# The Microbiome Doctor: Doctors Were Wrong! The 3 Foods You Should Eat For Perfect Gut Health!

An episode of [The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1291423644), 26 Jan 2026, 1 h 38 min.

Audio: https://pdst.fm/e/pscrb.fm/rss/p/mgln.ai/e/1390/claritaspod.com/measure/p.podderapp.com/2544644999/mgln.ai/e/1651/episode.flightcast.com/01KFNDKZSSJ0V3B6W1Y2MXE5H6.mp3

World-leading gut health expert PROFESSOR TIM SPECTOR reveals brand new research around why dementia, depression, and anxiety may start in the gut, how flossing lowers Alzheimer’s risk, and the TOP foods that stop inflammation! Professor Tim Spector is a medical doctor, Professor of Genetic Epidemiology at King’s College London, and co-founder of ZOE, a science-led nutrition company. He has been recognised as one of the top 1% of most-cited scientists worldwide, and is the author of bestselling books, including 'Ferment’. He explains: ◼️Why ultra-processed foods hijack your brain, mood, and behaviour ◼️The role of oral health and gum bacteria in brain inflammation ◼️Why most brain diseases share the same underlying risk factors ◼️The daily gut habits that improve focus, and cognitive resilience ◼️How poor sleep, stress, and late-night eating trigger brain fog and fatigue (00:00) Intro (02:38) Why My Mum No Longer Recognises Me (04:07) Is Dementia Becoming More Common—or Just Better Diagnosed? (05:07) The Hidden Dementia Types You Might Be at Risk For (07:43) How Your Gut Health Could Be Shaping Your Brain (11:18) What Your Diet Is Really Doing to Your Mood (14:09) Why You’re Craving Unhealthy Food—and How to Break the Cycle (14:45) Can Chronic Stress Increase Your Dementia Risk? (15:57) Could Vaccines Be Linked to Depression? (17:47) The Immune System’s Shocking Role in Brain Disorders (21:03) Does Parkinson’s Disease Begin in the Gut? (24:17) 8 Gut Health Rules That Can Transform Your Wellbeing (25:45) Is Coffee Actually Good for Your Gut? Here’s What We Know (30:24) Why You Should Eat 30 Different Plants Each Week (34:41) Prebiotics vs Probiotics: Which One Does Your Body Really Need? (39:17) How Flossing (or Not) Could Affect Your Risk of Dementia (40:30) What Our Belief in Science vs Religion Reveals About Us (45:56) Ads (47:57) Why Fermented Foods Are Crucial for Gut and Brain Health (55:58) Are You Eating the Wrong Kind of Protein? (56:54) This Matters More Than Counting Calories (58:14) The Hidden Dangers of Ultra-Processed Foods (01:01:34) What’s the Healthiest Bread You Can Actually Eat? (01:02:40) Are You Really Gluten-Free—Or Just Guessing? (01:05:01) What Most People Get Wrong About Nuts (01:08:12) What Fasting Does to Your Gut—and Why It Matters (01:10:03) Ads (01:11:55) The Keto Diet: What Condition It Could Actually Heal (01:16:15) Can a Keto Diet Still Support a Healthy Gut? (01:20:27) You Have Microplastics in Your Blood—Now What? (01:22:43) How GLP-1s Could Radically Change Your Health (01:25:35) Surprising Brain Benefits of Sauna Use (01:26:26) How Socialising Might Be Protecting Your Brain (01:30:43) Why Food Might Be the Most Powerful Medicine (01:32:07) How to Build a Better Relationship With Food Independent Research: https://stevenbartlett.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/DOAC-Tim-Spector-Independent-Research-further-reading-.pdf Follow Tim: Instagram - https://bit.ly/4jXTsPZ X - https://bit.ly/4qCNW88 ZOE YouTube - https://bit.ly/45tuXEt You can download Tim’s “How to eat in 2026” guide, full of practical tips, recipes and the science behind ZOE’s 8 nutrition principles, here: https://zoe.com/2026 You can purchase Tim’s book, ‘The Food For Life Cookbook: As seen on Channel 4's What Not To Eat’, here: https://amzn.to/3Zr1xDg Independent Fact Check: https://stevenbartlett.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/DOAC-Tim-Spector-Independent-Research-further-reading-.pdf Steven is an investor in ZOE. The Diary Of A CEO: ◼️Join DOAC circle here - https://doaccircle.com/ ◼️Buy The Diary Of A CEO book here - https://smarturl.it/DOACbook ◼️The 1% Diary is back - limited time only: https://bit.ly/3YFbJbt ◼️The Diary Of A CEO Conversation Cards (Second Edition): https://g2ul0.app.link/f31dsUttKKb ◼️Get email updates - https://bit.ly/diary-of-a-ceo-yt ◼️Follow Steven - https://g2ul0.app.link/gnGqL4IsKKb Sponsors: LinkedIn Talent Solutions - https://linkedin.com/doac Wispr - Get 14 days of Wispr…

## Transcript

[0:00] Studies show that if you are flossing you can reduce your risk of dementia by nearly half,
[0:05] which is quite impressive.
[0:06] So I started to research the brain much more and it made me realise this link with the brain
[0:11] and the gut is absolutely crucial and how that influences many things in our brain,
[0:16] for example, things like depression, new changes for teeth and energy.
[0:20] But for 40 years we've been going down the wrong path, we've got so distracted by
[0:24] treating the brain as something so different to the rest of the body.
[0:27] So what do we do about it if we want to have optimally healthy brains?
[0:31] So Professor Tim Specter is one of the top 100 most cited scientists worldwide
[0:37] and he's back to reveal the critical role our gut plays with our physical and mental health,
[0:42] our cognition and the prevention of chronic disease.
[0:45] We can dramatically improve our lives and our health just by making the right food choices
[0:51] and I've got eight rules for gut health which work for all health.
[0:54] So first thing pivot your protein then there's quality not calories.
[0:58] The whole idea of assessing food by calories is wrong.
[1:02] Calorie restricted darts have been shown for the vast majority of people not to work,
[1:06] your hunger signals go up and hunger is the main driver of obesity and we'll get into the other
[1:11] rules and what about coffee?
[1:13] So drinking between two and five cups of coffee reduces your risk of heart disease by about 25%.
[1:19] And then what do you think of almonds?
[1:20] So there's lots of studies showing good for your cognition and mood
[1:24] and what about your views on geography ones like a Zempack?
[1:27] I think from a public health perspective they're going to transform medicine
[1:31] and we ought to be taking it much more seriously but I've got two real worries about them.
[1:36] My first worry is that...
[1:44] Just give me 30 seconds of your time.
[1:47] Two things I wanted to say.
[1:48] The first thing is a huge thank you for listening and tuning into the show
[1:52] week after week means the world to all of us and this really is a dream that we absolutely never
[1:55] had and couldn't have imagined getting to this place.
[1:59] But secondly it's a dream where we feel like we're only just getting started.
[2:02] And if you enjoy what we do here please join the 24% of people that listen to this broadcast
[2:07] regularly and follow us on this app.
[2:10] Here's a promise I'm going to make to you.
[2:12] I'm going to do everything in my power to make this show as good as I can now and into the future.
[2:17] We're going to deliver the guests that you want me to speak to
[2:20] and we're going to continue to keep doing all of the things you love about this show.
[2:24] Thank you.
[2:32] Professor Tim Specter.
[2:35] Who is this lovely lady and how does she tie into the work you're focused on right now?
[2:42] That's my lovely mum June who is still with us age 93.
[2:50] But for the last seven years has been in a home in London
[2:55] after suffering a stroke and then developing dementia.
[3:00] And so yeah that's changed some of my views on life and she was really pro-Euthanasia
[3:12] and signed every paper possible that if this ever happened to her you know she would be
[3:18] out to enter life but unfortunately that didn't come true and under UK law it's not possible to
[3:25] to help her in that because she lost capability and mobility very early.
[3:30] So she's still there but she doesn't no longer recognises me and it's a reminder of
[3:39] you know our potential future life and how so many so many people are going to end up with dementia.
[3:48] That wasn't the case 50 years ago if I can do something to reverse this epidemic of dementia
[3:56] then that's really motivating for me and in a way one reason why I've started to research the
[4:04] brain much more than I've done in the past. So is dementia increasing or is it that we know of
[4:12] it more now so we're better at diagnosing it? It's increasing for a number of reasons so some of
[4:18] it is the age demographics so we're living longer but we're not living healthier so our health
[4:27] span hasn't really increased but our lifespan has we're good at keeping elderly people alive longer
[4:34] that's definitely true but there's also stats to show that it is increasing even when you take
[4:39] that into account so that more people are developing dementia than ever before even when you account
[4:46] for the demographics and those other changes so it is a major worry and I think it's one of the
[4:53] the major fears that all of us have you know obviously you've got cancer is one fear but I think
[5:00] the other really bad one is ending up with dementia because nearly everyone knows somebody
[5:05] with dementia. Did this inspire you to go get your own brain scan? Yes I'd had as you know problems
[5:12] with my brain before I had a mini stroke back in 2011 and never really worked out the causes of that
[5:22] I knew I had some white spots in my brain I wanted to see if they were still there if there
[5:29] any signs of that and at the same time I wanted to get a check up to see was I likely to end up
[5:37] like my mother or not and did I have the genetic form of the disease? Was it a straightforward
[5:44] Alzheimer's? Was it more the vascular type that my mother had? Well probably has and so yeah
[5:51] partly it was motivated out of my medical curiosity and partly for self-interest and what did you find?
