Is Your Gut Running the Show? How Diet and Microbe Diversity Shape Your Health and Aging - Episode 269

In this episode of the Gladden Longevity Podcast, Dr. Jeffrey Gladden interviews Dr. Timothy Spector, a leading expert in gut microbiome research. They discuss the importance of the gut microbiome for overall health, insights from twin studies, and the impact of diet and environment on gut health. Dr. Spector shares his journey from rheumatology to microbiome research, emphasizing the need for personalized nutrition and the role of diversity in the gut. The conversation also touches on the interplay between gut health, aging, and the immune system, as well as practical tips for improving gut health through diet and lifestyle changes. 
 
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Takeaways 
 
* The gut microbiome is essential for a functioning immune system. 
* Genetics plays a minimal role in determining gut microbiome composition. 
* Diversity in the gut microbiome is linked to better health outcomes. 
* Eating a variety of plants can enhance gut health. 
* Probiotics from food sources are more beneficial than supplements. 
* The gut microbiome can influence mood and energy levels. 
* Environmental factors have a significant impact on gut health. 
* Restoring gut health can improve symptoms of various conditions. 
* The gut microbiome acts as a virtual organ, interacting with the immune system. 
* Personalized nutrition is key to optimizing gut health. 
 
Chapters 
 
00:00 Introduction to Gut Health and Microbiome Research 
04:19 The Journey of Dr. Timothy Spector 
07:14 Understanding the Microbiome's Role in Health 
10:21 Insights from Twin Studies on Microbiome 
13:14 Genetics vs. Environment in Microbiome Composition 
16:30 The Gut Microbiome's Impact on Gene Expression 
19:19 The Gut as an Ecosystem 
22:13 The Complexity of a Healthy Gut Microbiome 
25:32 The Role of Parasites in Gut Health 
28:23 Diversity in Gut Microbiomes: A Key Indicator 
31:11 Compensating for Modern Lifestyle Effects on Gut Health 
33:32 The Importance of Diet and Gut Health 
36:25 Understanding Prebiotics, Probiotics, and Postbiotics 
41:16 Personalized Nutrition and the ZOE Test 
44:12 Linking Gut Microbiome to Health Outcomes 
52:59 Improving Gut Health and Addressing Symptoms 
57:24 The Gut Microbiome and Immune System Connection 
01:00:53 Aging, Inflammation, and Gut Health 
01:04:33 Exploring ZOE and Its Offerings 
01:07:53 Goodbye 
 
To learn more about Tim’s work and/or ZOE: 
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TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@join_zoe  
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/joinzoe1  
Food for Life cookbook by Tim Spector: https://www.amazon.com/Food-Life-Cookbook-bestselling-gut-health-ebook/dp/B0CTCBR3VB  
 
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Episode Transcript

(01:27):
Welcome everybody to this edition of the Gladden Longevity Podcast.
I'm your host, Dr.
Jeffrey Gladden, and I'm here today to discuss the gut biome, if you will, and health ofthe gut biome with somebody that's really a leader in this field, Dr.
Timothy Spector.

(01:47):
And Timothy, welcome to the Gladden Longevity Podcast.
It's a pleasure to be here.
Beautiful.
So you're coming to us from London.
I know that the English diet is maybe not the healthiest diet in the world, but here youare, a researcher at King's College, and you're interested in the gut biome.

(02:10):
That seems a little bit of an interesting path.
Tell us a little bit about your journey, how you got involved with the gut biome.
Yeah, it's a circuitous path, because I started life as a rheumatologist, which is a
like a bone and joint specialist, looking at arthritis and I was a practicing clinicianfor many years.

(02:34):
Then I want to get more and more into research.
So I did a master's in epidemiology and became an epidemiologist, then started a bigcohort of twins, the UK twin registry of 15,000 twins.
Is that identical twins or fraternal twins or both?

(02:54):
That was mixture of both, which allows you to look at nature v.
nurture.
That was extremely successful.
We probably wrote about 400 papers with the twins, looking at over 100 differentconditions and diseases.
I was very much interested in genetics and gene discovery and went through that genetic

(03:19):
exciting period of genetic revolution.
And that was all going very nicely until about 2011 when two things happened.
The first was I was skiing in the Alps in Italy and at the top of a mountain at about11,000 feet, I

(03:49):
got some double vision and had like a mini stroke in my eye, a mini occlusion of thefourth cranial nerve.
it left me quite debilitated for three months.
My blood pressure shot up and it was a bit of a health scare because my father had died inhis fifties of a heart attack suddenly.

(04:11):
And I suddenly didn't feel quite so fit.
And I started to look into my diet and
lifestyle things that could improve my chances of surviving to old age.
So that was a selfish change in my career, if you like.
And I wrote, I spent took time off and wrote a book called The Diet Myth, which is allabout diets and microbes and how we got it wrong and how I found out the most of the stuff

(04:38):
written at the written and which I'd learned as a doctor had been wrong.
It was all about calories and fats, etc.
nothing about the gut microbes at all.
And at the same time, I made a bit of a discovery in my twins that the only thing I'dfound in 20 years of research that was different between them was that they had very, very

(05:00):
different gut microbes in their lower intestine.
that those two things coincide in the same year.
And from that moment on, I decided to dedicate my career
in this direction of nutrition and gut health, gut microbiome.

(05:21):
And so I had a group of about 60 people at the time.
we were one of the major leaders in the UK in gut health research and looking at that,starting with the twins.
And then in 2017, I formed this company, Zoey, Z-O-E.

(05:46):
and with two entrepreneurs and that took this idea further and added this whole idea ofpersonalized nutrition to it.
And that's now a big, quite well established company in the US and the UK sellingpersonalized nutrition idea and a home kit plus microbiome testing as a sort of holistic

(06:10):
package to enable people to make better food choices.
It's only been a bit of a journey along the way.
what's been really cool is by forming this company, we've managed to carry on doing bigscale science.
We have over 200,000 people who have done this home testing in the US and the UK.

