Gut health
❌ 5 Things You Think Help Your Gut...But Don't
As a gut health advocate I couldn’t be happier that more and more people are talking about and taking action on their gut health.
However, I’m all about doing things efficiently, so here are 5 things you might think are helping your gut, but actually aren’t.
1️⃣ Fibremaxxing (too soon!)
Yeah, I know, I'm the fiber guy, so how come I’m telling you NOT to fiber-maxx? Well, the devil’s in the detail. It’s not that increasing your fiber intake is bad, it’s how and when you do it.
The evidence increasingly suggests that the recommended minimum of 30g of dietary fiber per day is sub-optimal. But if you’re currently eating the 16g the average Brit consumes every day, going from zero to hero overnight might well cause bloating, gas or discomfort.
The fix: Increase your fiber by no more 5g per day each week.
2️⃣ Non-targeted probiotics
The gut health benefits of probiotics are strain and the dose-dependent. In other words, generic off-the-shelf probiotics, even the ones that say "clinically proven” are unlikely to be right for you.
The fix: Build a resilient gut through eating fermented foods (yoghurt, kimchi, sauerkraut) and a wide variety of plants (including fruit, veg, nuts and seeds). For specific gut issues, your doctor can prescribe you a specific probiotic.
3️⃣ Trying to completely eliminate bloating
Bloating and gas are no fun for anyone, but like taxes and death, they’re an unavoidable part of life.
Paradoxically, permanently chasing a flat stomach with restrictive diets might end up depriving your gut of the nutrients it truly needs to thrive.
The fix: If bloating is causing you issues, track it. Make sure you know what provokes it:- which foods, what size meals etc and get professional advice if it’s persistent, painful or severe.
4️⃣ Drinking lemon water first thing in the morning
You’ll naturally wake up dehydrated after 7+ hours without any liquids. But if you feel better after drinking lemon water first thing in the morning, it’s the water that’s doing the heavy lifting.
There’s no convincing evidence that lemon water detoxes your gut or has any effect on your gut microbiome. Although if you drink it for the taste, knock yourself out.
The fix: Plain H²O first thing in the morning is probably all you need to stay hydrated.
5️⃣ Relying on Green Powders
Yes, they may contain some fiber, some micronutrients and probiotics (see above)/prebiotics, but generally, in lower quantities than you’d find in whole food. Fiber especially tends to be low as it gets lost in the extraction process.
Where they do win out is convenience. There are times when we’ll all struggle to eat 4-5 plants per day and that's when green powders can be a useful, albeit sub-optimal strategy.
The fix: Find ways to add plants to your current diet e.g. berries on your cereal, extra veg in your curry, nuts in the snack-box.
However, if you are going to rely on a supplement to hit your fiber target, LOAM’s the clear winner over green powders (LOAM: 10g per serving vs 2-3g for the average green powder).
LOAM is a 6-in-1 (5-in-1 for the wheat-free version) diverse selection of plant fiber that feeds the whole length of your gut, not just one part. Add it to your morning coffee and you won't even realise what you’re drinking - no taste, no texture, no fuss.
GENERAL health
🧠 What Diet Does To Babies' Brains
When it comes to pregnancy, we all know what expectant mothers should cut out. But could adding in certain foods have benefits for baby?
A couple of months ago a team of researchers in Barcelona published a study that looked at exactly this.
A small number of pregnant women who were roughly halfway through their pregnancies were randomly assigned to receive either a Mediterranean diet intervention, a stress-reduction programme or usual care.
Then, during the 36th-39th weeks of gestation, they underwent fetal brain MRI to measure the size of various structures in the unborn child’s brain.
Here are the size differences between the usual-care group and the Mediterranean diet group for 3 different brain structures:-
— Right insula: 28.78 vs 27.88 mm
— Left insula: 28.60 vs 27.49 mm
— Corpus callosum length: 42.24 vs 40.61 mm
The stress-reduction group also showed a significant increase in the left insula compared to usual care.
The insula are closely related to emotional regulation centers in the brain, while the corpus callosum, a thick bundle of nerves connecting the two hemispheres of the brain, is a measure of how integrated the brain’s two sides are.
Now it’s true these are tiny differences, but then again, we are talking about tiny brain structures of unborn fetuses(!) and all these differences were statistically significant.
Structural variation in both the insula and the corpus callosum have been linked to a variety of cognitive and behavioural outcomes. So these findings are worth paying attention to.
A couple of words of caution:
- Very small sample size and all the mothers-to-be were drawn from a larger sample of women who were at risk of giving birth to small-birth-weight children. So not a very representative sample.
- This study can’t tell us anything about how these structural brain variations affected the children long-term.
- The Mediterranean diet group wasn't just told, “eat Mediterranean”. They were given monthly counselling sessions as well as free olive oil and walnuts!
However, the fact that observable differences were visible in such a short period (between ≈20 weeks and 36-39 weeks of gestation) of time is striking.
So if you’re expecting, or plan to be, this is a powerful reminder that what you eat could have a powerful effect on your unborn child.
REFLECTIONS
📏 Measure The Right Things
Bryan Johnson, the self-proclaimed healthiest person alive, recently revealed a diagnosis of autoimmune gastritis.
Bryan lives possibly the most optimised life imaginable. He tracks his sleep, his bloodwork, every gram of food he eats, every single calorie he burns…and his doctors still missed a serious health problem that was right under their noses.
For years.
In the end, his diagnosis was only made when his doctors ran two very simple procedures:- colonoscopy and endoscopy - hardly cutting edge science.
The danger of not measuring the right thing comes up in so many different areas of life.
- The student who can tell you how many hours they’ve studied, but doesn’t know if they’ve actually learned anything
- The employee who chases a higher and higher salary at the expense of their mental health, their relationships and stress levels
- The person trying to lose weight who obsesses over the scales without tracking their strength, fitness, or body composition
As a content creator, it’s all too easy for me to make this mistake.
The trick is to know what metric is worth measuring.
It may well be reps, for example, posts on social media, weights lifted or pages read.
But the non-numerical stuff is important too.
After any habit, interaction or activity, why not track:-
- Your satisfaction
- Energy levels
- Mood
- Focus
- Meaning
These metrics may be trickier to measure than reps or time, but you might find them to be more revealing about the things you really care about.
👋 Who are you again? I’m Karan Rajan - a doctor and curious explorer of all things health and wellness. I'm the founder of LOAM Science, a microbiome company aiming to create the best fiber product in the world! I host the Dr Karan Explores Podcast, where I talk to experts in science and medicine to cut through the BS of modern health advice. If you'd like an easy way to dig through the archive, you can ask me any questions about the podcast and talk to my digital librarian here. I've also written two books "This Book May Save Your Life" and "This Is Vital Information". I'm the Chief of Science of Throne, a smart gut health tracking device.
If you feel strongly about some health things or just want to say hi? Hit reply... I’d love to hear it and hear from you! (yes I read every reply!!!)