[6:01] I went to this specialized clinic in London that does these dementia screens so I know if I had
[6:08] the risk genes for Alzheimer's which luckily I don't but I do have bad genes for diabetes and
[6:16] heart disease which predispose you to the vascular side of things what's vascular dementia?
[6:22] There's several types of dementia but the two main ones are Alzheimer's where you get these protein
[6:28] folds in the brain you get local inflammation these protein tangles and that then causes these
[6:36] damage to the bits of the brain that's a very specific type of dementia then you get more generalized
[6:42] dementia which is usually called vascular dementia where you're just getting clogging up of the
[6:48] arteries supplying the brain just like you do in the heart and that knocks off other bits of the
[6:55] brain in a slightly more random way than happens without time as slightly less predictable but that
[7:03] accounts for about a third of all dementia is this vascular time. I'm predispose because after this
[7:10] weird episode in 2011 my blood pressure went up so anyone with high blood pressure generally has
[7:16] slightly stiffer arteries than most people and that impacts the arteries in your brain so you
[7:22] are slightly more at risk and with these diabetes genes that I've got thanks to my grandmother
[7:29] I am more at risk of vascular dementia and so what I wanted to do was learn about that in order to
[7:36] optimize all the things I could do to postpone it or prevent it as much as possible.
[7:44] Over the last five years or so your interest in the brain has increased.
[7:48] What is the variance in your views of the brain now versus five years ago before you started
[7:53] doing research and getting interested in it? I think I saw the brain as a rather distinct organ
[7:58] that was the domain of psychiatry and perhaps gerontologists who look at dementia that wasn't really
[8:09] part of the major picture and certainly wasn't within my domain of expertise. I think I still believe
[8:16] in this the cartesian view of the difference between the mind and the brain, mind and the body
[8:24] that these two separate entities and you've got this barrier between them, this blood brain barrier
[8:31] that was really like an iron curtain. So I was interested in it but I didn't realize this huge
[8:37] connection I've now discovered really that has really excited me and I think the thing that
[8:45] triggered it was some of our own experiments which happened a bit by chance. So when we started
[8:52] Zoe we did a number of trials and we gave our participants apps so they could report how they felt.
[9:02] In every study we did we started getting back these incredible results of people saying when they
[9:08] when they started the Zoe diet for example the first thing they noticed was their mood and energy
[9:13] improved and their hunger got less and that was before any blood changes before any gut changes
[9:21] and so initially we slightly discounted it but it happened in every study we did we looked
[9:25] to the menopause and again the most dramatic change when people were improving their gut health
[9:32] through food with menopause of symptoms was on mood and energy because originally I'm a rheumatologist
[9:40] and was really interested in inflammation I'd never put that connection between what was inflammation
[9:46] in the body and in your joints with what was going on in your brain and suddenly the latest science
[9:52] when I'm going away doing my reading is making it all so much clearer it's it's really become
[10:00] you know this this I knew idea of things like depression things like mood changes things like
[10:07] fatigue and energy which I hadn't rethought about as in a way a malfunction of the brain
[10:14] responding the wrong way to signals from the rest of the body but it suddenly all comes into focus
[10:21] about how holistic the whole system is and how really the brain is just another organ
[10:26] and this link with the gut is absolutely crucial because that's where it gets most of its
[10:32] information from you know we have this vagus nerve that goes from our gut to our brain but the
[10:39] longest nerve in the body and 80% of the signals go gut to brain only 20% go brain to gut
[10:47] so all these things together have just made me realize how important what going into our gut is
[10:54] our diet is and how that influences many things in our brain that I didn't put together before
[11:00] and I don't think most most of the medical world have put together before and it we've all put
[11:05] the brain on a pedestal I should say you know we think it's this this unique thing that's driving
[11:10] our bodies but actually it's not it's just responding to them just like any other organ
[11:17] it made me reflect on the days that I've had like good and bad moods and how
[11:25] how much it's linked to my diet in the preceding couple of days like how I feel if I sleep is such a
[11:32] big exacerbating factor in how I feel but if I'm slept and I still don't feel good it's typically
[11:37] linked I think to something I've been eating or something I've eaten very recently maybe in
[11:42] the last 24 hours so when you talk about how there's this holistic picture and how my brain might be
[11:47] I think I can't remember the words you used but it sounded like you said my brain is receiving
[11:51] signals from other parts of my body and it's kind of malfunctioning based on the signals which is
[11:54] causing depression anxiety bad moods whatever that I think is really interesting because people think
[12:00] of mood is a separate thing we don't think of mood connected to my gut no it's it's your own fault
[12:04] you're in a bad mood why are you in a bad mood something happened yeah externally so someone cut
[12:09] you off in traffic or whatever it might be all these studies you know we've got four studies now
[12:14] where we're changing people's diets and they're going they've been on generally bad diets we've
[12:18] moved into good diets that mood and any particular energy levels the first thing they notice they're
[12:26] improving and they never linked just like you their mood and energy levels with things like
[12:32] diet it was just inherent they thought oh it's just because I'm you know my life's shit or whatever
[12:38] it is an extreme example is some families we've been working with doing a channel four series
[12:44] of the moment called what not to eat and we visit four families and they're terrible diets
[12:51] and we transform them give them a gut-friendly makeover diet look at them after six weeks
[12:59] the first thing they all know is that their mood and energy is dramatically increased
[13:04] they were napping all the time they were asleep all the time during the day what were they eating
[13:10] crap food highly processed crap food and snacking late at night bars of chocolate you know
[13:17] sodas chicken nuggets hot noodles rubbish food right so these were more worse than your average but
[13:26] still there's millions of people like that doing this and they had no clue that it was linked
[13:31] to them feeling terrible and tired all the time and again the first thing that it improved
[13:38] was what was going on in their brains and they suddenly felt alert again and once people
[13:43] realize this is connection then in a way you'd have this feedback loop to say okay I'm not going
[13:50] to eat this shit food you know because I know it's making me feel so sick but until you make that
[13:56] connection you're not going to know you'll just be in this constant state saying well you know
[14:02] I'm just overweight that's why I'm tired or I'm not exercising that's why I'm tired
[14:08] there's a bit of a vicious cycle here with eating something bad then being low energy and sleeping
[14:14] all day not feeling good so you eat something bad and the cycle continues because if I don't feel
[14:21] good I probably want to eat a chocolate bar in our Zoe stays we found the people who had a bad night
[14:26] sleep desperately craved some sugary crap in the morning right it's the first you don't go for a
[14:32] healthy breakfast it's like there's some little evil thing in your brain saying okay
[14:39] I need a quick fix I don't care about the rest of the day just get me through the next hour
[14:44] to know whether I had someone posit on my podcast that um that was because your body's basically
[14:50] under a form of stress so from an evolutionary perspective if you're waking up in the middle of
[14:54] the night for some reason or you weren't sleeping properly it might be because you were under threat
[14:59] so your brain wants energy so there's a lot of studies now that stress which we thought of as a
[15:05] sort of external psychological event is actually a physiological one and is actually driving
[15:11] inflammation it's directly affecting your immune system which is then sending these signals to
[15:16] your brain to change your behavior and this I think is very much the heart of what seems to be
[15:22] happening in depression what I've been finding out is that it's detecting a change in immune
[15:32] system it's switching on to the stress mode and the stress mode then triggers these different
[15:36] behaviors in your brain and very often it's not you know real stress I mean most of the stress as we
[15:45] get it every day are not like our ancestors had we're not being chased by wild animals or
[15:52] being burnt out of our village you know so the and what really interested me was this whole link
[15:58] between what happens when you have a vaccination during Zoe we looked at a million people's responses
[16:05] to the if you remember the the Pfizer and vaccine and the SK vaccine and what was really interesting
[16:14] was that people were actually depressed during that time so you had about 24 hours of depression
[16:23] which was mimicking a more constant threat and this suddenly brought home this idea that you
[16:29] can trigger depression through a little shift in your immune system there's really a growing theory
[16:36] about people who have long-term depression is that these their immune changes are switched on
[16:42] so that they're getting the equivalent of this constant tickling of the immune system by a vaccine
[16:48] so that to me is it was was a really important thing because I have vaccines I have regular
[16:57] vaccines and big believer in vaccines but they do make you feel a little bit down that makes sense
[17:02] because your blood tests will show a spike in your proteins for inflammation your immune systems
[17:09] kicking in that sends signals to your brain your brain says okay I looks like I've got an illness
[17:14] coming here that illness behavior in some people then gets carried on for months or years
[17:21] and this is now developing this whole new theory of why people are depressed which isn't the old
[17:30] theory of it's just due to a chemical imbalance it's actually your body responding abnormally to
[17:38] a normal response it's it thinks it's under attack your brain thinks it's under attack it should
[17:43] then shut down and protect you this I find fascinating that we're now linking so much to the
[17:49] immune system and it's the immune basis of things of mental and brain diseases is becoming
[17:58] incredibly important I'm sure you've talked on the podcast a lot about inflammation and the role
[18:04] of controlling the immune system because if your immune system's out of control you inflammation
[18:11] levels are high your body can't repair itself so aging happens faster in the brain all of these
[18:17] things are pointing to inflammation being crucial to everything but particularly in all aspects of
[18:22] brain health and when I went and looked you can really find that the immune system has a role in
