Adevărul despre mâncare și microbiom | BOABE DE CUNOAȘTERE | cu Prof. Tim Spector

Eat low fat, highly processed foods that have health labels on them and you'll lose weight. It's a route to disaster.

Tell me, do you still have unanswered questions?

Oh, absolutely. More than ever. Food companies love us to think of food as a single unit. They don't tell you it's got 20 chemical additives. Foods are making people hungrier. They're designed to make you hungrier.

You think it's intentional or it's completely intentional.

It's causing inflammation in the gut that causes inflammation in the brain. Probably what they think is right and what they've been told right is actually making them sicker.

Which one are the worst food you can have?

Well, 60% of people, if they see protein on any product, will think it's healthy food. The vast majority of people are worrying about the wrong thing. And the reason they're doing that is marketing. If you feel depressed and anxious, that might be because you had a poor diet and poor microbiome. People don't realize this, but our immune system is mainly in our gut, really. We don't need to be eating snacks. There's no evidence that's good for you. There's lots of evidence. It's very bad for you. In most of my books, I got sort of five key things you can do. The first, second, third thing is point four would be, and number five is really, if you do that, then they'll fill you up. In all the other countries, the food companies are lobbying, they're directly going to government to say, don't change these rules. It will be bad for the economy.

Did you feel threatened by this big food industry, Doctor. Professor Tim Spector, the professor de Epidemiologia Genetical at King's College London, she is the leader. Uk God project. Spoon fed the diet made she food for life. She just occurred identically different as. Professor. Team spectre. I forced protein the spray. Fibre the spray. So, Professor Tim Spector, welcome to my podcast.

It's great to be here.

Thank you so much for accepting this invitation.

Yeah, well, sounds fun.

What made you accept that?

Curiosity. Okay, so to meet you, look, I.

Have this, it's my personal curiosity. How do you manage to be one of the top scientists in the world? I mean, more than 900 published papers and they saw impactful papers with like thousands of them being cited in other scientific papers. How do you manage to work that on?

I'm not the brightest of people, but I'm. And I, but I, I do always hire people who are brighter than me, more intelligent and my Skill has always been to try and pick what I think are the best exciting bits of science and medicine to follow and to know when to change subject and to change tackle. So that's my skill is, I think, been opportunism. And so I've never stayed in one area too long and because I easily get bored. And so this has sort of suited my personality as well. So that's probably why I always want to do something that's fairly unique, rather than just doing what we call me too science, where you just doing a study slightly better than the one before, wanted to challenge some of the dogmas, move into areas that people thought were controversial or very new or fads and prove them or disprove them. So I think that's probably why. So that mixture of me being able to work very well with other very good people, and that's part of the success of being an academic, is knowing how to build a team and how to collaborate with other really good teams. And a lot of those 900 papers are very big collaborative papers.

Yeah.

It's not just me alone writing in a basement. So it's getting those teams together and knowing how to work in a team as well. So I think they're, they're the ideas and I've been lucky as well. You need a bit element of luck to be successful in academia and changing each time. You know, in genetics, epigenetics, the microbiome, nutrition, picking the time to change and working out when it's a really hot subject because you could do things. It's like writing a book. You can write the best book in the world, but if it's at the wrong time, no one reads it.

Yeah.

And I think it's the same in research. Sometimes also it needs time for that work to be appreciated. So the good thing about research is also you can get your paper recognized or cited many years after it's come out.

I think it happens.

Permanency.

Yeah. Because. Because I, I saw you have papers about epigenetics like 20 years ago, and this is a field that just emerges now in, in the mainstream light, and people start to, to get curious about that. We're gonna get to these questions also. But tell me, do you still have, after so many papers and so, so much research, do you still have unanswered questions that you look for for an answer?

Oh, absolutely. And more than ever.

More than ever.

That's the thing about science. The more you do, the more questions you have.

Okay.

It doesn't, it doesn't get easier. What Is it the questions sort of get more interesting or, you know, more nuanced. But that's the thing. You never really know what questions you're going to be asking next year. Well, you haven't thought of yet.

What's the question that doesn't let you sleep at night, like right now?

Well, I'm trying to. I'm really trying to get to grips with how the microbiome affects the brain. Okay. So that's the big question for me. How do microbes in your gut change how you think? And how can we help mental. Mental health.

Yeah.

Which hasn't moved forward in 50 years. What can we do that? I think, you know, that and dementia, you know, the things I'm sort of particularly interested in at the moment. And you know, how these things tie up. Because we're being teased. We know that, you know, there are some common themes starting to occur in disease, but we're still quite a way off of knowing exactly how it works. And, you know, does the same treatment for your gut really work exactly the same in everyone's brain? Could we ever get personalized brain food? These are sort of things now that are interesting me. And as I'm getting older, of course, I. I'm much more interested in aging and avoiding things like dementia, which my mother, you know, came down with. So, yeah, the things I'm interested in change. And I think initially when I started in science, I was much more interested in the science and the academia itself. Now I'm perhaps more interested in the end product and something that I can tell my followers and the public that this is something that you can do, you should do.

Yeah.

Or, you know, this is this amazing preventive solution that really works. So it's a more Pratt. I've moved from more abstract to more practical, I would say.

Yeah, that's what I love about you because you like such a great academic research that is translating into the simple things that we. That we can do in a daily life. So, for example, let's maybe start talk about this. Like, in Romania, we are facing an epidemic of obesity, diabetes, and burnout. And people, if you look around, people are eating lighter, they go to gym and they count the calories. So what are we missing here? Because we see people that are trying to live better, but we have more obesity, more diabetes, more burnout.

Well, people are trying to do the thing that they think is right, but probably what they think is right and what they've been told is right is actually making them sicker. So, you know, and diet is the the one thing where there's more misconception about eating healthily, I suspect that what's happening in Romania now is what happened in, in the UK about 20 years ago in terms of the food fads and government advice. People are still eating low fat foods and they are going for artificial sweeteners instead of full sugar foods.

Yes.

And the amount of highly processed foods they're eating is going steadily upwards.

That's true.

And traditional foods are going down. So this is the route that the US and the UK took and it, it's a route to disaster because the foods themselves are making people sick through areas that really aren't considered by the mainstream government advisors who just see this still as calories, fats, sugars and nothing else. They just have a reductionist view of nutrition that is very old fashioned, that treats it like a fuel. And just the simple idea that you can have a good health by having a reduced calories is complete nonsense. And you know, close to 90% of people fail on low calorie diets and usually worse off when they finish.

Yeah.

So people who say, okay, I'm counting my calories, I'm having less fat in my food, I go to the gym once a week, are probably gaining weight, getting big tummies, getting more diabetes. And the reason is they are not eating by the, the way they should. They're not eating to the basic principles of healthy eating, which is to look after your gut.

Yeah.

And this means, you know, ignore swapping this concept of calories for this concept of quality food quality. So it's probably that they've got fixated in the, you know, this western way promoted by big food companies that this is the way to go, which is eat low fat, highly processed foods that have health labels on them and make you think you're healthy. And then all you need to do is to go to the gym once or twice a week and you'll lose weight. Yeah. And people are finding to their cost that the opposite is happening. And they are gaining weight, they feel sick, they're more tired, they are having mental health problems. And this is because the food they're eating is making them sick. It's causing inflammation in the gut that causes inflammation in the brain. And you, the foods are making people hungrier. So they're, they're designed to make you hungrier. And this is a trap that many people around the world are, have going through. And they have, in a way you have to sort of go through this process to see the errors in it. And then you have to come out the other side and say, okay, you know, I'm gonna totally change my diet. I'm not gonna, I'm gonna ignore calories. And this is the whole basis of what we're doing with, you know, my company, Zoe, is trying to re educate people.

You don't count calories at Zoe.

No. A. It's a complete waste of time because it's very hard to do it properly. Unless you're a obsessional expert.

Yeah.

