's interested me because
01:16:32
I think being on a long-term keto diet is never going to work, right? is just too brutal and it's incompatible with
01:16:42
keeping your gut happy. >> Mhm. >> So to me that's I mean very few people
01:16:48
can tolerate it anyway as you know it's tough. >> Yeah. If we can come up with a regime
01:16:54
that every three or every six months, you had a few days of going into keto, just enough to reset your body and your
01:17:01
brain, and at the same time, you protected your gut, say by, you know, taking daily 30 or other things that
01:17:07
weren't going to get you out of keto, but could keep your your gut in a in a
01:17:12
in the right place, then I think we could potentially be have a uh something of practical use for brain health
01:17:20
issues. And I' I'd love to, you know, do more of that. I'm I'm planning at some point
01:17:26
later in this year to do to test myself to see if I can uh do a week of keto whilst keeping my gut microbes happy.
01:17:34
>> Have you ever done keto? >> Uh not properly. No. You know, if you've
01:17:38
done a 24-hour fast, you for a colonoscopy, you are just about getting into keto at the time you're doing it,
01:17:44
but you're not you've got other things to worry about going to the toilet to
01:17:48
distract you. I think this is really it because we talked about how holistic that the whole picture of the body is
01:17:53
and how it's so interconnected and how the brain is so connected to the gut and
01:17:57
all these things and there's something about doing the ketogenic diet which just it feels like
01:18:03
I get control back >> in a in a way that then has this bigger holistic effect on my life my ability
01:18:12
everything in my life like my ability to articulate myself as a podcaster I heard
01:18:17
actually Joe Rogan say the same thing he had him say that words to the effect of
01:18:21
the fact that when he's in ketosis, it's so profound his ability to articulate
01:18:24
himself and think as someone that does 4hour podcasts that he would almost stay in it forever just for that particular
01:18:31
cognitive benefit of like mental clarity. And I always say to my team that when I'm in the keto diet, I feel
01:18:36
like I'm looking at the world like this, like everything's high definition and my
01:18:40
mouth and brain are like I always say my mouth and brain are connected suddenly.
01:18:43
>> Yeah. I've had other people say this that they do get this sort of clarity
01:18:47
which which could be you know more exaggerated way of feeling that benefit of a long overnight fast um when you
01:18:55
come in after 14 hours without eating and you're doing a podcast like this. Yeah, I definitely do feel better than
01:19:01
if I'd had a big English breakfast >> just before. But I think the danger is
01:19:06
that, you know, if people disregard their gut microbiome and do this, the the any advantage be wiped out so
01:19:16
quickly by the the problems of what's happening to your immune cells and everything else in your body. So if we
01:19:22
can find this intermittent middle way while you can still look after your gut, then I agree that would be cool. But I
01:19:31
couldn't find any good data on on this apart from anecdotes of you know fanatics who will obviously um say it's
01:19:41
great for their patients but without any control group because must be a big placebo effect as well. Um it's very you
01:19:48
very hard to not have a placebo effect when you're doing that when you're when
01:19:52
you're struggling so hard to do things that as they say you know people get keto headaches and they get all you know
01:19:58
as you go into it people say it's can be quite rough so you can't double blind
01:20:03
yourself but I think it is fascinating that in the same way that reversing type 2 diabetes you know improves your mental
01:20:11
health it makes sense that if you're switching energy levels in the brain you
01:20:15
could also do things. And let's not forget things like ECT still an effective treatment. That's that's a
01:20:22
brain reset. Sometimes, you know, we may end up going back to the the old era of um psychiatry
01:20:31
where, you know, before we got into this obsession with neurochemicals to have this holistic view, which I
01:20:37
think is is really fascinating. And when you did that brain scan, you found that
01:20:44
you're in the highest 20% for levels of environmental microplastics >> in your blood.
01:20:51
>> Yeah, that was a bit scary. They divide the microplastics into into two groups.