(06:35):
And we have probably the biggest microbiome database in the world now.
And we make all kinds of fascinating discoveries and insights that
We certainly couldn't have done just with academic budgets.
So it's a really exciting time to be a scientist in the field of particularly nutritionand microbes and microbiome, because, know, it's still a new area and very few specialists

(07:04):
in it.
And we're learning so much every year that we didn't know last year.
Right.
Well, the microbiome is a little bit like the ocean floor, right?
We think we have a sense of it, but we haven't really mapped it.
We don't fully understand it.
We don't really, really comprehend it in many ways.
We don't really understand all the interactions between all the different microbes and theenvironment.

(07:26):
And I mean, there's a lot going on there, right?
We're We're just scraping the surface of what it can do.
But we do know that it's crucial for life.
We have no functioning immune system really without it.
If you don't have an immune system, then of course, you you can't fight cancer.

(07:47):
can't repair your body.
You can't fight off infections.
You got poor response to, you know, all allergens, et cetera.
So you add that on top of its other functions on the brain, neurochemicals, mood, energy.
And he, I mean, talked about digestion and, you know, the normal things that it does.

(08:09):
and also the way it deals with drugs, you know, the
Everyone, it's starting to unravel that why we all respond differently to medications isbecause we are far more unique in our gut microbiome than we are in our genetics and our
genes.
And that's what all these twin studies really showed me.
Yeah.
So I want to, I want to circle back to the immune system and the gut, but I'd like to, andthe gut microbiome, but I'd like to talk initially about the twin studies because that's

(08:38):
quite fascinating.
So what did you, what have you learned?
from looking at the gut microbiome and I assume, and this is an assumption that maybeyou've looked at the microbiome and the twins over time.
Maybe that's true, maybe it's not, but nonetheless, what have you learned from the twinsthat kind of jumped out at you?

(09:01):
Well, so the first thing, we did a small study with a research group in Cornell startingin about 2011.
where we looked a few hundred twins and found that the similarity in identical twins wasonly slightly more than in fraternal twins.

(09:24):
In the microbiome.
Yeah, in the similarity of the species to each other.
obviously, it's quite complicated to explain, but it's a bit like if we did a blood teston them,
looking at markers of say heart disease or lipids, cholesterol, inflammatory markers, wegenerally see about a...

(09:51):
genetic component about 50%.
50 or 60 % is sort of the average we get for most things, know, which means that you'reseeing much more similarity in identical twins compared to fraternal twins, about double
generally.
you that you'd see.
right.
So just so I'm clear to what you're saying.
So if we do blood markers on a set of fraternal twins, coherence between them in terms ofhaving similar results is

(10:21):
50%, but in identical twins, it's twice that.
that, and that's can be twice that.
So normally it's about 30 % in fraternal twins and 60 % in identical twins.
Okay.
Got it.
there's a back of an envelope formula that says you take twice the difference and then youget something called the heritability, which is the proportion that's due to genetic

(10:45):
factors in that in explaining the differences between people.
So, okay.
So that's the sort of general rule that I've seen in hundreds of tests that I've beendoing.
Because these twins in the UK are probably the most studied people on the planet.
They've had about $50,000 worth of tests, scans, regular, everything.

(11:12):
most things follow this pattern until we got to the gut microbiome and
we saw a, I think, a 20 % similarity in the fraternal twins and about a 22 % or 25 % inthe identical twins.

(11:34):
Less than 10 % genetic factors.
And that for me was a bit of an aha moment because I suddenly said that explains why
despite this obvious genetic, people have the same genes, they spent the same 18 yearsliving together, these identical twins, they should get the same cancers, the same heart

(12:00):
attacks, the same rate of aging, the same depression, anxiety, but they don't.
Something happens and it changes.
And this to me was really important because it explained the observations that I wasseeing.
Right.
And for the first time I had something tangible to say, it must be something to do whatthese microbes are doing in our bodies.

(12:26):
That's, that's different.
And then I started to think about microbes differently.
And this new concept of what microbes do is not like we think of them as just infectiousagents, but actually they are chemical factories.
they, they're producing thousands of chemicals that

(12:47):
as diverse as the B vitamins, which affect the nervous system to gut hormones, todigestive hormones, to brain chemicals like serotonin and GABA, which are involved in
things like Valium and Prozac.
so, you know, this was really a crucial breakthrough that it must be that in a way

(13:14):
We all have these very different chemicals in our blood because of our microbes andconventional medicine has never really thought about that difference.
And that was a big insight for me.
Right.
Exactly.
Let me go back to something because, you know, if there's a 20 percent concordance betweenpaternal twins and a 22 to 25 percent concordance in identical twins.

(13:41):
And I suppose these people were not the
At what age was the first microbiome studied in these twins?
they they weren't infants?
weren't the middle age generally.
So in our age.
Yeah.
So let me me finish this thought.
So what I'm wondering is, I wonder if the concordance in the microbiome really hasanything to do with genetics or whether or not the concordance has to do with the fact

(14:09):
that they were birthed through the same birthing canal and they
drank the same milk from their mother and they were exposed to, you know, the microbiomeof the mother.
I wonder if that explains the concordance to the extent that there is concordance and therest of it is a function of the environment that they went off separately into and the

(14:32):
foods they ate and the places they lived and the partners they had and, you know, all theother things that contribute.
It makes you even wonder if there's a genetic component.
to it or if the whole thing is environmental.
I wonder, do you have any thoughts about that?
Yeah, well, the twin model is designed to separate out these factors because you takefraternal twins and they have the same mother, they have the same birth mode of entry into

(15:02):
the world, and they live for 18 years in the same environment.
as the identical twins, the only difference between them is one group share 100 % of theirgenes, the other group share 50%.
So that's the basic model.
by looking at in the twin model, you have adjusted for the family environment.

(15:25):
Right.
And that's how we come to this idea.
And now we're able to measure that genetic component.
So the fact that the genetic component is tiny or negligible,
is, I think, a real finding.
mean, it is agreed.
And we also looked at unrelated individuals.