[18:30] every brain disease they've ever looked at and yet we've missed it because we've been
[18:35] sub-sessed with new you know the way the ProZac works by just being about serotonin or dopamine
[18:46] and for 40 years we've been going down the wrong path and missing this holistic view that
[18:53] actually it's it's about inflammation paired with metabolism because the other
[18:59] big player here is and the reason a lot of people get dementia is blood sugar is not well controlled
[19:04] and the the energy supply to the brain is not well controlled so those two things for me have
[19:12] transformed my view of of brain health and I used to study genetics as you know and it was always
[19:18] interesting that when we looked at twins which were usually very similar for most things when we
[19:24] looked at brain diseases there was very little similarity in the twins so the genetic
[19:29] command was always quite small apart from a few diseases most of them were really low level
[19:36] what we call heritability and there was a massive study in Sweden they looked at several
[19:43] million sibling pairs and looked at all their mental health or brain diseases I prefer to call them
[19:52] and there was no gene that really came out even in several million people that explained
[19:59] these disease other than a general tendency to get any type of brain disease so they called you
[20:09] this like factor p if you had this general susceptibility you could get any disease but that
[20:16] could be mania depression bipolar ADHD it could be Alzheimer's it could be schizophrenia which suddenly
[20:25] changes your whole view of these diseases we've said these are individual disease that should always
[20:31] be looked at separately and if you start thinking of this is the brain as an organ just like anything
[20:36] else like it was the liver it's okay we talk about liver disease you know how do you prevent liver
[20:42] disease we never talk about that in brain disease we just say okay you got to talk about manic
[20:48] depression differently to ADHD or personality disorder or epilepsy or whatever it is but it turns
[20:56] out there not only have that similar genes but really similar risk factors as well I've heard you say
[21:02] that you think Parkinson's disease starts in the gut as inflammation in the gut yeah that's a great
[21:11] example of how my view of these diseases changing there's really good epidemiology data now
[21:19] what's from the epidemiology data epidemiology data is data in large populations
[21:25] so you study the cause of disease by studying populations that's essentially what epidemiology is
[21:33] and what these studies have shown is that if you follow susceptible people
[21:42] and find out who at the end ended up with Parkinson's disease you will see that about 90% of
[21:49] people who end up with Parkinson's had some gut problems 10 years before and you might say okay well
[21:57] might not be related might be two separate things but they've actually found the same protein
[22:04] changes in the brains and people with Parkinson's disease this particular protein that gets misfolded
[22:12] it's a bit of common to out some but it's separate a separate type of protein
[22:16] alpha sineucleon and it gets folded and you get this characteristic thing you can see
[22:23] are post mortem called a Louis body but it's the protein folding that's important and if you look
[22:28] in the gut not only do these people have constipation and bloating problems 10 years before
[22:34] a really sluggish intestine but they have the same proteins that are misfolded that you can find
[22:40] in their gut and they think that it takes 10 years for these proteins to go slowly up the vagus
[22:48] nerve into the brain and then it causes the problem there so this is the latest theory behind
[22:55] Parkinson's disease that it actually starts in the gut and it's related to inflammation in the
[23:01] gut so these proteins start folding when the gut is not happy which means that you could potentially
[23:09] prevent Parkinson's disease by a gut-friendly diet it looks like it's the evidence is building
[23:16] that you know that's going to be pretty concrete soon if that's true then you may think what other
[23:22] diseases might have that origin there that we really don't understand what about multiple sclerosis
[23:29] that might happen there first and it really starts to bring you know this obscure of these brain
[23:37] disease back into the domain of the rest of the body and what's going on there and these metabolic
[23:42] problems you know diabetes is the number one risk factor for so many of these conditions as well
[23:50] so it like if you've got time to diabetes you're like four times as molecular to have a brain disease
[23:56] not only depression but also bipolar schizophrenia epilepsy all of these ones so clearly
[24:04] they're linked they're this what goes on in your body what you're eating what your immune system
[24:13] is doing has this amazing knock on effect so what do we do about it what does the average person
[24:18] do about it you know because the average you know what the average diet looks like in the western
[24:23] world if we want to have optimally healthy brains and avoid dementia Parkinson's and some of these
[24:31] disorders that are linked to the gut what is what is the most important thing the listener right
[24:36] now should be thinking about and doing well I like to think we've got I've got a list that's
[24:42] getting longer but it's got now eight rules for gut health which pretty much work
[24:48] for all health because we to treat the brain it's no really different to treating the rest of the
[24:55] your body if you treat that well you're going to be fine so first thing is to be mindful of what
[25:02] you're eating don't just put any old shit in your mouth you know I mean stop for a bit and say
[25:08] is this what's in it is it any good for me how's it going to make me feel you mean checking labels
[25:14] and stuff checking labels or even just taking a second to think you know gosh don't just blindly
[25:21] eat in front of the TV without thinking what you're eating as we most of us do second and probably
[25:26] the key thing is I think is to eat a diversity of plants 30 plants a week these 30 plants
[25:34] give you the diversity of chemicals to access fertilizers for as getting as many good bugs as you
[25:40] can get into your system how can you explain that to someone that doesn't know much about the gut
[25:44] when I'm talking about your gut I'm talking about gut microbes and there are 40 to a hundred
[25:50] trillion of these guys in your main you know large intestine that are many pharmacies and
[26:01] there we have thousands of different species all of which highly selected to eat only certain foods
[26:07] there's one that only likes coffee for example called Lawson a Bacter a bug that only likes coffee in
[26:12] my belly it's just waiting for you to drink coffee and when a drink coffee what happens
[26:17] it has a party has sex has babies multipliers and then produces certain chemicals in response
[26:24] by breaking down that coffee into other ingredients which might then help your immune system and
[26:30] in some way explain why coffee is good for your heart so you got to imagine that you've got
[26:36] lots of bugs like that that are highly specific waiting for you to have
[26:41] uh not eat coffee but you know maybe it's seaweed or maybe uh it's beobab or maybe it's things
[26:48] you don't often have so that we can expand our list of good bugs so if I stop eating a particular
[26:56] food like coffee if I stop having coffee will that bug guy it probably goes down to various
[27:03] low levels because actually it was interesting is even if you stop drinking coffee you're surrounded
[27:08] by coffee drinkers and they they're droplets of saliva and kisses and greetings mean that you'll
[27:17] be getting some of that either those bugs themselves or you'll be getting some bits of coffee in the air
[27:26] coffee aroma okay so the bugs go up and down in population yes so even in non-coffee drinkers we do
[27:33] see tiny amounts of this this loss in a backter um but in countries that don't drink coffee at
[27:39] all there are a few African countries for example it doesn't exactly in tribes you don't see it at all
[27:46] so it that's but I think it's the important to imagine you're it's a bit like having a rare animal
[27:52] you know you you've got a feed in your zoo you don't want to give them all the same food you've
[27:58] got to give them this diversity so that all the rare animals can get out there and we know that the
[28:04] more good bugs you've got the better your immune system the more you dampen inflammation the more
[28:11] you can prevent all these problems that we're seeing so our aim is to build up the good bugs and
[28:18] the more you build them up they squash out the bad bugs the ones that like eating the burgers and the
[28:24] the the bad food and the and the terrible quality fats and the artificial substances so
[28:31] so you're squashing them out by starving them and you do that by feeding them properly so that's
[28:35] the that's the concept if that makes sense and on that point of coffee doesn't it restrict blood flow
[28:41] to your brain no not as far as I know oh really um I'm talking I know about coffee at
[28:49] the epidemiological level so there've been multiple studies like I was saying I mean coffee drinkers
[28:54] non coffee drinkers sing what happens to them 20 30 years later and drinking between two and five
[29:02] cups of coffee reduces your risk of heart disease by about 25 percent so there may be other studies
[29:08] showing it does something to your brain but generally everything I've seen is beneficial I've not
[29:15] seen anything negative although there are some people who react to caffeine badly so there's always
[29:21] a personalized element to it sleep disruption and stuff yes so you might be a metabolizer it doesn't
[29:29] metabolize quickly in you so that caffeine is hanging around longer so they're the only
[29:36] downsides to it for some people can you make him more anxious I think can make some people more
[29:42] anxious yes and that's that's why things like mature are better than coffee because they have
[29:49] an extra chemical in there that can calm you down so like anything it's any food it's all personalized
[29:56] and so when we talk about epidemiology we're talking about the average person
[30:01] doesn't mean there aren't aren't exceptions so I'm not saying to everybody in the world is to have coffee
[30:06] but coffee used to be demonized as something that would give you heart attacks and arrhythmias
[30:12] and in fact the opposite is true epidemiological speed you can actually you get less
[30:18] heart abnormalities arrhythmias when you drink coffee for reasons we still don't understand
[30:24] so the first point of the eight was mind being mindful about what you eat second was
[30:29] eat 30 different plants and that's that was the basis of our our Zoe product the daily 30 which
[30:37] has 34 mainly freeze dried our whole plants in it and we've recently added some more so we added
[30:46] some seaweed some algae and some kombucha in there so they're rare ingredients we got seven
[30:52] different types of mushroom that you wouldn't normally have it's worth me saying that I'm an
[30:55] investor in Zoe and let me take this out and you sprinkle it on top of your food typically
[31:05] yes you add it to food and it's so it's it's different to most of the other sort of supplements you
[31:13] might see it's not instead of food it looks more like food than most of the common supplements out
[31:21] there that look like green powders we did a big trial of this with about three hundred and forty
