Inflammation drives the leading cause of death: Here's how to reverse it | No.1 Gut Scientist

inflammation is actually about our body repairs itself we'd be dead without it why is it bad if it keeps on going it's been likened to lighting lots of fires which normally are fine and they go straight out but if you keep doing it it's like you've got these hot coals in your body in a permanently heightened state which means that you can't function normally you can't do the normal repair processes you're more likely to miss a cancer more likely to badly repair some your body so you age faster well I think that's really interesting it's important for people to understand that this goes far beyond the immune system and activation of the immune system this is more nefarious in the big picture in terms of our health and if we go through the list of the most common causes of death that afflict our two countries what you'll find is that the top causes are all inflammatory diseases so is it possible to reduce the inflammation or is this a sort of like oneway Street you can absolutely reduce the inflammation in less than 24 hours if we could just do one thing and that would be welcome to Zoe science and nutrition where World leading scientists explain how their research can improve your health I'm your host Jonathan wolf co-founder and CEO of Zoe today we're talking about inflammation critical for our health but often misunderstood what if I told you that your gut could be a source of chronic inflammation and that this inflammation can cause serious conditions like type 2 diabetes heart disease and even cancer and then what if I told you that it's possible to reverse this that good bacteria in your gut could actually reduce your inflammation today we're joined by two giants in the world of Health Nutrition and the microbiome Professor Tim Spectre and Dr will bwitch Tim and Will are here to help us learn how to lower inflammation and improve our health Tim is a professor of epidemiology at Kings College London a leading author Authority on the gut microbiome and my scientific co-founder here at Zoe will is a board certified gastroenterologist New York Times best selling author gut health expert and Zoe's us medical director Tim and will thank you for joining me today so you know the drill we are of course going to start with a quick fire round of questions from our listeners uh and for anyone who's new to the show that means that you can give a yes or a no or if you absolutely have to to a one- sentence uh answer and I'll start with Tim can inflammation cause serious longterm diseases yes well if I have high levels of inflammation in my body will I feel it possibly Tim can what I eat lead to inflammation after meals definitely well could improving my gut bacteria reduce inflammation throughout my body absolutely and then for both of you what's the most surprising thing that you've discovered about inflammation I would say that inflammation is about more than just the immune system I would say that inflammation is actually about how our body repairs itself and is is crucial to aging body repair as well as all our immune functions so it's it's incredibly important we get it right so I'm really excited by this this episode and I think those answers sort of sort of tea up why because I think you know most of our listeners are going to be like me which is before I met Tim and Sarah s years ago I hadn't paid any like attention to this idea of of inflammation and actually what I'm struck as I've met more and more scientists over the last um seven years with Zoe is how often they focus on inflammation now what I do understand now is that it connects to the health of our gut microbiome right there sort of trillions of bacteria in our gut and that it can be seriously harmful to our health but after that it all gets very complicated so um I'm really excited to have both of you here to be able to explain that in a very simple way but also then to really take us through lots of actionable advice about what we can do to reduce inflammation and and improve our health and I guess I'd like to just start with the simplest question what is inflammation I would Define inflammation as activation of the immune system um and that activation is typically in response to what the immune system believes to be a threat now whether or not it's actually a threat is a different question but the immune system essentially has said it's time to go to work we must uh protect and defend the body and therefore the immune system system gets activated and Tim is inflammation good or bad essentially it's designed by Evolution to be good we'd be dead without it because our body wouldn't react to anything from you know a small cut against a rose bush to stop us bleeding to preventing scarring or fighting off some little microbe that was trying to get into you know into our mouth and into our guts so we all need inflammation and generally we talk about this as acute inflammation mean short-term inflammation and it's when it this normal response gets continued on that you get what's called chronic or long-term inflammation and that's when the body is in a permanent state of heightened awareness so it's like looking for a fight all the time uh but often inappropriately because there is no more infection there's nothing else it's it's it's being tricked into thinking it's got to got to fight and that that's where we have the problem and the analogy that I I think about a bit is I think as as as you both know I broke my toe uh a year ago I sort of smashed it into pieces and there was definitely a lot of inflammation in that toe afterwards like it swelled up to this enormous size and what I understood in fact you you were explaining to me is like that inflammation is good it's sort of all of this process that that the body has been triggered to actually go and heal this wound and interesting it lasted for quite a long time right I would say the inflammation you didn't fully Reed probably for more than six months in that case but it has now gone and so I think you're describing that as an example of inflammation working sort of in the way that it's intended Tim that's right it it's designed there to uh open up the blood vessels you get extra fluid in there and that in a way get gets rid of the debris and the damage and then also these it sends signals to white cells to come out of your your blood get into that system to start uh repairing the damage and so this this whole Cascade of events which leads to you getting a a swollen a red a painful dilated toe um is exactly the defense mechanism that you want and you know you notice it as swelling but eventually you get inflammation around the the cut and so um you get new cells being driven to that place and they start repairing and laying down new skin and eventually the whole process after a few months uh you know pretty much goes back to where it was that's a normal system so generally what we've discovered in in in health is it you know most pathology is when normal defense systems go a bit wrong and and this tends to increasingly occur