Dr. Karan Rajan x Mona Sharma | Rooted in Wellness Podcast

Stuff happens Wednesday, Thursday, like the booths and the supplies.

Yeah. Where you want to meet people and network and do all that.

Yeah. Meet ingredient supplies.

Okay. Secrets. You should stop talking about this.

Well, it's. It's all transparent. Like we. We have, you know, have it on.

The back by loam. Five days.

Yeah. Nerve wracking time, actually.

Yeah.

All right, we're good.

All right. If anyone's there. Hey, everyone who's joining us live. I love doing it live. There was a friend that we had on and it was a cool wait for the non podcast listening community to be able to tap in.

Yes.

Conversation.

This is the first time I'm doing a, like a live podcast that's like not on stage.

Yeah. Everything will still be edited too, so.

Yeah.

So don't worry about that. All right. We good? All right. Welcome, my dear friend, Dr. Kranrajan to Rouge and Wellness. Yeah. I'm so thrilled to have you.

It's a beautiful place.

Thank you. Yeah, it feels really grounding, being grounding. Being grounded. Doctor shah.

Yeah. Okay, good.

All right. Before we dive into all interviews, this podcast really is about coming rooted in your. Your health, in yourself, and I believe what is the inner wisdom that we all have to heal?

I would say the number one thing is trouble, because I'm away from my routine, my systems, and over the years I've developed my own routine. So, you know, when I wake up in the morning, I do the same thing every day. I see my dog, I have some black coffee, I walk around, and then the whole day is in line with my own body clock. When I eat, when I go to the gym, when I exercise. And that grounds you. And it's not monotonous and boring. And it may be for other people, like, who maybe read my timetable, but for me, it just gives me this anchor in my life and it comforts and my sleep times, my wake times are regular, my bowels are regular because I do the same thing every day. I eat the same of stuff and times. And when you travel, all of that just is, you know, Uprooted.

Yeah. Out the window. I love asking that question because a lot of people go back to things that are free that help them feel good. So the flip side of that question is, what are the things that cause you to feel truly rooted in your health and who you are? You mentioned the consistency, being around your dog, your morning ritual. Is there a practice specifically that helps you feel really rooted and grounded?

It's something that's taken some time to figure out what works. But I Know, a lot of people say this, but really not connecting to phones, laptops or emails like in the first hour. And I used to be really bad at this. So I'd wake up at 6:30 or 7:00 clock in the morning and immediately check my phone and be blasted by emails. And that would just stress me out, even like good emails. And so now I just like wake up, have a big glass of water, I go downstairs or take my dog out for a longish walk and then you know, have like a black coffee. And I've been blessed this year. In the last few months in the uk, the weather's been really good. So just sitting outdoors in my garden with a cup of black coffee and my dog and just like staring into nothing and just thinking about things and I just feel really good and it almost like it feels like I've got an hour or something to do, nothing before work really kicks in and I'm going to be stressed for the day.

Beautiful. So we are tracking at 100% of the answers from every expert who sat in that chair who has said that the thing that helps them feel grounded, grounded in their health and who they are is free, completely free rituals that are free practices that they have every single morning. So it's a powerful question that I really want to land with my audience. All right, so today we're going to be debunking a lot of health myths, specifically around the gut microbiome. You are such a pro at doing this. Your following is phenomenal and I think it's because of your story. So you come from this medical trained system. You're a doctor, you're a surgeon, as a GI doctor, what caused you to leave that system? You shared a little bit about your story with us, but can you fill in our audience?

Yeah, I think for multiple reasons. So I think some of my beliefs have changed when it comes to medicine and health and wellness in general compared to that traditional system where, you know, you're bounded by algorithms and guidelines and for good reason. Those algorithms and guidelines keep people safe. But safe isn't always like optimal health. And my beliefs have changed where I want to explore new practices, new maybe treatments on myself and you know, just understand kind of like the broader health and wellness beyond just, you know, medications and things like that. And so slowly I realized in my own practice I wasn't talking about the microbiome to patients I was seeing in GI clinic and I wasn't talking about prebiotics in depth and, and all those other things which are free, but Also are low cost that you could do from a lifestyle perspective. And I was so focused on the reactive side of health and wellness, which is what traditional medicine is. And I wasn't so focused on the preventative and lifestyle stuff. And it's something for me that was kind of incongruent with my life at this stage in my life. But also I recently got married six, seven months ago, and that changed things for me as well. I wanted to spend more time with my wife and want to start a family at some point. And, you know, when I have kids, I want to spend more time with my kids. Thinking back to when I was, you know, a junior surgeon, my seniors would finish a night shift, go back, sleep all day, not see their kids. And I was like, that can't be my life. So for all those reasons, I was like, okay, I need to step away and do my own thing.

Far too stressful also. Right. You're also so young to give up these, like, prime years of your life to be on an insane schedule like that. Can I ask you, during that time, was there a most common procedure that you would perform at the hospital?

Yeah, OT one of the most common things I would perform would be a cholecystectomy, which is a gallbladder removal. So keyhole surgery to remove the gallbladder, Appendicectomy, emergency operations, pretty common. You do an emergency operation to remove the appendix, and also emergency and elective planned surgery to fix hernias or the belly button hernias, groin hernias. So, yeah, you do a ton of those things. And you realize a lot of those things occasionally could be lifestyle related as well. Not the appendicectomy, but the other two things that you see could be lost or affected.

I love that you talk about the interconnectedness of everything and just pointing out the fact that as a doctor, you know, during acute care, you're. You're treating symptoms right. And patients aren't leaving these acute care scenarios. Understanding how to address the entire system. I remember first became a nutritionist. I was working with a client who had a portion of their colon removed and had to wear a colostomy bag for a couple of months. And the surgeon was like, well, you know, once you're healed, you can go back, you can go downstairs and eat the McDonald's that's down there. There was just no education. Not to say it's. It's what he knew. He assumed that it was okay. It wasn't part of his education to talk about how to repopulate you know, the, the bacteria and the, the colon and, and those types of things. So when we think about that through the lens of what you have today, it's almost like there's a new wave of understanding. I feel like something science around the gut microbiome is emerging so quickly now that it's inevitable that it has to, to change. Do you agree?

Yeah. You know, 15, 20 years ago, we barely heard the word microbiome even in published literature, and now it's everywhere. And we are still, I would say, at the precipice of understanding, you know, the tip of the iceberg of really understanding the microbiome. We do know a lot, and we know a lot more than we did a decade ago. There is so much more to uncover because we're understanding about the gut microbiome, but there are so many different continents of the microbiome. There's the vaginal microbiome, the skin microbiome, you've got a nasal microbiome, and the connections between the gut, the heart, the liver, the skin, the immune system, and how the microbiome ties all these things together. We are still scratching the surface when it comes to our understanding of those things.

Absolutely. So let's dive into a lot more specifically to the gut microbiome then to kick things off, let's start off with some rapid fire questions. Okay, so what's the number one health myth that you are tired of seeing online?

