Tim Spector: Why your gut sends 80% of signals to your brain

1. 0:00 – 2:53

   Intro

   1. TSTim Spector0:00

      Studies show that if you are flossing, you can reduce your risk of dementia by nearly half, which is quite impressive. So I started to research the brain much more, and it made me realize this link with the brain and the gut is absolutely crucial, and how that influences many things in our brain. For example, things like depression, mood changes, fatigue, and energy. But for forty years, we've been going down the wrong path. We've got so distracted by treating the brain as something so different to the rest of the body.

   2. SBSteven Bartlett0:27

      So what do we do about it if we want to have optimally healthy brains?

   3. TSTim Spector0:31

      So-

   4. SBSteven Bartlett0:32

      Professor Tim Spector is one of the top one hundred most cited scientists worldwide.

   5. SPSpeaker0:37

      And he's back to reveal the critical role our gut plays with our physical and mental health-

   6. TSTim Spector0:42

      Our cognition-

   7. SPSpeaker0:43

      And the prevention of chronic disease.

   8. TSTim Spector0:45

      We can dramatically improve our lives and our health just by making the right food choices. And I've got eight rules for gut health, which work for all health. So first thing, pivot your protein, then there's quality, not calories. The whole idea of assessing food by calories is wrong. Calorie-restricted diets have been shown for the vast majority of people not to work. Your hunger signals go up, and hunger is the main driver of obesity, and we'll get into the other rules.

   9. SBSteven Bartlett1:12

      And what about coffee?

   10. TSTim Spector1:13

       So drinking between two and five cups of coffee reduces your risk of heart disease by about twenty-five percent.

   11. SBSteven Bartlett1:19

       And then, what do you think of almonds?

   12. TSTim Spector1:20

       So there's lots of studies showing they're good for your cognition and mood.

   13. SBSteven Bartlett1:24

       And what about your views on GLP-1s like Ozempic?

   14. TSTim Spector1:27

       I think from a public health perspective, they're going to transform medicine, and we ought to be taking it much more seriously, but I've got two real worries about them. My f- first worry is that...

   15. SBSteven Bartlett1:45

       Listen, my, my team gave me a script that they asked me to read, but I'm just going to ask you, um, in the nicest way I possibly can. Thank you, first and foremost, for choosing to subscribe to this channel. It is, um, it's been one of the most incredible, crazy years of my life. I never could have imagined. I had so many dreams in my life, but this was not one of them. And the very fact that these conversations have resonated with you and you've given me so much feedback is something I will always be appreciative of, and I almost carry a weight, a sort of burden of, uh, responsibility to pay you back. And the favor I would like to ask from you today is to subscribe to the channel, if you, um, would be so obliged. It's completely free to do that. Roughly about forty-seven percent of you that listen to this channel frequently currently don't subscribe to this channel. So if you're one of those people, please come and join us. Hit the subscribe button. It's the single free thing you can do to make this channel better, and every subscriber sort of pays into this show and allows us to do things bigger and better and to push ourselves even more. And I will not let you down if you hit the subscribe button, I promise you. And if I do, please do unsubscribe, but I promise I won't. Thank you. [upbeat music] Professor Tim Spector, who is, um, who's this lovely

2. 2:53 – 4:22

   Why My Mum No Longer Recognises Me

   1. SBSteven Bartlett2:53

      lady, and how does she tie into the work you're focused on right now?

   2. TSTim Spector2:58

      That's my lovely mum, June, who is still with us, age ninety-three.

   3. SBSteven Bartlett3:05

      Wow!

   4. TSTim Spector3:05

      But for the last seven years has been in a, in a home in London after suffering a stroke and, uh, then developing dementia. And so, um, yeah, that's, um, changed some of my views on life and, uh, she was really pro, uh, euthanasia and signed every paper possible that if this ever happened to her, you know, she would be able to end her life. But unfortunately, that didn't come true, and under UK law, it's n- not possible to, to help her in that because she lost capability and mobility very early. So she's still there, but she doesn't-- no longer recognizes me, and, um, it's, it's a reminder of, you know, our potential future life and, uh, how so many, so many people in the-- are going to end up with dementia. That wasn't the case fifty years ago. If I can do something to reverse this epidemic of dementia, then that's really motivating for me and in a way, one reason why I've started to research the brain much more than I, I've done in the past.

3. 4:22 – 5:22

   Is Dementia Really Becoming More Common?

   1. SBSteven Bartlett4:22

      So is dementia increasing, or is it that we know of it more now, so we're better at diagnosing it?

   2. TSTim Spector4:31

      It's increasing for a number of reasons. So some of it is the age demographic, so we're living longer-

   3. SBSteven Bartlett4:37

      Mm-hmm.

   4. TSTim Spector4:38

      -but we're not living healthier. So our health span h- hasn't really increased, but our lo- lifespan has. We're good at keeping elderly people alive longer. That's definitely true, but there's also stats to show that it is increasing even when you take that into account, so that more people are developing, uh, dementia than ever before, even when you account for the demographics and those other changes. So it is a major worry, and I think it's one of the, the major fears that all of us have. You know, obviously, you've got cancer as one fear, but I think the other really bad one is ending up with dementia because nearly everyone knows somebody with dementia.

4. 5:22 – 7:59

   The Hidden Types of Dementia You Might Be at Risk For

   1. SBSteven Bartlett5:22

      Did this inspire you to go get your own brain scanned?

   2. TSTim Spector5:25

      Yes. I'd had, as you know, problems with my brain before. I'd had a mini stroke back in 2011 and never really worked out the causes of that. I knew I had some white spots in my brain. I wanted to see if they were still there, if there are any signs of that. And at the same time, I wanted to get a checkup to see, was I likely t- to end up like my mother or not, and did I have the genetic form of the disease? Was it a straightforward Alzheimer's, or was it more the vascular type that my mother had? Well, probably has.... And so, yeah, uh, partly it was motivated out of my cur- my med- medical curiosity and partly for self-interest.

   3. SBSteven Bartlett6:15

      And what did you find?

   4. TSTim Spector6:17

      I went to this specialized clinic in London that does these dementia screens, so I know if I had the risk genes for Alzheimer's, which luckily I don't, um, but I do have bad genes for diabetes and heart disease, which predispose you to the vascular side of things.

   5. SBSteven Bartlett6:36

      What's vascular dementia?

   6. TSTim Spector6:38

      There's several types of dementia, but the two main ones are Alzheimer's, where you get these, uh, protein folds in the brain. You get local inflammation, these protein tangles, and that then causes these damage to the bits of the brain. That's a very specific type of dementia. Then you get more generalized dementia, which is usually called vascular dementia, where you're just getting clogging up of the arteries supplying the brain, just like you do in the heart, and that knocks off other bits of the brain, uh, in a slightly more random way than happens, uh, with Alzheimer's. Slightly less predictable, but that accounts for about a third of, uh, all dementia is this vascular type. I'm predisposed to it because after my-- this weird episode in two thousand and eleven, my blood pressure went up. So anyone with high blood pressure generally has slightly stiffer arteries than most people, and that impacts the arteries in your brain, so you are slightly more at risk. And with these diabetes genes that I've got, thanks to my grandmother, I am more at risk of vascular dementia. And so what I wanted to do was learn about that in order to optimize all the things I could do to postpone it or prevent it as much as possible.

5. 7:59 – 11:34

   How Your Gut Might Be Controlling Your Brain Health

   1. SBSteven Bartlett7:59

      Over the last five years or so, your interest in the brain has increased. What, what is the, the, the variance in your views of the brain now versus five years ago before you started doing research and getting interested in it?

   2. TSTim Spector8:11

      I think I saw the brain as a rather distinct organ that, uh, was the domain of psychiatry and, you know, perhaps gerontologists who look at dementia. That wasn't really part of the major picture and certainly wasn't within my domain of expertise. I think I still believe in this, the Cartesian view of the difference between the mind and the brain, and the mind and the body, uh, that these two separate entities, and you've got this barrier between them, this blood-brain barrier that was really like an Iron Curtain. So I, I was interested in it, but I didn't realize this huge connection I've now discovered, really, that, um, has really excited me. And I think the thing that triggered it was some of our own experiments, which happened a bit by chance. So when we started ZOE, we did a number of trials, and we gave our participants apps, so they could report how they felt. In every study we did, we started getting back these incredible results of people saying when they were-- when they started the ZOE diet, for example, the first thing they noticed was their mood and energy improved and their hunger, uh, got less. And that was before any blood changes, before any gut changes. And so initially, we slightly discounted it, but it, it happened in every study we did. We looked at the menopause, and again, the most dramatic change when people were, were improving their gut health through food with menopausal symptoms was on, was on mood and energy. Because originally, I'm a rheumatologist, uh, and was really interested in inflammation. I'd never put that connection between what was inflammation in the body and in your joints with what was going on in your brain. And suddenly, the latest science, when I'm going away and doing my reading, is making it all so, so much clearer. Uh, it's, it's really become, you know, this, this id- new idea of things like depression, things like mood changes, things like fatigue and energy, which I hadn't really thought about as, in a way, a malfunction of the brain responding the wrong way to signals from the rest of the body. But it, it suddenly all comes into focus about how holistic the whole system is and how really the brain is just another organ, and this link with the gut is absolutely crucial because that's where it gets most of its information from. You know, we have this vagus nerve that goes from our gut to our brain, but the longest nerve in the body, and eighty percent of the signals go gut to brain. Only twenty percent go brain to gut. So all these things together have just made me realize how important what going into our gut is, our diet is, and how that influences many things in our brain that I didn't put together before, and I don't think most, most of the medical world have put together before, and it... We've all put the brain on a pedestal, I should say. You know, we, we think it's this some-- this unique thing that's driving our bodies, but actually, it's not. It's just responding to them, just like any other organ.

   3. SBSteven Bartlett11:33

      It made me reflect on

6. 11:34 – 14:25

   What Your Diet Could Be Doing to Your Mood

   1. SBSteven Bartlett11:34

      the days that I've had, like, good and bad moods and how, how much it's linked to my diet in the preceding couple of days. Like, how I feel. Uh, if I... Sleep is such a big exacerbating factor in how I feel. But if I'm slept and I still don't feel good, it's typically linked, I think, to something I've been eating or something I've eaten very recently, maybe in the last twenty-four hours. So when you talk about how there's this holistic picture and how my brain might be... I think I can't remember the words you used, but you, but it sounded like you said, my brain is receiving signals from other parts of my body, and it's kind of malfunctioning based on those signals, which is causing depression, anxiety, bad moods, whatever.... That I think is really interesting because people think of mood as a separate thing. We don't think of mood connected to my gut.

