EFR 924: How Fermented Foods Lower Inflammation by 25% and The Gut Health Strategy That Could Reverse Type 2 Diabetes, Fatty Liver Disease and More with Tim Spector

The following is an Operation Podcast production. Most of the world still ferments. Once you take it as a global view, you say, well, actually, we're the odd ones out. You know, we're the suckers who stopped, and we're the sickest. Suddenly, three years ago, a Stanford study by my colleague Christopher Gardner did a really detailed study where they're taking blood draws on 28 people every day, and gave them five ferments a day, and they compared that to a high-fiber diet. The researchers believed that the fiber would have a much bigger effect on the immune system than the fermented foods. And the opposite was the case. They tested 20 blood markers of inflammation. It turned out the FemmeFed Food Group lowered it by about 25%. They lowered 17 out of the 19 proteins. Clear evidence that it's really helping our immune system. It's dampening down inflammation. And that's the reason it has all these knock-on effects to the rest of our body. because we're now learning how important inflammation is, not only to cancer, not only to anti-aging, not only to metabolism and weight loss, but also to mental health and what's going on in our brains and our moods. Who do you think stands to benefit most from a chronic illness and disease perspective? Can this really have this cascading effect to what's affecting most Americans right now? What we're seeing across the board is that people really embrace this idea, really change their diet dramatically. everyone can improve their gut microbiome and that has knock-on effects on all kinds of diseases. Hi, welcome to Ever Forward Radio. My name is Tim Spector. I'm an MD, professor of epidemiology and co-founder of the company Zoe and I look forward to talking all about gut health and food. Something Tim and I actually talk a lot about in this episode is how aging doesn't just show up on the outside and how it actually starts deep inside of our cells. We think about gut health, microbiome diversity, nutrient quality, but underneath all of that is cellular energy. Because when your mitochondria work better, everything works better. That's why I've been using and loving these delicious new gummies, MitoPure gummies from Timeline Nutrition, today's sponsor. See, they're powered by Urolithin A, the only clinically proven form shown in human studies to help renew mitochondrial function, which is a key driver of healthy aging. And what I love is that it's been backed by over now 15 years of research, human clinical research and mitochondrial health. Plus it's vegan, sugar-free, non-GMO and clean label certified. If you're serious about longevity, not just adding years, but energy and strength to those years, support your cells at the source. Head to timeline.com slash ever forward to save up to 39% off of your MitoPure gummies. Yes, you heard me right up to 39% off of MitoPure gummies when you use our exclusive link in the show notes under podcast episode resources. That's timeline.com slash ever forward t-i-m-e-l-i-n-e.com slash ever forward support your mitochondria support your future self 2026 i'm sure we are gonna be seeing a lot of the same maybe some of the new when it comes to health fitness wellness and someone like yourself that has quite literally written the books on a lot of this stuff and been in the scientific literature, been in the lab and in the real world. I'm curious, what do you think are maybe going to be the top three things in 2026 that people should be mindful of in their health and wellness that maybe we haven't seen yet? Well, there's many trends I wish weren't around. So what you're saying is what are my sort of optimistic hopes of things that will happen? So, yeah, because obviously the protein craze is not going to go away in a year. I think it's going to take a couple of years. It may have plateaued, but it's still going to be there, right? What do you mean by that? The obsession that anything with protein sticker on it is healthy and that everyone is running around deficient in protein because the food companies and the influencers and everybody is pushing that. And it goes down well with consumers. people like it and they show that if it's got high in protein on it, it doesn't matter how crap the rest of the stuff is on the ingredients. I see. They will buy it and they will think it's doing them good. So that's, I think, going to continue. Hopefully stop going up because it squashes all the other health things going on. And this protein is not that harmful other than it focuses people on the wrong thing. So I think we're going to be seeing much more of the fiber story coming up. Fiber maxing, I think, is going to be a hit in 2026. You're saying that, is that a positive thing? People focusing more on fiber, getting more fiber? Yes. Just using the word is going to be a positive thing because people start thinking, gosh, what is fiber? you know it's a trend how can I get in on it and they might say okay I'll work out what actually fiber is and they realize that yeah well fiber is also a carb and carbs get a bad rap so a lot of people don't know that yeah yeah so in a way it's a way of educating people into into nutrition and and macros regardless of what their idea is you know fiber is just something a powder you put into your drink like you do your protein. But it will get people to start thinking about it. And, okay, how do I get my real fiber and how can I start getting plants on my plate? And that is my big hope because for gut health, the number one thing we should all be doing is eating 30 plants a week. So that if we move even a little bit towards that story, then I'll be very happy. Why 30? That's a very specific number. It is. And it comes from research that isn't that specific, but it rounds it up. It's not 20. It's probably not 40. It's somewhere in between. That just happens to be the figure that we've stuck on. And it's a reasonable target because the average American diet is probably around 10 plants a week and many have you know less than five most than potato does it need to be 30 different vegetables in a week that's the whole point that's a lot of vegetables it is until you start thinking what a veg you know what a plant is because you're you're already focusing i can see oh my god this is all how many types of kale can i eat right yeah i'm imagining where my listener is going they're like i don't know if i can even name 30 different plants right now okay well for anyone listening just imagine what a plant is it's everything that isn't meat so it's a fruit a vegetable it's an herb it's a spice it's a nut it's a seed all of them each one can be different species and that counts as a different plant you've also got 10 edible common forms of mushroom which are fungi not plants but they're grouped in that area so once you start thinking of plants in a different light you it starts to become actually not that hard to put them on your plate and i now do this regularly and um it's one of the number one principles we have you know i stress through my books and we do educating people through zoe this is what they should be doing and so it's a nice target to aim at um that is really simple to achieve and um everything else flows from that because um that helps you gut microbes that gives them the diversity because you're giving them really diverse like fertilizers you're giving them hundreds of different types of fiber to eat and so all the unknown good guys in your your micro in your gut can flourish. And that's really the essence. Because, you know, I believe a lot of the problems in the past have been we've had these very limited staple diets. And it's got narrower and narrower as we've eaten, you know, just three types of meat and just, you know, half a dozen vegetables and everything is super processed. And so you're not getting any of these nutrients that our ancestors as we're getting this rich variety that we need for our gut microbiome. So if fiber, this interest in fiber leads to this and understanding how many