5 WAYS TO IMPROVE YOUR GUT HEALTH
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Episode 220:
Show Notes
n this 220th episode of the Real Health and Weight Loss Podcast, hosts Dr Mary Barson and Dr Lucy Burns dive into the vital topic of gut health. They discuss the profound impact that a healthy gut has on overall well-being, including weight management, mental health, and immune system function. In this episode, Dr Mary and Dr Lucy outline the 5R Framework for Gut Health, offering practical and actionable steps to enhance gut health and achieve a balanced microbiome.
- Importance of Gut Health:
- The gut is essential for overall well-being, impacting weight loss, mental health, and immune function. The enteric nervous system, or "gut brain," with its 500 million neurons, is almost as complex as the brain itself. This system influences digestion and emotions, reflecting the gut-brain axis.
- The gut houses 80% of the immune system, playing a significant role in regulating immune responses, reducing inflammation, and potentially controlling autoimmune reactions.
- Gut Microbiome Insights:
- The gut microbiome affects mood, inflammation, and weight. Studies comparing gut microbiomes in different populations reveal that higher levels of Firmicutes and lower levels of Bacteroides are associated with obesity.
- A diverse gut microbiome is beneficial, much like a temperate rainforest, supporting a healthy ecosystem. Lack of diversity can lead to imbalances and health issues.
- 5R Framework for Gut Health:
- Rest: Practice intermittent fasting or take breaks from eating to improve gut microbiome diversity and reduce inflammation. Even short fasting periods, such as 12 hours, are beneficial.
- Remove: Eliminate ultra-processed foods and additives that harm the gut microbiome and disrupt the gut lining.
- Replace: Substitute unhealthy foods with whole foods, including nuts, seeds, meat, seafood, and a variety of plant foods. Incorporate organ meats and animal fibres for optimal gut health.
- Reinoculate: Add probiotics from fermented foods (e.g., sauerkraut, kefir, kombucha) to support gut health. While probiotics help balance gut bacteria, they don’t usually colonise long-term. Fermented foods maintain healthy bacterial balance.
- Repair: Nourish the gut lining with short-chain fatty acids produced during fasting and digestion. A healthy gut lining supports proper barrier function and prevents issues like intestinal permeability.
- Additional Considerations:
- Whole foods, including both animal and plant sources, support gut health.
- Prebiotics from plant fibre feeds beneficial gut bacteria.
- Probiotics from fermented foods help maintain gut balance.
Tune in to this episode to learn how to implement these strategies and nurture your gut to support overall health and well-being.
Episode 220:
Transcript
Dr Mary Barson (0:04) Hello, my lovely friends. I am Dr Mary Barson.
Dr Lucy Burns (0:09) And I'm Dr Lucy Burns Burns. We are doctors and weight management and metabolic health experts.
Both (0:16) And this is the Real Health and Weight Loss podcast!
Dr Lucy Burns (00.18): Good morning, my gorgeous friend. How are you today? Dr Lucy here on what is a lovely Tuesday morning here in Melbourne as we record or send this out to the universe. I hope you are all happy, healthy, and well. And I am of course, joined by the fantastic, the fabulous, the flamboyant Dr Mary, how are you?
Dr Mary Barson (00.25): I'm fabulous, flamboyant Lucy. I'm really good. Slightly windblown though, with currently Victoria, where we both live, is getting near cyclonic level winds with these enormous low fronts that are coming through. And it's quite frightening, took me about 45 minutes to make a 10-minute drive home yesterday. I actually had to stop and do a coaching call in the car because I pulled over. I was very safe and found my place to park because I couldn't get home because all the roads were blocked, by fallen trees. So it's all been a bit dramatic. But I'm well, I'm well. Everyone's safe. Uh, we're all good. We have electricity, which is better than a lot of people currently in our state.
Dr Lucy Burns (01:24): Absolutely. And you know, this is life, as we've mentioned many times, life doesn't throw you a curve ball. Life is a curve ball. Life is a series of storms, some mild, some more severe, and we develop skills enough to be resilient enough to weather the storms.