(15:48):
And as expected, they were just slightly less similar to each other than right than thefraternal twins.
And we've done studies look at twins separated apart.
And over time, twins who
you measure living further apart in time end up getting less similar.

(16:15):
Did you look at did you look at maternal siblings also?
No, we didn't because you've got the age factor there that makes it somewhat different towork out.
But we've done other studies about sharing in families.
I'm just thinking about, yeah, I'm just thinking about they would be exposed to the sameenvironment for the first, let's call it 16 to 18 years, something like that, right?

(16:37):
So it'd be interesting if it's the same.
It's never exactly the same once you've got a sibling, because, you know, you go to maybeseparate schools or different years, there's a sort of cohort effect difference that's
subtly different.
So it's not quite as accurate looking just at siblings, but

(16:59):
I think shouldn't get hooked up on this.
the take home message is it's not very genetic, unlike virtually everything else that I'vestudied.
environment is the key player here.
And there's also randomness to it, which I think is important.
So unlike many other traits, which are, you know, there's a sort of shared environment.

(17:22):
There's this huge random effect, which explains why even identical twins are so different.
you know, just by being born being born, you know, a few minutes apart, born sterile, nomicrobes, and suddenly they get them, depending which virus hit them first, when they were
together, whether, you know, the grandma touched them in a certain way in the first fewhours and gave them different microbes to start with.

(17:50):
The first three years are a chaotic period where we all, all of us, not only twins,
we get all our microbes sorted out.
And then at the end of those three years, we've got our personal signature of how ourmicrobes look.
So that's how we think it's working now.
And if one got antibiotics or one got a flu shot differently, that would have quite a bigeffect or a gastro infection.

(18:14):
And the other one didn't, you know, that would have very major effects on that on theirgut.
So
I think this is a fascinating point.
So really what we're saying is that when it comes to the gut microbiome, genetics has verylittle impact, quite honestly.
It probably has very little impact.
However, the question becomes the reverse equation.

(18:38):
I think the gut microbiome may have a big impact on genetic expression, right?
In terms of the other way.
So have you thought about or looked into that?
Because I think we know that when the gut...
microbiome is off, it can increase inflammation, it can increase risk of dementia, it canincrease other things.
And if you have genes that predispose you in those directions, it can augment that even tothe point of rheumatology where now you have an autoimmune disease or you have SLE or

(19:04):
Hashimoto's or whatever else is going on.
So it seems to me that when we think about the gut microbiome, it's really more of anindependent actor and it's acting to create an internal environment.
And we know the environment basically
is critical to how genes are expressed.
So it seems like this internal environment has a much bigger impact on how genes areexpressed than our genes have on the formation or the constituents that are in the

(19:30):
microbiome.
That's kind what I'm what I'm thinking as I'm listening to you.
Is that is that close to what you're thinking or?
Yeah, yeah, I think it is.
I think it's complicated because.
It's a two way street, you know, the the.
Microbiome is an you have to think of it as a virtual organ that is both cause and effectIt's has this complicated relationship with the immune system That and of course, you

(20:00):
know, the immune system is layered with genes that are sensitive to signals and and alsopassing signals back and forth in both directions so the immune system is trying to
influence what's going on in the microbiome and the microbiome is
influencing what's going on in the immune system.
They're talking to each other all the time, switching genes on and off.

(20:21):
And microbes, of course, also have an epigenetic system, which is way of regulating theirgenes.
And of course, one of the big players of gene expression is the immune system itself.
It's the environment of inflammation.

(20:44):
I'm sure
You you've talked a lot about inflammation aging and all this, these concepts.
I think increasingly everything I'm reading about the microbiome and we're all our work ispointing to this pivotal role in suppressing or exciting inflammation in the rest of the

(21:05):
body.
And it being a bit of a canary in there that it can put the fire out if it's in
fantastic shape, or it can actually make it worse if it's all inflamed.
And that can send the wrong signals to the brain and the rest of the body.
regardless of whether genes are being turned on and off, I think it's perhaps easy tothink of this as a big holistic system that's linking all the different bits, the immune

(21:37):
system, the brain, the vessels, and the gut, just with chemicals and whether chemicals are
are being produced by genes or by microbes or by our liver, you know, it doesn't reallychange that concept.
We have to get our gut microbes in order to be in really good shape to have the bestcontrol over disease and our immune system.

(22:04):
And sometimes, you know, it can be difficult.
So people who've got autoimmune diseases, they're always fighting this.
inflammation and so it's hard for them to have really healthy gut microbes and they reallyyou know and they need all the help they can get with perfect diets and they often don't

(22:25):
get it and so it's it's a definitely a two-way process the the rest of the body isinfluencing the gut but the gut has a huge say on how our body reacts to anything.
So what we're really describing here is an ecosystem
is what we're really talking about.
It's an ecosystem and it finds its own homeostasis based on the constituents.

(22:46):
When I think about genetics impacting it, the genetics aren't necessarily impacting themicrobiome that you have.
Your environment is responsible for that largely, let's say largely, but your genes doactually impact the integrity or the function of your gut.
So for example, you may have

(23:08):
genes that predispose you to histamine sensitivities when you eat certain foods, or youmay have genes that predispose you to gluten sensitivities when you eat certain foods.
And if you're eating those foods, then you can basically be aggravating the gut mucosa,the leakiness of the gut, and things like that.
So there is a genetic component here that's not necessarily directing the gut microbiomeand what they are, but it is kind of

(23:36):
creating another part of the ecosystem, is a substrate of the gut itself and how it'sresponding to certain foods, right?
So that's kind of an interesting interplay there as well.
And then the immune system also comes into play because certain food sensitivities showup.
And just because, you know, lima beans are, you know, full of fiber or something that aregood for the gut, it doesn't mean that's the right food for you, right?

(23:58):
But you still may be reacting to that in a negative way.
There's a lot that kind of goes into deconstructing that ecosystem to kind of get itright.
That's kind of what I'm surmising.
Am on the right track here?
Yeah.
No, absolutely.
I mean, it's an extremely complex ecosystem that we're only just discovering how it is.