with age and as we get slight little defects in how these things happen often the body's reacting to something it thinks is a threat but actually it's its own tissue and that's you know your body gone and attack uh its own skin uh causing funny rashes or it might attack its own joint thinking actually there's some microbe in there that it's got to get rid of and that's why people get long-term arthritis and skin disease and and in the gut might also get um gut colitis because the body's reacting against itself in the same way to your injury and so if inflammation is good in these examples I I guess the obvious question is why is it bad if it keeps on going you might you might think that it's great to have it just always on so so help help us to understand why it's it's not good if there's too much of it well there's always consequences there's always consequences to activation of the immune system so when it's in an acute setting in response to an infection or uh to bodily injury those consequences are worth the price of admission because you're um you're defending the body in a way that's necessary but when we're talking about unnecessary chronic inflammation which is really the the root of the issue here the consequences that we receive are not ones that we want or intend and they can have effects throughout our entire body Tim mentioned autoimmune diseases and we could add allergic diseases uh to the list of sort of classic inflammatory things but actually there the list goes far beyond this in terms of conditions that are associated with with inflammation and in many cases conditions that people would never even think they actually are inflammatory and so it's important for people to understand that this goes far beyond just like what we think of as you know uh the immune system and activ a of the immune system this is um more nefarious in the long in the big picture uh in terms of our health and well just to make sure that that I've got that what you're saying is if you have this like long-term inflammation for years rather than just days or maybe months actually that increases your risk of really serious diseases like heart attacks and cancer and and things like this absolutely and if and if we go through the the list of the most common causes of death that afflict our our two countries um what you'll find is that the the top causes are all inflammatory diseases so you know coronary artery disease cardiovascular diseases stroke different forms of cancer the vast majority of forms of cancer are inflammatory um as a result of long-term inflammation diabetes is an inflammatory disease uh obesity Alzheimer's these are all inflammatory conditions so it sounds like you're saying basically inflammation is this sort of hidden cause of sort of almost everything that probably people who are listening to this is are are worrying about or at least it's one of the causes I don't think we want to spend the hour doing this but I could easily generate a list of over a 100 health conditions that are associated with chronic inflammation and the thing that's important for our listeners to understand is that you may go to five different doctors for five different health conditions but the root cause that ties them all together is inflammation and the frustrating uh part of that is that if that's what it all together why are we not talking about this more that's the part that's frustrating well I think everyone's probably paying attention at this point and I guess the following question is is there more of this long-term inflammation today than in the past because I think we are obviously aware that there seems to be this big rise in these sort of um serious long-term chronic diseases um compared to the past I think we're we're seeing a change in the in the past people had chronic infection so it was very common for people to have tuberculosis for example which was the classic example of uh an acute inflammation that keeps going because you can't get rid of the uh the bug that causes the tuberculosis and so your body continues to react against it and you get a similar effect with things like leprosy and so often these chronic inflammatory conditions were related to an original infection and we've moved really into an era where we're not being exposed to as many bugs and infections but we now have these increased level these autoimmune diseases and these lifestyle Western diseases that now have an inflammatory component so I think we changed from modern living from living surrounded by microbes having a really strong immune system to suddenly uh moving to Modern Life in its sterile form with poor diets meaning that we suddenly uh are much more prone to things like food allergies and maybe some of these uh food allergies triggering longer term autoimmune diseases and and and chronic gut issues in a way we've had the defense system hasn't changed but the challenges have and maybe it's not as well primed in childhood as it was in the past and that's one Theory as about why we're getting more of these problems now on top of of course our terrible diet and there there's a question that is a classic science question which is is it nature or is it nurture is it genetics or is it the environment and Tim you've spent your life studying this question and um genetics don't shift in humans that quickly now in microbes they can shift very quickly but in humans we don't have the capacity or ability to do that um what has changed is our environment and you know we spent millions of years living in a pre-modern environment pre-agricultural environment and then we spent 12,000 years in a slowly adapting slowly changing um agricultural environment but really if you think about it we reached a point where Science and Technology took off in the last few hundred years and as Science and Technology took off we became uh evolutionary Pioneers as humans and in the process of doing that and allowing Science and Technology to shape our environment change our environment radically even in the last 100 years um what we've lost sight of is that those changes have an effect on our body those changes have an effect on the microbes and the microbes are responsible for training our immune our immune system yeah and that's why food allergy really was unknown to medicine before about 1969 when you know man walked on the moon and now it's one of the commonest things you see in schools so something quite dramatic has happened in our interaction of our immune system system uh to train it when we're kids that's uh was was really different before and after that sort of warshed time and I think that's that's really fascinating and that's really just a glimpse of what is happening in many other diseases I think what you're saying is levels of sort of long-term inflammation are much higher than in than in the past and particularly that when you had them in the past I think you were saying Tim that often came from some like active disease that you had like leprosy I haven't met a lot of people walking around the streets of you know New York or London or LA with Leprosy so I feel that