Dr Mary Barson (01.45): One, I think quite surprising part, at least surprising for me, that I have learned about in recent years, a surprising part of resilience, both physical and emotional resilience, is your gut. How healthy your gut is. I find it fascinating, and science is learning more and more about the gut. This uh, incredibly fabulous organ was, I think, um, kind of a bit dismissed, you know, even as recently as 20 years ago. You just sort of, you know, digested your food, big whoop, that's great, but you know, nothing compared to the brain, the heart, the liver. But actually, the gut is extraordinary and extraordinarily important for weight loss, well-being, mental health, for lots and lots of things. And there is a lot of I reckon it's fair to say, you know, hype and possibly woo out there about gut health. I know that it's very topical and there are lots of, you know, pills and potions that are sold to people to improve their gut. Lots of expensive tests that people can do about their gut health. And I'm not making broad generalisations that all of these are useless, but I think it could be really happy, really good to revisit ways the simple, cheap, often completely free, and powerful ways that you can nurture your gut into a good balance and good health that doesn't involve, you know, any cash at all.
Dr Lucy Burns (03.22): Indeed. Indeed. And this is, you're absolutely right. Whenever something's topical, you know, there are clever, clever ways to do it. Clever, let's call the clever people that will exploit that, that to need for people to want information or look in particular, look for the silver bullet. So the, you know, the quick fix, the, the magic potion. And yes, there are dozens of supplements. Of varying qualities. And the tricky bit is that the popularity of those supplements largely depends on the marketing machine behind them. Yes, that's right. Not necessarily their safety or efficacy. Indeed, indeed. And in fact, what they're even doing is using studies that aren't done on their particular product. So their particular product, let's say might have five components to it. And so what they'll do is they'll get studies on the five separate components and say, see, we're bringing all these together. And in fact, that's not how science works.
Dr Mary Barson (04.27): No. And it's not well regulated as well. In Australia, we've got the TGA, the Therapeutic Goods Administration and they do lots of things, but with regards to supplements, the main role is that, um, companies that sell these products just need to prove that they're safe, not that they are effective. Indeed. Yes. Indeed. It's so interesting, isn't it? It is. It is. I reckon it could be good to dive into a little moment and for us to all just focus in on our fabulous gut and take a moment to, you know, explore and appreciate. all of the incredible things that it does because there is so much to it. There is a very strong connection, like a literal connection, between our gut and our brain. Many people know this now, they're called the gut-brain axis. And mental health, in a large part, starts in your gut. And this is a good reason why you want to pay attention to your gut. Your gut isn't just about digestion. It's connected to our brain, you know, through an enteric nervous system and through multiple ways in which our brain and our gut interact and connect to each other. We've got, in our gut, we've got this, it's called the enteric nervous system. Enteric is like a doctory word for gut. The gut nervous system has got about 500 million neurons in it. So it's nearly, as complex as our brain. And indeed there is a movement now in some parts of psychology and medicine to actually refer to the enteric nervous system as our gut brain. So we have a head brain and a gut brain, and it's incredibly important. And yet the system, amazingly can operate independently and it influences digestion and it also possibly influences our emotions. So emotions can arise in this gut, this whole idea, I've got a gut feeling probably is quite literally true.
Dr Lucy Burns (06.36): Well, I think you only have to think about the butterflies feeling like when people are nervous, you know, it's described as butterflies. Where do we feel it? Nobody's getting butterflies in their knee. you get it in your gut.
Dr Mary Barson (06.49): So yes, it's it's amazing. And a lot of these studies are still at the animal level, like there isn't, um, the data about humans is still emerging, but it's extremely interesting to look at, look at and think about. The other incredible thing that our gut does is it's, it's great immune system organ. Like 80 per cent of our immune system resides in the gut, which is more than anywhere else. And it's crucial for modulating our immune system and for keeping our immune system under control, reducing, you know, autoimmune. If I've got good gut health, we can dampen down autoimmune responses. We can dampen down inflammation, but conversely, if our gut health is not where we want it to be, then we can have increased inflammation and all the problems that are associated with that.
Dr Lucy Burns (07.42): Yeah, absolutely. And I think it's fascinating. I mean, if we think about the appendix, which is, you know, most people will know the appendix is it's a little, just little pocket off our bowel. And it sometimes gets infected when, if it gets blocked and things like that. And so it gets removed and, you know, most people think no big deal. However, we do know that in the appendix, there are gazillions of immune cells, and it's another big pocket of our reservoir, I guess is a good word for, of immune function. But, and I'm sure maybe back in the olden days, you know, as before we sort of evolved to eat the way we eat, it was probably bigger and it wasn't just a little appendage, a little add-on.