01:20:55
The sort of depending the dimensions of them. I was concerned, am I eat was I eating a lot of microplastics? So it
01:21:01
turned out that the higher levels I had were actually the the smaller ones that you get through your lungs
01:21:08
which probably means a life having lived a life in London um you know six decades in London
01:21:16
probably wasn't very good for getting all this dust and and and uh things in
01:21:22
there. That was a bit of a worry. That's probably because I cycle around London a
01:21:25
lot in the last 30 years. >> Have you changed anything in that regard? >> I still cycle. I don't like wearing a
01:21:32
mask. I know I sort of probably should. And I've put a new water filter in my
01:21:36
home uh to take out some of these chemicals and and at least some of those plastics. I'm
01:21:44
still not totally convinced on how bad they are. And the science, I don't think really we've resolved that
01:21:51
issue yet. But it's it's something I'm I'm looking at closely. And I think if
01:21:55
there's something easy you can do, I try and avoid plastic containers. I try and
01:21:59
avoid plastic bottles and I think that's good for the planet as well. >> Is there a way to take these
01:22:04
microplastics out of our body once they're in there? >> They anecdotally they say things like
01:22:10
plasma feresis um you know you can go into a spa in LA and and get your uh plasma taken out and filtered and put
01:22:19
back into your body. This is from your blood. But uh I don't think there's any
01:22:23
real clinical trials that satisfy me that would be worth and they cost I think they're sort of $10,000 ago. So
01:22:31
it's not not a cheap process to have that done. So wait and see but at the moment yeah it's it's it's a worry but I
01:22:39
I think there are other things in the environment probably worse. you know, dust, pesticides.
01:22:48
Is it better to have organic food rather than worry about plastics? Um, we don't
01:22:53
know the answer to these these problems. How is your views on GLP1s like a Zmpeek
01:22:58
and WGO or whatever it's called, these these um injections and I think now tablets
01:23:04
people are taking for weight loss. How is your views on those evolved? Are they good, bad, and different?
01:23:09
>> They're going to be a part of our life anyway. So they're going to transform
01:23:12
medicine and uh obesity in a way we can't imagine at the moment especially now this year that the pills are
01:23:21
available and it's coming off patent in many countries so it'd be much cheaper.
01:23:27
I think for people who really need them they're an incredible drug. The only
01:23:33
problem is you can't really come off them. So they're pretty much for life.
01:23:38
My first worry is that a lot of people take them without supervision and they are not told to change their diet.
01:23:48
I'd love people to go take the drugs, their hunger signal gets switched off.
01:23:54
They can then be mindful about their food. They could do something like, you know, have the Zoey app or some other
01:24:00
educational program to change their food habits forever in that in that window of opportunity.
01:24:08
And that I think is where we should be doing. And that's been completely ignored at the moment. Virtually
01:24:15
nobody's getting that lifestyle advice as well as the drug. And so they're
01:24:21
failing. They're going back in it. you know, yo-yoing and they're getting the
01:24:25
worst of the worlds. The other the other slight worry we need to keep an eye on is the
01:24:32
long-term effects on the brain. So far, the data suggests that it does reduce your chances of getting dementia even
01:24:39
beyond, you know, reversing diabetes. So, it looks like it's brain protective
01:24:48
probably because it might have anti-inflammatory effects. It reduces things like gambling and uh
01:24:56
addictions. So we don't really know how it does that. But if it takes away some of your
01:25:04
drives, those basic drives to say I like to take risks, you know, I I like to take drugs. I like to smoke. I like to
01:25:12
gamble on horses. Is it in some way changing you as a a person long term in that you might be
01:25:22
less good as an entrepreneur for example? >> Mhm. >> So that is something I think that's
01:25:27
really interesting to follow. But in general, I think from a public health perspective,
01:25:33
this could save uh you know, health systems hundreds of billions long term and we ought to be taking it much more
01:25:42
seriously and integrating it into holistic and educational advice. >> And as it relates to brain health, you
01:25:51
also have a sauna routine as part of your brain health regime. Yeah, I've been impressed by some of the science uh
01:25:59
coming out of this and the fact that I quite enjoy just actually enjoy it from a hedonistic uh point of view. So I try
01:26:07
and have a sauna twice a week if I can if I can do that ideally with a cold plunge afterwards, but the science isn't
01:26:15
sure whether that makes a big difference. It's like just a workout for your your blood vessels in your body and
01:26:22
your brain. So um I think that the science is quite compelling and yeah it makes me feel good which um is always
01:26:31
should be part of anyone's health routine. Something you enjoy doing is always easy
01:26:35
>> and regular socializing is part of your brain routine. >> Yeah. If you look at the happiest
01:26:42
longived populations on the planet, they've all got really good social lives. They are always dining with
01:26:50
friends, going out. often that does involve a little bit of alcohol in most of these societies, but that doesn't
01:26:58
seem to adversely affect them. The idea of having a a a key group of core friends you see regularly, I think, is
01:27:04
really good for your mental and brain health, and loneliness has got to be one of the the worst things uh for your
01:27:11
brain health. So, really important to maintain your uh your good friends. What is uh what is the most important thing
01:27:18
as it relates to brain health or overall health that we haven't talked about that
01:27:22
we should have talked about? >> I think we haven't talked about early life experiences and stress but trauma.
