Kind: captions
Language: en
Tim Spector welcome to the show it's
great to be here I'm excited to have you
so I think if people want to lose weight
the odds are that they are barking up
the wrong tree so I want to ask you a
few questions to help people understand
what matters and what doesn't so if
somebody's trying to lose weight do they
need to be counting calories
no it's one of the worst things they can
do okay I think that's going to surprise
people what about exercise
very unlikely to help most people lose
weight maybe help you keep it off but as
a starting point it's a bad way to do
again very shocking and in terms of
are there things that have been billed
as healthy that people would be
surprised to find out are actually
moving them backwards
yeah the number of foods that people
regard as healthy
um things like juices orange juice
things like oatmeal porridge
things like
brown whole meal breads
Lots potentially
other fruits in large amounts
and a whole range of foods that are told
are low calorie low fat
low-fat Dairy low-fat yogurts the
yogurts that children get given
are all super unhealthy
and most people will be surprised by
that yeah I think people will be very
shocked to hear that especially the
calories part so why how is it possible
given what we know about thermodynamics
which say that if you're taking that
energy in it can't be created or
destroyed so something has to happen to
it so how is it possible that if I'm
trying to lose weight that calories
isn't the place that I start and if
exercise is burning calories how is it
that I'm not going to be able to
leverage that to get lean what is it
that people are getting wrong
they're treating the body as a simple
furnace
like a tube where you just burn stuff in
it and it comes out and you measure
everything whereas it's a much more
complex machine that is adapting to
what's going in an evolution has given
us this really fine control mechanism
over our bodies that we haven't really
reckoned with so that the
even if the inputs stay the same or
change are our outputs are the amount of
food we're burning is all is altering
and it's been very hard to measure but
we do know that
our bodies are always trying to get us
to stop
losing energy losing weight and they're
trying to maintain us in our in our
current state and that's that's been the
big mistake we've made so we've assumed
that just by some simple averages or
calculations we can guess how many
calories the average person Burns a day
and then simply work out okay we just
have 500 calories less than that and
you'll lose weight and
a those calculations are wild guesses
because most people are not average
and also there's a fallacy that your
body doesn't change so once you reduce
your calories your body is fighting to
get those calories back so it slows down
your metabolism
and it ramps up all the signals to your
brain making you hungrier and making you
much more likely to overeat at your next
meals and so this happens without you
knowing about it
and that's why people struggle if
they're only
reducing calories
to make any inroads long term in the
health everyone will lose some weight
the first few weeks without whatever
diet you tried but long term
the vast majority of people returned to
where they were because the hunger
levels just build up to a level you
cannot
sustainably ignore and your metabolism
means that you need less and less food
so if you're going to continue losing
weight you've got to keep eating less
and less because your body's fighting it
and the same thing happens more or less
with exercise
we know that it gets harder and harder
to lose weight and that
people who you know the trajectory is a
weight loss are really quite rapid
initially and then you maintain exactly
the same intake in very strict
conditions and it and it just tails off
so your body's just fighting the whole
the whole thing all the cellular
processes are everything's geared to
minimizing any energy expenditure and
it's all done without you knowing about
it and that's pretty Universal there
might be some
some range but as a as a response to
that calorie restriction that's what
happens so it's it's why you can't just
carry on losing weight your your body is
bringing you back up to the level it
wants to be and that's evolutionary wise
we we are our survival was dependent on
us going through
a few days without eating and then
getting our strength back and and
retaining that so through most of our
history
so it's what's controlling that
uh it's our evolutionary genes driving
it and
hunger is the primary
um mechanism we've got as well so
there's
so that you've got two things you've got
the metabolism and you've got the hunger
signals to the brain and
the metabolism is being slowed right
down and it's
definitely a brain
mechanism primarily but it's probably
being fed by signals from the gut
the microbiome signals as well
uh definitely a key role in that but we
know you know these appetite signals are
crucial and we can see this with the new
ozempic drugs
uh they're blocking those that hunger
Drive
and as soon as you block that then you
know you can lose weight but if you
don't block it it's sort of virtually
impossible for most people to just fight
that continually because it just gets
ramped up and ramped up and ramped up so
you're just thinking about food all the
time and
your body is designed to
um get back to where it was and so the
idea of relying just on calories as a
weight loss
tool has has been shown to be flawed in
numerous controlled trials
because eventually your body wins and
let me ask you because if you don't
change
other aspects of eating
and you're just obsessed with the
calories and that and that's if you can
count the calories anyway because most
of these trials
are not real life they're done in
highly controlled scenarios with nurses
ring you up and you know confirming what
you're eating and you know it's the best
possible scenario and even in those
scenarios 80 percent of people have
failed at two years
meaning they put the weight back on yes
can you lose fat without being in a
caloric deficit
yes
um
I mean you can obviously do that by
increasing your muscle to Fat ratios
but
used I mean ultimately uh calories are
still important
but I don't think we understand the the
subtle balance and the fact that food
also has other mechanisms
triggering hunger that aren't related
just to calories so the nature of the
food the quality of the food is
something that we're uncovering which we
never in the past talked about so we've
been so obsessed with the calorie
you know there's all kinds of problems
with the calorie it's not very accurate
to measure you know and it ignores the
structure of food so the way we've been
counting them is wrong
a great example is a study we did
in the in the Zoe product studies where
we gave
and in these days we gave everyone a
thousand odd people identical meals at
the same time muffins
and
everyone responded very differently to
those muffins but some people responded
with a sugar dip at three hours I don't
know if you had any sugar dips but
um when you were using cgms but one in
four males one in three females get a
marked sugared it below Baseline after
they've had a carb meal three hours
before I do not much to my dismay well
no it's good you don't want to dip
because those people they were blinded
they didn't know they were dipping but
they reported greater hunger uh lower
mood less energy and they over ate by
about 15 that day
so identical calories a different
response just because the nature of the
food and we were giving people the
equivalent of ultra processed food which
is what the average American diet is uh
in its highly refined form it had a very
different effect and you could give
identical calories
in a different format different
structure you would get a different
result and so
there's not another famous study from
the NIH where they gave people
um two weeks of Whole Foods and two
weeks of ultra processed foods and
identical calories and macronutrients
and the ultra processed food group over
at
so they were overeating by
equivalent 300 calories a day and so
if you only had calories as your
objective and you go back to this you
know there was the law of physics and
all this kind of stuff you missed the
point about food being so much more
complex and it's about the structure of
the food and we're not accurately
measuring the calories because you get
very different responses to the
theoretical identical calories I don't
think people know what you mean by
structure I have a guess but I'm not
sure that I'm right but before we get
into the structure of the food one I
want to plant a flag to say that the
people are having a different response
to the exact same food so even if the
structure of the food is the same
different people are going to have
different responses I've also heard you
say that the genes that we've identified
so far that have to do with
um weight loss or actually in the brain
which I thought was utterly fascinating
but I want to make this really human for
a second so there are people in my life
who I love very much and I know they are
good people they are smart people but
they absolutely cannot lose fat
do you have people like that in your
life and what do you think is the
problem because I have a hypothesis as
to why they can't lose fat and if they
would just do what I tell them they
would lose it but I'm curious do you
have people like that in your life
so you see who can't lose weight or why
use the word fat on purpose because of
course losing muscle is going to be a
very different experience than losing
fat
so
um but yeah for the average person they
just think of it as losing weight
but I am talking about adipose tissue
well there are definitely some people
who find it harder to lose weight than
others there's no doubt do you have
people in your life that struggle with
this
yes I've got um okay so now imagine
those people you don't have to out them
obviously but what's the problem is the
problem do they lack discipline
are they not smart enough to pull this
off like what is the the Trap that
they're caught in because they know you
so the odds of this being that they just
don't know what to eat is effectively
zero
but they're still not doing the things
they need to do to lose weight
so what's the Trap
for many people I think it's they have a
a drive that is
making them hungry and they're getting
increased hunger signals compared to
other people say like me
um so their brain is always telling them
to eat more
and although that's not often not
mentioned I think that's one of the big
drivers that uh they once they've got
into a state
they are regularly eating more and their
brain is saying eat carbs rather than
other things for for example
does it really just come down to you
there's something it's compelling them
to eat more but this is still a calorie
problem or is it compelling them to eat
carbohydrates and that's our problem
I think it's the latter so I think it's
they're they're pointed towards foods
that are likely be fattening for them
they could have arugula but it's not
going to fill them up therefore you know
their brain is saying you've got to have
something else have some bread with it
or whatever it is and they're not
satiated in the same way that other
people would be no don't get that
sensation of fullness those hormones are
not kicking in and
you know it's it's a bit of a vicious
circle because
these people are because they're getting
these sudden impulses to eat they're not
able to plan all they're eating as as
well as other people that have these
huge drives of their body to to do this
and we we see this all the time in
everyday life
um
if you've ever lost had a really poor
night's sleep
for some reason your brain tells you and
we've we've done this in the Zoe
predicts studies that it it tells you to
overeat and
we've seen it people eat carbs
much more uh after a poor night's sleep
than if I had a good night's sleep why
well our brain is is doing something
that we don't understand why but it's
because it's stressed and I think
it's just a hypothesis that the stress
you know related to not sleeping perhaps
your body say oh you need energy you
know it's like some evolutionary idea
you might need to run or you know get
quick energy
go for these kind of foods and it's also
comfort food if you had a really bad
night you know you lack a bit of comfort
you know you feel terrible and so it's a
way of pleasing your brain so so we're
hardwired on a lot of these things that
we don't realize are really are really
happening and no one's really studied
these things between you know exercise
and sleep and and food and on our mood
and all these because we've been so
obsessed with this
blind alley of of calories hmm
okay so when you were talking about
um they've got this drive they want to
eat carbohydrates you get Comfort out of
doing it my question would be from an
evolutionary standpoint nature only has
Pleasure and Pain as sticks to prod you
to do what it wants so it wants you to
eat these things
what is is the reason just quick energy
because you might be in danger or is
there something else going because I'm