Who weighs everything. The packets are unreliable, the labels are unreliable, and all the calculations are flawed. And even if you do, the clear clinical studies show that people who do go on calorie controlled diets are not able to maintain that weight. They can lose weight for a few weeks, but at two years, they've nearly all got worse. The body check. The body has a very good way of dealing with low calorie foods.

Yeah.

It just increases your hunger levels in your brain.

That this is, you know, this is a very big debate on online. If you, if you like, see like influencers that are talking online about weight loss, a lot of them are personal trainers. They can swear that they have clients that they put on the gym program. They count the calories and they lose weight because physically that's possible. Right. You eat less and you start to use your own fat, your own tissue for, for energy. But what do you say is that it's not suitable for everyone or for the masses. Right.

Well, everyone can produce an individual who does something different to the average.

Yeah.

Every personal trainer can motivate maybe 1 in 10 of their clients to do this. And by obsessionally exercising every day, you know, they may be able to lose weight. But the studies are very, very clear. All across the world, men and women, all ages, on average, the person who just uses exercise as a way to lose weight will fail.

Yeah, but if he counts calories also, because you know where.

If you can. Well, they've done those studies and they do show that if you exercise, if you, if you count calories and you also exercise, it does help you keep the weight off for a bit longer.

Yeah.

Okay. That's what the studies show. I'm talking combining multiple clinical trials. It doesn't help you initiate weight loss initially. And you have to realize that if you, if you do exercise and you reduce your calories, you increase your appetite signals. So you, your body is always hungrier. Yeah. Now you can put up with that for the first four or six weeks reasonably well. But every week that goes on, it's like someone's turning up the temperature dial in your house right by one degree every day until you walk past that fridge and you can't stop yourself. You say, I'm just got to have that ice cream. I've just got to, I'm hungry all the time. Your brain is just takes over. And that's why people fail. So this is why we think it, it fails mainly. And we only have to look at the Ozempic like drugs to see that. This has shown us that the appetite signal is the crucial thing in, in food and weight loss. Because now we have a miracle drug that will make you lose 15 to 20% of your weight much better, much faster than exercise or calorie counting purely by switching off the appetite signal. And you know, the calorie count in the exercise is always having to fight this bit in your hypothalamus, the center of your brain. That is evolutionary program to resist exercise and calorie counting. So you have to find a way around it. And it's not eating shitty ultra processed low calorie foods and going to the gym.

So what you say basically is, yeah, losing weight is of course caloric deficit, but not. But by counting those calories. But going around and maybe using drugs like Ozempic or maybe having other interventions that will maybe modify your microbiome and your general health. That's right.

Well, I'm trying to separate out the old fashioned concept which is calories the only things that matter.

Yeah, okay. Yeah.

So food companies love us to think of food as a single unit. You summarize food by saying, okay, it doesn't matter what it is. It's got a calorie count. Okay. This has 400 calories and it doesn't matter what else they put into it. That's what you know. And you also have a label saying it's low in fat. And it also has another label, say low in sugar, high in protein. Yeah, okay. And they don't tell you it's got 20 chemical additives. Many of them in combination are designed to make you hungrier by 25%.

Yeah.

Okay. Which is what the studies generally show that these packaged highly processed foods are designed to affect your brain. They're designed specifically by brilliant scientists. You think it's intentional or it's completely intentional. In the same way that cigarette companies designed their products to be addictive. That's why they played with adding Mitsubishar in there to make them more attractive. So they've been working since the 1970s on these foods and they have, they hire the very best Nutrition scientists to work out the combination of your fat, your sugar, your salt, your carbs, that gives a little signal in your brain that says, I can't stop eating this. Yeah, I know, I should stop.

Yeah.

And they're designed to have no fullness signal, so you never feel full and you just keep wanting more. You know, you think of any potato snack.

Yeah.

Like a Pringles, for example, the number one, one of the number one in the world.

They're delicious.

They are irresistible.

Yeah. You cannot stop. If you take one, you cannot stop. You eat them all.

But you know that the main ingredient is not potato.

Yeah, that's true.

It's rice or tapioca or. And they often have 30 ingredients. They're totally artificially made.

Yeah.

So they're a brilliant example of the science of someone fooling your brain into eating something that has virtually no nutritional value extremely fast. And so you can't, you know, there's, in English they say pop till you stop. You say you pop the lid and then you, you know, you can't stop. Yeah. And that's what most, that's the concept of most of the foods we're, we're eating in the UK, it's nearly 60 of our food. Is, is that type of food in countries like Romania? I imagine it's, you know, 30, but rising fast.

Yes.

And so these are the foods that come with health claims, healthy looking packs, people who are looking out for low calorie produce, low fat produce, they're also cheaper. This is cheaper, they last longer. You don't have to spend a long time cooking. They're convenient and they're seen as, you know, a relief from the drudgery and boredom of, you know, the kitchen, etc. So we know why they started, but, you know, people don't realize the effect it's having on their physical and their mental health. Yeah. And it is basically responsible for this epidemic of obesity, diabetes and mental health.

And you know, I, even though we, we are doing this podcast, you're writing these books, we talk about that on TV shows, I really feel it is. It will never be enough for stopping so many people to choose processed food. I mean, I think that the government should step in and make like police special policies and changes. How long do you think we have to wait and how many obese people do we have to treat until governments will stop it, like step in and take some actions?

Well, some governments have. So there are about a dozen countries in the world that have started legislation, started to push back against the false labeling of these Foods. They are countries in South America that have changed the labels of children's cereals. So you're not allowed to have cartoon characters advertising. Yeah, basically sugar. Yeah, some they put black stickers on it to indicate that it is bad food.

And they have very good results with that.

Yes, the results are encouraging. Although that, you know, they're fighting huge companies with massive budgets, bigger than, you know, you know, as big as countries like Romania that, you know, that's what. Exactly, that's. We offer the facing. So it's a big struggle to do this. So enlightened countries and governments are doing it. But in all the other countries the food companies are lobbying, they're directly going to government to say, don't change these rules. It will be bad for the economy, it'll be bad for employment. We'll take away our biscuit factory or our donut factory from your capital city. This will be bad for voters. And they're spending hundreds of millions a year in every country basically corrupting governments to stop them making these rules. And they're doing the same in Brussels at the European level. So it's a big fight, but there is light at the end of tunnel. So the usa, which is the most obese large country in the world, the sickest country in the world, they have the most ultra processed food in the world, has finally in this latest election woken up and said they're going to do something about it and highlighted that they, the food they're eating is terrible. They're trying to get at least the food additives down to the European level. So it's just started there. So I think we are seeing a big change across the world. Each country will go at its own speed depending on, you know, how much of a problem it is. But just in the UK that the economic cost is huge. So estimates what it costs the UK economy are somewhere between 90 billion and 200 billion pounds.

The cost of treating people that get sick after eating these foods.

Yeah, the health costs, health and social costs of people eating these out ultra processed illness making foods has been LMA, you know, it's roughly half, 50% of the total cost of our health service. Yeah. So and in each country it's probably similar ratio and the companies are making huge profits. They're making 30, 40 billion euros a year profit in each country and the cost goes to, to and you know, I'm not about banning these foods but they should, it should be like cigarettes or alcohol, clearly labeled, you know what you're eating. And there's a tax that Pays for the health damage. Yeah, that seems to be a normal thing to ask for.

Talking about that. Did you feel at any time like threatened by this big food industry speaking freely about these costs and the danger of the food.

Well, luckily I don't live in South America where journalists have been attacked and threatened with their lives by these companies, particularly the drinks companies in, in South America. So I've never, I've never felt that way. I've been offered consulting positions by big food companies which are very lucrative, which would have shut me up. So they're more subtle, they're not going to break my leg. But they, they would suggest that, that I, you know, I worked with them. But I'm also lucky because I'm at the stage of my career when I can take criticism and they do pay people to attack me on social media. Okay. So what people don't realize is that many influencers are paid by the food industry.

Yeah.