   2. TSTim Spector12:18

      No, it's, it's your own fault.

   3. SBSteven Bartlett12:20

      Yeah.

   4. TSTim Spector12:20

      You're in a bad mood. Why are you in a bad mood?

   5. SBSteven Bartlett12:22

      Something happened-

   6. TSTim Spector12:23

      Yeah

   7. SBSteven Bartlett12:23

      ... externally, so someone cut you off in traffic or whatever it might be.

   8. TSTim Spector12:26

      All these studies, you know, we've got four studies now where we're changing people's diets, and they're going-- They've been on generally bad diets, we've moved them to good diets. That mood and particularly energy levels, uh, uh, the first thing they notice, they're improving, and they never linked, just like you, their mood and energy levels with things like diet. It was just inherent. They thought, "Oh, it's just because I'm, you know, my life's shit," or whatever it is. An extreme example is some families we've been working with, doing a Channel 4 series at the moment called What Not to Eat, and we visit four families, and they've got terrible diets, and we transform them, give them a gut-friendly makeover diet, look at them after six weeks. The first thing they all notice is their mood and energy is dramatically increased. They were napping all the time. They were asleep all the time during the day.

   9. SBSteven Bartlett13:24

      What were they eating?

   10. TSTim Spector13:25

       Crap food. Highly processed crap food and snacking late at night, bars of chocolate, you know, sodas, chicken nuggets, pot noodles, rubbish food, right? So these were more worse than your average, but still, there's millions of people like that doing this, and they had no clue that it was linked to them feeling terrible and tired all the time. And again, the first thing that improved was what was going on in their brains, and they suddenly felt alert again. And once people realize there's this connection, then in a way, you'd have this feedback loop to say, "Okay, I'm not going to eat this shit food, you know, because I know it's making me feel so sick." But until you make that connection, you're not gonna know. You'll just be in this constant state saying, "Well, you know, I'm just overweight, that's why I'm tired," uh, or, "I'm not exercising, that's why I'm tired."

   11. SBSteven Bartlett14:24

       There's a bit of

7. 14:25 – 15:01

   Why We Crave Junk—and What It Reveals About Us

   1. SBSteven Bartlett14:25

      a vicious cycle here with eating something bad, then being low energy and sleeping all day, not feeling good, so you eat something bad, and the cycle continues. Because if I don't feel good, I'm-- I'll probably want to eat a chocolate bar.

   2. TSTim Spector14:39

      In our ZOE studies, we found that people who had a bad night's sleep desperately craved some sugary crap in the morning, right? It's the first... You don't go for a healthy breakfast. It's like there's some little evil thing in your brain saying, "Um, okay, I need a quick fix. I don't care about the rest of the day. Just get me through the next hour."

   3. SBSteven Bartlett15:00

      Do you know, do you know what though?

8. 15:01 – 16:12

   Can Chronic Stress Trigger Dementia?

   1. SBSteven Bartlett15:01

      I, I had someone posit on my podcast that, um, that was because your body's basically under a form of stress. So from an evolutionary perspective, if, if you're waking up in the middle of the night for some reason or you weren't sleeping properly, it might be because you were under threat, so your brain wants energy, so-

   2. TSTim Spector15:17

      There are a lot of studies now that stress, which we thought of as a sort of external psychological event, is actually a physiological one and is actually driving inflammation. It's directly affecting your immune system, which is then sending these signals to your brain to change your behavior and this, I think, is very much the heart of what seems to be happening, you know, in depression. What I've been finding out is that it's detecting a change in the immune system. It's switching on to this stress mode, and the stress mode then triggers these different behaviors in your brain, and very often, it's not, you know, real stress. I mean, most of the stresses we get it every day are not like our ancestors had.

   3. SBSteven Bartlett16:04

      Mm-hmm.

   4. TSTim Spector16:04

      Uh, we're not being chased by wild animals or, um, being burnt out of our village, you know, so these... And

9. 16:12 – 18:03

   Could Vaccines Affect Your Mental Health?

   1. TSTim Spector16:12

      what really interested me was this whole link between what happens when, uh, you have a vaccination. During ZOE, we looked at a million people's responses to the, if you remember, the, the Pfizer, uh, vaccine and the SK vaccine, and what was really interesting was that, uh, people were actually depressed during that time. So you had about twenty-four hours of depression, which was mimicking, um, a more constant threat, and this suddenly brought home this idea that you can trigger depression through a little shift in your immune system. There's really a growing theory about people who have long-term depression, is that these-- their immune changes are switched on, so that they're getting the equivalent of this constant tickling of the immune system by a vaccine. So that, to me, is, was, was a really important thing because I, I, I have vaccines, I have regular vaccines. I'm a big believer in vaccines, but they do make you feel a little bit down. That makes sense because y- your blood test will show a, a spike in your proteins for inflammation. Your immune system's kicking in. That sends signals to your brain. Your brain says, "Okay, I-- looks like I've got an illness coming here." That illness behavior, in some people, then gets carried on for months or years, and this is now developing this whole new theory of, of why, uh, people are depressed, which isn't the old theory of it's just due to a chemical imbalance. It's actually your body responding abnormally to a, a, you know, a normal response. It's- it thinks it's under attack. Your brain thinks it's under attack. It should then shut down and protect you. This I find fascinating, that

10. 18:03 – 21:18

    The Surprising Role of the Immune System in Brain Disease

    1. TSTim Spector18:03

       we're now linking so much to the immune system, and it's the immune basis of things like of mental and brain diseases is-... becoming incredibly important. I, I'm sure you've talked on the podcast a lot about inflammaging and the role of controlling the immune system, because if your immune system is out of control, your, your inflammation levels are high, your body can't repair itself, so aging happens faster in the brain. All of these things are pointing to inflammation being crucial to everything, but particularly in all aspects of brain health. And when I went and looked, you can really find that the immune system has a role in every brain disease they've ever looked at. And yet we've missed it because we've been so obsessed with new-- you know, the way that Prozac works by it just being about s- serotonin, uh, or dopamine. And for forty years, we've been down, going down the wrong path and missing this holistic view that actually it's, it's about inflammation paired with metabolism, because the other big player here is, and the reason a lot of people get dementia, is blood sugar is not well controlled, and the, the energy supply to the brain is not well controlled. So those two things for me have, uh, transformed my view of, of brain health. And I used to study genetics, as you know, and it was always interesting that in, um, when we looked at twins, which were usually very similar for most things, when we looked at, um, brain diseases, there was very little similarity in the twins. So the genetic component was always quite small, apart from a few diseases. Most of them were really low level, uh, what we call heritability. And there was a massive study in, um, Sweden. They looked at several million sibling pairs and so looked at all their mental health or brain diseases, I prefer to call them, and there was no g- g- gene that really came out, even in several million people, that explained these diseases, other than a, a, a general tendency to get any type of brain disease. So they called, you know, this like factor P. Um, if you had this general susceptibility, you could get any disease, but that could be mania, depression, bipolar, ADHD, it could be Alzheimer's, it could be schizophrenia, which sh- which suddenly changes your whole view of these, these diseases. We've said these are individual, um, disease that should always be looked at separately. And if you start thinking of this as the brain as a, an organ, just like anything else, like it was the liver, it's okay. We talk about liver disease, you know, how do you prevent liver disease? We never talk about that in brain disease. We just [clears throat] say, "Okay, you've got to talk about manic depression differently to, uh, ADHD or personality disorder or epilepsy or whatever it is." But it turns out they not only have the similar genes, but really similar risk factors as well.

    2. SBSteven Bartlett21:17

       I've heard

11. 21:18 – 24:32

    Does Parkinson’s Disease Begin in the Gut?

    1. SBSteven Bartlett21:18

       you say that you think Parkinson's disease starts in the gut, as inflammation in the gut.

    2. TSTim Spector21:24

       Yeah, that's a great, um, example of how [clears throat] my view of these diseases changing. There's really good epidemiology data now, um, from-

    3. SBSteven Bartlett21:35

       What's epidemiology data?

    4. TSTim Spector21:37

       Epidemiology data is data in large populations. Um, so you study the cause of disease by studying populations. That's essentially what epidemiology is. And what these studies have shown is that if you follow susceptible people, uh, and find out who at the end ended up with Parkinson's disease, you will see that about ninety percent of people who end up with Parkinson's disease had some gut problems ten years before. And you might say, "Okay, well, might not be related, might be two separate things," but they've actually found the same protein changes in the brains in people with Parkinson's disease, this, uh, particular protein that gets misfolded. It's a bit equivalent to Alzheimer's, but it's, it's separate, a separate type of protein, alpha-synuclein, and it gets folded, and you get this characteristic thing you can see on a postmortem called a, a Lewy body, but it's the protein folding that's important. If you look in the gut, not only do these people have constipation and bloating and problems ten years before, a really sluggish, uh, intestine, but they have the same proteins that are misfolded that you can find in their gut. And they think that it takes ten years for these proteins to go slowly up the vagus nerve into the brain, and then it causes the problem there. So this is the, the latest, uh, theory behind Parkinson's disease, that it actually starts in the gut, and it's related to inflammation in the gut. So these proteins start folding when the gut is not happy, which means that you could potentially prevent Parkinson's disease by a gut-friendly diet. It looks like it's-- the evidence is building that, you know, that's gonna be pretty concrete soon. If that's true, then you may think, what other diseases might have that origin there that we, um, really don't understand? What about multiple sclerosis that might happen there first? And it really starts to bring, you know, this obscure of these brain disease back into the domain of the rest of the body and what's going on there and these metabolic problems. You know, diabetes is the number one risk factor for so many of these conditions as well. So it like, if you've got type two diabetes, you're like four times as more likely to have a brain disease. Not only depression, but also, you know, bipolar, schizophrenia, epilepsy, all of these ones. So it-... clearly, they're linked. They're this, what goes on in your body, what you're eating, what, what your immune system is doing, has this amazing knock-on effect.

12. 24:32 – 26:01

    8 Rules for Building a Healthy Gut—And Why It Matters

    1. SBSteven Bartlett24:32

       So what do we do about it? What does the average person do about it? You know, 'cause the average-- you know what the average diet looks like in the Western world. Um, if we want to have optimally healthy brains and avoid dementia, Parkinson's, and some of these other disorders that are linked to the gut, what is, what is the most important thing the listener right now should be thinking about and doing?