I think especially now, it's people saying that you don't need fiber at all. And the caveat is that, yeah, you don't need fiber, but if you want to thrive, you do. Like, you can survive without fiber. But I don't think living a life without fiber would be considered, you know, a real, like, healthy life.

Fiber is a big topic today. We'll get there. All right. A misconception about modern medicine that you wish people would drop.

If you have normal bloods, it means you're healthy. That's not always true.

Trust, not feeling your best, despite the numbers. What's one thing about the human body that still amazes you every day?

I think it's just fantastic that we have more microbial cells than human cells. It's just wild to me. It's like, who's in control? Yeah.

What are three foundational habits that you believe to move the needle most for long term health?

I'm biased because I come from this sort of gut world, but, you know, it has to be fiber consistency. So with anything, you know, sleep or going to the toilet or exercising or seeing Family. Family and friends. Consistency ties all those things together. And the third thing would be, you know, without having any arbitrary figures, just moving as much as you can. And, you know, if you look at some of these, you know, people and countries around the world where there's a high burden of centenarians, they don't necessarily go to Barry's boot camp or F45 and lifting heavyweights. They are just moving a lot.

Yeah.

Steep hills, walking to the shops, farming. So just movement is, like, the basis for, like, living a good life.

I love that so much. All right, what are three common practices that you think people are wasting time or money on?

Functional health. Gummies. You know, gummies are not compatible from a physiological point with, like, health. Even if they've got stuff in them, the nutrients degrade in gummies. This may be controversial, but, like, you know, alcohol. Yeah, I used to drink. Not heavily, but once in a while with friends before 2020 and then lockdown and Covid happened. Didn't go out much apart from going to work in the hospital. So I completely stopped drinking. And I haven't, you know, had a sip of alcohol since 2020. My life has felt a lot better. It's cheaper as well, so that would be another thing. And probably, and this is something I've learned a lot, it's not doing things because you're afraid of failing. You know, I failed more in the last few years of my life than ever before, but it's just like data points that can actually improve your life going forward. So I think the fear of regret is worse than the fear of failure.

Absolutely. When we think about that through even the health lens, you're teaching your body resilience, moving through stress into being, becoming more resilient. I think that's so powerful. I love that you said that, and I agree with you. I'm pretty sure there's not one study that has proven that alcohol and sugar consumption is good for your gut and longevity, for your health and longevity.

People that say, oh, you know, a glass of red wine has polyphenols. It's kind of like saying, yeah, that is true. Red wine has polyphenols and resveratrol and antioxidant compounds potentially. But it's like saying, I'm eating this, you know, double cheeseburger because it's got lettuce, and, I mean, I'm getting fiber. So. Yeah, but, you know, it's the negatives outweigh the positives in that situation.

I'm with you on that. All right, let's Dive into some more debunking. So the concept of the misinformation that's out in the world today. We live in a world where everyone with a phone today feels like a health expert talking about health, prescribing health online. And it's very easy to become confused. I'm often confused as a practitioner. Right. Leaning into. You can find a study for just about everything today. So why do you think health misinformation around the gut and digestion spreads so quickly online?

I think it's easy to sensationalize things. It's also easy to lean into anecdotal experiences and then claim that as a gospel of truth. Right. Like, so someone who's on a keto or carnivore diet who completely cuts fiber out their diet, they feel good for a few weeks or they lose a lot of weight and they're like, oh, my God, you don't need fiber. This is me, this is my life. And so the nuance is missing sometimes on social media because those polarized, extreme opinions do well and they sound sexy, they sound amazing, and they sound believable because it's come from some anecdotal personal experience. I never want to ignore someone's personal experience, but then to then spread that message as mantra, I don't think we should be doing that.

I agree. And I have empathy, too, because I think a lot of it must come out of some sense of desperation. A lot of people don't feel good. We know that a lot of people wake up every day feeling bloated and having digestive issues. So if we hear someone who's got this, like, superstar story of healing through the ketogenic diet, that's them and their constitution. Let's just think about the number of women, too, who are following these protocols that worked for men, which is completely the opposite of what their physiology is. So, yeah, it's still that dangling carrot, quick fix aspect that's happening when people think about treating their gut like it's broken. I'm also noticing that they're chasing cleanses, they're chasing protocols, they're chasing whatever cure or trending supplement that they're seeing online. What's the biggest misconception that you see about digestion and how it actually works?

I think the biggest myth is probably just thinking that the digestive tract is this inert tube that houses various organs and essentially is like a factory line to create poop. It does way more than that. It's alive. It's a dynamic interface. There are living creatures inside There that actually, like, you know, if it was a factory line, there are workers inside there actually constructing the things that are beneficial for human health. And so it's understanding that it is not only a anatomical structure, but it is a live interface with your environment. And it's so influential for more than digestion, for mental health, for immune health, metabolic health. And so actually, you know, treat this as like a powerful core of everyday life.

It's interesting you say it that way. So the gut microbiome, we're more bacteria than MIC and microbes than human cells which are interacting with our environment 24 7. Right. And yet we think that we're calling the shots when it's really this internal system that most of us had have no connection to. And unless something goes wrong. And you know, you and I, I remember on the panel we started talking about the oral microbiome before we talked about pooping and all of those things. So do you want to give our listeners an understanding? Because I think we get so caught on symptoms, digestion, bloating, gas and those things. But when we think about the gut microbiome, it's from the mouth all the way to the anus that will connect everything. So can you just do like an educational 101 for people to really understand the diversity of what it means, have healthy digestion?

Yeah. So I mean, healthy digestion varies from person to person. But I would say if someone is experiencing chronic abdominal pain, bloating, irregular stools, blood in the stool, all of these chronic symptoms is something to go and see a doctor about so they can investigate. Right. But as you said, the beginning is in the oral microbiome. So you can get manifestations of poor gut health that show up in the mouth, whether it's halitosis or bad breath or gum disease, you know, tooth decay, that can all be influenced by the health of the oral bacteria and the oral microbiome. Right. Because they also require cleansing, you know, not excessive sugar intakes. You're making sure that you're flossing and you're brushing and you're hydrating to make sure that the oral balance of the microbiome is maintained because they're also similar but have overlapping roles, but some idiosyncrasies that they specifically do. So the oral microbiome is one of the key things they do is produce nitrates, and that's essential for heart health, vascular health and cause vasodilation and expand the blood vessels, which all good for your cardiovascular health and long term coronary health. So keeping them well fed is in your best interest for not only your dental and oral cavity health, but downstream, because you're swallowing, you're swallowing some of those bacteria and they're migrating as well through the gut. So how you take care of your mouth determines partially your gut health as well.

Do you think that growing up South Asian, you were introduced to some modalities to help to optimize digestion? Like, do you have any oral microbiome practices that you do every day? Tongue scraping?

