Dr Will Bulsiewicz on A Fiber Fueled Microbiome

This episode is brought to you by Nourish Me Organics. Now, today, the conversation is going to center around plant foods and fiber and the impact on gut health. One of the easiest ways to start to incorporate fibre into the diet is to use a prebiotic fiber. Now, if you go and ramp up your fiber consumption, you may experience significant amounts of bloating and irritation to the gut. So what we recommend is to use a prebiotic fiber, something like partially hydrolyzed guar gum or acacia fiber, both which are fodmap friendly approved and less likely to create any bloating. So, guys, head to www.nourishmeorganics.com to get started. Hey, guys, cribbing Goven from the Gut Health Gurus podcast. I've got a background in food science and today I have an absolutely staggering guest. His name is Dr. Will be or Dr. Bill. Dr. Will. Bill Switzer. I was so scared to say that name, Will. I was just like, I'm super nervous, but hopefully I've done it justice.

It's all good, man. No, I'll take it. I love it and it's an honor. I'm staggered to be on the show with you, my friend. So I've been a bit, big fan of the things that you're doing and the thing that I think is really cool is that you are literally on the other side of the planet right now. It's nighttime by me, it's morning by you. I'm in the United States, you're in Australia, and yet we can connect through the Internet. The Internet drives me nuts. But there are some good things. And this right now, this session for the next hour or whatever we do, this is good stuff. This is going to be good stuff.

Absolutely. It's a double edged sword, isn't it? The Internet and what's going on in the globe right now, but still two guys that have mutual respect for each other's work, being able to connect. And I've been following your work for some time as well. Having the ability to meet you and speak to you is so humbling. And I really appreciate all that you're doing for the world. What we like to do at the start of each show is to get it from the horse's mouth. Now, who is Dr. B?

Dr. B is a normal guy. Dr. B loves sports. Dr. B is a dad. He's got two kids that he loves, a daughter who's five, a son who's three. Dr. B loves his family and his wife. Dr. B is closing in on 40 and yet feels Younger and gets asked more often, are you old enough to be a doctor these days than I did when I was 30. And that's a pretty. That makes me feel really good about myself. So I love that. But yeah, I'm just an average guy who also is a total science nerd. I mean, what can I say? I'm a science nerd. I think it shines through in the book Fiber Fueled that I wrote, and it's going to come through a little bit today. I'm going to try to keep it under wraps a little bit like the Incredible Hulk, you just try to keep it bottled up a little bit, but it sneaks out every once in a while where the science gets. Gets out of me.

That's amazing, man. It's so humbling to have a person of your stature, a gastroenterologist, who's really at the cutting edge of the science. And certainly that speaks to all the stuff that you're posting on Instagram. Very cutting edge stuff when it comes to the microbiome and whatnot. Really, both of us navigate a world, especially on Instagram or on social media, where everybody seems to to have expertise in gut health, particularly because that's the area we focus on. But to have someone that actually is looking at the literature and who's actually qualified to talk about these things and also has the clinical practice who's boots on the ground dealing with gut health issues with clients on a daily basis. So it's incredibly humbling. And one of the reasons why I was so excited to have you on the show is because we know in the Western world, specifically in Australia and also in the US and UK and all the modern countries, we're in a state where like it's 50% of our populations, certainly in Australia, have some form of digestive issues. That's massive. That is absolutely huge.

70 million Americans. 70 million Americans. And believe it or not, I actually published that statistic myself. I was the one who published that statistic in the top American gastroenterology journal a couple of years ago. 70 million Americans. It's insane.

Wow.

You know what I think the word is, and I think you're going to appreciate this, the magic word is biodiversity. I want to make this the word of the year, okay? And actually this is, I believe, the first time that I'm saying this on a podcast. So you guys heard it here first, okay? Biodiversity. And we have to think about this because it affects any ecosystem. And it doesn't matter whether we're talking about a large ecosystem like the forest Fires in Australia or the Amazon rainforest, these moments of environmental catastrophe that we've been dealing with in the last year, where we fear a loss of biodiversity. And the same thing is happening on a microscopic level inside of us right now. Our gut is an ecosystem, is an ecosystem, just as much as the Amazon rainforest, just as much as the forest is in our Australia. And unfortunately, the same thing that we're seeing happen to our forests is happening inside of us. In the 21st century, we haven't been taking care of our gut.

Yeah, totally, totally. And it's so intuitive when you think about it. Like any ecosystem, it could be a paddock or a forest or the soil. As soon as we decimate the biodiversity of that ecosystem, it loses its resilience. So absolutely spot on. And I've heard you speak about it many times about the importance of having diversity in the gut as well. It's an ecosystem. It's very much akin to a soil environment. So it's almost like soil inside the body. So you're absolutely spot on.