(24:20):
And it could be that just a tiny change in the acidity, the pH of the environment canradically change which microbes are in there.
and therefore which chemicals are being produced.
And so these sort of subtle changes we haven't really thought about much.

(24:42):
it's, you know, but also the like an ecosystem, there's an interesting story we discoveredbecause Zoe's got this massive database now of 200,000 individuals in the UK and the US
and we found in our sequencing a parasite.
called Blastocystis.

(25:03):
might have heard of it.
the past, if your physician had found it, said, well, this is causing diarrhea, you oughtto get rid of it.
And it was seen as bad.
Now, did a study that showed that if you have Blastocystis, you're more likely to lowblood pressure, low cholesterol, low visceral fat, low heart disease risk, and be thinner.

(25:32):
one in four Brits has it and what about one in 10 Americans and it's absolutely linked toand less and more in men than women.
Women have less of it than men and it's a godsend and we think all our ancestors had itbut we've lost it in the last 50 hundred years and we're saying well what

(25:59):
How do you think about it?
the only way we can start to describe it is like, it's like a predator.
It's like that lone wolf in Yellowstone Park or wherever that would kill the deer orwhatever and therefore keep those numbers down so they wouldn't eat all the trees and
everything else followed.

(26:20):
So we think this parasite, which we've lost, was eating bacteria that were
producing inflammation and fat and letting fat deposits happen.
that's just one example of how you can start to conceive of our gut.

(26:40):
What's going on in our gut's a bit like a jungle or a forest and everything is playing alittle role.
Even if you think it's a bad guy, it's got its own internal role.
So really important that we, you know, and we've been sort of screwing it up withantibiotics.
and junk foods and urban living and sterilizing everything and pesticides and all thisstuff.

(27:08):
And of course, every time, you know, physicians didn't know better and they just see somebug and they kill it.
You know, this is like, that's what we did.
Like shooting a predator, by shooting predators.
Yeah.
that's really interesting thing.
So we need to work out how to get this.
How do we get this back into the average American gut that's so lacking and we need morepredators out there?

(27:33):
Well, it sounds like you could just, I've come across it in some of our clients.
sounds like you could put, I mean, it's a known parasite, right?
You could probably just drink it and put it back in.
Seems like, right?
Why not?
What's the downside?
Why not just get ahold of it and drink it?
we haven't found, yeah, because people ask me, how do I get it?

(27:53):
And it just does get transferred because we're not born with it and instantly infantsdon't have it.
The first three years of life, it's hard to find it.
So you acquire it gradually.
So you probably could drink.
So we could probably do a test on you, Geoffrey, and, you know, get you to drink some andsee if you can get healthier that way.

(28:15):
That'd be a good one.
I'm not sure you could give it to your patients, but it would be good, you know, maybe oneto do yourself first.
Yeah, no, I'm always a pointy end of the stick over here.
So that's not a problem.
Yeah, that's easy.
Yeah, I would do that.
think, yeah, that's really interesting.
And, know, the other thing for the audience to understand is that it's not just, it's notjust bacteria that are in there.

(28:37):
And there are some aerobic bacteria and there's a lot of anaerobic bacteria.
Some ones that utilize oxygen is one that don't, but there's also viruses.
There's also yeast.
There's also now healthy parasites, right?
That we're talking about.
So this is really a very complex ecosystem.
So what does a healthy gut microbiome look like?

(28:59):
And I suppose that that's actually a little bit different depending on the person also.
I'm sure there's a spectrum of healthy microbiomes.
There's not one.
And what does that spectrum look like?
What comprises it?
Maybe you can give us some insight into that.
Sure.
up to now, the last 15 years,

(29:21):
in the field since I've been in the field, there's been a concept of diversity has beenthe mainstay of looking at a gut and saying, this is healthy, this is less healthy on a
spectrum.
And it's been a continuum.
There's no, isn't like a sudden cutoff, but we know that all, you know, hunter gatherers,people living in developed countries on

(29:48):
plant-based diets have really diverse gut microbes.
gathered in Tanzania that I visited 10 years ago have twice as many diverse species as theaverage American.
So we've lost some of those.
up to recently, that was the gold standard.

(30:08):
You just measured how many different species or now if you do proper sequencing strains.
you'd have, and that would give you a snapshot of this.
we found that- Let me interrupt you for a second and hold that thought, because this ideaof diversity is something that's kind of been a gold standard, as you say.

(30:28):
And we know that the hunter gathers, we know that when people have gone and looked attribes that are kind of removed from civilization, right, and they do their gut
microbiomes, that they have the most diverse gut microbiomes, to your point about-
hunter gatherers and people that are living in the wild.
So the question is, what is it about living in the wild that does that?

(30:49):
Is it the fact that they're basically getting microbiomes from the soil and the dirt andwith their hands and the food that they're eating?
Is this what we're talking about?
Or is it literally in the food or is it in the environment at large?
Do you have a sense of that?
Well, it's both.
And in a way, they're hard to distinguish the environment and the food because

(31:11):
You know, they don't go to shops, they don't have, you know, stores to go to.
just wake up in the morning and they pick berries off the trees and they, you know, theirkids shoot the little birds.
They eat anything that moves that isn't a, you know, a hyena or a giraffe and, or snake,you know, reptiles.

(31:36):
they, they eat about 600.
different plants and animals a year, all of which have different microbes on them and inthem when they're cooked and they're nourishing their own.
But a lot of it is the dirt and the trees and the environment and the fact they don't havechemicals anywhere.

(31:56):
So nothing to kill it.
And they don't have antibiotics, although missionaries are swapping, you know.
some Christianity for antibiotics, interestingly, in some of these places.
But that's the...
So I think you can't separate those two.

(32:19):
And when I stayed there, I tested my microbiome and my diversity increased by about 30 %while I was there for a week, but it quickly disappeared.
these were perhaps African microbes that really
couldn't then live in a sort of European environment.