Yeah, I think, like, you know, it's a lot of modern medicine is based and filtered from Ayurvedic practices. And a lot of Ayurvedic practices were seemingly really weird and niche and exotic, but now they've come into mainstream. Although I don't practice it. Things like oil pulling. But yeah, the tongue scraping is something that I grew up with from a very young age. And now it's like, oh, tongue's breaking. You need to do that because it's like something new in the science, the traditional science, Western science has caught up with those sort of ancient practices. And you know, you, when you tongue scrape, you are literally removing biofilm and that top layer of dead cells to continue to cull any bad bacteria and just clean any debris. You know, that's like the equivalent of like a biological roomba where you're just like cleaning the mouth. So all of those things are like, really important. So, yeah, I mean, even though I didn't understand the oral microbiome when I was like growing up as a kid and didn't even know the word existed, these things I did because I was told to do them. And now thinking back, I'm like, oh.

Yeah, yeah, exactly, yeah. My dad would always put clothes in between his gums also, which is like anti.

Inflammatory.

Inflammatory. Yeah. And I wanted to hover on that because I think that we can empower people by understanding the concept of working upstream. It's not just about a localized approach to what we think needs to support. We need to become an investigator for our health. And that's a really great place to start. So let's dive into the missing nutrient. I was so excited. I was smiling ear to ear. My cheeks hurt listening to you speak on stage. I really do believe that the future of gut healing is specific to fiber. I think that it's a missing nutrient. I think that I know that over the past 15 years of me doing this work, when I ask somebody to do something like a food journal, they think they get a ton of fiber and we break it down. There's lots of than 10 grams of fiber typically a day. So can you talk to us about this misconception around fiber and what's actually needed for a gut microbiome to thrive?

Yeah, so I think fiber is always been the sort of ugly sister of protein that's kind of the Cinderella syndrome, where it's kind of like, hey, you stay at home? Well, you know, we go out. Yeah, we're going to be in all the bars and we're going to be in the foods and the powders. You set home, no one wants to see you. And, you know, I also was fiber deficient for, like in my 20s, like eating a lot of animal protein, saturated fats. And that led to my own sort of health issues at the time with high cholesterol and fatty liver disease. And fiber was core to me reversing those things. And, you know, beyond being something that is roughage is what it's typically known as. And helping to bulk your stool and give you regularity, it fuels your gut microbiome, it fuels their function, it helps them help you, you know, absorb more nutrients, produce various vitamins that as humans we can't produce. They have the enzymes to unlock the secrets of fiber and produce more of that rocket fuel that we need. And I think when it comes to fiber, we need to also evolve our understanding that it's more than just quantity of fiber. 30 grams is the commonly trotted out statistic that we need. I would say that's baseline, so we should be aiming for more than 30 if we can eventually. But also the quality of fibers. There are high fodmap fibers which can trigger people with sensitive guts, low fodmap fibers, which are gentle on the gut but still powerful. There are fibers which don't have much prebiotic activity which don't influence the microbiome much like cellulose, you know, found in plant cell walls. Then you have prebiotic fibers which can directly manipulate the microbiome. Positively very soluble fibers. And it's also about diversity. If we look at some of these populations around the world, like, you know, there's hunter gatherer tribes in different regions. In the Amazon in Africa, Yamami tribe in Hadza. They not only eat a high volume of fiber, but a diverse range of different fibers and they eat seasonally. That's not something they're thinking, oh, I need fiber diversity. They're eating what is available and what they can forage and what is available at that climate at that time.

Mm, so true. Yeah, I think a lot of people, they Think if they're eating a veggie, they must be getting a lot of fiber. But just think about it when you've had an iceberg salad versus when you're eating something with broccoli and celery, where you have to really chew your food to break those things down. And going back to the Hudson Tribe, too, the variety of foods and grains and lentils and beans and the fiber that they're consuming, that bulking agent, we know, fuels the microbes within the gut microbiome. And something that I learned from you too, is when we think about, we'll get into probiotics, but just the diversity between the ascending colon, transverse colon, descending colon. Can you talk to us a bit about the function of those three and the uniqueness of all three?

Yeah. So, you know, the biggest colony of microbes that form the gut microbiome live in the colon. So the large intestine, right. You've got some in the small intestine as well in the esophagus, all throughout the digestive tract. But the environment of the GI tract changes as you go deeper in the colon, you know, becomes more filled with mucus, the abundance of bacteria increase. And even within the colon, from the first part of the colon to the end, the distal colon and rectum, you also get more density of microbes and the bacteria. And the biggest density happens to be right at the end of the colon, the end of the line. So you've got this huge population of creatures that are at the end of the queue. And sometimes the food that we feed them don't make it all the way to the end. It gets eaten by the guys, the front of the queue. And interestingly, not only is the biggest density of people living, I say people, microbes living at the end of the colon, but those are the ones that produce butyrate. They are butyrate producers. And butyrate is a type of short chain fatty acid and antioxidant compound which is most nourishing for the colonocytes, the cells that line the colon. So if we're not eating the types of food that can make it to the end, like the corns and the wheat and the cassava and the resistant starches and those sort of hardy fibers, those guys are not going to get fed at the end, and we're not going to get the benefit of the full spectrum of short chain fatty acids. And actually, you need to. That's why diversity is key. Having different foods, different fibers to make it at different points of the codon. Right. You don't want the ones that just make it to the end. You want ones that make it to the end. Feed the guys in the middle, feed the guys in the front. And there are compounds that the guys in the front and middle produce which also feed the stuff at the end. There's lots of cross feeding going on. So it's such an intricately complex, beautiful ecosystem. And you need to make sure, just like a garden, different flowers and plants require different fertilizers and different temperatures and slightly different growing environments. So you're not going to give a gallon of water or, you know, several ounces of water to each flower. They all require slightly different nutritional requirements.

You're such a good teacher. My mind is always blown when we think about this ecosystem within us that is so highly functioning that most of us know nothing about or how to optimize it. Right? Which is insane. So I'm really hearing variety and diversity. Those are two common things that I often coach my clients with. The greatest tip or hack for that is never go to the grocery store hungry because you're always want to go to the center aisles where you can just open up a package and start snacking. And instead just avoid being a creature of habit. Spend your time in the fruit and the produce section and, you know, one day, if you're buying your sweet potatoes and peppers and cucumbers, next week, buy your purple potatoes and your squash and, you know, whatever else there is, just variety is so key. Look for color. I think that that's so powerful. And now you understand the fact that you're feeding different microbes at different points during the line to support you and your overall health. At what point does a gut tell test? Let me say that again, at what point is a gut or stool test recommended?

So there was a recent consensus review of, I think, over 60 experts around the world who all gave their opinions on gut microbiome testing. And most of the opinions were somewhat aligned on the same thing that they can't diagnose or tell you you've got a specific condition and ultimately they're a useful data point. If you're doing it as a point to compare an intervention and how it's doing against something else. So if you started a probiotic or a prebiotic or something, or you're involved in a trial, it's quite useful to see at two different time points how your gut microbiome has evolved or changed in accordance to the new intervention you're giving it. And so I think if you're assessing the utility of a New treatment or therapy or your health in general at point A to point B, that's when it's really useful. And even if you just did it once as like a learning exercise, like what's going on here and just you wanted to learn and deep dive more about your gut health, I think for also that it can be quite useful.

