Why You’re Tired, Anxious & Inflamed I Dr Tim Spector

24:21And I said, well, just think of it. If you're like this zookeeper or a gardener for this incredible garden and you want to keep all these different species going, you wouldn't feed them just one, the same food, right? If you're in a zoo, you know, some animals would die if you just fed them all the same. So you give them a diversity. and you don't want too many chemicals. You want to nourish it, but seeds in there, new stuff, fermented foods, you can have this concept that if you look at nutrition through the lens of your gut microbes, what do they want to eat? Everything just about follows logically that that's true.

24:58So the foods that we've originally thought were healthy, like orange juice, for example, heavily pushed by Florida and Tropicana and Pepsi, none of that really gets to your gut microbes. The sugar just comes out of that, goes straight into your system, and there's virtually no fiber gets through to your gut microbes. So the alternative would be, we've always thought of coffee as a rather harmful drink, but the epidemiology has now reversed in the last five years and shows it actually reduces heart disease if you have three cups of coffee a day. Is that because of the polyphenols? It's partly because of the polyphenols, because they're very high in polyphenols.

25:40These defense chemicals you get from plants, particularly the bitter ones like coffee or dark chocolate. But it's also due to the fiber itself, because you need to remember that coffee, you know, originally was this fermented bean. It's a plant.

25:54Dr. Michael Gervais:When I tell people, like, I don't drink coffee. I drink a lot of tea. So I do want to get to it. But I say, do you really like bean juice? And like, no, that's gross. But they love their coffee, which is bean juice, basically. But you're saying there's fiber. That's a totally new idea for me, that there's fiber in coffee. Yes. So one half grams of fiber, which is the same as you get in a small banana. Per cup. Per cup. So the average American will have three cups of coffee a day. It's probably the major single source of fiber in the American diet. I do supplement with fiber. I try to eat a lot of natural food, but I do supplement with fiber, almost like a prebiotic.

26:34Dr. Michael Gervais:But I do want to hold back my thoughts. I have a word with you about that. Okay, good. Let's do that. Because you're going to want me to eat more whole foods. Have we tried matcha? That's nearly as much fiber as coffee. I like matcha. Yeah. It's still like, isn't it a supplement? I think the supplement I take is like five grams. And so you're saying a couple cups of matcha, but none in tea. This is not. Green tea, yes. Black tea has very little fiber. Yeah, okay. But matcha is closer to coffee. So you need five cups of matcha to get your five grams of fiber, but - I'll be buzzing by. There are easier ways to get your fiber.

27:13That's right.

27:13Dr. Michael Gervais:Okay. Yeah, good. Okay. Awesome. These are gems. These are great. Based on your research, the general recommendations to invest in gut health. I would love to start with like a big idea because I feel like we're down into like drink three cups of coffee and you've got enough fiber. We need to go back to the general principles. Yeah, general principles. So, okay, why is gut health important? Because we can't exist without healthy gut microbes. We've evolved to live with them, and they provide key chemicals that our body can't produce itself, key vitamins, the B vitamins, the vitamin K2. They produce some B12 but can't use that, but they also produce many brain neurochemicals, serotonin, dopamine.

28:01and they're key messengers for our immune system. So our immune system can't function normally without a functioning microbiome. And we're realizing how important the immune system is for our overall health. So the last few years it's just exploded, understanding that it's absolutely key not only for autoimmune diseases, allergies, but also fighting cancer, fighting aging, and controlling inflammation and mental health.

28:31Dr. Michael Gervais:If you were to say, if you don't have a healthy gut, you run the increased risk of, how would you finish that thought? If you don't have a healthy gut, you're highly likely to have a whole host of diseases, two or three times the risk of metabolic disease like obesity, like type 2 diabetes, a heart disease. You're more likely to get dementia. You're more likely to get depression. You're more likely to have a stroke. You're more likely to get cancers and accelerated aging and food allergies. So there's virtually nothing that isn't touched by having poor gut health. And, you know, we know this because at Zoe now we've done 300 ,000 gut tests and compared that to health profiles.

29:16And so it's obvious that it runs across the board. People with healthy guts just get less of all those diseases.

29:22Dr. Michael Gervais:So you have my attention. Okay. And I don't, I didn't need you to say that, but then when you say it that way, it's like, oh goodness. Okay. Go from a macro position or a model, if you will, about what are the most important factors to think through to invest in a high quality gut microbiome. I think we've got several principles that are worth just going through to remember. The first, and I think the most important, is to eat a diversity of plants. From our studies, we think around 30 plants a week is the optimum. If you can get to that target, you look skeptical. But to get to 30 plants, you've got to remember what a plant is.

30:01So I've said coffee is a plant, okay? So you're allowed coffee or matcha. You're also allowed nuts and seeds. Each one is different, herbs and spices, okay? So once you start thinking more broadly, it's not as hard as that. And that is a very effective way to do this. The average American has about between 9 and 11 plants at most a week. So, you know, there's a way to go, but it's a different way of thinking because in the past we've said, well, you can have the same food, you know, you just get your banana, your apple, beans and peas, and that's it, you know, that's all you need every day and you're fine.

30:42The truth is that doesn't work. People have the same salad every day and not as healthy as people have a different salad every day. So it's embracing diversity. And you do that, that keeps your gut microbes happy more than anything. And I think that's a foundation, really, because you don't have to count fiber, because if you're doing that, you're going to be getting a lot of fiber just automatically. It's very hard not to boost your fiber amounts because we need to be getting over 30 grams of fiber a day. Average American is having less than 15. So we need to double the amount of fiber, and that's one way of doing it.

31:20The second general principle is to eat the rainbow, and that's because coloured plants and vegetables, as well as bitter ones, have these defence chemicals, these polyphenols. Such as? Bright coloured berries, dark purple, blueberries, blackberries, lettuces that are, you know, the Rosololo lettuces that have purple leaves are much better than something boring like the iceberg lettuce, which has zero polyphenols. It's just water. Cabbage? All cabbages are actually good, surprisingly. They are a slight exception, but always pick ones with the darker leaves. You'll do better. Things like dark chocolate are high in polyphenols, extra virgin olive oil, red wine, coffee, all these things where you're getting a slight bitterness and a slight astringency on your tongue.

