Can You Actually "Detox" Your Gut, Or Are Trendy Cleanses The Industry's Latest Cash Grab?

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1:36Alana Macfarlane:Welcome back to the podcast and today's subject is one of the most misunderstood, complicated, yet trendy subjects out there in the health and wellness world. It is, of course, gut health. But with gut health comes a wave of confusion and a wave of scientific infancy because we still don't fully understand the subject and we are learning as we go. But I have one of the best people in the game who's been studying the gut and been involved in the gut health space for the last seven years, Alana McFarlane from The Gut Stuff. She is someone who has been there, done it, and even been in the scientific studies herself with her twin so this is going to be a fascinating one where we lift the curtain on all the myths and the truths around gut health our guest today is Alana McFarlane co-founder of The Gut Stuff but you alongside your twin sister were also the chief guinea pig for leading world gut scientists and research and have spent the last seven years trying to demystify gut health and the gut and what it all really means thank you for joining me Alana thank you for having me great well let's start off with that King's College study like what happened what did you learn with the twin study yeah so um a lot and sort of medical research thankfully um but yeah I guess for further context like we were DJs so DJs on Love Island official charts all the rest of it so could not be further from health and wellness and also from working class Scotland you know brought up and deep fried pizza chips and 10 lamb and butter for lunch age 11 and so we were prime candidates for research and but I guess yeah a lot of you know the research that had been done that it goes on it can be from anything it's not just about gut health so sometimes you'd be in for a taste test and Lisa and I were just genuinely curious about what was different between us for being identical twins and so yeah a few different factors um you know i had juvenile chronic arthritis from the age of seven at least i didn't and there was just a few things throughout our health history that didn't quite match up from you know being genetically identical yeah so tim asked us if we wanted to go on this study it was actually the american gut project at times which is obviously now a big like landmark finding study um he's like do you want to have your guts analyzed i was like what's my gut what do i have to do tell me at the time we were djing at the edinburgh festival and we had this like dj battle show and we were DJing for Tia Maria at the same time.

4:10So we were drinking Tia Maria all day and then having Red Bulls to keep us up at night at 3am. So Tim was like, is there a time of the year that you can basically have only processed foods and drink alcohol? We were like Edinburgh Festival. So we did that. So for a month, we only ate processed foods and drank alcohol.

4:29Alana Macfarlane:Wow, you must have felt great. Well, as 25-year-old DJs, you were like, woohoo, let's go. Tim, you playing for my Jager bombs, amazing. Yeah, so obviously for a week it's fun and then it's not. And then for the month after that, when we came back to London, they actually put us on at the time, it was hollow fresh, but it was a high fiber plant-based diet essentially. And at any two, like one time at the study, we actually only had 30 to 40 % the same microbiome, even though we're eating the same things, living in the same house, doing the exact same thing. So this was obviously groundbreaking research for Tim and everyone else at King's, but it was groundbreaking for Lisa and I.

5:08You know, we had been brought up on, you know, doing these fad diets, Dukin diet. I don't know if you did like cabbage soup diet. No, I've never done that. This was like Closer magazine for me in my 20s. So we did every fad diet under the sun anyway, you know, and this was groundbreaking for us. Like if we can't be sold to the same diet or lifestyle as identical twins, then no one can. And then obviously as it all sort of transpired as we were going through the research that the gut was linked to so many different things, and what exactly the gut was. And 10 years ago, we talk about gut health now in 2025 or 2026 now.

5:42And people are like, oh yeah, I've heard of that. 10 years ago, that just was not the case. But that sort of started us on our journey to just shout it from the rooftops about how important gut health was and also move into this idea of sort of personalized, it's not just do what I do and that will work for you because that simply wasn't the case. Interesting.

6:01Alana Macfarlane:So did they tell you what, if 30 to 40 % was the same, where was the rest of it coming from if your diet and lifestyle was similar? Yeah so they think it's just you know something to do from when we were younger and so as I said like I had juvenile chronic arthritis from the age of seven that Lisa didn't and normally that would be hereditary and they think that was due to a course of antibiotics I took when we were three that Lisa didn't. Wow and it's still affecting you today? Yeah so So obviously, you know, and being different, you know, them being different wasn't necessarily, and at the time the technology definitely wasn't there to say, you know, whose is better, you know, even though we asked that.

