How to Repair and Nourish Your Gut | Dr. Giulia Enders

Dr. Giulia Enders has changed the way millions of people think about the human body. As a physician, microbiome researcher, and bestselling author, she has spent years studying the surprising role the gut plays in everything from digestion and immunity to mood, sleep, metabolism, and long-term health. In this conversation, Giulia explains how your gut shapes your health, how stress quietly damages it, what ultra-processed foods are doing to you, and what your body’s been trying to tell you all along. This episode is packed with practical advice you can use right away. You’ll understand your body better and leave with a simple framework for improving your health, without complicated diets, expensive supplements, or extreme interventions. If you’ve ever wondered why you feel the way you do, this conversation is a great place to start. ------ Timestamps: (00:00) How A Thriving Gut Can Unlock Your Health (02:23) Foods to Eat to Improve Gut Health (07:57) The Link Between Your Gut and Immune System (09:28) How to Get Prebiotics in Your Food (10:22) Why Fiber is Key to a Healthy Gut (10:47) How Cooling Starches Can Help You Lose Weight (12:48) Why Fiber Reduces Your Risk of Cancer (14:13) How Sugar Causes Inflammation (15:40) Are Some Sugars Better than Others? (16:25) What Your Poop Is Telling You (17:53) Healthy vs Unhealthy Poop (20:01) How to Rebuild the Gut After Antibiotics (22:08) Warning Signs You Should See a Doctor (23:11) The Best Position for Pooping (26:26) Constipation: Causes & Solutions (28:06) Importance of Chewing (31:07) How Long Does it Take to Heal Your Gut? (34:25) Why Dopamine is Driving Your Bad Cravings (36:40) Three Things to Watch Out for on Ingredients List (36:56) Effect of Alcohol on Gut (37:55) Is Caffeine Bad for Your Gut? (39:56) Impact of Snacking on Gut and Metabolism (41:28) Do Gut Cleanses Work? (43:07) Are Supplements Worth It? (44:59) The Benefits of Walking After a Meal (49:29) The Number One Thing to Change for Better Gut Health (49:51) Why Sanitizer Isn't the Best Approach to Hygiene ------ Newsletter: The Brain Food newsletter delivers actionable insights and thoughtful ideas every Sunday. It takes 5 minutes to read, and it’s completely free. Learn more and sign up at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠fs.blog/newsletter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ------ Follow Shane Parrish: X: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://x.com/shaneparrish⁠ Insta: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/farnamstreet/⁠ LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/shane-parrish-050a2183/⁠ ------ Follow Dr. Giulia Enders X: https://x.com/giulia_enders Check out Dr. Giulia’s Books: Gut: The Inside Story of Our Body’s Most Underrated Organ: https://a.co/d/0hqm72mN Organ Speak: What It Really Means to Listen to Our Bodies: https://a.co/d/07ClmNVu ------ Thank you to the sponsors for this episode: +CoinShares: Delivering Reason to Digital Asset Investing. ⁠https://coinshares.com/⁠ +Granola AI, The AI notepad for people in back-to-back meetings: https://www.granola.ai/shane Check out the Granola Notes +HeyGen is a message-first AI video platform that helps people and AI agents turn ideas into professional video in minutes. Try for free at https://www.heygen.com/tkp +LMNT: My go-to zero sugar electrolytes — get a free LMNT Sample Pack here: DrinkLMNT.com/TKP Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Shane Parrish?

  What can unlocking a healthy gut do for your life?

• 0:03Speaker 01

  It can re-center one of the most important organs we have. And really with that have all these second and third-hand effects that you wouldn't even maybe have thought of. All these influences on your mental health, on just your sleep quality, on your metabolism, on your weight, on how you just feel emotionally during the day. It's sometimes more potent than genetics. And why would you not want to get into something that is so easy to influence and change? And then has such a wide reach on every aspect of your health?

• 0:37Shane Parrish?

  What's the biggest myth about the gut that you wish would disappear?

• 0:40Speaker 01

  I think a lot of people are afraid that it's like too fragile, too sensitive, too stupid to handle things. And the gut is a very robust organ. If you treat it right and understand it most of the time, it can take a lot, actually. And so sometimes when people think they have all kinds of sensitivities, some people do. And then for other people, it's more something that damaged the gut. So now when all these foods come into contact, fructose, gluten, dairy, and so on and so on, the gut always has an issue, but that's more because it has an underlying general issue that you have to first take care of. And then when it's all healed up and doing well again, you probably are able to eat all these foods again.