01:27:29
>> Yeah. So one thing um and we haven't talked about talk therapies and um you
01:27:35
know conventional treatments. So if you look at all all these brain diseases, virtually all of them, if you go back in
01:27:43
time, if you've had uh emotional, physical, sexual trauma in in early life, you're
01:27:53
much more likely to have brain diseases later in life. And this is across all of them. Again,
01:28:03
coming up with the idea that they're all related in some way. And so, you know,
01:28:07
we've moved on from the Freudian idea that, you know, the mind is different and from the brain. If you take this
01:28:13
holistic idea, how does this fit into this inflammatory metabolic um theory of brain health? I think it it
01:28:24
now does because they've done studies showing that uh following trauma or stress,
01:28:30
you can trigger your immune system to be permanently raised. So again, you get this uh consistent uh
01:28:41
stress that the thermostat doesn't go down to baseline. So you have a period of a year, a
01:28:50
terrible period as a kid. They do tests later in life. You'll they'll find your
01:28:56
inflammation levels in your blood are raised from people who had a nice gentle quiet childhood.
01:29:03
And I think this is starts to link all these different components together. And these cross all
01:29:10
these early life traumas. You see the same thing in people with chronic pain, um chronic back pain, fibromyalgia,
01:29:19
um irritable bowel syndrome, epilepsy, schizophrenia, it it everything. But it doesn't really matter
01:29:27
where the source of the stress was. It's caused some physiological problem. So I
01:29:31
think that that is really interesting so that we could pick up people who if we had better tests of that stress and
01:29:40
inflammation we could start to help those people earlier on before the brain started to uh struggle and I think that
01:29:49
that's really interesting and of course we want to do most to reduce the problem
01:29:55
in the first place. They've also done studies on talk therapies. So obviously
01:30:00
psychiatry is compartmentalized into the talk therapists and the and the drug therapists
01:30:05
and there's quite a lot of evidence that talk therapy does reduce inflammation
01:30:12
levels and help your immune system. So just in the same way possibly that talking to friends has that effect. So
01:30:20
uh talking to your therapist long term uh will reduce your stress and you can see that in blood markers as well. the
01:30:28
whole thing is starting to come together that uh all these different ways of treating it can be working through
01:30:33
similar pathways that looked so different through our you know the fact that we've got so distracted by
01:30:42
Dickart um Freud um treating the brain as something so different to the rest of the body.
01:30:52
We have a closing tradition on this podcast with the last guest leaves a question for the next not knowing who
01:30:55
they're leaving it for. And the question for you is, what are you uncontainably
01:31:02
excited about? >> I'm uncontainably excited about the idea that we can dramatically
01:31:15
improve our lives and our health just by making the right food choices. This is really driving me to talk about
01:31:24
it so much to do the studies to do the science to spread the word because you know we're seeing all the time the
01:31:33
dramatic effects and I was talking about the TV program was doing with these you
01:31:38
know these these families that are really suffering. It just shows you what you can do if you start treating food
01:31:47
like you would treat medicine. you know, taking it really seriously and experimenting with it and noticing those
01:31:56
those differences and um you know, I get the feedback all the time because I because the books and the media, people
01:32:04
telling me how their lives have been transformed and so that feedback keeps me excited on this topic. And so, um
01:32:12
I've never had that in my career before and it's super exciting. It's um it's
01:32:17
really hard though, isn't it? And this is I guess the part we don't talk about
01:32:20
much, which is the psychological part of you know what some might call discipline
01:32:25
in a world we live in where you go into like I don't know a gas station or a
01:32:28
petrol station or whatever you call it in different parts of the world and the options are very
01:32:34
ultrarocessed. Um and you you live a stressful life. You're on your phone all day. You're
01:32:39
getting your dopamine fried by watching short form videos back to back to back to back to back. you may be, you know,
01:32:46
people are lonier than ever before. So, making the right choices when we're controlled by our neurology and our
01:32:54
hormones and how we feel is is often easier said than done. So, even in the case of that family that you met, do you
01:33:03
think much about the psychology part of like discipline when it comes to making the right choice? And is there any
01:33:10
advice there on how to be more disciplined with our food choices? Or do you just think that knowledge is power
01:33:16
in this regard? >> Well, knowledge is power, but it's not the only thing. You you need tricks. Um,
01:33:25
we're fighting a food environment. You know, multi-billion dollar industry wants us to eat this crap food. your gas
01:33:34
station, they're being bribed to fill their everything around you with the worst foods. The worse the food, the
01:33:41
more they pay the supermarkets to have it in a point where you're going to buy
01:33:45
it. So, you need to have tricks to counteract that. And not going to a supermarket is is often one way to avoid
01:33:54
doing that. If my house was filled with crap food, I would probably be snacking in it. I find it really hard to throw
01:34:02
stuff away. You know, you you go to workplaces and you see people with piles of biscuits and uh M&M's uh there. You
01:34:11
know, they should be banned. Um so there are certain things you say we need to fight back by changing the rules a bit.