trying to figure out why after a bad
night's sleep so one after a bad night's
sleep you're you are it's something like
you have the
um insulin sensitivity of a diabetic
so your body's basically saying I don't
want the fat in my cells I want to leave
it in my bloodstream and I want you to
go eat it's it is the exact metabolic
State you would be in if you were about
to hibernate so my question is do you
have a guess I'm sure there's not a
study on this yet but do you have a
guess like why if you get bad sleep or
you're stressed or whatever does your
body go oh I'm gonna treat this like
we're about to hibernate I'm gonna get
you to eat the most glucose spiking
things I can make you insulin
insensitive so it's not going to go into
the fat
why that seems so cruel but obviously
there was an evolutionary advantage to
this at some point
well your guess is as good as mine I
just think it's the body's just picking
up a stress it's saying this guy's you
know anxious stressed is not slept maybe
there's some threat maybe they're in a
war situation uh maybe they have to
leave the cave and and go walk for three
days you know
um without eating
um and you know we weren't programmed to
be living in the modern world we're
programmed you know thousands of years
thousands of years ago our genes haven't
really changed so it's fight and flight
idea I guess it's getting the wrong
signal and that's
but everyone's experienced it I think
you know in
and uh
similar with perhaps with hangovers and
things like this that you know this is
some Shock to the body
and it behaves out then out of character
and then this actually makes the whole
thing worse but it it wasn't designed
perhaps to do that
um but so so I but I think we're very
early stages of working out the links
between sleep and eating and mood
we just haven't studied it in detail and
that's why we're getting this amazing
data in real time
you know from wearables and other
gadgets that just allow us to collect
this incredible stuff so I think in the
future you know we're gonna
uh Zoe we're thinking about you know
linking the Sleep data to warnings about
your breakfast and saying you know give
you a little warning say hey your
brain's about to tell you
uh this you should be doing the opposite
quickly because you know if you'll get
inside you you know because what what
triggers that warning what do you know
what data are you collecting well it
would be say sleep duration or Sleep
Quality oh oh so you recognize you had a
bad night's sleep here's what your
body's gonna give you the impulse to do
very interesting is that part of the Zoe
predict
um well we collected the data as part of
the Zoe predict study but these these
are just future ideas to go into the Zoe
product
um it's not there yet but these are all
as we're collecting more and more data
and we've now got over 50 000 people's
information you know and
it's growing rapidly we're being able to
dissect these things and start to
personalize you know that information
even more not just based on your diet
and your age and hormone level menopause
Etc but you know on day-to-day
differences in exercise level or sleep
levels so that we can just start to give
people those
those heads up about hang on your
brain's trying to tell you to do one
thing but you know we know that's not
good
um and you know if you are just carb
loading after a bad night's sleep you'll
eat you you tend to all these people in
our study after bad night's sleep over
it
so you can see how people get into these
Vicious Cycles very easily and they're
overeating on carb heavy stuff so you're
getting as you said more more
more sugar spikes more insulin and and
maybe that also means you it might eat
late and therefore you don't sleep as
well the whole thing keeps going so it's
it's trying to little tricks to get
people out of these these bad habits
it's very interesting so I want to give
people a quick breakdown of what I see
as your sort of General thesis because
you've brought up Zoe a couple times
which is your company but the idea of
Zoe is that hey boys and girls the
reason that you're having such a hard
time is the one size fits-all notion of
eat less calories one ignores variance
in food but two maybe more importantly
it ignores variance in your individual
metabolic reality I'm calling it that
but I really mean your genes I mean your
microbiome probably most importantly
because you've done some fascinating
work on Twins and even twins have
different outcomes and different
responses to eating the same thing there
are clones you wouldn't expect that but
in fact you do because our microbiomes
end up becoming very Divergent
and if there's anybody listening to this
that's never heard of a microbiome
inside of your guts are just
a bazillion bugs microbes a whole bunch
of different things that help you
process food and depending on what you
eat and what bacteria you have and fungi
and viruses like all kinds of things
will determine metabolites which then
signal your body it's a whole Cascade of
things that happen that's highly
individualized okay so setting that
stage I want to go and finish the loop
on this idea of what response your body
is having to a stressor so
a year ago I was going through the most
stressful period of my life it was
insanity and I found myself walking
across a room opening a cupboard and
grabbing food before I realized that I
had gotten up and I was like whoa this
is a very powerful impulse and so I
started thinking of that as the the
metabolic anxiety response
so if anxiety from an evolutionary
perspective is valuable because it makes
you take a Potential Threat seriously
that oh I should plan in this way and
the anxiety makes you really do
something about it keeps you from being
lazy in the face of of a real
existential problem that's my gut
instinct about why you find yourself in
what I'll call foraging behavior that
you just sort of Click over almost like
a zombie and you're just gonna go do the
things that you would need to do to get
that food because the body's like yo we
might have a problem there's already
some sort of stressor in this case from
lack of sleep
um
that makes a lot of sense to me and gets
at some of the complexity that I think
that you're trying to lay out you can
reboot your life your health even your
career anything you want all you need is
discipline I can teach you the tactics
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today
now I want to bring that into this
discussion of okay we both know these
people amazing people smart
these are not problems of
necessarily even willpower and I look I
will say if they can stop themselves
from eating enough calories on a long
enough time period they are going to
lose weight but it is a very different
battle than just like do don't do it as
you said it ratchets up and ratchets up
and ratchets up and it can be very very
difficult
so
the the punch line I think to all this
is that this becomes so highly
individualized that if you don't take
control of your situation if you don't
start running NF1 experiments on
yourself and see what works for you what
doesn't work for you you're never going
to be able to get a hold of it and I may
over index here and I'll be curious to
get your feedback so to the people that
I love I'm talking to you now that are
struggling with your weight this is a
microbiome question and you now have to
start thinking about eating to alter
your microbiome because your microbiome
is going to signal to your brain to say
I got in here because you eat McDonald's
french fries and so you'll crave
McDonald's french fries and so until you
force yourself to eat for an extended
period of time the things you quote
unquote ought to eat the things that
will give you the body composition that
you want
um you'll never win the war
yeah you're never going to win the war
if you've got an unhealthy set of gut
microbes that are fighting against you I
think that's the that's the key here and
I think it's the other way of thinking
about nutrition is rather than you know
just worrying about the inputs it's just
saying well
uh
you you should be nourishing these guys
who are these magical pharmacies that
can help you pump out all the right
chemicals to send you the signals of
fullness to dampen down the inflammation
stop the stress messages going around
your body and you know allow you to deal
with all these situations and improve
your immune system and
your those brain commands and I think
that's a really important message and if
you are
you know you you've lost the battle for
a few years you're eating junk food you
you are going to have a gut that's
really low in diversity you've got
microbes you won't have many of the good
guys left that have been wiped out been
taken over by the the bad guys who are
these microbes that love inflammation
they Love Actually these stress
chemicals they love the fats and
saturated fats that are coming from your
um fast food
so sorry before you move on I need to
understand that better so when you say
that they love the stress chemicals
what does it mean can they metabolize
the chemicals like what how is it well
we don't know exactly but
when they've done all kinds of
experiments both in mice and and humans
where you say give people junk food from
you know you change dramatically their
diet from healthy to unhealthy
you get an increase in these microbes
which uh are always associated with
inflammation so when you look in the
blood levels you see these markers of
blood inflammation which is this like
low level stress in the body like little
mini fires going around throughout the
body and
they take over so it's like we think
it's as a subtle change in maybe the
acidity of the gut in tiny amounts and
he takes a tiny tweak for one one group
of microbes to out-compete the others so
these guys are the pro-inflammatory
microbes and the anti-inflammatory ones
who are normally they're dampening down
these fires are really they've got
nothing to eat okay so that hypothesis
makes a prediction let me see if this is
accurate so if I were to
um not change the diet at all but I were
to dial up or down the inflammatory
response of the body
if I dial it down would those microbes
start dying off without changing the
diet just changing through medication or
whatever the inflammation
probably I don't think we know
absolutely but we think it's working in
both directions so it's partly a
response to the inflammation and partly
a Cause
so it you know so when people when you
look at someone who's got a chronic
inflammatory condition whether it's
osteopolitis rheumatoid arthritis some
autoimmune condition and all their blood
markers of you know these stress are
High
um you see more and more of these these
microbes appearing
and if you transplant them from say one
Mouse to another you can make that
Mouse's gut more inflamed
so it's both a cause and a consequence
of of it so it's not as
clear-cut
but it's a bit of both but if you can
like you give people steroids you reduce
that inflammation they won't be doing as
well because they they're thriving in
that particular environment
you know it's a bit like when you're
doing fermented foods and you tweak the
environment you get a bit of acid you
know lactic acid produced yogurt
that's tiny change in PH means one group
out competes another
and I think we think this is what's
happening in the in the human gut that
there's some stress chemicals in there
we can't yet measure but are this these
microbes are super sensitive to that
means that one group suddenly out meets
another these guys take over these are
the guys that want more McDonald's and
are selling the wrong messages to the
immune system and and the gut and
altering your metabolism make it harder
to lose that weight make you hungrier
doing all these things so
going back to your initial idea yes in
order to
start to lose weight properly you've got
to deal with your gut microbiome you've
got to redress this good
good guy bad guy balance that we we see
you know in all 50 000 people we see
this quite clearly there are these Good
Guys the bad guys and it's absolutely
correlated with not only weight but also
Health all the health outcomes
so if you can get people
to eat more healthily
then once you've re-established the gut
microbiome then you can start to much
better control your weight
but you you can't just do it just like
that with with the crummy microbes how
changeable is our microbiome
Studies have shown that if you go
through a dramatic change say from Total
meaty to American starter vegan you can
see a change within a week
and
others other Studies have shown you can
change it quite several weeks if you
make a big enough change
things like fermented foods can have
quite a big impact within just a couple
of weeks on your on your diet
has a bigger impact the worse you are
so that the worse your starting point
the easier it is to change it's quite
hard to re improve someone who's really
good
to get them better is is quite tough but
if you've got a really
um
a sparse set of microbes they're quite
easy to change and we see that
with fecal transplants we put poo
transplants in people they work best and
people who've really got hardly any
decent microbes they've got terrible