• 1:23Speaker 01

  But people then stop entirely, especially with IBS, for example. And they say, I can't have all of these things. And I would say, you're right, you're not imagining this, you really can't at the moment. But it's not because, you know, your stupid gut can't take it. Because there's something underlying that we need to fix first. And then slowly and surely you'll be able to have all these things again. Sometimes people have a little bit of a wrong view of what their body is actually still capable of and what medicine and like things from the outside can do to it.

• 1:51Shane Parrish?

  What are the most common signs that the gut is not healthy?

• 1:55Speaker 01

  Very simple things are just the basics. Do you have a bellyache? How is digestion? Your body basically sends you texts every morning when you go to the bathroom. Might check it out, it's free. Just turn around and look. And then also some other things are also a bit more subtle. When you look at the effect of an unhealthy gut on symptoms like anxiety, risk of depression, just an immune system that's out of check. Maybe influenced by some disturbances in the gut has an impact.

• 2:23Shane Parrish?

  If someone wanted to improve their gut health, what should they eat more of?

• 2:27Speaker 01

  I would say eat more of things that you really like, but that are luckily also healthy. That's always the first step because what I see oftentimes in clinic was that people would eat these things because they heard they were healthy, but they hated them. And then they would just stuff their face with a stupid kale that ugh, you know. And then always I said, oh, no, that's not good. Let's look at like all these vegetable and fruit there are. Which ones of those do you like? Cause there'll be one or two that you like. And it's often way easier to go from there and then starting having just a bit more of that healthy stuff. Some people really like asparagus, others will not mind having an onion more, you know, putting it in your sauce when you have like some ready-made sauce, like just things you don't mind or that you really

• 3:12Speaker 01

  like the taste of and then have a little bit more of them. And I think that's always the starting point because drastically changing the diet, also putting way more fiber in all of a sudden will just make you gassy or bloated because your guts are is not used to that. And your microbes suddenly get all these foods. It's like a forest and then you just dump some fertilizer on it. What's that gonna do? You know, slowly change your diet, but with the things you like and the microbes like. That's a good compromise.

• 3:41Shane Parrish?

  Are there better foods for gut health? Like what would those be? Like what are the best foods for gut health?

• 3:46Speaker 01

  It is individual for some people because gut microbes are individual. Some people might have gut microbes that when they eat beans, it's wonderful. They got all their fiber. They do all the nice things. Some other people have gut microbes where they are horribly bloated when they eat beans. And this relies on your gut microbes. So I would say, look at the different vegetables and fruit. If you want to, then go ahead and look for their fiber content. You will always have two types of fiber. One is water soluble. The other is water non-soluble. What does that mean? That means, for example, cereal or the skin of an apple, for example, it has fiber that are not able to fully dilute into something gel-like when they are mixed with

• 4:28Speaker 01

  water. They'll just stay a bit like sturdy, fibery stuff. And those can mostly not be digested by the microbes because they're tough to really crack up. And they will just form. Bulk. And this bulk is good because it will knock on the walls of the gut and be like and the gut is very curious, so it bounces back and this propels like digestion. This is really what gets you a regular bowel movement, so it's good to have. But this other type of fiber, the water soluble one, is usually what makes up the fruity flesh of the apple, for example, and in asparagus or when you just have carbs like rice and noodles and so on. If you cook them once, let them cool down, suddenly their content of like the resistant starch and so with that soluble, water soluble fiber rises.

• 5:13Speaker 01

  So just having your carbs cooked, cool them down and then you can even reheat them, makes them more prebiotic. So prebiotic meaning food for good microbes in the gut. There are things that are good for the microbiome, like let's say beans, onions, you know, green leafy vegetables. But if you don't crave them at all, start with ones that you crave, because then that might mean you actually have the microbes that are eating them that make you want to eat it.

• 5:40Shane Parrish?

  How did you get interested in the body?

• 5:42Speaker 01

  I think it all started in my teenage years when I suddenly got a skin disease. Um, and I realized that I know nothing about my body. I'll be hanging around in this body, you know, for another seventy years or so. And I just don't know how to like understand all these processes where this suddenly coming from. And I have to go to a doctor who tells me then, I'll just put this on it, helps a little bit, then comes back and I realized, oh, I just have to like do what he says because I have no idea. And then I started reading and I started like being surprised, understanding so much more, also realizing that it gives you quite a friendly kind of power when you know more about the body.

• 6:19Shane Parrish?

  What was the skin condition?

• 6:21Speaker 01

  Well, I had like these open wounds coming up and then he said, oh, it's like eczema or something and I put steroids on it and went away, but then it just came back. And I thought, well, this can't be it for the rest of my life, you know, so what else is there? And I found all these things about the gut, about after probiotics, sometimes things like this can pop up or have food can even show up on the skin. So that was just a topic I got into and then I tried all these things very unscientifically at the same time, this and this and a little bit of that. But after a while, I realized, oh, it was getting better. I could visibly see how it was getting better and how it could help myself just by trying things out and by having more knowledge.