Like in any industry, you know, it's not, they're not special and they will get told, okay, we don't like what this guy's doing. Can you do some posts attacking him or her? Attack their credentials, etc. And so they are like guns for hire. And so I've, there's a few people on social media that are always attacking me and it's highly likely they receive money from the food industry. So that's, that's the sort of worst that happens to me. I'm quite lucky.

Yeah, good to hear that.

Yeah.

So.

And if no one's attacking you, probably not doing the right thing. So. You know what I mean?

Yeah, that's true.

You have to, you know, you've got to break a few eggs to, to make an omelet. And I, I think it's right that, you know, if you're really pushing it, you should have some people saying you're going too far or on both sides. Yeah. So, yeah, that, so I, I feel we're in a good place in the moment and I think a lot of the public are behind me and people like me, which wasn't the case 10 years ago. Yeah, well, I've been seen as a bit crazy.

Yeah. That's great to hear.

Yeah.

That you're in a safe place and that we can speak freely about this, this health problems.

Yeah. But some of my colleagues, if they're more in the academic space, do worry about their reputation and things about being criticized by some of these paid influencers. So it's, you can see how it, it does inhibit some people.

Yeah. Let's Change our focus to, to the microbiome. Because like, this is it, it is getting a mainstream subject now. And I just want to start by saying my story. And I know it's anecdotal, but I was trying to lose weight also, and I managed to lose weight about two years ago. I lost 10 kilos. Then I put them back, and I was reading to your books and listening to your advices, and I understood in the end this advice of eating 30 plants a week. And I somehow managed to create a salad that is 30 plant salad, so you can eat dirty plants in. In one meal. So we, we actually developed it and it's called, it's called Dr. Mikhail salad with 30 plants. And we actually even sell it in one of the restaurants near our studio in, in Bucharest. And I started to eat that salad in my effort to lose weight, and I lost about 13 kg and a few months. And I'm pretty sure, I don't know if it is going to work with other people, but I'm pretty sure that the microbiome that eat it, all of those fibers, he got enough food and he was not like giggling my appetite. And that was one of the main causes that I lost weight. So starting with that, I want to ask you what, what is exactly this microbiome? And how can it affect our weight, our mood or energy or appetite? And if you can use it, if you can enhance it somehow to optimize all of this metrics?

So the microbiome is best thought of as a. A newly discovered organ in our body. Okay. So it's like we've just discovered we've got something like a liver. Yeah, okay. That we didn't know about 20 years ago, and just so happens to live in the lower part of our intestine. And it's made up of hundreds of trillions of microbes, little organisms you need a microscope to see that are bacteria, they're viruses, they're parasites, they're fungi, and they work by being like mini pharmacies. They produce chemicals. That's what they do. They're chemical factories. And each of them produce a range of chemicals. And they often work together as teams to do that. And they convert food into chemicals. Yeah, and we've evolved with them since, you know, all animals have microbes inside them. We evolved from microbes and we now offer them a nice home for the rest of their life. And these chemicals are. Were initially thought just to work on the gut, but now we know that they do all kinds of things. And probably the number one thing they do is to interact with our immune system. People don't realize this, but our immune system is mainly in our gut. So 70% of the immune cells align in the gut. The chemicals from our microbes are talking to the immune system all the time. So they're sending signals, usually, hopefully calming it down, saying, relax, everything's fine. Just do your job. You know, Mikhail's eating his salad. It's all good. You know, you don't have to stress. Yeah. And that means that the immune system is in a really good place. And it can do all its repair, repair jobs. It can stop cancer, it can stop aging. It can, you know, deal with any infections or whatever. And in the case that if you're eating badly, it could send signals saying, there's something going on here. We're seeing some swelling in the gut lining. The inflammation's carrying on. You know, I think we might need to trigger the immune system to ramp it up a bit, Cause some inflammation that might cause you some allergies that might lead to autoimmune disease. It might distract your system so that it misses a cancer. It might mean that it's just not working efficiently, so it can't repair your system to help with aging. And so that's how it affects the immune system. It also affects the brain because there are nerve cells all along. The gut, as well, interacts with the nerve cells directly, but also through chemicals. So it can produce brain chemicals in your gut, which actually can influence your mood and your thoughts in your brain. And it's a key producer of serotonin, which is. Is the basis of most antidepressant drugs. Yeah. So clearly changes in the production of those. And another one that's a bit like Valium, called Gaba, can change your mood and. And. And how your brain is reacting as well. So they're just. That's just the brain and the immune system, but it also has effects on your digestion and your metabolism. So how much energy you're burning, it sends. We believe it sends signals of fullness to the brain to say whether you're full or not. And that's probably why fiber has this big effect. Also acts is the keys to whether things like fermented foods are working inside you. The interaction between the microbes then tickle the immune cells. And then we think it's an immune reaction that works again through your gut. So the gut is turning out to be much more than just this tube. So 20 years ago, we just said your gut is a tube. Fiber fills it up, makes it flush out easier. Yeah, we know that's no longer true. Okay. That's, that was the old fashioned view. It's, it's a highly dynamic living organ that really needs nourishing. Just like our heart, our brain, our liver. And we ignore it at our peril.

Yeah, exactly. And like the most convincing evidence that I can find and when I talk with other people and I explain them things about microbiome, I find them to be the studies that when, like scientists show that if you take a schizophrenic mouse and you transfer his microbiome to healthy mouse, he got a bigger chance to, to get schizophrenia. Right. Or if you take an obese mouse and you take his microbiome out and you transfer it to a normal mouse, he gets obese. And if you take healthy microbiome and transfer it to obese mouse, he got healthy and fit. So if we can do that in, in the mouse models and if we know that the microbiome is so important for our health, are there any manipulate this microbiome to change it in our favor?

Yes. Unfortunately, humans aren't as simple as mice.

Yeah.

So those experiments show that it's possible, but they don't show it will automatically happen in humans. And most of the actual transplant studies in humans have failed.

Really? Yeah.

Probably because the human gut and the human microbe more. We're more complicated.

Yeah.

And we're also more different in our microbes than these genetically bred mice. True.

Yeah.

That are very uniform and only, you know, they only live two years anyway.

Yeah.

So it's a very different model. But it shows it's possible. The. But we, we know we can manipulate our gut microbes. Lots of diet studies show that by changing your diet you can within a few days or weeks change quite dramatically your microbes. We know that antibiotics can change it for the worse and they have effects, negative effects on the body. So. Yeah, they're manipulating your gut microbiome can be done through, you know, as you suggested, in mice, you can stress them. Interesting. So it can work the other way as well. You can induce anxiety in a mouse that will change its microbes and then you transplant those microbes into another mouse. You'll make that mouse anxious. Oh, really? Just because. But if you think of it, it makes sense if you think of them as a chemical factory.

Yeah.

And there are some microbes there who are sensing from the immune system because it works the other way around. Well, there's a bit of stress out there. Let's, let's send those signals so it's.

Not only what we eat changes the microbiome, but also how we feel or.

It'S a two way thing. Yes. It's not just a one way thing. So there's a two way interaction between our immune system, our nervous system and our microbes. And that's why it's, it's a complicated field because it's, it's not just all causal, some of it is consequent. So when you, if you feel depressed and anxious, that will have a, that might be because you had a poor diet and a poor microbiome. Okay. But it also will reflect the stress and the anxiety chemicals floating around your body which will send signals to your microbes to have a negative effect on them.

Yeah. What would you recommend to the people that are watching now if they know they took antibiotics, they ate processed food and they want to, they want to change their health and they, they want to improve their microbial or maybe to repair it. What, what would you suggest them to do?

Well, in most of my books I've got sort of five key things you can do and I think it's quite easy to remember them. The first is to try and eat 30 different plants a week.

Yeah.

So maybe your Mikhail salad is the, is a good example, but it's, it could be, you know, having lots of nut mixed nuts and seeds, just trying to go for more variety in your, in your, you know, not just have, you know, tomatoes and beetroot. Yeah. The second is to eat the rainbow so that you're having lots of colors in your, your choice of foods because those colors indicate other chemicals. These, we haven't talked about them, but it's not the source of fuel for your gut microbes. These are called polyphenols. And the bright, more brightly colored, the more chemicals they have.