is no longer like the the core driving issue of inflammation is this Fair Tim in India and uh Nepal that I visited there's still many leprosy hospitals but TB its cousin is very very common got it but in terms of like driving the rates of cancer and diabetes and all the things you're talking about it's not it's it's not leprosy or TB that is causing this anymore correct that's correct yeah that's right and and that's just the way the immune system is working differently and so you're saying is this is really high level of inflammation over years that's been caused by by our environment hi were you surprised to learn how important a role inflammation plays in serious diseases I know I was now it means a lot to me and the whole team that you are listening to this each week we put such a lot of hours into this podcast and we released the show for free without ads to help millions of people improve their health with Cutting Edge science in return all I ask is that you help us on this Mission by hitting the Subscribe button below it really helps thank you and on with the show most people listening are over the age of five right they can't change what happened in those first five years quite clear they have a lot of uh control over the food they're eating and maybe some other aspects of their their environment so how do how does food play into this this story of raised inflammation well until recently um food was sort of vaguely discussed as uh in terms of oh pro-inflammatory diets and these things and but there wasn't really much science to back it up it was fascinating when um in the Zoe predict study I think Sarah Barry was leading this work and uh found that when people had very large uh sugar spikes and particularly fat spikes after a meal remember these vary tenfold between people that was also associated with big increases in inflammatory markers these are um little telltale signs in the blood that your immune system is really activated and trying to kill off other things and being very aggressive and so most Ultra processed food would cause in some people these really inflammatory spikes and if you were having a snack every two or three hours you'd be triggering this inflammation every few hours for you know 14 or 16 hours a day so your body was in this state of high tension excitement you know the immune system was come on waiting for someone to attack and would sometimes mistakenly attack things that it wasn't supposed to and uh really fool the body into think it was in in in a war footing and that's what many people in our populations in the western world are constantly in who are eating junk food regularly their body thinks it's uh in a crisis situation and so everything is going full full alert it's not trying to repair itself it doesn't have time to repair itself it's uh really sending out all the wrong signals to the body and that's why we get these problems in all these other organs in our brain and our heart Etc so realizing that certain foods in certain people uh will cause these inflammatory spikes uh is really important and we also know that our gut microbes can dampen that down as well so that that's also really important that as well as our you know genes which partly control our immune system we've also got the genes in our microbes that also uh can produce anti-inflammatory dampening down signals to sort of put out these hot Embers so it's it's been likened to lighting lots of fires which normally are fine and they go straight out but if if you keep doing it it's like you've got these hot coals in your body in a permanently H heightened state which means that you can't function normally you can't do the normal repair processes you're more likely to miss a cancer you're more like to badly repair some your body so you age faster this is I think the modern equivalent of what uh long-term inflammation is doing to us all and basically our diet and I I got microbes at the heart of it it's a slightly scary story isn't it Tim that you talk about you touch a little bit on sort of blood sugar and blood fat could you explain a little bit more about what's going as somebody's thinking you know who maybe is is new to this um and they're thinking about you know they're eating something how does that link through to the sort of the spikes that you're you're talking about we see in in studies that we did like the zo predict study people are wearing a a blood sugar monitor so we know what their blood sugar levels are every few minutes and when you eat something like a a breakfast muffin or a cookie uh after around 30 minutes you'll get a peak in your blood sugar and after about two to four hours you'll get uh start to get a peak in your blood fats and at those Peaks um that means your body's under stress if it stays there too long and we think the body is is seeing that as a a threat it has to deal with it's causing some general stress to the the system and in response the body then pumps out these inflammatory chemicals which are arming the immune system to help deal with it in a way help deal with getting that fat out of the system and uh trying to initiate some sort of repair and it it it's a failed system because it's never really going to work in that way and that's why we we think that people have too much fat in their system say four to six hours after a meal these little particles of fat get stuck in the in the blood vessels and they trigger even more inflammation and uh that irritates that whole system and makes it more likely over time to build up plark and and heart disease so we think there's a real l link between not only what you eat but how you respond to that food how quickly you get rid of it and how big that immune reaction is to it you put those things together it's a it's a nasty cocktail for many people you know and Tim one of the things that that filled in some of the puzzle pieces for me when I read that study the predict study that you and Sarah were a part of uh was that the inflammation peaked 6 or eight hours after the meal so there was this buildup and lag that took place and if you think about this people who are snacking 10:00 at night you're essentially kicking your body into a constant state of inflammation because that's peaking in the middle of the night and then just starting to come down you wake up in the morning and it just fire it back up again and that's why fasting overnight is probably useful because your body can get dampen down that inflammation and while you continued snacking uh generally is pretty bad for your metabolism I think some people listening to people say well hang on a minute you're saying I can't eat but I don't think that's the message is it it's not that like all food causes this or even that having a rise in your blood sugar or your blood fat is bad you're s talking about the way that these are really big spikes and over and over again in a way in which we probably didn't normally experience them before the sort of foods we eat today is that is that correct yeah that that's ABS right Jonathan you know until we did these kind of studies in normal people we didn't