Your gut bacteria, about 2 kg of them mostly beneficial, produce serotonin and B-vitamins that affect your mood and stress resilience. Refined sugars trigger inflammation that damages these bacteria, while whole foods like vegetables and fruits feed them. Swapping processed carbs for whole ones stabilizes blood glucose and protects your mental health.
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Fantastic. So I know there's a huge amount of research going on at the moment around the link between gut health and mental health. And something that I find is it feels so confusing that it wasn't that long ago that fat was the bad thing.
Mm.
And then it was just eat proteins. And then that kind of got thrown in the bin and now we're on sugar. So what is the latest research that's really making this link between sugar as now being the new evil And the impact that that has on our, on our mental well-being.
Yeah, okay, so let's first of all understand gut health. So you have, um, all this bacteria that live on you and in you, and it is the kind of foundation to your well-being. It weighs— if you added all that bacteria up, it weighs about 2 kilograms. So they're now starting— scientists are now starting to recognize that actually it's an organ in its own right. And I'd love to use this, this little saying, that only your mother loves you more than your gut bacteria. Your gut bacteria is so passionate about supporting your long-term wellbeing. So having— That's funny, isn't it?
Because quite often when we talk about bacteria, it always has a negative connotation.
Yeah.
As you say, it's— I think it was Actimel, it always talks about the good bacteria.
Yeah, yeah. Well, actually, but we need a good balance of good bacteria, bad bacteria, about 80% good bacteria, 20% bad bacteria in our intestine, but also on our hands, in our mouth. We have bacteria everywhere. We're only actually 10% human. We're made up of so much bacteria that there's more bacteria than there is DNA in our system. Now, so that gut microbiome, that balance of bacteria is our kind of foundation. Our gut health is our foundation to our long-term wellbeing. And built on that are 5 pillars: hydration, nutrition, movement, mindset, and sleep. And all of those 5 need to be in the right place in order to function, in order for our bodies to function efficiently, to be in a place of longevity, to be in a place of what we like to call elite health, really good health. Now, if you add sugar into the mix, sugar is really disruptive to all 5 of those pillars. So let's just understand a little bit more about what happens with sugar, first of all, when we consume it. So when we consume sugar, Actually, let's talk about the carbohydrate spectrum first of all. So this is spectrum of carbohydrates, and we start with kind of greens and reds and oranges, and then we move to beige and white. And the greens and the reds and the oranges are the vegetables and the fruit. The greens are the more veggies that we get to the red, and then oranges, they're kind of heading into fruit. And then we've got beige things like pasta and bread, and then we've got the white, which is the real refined sugars like biscuits and cakes and cookies and all those kind of things. Now when you, when your body metabolizes, um, when your body metabolizes carbohydrate, the metabolic process it goes through is exactly the same whether it is green or whether it is beige, okay, or white. But one, with the greens and the, and the reds and the oranges, we release, we, they contain something called antioxidants. And those antioxidants neutralize the side effects of the metabolic process that the body goes through in order to access the glucose in those reds and greens and oranges. We don't have antioxidants in the beiges and the whites, so as a result, when we metabolize that carbohydrate, the substances that are released in the body aren't neutralized by the antioxidants, and they can start to cause damage in the system. So they can start— they start to attack healthy tissue Basically, and they start to set up a little bit of inflammation. Now inflammation is really, it's a really important process that the body needs to protect us, but when we are constantly eating beige and white sources of carbohydrate, more and more of these free radicals, they're called, the side effects of the metabolic process are produced, and so more and more inflammation starts to be caused in the body.
This is what, is this what some people then label as bloating?
Not necessarily. Bloating is a side effect, but inflammation might be seen as joint health, poor, you know, kind of really uncomfortable joints, low back pain, all that kind of thing. It might impact our immunity, but in your situation, it also impacts our ability to be able to cope with stress externally because it's creating a stress internally. So this inflammation is creating a stress. It causes the release of cortisol, which is a hormone that we need for the body to repair. But if cortisol rises too high, cortisol can, um, become toxic to the body.
Yep.
So we're inflamed internally, we're stressed internally. It makes dealing with external circumstances harder. So in the case of anxiety, it would make dealing with things that might set off your anxiety, um, it makes it dealing with all those kind of things much harder. But most important, most importantly, what cortisol does is it disrupts the health of the good bacteria. And when the health of the good bacteria is disrupted, it basically starts to destroy them. That can lead to other really big consequences. So the good bacteria release serotonin, which is our feel-good hormone. They also release B vitamins, which is— which are the nutrients that help us to stay calm in stressful situations. So we've got all this bacteria being disrupted by cortisol, which is then having a knock-on effect to our mental wellbeing. It's our ability to be able to cope with stress externally. So not only have we got sugar in the form of carbohydrates, in the form of beige and white carbohydrates, those sugars are causing this bit of inflammation. They're causing this disruption in the system that's causing disruption to our gut bacteria, which as a consequence means that that direct link between the gut and the brain is being disrupted. Anything goes on in your back, in your intestine basically comes out in your brain. So if your intestine is inflamed and stressed, that's what comes out as far as your emotions are concerned and your ability to be able to cope with things. So there's this real inextricable link between how much sugar you consume and your ability to be able to cope with anxiety. And it's all linked through gut health, basically inflammation and gut health in the body. The more you are consuming carbohydrates from the reds and the greens and the oranges, the less inflammation you're going to have, the more healthy your good bacteria is going to be because All of those, those colors contain something called short-chain fatty acids, which will feed the good bacteria and help the good bacteria to thrive. So the more the reds and the greens, the oranges you're consuming in your form of your carbohydrate, the better your gut health is going to be, the less inflammation you're going to have, the more you're going to be able to cope with stressful situations externally. So when someone says they're carb, they're going low carb, Actually, if you're eating fruit and vegetables, you're not low carb. Those are the perfect kind of carbohydrates you should be eating. You're only taking out the processed carbohydrates, which influence our blood glucose levels really massively. And we want our blood glucose levels to be really nicely balanced. That's the way we keep inflammation under control, and we can keep anxiety and improve our better— our mental health by having really nicely balanced blood glucose levels.