6:41Yeah, but yeah, I guess it was just interesting that it can be so different. And actually the thing that really interested us was that it could be changed and it could be changed quickly. You know, our Scottish working class genes, we couldn't do much about, but actually, you know, this was something that we found, you know, overwhelming, but then very empowering.

6:58Alana Macfarlane:Interesting. okay so it's a term we do understand now but at 26 we cover gut health crisis report claims that now 68 percent of britons have a significant gut imbalance so it's a lot of people but in layman terms from what you understand now like what is a gut imbalance and why should people care yeah i guess for me the big thing was you know people think that their gut is just their stomach so they automatically think of digestion but it's actually everything from mouth to bum and then you've got the whole you know gut microbiome as well that just influences so many aspects of our health it is so important i think there's lots of impact and i don't think it's one factor you know your microbiome is influenced influenced by so many different factors everything from of course diet which you'd think would be um you know top of the list but also exercise where you were born in the world how you were fed as a baby how you were born as a baby and stress is a massive one which you know we all think we can do a lot about but it's very difficult and where we live where you live in the world and you know there's so many different factors and impacts and that can feel overwhelming but i actually think it's quite good that it's not like obsessing over one thing it's tinkering lots of different things so i think there's a lot of reasons why you know our gut health is in the state is but i hope and what we're trying to do at the gut stuff is have that education piece first to educate people around what gut health is and then hopefully they can make sort of steps to to make it better okay and so now one in five gp visits to do with the gut do you think the rise in gut health like we can't change what happened when we were babies or kids or how we were born but what do you think the rise of gut health today is about like what's the biggest issue you see i think some gut symptoms is massive but i think people also we rarely tune into our bodies right unless we're ill or we're hungover and so we actually developed like a gut diary it used to be literally writing down but it's now electronic and where you actually write down all your symptoms and those symptoms are obviously going to be you know what you're eating but not obsessively counting that but also things like stress and you know moods exercise factoring all that in as well because you know it's very very difficult for gps just now most gut health issues are multifactorial and there's lots of things at play and you maybe have i think it's eight minutes you have in gp surgery now so to speak about that is very very difficult and actually you know what i found as we you know went into this is actually having the language to communicate about about that you know it's not just talking about poo of course but just having you know that language to say how you feel when and and actually so we developed the diaries and we also have a lot of information um on our website and others to actually how to go to gp with a gut issue to try and get the most out of out of that time okay interesting but there's no one single factor you would point to as the biggest issue today no there's too many yeah okay well have you got you gotta give me one but the biggest like myth or misconception about gut health yeah I think people think they want to cleanse or detox their gut.

10:13And the only thing that can detox is your liver. So I think we need to get rid of this thing of, you know, having colonics and flushing out all the back. That's just not what it's about. So I think that is a big factor for me, is, yeah, thinking that something where our gut needs to be cleansed or detoxed.

10:32Alana Macfarlane:Can't do it. No. how do you feel about 99 kills all bacteria cleaning products in your kitchen because that's the microscopic world in our house not just our food that affects our gut yeah totally and it's the same when you can apply you know getting out and dirt and out and nature and all the rest of it i think you know it's been very difficult since covid to from a bacteria perspective i think in the 80s as 80s babies we were told all bacteria is bad you know death all blah blah and then add covid to the mix where we absolutely had to sanitize and all rest of it i think people actually don't know that not all bacteria is bad so i think that's difficult when it comes to things like household products and then yes i think you know we do have to do all these microscopic things but i think like microscopic and you know these habitual changes across our whole lifestyle but i think it can start to feel overwhelming for people when you're like oh you're cleaning products and then as soon as you step outside and then do this and then you're right and then that's why people now have and I believe we actually do wellness fatigue they're just going oh fuck it I literally you're telling me too much and too many I think we need to like sort of draw it back a bit and go what one thing can I do for the next fortnight and what's practical and what's affordable for me and what's accessible I mean you know you're all about the same as we are you know it's got to be affordable and accessible for a mass market otherwise you know you're preaching to the converted essentially yeah yeah yeah Yeah, exactly.