32:12They are signs that these have natural chemicals in them that we used to call them more antioxidants, if you remember that. And that was such a vague term, and it was pretty obvious that scientists were just bullshitting. They didn't really know what it meant. And now we know that they actually feed our gut microbes, their energy for our gut microbes, and they convert that into other products that are good for our immune system. That's what we want. So polyphenols are really important. And choosing what you eat, partly based on the polyphenol counts, is really important. So beans are another great example of something that are high in polyphenols and in fiber.

32:52And there's many sort of foods in those categories, seeds, nuts, all these things are also really good.

32:59Dr. Michael Gervais:Let's go back to cabbage for just a minute because I know eventually we're going to get into fermentation. But raw cabbage, I remember somewhere in my research that like some of these more raw foods are really hard, like hard in the gut. Like I think kale, cabbage. Is that a misnomer or does that show up to be true? There are always some exceptions, but on average, the nutrient value of raw food is less than slightly steamed. Slightly steamed is a little bit better. Significantly better. And oversteamed is the problem. This raw food diet stuff, it doesn't stack up scientifically. You can't digest this easily if it's all raw.

33:40But at the same time, if you boil the shit out of it for two hours, then you do destroy it unless you're drinking the liquid. So the sweet spot is this done just for a couple of minutes, al dente, minimum amount of water, just fry it up in oil. That's the perfect way to - Oh, and fry it in oil. You can do it in oil as well. Yeah, particularly olive oil. You get actually more nutrients out of it.

34:07Dr. Michael Gervais:High heat olive oil? or you don't want to overcook the olive oil? It's hard to do that, actually, because the smoke point of olive oil is actually above 200 degrees. It's really high. So unless you're wok frying, you won't get it there. So that was a bit of a myth that you couldn't use olive oil for frying because it was harmful. The science doesn't support that. Let's stay there for a minute. What about using seed oils for cooking, whether it's avocado or whatever it might be. I think the jury is pretty clear that canola oil is something that's probably not great, but I even read some counter evidence that no, get over it.

34:48Dr. Michael Gervais:Canola oil is fine. What is your position on it? Body Mastery is brought to you by Fatty 15. Did you know that Navy Dolphins helped unlock a secret to healthy aging? It's a wild story and it's the foundation for a product that I've come to really love, Fatty15. Fatty15 is built around C15, the first essential fatty acid discovered in over 90 years. And it was discovered by Dr. Stephanie Van Watson. She's the co-founder of Fatty15. While she was working with the US Navy and based on over 100 studies, we now know that C15 strengthens our cells and is foundational for healthy aging at the cellular level.

35:26Dr. Michael Gervais:Stephanie's been on the podcast and it was one of my favorite conversations. She's amazing. And what her and her team are building is something I'm really excited about. Head to fatty15.com slash finding mastery and use the code finding mastery for an additional 15 % off your 90 day starter kit. Again, that's fatty, F-A-T-T-Y 15.com slash finding mastery. And the code is finding mastery. I want to take a second here to tell you about a morning routine that I've been using for years. For me, it's a great way to switch on my mind, to ready myself to take on the day. So before I check my phone, my emails, market updates, or text threads, I choose how to start my morning.

36:04Dr. Michael Gervais:That's always in my control. That's always in your control too. This is the same morning mindset routine that some of the world's top performers across sport, business, and the arts are using. The best part, it only takes about 90 seconds to do. So just head over to findingmastery.com slash morning to download the audio guide for free. Again, head to findingmastery.com slash morning to get your morning mindset routine. This anti-seed oil campaign is massively hyped, right, by a few influencers who are not scientists. I think most of the evidence doesn't support anything really deadly about seed oils.

36:44It doesn't mean that I use them myself. I would much rather have extra virgin olive oil, which I know is the healthiest oil on the planet. Why would you use anything else unless you couldn't afford it? There are good seed oils and there are bad seed oils. down the bottom end, highly refined. The food companies are mixing them all up, adding all kinds of industrial processes to the, you know, that's a problem with the processing, not the seed. So high-quality seed oil, I'm sure is fine. I don't personally use it. I just use extra virgin olive oil for everything. But if someone said, I haven't got any, here's some avocado oil or some high-quality rapeseed oil, canola, I would use it.

37:27Dr. Michael Gervais:Yeah, okay. And when I go shopping for extra virgin olive oil, I use the same thing. I don't know which brand to trust. So I'm kind of going down and looking for labels that look like, I don't know, you know, like it's a little bit of a mess for me to choose. So I choose a dark bottle and from Italy. So I'm not even sure how I got to those two ideas, but can you give me us, me, but take a little bit more guidance? Italians would never buy their olive oil from a giant store or supermarket, right? They would have their guy they know because they know all kinds of trickery goes on in olive oil, right?

38:08And by the time it's imported to the US, there's lots of contamination, you know, labels get switched. And there have been some surveys showing that often it's not good. So the most important thing is to check the date of the olive oil because it goes off. Okay, so each year there's a harvest. It's in October and November, and it will normally last about 18 months. And very often by the time it gets shipped over from Europe to the US, they say, well, the US, they don't mind. They don't know much about olive oil. We'll just give them the old stuff. So they might be two or three years out of date.

38:47It's lost a lot of its punch, its polyphenols. You lose a lot in the first 12 months. So you want something that's really been harvested recently. It's in a dark glass bottle. And when you drink it and have a bit raw, taste it, just put it in a teaspoon. It should have a bitterness and it should make you cough. You know, it should sort of.

39:10Dr. Michael Gervais:I always thought it was like a spice that I would taste. Yes. Yeah. But the key is to get a supplier you trust. I think that's the way to do it. Most of the mass brands are mixtures and they're not very good. You want to get, you know, single, like you would a wine. You don't want to get a wine from 20 vineyards mashed together. You know, you want to get something that's real that you know comes from a single estate. And they're the really good ones. But once you start tasting, you know what's a good one. Great. Diversity, colorful plate or colorful foods. Yeah. And there's many other examples really of, you know, that's what I love about this idea.

39:45it's not about restriction it's about adding and you know we're so used to talking about food and nutrition and diet as you can't have this you can't have that you know exclude this whereas what we're trying to do is to get more on people's plate and try new stuff and you know every time you go to a restaurant you're eating oh i haven't had that plate before or that you know it makes you more adventurous try and get some new plant you've never seen before and just try it you know more different colored ones are the same ones. Why always orange carrots when you can have purple Persian carrots that have nine times the polyphenol count?