infectious diseases works really well
doesn't work very well when it's at high
complex saturation but it overall it's
an optimistic message most people
can within a few days improve their gut
microbes just by feeding them the right
things and reduce them are the bad guys
very quickly Okay so
is from a fecal transplant
standpoint does that last because I had
heard that it you know maybe it works
for a couple weeks and then you start
reverting back to your Baseline and my
wife went through a very dramatic
microbiome issue and we have found it
brutally difficult to rehabilitate her
it took us years and it got so bad at
one point I was considering a fecal
microbial transplant just a little
worried that we don't yet know enough
about what you're transferring over so
we didn't
um but and I am perfectly willing to
accept that we just didn't do it well
but our experience was that it's even
though because she got tested and she
had like they were like whoa your
variety is is just atrocious it's so low
and we just found building back up has
been really really hard
yeah well it can be and I I've got
um
an example of my son
who
I uh got to volunteer to do the
McDonald's diet for 10 days
and because he was a student and he
liked McDonald's and he was happy for me
to pay for him
and he thought it was all quite fun as I
did and uh
he um he did this at all his meals at
McDonald's
for 10 days straight with any effort to
be healthy or literally just give me a
number one with a large Coke yes he
didn't supersize and so he just did the
regular and he found he couldn't eat
more than twice a day he initially the
idea was to go for all three meals but
he he started to feel a bit nauseated so
he uh but yeah it was and he had just
just the um
the Big Mac and the um
uh nuggets
with the odd McFlurry and uh Cokes and
he didn't feel well at all but he'd lost
40 percent of his gut microbes whoa in
that in that time amount like by volume
or by diversity by diversity okay so we
we this is a while ago we measured it
with a 16s test which is a fairly crude
measure and it was an end of one study
so you know there's some
uh
uh give and take on those results but
that was quite shocking
um that you know I'd done this to my son
and tried to feed him up
um and it's proven remarkably difficult
in him too so I'm right at the top five
percent of uh outs my diversity in
microbiome he's still in the bottom 10
percent
and uh it's been a struggle in it but I
think it was interesting that some
people
you know
may have susceptible microbes
particularly that you know going through
a time like a student when you eat
terribly you've got no budget you know
you just eat whatever you can
may go such a long time without fiber
and nutrients for the microbes that the
many of the good guys just just die off
and find it hard to get going again
so there are these these scenarios but
um coming back to the fecal transplant
question it is highly effective for some
infectious diseases so 90 are cured with
a single transfusion if you've got
something called recurrent clostridium
difficile and it's an official treatment
now uh across across the US for that is
that an orally or did they go in
rectally and deposit at very specific
places in the it doesn't seem to matter
there's three different ways of giving
it you can have it through an endoscope
through in a nasal
you pass down through your nose into
your into your stomach and then put down
just below the stomach uh you can have
on colonoscopy
uh or you have it by mouth with these
dried
um capsules
uh which are acid resistant coats they
go through the stomach which
affectionately known as capsules
so gnarly the idea but all three of them
are eating that's yeah absolutely
well if you're that ill and you're going
to the toilet 30 times a day Fair uh you
you believe me you'll do anything so and
it's a 90 success rate with a single go
but
when they've looked at other diseases
it's been much more difficult to get an
improvement and the initial idea that
you could cure things like obesity with
these as trimmed to be a false Dawn
really hasn't happened and so it's only
other
the only other one that works really
well is another inflammatory condition
of the bowel called ulcerative colitis
and there you do get absolute remission
so it's a cure in about one in five
people
and can be dramatic but other conditions
as you said it some people get remission
but others do need multiple top-ups and
things like so it's proven much more
difficult than I think we thought it was
going to be maybe 10 years ago when the
first results came out so it could be
because we're all so different
and we're not matching the donor and the
recipient
to colonize it's a bit like a you know
doing blood blood transfusions or marrow
transfusions if you've got different
immune cells you know they might be
fighting it off so that's one reason
they they probably don't work so I think
it's still an evolving science
and it could still be
potentially beneficial if you find what
the key say 10 microbes are then you
could create them in probiotic pills and
um and give them so people a lot of
companies still working on it and
it is proved to be very useful in cancer
treatment as well
so that's that's one area that's really
big and so you know that's big source of
optimism in in in the cancer successes
really underscore how important the
microbiome is for your immune system and
all the new successes in cancer are due
to us
invigorating the immune system
and people with poor gut microbiomes and
poor diets do very badly on these
immunotherapy drugs
and
there are
um whereas if you've got good microbes
good healthy diet good plant-based diet
you're twice as likely to survive do you
have a quick way to describe what a good
microbiome looks like
it's one that has a lot a wide range of
different species
so that's what we call diversity
and it's also one that has a high rate
ratio of uh good healthy bugs compared
to unhealthy bugs and we is that a fair
breakdown or is it
um context specific so this bug is good
if you have uh you know this much
diversity and you're eating apples but
that bug is bad if you have low
diversity and you're eating McDonald's
fries but it's the same bug but in a
different setup or no there are just
some if you get them these are
problematic well what you said is true
for some bugs
there are some bugs that if if you live
in Africa are very healthy and they're
very unhealthy if you uh live in America
because of the foods you're in taking or
something we don't know the environment
the air animals the soil
um or that you know it's just different
the environment they're living in so
they're they can't cope with that
environment and they it's abnormal so
we've known that but
with in the Zoe study we've now got
these 50 000 gut microbiomes it's the
biggest study in the world and we've
we've got their diet data and we've got
the health data and so we've now worked
out a whole series of microbes that are
associated with uh healthy foods and
healthy Health outcomes and a whole
series of microbes that are associated
with junk Foods you know bad unhealthy
foods and unhealthy outcomes and
we know that these are common in most
people so we're excluding the rare ones
that you know we've all got the unique
ones to us but these are the common ones
and so using that score that's by far
the best predictor of what we think is a
healthy gut microbiome and it's an
evolving science so we've got bats based
on 50 000 but when we get to 500 000 it
might change and it it's probably
different between just Americans and
Brits be a subtle difference in some of
these we are seeing quite big
differences in in a few species just
even you know in what you think would be
similar diets and different similar
countries all right so let's go back to
what you need to eat in order to alter
your microbiome and one thing I want to
say very quickly
reading your book you said that kids
their microbiome is actually more you
didn't say plastic but I'll say plastic
more changeable than adults
I'd be very curious as to why and then I
want to get into the like what are the
specific things that the I I totally
understand there's no one size fits all
but I'd love to get a general sense of
eat like this
okay so kids the reason that flexible is
we're not we're not born with a complete
gut microbiome so we're born pretty much
sterile
and we acquire
our set of microbes our Colony we sort
of put it together like a jigsaw puzzle
in different ways after the birth
process
so and this happens to all male all
mammals
and so
the fact that the birth process is so
messy
and you've got blood and vaginal fluid
and poo and everything and it and the
baby's face is actually smeared in it is
actually for a reason
it was messy for a reason and that's the
way the microbes get into the into the
infant uh gut and they start to colonize
it and that's a crucial part of our
Evolution because you need those bugs in
there in order to break down the uh
complex sugars in breast milk
so and break them down so you can get
the nutrients from them so we've all had
to do that as babies acquire these uh
micros from this rather messy process
that you think would have been better
done by Evolution and that's the first
thing that happens and then once you get
the breast milk then you start to get
other microbes coming in from the skin
of your mother and the environment and
you slowly build up this more complex
set of gut microbes that become your
adult one
and you acquire them but it's it's a bit
of a random process and there is a lot
depending on your environment
and if you're born by cesarean section
you might have a completely different
early set of microbes they end up being
quite similar but
the first year or two they'll be quite
different I've heard there's a link
between cesarean births and autism that
may be tied to microbiome
that something you've heard something
makes sense I think that I've heard it I
think the evidence is fairly weak the
evidence is stronger for increased rate
of allergies
and increased rate of childhood obesity
hmm in cesarean birth kids
and that's even when you adjust for
breastfeeding
so the worst case scenario for your gut
microbiome is to have a cesarean birth
and then you're bottle fed
you're not getting anything like the
natural microbes into your system you
don't have the complexity that play has
an effect on your your growing immune
system and
is literally one reason why we have this
epidemic of food allergy Etc because
very high rates of cesarean section now
and over sterilization of the whole
birth process
so that the baby is not
getting the same microbes they would be
that our ancestor baby's got
surrounded by animals in dirt and the
way that you know we probably performed
a microbiome much quicker
than sort of Western babies
so I think it's
Evolution would just become a bit too
smart but too clean but too sterile and
of course
other problems a lot of babies and given
antibiotics and the mother is given
antibiotics
mothers generally get antibiotics at the
time of cesarean section that those
antibiotics go into the baby another
reason that uh
you know they have a bad start to life
so
um those first few years are really
quite flexible and every time a baby
gets a virus or an infection it can
really
change totally the um
the microbiome
uh
composition
because you remember the first few years
the baby is protected from the ma by the
mother's immune system so it doesn't
need a fully functioning one so it's got
a time to get its own act together and
so by the age of four then it's more
stable and that's more or less what you
take into adult life
it doesn't tend to change dramatically
you sort of
you've got that form formative years but
clearly if those years are you're being
pumped with antibiotics you're having
all kinds of sterilization problems you
know you're kept in a a nice Urban
bubble
it's not going to be good for you
because you're not going to have the
same range of microbes that
um a healthy kid
might have in a developing country where
you know they're much more exposed to
things right so if I had a baby and at
like day one I was like
Tim I gotta bounce for just like a year
I'll be right back if you could what
would you do with my kid to make sure
that when I got back they had a nice
robust immune system well I guess
specifically through the microbiome
so you're going to donate your baby to
me and let you borrow it for a year just
because you know I I need it I needed to
be tipped out of shape when I get back
okay well I'd be putting all kinds of
things in their mouth so when kids
grabbing the dirt in the grocery store
or whatever and then put their little
fist in their mouth that's a good thing
let them do it yeah so
um
when um
um they've done some studies when kids
drop a
um what's it called pacifier pacifier
yes
because spit the dummy but they're The
Pacifier
um when they drop on the floor they did
some studies that parents who put the
put it straight back into the mouth of
the baby had better gut microbes than
those that instantly sterilized oh yeah
it triggers every like sterilizing
desire I have so basically I would I
would have a an approach by you know I'd
