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

Taking care of your gut

health

is one of the most important

things

you can do for your overall

health

. By the time you finish this video, you'll

know

exactly what to do. Research shows that if you do these five

things

, you could improve your immune system. Healthy your digestion reduce excessive appetite problems increase your energy levels and possibly even live longer Hi, I'm Professor Tim Specter, I'm a

professor

of genetic epidemiology and co-founder of Zoe. My number one tip for improving gut health is to eat more. Plants is all about plant diversity, it's such a complete range because each plant is full of different chemicals that are nutritious for our gut microbes and remember gut microbes like you and I have our favorite foods so some microbes find them They may like a purple carrot instead of an orange one, so give them a treat and the more you do it, the more different microbes you will have that will act in their pharmacy function pumping out all these vitamins and chemicals that help our health.

This diversity is really important according to a study we did. with the American gut project and the British gut project that I was leading and they found that the sweet spot for optimal gut health was around 30 plants a week, you might be saying 30 plants, that's too many, I can't handle it that well. To remember what a plant is, it's not just a vegetable, it's nuts, it's seeds, it's herbs and spices, so my first tip is to add more herbs and spices to your cooking and in fact, an herb and a spice have the highest level of defense chemicals. which gives it those aromas, gives it that amazing flavor, so you don't

need

much to have a really big effect on your gut microbes if you want to get as many different ones as you can in your cooking, try to combine those herbs, for example, picks Mediterranean herbs where you have four or five of them in the same jar, that works very well.

You can also get other ones where you have the spices, so spice mixes are very common again, getting four or There are five studies and recently there was one in Singapore that gave volunteers a single serving of spice mix and in two weeks it improved your gut microbes, so I think as long as you're generous with it, it should have a good effect. your gut, so in addition to buying mixed herbs and spices, you can also buy mixed grains and nuts, so you'll get four or five plants right away when you get your nuts, don't just go for one nut, go for four or five.

They are all very tasty and remember that each one is helping to guide microbes that can be a little finicky. I want to show you what I do. My main trick is to make my own diversity jar so I don't have to worry about I use it every morning and I'm going to fill it with a variety of nuts and seeds, so there we have my gut health cocktail and it's very rewarding to

know

that of The 30 plants per week I already have about one. dozen of them marked that I simply have to add to my morning yogurt for gut health.

I always choose this over this and I'll 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 that these same polyphenols that help plants also help us because they are like fuel for our gut microbes, so it is very important to recognize which plants have the highest polyphenols so that you can choose them in advance. those that don't, so it's very important to learn how we can get more of these polyphenols into our diet and I'm going to show you how to always choose brighter colored plants over others, for example if you come across some of these purple carrots you'll have nine or 10 times more polyphenols than standard ones.

My other tip is to go for these green vegetables like kale, they are a fantastic way to get polyphenols, they are slightly bitter and that's a really good sign. just like the dark color, remember that each of these colors will give you a different chemical, a different pigment, so if you want to feed your microwave different things, that's why this rainbow concept is so important and why Of course, we all love chocolate, if it has more than 7% it will be full of polyphenols that are really good for you, in addition to having extra virgin olive oil and, of course, the last of that trio that I cannot do without is my daily dose of polyphenols, which is my cup of coffee, greetings.

I can almost guarantee that there is a key nutrient for gut health that we are missing. More than 90% of us do not get enough fiber in our diet to optimize our intestinal support. I realized all this a few years ago when I visited the hadza. tribe in Tanzania are hunter-gatherers who still have the same lifestyle as we did 30,000 years ago and it turns out that this tribe has twice as many microbial species, which means twice as good gut health as ours, they get less Western diseases, practically not. cancers or heart disease now the easiest way to increase fiber content starts with whole grains and whatever they are, it is always

better

to choose the darker version of whole grains, like whole grain pasta, for example, which has twice the fiber.

Then the beans are absolutely full. with fiber and other nutrients and I like to get a mix of them. You can get cans containing mixed beans which give you even more variety of fiber and I like to add them to my pasta sauce if I eat pasta. with it or even instead of pasta to make a really nutritious high-fiber meal, then you might want to swap your regular chips for popcorn. Three sets of fiber and a serving of popcorn. Your frozen peas. These guys have four or five grams per serving which is amazing and of course let's go back to the good old raspberries and other berries which have some of the highest fiber content out there and are very easy to add to all kinds of meals and finally, let's not forget about the skin of the plants because that is where much of the fiber is found.

The fiber is hidden and in potatoes, if you peel them, you lose more than half of the fiber, so I always try to keep the skin and there are also some fruits like these kiwis, so now I eat my kiwis with skin. Do you like it? live or dead food, I prefer mine live and by that I don't mean running around, but they are 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 is good old yogurt.

Yogurt is basically any dairy cow or sheep or goat and you add some microbes to it and they grow and love to live there and you get two or three different species. What most people don't know is that cfir, which is gaining popularity, is like a super yogurt, so instead of just two or three microbes, there are often 10 to 20 different types of microbes in a cfia that can be used in addition to yogurt. because it's a little more acidic, so I tend to mix them myself. I like the taste of both, so they are really good and you can add both of these sauces to salad dressings, for example, as an easy way to make kombucha into another fermented tea. make sure it doesn't have too much sugar but it's fabulous to drink on its own and then of course you have SAU KRA and kimchi which are basically cabbage based one with chillies and other spices and others just with some herbs both are delicious on their own, whether on top of an avocado or in a sandwich.

I tend to find all kinds of fascinating ways to incorporate my ferments so I can incorporate several servings of fermented foods into my daily diet. eating pattern and studies have clearly shown that this improves your immune health and will improve your gut health. There is one major food that we eat in the UK more than anyone else in Europe and almost anyone else in the world that is slowly killing us. Gut microbes are ultra-processed foods. Ultra-processed foods make up almost 60% of our diet in the UK. We know particularly from our own Zoe snack survey that we did that 75% of the snacks we eat, which is a considerable amount of our daily calories, are ultra-processed, that means they are really damaging our gut health every time we eat them, even if they have some health.

Halo says they're high in protein or high in this or they're not good for us, so I want to suggest some changes to our snacking habits that can make a drastic change for you and your gut health. It's always good to have olives on hand because they are fantastic. High polyphenol popcorn is a really good swap for some of those really synthetic salty snacks that we're tempted to buy, you've got peanut butter, nuts and seeds. Just a handful of nuts can reduce your risk of death by about 14% if you eat them every day, so they're incredibly healthy and you'll be eating the rainbow again with snacks you can.

Dip into something like hummus, so easy to eat, as well as a handful of berries if you're craving something a little sweeter, so there are plenty of ways to transition from an unhealthy snacking habit to a healthy snacking habit and , by doing so, truly improve the health of your gut and its microbes. Thank you for joining me on this intestinal journey. I hope you enjoyed. Leave us any comments. We'd love to hear how it went and if you want to learn more to take it to the next level, please ask. Check out our videos so it's goodbye to me and goodbye to my gut microbes.