Gut health
🍫Eat Chocolate For Elite Gut Health
Yes, you read that title correctly and no, I'm not entirely cooked (Gen Z slang, apparently).
I often write about “eating for gut health” and you don't need to be a long-time reader to know the basics - legumes, fruit and veg, whole grains, nuts and seeds and, whatever you do, limit your consumption of those sweet treats like chocolate, jam and popcorn because, I mean, come on that’s obvious, right?
Wrong
Chocolate, jam and popcorn might sound like a six-year-old’s birthday party menu, but can also be a regular part of a proper, grownup, fibermaxxing adult’s diet too
Don't believe me?
Chocolate
OK, the only caveat I need to make here is it needs to be dark chocolate, minimum 70% cocoa solids.
Just 30g will give you 3.5g of fiber as well as 45% of your daily iron, and 60% of your daily copper
I love it stirred into overnight oats accompanied by frozen berries. Depending on the quantity of oats you eat, breakfast can easily top double digits of fiber meaning the day is already won.
Jam
The key here is to make your own jam (jelly for the American readers, I've made that mistake before!) with chia seeds or LOAM. 3 tablespoons (25-30g) of chia mixed with 150g of frozen berries (mushed into a runny paste) and a squeeze of lemon/lime makes a fiber-charged fruit jam after 10 minutes in the fridge. The whole thing is 20g+ of fiber so best not eat it all in one go! Spread it on some wholegrain toast for another fibertastic breakfast
Popcorn
Just 25g of popcorn contains 3-4g of fiber (who only eats 25g of popcorn?!) so this can be a snack of champions if you’re fiber-maxxing. The key is just not to cover it in sugar, salt or butter like you get at the movies. Of course you could also stir it through some melted dark chocolate for maximum smug points.
One thing about these three fibre heroes is that they all ferment relatively slowly, meaning they reach the later stages of the colon before being fermented by gut bacteria. To feed the microbiome at the start of the colon, you'll need to consume fast-fermenting fiber too.
Or you could just use LOAM: a fiber supplement that covers the whole fermentation spectrum giving your gut microbiome different fibers to work with throughout the entire colon. One sachet is 10g of fiber that you can add to your coffee or overnight oats and you won't even notice.
GENERAL health
🥱 Why You DON'T Need Perfect Sleep
Right now, you’re probably thinking I’ve lost the plot. First telling you to eat chocolate and now saying not to worry about your sleep!
I’ve not gone bonkers, hear me out first!
There's an interesting paradox about many people living in preindustrial societies. They tend to sleep less than you and me, wake up more often…yet, when you ask them "Do you ever have trouble sleeping?” they don’t even understand the question.
How can they have “objectively” worse sleep than us, but not recognise it?
First, let's see what we can learn from the groups of people who are thought to most resemble our ancient hunter-gatherer ancestors.
Light
You probably know the advice is to get exposure to natural light as soon as possible after you wake up. It’s true that light helps regulate the circadian rhythm, our body’s clock telling us when to sleep and wake. For those of us waking up in the dark during winter months and spending all day in an office, the best advice is to accumulate exposure to light throughout the day. Go for a walk in your lunch break or work next to a window if you can.
Temperature
Temperature is as much of a circadian regulator as light. Interestingly, the Hadza people of Tanzania’s sleep tends to track temperature rather than light (e.g. they wake up before dawn). In contrast, most of us live in homes where the temperature is the same all the time. Try turning down the thermostat or opening a bedroom window before you go to sleep.
Nighttime activity
Researchers studying the Hadza report these people engage in “radically different” activities in the final hours before bed compared to during the day. This is thought to be another signal to our brain and body that it's time to sleep. So make it a habit to avoid working at night if you can...
..and those “radically different” activities tend to be communal rather than individual. Even for people who live alone, taking part in some kind of group class, having friends over for dinner or just calling a friend might improve sleep.
In our first clinical trial for LOAM we noticed many participants who took a double dose reported reductions in levels of perceived stress and a number of customers have told us about improvements in fatigue and energy.
All anecdotal of course, but we wonder if this is a result of the gut-brain axis in action. We're in the early days of planning a trial looking at LOAM and the gut-brain axis, so if you're a researcher in that area, please get in touch.
Finally, remember how I said many of these modern hunter-gatherers don't recognize the concept of a poor night’s sleep?
Maybe there’s a lesson for us to learn there too.
What if your sleep improved if you just stopped worrying about it so much? Maybe it doesn't matter if you don't get 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep (after nearly 5 months of parenthood, I can’t remember what that even feels like!) Perhaps it’s ok to wake up feeling a bit groggier some days than others?
Being ok with less-than-perfect sleep might be the ultimate hack there is.
REFLECTIONS
🍀 How To Become More Lucky
If you’ve ever thought, “some people just have all the luck” and that person is never you…
…you might be right.
But there are ways to make yourself more lucky, that is to say, things you can do that make it statistically more likely that good things will happen to you, which is the best definition of luck I can come up with.
Try some of these:
1️⃣ Always ask for what you want
The absolute worst outcome here is the answer is “no”, in which case you’re in exactly the same situation as you started in. Alternatively, the answer might be “not yet” in which case you can get an idea of what you need to do in order to get what you want. Great! And, of course, there’s always the chance the answer will be, “yes”.
2️⃣ Start Publishing Content Online
I can trace almost every good thing that’s happened to me in my professional life over the last few years to my decision to start posting content online in 2020. You don’t have to start making YouTube videos, it could be as simple as starting/updating your LinkedIn. Again, the worst outcome is you develop some skills related to posting content and improve your consistency. None too shabby. The potential upside is essentially infinite.
3️⃣ Find or become a mentor
Everything you want to do has been done by someone else before. They have valuable experience and more often than not, they’ll want to share it with you. This could be in-person or online. After all, there are experts of all shapes and sizes posting content you can access for free. Alternatively, what valuable experience could you share with someone else?
4️⃣ Have more conversation with strangers
This time, I really do mean just in real life. The person working in the shop, the commuter you always see in the morning, dare I say it…your next door neighbour? It all starts with “good morning, how are you” and who knows where it will go from there?
5️⃣ Take on a leadership role in your community
That could be at work, in church, at your kids’ school or your online community of choice. It will almost certainly expose you to novel situations, in which you'll have to come up with solutions to problems you’ve never encountered before.
👋 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".
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!!!)