keep things clean yeah you wash it but
you don't sterilize it all why wash it
then
well because you don't want to be giving
them infections necessarily you don't
mind small amounts of bacteria so it's
just quantity it's just the quantity
yeah I don't want to deliberately give
food poisoning to your baby right you
might be thank you they didn't survive
so but what I'm trying to figure out my
reaction stuff but I wouldn't be putting
every single bottle every single
pacifier into a sterile container I
wouldn't be using liquids I wouldn't be
sterilizing but all the surface which is
the time when the the dummy falls on the
floor it didn't hit the bad food
poisoning bacteria that's why I'm just
like uh like even with myself
I'm just going to sanitize I don't know
and maybe I would pick up good bacteria
but maybe not
so I don't understand how a parent is
supposed to know that it's okay to pick
it up and put it back in their mouth but
at some point you need to wash it
because it could have picked up bad
bacteria
well I think you don't know for sure you
could have there's no such thing as 100
but you're just saying listen this is
how our ancestors you know how or
probably you know even people born
before me were brought up and we have a
more robust immune system than the
people who are brought up in this
sterile sort of Nanny state where you
know everything's swabbed and cleaned
and screwed up and died a lot more uh
yeah
yes but not uh but they had much more
robust
immune system so that it wasn't allergy
and the all these food allergies are
completely new
uh in the last 50 years when I went to
school no kid had a food allergy in my
school can I run a hypothesis by you
that you're probably going to hate but I
think might be true
I think you have to let things be a
little dangerous and I think that for
the greater good you have to let kids be
in a situation where some of them are
going to die but the ones that live
they're going to be better off and that
once you try to save every single one of
them you get the problems that we see
today that sounds terrible when I say it
out loud but I that seems true to me
in general I agree I think
um
doing things to have to save a one in
million chance of something happening
because we're gonna remember you know
anyone listening it is incredibly rare
if you dropped a pacifier on the floor
and you put it back in your kid's mouth
that they're gonna die of food poisoning
right
I I've never heard of a case so I don't
say it doesn't happen but it just
incredibly rare and the chances are that
by doing that you're going to actually
protect them against many disease when
they get older improve their immune
system build them up is far greater it's
like people they've done studies of
people who have dogs in the house
smelly dogs are coming in Licking the
babies and kids those kids are healthier
they have better gut microbes and the
family is generally healthier with you
know these other dirty microbes in the
house so it's it's in it's it's changing
that House's environment from the
sterile place to one that is more
natural to us where we wanted as many
bugs in us so that we can train our
immune systems properly to defend itself
and know when it's a real threat or a
fake threat so it's not going to get
upset about when we eat peanuts uh which
is a recent phenomenon peanut allergy
and it's gonna but it is going to react
against uh you know cholera or
salmonella you know properly so I think
it's this training of our gut microbes
that we we need to reinstill and eating
real food is a part of that as well so
yes there's the environment but also
the idea of weaning kids early onto real
foods
and uh playing with food and playing
with vegetables uh even if there's some
dirt on them
it should be part of every every kid's
repertoire is that true even if you
bought the food from the grocery store
because I'm always conflicted I want to
get the microbes and I'm worried about
pesticides well you for a young kid I
would if you've got the money I would
buy organic because you will get some
pesticides on it but you get a
10 to 20 so 80 80 less than you would in
a non-organic product so if you're
particularly keen on fresh vegetables
definitely worth doing that for your kid
um but it's you know it's
I think it's just
moving away from those sterile cans of
uh pre-treated Ultra processed foods
baby foods and exist to to actual real
foods and getting them to play with
their hands and things so that they are
they're just constantly
ingesting foods and um and playing with
the environment and and not worrying
about them getting dirty does this apply
for adults as well like should I be
touching more things dirty surfaces
licking my fingers and not I am captain
paranoia so I haven't been sick since
February of 2020 so I realized that when
covid kicked off I just elevated my
level of paranoia to uh 11 and I haven't
dialed it back down and I still I
haven't gotten covet haven't had a cold
nothing and I used to get at least one
cold every year for sure but now my
vigilance is just on another level I've
destroyed the speaker phones on two
iPhones because I sanitize them if I go
out and about as soon as I come home I
sanitize my phone Santa's has my hands
wash my hands like and it's been
effective in terms of me not getting
sick but am I now cruising for a
bruising as I get older and it's like my
my immune system has been been allowed
to get lazy or like how does this play
out in the long run
the honest answer is we don't know
um
I was like you I I used to get colds all
the time
covered marvelous no colds no sinusitis
nothing and you know
but two weeks ago I got a cold I said oh
no it's Dreadful
um
but uh I think I have to look at your
gut microbes to to tell if you had
really good looking healthy gut microbes
I say you don't have to worry too much
um but at the same time
you know there's a difference between it
going out and you know you
going on the subway in New York
or you're going for a walk in the park
in the woods
uh playing with dirt playing with
animals
so I think we have to be sensible about
what the threats are
you know you don't want a respiratory
virus so going you know getting close to
people
um breathing on you you don't know that
could be infected that's a reasonable
precaution
but uh worrying about our natural
environment that's not a natural thing
to do you should yeah you don't have to
be near people but you should be quite
happy with animals and uh space and dirt
and if you are too sterile I think you
will run into problems if you're not
exposed to that because you your immune
system does need a stimulus I know of
a lot of medical colleagues who from
India and
they say that they have to go back every
six months to eat Street Food
in order to stop being ill
because they once went a few years
without going and every time they went
back home they got ill use it or lose it
but exactly so they had to go and have
some you know slightly polluted uh bit
of fruit
and it kept them their defenses uh ready
you know so they they I remember going
of course they're horrified as they go
you know some grubby looking Fruit Stand
in India and uh picking some breadfruit
and eating it I said no I'm fine you
know I'll be okay now that's so
interesting but that makes sense I get
it okay so we're probably not going to
go straight to street vendor food in
India but what should we be eating to
get diversity so in the beginning we
talked about the structure of food so
this all started with calories the
calories not a calorie there's something
far more complicated going on here uh we
know that it's not as simple as you can
devastate your microbiome and then just
eat your way back but eating your way
back not over sterilizing those are
probably other than uh fecal microbial
transplant those are our options so how
do we eat well for our microbiome
okay well the rule one is eat a
diversity of whole plants
and if you could snap your fingers and
not for ethical reasons but if you could
snap your fingers
to for people to feel better or live
longer or all that would it would we all
be vegan
I think we'd all be vegetarian
I don't think the evidence is out
that Dairy makes such a big difference
and in the studies
uh the early citizen science studies we
did the American gut and the British gut
projects we found that the sweet spot
for gut health measured by diversity was
30 different plants a week and it didn't
matter whether you're a a meat eater a
pescetarian a vegan or a vegetarian as
long as you got those on your plate
your gut was happy
so I think that's a really important
point that we don't get too obsessed
with these sort of religious categories
of eating
and realize that what is the really good
thing about this
and focus on those good things and and
there are many different ways you can
achieve that I think that's really
important and
and it's not as hard as we think because
a plant is every different type of nut
every different type of seed herb it's a
difference between a purple sprouting
broccoli and a normal broccoli purple
carrot an orange carrot have different
chemicals so they're all
giving nutrients to different microbes
so they will you'll get a greater range
of microbes feeding off them that's
that's
the important thing and going back to
the question you asked me ages ago it
had an answer was about structure
these are all Whole Foods so they are
structured completely differently to
ultra processed food so that
you're getting all the the structures of
that plant you're getting the fiber
you're getting all the nutrients and all
the layers of the plant and
the calorie is is the energy is not
going in fast the body so
um it's going to release slowly most of
it will get to the lower intestine where
the microbes are it's not if it was
refined and in poor structure same
calories it would have a very different
effect because it'd be released straight
into the bloodstream so whole structure
is important not Stripped Away not the
equivalent
fake food that you get that is you know
plant extracts and things so that's
number rule number one rule number two
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description alright my friend back to
today's episode
eat the rainbow nice brightly colors
because of the polyphenols these defense
chemicals that are microbes like
and countless studies show the
what we thought were these called
antioxidants are actually really useful
for
uh growing our microbes to give them
more energy help them reproduce produce
helpful chemicals in in reply and these
are bitter brightly colored berries
coffee dark chocolate why bitter that
seems like Nature's saying don't eat
this
yes
um
well it's it's saying maybe
stopping insects eating it quite
possibly that's protective device so
it's obviously
plants are around before humans
so
um they maybe didn't evolve uh just to
be tasty for humans but it was other
animals so they wanted some animals to
eat them that were perhaps trained to
realize that these these some of these
bitter Foods were actually very
nutritious but nature could make
anything taste good to me like dogs will
eat literal
so nature obviously said dogs you know
what this is a delicatessen for you but
for me I want to vomit when I see a dog
do that it's the most horrifying thing
in the universe so I have to imagine
that even though the plants didn't
develop the bitterness because of me
Evolution left it tasting bitter for a
reason instead of like bitter could be
where we're all like oh yo I love bitter
stuff but for the most part we're not
bitter sucks and we want to add
something sweet to said bitter thing so
why is that because you're you go into
this a lot in the book of like just a
laundry list of bitter things that my
palette tells me to avoid but my
belief in your ability to steer me well
tells me I need to start eating why is
there a discrepancy well I think
babies are averse to Bitter things
but as we as we get older we actually
start to enjoy them
so you're saying I have a baby's palette
yeah is that what I'm hearing
but you know we've it's like you're not
going to get a baby to drink coffee or
tea or whatever and
yes you start off having sugar in it and
as as your palate gets more refined you
drop down the sugar and you can have you
know black tea black coffee these bitter
tastings dark chocolate
um but
unfortunately in this country you know
we've given so much sugar
the contrast is very great but you go to
countries that don't have a lot of sugar
or most of Europe for example it doesn't
have dairy chocolate
it just has dark chocolate kids love it
you know so I think a lot of it is is
our cultural upbring rather than sort of
hardwired in us and so yes first few
years most babies will avoid bitter
Foods because
it's unsure where they're going to be
good or bad for them okay so that but as
adults you start to realize these are
nutritious and beneficial and it's a bit
like the whole question of sour
sour Foods
um whoever sort of love hate
relationship with them because we know
that
um they have acid in them and but it was
an important source that we actually
quite liked that taste so the citrus
acid because we get vitamin C that way