Dr Mary Barson (08.29): Yeah, I mean, obviously we can live without it, but it doesn't mean to say that it doesn't have a role. The gut microbiome affects so many things in our lives. It affects our mood, it affects our inflammation levels. It also affects our weight in ways that are becoming more and more understood. Harvard University has done studies looking at the gut microbiome, comparing American gut microbiomes on average to African gut microbiomes, and looking at the averages and all the different types of microbes and the ratios and amounts. And this is interesting because, in Africa, there's much less obesity than there is here. in America, although the rest of the world is catching up to the Western world when it comes to obesity level. So this may not be true for very long. And no, two famous groups of bacteria are the Firmicutes and the Bacteroides. And these studies have shown that on average, African microbiomes have got much more of the bacteroides and less of the firmicutes and vice versa. And firmicutes is associated with having increased risk, having more firmicutes than the bacteroides. Having the sort of balance out of whack is strongly associated with obesity. And it's hypothesised probably because the one thing that this bacteria family does in our gut is it's really good at extracting all of the energy out of food.
Dr Lucy Burns (10.06): Indeed, which is why calorie counting is garbage.
Dr Mary Barson (10.08): Totally. Just bringing it back to that. That's right. You can, you can count all the calories you want, but you can't necessarily, um, you can't account for what your gut microbiome is then going to do with the fuel that you eat. Because bacteroides have more of a role in breaking down plant fibre. So that's very interesting. And we also know that it's not so much about individual populations of gut bacteria. It's more about the overall ecosystem and having overall having a nice diversity and overall having. Lots of different bacteria in there without one particularly taking over or one important group being completely absent. So I like the analogy that it's, you want your gut microbiome to be like a rainforest. We've got a beautiful temperate rainforest here. It's very windblown at the moment, but it is there. And it's got mountain ash and it's got all different types of acacias and different eucalypts and it's got mosses and it's got lichen and beautiful tree ferns and beaches and all of these different trees and plants make up this gorgeous temperate rainforest. And it's not just mountain ash and it's not just just moss. And it's not just acacia. It's all of them mixed together to make this vibrant natural environment that supports this fabulous ecosystem. And it's kind of the same with our gut. You know, we want that beautiful temperate rainforest. We don't want, you know, a pine plantation monoculture, even though there's nothing necessarily wrong with pine trees and nothing wrong with the bacterial equivalent of pine trees in your gut. It's the diversity that you want.
Dr Lucy Burns (11.54): Yes. I often think of it like a herb garden. And again, You've got different, all the different herbs, but if mint takes over, you end up with no herbs. You just end up with a mint garden. Nothing wrong with mint, but you know,
Dr Mary Barson (12.10): We've had a few mint gardens in my life being as I am not a particularly dedicated gardener.
Dr Lucy Burns (12.14): Yeah. Yes. But again, that's actually a great analogy because if you don't look after your biome, then yeah, mint will reign supreme, or in this case, probably Firmicutes, that's it. Firmicutes is the mint of the gut.
Dr Mary Barson (12.32): Microbiome. That's right. And look, I may not be a particularly dedicated gardener of my outside garden, but I do like to think I'm fairly dedicated to being a gardener of my internal garden looking after my lovely gut to ensure that it can also look after me. Yeah, when I first started learning about gut health and its importance, I actually felt really deflated by it because what I was learning about, you know, how to improve, how to have a great gut microbiome, it was, you know, natural vaginal birth. So important that the moment when the baby comes out causes a little newborn baby doesn't have any gut microbes yet. And then as it moves through the birth canal, it picks up the microbes from the mother's vagina. And that seeds, you know, the first little seeds of that, that healthy development of the gut microbiome. I was born by an extremely emergent but life-saving emergency Caesar, and so were both of my kids. So I was like, Oh, that's just sucks, doesn't it? And then it's, you know, that, uh, lovely bacteroides can be transmitted through breastfeeding and breastfeeding really helps nurture the gut. And I'm like, again, my mom wasn't able for very important reasons to breastfeed me. And I also had really significant difficulty, with exclusively breastfeeding my children, I couldn't do it, heartbreaking at the time, we won't go into it, but I couldn't. And then also I was an unwell baby, I was an unwell neonate partly because of the complications of pregnancy, which were just bad luck. And I was filled with antibiotics and then I, I was prone to infections as a kid, so I got lots and lots of antibiotics as a kid. And you know, that's the other thing that to help nurture a healthy gut microbiome, you know, in short limit antibiotics in early life. So I'd rate that number like, well. I'm doomed. Doomed. I'm like, this is rubbish. And I hated gut health. I don't even want to mention gut health, but I was able to do a little bit of a mind flip on this and realise, yes, which is helpful. Of course, none of us can control how we were born. None of us can control how we were fed. None of us can control whether or not we needed antibiotics or got antibiotics as a kid. Even now, sometimes we just need antibiotics. All of these things are outside of our control, so I don't find them very helpful to dwell on at all. But what I've discovered is that actually is an enormous amount that you can do right now, here, to improve that lovely inner garden and make it a gorgeous garden herb garden with the mint in control and not taking over and that's what you can focus your energy on that feeling defeated about the fact, well, you know, either an emergency Caesar or I died, I suppose I'd prefer that, but geez, I'm going to have bad gut health for every reason that terrible. No, that is not the case.