different types of fiber we have, how they're all different, then I think that'll be a real plus. What do you think would be perhaps the most unexpected benefit to one's health by getting to this 30 plants per week in their diet? I think people would be most surprised that the thing they'll notice first would be an improvement in their mental health. Not what I was expecting. How does getting more plants in one's diet help one's mental health? That will increase the good microbes in your gut, decrease the bad microbes. That'll reduce inflammatory signals. means that the chemicals that the microbes are sending through the immune system and the nervous system to your brain will be much more calming. And our studies show we've done a number of trials with Zoe that when you put people on a gut-friendly program, you give them a prebiotic daily 30 or you give them fermented foods, the first thing you notice is an improvement in your mood and your energy. so not only a big thing or surprising thing you're saying the first thing correct wow and so this is this is fairly novel science because you know i'm medically trained but we were never trained to ask patients about energy levels for example or mood and we now know that they're absolutely linked between what's going on your brain and inflammation in your body which is the sort of abnormalities of your immune system where it's just being tweaked and always heightened when it should just be resting so i think so you asked for something surprising and i think um that you know is becoming clearer and clearer this huge link between what goes on your gut and what goes on your brain and many people listening might you know just saying oh i can't get through the day without feeling really tired or having a lie down. I just don't have the energy I used to 10 years ago. If you change your diet, that's the first thing you'll notice. But you've got to think about it first. If nobody points it out to you and all you're concerned about is your weight or, you know. Right, right, yeah. You know, how much weight you're lifting in the gym, all this stuff. Yeah, you've got to start thinking about, oh, this is an obvious outcome. I need to be tracking. then it starts to obvious this link just having the wrong breakfast in the morning many people can't put up with a high carb breakfast and three hours later not only they're hungry but they are a bit moody irritable and fatigued you know they need to sort of sit down they're lacking energy was you know try changing your breakfast to something different and just making a mental note set an alarm at three hours am i as tired and moody and um hungry as i was you know last week so a lot of this is about thinking yourself what outcomes to look for and not just blindly going through life saying well i've read this you know, this influencer told me to do this. Therefore, you know, it must be good for me. Just really listen to your own body and everyone's going to respond differently. So, you know, it may be some people that got the perfect breakfast and that suits them. But I think the majority of people don't and they don't listen. We don't listen to our bodies enough. I cannot agree more. I've said it before, I'll say it again. I think the best piece of advice I could ever give anybody when looking for external guidance or like, hey, what's the best tip for my health and my wellness is listen to your body. There will never be a better coach, a better teacher, a better advocate for what you need and what you don't than your own self, your body. And if we just learn how to pay attention to the signals it's telling us by feeling good, not feeling good, by skin problems, by great complexion, by bowel movements, by headaches, by fatigue, by advances in the gym, by sleep, All these things are signals because we're doing things to give our body what it needs and wants or we're not. We can just learn how to sit still long enough, really, and listen and pay attention. Then, boom, we got all the clues we need to solve life's greatest. Yeah. And, you know, humans are suckers for getting into routines without thinking about it. You know, so you were talking about your uniform and your dress code, you know. But it's the same when we go shopping. you know we go around the store with endless choices we end up with the same 20 items in our basket right every week and you think why am I doing that well it's just an easy way you know there's too much choice so I'll just stick with what I know hey friends you know on the show I talk a lot about performance recovery and really what it means to rest well not just fall asleep but get the kind of deep restorative sleep that actually changes how you function the next day. Let's be honest, we all know what it feels like to get a great night's sleep and what it feels like to get anything other than. 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So instead of tossing and turning, you can get closer to the kind of sleep where muscle recovery happens. Your stress response resets and your brain actually gets the downtime it needs. The kind that even Tim here today, my guest would nod at when we talk about how sleep impacts every system in the body. So if you want to try Tro-Z or any one of their other amazing Tro-Key products and get a great exclusive discount at checkout, just make sure to use code EVERFORWARD. You can click the link in the show notes today under episode resources or head to tro-scriptions.com slash everford to scoop up yours now. That's T-R-O-S-C-R-I-P-T-I-O-N-S.com slash everford to get an exclusive discount just for you being a loyal listener here on Everford Radio. Well, speaking of getting out of the routine and shaking it up, I want to dive now kind of like the heart of this conversation for the rest of the episode is really going to be around fermented foods. And someone might be listening or watching and going, how are you going to talk about pickles, fermented foods, vegetables for the next 30 minutes, 45 minutes? But diving into your work, especially work around your book, Ferment, I was just blown away. I always heard and knew that fermented foods hold great benefit, if not even power for a general well-being, but specifically the gut. And with just a little bit of information you just shared, I mean, we're not just talking gut health. We're talking mood. We're talking performance. We're talking mental health. We're talking anxiety, stress, potentially depression and all of these things where if the gut goes unchecked, the rest of the body goes unchecked. And one of the best things I'm hearing is to support gut health is through these fermented, these quote live foods. And so I think fermentation matters more than ever. And you actually talk about how you think the modern life. And I don't think anyone would really disagree here. How modern life has quietly destroyed our relationship with fermented foods. So then what exactly did humans lose when we stopped fermenting, do you think? Well, most of the world still ferments. I think it's the English-speaking world, unfortunately. Let's call it out. It's just America, right? It's just us. No, it's not just America. It's Brits as well. Okay. It's the Irish. It's Canadians. It's the Australians. It's, you know, the influence of the Brits. You can blame the old empire. And it promoted this idea of cleanliness, sterility, modernization, getting refrigerators everywhere, cold storage, doing away with little home industries, and doing away with the fact that many families existed on what grandma was making for the family. And you go around the world, it's very interesting. So, you know, you go to Central and Eastern Europe, whether it's Hungary, Romania, Poland, Czechoslovakia, you know, all those countries, Russia, they're all fermenting. You go to Scandinavia, they're all fermenting their milks and their fish. You go to the Mediterranean countries they still really big into home cheeses and yogurts Africa they doing porridge and beer still A lot of grains they fermenting And you've got India. You know, India, you've got, they're making the lassies, which is like a kefir. We