so you know our Evolution has told us
that yeah it's a bit you know
there's something Tangy about sort of
vinegary you know acidy Foods we do
actually quite like but of course the
context is to survived until that point
we have to love sugar because that's
breast milk so that was the first thing
but all these other tastes have a role
but it they're slightly more subtle so I
think
you know I like bitter foods and many
cultures do like bitter foods and I
think average American has lost that
um appreciation because just being
swamped with so much sugar which doesn't
really appear in nature so I think
that's my that's my view of it would I
agree with that so what about fruit
yes what
you can have fruit but you wouldn't be
having fruit
uh six times a day
in the average place if you go and you
know I spend time with the hadza tribe
yeah
how long did you spend with them I was
there for about six days tell people who
their hearts are it's pretty interesting
so they're a hunter-gatherer tribe uh
who live in East Africa uh on the border
between Tanzania and Kenya and they've
been in that same spot for about 15 000
years and essentially haven't really
changed their way of life
they're a diminishing number there's
perhaps it's just a few thousand of them
left and they live off the land and they
don't have refrigerators they store food
they just get up every day and get what
they need and they don't really have
many possessions and they they move Camp
quite so regularly and they're super
lean they look super healthy they never
appear to get any Western diseases like
diabetes obesity cancer heart disease
and they are surrounded by Little
Treasures but the foods they eat which
is what our ancestors at are things like
Baobab whichever which grows on trees
and you get these these husks which
break on the ground and 10 months of the
year they've got this bear bad which is
a slightly bitter
citrusy
um fruit but you mash with water and
it's like a you get a porridge but it
has an acidic tastes good lots of
vitamin C in it
but it's not sweet
it has some sugar but it's masked by the
the acid and they have also these little
tiny berries
which are
uncult you know that nothing like the
sort of cultivated berries we see
and they are very tiny and they have a
mixture of sourness and sweetness
very ten times amount of fiber you get
in modern berries but they're not sort
of luscious sweets so the only sweet
they get is when they eat honey
and first like one or two months a year
they just Gorge themselves on honey
and they love it do bees produce honey
seasonally
they do seem to there yes so
um or they I wasn't quite sure whether
they rotate their
um their nests and things but um
most of the year they can get some honey
but the different species of bees that
they're they're tracking do seem to work
that way so it wasn't a constant supply
of honey and when they got a big one it
was quite a big celebration for the
whole group and they and when there's
there's honey they don't bother going
for meat which is quite interesting so
you know all these ideas that we're all
obsessed with meat
give humans honey instead and they'll
nobody wants to hunt yeah you give them
enough sugar if you give me donuts I
wouldn't be worried about meat either
okay so that's I had yeah how how much
variety do they have in their diet
because like when I think about having
to get 30 different plants every week
I'm like and I can go to the grocery
store and get them and that sounds
exhausting so do they have that level of
diversity
they have enormous diversity
but a lot of us through the animals they
eat hmm
they eat that many different variety of
animal yes whoa so someone's calculated
that um
they ate hundreds of different uh animal
varieties they eat everything
um apart from
snakes and um
hyenas I think the sort of eventually
everything else there do they avoid them
on purpose
yes
they don't eat they don't eat things
that eat
um
I think they've got some rule about uh
they don't eat carnivores yes
interesting so ruminants only they don't
eat lion much either that's right but
they're happy to eat giraffe and um
um when I was there they uh at porcupine
[Music]
are also vegetarian yes
that's really interesting have you
looked at that at all as to is that like
a thing that many cultures have had
where we only pursue ruminants
yes I think and there's a few religions
that have used that
that general rule that these things are
dirty you don't know what they've eaten
in other words
so there could have because they might
have eaten humans or might have eaten
you know something you like
so it's that it's like no one eats
vultures for example as well
that was a other fish
our fish I know a lot of fish are meat
eaters
but I don't know how many eat other fish
versus eat plankton but that's really
interesting so we definitely eat fish
but I guess we don't have to worry that
they humans I don't know I I don't know
what that means I'd be very interested
to dig into that but that's a lot of
birds as well
um because there are hundreds of
different species of bird and the every
kid after the age of about six has
learned to use the bow and arrow and
their job of young the young boys is to
kill the birds
and they they eat them and they stick on
Long sticks and they barbecue them and
it's there they're getting a huge
variety
um
they're Maybe
10 different types of berries they have
um they're four or five different types
of tuber they dig up the women dig those
up they instinctively know where they're
growing under the ground
and the berries do change seasonally and
there are various other leaves and
things they eat so yeah
the stories about them having masses of
different plants have quite exaggerated
and most of their diversity is coming
from
eating all these uh different animals
but with a huge base of massive fiber
base they probably get 70 grams of fiber
as opposed to the average American is
all about 15. so they're
so why wouldn't you recommend that diet
why wouldn't
I don't know if that's there there are
one-off and you think that there are
other ways that our ancestors would have
come up but is there a reason why you
wouldn't say hey get a ton of variety in
your meat
um
because that and man this is so
anecdotal but I have I've tried a few
times to go plant forward and eat
primarily plants and I never feel as
good as when I eat meat and I've gone
through periods where honestly just out
of laziness I have been
um virtually no vegetable matter
whatsoever just meat I've been fine
bowel motility perfect no constipation
no constipation uh the quality and how
that anybody wants to hear this but the
quality of my bowel movements money like
yeah you know the high quality ones and
that that's always been a bit mysterious
to me like I never want to come out and
just say like
oh people should be eating meat but
certainly in my own life that has been
um
it's never had any negative consequence
in the moment that I can tell I just
don't know if it's killing me slowly
well I I don't have a problem with meat
as long as you're getting enough
vegetables and plants because there's
something in them is it the fiber or
micronutrients what what do I need to
make sure that I get from vegetable
matter well it's everything it's it's
it's the micronutrients it's the
polyphenols we discussed which are fuel
for your gut microbes it's it's the
fiber all the different fibers and those
whole plants that the microbes are
eating and many other things we still
don't understand what's in them but we
just you know know that all the science
points that people who eat lots lots of
plants and have high fiber levels so
both that combination of diversity and
high fiber regardless of whether they
eat meat or not are the healthy ones so
meet I I see it as an option which some
people might feel healthier on or not
but it's not a sort of obligatory you
have to have meat or you don't need
vegetables you know so I think everyone
needs plants some people can do well on
meat eating and others may not and we
there's increasing evidence that some
micro the microbial composition of your
gut might be more
tuned to eat meat and not cause harmful
side effects
there's there's uh a chemical that uh
breaks down in meat good tmao
[Music]
um that is only produced in some people
who have certain microbes and this this
tmao
when it builds up can cause heart
disease atherosclerosis little clots and
things like this that can lead to heart
disease but other people don't have that
and they might be fine eating meat so
now is that based on the microbe or
based on a genetic predisposition what's
creating the tmao
um
well
again why it's broken down in some
people is due to an enzyme and that
enzyme is produced by microbes not by
our human body so if you did uh um a
fecal study on me you'd be able to tell
if I'm if I have the microbe that
produces that uh I would if we knew all
the microbes that do it's it's
technically been very difficult to tease
that apart
um so it's generally done on blood tests
got it so it's just present in the blood
yes it and there's seems to be this big
person individual difference between
people and so this could be another
reason that we you know we have these
people that say I feel super healthy on
meat and other people say well I feel
Dreadful on meat do you cringe when you
see people that are on the lion diet or
the carnivore diet or are you like no I
get it
um I cringe when they they try and tell
other people that this is the the diet
for everyone and they're crazy not to
have it because I think they're real
outliers and that if people and also
they haven't
really studied our ancestors you know
the hunter-gatherers what they really
eat they eat a huge amount of plants and
you know for several months a year there
are no animals it's the uh you know the
wet season and they can't get near the
hunt them and and so they're very happy
on their honey and their plants and
all of these people regardless whether
eating meat are getting huge amounts of
of plants and fiber in their diet to
stay healthy so these carnivore diet
people they might temporarily feel
better and healthy but
if they're not getting the plants
they'll get a very increased shrinking
supply of gut microbes which means
they're not getting those chemicals that
they need for their immune system to
look after them long term you know
they're not going to be as robust
against in infections and things like
this long term short term might be fine
you know and I think humans are flexible
and they're also other
you know we might have genetically
modified in certain parts of the world
to live in places they're little plants
you know Inuits and in the Arctic Etc
um you know have very little access to
plants but they they're designed to eat
eat fats and things doesn't mean they're
super healthy but they have evolved in
that way but for most people no so as a
generalization I think it's a bad idea
to think that's healthy and
um
plants need to be the basis and diverse
set of plants for most people okay and
so your
if we don't know exactly what it is
about eating plants that works or
doesn't work the studies that you're
looking at are they correlative are we
looking at meta uh studies meta-analysis
like what what is the evidence that
drives you to feel that way
well twins we're talking about General
Health we're talking about the
microbiome but um can those BTS depart
um yes so
were there lots of epidemiology studies
linking
amount of plants you eat and your
Healthy gut as I explained the 11 000
people of the American gut project many
other studies so it's pretty much
uniform that if you look at people and
say how healthy is your gut
how many plants do you eat there's a
correlation
there's a also a correlation in the
literature between the amount of fiber
people eat
and their their health whether it's
heart disease cancer
um more overall mortality from over 30
studies and meta-analyze so every
serious nutritional epidemiologist
recognizes there's a a link between
eating fiber and and health
and
they're also randomized controlled
trials where people have gone on say a
Mediterranean diet which is high in
fiber versus say a
low fat diet or one other one that was
thought to be healthy and
in every case the Mediterranean diet
with a higher fiber has a better result
in a over a few years that they're
followed so I've never heard anybody
correlate high fiber to Mediterranean
diet is that what you think makes the
Mediterranean diet work is the fiber
content
um it's one one element to it it's the
plant it's the variety of it and it's
it's the fact that it's pretty gut
friendly
so Mediterranean diet you've got olive
oil in there
um which is high in polyphenols you've
got
um lots of nuts and seeds high in fiber
and polyphenols you've got
um
fermented foods in there which are good
for the gut it's it's a mixture of
things so but it's a gut friendly
generally high fiber diet so there are
whole grains in there there are lots of
salads and plants and fruits
that you don't get in in a lot of these
other traditional diets so generally
that seems to be the consensus that is a
healthy diet and that's the way I see it
is a
um
the basis of most people are happy with