11:57Alana Macfarlane:It's a tough, complicated game. It's behavioral as well. Most of it is behavioral when it comes to like actually implementing change on a mass market. Yeah. So of your journey, because you've been preaching about gut health for seven years, like what's the biggest thing you've learned on that journey of how people can like actually make change? Yeah, I think it is. I think before wellness was sort of seen as this thing that you did two weeks before you went on holiday. So, you know, seeing health as just not being ill and wellness is like, oh, I'm going on holiday, I need to look good. Do you know what I mean?

12:34So that for me, that was very short term fixes and fluctuated across the year of when you could afford a holiday. But I think now it's, for me, it's very different. It's about, you know, those, it's not about, you know, completely overhauling. And I was like, me, it's like, right, I'm not eating for five days. And then I'm doing like just ridiculous, extreme stuff. yeah but i actually think the small habitual things over a long period of time which isn't sexy it's not a magic pill it's very hard to commercialize um that is the things that will make a difference long term and actually you know if you want a glass of red overnight crack on but just know what the consequences are and that you know it's got to be you know moderation and all the rest of it that for me is the biggest thing so not seeing this health is so extreme and more

13:16Alana Macfarlane:just a lifestyle change so if i was here being my dad right now he'd say but alcohol's fermented wine is fermented great surely it's good for my gut bacteria this is the thing everything is a way up job right and i think what we've lost in this wellness chaos is the ability to think critically yes because we've had so much clickbait extremism that we have just okay that's it then i'm going keto done but because so-and-so says that worked for them actually and i think what lisa found is even the gut health principles so fiber variety dry fermented foods blah blah we incorporate them differently into our house because she into our house and lives because she has a two-year-old or a newborn i've got a four-year-old with different things we live in different parts of you know the country so you know i think it's behavioral as well as like okay here are my principles if you simplify gut health down do you think it is just about fiber or where know probiotics come into it because obviously probiotics get a lot of stick on the internet are they actually good long term do they really reach the gut like you run a gut company but you don't sell probiotics why is that um so we went for for prebiotics and fiber um just because we felt that was more universal you know and we could put that into food products which we felt would build better habits over a long period of time um probiotics i think people people don't realize is that different strains do different things um and you'll know this but you know i think so like what do you actually what do you need a probiotic for and does that strain that you're looking at do the thing that you want or need it to do and i think that is nuanced of course yeah i think there will be a world pretty soon where you'll be able to get your stool tested and you'll get a personalized probiotic that's very exciting um but i think there's education to be done in that bit just as there had to be done with fiber you know we've been banging on the fiber job for seven years thank god people are starting to listen um but with everything with gut health there needs to be a level of education beforehand which is difficult for things to move quickly so right now in the current form when you say probiotics yay or no yay i mean if they do absolutely amazing and things for specific um health issues yeah totally absolutely but it's always best i think to say kefir kombucha sauerkraut fermented pickles kimchi is like a far more effective way to get it than necessarily in a pill i think it depends what you're going to implement daily this is the thing it's about consistency right take someone like my mom she'll kill me for saying this she ain't gonna have kefir every day will she pop a bill yes okay so like you have to do it's perspective it's totally it's total individualized yeah because it's interesting because obviously i run a vitamin company and we do have a probiotic but we only made it for kids okay because my view was actually as an adult you've got kefir you've got kombucha you've got loads of good food-based options to do it and i'd rather you went that way but for kids not going to drink yeah it's a bit of an acquired taste they're probably not going to do it i told my daughter for years that kefir was yogurt so she just has it 100 i mean jack's jack's is four next week and he eats 90 dark chocolate because that's all he really knows yeah and that's what i give him and so kids are adaptable so you should 100 try it and also we say our probiotics are not really designed for all day everyday use and you should have it all year round it's like maybe if the kid got sick had a tummy bug and then you know it flushes out all your gut bacteria then you might want to repopulate