know what a noral blood Spike of of sugar or fat was so we were still finding our way even back then and those those first studies but it's clear that many people can metabolize food and get a small Spike saying they fat they clear it very efficiently and there's little or no inflammation left over so it's it's not like all food is bad um right it's something to do with um the sort of foods that we're eating today compared to in in the past so definitely all foods don't cause an inflammatory reaction and if you have say a bowl of mushrooms and lentils high in fiber high in in good fats and protein you're very unlikely to see any inflammatory reaction it seems to be uh really with fatty foods that we we get this big reaction and particularly poor quality fats these uh saturated fats that having meals without fiber that you find in Ultra processed foods and to a less extent sugary uh drinks as well so it's those ones that cause a really big peak say six hours uh after you've had your meal you still got fat in the system and then after that uh you get this inflammatory reaction so it's a long time after your meal and it doesn't happen in everybody there seems to be a degree of personalization with that as well so I think it's again we're finding out more and more about how we all respond differently to foods but for many people eating bad foods regularly at regular intervals throughout the day keeps them in a high state of inflam inflammation which is in a high state of body stress so you've got this sort of high level of inflammation because you're just eating all of these foods and probably your environment which has got this like switched on too high all the time how does the gut fit into that story well we talk about the gut microbes on this podcast all the time but there's an a part of our body that I want to introduce that I think is critically important to this conversation that goes along with the gut the gut microbes and that's the gut barrier so throughout our body throughout our intestines there is a single layer of cells and that single layer of cells has the responsibility of separating the 38 trillion gut microbes that are on one side inside our intestines from our immune system 70 to 80% of our immune system is on the other side so first of all people should know that the home of your immune system is in your gut it's in your gut in the bone so I would I would never have guessed that and it makes a lot of sense because actually this is where even though it's the deepest part of our body parado toxically this is actually the place where we're interacting with the outside world the most our skin is a barrier our skin blocks the outside world but the gut this is the place where you know in a way our intestines it's like a it's like a beautiful River and that River brings clean water and it brings the nutrients that we need that are lifegiving but at the same time that River at times can be perilous and there can be things in there that we would prefer to not come into contact with and I'm going to interrup just for a second because I love only a gastroenterologist could say that our intestines were beautiful River I was just thinking about my poor little girl who was violently sick uh last weekend and vomiting everywhere and whatever that was it was not a beautiful River will but I'll let you keep going with this beautiful River metaphor now well yes I have an optimistic beautiful view of the intestines so which is quite different from most other people it's distorted um so none nonetheless um uh this is the responsibility of this barrier which is to allow us to recruit into our body the things that we really want the things that we need and yet simultaneously to protect us from you know sort of perilous uh piranhas or whatever you want to call it that we want to basically keep outside and leave it inside the intestines and ultimately poop it out and so now the these three parties the gut microbes the gut barrier and our immune system they're constantly communicating with one another and they're working together our gut barrier that has this responsibility of protecting us it actually renews itself every three or four days so we get a brand new gut barrier by the way the total surface area of our gut barrier is massive larger than a soccer field football in the UK and yet every single every single blade of grass there are microbes there that matter every single blade of grass and so the the way that we ultimately set this up Jonathan is that we want a healthy gut barrier to protect us the stewards of that gut barrier are the microbes they build the barrier they fortify the barrier they make sure that it's intact and able to do its job to protect us when our gut microbes are healthy they're able to do their job the way that they're supposed to when our gut microbes have been beaten up and broken down they're unable to fulfill their job and part of their job is actually to help us to maintain that gut barrier and when that happens we are allowing access into our body things that aren't supposed to be getting in there and the classic thing is something called bacterial endotoxin and this is something that you'll find with eoli salmonella basically the um the pathologic bacteria that are a normal part of our body they can actually get across and they inflame our immune system and this is a large part of where chronic inflammation comes from so our gut microbes play an essential role in maintaining this barrier to protect us and just to add that when you eat healthy food like fiber are beneficial microbes will eat on that fiber and produce chemicals that are then really stimulating our immune system to dampen down any inflammation in the rest of the body so that's why there's this link link between eating good foods and uh making sure that our immune system is is working perfectly not overreacting and if anything can dampen down any of these fires but it can't do that if it's not getting the right foods for those particular microbes that are very specialized and uh need real foods to eat they can't just um exist on Burgers because those those microbes tend to produce pro-inflammatory substances things that actually kick up the inflammation more so that's how our diet starts to to play into this this delicate balance that Will's talking about hi I want to take a quick break here and tell you about something new we've created a free guide that will Kickstart your journey to better gut health as we're learning from Tim and will today and as our members know through using Zoe we feed our gut microbiome through the variety of foods we eat and in return our microbes give us a wealth of health benefits they're responsible for so much as we've been learning from digestion to immune support and even our mental well-being so how can you nurture your gut in the best way which food swaps can you try to nourish those good bacteria what is a high fiber shopping list really look like well stay tuned to hear Tim and Will's top tips however if you want even more support our free gut health guide shares it all emails and actionable tips that