There's this beautiful thing. I love where you're taking this because there's this beautiful thing that exists where there is a circle of life and we're just a part of it. And we can look at ourselves as these big, strong humans, like, oh, we are the masters of our terrain. We can cut down trees and we can destroy the area and we can do whatever we want and we're in control. But at the end of the day, we're going to hurt ourselves if we look at the world in that way. We have to look at the fact that we need to fit in with everything else, all of the other life that's out there. And so there is this beautiful thing that exists where it goes from soil to food. You need healthy soil to have healthy food. You need healthy food to have healthy humans. And then healthy humans are able to then create new, fresh, healthy soil through our processes. And that's the circle of life that we need to promote. I think it's coming. What do you think about regenerative agriculture? Are you excited?

Oh, yeah, totally. I actually spend time with a guy last week who is one of the pioneers in this particular space, and I'm going to get him onto the podcast soon. But it was staggering to actually see the process. So what he does is he has very small kind of flocks of cows, and what he does is he rotates the actual paddocks, so they use this regenerative. I'm certainly no expert in regenerative agriculture, but he uses these techniques to actually foster and maintain the actual the ecosystem that he's fostering. And we also talked about mycorrhizal fungi and things like that. Incorporating that into his practice to actually extend the roots out and get more yields out of that particular block of land and also more biodiversity. But what I really loved about, and I know you're a plant based guy, so my apologies for going down this path, but what he's talking about is that one of the biggest burdens on the particular animal is the stress that's caused during the actual process of slaughtering. So what his premise is to actually have mobile slaughtering so the animals actually slaughtered on the plot itself. So it's very comfortable in its environment and it's done in a very humane way. That's what excites me. And then it also maintains that ecosystem so it's not damaging like in a massive feedlot type confined sort of systems where it's very, very detrimental to the planet. So this is a small, small way and more friendly for the planet. Definitely with regen agriculture.

Yeah. No, that's amazing. And just to comment on that real quickly, that I am a plant based guy and I'm a plant based guy because of where the science that I was reading, where it led me and it made a huge difference in my own life. I lost £50 by following the path that I lay out in the book Fiber Fueled. For me it's made a difference. But what people will find in the book is that I'm not saying that there's only one way to be healthy and there's different ways. And I can guarantee you one thing, that tomorrow when we wake up, the entire planet is not going to be vegan. I can guarantee that there are going to be people eating meat and there are going to be people eating plants. Me personally, I'm sharing science that I would love to encourage people to. Wherever you are, wherever you are, move a little bit more in the plant based direction. That's what I want to see people do. Because I really think that that is the path that leads to better health. But the key is this, to take a step back for a moment. I am a science guy and I want a healthy planet. I have young children and I am so scared about what this planet is like for my grandkids. I think about the way that things are right now and I think about the way they were 100 years ago and it is already radically different. And so we need to think about these things and we need to be prepared to Support all dietary types. I don't think that we should be creating regenerative culture that only supports one dietary type, because, as I said, the world is never going to be 100% vegan. The world is never going to be 100% carnivore. I can assure you of that as long as I'm on this planet. But I guess the point from my perspective is that it's investing into the science of. It's investing into our future, and it's finding legitimate solutions, not bullshit. I don't know if I'm allowed to swear on your program or not, but minimal amounts. We need real stuff. We need real science, and we need to heal this planet. And we need to think about this and. Because part of it is what we have done in the last 50 years. Flogging our soil with glyphosate, flogging our soil with pesticides, things that you may be able to grow a genetically modified plant, but you're killing all the other life around it. And it's not just the life that we can see with our eye. It's the life that exists on a microscopic level that matters so much, not just to the soil, but to our own health in terms of our microbiome.

Yeah, yeah, totally. 100%. I just want to underscore as well, I'm 100% supportive of what you're saying, and I support every single dietary regime out there because I think each of the range. I mean, diets are like, almost like religion. But what we can do is we can fall back on the science, and the science is what's going to lead us. And I know you've spoken on many different podcasts as well, listen to some of your shows, and you talk about the importance of plant foods and diversity in the gut. Do you want to speak to that a little bit?

Yeah, I would love to. I mean, so let me say that we're talking about science, and I'm a science guy, so I can't help but nerd out a little bit. So I hope that your listeners will bear with me as I nerd out for a moment.

Just to put it out there. This is a science show. I mean, we go heavy and deep in the science. It's perfectly normal. So go for it.