[31:27] people comparing it to a probiotic and a a dummy one and over six weeks you get really quite
[31:36] dramatic improvements in your gut microbes with with eating this so that you really push up the
[31:42] good bugs and squash out the bad bugs about several times more than you would get just by having
[31:50] a traditional probiotic so this fertilizer approach does seem to work and this is this is the study
[31:58] where we also showed the improvements in mood after a few days which you know surprised me because
[32:05] I wasn't even thinking about that when we we planned the study so the key reported findings in that
[32:12] study were a gut microbiome improvement an average increase of five points in there Zoe got
[32:17] microbiome school digestive system 70% of people reported improvements in overall digestive systems
[32:24] symptoms and it increased fullness by 41.5% satisfaction by 21.6% and energy by 43.3% and reduced
[32:36] hunger and desire to eat versus the meal alone about half reported increased energy and 45%
[32:45] reported improved happiness in the main study so we weren't expecting that that was my point really
[32:51] on these because we thought it would just be gut it would like okay do I get do I get the toilet
[32:57] more often is it improve my gut microbes and so it was a real bonus to see these these brain effects
[33:04] and did you do stool tests on those people to see yes the change in the bugs in their stomach over
[33:09] that period and was it six weeks it was around six weeks yeah and what did you see change in
[33:14] their their gut bugs so we've got a new scoring method for gut bugs which we published last
[33:21] month in in nature and so we used to talk about diversity and on previous podcast I think we've
[33:28] talked about diversity which is the number of different species but we've got a better way of
[33:33] looking at that now which is to take 100 most important bugs that change with diet that everybody's
[33:41] got because we're all different it's very hard to compare your your bugs with my bugs because
[33:46] we'll need share 20% so this looks at 100 common bugs that we've both got 50 good and 50 bad
[33:53] and what we want in an intervention is to see that the good bugs are associated with good
[33:58] diet and good health outcomes good blood tests are going up and the bad bugs associated with
[34:06] inflammation poor diets and bad health outcomes are going down and that's exactly what we saw
[34:14] we saw in a change in roughly 40 of these microbes with the prebiotic the daily 30 whereas with
[34:22] the probiotic which we know works from other studies we saw any change in about four or five
[34:27] of the bugs okay so was it so they both worked but the prebiotic was working better than the
[34:34] probiotic which has sort of changed my mind about what's more powerful so prebiotic being what
[34:40] and probiotic being what prebiotic is like a fertilizer for gut microbes it's there it's giving
[34:46] them food yeah so that in an indiscriminate way because we're giving a wide variety of foods
[34:52] in these 34 plants each of them has hundreds of chemicals so there's thousands of different things
[34:58] for them to feed on whereas a probiotic we used lactobacillus ramnosus which is a well-known one
[35:04] that's been studied you know hundreds of in hundreds of trials it's a live microbe that lives
[35:12] generally in foods like yogurt and things like this in a concentrated form and a capsule you give
[35:17] that and it improved the gut microbiome but much less than the so prebiotic gives them food
[35:25] probiotic actually just puts bugs in there it put bugs in there we used to think it was like a seed
[35:31] so the it was the so you know so fertilizers and maybe seeds but we now know that that bug will
[35:37] never really seed in your in your gut microbiome and so the sciences and our thinking has changed
[35:43] we think the probiotic is is really tinkling your immune system as it's going down okay so it's
[35:51] probably working higher up in the the small intestine which is further up in the gut
[35:58] where where is where is the gut yeah so most people if you ask people to point to the gut that
[36:04] they always think of their stomach yeah well that's not your stomach you see that's that's
[36:10] your their intestine so your stomach is up here I want to take away your liver if you imagine
[36:18] we've got a body here mouth food goes in there through the esophagus which is a tube that leads
[36:27] to the stomach and this is the stomach here which is highly acidic and that leads into the
[36:33] duodenum through a little valve and that is where food starts going mushed around into little balls
[36:42] and it goes into the small intestine here which is badly named because the small intestine
[36:48] is really the largest bit of the gut and it's endless coils as of guts there lots of
[36:57] crypts there's little nooks and crannies everywhere and so the surface area is really huge as
[37:03] it's several tennis courts if you laid it out just one in one human and that's because that's
[37:11] where most of the nutrients get absorbed they get extracted from the food and absorb that way
[37:17] so that all the trace elements and things we're recycling we're like a recycling factory
[37:22] and then from the small intestine it then goes into the large intestine which is also called the
[37:28] colon and that's where most of the gut microbes are so 99% of the gut microbes are in that final part
[37:40] the large intestine which is a couple of meters long and varies widely between people and
[37:49] this is the spot where fiber goes things that hasn't been digested in the early part of the
[37:55] the gut is and that's because the microbes mainly feed off fiber and so that's where they do
[38:04] the good they convert that fiber into products such as short chain fatty acids which are the
[38:11] really beneficial chemicals that are good for our immune system and it's important to realize that
[38:16] across both the small and the large intestine you've got huge amounts of nerves you've got what's
[38:22] called the enteric nervous system which is our second brain and it was actually the first brain
[38:31] to be formed so when we were little embryos we started as a little tube and the nervous system
[38:39] that formed around our intestine was actually the first bit first brain of our body and in a way we
[38:44] divert the second one on our head as a little bit of an afterthought which is quite fun way of thinking
[38:49] about it but it just shows how important the nerves are in our gut to the way we function and as we
[38:56] were talking earlier about this this connection between the two and there's also immune cells so
[39:02] 70% of our immune cells are in the gut most of them in the large intestine but also in the small intestine
[39:09] so our immune system is here and a huge amount of our nervous system is here why presumably the bugs
[39:17] are all through the body they're everywhere so they're also in yeah so I should point out
[39:22] we're covered in bugs so every bit of the human body has some bugs in it the second biggest
[39:30] place where we have them is in our mouth so the oral microbiome in our saliva and in our teeth
[39:38] and our gums and that's why poor hygiene if you're not flossing properly you double the risk of
[39:47] getting dementia as well interestingly because there's a real link between microbes here that if
[39:53] they're eating plaque of other stuff that you're leaving around in your gums gets inflamed that
[39:59] creates an environment where nasty microbes that love inflammation live and for easily don't know
[40:06] they seem to pass in from from your mouth into your brain and trigger inflammation in the brain which
[40:13] then increase your risk of dementia so you're not flossing yes this is really new science showing
[40:20] that just how important these getting the right bugs in the right place and avoiding the
[40:25] ones who are in the wrong place really is why do we need these bugs why didn't evolution design us
[40:31] so that we could just do all this stuff without the need of these little workers these little bugs
[40:37] in our bodies it seems super weird to me that you know you think of the human body as being this one
[40:42] organism but actually it appears to be many millions millions millions of organisms well you've
[40:47] got a sort of human centric view of the world it seems so we evolve from microbes we are one we
[40:54] used to be one we used to be one and it turns out that most of our body is our remnants of microbes
[41:04] microbes obviously fuse to cause to cause human cells so that was the whole origin of
[41:12] of how multicellular creatures came together we the single cell microbes some of them fuse to
[41:19] to do that other state of single cells there was always this link between the single cell guys
[41:26] and their multicellular ancestors if you like and so as we co-evolved into more complicated beings
[41:35] the two are always together and it turned out that again as like as we're formed as embryos the
[41:44] gut is the first thing that this sling this tube is the first thing that comes out of the design
[41:52] system and it's designed to have microbes in it that serve a crucial purpose in training our
[42:00] immune system to recognize what's out what's harmful and what's beneficial and it's also shown
[42:08] to be crucial for our brain development but it is fascinating when we start thinking about our
[42:13] origins and think of it that you know we essentially start as microbes because also we don't
[42:19] think of our body you know we've always historically thought of you know gods creation this body
[42:24] had nothing to do with anything else we would they masters the universe and it's quite humbling to
[42:28] realize that so much of us comes from microbes and I learned something recently there was there
[42:35] also blew me away is that all ourselves have these powerhouses in them called mitochondria
[42:42] and it turns out they do much more than just supply batteries for the cell they're fighting
[42:48] inflammation they put for gene expression they're good for metabolism and it turns out the
[42:55] origin of these things is little microbes that got trapped in our bodies they are essentially
[43:03] microbes that were good at making creating energy and at some point in our distant past we fused
[43:13] our multicellular microbes that were going around doing stuff they said we could do with some more
[43:21] energy and so by chance they fused with these energy microbes and slowly and slowly became
[43:28] incorporating into our bodies so that we now have these mitochondria all our bodies which whose
[43:34] ancestors are also microbes and we have them in every cell of our body yes we do and they're
[43:40] turning out to be quite crucial as well in brain health do you spend much time wondering
[43:46] or have there been periods in your life where you've wondered about the meaning of all of this and
[43:50] why there's living organisms because it doesn't appear to be a great need for living organisms
[43:56] you know you could just have rocks and water on these planets I don't know why you need
[44:02] humans necessarily and as it relates to the contribution we make to the environment
[44:11] well I think as soon as you add life whether it's plant life I mean you're you're thinking perhaps
[44:16] of animal life but you know things like lycan on rocks or one of the first forms of life
[44:25] and something that was needed to get energy nutrients from the rock and then they for some reason
[44:37] just wanted to survive and I think that's the the point that life is about getting enough nutrients