are designed to put you in control control of your gut health to get yours for free simply go to zoe.com gutu is it always one way so is it basically you start with um whether or not your gut bacteria good and then it leads to inflammation in the body or is there also something you know coming is there also a chicken and egg where you know I've got inflammation elsewhere and that then shapes my gut microbes how do we know it absolutely is a two-way street so when you have inflammation the inflammation does affect your gut microbes um so ultimately though the part that we have more command and control over are the choices that we make with diet and lifestyle those choices ultimately are shaping the environment of the microbes when you shape the environment of the microbes then ultimately um you are creating a specific microbiome that can create an anti-inflammatory immune system or that is going to promote inflammation in the body and we've talked about microbiome and bacteria I'm conscious there'll be some people joining us you know at the beginning of the year for whom this might be a bit new could you just help to explain a bit like what that what those two terms mean and how that ties back to this idea I think of what people are really interested in here which is okay so I want to Red I want to have the stuff that's going to be reducing my inflammation but also how you know what's going on with this stuff that's actually increasing my inflammation so what we mean by microbes are microorganisms so that means bacteria it also means parasites it means fungi and little viruses but we tend to call them all the same sort of community and that Community is called the microbiome and there's good and bad guys in there and if you're healthy you'll have a good balance of good guys and relatively small amounts of bad guys and essentially they're all like many pharmacies pumping out generally healthy chemicals but the bad guys can be sometimes pumping out chemicals that are increasing inflammation irritating your body so you want get that ratio right and that's where lifestyle comes in and is it possible to reduce the inflammation in the guts I think you were both describing this pattern where you could have this really inflamed G some awful things were happening will which were pretty scary sounding so is it Poss possible to reduce the inflammation or is this a sort of like oneway Street you can absolutely reduce the inflammation and um you know the the exciting and empowering thing about the gut microbiome is that it is constantly evolving and changing and it is also extremely forgiving there's a research that was done almost 10 years ago that was one of the first major papers in the microbiome where basically they showed that in less than 24 hours after changing your diet you will start to see those effects take shape within your microbiome now this is not to say that 24 hours is all that it takes to overhaul the microbiome that would not be true but the choices that you make today will start to manifest by tomorrow in your microbiome and it will be a snowball effect that snowball starts very small but if you come back and you double down and you keep following with consistency these same patterns you start to build that snow ball you start to build momentum and that momentum can be an anti-inflammatory momentum and so what happens when the inflammation is reduced how does that what what happens as a as a consequence we've talked a lot about as it going up there's two effects one one inside the gut you'll get a greater number of beneficial microbes rather than pro-inflammatory loving microbes and so you get a more helpful set of chemicals being produced and your immune system will then get back into its normal regulation and it'll be able to carry on repairing the body and picking up cancers and dealing with aging and really perfecting metabolism so you're not wasting energy and your uh you're feeling healthier and your chemicals going to your brain are improving your mood and your energy so it's really getting you back into that uh that perfect scenario before in a way this um false infection hit the body so the idea is to use restabilizing things and because your blood is isn't having that inflammation anymore that also acts two ways and again helps the good microbes overcome the bad microbes in your in your gut so again this two-way process just as well as it happens on the the bad way when you get a disease or an infection the same thing happens when you can improve your diet then uh all the rest of it falls into place so I'd love I guess having sort of talked about how serious inflammation is How Deeply interlined is with our you know our gut microbes these bacteria to start to talk about okay what what's the actionable advice what can people do and I think a lot of people listening to this will be saying okay that's great I want to go and make some changes Tim maybe you could start by saying imagine they one of people are thinking about changing what they want to eat what would you be telling them to do in order to really make a difference here eating a greater diversity of plants uh having more color on your plate having more fermented foods are particularly important and um the fermented food is very interesting because our clinical studies showing that people having several portions a day got really big reductions in their inflammatory markers just after a couple of weeks we don't know the exact mechanisms but we do know that fermented foods are probiotics so they're live microbes and these people uh this was a US study where having lots of different types of microbes so maybe 30 or 40 different species every day they seem to have a beneficial effect on the resident microbes in the gut and that meant they were pushing out helpful anti-inflammatory chemicals and actually drove down and suppress the immune system that was previously high and this was a remarkable result because no one expected this to be quite so dramatic and they there was a much bigger effect just by from fermented food rather than just fiber alone so this is a real sign that um of th all those D Tre changes we're talking about whether it's the multiple plants whether it's the the polyphenols in the have color fermented food is probably the the one that's most specific specific to inflammation in the immune system and it's something I think we we haven't really paid nearly enough attention to in the past so little and often but I think it's not just having one uh pot of children's yogurt uh once a week that's going to do it you need uh several portions a day probably three small portions a day to get these beneficial effects and um at the same time cutting out some of the negative things in your diet ultr processed foods things foods containing um bad fats that we've talked about a lot and we know that from our own experiments people having L these highly processed saturated fats in ready meals Etc and uh junk Foods they're they cause these these particular spikes and inflammation so cutting them out and then giving your gut a rest uh so it can't Spike and