were talking about Iran, you know. Yeah, shout out Torshi. Yeah, all the fermented foods. Big into ferments. And then, of course, Korea and Japan, massive fermenters of everything using the incredible soybean and cabbages. So once you take it as a global view, you say, well, actually, we're the odd ones out. You know, we're the suckers who stopped and we're the sickest. So, you know, there's probably a relationship here about what we lost. And we lost this probably after about the Second World War when everything started going converging. Everyone got a fridge. They didn't need, people forget that, you know, fermentation was brought in as a way to preserve food without a refrigerator. So the microbes would protect it. So once you started the fermentation process, as long as you got the pH down, the acidity up, then only the good guys could survive. And so you were able to keep the stuff for several weeks without going rotten and feed the family in ways that just weren't possible. Which was huge back then. I mean, being able to keep food for weeks meant, you know, making it or not probably. Yeah. And, you know, after a big harvest in the summer, you know, they had rather than wasting all this food, they would just store it up and bottle it and keep it going. And so in those seasons where you ran out of food, you had something to sustain you until the next spring. So it really was an essential part of life that nothing went to waste. and that's another thing that you know we've forgotten in our very wasteful society particularly here in the u.s where you know waste more food than any other nation so it is this combination so we've lost it other countries have carried on the science has finally caught up and it was rather vague science before and you know i've been writing this book for about seven years now and And it wasn't that convincing until about three years ago that suddenly a key study came out that really changed my mind about this. Because before then, there'd been little studies in Iran, Afghanistan, Turkey, some in Korea, often sponsored by the local producers. And you think, well, this could be right, but no big organizations did. And then suddenly three years ago, a Stanford study by my colleague Christopher Gardner did a really detailed study where they're taking blood draws on 28 people every day and gave them five ferments a day. So a really short, really intense study. And they compared that to a high fiber diet. So were they adding these five fermented foods to an uncontrolled diet or just it was a controlled diet in this? Okay. So it was a regular healthy diet, nothing special, but they were adding this to it. And there were two arms. One was given added extra fiber, and the other was given added these five ferments. And the researchers believed that the fiber would have a much bigger effect on the immune system than the fermented foods. And the opposite was the case. So they found that they tested 20 blood markers of inflammation. This is this, you know, measures of what's going on in our defense mechanisms, that you want to be low as possible. And it turned out the Femteh food group lowered it by about 25%. So they lowered 17 out of the 19 proteins. And that was the first time anyone had really shown a mechanism for why, you know, these smaller studies to cheaper studies had shown these benefits in a whole wide range of diseases. So clear evidence that it's really helping our immune system. It's dampening down inflammation. And that's the reason it has all these knock-on effects the rest of our body, because we're now learning how important inflammation is, you know, not only to cancer, not only to anti-aging, not only to metabolism and weight loss, but also to mental health and what's going on in our brains and our mood. So that was the big clincher for me that this is really important and there'd been more and more proper science now. People are taking it seriously because it was seen as a fringe alternative, sort of hippie movement, not real stuff. Now it's mainstream and I think people are taking it seriously. And certainly in England, we've seen an explosion of products now in stores that just weren't there five years ago, as people are realizing that not only is it healthy, but it's also super tasty to have this whole range of ferments that you can add to your plate. And so, you know, I really want people listening to start thinking about, you know, getting those three ferments a day. I think five might be a bit of a reach for most people. start with three and you don't need lots of them you need small amounts regularly that's that's really what uh seems to be beneficial what do you think would be three quick examples of those uh well what i have for my my standard breakfast was a full fat greek yogurt um with uh milk kefir mixed together. That gives me two. And then at lunch with my salad, I might have some beetroot kraut. Or in the evening, I have some cheese. So that's four ferments from it. But I could easily well, you know, add some kefir to a curry as a sauce instead of cream, you know, or as a dip with your tacos. Because these are pretty common foods that I think people might not automatically go to when thinking for fermented foods. Correctly. Most people don't think of cheese as fermented. They just say, oh. And, you know, in the book, I did actually do a study of 70 products. And, yes, even things as banal as Kraft Philadelphia cream cheese has microbes in it. It's fermented. Right. That doesn't mean all craft products are because I did test a cheese slice, which I'd had on my shelf for five years and is still bright orange and shiny. Oh, no. Oh, no. That's never a good start. I'm not eating it. And the sort of frozen pizza cheese is not real cheese either. So there's lots of fake cheese in America, but there's also quite a lot of good stuff as well. So, yeah, ferments are everywhere. Miso paste, which you can use instead of stock cubes, is a really good other thing. You've got soy sauce is fermented, you know, Tabasco, Worcestershire sauce. These are all actual ferments. So there's a lot of it around. We just need to start rediscovering the stuff and putting it back on our plates and just enjoying those extra flavors like you were telling me about. Yeah, I'm a sucker for a tour sheet. I was telling you this, this Persian side dish that's a fermented vegetables or it can be mangoes. It can be vegetables. It can be onions. It can be a lot of things. And it's a bit like a, yeah, it sounds like a bit like a Persian kimchi. I basically, yeah. It's like a Persian kimchi. I eat it by the bowl. I love it. I eat it until my, my tongue is melting off. I love fermented foods, but yeah, they use it as a little garnish or an accent on other foods. I'm the weirdo at the dinner table eating all the all the all the torshi for sure so yeah this stuff is really good in it um but what we also discovered was because i was very critical of things like kombucha you get them in a store here and um us is full of these these big national brands won't name any of them but you know in cans or bottles and they've got long shelf lives and you think you know this is supposed to be a live ferment, can it really last six months in a bottle without exploding or doing something? So they must do something to it in order to be able to scale up and do this nationally. So they normally strain them. They micro-strain them so there's no microbes can get through into that final bottle. They might pasteurize them so they kill the microbes or they might make them into vinegar so they've used up all the sugar. They're essentially asleep, these microbes. And then you don't add any sugar, you add artificial sweeteners. So there's several methods you can do to mass produce things like kombucha. And I thought they'd all be useless. But the latest research shows that there are studies showing when you've killed microbes in fermented food, it can still have health benefits, which is kind of weird, right? So you ingest microbes that are dead and they still have a benefit on your immune system. And I couldn't work this out until talking to a few of my