You’ve Heard Gut Advice Before. But Not Like This | 5 Surprising Gut Health Fixes | Dr. Emily Leeming

0:00Welcome to Live Well Be Well, a show to help high performers improve their health and well-being.

0:10If someone was like, now, okay, I'm going to finish this episode, I'm going to go and do five things to implement over the next couple of weeks, what would you want those five things to be? First off, I'd say focus on fibre. Fibre has been, you know, forgotten and thinking it all just kind of some shoddy reputation of being bland and boring. you know just something that helps you have a nice smooth poo yes it does that and we should be giving it you know lots of credit for that um but it has so many benefits and i joke about it as being a bit like um uh you know when lois lane hangs out with clark kent from superman you know she just thinks he's some kind of boring uh well kind of nice but slightly dull you know man um and he's actually superman flying around in this cape and i think fiber really is that kind of closest thing to a superfood it's not just helping with our gut microbiome but it's great for our heart health um it's great for our metabolic health you know there's so many things that we can be um you know doing more but for our gut microbiome it is really its favorite food and 93 percent of us are not eating enough fiber so that's a huge stat i wrote that down earlier because you mentioned that in our five questions i haven't brought it up yet but it did shock me That's gone up since I last looked at the statistics, actually, which kind of surprises me because I feel that we speak more about health than ever before.

1:27I don't know why it's going up. On average, we're eating about 20 grams of fiber a day in the UK. That's slightly up from kind of 18, which it was before. That's a deficit of kind of 35, 40 percent. So I think just for me, that signals that, you know, that is one really simple, impactful change that you can make for your health. and the beauty of fiber-rich foods, they're also densely packed with many other nutrients that are going to mean that you can naturally meet your nutritional needs in many other ways as well. So that is probably my first one. Second one, I'm like, okay, we've talked about fiber, but we just don't seem to know day to day what the high fiber foods are.

2:07I think we're very quick at knowing what the high protein foods are. I'll say to someone, list it off the top of your head. They'll say meat, eggs, you know, fish. Can we do the same for fibre? And I actually say, you know, whoever's listening, you know, please, you know, think, is anything coming to mind? And no, we don't have to be stuck on, you know, dry, justy bran flakes or kind of bland wholemeal bread. Fibre is found in fruits, vegetables, beans, legumes, whole grains, nuts and seeds. So we've got this wide variety of fibre and lots of different fibre types that help support our health.

2:43so I talk a lot in the book about what I call the BGBGs which is a little bit like you know the BGs you know 70s band you know Saturday night fever so we're throwing our gut microbes at party and this affects it so BGBGS so beans greens berries grains as in whole grains and then seeds as in nuts and seeds and actually of those it's the beans whole grains and nuts and seeds that tend to contain the most fiber so i think that's quite surprising often because i think yes we want more fruits and vegetables but to make it really easy for us to hit that 30 grams of fiber a day that's recommended if we are focusing on having a handful of nuts a day as a snack you know i keep uh them in a jar by the my kettle so i can kind of see it when i'm making a cup of tea um if we can getting you know berries most days also contain you know lots of polyphenols are really important for our brain um they tend to be the most kind of fiber rich fruit you know frozen berries chuck them onto your breakfast have them as a snack or have fresh you know whatever works for you and then oh sorry i feel like i was talking about berries and beans i wanted the wrong b you've got that there's an extra b um but beans you know we could be eating so much more of just half a can contains seven grams of fiber so that for most people could just by adding that in that's you know you're already nearly hitting your your 30 grams we just need a little kind of extra extra top up um and then the whole grains you know i think when i people say i really want to invest in my gut health i say if you're going to spend money on something spend it on the things that are going to make it easier for you to eat healthily so that could be kind of um you know those pre-cooked sachets of spelt or grains you know that that for me is like um you know if i'm going to splurge on something it's those kind of things um because they are expensive um you don't have to you can you know buy them in bulk and pre-cook them but that's where i'd be putting my investment if you're going to spend money you know those simple things are going to make it easier for you one billion people worldwide are deficient in this nutrient that so many of you guys might not be aware of and women if you're listening you are more risk of being deficient in this nutrient.

5:03So I'm going to first of all explain what the physical symptoms are. If you have cold hands and feet, pale skin, extreme lack of energy or fatigue, then you might be suffering with iron deficiency or anemia. Now first off, please go to your GP to get your iron levels checked. Secondly, please explore a good iron supplement. Many people that come to me are worried about taking iron supplementation because it can cause constipation or GI distress. that's why I'm so incredibly proud to be partnering for this episode with Spartone the number one iron rich water supplement now I've personally been using these for years the reason why is because they are naturally sourced highly absorbable iron that means it's much more gentle on your stomach there's no harsh tablets it's just one naturally sourced ingredient that works very well you can pick it up in boots or buy online at amazon but please do not ignore this it is really critical to make sure your iron levels are in check so we've got fiber yes two three four and five okay and then we talk about diversity um i'm actually not a big fan of the 30 plants a week message um the reason for that is that i think it's very individual i think if somebody really like sand they find it easy then great and i think the message of diversity is really important we do want a range of different things but i prefer to talk about colors of different fruits and vegetables giving you lots of different you know talk about polyphenols you know which are also good for the gut microbiome lots of different types of fibers and also thinking about food groups across the day The reason I'm not that hot on the 30 plants a week message is that it's actually just based on one study, which is a kind of guesstimated survey question.