01:34:18
Um just like you wouldn't have, you know, glasses of vodka in an office uh for people just have a swig if they
01:34:25
fancy, you shouldn't have candies and sweets and these things. um in the current environment where you know we're
01:34:32
fighting a battle like you know they used to have cigarettes that were free everywhere we forget um and they change
01:34:38
that environment and the cigarettes are now really hard to get at that makes it easier for people to fight the habit
01:34:46
>> and we we often beat ourselves up because we think of ourselves as being
01:34:49
weak because of this we think ourselves being like illd disciplined because we end up reaching for the wrong things but
01:34:54
it is really really hard and it's really really hard even you know I sit here all
01:34:57
day every day speaking to people that are experts on these subjects. And you'd
01:35:00
think that would mean that I made perfect decisions because I've probably interviewed, you know, more people than
01:35:05
the average 99.99% of the population on this subject. But I'm a human with emotions and hormones and life to deal
01:35:13
with. And and so even I have to um regardless of how much I know about this stuff now, I still have to like give
01:35:20
myself the best possible chance by thinking proactively about my environment at home and even like in the
01:35:27
cart and even at the office. like I have to think really proactively, put systems
01:35:30
in place to avoid the possibility that I get really really hungry really really late at night and my only options are
01:35:36
for example, you know, um which has been a bit the big change >> and it's forming habits and that's the
01:35:42
other thing. So it's yeah you got knowledge then you got these tricks tricks to avoid often the the worst
01:35:50
offenders and then you've got to come up with these these new habits that you you
01:35:55
make that are going to break the old ones. So, you know, rather than reaching for your breakfast cereal in the
01:35:59
morning, you've got a different one ready to go. And often we've found that if you can change
01:36:05
that first meal of the day, it it becomes a lot easier because that's the one you're mainly in control of and
01:36:12
realize when the other risky events are. >> Tim, you've written many, many books.
01:36:16
I'm going to link them all below. This is the the newest one. I know you're
01:36:19
working on one specifically about the brain, but I'm very excited for that one. But this is the newest one called
01:36:23
Ferment. um unsurprisingly a number one bestseller yet again. Um but there's a
01:36:29
whole stack of books here. The diet myth, the real science behind what we eat. Um Spoonfed, why almost everything
01:36:35
we've been told about food is wrong. And this book, which has been extremely
01:36:39
successful, um the Food for Life cookbook with 100 recipes created by Zoe. I'm going to link all of them below
01:36:45
for anyone that wants to check them out. And uh thank you so much once again. >> Been a pleasure as always. you've kept
01:36:52
my audience very very healthy and they're very appreciative of that. I I I remember um just the amount of people
01:36:58
that come up to all over the world and site the conversations we've had in the
01:37:01
past and how that's had been the thing for them that has helped them to change
01:37:05
their life. And it's pretty remarkable. It's really remarkable how many people
01:37:09
you must have fundamentally caused to create different food and dietary decisions through the work you've done
01:37:15
yourself, through the books, through Zoe. Um and that's a really special thing. So, thank you on behalf of all of
01:37:20
them. Well, hopefully we can do millions more. I hope so. If there's anything we need, it is
01:37:30
connection. Especially in the world we're living in today. And that is exactly why we created these
01:37:35
conversation cards. Because on this show, when I sit here with my guests and have those deep, intimate conversations,
01:37:41
this remarkable thing happens time and time again. We feel deeply connected to each other. At the end of every episode,
01:37:47
the guest I'm interviewing leaves a question for the next guest, and we've
01:37:51
turned them into these conversation cards. And we've added these twist cards
01:37:55
to make your conversations even more interesting. And there are so many more twists along the way with the
01:38:00
conversation cards. This is the brand new edition. And for the first time ever, I've added to the pack this gold
01:38:05
card, which is an exclusive question from me. But I'm only putting the gold cards in the first run of conversation
01:38:13
cards. So get yours now before the limited edition gold cards are all gone. Head to the link in the description
01:38:18
below. >> You take a healthy person's poop and you transfer it into the person who's sick.
01:38:23
So this is a great example to show how important our gut microbiome is because 60% of the weight of your stool is your
01:38:29
microbiome. And so I've identified four things missing in our diet. And when you
01:38:33
do these, you will thrive and you will live longer and you will have less disease. And I'm going to take you
01:38:37
through all of these steps right