[44:45] so you can keep living or pass you know your genes on to someone else is this that concept once
[44:52] that was started maybe it was lycan everything else came from that and that could have just been a
[44:57] chance of end so but I you know it's always humbling humbling to think that you know we've
[45:04] pretty come back from some lowly point like this as we murder from a murder from rocks and water
[45:12] but yeah I philosophies not my strong suit but I just get so much pleasure from finding new facts
[45:20] they're all around us and I think it's fascinating that we've spent so long as humans looking
[45:25] up at the stars whereas looking inside us at things like microbes and their origin is to me far
[45:35] more exciting and maybe explanatory as to like you know we're looking at the stars yeah we look at
[45:43] the stars so where do we come from you know where what about the big bang all this kind of stuff
[45:47] actually studying what's in ourselves and where do they come from we could learn a hell a lot
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[47:56] so that was the second point of the eight which is eat 30 plants and so a daily 30
[48:04] is a easy way to do that and it takes the way to do that what's the third one I go for eat
[48:09] eat fermented foods and try and get three portions of ferments in your diet every day every day
[48:18] and I wouldn't have said this three years ago because the science wasn't really strong enough to
[48:24] support this but a study three years ago by a group in Stanford of 28 people showed the giving
[48:33] they gave them five portions a day for about a month and showed that you can get a reduction in
[48:41] blood inflammation levels about 25% in that time compared to a fiber diet and that
[48:49] you know blew me away because this was the first really good study in this very because I mean
[48:55] lots of studies but they're not good quality suddenly someone doing daily bloods you know they
[49:01] were looked at 20 odd proteins in the blood and suddenly you got this link between a food
[49:10] and directly affecting inflammation in the blood which as we've been talking about has big knock
[49:16] on effects on the brain and the rest of the body that's like kimchi and stuff like that fermented
[49:20] food is any food that's been transformed by microbes into something better which means it it
[49:26] tastes better it's more complex it lasts longer so you don't need a fridge that's why our ancestors
[49:33] did it and it's been chemically transformed it is generally more nutritious give me some examples
[49:40] so yoghurt from milk all you're doing is adding zero fat zero fat Greek yogurt
[49:50] never have zero fat Greek yogurt why do you want to drink now I don't know I just I was just
[49:55] no no that means it be yeah heavily processed you don't want that but there's still good microbes
[50:00] in it and you know all you're doing is transforming something rather average like milk which adults
[50:08] don't really need it's not particularly beneficial milk and just by adding the microbes to it you
[50:14] make it something healthy for the for the body and that's not been shown by by these these kind of
[50:20] studies what you mean by what's wrong with this zero fat Greek yoghurt says zero fat so that's
[50:26] sounds like it's there's nothing well we need fat to live so fat is good and in fact that
[50:35] just a few days ago the USDA have changed their all their guidelines which used to be about saying
[50:42] don't have fat and and have low fat products to saying actually fat is good all that advice
[50:47] we said in the past is wrong so why do they label things zero zero fat still because public
[50:53] still believe they're healthy and the companies that make them save money by calling by having
[51:00] zero fat they replace the fat with starchy artificially made fillers basically so it's usually
[51:08] more sugary by having zero fat in it but if it's a zero fat it's a sign it's unhealthy you should
[51:15] avoid it so what are those fermented foods then you were going to say you said well I just give you
[51:19] a quick list of all of them so people know I'm talking about yeah so we've got yoghurt we've got
[51:24] cheese and virtually every cheese has live microbes except American cheeses the more artisan
[51:30] the bigger the number milk kefir which is like a super yoghurt often has 10 to 20 types of microbe
[51:39] in it the crowds so I think of the 4k so we've got we've done kefir the crowd is like a sour
[51:46] crowd so we got fermented cabbage cabbage is pretty boring on its own you ferment it the taste
[51:52] are amazing and it has these health benefits then you've got kimchi which is a spicy
[52:00] crowd and the staple diet of career and they're pretty healthy and even a guy it's got salt in it
[52:07] people who have kimchi have lower blood pressure than people who don't have kimchi and I love
[52:12] kimchi and I hated it at first but I'm now a real addict then you've got kombucha you see those
[52:20] in most supermarkets and stores that's fermented tea and the good ones can have 30 or 40 of these
[52:30] there's another type water kefir which isn't as popular but I think we're going to see more of it
[52:35] tibikos is the other name for it it's grains with lots of microbes in it a bit like milk kefir
[52:42] but with fruit added and then you've got miso all the miso you get in Japan miso soup miso paste
[52:49] tempehs all the all these are ferments around the world there's hundreds of different
[52:56] ferments in nearly every continent has their own type of ferment in Africa there's all kinds
[53:01] of fermented beers and porridges and of course we got these are the live ones but there's also
[53:06] a lot lots of dead ferments obviously bread is a dead ferment if it makes sourdough then you've got
[53:13] wines and beers and interestingly again very new science dead ferments actually have some
[53:24] health benefits so I used to be very dismissive of products like kombuchas that you would see in
[53:32] in stores in America that say lightly pasteurized and I'd say that's literally rubbish be nothing
[53:38] good about that but it turns out that even dead microbes when you do a randomized trial have
[53:45] some benefit for the host you're looking a bit skeptical but these against placebo
[53:52] studies and enough of them now that you definitely believe that I know some of the researchers
[53:57] that they they were surprised but it's it's genuine why is that what's going on we think again
[54:03] if you go back to the vaccine discussion we were having it looks like although it's not alive
[54:12] the microbes still has a cell wall and it has proteins in the cell wall so it's like the debris
[54:19] of these dead bodies that you're ingesting we think they're tickling your immune cells as they go
[54:26] through the small intestine okay and it's it's giving a signal to immune system to calm down
[54:35] reduce inflammation that's our best understanding of what this phenomenon is about so
[54:43] live microbes are best but it looks like dead microbes which are called postbiotics or zombie
[54:50] biotics are probably also good for you so I think all fermented foods even those that you know I
[55:00] would have dismissed three years ago are probably good for us and that's really the best way to
[55:05] reduce your inflammation levels we did a big study in Zoe of we asked 9,000 people who have
[55:12] Zoe members who weren't taking ferment to try and see how they get on taking three
[55:19] ferments a day how do they feel I think about 3,000 dropped out then didn't fancy it but nearly
[55:28] 6,000 continued and did the the two weeks taking it after a one week run in period and around half
[55:36] of them noticed improvements in mood energy and had less hunger so anyone out though hasn't tried
[55:45] this I think it's a great simple way to see what you can improve just by changing what you're
[55:52] eating and and going for some of these firments that you might not have thought about what's
[55:56] number four number four is pivot your protein at the moment proteins all in the news everyone wants
[56:04] to have more protein big controversy about whether you need more most studies showed 90% of us are
[56:10] getting enough protein probably doesn't do too much harm other than it's really hard to get lots
[56:15] of protein in your diet and most people are focusing on eggs and meat when they think about protein
[56:21] so what I think people should focus on is that many other sources of good quality protein like beans
[56:28] like legumes like mushrooms like whole grains like quinoa and pearl barley instead of rice
[56:36] that if you're thinking about it you can get your protein and get your fiber
[56:40] because 90% of us are deficient in fiber and if you want to look after your gut microbes
[56:47] you really need to be giving them the fiber otherwise you're starving them just by having a protein
[56:52] drink next one which one are we now on number five number five is think quality not calories
[57:00] the whole idea of assessing food by calories is wrong we've discussed this in the past you should never
[57:08] really go for low calorie products you should go for ones that are whole foods that have their initial
[57:16] structure in them that have all those original nutrients it's all focusing really on high quality
[57:22] foods that haven't been tampered with and why not calories because it's not a good way to assess
[57:29] food calorie restricted diets have been shown for the vast majority of people not to work
[57:37] and we know particularly through GLP1 drugs that as you restrict your your diet and calories your
[57:46] hunger signals go up and hunger is the main driver of obesity so all you're doing is
[57:54] losing some weight short-term long-term it will bounce back as your as your body does that so
[58:01] calories should be ignored on any labels really you should be looking to get high-quality food
[58:07] that supports your gut and that's an important change in mindset for many people
[58:12] but the next point is is the crucial one which links to that which is avoiding high-risk process
[58:19] foods because they damage your your gut and your body in in a number of ways the first obvious
[58:29] one is that they have lots of additives and chemicals to transform them into something edible
[58:34] and those ones things like emulsifiers preservatives gums colorants flavorings artificial sweeteners
[58:48] are all things made by the food companies to trick your body into thinking these are tasty and
[58:55] they often are but they will damage your gut microbes who in their billions of years of evolution
[59:01] have never come across these products because they don't exist in nature in that form so like the
[59:08] cereal bar I have here yes so this has got flavored fillings whatever that means glucose syrup
[59:18] glycerin wheat fruit juice concentrate vegetable fiber natural flavorings oatmeal and
[59:28] soya all this one doesn't look too bad whatever I'm not sure our flavored filling is though
[59:34] flavoured filling what about the other thing was that cornflakes or something cornflakes yes so
[59:41] they would be something I would regard as highly processed and probably a moderate risk
[59:51] and Zoe we created a new scale because in the past we'd have grouped all of these together as the same
[59:56] but I think we now need to think of these as zero mild moderate high risk depending on whether
[1:00:03] they have them perhaps that would be high risk okay because this is designed by the people that
[1:00:11] make them it's got preservatives in it that so this will be the same in a week's time right we
[1:00:16] can still be playing with it it's not going to change or get moldy it's got emulsifiers to keep