and the strain we use has been studied on kids and then you know so there's all this nuance around it but it's very hard for probiotics as well i mean you'll know this firsthand from a regs perspective it's so difficult to say well a what trials has been through the efficacy you can't even say the word probiotic no you're not allowed i think yeah i think that's why you know we didn't go into it either because it would be it's very hard to mark to market and um yeah that there's a lot of work that needs to be done and you know we do a lot with probiotic association on that how can we sort of do that it's the same like we you know no one should be saying prebiotic unpack either um so why though come on i mean like this is it just confuses the consumer more prebiotic is a technical term for what it is it's a health claim um but yeah but the thing is i am totally on but we need to look at the regs side of things because it is only gut health is confusing anyway right yeah then you have the regs on top and then you have the personalization element of it like no wonder it's taken so long to come into public consciousness and no wonder people are still going i'm still so confused about what i need to do and why okay so let's get into then the gluten debate is this the cause of all gut health issues or what's actually going on with gluten because everyone just thinks they've got gluten intolerance yeah no and we have you know we're obviously really against intolerance tests that you can buy off the internet and you put a little goldilocks hair in and you'll get you can't have pinot grigio ever again um you know no one could tell me that um no i i think um gluten has been demonized um and i think you know there is people that are celiac absolutely need to avoid gluten but it is a test that you can get done at your gpu so anything about gluten i'll say you know if you feel like you do have an intolerance um to to gluten or you think you're celiac your gp can do that test for you yeah fair and arguably try sourdough bread because it might be that the pre-fermentation helps your body digest the gluten better and you're not actually intolerant you just can't digest it very well with ultra processed bread sourdough all the way anyway sourdough all the way all day um okay the latest one fiber maxing yes are you fiber maxing i mean finally something we can all get on board with like some that's i don't know though some people yeah so 100 grams of fiber in a day is that what they're saying yeah that's almighty let's go start slow guys work your way up have lots of water um up by five grams a day this is the thing right people like to go extreme i am so happy that fiber is finally having its its day and it is one that all the clinicians agree on which is fantastic yeah that being said there's a caveat if you have a gut issue um you need to speak to clinician when you're up in your fiber um that's you know a massive caveat to be honest um but everyone you know no one's getting enough fiber um so nine yeah nine out of ten of us are not getting enough fiber and even i'm not like we did a fiber challenge in september on our app and at you track we've we've got a fiber tracker on our app and i was only getting like 15 to 20 and i'm a gut founder you know i needed you know our fiber products to get us up to that it's difficult you know an apple's only two and a half grams of fiber broccoli is only two and a half grams of fiber a portion of broccoli it's so difficult to get to that 30 i am not blaming or preaching anyone here like i myself i'm there but um yeah it's definitely a trend that i can get on board with and i'm glad that it's sort of it should be here to stay really but not fiber maxing maybe 100 grams i didn't know it was 100 it's like you're extreme like i'm gonna fast for five days it doesn't need to be that extreme just try and hit your 30 grams a day that's all we're asking for people all we're asking for cool uh what about sugar in the gut it's a big one so i am not about demonizing sugar um i think there was a whole backlash of you can't have fruit and you can't have this certain fruit and you can't have that of course you know the sugar we find in sweeties that are the color and that will last longer than we will live of course they're going to be bad for you yeah um but i worry about the demonizing sugar thing um because people are yeah going i'm not gonna have fruit now and i'm not gonna have you know things that aren't necessarily bad for them well we have to make a clear distinction like fruit comes with fiber so it's in its whole food matrix and therefore your body can handle absorption sugar exactly your body can handle it better but sugar in a fizzy drink or a sweet right different thing because there's zero fiber like even a juice like an orange juice right you You take the fiber away and the sugar has a bigger impact on your body.

21:30And I think a lot of people don't know about the fiber fact as well when it comes to sugar. But I guess what we try and do at the gut stuff is try not to demonize stuff and take the extreme. And it's about adding stuff in rather than taking it away. But I think, yeah, I mean, it'd be amazing if everyone knew about the sugar fiber fact.