that with that concept because it
doesn't mean military note you can have
a little bit of fish and a little bit of
meat it's not doesn't mean it makes it
unhealthy as long as you're getting
those basics
so but I don't want to get obsessed with
fiber and
I I think we should be that's again
reductionism
um it's it's and you said I don't really
understand what's what's good about
these plants I think I do and we are we
do understand
there are also the you know that all
these nutrients locked into the
into the whole plants we've got
um all these different fibers in there
and it's not just one single thing we
don't understand exactly how the fibers
will work we haven't really studied them
very well we've got the polyphenols
you've got the fibers and we know that
when you give them in experiments to
people they will increase the amount of
gut microbes they've got and we know
that those gut microbes then produce
more chemicals so there's a lot we do
know
and
I don't think it's a big leap to say
that this is the basis of a healthy gut
and a healthy lifestyle
and I think it's a different question to
saying well are there a few people that
can
survive eating large amounts of meat
probably yes
is that a generalizable good idea for
the world's population no hmm
all right let's dive in then to why that
might be true so
a big part of your thesis is it comes
across to me is that the diversity in
your microbiome they are kicking off
you're referring to them as chemicals is
it fair to say metabolite as well okay
so the microbes eat what you eat and
then they create these metabolites which
is basically it's their excrement I mean
that might be a horrible word but that
helped me at least conceptualize what
was going on is that accurate or is that
not how this is working well byproducts
of their chemical reactions so they
break something down and they throw out
this other stuff which might be a yeah a
short chain fatty acid or something
that's it's a byproduct so yeah you can
call it excrement if you want but it's
right not quite accurate
um okay and so all of that is then
signaling to our bodies so
how much and and I'm gonna guess we just
they evolve together to do that it's not
by chance you know they know
you know they get fed by us and in
return they're they're sending out
chemicals to keep us healthy because
they want us to be healthy otherwise you
know they've got nowhere to live
and let me ask so I've heard it said and
I find this really interesting that
humans are the vehicle that microbes
built to carry them around
basically that they're driving it when
you look at the amount of DNA that we
have in and on our body the human part
is some tiny tiny tiny tiny fraction of
the overall DNA that you have inside
your body on your skin yeah all that
that's right yes at least 300 times more
sort of genes in our microbes than them
than we have in our bodies so
genetically we're much more microbial
than we are human
um and so yeah we could be all living in
a microbial Matrix you know where uh and
we don't realize it but we're being
controlled but I think these are just
you know
um
evolutionary fantasies but we know we
evolve from microbes so if that's a way
of saying that if you know microbes
created us it's a bit like saying that
primates created humans well it would if
the primates were still riding around in
our guts but the interesting thing so
the reason I say that is it becomes a
useful framework to think about why I
should be eating what I should be eating
so if your framework is correct
uh actually the marriage of our
Frameworks is how it ended up here so
the way that I was thinking about it is
okay I'm being puppeteered by my
microbiome it's telling me it's giving
me Cravings it's telling me what to eat
what to want
um I I personally can make myself
anxious based on drinking
um diet Monster drinks and that will
give me generalized anxiety it's surreal
and so seeing how much I can influence
My Own neurochemistry by the things that
I eat the general way that I feel by
what I eat
very profound and so if those are me
responding to signals being the
metabolites the chemicals however you
want to say it being kicked off by my
microbes and it's like okay if I
conceptualize myself as this vehicle for
my microbes obviously I have
intelligence and all of that so there is
a sense of I that is separate from my
microbes but when I think about myself
as really I you can't separate the two I
would be fundamentally different if my
microbiome were different and this
actually starts coming in with the AI
debate it's like will computers ever be
intelligent in the way that humans are
intelligent if they don't have the body
if they aren't influenced by emotions
which are driven largely by the microbes
which influence your neurochemistry on
and on and on so it's like okay then
that really makes me think about how I
eat because when I eat meat I feel great
but would I be better with some of the
problems that I have like for instance I
still even though I can manage my
Society tremendously and I would say
that I've taken it from it used to be a
hundred percent where I'm like I don't
know if you get more anxious than this
and then I was able to reduce it
dramatically I would say cut it down by
70 just by removing uh diet monster and
I I have
a half a Diet Coke on Saturday and a
half a Diet Coke on Sunday but that's it
other than that I almost never drink
diet coke
so I don't have artificial things in my
life but because I eat very little
vegetable matter
by your standards so I probably eat 10
vegetables a week so I'm way off and it
may be lower than seven
um I may be way off so but I don't have
a feeling that oh I need to change
something I need to do something
different but I may just be ignoring
things like I still have 30 of the
anxiety maybe that would go away if I
were to broaden the diversity in my gut
so anyway that's why I'm conceptualizing
it like that because it does make me
think oh if I am actually being
puppeteered by my microbes then maybe I
need to be more thoughtful well I think
all of us need to think
what can we do to experiment
with our own bodies to try and improve
it given that there is this Dynamic
relationship
and you know because we until recently
we had no clue that these microbes if
you fed them differently would produce
substances that can affect your brain
and
numerous studies that show that people
with anxiety and depression have
abnormal gut microbes so they lack
diversity and they have certain
pro-inflammatory ones and now lots of
studies showing that certain probiotics
can can have a
an improvement in about a third of
people
with anxiety and depression and do you
have one that you recommend
um
not off the top of my head all the
studies use different ones that's the
annoying thing about this so there but
there are mixtures and um
there's a group in Cork Ireland that
have done a lot of work on this
recommend people to look up uh their
work and there's a book called
psychobiotics which is is quite fun to
look at but
we know they work we don't know exactly
what the best mixture is and whether it
might be highly individual as well
but so these probiotics do work but also
um as an Australian study gave
for three months people of Mediterranean
diet high fiber Mediterranean diet had
even more dramatic effects on the
anxiety and the depression
and the effect size was actually larger
than you'd get with the standard
antidepressant hmm
so I would say to anybody with
anxiety or depression issues it'd be
worth doing a three-month experiment
with your diet say okay
you know forget everything I think
forget what I've read whatever just do
it
an experiment and see okay I'm going to
chart
you can use an app or whatever it is to
just chart your mood and see how you get
on with a knowing that you're changing
your microbes am I changing your
microbes you're going to be changing
well there's brain chemicals
and it it could be for the better or the
worst because yeah these studies are
always averages and some people might do
well and some others do badly you don't
know until you study it but I think and
what would that look like I'm the 30
different plant matters per week
I would recommend a gut-friendly diet so
just going tick off your your 30
different plants go for go for rainbow
colors fermented foods I think are
really important even if I'm getting the
30 yes different they're really
important for inflammation and your
immune immune system and there are a few
poor quality studies showing they help
anxiety and depression as well
um poorer quality studies yeah I mean a
lot of this you're not putting a lot of
weight in them but early indicators yes
yes exactly
um and do other things I don't know if
you do anything on your meal timings as
well
um I do yeah time restricted eating
we've done a big
um study in the UK
um with our citizen science project and
most people who managed to do a 10 hour
time window do
notice an effect on mood
so can be mood enhancing to not snack
and not eat in time when your gut should
be recovering
and finally cut back on you know give up
your two uh diet uh drinks with those
artificial sweeteners which we know are
harmful to your gut microbes how dare
you Tim yeah take my one treat away no
okay so give yourself another treat you
know give a you know who knows replace
it with something else that is a natural
treat rather than a chemical that your
microbes have never encountered that is
designed from the you know the petrol
industry
um whether it's sucralose aspartame or
one of these other ones you know they're
they're not going to be good for you
and just well even do this for a month
I'm not saying you know don't deprive
yourself of your your diet Monster
drinks but I know those I've had to cut
out unfortunately
but uh it's fortunately you know the if
you look at the list of them it's like a
list of your
your microbes worst nightmare you know
to be dealing with those sort of
chemicals that you certainly don't get
in uh the jungle in Tanzania
so let me I want to go back to your son
because I find this very distressing
because this is exactly what I'm going
through with my wife and maybe sort of
the lingering reasons why I can't get my
anxiety to what I would consider a
normal level
um
have you looked at what makes it
resistant are we looking at biofilms
where the microbes now have defenses
against my
um basically I don't know if you know
biofilms well and can explain it to
people uh that would be amazing unless
it's not that at all but
what do you think is making it resistant
to change
uh well biofilms are basically groups of
microbes that group together and they
produce a sort of slime so salivary
slime that protects them walls them off
against Invaders and it's a it's a
defense chemical like they produce
antibiotics against uh other foes
they've all got it's one of their
defense mechanisms and it's it's what
you see in a kombucha
um mother basically is a giant biofilm
well you get 30 different microbes all
grouping together with some yeasts and
they all live under this little
protective uh shell it's kind of kind of
uh cute so
um
why some people are resistant to
Improvement
I don't think we know yet to be honest I
think we haven't had nearly enough
studies of the individual who always
looked at groups many traditional
medical Sciences just saying the doctor
as long as you get a significant result
you don't care about the individual
that's just an outlier no one's really
looked and I think that's one of the big
things we're going to be doing with Zoe
is much more emphasis on the individuals
journey and why that person didn't
respond so uh
it could be they have a certain species
that have are really entrenched in there
and you have to might people with you
know some of these gut disorders they
have to have very sometimes the only
thing you can do is to wipe them out the
antibiotics and start again right which
is like the worst case scenario because
it can that can go wrong
but
um you do see this in some small
intestinal overgrowth and other things
that you know they've tried everything
and uh you have to sort of
clear out
the whole process and then start again
sometimes
um washouts and colonoscopies can can do
that
and there are
you can get resets that way so if you
speak to gastroenterologists who do a
lot of colonoscopies they do report
just the bowel prep you know when you
take the stuff and you get evacuated and
you're not eating for a couple of days
they say you know a percentage of people
are
in Brackets cured by the the prep
process so sometimes it's some reset
like that this needs to be done has your
son tried fasting
no he's he's not very compliant because
because I'm his dad he doesn't really
believe me so it's not sufficiently bad
that he's worried he's young you know
he's
um but I'm working on him we're going to
retest him and we're gonna give him
strictly giving the Zoe method to do and
see if we can um
throw everything at him and get his
microbes up because you know I
he's he hasn't fully committed uh to
this yet but um now I'm hyper compliant
so if I wanted to make improvements and
I was going to try anything and
everything but let's say I've already
done the I'm doing the 30 a week