(32:41):
So I think that's why, but I think the lack of antibiotics as kids and the lack ofchemicals in their food, plus this massive diversity of diet, and these are all things
that we're lacking in the West that we don't have.
So that's my view on why that is, but...

(33:03):
So is there a way to, is there a way for us to compensate for that?
Because I don't think many people are going to start living in a mud hut.
you know, although there's a real movement around regenerative farming and, you know, alot of really, I think, very cool initiatives, right?
To kind of recreate the soil and do lots of real healthy things.
And I think that's, that's nice step.
But are there some things that we can do to compensate for the fact that we don't haveaccess to the same things that they do?

(33:28):
Well, we can really push the one thing we are in control of.
if we have some financial independence, we're not on the poverty line is to control ourdiets to some extent.
we can restrict our use of antibiotics when it's absolutely essential.

(33:52):
And the US uses three times more antibiotics than many countries, say in Northern Europe.
Scandinavia, So it's massively overused without realizing there are consequences for ourgut microbes and our immune health and our allergies, etc.
Second is to improve our diets, stop, get junk food, which is 60 % of the US diet down tolevels in Mediterranean countries around 10%.

(34:28):
So six-fold difference, six-fold reduction in the use of junk foods, which the chemicalsin them have been shown to harm our gut microbes.
And then eating a diversity of plants.
And this is something that we've been working with Zoe and in my book, something is thisconcept of eating 30 different plants a week, which would include fruits, vegetables,

(34:55):
nuts, seeds, herbs.
and spices.
And it's not that hard when you start thinking about, you know, what a plant is and youadd in mushrooms and all the different types of mushrooms you can have.
And, you know, you don't need vast amounts of it.
You just need that diversity.
Right.
And we think possibly fermented foods has some effect on improves gut health as well.

(35:22):
So I think these are things that if you you combine those together,
possibly eat like these hunter-gatherers in, you know, which we have time-restrictedeating, so you're not snacking all the time, give your gut a rest.
These are things you can compensate your gut health for.
So I think that's, they're things that all of us can do to reverse what's happened in thelast 50 years.

(35:49):
But it does mean knowing more about food and knowing which foods particularly are harmfulfor your gut health and which
you know, high fiber foods are really beneficial for your gut health.
And what's your take on pre, pro and post biotics in terms of rehabbing the gut or healingthe gut or getting people to a healthier gut microbiome?

(36:14):
What's your take on that?
Well, prebiotics, which are fertilizers for the gut microbes, are really, I mean,
It's another way of saying these are really good foods for your gut microbe.
So whether they see them as medicines or you see them as actual part of your normal dietis a bit unclear.

(36:38):
know, there are artificial fibers you can have, are pretty valid.
They definitely work.
And I think the more natural you can get them, probably the more effective because there'ssome evidence that if you get these very pure forms of inulin,
They don't have the diversity of fibers to support all the microbes and you lose a bitout.

(37:00):
I'm a big fan of, know, the 30 plants a week is basically a prebiotic diet and you willget those fibers.
anything with prebiotics is great.
You don't have to get it out of a pharmacy though.
You should be able to get it from the fruit store.
Probiotics come in two forms.

(37:23):
Again,
those you get from the pharmacy or the health food store, which might be in capsules or inliquids, which are just a few selected strains that have been around for like hundred
years that have been shown generally to work, but we don't know enough about them and theydon't seem to work in everybody.
So I'm not a huge fan of them because we're all very, have very different gut microbiomesand

(37:51):
Why pick just one or two strains that might work?
Because we need to personalize them is what I'm saying.
So in the future, we need to adapt it for everyone's gut microbiome is my view of more thepharmaceutical type probiotic.
But I'm a big fan of probiotics in food because fermented food, which is your kefas, youryogurts, your artisan cheeses, your

(38:20):
Kimchis, kombuchas, your sauerkrauts, these have many more microbe species.
we know that overall there'll be something that's gonna suit.
And they've been around for thousands of years, very safe, very easy to have them everyday, much cheaper than taking some of these tablets.

(38:44):
And recent studies show they're really powerful anti-...
inflammation medicines.
So I'm a big fan of those.
and post-biotics, I we're going to see more and more of these.
For those of you that don't these are dead probiotics.

(39:06):
And we think that the shell of the bacteria has proteins in it that still have an effecton the immune system, or that the soup that these
probiotics were living in while they were alive has produced chemicals that are actuallystill can carry on working even if the initial microbe is dead.

(39:28):
All the recent studies are very exciting and showing that they have nearly as much effect,sometimes more than the live microbe.
And if this is true, this is going to be a huge revolution in the field.
And I think, you know, I'm very excited by this field, but

(39:48):
It's really young, really early days.
Yeah, interesting.
So really, you're a big fan of getting these naturally.
And then the postbiotics, of course, those are sort of in the supplement category.
It's difficult to get them otherwise.
could heat up your cheese and you've got your own post-partix or you take the miso soup.

(40:14):
When you have miso soup, it starts off live.
By the time you've boiled it, it becomes a post biotic.
So I think we're going to have some interesting new types of medicinal foods that aregoing to be out there.
You can now buy killed kimchi powder.

(40:36):
And so there are a few niche brands here that we're going to see more of.
And at Zellie, we're thinking of having some formulations that
that we test as well.
Because we tested something, we tested a pre-Bartic and found that it did better than apro-Bartic in our trials.

(41:00):
And we're going to start adding post-Bartics to that, see if we can get even more bang forour buck, if you like.
So when you talked about customization for individuals and you have a database of over200,000
Really people of Northern European descent, I guess, between Britain and mostly.
Yeah.

(41:20):
Mostly.
Then the question becomes, have you been able to go through that data and start to devisetruly personalized recommendations for people that are doing the Zoe test?
And we can talk a little bit more about the test in the platform.
I went online and went through your intake forms and all of that.