[1:00:24] it together it's got extra sugar in it it'll have a really amount of salt in there probably
[1:00:31] and sugar and I've got some fat in here so it'll be hyper palatable and what does that mean
[1:00:39] that means that you can eat a lot of it before you get full so it makes you overeat
[1:00:46] for you and I can't see we're talking about white bread just normal white bread that you'd
[1:00:49] probably get in the supermarket yeah and it's got a special structure that's different that also
[1:00:54] means that it it takes very little chewing all right so you put this new mouth you don't really have
[1:01:00] to chew it it's like baby food because you know a real bread made with high fiber you know it takes
[1:01:07] several chews to get it down you so there's lots of features of these foods that alert you to them
[1:01:13] being unhealthy so not only ingredients which are bad for your gut microbes and disrupt them
[1:01:20] the additives you've got the fact that it makes you overeat so a lot of those potato snacks and
[1:01:28] things you get they just dissolve in your mouth they're designed you eat them so fast
[1:01:33] is there a good bread or a preferable bread yeah there are there's not many things like
[1:01:40] rye breads and spelt breads ideally salados the German style breads that you know the Scandinavian
[1:01:48] breads they're pretty good for you because they still have the whole grain intact and that means
[1:01:55] it's got the nutrients also means it's harder to eat them quickly and they fill you up these if
[1:02:01] you eat this bread it just doesn't it makes you hungrier you used to have this all the time when
[1:02:06] I was a junior doctor every ward had toasters and cheap bread courtesy of the NHS and you eat them
[1:02:16] they give you a little kick you just feel just as hungry an hour later having eaten you know four of
[1:02:22] them and I think this is the problem many people don't realize that this food is it's not only
[1:02:27] making them sick making their gut microbes sick but it's actually making them overeat and
[1:02:32] studies show it makes you overeat by about 25 percent which you know really adds up every day of your
[1:02:38] life a lot of people including me have gone through their life thinking that because when they
[1:02:44] this stuff they get stomach pains and sometimes they have gas or they'll have like I don't know
[1:02:51] toilet related issues that they are gluten free like they are gluten intolerant or whatever I
[1:02:58] was one of those people I thought because if I eat this if I was to eat this piece of bread I'd
[1:03:01] feel it for the next two days so I assumed I was gluten free but when I think we spoke last time
[1:03:06] you told me that almost nobody is gluten intolerant has a gluten what's the term
[1:03:13] well there's gluten intolerant gluten intolerant yeah but that's not necessarily yes directly
[1:03:20] I mean there are some but most people who think they are not and that's because generally
[1:03:29] when you eat a sandwich in the US or the UK you're getting crap bread terrible filling
[1:03:38] all kinds of other additives and chemicals which are probably disagreeing with you so when
[1:03:43] you give up eating sandwiches you might feel better so roughly up to 30 percent of people believe
[1:03:50] gluten is a problem for them but only one person actually need to strictly avoid it I think
[1:03:56] it's a great example of we love to have a simple solution so gluten came in said right everyone can
[1:04:04] think about gluten let's just get rid of that and all our problems are solved rather than thinking
[1:04:11] what are all the other things in a in a cheap bread sandwich that you might be reacting to it also
[1:04:17] could be the emulsifier that is gluing that bread together or is in the mayonnaise that you're having
[1:04:26] it could be some of these colorants that are you know making the bread white or
[1:04:32] making that sauce bright yellow that you might be intolerant of because the more things that they
[1:04:38] these manufacturers add to these foods the more likely there is one that is disagreeing you with
[1:04:44] you and your favorite sandwich suddenly you know becomes your worst enemy because you know they're
[1:04:51] just created by brilliant scientists to all they care about is you find it irresistible and keep
[1:04:57] eating it if you eat the healthy stuff you don't have these problems where about these these
[1:05:02] almonds some walnuts and there's a what do you think of almonds I love almonds they're good for
[1:05:09] you and lots of studies showing they're good for your cognition even some mild effects on
[1:05:16] other aspects of brain health and mood these are good for gut health they've got all kinds of
[1:05:24] really good fats in them these omega-3s and et cetera are in nuts so they're a fantastic snack
[1:05:32] that do fill you up and generally recommend them bring more data about walnuts than almonds for
[1:05:39] brain health that I've read about so there are you know stays the people take a lot of walnuts
[1:05:45] they help but I think the idea shouldn't be there's only one type of nut that you should eat that's
[1:05:50] going to help your brain we should again go back to this concept of diversity and so
[1:05:56] mix nuts really your best way of helping your your brain health by eating these things and we used
[1:06:03] to demonize nuts because they had fat in it but certainly when I was you know 20 years ago
[1:06:09] well you can't have peanuts and nuts they're really bad for your heart now we're totally
[1:06:13] reversed this and I just think it it just shows how much has changed in this field in a
[1:06:20] relatively short time what's number seven so that the mistakes was avoid high risk process foods
[1:06:26] import when you're picking food to try and get as many colors on your plate as possible because
[1:06:33] that's a sign that they contain these chemicals called polyphenols natural colors yes
[1:06:40] exactly not the the blue colors you get that we really want to avoid which are bad for you so
[1:06:46] natural colors are a sign that they these foods are good for you so we're talking bright berries
[1:06:53] we're talking raspberries blackberries strawberries we're talking
[1:06:59] rossololo lettuce we're talking about cabbages that are purple we're talking really all those
[1:07:06] bright colors because they contain chemicals that are from this family broadly called the
[1:07:12] polyphenols which act as fuel for your gut microbes and that allows them to then in turn
[1:07:22] produce things like short chain fatty acids and keeps them healthy so it's a sign from nature that
[1:07:29] we're eating these these foods and it's a signal prior ancestor's new and the other sign which we
[1:07:36] can't tell from looking at but we get to know is bitterness so bitter plants tend to be much healthier than
[1:07:46] bland ones that's the broccoli story that's why extra virgin olive oil is so good for us why
[1:07:55] coffee is also good why red wine and dark chocolate it's those polyphenols in there
[1:08:04] that are really giving us our microbes a boost and the eighth one last but at least
[1:08:11] last but at least give your gut a rest fast yes so time restricted eating this has been
[1:08:19] shown to help your gut recover in a proper circadian rhythm it's a bit like getting a good night's
[1:08:27] sleep for your gut so we can we all know the benefits of sleep for us but we often disregard our gut
[1:08:34] many people have a late night snack a kebab going home from the parbo whatever it is it's completely
[1:08:41] the wrong thing to do for your gut health 12 to 14 hour overnight fast trying to restrict your
[1:08:49] eating time to 10 hours really has been shown to have metabolic advantages for you and improves
[1:08:58] your gut lining so it's less likely to to leak and cause inflammation and allows the cleaning
[1:09:05] team and your microbes to come out and clean up your gut the number of studies now
[1:09:11] showing that it does have these metabolic advantages but I'm not pushing it so hard these days because
[1:09:18] we did do a mass another massive citizen science study with over a hundred thousand people doing
[1:09:25] this we asked them to do 14 hour time restrict eating a third gave up they said I can't do this I
[1:09:34] feel too hungry all the time I need to be snacking something like almonds a third loved it
[1:09:41] and they're still doing it two years later and a third was sort of yeah I'll do this sometimes
[1:09:45] I feel better on it so I think there's a personalized element to it but if you can do it
[1:09:51] it is really important I would urge even the people that find it tough if you can avoid that
[1:09:56] unhealthy late night snack that can have a really big impact on your gut and your brain
[1:10:02] you know every once in a while you come across a product that has such a huge impact on your life
[1:10:07] that you'd probably describe it as a game changer and I would say for about 35 to 40 percent of my
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[1:10:58] where your first shot is completely free of charge if there's anything we need it is connection
[1:11:04] especially in the world we're living in today and that is exactly why we created these conversation
[1:11:09] cards because on this show when I sit here with my guest and have those deep intimate conversations
[1:11:15] this remarkable thing happens time and time again we feel deeply connected to each other at the end
[1:11:20] of every episode the guest I'm interviewing leaves a question for the next guest and we've turned
[1:11:25] them into these conversation cards and we've added these twist cards to make your conversations
[1:11:30] even more interesting and there are so many more twists along the way with the conversation cards
[1:11:34] this is the brand new addition and for the first time ever I've added to the pack this gold card
[1:11:39] which is an exclusive question from me but I'm only putting the gold cards in the first run of
[1:11:46] conversation cards so get yours now before the limited edition gold cards are all gone head to
[1:11:51] the link in the description below you've become more open to keto in recent years yes
[1:11:59] and I'm key I would say I'm keto curious your keto curious what's made you keto curious because
[1:12:04] I don't think you I don't think you were very keen on keto before for no I think when we discussed
[1:12:11] it I was I was pretty anti it you know but reading about the brain how important metabolism
[1:12:19] of the brain brain energy is and doing more research has slightly changed my mind because
[1:12:26] what we discovered is how amazing it is for childhood epilepsy it is still used as the main
[1:12:36] treatment for drug resistant childhood epilepsy the keto diet the keto diet so what for people who
[1:12:43] don't know what what we're talking about here is you're changing the the energy supply of the
[1:12:49] brain from glucose to ketone bodies which is a switch that we've always had ever in evolutionary
[1:12:56] terms when we couldn't get food so after about two days of not having food we used up our glucose
[1:13:03] reserves we used it up from our muscles and you switched to this other form of energy
[1:13:10] and it's a survival mechanism but what it tends to do is reset the brain and so in epilepsy that's
[1:13:18] what they think it's a bit of a like rebooting your computer epilepsy is rather strange because
[1:13:26] and it used to be thought of as a mental illness as I said because you can get hallucinations
[1:13:33] delusions it's associated with depression all the same you can have all the same symptoms you get
[1:13:41] all mental illnesses interestingly and it can be cured by the by keto so that made me