Perfect. And I know that your listeners know what the microbiome is. Right. The microbiome is this community of invisible microbes that are as alive as you and I, and they cover us from the top of our head to the tip of our toes, but they're Concentrated there in our gut. That's the number one location. From that location in the gut, it's almost like the epicenter of human health. All health starts right there and it branches out. It's more than digestion, it's the immune system. It's your mood, the way that you feel, some would argue even your personality, believe it or not, which I find to be absolutely fascinating. It is your metabolism. Think of the person who eats all the right food and can't lose weight and then compare it to the person who eats whatever they want. And they're still skinny. They're just lucky they have a good gut microbiome. It's our hormones and it's the way that we express our genes. All of that is concentrated in this one location. And amazingly, we have outsourced it to our microbes. What we want is, we want to optimize. We want to optimize those microbes to play in our favor. We have to think about. See, here's the thing. We have to think about our life projected out over 80 to 100 years. Because you can do a diet for three months and it's not going to kill you in three months. But if you're one of the people who has a heart attack in their 50s, you'll never be able to take back the fact that you did that diet. And that's the reality of the matter. We have to think about what is the diet that's going to promote longevity throughout our life into our 80s, 90s and 1002s. To me, that's an anti inflammatory diet. The way that we accomplish that is through our gut, believe it or not, using prebiotics. Your listeners know probiotics, that's the capsule that has the living microorganisms. But I actually am completely obsessed with, with prebiotics and I think we should be talking way more about them because what happens is they're fertilizer for the healthy anti inflammatory microbes in our gut. And when you feed them, they grow stronger, they multiply, and then what they do is they unpack that prebiotic. Specifically soluble fiber or resistant starch. They will unpack that for us and release short chain fatty acids like butyrate, acetate, propionate. These are the anti inflammatory molecule. You want to control your immune system. Give me some short chain fatty acids. You want to reverse leaky gut, Give me some short chain fatty acids. You want to prevent Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, improve your mood, give me short chain fatty acids. It's amazing what they do throughout the entire body. From the brain all the way down to your gut. It's amazing what they do. From my perspective, I really see this connection between our gut and our food. And I see that when we eat fiber enriched foods, meaning plants, fruits, vegetables, whole grains, seeds, nuts, they're rewarding us with the currency of gut health, which is short chain fatty acids. If I needed any more verification on this idea that I had been thinking about, my verification came in 2017 when I got to sit in on a meeting on a major study that had not yet been published. It was the American Gut Project, which I know that you have seen this study. The study didn't get published until 2018. This was a year ahead of time. It feels good for me because I got to go on all these podcasts and talk about it before the paper had even been published. The point of the study is that the largest study to date to correlate our gut microbiome and our biodiversity, biodiversity being a really good thing. When we lose diversity in the gut, that's when disease shows up. Correlating biodiversity to the way that we live, the way that we eat. What is it? What is it? Was it a vegan diet that was the healthiest thing for our gut? The answer in the study is no. The single greatest predictor of a healthy gut microbiome was the diversity of plants in your diet. When you have diversity in your diet, you get diversity in your microbiome. Biodiversity is the word.

Yeah. Makes perfect sense. And that was our mate, Rob Knight, wasn't it? Yeah.

Oh, my gosh. And so, yeah, it was Rob Knight, who's one of my health heroes. And he's literally changing the game in terms of microbiome research. And so it blows my mind that the first time they revealed that I was actually there at the meeting that was in Chicago at Digestive Disease Week.

It's amazing, man. Rob Knight is. I think he's from a bit more south of us. He's a New Zealander.

Yeah, he's a Kiwi, isn't he?

He's a Kiwi. But he was one of the early guys that I was following very intently as well. Admittedly now where the science is headed in terms of microbiome and what I'm really interested in and the audience might be interested in. A lot of those early studies were done with 16s technology. Where it's moving now is a bit more of a high resolution, if people want to learn about that. We interviewed one of the world experts. He was actually the curator of the Greens Genes database, which is actually what people use to cross match 16s data. But where it's moved now, Professor Phil Hugenholz and his team at Microbar and are using a high resolution snapshot of what's happening in the gut. And that's called whole genome sequencing, which I'm sure you're familiar with as well, and all the metabolomics aspects as well. So they use the KEG database to actually work out what's happening from the metabolite perspective. What's the affinity of the gut to produce all these different metabolites. So that really excites me massively.

Oh, so the amount of information is overwhelming. And you are 100% right that it is not actually the makeup of the microbiome that matters and it is not the makeup of your diet that matters. What actually matters is the metabolites. So what your microbiome produces for you is what ultimately is going to make the difference. And what is interesting though, from my perspective is that the microbiome is not set in stone. You're not like stuck. Okay. I like to say this is something that I talk about in great detail in the book. In my book, Fiber fueled. The gut is like a muscle. It can be trained. Think of your gut as a muscle. Now, it may have certain strengths and it may have certain weaknesses. But if you take your weaknesses and you start low and you go slow, you can train your gut and make that a strength. It's entirely possible and adaptable. That's one of the beautiful things about it. You're right. Short chain fatty acids are one example of postbiotics. Postbiotics, meaning health promoting molecules or metabolites produced by our microbes. And there's so many of them. Most people, we talk about polyphenols, the health benefits of polyphenols. People don't realize that it's not the polyphenols in their native state, it's the polyphenols after they've been metabolized by your microbiome that actually have the healing effects.