(41:42):
So I have a sense of kind how you how you work.
But but are you able to actually make customized recommendations or are they just genericrecommendations about, everybody needs more plants and fiber and, you know, that kind of
scenario, more probiotic foods, heat them up and you'll get the post biotics.
Well, unlike any other company, we don't depend purely on the microbiome or any one test.

(42:11):
So we do three tests together.
So.
We do have a continuous glucose monitor to measure your response to a standard meal.
We have a blood collection device that looks at your triglyceride fat levels six hoursafter a fatty meal.

(42:31):
And then we have the gut microbiome as well.
with those three together, we personalize your carb and fat responses and we know whatstate your gut microbiome is.
So, uh, cause that initially it would have been very difficult based on just a fewthousand people to customize or personalized diets.

(42:54):
think people who did that, might, there are other companies doing it.
They just making it up, right?
It's obviously a lot of people making it up in this field.
That's for sure.
Yeah.
And it's a bit like genetics.
We realized you need hundreds of thousands to really get really good, good results.
Everything else is waving hands in the air.
Um,
So we didn't make any big claims based on our microbiome data initially, but now we've gota big data set.

(43:22):
We are able to work out which microbes are linked to which foods in the diet and whichhealth outcomes.
okay, well, that's big news.
So our first paper we published in Nature Medicine.
So, you know, we're talking the high end.

(43:42):
This is,
the Oscars of the medical world for those people who don't know getting papers in thesejournals.
So it's quite unique data.
And we've shown these clear links so that that's how we also got our scoring method.
So we've got a new way of scoring the microbes moved away from diversity.
This should be published soon in it's going through one of those journals.

(44:04):
I can't say which at the moment in final revision.
But so we've made this clear link between
the foods you eat, how the microbes change, and then your health outcomes.
So a whole range of blood tests and heart disease, factors, obesity, diabetes, metabolicrisk factors, et cetera.

(44:27):
having those three things in a really, really big database allows us to pick out the foodsthat are most correlated with microbes and then tell people, okay, we know this is in this
group of good microbes.
that people who live the longest have the least disease, they have these 50 good guys andthey have very few of these 50 bad guys.

(44:52):
At the moment, we're still, I think it's going to be even better once we get to severalmillion in our database, but we're able to pick out, example, and we've published on this
a month ago about a microbe that only eats coffee.
Coffee is good for your heart and

(45:13):
But we didn't know that there's a microbe that's so specialized, it only eats coffee.
All right.
And it's sitting around in non-coffee drinkers in a sort spore form, just waiting for thatfirst cup of coffee.
And then it goes crazy and there's tenfold numbers.
Now, that was the biggest association we saw between a microbe and a food.

(45:35):
Our second biggest one is things like specific nuts and seeds.
So we can make recommendations now.
on people having certain types of nuts they should be having and seeds.
And there are other vegetables that we're increasingly confident that they will changethis ratio of good to bad bugs.

(45:58):
And what kind of nuts and seeds are you talking about?
I'm sure the audience is wondering.
Well, we haven't.
I mean, they're all good at the moment.
We haven't found a bad one.
Okay.
Haven't found a bad nut or a seed.
I mean, we think ground nuts, know, peanuts are slightly different to the others becausethey structurally and they come from a different place.

(46:23):
But it's hard to tease our database apart because people don't tend to not, don't just eatBrazil nuts, you know, they will have mixed nuts or walnuts or whatever.
I think we're
we're starting to do some experiments where we might give people these and see whathappens.
So I'm just giving you a taste of the future.

(46:44):
At the moment, you know, we can only do this.
We call these how to boost your gut microbes.
So we can give some suggestions on this.
And at the other end, we see that people have very poor gut microbiomes are eating thesetype of foods.
And that increases these in pro-inflammatory microbes.
And we're telling people to avoid those ones.

(47:06):
So
It's still quite primitive, but each year it's getting better and better.
And I think that's the exciting side.
But it's really complicated to sort out nutrition and diet in this way without doing ahundred of an experiment.

(47:26):
that's the challenge.
But I think coffee was a marvelous example of how you can tease these apart, but also
how specific our microbes are and coming back to the original point, how to feed themright and how each diverse tiny little difference between like two types of nuts or seed
could feed a whole different species of microbe that could produce different chemicals.

(47:51):
And I think that's really exciting.
And that, that can sort of blow your mind a bit to think, yeah, can really start to growmy inside gut just by giving them a little taste of something else, you know?

(50:04):
Yeah.
No, it's it's a great concept.
I think, um,
You know, we encourage all our clients.
We think most people lead about, you know, 13 to 15 foods a week.
They kind of just circle into this, you know, whatever it is.
Right.
And that's, it's such a disservice to themselves and, and to their gut microbiome.
So we really try to push people into much more diversity, even small amounts of many, manythings, right.

(50:26):
Like multiple plants and seeds and nuts and things like this, even different meats andfruits and, and everything else.
think.
There's a lot of wisdom in that, although it's really interesting if you're listening tothis, to think about the fact that when you eat, you think you're eating to basically
satisfy your hunger.
But we know that hunger itself is also a function of the gut microbiome and the, the, themicrobes will actually drive.

(50:51):
Like if you eat sugar all the time, you're feeding that population that likes sugar downthere.
And then when you don't have sugar, they're going to basically push your appetite, so tospeak, to get more sugar in so that they can feel satisfied.
And I suspect that maybe, you know, we found that doing a five day fast mimicking diet isactually a good way to sort of reset the gut microbiome to where, I will tell you that for

(51:18):
us, we've been working diligently to sort of clean up people's guts, if you will, right?
Get rid of the bad parasites, heal the leaky gut and things like that.
One of the things that's struck us is that it's very, very difficult.
Get out the, you know, the
the yeast overgrowth, bacterial overgrowth in the small intestine.
What we've found is that it's very, very difficult to do that for people that are stilldrinking alcohol.

(51:42):
Like no matter what we do, it seems like you can't get rid of the candida.
You can't get rid of certain things, but when they stop drinking alcohol and then weactually, you know, sort of clean out the gut and then kind of repopulate it with the
proper foods and maybe some pre and pro and post biotics.
we use
things like some peptides like oral BPC and KPV to actually, you know, heal the intestinalmembrane and things like that.