40:23You know, it's a whole new world. Once you start thinking in those terms of adding more and new different things, because, you know, A, it's going to help your taste buds, but also it's going to help the the microbe guys down there.

40:36Dr. Michael Gervais:One of my favorite things, my wife and I, Sunday mornings, we've got a local farmer's market. I do a little fitness. She does a little fitness. We meet at the farmer's market. Both of us are just kind of the glow after fitness or exercise and we're shopping down and it's like, it feels like it's a treat for the gut biome because there's so many different things to choose from. And it's a place we also get sourdough bread. I don't know exactly, but it's like an artist in sourdough bread, which I know you're high on sourdough as a fermented food. Would you suggest that on the diversity bit that if there's a bread you would stick with sourdough versus other breads or would you expand the types of breads beyond sourdough?

41:16There's a lot of fake sourdough around. So supermarket sourdough is not controlled at all. They just can sprinkle a bit of sourdough flour in there or spray it with something that gives a sourdough smell, a slightly acidic lactic acid smell, and it passes a sourdough. Be wary of those cheap brands that say they're sourdough. They're just exactly the same. They're not of any health benefit at all. If you have a sourdough white loaf, it's still generally not good for you. It'll be slightly better than the equivalent white loaf.

41:46Dr. Michael Gervais:What's a sourdough non-white loaf? What do you mean by that? Well, the stuff I make and I eat regularly would be a sourdough made with at least 50 % rye and 50 % whole grain wheat. So it's not containing any refined flour in there. So it's full of fiber. It's very dense. It fills you up. And it's a completely different taste. It doesn't have that sort of instant sugar burst that most breads do. What do I ask the person that I'm buying my bread from? What do I ask them to know if I'm getting a properly fermented sourdough? Well, you ask him, you know, how long it's fermented for, where is the fermentation process take place.

42:35Dr. Michael Gervais:He's going to look at me sideways, but how long is the fermented process? Usually should be at least 12 hours. Okay. And they can do longer ones. And is it all done on the premises? Does it come in frozen? Okay. You know, these are sort of questions you can ask, but bread itself is one of the things that we all eat, but one of the most unhealthy things we can eat because most of it is sugar. So even if you sourdough it up, which means that the gluten particles are slightly smaller, you've got some dead microbes in there, you're still having a lot of sugar. So if you can go towards grains that are whole grains, so it's made with the whole grain, not the refined grain, and it's got more rye or spelt in it, then it's going to fill you up much quicker, give you less of a sugar spike and be much healthier.

43:25So I'm worried about everyone and say, oh, it's sourdough, therefore it's healthy. That's not the case. It's definitely not the case. How many slices of bread do you have a week? Oh, that's a tricky question.

43:36Dr. Michael Gervais:One a day, probably. One slice a day, yeah. And then do you put corn tortilla and flour tortilla in the same conversation? The same principles apply in that whatever your flour is, there's a huge difference. And this is the same for rice, for pasta, for all these things. if you're having the whole grain version of it rather than the refined white version of it, you're getting more fiber. It's harder to digest. It's helping your microbes and it will fill you up more. So across the board, it will always be the better option. That's a general rule that people should be looking at. Do you eat corn tortillas and flour tortillas?

44:15Rarely, yeah. I mean, I eat most things occasionally, but I wouldn't be having them regularly. Yeah. And I was in Guatemala and it was very hard to avoid Yeah, that's right.

44:24Dr. Michael Gervais:Southern California, there's, you know, there's lots of options. And then kind of stay in this Southwest diet, if you will, here for just a moment. What about like tortilla chips that are, quote, organic? There's only like two ingredients in it or whatever, you know, back to that idea that we're talking about earlier. Danger food or it's okay. They're a treat. They shouldn't be a regular thing. They're still going to give you a big sugar spike. They're not really going to give you any significant fiber. So they're of no great benefit to you. And yeah, the best ones may not have many additives, but you go for the average tortilla chip, it's got 20 ingredients that you really don't want to know where they are.

45:04And so these should be rare treats, definitely not part of a regular diet. Okay.

45:09Dr. Michael Gervais:Principle number one, diversity. Eat with lots of different types of people. 30 plants. A second, read the rainbow. Third would be have regular fermented foods. So try and get three fermented foods in a day. And the science is backing this up now. Is this the 4Ks? Includes the 4Ks, but not restrict to the 4Ks. There's many more fermented foods than the kefir, the kombucha, the kraut, and the kimchi. You've also got all the misos. So miso paste, the soy sauce. the natto's if you're brave which is you know the fermented soy sprouts water kefir is called tibikos which is a drink i haven't seen much of it in the u.s but i've never had it it's quite big in the uk now which again is made with grains a bit like milk kefir grains and you've also got some things like worcestershire sauce which are our actual ferments tabasco tabasco when you mentioned that, it really surprised me.

46:09Dr. Michael Gervais:So Tabasco sauce is a ferment. Yeah. So a lot of these original, these condiments were made by fermentation. And then often the lay got like the ketchup, you know, Heinz took it over and it's no longer fermented. It's just chemically made, but some of these have kept those ferments. And, you know, most people don't realize that high quality soy sauce, you know, is fermented. I watch my salt intake. So when miso soup comes around at like a Japanese restaurant per se, I tend to pass from the salt intake. On the sodium or on the soy sauce, I tend to go low sodium. And I was reading your book. I was like, man, I need to maybe be rethinking this.

46:47Dr. Michael Gervais:Can you talk to me about salt and soy and salt and miso? And salt in all ferments, really. So, I mean, kimchi is the one a lot of people avoid because they say, well, this tastes really salty. Salty, yeah. And, you know, I ferment and I'm adding a lot of salt to this stuff. 2 % of everything you go in, it's salt. and if you're making miso paste, I make my own miso, you put in like 6 % salt. So you'd expect people who have fermented foods a lot to have high blood pressure and it turns out the opposite is true. In Korea, they've done studies of 30 ,000 sort of kimchi addicts compared to 30 ,000 strange Koreans who don't have any kimchi and their blood pressure of the kimchi guys was actually lower than the others.

47:31With higher salt intake. Yes.