Dr Lucy Burns (15.24): No it's definitely not the case. And I think the interesting thing is that as you said, we can get the gut microbiome does develop in the first few years of life. There are things that we can do to improve that. And again, you don't, you don't, as a baby, you don't get a choice. And my vaginal delivery was a Caesar, but you know, we're now recognising that the enormous amount of antibacterial lotions and wipes and things like that, that we probably don't really need. And I'm quite glad that my kids crawled around on, on the floor and you know, rolled around in the grass and all those sorts of things. Yeah. Get grubby. Yeah, grub is good, grub is good. So yeah, it doesn't have to be perfect. That's for sure. But as you said, what are the things that we could actually do now though? So let's say fast forward to, you know, Dr Mary, now a 42-year-old woman, 42 years past her Caesar and unbreastfedness, what are the things that you do to look after your gut now?
Dr Mary Barson (16.32): Yeah, I, we, we have a framework that I like to think about it, yes. And we call it the 5R framework. We've added another R in the last few years. I think the last time we talked about this, it was a 4R framework. And these are all things that we can all do. So I'll just before I go into the 5R framework, I will say that we do know that one of the things that most profoundly affects our gut microbiome is our diet and how we nourish ourselves. So that's extremely important. And we can really shift and move our gut microbiome by shifting and moving the way that we nourish our beautiful bodies.
Dr Lucy Burns (17.19): Which makes complete sense really, isn't it? Because your, your gut is a tube and you're putting stuff into the tube.
Dr Mary Barson (17.25): Exactly. It is a tube. It's a tube. Yeah. It goes tube from my mouth all the way through to my anus. And technically everything that we put inside our gut. He's technically outside our body. I think that's cause we're really, really complicated elongated doughnut. Yes. I was thinking more like a sea cucumber, but you know, cucumber might be better. Yeah. You know, we're both, we're all animals. Okay. So 5R framework, number one, just the first one that we use is rest. So rest can mean lots of things, but what rest is in our 5R framework? Okay. is rest from food and just spending a bit of time where you're not eating. And I'm only talking about, you know, short, intermittent fasting periods of time can be really beneficial on the gut. And we know this, a lot of this data comes from mouse studies, but also looking at people who've done Ramadan fasting for religious purposes. We know lots about fasting and the health benefits of fasting from generous people during Ramadan who have allowed scientists to study them. including studying their poo. So I'd like to thank all of those people and what we've been able to learn from them. So fasting is a really powerful way to improve your gut. It helps improve gut microbiome diversity, sort of can knock off any like particular branches of bacteria that are getting a bit minty and wanting to take over. I can help sort of knock them back down. It's a useful way to kind of, you know, weed the garden. It's powerfully anti-inflammatory as well for the gut. And it doesn't have to be long, you know, even like 12 hours is still enough time to rest your gut and to get a little bit of time where your gut is able to enjoy these resting benefits.
Dr Lucy Burns (19.21): It makes sense too. Like I was talking to somebody, one of my coaching clients today about the idea that humans, we're not cows. We're not designed to eat all day. You know, we're not designed to ruminate our food. We don't have a gut that's like that. Our gut is designed to have a meal, then have a rest, then have a meal, then have a rest. And when we keep piling things into it, then it doesn't get the downtime to rest. It's just constantly working like a cow's gut. And so it makes sense then when we. I give it a big rest overnight, potentially, but also between meals. And I was saying to her, it's a bit like if you're, let's say you're, you know, you're at work and you've got three jobs that you need to do for the day, but somebody keeps coming in and just sort of giving you a few little extra jobs along the way. You don't have time to do your three big jobs. Like it's like, uh.