so it can repair itself I think they're the the key essential elements that uh everyone can do if they want to um get a a nice even lwi inflammatory uh state in them and and people with many chronic diseases I think would benefit from this advice and most them are not being given it at the moment yeah it's interesting that you know it kind of boils down to two essential principles from a dietary perspective add more plants and add fermented food and um these are two two things that we have done throughout human history that we've lost in the last last 100 years and so restoring that in a way would be restoring a more natural environment for these microbes and will can you can you help us on understand a bit more about how the plant side of this links through ultimately to this reducing inflammation well it you know it go it goes back to um a concept that Tim introduced earlier which is that these these microbes have the ability to transform our food if we were sterile which we are not has never been a sterile human we've always evolved with these microbes but if we were sterile fiber meaning not that we can't have children but that there's no I just want to make sure I understand this that's not yeah sterile in terms of not having a microbiome if we lacked a microbiome which is not possible all humans have ever have always had a microbiome fiber wouldn't serve the purpose that it does because fiber exemplifies our relation reltionship with these microbes it's mutually beneficial we consume the fiber the fiber is actually their food we don't have the enzymes to break down the fiber and release the nutritional quality from it but the microbes do they have actually thousands of enzymes um that allow them to go to work typically in teams uh unpacking the fiber and releasing what are called short chain fatty acids these short chain fatty acids in my more than 20 years of studying medicine I can say without any question at all these are the most anti-inflammatory compounds that I've ever come across and they are responsible this is how the gut microbes restore our gut barrier this is also how our gut microbes suppress and control and shape the immune system um and it's also how they have an anti-inflammatory effect throughout our entire body not just in our gut but even as far as our brain um so the way in which fiber ultimately manifests is fiber comes into contact with microbes those microbes do us a favor releasing these short chain fatty acids and in the process of doing that they're having an anti-inflammatory effect on our body so they basically create this magic stuff these short chain fatty acids which I've heard you guys talk a lot about I've have literally no idea really what that means but that's good stuff and basically the point is we can't get it directly just in what we eat that's right it doesn't it doesn't seem to work when you give it as a supplement people have tried giving them supplements in in clinical trials and uh it doesn't work like that and butter rate is is is the one that's used most and it it also smells like putrifying fish so you wouldn't really want to have it as a supplement so that's not just like it's not a big part of what just to be clear right because you know I don't understand this most people don't it's not like there's loads of these short chain fatty acids when I like you know eat a banana it's something that actually you need these bacteria inside us to create out of um you know the regular foods that we might eat so they always they always are the product of the microbes um but there are foods that do contain short chain fat acids such as butyrate so for example um there are dairy products that because the cow has microbes produces these short chain fatty acids you'll find it in the dairy products they're in Trivial amounts they're not known to have the same effect on the body and most likely what's happening is when you drink them these fats get absorbed almost instantly into your body um without actually like getting to where they're supposed to be this is a very different thing than to consume fiber and have that fiber wiggle its way down through you know 8 MERS of intestines uh 25 ft and arrive um into the colon where the where the microbes are um are residing and then be released in that specific location you know I think it's important to to bear in mind it's not just the short chain fatty acids it's this process of dietary fiber having this effect in the colon so it's sort of like delivering this medicine like to just the right place you know in the right way and in this case though you know we we feed the bacteria the sort of the the input to that and then it actually creates this medicine sort of for us you know in in where it's needed which is you know deep in our gut that's absolutely right and and this is this is the this is the most clear example of the millions of years of coevolution that have taken place between humans and microbes we need them they need us and this is how we Thrive together yeah and that's where the analogy of them being mini pharmacies is uh is really helpful but to produce these wonderful chemicals you've got to give them the right supplies and so that's what our job is is to make sure they have the right things to make these amazing chemicals for us if I was really thinking I want to reduce this inflammation so I want to have be giving the best sort of foods to the bacteria you talked about fermented foods but in terms of feeding the bacteria what are the other sort of key rules that you'd want people to to hold on to so a diverse range of plants is important uh because that creates a whole range of diverse different microbes and the more diverse your set of microbes are um the more chemicals they can produce together the less waste there is and interestingly there's a new study showing that the more diverse your microbes are the less nutrients there are left for Invaders so if you got salmonella or something it can't take hold in your gut because uh your community of microbes is ABS eating all their nutrients so they they will literally starve whereas if you haven't got very many because you have a rather limited diet uh new Invaders like eoli or salm Manila uh will take over the different colors are there because they've got these polyphenols in there which these defense chemicals which are a general energy for all your microbes so uh in order for them to flourish they use that as an energy source uh as well so regardless of what they're eating they all like those polyphenols and then thirdly you've got the fermented foods which are these probiotics that have this effect we still don't exactly understand why they pass through the gut stay a few days and seem to energize your gut microbes to really um get our immune system in order and then pass through uh down the toilet so that's why you need to have them regularly so that there are the three things that essentially need to happen but you know one thing Tim with the fermented foods the study that you're referring to which was out of Stanford and it involved uh Professor Christopher Gardner who's