    2. TSTim Spector24:54

       Well, I like to think we got-- I've got a, a list that's getting longer, but it's, it, I've got now eight rules for gut health, which pretty much work for all health because we-- uh, to treat the brain, it's no really different to treating the rest of your body. If you treat that well, you, you're gonna be fine. So the first thing is to be mindful of what you're eating. Don't just put any old shit in your mouth, you know? I mean, stop for a bit and say: "Is this-- What's in it? Is it any good for me? How's it gonna make me feel?"

    3. SBSteven Bartlett25:28

       You mean checking labels and stuff?

    4. TSTim Spector25:30

       Checking labels or even just taking a second to think, you know, gosh, uh, don't just blindly eat in front of the TV without thinking what you're eating, as we-- most of us do. Second, and probably the, the key thing is, I think, is to eat a diversity of plants, 30 plants a week. These thirty plants give you the diversity of chemicals to act as fertilizers for as getting as many good bugs as you can have into your system.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett25:57

       How can you explain that to someone that doesn't know much about the gut?

    6. TSTim Spector26:00

       When I'm talking about your

13. 26:01 – 30:40

    What Coffee Really Does to Your Gut Health

    1. TSTim Spector26:01

       gut, I'm talking about gut microbes, and there are forty to a hundred trillion of these guys in your mainly in your large intestine that are m- mini pharmacies. And there's-- we have thousands of different species, all of which highly selected to eat only certain foods. There's one that only likes coffee, for example, called Lawsonia bacter.

    2. SBSteven Bartlett26:27

       A bug that only likes coffee in my belly?

    3. TSTim Spector26:29

       Just waiting for you to drink coffee.

    4. SBSteven Bartlett26:30

       And when I drink coffee, what happens?

    5. TSTim Spector26:32

       It, uh, has a party, has sex, has babies, multiplies, and then produces certain chemicals in response by breaking down that coffee into other ingredients, which might then help your immune system and, um, in some way, explain why coffee is good for your heart. So you gotta imagine that you've got lots of bugs like that that are highly specific, waiting for you to have, uh, not only coffee, but, you know, maybe it's seaweed, or maybe, uh, it's baobab, or maybe it's things you don't often have, uh, so that we can expand our list of good bugs.

    6. SBSteven Bartlett27:09

       So if I stop eating a particular f- food, like coffee, if I stop having coffee, will that bug die?

    7. TSTim Spector27:15

       It probably goes down to very low levels because actually-- what's interesting is, even if you stop drinking coffee, you're surrounded by coffee drinkers, and they-- their droplets of saliva, and kisses, and, uh, greetings mean that you'll be getting, uh, some of that, either those bugs themselves, or you'll be getting, um, some bits of coffee in the air, a coffee aroma.

    8. SBSteven Bartlett27:43

       Okay, so the bugs go up and down in population?

    9. TSTim Spector27:46

       Yes. So even in non-coffee drinkers, we do see tiny amounts of this, uh, this Lawsonia bacter. Um, but in countries that don't drink coffee at all, there are a few African countries, for example, where it doesn't exist, or in tribes, you don't see it at all. Um, so it-- that's-- But I think it's important to imagine you're-- it's a bit like having a rare animal. You know, y- you've got to feed in a zoo. You don't want to give them all the same food. You've got to give them this diversity so that all the rare animals can get out there. And we know that the more good bugs you've got, the better your immune system, the more you dampen inflammation, the more you can prevent all these problems that we're, we're seeing. So our, our aim is to build up the good bugs, and the more you build them up, they squash out the bad bugs, the ones that like eating the burgers and the, the, the bad food and the, and the terrible quality fats and the artificial substances. So you're squashing them out by starving them, and you do that by feeding them properly. So that's the, that's the concept, if that makes sense.

    10. SBSteven Bartlett28:54

        And on that point of coffee, doesn't it restrict blood flow to your brain?

    11. TSTim Spector28:59

        No, not as far as I know.

    12. SBSteven Bartlett29:00

        Oh, really?

    13. TSTim Spector29:02

        Um, I'm talking-- I know about coffee at the epidemiological level, so there have been multiple studies, like I was saying, bringing coffee drinkers, non-coffee drinkers, seeing what happens to them twenty, thirty years later, and drinking between two and five cups of coffee reduces your risk of heart disease by about twenty-five percent. So there may be other studies showing it does something to your brain, but generally, everything I've seen is beneficial. I've not seen anything negative, although there are some people who react to caffeine badly, so there's always a, a personalized element to it.

    14. SBSteven Bartlett29:39

        Sleep disruption and stuff?

    15. TSTim Spector29:41

        Yes. So you, you might be a, a metabolizer. It doesn't metabolize quickly in you, so that caffeine is hanging around longer. So they're the only, um, downsides to it for some people.

    16. SBSteven Bartlett29:53

        Can it make you more anxious?

    17. TSTim Spector29:55

        Um, I think it can make some people more anxious, yes. Um, and that's, uh, that's why things like matcha are, are better than coffee because they have a, an extra chemical in there that can calm you down. So like anything, it's-- any food, it's all personalized. And so when we talk about epidemiology, we're talking about the average person. Um, doesn't mean there aren't, aren't exceptions. So I'm not saying that everybody in the world needs to have coffee, but coffee used to be demonized as something that would give you heart attacks and arrhythmias, and in fact, the opposite-... is true. Epidemiologically speaking, you can actually, you get less heart abnormalities, uh, arrhythmias when you drink coffee, for reasons we still don't understand.

14. 30:40 – 34:56

    What Happens When You Eat 30 Plants a Week

    1. SBSteven Bartlett30:40

       So the first point of the eight was mind-- being mindful about what you eat.

    2. TSTim Spector30:43

       Second was, uh, eat, uh, thirty different plants, and that's, that was the basis of our, our ZOE product, the, uh, Daily Thirty, which has thirty-four, uh, mainly freeze-dried, uh, whole plants in it, and we've recently added some more. So we added some seaweed, some algae, and, uh, some kombucha in there. So some... They're rare ingredients. We've got seven different types of mushroom that you wouldn't normally have.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett31:10

       It's worth me saying that I'm an investor in ZOE. Um, and let me take our back. So you just, you take this out, and you sprinkle it on top of your food, typically?

    4. TSTim Spector31:21

       Yes, you add it to food, um, and it's-- so it's, it's different to most of the other sort of supplements you might see. Uh, it's not instead of food. It looks more like food than most, uh, of the, of the common supplements out there that look like green powders. We, we did a big trial of this with about three hundred and forty people, comparing it to a probiotic and a, um, a dummy one, and over six weeks, you get really quite dramatic improvements in your gut, uh, microbes with, with eating this. So the, you really push up the good bugs and squash out the bad bugs about several times more than you would get just by having a, a traditional probiotic. So this fertilizer approach, uh, does seem to work, and this is the, this is the study where we also showed the improvements in mood after a few days, which, um, you know, surprised me 'cause I, I wasn't even thinking about that when we wr- we, we planned the study.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett32:26

       So the key reported findings in that study were a gut microbiome improvement, an average increase of five points in their ZOE Gut Microbiome Score. Digestive system, seventy percent of people reported improvements in overall digestive systems, symptoms, um, and it increased fullness by forty-one point five%, satisfaction by twenty-one point six%, and energy by forty-three point three%, and reduced hunger and desire to eat versus the meal alone. About half reported increased energy, and forty-five percent re-reported improved happiness in the main study.

    6. TSTim Spector33:04

       So we weren't expecting that. That was, that was my, my point, really on these, 'cause we thought it would just be gut... It would like, okay, do I get-- do I go to the toilet more often? Is it improving my gut microbes? And so it was a real bonus to see these, these brain effects.

    7. SBSteven Bartlett33:20

       And did you do stool tests on these people to see-

    8. TSTim Spector33:22

       Yes

    9. SBSteven Bartlett33:22

       ... the, the change in the bugs in their stomach over that period? And was it six weeks?

    10. TSTim Spector33:26

        It was around six weeks, yes.

    11. SBSteven Bartlett33:27

        Yeah. And what did you see change in their, their gut bugs?

    12. TSTim Spector33:32

        So we've got a new scoring method for gut bugs, which we published last month in, in, in Nature, and so we used to talk about diversity, and on previous podcasts, I think we've talked about diversity, which is the number of different species. But we've got a better way of looking at that now, which is to take, um, a hundred most important bugs that change with diet that everybody's got, 'cause we're all different. It's very hard to compare your, your bugs with my bugs 'cause we only share twenty percent. So this looks at a hundred common bugs that we've both got, fifty good and fifty bad, and what we want in an intervention is to see the, the good bugs that are associated with good diet and good health outcomes, good blood tests, uh, uh, going up, and the bad bugs associated with inflammation, uh, poor diets, and, uh, bad health outcomes, are going down. And that's exactly what we saw. We saw imp-- a change in roughly forty of these microbes with the prebiotic, the Daily Thirty. Whereas with the probiotic, which we know works from other studies, we s-saw only a change in about four or five of the bugs.

    13. SBSteven Bartlett34:44

        Okay.

    14. TSTim Spector34:44

        So it was... So they both worked, but the, the prebiotic was working better than the probiotic, which has sort of changed my mind about what's more powerful.

    15. SBSteven Bartlett34:54

        So prebiotic being what and probiotic

15. 34:56 – 39:33

    Prebiotics vs Probiotics: Which Does Your Gut Actually Need?

    1. SBSteven Bartlett34:56

       being what?

    2. TSTim Spector34:57

       Prebiotic is like a fertilizer for gut microbes. It's there-- It's giving them food.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett35:02

       Yeah.

    4. TSTim Spector35:03

       So that... And i-in an indiscriminate way, because we're giving a, a wide variety of foods. In these thirty-four plants, each of them has hundreds of chemicals, so there's thousands of different things for them to feed on. Whereas a probiotic, we used Lactobacillus rhamnosus, which is a well-known one that's been studied, you know, hundred of ti-- in hundreds of trials. It's a live microbe that lives generally in, in foods like yogurt and things like this. In a concentrated form, in a capsule, you give that, and it improved, uh, the gut microbiome, but much less than the-

    5. SBSteven Bartlett35:38

       So prebiotic gives them food, probiotic actually just puts bugs in there.

    6. TSTim Spector35:42

       It put bugs in there, and we used to think it was like a seed. Uh, so the, uh, it was the s-- you know, so fertilizers and maybe seeds, but we now know that, that bug will never really seed in your, in your gut microbiome, and so the science is, and our thinking has changed. We think the probiotic is, is really tickling your immune system as it's going down.

    7. SBSteven Bartlett36:04

       Okay.

    8. TSTim Spector36:05

       So it's probably working higher up in the, the small intestine, which is, um, further up in the gut.