(52:06):
We can fix guts, right?
And it's, it's very gratifying and satisfying.
I think what you're talking about is taking things to the next level in terms of reallyoptimizing gut diversity.
And I like the fact that you're using the continuous glucose monitor and the checkingtriglycerides six hours after a meal.
But I think that,

(52:30):
I don't know what your take is on it, but do you have a sense that with the people thatyou're treating with food, that you're actually able to heal their guts and that you're
able to get rid of the yeast and things like that?
Because we seem to feel like, or what our finding is, is that it takes more than just foodto actually get this right for a lot of people.
So I'm just curious about your take on that.

(52:52):
Well, we're not targeting the Zoe home test at people with really acute problems.
Okay.
Um, you know, we're definitely a wellness product, a disease product.
Okay.
Um, but what we have seen is people have, cause we've done, we've tested our product witha randomized control trial, um, of 350 people, which we've, published in nature medicine

(53:20):
and, uh, against standard FDA, you know, low calorie diets and it, it outperformed it atall levels.
But what was interesting is that the adherent group had really big improvements in theirgut health symptoms.
So bloating, constipation, diarrhoea, all these things improved just by, you know, uppingtheir plant count and reducing sugar spikes and doing things personalized to them that was

(53:52):
sort of maximizing gut health and, you know,
being more mindful about what they're eating.
And in a study of our prebiotic, we also found that gut health symptoms improved usuallywithin a few weeks.

(54:12):
So I think a lot of people just by improving the gut microbiome generally will get reliefof these symptoms.
But we haven't gone as far as you in terms of looking at things like.
leaky gut or gut lining or calprotectin levels or this.
Remember, we're doing this at home without physicians.
This is very much more global, more general.

(54:35):
But my view is that we can improve anybody's gut microbiome at any age, at any startingpoint.
And you'll generally find some benefit along the way.
We certainly don't find, you know,
I'm not convinced yet about trying to eradicate candida and fungi and things like this,because I think they're an integral part of environment in the vast majority of cases.

(55:07):
And it's only maybe post infections or overuse of antibiotics.
And when that environment has got very toxic, that things like fungi or parasites mightplay a role.
But yeah, so I think we're seeing different spectrum side of the spectrum.

(55:31):
But I think the message is that everybody can improve their gut microbiome.
Even if they didn't get, you know, rid of their IBS or whatever, they'll probably improvetheir symptoms a bit.
And maybe the biggest symptom we found of people changing to our diets is actually on moodand energy, which
We didn't we were hardly going to even bother measuring when we started seven years ago,because no one had no one talks about that.

(55:57):
And most certainly in the UK, most doctors don't ask patients about that.
It's you know, it's not what we taught in medical school.
Right.
So that's right.
And yet it's it's perhaps the overriding symptom of maybe inflammation that goesundetected.

(56:18):
I agree.
So
I said that we were going to circle back to the immune system and I'd like to circle backto that.
You know, I think in the aging process, we do measure the immune system through severaldifferent modalities.
Actually, we can look at the anatomic age of the immune system.
We can look at the function of the immune system in the testing that we do here.

(56:41):
And it's really interesting to see a correlation between shortening of telomeres and theaging of the immune system.
It's also interesting to see
the immune system aging in the face of inflammation.
And we know that when the immune system is damaged, that it's more prone to inflammation.
It's also less able to prune senescent cells.

(57:02):
It's less able to prune cancer cells when they show up and things like that.
So in your work and testing, tell us a little bit about what you've seen in terms ofrejuvenating the immune system with some of the work you've done on the gut microbiome.
Do you have data from that from the Zoey population or from other populations?

(57:26):
we don't have, we don't measure the immune system directly in our, in our studies.
So everything we usually extrapolated from other smaller, either preclinical studies inmiles or miles or other studies of aging populations.
but clearly, you know, there's a general drop off in microbiome health as you get older.

(57:54):
with, but without, but not as much as in other parameters, other blood parameters,interestingly.
it's, I mean, I used to study telomeres a lot and epigenetics of aging and you get a muchclearer drop off in epigenetic aging and telomeres than you do say in gut microbiome

(58:20):
health.
Until you
suddenly get frail.
once you are, it's not the age itself, it's frailty that seems to be a marker of, youknow, be associated with the gut health.
So there seems to be a bit of a tipping point.
And we're not quite sure which way it goes.

(58:42):
But if you are following someone's microbiome every year, and suddenly you saw it take adip, you'd be pretty worried that, you know, lots of systems are beginning to fail.
There are some other studies in nursing homes where, you know, in the space of six months,it can dramatically fall off a cliff.

(59:03):
And that tends to be associated with also a failure in the immune system.
So I think the two are very linked and there's an inverse correlation with markers ofinflammation as well.
So C-reactive protein will start to go up as well.

(59:23):
We certainly haven't cracked this because there hasn't been enough good longitudinalmicrobiome data yet.
And that's because the technology keeps changing.
And it's very sensitive to how you collected the samples, how you extracted the DNA.
It's much harder than normal genetics or normal biochemistry, or it's even harder thantelomere work, which is already quite technical.

(59:52):
people haven't...
done this really well yet to look at the changes.
We've had these samples, but there's all kinds of technical issues I won't go into thatmake it really tough to be sure what you're saying is real.
that's why you're not seeing it.
So I think we're gonna learn, we're just about to analyze our big database of it and lookat the effects of aging.

(01:00:14):
And I think we'll learn much more from then.
But in general, as people age,
Pro-inflammatory microbes tend to creep up and the anti-inflammatory microbes tend to godown.
And I think that's at a very simple level.
We're pretty sure that's going on.
And if we can reverse that, you know, through medication or diet, then I think we're doingsome good.