21:49Alana Macfarlane:What is the fact with fiber and sugar? So basically fiber slows the absorption of sugars. great and that's why fruit in its whole form is much better than it's juiced but so sugar's been shown to like alter the gut bacteria proliferate bad bacteria in the gut so even though we're not demonizing sugar and i will get criticized for demonizing things and my book's called the good bad and the healthy and people don't believe there's bad foods but i do um but what would you say sugar bad out get rid of it if you can without demonizing it because a little bit's fine you can tolerate it i think that's the thing it's not about completely cutting it out i think that's really difficult to do especially when you have kids and they're going to nursery and someone brings in a cake and all the rest of it so i think it's very difficult to cut and complete it yes should we be reducing if we can um process sugar yes

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23:15Alana Macfarlane:But let's get on to plants then. 30 plants a week your mate Tim yeah that was a study we were part of yeah that came out of that yeah I mean why 30 so that basically the study that we did the American Gut Project that was what they found that people that ate 30 or more different plant varieties per week had a more diverse gut bacteria basically got microbiome and so that's where that number came from and so it's sort of good to remember because it's like 30 grams of fiber in 30 different plants um that being said i think we don't we shouldn't really get too hit up on like i've hit that specific number because is it gonna matter if it's 28 and like some people are like oh you only get half point for this herb and you only get half point for cinnamon and it's like oh my god we're getting into the calorie counting counting calories again so i think you can go down rabbit holes with it what we say is like look at your plate or a snack what other plant can you add yeah into that meal eat more plants very simple very healthy you know half lentils and half you know what could you do from a perspective of um adding something and something you're already eating and enjoying yeah makes sense i like that um this might be a bit rogue but parasites in your gut yeah i mean we on the channel four series that was like hot topic yeah it's quite scary yeah it is so what do you know um so it's very complex and i would not like i am no professor so i wouldn't but like it was so interesting on the channel 4 series because a lot of people that had gut issues would come in so we had like a clinic yeah like i've got a parasite that'd be the first thing they would would say but actually there was a few cases that they did um but yeah you can get all that checked um if you are worried you can get it checked you can get your parasites checked It's probably not the GP, I don't think yet.