colleagues. We came up with this explanation that they're probably acting like vaccines. If you think about dead vaccines, Yes, yeah. Why would a dead bacteria or a dead virus work on your immune system? It's because they all have these cell walls and they have proteins sticking out of them. And as you're eating, they probably tickle your immune system and just say, hey, you know. It's still enough of a small introduction to the system to trigger the wanted response. Correct. Because you're having large amounts of them, you're ingesting billions of them, then they have this cumulative effect if you have them regularly. So that was a real eye-opener for me. And then that got me more excited to finish my book and say, I've got to tell people I won't be so rude about those highly commercial kombuchas that I've been dissing because they may well have some benefit. And also things like sourdough bread, which, you know, very trendy, controversial about how good they are. But the fact that it's been fermented probably gives it some advantages because you are ingesting lots of dead microbes, lots of dead yeast. And for those beer lovers, you know, if you get a yeasty beer, that could also have some mitigating effects against the alcohol, shall we say. So I think it opens up all kinds of possibilities and makes you think about things you can add to food. So I think we're going to see a food trend of people using these postbiotics. Hey guys, in my episode today with Dr. Tim Spector and on a lot of my conversations with experts in the clinical field, the longevity field, the wellness field, I'm trying to deliver not just vague tips, but measurable health outcomes that can move the needle for you, that can motivate you. But also if you apply them, these lessons from the show, you can really move the needle towards your personal goals, maybe losing some body fat, building muscle, improving energy. And just honestly, like me now in my forties, trying to just stay healthy, upright, and mobile as much as possible as I age. And one of the biggest game changers I've learned, especially through conversations like this one today with Tim Spector, is this. You can't manage what you don't measure. 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And right now, you can get 50% off, 50% off any diagnostic lab panel when you head to joyandblokes.com slash chase. that's j-o-i-a-n-d-b-l-o-k-e-s.com slash chase and use checkout code chase to save 50% off your first diagnostic labs yes half off and depending on where you live they can even send a certified phlebotomist to your home that's huge for me as a new dad the last several labs i've had drawn they have come to my home right before my son's nap time so i don't need to take away family time. I don't need to get in the car, travel anywhere. It's been a huge, huge help. Plus, saving 50% off, man, doesn't hurt the wallet at all. So as soon as I heard this news, we have a product at Zoe called Daily 30, which is prebiotic of 34 freeze-dried plants. And we changed the formula and I added some dead kombucha in there. So you get dried kombucha in a powder that you can rehydrate previously i said that would be completely useless but we now know that even if it's dead it could have a beneficial effect on immune system so we added that to our mix that's just an example of how i think we're going to see postbiotics used uh in foods um one of the big dairy yogurt producers in europe danone have um they bought a company that made a dead probiotic called Accomantia, and they're going to start putting it into their foods. You heard of Accomantia? I've been taking Accomantia for two years-ish. Yeah, that for me was one of the- You take the live one, do you? I'm pretty sure I'll have to double check. I get mine from Pendulum. Yes, that'd be the live version. Yes. In Europe, they were doing studies showing that the dead one worked as well as the live one, or sometimes better. So it was kind of weird. Huh. And it's a lot easier to work with a dead one and get approval. I can see that, yeah. And, you know, you're not worried about it going crazy or taking over your body or doing something unusual. And so it's, you know, in terms of trends, it's a really interesting area that, you know, these zombie biotics can actually be beneficial. Yeah, acromantia for me was one of the biggest notable changes that I've felt when it comes to any probiotic, postbiotic, any kind of gut health supplementation for me personally. It's like I didn't know I was walking around with as much kind of mild gut discomfort, bloating that I was until I started acromantia. And also urolithin A, the postbiotic, I've been using that for years as well with tremendous benefit. Okay. Yeah. But kind of talking about these live microbes versus dead, I want to kind of get into this live versus dead food situation. It's really exciting, but also kind of odd to hear you talk about benefits of dead food and live food. I'm curious, are we getting the same amount of benefits from these dead foods, these dead microbes as we are the live versions? Is it just a matter of, you know, the dosage or is it just a matter of like a saturation point? how is it that we can even get the same benefits from something that's alive or dead great questions i don't have all the answers what do you hypothesize what would you guess what have you seen well i think you've got to realize that when you're having a regular ferment whether it's a sauerkraut or whatever it is you're going to be um ingesting a mixture of dead and live microbes. So these microbes, they live just for a few hours. And so they're producing lots of dead bodies in there. So when you have a live ferment, you're getting both. And when you've got a dead one, you're only getting the dead ones. Ah, I see. So I think in general, you'd always get more benefit from the live ones, the live ferments is my belief. Although there are some studies, like in this particular Accomantia study, what they did where they were just taking one microbe on its own, they got better effects with the dead than the live one. And it must have been because in that particular case, the protein in the cell wall was having more effect than the rest of it. We don't understand. But anyway, so in general, I think I would prefer my ferments to be live. Because we're getting both live and dead. Yeah, but I still think we can probably get some benefit from the dead ones. And we should just keep an open mind for all these things now and sort of reverse our view. Because for years we were saying, well, it's, you know, it's been put in the oven. It's been added to water. Like, you know, you add miso, miso soup. Well, you know, it's killed those nice, those 20 species of microbes. They're dead now. And that's the argument against pasteurization. Correct me if I'm wrong, right? It's, you know, it's this flash heating process that is necessary for sterilization, sanitation, and really mass distribution of like usually dairy products and things like that. But this is actually something different you're saying. Yeah. No, it's, it's so saying, well, you can still make it safe and make sure you're not getting listeria or some of these other nasty bugs. Which is a good thing, yeah. Which people, a lot of people die for it from in the US, you know, from these raw milk outbreaks and et cetera. so you can still pasteurize it and have some of the benefits of those microbes after that. So there is, you know, life after death, if you like. So I think it a really interesting concept And if we start thinking about all these things you could start adding to food you know a bit like the example of the of the dried kombucha or you could start you know your dried kimchi or your you know you could start making you know business with your your persian uh mix you know you just get vats of it and then yeah uh kill it and dry it and uh it could still have some health benefits so there's a lot more work to be done but i i think it's it's opened up a whole new field for nutrition that we should take seriously. And because it's been so hard really to develop new probiotics, it takes so much work and