• 6:58Shane Parrish?

  You were experimenting on yourself?

• 7:00Speaker 01

  Yes, definitely. Some of the things I wouldn't recommend today with the knowledge I have now, but you know, I was young and just.

• 7:07Shane Parrish?

  What was one of the crazier things you tried?

• 7:10Speaker 01

  I overdosed on zinc and then I really, back then, I just got a really sensitive smell. Like I could smell things from further away. At least that was my impression and experience.

• 7:21Shane Parrish?

  Wait, so if you overdose on zinc, you can get like a superpower?

• 7:24Speaker 01

  I read later on that this may be possible and I just had this happening to me. So I thought, oh, wow, okay.

• 7:31Shane Parrish?

  And is that when you decided you wanted to be a doctor?

• 7:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, before that I wanted to go into like energy engineering. I'd already done like internships and I was really into that. But then I realized, oh, I can read these medical texts and even like papers or books for hours on. And even if I'm really tired and so something within this topic is like grabbing my attention. And it's really easy for me to get into it, especially when I discovered the gut. That was it from there on, you know.

• 7:57Shane Parrish?

  What's the link between the gut and the immune system?

• 8:01Speaker 01

  Well, there's lots of immune cells residing in the walls of our gut and they're checking out what's going on. At least, you know, the gut is one of them.

• 8:08Shane Parrish?

  Is that like the heart of our immune system?

• 8:10Speaker 01

  I mean, the immune system has different locations where it's being trained. But the gut is a very large and a very central one. Because especially there's all these exchange happening with the outside world. When you look at us from the outside, you would almost think the skin is the biggest surface to the outside world. But the gut is a huge one where you have all these substances coming in, crossing the wall into the blood of ours. So that's a quite intense process. And of course, the immune cells will be there to just see what's going on and really be sure that there's nothing, you know, wrong happening. And there they'll also learn tolerance, usually in a healthy gut. That's the training boot camp of tolerance. They'll be like, some peanut came, but it was all right. Our cells are still doing fine. And then all these immune cells are gathering and saying, oh, this is peanut.

• 8:55Speaker 01

  It's it's seems to be quite okay because we're still doing fine. And it sounds like a really funny process, but it's happening every day, all the time. They're just training this tolerance. And of course, then when your gut cells aren't doing so well, there's maybe little wounds or it's been stressed. So the protective mucus layer is down. Then the immune cells might be wondering, hmm, maybe the peanut is not so good for us because the cells aren't looking so good. So should I be watching out for peanut next time? So these are some of the processes that can lead, for example, to sensitivities or allergies or just a gut that's not feeling well.

• 9:28Shane Parrish?

  There's a lot of supplements that are pre and probiotics. Are there foods that we could take for the prebiotics?

• 9:34Speaker 01

  Definitely, it's all the same stuff. It's have your veggies, have your fruit.

• 9:38Shane Parrish?

  So they have prebiotics in them?

• 9:40Speaker 01

  Absolutely. And as I said, usually in a fruit, you see that the the skin of the apple, for example, has the water non soluble fiber and then the flesh has the water soluble fiber and those are prebiotic. And you can basically pick any vegetable. Then you have some like banana that have a little less, but if you pick a green banana, for example, the starches are not yet unpacked. So it's not so sweet because unpacking the starches, making some sugar out of them makes the banana sweet. But if it's really green, then this hasn't happened so much. So there's more prebiotic in them. So that's why in some countries, green bananas are also used when you have some diarrhea. Because they might help with feeding good microbes, which then fight off the diarrhea causing microbes.

• 10:22Shane Parrish?

  Is fiber like the most important thing that most people don't think about very much?

• 10:27Speaker 01

  Fiber is maybe an overlooked thing. Because we have managed to produce foods that just have less and less fiber. Because the caloric density is again higher, that makes the dopamine cells go yay. Then we will rather pick those. But I think the effects of fiber are just so nice. When you look at metabolic health, for example, we've seen one study that I like to quote is when you looked at Pacific islands where the rice cooker was introduced. People put on a lot of weight. And that one aspect, hypothesis of this paper mentioned and explained was that the rice was suddenly now not cooked and then cooled down and then reheated. But it was cooked and just stayed warm.