47:33Dr. Michael Gervais:But the way it works with the gut biome, it's maybe offsetting. Well, clearly it must be the benefits of these fermented foods outweigh any negative effects of the salt. And I think we were always taught in medical school that salt is bad for everybody. We should all avoid it. But the research is really quite controversial. It's suggesting that there are some people who are salt sensitive. People from African background, for example, are much more likely to be salt sensitive. But overall, only about 20 % of people in the US and UK are really sensitive to salt. The others, yeah, makes only a tiny difference, a few percentage difference if you had really high salt intake.

48:18Dr. Michael Gervais:That's interesting. So the reason I was sensitive... It's overstated, you know, because it was a nice easy thing. Okay, your doctor says, don't have any salt, you know, don't have any fat, don't have any salt, sorted. But the science doesn't tell us that. And what it does tell us is that if you have lots of plants, for example, that contain potassium, and many of the things we're talking about, the plants we're talking about, have high potassium levels, that is having high potassium or potassium supplements is three times more effective than stopping salt. So it could be that all these plants you get in by having kimchi or even the ferments in miso, the soybeans are reducing your blood pressure, and that far outweighs any bad effect of the salt.

49:01I believe that fermentation itself, plus eating high potassium foods, is actually good for your circulatory system, and that has been far underplayed by the medical world who are obsessed with just salt, and a very simple solution. And it's actually clear from a lot of the data that, yeah, some people suffer. They do need to pay attention to their salt. I'm not saying that's not true. But the majority of people are much better off having more forgetting about salt, having, you know, as long as they're not eating junk food, because a lot of the salt, most of the salt comes from packaged goods. But if you're eating fresh fruit, adding salt to your food, you know, life isn't worth living without adding salt to your food.

49:42A little pressure, saying, yeah.

49:43Dr. Michael Gervais:But if you're opening a package, there's so much salt in those things, right? But if you're doing your own stuff, you know, you should be adding salt to it taste. You know, meat, for example, without salt, there's no point in eating it. It's totally tasteless. And we've evolved to have salt. You know, I stayed for a week with the Hadza tribe in Tanzania, and the one thing they used to trade for, they didn't need anything, but salt was the one thing they wanted when they met any other tribes. That's all they wanted. And you can understand why it's so precious. I think the easy button is potassium banana.

50:18Dr. Michael Gervais:What are some of the other things that you think about for potassium enriched foods? Things like kiwi fruits, virtually all leafy vegetables, spinach, kale, they all have high potassium levels. Most fruits do. So it's, again, it fits into this idea of this wide variety of, of plants. You'll naturally get high potassium levels if you do that. And I don't like to obsess about one particular plant or fruit because I think, you know, because everyone's trying to say, what's your super, what's your super food? What's this one thing that's going to do it? It's getting this diversity of richness. You will naturally get the things that your body needs.

51:01Yeah. And stop thinking, oh, well, you know, I was told I mustn't have this. And so you cut out all this range of things from your diet. They're really useful. I mean, beetroot, you know, is an amazing vegetable. And I do a fermented beetroot. That's what I'm eating.

51:16Dr. Michael Gervais:Yeah. And it's wonderful. That's been shown in trials to have three times more effect on lowering your blood pressure than stopping salt. How about it? I tripped on it by accident. And the Romans said it was good for your sex life. So they had beetroot in all the brothels. Oh, did they? Really? Yeah. That's funny. Finding Mastery is brought to you by LinkedIn. Earlier, I mentioned LinkedIn Hiring Pro, And I want to come back to something a little more personal. We talk a lot about the people who make extraordinary things possible. And I want to take a moment to acknowledge some of ours. Janelle, Taylor, Alex, Emma, and our newest teammate, Chelsea.

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54:16Dr. Michael Gervais:Okay, so what do you say to the influencers that say, stop eating kale? It's giving you gas. It's a problem for your gut. That narrative, we just had somebody on that went pretty wild about that idea. Kale's fine, but I wouldn't have it every day. I mean, you know, it's like everything in moderation. If you like kale, eat it, but you don't have to. There's plenty of other, you know, we have 30 ,000 other edible plants on the planet. We just get obsessed with a few we think are the only healthy ones. And this is this, we're in this culture of, you know, what's the latest superfood? You know, I'm in LA.

54:53What's the, you know, what's the 2026 superfood I'm going to have? Is it going to be this Icelandic seaweed?

54:58Dr. Michael Gervais:You seem like you have an attitude about LA a little bit. It's great. This is where all the food trends happen. Is that the case? Interesting. It is. A lot of food trends happen here. A lot of food myths happen here as well. So it's the good and the bad often starts here. Then it goes often to London as the next big food influence place. And then if it's big in London, then it will come back to East Coast, U.S., and other things happen that way. It's really interesting. But generally, L.A. is still behind Europe in gut health. That's something I've noticed. I think your warm beer is probably winning.

55:40Dr. Michael Gervais:Okay, keep going. So we've got diversity. We've got lots of colors. We digress. Yeah, we digress. Number three is? We've done number three, which is have three ferments a day. Three ferments a day. And studies have shown that that will reduce your levels of inflammation, which we all know is crucial. Linked to chronic disease. It's linked to everything, right? Mental health, it's linked to. It's linked to physical health. It's linked to longevity, heart disease, immunity, you name it. In the Western world, we have low levels of inflammation that they simply don't have in underdeveloped countries.

56:14Dr. Michael Gervais:Low levels of chronic inflammation. Chronic inflammation. And on the nutritional blood draw, what do you look for for a marker for inflammation? There's either one called a high sensitive CRP level. That's C-reactive protein. C-reactive protein. That's often not sensitive enough. And the other one is something called glycate, which is a metabolite. It's not very well known. It's only used in research, but that's what we did in our Zoe studies. and that's why we used as when we see like what happens after you eat some carbohydrates or you have too much fat in your blood, your glycate will go up progressively after these meals.

56:56So you're getting these little peaks of inflammation after bad food and that builds up over time so that you're getting these low levels. But we know that many things contribute to inflammation including stress and past trauma and pollution and everything else. So it's a pretty good marker of your environment and what you're doing. So get your fermented foods. You can get three fermented foods a day. And don't forget, we haven't discussed cheese. If you can find real cheese, right, not the Kraft slice or the cheese whiz or the stuff in the tubes. You get fermented from that. Hard or soft? Does it matter to you?