That's it. Absolutely right. About 80% of the polyphenols are not actually metabolized by you. They go down into the gut. And then a classic example is something like pomegranate, which I absolutely love. And pomegranate metabolite is actually very rich in polyphenols, but it's the postbiotic. So it's what the bacteria actually make out of these polyphenols. And I think it's urolithulamin A or something like that. It's a very powerful metabolite that elicits a lot of benefits, especially when it comes to mitochondrial health. So 100% with you. The other ones that are of key importance are things like short chain fatty acids, neurotransmitters. And the big one for me is lps, something that I'm really hot on at the moment. Do you want to speak a little bit to lps?

No, happy to. So otherwise referred to as bacterial endotoxin, depending on where you are. And if I were to, for the listeners at home, use literally one word to summarize what we're talking about, that word would be inflammation. Inflammation. And it can be anything from a low grade slow burn, smoldering inflammation, the type of thing that can cause heart disease 40, 50 years from now. The type of thing that can cause dementia 40, 50 years from now. That's low grade inflammation. Or it can be the extreme opposite, which is that the patient that I see who comes into the hospital, they literally don't know where they are. Their eyes are rolled back in their head, they're delirious, they're thrashing around, their oxygen levels are dropping, their blood pressure is dropping. What I'm describing to you is a person in septic shock. And septic shock is due to a surge, a massive surge of this bacterial endotoxin or lps. Now what's important is that people don't realize that our gut, although it is the deepest part of our body, it actually is outward facing. It actually is outward facing. So think about this for a moment. It's a tube. It actually is where we interact with the environment. And it's our most vulnerable place. And it's where we need the most protection. And so we have this wall that's built within our gut to protect us from the unhealthy microbes, like for example, E. Coli or salmonella or Shigella or Pseudomonas that would release this bacterial endotoxin. It tends to be these gram negative bacteria that release the lps. They're there, we all have them. They're a part of our ecosystem. They're going to release that. The question is, does it get through? Does it get through to the bloodstream? The answer is, well, what's going on with the tight junctions? When we talk about leaky gut, this is what we're referring to, is when the tight junctions break down, you create channels between the cells that line the colon and you allow the release of this bacterial endotoxin or LPS into the bloodstream.

I'm going to Pause you there for a sec because I've got a burning question, and this is often because you're a medical guy. And firstly, is leaky gut two part question. Is leaky gut fully acknowledged by the medical community? That's part one. And part two is how do we actually diagnose it?

Okay, so leaky gut as an expression is not fully acknowledged by the medical community, but there is a word that we use which is dysbiosis. And dysbiosis describes a state in the gut where there are three things. Number one, there's a loss of balance within the gut. Many times this is a loss of diversity. Less good guys, more bad guys, loss of balance in the gut microbes. Number two, increase intestinal permeability. Increase intestinal permeability is synonymous with saying leaky gut. And number three is the release of bacterial endotoxin. This is dysbiosis. Three parts damage to the gut microbes. Increase intestinal permeability. Release of bacterial endotoxin. So the word that we would use is dysbiosis. Okay, now we are in a phase where we're trying to understand this. There is no test to prove that a person right now has dysbiosis. There are tests that you can do to look for increased intestinal permeability, and they're not widely available from a clinical perspective. And I would love to see more research to validate them as well. But from our perspective, people can look down on the expression leaky gut. Whether you say leaky gut and I say dysbiosis, I know when I'm talking to you, my friends, we're saying the same thing. The only thing that I would caution people, and this is not just when it comes to leaky gut, this is when it comes to literally any health information. Be careful who your source is. When you go to the Internet, when it comes to health related information, no matter what you're talking about, whether it's leaky gut or something else, 97% of what's out there, the person's not qualified to talk to you about this. So why are you wasting your time on it? I don't care how many followers they have on Instagram. I just don't care. They didn't go to medical school or they don't have any formal training, or they don't spend their life studying this.

I hear you, man. My equal frustration, you, and I'm sure this is the case with you, I read at least, I would say at least five papers per day because the microbiome research is so hot right now. There's so many studies coming out, it's hard to even keep up with it. You literally need to invest time in reading every single day.

80% of the studies have come out in the last five years. 80% of the studies, there are more than 30 studies per day that come out with regard to the microbiome. So yeah, I spend a ton of time on this in my book. I have literally 600 references and it actually got so long that I had to take it out of the physical. So if your listeners buy my book, you're not going to find the references physically in the book. What you do is you come to my website, ThePlantFedGut.com and basically what I'm doing is I'm putting all the references there along with my research manifesto, because I want to have a conversation. There's a conversation that was not appropriate for the book but that I really feel compelled to have with people, which is that if you're going to learn on the Internet, you need to be a smart shopper and if you're not a smart shopper, you're going to hurt yourself because there's a lot of bad information out there.