25:05Alana Macfarlane:Yeah, quite scary. But there are places that you can go. Okay. But then if you, people think parasites, ah, but when I first heard that I had this bacteria that lived in and around and on me that, you know, I wouldn't leave without, I was like, oh my God, give me a bath, wash me. But, you know, so it's a sort of similar thing to get your head around. Well, our body's like an ecosystem. Totally. Right. The fact I didn't know that for 25 years of my life, that there's these microscopic beings that basically impact my whole health. You know, and not just a gut microbiome, an oral microbiome skin microbiome i was like this is blowing my mind well i mean the one that blew my mind was an apple skin has a microbiome and there's natural bugs on there that are actually good potentially for our gut and so pick an apple off the tree don't wash it just eat it obviously if it hasn't been sprayed with pesticides whatever but do you know what i mean like we're part of that environment it's all communication we're one um but like dr emily lehman who's amazing she works a lot with us and she used to say this analogy when we did talks that if aliens were to come down from outer space they'd see us as hybrid creatures so half human and half microbial interesting that's crazy yeah but it's fact it's true we wouldn't be alive without them they were here before us it's right isn't it that there's more bacteria in our body than there is cells human cells they used to think it was like 10 to 1 but they actually now think it's a ratio of one-to-one so just the same amount yeah okay interesting what about aloe vera juice because i've got personal experience of this to be honest i only know about aloe vera juice because i used to drink it on a hangover oh really why did you drink it for a hangover i don't know maybe it was like the texture of feeling like i was actually eating something but not i actually don't know how legit this aloe vera juice was either but it was very thirst questioning and quenching um but to be honest from a scientific point of view i have no idea i didn't even know even know that was a thing well so so i have a bit of experience with gut health because my wife had ulcerative colitis okay and we were told she's got just be on steroids for the rest of your life and it's incurable and i just refused to accept it so we spent about 18 months trying to figure out like what hurt her and what didn't like it's a perfect feedback loop in a way because you're told pretty quickly after that meal whether that agreed with you or whether it didn't and so we ended up one of the you know we took everything out that created inflammation didn't eat anything raw peeled her tomatoes all sorts of stuff but then one of the things that actually helped heal the colon i believe no fact this is just a case study i guess um was we made her a drink every morning of water kefir to add probiotics in raw honey aloe vera and a bit of lime juice and it wasn't like the sugary aloe vera drink you buy as a tasty drink yeah no it was like pure aloe vera juice um who would want to acquire that just like a supermarket what annie was in la at the time so she um literally would just go down to whole foods and buy an aloe vera leaf and then like cut off the green bit and put the gel in her smoothie in the morning and like the theory of it makes a lot of sense to me because if you've ever had a burn on your skin and you put aloe vera on your skin it's incredibly healing we know that from a dermatological perspective so why wouldn't it be the same for the gut it's a fair point jury's out yeah i just don't know we don't know i'll find out for you don't worry well i'm just curious because there's a lot more people nowadays getting ibd and crohn's and uc and more and more people are getting diagnosed with it and they're just told there's nothing you can do yeah and i don't believe that to be true so there is something you can do um but let's take it back to the basics in the beginning if someone's got a gut issue what's the first thing you would do to try and help them i would keep a book an appointment with your gp um and i would stay away from buying anything off the internet that say that's going to cure your gut heal your gut or give you some sort of intolerance test yeah do not waste your money on that i'd keep a diary um just of you know what you're eating different symptoms so you can go to your gp enhancing this i've done this for the last six weeks or however long it takes to get an appointment which could be longer than that nowadays unfortunately um but that should always be your first protocol not going on gut talk and seeing what's being said on there hashtag gut talk it's not the place for medical information no no but there is a lot of validity i think in what you said about the gut diary and listening to your body and going how did i feel after this meal right it's the perfect feedback and listen ibs was reclassified as a gut brain disorder in 2016 was it people know that yeah so it's to do with your gut and brain so it's to do with that connection and so i think people when they're thinking about a diary to write before they go to the gp they're they're writing down everything they eat but actually you should be sort of noting on you know how stressed you are that day um how your mood was that sort of thing as well and for women where their cycle is yeah that makes a big impact as well but so then if someone has started to have like gut issues not feeling very