Do you think the fiber is having a rise right now simply as a byproduct of living in our modern world? So we talked about the toxins that we're exposed to, the consumption of ultra processed foods that we're consuming every day, the starches that we're constantly eating that are void of fiber for our gut microbiome, microplastics that we're exposed to, toxic air, toxic water, the list goes on. And really, fiber being the resource that we could all use to support our body in detoxification, how effective is fiber in detoxing the body that way? Knowing that maybe you don't need the gut test, you're just a human being that's alive in today's world, chances are your body could use some support.

Yeah. So, you know, the word detox obviously is like thrown out so much. And one of the biggest detoxification organs, or two of the biggest, would be the colon and the liver. Right. And there also is that gut liver access connection. So if you had a healthy, thriving microbiome, your colon would assist you in that detoxification process, at screening for pathogens. And, you know, your immune system is closely linked to your gut as well. So you're priming your immune system, it's stronger if your gut health and microbiome is strong. So feeding it with fiber just raises the level of your immune resilience and gut barrier resilience as well. So you're more sort of fortified against, you know, the stresses, external stresses of life. But also we have emerging research that certain types of fiber, like beta glucans or, you know, I think it's certain fibers from, you know, sort of pectins derived from citrus fruits have a role in binding microplastics, in binding heavy metals as well. That needs a lot more research, but there is some growing data around that. So again, sort of detoxifying, you know, some certain contaminants in your own body. And ultimately, you know, even as like a stool bulking role, it's getting rid of that sort of waste as well. And finally, soluble fibers and prebiotics have a role in. There's something called intrahepatic circulation. So especially, you know, in female physiology A lot of women's health conditions are estrogen dominant and driven. And there's a risk that a lot of estrogen, if you're constipated or you've not got good gut motility, estrogen can be reabsorbed by the colon and then recirculate by the portal vein to the liver and then the rest of the circulation. And so you're sort of accumulating that estrogen, which should be excreted soluble fibers can bind to estrogens in the bile acids and excrete them in the stool. So you reduce estrogen and you reduce symptoms from estrogen because you're not allowing it to be reabsorbed by the colon.

So important gut health? No, I should say everything around hormones right now is trending and buzzworthy. We're becoming so hormone focused, yet nobody's talking about the relationship to digestion with that, which is insane. Start with your digestion. No. Estrogen dominance and not feeling great. I would say that the greatest indicator of solid fiber intake in your diet would be how good you feel after you have a poop.

Oh, yeah. Unbeatable.

Unbeatable. Right. You feel like you've won the day. You can head out into the world. Let's break it down. I talk about poop every day. What do we want to see in the toilet?

So I think a good visual chart for anyone, like watching or listening, would be the Bristol Stool Scale or the Bristol Stool Chart. And that breaks a nice visual explainer for anyone. And it's like type 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 7 Types of poop and how it looks like. And too early in the morning for this, but they're sort of. You can make them akin to, like, chocolates.

Yeah.

Type 1 is like the Maltesers, round, hard nuggets, like rabbit pellets. That means that you're very constipated. And then type 7 is like chocolate milk. It's like diarrhea and that's also not good. And then there's like. So type 1 and 2 are hard and not very good in constipation. Type 6 and 7 are this loose, watery, milky, like chocolate milk type. And then you've got type three and four and then type five, which is also slightly towards the diarrhea end. But type 3 and 4 are like your smooth sausages snake, like maybe like a Mars bar or a Snickers bar, and it's like cracked and maybe sometimes smooth. Those are the ultimate poops that you could have. And, you know, from a pure Visual standpoint, that's something that people should be looking to aim for.

Talk about a new health goal, New Year's resolution. Right?

Right.

Yeah. And it's funny, when my son, when my kids were little, I would print out the Bristol stool chart and I would keep it in the bathroom so that my son could understand the quality of his digestion. So for us, instead of labeling food as good or bad, when they went to a birthday party, my son would know the difference when he had Doritos at a party and the birthday cake and the pizza and all the things he would, I would hear, mom, come look at this. Like, come look in the toilet. You can make the, the association. I want adults to do the exact same thing.

Yes.

You understand the impact of what you're consuming on your health and your digestion. And everything starts with digestion. That is key. Can we debunk wheat? Is there a gluten free craze in the uk?

I think there, yeah, has been intermittently where people demonize gluten. And, you know, if you have a celiac disease and you're allergic to gluten from a immune system perspective, yeah, you should avoid it. But I don't think, you know, there's a lot of kind of fiber based foods which have, you know, a little bit of gluten in them. So they shouldn't be demonized unless, you know, physiologically you can't tolerate gluten.

You got it?

Yeah.

I would say in the US the biggest scare is probably around glyphosate and glyphosate sprayed crops on wheat and oats and soy and those type of things. But yeah, I wanted to own in what you, what you just said is this personalization. Right. Instead of hopping onto media trends, be mindful of what you're consuming and also be very aware that the wheat that we're consuming today is not the wheat of our ancestors. You know, our parents, maybe they did, maybe our grandparents, they didn't know what Wonder Bread was. Or like this fluffy whole wheat bread that's really choosy, chewy and stuff like that. So be mindful of that. That's one thing that I love when I go to Denmark, even when I go to India, you can taste the wheat in the chapatis and rotis and stuff like that. In Denmark, the bread that you get, that's high quality, you could stand on it, it is so thick. Right. Like, it's such a good source of fiber and protein. So thank you. I just wanted to hover on that for A second. And when we think about again just going back to the toxins in the environment, increasing our fiber, looking for those high quality, amazing wins of bowel movements. What about hydration? I think it's something else that maybe we could be over hydrating. There's such a focus on proper hydration for the colon as well. What's a good baseline to understand what the colon needs in terms of hydration? Looking at your stool, obviously you'll understand if you're constipated, but what about the in between?

Yeah, I think markers of hydration is sort of your urine color would obviously be a good marker of hydration. Being clear is not good. It means you're actually over hydrated. It's kind of been stereotyped by sports where it's like you need to pee clear to have healthy hydration levels. No, you need to be like lightly straw colored. And if your urine is too dark, that means, you know, you're under hydrated, you dehydrated. So pee is one thing. Skin turgor. So like, you know, if you're pinching your skin and taking a while to snap back, especially in the back of the hands, that is a sign of blood perfusion and tissue perfusion and how hydrated you are. Just the dryness of your mucosal membrane. So like the inside of your lips, your tongue, the roof of your mouth, does that feel sort of dry and cracked again, a sign that you're potentially dehydrated. Your heart rate, as you become more dehydrated, your heart rate goes up and your blood pressure goes down. Just your energy, mental state and clarity. If you feel sort of, you know, a bit foggy and groggy again, you know, your cognitive and alertness state goes down as you become dehydrated. And generally your mood as well, like when you're dehydrated, you could be more irritable as well. So all of these signs together form a nice picture of hydration. And obviously, you know, water is key for having well rounded, soft, bulky poops as well. So that would be the final piece of the puzzle.