57:33It doesn't matter as long as it's real and it has microbes in it and it's going to go off. Parmesan versus brie. They both have high levels of fermentation. In my book, I surveyed lots of foods, and even Philadelphia cream cheese, one of the most popular ones, has three microbe species in it. So most cheese is actually healthy for you. And despite the fat content, despite what we've been told, that should be part of your people's diet if they want to get another ferment. Real cheese, not packaged cheese for the most. Nothing that comes too hyper-packaged, that has a shelf life of two years, you know that that's not real.

58:11Dr. Michael Gervais:And low-fat cheese, the processed low-fat cheese. No fat. You don't want that. You don't want frozen cheese. You don't want most frozen pizza cheese. That's analog cheese. It's fake cheese. Yeah. So it's real stuff. You may have to pay a bit more for it. It's very hard to get it in the U.S., but raw milk cheese has even more microbes. Sheep versus cow? Doesn't matter. They're both great. And goat is also good. So it doesn't matter what the original milk is. Sheep and goat work way better on my gut. Thank God. Maybe you look at me like I'm crazy, but like. Well, yeah. I like the look. You know, like, oh, I've heard this before.

58:52Everyone, yeah. Did I tell you we're in LA? Yeah, you're in LA, so you can say whatever you like. Everyone's got some allergy, so I know that. Or intolerance. I'm used to it now. That's fine. But, you know, we weren't designed to eat cow's milk for the rest of adulthood. 80 % of the world's population can't drink milk. But you ferment it, you break it down to small bits. Most of the world can eat fermented milk.

59:19Dr. Michael Gervais:When would you recommend kids stop drinking milk? If they're growing fast enough, then probably they don't need it. It's quite good for promoting growth. But if you give too much, there is some evidence that the Dutch kids are growing too quickly and too tall and they're having lots of fractures when they're older. So sometimes these - Are they drinking too much milk? The Dutchies? They drink, yeah, three times more than any other country. Is that right? Yeah, you go to a university campus there and they have it on tap behind the bar. I find the consistency to be nauseating. So I don't think adults should be really drinking milk.

59:56There's no evidence now that it is healthy. We used to believe it was good at women at the menopause and all this kind of stuff, but all the latest science shows that's not true. So it's only good when it's fermented. And I only have it when it's in a fermented form, like a yogurt or a cheese.

1:00:11Dr. Michael Gervais:Let's go back on the fermented food. The kraut is like one scoop, like one spoonful, one forkful. Like how much are we talking about throughout a day? We don't really know. I mean, there isn't the science yet to say what's the minimum amount you need. The studies that have been done have used portions like a small bowl or a cup. Yeah. So it's not a huge amount. Right, yeah. And it's something you can add to your meal rather than it being the meal itself. I put it on top of things. That's all you need to do. Just add a bit of color to your plate. That's what I do. That's what I do. Okay. So a little cup in the corner, add a bit of kraut to it.

1:00:49That's my portion. My breakfast is a mixture of Greek yogurt and kefir. Oh, you blend the two together? I blend the two together because I find Greek yogurt a bit too solid and I find the kefir a bit too runny. And I recommend that to anyone who thinks kefir is a bit too sour as well. It sort of softens it. And so I put that together with some nuts and berries. That's my breakfast. But I've got my two ferments and I've got a really good start to the day.

1:01:15Dr. Michael Gervais:Throw a little chia on there. Now you've got another superfood. Yeah. We're in LA. Okay. I do that. A little chia on there is good. Some nuts. And sometimes if I'm - I put my daily 30 on there, actually. Do you? Yeah. Because that trumps your chia, see? I can't wait to get to the daily 30. Okay. And then kombucha, per your book, not all kombuchas are the same. And so I'm not making my own kombucha. I am buying one that's artisanal, if you will. But then, like I said, we've got on tap here at the Mastery Lab, we've got a kombucha tap. And I mean, this is one that you buy kind of off the shelf. I'll have you take a look at it.

1:01:49Dr. Michael Gervais:But should we be wary of the kombuchas that we buy off the shelf in the US, like a Whole Foods or one of those markets that has slews of kombucha? Yeah, I think you should be wary. but at the same time realized, well, is this better than what I was drinking before? So is this better than a regular soda? Probably yes. Does it have too much sugar in it or does it have artificial sweeteners in it? Oh, yeah, maybe it does. So it's all relative. Most mass-produced kombuchas that can go all over California or over the U.S. have to have long shelf lives. So you think, how does a live microbe and yeast producing CO2 gas exist in a bottle or a can when it can't be refrigerated all the time?

1:02:37It can't. So they've either killed them. Say most commercial kombuchas either have dead microbes in them or they're filtered out. So they have this microfilter so none of the actual little bugs can get through. And so they've just got the soup they're in. they'll still be giving you some benefits. So all the recent studies show that dead microbes, whether it's in dead kefir or in dead kombucha or any other form, still have some health benefits for individuals. And they've done the same with probiotics. They've killed some of them and given people dead microbes as capsules. And amazingly, they work.

1:03:21In some cases, better than the live form, which is really strange. but in most cases not quite as well. And I think we have to still say we don't know the evidence here, but suddenly this opens up this idea that dead ferments could be good for us and could be why sourdough bread has some advantages. So we're going back to the sourdough. Of course, it's baked in an oven. Everything's killed because if you heat anything above 65 degrees centigrade, everything's dead. But eating these dead bugs can provide some benefits. And what's really interesting is how do they work? How does a dead bug help you?

1:03:57It's a bit like a dead vaccine. We think it goes into the small intestine and then tickles your immune cells. And that sends signals to the rest of your body to lower inflammation and calm things down. So I think we have to keep an open mind on these products. and you know if you can't get the very artisan one that's local to you yeah have the mass-produced one it will still probably be giving you some benefit oddly like it sparks the idea that again

1:04:25Dr. Michael Gervais:back to your book ferment is that if you are partners with somebody that drinks coffee which my partner she's cuban she drinks plenty of coffee and you give her a kiss that somehow you might be getting some of that in your gut as well yes you'll be getting the microbe microbe that's It's called Lawsonobacter that is a very fussy microbe that only eats coffee. So if we did the Zoe Stuhl's test on you, we likely defined reasonable levels of Lawsonobacter because you have a partner that has coffee. But your partner would be five or ten times higher. Yeah, right, okay. Because your one doesn't get a lot to eat.

1:05:03I don't know how many kisses you're getting, but it's probably not as much as drinking three cups of coffee a day. Yeah, okay. And so we do transmit our microbes between ourselves, our partners, our family, even our dogs to some extent. So there's much more crossover than we think. It's quite a flexible system.