Exactly. And people don't realize, I mean, the microbiome space is evolving. So as we shift more from 16s studies to whole genome sequencing, shotgun sequencing studies, the resolution is, is far more enhanced. Like so you're going from, you're going from really from genus level analysis down to subspecies analysis and then compound that with the fact that we are just about to reclassify Lactobacillus. So it's staggering when you think about a lot of these studies might become obsolete. That's how fast eaten the studies are moving. The technology is moving because when you look at microbiome, it's all based on technology. I mean, we're using computers to do a lot of these analyses and as the analyses evolve and they're evolving at such a rapid rate, a lot of studies are going to be obsolete within a few months. So that's how fast this space is moving. I'm really interested to see what's going to happen with the later Visalis reclassification of that group and how that affects the so called probiotic space. It's going to be really interesting.

Well, and I'll say that I share all of your enthusiasm for this. This is the real deal. This is the real deal. This is not a fad. This is not going away now. We're going to evolve. There's stuff that we don't know. There's stuff that we may think we know and we're going to have to have an open mind. But what I think is also exciting about this is that you don't need to wait 10 years to change your gut. You don't need to wait for us to do more studies to know how to change your gut. We have studies right now that show us that diet and lifestyle are the most powerful drivers of the constitution of your gut microbiome. So if you're waiting for a supplement or if you're waiting for a pill that's going to fix your gut health issues, I'm going to tell you right now, it's never going to work. It's never going to work because you can take a C minus gut and with a perfect supplement, you can make it a C. But if you want an A minus, you got to be prepared to change your diet and your lifestyle. And that's a big part of what my book is about, is that is that I know there's going to be evolution and I know really truly what we're going to have in the future is the manipulation for disease specific states.

Yes.

But where we are right now, no matter who you are, there are basic general rules that we can follow that will lead you to a healthier gut.

Totally 100% with you. I mean, we live in such an exciting time, Will. I mean, it's like there's connectivity with the scientists that are doing this work like never before. Like, I mean, I can sit down with guys like you, I can sit down with researchers and hear from their mouths what they're doing in their research and implement those changes immediately. I mean, in private prior eras, I mean it would be like it a minimum of 10 to 20 years from research to actually mainstream adoption of this information. But the Internet has allowed us to connect and disseminate this information so much faster. I think especially when people are following guys like you who are at the cutting edge, you can implement this science straight away without having to wait for decades.

The studies say that when we make a discovery, it takes 17 years to get into the medical clinic because there's such inertia to re educate doctors and get this information out there. There are so many doctors that will say to me, I'm excited about the microbiome, I love where this is going, but I don't know how to use it. They're like, I just don't know how to use it. Read my book, read my book. I lay it out for you. And that's why I was very vigilant about the studies that I used and the references. There's over 600 references in my book because I want the doctor to read my book and see, oh my gosh, this is not just an intuitive approach. There's actually research to back this up. I think that's what's really exciting about where we are now, is that if you went back 15 years, we knew nothing. We knew nothing and we were ignoring it, we were flogging it. I mean, let me ask you something. I'm curious what your perspective is on this. What do you feel like is the number one thing in the last 100 years? And I know it's hard to pick out one. If you want to give me three, give me three. But what's really crushing our gut in the industrialized world? Because clearly it's happening, we're destroying our gut. What do you think are the main things that you worry about?

The number one thing, and you've touched on it earlier, I think it's a double edged sword. I mean, antibiotics, that's probably number one because it saves lives in situations where we need it. But then we've gone to a situation where we've introduced these antibiotic compounds widely throughout a whole food chain. Most of the antibiotics are not coming from the doctor. Most of them are actually coming through the food supply. Mostly meat. Mostly meat. Because what happens is that they figured out, and this is really interesting when we explore this, when you feed an animal antibiotics, it makes it bigger. It actually creates more mass.

15% more mass. You can feed them the exact same calories and they will gain 15% more mass.

Yeah. And that's just a purely a commercial decision to do that. But what happens again, like when you inoculate the whole system with antibiotics and the meat that you're consuming is definitely having an impact on what's happening in the microbial communities in the gut. So for me, that's the number one thing. And number two to me is counterintuitive. People might not be aware of this yet. There's a study that came out very recently, it's only a few months ago. I think it just literally got posted, I think for early release is it's a study called, actually written by two amazing scientists, John Cryan and Professor Ted Dinan. And it talks to rhythmicity, rhythmicity in the microbiome. So rhythmicity being your circadian rhythms, like the time of day that you eat, having breakfast at a certain time, having lunch at a certain time, but then also insults in Rhythmicity and circadian rhythm and the impact, the potential impacts of that on actually modulating the gut microbiome. And to me, the biggest thing that's disturbing to circadian rhythm is actually blue light from LED screens, whether it's the energy saving bulbs, which is great for the environment and great for energy production. But there's a price to pay from what I'm seeing that's emerging in the research, because if you've got your computer screen on at night and you're blasting yourself with this blue light, it's actually signaling and it's very, very sharp peaks at the 400, I think to 490 nanometers. That's actually potentially signaling to the body that you're actually in the middle of the day. Yes. This is how substantial. And now they're starting to.