    9. SBSteven Bartlett36:13

       W-where, where is, where is the gut?

    10. TSTim Spector36:16

        Yeah, so most people, if you ask people to point to the gut, they, they always think of their stomach.

    11. SBSteven Bartlett36:22

        Yeah.

    12. TSTim Spector36:23

        Uh, yeah, well, that's not your stomach, you see. That's, that's your... They're the intestines. So your, your stomach is up here. Uh, we have to take away your, your liver.... If, if you imagine we've got, uh, a body here, you got a mouth, food goes in there through the esophagus, which is, uh, a tube that leads to the stomach, and this is the stomach here, which is highly acidic, and that leads into the duodenum through a, uh, a little valve, and that is where food starts getting mushed around into little balls, and that goes into the small intestine here, which is badly named, because the small intestine is really the largest bit of the gut, and it's endless coils as of, uh, guts. There are lots of crypts. There's little nooks and crannies everywhere, and so the surface area is really huge. It's, it's several tennis courts if you laid it out, just one, um, i- in one human. And that's because that's where most of the nutrients get absorbed. Uh, they get extracted from the food and absorbed that way so that all the trace elements and things we're recycling. We're like a recycling factory. And then from the small intestine, it then goes into the large intestine, which is also called the colon, and that's where most of the gut microbes are.

    13. SBSteven Bartlett37:49

        Ah.

    14. TSTim Spector37:49

        So, so ninety-nine percent of the gut microbes are in that final part, the large intestine, which, uh, is a, a, a couple of meters long and varies widely between people. And this is the spot where fiber, uh, goes, things that hasn't been digested in the early part of the, the gut, uh, is-- and that's because the microbes mainly feed off fiber. And so that's where they do the good. They convert that fiber into products such as short-chain fatty acids, which are the really beneficial chemicals that are good for our immune system. And it's important to realize that across both the small and the large intestine, you've got ner-- huge amounts of nerves. You've got what's called the enteric nervous system, which is our second brain, and is, uh... It was actually the first brain to be formed. So when we were little embryos, uh, we started as a little tube, and the nervous system that formed around our intestine was actually the first bit, first brain of our body, and in a way, we developed the second one on our head as a, oh, bit of an afterthought, uh, which is quite a fun way of thinking about it. But it just shows how important the nerves are in our, in our gut to our, the way we function, and as we were talking earlier about this, this connection between the two. And there's also immune cells. So seventy percent of our immune cells are, uh, in the gut, most of them in, in the large intestine, but also in the small intestine. So our immune system is here, and a huge amount of our nervous system is here.

    15. SBSteven Bartlett39:31

        Why-- Um, presumably, the,

16. 39:33 – 40:45

    Why Not Flossing Might Raise Your Dementia Risk

    1. SBSteven Bartlett39:33

       the bugs are all through the body.

    2. TSTim Spector39:34

       They're everywhere. So they're also in your... Yes, so I should point out, we're covered in bugs, so every bit of the human body, uh, has, uh, some bugs in it. The second biggest place where we have them is in our mouth, so the oral microbiome, in our, in our saliva and in our teeth and, uh, our gums, and that's why poor, uh, hygiene, if you're not flossing properly, you double the risk of getting dementia as well, interestingly. 'Cause there's a, a real link between microbes here that if they're eating plaque and other s- stuff that you're leaving around in your gums, gets inflamed. That creates an environment where nasty microbes that love inflammation live, and for reasons we don't know, they seem to pass into from, from your mouth into your brain and trigger inflammation in the brain, which then, uh, increase your risk of dementia. So-

    3. SBSteven Bartlett40:32

       If you're not flossing?

    4. TSTim Spector40:33

       Yes. This is really new science showing that just how important these-- getting the right bugs in the right place and avoiding the ones who are in the wrong place really is.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett40:43

       Why do we need these bugs?

17. 40:45 – 46:11

    Why We Struggle With the Science of Existence

    1. SBSteven Bartlett40:45

       Why didn't evolution design us so that we could just do all this stuff without the need of these little workers, these little bugs in our bodies? It s- it seems super weird to me that, you know, you think of the human body as being this one organism, but actually, it's appears to be many millions and millions and millions of organisms.

    2. TSTim Spector41:02

       Well, you've got a sort of human-centric view of the world, Steven.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett41:05

       True, yeah.

    4. TSTim Spector41:06

       Um, we, we evolved from microbes.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett41:08

       We are one. We, we used to be one.

    6. TSTim Spector41:10

       We used to be one, and, um, it, it turns out that most of our body is, are remnants of microbes. Microbes obviously fused to cause, to cause, uh, human cells. So that was the whole origin of, of how, uh, multicellular creatures came together. These single-celled microbes, uh, some of them fused to, to do that. Others stayed as single cells. There was always this link between the single-celled guys and their multicellular ancestors, if you like. And so as we co-evolved into more complicated beings, the, the two were always together.

    7. SBSteven Bartlett41:53

       Mm-hmm.

    8. TSTim Spector41:53

       And it turned out that, again, as, like, as we're formed as embryos, the gut is the first thing that, you know, this, this cylin- this tube is the first thing that comes out, um, of the design system.

    9. SBSteven Bartlett42:08

       Mm-hmm.

    10. TSTim Spector42:09

        And it's designed to have microbes in it that serve a crucial purpose in training our immune system to recognize what's out, what's harmful and what's beneficial, and it's also shown to be crucial for our brain development. But it, it is fascinating when we start thinking about our origins and think of it, you know, we essentially start as microbes, 'cause also, we don't think of our bod-- you know, we've always-... historically thought of, you know, God's creation, this body, had nothing to do with anything else. We were the masters of the universe, and I think it's quite humbling to realize that so much of us comes from microbes. And I learned something recently that was-- that also blew me away, is that all our cells have these, uh, powerhouses in them called mitochondria, and it turns out they do much more than just supply batteries for the cell. They, they're fighting inflammation, they're important for gene expression, they're good for metabolism. And i-it turns out the origin of these things is little microbes that got trapped in our bodies. They are essentially, uh, microbes that were good at making, creating energy, and, um, w- at some point in our distant past, we fused, um, our multicellular, um, microbes that were g- were going around doing stuff. They said, "Oh, we could do with some more energy," and so by chance, they fused with these energy microbes and slowly and slowly became incorporated into our bodies so that we now have these mitochondria all over our bodies, which, whose ancestors are also, uh, microbes.

    11. SBSteven Bartlett43:52

        And we have them in every cell of our body?

    12. TSTim Spector43:54

        Yes, we do, and they're turning out to be quite crucial as well in, in brain health.

    13. SBSteven Bartlett43:59

        Do you, do you, do you spend much time wondering or have there been periods in your life where you've wondered about the meaning of all of this and why there's living organisms? 'Cause there doesn't appear to be a great need for living organisms. You know, you could just have rocks and water o-on these planets. I don't know why you need humans necessarily in, as it relates to the contribution we make to the, um, the environment.

    14. TSTim Spector44:26

        Well, I think as soon as you add life, whether it's plant life... I mean, you're, you're thinking perhaps of animal life, but, you know, things like lichen on rocks-

    15. SBSteven Bartlett44:38

        Mm-hmm

    16. TSTim Spector44:38

        ... were one of the first forms of life, and something that was ... it needed to get e- you know, energy f- nutrients from the rock, and then they, for some reason, just wanted to survive, you know? And I think that's the, the point, that life is about getting enough nutrients so you can, uh, keep living or pass, you know, your genes onto someone else. It's this, uh, that concept. Once that was started, maybe it was lichen, everything else came from that, and that could have just been a chance event. So I... But I, you know, it is always humbling, humbling to think that, you know, we've probably come back from some lowly point like this, uh, as we emerged from, emerged from rocks and, and water. But, um, uh, yeah, I... Philosophy's not my strong suit, but I, I, I just get so much pleasure from finding new facts, uh, that are all around us, and I think it's fascinating that we've spent so long as humans looking up at the stars, whereas looking inside us, uh, at things like microbes and their origin is, to me, far more exciting.

    17. SBSteven Bartlett45:52

        And maybe explanatory as to, like, you know, we're looking at the stars-

    18. TSTim Spector45:57

        We may-

    19. SBSteven Bartlett45:57

        ... in search for answers.

    20. TSTim Spector45:58

        Yeah. Yeah, we look at the stars, say, "Well, where do we come from?" You know, "Where, what about the Big Bang?" All this kind of stuff, whereas actually studying what's in our cells and where do they come from, we could learn a, a hell of a lot more about ourselves.

18. 46:11 – 48:13

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    1. TSTim Spector46:11

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    2. SBSteven Bartlett46:11

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19. 48:13 – 56:14

    Why You Should Be Eating Fermented Foods Every Day

    1. SBSteven Bartlett48:13

       second point of the eight, which is eat thirty plants. And, uh, ZOE Daily Thirty is a, is an easy way to do that and a tasty way to do that. What's the third one?

    2. TSTim Spector48:24

       I'd go for eat, eat fermented foods, and try and get three portions of ferments in your diet-

    3. SBSteven Bartlett48:31

       Per?

    4. TSTim Spector48:32

       ... every day.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett48:32

       Every day.

    6. TSTim Spector48:34

       And I wouldn't have said this three years ago, because the science wasn't really strong enough to support-... this, but a study three years ago by, uh, a group in Stanford of twenty-eight people showed giving-- they gave them five portions a day for a- about a month, and showed that you can get a reduction in blood inflammation levels about twenty-five percent in that time, compared to a fiber diet. And that, you know, blew me away because this, this was the first really good study in this area, because there have been lots of studies, but they're not good quality. Suddenly, someone doing daily bloods, you know, they were-- looked at twenty-odd proteins in the blood, and suddenly you've got this link between a, a food and directly affecting inflammation in the blood, which, as we've been talking about, has big knock-on effects on the brain and the rest of the body.

    7. SBSteven Bartlett49:33

       That's like kimchi and stuff like that.

    8. TSTim Spector49:35

       Fermented food is any food that's been transformed by microbes into something better, which means it, it tastes better, it's more complex, it lasts longer, so you don't need a fridge. That's why our ancestors did it, and it, it's been chemically transformed and is generally more nu- nutritious.

    9. SBSteven Bartlett49:54

       Give me some examples.

    10. TSTim Spector49:55

        So, um, [lip smack] yogurt from milk. All you're doing-

    11. SBSteven Bartlett50:00

        I've got this one here.

    12. TSTim Spector50:00

        Adding, uh-

    13. SBSteven Bartlett50:02

        Zero fat. Zero-fat Greek yogurt.