• 11:10Speaker 01

  So the all the starches and the carbohydrates in the rice were so superly fast accessible that the glucose in the blood spikes, goes down, you get hungry, you need another snack. But if you have the rice cooled down, the starch crystallizes again. And then when you eat it, it takes more time and more enzymes to unpack this crystallized starch. So then it's slowly. Gets your blood sugar up and then down again. So you don't have this. And this also is good for your, you know, weight. Because when they then had people cool down the rice after cooking again, but people would also lose weight again. So you see that it's sometimes not only about the number of calories that's on the package, but really also how you prepare these foods that then will make a metabolic impact.

• 11:53Shane Parrish?

  Are there any other foods like rice like that, where if you let them?

• 11:56Speaker 01

  Well, all the starches, when you have noodles, when you have potato, when you have rice, uh, these typical starches, when you cook them and you cool them down, they get more prebiotic. So potato salad, for example, wonderful, or just having cooked potatoes in the fridge and then making um, them fry them up again with a little bit of olive oil or something, you know? That's already better for the microbes than just having them all.

• 12:19Shane Parrish?

  And do we need a wide variety of fiber? Or is it something where we can just consume one or two foods and get all the fiber we need?

• 12:26Speaker 01

  No, the thing, there's this rule, I think by Tim Spector, who made this prominently, and it's, it's very good. And he made all the wonderful research for that, that if you have about thirty different types of fruit and vegetable a week, then you're really in a good window where there's so much variety of different foods that there can be a variety of different microbes eating them in your gut, which then contributes to your health.

• 12:48Shane Parrish?

  Does eating fiber reduce your risk of cancer?

• 12:52Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 12:53Shane Parrish?

  Why?

• 12:53Speaker 01

  When you look at cancer, there's different types of cancer. We have a hereditary kind of colon cancer, for example. But we have also colon cancers where we now have the leading indicators that the microbiome play a part in it. And also, when you look at fiber, what it does is also propel digestion. So, for example, all this metabolized stuff that really is ready to just get out of your body doesn't sit there for very long, releasing also possible toxins, for example. Um, and they then come in contact with your gut cells. So there is a type of pro-inflammatory or then even pro-cancerous processes that are being influenced positively by fiber. And that is once by influencing the gut microbiome, two by influencing just the process of digestion itself.

• 13:37Speaker 01

  And then three, also effects that have to do with metabolic risks of cancer. So fibre and the way it slows down the intake of blood sugary things, for example. When you have spikes of blood sugar all the time, this can be pro-cancerous by multiple routes, by making the immune cells a bit more aggressive by then, you know, promoting pro-inflammatory causes. So it's a very complex building, but the simple answer is, yes, fibre can protect you of colon cancer, for example, and then other cancers that are related to those metabolic processes that I mentioned.

• 14:13Shane Parrish?

  What causes the inflammation inside of us that you mentioned?

• 14:16Speaker 01

  For example, a very simple link is sugar. When you look at sugar, it is high energy and immune cells will realise that they have now this budget of energy to spend. And of course, they are pro-safety. And of course, they say, oh, I'd rather have some more safety guards and some unnecessary inflammation than too little. So this is a little bit the tendency they're leaning towards. Well, because when you look at our history, thousands of years, it's always better to have this additional safety, but we rarely ever had enough energy for that. Our energy budget was always limited, cut off at the very, you know, necessary things. And suddenly, we have all this energy to spend. And then the immune system, as we see, is a bit switched on by sugar. It goes a bit more into the

• 14:58Speaker 01

  aggressive direction because it can, you know. And this is one process that sugar will tip off. And we see, for example, people drinking soft drinks, high in sugar for ten, twenty years, they have a significant elevated risk of like inflammatory diseases. And this isn't always the one cause why someone has an inflammatory disease. It's different other possibilities, pollution in our environment, making the immune cells irritated and aggressive, genetic predisposition where there's less calming signals, you know, in an immune system, for example, all these other things. But for example, sugar is one of them, and it can tip off these processes. And this then can have a range of effects.

• 15:40Shane Parrish?

  And there's different types of sugar too, right? Like there's naturally occurring sugar in fruits.

• 15:45Speaker 01

  Um.

• 15:45Shane Parrish?

  But then there's like white sugar.

• 15:47Speaker 01

  Um.

• 15:47Shane Parrish?

  That's refined and then high fructose corn syrup.

• 15:50Speaker 01

  That is true, and you can definitely say that this like concentrated high fructose corn syrup is like one of the ones where we see these ungood effects if it's administered in a too high dose, the clearest. But I'm I'm not convinced by these things saying have a date instead because there's just the same molecule in it. The fiber of the date might slow it down the take up a little bit. But if you have like, you know, dates that have been made to be this big and super sweet, then they're also full of sugar. So I would say, don't kid yourself.

• 16:21Shane Parrish?

  All right, I wanna talk poo.

• 16:23Speaker 01

  Yes, that's.