money. It's been so slow, and you've got to prove they're completely safe before you can launch in the markets, etc, etc. So this gets around all that. Can you, I'm going to go back and define our terms a little bit here, because we've mentioned postbiotics probiotics. I think maybe, well, I'm about to prebiotics these three P's of the biotic sphere. This is kind of like the world of microbes and fermentation. How would you define and describe each of them? And also, is there a hierarchy that we should be focusing on of, I need more prebiotics than postbiotics. Is it a magical ratio of all three? Define them, describe them and hierarchy eyes down. It's super confusing. So let's just do the definitions again. So a probiotic is a live microbe that has been shown to produce benefits in humans. And so you have to have done the study rather than just sort of believe it's helpful. And that can be in a capsule. As in the Akkermansi utoka, it can be in a fermented food like a yogurt or a kraut, where it naturally lives. Both are considered probiotics. One's a probiotic food, one's a probiotic supplement. Okay. Then you've got postbiotics, which are dead forms of those microbes, either the dead microbe itself or in a way it's soup. You know, the chemicals it was producing up to the point of death counters the postbiotic. Okay, so microbes in your gut are essentially chemical factories. They're pumping out thousands of different chemicals all the time, converting food into those chemicals that your body needs for optimized health. So it's a mixture of the debris of the bodies and the chemicals in the liquid. That's sort of collectively called postbiotics. Then you've got prebiotics, which are the fertilizers for the microbes in your gut that are beneficial for health. And so consider that a bit like a general fertilizer. Okay. And the examples in the past we've had are chicory root, which is inulin, which you often see in commercial products. I love chicory root. it's in a coffee at New Orleans. Café du Monde has chicory root coffee. It's so good. I had no idea this was a prebiotic. Yes. So chicory root has the most amount of fiber of anything and it's a whole industry. They now make it sort of synthetically created. But that's a single fiber. Then you've got these more complex fibers. They're all prebiotics if they nourish microbes. Then you've got things like our product that we developed over the last few years, which is a mixture of freeze-dried plants. So 34 freeze-dried plants includes seven types of mushrooms. You've got baobab, you've got seaweed, you've got the kombucha I mentioned, and you've got all kinds of nuts and seeds and different herbs and spices. all of them will have hundreds of different types of fiber many of them we don't know about but overall they're providing nutrition for the diversity of microbes you have in your gut and they're going to beneficially do that so that's what prebiotics are they're either very synthetic ones that are sort of you get in factories or they are basically just condensed versions of real plants. And in terms of a hierarchy of them, we don't know for sure. There haven't been long-term studies. The standard probiotics you get from the drugstore overall have been shown to work, but not consistently. So there are studies showing that if you take a particular strain, It might help mental health, might help blood pressure, glucose control a little bit, but it doesn't work in some people. And the data are not that convincing that no one's done long-term studies and the effects may not be that big. Then you've got the post-botics, which we've discussed, which in a few cases are stronger than the live one, but generally it's weaker than the probiotic foods. The fermented foods, my reading is the data is still incomplete, but looks like they might have more benefit than capsule probiotics because you're getting many more microbes, both in quantity and in species. So in something like your Persian kraut, you're probably getting 25, 30 different microbial species. Whereas, you know, these probiotic combinations, you know, the most you can get is about eight or something together. And if you add too many, they might counteract each other. So you don't know that that's good necessarily. Yeah, that made me wonder, is there a dance that we need to be aware of when it comes to these different biotics and, you know, the live foods? are they going to be fighting for attention, so to speak? Are they going to, is one going to outdo the other? Is one going to overtake another? Is it a matter of timing? Is it a matter of taking with or without other certain foods? Is it a matter of taking on an empty stomach? Not to get too nuanced, but how can we really take what you've just said and then, you know, optimize it a little bit more? If I wanted to focus on prebiotic, postbiotic, and probiotic, this is kind of maybe the best practices. yeah well um i mean obviously the three are rather different it's a lot easier to eat your prebiotics because you're eating food right we're talking vegetables and all the things we're talking about yeah okay plant foods are all prebiotics and so you can have in a concentrated form in a you know a supplement you buy or you can just have lots of high fiber foods that's straightforward you don't don't have to worry about anything. You've just got to get them regularly into your gut. They'll do the trick. Probiotics in foods and ferments and postbiotics is a bit more tricky because they've got to get through the gut, not be killed, before they get down to the lower intestines. So they've got to get through the stomach. And so some of the probiotics, the capsules might have acid-resistant capsules on the outside so they don't get broken down too much. I was going to say, what would keep them from getting to where they need to be, when they need to be? Well, you've either got to have enormous amounts of them and just assume that most of them will die, but some will get through. Because normally you're getting billions. So you mentioned these colony forming units that you often see on the pack. That's an idea of how many there are. So you want to be ingesting billions in order for a few to make it. Okay? So they do get killed. If you've got a gastric-resistant capsule, that's going to help. If you have it with food, particular fatty food, it's going to help as well. Because they hide in the food. So it's kind of like you want to take some vitamins with food, right? These fat-soluble items, they need to be passed through certain parts of the digestive tract and be broken down at the right place and right time. Yeah, but you've got gastric acid trying to break things down and stop microbes entering your system. So if you wrap it around some food that it takes a while for it to get to it, these guys will get through. So generally fermented foods, you know, like a kraut or something, a lot of the microbes, they're more to start with. So they have 10 times more than, say, a standard probiotic. And they can hide in the leaves and, you know, in the form of kraut. You know, they won't be all eaten by the acid. they won't all die off just the ones on the outside uh or if they're in a yogurt or a milk or kefir they'll be they can hide around the fat globules and be protected so they're naturally protected doesn't matter too much when you take those those products but it's a big problem more for the the synthetic supplement probiotics a lot of them you know don't make it whereas you get more in the foods so generally my hierarchy would be that you know i'd rather people took fermented foods to get more benefit than than off-the-shelf probiotics uh there's a much wider variety of species that you're ingesting as well and because you've got to remember that we all have very individual gut microbiomes yours will only overlap about 20 with mine so why would one species help us both equally. So the acomancia you're taking might help you, but not me. Whereas if we're taking the same 25 microbes, chances are they might help us equally. What do you think is the biggest disruptor in our modern lifestyle, whether it's