[1:13:47] curious as to what else is going on so in theory some of the other mental health issues could be
[1:13:53] improved by keto at the moment there isn't sufficient good evidence there's lots of anecdotal
[1:13:59] stories studies of seven patients open label not convincing enough for me to say let's do it
[1:14:09] but I think definitely worth doing some real studies but also suggesting that even if you don't
[1:14:14] go as far as keto just by improving the metabolism and what how the brain is getting its energy
[1:14:22] could be really important I think the interesting thing about the ketogenic diet
[1:14:27] as someone that kind of cycles in and out of it actually I showed you earlier I have this ketone
[1:14:31] monitor on my arm which is monitoring my at ketone levels at all times and connected to my phone
[1:14:39] I think the interesting thing is in the in the world we live in where there's a lot of food
[1:14:43] noises they call it everywhere you go there's temptation to eat something bad you're going down
[1:14:48] the high street there's takeaways and junk food stores and stuff like that what I think keto does
[1:14:55] which you're probably never going to see in a study I don't know if you would is it helps the craving
[1:15:03] it like dampens the food noise so this is part of why I think cycling in and out if it's quite
[1:15:08] useful for me because it means I have several moments in the year where my cravings for like
[1:15:15] this junk food some of which we have on this table just appear to vanish for a while even if it's
[1:15:19] just for a week or two weeks or three weeks or four weeks and that allows me to kind of reset and
[1:15:23] kind of take back control of the steering wheel whereas it's very easy especially in modern life
[1:15:28] when you're working really hard or you're traveling you've got sleep disruption to get into that
[1:15:32] exact spiral we talked about where you get like cravings for sugar and then you eat sugar
[1:15:37] so you feel a bit more tired and you lay down a bit more and then you're not you miss the gym
[1:15:43] and then you kind of you have the same like that with spiral keto continually snaps me out of
[1:15:49] the probability the chance of that how long for that probably the longest I've done it is maybe
[1:15:56] six weeks or eight weeks but even get even doing it for let's say one week for me will then
[1:16:04] mean the preceding four eight weeks are much healthier in every regard so even when I come off
[1:16:11] it I'm much healthier what I you know what I'm saying that's why what's interested me because I think
[1:16:18] being in a long-term keto diet is never going to work right it's just too brutal and it's
[1:16:25] incompatible with keeping your gut happening so to me that's I mean very few people can tolerate
[1:16:33] it anyway as you know it's tough yeah if we can come up with a regime that every three or every
[1:16:39] six months you had a few days of going into keto just enough to reset your body and your brain
[1:16:46] and at the same time you protected your gut say by you know taking daily 30 or other things
[1:16:51] that weren't gonna get you out of keto but could keep your your gut in a in a in the right place then
[1:16:58] I think we could potentially be have a something of practical use for brain health issues and I'd
[1:17:06] I'd love to you know do more I'm planning at some point later in this year to do to test myself
[1:17:13] see if I can do a week of keto whilst keeping my gut microbes happy have you ever done keto
[1:17:20] not properly no you know if you've done a 24 hour fast you know for a colonoscopy you are just
[1:17:26] about getting into keto at the time you're doing it but you're not you've got other things to
[1:17:30] worry about right game to the toilet to distract you I think this is really it because we talked
[1:17:35] about how holistic the whole picture of the body isn't how it's so interconnected and how the
[1:17:40] brain is so connected to the gut and all these things and there's something about doing the
[1:17:45] ketogenic diet which just it feels like I get control back in a in a way that then has this
[1:17:52] bigger holistic effect on my life my ability of everything in my life like my ability to articulate
[1:18:00] myself as a podcaster I had actually Juregen say the same thing had him say that words to the effect
[1:18:05] of the fact that when he's in ketosis it's so profound his ability to articulate himself and think
[1:18:10] as someone that does four hour podcasts that he would almost stay in it forever just for that
[1:18:15] particular cognitive benefit of like mental clarity and I always say to my team that when I'm in the
[1:18:19] key to doing diet I feel like I'm looking at the world like this like everything's high definition
[1:18:24] and my mouth and brain are like I always say my mouth and brain are connected suddenly
[1:18:27] no I've had other people say this that they do get this sort of clarity which could be a you know
[1:18:32] more exaggerated way of filling that benefit of a long overnight fast when you come in after 14
[1:18:40] hours without eating and you're doing a podcast like this yeah I definitely do feel better than if
[1:18:46] I'd had a big English breakfast just before but I think the danger is that you know if people
[1:18:54] disregard their gut microbiome and do this any advantage would be wiped out so quickly by the
[1:19:01] the problems of what's happening to your immune cells and everything else nearby so if we can
[1:19:07] find this intermittent middle way well you can still look after your gut then I agree that would
[1:19:14] be cool but I couldn't find any good data on this apart from anecdotes of you know fanatics who
[1:19:22] will obviously say it's great for their patients but without any control group because
[1:19:29] must be a big placebo effect as well it's very very hard to not have a placebo effect when you're
[1:19:35] doing that and when you're struggling so hard to do things that as they say you know people get
[1:19:40] keto headaches and they get all you know as you go into it people say it can be quite rough so
[1:19:46] you can't double blind yourself but I think it is fascinating that in the same way that reversing
[1:19:52] type 2 diabetes you know improves your mental health it makes sense that if you're switching
[1:19:58] energy levels in the brain you could also do things and let's not forget things at ECT still an
[1:20:04] effective treatment that's a that's a brain reset sometimes you know we may end up going back to the
[1:20:11] the old era of psychiatry where you know before we got into this obsession with neurochemicals
[1:20:20] to have this holistic view which I think is really fascinating and when you did that brain scan
[1:20:26] you found that you're in the highest 20% for levels of environmental microplastics
[1:20:34] in your blood yeah that was a bit scary they divide the microplastics into into two groups
[1:20:40] there's sort of depending the dimensions of them I was concerned am I eating was I eating a lot of
[1:20:45] microplastics it turned out that the higher levels of head were actually the the smaller ones
[1:20:49] that you get through the lungs which probably means a life having lived a life in London you know six
[1:20:59] decades in London probably wasn't very good for getting all this dust and and things in there
[1:21:07] that was a bit of a worry that's probably because I cycle round London a lot in the last 30 years
[1:21:12] have you changed anything in that regard I still cycle I don't like wearing a mask I know I
[1:21:17] sort of probably should and I've put a new water filter in my home to take out some of these
[1:21:25] chemicals and at least some of those plastics I'm still not totally convinced on how bad they are
[1:21:32] and the science I don't think really with resolve that issue yet but it's something I'm looking
[1:21:38] at closely and I think if there's some easy you can do I try and avoid plastic containers I try
[1:21:44] and avoid plastic bottles and I think that's good for the planet as well is there a way to take
[1:21:48] these microplastics out of our body once they're in there they's anecdotally they say things like
[1:21:55] plasma ferrisis you know you can go to a spar in LA and and get your plasma taken out and filtered
[1:22:03] and put back into your body this is from your blood but I don't think there's any real clinical trials
[1:22:09] that satisfy me that would be worth and they cost I think there's of $10,000 a go so it's not
[1:22:16] not a cheap process to have that done so I'll wait and see but at the moment yeah it's it's a worry
[1:22:24] I think there are other things in the environment probably worse you know dust pesticides
[1:22:32] is it better to have organic food rather than worry about plastics we don't know the answer
[1:22:38] to these these problems how is your views on GLP ones like Zemperkin would go for you whatever
[1:22:44] it's called these these injections and I think now tablets people are taking for weight loss
[1:22:50] how is your views on those evolved are they good bad and different they're going to be a part
[1:22:54] of our life anyway so they're going to transform medicine and obesity in a way we can't imagine
[1:23:03] at the moment especially now this year that the pills are available and it's coming off patent in
[1:23:08] many countries so it'd be much cheaper I think for people who really need them they're an incredible
[1:23:16] drug the only problem is you can't really come off them so they're pretty much for life my first
[1:23:23] worry is that a lot of people take them without supervision and they are not told to change their
[1:23:31] diet I'd love people to go take the drugs the hunger signal gets switched off they can then be
[1:23:39] mindful about their food they could do something like you know have the Zoe app or some other
[1:23:44] educational program to change their food habits forever in that in that window opportunity and
[1:23:53] that I think is where we should be doing and that that's been completely ignored at the moment
[1:23:59] virtually nobody's getting that lifestyle advice as well as the drug and so they're failing they're
[1:24:06] going back in it they're you know yo-yoing and they're getting the worst of the world the other
[1:24:11] the other slight worry we need to keep an eye on is the long-term effects on the brain so far the
[1:24:18] data suggests that it does reduce your chances of getting dementia even beyond you know reversing
[1:24:27] diabetes so it looks like its brain protective probably because it might have anti-inflammatory effects
[1:24:34] it reduces things like gambling and addictions so we don't really know how it does that but
[1:24:46] if it takes away some of your drives there's basic drives to say I like to take risks you know
[1:24:53] I like to take drugs I like to smoke I like to gamble on horses is it in some way changing you
[1:25:02] as a person long-term in that you might be less good as an entrepreneur for example
[1:25:10] so that is something I think is really interesting to follow but in general I think from a public
[1:25:16] health perspective this could save health systems hundreds of billions long-term and we ought to
[1:25:26] be taking it much more seriously and integrating it into holistic and educational advice and as
[1:25:33] it relates to brain health you also have a sauna routine as part of your brain health regime yeah
[1:25:40] I've been impressed by some of the science coming out of this and the fact that I quite enjoy
[1:25:47] just actually enjoy it from a hedonistic point of view so I try and have a sauna twice
[1:25:53] a week if I if I can do that ideally with a cold plunge afterwards but the science isn't sure
[1:26:00] whether that makes a big difference it's like a just a workout for your your blood vessels in