well budget's a bit of an issue like what would you recommend for them from a diet perspective of what you've learned over the years so i think it's hard because and this is a difficulty we have with gut health because what the advice that we give for general well-being gut health that everyone should be thinking and talking about because gut health is linked to so many things from mental health to heart health to immunity is different from someone that's got an issue so i think if you have an issue you really have to stick to doing what your clinician says um because it's so different for everyone else general gut health and you can think about you know the pillars of obviously more fiber variety trying fermented foods and hydration is the one that i think we all miss it's very very important and looking at your stress levels like for us it's easy just to go do you know what just be less stressed like you and i both know we run startups that's almost impossible we have young kids but actually looking at what works for you you know people think when they think de-stress i need to stand on my head drinking green smoothies doing a yoga class actually for me mine has been down the pub with my mates talking about everything and nothing like i think gut health has to fit into your lifestyle and behavior because it's a long-term game it's it's not a quick fix and anyone that says that is trying to sell you that is not being true to you yeah and it you know just little simple things right i think the one big thing i've done in the last six months to a year is i always i'm like eat your greek yogurt for breakfast you know granola and berries and you're good to go but i've actually greek yogurts high in protein low in sugar but actually what i've started to do is buy a tub of kefir alongside it and i put a few spoons of kefir in alongside my greek yogurt so i still get the high protein low sugar but then just adding a load of good bacteria in right god knows what the strains are and you know it's organic it says it's got 14 strains and x many billion i don't know what they're going to do exactly but totally and that and you're getting like variety at that point as well like i think for me as well you know it doesn't even just have to be food related and you know you could for me it was really focusing on my sleep you know i was a dj and sleep can really impact our microbes or make an impact our sleep our microbes actually have a circadian rhythm and so for me it's like that sort of thing is like what's my sleep hygiene like what's my routine like um but we always say you know try and pick one thing to do over the next fortnight you're never going to rehaul everything overnight unfortunately um and nor should you like you still need to live your life and have fun and you know um but yeah so i think the two they're very two different caps when it comes to like tips and advice on on gut health so yeah we do like 100 days to hack your gut health um like course and there's two different one which you've got a gut issue and one if you've if our general gut health and well-being you've got a course but can you give us a nugget of like what should people do in that 100 days yes so we actually have different modules so the modules come of like tuning in where's your gut health at just now and then we talk about fiber variety and we actually go through all those pillars that that i've just said one by one and actually giving people the facts and and the evidence behind it you know we're very lucky we've got an amazing team of clinicians behind us nutritionists but also dietitians and sometimes they agree and sometimes they don't but it's important to have that wide variety not just saying you know what's worked for me should work for everyone else it's about going on your own fact finding mission well that's a curious part right because i from a scientific point of view i would say we still don't fully understand the gut and what it does scratching the surface which is amazing yeah we have to be realistic to that to that point of saying you know people who talk about the gut brain access what an exciting field of research that is but we we can't say like just have some sauerkraut and it's going to cure depression that's dangerous and we should not be saying that and i think people have a tendency to sensationalize the science um and we have to be very very careful for that because people you know want to believe and they want you know they want you know we are all susceptible of going oh right cool amazing i'll do that so how do you manage that then as the founder and the company owner if you've got two scientists or nutritionists or doctors in your team that disagree about something on the gut to be honest we then we we sort of pull back on it like i guess initially the resounding thing was was fiber so that's why we sort of went into the fiber product everyone agrees on everyone agreed on it um so i guess that's how we play it really and if something if they don't agree it's about showing people both sides of the coin and saying actually these are the two facts you have on it you know you could take any topic and do that you know you decide it's like alcohol it's like yes red wine has lots of polyphenols um which your gut bugs quite like but alcohol is not good for your gut like what you know where do you sit on that spectrum on any given day month a year that's up to you like i'm not going to preach to you and say you can never drink again Well, it's complex, right?