1:05:23Dr. Michael Gervais:Since we're talking about poop, scooping your poop is kind of the kind of classic test for gut biome. I think it's probably worth, before we finish off the other main factors, we've got three of the main kind of principles. When I first came across that research where they were inserting feces into mice, and you'll do a better job of explaining it, and that was changing their health profile, I was like, whoa, that was a remarkable, groundbreaking bit of research. Can you set up that research and what the findings were that if they were interesting to you as well? Yeah, so this really a lot of breakthroughs, as you said, in the microbiome came from the ability to take a stool sample from diseased or healthy humans and put them into special mouse models that were these so-called sterile mice that had been raised in a microbial vacuum, very clever systems.

1:06:16systems. And these mice didn't develop very well, but they could keep them alive. And they gave a transplant of these microbes into these mice that had nothing in there at all. So suddenly they were getting these human microbes in them, and you could observe what happened to those mice. And the first experiments they did, they took some twins. One was obese, This one was skinny, and they gave those to the mice. And sure enough, the one that got the obese microbes got fatter than the other one.

1:06:49Dr. Michael Gervais:It's wild. Same with anxiety, same with depression. Or anxiety. I don't think depression was one of them. They find it hard to get a perfect model of mouse depression. But anxiety. Anxiety, definitely. And the effects were even bigger compared to the obese model. So we think the effect actually on the brain is bigger than on weight. They've replicated those anxiety studies in mice multiple times. Just to be clear, you take stool from an anxious person, and you put that stool into a sterile environment, call it this mouse in particular, that mouse becomes anxious. Correct. And then you can actually transfer from that mouse to another mouse and make it anxious.

1:07:33And you can reverse, if you then give them antibiotics, you can actually reverse it as well and calm them down.

1:07:40Dr. Michael Gervais:Is that also the case where if you took a stool from a very calm, grounded person, I'm using grounded as a non-medical term, and then had an anxious mouse and then inserted the stool from the calm person, would that alone do it? Yes. Yeah. And I haven't read that research. Yeah, no, it works both ways. It works both ways. So, and it is remarkably consistent, these effects on the brain. So let's stay here one more turn, is that if somebody is struggling with anxiety, depression, a mental health condition of the such, and we are missing, or if you, I'll speak to the listener viewer right now, if you have anxiety or depression and you're feeling those symptoms, whether you're in a medical diagnosis of it or not, take a look at your gut health.

1:08:29100 % this is something I'm researching deeply at the moment and the research is overwhelming that the state of your gut plays a huge role in your mental state and this is borne out by numerous studies comparing people with mental health conditions against normals looking at their gut health virtually all cases you know there's abnormalities and we know that they've done randomized trials of probiotics and gut-friendly diets that improve people with mild to moderate depression more than antidepressants.

1:09:04Dr. Michael Gervais:It's a remarkable bit of research. It doesn't mean that there's not a place for traditional medicine for folks that like, however, and I'll take a strong position with you, I think, on this, is that if you are not investigating gut health as part of a mental health condition, you are missing a massive, massive contributor to overall function. Yeah, it doesn't matter whether you respond to antidepressants or not. If you can improve your diet and your gut, you're going to improve your outcomes massively. And you remember about at least a third of people don't respond at all to standard antidepressants or don't respond to talk therapy.

1:09:43So I think this should be, apart for everybody, regardless of whether they're on drugs or not or on therapy. And my view has been hardened on this because of some trials we've been doing with Zoe. We're unusual in terms of a direct-to-consumer company that actually does science. So we've done three trials. One was a trial of just going on the Zoe program diet where we get personalized nutrition and they improve their diet along these principles. and we saw big improvements compared to the control group in terms of mood and energy and hunger, right? And they happened before anything else. We did a study I was going to talk about where we gave our prebiotic, this daily 30 mix that's now commercially available, and compared that to a control and to a probiotic arm.

1:10:38And before we saw any changes in the gut microbiome, And after a few days, mood and energy improved significantly. Self-report. Yes, it was self-report. But there was a dose-response effect as well. So the people that dropped out, you know, had much less effects. You can't really measure any other way in psychiatry. So that really supports all this animal data that one of the first effects of changing your gut health is actually on mood and energy. And as you know, energy is particularly a sign of neuroinflammation. When you say energy, what do you mean by energy? It's a perception of how much fatigue you have, whether you're dozing off at the end of the day, you need a nap, you're just not motivated to get out of your chair and go to the gym or meet friends.

1:11:30It's hard to separate that from mild depression. They do go together. But it's a common complaint and it's not something that most physicians really ask patients about. But it's something I've got interested in because it's so striking in our trials.

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1:14:01Dr. Michael Gervais:If you take your work seriously, take the conditions you work in seriously too. Right now, ProtonVPN is offering you 70 % off a two-year plan when you go to protonvpn.com slash mastery. That's proton, P-R-O-T-O-N-V-P-N.com slash mastery for 70 % off your two-year plan. Again, that's protonvpn.com slash mastery. there is one solution which is like eat more diversity eat more color and skittles doesn't mean color m &ms is not color right we're talking about yeah we're talking about the real color okay so that's going to solve it you're going to eat less packaged foods if you're eating more real foods there's going to be a gut health which is going to have for most people i should say i think it's 50 plus percentage would be an easy number a net positive impact on brain and mood correct Yeah, roughly.

1:14:56Dr. Michael Gervais:Okay, so there's one indicator. The second is knowing how to modulate and work with stress. Stress is always part of the human condition. And there's different types of stress, acute stress, moderate stress, chronic stress. And we're really talking about the inability to meet acute stress with high skill. So when there's an acute stressor that takes place and a person lacks the ability to meet that demand, then it kind of slides eventually over to moderate slides, over eventually to chronic stress. And what we're really talking about is chronic stress is an underlying factor for so many conditions.

1:15:35Dr. Michael Gervais:And breathing, meditation, exercise, smiling, laughing, holding hands, being in nature, magnesium baths. Okay, lots of things that you can do to modulate stress well, Optimism training and, and, and. Okay. So if you did some of those training recommendations, you would also have a gut health without a benefit, I think, a net positive increase in gut health. If you did both together, quality food, quality psychological kind of buffering with acute stress, I think there's a winning combination in that. Yeah, I think you've got to see this as a two-way. you've got inflammation in your gut which can make brain disorders worse and you've got things like stresses which can make your gut inflammation worse so it's a two-way street it's hard to know in a way where to start this idea because you've got to try and come up with some holistic view of everything from you know some people believe that childhood traumas uh caused long-term stress and there's some evidence, you know more than I do, but there's, you know, that this is the case that can cause physiological stress levels, which means your immune system is just primed more so that it's going to react more to things than it would.