    14. TSTim Spector50:06

        Oh, I never have zero-fat Greek yogurt. Why do you want to drink that?

    15. SBSteven Bartlett50:09

        I don't know. I just, I was just-

    16. TSTim Spector50:10

        No, uh-

    17. SBSteven Bartlett50:11

        No?

    18. TSTim Spector50:11

        That, that means it'd be, yeah, heavily processed. You don't want that. But there's still good microbes in it, and, um, you know, all you're doing is transforming something rather average, like milk, which adults don't really need. It's not particularly beneficial, milk. And just by adding the microbes to it, you make it something healthy for the, for the body, and that's now been shown by, uh, by these, these kind of studies.

    19. SBSteven Bartlett50:37

        What do you, what do you mean by... What's, what's wrong with this zero-fat Greek yogurt? It says zero fat, so that's sounds like it's-

    20. TSTim Spector50:43

        There's nothing-- Well, we, we need fat to live, so fat is good. And in fact, the-- just, uh, a few days ago, the USDA have changed their, all their guidelines, which used to be about saying, "Don't have fat, and you-- and have low-fat products," to saying: "Actually, fat is good. All that advice we said in the past is wrong."

    21. SBSteven Bartlett51:05

        So why do they label things zero, zero fat still?

    22. TSTim Spector51:08

        Because public still believe they're healthy, and the companies that make them save money by calling it-- by having zero fat. They replace the fat with starchy, artificially made, um, fillers, basically. So it's usually more sugary, uh, by having zero fat in it. But if it says zero fat, it's a sign it's unhealthy, you should avoid it.

    23. SBSteven Bartlett51:31

        So what are those fermented foods then? You were gonna say, you said-

    24. TSTim Spector51:34

        Well, I'll... Shall I just give you a quick list-

    25. SBSteven Bartlett51:35

        Yeah

    26. TSTim Spector51:35

        ... of all, all of them, so people know what I'm talking about?

    27. SBSteven Bartlett51:37

        Yeah.

    28. TSTim Spector51:38

        So we've got yogurt, we've got cheese, and virtually every cheese has live microbes except American cheeses. The more artisan, the bigger the number. Uh, milk kefir, which is like a super yogurt, often has ten to twenty types of microbe in it. The krauts. So I think of the four K's. So we've got-- We've done kefir. The kraut is like a sauerkraut, so we've got fermented cabbage. Cabbage is pretty boring on its own. You ferment it, the tastes are amazing, and it has these health benefits. Then you've got kimchi, which is a, a spicy, uh, kraut and the staple diet of Korea, and they're pretty healthy. And even though it's got salt in it, people who have kimchi have lower blood pressure than people who don't have kimchi. And I love kimchi now. I, I hated it at first, but I'm now a, a real addict. Then you've got kombuchas. Um, you see those in, in most supermarkets and stores. Uh, that's fermented tea, and the good ones can have thirty or forty of these. There's other-- another type, water kefir, which isn't as popular, but I think we're going to see more of it. Tibicos is the other name for it. It's grains with lots of microbes in it, a bit like milk kefir, but with fruit added. And then you've got mis- all the misos you get in Japan, miso soup, uh, miso paste, tempehs, all the-- all these, uh, ferments. Around the world, there's hundreds of different ferments, in nearly every continent has their own type of ferment. In Africa, there's all kinds of fermented beers and porridges. And of course, we got the... These are the live ones, but they've also got lots of dead ferments. Obviously, bread is a dead ferment. Everyone makes sourdough. Then you've got wines and beers, and interestingly, um, again, very new science, dead ferments actually have some health benefits. So I used to be very dismissive of, uh, products like kombuchas that you would see in, in stores in America that say, "Lightly pasteurized." And I'd say: Well, that's a load of rubbish. Be nothing good about that. But it turns out that even dead microbes, when you do a randomized trial, have some benefit for the host.

    29. SBSteven Bartlett54:03

        Hmm.

    30. TSTim Spector54:03

        You're looking a bit skeptical, but I-- these against placebo, uh, uh, studies, and there are enough of them now that you, uh, definitely believe it. I know some of the researchers, they, they were surprised, but it's, it's genuine.
20. 56:14 – 57:09

    Are You Eating the Wrong Type of Protein?

    1. TSTim Spector56:14

       protein. At the moment, protein's all in the news. Everyone wants to have more protein. Big controversy about whether you need more. Uh, most studies showed ninety percent of us are getting enough protein. Probably doesn't do too much harm, other than it's really hard to get lots of protein in your diet, and most people are focusing on eggs and m- meat when they think about protein. So what I think people should focus on is there are many other sources of good quality protein, like beans, like legumes, like mushrooms, uh, like, uh, whole grains, like quinoa and pearl barley, instead of rice. That if you're thinking about it, you can get your protein and get your fiber, because ninety percent of us are deficient in fiber, and if you want to look after your gut microbes, you really need to, uh, be giving them the fiber. Otherwise, you're starving them just by having a, a protein drink. Next

21. 57:09 – 58:30

    What Really Matters More Than Counting Calories

    1. TSTim Spector57:09

       one, which one are we now on? Number five. [chuckles] Number five is think quality, not calories. The whole idea of assessing food by calories is wrong. We've discussed this in the past. You should never really go for low-calorie products. You should go for ones that are whole foods, that are-- have their initial structure in them, that, uh, have all those original nutrients. So it's all focusing really on high-quality foods that haven't been tampered with and- Why, why not calories? Because it's not a good way to assess food. Uh, calorie-restricted diets have been shown, for the vast majority of people, not to work, and we know, particularly through GLP-1 drugs, that as you restrict your, your diet and calories, your hunger signals go up, and hunger is the main driver of obesity. So all you're doing is losing some weight short term. Long term, it will bounce back as your, as your body does that. So, um, calories should be ignored on any labels. Really, you should be looking to get high-quality food that supports your gut, and that's an important change in mindset for many people. But the next

22. 58:30 – 1:01:49

    The Real Cost of Ultra-Processed Foods

    1. TSTim Spector58:30

       point is, is, is the crucial one, which links to that, which is avoiding high-risk processed foods because they damage your, your gut and your body in, in, in a number of ways. The first obvious one is that they have lots of additives and chemicals to transform them into something edible, and those ones, uh, things like emulsifiers, preservatives, uh, gums, uh, colorants, flavorings, artificial sweeteners, are all things made by the food companies to trick your body into thinking these are tasty, and they often are, but they will damage your gut microbes, who, in their billions of years of evolution, have never come across these products because they don't exist in nature in that form. So like the cereal bar I have here? [packaging rustling] Yeah, so this has got, um, flavored fillings, whatever that means, glucose syrup, glycerin, uh, wheat, fruit juice concentrate, vegetable fiber, natural flavorings, oatmeal, and soya. Oh, well, this one doesn't look too bad. Whatever... I'm not quite sure what a flavored filling is, though. Flavored filling- What about this? Could be anything. What's that, cornflakes or something? Cornflakes, yes. So they would be, uh, something I would regard as, uh, highly processed and, uh, probably a, a moderate risk. At, at ZOE, we've created a new scale, 'cause in the past, we'd have grouped all of these together as the same, but I think we now need to think of these as zero, mild, moderate, high risk, depending on whether they have them. What about this? That, that would be high risk, okay? Because this is designed by, uh, the people that make them. It's got preservatives in it. That-- so this will be the same in a week's time, right? We can still be playing with it. It's not gonna change or get moldy. Um, it's got, uh, emulsifiers to keep it together. It's, uh, got extra sugar in it. It'll have a really amount of salt in there, probably, and, and sugar, and it's probably got some fat in here. Um, so-... it'll be hyperpalatable, and-

    2. SBSteven Bartlett1:00:54

       What does that mean?

    3. TSTim Spector1:00:55

       That means that you can eat a lot of it before you get full, so it makes you overeat.

    4. SBSteven Bartlett1:01:01

       For anyone that can't see, we're talking about white bread, just normal white bread that you'd probably get in the supermarket.

    5. TSTim Spector1:01:06

       Yeah, and it's, it's got a special structure that's different. That also means that it, it, it takes very little chewing. All right? So you put this in your mouth, you don't really have to chew it. It's like baby food. Whereas, you know, a real bread made with high fiber, you, you know, it takes several chews to get it down you. So there's lots of features of these foods that, um, alert you to them being, uh, unhealthy. So not only the ingredients which are bad for your gut microbes and disrupt them, the additives, uh, you've got the fact that it makes you overeat. So a lot of those potato snacks and things you get, they just dissolve in your mouth. They're designed... You can eat them so fast.

23. 1:01:49 – 1:02:55

    What’s the Best Bread for Gut and Brain Health?

    1. SBSteven Bartlett1:01:49

       Is there a good bread or a preferable bread?

    2. TSTim Spector1:01:52

       Yeah, there are. There's not many. Things like rye breads and spelt breads, ideally sourdoughs, um, the German-style breads, the, you know, the Scandinavian breads, they're pretty good for you because they still have the whole grain intact, and that means it's got the nutrients. Also means it's harder to eat them quickly, and they fill you up. These-- If you eat this bread, it just doesn't-- makes you hungrier. I used to have this all the time when I was a, a junior doctor. Every ward had toasters and, uh, cheap bread, courtesy of the NHS, and you, you eat them, they give you a little kick, but you just feel just as hungry an hour later, having eaten, you know, four of them. And I think this is the problem. Many people don't realize that this food is, is not only making them sick, making their gut microbes sick, but it, it's actually making them overeat. And studies show it makes you overeat by about twenty-five percent, which, you know, really adds up e-every day of your life.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett1:02:54

       A lot of

24. 1:02:55 – 1:05:16

    Am I Really Gluten-Free, or Just Guessing?

    1. SBSteven Bartlett1:02:55

       people, including me, have gone through their life thinking that because when they eat this stuff, they get stomach pains, and sometimes they have gas, or they'll have, like, I don't know, toilet-related issues, um, that they are gluten-free, like they are gluten intolerant or whatever.

    2. TSTim Spector1:03:13

       Mm-hmm.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett1:03:14

       I was one of those people. I thought, 'cause if I eat this-- if I was to eat this piece of bread, I'd feel it for the next two days, so I assumed I was gluten-free. But when, I think, we spoke last time, you told me that almost nobody is gl- is gluten intolerant, to-- has a gluten... What's the term?

    4. TSTim Spector1:03:29

       Well, there's, uh, yeah-

    5. SBSteven Bartlett1:03:30

       Gluten intolerance?