um and I'm like still we're testing and
it's it's coming back that I'm also in
that resistant class
um would you have me fast a prolonged
fast would you have me go do a cleanse
like what would be what would be that
ordered
um list of things that we would try on
me
but I definitely do I do a 10 hour time
restricted eating definitely
and if you could go maybe to eight hours
you know do that so I do daily uh my
average over an 18 month period when I
was tracking just absolutely religiously
average to 17 and a half hours that
includes weekends holidays everything
okay so you're already doing that it's
like but what about like a three-day
fast or a five-day fast or a seven day
fast
I I definitely wouldn't advise any long
fasting because there's when does it
become long
I'd say more than 48 hours
um
there's some evidence that your microbes
start eating your gut lining
once you get over a certain period of
time because when there's nothing to eat
the the repair Team come out and
normally they they nibble away at the
sugars on the lining of your gut
and they're quite happy tidying that up
until the food comes you know 14 or in
your case 17 hours later they can wait
but if it's not there they do keep
nibbling away and there's some evidence
that caused gut leakiness Etc so I'd be
I'm very wary about long fasts but you
know
um I think up to 48 hours
is probably it's pretty healthy and may
Kickstart some activity but there's no
real hard evidence
for that so I you know we're just trying
to experiment with different things to
to play around with but so far you know
we've just started doing um
retesting in the Zoe program of people
who've been doing you know increasing
their plant intakes and things and
people who aren't are compliant
um you know high percent only a small
percent of people are not seeing an
improvement in their gut microbes
and certainly hardly anyone is getting
worse so what do you do when somebody
has a bad reaction to a food so take my
wife uh we've built her back we've made
a lot of progress
she used to uh I mean literally she
could just eat beef and lamb and that
was it and if she tried to introduce any
plant matter it was doubled over in
agony and just really really bad but now
we've found the things that she can have
we've added those back into our diet but
there's just a certain subset of things
that she can't have now there are two
things that if you can teach me how to
get her back on those she would be
ecstatic and they are soy sauce or soy
and
um Sesame for some reason and of course
it's in every Sushi item ever uh and as
people that love sushi she is
traumatized is there a way to
selectively go okay I want to bring this
thing back into my diet I need to do XYZ
well
you know I'm not a gastroenterologist
you might want to ask Dr B afterwards
but
the
General principle is
sort of micro dosing and build it up
and mistake most people make when they
try to reintroduce Foods is just too
much of it and so all the Immunology
work and all this stuff even on people
with really severe peanut allergy is
just absolutely tiny amounts so really
homeopathic amounts and then building up
really slowly is the way to do this
whilst you've also got
you know the protection of all the other
other good microbiome base so you know
you've got high plant levels high fiber
levels you're not doing it just with
meat you know so that you you've got the
things that you can tolerate built up
and then you start doing this micro
dosing idea and slowly slowly building
it up and that that's worked for a
number of other food intolerances and so
that that's all I can suggest
um I'm not done anything particularly
about soy sauce and sesame right but I
like Japanese food as well so I would
not it would annoy me it is very
heartbreaking uh okay let's go I want to
talk about how the microbiome is being
implicated in cancer treatments and some
of the new things that we're learning
about
um immune based therapies for cancer and
how there seems to be a direct tie to
the state of the microbiome
one walk us through what we're learning
about immune-based therapies and then
how is the microbiome implicated in this
so one of the biggest breakthroughs in
the last 10 years in cancer has been
immunotherapies and the revolutionize
certain hard tumors solid tumors
such as melanoma kidney cancer lung
disease and lesser extent prostate
and this involves uh giving a drug that
um
allows the body's immune system to
attack the tumor
which is its normal purpose but the
tumor usually has a careful cloaking
system to stop recognition of it so the
drug is breaking that cloaking system
allowing the immune system to then
attack the tumor and effectively destroy
it
and these are these immune therapies
could also checkpoint Inhibitors and the
revolutionized
what were near always fatal
conditions in the end stage so
particularly starting with melanoma
metastatic melanoma end stage malignant
myeloma has been transformed and
we actually
I co-led a big Consortium in Europe
looking at several hundred people in
this condition followed them for a year
when they're having these drugs because
even with the drug only about 40 or 50
percent
uh respond really well on average
so survive and the others don't so that
better than zero but it was a lot
um it still could be better and we
looked
we took did look to the microbiome we
saw that the state of their gut microbes
the beginning of their treatment
if they had a diverse one with good
um good to bad ratios
compared to the people in the lowest
quartile who had the poorest one they
had double the chance of survival
and
also did another study and well another
analysis and linked that also to the
eating a healthy Mediterranean style
diet high in fiber high in Plants etc
etc gut friendly diet so that was the
largest study done but there are now
four or five other ones some small some
large all showing the same thing so this
is a very major
breakthrough the showing the link
between
having a healthy gut microbes which then
enables your immune system to work
really well in conjunction with the
drugs to overcome the cancer
and it I think is is bigger than just
immunotherapy because it tells you how
important a gut microbiome is against
all cancers and our natural protection
system against all cancers so we forget
they've done these studies of people who
die early in accidents and looking at
their bodies we're full of micro tumors
all the time
so we've perhaps got five or six little
microtumors in our body and our immune
system is finding that that cancer cell
very early and destroying it we've got a
brilliant system for doing it and I
think what we're realizing is that our
ability to fight off cancer is totally
depend on this immune system which is in
turn driven by the gut microbes and our
diet
so it now explains that really good link
between healthy diet and cancer in ways
we hadn't really understood before I
think that's a really important point at
um
it means we're not really talking about
toxins and foods and all this and we
always talked about the bad things in
food we haven't really focused on all
the good things that people should be
eating to
give us those anti-cancer benefits
through our own body's natural defense
system
that's interesting so you think given
the relationship to the microbiome this
is more a thing of you're not eating
enough to get the diversity and the
right chemistry being pumped out there
that you need in order to supercharge
your immune system versus hey there are
problems in your diet and you need to
get them out
what's mixture of both I mean
um but yes the core is having a healthy
gut microbiome and and if you've got a
healthy gut microbiome it will help your
immune system to fight the cancer and it
will help those drugs and I think that's
that's the key bit and you you either by
not you know not having nasty things in
your system like you're drinking Monster
drink uh three times a day which you
don't but oh but I did I'm sure you did
um would really
sort of your your your microbes
and your immune system and also having
these good things to make sure they're
they're as diverse and healthy as
possible all right speaking of good
things there was something that you go
into great length about in the book that
I am
not phobic but I'm coming right up to it
and that is mushrooms
talk to me about mushrooms
um well I discovered this really in
only only doing the book I you know I
thought well mushrooms are sort of
interesting but I didn't realize what a
amazing health food they are
and of course they're part of the fungi
family which are more
animal than plant that is the freakiest
thing you said in the book How is it
that fungi are more like animals and
plants
uh they've worked this out based on the
genetic lineage
and the genes that we share with fungi
are more closely related
and so evolutionary wise we are more
related to them so they're definitely
not plants and they're not in the plant
kingdom and
you know the way they work their their
networks they work as teams they talk to
each other
they probably cover I think a third of
the planet
um interweaving across our soil they
communicate with each other
you know they're amazing things I mean
just just when you go out and you wonder
how how did that mushroom suddenly pop
up there and look so beautiful and go
down again and you know and underneath
you've got these
this sort of incredible neural network
um undermining it all so there are
hundreds of species of these these
mushrooms and we know that on the one
end you've got the you know the
Psychedelic ones the ones
with the psilocybins that are
transforming some of the treatments of
depression you know super powerful drugs
that seem to have very little side
effects if you're using the right the
right way do you think that's a
psychological breakthrough or a
microbiome adjustment
um
no I think it's due to the actual
chemical
um it just these they naturally produce
these these chemicals but
um
in a way
it's it's getting some other
you know a bit like our microbes could
have produced it
um and there might be other things
inside our gut that are just like
psilocybins if we could synthesize them
and
and mine them as as treatments and this
is in a way a nice example of we've sort
of ignored things that come from nature
and you know only want it synthesized
from
chemicals and the petrol industry but
all this natural stuff is out there
um so I think it's this that's the
really cool bit but of course they do
all kinds of other things and
I was amazed to show that a lot of the
cancer studies
we're talking about cancer that in
addition to chemotherapy if you have a
regular supply of mushrooms you have a
much better chance of survival
and so they've done a formal study yes
multiple side dishes whoa what kind of
mushrooms uh well again they use lots of
different ones but you know
the uh they've been the shiitake
mushrooms the lion's mane variety of
different ones uh chantrell
um they're not quite sure which are the
best mushrooms
um because we still don't really
you know there's not many people
studying them as as their main source of
interest it's been a bit peripheral to
Medicine
and
I think but because of the psilocybin
work which they're now making
artificially they don't they don't need
the mushrooms anymore
do you think that's a mistake I am
always super skeptical of supplements
because you're isolating it there's odds
are there's a whole bunch of other stuff
it's like juice versus the actual fruit
in general I totally agree with you and
you know it's again reductionism but
they've done the clinical trials to show
the way whereas when you do the
supplements and you do a clinical trial
it never works right whereas
um so you write on the supplements
versus Whole Foods
um
but in this case they they have actually
extracted the chemical given us a pill
form and done random magical trials the
show it works very well
um for for depression Etc so
um let's keep let's keep an open mind on
that but there's a treasure Trove of
other chemicals in these mushrooms
um like their effects on cancer that we
don't still understand and so
um I think eating mushrooms regularly
is is a is a really important
uh point that we should be eating more
of so I've made a big thing of doing
this and I've seen now there's mushroom
teas and mushroom coffees and
um it's one of those rare trends that I
actually approve of as long as they
don't over synthesize it and it's still
got the real bit of the mushroom in it
for the point you made that
for some of these things we don't know
what the actual active chemical is so
let's not guess let's just use the whole
plant what's your personal mushroom
protocol
um is to eat as many different ones that
are in season that I can find
um I'm not a I'm not into I'm not a
microdoser or a uh that much it funny
thing is I didn't actually mean that
side I meant the the edible side but now
that you bring it up have you ever tried
any uh psychedelics
I was given some chocolate once
I love it but I can't discuss anymore
for legal reasons all right Fair
um
so going back to the ones that you eat
that are non-psychedelic uh
uh truly non-discriminating you go into