1:16:54Dr. Michael Gervais:Sympathetic dominance, as we might say. So, you know, if you had this whole history of these traumas and then you got a bad diet on top of that, which may be trebling those rates that you would have had because of those incidents, is just stacking up all these features that continue to drive this physiological inflammation, which is the signal to your brain to be stressed. That's right. So it's all rather circular, and they do connect up. And it does start to, I think this is really important, because it starts to link psychological theory with something hard, physiological that you can measure.

1:17:34And the gut is probably reflecting a lot of this stuff that, you know, as well as transmitting stuff to the brain, it's also sensing what the brain is telling it as well.

1:17:48Dr. Michael Gervais:It's such a wonderful emblem for the interaction between what we would call a top-down and a bottom-up approach. The bottom-up, meaning the gut in this case, is telling the brain some stuff and influencing the psychology. And psychology is going to tell the brain some stuff that influenced the gut. And the choices that you're making about how you're framing a situation and the choices you're making about what you're ingesting into the ecosystem, you know, it's a beautiful harmony. I've been really interested in nutrition for all of those reasons. and I think it's near negligent to not talk about optimization or becoming your very best let alone lifespan healthspan longevity of course those are great topics without including gut health nutrition and psychology as part of the narrative no it's clear now that it once you start to think about what's going on in your gut and that incredible axis, you know, to the brain that goes in both directions.

1:18:45And the fact we've evolved millions of years to have these microbes that are in a way telling the brain what's going on, you know, and if we see that that way, the brain sometimes, in a lot of our common mental health problems, I think are the brain misinterpreting what's going on. It says, hey, I should be depressed or stressed because my gut tells me I'm ill. Maybe the brain can't say whether I've got the flu or I've just been eating lots of junk food and crap for the last six months.

1:19:16Dr. Michael Gervais:Or flipping through your phone. If I'm on social media for, I don't know, longer than 15 minutes, I feel something. I feel like, this is a nauseous feeling that I have. You've had too many Big Macs. Is that a similar feeling? Yeah, right. Yeah. Okay. Let's hit principle four, which is intermittent fasting. Yes. And what we're talking about here is time-restricted eating, where the evidence is all piling up for this is really beneficial for people because it is eating the same amount of food but in a limited time. It's not about dieting or anything else. It's just saying, okay, I'll just be careful when I have my first and my last meal of the day.

1:19:52And if you can do that in a 10-hour window, ideally, you know, it could be a bit flexible around that, but leaving 14 hours overnight, that seems to be pretty optimum in terms of how you can do it but also helps your gut. And the reason that it helps your metabolism, helps some people lose weight, a lot of that is due to the fact that it's helping your gut repair itself. And getting us out of this cycle of late night snacking, doing what the food companies want us to do, eat seven, eight times a day. So you're not giving your gut time to rest, repair the gut wall, and realize that there's a whole other defense team comes out at night from your gut microbes, completely different set of species, and they just clean up, and they clean your mucus layer, and they smarten everything up.

1:20:41And the better that is, the better your metabolism. And that is really important for your immune health.

1:20:45Dr. Michael Gervais:And you can get to that autophagial process within a 10-hour window of restricted eating? I thought autophagy didn't happen until like, I don't know, 36 hours in there. We're not talking autophagy here. We're really talking basic cleaning operations, that the microbes are essentially eating your mucus layer, and so they're tidying up this, and your body is able to sleep. And it's all about circadian rhythms, so that your gut is in the same circadian rhythm as you are. And the more we look at it, the more important it is, is everything is aligned. If you, just before going to bed, you know, you have a Snickers bar or some cookies, you're totally confused.

1:21:26You're not letting your gut sleep at all. And so, you know, you're getting the effects of insomnia in your gut. That's the way to be thinking about it. So it's a much more holistic view than this concept of autophagy, which is a bit reductionist because it's just one of the many systems we have for being healthy. Which is the clearing out of the senescent, the quote-unquote bad cells. But we know that, you know, the better you sleep, the better your circadian rhythms are, the more you can control this kind of repair processes of the body. and it's repairing all the cells in your body, you know, whether senescent ones or cancerous ones.

1:22:01It's allowing your immune system to be optimally surveying everything. So I think it all fits in. And in those studies, you know, we did a study on 140 ,000 people who are ZOE members in the UK, and they just said, hey, I'll give it a try. And a third of people loved it, and they're still doing it, you know, two years later. A third hated it and said, I don't want to do this. I can't control when I stop eating. And about a third are in the middle and are still doing it a bit. So it's not for everybody, but I think it's definitely in there that if you can do it, you will feel a lot better, and it can definitely shift your mood and energy levels.

1:22:41Dr. Michael Gervais:I intermittently do intermittent fasting, and I search for that 12 to 14-hour restricted zone. I like it. like i really i think that i feel i feel better when i do it but i intermittently do it it's not seven days a week it's more like three or four all the things i'm talking about you shouldn't you try for 80 of the time right there you go um because what you want to do is sustain this for decades not just for a few weeks in january you know when you're changing habits that's we've made that mistake so often as humans that we just try and be good for a few weeks and then we break it once because you know some friends come around and you you know and uh take you out for a meal or whatever and it's all over so it's really important to have a social life really important to not be too restrictive in your habits and i think we can get too obsessed with this 80 % of the time is fine you know if you fall off the wagon for a couple of weeks doesn't matter go on and do it.

1:23:42You know, I find, you know, if I've got something important like a podcast and it's 11 in the morning, much better if I haven't eaten. Me too. I'm sharper. And, you know, and as long as you're engaged, it's easy to do. If you're hanging around on a Sunday by the fridge, it's quite hard, right?

1:23:59Dr. Michael Gervais:So I've got three things left. I want to hit the last principle. I want to talk about alcohol and then I want to hit us on probiotics. Okay. Let's get the last principles out of the way, shall we? So it's quality, not quantity. Ignore calories and go for whole plant foods. Avoid ultra-processed foods. That's a pretty clear one for the reasons we've already discussed. The other one is pivot your protein. Everyone's obsessed with protein at the moment. It's still see that trend, you know, continuing for another year or so. But let's try and focus not on total amount of protein, but get quality protein.