Yeah.

So that's rule number two. High polyphenol foods. Also these are bitter ones. It means going for high polyphenol things like cooking oil. So extra virgin olive oil rather than, you know, corn or seed oils.

Yeah.

Also I know sunflower oil is big in Romania. Olive oil is definitely healthier because it's got more polyphenols, it's more bitter, makes you cough.

So it should be bitter.

Yes.

Okay. So.

So to some extent, I mean, you know, it should be a strong flavor, tells you that's got chemicals in it.

Sunflower oil, is it good for, for the health?

The good ones are the good ones.

Okay.

It shouldn't be too refined and an ultra processed. Okay. So if you have, you know, really well Produced high quality sunflower oil. It can be beneficial for your health. At the other end of the spectrum, I would say they're probably, you know, negative your health.

Okay.

But olive oil is always going to be better.

Okay, so. So you said 30 plants eat the rainbow.

Third thing is to eat regular fermented foods, which I know many people in Romania do already.

Yeah.

But have a variety of them. Don't just have the same pickled vegetables. Remember that anything in vinegar is dead and doesn't have the same benefit as. So not in.

Not the vinegar. So if I ate pickles in the vinegar, that's not probiotic food.

Right. Okay.

It. But it should be in salt.

Yes.

If it's in salt, it's probiotic food, correct?

Yes. Because that changes. Vinegar basically kills all the microbes. They can't live in high acetic acid environment. Whereas if you have it with salt and you've done it gradually, then you, you get. It's called a lactic acid ferment and you, you get the beneficial microbes living in there. Yeah. So remember the full range of fermented foods. It's yogurt, it's fermented milk, kefir, it's your krauts, all the fermented vegetables, which are very traditional. But also remember kombucha, which is fermented tea. You've got.

Is it easy to make the kombucha? Because this is something we didn't do yet and we want to do it at home.

It's very easy. Yeah. Yes. You just need to get hold of a mother, which is a scoby, which is like a blob. Okay. A starter thing. And if you buy a good quality kombucha, you often it comes in the bottom of the bottle. You'll see a little one. You can grow it up just by giving it tea and sugar.

Is the commercial kombucha good? We. We've just had one in a ecological shop and it's. It calls Gutsy and it's produced here in uk.

Is it.

Is it anything?

I don't know that brand. Some brands are good, some bands are not good.

How can you find. I love that one because it was zero sugar and I checked if it's aspartament, something inside it. It. They were claiming it's all the sugar was fermented. So it's zero sugar naturally. Zero sugar, Good flavor. How can you make sure the kombucha you buy is good?

Very difficult. I mean, the best kombucha to buy is when it's quite fresh and you see a sediment in the bottom. Okay. And you can grow it at home. You take that bottle and you can add tea and sugar and you can.

Grow your own and you make your own kombucha like that from that.

Then you know that's the real deal. Right. Okay, but everyone, it's very difficult. But if you want to scale up and you want to put it in bottles and you want to put it in cans, you can't really have live butcher.

Okay.

Because it will explode everywhere and keep, keep fermenting.

Yes.

So you have to have tricks. So either fermented a long time so it's used up all the sugar and then you add in some artificial sweeteners or.

Yes.

Something else at the end or you, you can. You ultra filtrate it all out so that there's nothing, there's no bugs left. You spin it around and you know, so it's not quite the same. Lots of tricks that they do in order to keep it going longer. So most of them are still probably healthy. Yeah. But you have to. But avoid ones with too much sugar in them. Okay. Because they tend to be bad. And you know, as always, if you want to be absolutely sure, you know, you make your own because you know exactly what you're putting into it.

But I have a question. Like the fact that kombucha, which is fermented food, is good for our microbiome. Is it just a supposition or have it been tested? Like, do we have studies that prove that the, the bugs from the kombucha can pass the acidity of the stomach and get into your gut and make it better?

No. Well, we know from clinical trials that you can get health benefits from having these foods.

Yeah.

In terms of the mechanism, we don't understand the mechanism. Okay. So the, we don't know at what part of the, the gut it, it works. We don't know how much is needed to have an effect. We used to think they were all destroyed in the stomach.

Yes.

And that's not true. But we don't know exactly how many pass through and still have an effect. Current theory is that a lot of them have their effect not in the large intestine, but in the small intestine, which is the bit before it. Because there's less competition there. Because if you think about it, the amount of microbes in a kombucha is still tiny to the one of normal residence in your gut, in your lower gut. And we think it might even act on the immune system directly. So. But this is all speculation. Yeah. Nobody really knows what's going on, but there's increasing evidence they do work. There was a very good study from Stanford because in the past, a lot of these have been very small studies sponsored by little companies in Eastern Europe where they're just trying to sell their brand, you know.

Yeah.

And you didn't really know if it was true or not, but there have been some. This really big study in Stanford showed that over three weeks, people having five portions a day of fermented food got a significant reduction in their blood inflammation levels. Yeah.

But immune system 5 portion is kind of a lot. How can you eat 5 portion of fermented food?

Well, these are all small. It's a small portion. So it would be.

I mean, you can have pickles and a yogurt, and each is a little.

Little amount, little amount kimchi, a bit of kraut, you know, a shot of kefir, shot of kombucha.

Yeah.

This was a trial. Yeah. So they wanted to show something. So it. We know it works and it works better than just fiber alone.

Cheese is also fermented food.

Correct. Okay. So cheeses and even, even some of the processed cheeses still have microbes in them. Yeah. Your standard yogurt is still, is still a fermented food. So there are, there is actually a big range. And then they've got all the Japanese foods.

Yes.

I don't know how big they are in Romania, but, you know, anything in miso? Yes, miso is fermented soybeans. And so you can add miso paste to things at the end of a meal. If you don't boil it up, it will still be alive.

Yeah.

You can put it on as a, on top of anything else. And. Yeah, so fermented soybeans are another source. Soy sauce is. It's a fermented food as well. So, yeah, if you think more broadly, it's not that hard. I'm not saying you have to have five a day. I think two or three, you'll see. Definitely see benefits.

Okay.

And the studies show that this, you know, and we did a big study of 10,000 people asking them to have three portions a day. And after two weeks, 50% noted improvement in their mood and energy and hunger levels.

In how many weeks?

Two weeks.

In two weeks.

Okay. So it's a challenge for your listeners to, to do that. And this is the other thing about improving your gut health. The first thing that we notice is an improvement to your mood and your energy because it's reducing inflammation. And we now think that a lot of the problems of the brain are due to what's happening the rest of the body.

Yes.

This immune system is being overstimulated and so you know, from bad environments, you know, living in cities, stress, junk food, all this stuff is pushing it up. That's, and, and all these good foods are pushing it down.

Yeah. So this is the, the, the third advice. Yeah, the first one was 30 plants then.

Yeah. You should get through them before you get distracted. So.

And fermented food is the third one.

Yes.

And you said you have like in all of your books, you fight, you talk about five key points.

Yeah.

You can do to improve your microbiome.

Yes. So point four would be give your gut a rest overnight. Okay.

So we should stop eating at what time?

Well, that depends. We again did a big study with Zoe. A hundred thousand people asked them to eat within the same food but within a less of a window. Yeah. And we said you can either do it, it early on, so you stop at about 6pm or you, you can do it late and stop at 9pm we said it's slightly better to do the early one, but it's slightly easier to do the late one. Yeah. And so most people went for the late one. Okay. And it worked. And a third of people loved it, third of people hated it, they felt hungry. And a third of people said yeah, I could do this. But, but they weren't totally convinced. So I think it's a bit personal about, you know, where, where the, you, how easy you find it to do that. But yeah, I think it's the natural way that we, we used to eat. So what I do is I, I will eat my meals, try and stop at about 9pm avoid late night snacks and eat, start eating again at 11 in the morning. 11.

Okay.

So that means you can't 14 hours.