the grocery store if they've got seven
different kinds you pick up seven
different kinds you don't have one that
you prefer there's no study that says
this one over that one well
there are some so so things like lion's
mane shiitake do crop up Time After Time
as as if they have some special
properties and they've but
um and so generally ones that look more
interesting more complex mushrooms
rather than those those Round field
mushrooms uh the button ones that are
perhaps grown uh
everywhere
if I can get them and they're in season
yes I'd go for the more interesting ones
how important you keep saying in season
is so they could be in the grocery store
but still be problematic if they're out
of season
well that's just
for more environmental reasons you know
I wouldn't I wouldn't ship around the
world just so I can I can try that one I
have whatever's local right and I like
to think it's you know getting it fresh
as well um
okay so food preparation you on
mushrooms and I would love to know about
extra virgin olive oil so I cook with
extra virgin olive oil all the time
but sometimes it smokes like how tense
do I need to be about the level to which
I heat it up
not nearly as much as we've been led to
believe so the smoke point of most of
the olive oils the good quality of all
of those is is over 200 degrees
and
usually it's only when you're Wok frying
that you get anywhere near that sort of
temperature
so for the vast majority of your general
frying and cooking you're not going to
get over 200 degrees so it's not not a
real problem and then uh
the actual problems of that smoke point
uh even if it did smoke I'm not really
worried about there's no real hard
evidence that
you get sufficient of these chemicals
that are going to give you cancer or
whatever it's extremely weak data that
says they're bad for you so the benefits
of eating and cooking with extra virgin
olive oils extra virgin is important not
the cheap stuff is refined and doesn't
have any of those high levels of
polyphenols that are really good for you
is really important because they've done
massive studies in thousands of Spanish
people showing that
cooking with it eating with it people
are given you know extra
two liters a week
over six years they actually less
cancers and they're they're cooking with
all the time so I think we can be
totally relaxed about olive oil not
worry about smoke points even if you
have the occasional uh stir fry with it
um if you do it occasional stir fry well
you know just on that one occasion I
don't know use some
other oil that is if you're worried
about it but it's much more
you know there's obsession with smoke
point is
overrated because other other oils that
because it has saturated fat in it it's
actually more stable and doesn't
decompose whether you use other
vegetable oils that are are in
polyunsaturated so keep doing what
you're doing
and what about mushrooms do I need to
cook them raw does it matter
um they have slight more nutrients when
they're cooked
um and I don't think anyone's done a
formal study on that
but
um lightly fried
in olive oil with a bit of garlic
got to be the healthy way to go all
right what if I because the only way
that I could bear to do this would be to
put them in I do like a vegetable and
fruit smoothies probably the right way
to think about it mixed with a little
bit of protein powder be curious to know
if you love our hay protein powder uh
and then I could see blending a few of
them up and putting them in that my
hoping that I do not taste them at all
uh you're not a fan are you dude I hate
mushrooms in ways you can't imagine and
I've tried them six ways a Sunday and
the number of people that say like
they're so good for me and I want to do
everything that's good for me and like I
said I will find ways to be compliant
but uh if you tell me that I can just
dice them into little teeny Smithereens
I'd be really happy I'm sure that's
still good for you uh in raw form there
isn't you know you get slightly more
nutrients when you cook them but not
massive not massively different so that
you'll still get plenty of the goodness
if you just mash them up you if you
perform that way so I prefer not to
taste them that's uh that's my real
punchline okay so um stepping back out
to 30 000 feet people that are really
trying to do
um their focus on longevity they want to
feel good what is something surprising
that they might not realize uh you go
into to great detail on several
different key things in the book
um what's one thing that when you were
writing it you were surprised that you
think people just are completely
oblivious to how important it is well
for longevity or for longevity what
we'll call General Health so it could be
something that surprised you about
cancer could be something that surprised
you about strong immune system uh just
something that the average person it's
not on their radar at all
I guess well I learned lots of little
things and I think that's the you know
the book is full of tiny little nuggets
that would nudge you towards these
things
um I think
what for me was interesting is how they
uh aging and cancer
uh came together
so people have always sort of separated
them out and said
um they're sort of opposites you know
um in some way that
but it's looking like with this new idea
of the immune system being
key to our health
that there is a NASA and now a common
model about
what we need to sustain our health and
we've talked about the immune system in
fighting cancer but we haven't talked
about the immune system in fighting
aging
and
there's clear links between
um immune immune cells will
detect early cancer cells and kill them
off if if we've got the right apparatus
and as you get older
the ability to do that Fades your body
is
too busy repairing other things to
um gets distracted and therefore I might
miss that cancer cell that's this common
idea why cancer increases with age
but at the same time
most of the current theories of of Aging
around this inflam aging so that
a the aging process associated with
inflammation in the body so you're
getting these stress levels so we talked
earlier about you know these sugar
spikes and these fat spikes hanging
around why are they bad because they
cause low level stress in the body this
inflammation and if that long term means
that your whole body is in a slight
state of stress so that each cell is not
performing at the top level and might
get damaged and cause byproducts and
your immune system is constantly going
and having to clean that up
so it's having to tidy up the mess
and
detoxify the Cell at a cellular level
get rid of the debris because you know
each cell is like a little battery
that's always producing all this stuff
and
if we just set the level higher so
everything's working a bit higher
they've got to work harder so the
current theory of Aging is is actually
that if you can either reduce that
inflammation
and or you can improve your immune
surveillance
you can reduce
the ravages of of aging and I think
that's that's a really quite neat system
that fits in you know with the brain and
Alzheimer's and mopping up the damage
that's caused and it it nicely links in
how diet
is so important because you know we've
never really understood why is
diet so linked to alzheimer's and you
know they're called they're called
dementia you know Diabetes Type three
uh why are they so linked but it sort of
makes sense when you start to think well
okay food gut microbes
immune system
the immune system has these multiple
roles
that we didn't really envisage you know
10 years ago that suddenly it's
absolutely crucial in not any fighting
cancers and cancerous cells but also
getting rid of the damage of normal
processes and repairing our body so
aging is the failure to deal
adequately repair cells that are damaged
and if our immune system is Tip Top
you'll you'll be able to keep repairing
for a much longer and I think that that
as a general concept I don't think many
people
uh have got yet and I think it it it it
changes our ideas of aging and how we we
view it so we just need to reduce these
stresses long term so some of these
things that seem like short term like
your Sugar Peak or your your fat level
you know it doesn't matter you know well
you just times that by
50 years and you start to see how it
does and you start to put a strain on
your immune system that can't quite cope
because it's being pulled in all
directions
um when actually it should be focusing
on just nailing those cancer cells or
dealing with that bit of plaque buildup
or whatever it is in the body so I think
as a concept that's that's one I think
I'd like people to uh to think more
about how far can we push that how much
can we
slow aging I'm gonna guess you're not in
the we can reverse it camp but how far
can we slow it like can we start seeing
the average life expectancy yeah 100 120
or
no
I think some have already got
25 years difference in life expectancy
between people on
you know the lowest of our society and
the most well-off and educated
so
that's
and if you you push those extremes and
you realize well that's maybe just the
effect of diet
so you you could actually
really you know push it so I think if we
we understood much more about these
systems yeah I mean we could be living
easily another uh 10 years longer but
I'm not I don't want to live 10 years
longer I just I just don't want to
I want to have a healthy life for longer
fair so Health span to me is is where we
should be aiming not um
not lifespan now is there a health span
though where you'd want to tap out like
I I would live forever if I could do so
with health would you or is there a
point at which
you might get bored after a thousand
years but you think
it depends if you've got any mates isn't
it really I mean let's say that you do
yeah if you've all got our mates
um yeah I think nobody wants to die if
they're healthy oh no no that this is a
raging debate and when I bring this up
there are some people who are like hey
it's disgusting Tom that you would even
ask that like you should want to just
the natural cycle of life there are
people who are convinced that yeah like
once I've been around for 80 100 years
I'm done I don't want to live longer I
was shocked to find that my frame of
reference was not necessarily even the
dominant frame of reference yeah well I
might get bored after a couple of
hundred years I think just you know it
depends if you can still surf or do
stuff isn't it yeah well if you can get
another 100 years either we will
completely obliterate Humanity or I'm
sure we will solve for that problem and
the reason I believe that is AI which I
actually want to ask you about what is
the role that AI is playing right now
for you guys are you using it Zoe
uh we've been using
in its in simple forms so mainly machine
learning which is a simple form of AI
but it's definitely part of the plan and
we're brainstorming how we're going to
be using in the future so definitely for
for the complexities of things like the
microbiome it's perfect
because you're trying to get it to find
patterns yes
so that's that's a big project we've got
so we can work out the functions of all
the microbes you feed in all the data on
50 000 people or the Health Data or the
food data try and work out
you know the these Myriad patterns that
will be not only the species but also
the substrains of the microbes and is
your gut that this is going to be a
uh like a big chunk like this type of
microbiome leads to these types of
outcomes or do you think it's going to
be this
um
individual species leads to this type of
outcome
I think we're going to say that there'll
be groups or communities or what some
people call them guilds where you get
say a group of 10 microbes that can all
make similar chemicals or work together
as teams so I think the idea of using AI
to try and work out what these teams are
that will use each other's as you call
it excrement to you know one person's
excrement is another person's meal right
um
so there's no waste zero waste they use
these teams to work out what their
functions are I think that's going to be
really cool and then we work out what
you need to feed to get that team to be
optimal because at the moment we're
still in a bit in the dark we're dealing
with these individual species
know we have a few chemicals we know
they do but there's so much you know
left to it discovered and I think
now that we've suddenly we've got uh
these 50 000 people at one point in time
we're going to get
you know 50 000 at two points of time
look at changes and what they've changed
their diet that's really gonna help this
speed this up so I think you know the
next year or two is going to be super
exciting in this field agreed agreed if
people want to follow along on that
Journey how do they stay in touch with
you
stay in touch with me I guess on
Instagram or my nutrition stuff is and
join zoe.com
is uh where if they want to find out
about the company I love it all right
everybody this stuff is real pay
attention to it and speaking of things
you should pay attention to if you
haven't already be sure to subscribe and
until next time my friends be legendary
take care peace
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