    6. TSTim Spector1:03:30

       Gluten intolerant.

    7. SBSteven Bartlett1:03:32

       Yeah, but that, that's not necessarily-

    8. TSTim Spector1:03:33

       When you test them, yes, directly. I mean, there are some, uh, but most people who think they are are not. And that's because, generally, when you eat a sandwich in the US or the UK, uh, you're getting crap bread, a terrible filling, uh, all kinds of other additives and chemicals, which are probably disagreeing with you. So when you give up eating sandwiches, you might feel better.

    9. SBSteven Bartlett1:04:02

       So roughly up to thirty percent of people believe gluten is a problem for them, but only one percent actually need to strictly avoid it.

    10. TSTim Spector1:04:11

        I think it's a great example of we love to have a simple solution. So gluten came in, said, "Right, everyone can think about gluten. Let's just get rid of that, and all our problems are solved," rather than thinking, "What are all the other things in a, in a cheap bread sandwich-

    11. SBSteven Bartlett1:04:30

        Mm-hmm

    12. TSTim Spector1:04:30

        ... that you might be reacting to?" It also could be the emulsifier-

    13. SBSteven Bartlett1:04:34

        Mm-hmm

    14. TSTim Spector1:04:34

        ... that is, uh, gluing that bread together or is in the mayonnaise that you're having. Uh, it could be some of these colorants that are, you know, making the bread white or cha-- making that sauce bright yellow, that you might be intolerant of. Be- the more things that they, these manufacturers add to these foods, the more likely there is one that is disagreeing you with you, and your favorite sandwich suddenly, you know, becomes your worst enemy because, you know, they're just created by brilliant scientists to... All they care about is you find it irresistible and keep eating it. If you eat the healthy stuff, you don't

25. 1:05:16 – 1:06:39

    The Truth About Nuts and Your Brain Health

    1. TSTim Spector1:05:16

       have these problems.

    2. SBSteven Bartlett1:05:17

       What about these, these almonds?

    3. TSTim Spector1:05:18

       Mm.

    4. SBSteven Bartlett1:05:19

       Um, some walnuts in there as well. What do you think of almonds?

    5. TSTim Spector1:05:21

       I love almonds. Um, they're, they're good for you, and there are lots of studies showing they're good for your cognition, even some mild effects on, uh, other aspects of brain health and, uh, and, and mood. These are, uh, good for gut health. They've got all kinds of really good fats in them. These omega-3s and et cetera, are in, are in nuts, so they're a fantastic snack that, um, do fill you up and generally recommend them. Probably more data about walnuts than almonds for brain health, that I, that I've read about. So there are, you know, studies of people who take a lot of walnuts, they help. But I, I think the idea shouldn't be there's only one type of nut that you should eat that's gonna help your brain. We should, again, go back to this concept of diversity, and so mixed nuts really are your best way of, um, helping your, your brain health by eating these things. And we used to demonize nuts because they had fat in it. Certainly, when I was, uh, you know, twenty years ago, "Oh, you can't have peanuts and nuts. They're really bad for your heart." Now, we've totally reversed this, and I just think it, it just sh- shows how much has changed in this field in a, in a relatively short time.

    6. SBSteven Bartlett1:06:38

       What's number seven?

26. 1:06:39 – 1:08:28

    What Makes a Food a True Superfood?

    1. SBSteven Bartlett1:06:39

       So then number six was avoid high-risk processed foods.

    2. TSTim Spector1:06:42

       Important when you're picking food, to try and get as many colors on your plate as possible because that's a sign that they contain these chemicals called polyphenols.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett1:06:52

       Natural colors?

    4. TSTim Spector1:06:53

       Mm-hmm.... Yes. [chuckles] Yeah, exactly. Not the, uh, the blue colors you get, uh, that we really want to avoid, which are bad for you. So natural colors are a sign that they, these foods are good for you. So we're talking bright berries. We're talking raspberries, blackberries, uh, strawberries. We're talking, um, Rossolo lettuce. We're talking about, uh, cabbages that are purple. Uh, we're talking really all those bright colors because they contain chemicals that are from this family, broadly called the polyphenols, which act as f- fuel for your gut microbes, and that allows them to then, in turn, uh, produce things like short-chain fatty acids and, and keeps them healthy. So it's a sign from nature that we're eating these, these foods, and it's a signal probably our ancestors knew. And the other sign, which we can't tell from looking at it, but you-- we get to know, is bitterness. So bitter, uh, plants tend to be much healthier than, uh, bland ones. That's the broccoli story. That's, um, why extra virgin olive oil is so good for us, why, uh, coffee is also good, why, uh, red wine and, and, uh, dark chocolate. It's b-- those polyphenols in there that are really giving us, our microbes a boost.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett1:08:24

       And the eighth one, last but not least.

    6. TSTim Spector1:08:27

       Last but not least, give

27. 1:08:28 – 1:10:19

    How Fasting Impacts Your Gut and Mind

    1. TSTim Spector1:08:28

       your gut a rest.

    2. SBSteven Bartlett1:08:29

       Fast?

    3. TSTim Spector1:08:30

       Yes, so time-restricted eating. This has been shown to help your, uh, gut recover in a proper circadian rhythm. It's a bit like getting a good night's sleep for your gut. So we can-- we all know the benefits of sleep for us, but we often disregard our gut. Many people have a late-night snack, uh, a kebab going home from the pub or whatever it is. It's completely the wrong thing to do for your gut health. Twelve to fourteen-hour, uh, overnight fast, trying to restrict your eating time to, uh, ten hours, really has been shown to have metabolic advantages for you, uh, and improves your gut lining, so it's less likely to, to leak and cause inflammation, and allows the cleaning team in your microbes to come out and, and clean up your gut. The number of studies now, um, showing that it, it does have these metabolic advantages, but I'm not pushing it so hard these days 'cause we did do a mass-- another massive, uh, citizen science study with ZOE, with over a hundred thousand people doing this. Um, we asked them to do fourteen-hour time-restricted eating. A third gave up. They said: "I can't do this. I feel hun-- too hungry all the time. I need to be snacking something like almonds." Uh, a third loved it, and they're still doing it two years later, and a third were sort of: "Yeah, I'll do this sometimes. I feel better on it." So I think there's a personalized element to it, but, uh, if you can do it, it is really important, and I would urge even the people that find it tough, if you can avoid that unhealthy late-night snack, that can have a really big impact on your gut and your brain.

    4. SBSteven Bartlett1:10:17

       [page flipping] You know, every once in a while,

28. 1:10:19 – 1:12:10

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    1. SBSteven Bartlett1:10:19

       you come across a product that has such a huge impact on your life that you'd probably describe it as a game changer. And I would say, for about thirty-five to forty percent of my team, they would currently describe this product that I have in front of me, called Ketone IQ, which you can get at ketone.com, as a game changer. But the reason I became a co-owner of this company, and the reason why they, they now are a sponsor of this podcast, is because one day when I came to work, there was a box of this stuff sat on my desk. I had no idea what it was. Lily in my team says that this company have been in touch. So I went upstairs, tried it, and quite frankly, the rest is history. In terms of my focus, my energy levels, how I feel, how I work, how productive I am, game changer. So if you want to give it a try, visit ketone.com/stephen for thirty percent off. You'll also get a free gift with your second shipment, and now you can find Ketone IQ at Target stores across the United States, where your first shot is completely free of charge. [page flipping] If there's anything we need, it is connection, especially in the world we're living in today, and that is exactly why we created these Conversation Cards. Because on this show, when I sit here with my guests and have those deep, intimate conversations, this remarkable thing happens time and time again. We feel deeply connected to each other. At the end of every episode, the guest I'm interviewing leaves a question for the next guest, and we've turned them into these Conversation Cards. And we've added these Twist Cards to make your conversations even more interesting. And there are so many more twists along the way with the Conversation Cards. This is the brand-new edition, and for the first time ever, I've added to the pack this Gold Card, which is an exclusive question from me. But I'm only putting the Gold Cards in the first run of Conversation Cards. So get yours now before the limited edition Gold Cards are all gone. Head to the link in the description below. [page flipping] You've become more

29. 1:12:10 – 1:16:30

    How the Keto Diet Might Heal More Than You Think

    1. SBSteven Bartlett1:12:10

       open to keto in recent years?

    2. TSTim Spector1:12:12

       Yes.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett1:12:14

       Um, and-

    4. TSTim Spector1:12:15

       I'm ke... I would say I'm keto curious.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett1:12:17

       You're keto curious. What's made you keto curious? 'Cause I don't think you, I don't think you were very, um, keen on keto before, for-

    6. TSTim Spector1:12:25

       No, I think when we discussed it, I was, I was pretty anti it, you know. But reading about the brain, how important metabolism of the brain, brain energy is, uh, and doing more research, h- has slightly changed my mind because what we discovered is how amazing it is for childhood epilepsy.

    7. SBSteven Bartlett1:12:45

       Mm-hmm.

    8. TSTim Spector1:12:47

       It, it is still used as the main treatment for, uh, drug-resistant childhood epilepsy.

    9. SBSteven Bartlett1:12:55

       The keto diet?

    10. TSTim Spector1:12:56

        The keto diet. So what-- for people who don't know, what, what we're talking about here is y- you're changing the-... the energy supply of the brain from glucose to ketone bodies, which is a switch that we've always had ever in evolutionary terms when we couldn't get food. So after about two days of not having food, we've used up our glucose reserves, we used it up from our, our muscles, and you switch to this other form, uh, of energy, and it's a survival mechanism. But what it tends to do is reset the brain, and so in epilepsy, that's what they think. It's a bit of a, uh, like rebooting your computer. Epilepsy is rather strange because... and it used to be thought of as a mental illness, as I, as I said, because you can get hallucinations, delusions, um, it's associated with depression. All, all the same, you can have all the same symptoms you get in all mental illnesses, interestingly, and it can be cured by the- by keto. So that made me curious as to what else is going on. So in theory, some of the other mental health issues could be improved by keto. At the moment, there isn't sufficient good evidence. There's lots of anecdotal stories, studies of seven patients, open label, not convincing enough for me to say, "Let's do it," but I think definitely worth doing some real studies, but also suggesting that even if you don't go as far as keto, just by improving the metabolism and what-- how the brain is getting its energy could be really important.

    11. SBSteven Bartlett1:14:39

        I think, um, the interesting thing about the ketogenic diet, um, as someone that kind of cycles in and out of it, I actually, I showed you earlier, I have this ketone-

    12. TSTim Spector1:14:46

        Mm.