Dr Mary Barson (20.23): Yep. And the day gets. Taken up and then you've done, you know, a poorer job on those, a poorer, poorer work, a poorer output on those three jobs that you would have done. Absolutely. Yes. Yes. We also know that when we fast for a little while, we get an increase in the production of these beneficial short-chain fatty acids. This has been shown in both observational human studies and my studies. And these short-chain fatty acids are a fuel source and they're a fabulous fuel source for the lining of our gut. They love it. It's their favourite thing. And our gut when we give our body a chance, we can make these and we make more of them when we rest our gut for a little while. So resting is actually nourishing for your gut as well as resting. It's good stuff.
Dr Lucy Burns (21.07): And when we're feeding the lining, the colonocytes in particular, well, that makes them a bit more robust. So if you think of them as like skin on the inside, it's a good barrier protection then for the body.
Dr Mary Barson (21.23): It is. We haven't gone into intestinal permeability now, which is a big topic, but yes, you want to have a really nice integral healthy barrier to your gut and everything we're talking about that will help with that. Good. All right. Next one. What's next R? The next R is remove. And we talk about removing the foods in particular that are unhelpful for our gut health. You know, two words really can sum this up, processed foods. I was going to go ultra-processed. Three words. Ultra-processed foods. Yes. I think that's probably better. So these have got lots of harmful substances in them that can disrupt the lining of our gut, be harmful to our gut, and microbiome, irritate our gut, and do lots of bad things. Like, um, there's surfactants in. Soaps, essentially, in processed foods, improve their shelf life and improve their mouthfeel, but are not at all good for our gut. A lot of preservatives and processed food can knock off our gut bacteria. It's harmful, and the less we have, the better we will be. So removing ultra-processed foods is key really to improving your gut health.
Dr Lucy Burns (22.52): And I think I do, I think you're right. I mean, you know, in some parts of our society, people's diet is 80 per cent ultra-processed food and our bodies just aren't coping with it. It doesn't mean that if you, you know if let's say you have a Mars fun size bite that you're going to suddenly drop dead of, you know, gut dysbiosis. Having one small ultra-processed product, like it's not about that, it's the amount, the quantity and the longevity of having that. So if you do it every day for years, yeah, your gut's gonna be very, very sad. I don't even know that mint will actually be worse than mint. What's worse than mint? Ivy.
Dr Mary Barson (23.41): Ivy. Yeah, absolutely. Something you can't even eat. Yeah. That's right. But you know, you can turn it around. This is changeable. It's never too late and never too hard to improve your gut health. And you can break up with ultra-processed foods. There are other things that are good to remove like stress and sedentary behavior, but we talk about those a little bit more. So the remove is really about the ultra-processed foods. And then the next R is replace. So this is if you're, you know, cutting out those ultra-processed foods, you want to replace your nutrition, how you are nourishing your beautiful body with healthy whole foods that nourish the gut. And essentially any real food is going to be good for your gut. And there are some foods that are particularly good that can be extremely helpful, but any of your nuts, seeds, meat, fish, or seafood. Organ meat. Fantastic. So nutritious and good for your gut. I reckon we could do a podcast on, on organ meat. I reckon perhaps. I'm still not eating it. I know you're not eating it. People out there. I'll get, I'll get Lucy onto it and then we'll do it for the girls. A little bit goes a long way, but real foods are really helpful and they nourish your gut. Give your gut what it needs. Some other foods that I think it's good to incorporate is to eat a variety of plant foods in particular, I know that, you know, they're in the low carb movement. There are people who will really dismiss the benefits of plant foods and really focus more on animal foods. But we're of the opinion that they're both helpful. You know, there are really helpful things in eating plant foods and helpful things in eating animal foods. And you can, if you want to, you know, focus mostly on the animal or entirely if that is your choice, or mostly on the plants or entirely if that's your choice. Following the principles of real food, you can figure out what works for you. And in terms of gut health, they are both beneficial. That is what the science shows us. And also. Thinking about the variety, you don't need to go absolutely crazy, you know, with eating an enormous variety of plant foods. There are some studies looking at people who had 30 different plant foods in a week and they had a better gut microbiome than people who had less. But those were observational studies with a lot of health use bias and problems in them. So instead, I think it could be helpful to just think over your day and try and get different colors of plant foods. And that could just be a useful way to think about it. Get a bit of red, get a bit of grey, and get a bit of brown. And maybe, you know, just three a day would probably be fine. Like, I think that's a reasonable suggestion. It's not like you need to have 10 different colours every day.