Skip the breakfast.

Skip or delay it?

Skip or delay it.

There's no evidence that breakfast, you need to have breakfast. Okay. Although that's a dogma that's out there. I don't know if in Romania as well, but, but some people miss it, others don't. It's quite personal.

It's quite personal.

Yeah. So I'm not, it shouldn't be a strict rule, but the idea behind this is that if you, you allow your gut a rest, just like you like to sleep it, the microbes can repair your gut lining. It's more efficient, it's better for the immune system.

It's, and it improves, it's sort of intermittent fasting. Right.

It's a form of intermittent fasting, but it's not calorie restricting.

Okay. And I also saw you in a Zoe podcast talking about the fact that if you, if you make this not eating window larger, it can affect your, your gut and your gut lining.

Right.

I mean there's a lot of people that are going, especially in Romania and it's getting scary because they go mainstream in the podcast and they promote like one day fasting or three days fasting or even we have people that are going to 30 day fasting, like 30 day only drinking water. What do you think about that? Can that harm your microbiome?

Yeah, I think fasting for a day or two a month is probably not harmful.

A day or two in a month. Okay.

I, you know, but if you go beyond that, there are potential dangers. It may not be easy for people to do. And there's some evidence from animal studies that your microbes start to, your gut lining starts to deteriorate because the gut microbes are actually got nothing to eat except your gut lining.

Yes.

So you start to eat yourself. And so there's probably a point at which, you know, healthy becomes unhealthy. Yeah, we don't know what that is yet. So I don't advise people to do more than the occasional fast, which some people find psychologically important. But there's no good evidence that, you know, regular long term fasting is good for you. So I think people should do something more modest like this. Time restricted eating it's called, which is very easy to carry on most days of the week. You don't have to do it every day of the week. Yeah, because we all have social lives and you know, we go out to restaurants and you know, you travel. It's pretty hard to do that. But realizing how important it is to give your gut microbes as much rest as you, they can overnight so they can really look after repairing your, your gut, I think is, is an important concept that people need to do and, and, and you know, try and block out all those advertisements from companies selling you snacks all the time. We don't need to be eating snacks. There's no evidence that's good for you. There's lots of evidence. It's very bad for you really because.

We have like advices of eating snacks to not for losing weight. Yeah, there's a lot of advices that to lose weight you have to eat small portions and snack from time to time.

That's old fashioned advice and it's now been disproven so again, it's, you know, probably having two proper meals a day.

Yeah.

That fill you up and that, you know, you leave the rest of your, your time when you're not eating and your body can repair itself and recover generally does better. And so a lot of these. What was interesting in our, in our studies were that the majority of people who did our time restricted eating felt less hungry doing that than they did before that. So that suggests that if you eat the right foods, it will fill you up and that snacking just makes you hungrier.

Even if it's like healthy snacking, like nuts.

That's unclear. Most snacking is not healthy.

Okay.

I think eating between meals, something like nuts and seeds, there's nothing wrong with that. It's probably beneficial. But if you had them late at night, it would probably not be beneficial. Okay.

Yeah, that's clear. And that's the fourth point.

Yeah, that's number four.

Give it the rest. Yeah.

And number five is really switch out these ultra processed foods for whole foods. Yeah. And no, recognize what an ultra processed food is. And it's very hard to cut them out completely.

Do you eat ultra processed foods sometimes?

Yeah, every now and again. I don't think it's harmful every now and again. And they're not all bad either. So we're just designing Zoe a new score to separate out all these processed foods into risks. Some are low risk, some are very high risk. The high risk ones have a long list of additives that might cause cancer and upset your gut microbes. They also are calorie dense. So they. And they're very easy. They're soft and very easy to eat. And they also have this characteristic of being hyper palatable, which makes they make. They make you hungrier.

Yeah.

So they're the worst ones we can.

Find this score on Zoe.

Well, if you're in America, you'll be out to down. You can download the app. Okay. There's a free app in America we're piloting at the moment, so we'll see how it goes there before spreading it out to other countries. But it's. I think it's a revolutionary device that when you go shopping, you, you can get a risk score for every food.

Yeah.

That isn't just the additives. It's also. Does it make you hungry? You know, how easy is it to eat all these structural things as well? So that's co. I think that's quite clever. So that's. If you do that, then you know, that's a key part of Your diet, which means that you're swapped to eating foods that are higher in fiber, they're higher in natural nutrients and goodness, and they'll fill you up more.

Yeah.

And will stop making you sick. So if the average Romanian is having 30 to 40% of their food in that way, if they can get it less than 10%, okay. Then they'll be doing themselves a lot of good and avoid the very worst of those foods. Yeah. Which they might not be noticing, but they're having them regularly.

Which one are the worst food you can have?

Well, a lot of breakfast cereals.

Breakfast cereals.

Okay. Things aimed at children. Lots of children's yogurts, which added sugar. Added sugar. But also additives that like emulsifiers and artificial sweeteners that are bad for your gut. They might have additives that are bad for the brain, and they'll generally make you, your children, hungrier. So many of those things aimed at children are the worst offenders. So breakfast cereals, savory snacks, a lot of protein bars really have lots of additives in them. And sugars, they're just disguising it by adding a bit of protein to sell it as a health food. These are ones that people don't think about. So you need to look at the back of the packet and see what the ingredients are and say if you don't recognize more than two of them, then probably it's not going to be good for you.

Yeah. Regarding the proteins, I've heard you saying that we don't have a protein deficiency, we have a fiber deficiency. And I would like to take your position about that because, like, the general accommodation is to have 0.8 grams per kg per kg of body weight of proteins. There are studies that are showing that the more is better and that one of the. One of the main causes of getting old is sarcopenia, that you lose muscle. And the logics is that in order to not lose muscle, you have to exercise them and you have to eat a lot of proteins. So a lot of people are now, they are calculating not calories, but proteins, and they want to fit into 1 gram per kg body weight or maybe 2 grams, which is really hard to achieve. What do you think about it? And that goes with eating a lot of animal protein and having this protein shakes.

So the recommendations, which are pretty uniform across the world of this somebody 0.8 and 0.85 grams of protein per kilogram come from very careful studies using radial labeling and know exactly how much protein people burn is for the. You Know, average non exercising person. Yeah, okay.

Yes, exactly.

Yeah. So my view is that we should relax that a bit, assume that most people will do some exercise and just call it one gram per kilo, which is also easier to calculate. Yeah. So let's have another 15 doing that anyway. But you've got to realize that in countries where they've looked at these levels, like the U.S. the average U.S. person is taking about 1.6 grams of protein anyway, so. And not so 95%. Some between 90 and 95% are getting more than 0.8 grams anyway. So virtually everyone is getting excess protein because they don't realize that you get protein in normal food. You think it's only eggs and steak, but actually you're getting it every time you eat pasta, every time you have a grain like quinoa, every time you eat beans, you're getting protein. So there's a misconception about, you know what that is. And if you try and get to 2 grams, which some influencers saying, but no serious scientists are saying, okay, it's a, it's really hard. And it also means that you won't be getting nutritious meals, you won't be getting enough fiber. Yeah. And you're already deficient in fiber. And you, and the other thing people don't realize is you can't store protein anywhere. You can, you can store sugar. You know, it gets conversion to fat protein. You either pee it out or sometimes the body will store it as fat.

Yeah.

But you can't get it back as protein. So you're not going to keep your muscle for a sp. For, you know, for tomorrow will just be used as fat. So unless you're a professional athlete, you know, if you're a professional bodybuilder, you're in the gym three hours a day, then you shouldn't really be worried about protein unless you're, you're ill, you know, you're elderly, in which case you won't be eating as much. So you do have to maybe switch out some things for some high protein. But the vast majority of people are worrying about the wrong thing.

Yeah.

And the reason they're doing that is marketing. Companies make much more money by selling cheap protein into things than fiber.

Yeah.

And fiber also fills you up more than protein.

And probably you cannot sell fiber. Or maybe we, we can wait and see. The companies sell fiber products which if.