    13. SBSteven Bartlett1:14:47

        -monitor on my arm, which is monitoring my, uh, ketone levels at all times and connected to my phone. Um, I think the interesting thing is, in the, in the world we live in, where there's a lot of food noise, as they call it, everywhere you go, there's temptation to eat something bad. You're going down the high street, there's takeaways and junk food stores and stuff like that. What I think keto does, which you're probably never going to see in a study, I don't know if you would, is it helps the craving. It, like, dampens the food noise. So this is part of why I think cycling in and out of it is quite useful for me because it means I have m- several moments in the year where my cravings for, like, this junk food, some of which we have on this table, just appear to vanish for a while, even if it's just for a week or two weeks or three weeks or four weeks, and that allows me to kind of reset and kind of take back control of the steering wheel. Whereas it's very easy, especially in modern life, when you're working really hard or you're traveling, you've got sleep disruption, to get into that exact spiral we talked about, where you get, like, cravings for sugar, and then you eat sugar, so you feel a bit more tired, and you lay down a bit more, and then you're not-- you miss the gym, and then you kind of, you have the same, like, downward spiral. Um, keto continually snaps me out of the probabilis- the chance of that.

    14. TSTim Spector1:16:06

        How long for, though?

    15. SBSteven Bartlett1:16:08

        Hmm, [lips fluttering] probably the longest I've done it is maybe six weeks or eight weeks, but even get-- even doing it for, let's say, one week for me, will then mean the preceding four, eight weeks are much healthier in every regard. So even when I come off it, I'm much healthier. When I...

30. 1:16:30 – 1:20:42

    Can You Be Keto and Still Have a Healthy Gut?

    1. SBSteven Bartlett1:16:30

       You know what I'm saying?

    2. TSTim Spector1:16:30

       That's why- what's interested me, 'cause I, I think being on a long-term keto diet is never gonna work, right? It's just too brutal, and it's incompatible with keeping your gut happy.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett1:16:44

       Mm-hmm.

    4. TSTim Spector1:16:44

       So to me, that's... I mean, very few people can tolerate it anyway. As you know, it's tough.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett1:16:51

       Yeah.

    6. TSTim Spector1:16:51

       If we can come up with a regime that every three or every six months, you had a few days of going into keto, just enough to reset your body and your brain, and at the same time, you protected your gut, say, by, you know, taking Daily Thirty or other things that weren't gonna get you out of keto but could keep your, your gut in a, in a, in the right place, then I think we could potentially be, have a, uh, something of practical use for brain health issues. And I'd, I'd love to, you know, do more. I'm, I'm planning at some point later in this year to do-- to test myself to see if I can, uh, do a week of keto whilst keeping my gut microbes happy.

    7. SBSteven Bartlett1:17:34

       Have you ever done keto?

    8. TSTim Spector1:17:36

       Uh, not properly, no. You know, if you've done a twenty-four-hour fast, you know, for a colonoscopy, you are just about getting into keto at the time you're doing it, but you're not re-- you've got other things to worry about, like going to the toilet-

    9. SBSteven Bartlett1:17:48

       Mm-hmm

    10. TSTim Spector1:17:48

        ... to distract you.

    11. SBSteven Bartlett1:17:49

        I think this is really it, 'cause you, we talked about how holistic the, the whole picture of the body is and how it's so interconnected, and how the brain is so connected to the gut and all these things, and there's something about doing the ketogenic diet, which just it feels like I get control back-

    12. TSTim Spector1:18:05

        Mm

    13. SBSteven Bartlett1:18:05

        ... in a, in a way that then has this bigger holistic effect on m- my life, my ability, everything in my life, like my ability to articulate myself as a podcaster. I heard actually Joe Rogan say the same thing. I heard him say that words to the effect of the fact that when he's in ketosis, it's so profound, his ability to articulate himself and think as someone that does four-hour podcasts, that he would almost stay in it forever just for that particular cognitive benefit of, like, mental clarity.

    14. TSTim Spector1:18:33

        Mm.

    15. SBSteven Bartlett1:18:33

        And I always say to my team that when I'm in the ketogenic diet, I feel like I'm looking at the world like this, like everything's high definition, and my mouth and brain are like... I always say my mouth and brain are connected suddenly.

    16. TSTim Spector1:18:43

        Yeah, well, I've heard other people say this, that they do get this sort of clarity, which, which could be a, in a more exaggerated way of feeling that benefit of a long overnight fast. Um, when you come in after fourteen hours without eating and you're doing a podcast like this, yeah, I definitely do feel better than if I'd had a big English breakfast-

    17. SBSteven Bartlett1:19:03

        Yeah

    18. TSTim Spector1:19:04

        ... uh, just before. But I think the danger is that-... you know, if people disregard their gut microbiome and do this, the, the, any advantage will be wiped out so quickly by the, the problems of y- what's happening to your immune cells and everything else in your body. So if we can find this intermittent middle way, where you can still look after your gut, then I agree that would be cool. But I couldn't find any good data on, on this, apart from anecdotes of, you know, fanatics who will obviously, um, say it's great for their patients, but without any control group, 'cause must be a big placebo effect as well.

    19. SBSteven Bartlett1:19:46

        Mm-hmm.

    20. TSTim Spector1:19:46

        Um, it's very you-- very hard to not have a placebo effect when you're doing that, and when you're, when you're struggling so hard to do things that, as I say, you, you know, people get keto headaches, and they get all... You know, as you go into it, people say it's can be quite rough, so you can't double-blind yourself. But I think it is fascinating that in the same way that reversing type two diabetes, you know, improves your mental health, it makes sense that if you're switching energy levels in the brain, you could also do things. And let's not forget, things like ECT, still an effective treatment. That's a, that's a brain reset. Sometimes, you know, we may end up going back to the, the old era of, um, psychiatry, where, you know, before we got into this obsession with neurochemicals, to have this holistic view, which I think is, is really fascinating.

    21. SBSteven Bartlett1:20:39

        And when you did that brain scan, you

31. 1:20:42 – 1:22:58

    What It Means If You Have Microplastics in Your Blood

    1. SBSteven Bartlett1:20:42

       f- found that you're in the highest twenty percent for levels of environmental microplastics-

    2. TSTim Spector1:20:49

       Mm.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett1:20:50

       -in your blood.

    4. TSTim Spector1:20:51

       Yeah, that was a bit scary. They divide the microplastics into, into two groups, the sort of depending on the dimensions of them. I was p- concerned, am I eat-- was I eating a lot of microplastics? And it turned out that the higher levels I had were actually the, the smaller ones that you get through your lungs, which probably means a life... have-- having lived a life in London. Um, you know, six decades in London, probably wasn't very good for getting all this dust and, and, and, uh, things in there. That was a bit of a worry, and that's probably 'cause I cycle around London a lot in the last thirty years.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett1:21:27

       Have you changed anything in that regard?

    6. TSTim Spector1:21:29

       I still cycle. I don't like wearing a mask. I know I sort of probably should, and I've put a new water filter in my home, uh, to, uh, take out some of these chemicals and, and at least some of those plastics. I'm still not totally convinced, uh, on how bad they are, and the science, I don't think really we've resolved that issue yet, but it's, it's something I'm, I'm looking at closely, and I think if there's something easy you can do, I try and avoid plastic containers. I try and avoid plastic bottles, and I think that's good for the planet as well.

    7. SBSteven Bartlett1:22:03

       Is there a way to take these microplastics out of our body once they're in there?

    8. TSTim Spector1:22:07

       Uh, they s- anecdotally, they say things like plasmapheresis. Um-

    9. SBSteven Bartlett1:22:12

       Yes.

    10. TSTim Spector1:22:12

        You know, you can go to a spa in LA and, and get your, uh, plasma taken out and filtered and put back into your body. This is from your blood. But, uh, I don't think there's any real clinical trials that will satisfy me that would be worth... And they cost, I think, they're sort of ten thousand dollars a go, so it's not, not a cheap process to have that done. So I will wait and see. But at the moment, yeah, it's, it's, it's a worry, but I, I think there are other, uh, other things in the environment probably worse. You know, dust, pesticides. Is it better to have organic food rather than worry about plastics? Um, we don't know the answer to these, these problems.

    11. SBSteven Bartlett1:22:55

        How has your views on GLP-1s like

32. 1:22:58 – 1:25:51

    How GLP-1 Drugs Could Improve Your Life

    1. SBSteven Bartlett1:22:58

       Ozempic and Wegovy, or whatever it's called, these, these, um, injections, and I think now tablets people are taking for weight loss, how has your views on those evolved? Are they good, bad, and different?

    2. TSTim Spector1:23:09

       They're gonna be a part of our life anyway, so they're gonna transform medicine and, uh, obesity in a way we can't imagine at the moment, especially now, this year, that the pills are available, and it's coming off patent in many countries, so it'll be much cheaper. I think for people who really need them, they're an incredible drug. Uh, the only problem is you can't really come off them, so they're pretty much for life. My f- first worry is that a lot of people take them without supervision, and they are not told to change their diet. I'd love people to go take the drugs, their hunger signal gets switched off. They can then be mindful about their food. They could do something like, you know, have the ZOE app or some other educational program to change their food habits forever in that w- in that window of opportunity, and that, I think, is where we should be doing, and that, that's been completely ignored at the moment. Virtually, nobody's getting that lifestyle advice, as well as the drug, and so they're failing, they're going back, and they're, you know, yo-yoing, and they're getting the worst of the worlds. The other, the other slight worry we need to keep an eye on is the long-term effects on the brain. So far, the data suggests that it does reduce your chances of getting dementia, even beyond, you know, re- reversing diabetes. So it looks like it's brain protective, probably 'cause it might have anti-inflammatory effects. It reduces things like gambling and, uh, addictions. So we don't really know how it does that, but if it takes away some of those drives, those basic drives to say, "I like to take risks," you know, "I l- I like to take drugs, I like to smoke, I like to gamble on horses."... is it in some way changing you as a, a person long term, in that you might be less good as an entrepreneur, for example?

    3. SBSteven Bartlett1:25:24

       Mm-hmm.

    4. TSTim Spector1:25:25

       So that is something I think that's really interesting to follow. But in general, I think from a public health perspective, this could save, uh, c- you know, health systems hundreds of billions long term, and we ought to be taking it much more seriously and integrating it into holistic and educational advice.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett1:25:48

       And as it relates to brain health, you

33. 1:25:51 – 1:26:41

    The Powerful Brain Benefits of Sauna Use

    1. SBSteven Bartlett1:25:51

       also have a sauna routine as part of your brain health regime?