Dr Lucy Burns (26.36): No, although you know what? There's some time, there's a few little hacks I reckon that you can do to add in like some, you know, my seed cracker recipe. I do. It's yummy. That's got five different types of plants really. That's right. I know it's like seeds, plants. Yeah, it's five different ones and that's in one.
Dr Mary Barson (26.53): It is. I made your hemp seed porridge this morning and yeah, and that's got three. That's pretty good. You've just done three right there without trying very hard. Yeah, there is, you know, and yeah. Herbs and spices.
Dr Lucy Burns (27.08): Yep, they all count. If you add some berries to that hemp seed porridge, you've actually got four. Totally. Exactly. And with a squirt of peanut butter, you've actually got five.
Dr Mary Barson (27.14): That's it. Yeah, that's it. So it can absolutely add up. All of those different foods have got different nutrient profiles. You know, they've got different beneficial, um, plant chemicals or phytonutrients and different types of phenols that are in there, but they're just helpful. But animal foods and animal fibres are also really helpful for our gut. So thinking about, um, having different types of animal foods is good. In particular, you know, getting a bit of fish in your diet as well, red meat in your diet. All of these things are helpful. So it's real food. It's delicious. It's yummy. Check out Lucy's recipes. They're amazing. I use them all the time.
Dr Lucy Burns (27.52): And we are the worst cooks ever. So, you know, totally. Yeah. And I'm not spending a long time in the kitchen in and out quickly. No. Bang for your buck is what we want.
Dr Mary Barson (28.05): That's right. I reckon, yep. 20 minutes max is how much time I want to spend making dinner. Less if possible. Yeah. Yeah.
Dr Lucy Burns (28.09): So in this replace thing, is this where we talk about the prebiotics?
Dr Mary Barson (28.14): I think this is, and we sort of have been talking about this, but not specifically yet. So prebiotics, confusing term, prebiotics and probiotics. Prebiotics are fibres, essentially, that come from plant foods that are food for lots of the different little microorganisms in our gut. And each bacteria has its preferred food so that's why it's helpful to have a different, variety of these prebiotics. Essentially it's, it's a fibre that we eat that doesn't get completely digested by our stomach and small intestine and goes through prebiotics. relatively intact, um, throughout our gut. So the bacteria in the different parts of our gut can then break it down. Bacteroides love to do this. Bacteroides being the, the, the helpful bacteria we were talking about before. So prebiotic foods are all of your plant foods that have got some fibre in them and they're great. And we really do want to think about incorporating them into our diet each day, each day that we're choosing to eat. And then probiotics, there's a nice little segue into the next R, which is the re-inoculate. We called it that just because we wanted to stick with the R for the literation, but it's not exactly inoculating your gut. Probiotics are beneficial bacteria or sometimes yeast that we eat and they go through into our gut. They usually don't hang around for long though. They don't normally stay and colonise the gut. They do sometimes, but not usually most of us have a fairly well-established gut microbiome, the ecosystem in there. And the only way to really shift that dramatically is by changing your food. You could also do a fecal transplant, which is outside the scope of what we're talking about right now, I think, but just for completion that does also work. Yeah. So, but they do have a helpful. effect on our gut. It's really interesting. We eat probiotics in the form of fermented foods, like sauerkraut, which is probably my favourite fermented food, or drinks like kefir or kombucha, which is probably my favourite drink. And these beneficial bacteria, they go down into our gut and they affect our gut. Probably not the actual words, but they communicate and have an effect on the gut that the bacteria that are already there. And one thing that we're almost certain that they do is they sort of put the brakes on one particular type of bacteria. bacteria overgrowing. So they kind of just sort of dampen down the growth and keep it all kind of nice and even. So they're sort of like out there sort of gardening. If the mint is taking over there, they're kind of, you know, plucking out some mint. They're a gardener. They're a gardener. Exactly. Yes. They're like gardeners in our garden that we eat and they hang around for a few weeks, possibly a few months. And then they're gone. So they have this role in supporting, the gut microbiome is there, and it's supporting the immune function of our gut. And it's really important that we get them. And we, you know, we can get bacteria from yep, you know, grubby bubbies out there playing in the dirt. They're ingesting bacteria, you know that? That's a probiotic thing to do. But a great way to get them is from fermented foods and fermented drinks.