1:24:37The average American player has twice as much protein as they need. But they're not getting off the right protein. And by the right protein, I mean, let's get things like legumes, which are packed with protein and they're also really high in fiber because we also know that 95 % of Americans are deficient in fiber. Get those protein goals in, but also be sensible and switch rather than just having it as powders. Start getting, you know, get those beans in the system. So I think these are some general principles that are really helpful in thinking about everything that you can do to help your gut health.

1:25:13Dr. Michael Gervais:Awesome. I love principle-based approaches to everything. So thank you for those. Hit us on alcohol really quickly, your take on alcohol in general. There's a fermentation involved in it, which I'm sure you like that. But there's also so much concern about kidney and other organ health, including brain health, when it comes to alcohol. Yes, there's no doubt that alcohol is bad for us. Okay, it's a neurotoxin, it's bad for our brains, increases our risk of cancer, etc. Many populations do have alcohol as part of their culture, and some of the most long-lived populations in the planet have a culture of drinking wine, for example.

1:25:53Lots of centenarians will drink lots of wine and be healthy, so there's a slight mismatch here. I'm someone who does drink alcohol. I drink 10 to 14 units a week, mostly wine, mostly red wine. What is a unit? A glass. A glass. A small glass. A more European-sized glass, not an American-sized glass. 12 ounces of wine. Yeah. You can have half a bottle and a glass in some bars here, I think. And the reason is that red wine is actually healthy for your gut. So it might be overall bad for your health slightly, but it does because the grape skin is in contact with water. Those polyphenols come out and they're very high polyphenol foods.

1:26:37So generally red wine drinkers have healthier guts than non-drinkers. So we did a study on this. But I do think we need to be careful when we say, so I think drinking one glass of wine a day is fine. There are risks involved, but I worked it out in my book. you get far more risk by driving an hour a day in your car. And if you're drinking one glass of wine, you need to be drinking about a million bottles before one person's going to die because of that. So when people talk about there is an increased risk, there's no safe level of drinking, they never say compared to what? Driving. Which I think is a pretty good thing to say.

1:27:18You don't have to drive. You know, you could take... Right, yeah. But you don't have to drink, but you could do. So I think we have to be sensible and realize that, yeah, it's dangerous for many people. Alcohol is a drug. But for many people, it's important for their social cohesion. Going out in Mediterranean countries, a lot of social contact revolves around it. It makes them more sociable, makes them live longer. So there are other advantages. So I attract a lot of criticism when I say this, but I think it is important to get perspective. I'm an epidemiologist, so I do talk in terms of risk.

1:27:54It's something I do know about.

1:27:56Dr. Michael Gervais:Red wine versus gin versus wine versus tequila. Spirits are bad. So they have no benefits on gut health. Less sugar in, call it a gin versus red wine. Yeah, but the difference is not that important. And so just having that distilled spirit means it's got nothing really beneficial in it. And interestingly, we were talking about postbiotics, these dead microbes. There are some beers that have yeast in them, that dead yeast in the bottom of sediment, some Belgian beers, et cetera, and Guinness could actually have some health benefits to counteract the alcohol. They're going to love you if you find some of that.

1:28:35That's really funny. Well, they are doing some studies now because of this new idea. And interestingly, because this postbiotic thing is becoming real, these dead microbes, it's one reason we put dead kombucha into our Daily 30. We added it recently. So I think we're going to see many more dead microbes or dead fermented foods added to normal food because it's so much easier to deal with a dead product than something that's live. So this is, I think, a big trend for next year.

1:29:02Dr. Michael Gervais:Dr. Spector, I could talk to you for a long time. I'm getting a hook from our producer that we are way over time. So thumbs up or thumbs down on probiotics versus prebiotics or both? They both work, but our studies show that prebiotics like Daily 30 have a much bigger effect on the gut microbiome. I love the approach you're taking that is principle-based, evidence-informed, research-backed, and very practical. So thank you for carving out the time. I'm wishing you the flat-out best on your book. It's a great read. I've really enjoyed it because it also teaches how to do fermenting. You know, the benefits, a position on gut health and super practical, like low alcohol content wines, red wines included, you know, and and and and.

1:29:49Dr. Michael Gervais:So I just want to say thank you for your contribution to human health. And I've really appreciated your work. That's right. I love it. And it's been fun. Yeah, thank you. Next time on Finding Mastery, we're joined by Dr. Angela Duckworth, psychologist and bestselling author of Grit. In this conversation, Angela and Mike go beyond perseverance to explore what it really takes to sustain effort over time. How purpose shapes resilience when pushing harder helps or harms and why passion is something we develop, not discover. They also dig into thoughtful insights on parenting and how to support growth without pressure.

1:30:26Join us Wednesday, February 18th at 9 a.m. Pacific.

1:30:32All right.

1:30:33Dr. Michael Gervais:Thank you so much for diving into another episode of Finding Mastery with us. Our team loves creating this podcast and sharing these conversations with you. We really appreciate you being part of this community. And if you're enjoying the show, the easiest no-cost way to support is to hit the subscribe or follow button wherever you're listening. Also, if you haven't already, please consider dropping us a review on Apple or Spotify. We are incredibly grateful for the support and feedback. If you're looking for even more insights, we have a newsletter we send out every Wednesday. Punch over to findingmastery.com slash newsletter to sign up.

1:31:08Dr. Michael Gervais:The show wouldn't be possible without our sponsors and we take our recommendations seriously. And the team is very thoughtful about making sure we love and endorse every product you hear on the show. If you want to check out any of our sponsor offers you heard about in this episode, you You can find those deals at finding mastery.com slash sponsors. And remember, no one does it alone. The door here at Finding Mastery is always open to those looking to explore the edges and the reaches of their potential so that they can help others do the same. So join our community, share your favorite episode with a friend, and let us know how we can continue to show up for you.

1:31:45Dr. Michael Gervais:Lastly, as a quick reminder, information in this podcast and from any material on the Finding Mastery website and social channels is for information purposes only. If you're looking for meaningful support, which we all need, one of the best things you can do is to talk to a licensed professional. So seek assistance from your healthcare providers. Again, a sincere thank you for listening. Until next episode, be well, think well, keep exploring.