I do notice the feedback from my clients. I tend to put people on a lot of, you know, herbal tea protocols, which they really enjoy and by simply hydrating more. But the caveat is with warm or hot fluids, they notice that that might induce another bowel movement later on that day when they typically won't have had one. Then I tried to work that back and I thought back to whenever I go back to the ashram, we don't drink anything iced. There's nothing iced. There's nothing cold. Everything is either warm or hot tea. And it makes sense, right? When we think about the colon contracting, would that support somebody in having an extra bowel movement? Am I making it up?

No, that makes sense because that, you know, would align with the physiology of the gastrocolic reflex, where you have something warm and potentially nourishing hits your stomach. The mechanoreceptors, or the stretch receptors in the stomach stretch that triggers a cascade of chemicals and hormones from colysis to kin in digestive juices, bile acids, you know, which all are released, and that turns on the ignition for the rest of digestion, gut motility, peristaltic waves, and eventually you might get the bowel movement. Which is why when someone, you know, one of the reasons why if someone drinks a hot cup of coffee in the morning, they have a bowel motion that starts to, you know, be sort of trained and entrained in their brain. And I guess one moment is that gut brain connection. Once you have that bowel motion with something warm or hot, it then maybe forms a ritual where every morning when you have that herbal tea, your brain thinks, ah, this is when I'm meant to poo. And then you go and have a nice poop.

I love it. Training your body. Go make a cup of tea right now. If you're listening. All right, this next one is for everyone listening who experiences bloating. A lot of people can are concerned about the bloating that they feel at the end of the day. A lot of the female clients that I work with will often say, God, I look in the mirror.

Yeah, leaf thrower and dog.

Yeah, exactly. All right, that's good. It'll warm up, too. So a lot of my clients will often report at the end of the day looking in the mirror and feeling bloated, having to undo the top button on their pants and still eating fairly healthy. So is this something that people should be concerned of? Is there a normal cause for bloating versus something that's abnormal? Obviously you'd mentioned keeping an eye on if it's something that's persistent over time, you should work with a practitioner. But when is having a symptom of feeling bloated normal?

I think bloating can be normal or abnormal. Right? Kind of mild bloating after meals when you know things are being fermented in your colon, you're full. It's normal to be transiently bloated. If you are chronically bloated and it's painful and affecting your symptoms and quality of life. That is a trigger for you to go and see your practitioner to see you know, what's causing that and if it's associated with other symptoms like constipation, diarrhea, bleeding, gynecological symptoms. Again, something to see a doctor about because, you know, there are. The causes of bloating are as long as your arm, you know, from aerophagia to gynecological issues like endometriosis or pcos. It's not always a GI issue. It could be something else. Stress.

Yeah.

As I mentioned, endometriosis, one of the symptoms of that could be bloating. So sometimes it's worth thinking outside the box. And that's where, you know, the practitioner comes in handy to sort of work your way through your history, symptoms and examination, see what's potentially causing it. But I think mild bloating after eating certain foods, there may be something you're mildly intolerant to. You've had a bit too much lactose, you know, in dairy. Could that cause bloating? Potentially. So don't be worried. Initially one off a few times. But yeah, there are these chronic things and if it's painful and there's other symptoms which are affecting you, then you should see someone. Yeah.

Such a good call out for listeners who are going to walk away and like really be inspired to get to 30, 40 grams of fiber. Expect some mild bloating to begin with. Don't jump to 40 grams of fiber initially and just tune into your body communicating with you as you increase your fiber intake. A lot of my clients notice that after the first week or so their body kind of adjusts to it and they feel a little bit less uncomfortable. So I say that with an air of caution because a lot of people the knee jerk reaction is to go and buy an anti bloat supplement. There's lots of bloating teas and bloating cleanses and you name it, it exists. And yet here we are taking something else to cure just what your body is doing naturally. So there's a supplement for everything now, even a tea for everything now to beat the bloat. Do any of those quick fix products actually work? Is it marketing?

Depends what they contain. My concern about these kind of anti bloat or detox products or cleanse products is that they may contain high doses of laxatives and laxatives are not good for gut microbiome health long term. Or do they also contain high doses of certain magnesium compounds which again Just cause you to go to the toilet and it's not actually fixing the root cause of what's going on. Is it fiber deficiency? Have you got an underlying condition? Are you not drinking enough water? Are you consistently eating something which is triggering you? So I think that's more important rather than a quick fix with something which is just papering over the cracks.

You reminded me at a time in my life like you, I went on a crazy diet. I was on the Atkins diet. I would eat so much protein, it was insane. Zero fiber whatsoever. And this is when I was working in the fashion industry. We would literally all take laxatives that night before we went to bed to undo any damage from, you know, either not having a bowel movement or our destructive kind of eating patterns and stuff like that. I just think about the level of anxiety that I had at that time, how ungrounded I felt at that time, all of the digestive issues that I had at the time as a result of like probably completely dehydrating my colon and being so backed up, like bouncing back and forth between those two things. So yeah, avoid jumping to all the products. What happened to like, why don't doctors just recommend something like prune juice or something? You know, a client of mine last night was given a prescription laxative for something and I'm like, can you just go mix some prune juice with some hot water? Worked like magic.

Yeah. I have a. The problem with laxatives is some people may need them. Right. And there are different types of.

For sure. Yeah.

Osmotic laxatives help you to add more bulk to your stool. You know, contraction based laxatives like stimulant laxative like senna and the senna side compounds, in certain cases they have indications. But the long term use of laxatives, it's like a crutch and it can actually reduce the contractions and cause some atrophy of the muscles. Especially with the stimulant laxatives cause some gut microbiome dysbiosis as well. And they shouldn't be long term solutions. They should be an adjunct or an aid short term. Right. It's like these sleeping aids as well. They're not a long term fix. And so there are like you said to your point, prune juice is one various types of fruits and vegetables. There's, you know, a lot of papers out there suggesting that kiwis are equivalent to certain types of laxatives when it comes to the bowel action effects. So there are so many natural things available to Us that are either zero cost or low cost to help with, you know, bowel motions.

Good shout out on kiwis. Those are part of the protocol also. Yeah, a lot of people are also, if they're not thinking about a supplement, sorry, a lot of people will say then afterwards, well, I must need a probiotic. Is that a myth? Do we need to be taking probiotics? You know, again, I know.