It suppresses melatonin. You should be actually melatonin at that point.

Yep, exactly, exactly. And also getting the sunlight exposure early in the day and then midday exposure, there's all these triggers of actually being outside nature to actually set rhythmicity. But then.

Which we no longer do.

Which we no longer do. So the body is confused. The microbiome, which has its own circadian rhythms, is also confused. There is differences in the microbiome composition as you move through the day. So imagine this confusion in, in the body's clock. There's a clock inside the brain called the super charismatic nucleus, which sets the timing for the whole body. And then the signaling that's happening with your actual microbiome from your body as well through the gene expression. So those two things I think are having the biggest impact in our world right now. So hopefully that gives you some perspective before where I'm coming from. But you should check out that study if you haven't. It literally just came out.

I don't know if I saw that one. I've seen a couple of studies talking about the circadian rhythm of our microbiome and I've actually written some here in the States about this. That the idea of jet lag, or people who are shift workers that work at night, like our nurses, for example, there's very, very clear cut data. Like we have known for years that these people are prone to gaining weight, that they are prone to having insulin resistance, type 2 diabetes, elevated cholesterol. Honestly, what's interesting is many of the conditions they develop, many of the conditions that improve with fasting.

Yeah.

And what we did not understand until recently is that it's through the gut microbiome, an alteration of the gut microbiome where we actually see the gut microbiome when you are sleep deprived, which to me, exposure to blue light is actually making yourself sleep deprived. It doesn't matter how many hours you attempt to rest. It's not high quality sleep. And so when you are sleep deprived, there's a shift in the gut microbiome towards something that is more prone to obesity, to energy extraction and to insulin resistance.

Totally.

And so, yeah, so I, you know, that's a very interesting one. I love that. I think that was a great answer and I agree with you wholeheartedly on your first one, the antibiotics.

Yeah.

And I, it's really hard for me to choose which one I would put number three. If you allow me to jump in and ask the third one, it's a little bit hard because there's so many great options. Like we could talk about processed foods. There's so many different directions that you could go with things. But I honestly think it's the fiber deficiency. I honestly legitimately believe that it's the fiber deficiency. I want to share with you the study that leads me to say that. But before I go there, let me just say in the United States, 97% of Americans are not getting the minimal standard of fiber. 97% are not even getting the minimal amount on a daily basis, which isn't even that much. And when we try to do, when we try to do fiber studies, one of the ways that we'll do this is we'll break a population up into quartiles or quintiles and we'll compare high fiber consumers to low fiber consumers. Next time you see a fiber study, take a look. If it's from the United States, and I'm guessing this is probably true in Australia, although I think you guys are a bit little, little bit better than this. But if you look, the high fiber consumers are still getting less than the recommended minimum amount. That's the high fiber consumers. That is terrifying. The study that changes the game for me. I've already told you that the number one predictor of a healthy gut microbiome is the diversity of plants in your diet. I've already talked about this connection between fiber and prebiotics and how that feeds and nourishes the gut to produce short chain fatty acids. But there was a basic science study that Justin Sonnenberg, who's at Stanford and by the way, really cool guy, he wrote a book called the Good Gut, if people are interested, they should check it out.

Absolutely.

He read my book and he loves my book and he wrote me an endorsement to support my book. And that's really cool because he's one of the world's leading microbiome researchers.

Yeah.

And so he did something that we can't do in humans, that it's impossible for us to do this study in humans. He took an animal model with mice and he looked at what happens if you expose the mice to a fiber deprived diet over generations and then what happens if you reintroduce fiber at some point during those generations. Okay, so he's looking at from grandma to mom to daughter, he's looking over multiple generations of animals. And here's the catch again. I'm going to get really sciency here and be a nerd. I can't help it. These were initially germ free mice that they put the human microbiome into. They transplanted a human microbiome into these germ free mice to try to get their best approximation of what would actually happen in humans. And when they did this and they put them on a low fiber diet, what they saw was a loss of diversity in the gut microbiome that compounded over generations. If Hypothetically, Grandma has 1200 species, but by the time she has mom, that low fiber diet has led her to 900. That means mom starts at 900 and then mom is on a low fiber diet and she drops to 600. And that means when the daughter is born, she's only at 600, she's only at half of where grandma started. And what Sonnenberg found is if you reintroduce fiber, if you do it early enough, you can get the diversity back. If you don't do it early enough, if you wait too long, the microbes are gone and they're gone permanently. And we don't know how to get them back in that particular setting. We don't know if a fecal transplant would do it. It's kind of interesting because there actually is a data bank or I'm sorry, there is a stool repository that was set up by Jack Gilbert, who is one of the researchers from the American Gut project. And it's basically like they're taking stool specimens from native tribal people and they're storing them because they don't know if one day this is the only way that they will save our planet, is the poop of native people.