(01:00:41):
And there's some evidence that things like metformin, possibly, you know, these GLP-1scould be influencing those pathways or this sort of nutrient sensing could also be working
through the gut microbes.
Yep.
No, that's right.
You know, it's interesting.
Um, the composition of the gut microbiome is now considered one of the hallmarks of aging.
It's been added in, uh, in 2022 as a, as an actual hallmark of aging.

(01:01:05):
So we know that, um, and then there's always a question of, know, with the hallmarks ofaging, um, there are phenotypic expressions of aging, and then they also seem to be
contributors to the aging process too, right?
Like a senescent cell is a...
is an expression of aging, but it also contributes to aging.
Short telomeres are an expression of aging and also contribute to aging, right?
And so when you think about the gut microbiome, it would be interesting in your databaseto look at people and relatives that are chronological ages.

(01:01:34):
I'm sure you have a spectrum of those and try to get a figure for, is there a cut pointsomewhere or what starts to happen that starts to accelerate this or things like that?
Because I think
keeping the gut microbiome healthy, there are many things that go into anti-aging, right?
And the gut microbiome is not going to enable you to live to 150, but without a healthygut microbiome, you're not gonna live to 150, right?

(01:02:02):
So it's a component of a larger ecosystem.
That ecosystem is a component of a larger ecosystem, but being able to actually focus onit and...
test it and know that you're doing the things that are actually enhancing it becomes a bigpart of your longevity play.
So if you're listening to this, start to think of it that way.

(01:02:24):
And also start to think about when you sit down to eat that you're not just eating foryourself or your appetites, you're starting to eat for the microbes that are down there.
And they like they like a lot of different kinds of chow.
So put down different different kinds of chow to keep them happy and keep you happy.
Right.
So, yeah, that's absolutely right.
I say I
Did a podcast with Brian Johnson.

(01:02:47):
And he's trying to live to be a thousand and he's interesting.
The one, you know, he pays enormous attention to everybody.
He doesn't pay enormous attention to his gut microbiome yet.
And I was, I was teasing him a bit because he has the same meal every day.
Right.
And that's, that's like the worst thing you can possibly do.
Maybe the healthiest sort of meal you can have, but

(01:03:12):
I'll try to explain to him that your microbes will get bored.
That's right.
He's not going to, you I'm going to have a more diverse set of microbes than he has.
That's right.
And I think that's the other lesson here that we all get into ruts, maybe a healthy rut,maybe a healthy rut, you know, it's still a rut.
That's right.

(01:03:32):
Yeah, everything.
Everything likes diversity.
It's so critical.
Novelty and diversity.
Those are key things.
So giving yourself something novel.
Go to it.
If you're traveling, eat something different, completely different.
A fruit you haven't had before.
It's a salad, a vegetable or whatever.
And, know, make sure you don't pick up Montezuma's Revenge or something.
the point is, you know, spreading out with novelty and diversity.

(01:03:52):
Your gut likes that.
Your nervous system likes that.
Right.
Your brain likes that.
That's seaweed in the sushi.
That's right.
You know, because they carry a little algae on them that have microbes that
that you know, cross over into your gut and allow you to then break down seaweed and, youknow, get the nutrients.
There it is.
Yeah.
So, yeah, that's fantastic.

(01:04:12):
So how do people learn more about Zoe?
And I went to your website, but maybe you can recount that for the audience here.
And then there's an intake form and you can sign up for different programs that you haveand things like that.
Do you want to talk a little bit about that?
Yeah, different levels to interact with Zoe, really.
So

(01:04:33):
I mean, the easiest is to go onto the website with whole lot of literature and educationalmaterial on there.
And you can also sign up there for the at-home testing program where you get the CGM, thetriglyceride test, the microbiome sequencing test.

(01:04:53):
then a few weeks later, you get an app with your personalized scores and you can now photolog all your...
everything on your plate.
You don't have to log manually anymore.
AI does it for you.
It's really cool and gives you a score every day and you can make that your program andreally change the way you think about food long term.

(01:05:13):
So it's not a short term crash diet.
We don't talk about calories.
You can eat what you like and it encourages all these things we're talking about here foryour gut health.
And this enables you to much healthier and live healthier in a long term.
That's gold standard one.
if you don't feel ready for that, you haven't got those spare dollars to do that, you canengage with us in other ways.

(01:05:43):
We have a podcast which is just on nutrition called the Zoey Science and NutritionPodcast, which is the number one nutrition podcast in the English speaking world, which is
good.
I've got books.
either on their gut microbiome or on the whole of nutrition and how it relates in thisway.

(01:06:05):
My latest book Food for Life.
If you don't like reading big science books with lots of references, there's a cookbookcoming out next year.
mean, you can get it from the UK now.
It's coming to the US.
It'll be in the US in May with 100 recipes all around based on the Zoe principle offeeding your gut microbiome.

(01:06:28):
It's all plant based and some really cool ways of getting more fermented foods in yourdiet, et cetera.
So lots of ways to interact at different levels.
And, you know, we'll be bringing in our other product products soon.
Hopefully looking at a free app as well for the U.S.

(01:06:49):
sometime in the spring.
So, yeah, keep keep it on the website and that way you'll know what's going on.
Follow me on Instagram.
and Zoe on Instagram as well, Tim Spector.
And we do have all kinds of little tips.
So plenty of ways to interact with us.
And yeah, it sounds like this is a very engaged audience.

(01:07:12):
they've kept up with you and I talking about this, they'll be well ahead of the game.
Yeah, no, that's right.
That's right.
are.
Yeah.
So that's zoi.com, right?
Zoe.com.
No, z-o-e.
Z-O-E, sorry, there it is, clarification.
Zoe is the Greek word for life.
Okay.
Because Zoe is for life.

(01:07:34):
It's not a short-term fix.
It's change your way of thinking about food forever.
Right.
Beautiful.
I love that.
Well, Tim, it's been such a pleasure.
I appreciate you taking the time to chat.
I really enjoyed the conversation.
I think the audience learned a lot.
So thank you for that.
It's been my pleasure.
Yep.
Thanks.