on the scientific Advisory Board of Zoe uh um one of the major findings in addition to fermented foods reducing inflammation is that the addition of fermented foods in a period of just eight weeks which is exciting and fascinating we're able to actually increase the diversity of the microbiome and this is a pattern that we see time and again because when you look at people who have these inflammatory conditions specifically the autoimmune diseases if you look under the hood their microbiome typically has less gut diversity so it's quite fast that when you move the gut from less diversity to more diversity you also reduce the um the inflammation it's a pattern that we see time time and again yeah and just I mean I'm constantly being told by patients that their doctor has said your immune system isn't very good so don't eat um fermented foods and I think uh we need to be moving away from this rather primitive advice apart from the very rare individuals who might be having cancer therapy with you know literally no bone marrow or no white cells but I think you'd agree will that the vast majority of people would benefit from having more fermented foods in their diet I think that that's a myth that really exemplifies how misunderstood fermented foods are and how far we've drifted away from what was a traditional diet well I think that's really interesting now for people listening at this point it feels like only food can reduce inflammation but well I think there's a bunch of other things that you talk about uh that you can do addition I think that there's so much that you can do uh frankly without even lifting a fork and that to me is quite empowering because for example if you're a person you I've SE I've had I've taken care of many people with crohn's disease or all sort of colitis and these people have the worst Food intolerances it's very hard for them to do some of the things that we're describing here you know to say eat more fiber like I fully acknowledge that as much as I want them to do that that's not easy for them so perhaps for them a place to start is to do these other things and it includes sort of the classics that we always think of so for example sleep sleep is uh incredibly restorative and people who um get a better night's sleep have a healthier gut microbiome and when you in in studies where they take people into a sleep lab and deprive them of sleep it doesn't take long for you to start to see the effects of deprived sleep on the gut microbiome it happens very quickly so sleep an extra exercise by the way many different forms of exercise have different effects on the microbiome so don't just always do the same thing switch up your routine but I would recommend both um cardiovascular exercise and also weight bearing or strength training I think both of those are complimentary to one another and then Tim uh alluded a bit to intermittent fasting or Tim restricted eating and to me this is an important Concept in terms of um reducing inflammation and also supporting the got microbiome and it to if we could just do one thing and that would be to have an early dinner to me early depends on you know your own personal lifestyle but that would be before 7 p.m. and then to say no food no alcohol after dinner um and allow your body a period of time where it's now unwinding and then you go to bed and you have a truly restorative period of time that's in inflammation um that actually is fantastic for the microbiome and it doesn't take much you know we did a study in that study the big if study we had people doing 14 hours of fasting which means that they had a 10-hour eating window during the day and by doing this we found a number of different benefits including energy levels increased better mood reduced hunger and I'm personally excited about this one less bloating so and that's quite simply by making those choices so once again there are many different things that we can do that aren't necessarily food that can make us feel better and Empower ourselves amazing though I don't think I'm G to be signing up for that I have to finish all my dinner by 7 P.M every night uh plan anytime soon will but I I like your sort of like perfect Living Well I think it's more just um I want to get people away from the idea of a midnight snack or a night cap alcoholic drink that's what I want to get people away from I well I I have to say every night as I'm um finally crashing out after finishing the email and eating dark chocolate while watching TV at about 10 p.m. I think of the the pair of you uh you know sort of frowning on my shoulder at my terrible Le short period of not eating but there's always something it's good it's good to have something to Aspire to are there any final thoughts on this for somebody who's like come through this story and is saying um okay sort I'm really convinced I want to reduce this inflammation I'm you know I'm worried in fact about how maybe I am on the path towards some sort of long-term you know serious disease whether it's heart disease or um or diabetes or or whatever anything else you'd want to make sure that they were were thinking of as um as we come to the end here I would just add that um many people are confused if they went to the internet and said I've got inflammation my doctor said I've got this new disease and it might go on social media whether it's Tik Tok or Instagram they'd be uh confronted with this huge array of weird diets and exclusions things like alkaline water or potato juice or chlorophyll tablets or um when I was doing Rheumatology patients were were told they could never have anything with tomatoes or over jees in them ever again the point is you should be adding things to your Dart not excluding them and it's ultr processed so I think that's the main message I would have for people is you know if you understand the key role your microbes are playing and you're looking to feed more and more of those guys don't go down the route of uh these wacky exclusion diets that have no scientific basis on them and are calling themselves anti-inflammatory diets an anti-inflammatory diet is one is generally good for your gut microbes I think that's the the message I would leave with it's a diet of abundance that ultimately we need in order to be successful not not restriction so and um and I think just to get back to these uh essential concepts of fiber and fermented foods and if we could quite simply add these because the reality is that the opportunities that will have the biggest impact are the ones that we're not doing so doing more of what we're currently doing is not going to really make a huge difference what what helps is when we take something that we just aren't doing and we know that 95% of Americans and 90% of British people are inadequate in their fiber consumption and the average amount of fermented food intake in the United States is zero on a daily basis so and if we could just increase that a little bit we would make a huge difference and that's that's where I I I would um uh encourage people to to start this year and and also last thing consistency is extremely important the