That's it. The Bio Collective. The Bio Collective. Actually I donated some of mine. I think it's about five years ago or so. It was a horrendous process. You literally have to dump in this big. I don't know, they've got some patented collection thing and then you've got to send it off to them to database. But that's interesting. There's another Aussie company recently that started this very similar concept because the premise is that as we lose diversity in the gut and as our understanding improves, maybe there could be a therapeutic use for strains that they isolate out of these poops. There's even poo pills, there's FMTs, very, very powerful for C Diff, as you probably know. But that's really interesting because our understanding is just starting to emerge and I think it's a smart idea to maintain these things before we lose it, especially from the tribal regions, because as the tribes move to more processed styles of eating, like the Western world, there's a higher likelihood they're going to lose the diversity.

Oh, it happens very quickly. They've done studies, you may have seen this one where they studied people who moved from Thailand to the United States, and in literally just a few months, they had already lost tremendous diversity with within their gut.

Yeah. And to your point on that particular study from Justin Sonnenberg and his group, it highlights the dilution potential of the microbiome over generations. Because in my setting, the generations are happening quickly, but there's a risk for us as a society to gradually lose more and more as we move from generation to generation. And do you want to speak to a little bit on how we actually acquire the microbiome? Because it might be a nice little tie to what you were talking about.

Well, there's a lot that we don't know. We used to think that the child was completely sterile while in the womb. And there have more recently been some studies that have suggested that that's not in fact true. But what we do know is that when a child is born, the child is as close as they will ever be to being sort of sterile. They are in their infantile stage where they're ready and open for business to welcome new microbes. In a perfect world, that child passes through the birth canal, through mom's birth canal, and in that process picks up the vaginal flora, which is quite fascinating because the vaginal flora late in pregnancy will start to change and shift to be more similar to mom's gut microbiome. I find that to be quite fascinating. In a perfect world, that's where it starts. What we see is if you take a child and newborn and you track them out over the course of years, by the time they are somewhere in the range of 2 to 3 years of age, they have a fully formed, adult sized gut microbiome. There are so many important elements that come into play during that period of time. For example, where is the child playing? Are they playing outside? Are they playing in dirt? Or are we having them inside in a hyper sterile home that is essentially a wasteland when it comes to microbes. What is the child eating? Is the child breastfed? One of the fascinating things about I honestly believe that breast milk is the perfect food. I honestly think it's the perfect food. And the reason why is because it was developed and bore out through 3 million years of human evolution to design itself to sustain new life in a child. So you can't. We can't. There's things about it that we don't even understand that are there to help this child. And it contains human milk oligosaccharides, which we now know. There's at least 200 varieties of these human milk oligosaccharides which have zero nutritional value for the child. 0. Because they're completely designed to feed the microbes. They feed the bifidobacterium. And you see the growth, the bloom of the bifidobacterium as a result of breastfeeding the child. So I guess the point is that we take this child and there's this vulnerable period from the time of birth until 2 to 3 years of age. And whether it is performing cesarean section, not breastfeeding, but instead bottle feeding, or whether it is giving antibiotics to that child during this period of vulnerability, the result is the same, which is across the board. Increased risk of obesity, increased risk of type 2 diabetes, increased risk of autoimmune conditions, increased risk of allergic conditions. The immune system needs our gut microbiome in order to develop properly. And if we disrupt the gut microbiome during this vulnerable period of time, it's also disruptive to the immune system.

Yeah.

And those, those things will carry over into adulthood.

Yeah, I agree with you 100% because exposure to these microbes is, is what's going to prime the, the actual innate humoral immune system. I mean, it needs that, it needs data. I mean, these B cells, these T cells, cytokine production, all these things, they need interaction with these microbes to work out the friend and foe, what's happening. So I think we're seeing a prevalence of these autoimmune dysfunctions because we've sterilized everything. There's no interaction, or not as much interaction with the outside world, with the soil, with the dirt, to actually prime and train the immune system and then you end up with autoimmune dysfunction.

I think it's the whole package. I think that the scary thing is the child who is born by C section is bottle fed, is fed processed foods, they're eating chicken nuggets instead of eating real food. And they spend all their time indoors in a hyper sterile environment. And then they get ear infections and we blast them with antibiotics. And let me just say both of my children, by the way, for people who are listening and potentially very concerned by what they're hearing, I understand that because I have kids and I understand when that can be very scary to hear things like this. Both of my children were born by C section and we didn't want it that way and that's just the way that it had to be. And both my children have been incredibly healthy. You can have healthy children. I'm not saying that they're not going to be healthy. My children have never been combined. They are almost 10 years of life and they've never been on antibiotics.

Wowzers. That's amazing.

And I've never forced, like I've never, you know, it's never been a situation where the doctor says, hey, the child needs antibiotics. And I said no, it's never been that. We just never have never. They've never needed it.