They do it too well, people eat less. So it doesn't work as a big commercial product. So that's why they don't do it. I Did meet a company once that added fiber to beer. Okay. And they did an experiment and they did some beta testing out of it. And people like the taste of it. Okay. But they found they were full and so they drank less beer. Okay. So they had to abandon the project. So, you know, sometimes being healthy is bad for the, you know, the commercial aspect of it. And that's. Whereas they know they can sell protein in anything and people will buy it. We did a survey recently, and, you know, and 60 of people, if they see protein on any product, will think it's healthy for them.

Yeah, exactly.

Even if it's the shittiest project, you know, you've ever seen.

I even see a company, high protein.

Coca Cola or something, you know, they'd say, oh, that's good for me. Yeah.

And I also see, like, normal products, like very good kefir, let's say. And they add the protein label on it. Like, you don't have to. It's healthy already. Why do you add the protein?

Well, they're doing it because every food company in the world is marketing protein at the moment. Every influencer has been convinced that, you know, we have to have more protein. So the general public now sees protein as like, you know, we used to see vitamins 50 years ago.

Yeah.

And yet, you know, it's of no use to you if. If you're eating enough of it, you can't use it.

Yeah.

So you just, you know, it just gets converted to fat or you peel it out. And that's what people need to realize. And so, you know, let's focus on what you're deficient in, not what you've already got too much of.

Do you take any vitamins or supplements?

I take some every now and again. I take some B12.

Okay.

Why? Because I don't. I hardly have. I only have meat about once a month.

Okay.

Yeah. And I've. Ever Since I was 18, I've had a low B12 and folate level.

Okay, good.

So. But I used to take vitamin D. I used to take calcium. I used to take Omega 3. But now all the studies have shown they don't work. Yeah. So I've stopped taking those and just take food instead.

How can you explain to somebody that got a recommendation to take vitamin D? So people like. And I've talked about that in. In a lot of vlogs of. Of ours, that when I was resident surgeon, we had no vitamin D testing in the. In the hospital. And that was like 12 years ago. And then we started to test people to Vitamin D. We started to see the deficiency and I think everyone, or maybe any, any second patient that goes to normal blood check, he gets the vitamin D tested for no reason. They see the deficiency and the doctor will recommend vitamin D. How can you explain to some, someone that it actually won't work or the studies shows that taking vitamin D will only change the level of your vitamin D in the blood?

Well, it's hard because people love vitamin D. Yes, it's a, it's the sunshine vitamin. Right. It's like perfect. But you've got to tell them A, it's not a vitamin because it doesn't meet the definition of a vitamin, which is something that you, the body can't synthesize itself and it's in extremely small amounts.

Yeah, that's the definition for the, of the vitamin. And vitamin D can be made by.

And it's also a steroid. So vitamin D is a steroid, not really a traditional vitamin. So that might put them off. If you say it's more like a steroid and you tell them that all the clinical trials show that it doesn't work when you give the chemical equivalent of it to people. It may be that the sunshine version of it work, does work better.

Yeah.

There isn't really good studies, but there's some suggestion, particularly you know, in fighting cancers and things, that people who go out in the sunshine get high vitamin D levels do better fighting cancer. And there's no evidence that just taking tablets helps.

We still don't know if the reason is that the vitamin D is growing or the fact that they're moving more their stay in nature.

No, it's hard to, it's, it's, it's hard to separate the two. But we do know there's so many negative clinical trials of placebo against vitamin D that it's pretty clear that it, it's a pretty lousy supplement for most people that they didn't need it. And I think your point is that I've been studying vitamin D pretty much all my scientific career. I did some trials on it in the 19, you know, 80s and 90s thinking it was great. I used to give it to all my patients. But the level of what normal was, was, was, was actually much lower.

Yeah.

So every 10 years we raise the bar of what we think is normal and there's no real scientific rationale for that. So it used to be that, you know, if you had vitamin D levels really undetectable, then you had problem.

Okay.

So, you know, we're talking less than 2010 or 20. Yeah, micromoles. And now if, you know, some, some countries have levels saying you've got to be over 70, they say it's optimal over 70.

So even if you have a level of 45, they say it's better to have it.

Correct.

Yeah.

So this is a non disease that people are creating into a disease in order to sell more vitamin D. And, and doctors like to prescribe things and health professionals like to give them out and patients like to receive them.

Yeah.

So in a way everyone's happy short term.

And also there's no like side, like big side effects.

Right. It's kind of safe with the normal levels. Yes. There were, there was a phase a few years ago where people getting 10,000 units online.

Yeah, yeah.

Which is like 20 times the normal dose. And we're having toxic side effects.

Yeah.

Because it can build up in your body, it's not excreted in your urine. So there are downsides and there were suggestions from some of the trials. The people having vitamin D injections had more fractures and more falls. Really. So there are downsides to this. So, you know, like any. Taking any steroid, if you're taking excessive amounts the body's not used to, it's going to have some consequence.

So you don't take any vitamin D?

I don't know. I go in the sunshine. Yeah.

I saw you. You came to, to this podcast, to the studio, on a bike.

Right.

In the sunshine. Such, such a great.

Yes. No, so. And I used to take vitamin D. But the trials are so clear that even for osteoporosis, which is what it was originally designed for, it's been shown not to work.

Yeah.

So the only exceptions are if, if you never go out in the sunshine.

Yes.

You're ill, you're in an old age person's home, then I think it's quite reasonable to take it. So I'm not against taking for everything. There's one disease where it has been shown to be beneficial in preventing it and that's called, that's multiple sclerosis. We don't know why. I have no idea why that is. But in the other hundred diseases they've looked at, there's no evidence that it prevents them.

But it can prevent multiple sclerosis if you just take them daily or.

Yeah. So if you have a family history of this or high risk, then it might be worth taking. But otherwise. Yeah, it's has all these theoretical benefits and we obviously need to have some of it, but the level we need is pretty much lower. Than we are currently led to believe. And all the trials of the chemicals are very disappointing. So believing we can cure all our ills of vitamin D is misguided. But 20 minutes in the sunshine every day, to my mind, you know, it's a much more pleasant way to get your vitamin D. Yeah. And we should stop putting too much sun cream on people that don't need it, really.

Do you use sunscreen?

I do sometimes if I'm in very strong sunlight. But there are. I don't know what Romania is, but in countries like Australia and the uk, in the us, even in winter, they tell people to use sunscreen.

Yeah, it's the same. It's the same in Romania. And doctors recommend to use sunscreen in. Even in winter, even if you stay inside.

Well, that's just Matt madness. And women's makeup now all contains SPF 30.

Yes.

So they have foundation creams, which means that normal people are not even win during winter getting vitamin D from the sunshine.

Yeah.

And this is a terrible thing. And all. All the cosmetics companies love the vitamin D story, so they can sell their sun blockers. And you have to strike the balance between, you know, damaging your sun by too much sun exposure versus stopping what we've naturally evolved to have, which is absorbing vitamin D through our skin.

Yeah. That should be a good investment in a vitamin D supplement company and sun blocker company.

Right.

They go hand in hand.

Absolutely, yes. And plus all the charities that make money out of scaring people about skin cancer. Cancer. Yeah. It's all a big industry. And it's also people, you know, then doing testing to screening you. You know, we can go into the whole thing about melanoma and moles and all this stuff, but you just got to use common sense, you know, no reason to cover everyone in sunscreen in winter in whatever country you're at. Yes. You know, in June, when the first strong sunlight is and we've got white skin, you don't want to burn.

Yeah.

But the rest of the time, you want the natural. You know, the way we've evolved is to have lighter skin so we can absorb vitamin D. So that's a good advice. That's why we don't have black skin as they do in Africa, because we need it. We need it in our winters.

Exactly. Yeah.

So we shouldn't be having makeup and sunscreen and putting the fear of God into people about getting melanoma when there's no real risk. Risk. It's just a marketing exercise.