I, I don't believe. Right now we're at the stage of science in gut microbiome science, where we have a general wellness probiotic that your eye, with no gut problems and no chronic health conditions can take probiotic X and it's going to somehow improve the baseline of our gut health. I think we could get there in the future. Not too distant in the future as well, where we have these precision probiotics that are next generation and engineered for each individual according to our gut physiology. But right now, the stage of probiotics we're at is it's function specific. So is there a probiotic that can help you with traveler's diarrhea? Yes, Saccharomyces boulari. Is there a probiotic that can help you if you have a certain subtype of IBS and you suffer with bloating? Yes, we have a certain type of probiotic. So I think if you're targeting a specific case or a use case, you can look up a specific strain that is studied for that and that may help. Not a guarantee. It may help.

Yeah.

But if you're already like, you know, doing all the other things like fiber regularity, sleep movement, stress reduction, all those good things, and then you want to add in a probiotic to raise the level, I don't think it will do much for you. But if you're on antibiotics and you want to reduce the chances of post antibiotic diarrhea, speak to your practitioner who may be able to prescribe you a specific probiotic in that specific use case.

Absolutely. If you're taking a probiotic too, I think it's the same as what we talked about with food variety and diversity. You've been taking the same probiotic for months or years. Variety is key and give your system a break. Go food first. Your body will naturally reinoculate itself with what it needs and its deficiencies based on what you're eating. That leads us to prebiotic fiber. Is it just as important? You talked about some of your prebiotic foods and I want to talk to you about loam as well, the inspiration behind that.

So prebiotics are essentially the step before probiotics. Right? The prebiotics feed probiotics. And I've always thought of your gut as a garden, and you've already got the seeds of life waiting to bloom. So instead of adding more flowers and planting them in your garden, just fertilize the soil and add more nutrition to the soil to allow the plants that are, you know, budding to just bloom and flourish already there. And so a lot of foods have prebiotics naturally in them. You know, your oats and barley have beta glucans, your apples and pears have pectin, your onions and garlics have fructooligosaccharides and inulin. So you can get small amounts of prebiotic from the food.

Food.

It sometimes is hard to accumulate a high dose of prebiotics, sometimes from just food alone. But with fiber diversity in your diet, plant diversity, you will eventually, you know, get enough of that. And so I think that is very important to all the points of quantity, quality, diversity of the foods you get. You know, you'll be well taken care of. But, you know, in my own case, I take fiber supplements because life happens. You're traveling. I've been traveling this whole month. It's very hard to top up fiber, stress, work. You skip breakfast, you skip dinner, you go out to a friend's barbecue and you just have meat and you have no fiber. There are so many use cases that you can make for, you know, things like that.

Should we make an apple a day go viral again?

Yeah. I mean, people at some point then distorted it being like, oh, apple's full of sugar. You shouldn't have apple.

Oh, my God, what have we done? Yeah, a lot of the. A really fun tip for a lot of my clients is to cut up the prebiotic food, keep it in a glass container right at eye level. And that way, whenever you're cooking, bring it out for the family or whoever is over to start snacking on the prebiotics. We have jicama here. Do you have jicama in the uk?

What's that?

A jicama is a root vegetable. It's kind of like a cross between a yam and an apple, but really high. Like you can see the starch on it when you're eating it. That does a number to your bowel movements in a good way.

Might try it before I go. Yeah, in the groceries or groceries.

It, like, looks ugly. It's like this round tuber almost interesting. You have to try it. You actually get it down by where you are at the street vendors.

Okay. Chopped up whitehead, that's my snack for today.

You got it? Yeah. You'll love it with Tahin on top. Oh, so good. All right. So we are at a dinner party and you pull out these beautiful packets of loam. And I have tried so many fiber supplements, and the majority of them have been gritty. They're thick, they settle at the bottom. There's no way that I could ever get them into my kid's belly. And yet here I am. I brought some of them home for my kids. I brought them their water first thing in the morning. The water was completely clear. They had no idea. And they drank the entire glass of water.

Wow.

So how much fiber did they get that morning?

10 grams of dietary fiber in that glass of loam. Wow. They didn't even know.

They didn't even know. Nope. My son didn't even think about it.

Self health, self help.

Here you go. So talk to us about Loam prebiotic fiber formula and the inspiration behind this.

Yeah. So you know, I'm never going to be one to say that a supplement can replace the plants and food that you should have. Right. It's in the name a supplement. It's an adjunct to your life. It's an add on. And so I, with my personal use of fiber supplements from back in the day, I went through over 60 different fiber supplements over the weeks and months and years. And some were good, but they always lacked something right. And I'm trying to find this sweet spot and this is why I created Loam, where it's. What's the user experience like first and foremost? Can it go crystal clear? Can it be completely soluble? No taste profile, no mouth feel that you get with psyllium husk. And it's viscous. And literally it can integrate into someone's life.

Life.

I'm not asking someone to make a new routine. You can add this to your water goes crystal clear, like you're just drinking water like your kids had. You can add it to your coffee, your soups, pasta sauces, to your meal just like as a powder on top. Number two was the basis of science. Can I make sure all the ingredients are clinically validated to the highest possible level? They've got dozens and dozens of trials behind each ingredient. So that's the scientific basis, making sure their dosing is high. A lot of fiber supplements out there that I've taken sometimes are 3, 4, 5 grams. And even the. Some of the leading fiber supplements in the market don't go beyond 6 grams or 7 grams. And I wanted something even higher, so I made sure it was 10 grams. Then the other thing was the prebiotic activity and potential psyllium husk, which I've taken for years, is a good fiber supplement. But the downsides are it's thickened, viscousy and mucusy and it has very low prebiotic activity. It doesn't actually manipulate your microbiome the way you want. And finally, it's about diversity. I want this to replicate a farmer's basket, like you go to a farmer's market and you put various fruits and vegetables in your thing. How can I replicate that salad bowl type thing with as many different fibers as I can? So this is trying as close as I can to replicate diversity in your diet with six different prebiotics. And the six different probiotics synergize together to actually have an even more powerful effect. We have data that when you combine different fibers, they actually outperform any individual one. So it's like a one plus one equals three phenomenon. And so monofibers like psyllium has, or just like inulin that you might get in prebiotic sodas are very limited in their role. And each fiber has been carefully selected here for its fermentability, solubility and user experience. And each one has a different role. As we said before, different bacterias like to eat different things, right? So there are some that ferment in the early colon, there are some fibers in loam that ferment in the middle part of the colon and some ferment in the end part of the colon. It's got a mix of early medium and fast fermenting fibers and slow fermenting fibers. I should say that reach all parts of the microbiome and it sort of intelligently feed all parts of your microbiome and do different things like help with lowering cholesterol, supporting bloating, feeding your microbiome regularity, immune health. So I really wanted that sort of real umbrella blanket to really feel like you're getting the best of everything.

So good you've, I know you've done your research, we had a whole conversation about it. And I think, I think that this is so powerful. Even if you have a great diet, when we think about this diversity or keeping them with you for travel, when we own in, just on the superpower of the gut and everything that's emerging for disease prevention, for GLP1 activation, right? Those microbes within you for the cardiovascular benefits for the gut brain axis, neuroprotective aspect of diversifying the gut Microbiome metabolic health diversity by increasing diversity in the gut microbiome. It's just, it's so fascinating and it's a daily ritual that you can really take ownership of. I did ask you a question about the soluble wheat fiber that's in this. Can you give me the answer? Because I know a lot of people might ask about that as well.