• 16:25Shane Parrish?

  You became famous partly for making people think differently about poop, including myself. What are we still getting wrong about poop?

• 16:33Speaker 01

  Well, I think the thing to get wrong is just to ignore it, really. In Germany, you have two different kinds of toilets. We have one toilet where it goes into the water, which is, I think, the American and Canadian types that you will know of as well. And then we have this toilet, which is has a presenter. So you will just have it presented there and from here you can flush it then with water. But you will really see and also not to go into too much detail, but you will smell it a bit more too. So there it's really hard to ignore. Um, but I mean, you can also look at it in in other ways. There's, for example, the behavior it has when it's floating. When there's no air bubbles in it and all, that means bacteria haven't really done their work, their job there. So it sinks to the bottom immediately without sometimes swimming a little bit.

• 17:18Speaker 01

  So that's a sign that you're not digesting properly, for example, can be a sign. Then if you have lots of fats in your stool still, it's a sign that maybe you're not digesting fats really well. You might even get that checked out if it's very prominently there. Then, of course, you have just things like structure and color where you can get some hints from. Um, as I said, a really black color or blood. Reddish colour, that's always a warning signal. There's also things like um it being a bit more to the greener side or yellowish or something. And grey is a warning signal as well. And then when it comes to consistency, I think um this is for most people probably the thing that they realise the most. You know, we have the Bristol stool scale.

• 18:02Speaker 01

  It's written in wonderful like British language with like, you know, uh smooth and soft like a snail or something. It's really fun to check it out if you want to. But there you can see that if you go more to the constipated side, what um forms are already indicating that. Um and then you can of course also realise diarrhoea or stool being too soft. I think oftentimes it's an overlooked problem because it can mean that your mucus is not intact or your digestion is not going so well. There is um, maybe that is predominantly German, I don't know, but I can say that people were also a bit embarrassed about the topic when it all started in Germany ten years ago.

• 18:41Speaker 01

  But there's like a literature piece where they describe like the holy perfect way where you go to the toilet and you don't, wouldn't even have had to wipe. Because it was so perfect that there was no wiping necessary. So I think what that actually indicates, and that was way before we realised this scientifically, is that when you have a very proper intact gut mucus lining. Then it will really surround the last bit of uh digested stuff and really pack it up. So it doesn't really touch much um of your skin or mucus area when it comes out and it just is a clean business.

• 19:15Shane Parrish?

  What about size, the toilet cloggers?

• 19:18Speaker 01

  The toilet cloggers. Well, the perfect toilet cloggers would be the one where they just have so much fibre that this really gives them a lot of bulk or mass or whatever. Um and then the not so perfect ones is when really you're not digesting so well. So you haven't taken up all the food and too much of it comes out unprocessed, basically. That is not such a good thing. And then sometimes you can see it even as a side effect of antibiotics. Because the antibiotics kill off all these bacteria and they have quite some weight, they have a mass, you know. They are sometimes described as an organ of its own. So you're basically losing a little bit or a bigger part of that organ and that can sometimes amount to a bigger volume. But it's not necessarily a bad thing if you can handle it well.

• 20:01Shane Parrish?

  How do we rebuild our gut after a dose of antibiotics?

• 20:06Speaker 01

  People in different life stages are more susceptible to the disadvantages, changes, antibiotics induced. So we see especially small kids and seniors in studies that they have a harder time going back to their microbiome after a round of antibiotics. Then we have all the adults in the middle area of this. For them, it's like 50/50. Some of them will actually go back quite well and others will never replenish the microbes they've lost. And some of them might have been even like some nice family inheritance pieces, so to say, that they will not get back and that used to protect them of certain diseases or things before. So it is not with an easy hand that you should administer

• 20:48Speaker 01

  antibiotics just for every cold you have. And especially in the United States, I have to say, we see that this is a problem that is maybe responsible for the high number of people having problems with their gut. So that being said, what can you do? Of course, you can have probiotics, especially when you start having diarrhea while you're being on antibiotics. We've seen studies that probiotics help with antibiotic-induced diarrhea. So especially for children also and the elderly, as I said, but also with grownups experiencing diarrhea, that is an indicator probiotics could be helpful. Then we see that when you take probiotics after a round of antibiotics, there is two effects.

• 21:29Speaker 01

  One is that they can help lower your pH value by, for example, bifidobacteria or lactobacillus a, who produce these acids, can have a beneficial effect because, you know, again, good bacterias thrive in those environments, others might not, so it will help. But it can also have an effect that they take up niche and room of your initial microbes. And then when you stop taking them, they're gone. And yours don't return the same way because they were being like, kind of like pushed to the side. So it's not only a good thing. So this is where prebiotics are also really important. As I said, feeding your good microbes that will actually stay with you and that feed off like good foods.