    2. TSTim Spector1:25:55

       Yeah, I've been im-impressed by some of the science, uh, coming out of this, and the fact that I quite enjoy-- just actually enjoy it from a hedonistic, uh, point of view. So I try and have a sauna twice a week, if I can, if I can do that, uh, ideally with a cold plunge afterwards, but the science isn't sure whether that makes a big difference. It's like a just a workout for your, your blood vessels in your, in your body and your brain. So, um, I think that the science is quite compelling, and yeah, it makes me feel good, which, um, is always-- should be part of anyone's health routine. Something you enjoy doing is always easy.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett1:26:35

       And regular socialising is part of your brain routine.

    4. TSTim Spector1:26:39

       Yeah. Th- if you look at

34. 1:26:41 – 1:27:23

    How Socialising Could Protect Your Brain

    1. TSTim Spector1:26:41

       the happiest, long-lived populations on the planet, they've all got really good social lives. They are always dining with friends, going out. Often, that does involve a little bit of alcohol in most of these societies, but that doesn't seem to adversely affect them. The idea of having a, a, a key group of core friends you see regularly, I think is really good for your mental and brain health, and loneliness has got to be one of the, the worst things, uh, for your brain health. So really important to maintain your, uh, your good friends.

    2. SBSteven Bartlett1:27:17

       What is the, what is the most important thing as it relates to brain health or overall health that we haven't talked about, that we should

35. 1:27:23 – 1:30:58

    Can Childhood Trauma Predict Disease Later in Life?

    1. SBSteven Bartlett1:27:23

       have talked about?

    2. TSTim Spector1:27:24

       I think we haven't talked about ear- early life experiences and stress.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett1:27:27

       What, trauma?

    4. TSTim Spector1:27:29

       Yeah. So one thing, um... and we haven't talked about talk therapies and, um, you know, conventional treatments. So if you look at all, all these brain diseases, virtually all of them, if you go back in time, if you've had, uh, emotional, physical, sexual trauma in, in early life, you're much more likely to have brain diseases later in life. And this is across all of them. Again, coming up with the idea that they're all related in some way. And so, you know, we've moved on from the Freudian idea that, you know, the mind is different from the brain. If you take this holistic idea, how does this fit into this inflammatory, metabolic, um, theory of brain health? I think it, it now does, because they've done studies showing that, uh, following trauma or stress, you can trigger your immune system to be permanently raised. So again, you get this, uh, consistent, uh, stress that the thermostat doesn't go down to baseline. So you have a, a period of a year as-- a terrible period as, as a kid. They do tests later in life, you'll-- they'll find your inflammation levels in your blood are raised than people who had a, a nice, gentle, quiet childhood. And I think this is-- starts to link all these different components together, and these cross all these early life traumas. You see the same thing in people with chronic pain, um, chronic back pain, fibromyalgia, um, irritable bowel syndrome, epilepsy, schizophrenia, it, it-- everything. But it doesn't really matter where the st- source of the stress was, it's caused some physiological problem. So I think that, that is really interesting, so that we could pick up people who... If we had better tests of that stress and inflammation, we could start to help those people earlier on before the brain started to, uh, struggle. And I think that-that's really interesting. And of course, we want to do most to reduce the problem in the first place. They've also done studies on talk therapies, so obviously, psychiatry is compartmentalized into the talk therapists and the, and the drug therapists. And there's quite a lot of evidence that talk therapy does reduce inflammation levels and help your immune system. So just in the same way, possibly, that talking to friends has that effect. So, uh, talking to your therapist long term, uh, will r-reduce your stress, and you can see that in blood markers as well. The whole thing is starting to come together, that, uh, all these different ways of treating it can be working through similar pathways that look so different through our-- you know, the fact that we've got so distracted by, uh, Descartes, um, Freud, uh, treating the brain as something so different to the rest of the body.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett1:30:52

       We have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next, not knowing who they're leaving it for. And the question, uh, for you

36. 1:30:58 – 1:32:23

    How Food Is Quietly Becoming Medicine

    1. SBSteven Bartlett1:30:58

       is: What are you uncontainably excited about?

    2. TSTim Spector1:31:05

       I'm uncontainably excited about the idea that we can dramatically improve our lives and our health just by making the right food choices.... this is really driving me to talk about it so much, to do the studies, to do the science, to spread the word, because, you know, we're seeing all the time the dramatic effects, and I was talking about the TV program I was doing with these, you know, these, these families that are really suffering. It just shows you what you can do if you start treating food like you would treat medicine. You know, taking it really seriously and experimenting with it and noticing those, those differences. And, um, you know, I get the feedback all the time 'cause I- 'cause the books and the media, people telling me how their lives have been transformed, and so that feedback keeps me excited on this topic. And so, um, I've never had that in my career before, and it's super exciting.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett1:32:16

       It's, um, it's really hard though, isn't it? And this is, I guess, the, the part we don't talk about much, which is the psychological part of,

37. 1:32:23 – 1:38:39

    What It Takes to Build a Healthy Relationship With Food

    1. SBSteven Bartlett1:32:23

       you know, what some might call discipline. In a world- the world we live in, where you go into, like, a, I don't know, a gas station or a petrol station, whatever you call it in different parts of the world, and the options are very ultra-processed. Um, and you've... You live a stressful life. You're on your phone all day. You're getting your, your dopamine fried by watching short-form videos back to back to back to back to back. You may be... You know, people are lonelier than ever before. So making the right choices when we're controlled by our neurology and our hormones and how we feel is, is often easier said than done. So even in the case of that family that you met, do you think much about the psychology part of, like, discipline when it comes to making the right choice? And is there any advice there on how to be more disciplined with our food choices, or do you just think that knowledge is power in this regard?

    2. TSTim Spector1:33:18

       Well, knowledge is power, but it's not the only thing. You, you, you need tricks. Um, we're fighting a food environment. You know, multi-billion-dollar industry wants us to eat this crap food. Your gas station, they're being bribed to fill their everything around you with the worst foods. The worse the food, the more they pay the supermarkets to have it in a point where you're gonna buy it. So you need to have tricks to counteract that, and, uh, not going to a supermarket is, is often one way to avoid doing that. If my house was filled with crap food, I would probably be snacking on it. I find it really hard to throw stuff away. You know, you, you go to workplaces, and you see people with piles of biscuits and, uh, M&M's, uh, there. You know, they should be banned. Um, so there are certain things you say, "We need to fight back by changing the rules a bit." Um, just like you wouldn't have, you know, glasses of vodka in an office, uh, for people to just have a swig if they fancied, you shouldn't have candies and sweets and these things, um, in the current environment where, you know, we're fighting a battle. Like, you know, they used to have cigarettes that were free everywhere. We forget. Um, and they changed that environment, so the cigarettes are now really hard to get at. That makes it easier for people to fight the habit.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett1:34:46

       And we, we often beat ourselves up 'cause we think of ourselves as being weak. Because of this, we think ourselves being, like, ill-disciplined because we end up reaching for the wrong things, but it is really, really hard, and it's really, really hard. Even, you know, I sit here all day, every day speaking to people that are experts on these subjects, and you'd think that would mean that I made perfect decisions, 'cause I've probably interviewed, you know, more people than the average ninety-nine point nine, nine, nine percent of the population on this subject. But I'm a human with emotions and hormones and life to deal with, and, and so even I have to, um... Regardless of how much I know about this stuff now, I still have to, like, give myself the best possible chance by thinking proactively about my environment, my food environment at home. And even, like, in the car and even at the office, like, I have to think really proactively, put systems in place to avoid the possibility that I get really, really hungry really, really late at night, and my only options are shit, for example, you know, um, which has been a bit, the big change.

    4. TSTim Spector1:35:41

       But it's forming habits, and that's the other thing. So it's... Yeah, so it's you've got knowledge, then you've got these tricks, tricks to avoid often the, the, the worst offenders, and then you've got to come up with these, these new habits that you, you make that are gonna break the old one. So, you know, rather than reaching for your breakfast cereal in the morning, you've got a different one ready to go, and, uh, often we've found that if you can change that first meal of the day, it, it becomes a lot easier because that's the one you're mainly in control of and realise when the other risky events are.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett1:36:15

       Tim, you've written many, many books. I'm gonna link them all below. This is the, the newest one. I know you're working on one specifically about the brain, but I'm very excited for that one. But this is the newest one called Ferment. Um, unsurprisingly, a number one bestseller yet again, um, but there's a whole stack of books here, The Diet Myth: The Real Science Behind What We Eat, um, Spoon-Fed: Why Almost Everything We've Been Told about Food Is Wrong, and this book, which has been extremely successful, um, The Food for Life Cookbook, with hundred recipes created by ZOE. I'm gonna link all of them below for anyone that wants to check them out, and, uh, thank you so much once again.

    6. TSTim Spector1:36:51

       Been a pleasure, as always.

    7. SBSteven Bartlett1:36:52

       You've kept my audience very, very healthy, and they're very appreciative of that. I, I, uh, remember, um, just the amount of people that come up to you all over the world and cite the conversations we've had in the past and how that's h- been the thing for them that has helped them to change their life, and it's pretty remarkable. It's really remarkable how many people you, you must have fundamentally caused to create different food and dietary decisions through the work you've done yourself, through the books, through ZOE, um, and that's a really special thing, so thank you on behalf of all of them.

    8. TSTim Spector1:37:20

       Well, hopefully, we can do millions more.

    9. SBSteven Bartlett1:37:23

       I hope so. [upbeat music] If there's anything we need, it is connection, especially in the world we're living in today, and that is exactly why we created these Conversation Cards, because on this show, when I sit here with my guests and have those deep, intimate conversations, this remarkable thing happens time and time again. We feel deeply connected to each other. At the end of every episode, the guest I'm interviewing leaves a question for the next guest, and we've turned them into these Conversation Cards, and we've added these Twist Cards to make your conversations even more interesting, and there are so many more twists along the way with the Conversation Cards. This is the brand-new edition, and for the first time ever, I've added to the pack this Gold Card, which is an exclusive question from me. But I'm only putting the Gold Cards in the first run of Conversation Cards, so get yours now before the limited edition Gold Cards are all gone. Head to the link in the description below.

    10. SPSpeaker1:38:18

        You take a healthy person's poop, and you transfer it into the person who's sick. So this is a great example to show how important our gut microbiome is because sixty percent of the weight of your stool is your microbiome. And so I've identified four things missing in our diet, and when you do these, you will thrive, and you will live longer, and you will have less disease. And I'm gonna take you through all of these steps right now.

Episode duration: 1:38:39