That's amazing. My eldest is also a C section baby and at the time, obviously this is going back 13 years ago, there's no way that we had the level of knowledge that we have now to make those informed decisions. But now we're just doing the best we can, you know, to bolster up his gut health and that's really all we can do. Yeah, yeah. So Will, I know we're coming up to time. I really appreciate this conversation. It's been absolutely sensational and certainly talking about the impacts of all these different factors like diet and fiber consumption and whatnot. So there was a bunch of questions I had still left to ask, but we might have to do around two another time to cover it.

Dude, I'm with you 100% my friend. I would absolutely love to do it and I hope one of these days I make it out to Australia and would love to meet up and hang out in Melbourne.

Yeah, if you're ever down here, definitely reach out and we'll touch base. And so if people are totally fascinated about, firstly you've covered your book. Now what's the book called? What's the full title so people can find it once it's launched.

Okay, so the book is Launching on May 12th in North America and it's called Fiber Fueled. Now in the United States. Just to clarify, because I feel compelled to say this, we spell fibre. F I, B, E, R. All right, So I don't want any confusion. We're talking about the same thing as F I, B, R, E. It's the same thing. We just use a different spelling in the United States. I don't know why we're weird, but anyway, the book is called Fiber Field. It's out in the United States on May 12. There are ways that it can be ordered. If you come to my website, ThePlantTheGut.com, we'll have links so that you can order it from Australia, if that's something that people are interested in doing. I also have all of these other resources. My Instagram is completely free. I post typically four to five times a week. It's the gut health MD. You can also come to ThePlantFedGut.com and sign up for my email list. And I have an email that goes out about once every two weeks on Saturday. I don't know if you saw this study. I just reviewed the study where prebiotics can actually improve sleep sleep better in mice. It was a new nature study that just came out. Then the last thing. I'm really excited about this and we haven't talked about it much, but I have a course that I'm developing.

Oh, wow.

And the course is meant to be. I'm super excited about it. It's meant to be basically like whether you are literally my patient and you see me in my medical practice or you're not. This is the conversation that I wish that I could have. This is the long form education that I wish that I could give you so that it's more than just showing up in your doctor's office or your care practitioner's office and having a quick visit and not really being taught the whole story about gut health. And so I'm going to be providing comprehensive information and the course is planning. We're planning to launch in most likely June.

Wow. That's going to be a game changer. Amazing.

Yeah. Super excited about it.

Cool. And I'm just going to ask you the question. I can't remember that particular study. I think I've read it. But just for the audience. What was the particular probiotic that improves the sleep? Is it in your.

So what they. What they gave them was. It was a prebiotic diet. They were feeding mice. So of course it's not like they're not literally giving them A salad. But it was a mixture of, I believe, four different prebiotics. And so it was not just one. It did include, I believe, either fructose or galactoligosaccharide. It included, I think, inulin and then. But there was also a dairy prebiotic that was in there as well.

Probably gosaccharides. I saw one recently with a prebiotic for anxiety, depression, and that was gos.

Yeah, this is where just to close out and drive the nail home. I really, truly believe that if you eat a diversity of plants, you're getting all of these prebiotics like there is no one such fiber. There's no such thing as one type of fiber. That's good. There are literally millions of types of fiber. We can't even define how many there are. We don't know. And every single plant has unique types, and every single one is going to have unique benefits too. That's why the diversity of plants, no matter who you are, you don't have to be vegan to do this. No matter who you are, it's just so simple.

Diversity of plants, just adding more plants to the plate makes sense exactly 100% with you. And just to close the loop now, Dr. B, if there was one thing that our audience members listening to this podcast could do to improve their gut health, what would it be?

Oh, my gosh. It's like you just threw me an alley oop and I'm going to dump it all. Diversity of plants. Diversity of plants. Diversity of plants.

Amen.

You go to your supermarket, you hear Dr. B's voice, diversity of plants, salad bar. You're trying to figure out what you want to put in your salad. I pop up on your shoulder, I say in your ear, diversity of plants. You're at the table with your family. You have a choice. You can put whatever you want on your plate. Forget the salad that just has the iceberg lettuce and one tomato that you cut four ways. Throw a whole bunch of frickin plants in there. Let's see what happens. Make some magic.

Yeah, man. I'm with you, brother. That's absolutely brilliant way to end this show. Thank you so much for your time, Dr. B.

Thank you, my friends. Take care.

Take care, man. We hope you enjoyed this episode of the Gut Health Gurus podcast with Dr. Will B. Now, wasn't that an amazing interview, guys? If you enjoyed the show, please share with your your friends and family members so we can get this very important message out to the community. Please follow us on Facebook, on Instagram, on YouTube, and give us a thumbs up on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcasting app. Now, if you want to get started with prebiotic supplementation, head to www.nourishmeorgan. and guys, we have a special 10% off discount code for all prebiotic supplements. You can use the code Dr. B. So that's D O C T O r B for 10% off. Guys, thank you so much for joining. We hope you have a great week ahead. Thank you so much.