• 22:08Shane Parrish?

  What are the warning signs that someone should see a doctor instead of trying to fix it themselves?

• 22:14Speaker 01

  Well, the typical warning signs are just like heavy, like extreme, like really pain that you don't usually have or don't know. Then we always have the black or the bloody stools that you should get checked out of. Weight loss, night sweats, those are like the really severe common ones. But also things like if you have a tendency towards diarrhea and it lasts more than three, four days, then I would also think of having that checked. And then if you have a really bad constipation, for example, um, that can be something that you already know, you've had it since you were a child or you've had it for a long time. Then I would always say it's not uh an act of immediate uh attention, but it can always be improved.

• 22:58Speaker 01

  So it makes sense to go somewhere and check some things out. But if it's suddenly start starting, that suddenly you're constipated and you don't even know why. It didn't used to be like that. That's something you should also have checked out pretty soonish. Yeah.

• 23:11Shane Parrish?

  Are we pooing wrong?

• 23:12Speaker 01

  There is an aspect that is a bit disadvantaged. And this is this um seat of toilet that looks like a chair, you know? And we sit on it in a posture that we usually know from, you know, sitting on a chair. And our body has the smart mechanism of having a muscle going around the end of the gut and then, you know, holding it back a little bit so that we stand. Or when we sit in that position, not all of it is like immediately in the position to come out. So it creates this curve. When we put our legs up a little bit, you could say like a thirty degree angle from just being horizontal, then this gets loosened up and then there's not this curve anymore, but it's rather a bit straight. And, you know, this is just the natural position when we squat outdoors when we go to the toilet.

• 23:56Speaker 01

  And this is then uh uh better anatomically speaking, a better way to go to the toilet because you need less pressure and you're not pressing against. Uh, you know, your own muscles holding stuff back. And this way can reduce the risk of hemorrhoids or diverticulosis, which we see less of in countries where people still use a squatting position when they go to the toilet. So it is a good idea to maybe try to emulate this. And you can do so with a little stool in front of your toilet where you just, you know, put your feet on. I've heard now so many people report back to me that this has helped them or that they really miss it now when they go elsewhere. They will use like the tiny bin in the hotel toilet to put in front of the toilet so that they have this position because it just feels more natural.

• 24:38Speaker 01

  And there's been a study on that um by Dafsi Kirov, a researcher who compared these different sitting positions and could show that it's much easier or also feels better for people that they really got everything out when they are rather in that situ- like position than in a normal chair stool position.

• 24:57Shane Parrish?

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• 25:36Shane Parrish?

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• 26:26Shane Parrish?

  What does constipation actually mean?

• 26:28Speaker 01

  Constipation can is, well, the problem of having the feeling you're not really emptying all the way when you go to the toilet, of having a too hard, too difficult time to go to the toilet, you really need a lot of force to get stuff out, or even need to like help a little bit, manipulate so that you can get it out. It can be too hard. So these little pieces of stool, like a goat would have, for example, is a good indicator that it has just spent too much time and the gut already got all the liquids and then some more. So it's really like dehydrated a little bit. Those are different aspects and can have different causes. For some people, it's just in the very end that they're having a hard time coordinating it really getting out. For others, it's all the way before that, that it's too slow, at some where it's being like not transported fast enough.

• 27:13Speaker 01

  And that can happen with a low fiber diet, where you just like have pizza and pasta and white flour and that's it, basically. So there's different causes for that. But a way to handle it is almost always easy and has really great results. And I've personally never experienced a patient that didn't get better with just some simple tricks here and there. And then, of course, there are some severe cases where really some things off, motility disorders, where since birth you've had a super horrible, hard time to go to the toilet. And there we need to be a bit more creative, but there's also wonderful solutions for that now.

• 27:48Shane Parrish?

  What are the tips and tricks when you say that?

• 27:50Speaker 01

  Some more fiber, some more probiotics in your diet. There's things like flaxseed, chia seeds, these things that you really need to add some additional water also to really have them soak up and really, you know, have some material that the gut then can propel forwards. Those are very simple things.

• 28:06Shane Parrish?

  How important is chewing?