Gluten free. Yeah, it's gluten free and non gmo. So, you know, we made sure that if it's for functional, gut health is as optimized as possible. So, you know, two of the things, it's got like a corn based fiber, but also like a wheat fiber or non gmo. And yeah, it's sort of like deglutinized to the point where it is, you know. Yeah, no gluten. And that's like a actual claim that you can make.

Beautiful. Yeah. Honestly, you cannot taste anything. And after a few seconds of stirring, it turns completely clear. There may have or may not have been a text thread the following morning about these winter bowel movements that some of us were having, which is really beneficial. All right, so this launches in five days. So by the time this comes out, you'll be able to order your loam.

Oh, yeah. Wow. It's a very visceral feeling that it's so close.

Yeah. Congratulations. Thank you. So let's take you, for everyone, on a journey. They've focused on the abundance of foods that we've talked about, the variety, the diversity, the introduction of really beneficial supplements to diversify the gut microbiome. Now, what are the improvements that they're feeling? We talked about 95% of our body's serotonin being made in the gut microbiome. So we've been talking about digestion quite a bit, the protective aspects in terms of disease prevention. But what are some surprising benefits that people could feel when they focus on diversity?

So I think some of the more vague and misunderstood things would relate to the immune system, skin health and brain health. So this would you start to feel it in the few weeks to few months kind of timestamp where consistently, if you're increasing your fiber intake by the gut skin axis, you might find your skin feels more vibrant and clear and healthier because you know, there's less or fewer pro inflammatory compounds which then manifest as better skin health.

Mouth.

And you might find yourself glowing a bit more as well. Gut immune system. The gut is so closely linked to the immune system. The gut microbes train the immune system in early age and throughout life. So Increasing your fiber intake would also make your immune system more resilient and that gut barrier more resilient as well. And then the gut brain axis as well. And you know, you've spoken about this so many times as that connection that to that bi directional highway between the gut and brain, your mood, your energy levels, the fatigue might dissipate as you consistently increase your fiber intake and you improve your gut health where actually that brain fog potentially clears, you feel more clarity. And those things aren't difficult. Well, are difficult to specifically say, oh, at this point my skin is better, but it's a gradual thing, you might notice. So if you take a photo of yourself at, you know, day zero and then month six, you might actually notice, hey, this like fiber is doing its thing. And so, you know, I think those are some poorly understood benefits.

Yeah, I love that you brought that up. And look for the wins, like make sure that what you're doing pay attention so that you keep doing it. You want to look for what works for your constitution. Another one of the kind of success stories that I hear with the increase of fiber intake and the focus of diversity is fewer food cravings, weight loss as well, because you tend not to eat as much, you tend not to crave sugar as much. When you have that diversity as well, which are all key. There's no quick fix needed, there's no magic pill needed. You just gave your body exactly what it needed. And we didn't talk too much about this, but I would say when I went back to my healing journey, I got off beta blocker medication at the ashram. There's two specific things looking back that I think that were the most powerful one. Gosh, we were probably eating upwards of 40 grams of fiber a day. Reds, purples, blues, yellows, dals, lentils, beans, you name took a while for the body to acclimate, but then it felt really good. And after that I lost about 45 pounds.

Wow.

And it felt really great because I was so in tune with my satiety at that point that I was like retraining my system. And then the next byproduct of that at the ashram specifically was what you're mentioning. So when we think of serotonin or that gut brain axis, I wrap my nervous system back online. So let's make that correlation. Right, Because I think this is what's going to be like the missing key to make the fiber work, bringing your constitution into this rest and digest state. Do you want to talk about that?

Yeah, I think, you know, as you Said like before, the sort of gut is so closely linked to, you know, the brain. So when you consistently sort of lost my train of thought here, what was the question?

So I would say just tune into the power for making the fiber work for you.

Yeah.

What is the benefit of optimizing your nervous system, that gut brain access?

Yeah, I think, you know those fibers that you consume on a regular basis and then when they're fermented by the bacteria, your bacteria produce neurotransmitters, neurochemicals and hormones which can cross the blood brain barrier and actually then settle your gut further as well. So it's, it's a really bi directional role. The brain sets up the gut and the gut sets up the brain. It's, it's constantly like a back and forth, like a sort of telephone line, you know, just, just two friends calling each other. And if the nervous system is out of whack and there's like static on the line, the gut sort of freaks out because it's kind of lost its pen pal is how I think of it. And there could be some dysbiosis potentially in the gut because the brain is stressed or, you know, it's kind of like hyper vigilant or whatever. And then that sort of disturbs the gut in a way and kind of unsettles the microbes as well.

We often say that you cannot digest food when you're stressed. Is that true?

I would say that when you're stressed. And yeah, I would say, yeah, this is true to a degree. Because when you're stressed, you could have increased gut motility so there isn't enough time for the nutrients to potentially be absorbed and acted on. So you could sometimes get diarrhea when you're stressed. Those kind of stress poops, maybe you're not maximizing nutrient absorption and unlocking the power of the food that you eat because of that.

I wonder if today, because of that, with the onset of chronic stress, that so many of us feel that we've become accustomed to living with, that this is directly associated to the rise of leaky gut diagnoses and maybe people even self diagnosing now that they have leaky gut as well. What would you attribute to the fear that comes with leaky gut?

So leaky gut is a collection of symptoms rather than a diagnosis on its own. So leaky gut basically refers to increased intestinal hyperpermeability and it suggests that there may be a pro inflammatory state in the gut and that could be an overabundance of stress and those Sort of stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol, which put the body chronically into that pro inflammatory state and then that manifests in those gut symptoms. But also there are, you know, consistently certain types of food that we could consume that when it's metabolized, some of those byproducts could cause and contribute to that pro inflammatory state. So highly saturated, you know, fat foods, deep fried foods, ultra processed foods, all those sort of things could also contribute, you know, to that thing as well.

So take a few deep breaths, then eat the fiber. Take a few deep breaths and eat the fiber.

I yeah, I mean like again going back to the sort of ayurvedic practices and you'll know from your time in the ashram as well there are certain ways in which to consume your food, right? Like kind of like yeah, just mindfully eating. Instead of sitting in front of the tv shoveling food in your face or on your phone texting and scrolling, maybe eat just sitting out looking at nature or you know, just not dial into your phone when you're eating, you're actually focusing on the meal and eat with your hands as well, like you're really connected to the food. It sounds wishy washy but you know, those are actually rooted on real physiology.

You just made me think, does the gut have a Circadian rhythm as well? 100 in a world where a lot of people we're understanding, okay, no snacking, but then we're eating from dusk until midnight just before we go to bed. Is that working against the function and motility of our gut?