[1:26:06] your body and your brain so I think that the science is quite compelling and yeah it makes me
[1:26:14] feel good which it's always should be part of anyone's health routine some of you enjoy doing
[1:26:19] is always easy and regular socializing it's part of your brain routine yeah if you look at
[1:26:26] the happiest long live populations on the planet they've all got really good social lives
[1:26:33] they are always dining with friends going out often that does involve a little bit of alcohol
[1:26:39] in most of these societies but that doesn't seem to adversely affect them the idea of having a
[1:26:46] key group of core friends you see regularly I think is really good for your mental and brain
[1:26:50] health and loneliness has got to be one of the the worst things for your brain health so really
[1:26:57] important to maintain your your good friends what is what is the most important thing as it relates to
[1:27:04] brain health or overall health that we haven't talked about that we should have talked about
[1:27:08] I think we haven't talked about early life experiences and stress but trauma
[1:27:13] yeah so one thing and we haven't talked about talk therapies and you know conventional
[1:27:20] treatments so if you look at all these brain diseases virtually all of them if you go back in time
[1:27:29] if you've had emotional physical sexual trauma in in early life you're much more likely to have
[1:27:39] brain diseases later in life and this is across all of them again coming up with the idea that
[1:27:49] they're all related in some way and so you know we've moved on from the Freudian idea that
[1:27:55] the mind is different from the brain if you take the Solistic idea how does this fit into this
[1:28:00] inflammatory metabolic theory of brain health I think it it now does because they've done studies
[1:28:10] showing that following trauma or stress you can trigger your immune system to be permanently raised
[1:28:19] so again you get this consistent stress that the thermostat doesn't go down to baseline
[1:28:31] so you have a period of a year as a terrible period as a kid they do test later in life youth they'll
[1:28:38] find your inflammation levels in your blood are raised can people who had a nice gentle quiet childhood
[1:28:47] and I think this is starts to link all these different components together and these cross all
[1:28:54] these early life traumas you see the same thing in people with chronic pain chronic back pain
[1:29:01] fibromyalgia irritable bowel syndrome epilepsy schizophrenia everything but it doesn't really
[1:29:11] matter where the source of the stress was it's caused some physiological problem so I think that
[1:29:18] that is really interesting so that we couldn't pick up people if we had better tests of that stress
[1:29:24] and inflammation we could start to help those people earlier on before the brain started to
[1:29:32] struggle and I think that that's really interesting and of course we want to do most to reduce
[1:29:39] the problem in the first place they've also done studies on talk therapies so obviously
[1:29:44] psychiatry is compartmentalized into the talk therapists and the drug therapists and there's
[1:29:52] quite a lot of evidence that talk therapy does reduce inflammation levels and help your immune system
[1:29:58] so just in the same way possibly that talking to friends has that effect so talking to your therapist
[1:30:05] long term will reduce your stress and you can see that in blood markers as well the whole thing is
[1:30:13] starting to come together that all these different ways of treating it can be working through similar
[1:30:18] pathways that look so different throughout you know the fact that we've got so distracted by
[1:30:27] decart, Freud, treating the brain as something so different to the rest of the body.
[1:30:37] We have a close-in situation on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the
[1:30:39] next one who they're leaving it for and the question for you is what are you
[1:30:45] uncontainably excited about? I am uncontainably excited about the idea that we can
[1:30:59] dramatically improve our lives and our health just by making the right food choices.
[1:31:05] This is really driving me to talk about it so much to do the studies, to do the science,
[1:31:12] to spread the word because you know we're seeing all the time the dramatic effects and I was talking
[1:31:19] about the TV program was doing with these you know these these families that are really suffering
[1:31:26] it just shows you what you can do if you start treating food like you would treat medicine you know
[1:31:33] take it really seriously and experimenting with it and noticing those differences and you know I
[1:31:43] get the feedback all the time because I because the books and the media people tell me how
[1:31:50] their lives have been transformed and so that feedback keeps me excited on this topic and so I've
[1:31:57] never had that in my career before and it's super exciting. It's really hard though isn't it and
[1:32:03] this is I guess the part we don't talk about much which is the psychological part of you know
[1:32:07] what some might call discipline in the world we live in where you go into like a I know a gas
[1:32:12] station or a petrol station or whatever you call it in different parts of the world and the options
[1:32:16] are very ultra processed and you live a stressful life you're on your phone all day you're getting
[1:32:24] you don't have been fried by watching short form videos back to back to back to back to back to back to
[1:32:29] you maybe you know people are lonely than ever before so making the right choices when we're controlled
[1:32:37] by our neurology and our hormones and how we feel is is often easier said than done so even in the
[1:32:44] case of that family that you met do you think much about the psychology part of like discipline
[1:32:52] when it comes to making the right choice and is there any advice there on how to be more disciplined
[1:32:57] with our food choices or do you just think that knowledge is power in this regard well knowledge
[1:33:03] is power but it's not the only thing you you need tricks we're fighting a food environment
[1:33:13] you know multi-billion dollar industry wants us to eat this crap food your gas station they're
[1:33:19] being bribed to fill their everything around you with the worst foods the worst the food the more
[1:33:26] they pay the supermarkets to have it in a point where you're gonna buy it so you need to have
[1:33:33] tricks to counteract that and it not going to a supermarket is often one way to avoid doing that
[1:33:39] if my house was filled with crap food I would probably be snacking it I find it really hard
[1:33:46] to throw stuff away you know you you go to workplaces and you see people with piles of biscuits and
[1:33:53] M&Ms then you know they should be banned so there's certain things you say we need to fight back
[1:34:01] by changing the rules a bit just like you wouldn't have you know glasses of vodka in an office
[1:34:08] for people just have a swig if they fancy you shouldn't have candies and sweets and these things
[1:34:14] in the current environment where you know we're fighting a battle like you know they used to have
[1:34:18] cigarettes that were free everywhere forget and they changed that environment so the cigarettes
[1:34:24] are now really hard to get at that makes it easy for people to fight the habit and we we often
[1:34:31] beat ourselves up because we think of ourselves as being weak because of this we think ourselves
[1:34:35] being like ill-disciplined because we end up reaching for the wrong things but it is really really
[1:34:39] hard and it's really really hard even you know I sit here all day every day speaking to people that
[1:34:43] are experts on these subjects and you'd think that would mean that I made perfect decisions
[1:34:48] because I probably interviewed you know more people than the average 99.99% of the population on
[1:34:52] the subject but I'm a human with emotions and hormones in life to deal with and so even I have to
[1:35:01] regardless of how much I know about this stuff now I still have to like give myself the best
[1:35:05] possible chance by thinking proactively about my environment my food environment at home
[1:35:10] and even like in the car and even at the office like I have to think really proactively put systems
[1:35:14] in place to avoid the possibility that I get really really hungry really really late at night
[1:35:20] and my only options are shit for example you know which has been a bit the big change.
[1:35:25] But it's forming habits and that's the other thing so it's yes it's you've got knowledge then you
[1:35:30] got these tricks tricks to avoid often the worst offenders and then you've got to come up with
[1:35:37] these these new habits that you make that are going to break the old one so you know rather than
[1:35:42] reaching for your breakfast cereal in the morning you've got a different one ready to go and
[1:35:48] often we've found that if you can change that first meal of the day it becomes a lot easier
[1:35:54] because that's the one you're mainly in control of and realize when the other risky events are.
[1:35:59] Tim you've written many many books I'm going to link them all below this is the the newest one
[1:36:03] I know you're working on one specifically about the brain but I'm very excited for that one but this
[1:36:07] is the newest one called ferment and surprisingly a number one best seller yet again but there's a
[1:36:13] whole stack of books here the diet myth the real science behind what we eat spoon fed white almost
[1:36:19] everything we've been told about food is wrong and this book which has been extremely successful
[1:36:24] the food for life cookbook with 100 recipes created by Zoe I'm going to link all of them
[1:36:29] below for anyone that wants to check them out and thank you so much once again being a pleasure
[1:36:36] as always we've kept my audience very very healthy and they're very appreciative of that I I remember
[1:36:42] just the amount of people that come up to all over the world and cite the conversations we've
[1:36:45] had in the past and how that's been the thing for them that has helped them to change their life
[1:36:50] and it's pretty remarkable it's really remarkable how many people you must have fundamentally
[1:36:55] caused to create different food and dietary decisions through the work you've done yourself
[1:36:59] through the books through Zoe and that's a really special thing so thank you on behalf of all of them
[1:37:05] I hope we're living doing millions more I hope so
[1:37:12] if there's anything we need it is connection especially in the world we're living in today
[1:37:17] and that is exactly why we created these conversation cards because on this show when I sit here with
[1:37:22] my guest and have those deep intimate conversations this remarkable thing happens time and time again
[1:37:28] we feel deeply connected to each other at the end of every episode the guest I'm interviewing leaves
[1:37:33] a question for the next guest and we've turned them into these conversation cards and we've added
[1:37:39] these twist cards to make your conversations even more interesting and there are so many more
[1:37:43] twists along the way with the conversation cards this is the brand new edition and for the first time
[1:37:47] ever I've added to the pack this gold card which is an exclusive question from me but I'm only
[1:37:54] putting the gold cards in the first run of conversation cards so get yours now before the limited
[1:37:59] edition gold cards are all gone head to the link in the description below

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