sleep, stress, diet? What do you think is the biggest disruptor to these microbes? So let's say we're we're ingesting them, we're eating the foods, we're taking maybe the right supplements and we're doing the air quote here, the right thing. But maybe we're negating it or offsetting it or potentially even counteracting it entirely. Well, our dependence on high risk processed foods, known as ultra processed foods. So processed foods could be completely negating the benefits we're getting from focusing on prebiotics, postbiotics, probiotics. At the same time, yes. So if you're taking your probiotic supplement and at the same time you're having, you know, a standard American diet full of additives and chemicals, emulsifiers, glues that stick the microbes together, lack of fiber so that they're dying off, you're highly unlikely to get any great benefits from the probiotic. I think you need everything together for them to work maximally. So, you know, those things are really bad for your gut health. And it's a combination of the lack of fiber plus the chemicals that actively are harmful for your gut microbes. So that's by far the biggest thing. I mean, obviously, taking regular antibiotics is a pretty bad thing for the gut. and the average 18-year-old American has had about 18, 20 courses of antibiotics. It's very hard to avoid here. That's another big factor. So I think you've got to take a more holistic view. You can't solve a terrible diet just by popping a probiotic. and interestingly when we did a study we did a clinical trial of our daily 30 prebiotic and we wanted to see how it compared with a good probiotic so there's a one of the classic ones that's been shown to work particularly in depression and mental health called lactobacillus a reuteri. They both improved gut health, but the prebiotic mix with, you know, with its wider variety of fertilizers had a much 10 times more effect, more improvement than the probiotic. Well, it kind of isn't surprising. It isn't, but you won't find that in the literature because people have been very dismissive of fibers and probiotics. Also because in the past, the way we scored the gut microbiome didn't really help the fibers because we didn't see big, we were only looking at diversity changes. And if you add a lot of a single fiber like inulin, it only helps certain species. I see. It doesn't give that broad one. So now we're changing our mind and saying, let's move away from these single fibers to this broad brush approach. which is really confessing our ignorance and saying, we don't know everything, so let's just use all the good things nature has provided and it should work. So I think that was a bit of a surprise to us, that both worked compared to control, but 10 times bigger effect on the gut microbiome in that six-week period, possibly because some people responded to the probiotic and some people didn't. And obviously when you do a trial, you're just getting the averages. What did that response look like, particularly in this study? Or what is the most common immediate response to something like this? You said responding to the biotic. Well, our main outcome was does your gut health improve? How is that measured? Well, two ways. One standard way is diversity to increase the number of species, which is the classical way it's done. But we also used our new method, which we just published a few days ago in the top journal Nature, which is the very top science journal you can publish in. And based on 34,000 people, we found out that the best way to look at gut health is to see what your top 50 microbes are compared to your bottom 50. And you get a ratio. So it's a bit like a healthy cholesterol. I was going to kind of like the cholesterol ratio. Yeah. Yes. HDL to LDL. But we're looking at 50 microbes that everyone in the world has against 50 microbes that are bad that everyone in the world has. And both of them change when you change your diet. And this is a really new concept in how to test gut health because it's a big problem. So what do you mean by gut health? It's a bit vague. and diversity is okay, but I can give you, you know, uh, an artificial fiber or not change diversity because you might improve the good ones, but you, um, uh, you don't change the total number because, you know, cause it's just looking globally. It doesn't matter which ones are changing. Is it, so is it really more so, is it more about more of the better or less of the bad? Great question. It turns out that it's more of the better. And if you can increase the good guys, they squeeze out the bad ones. Inevitably, they kind of take care of the guys. Yeah, we didn't know that. We didn't know that before this study. So that was another real big insight. Because what's happening is that the more you feed the good guys, the more efficiently they are using all the resources in the gut. They basically starve out the bad guys. The bad guys are the pro-inflammatory ones, the ones that are grubbing around for scraps and things. They're like scavenger vultures. But if it's so efficient, the cleaning system, then there's nothing for them to eat and they slowly die out. That makes sense, yeah. So that's what we were seeing is progressively the good guys increase and that's what we see in our studies, particularly with this Dirty 30 prebiotic. we got a change in about 47 out of the 100 microbes, whereas in the probiotic we only saw a change in four. Wow, wow. So that's telling us something that we've had the wrong approach really to the gut. We're always looking for that magic bullet of that one thing that's going to do it, but actually it's this coming back to this diversity idea, this concept of greater variety is really what we need. And that's partly because we don't still understand most of what we're going on. In that top 50 microbes, 40 of them we'd never heard of before. They were newly discovered without a, didn't even have a name. How long ago was this? About a week ago we published this. This is just a testament to the validity and importance of good science, but also as great of a breakthrough as we can have with all of the modern tools and advancement and technology, we still are scratching the surface on the human body. Like we're making breakthroughs, but also going, oh, we were clueless on this up until now. And which makes you think, what are we going to be clueless about in the next year, five years, 10 years? I think it, yeah, it makes you humble to realize, and you know, everyone states these, you know, you go on social media and everyone's making all these statements, so black and white and this is this. No, no, no, no, no, no. And you just realize we understand so little of the intricacies, you know, things that we were saying completely wrong and now we're reversed, you know, dead microbes are useless. It's usually what, about 10 years in my experience, 10 years of what the nutrition, health, wellness space says is the way, the truth and the light, you know, in about 10 years. Actually, we were wrong or it's just, you know, it's a big, I mean look at the no diet low diet Atkins all that It was still hanging around isn it In the stores all those low foods yeah um that the fat is still the thing and then there you know and you know we still got the keto you know uh leftover from yeah yeah truly um it it takes a long time to to change people's because nutrition science is difficult though you know it's you have to get big numbers i mean we had 34 000 people in this study that's a huge sample size and you do metagenomes on all of them. You had, uh, health records on all of them, you know, blood draws and you've got, um, nutrition data. People can't afford to do that. No. Do you think we'll ever really be able to catch up? What I mean by that is, I mean, look, humans are evolving all the time, right? In some ways, very slow and other ways, very fast, but with technology and access to ultra processed food and processed food and just even socioeconomic change, I feel like there are ways that the human gut is going to be changing in ways that science can't always catch up with. So are we ever really going to be able to