Gut health
🐐 Combine These Foods For GOATed Gut Health
I know it can be overwhelming trying to eat for GOATed gut health.
It’s not just about 30g per day, there’s so much else to think about:- resistant starch, slow, medium and fast-fermenting fibers, polyphenols, beta-glucan, healthy fats etc.
That's why the biggest wins come from food combos.
Here are 5 of the best:
Breakfast
1️⃣ Oats + berries + yoghurt/kefir - you'll get beta-glucan from the oats and polyphenols from the berries to feed your gut microbiome, plus live cultures from the yoghurt/kefir.
This is an example of what I call the ultimate, quick-to-make slop meal. Mine always includes the 3 Ps:- polyphenols from the berries, prebiotics from the oats and probiotics with the yoghurt/kefir.
Lunch/Dinner
2️⃣ Beans/legumes + EVOO - fermentable fiber from the beans and polyphenols from the EVOO that’s been shown to positively influence the gut microbiome. Think beans on toast with olive oil instead of butter
3️⃣ Beans/legumes + onion and garlic - this combo gives you a range of fermentable fibers including resistant starch and fructans. Your gut microbes will be spoilt for choice!
4️⃣ Chickpeas + sundried tomatoes: fermentable fiber and resistant starch from the chickpeas will keep your gut microbiome busy while the tomatoes bring lycopene (an antioxidant) and the fat from the oil makes the lycopene more bioavailable
Dessert/snack
5️⃣ Kiwi + yogurt/kefir - kiwi provide the fermentable fiber, while the dairy brings live cultures and fermentation products. Plus eating kiwi 1-2 hours before bed may help you sleep (PMID: 21669584)
I'm all about making this easier and going for the small wins where possible. But I'm also a realist and as a small business owner, workaholic and new Dad, some days just go to sh*t and I don't have time to prepare 3 nutritious meals.
So, of course, an easy addition to the ultimate combo would be adding one LOAM sachet to your morning coffee, protein shake or favourite chia pudding. It delivers an instant hit of 10g of fast, medium and slow-releasing fiber without any change to texture or taste. And don’t forget LOAM is also available in a gluten-free formulation as well as wheat free too
GENERAL health
⏰ Time To Ditch Intermittent Fasting?
You could barely open social media 3 or 4 years ago without being assailed by influencers large and small praising the benefit of intermittent fasting (IF).
Weight loss! Blood glucose control! Blood pressure! Immune function! Reduce Inflammation!
It may as well have been called fairy dust.
Well, a newly-published study (PMID: 42508996) that compared IF with a more conventional eating pattern might be about to do away with all that.
Adults with obesity and either diet-controlled type 2 Diabetes or prediabetes, were randomly allocated to 1) a time-restricted eating window of 10 hours, or 2) a more conventional 16-hour schedule.
Importantly, the nutritional content of both diets was exactly the same (same calories, same macros) so the only thing that differed was when the participants ate.
After 12 weeks, the researchers compared the two groups and found:-
- No significant difference in weight loss
- No significant difference in inflammation markers
- No overall advantage in problematic eating behaviours (e.g. out-of-control eating)
So IF seems to carry no real advantage over other eating patterns.
However, both groups did lose a modest amount of weight (2.5-2.7%) over the course of the study regardless of when they ate.
The researchers suggested this might have been because all the participants had their meals prepared for them and as they were created by dieticians, they were nutritious meals made with whole foods.
That way, there was no chance of anyone defaulting to frozen pizza just because they felt too tired to cook.
It’s worth mentioning a couple of limitations of this study:- the sample was very small (n=39) and almost all the participants came from Black, female populations, so these findings might not be representative.
Nonetheless, here’s what I’d take away from this experiment:-
1️⃣ Most important:- If intermittent fasting works for you, do not stop. The best diet is always the one you can follow consistently.
2️⃣ If you need to lose weight, intermittent fasting could be a useful way for you to reduce your daily calories. Just remember, it’s the calorie reduction that’s important, not when you consume them.
3️⃣ Eating as many whole foods as possible is probably your best bet for weight loss - you’ll feel fuller for longer and so eat less.
P.S Adriano Dos Santos is an expert in chrononutrition. In this recent podcast he explained how the same meal eaten at different times of the day can have wildly different effects on your body. Plus why late-night scrolling is not as bad as you think!
REFLECTIONS
⏭️ The Adjacent Possible
Here's a mind-boggling concept I came across recently.
The adjacent possible is all the futures that are possible now based on the present, or more poetically, the shadow future.
I wrote recently about restarting running.
I have run before, so I’m not an absolute beginner and I’m hoping some of my running fitness is going to come back quickly. All of which means I could run a 5km tomorrow reasonably comfortably. That’s my adjacent possible now.
But ask me again in a year’s time - after I’ve been running regularly for 12 months - and hopefully I’ll be close to running a half-marathon if not the full thing. That’ll be the adjacent possible then.
The point is: no development or progress happens in a vacuum. It can only happen in the context of your present circumstances.
This is why I’m so bullish on learning new skills.
As Booker Prize-worthy as my writing is, I would never have been offered a publishing deal had I not had a sizeable online audience.
I’d never have built that audience had I not learned how to create and post quality content regularly.
And I’d never have learned how to create quality content if I hadn’t taken the time to learn that specific skill.
So don’t make a 5-year plan.
Instead, think about what new skills you could develop, which relationships you could form or deepen and which new environments you could enter.
And then focus on just taking the first step towards that new frontier.
👋 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!!!)