choice that you make that you can do on a daily basis it goes it gets back to the snowball idea if you can do it and you can come back and do it again tomorrow it's going to make a much bigger difference than that one thing that you did that one time brilliant thank you both I'm going to try and do a a quick summary on quite a complex topic I thought um this week and please both of you um keep me onest so we started off basically explaining what inflammation is and and you both explain that basically if you didn't have the ability to have inflammation you die really fast of like an infection or like you know not being able to cure you know that my broken toe so like shortterm acute inflammation is a good thing we're built to have that the problem is that today many of us get us in a situation where sort of the the inflammatory response has being switched on and it's never switching off and for people who are therefore in that inflammatory state for year after year will have this terrifying list of basically every disease that anyone could possibly worrying about you're more likely to get it including I think things like cancer that I think um you know I was really shocked here but also you know disease things that you don't really think of as being linked to uh to inflammation at all that there's a lot of reasons for why that inflammation um might be increased including like our environment and what's happening to us as uh children um but we talked a lot about how you know for those of us who are you know adults listening to this it's very much shaped by what's going on in terms of what we're eating um and by the way that that's affecting our gut microbiome you talked about this incredibly thin layer I think will between like our body and our microbes and that almost all of our immune system is actually sort of in our gut managing this thing with our bacteria and that basically the sort of food we eat shapes the bacteria that we have inside our gut shapes what sort of microbiome we have and that sadly today you know the diet that we eat is a diet which is mainly the diet that the bad bacteria wants to eat and not the diet that the good bacteria wants to eat so we're ending up with like the wrong sort of bugs which are actually making our inflammation higher so that's all very depressing but the good news I think is you saying you know what if you change your diet you can change you know the you can increase the number of good bacteria in your gut and actually that will dampen down the inflammation and I and I think Tim you're saying you could positively reduce Therefore your risks of diseases and your potentially symptoms from some diseas is that is that correct absolutely yes so that's really exciting and then you said like there's some really simple practical rules so firstly what you eat is really Central um eat more plants because plants have the fiber inside them that feed the microbes and they create then this magic thing called short chain fatty acids which I think only will and Tim understand what they are but for the rest of it like that's the good stuff that the bacteria make and so you need to give them the fiber in order to make the the the good stuff um and there isn't a shortcut you can't just eat like a short chain fatty acid supplement it doesn't work you got to get this fiber to make all of these different bacteria make it think about lots of different colors because that's you know this other sort of concept polyphenols which it means again basically lots of foods with these different colors is how I understand it which again is feeding the microbes that are are giving this anti-inflammatory properties um and then separately I think both Tim and will you've got like more excited about from fermented food over the last few years with this new research and that're actually just eating quite a lot of fermented foods right not one you said Tim once a week doesn't get you there you actually got to eat few of these several P it's quite a high bar which I have to admit I often don't hit that could make a difference and then if people are listening to this it's not only food that you can do interestingly like sleep and exercise could both also reduce your inflammation and I think we wrapped up with this idea of Tim restricted eating so having sort of long periods of the day when you don't eat so not midnight snacking and then having something at 7 in the air in the morning but having maybe 12 whole hours without um eating or in fact if you could get it up to 14 hours which I never can then you know that might be even even better and finally whatever you do do not follow any diet that comes about after you click on the words anti-inflammatory diet on the internet uh is my takeaway too him cuz basically you're going to get some totally weird diet where you should exclude things and I think what I heard was you know every good diet is like it's it's good for your gut it's about adding more things in and finally it's about consistency because the only thing that's relevant here is something you can stick with you know for years so crazy DTS you know aren't going to get you there something that long-term supports you you got it brilliant well I think everybody has their marching orders and I think there's something incredibly exciting about this idea that there's things that you can do right now that really can reduce your inflammation and can really improve your health for the long term uh by basically bringing on all of these microbes to fight in your corner wonderful thank you very much byebye thanks everyone bye I hope this episode has opened your eyes to how important your gut microbiome is in keeping inflammation in check and that you've learned something new from Tim and Will are you interested in finding out more about your gut microbiome as I have done with a Zoe membership you can understand what's going on in your gut microbiome with the most advanced tests available and then receive personalized advice and support on how to eat the best foods to support a healthy gut Zoe can help you feel better now and live healthier in the years to come backed by real clinical studies simply go to zoe.com podcast to learn more and get 10% off your membership join us next week when I'll be talking to Dr Andy Galpin about how you can improve your Fitness to live a long and healthy life I'm your host Jonathan wolf Zoe science and nutrition is produced by yellow huin Martin Richard Willen and Tilly forfor as always the Zoe science and nutrition podcast is not medical advice it's for General informational purposes only if you have any medical concerns please consult your doctor see you next [Music] time [Music] a

Channel: ZOE

Views: 292,498

Keywords: zoe, zoe podcast, gut health, ultra processed foods, tim spector, gut health diet, ultra processed foods documentary, ultra processed food, will bulsiewicz, cancer, disease, gut inflammation, inflamation, inflammation, self improvement, how to live longer, poo doctor, poo dr

Id: R_JQllUuv7I

Length: 61min 6sec (3666 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 04 2024