capture an accurate depiction of the human experience, the human gut experience to really go, this is great. this is bad kind of thing, or these are advancements, or these are where we still need a lot of research and help. I feel like it's just like a constant change. We can never catch the ball. I think we can through the technology. So we've made massive changes. Just in two years, we doubled the number of species we can identify in the human gut, right? So that's pretty big. It's a bit like the genetic revolution that, you know, means, yeah, you can get all your genes looked at very easily and given to you, on a disc. True. The microbiome now is within everyone's grasp that this should be an annual test you can get. And if it became adopted by the insurance companies and government such that it was having a blood pressure measured every year, the cost you could get it done for $25 or something. So this could be even a part of one's annual physical. It's far more useful than most of the blood tests done at Quest for your annual physical, which you sort of know the result of anyway. It doesn't really sort of excite you anymore. So why am I doing this? When I could learn so much from knowing the state of my gut health. And so if we did that, I mean, we've now got 300,000 people's results at Zoe. And, you know, we've just made, we can now diagnose someone with type 2 diabetes or pre-diabetes or high blood pressure. So that's just with 300,000 people at one point in time. But when we get to a million, you start getting people recording it regularly. Then you can start to get to some of the questions you're answering. You can start getting babies from birth and look at them every year. Once it gets cheap and available and just as part of our health system, it should be easy and we can start looking at people exposed to pollution or people exposed to microplastics or pesticides and really start to understand this stuff that at the moment is a lot of conjecture and guesswork and, you know, fear mongering. I've heard one of the best ways to look at the state of one's gut health is to do a stool sample. Is that correct? And what can we find in looking at what we excrete that is so powerful when looking at the gut microbiome? Well, it's the only way non-invasively at seeing what's inside your gut. so you can't regularly have a colonoscopy just to see no nor would i recommend it no no so you know what comes out of your gut it is actually a good reflection of what it is inside it we've done we did a very detailed study of some twins and we took biopsies inside their gut and compared it to the stool sample so it does reflect what's going on inside your gut you know about 80 correlation So it's as good as you can get for something that's easy. And so the state of your stool is a good guide. Just by looking at it, you can tell quite a lot how hard it is, how soft it is, how regular you're going, is correlated with your overall microbiome health. Can I pause you right there? We're getting too graphic. No, no, no. Is that what you're worried about? I want to go a little bit deeper. but um you know in a professional manner i because it is so important and i've had um several gut health specialists on the show before and um i think it's worth revisiting how can one look at their stool as a quick glance litmus test of i'm in a good place with my gut health or not what are you were hitting on some key words of like color and softness and firmness and like you know what what's going on there? How can I look in the toilet real quick and go, all right, my gut health is good or not so good. Okay. If you want to lay it all out the 10 second. Yeah. Yeah. You look back in the pan and you see, okay, is it a nice brown color? It, it's not horribly yellow or white or there's no blood in it. Um, and it, it, it looks like a stool. It doesn't look like a cow pattern. It doesn't look like a rabbit dropping. Okay. So if you're somewhere in the middle, that's pretty good. if you're going every day, that's good. If you're going once a week, that's bad. And if you're going more than three times a day, that's probably bad as well. So you want to be nicely in the middle. You don't want to have constipation. You don't have bloating. You don't have diarrhea, brushing something in the toilet. It's that regularity you want. Then you know you've got a pretty healthy gut. And as we were saying earlier, actually mood and energy are pretty good indicators that your gut is healthy as well. So think outside just the area of your gut. They do go together. So people with irritable bowel syndrome often have mood disturbances as well. They absolutely tend to go together. So that's the easy way. It's a cheap way. It doesn't cost you anything. If you want to spend a bit of money, you can get a stool test. You send it off to a lab, a lab like Zoe's, but there are two or three other companies in the US that do it, they would extract the DNA from the microbes in your stool. So most of your stool is made up of dead microbes. And what the DNA test is, it breaks down the DNA, separates it from everything else. So you just get the DNA, you do genetic tests on that to look at every gene in every microbe, giant jigsaw puzzle, put it together with computers to work out what's what. and then you finally get this uh picture like with which we've we've published this idea of you've got the the top 100 microbes to really focus on because you can't focus on everything right it's just too big it's a bit like genetics you can't it's never when you knowing all 23 000 genes just you can tell me the you know useful stuff same with you about microbes so that's why we focused on these hundred these are ones that can change with diet that are good and bad and And if you look at that, you'll see we give you a score out of 1,000, and 1,000 is perfect. Zero is the worst we've ever seen. And you'll be somewhere in the middle, and you say, okay, a score of 350, below average, I can do much better. And we've got some clusters in there. We can tell whether some of those pathways are involved in the immune system. Others are involved in where the fat is deposited. others for your glucose control so we we're slowly each time getting to know more and more about the function of what's going on but we're probably only 10 away on that journey and we it's only when we got to 30 000 people that we started to make these real discoveries and we're now at 300 000 we're making more once we get to you know three million we'll be at the next stage so you've got to think about it you know everyone is so different everyone's unique so you need huge numbers to be able to make sense of it right yeah as um i had uh dr amy shaw on the show like a year or two ago and we briefly at the end of that interview got into this concept of i forget what it's called i don't want to say zbiotics but um not zbiotic that's a alcohol drink uh xenobiotics xenobiotics yes you're familiar with this yes please unfold it unpack it for us but basically she was saying how this is becoming a thing of taking a stool or the excrement of you know like an elite athlete kind of thing and you can take it more or less as a supplement to reap the benefits of that person you know like a high performance state i'm probably butchering the science, but is it, am I getting anywhere close here? I'm not quite sure. You're saying you athletes eat their own. The new performance enhancing drug. Basically it was like, let's say I'm an Olympic tracks star or like a really high elite athlete. They supplement turned us into supplement form basically from the excrement, which now I'm understanding is basically just all these great microbes. Okay. So things like butyrate maybe is what you're thinking about. Okay. So microbes produce all these chemicals. I'm ruining this reference, by the way. Some of them are anti-inflammatories. Some of them are, you know, these postbiotics. So postbiotic is something produced by, you know, also by a microbe. So it's the metabolites they're producing. So they are taking some of those and trying them out on athletes. Yes. Okay. Is that working? Is that a