Dr Lucy Burns (31.52): Yogurt. Again, yogurt, but not all yogurts are created equally. So. You know, I'm a big fan of Greek yogurt. I've tried it and even within the Greek yogurt, there are different ones that I just prefer the taste of. But a lot of yogurts these days have very little bacteria in them and a lot of preservatives, emulsifiers, sugar, flavourings and colourings. And so it's like, meh, that's probably not ideal. So the interesting thing is that when I was a sugarholic when I ate a lot of sugar, I hated yogurt because it was too sour. My taste buds weren't adapted. Now that I eat very little sweet food, I actually love it. It's beautiful. It's like, Ooh. So berries and yogurt to me is now, you know, it's what I would eat instead of, you know, in the olden days where I would eat red and white, whatever they're called, white bullets with the red inside. Yes. I know those. There are raspberry bullet things. Raspberry bullet things Now I'll have a raspberry yogurt thing
Dr Mary Barson (33.03): I get the frozen berries and mash them into Greek yogurt and my children call it ice cream. Actually, that's not true. My toddler calls it ice cream. My 11-year-old has gotten on to that. It's not true, but I love it too. You know, like, cause their taste buds are such that. That berries and yogurt are fabulous for them.
Dr Lucy Burns (33.22): Absolutely Yes. Okay. So we're up to the last R now.
Dr Mary Barson (33.25): Ah my favourite R possibly is rebalance. We've talked about these sorts of information superhighway between the gut the enteric nervous system and our brain. And it goes both ways. Our brain communicates with our gut by the vagus nerve and vice versa. And also it's amazing, but Our gut microbiome actually can directly communicate with our brain as well through neurotransmitters and hormones. And we didn't even mention that the gut is really hormonally active and most of our body's serotonin actually resides in the guts, very, very, very complex, fabulous organ, and it's a two-way street. There are many things that we can do in how we behave and what we do throughout the day that can help rebalance our gut, keep the enteric nervous system in balance, nice and calm, and also directly impact our gut microbiome. So it's not just food food's probably the most important, but it isn't just food things like sleep and your circadian rhythm. Our gut has its own circadian rhythm. It follows a 24-hour cycle. And we can see differences in the activity and the number of gut microbiomes throughout the day. So it's got its own little internal clock and it's linked to our circadian rhythms. They are joined. And so yes, this intestinal microbiome is regulated through these intrinsic clocks. It has its own clock and the host organism, which is us, our clock as well. And so getting enough sleep is going to help improve your gut, uh, function and diversity in, I think that's really fascinating. So getting some morning sunlight, prioritising your sleep, having a helpful sleep routine, having a healthy relationship with sleep, having a positive outlook about your bed, all of these factors will improve your gut.
Dr Lucy Burns (35.31): Indeed. And again, I, you know, I just, I love getting on my high horse, but it's still just comes back then to why do people, particularly trainers, PTs, not all PTs, if you're a PT out there who doesn't just espouse calorie counting, this is why I get so cross because they just are complex but simple, but we're not so simple that it's just maths in, you know, calories in, calories out. It's not that simple. You know, we're a whole diverse being and we need to look at all aspects of our health, you know if weight loss is our ultimate outcome. And this is where I love this idea. I mean, we talk about it all the time, but you know, to be healthy on the inside, including your gut, is how you glow on the outside.
Dr Mary Barson (36.32): Yes. So sleep the central part of the rebalance, as is managing your stress. So stress is bad for our gut, bad for our gut microbiome, bad for the integrity of the lining of our gut, like chronic stress, day in, day out. That moment of stress while you're, you know, sitting through an exam. You know, that's okay. You're allowed that moment of stress while you're running late for work. But when the stress is day in, and day out, not great. So having a meditation practice, um, listening to guided hypnosis, uh, doing something each day to rebalance your central nervous system also is integral to good health as is movement. It doesn't have to be, you know, bodybuilding and Olympic weightlifting and marathon running, but movement also, regular movement has been shown to improve your gut microbiome diversity, which I think is fascinating, but that's what the science shows.