34:49Alana Macfarlane:Because I mean, some studies from what I've seen say, no amount of alcohol is good, like quite a hard fact, not that disputable. But then polyphenols are a benefit. But then actually, if you talk about stress and you layer that in, and if that one glass of wine on a weekend is the way people really unwind and de-stress, like maybe the benefit of stress is outweighing the little bit of alcohol that they're consuming. Yeah, and it's so individualized. I can't answer that for you. I can't answer it for anyone. I know what the answer is for me. But that is the nuance that comes with everything. And all science.

35:25I think, you know, I come from the entertainment industry. I thought science was binary. Like, this is right and this is wrong. And then we got into gut health. I was like, A, why are you all arguing? No one agrees. But B, it's so nuanced. Even within a scientific paper, people will have two different opinions of it and take what they want to suit their agenda. Of course. So like, that's why I, you know, when they think about, you know, sugar and protein and all the rest, should we be having grains? Should we be keto? I think you just have to look at the evidence and go, actually, what do I believe?

35:55And then how can I implement that into my life?

35:56Alana Macfarlane:Yeah, and how you can be a little bit healthier because that's the funniest thing around, actually, which we're not very good at in social is everyone tries to have the answer and pretends that they are right. When in fact, the definition of science is testing hypotheses and debating to find the truth right it's a process any scientist who says i am the authority on this and therefore i am right is always a red flag for me and i think you see either not even just from a science perspective the cleverest people in the world will always say i do not know everything yes and we have to apply that theory across the board you know well because we're still learning and we're still figuring it out it's still it's so exciting how far we've got to go with the science as well and you know even in the 10 years we've been involved in it it's changed so much and science has changed so much and you know everyone's going to have to u-turn and pivot but it's because it's like actually now we think it's you know x amount or y um and everyone has to be humble enough to say yeah okay let's change it yeah so what's the biggest thing that's blown your mind in 10 years of learning about the gut i think that our gut and brain are actually linked by the vagus nerve that was mind-blowing to me because i think for many years we've always said oh gut instinct or you see the person you fancy and you get butterflies in your stomach and we all have for many years have used those terms but actually to learn that they are linked and um so the vagus nerve so we sort of see it as like so obviously at the gut stuff lisa and i are like toddlers it's like explain it like explain to us like toddlers so this is how i am relaying it but basically they're linked by the vagus nerve that you know is from your brain to your gut and so we see that as like the phone line but they also chat through neurotransmitters which we see like whatsapp so constantly chatting away with each other and i think what blew my mind was that we all have sort of known anecdotally that that messages and chat goes down the way to the gut you know like i said butterflies in the tummy or needing to go to the toilet if you're public speaking yeah but actually the fact that those messages go up the way as well is insane um so yeah we went actually a lot of the studies are coming out of cork university um and lisa and i went there um and uh ted did ted and john cry and are sort of pioneers in the gut brain access and they wrote that chapter of our book and and they yeah the research they're doing is amazing and crazy and you know that was probably going to the university that day i was just like this is nuts and this will change the world so what's your gut saying to your brain right now um god knows it talks at 100 miles an hour so it's still trying to keep up does it talk in a Scottish accent yeah it does aggressively I need more iron brute exactly exactly very good very good all right well Alana this has been fascinating I think the gut is such an interesting field of research and we should just all eat probably more fiber and more plants really basic rules that we know make us healthier and maybe not worry too much about the rest of it in a way because we don't know and the more we worry the more impacts our gut microbiome through stress so i think yeah exactly i like to make things simple i agree i am the same very good very good what on a final note personally what does health mean to you so i hate the word thrive right i was always that person like oh good but we all say survive and i'm driving honeys and um i guess it's sort of like health means to me feeling the sort of best you can on a day-to-day basis and that's not going to be every day but like i think especially you know historically i was always like living on like god as long as i'm just getting through the day that's like um so it probably means a lot of different things um to me but i think yeah just living doing what allowing your body and mind allowing you to do what you want to achieve in life I think is a long-winded answer for what should have been a nutshell but not thriving yeah so what we always say is like would be people like survive not thriving honeys um but yeah I don't like the word thrive yeah but I think what does it really mean right it's like we're all just living our life trying to get on with it and with parents I also think health is and and life is in in chapters right and I think we all like this is what I need to do for the rest of my life and that changes you know you have kids your job changes the things that happen in the outside world like it's always fluctuating and i think to be less binary about health i've become less binary about health as my life has progressed through gut health but also just in general as i've got older and a tiny bit wiser i guess yeah well and i think that's what i've learned over sort of the last 10 years of kind of being in the health space i've tried keto i've tried carnivore i've tried going more plant-based you know every fad under the sun fasting whatever I've given it a go and then the more you do those things the more you come out of it going actually you just need a really like fairly balanced approach that you can stick to consistently over the long term and that's for me where I got into the bit of well actually it's just what you put in your shopping basket like just put the right things in that aren't that bad for you and you'll be all right you don't need to fucking calorie count be on some 5-2 diet plan like it's that's hard it's complicated it's extreme it doesn't necessarily work for everyone we just all need to eat a little bit healthier because by and large we're all pretty unhealthy if you look at the macro data yeah simple swaps over a long period of time it's a way to go yeah and if you've got an issue do keep a diary listen to your body talk to your gp please do not be embarrassed you know there's absolutely no embarrassment needed when going to your gp with a gut issue or talking to anyone about a gut issue and if you want to learn more about your gut they can listen to your podcast what's it called chatting shit chatting shit it's my favourite podcast name going it's definitely better than the unprocessed no it is just like trying to say it on stuff it's like you know it was the same with the TV show called Know Your Shit it was like Breakfast Telly like oh you can't see the name of the show I'm like okay how are we going to tell people to watch it then oh really you weren't allowed but there we are we've just got shit in all our titles that's a good way to go it's just a word doesn't matter good stuff well thank you so much for coming on it was great to have you Thank you.

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