Yeah, that's a very good advice. So, yeah, Check your, check your makeup. If it's 30 SPF, keep it for, for, for the sunny days. Yeah.

You've got dark skin and dark hair. You don't to worry about anywhere. You know, it should be for the lighter skin. People with, you know, light, you know, that lighter complexion who burn easily, they should worry. But it shouldn't be the same for everybody. We should start, you know, personalizing this advice and particularly stop, you know, poor old children having no vitamin D naturally.

I've read in this book that in the identically different that you have at Zoe, the largest collection in the world of microbiome samples. That's right, yeah.

Sequenced. So we have a quarter of a million.

Quarter of a million. What are you doing with them?

Well, it's great fun. We can look at anything. So everyone who takes part in Zoe signs a consent for medical science. So we can use these to report on them. We're currently looking at a new way to score the gut microbiome. Because people say, what's a healthy or an unhealthy microbiome? It's very difficult. Right.

Yeah.

So we've got a new scoring system based on these huge numbers of people. Got 100 microbes that everyone has 50 good, 50 bad. And we're looking at the ratio of them to tell how, how healthy or unhealthy someone's gut is.

You basically have, you have, you have the people's stool and you sequenced.

Yeah. We take the DNA from the stool.

Somewhere and you have like the digital blueprint of the microbial. Right.

Yeah. So we do a full. It's called shotgun sequencing. So we do a genetic sequence of every gene in every microbe in your gut. It's amazing, really, what, you know, when you think about it. Yeah. It's much more complex than just doing human.

Yeah.

DNA sequencing, where you just got one species.

Yeah.

So we've got thousands of species. And using incredible computing power, we match them all up to a database and we work out what they are. But increasingly, every, every two years, we're doubling the number of microbes we can detect. We don't have names for most of them. Okay. But we know that some of them really important. So we've got this paper coming out now which is a new way of scoring which I think is really going to advance the field because it will be able to see how when you change your diet, this score changes when you're on antibiotics, it gets worse, you know, etcetera, much more clearly than we have in the past. So that's one thing we're doing, the other is looking for specific foods that change your microbiome. The first one we came up with was coffee. And there's just one bug in our gut that likes to drink coffee. Yeah, it's called Lawson a Bacter. Okay. And if you don't drink coffee, you've got very low levels of it that if you drink it, you've got very high levels of it.

And what does that back does?

Well, apart from eating coffee, it produces various metabolites which we think are good for our health, so reduces our fat levels. It also dampens down inflammation. So that's just one example of we're going to try and work through all the foods and work out what they do and which, how to feed them.

But then you have to have these patients give you a sample before they eat the food and after they eat the food.

Right. Well, we've got at the moment 250000 just at one point in time.

Yeah.

So we can tell things like coffee eaters.

Okay.

Someone who only eats some rare, has some rare drink or any red wine drinkers or whatever. But we do need longitudinal samples, ideally to see people have changed their diet and how that changes. So we're, we've got about 20,000 people who've got, we've got two samples on. So we're going to get more of those. So I think that's, that's an exciting area. So we'll be able to give much more personalized advice for people about what they need to improve this particular good microbe because at the moment we're just guessing, we don't know specifically what they eat or what they need.

What do you think about this? Commercial tests that will test your microbiome and will tell you that this is good, this is bad, what you have to improve.

Well, Zoe has one of them.

Okay.

So I think the Zoe one's good because we publish in it.

Okay.

Zoe's published over 70 papers. Okay. And so we publish in Nature and top journals. But other ones, they're making it up main generally. So a lot of them are based on old technology that was fine 10 years ago, 20 years ago. And they use other people's results so they're not very reliable in terms of the advice they give. So I think it's, it's still a bit of a lottery where you are, what the test will do. And so our test report is actually very short because we say, well, we don't believe all the old studies.

Yeah.

This is the state of Your gut, you know, this is what, using our basic principles I've been talking about, this is what you need to do for the next six months to build it up and then retest yourself.

So you have the advisors in the test results, right?

Yes, but it's not, not R1 is not as some, some of these companies give you a 30 page report.

Yeah, exactly.

Which you can't interpret.

Yeah.

It's nonsense. Right. It's just.

Yeah.

They've taken every study in the world from the last 20 years and just put it in the report. Even if it's based on five people.

Yeah.

So that's, so we're doing it all. This is the new way of doing it, based on AI and computing and big data. So it's very different to the old fashioned way. You know, it's digital, analog sort of difference. So we hope to get the advice better and better. There are things we, we will be doing. Like there's a parasite that's quite interesting that we found that one in four people have in the UK called Blastocystis. All our ancestors had it and it's actually good for your health.

And actually that's. That was one of my questions because. Because I had one of those commercial tests and I. It showed positive on this parasite and the recommendation was to get rid of it.

Yeah, well that was, that'd be the worst thing to do.

Yeah. And I, and then I read in a paper of yours that actually this is good and I have to be proud of having that.

Yeah, yeah. No, it means your health is good. It means your diet is good and that's why most Americans don't have it. So only like one in ten Americans has it. It. But all our ancestors had it.

Yeah.

So yeah, this is again how we're changing the science. So you can only do this on big databases and it's, that's just another example. So we're going to find more like that. I'd love to find the microbes that can tell whether it's safe for you to eat lots of red meat or not.

Okay. There's something like that.

Yeah. Okay. Some people convert a chemical in red meat to something that's harmful for your blood vessels and others don't.

It would be nice if you don't have those kinds of microbes to take them, you know, to be able to read more.

Yeah, exactly. So that, but it'd be nice for people to say, you know, eating lots of red meat is a big risk for you or you don't have to worry Yeah, a nice thing to know as well. And so there are lots of little things like that that we can, you know, how safe is it for you to take antibiotics? Some people react very badly to them, others, you know, don't. Drugs. Most drugs depend on your microbes to work or not. Antidepressants don't work in most people. A lot of much of that could be due to their microbes. So these are a lot of the things we're thinking about doing in the future with this, just as our data base gets better and better.

And keeping that in mind, like your last published paper is called Clinical Translation of Microbiome Research. You co authored it with Rob Knight. And I'm curious what we can do in the present and let's say in clinical setting with the microbiome research and what interventions do we have right now and how is the future looks like. What do you think we're going to do in 10 years? Maybe will have like special DNA recommended diet for each one of us or what, what other things we will be able to change and to manipulate for our health?

Well, I think we'll do a better job of personalizing diets for your microbes because the one thing we've noticed is everyone has a very different gut microbiome and yet most the dietary information is very similar. So personalizing that more like for example, you know, the meat example I gave you. Yeah, we should have sorted that out by then. We should be able to personalize things like probiotics and fermented foods. We should better personalize prebiotics. I think we will. Before you go on certain medicines, test you to say you need to change the dose. Okay. Or you know, have a different form of that drug so that your, your gut microbes don't deactivate it. I think they're the, they're the main ones and I think we'll be hopefully getting, using these tests as they get cheaper and cheaper and I think that, you know, they should be less than, you know, by that time. About €20. It'll be like a blood pressure check, you know.

Yeah.

Having that and it could even be, and it's fitted into your toilet so that, you know, you get a running check of what your gut health is.

Like, Like a continuous blood monitoring.

Yeah.

That you can monitor constantly now maybe. Yeah, that would be amazing. Yeah.

To see every day there are companies working on this.

Okay.

So I, I think, yeah, it be great fun to come back in 10 years and see how, see how right I am on this.

I, I, yeah. I hope to come back earlier because, like, I started to read this book. Identically different. Like, I've read all. All of your books, but this one is really, I think it. I think this one is getting. Going to be my favorite one because.

It'S the most fun to write, I must say, because it's. It's.

Yeah.

True stories about twins.

Yeah, exactly.

They bring it to life a lot.

And a lot of science about genetics and how you can change your genes, actually, and how you can change your epigenetics. And like, I have a few more questions to you, but one of them is about epigenetics. Like, if you just in a few terms explain us what is epigenetics and how reliable are the age clock tests that test your epigenetics and tell you what's your biological age?