thing? How is that possible? It's not proven to work. They often work in mice. And so you can get mice, see improvements in mice. No one's shown any definite improvements in humans, but that's why athletes just take them anyway. They don't care. I mean, as someone performing at that level, if you're telling me there's any way I can get like a half a percent better, they're the ones kind of looking for something like this, right? Yeah, whereas it wouldn't affect the average person probably. It's not like I can take the stool supplement or the microbes, basically, of a high performer and gain all their powers. It's not like that. No. And you've obviously done mouse studies swapping microbes from one mouse to another. And it's not nearly as simple as that. You can change things like depression and anxiety by transplanting stools. but I don't think things like exercise performance. Okay, okay. But as you said, if you're talking about less than 1%, Yeah. Yeah, take it and see, you know. But I think it is a big evolving science about looking within the stool at the metabolites. These are the chemicals that the microbes produce and then trying to work out what the really good ones are and then sort of growing them up and then using them as something. So there are lots of companies doing that now, but the science hasn't yet shown that they're yet effective in humans, but they have potential. So I think that's really where we are. Well, let's maybe get away from the college track star trying to squeeze that extra half percent. Let's talk maybe bigger picture for a lot of the bigger problems facing here in the United States. A lot of Americans, chronic illness, disease, type 2 diabetes, inflammation, brain fog, fatigue, Just a lot of symptoms that come due to mostly lifestyle, poor lifestyle choices, poor diet, poor nutrition, maybe a little bit of genetic influence sprinkled in there. But who do you think stands to benefit most from a chronic illness and disease standpoint from improving gut health? If I'm a type two diabetic and I focus on these things we've been walking through now, can I see a reversal in my diabetes? Can I see my A1C go down? Who do you think stands to benefit most from a chronic illness and disease perspective? Can we see reversal? Can we see change? Can this really have this cascading effect to what's affecting most Americans right now? What we're seeing across the board is that when people really embrace this idea, really change their diet dramatically, everyone can improve their gut microbiome. And that has knock-on effects on all kinds of diseases, all these chronic diseases. There haven't been long-term studies long enough to see how this works over years. But everything we're seeing, and there's many studies in type 2 diabetes, for example, showing you can reverse that. You can reverse things like fatty liver disease just with diet alone. Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. Non-alcoholic liver disease. So I believe you can, but I think we're going to see the biggest problem in the United States is a combination of obesity and type 2 diabetes. So where I think the big potential here is using the power of the GLP-1 drugs to get that initial weight loss so that people physiologically getting back towards normal. and you can switch off those hunger signals that prevent them. Yeah, all that food noise goes away. Taking the healthy choice. And at the same time, then giving them programs that talk to them about their gut health long-term, which can wean them off these drugs or get them on lower doses and start making healthy food choices. At the moment, they're all separate. No one's saying, let's join this stuff together. because the GLP-1 drugs, you know, are a medical revolution. They're incredible, but at the moment they're being misused and we're not taking the opportunity when people are out of that addictive phrase to teach them about real food and combating the food companies. So I think it's a great opportunity. Yeah, thank you for that. I want to get into a couple rapid fire questions before I get to my final question here. What do you think is the most underrated fermented food? probably cheese because people don't realize it's actually fermented. Who's going to say no to more cheese in their life? Exactly. Not me. But most doctors will still tell people, don't eat cheese. It's bad for your heart. That's still, you know, so. Also, shout out Dr. Eric Van Watson and Stephanie Van Watson. C15 essential fatty acids from Fatty 15. It's one of the best natural sources of this essential fatty acid C15 we found in diets is cheese, particularly a high altitude grown cheese. I think it was, it's like a goat cheese in Italy. Was it, I forget the name, but yeah, you can get. Alpine cheeses. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, so it's, it's great. So you're getting all these amazing healthy fats and the fermentation here. So you agree with me. It's a win-win. Yeah. Oh, cheese for days. Cheese for days. What do you think is a food we should fear less? i would say uh well a good one is coffee oh um you know coffee is has a terrible reputation for causing heart problems whatever and it's actually heart protective and really good for your gut really good source of fiber and polyphenols so all right next time we're getting coffee we're getting cheese so health they're both yeah health foods i love it get rid of orange juice put you know, coffee in the health section. Coffee and cheese. You heard it here first. What is your simplest gut health rule someone can walk away with from this episode right now? Eat 30 plants a week. This show is meant to bring on people like yourself that have expertise, experience, and unique areas of well-being, physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual, so that you can help me, frankly, and my audience, you guys, learn something new or go back to a basics so that we can advance, we can move forward. And one of those areas where collectively all areas of life to live a life ever forward. So Dr. Spector, those two words, ever forward, what do they mean to you? If I were to say, how do you live a life ever forward? How would you interpret that? What does that mean to you? It sort of means different things. I mean, personally, I love learning new things and having new challenges. So I've changed career five or six times, which is very hard as an academic specialist because you don't like it when you change. But I've always wanted new challenges, so I'm always looking at something that excites me and I want to unravel. So that, I think, to me motivates me in my life. I get up every morning really wanting to discover new stuff. So that's great. But the other thing ever forward, I think, is the fact that by translating the science into practical tips and knowledge, if we all used those tips and improved our diets, we'd all have an extra 10 years of healthy life. And to me, that's pushing ever forward our health span, which is all vital. And increasingly, all of us are valuing health above everything else. And so this is the perfect way to do it. 10 more years of good coffee and cheese. Absolutely. I'll take it. And Persian firmness as well. And torsci. Yeah, actually, that would be a great little charcuterie board, some good cheese, some torsci, and coffee. Well, I might go with a Bordeaux. Next time I come, you have to bring me some. We've got to update the studio for you guys. Dr. Factor, this was a privilege. Thank you so much. For anybody wanting to learn more, I'll have all of your work, the book, Zoe Health, everything linked down in the show notes, the video description on YouTube if you're watching. But where's one place my audience can go right now to connect with you more, to learn more about what you've got going on in the world? Zoe.com. Z-O-E. Z-O-E. Or they can just download the Zoe Health app for free, which is a free app and very educational. And, you know, start learning about gut health and food. Let's do it. All right. Well, I'm going to get out of here. Go eat some cheese, make another cup of coffee and clean up my gut health. All right. Thank you.