Dr Lucy Burns (37.31): Oh, and you know, at one level, it's fascinating. At the other level, it makes sense because we know for, you know, propulsion, you know, which is peristalsis, is the, is the medical phrase of, of your gut movement. So to get, and move the food through your gut, sitting is unhelpful. Walking is more helpful or swimming or whatever sort of movement you do will improve therefore the passage of the food through, which is, is also good. I mean, we don't, again, it's very Goldilocksy, isn't it? We don't want it to go too fast so that you end up with diarrhea.We don't want it to go through slowly so that you end up with constipation. We just want the food to move through the gut at the optimal rate.
Dr Mary Barson (38.16): That's right. I love that you just said Goldilocks then when my son was eating his hemp seed porridge this morning, he was telling me the story of Goldilocks and he's like, and you're just right.
Dr Lucy Burns (38.30): Beautiful. I love that. I love that. So there we go. The five R's.
Dr Mary Barson (38.35): It's simple, doable, powerful, and like pretty much everything here we've mentioned is, if not free, it's not exorbitantly expensive at all. These are very, very affordable, simple, powerful ways that you can nurture your inner garden and it's essential. It's essential to every single part of your health. including weight loss.
Dr Lucy Burns (38.58): Absolutely. So much so that this is the focus of our topic for the month for our Momentum members. So for those of you who are unaware of Momentum, it is our follow-up program to the 12 Week Mind Body Rebalance. Although once a year, we do open it up to the public. Each month we pick a topic to do a deep dive on and just a little reminder, a refresh. Sometimes people just need a little memory jog, if you like to go, yeah, you know what might be thinking of myself here. My kombucha has been sitting in its jar for a couple of months untended. It's time to get it back out nurture it and feed it. And it will produce for me. Beautiful, fermented drink that I love, delicious, and my guts bloody love it. So there we go.
Dr Mary Barson (39.52): Yes. I'm praising all of your cooking and everything. It's like, you're like my food preparation guru, Lucy, but I have started doing what you showed me ages ago with using milk kefir with cream. So you end up with this lovely kind of sour, creamy type kefir, which I'm, yeah, I'm enjoying that. Having a spoonful of that each day and a little spoonful of sauerkraut as well. I love both of those things.
Dr Lucy Burns (40.17): Yeah, I love that. And kefir is, um, great if, especially if you've got cream that's getting close to its use-by date and you're thinking, Oh, what am I going to do with it? Yeah. You just bang it into some grains and let it sit on the bench for a few days. And voila, you've got sort of a sour cream-ish. type concoction.
Dr Mary Barson (40.34): And if this sounds too hard, gorgeous people, you don't need to make your own fermented products. You know, you can buy a good quality yogurt or a good, I don't make mine sauerkraut. For example, I buy my sauerkraut from the refrigerator section to get from the refrigerator section, from my supermarket. I say the refrigerator section because you want to make sure that it's still alive. The live cultures are still in there. If you get canned, It's not necessarily a bad product at all, but the canning heating process or jarring process kills the bacteria. So it's not probiotic. It's just interesting cabbage.
Dr Lucy Burns (41.10): Yeah. Another great place is farmer's markets where people do homemade, you know, pickles, because pickles are also like, you know, cucumber pickles, whatever they're called,.I love them and they're probiotic. So huzzah.
Dr Mary Barson (47.21): If you get them from someone's made them or you get them from the refrigerator section.Absolutely. They're great. Pickles. Yeah. Pickles, sauerkraut, kimchi. Kefir, kombucha, apple cider vinegar. Apple cider vinegar is a great probiotic food. Make sure it's got the live cultures or the mother as they sometimes call it in it. And yeah, you know, you can have a teaspoon or tablespoon of that a day and that would have the same effect.
Dr Lucy Burns (41.51): Amazing. All right, lovely friends. You've probably had a gut full of us now.
Dr Mary Barson (41.52): That's right. I'll follow our gut and we'll wrap it up here.
Dr Lucy Burns (41.53): We will see you next week.
Dr Mary Barson (42.06): Bye bye gorgeous people.
Dr Lucy Burns (42:10) The information shared on the Real Health and Weight Loss Podcast, including show notes and links, provides general information only. It is not a substitute, nor is it intended to provide individualised medical advice, diagnosis or treatment, nor can it be construed as such. Please consult your doctor for any medical concerns.