So epigenetics is the ability to slightly change your. What, the proteins that your genes make.

Yeah.

By chemicals that stick on them. And they work a little bit like a dimmer switch on a light. So you can just adjust the amount that they. That that gene is producing and you. And that effect lasts a relatively short while.

Yeah.

So you can do it. You know, we're not sure exactly, but it's not like permanent.

Yes.

And there's this whole concept is, it's how we're born, you know, from one cell. The same DNA in every cell gets switched on by these signals to work differently to make a liver cell, a bone cell, a brain cell, or whatever. So it's very crucial to our development is this. This whole idea of being able to just slightly alter the genes for a particular purpose. So that was. That was my original idea about why identical twins ended up being different. And because they have the same DNA in every cell in their body, but their epigenetics changes. And so. And there was an interesting idea that your life experience can change your epigenetics and those that can therefore change your genes. So things like stress or starvation or major sort of episodes in your life can leave this imprint on you. That means that you're slightly changed, which I think is a nice one because, you know, in the previously, we're into this genetic determinism.

Yes.

You could never change your genes, but you also.

What is amazing is that it seems that you can transfer these epigenetic changes to your kids, right?

Yes, it seems to go two or three generations. It gets weaker every time. But you can, you can do. Works very well in animals, as the experiments in humans are rather hard to do.

Yeah.

So we don't have as much information on that. But yeah, there's speculation that things. Events like, you know, after the Second World War, starvation events would affect two generations after that. And this, this idea that humans had a way of adapting after major, particularly famines and things like this sort of made sense as an evolution one. So it's called sort of soft evolution.

Yeah, exactly.

So you've got this sort of hard Darwinian one and you've got this other one that short term can just tweak things a little bit, which might have meant that, you know, we survived in the world longer or had a bit. We were a bit more flexible than we believe we were.

Yeah. This is the theory made by Lamarck first. First time. Right. You describe it in the book. And what about this epigenetic clock tests? Are, are they. Are they legit? Can we use them to.

I think we can, yes, most of them. I mean, I can't vouch for them all, but the science is quite strong that age is one of the biggest effects you see on the epigenome, which is like. Like you combine all the. The epigenetics on your genes together and so you can predict someone's age from these tests. If you take the epigenetics that change with age, you put them together in a test and you do a sort of DNA test. They are quite sensitive to how you collect them, though. So, you know, there was a bit of worry that if you collect it in saliva, if, you know, depending on the concentration of your saliva, it might change it. So they're. They're more sensitive than a DNA test. Okay. So you have to be a bit worried that, you know, they've got that bit sorted out. If you've got lots of different white cells and they can change how you interpret it. But in general, I think they give you a rough guide to it. I think they're better at the population level than they are for an individual. Okay, okay. They didn't all. You know, I've rep. I've done. Been doing quite a few of them and I generally come out quite well, so I like them. I. I'm younger than I'm supposed to be, which is good.

I'm older on this test, so. So you hate them and I don't believe them. No.

So. But yeah, they have technical problems with them. Yeah. On average they work.

Yes, they work.

I don't think they're that brilliant yet that they, that they're more for. Of general interest than they are as a fantastic medical test. Yeah. And, you know, some, some of them give me a result of say I'm in my 40s and things like that. It seems too, too extreme.

Yeah.

I'm not by the way anyone who.

I'm also in my 40s and I am 38 and I, I, I was.

That's all right, it's close enough.

37 and it showed 42 and I was like okay.

Yeah.

I don't know, maybe I have to repeat them.

Yeah.

I see you wear this. Wearables.

Yeah.

A watch and a ring. This aura ring.

Yeah.

Yeah. You like them?

Yeah, I, I play around. Well, I'm not obsessed with them like some people. Yeah. So I, I don't. But I, you know I am sort of comparing them and start looking after my, my body and my sleep particularly. So. Yeah. I use a lot to sort of track my sleep which I find is interesting because it's, that's one thing. It's quite hard to do otherwise. Yeah.

And you, and actually you can see like the influence of food or drinks you have before the slip on, on your sleep. I find it very useful.

Yeah. But I think, yeah, but I'm not constantly tracking everything because I think that can become negative for your mental health if you overdo it.

Yeah, that's true.

Yeah. So I, I can quite easily take it off for the holiday and relax.

I take my blood sugar sensor off when I'm in holidays to not track my sugar.

Yeah. Well, I don't use it. I found that I've sort of learned what I, you know doing it a few, a couple of times is enough for me. You know, I don't think I, each time I did it I learned less because you sort of know.

Yeah.

What it does after a while. So I think everyone should do it once. And that's what Zoe we, you know, is part of the test as blood sugar test. But we don't say you should have this every month or anything. I don't think it helps. It makes you too obsessed with sugar. Without worrying about the holistic picture. I think you could also worry about the fats. You've got to worry about the quality of the food, you know, all this kind of stuff. So I think it can over you get over obsessed with one thing that's not good for you either.

Can you tell me like, like a secret from your next book that is going to come in September. Yeah. Ferment something that you never said before.

What, what if we, if we can keep it a secret between us.

Yeah. And the people that are watching it.

That's right. Okay. We're just between us then. It's a chapter on how dead microbes could still be beneficial for us. Okay. So when you kill, you pasteurize you, you or you heat these probiotic microbes, this increasing evidence they are can still be good for your health.

Okay. So if you pasteurize the milk and make yogurt, you can still have benefits from dead microbes.

Correct. I think that's really fascinating area.

Yeah.

It's called postbiotics.

Postbiotics.

Okay. Because they're like beyond the grave.

Yeah.

You have to read the book to find out.

Yeah, I will.

But I think that's a really exciting area.

Yeah. Actually, do you think it's. It's beneficial to take any supplements with fiber or probiotics or. It depends on, on where you take them.

Probiotics. Not for prevention, but there are, it's worth trying them, you know, for certain conditions. There's evidence they work in depression and anxiety. Some work in irritable bowel syndrome, diarrhea, other areas like this. Fiber supplements, single fibers don't work very well. Okay. Because they only encourage one particular type of microbe to grow.

Yeah.

So they've been a bit disappointed. Eating multiple fibers probably do work. And Zoe has this 30 plant dried plant, high fiber whole food supplement. Yeah, we did a trial on that actually showed it was. But it showed it worked.

I, I don't like the fact that, the fact that you call it supplement.

Because we had to by law. You had to by law because it contains two types of mushroom that aren't considered by the EU as food.

Okay, okay. So by law it's supplement, but actually it's food like it's real food.

It's a whole food supplement is what it is.

Wolf food supplement. Okay.

But it's. Yeah. In the US has different rules, but so in the US we can call it a prebiotic.

Yeah.

Okay. You can't call it a prebiotic in the uk. Yeah. Or in Europe.

Yeah.

Okay. So it's slightly. The European law rules on this are complete rubbish. Yeah.

Actually this supplement, like this whole food supplement will make the dirty plant salad much easier to do.

Yeah.

You can put anything there and puts the.

Correct. Yeah, but the idea is it's going to be a daily habit because you're only getting tiny amounts of them. Yeah. Every day. But, but yeah, that. So we've done a study that showed it really works really well on the gut and it worked better than a probiotic.

Yeah. Good. Professor, thank you so much again for taking your. Your time and coming to this podcast. It was be will be like a really, really precious podcast for the Romanian public. If, if there is any message you want to send to Romanian public.

Yes. Well, carry on eating the traditional foods, not the new foods. Don't give up all those good habits of fermenting.

Yeah.

And yeah, do do follow me on Instagram and listen to our free nutrition podcast on on Zoe. I think, and hopefully we'll get some of our products in Romania soon.

Yeah. I can't wait. Really, I can't wait. Yeah. Thank you so much for, for joining our podcast.

My pleasure.

I'm going to switch to Romanian now to say goodbye to the people podcast. Professor Inspector. Podcast professor inspector. A professor at Inspector on the. Professor inspector.

Sam.