7:01So it's not even rigorously correct to dietary data. It's literally, you know, how many plants do you think you've eaten across the week? And the people who said that they ate 30 plants or more likely were probably just eating more fruits and vegetables overall. and I think when that when practically for many people writing down every single plant you eat every single day can feel really overwhelming and especially you know if you're like oh well you know I ate a tomato on Monday so I can't have it on Wednesday and then you've got loads of food waste left over and it can be really expensive so I think if you find that works for you great but don't feel like it's the be all and end all kind of take the message the core message which is yes let's have a more diverse diet we know that but but again finding that sweet spot for for for you and your lifestyle and not feeling like you have to write everything single thing down no that's not healthy yeah so so fiber diversity diversity and then we're going to talk about so i mentioned about polyphenols so polyphenols are effectively these uh kind of plant um compounds that give the colour to many fruits and vegetables that we know and love.

8:12And we think of them almost as acting a little bit like how fibre does and feeding the gut microbes. And so by getting a range of different colours, you're then getting a range of different polyphenols and not just great for your gut, also great for your brain as well. And we see kind of studies with particularly the ones found in berries, for example, really helping to support your kind of cognition and keeping you feeling alert and focused and then I think we'd really have to talk about that stress element right yeah and talking about breathing and breathing number four what would you say number four is uh so number four well I feel like I mean I think we could talk about fish I mean there's so many things fermented foods no wait you just said stress did you not think that should be one of them well one of them is Yes, where are we at for...

9:02So we've basically got fibre, diversity, polyphenols. Yes, so we need two more. So we need two more. Yeah, so we've got fermented foods and stress. Let's do that. Fermented foods, yeah, but you've got to narrow me in. Can't be stress. I'm being really stressed now. It's got to be applicable. Are we just doing food? Yes, yes. No, it's got to be... No, no, we can be anything. Oh, yes, okay. The five things that people can do for their gut health. Yes, yes, I was going to say breathing techniques. Breathing technique. Okay, right. These are our five. this is what we're doing when live our be well gut health there we go okay so let's go to fermented them fermented foods the research um there was a great study that came out a couple of years ago that showed that six servings of fermented foods a day is linked with no actually kind of caused increased microbial diversity so a more healthy gut microbiome and lowered measures of inflammation um so that i feels i think very overwhelming for people six servings kind of oh my gosh you know i've got to fit all these in actually that you know i think often with these studies how we do them is that we tend to make them you know quite a big change so that we can make sure that we can see an impact across what is a relatively short period of time which is a couple of you know weeks or months so actually making those changes even if they're smaller but more consistently over time So let's say months or years, even if it's kind of one or two servings, it's still going to have a benefit.

10:28We still see this in, you know, and we see this in other studies that, you know, even 100 grams of kind of live microbial foods, which can not just be, you know, your fermented foods, but also we talked about, you know, fruits and vegetables containing live microbes, is also kind of seen to be a great thing. in terms of the research when we talk about individual fermented foods it tends to be that kefir has the most research behind it so if you're starting on a fermented food start with kefir it yeah has has the most impact from what we know so far in terms of how much research has been done kombucha is an interesting one because i think it gets a lot of air time but actually we've only had a handful of very small kind of human studies on it um so kind of just to kind of um kind of bring that into context and then we want to talk about and then we want to talk about breathing and breathing i've made you pick one because i think stress is such a encompassing word that but it's like what's the one thing that we can do for our gut health and so breathing ether is one of the key levers that we can pull i mean breathing is essential to be alive but breathing techniques I think when we're you know we can't avoid stress right and for me it's um it's very much a breathing techniques are a great tool to help us manage that stress um and I really like breathing techniques versus you know I think people are a fan of yoga great go for it but actually you want something that you know you can use right in here and now whether you are standing in the queue you know at the supermarket and wanting to kind of probably you know maybe punch the person in front of you or you're feeling incredibly, or you're in a meeting and, you know, your blood levels are kind of rising and you're thinking, oh, God.

12:15You know, these breathing techniques, you can often, and there's so many of them you can just do and nobody notices you're doing them. Yeah. So, you know, I just think really great. There's kind of box breathing, which is effectively kind of breathing in for four, holding for four, breathing out for four, holding for four. so again really simple or just kind of letting out a really long sigh so kind of just sighing out hold it for a second and sigh out a bit more the psychological sigh it's great there we go and if these are techniques that actually the navy seals the navy seals use which for anyone who i mean i don't think anyone listening to the show thinks it's weird because it's so rooted in science but i feel like when i say that's people that go oh really like some of the toughest men on the planet use these breathing techniques to get their nervous systems regulated yeah absolutely and i think you know performance as well like you know that's exactly why they're they're getting themselves in the zone they're calming themselves down um and you know that's you know stress it's you know if we can't avoid it because everyday life can we help ourselves manage it and um and that's really kind of a key key way that i like to kind of talk about it thanks so much for listening to hear the full episode there's a link in the description