• 28:08Speaker 01

  Chewing is a good thing if you want to take some work off your stomach, off the hands of your stomach, because the stomach really then has to get all this muscular work going if things are not chewed correctly. And its exit, so to say, will only let very tiny particles through. So if you don't chew well, it has just a bit more stuff to do. And also you tell your brain what kind of nutrients are coming in when you're tasting them already. So actually just looking at certain foods will start the process, but then really having them in your mouth will already get some things going and some juices flowing. It's a nice thing, but I also have to say, a lot of the foods we eat nowadays don't necessarily need the chewing anymore. When you look at highly or ultra-processed foods, they're so

• 28:52Speaker 01

  Almost falling apart into sugar particles. White bread, white pastries, white flour stuff. I mean, you can chew, but it'll be very soon just sugar in the very first, um, you know, inches of your small intestine. It's all sugar going into the bloodstream.

• 29:09Shane Parrish?

  Go deeper on the ultra-processed foods versus sort of nature's foods, if you will.

• 29:15Speaker 01

  So when you look at all these advices we get all the time about food, right? Um, there has been an era for something like the Taylor Swift era, as you could almost say. There's been the era of having low fat in order to not, um, put on weight. There's been an era of having everything less sugar, sugar substitutes. Now, when we look back at these, um, discoveries, scientific opinions, you could say, but of course with evidence, then you can say, well, they're not entirely wrong, but they really weren't entirely true also. And what we're looking at now, which era are we in now? I think this is now the era where we say, ah, probably it's about the ultra-processed foods, that bad. You know, we still have some of the remaining advices, like, of course, don't have too much sugar, that's still a very good advice.

• 29:59Speaker 01

  And I think here, the nice thing is to have a clear, um, amount, which is 25 grams. This is what the World Health Organization say. This is the amount of sugar you can have without it in the long run affecting your health. And then when you look at fats, it's still true to say it's good to have like, um, poorly unsaturated fats, a good olive oil, don't heat it up too much because then it breaks apart and can like reshape chemically, um, not be so good anymore. But those are the things that still keep standing. But the rest of it, people say, well, rather have the full fat yogurt, you know, um, because not engineering it so much, also the way it is digested is a bit more, um, natural to the body and doesn't have all these horrible effects we all earlier thought.

• 30:41Speaker 01

  And now when we look at people having diets without all these additives, we see how healthy they are. And we see even when we have people stopping their usual diet with all these processed foods and going back to a more natural. Diet without all these additives, we can track all the effects and the right away shown that it's much more healthier for their body, that's good on them. So we get an idea that, oh, maybe, you know, that was the thing.

• 31:07Shane Parrish?

  How long does that take? If I, if I stop consuming, let's say I move from a diet of highly ultra-processed foods to more natural, how long does it take for my body to adjust and start to show signs of progress?

• 31:24Speaker 01

  Some effects you'll see after three days. Some it might take, you know, one, two or three weeks, but that's really the amount of time. You hardly ever take more than that in the department of the microbiome to reach all these really nice, good changes. Cause you know, they eat every day. So if different foods comes in, they adjust every day. And then of course you have more, um, more long-term things metabolically speaking. Your cholesterol, for example, um, also just, um, your overall immune function or stress hormones. These things can indirectly be influenced and those will take a little bit longer because you still have all this storage fat, for example, when we talk about blood lipids. Um, or also just feeling better when your immune system is maybe not so angered by some additives

• 32:08Speaker 01

  or food processes or just a sensitive, um, gut wall. This is, I think, a bit more individual and could take a bit longer.

• 32:16Shane Parrish?

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• 33:00Shane Parrish?

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• 33:43Shane Parrish?

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• 33:58Shane Parrish?

  It seems like a lot of the knowledge that we've had over the years, the low fat, less sugar, also led to more processed foods. So in order to reduce fat, we came up with substitutes for fat. In order to reduce sugar, we came up with substitutes too. Is that true?

• 34:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's true, especially when you talk about the low fat. There were all these processes to remove, to have that. But I think what is actually a bit more the culprit here is the dopamine. We have a lot of processed foods because we make it more appealing to our dopamine releasing cells. When they realize that you have a very high caloric density, they're rewarded because it means you ate just something very little, but it gave you a lot of energy. So little investment, lot of turnout. And that is what those cells are about and they're rewarded, not knowing what it does in the long term sometimes. And unconsciously oftentimes, but nowadays also targeted and very consciously, food industry has seen, okay, this is my target audience. Those are the cells that rave when something comes in and they will motivate you to buy

• 35:03Speaker 01

  it again and again and have some more of it even. So I think it's not really only the mistake or the wrongdoing of these hypotheses nutrient wise or health wise, but really also a dopamine system that screens out for reward louder and louder these days. And it understandably does though, because it's been like. How do you say, wrenched?

• 35:25Shane Parrish?

  Yeah.

• 35:25Speaker 01

  By social media, by processes that are not so fulfilling, by times sometimes getting a bit tougher. People want a good feeling and food is a way to get it.

• 35:35Shane Parrish?