So if you look at the function of the digestive system, it closely mirrors our energy levels and the circadian rhythm. So peak digestive function happens around 11am to 2pm we know when we're most energetic and active throughout the day. And then after that sort of mid afternoon, the digestive prowess and function will slowly attenuate as it gets gets to nighttime. And the lowest the nadir of digestive function will be in the sort of early to late evening and the nighttime right when we're meant to be asleep. So you should time your meals according to that and sort of front load as many calories as you can throughout the day. Because if you're eating so close to bedtime, you're increasing risk of bloating, constipation, acid reflux, and it takes around 90 minutes for 50% of your stomach to empty into the small intestine. So if you're eating less than 90 minutes close to bedtime, and ideally you shouldn't be eating three hours, close to bedtime in a very, very ideal world because that's going to increase digestive discomfort. That is key to sort of bring your all your meals as early as possible.

So.

Good.

Some other addictions as part of that. I'm thinking people late at night, they might be snacking on ultra processed foods. They think that they're hungry, they won't go into the fridge, they'll go into the cabinets with things that come in boxes and packages. The other addiction might be to, what is it called? Fake sugar. What is it? Artificial sweeteners? Right. The Splendas and stuff like that. Can you break down what's happening when we're consuming those boxed deads? Dead. Can you explain what's happening when we consume those artificial sugars and sweeteners, the boxed dead, starchy food? What happens to the gut brain?

So it's interesting like, and there's like two camps, right? There's camps where people are anti artificial sweeteners and you know, some pro and there's some epidemiological data which suggested that in certain rat models and you know, kind of animal models that artificial sweeteners had a role in distorting the gut microbiome. But there was no causative link between the two. There's also newer data suggesting that artificial sweeteners could improve the gut microbiome. And the reason for that was it was indirect. Right. And it's all about the, you know, poison is in the dose. If you're having one Coke Zero, is that going to ruin your day? No. If you're having 20 Diet Cokes or Coke Zeros a day, can that be potentially harmful? Yes. And the recent study which came out which suggested why artificial sweeteners were beneficial was not because of the artificial sweeteners, was because people consuming artificial sweeteners were no longer consuming the full sugar versions of Coke or whatever they were doing. And so they were losing weight. Losing weight improved their metabolic profile, which then improved the state of their gut. So, so there's always nuance here, right? And so if you had a choice between you know, a fruit juice or just like a glass of water or coffee or tea and something which is artificial sweetener based, neither one is going to harm you. But I think not having ultra sweeteners is better than consuming it.

Yeah, it's the dose, the consistency, it's all of the other factors that you mentioned as well, Right. Tune into your digestion, tune into your bowel movements to see what happens. A lot of my clients hopped on the Craze of using erythritol sweetened everything. And they spent a lot of time with splattery poops in the bathroom too. So just be mindful of what you're consuming and how it reacts with your body over time. At the end of the day, I think the foundation of everything that we've talked about today are ingredients that come from nature. Those are the things that are proven time and time again to optimize digestion and to lower inflammation in the body. So to slowly wrap things up then for everyone listening outside of now, everyone's printed the Bristol stool charts. What are some science fact winning signs so that they know their op, their digestion is optimized.

So farting is a good thing. You know, if you're breaking wind, cutting cheese, whatever you want to call it, that's a sign of a thriving, alive, bubbling microbiome.

Beautiful. And when is it too much?

If it starts to be painful, you know, pain and like just that bloating feeling. If you're farting a lot as well, you know, that could be something, you know, amiss, maybe over a long period of time, as we said, you know, there could be some early stages where you get a bit of bloating and whatever, it's fine. But generally, like if you're sort of farting throughout the day and you have some gas that is normal, you know, that's very good. Obviously, like the shape, quality, size and color of your poop groups, that's a proxy for microbiome health as well. And generally just feeling normal, you know, you don't have to feel great just feeling normal, like not in pain, you know, not unwell, or like, you know, flagging throughout the day. Again, those are potentially proxies for indirect benefits of a good microbiome as well.

So.

Good.

So use your poop, your digestion, how you're feeling as biofeedback, and how to direct your decisions, your lifestyle choices and even your diet. And can people expect maybe with a change of season to go through some changes as well with their digestion and their gut Microbiome?

Yeah, I think, you know, changing seasons, you eat different types of foods that may impact your gut. The, the weather may become darker, you know, you don't have as much light, you're not moving that much. That may affect your bowels, may affect your microbiome. You know, it's so intricately connected to our environment. So environmental changes will lead to microbiome changes?

Absolutely. Just tune in. And if there are changes, don't stress about it just acknowledge and make appropriate changes to come back into what your balance is. Right. Beautiful. I love this conversation. I'm so happy that you're here. I'm so happy that I got time with you.

It's a great conversation, great environment and yeah, very nice. Good way to start the day.

Can you tell people where to find you, where to purchase loam as well? You've got a thriving online community.

I am Dr. Karan Rajan everywhere, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube. And you can get loam in five days@loamscience.com beautiful.

And in closing, what's something that excites you about the future?

Excites me about the future? So many things. I want to continue to learn things and stumble upon things I never knew. And that excites me, you know, going on that curiosity journey and then sharing things with people or reading something amazing and just being mind blown by it. Like I think I mentioned to you over dinner, I read the series, the Three Body Problem. The books.

Yeah, I ordered them.

The greatest three books I've read in my life.

Amazing.

And I actually feel an emptiness in my life now because I know that. That I can never reread them for the first time.

Yeah. Yeah. What a good feeling.

Yeah. So I want to. I want to keep uncovering things that it's just mind blowing and fills me with awe.

You just reminded me I loved living through you again in Montecito. Looking up towards the canyon, seeing the sunset on the mountains, your eyes lit up, your jaw dropped. And I remember that feeling. Seek more awe, seek more wonder. We need to talk about things like this more when it comes to optimizing healing and gut health. So thank you for that reflection and thank you for being here. More to come. I can't wait to see you in the uk.

Yeah, exactly.

All right, that's a wrap.

Beautiful.

Beautiful. Wow, that was great. We covered a lot.

Oh yeah.

Oh yeah. And of course the wood blower stopped.

Are we still alive?

It would have stopped it. Yeah. Yeah. So if you guys wanted to. You could go to Endless Color if you wanted to grab a bite.

Okay.

It's too bad with the fires. There are like some really cool restaurants that were here that all. They're gone unfortunately. Just on the pch.

Got a one o' clock call with lawyers, but we get back.

Craig, Is that okay? Is it still going? Yep.

Yeah.

Okay. So I think Alice does this. Alice just put this in where I said mixed health. Everything's going to be moved though. It's okay. Okay. Is it recording? Yep. Shout out to our dear friend Dr. Darshan Shah at Nexthel for bringing us together. Great. Thank you. Dr. Rajan Acid for the first time. No way. It's. That's. Sam. Ra. Sam. It's. Sa.