The 5 things you NEED to know for better GUT HEALTH with Professor Tim Spector

looking after your gut health is one of the most important things you can do for your overall health by the time you've finished this video you'll know exactly what to do research shows that if you do these five things you could improve your immune Health your digestion reduce problems of excessive appetite increase your energy levels and even possibly live longer hi I'm Professor Tim Spectre I'm a professor of genetic epidemiology and a co-founder of Zoe my number one tip for improving gut health is eat more plants it's about diversity of plants it's that full range because each plant is full of different chemicals that are nutritious for our gut microbes and remember that gut microbs like you and I have their favorite foods so some microbs might like a per purple carrot rather than an orange one so give them a treat and the more you do that the more different microbes you have that will be then acting in their Pharmacy role pumping out all these vitamins and chemicals that help our health this diversity is really important based on a study we did with the American gut project and the British gut project that I was leading that found that the sweet spot for Optimum gut health was around 30 plants a week you might be saying 30 plants that's far too many I can't cope with that well you got to remember what a plant is it's not just a vegetable it's nuts it's seeds it's herbs and it's spices so my first tip is to add more herbs and spices to your cooking and actually a herb and a spice has the highest level of Defense chemicals in it which gives it those Aromas it gives it that incredible taste and so you you don't need very much of it to have a really big effect on your gut microbes if you want to get as many of the different ones as you uh can into your cooking try combining those herbs for example selections of Mediterranean herbs where you got four or five of them in the same jar that works very well you can also get other ones where you've got the spices so spice mixes are very common again getting four or five there are studies and there was one recently in in Singapore gave volunteers a single serving of spice mix and within two weeks that' improved their gut microbes so I think as long as you're generous with it it should be having a good effect on your gut so as well as buying mixed herbs and spices you can also buy mixed grains and nuts so that gives you four or five plants straight away when you get your nuts don't just go for one nut go for four or five of them they're all really tasty and remember each one is helping your guide microbes who might be a bit fussy I want to show you what I do is my go-to hack is to make my own diversity jar so I don't have to worry about it every morning and I'm just going to fill it up with variety of nuts and seeds so there we've got it my gut health cocktail and it's so gratifying to know that of the 30 plants a week I've already got about a dozen of them ticked off that I just simply have to add to my morning yogurt for gut health I always choose this over this and I'm going to tell you why well it's all about eating the rainbow because these plants get their color and sometimes their bitter taste from defense chemicals called polyphenols it turns out these same polyphenols that help the plants also help us because they're like rocket fuel for our gut microbes so it's really important to recognize which plants have the highest polyphenols so you can choose them ahead of those the ones that don't so it's super important to learn how do we get more of these polyphenols into our diets and I'm going to show you how always pick brighter colored plants over the others so for example if you happen to come across some of these purple carrots these will have nine or 10 times more polyphenols than the standard one my other tip is to go for these green vegetables like kale are a fantastic way to get your polyphenols they're of slightly bitter and that's really good sign as well as dark colored remember each of these colors is going to give you a different chemical a different pigment and so if you want to feed your microw different things that's why this rainbow concept is so important and of course we all love chocolate if it's over 7 % it's going to be packed with polyphenols that are really good for you as well as having your extra virgin olive oil and of course the last of that Trio that I can't go without is my daily polyphenol dose which is my cup of coffee cheers I can nearly guarantee there's one key nutrient for gut health that you're lacking over 90% of us are not getting nearly enough fiber in our diet to optimize our gut help this all came home to me a few years ago when I visited the hadza tribe in Tanzania they're hunter gatherers who still have the same lifestyle as we did 30,000 years ago and it turns out that this tribe have twice as many microbial species which means twice as good gut health as we do they get less Western diseases virtually no cancers or heart disease now the simplest way to up your fiber content starts with whole grains and whatever they are it's always better to pick the whole grain darker version of it like whole grain pasta for example which has twice as much fiber next beans are absolutely packed with fiber as well as other nutrients and I like to get a mix of them you can get cans that have mixed beans in them that give you even more variety of fiber and I like to add those to my pasta sauce if I'm having pasta with it or even instead of the pasta to make a really nutritious high fiber meal then you might want to swap out your normal crisps for popcorn three Gams of fiber and a portion of popcorn your frozen peas these guys have four or five grams per portion which is amazing and of course back to your good old raspberries and other berries which have one the highest fiber contents around and are so easy to add to all kinds of meals and finally let's not forget about the skin of plants because that's where a lot of the fiber is hidden and in potatoes if you peel them you lose over half of the fiber so I always trying to keep the skin on and there are some fruits as well like these kiwis so now I eat my kiwis with the skins on do you like your food dead or alive I prefer mine alive and by that I don't mean running around but they're full of live microbes in certain foods certain fermented foods that end up being really good for our gut health and there are all kinds of ways to get your ferments the one most people know about is good old yogurt yogurt is basically just any uh milk cows or uh sheep or goats and you add some microbes to it and they grow and they love living there and you get two or three different species in there what most people don't know is that cfir which is increasing popularity is like a super yogurt so rather than just two or three microbes there are often uh 10 to 20 different types of microbe in a cfia that can be used in addition to yogurt cuz it's slightly more sour so I tend to mix them up myself I like the taste of both and so they're really good and you can add these two sauces add it to salad dressings for example as easy ways kombucha is another one that's fermented tea make sure it hasn't got too much sugar in it but this stuff fabulous to just drink on its own and then of course you've got uh SAU KRA and kimchi which are basically cabbage based one with chilies and other spices and others just with some herbs they're both delicious on their own whether it's on top of an avocado or it's on a sandwich I tend to find all kinds of fascinating ways to get my ferments in so that way I can get several portions of fermented foods into my daily pattern of eating and studies of clearly shown that this improves your immune health and you'll improve your gut health there's one major food that we eat in the UK more than anyone else in Europe and nearly anyone else in the world that is slowly killing are gut microbes it's ultr processed food ultr processed food makes up nearly 60% of our diet in the UK we know particularly from our own Zoe snack survey we did that 75% of the snacks we eat which is a considerable amount of our our daily calories are ultr processed that means they're really harming our gut health every time we eat them even if they've got some health Halo saying they're high in protein or high in this or that they're not good for us so I want to suggest a few swaps in our snack habits that can make a dramatic change to you and your gut health always nice to have olives around because they're a fantastic High polyphenol snack popcorn is a really good swap for some of those really synthetic Savory snacks that we we're tempted to buy you got peanut butter nuts and seeds just a handful of nuts can reduce your risk of death by about 14% if you have that every day so these are incredibly healthy and eating the rainbow again with snacks that you can dip into something like hummus um so easy to have as well as a handful of berries if you fancy something a bit sweeter so there are many ways to make the transition from an unhealthy snacking Habit to a healthy snacking habit and in doing so really improving the health of your gut and its microbes thanks for joining me on this gut journey I hope you enjoyed it do leave us any comments we'd love to know how you got on and if you want to learn more to go to the next level do check out our videos so it's goodbye from me and it's goodbye from my gut microbes

Channel: ZOE

Views: 455,323

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Id: BPI-FJj8f5o

Length: 11min 24sec (684 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 08 2024