  Is one way to think about food when you're in the grocery store, just to look at the ingredient list and and a good sort of like heuristic is the fewer ingredients, the better?

• 35:44Speaker 01

  Yes, and I do this all the time. And sometimes I'm really surprised is what I find when I look on the ingredients lists. Some things marketed as super healthy, um and then you look at like this nice, uh. It has all these fruits and all this fiber and you look and it has like forty percent sugar.

• 36:04Speaker 01

  That is like, what? Or some drinks, they are, oh, it's super healthy, wonderful juice, blah, blah, blah. And it has more sugar than Coca-Cola has. I'm a bit like drawn to doing this now and I buy these ready-made foods and I have them as well. I think it's really difficult to cut them out entirely. Whatever half God is able to do that, applaud to you. But I think if you have a good like eighty twenty ratio, you're good. So twenty percent processed foods or stuff from the supermarket, fine. And then if you manage to get, you know, to the eighty percent of like real foods that come like that from the soil or the tree. Good balance. But yeah, check out the ingredients list. And I check for um M C M. This is the methyl cellulose and the polysorbate eighty, so P S A T and kerogens.

• 36:48Speaker 01

  It's really sometimes almost horrible to look at what substances are in these products. So really go for the companies that look out for your health as well, you know?

• 36:56Shane Parrish?

  What's the effect of alcohol on our gut microbiome? Outside of sort of the obvious symptoms that people would think of with people who consume too much alcohol? Like, how would it manifest itself in our poop and our digestion?

• 37:10Speaker 01

  I don't know if you have this term, and it's not necessarily a pretty one either, but in Germany, we have this term of beer schiss.

• 37:19Speaker 01

  Which means when you have too much beer, then you will just have this ungood poo where you're like, oh, this is beer schiss.

• 37:27Speaker 01

  It's too, it's too soft, it smells funky. It's something where you realize that wasn't a good idea, you know.

• 37:32Shane Parrish?

  Right.

• 37:33Speaker 01

  And it's a mixture of alcohol annoying the immune cells, alcohol not being good on the nerve cells, alcohol getting chaos into the microbiome. So all of this comes together and gives you this weird, weird text message on your toilet in the next morning saying, what was that?

• 37:48Shane Parrish?

  It's like our body is speaking to us, right? Like it's giving us feedback.

• 37:52Speaker 01

  Well, it is definitely a form of feedback, yes.

• 37:55Shane Parrish?

  What does coffee do?

• 37:56Speaker 01

  With coffee, it contains polyphenols, it contains antioxidants. So it is not necessarily a bad thing. The thing that can be problematic is the caffeine in it. If you have lots and lots of caffeine, it has an effect on your dopamine system. Not like drugs, but it elevates the response of the dopamine system. So that's actually also what you really wish for. The email of your boss saying wonderful work feels just a bit better, a bit more motivating. You're just a bit more like active fit in the day. And this is good, nice to have, we like to have it. But in too large of an amount, and that is the case when people then really have sort of withdrawal, when they don't have it on vacation or somewhere in the plane or whatever.

• 38:42Speaker 01

  Then this becomes, I think, a bit problematic. And then you might think also of sleep. Because we've seen all the studies and rarely ever is science so clear on one point. There's always multiple opinions usually. But with coffee, there's really not been a study where you don't see an effect. People will say, but I have no trouble falling asleep. But then you see in all the measurements, the quality of sleep after falling asleep is poorer. And then what do you need in the morning when you wake up? Coffee. So it like becomes this vicious circle where I think this is a main factor that then can influence the microbiome. The polyphenols and antioxidants, wonderful, they are actually good for the microbiome, you could say. But you can have them with decaf coffee just as well.

• 39:26Speaker 01

  And then when you have your coffee, within a time window, select 12, 2 P M, 4 P M, perfectly fine, and then you will be able to sleep wonderfully. But people who have coffee after that. I don't believe them that it doesn't do anything. And I think if they could switch to decaf and just check it out for a few days and really be honest if their sleep is better now. And then they say it's not better at all, then you know, do whatever you want. But before that experiment, I would say have the experiment. Yes, try it.

• 39:56Shane Parrish?

  What effect does snacking have?

• 39:58Speaker 01

  There's different approaches to um frequency of food intake. Uh for some people, they will really notice a difference when they keep a window of four hours in between meals. They would say, oh, this is so much better for me now. For others, they don't. Um they get uh too low blood pressure, they don't feel so well. And so it is again something where I would rather people listen to their own instincts and then have a healthy snack than say, oh, snacks are not good, so I shouldn't at all. There is some different um opinions on the timeframe, like should we only eat from eleven in the morning to seven? Should we only eat when there's daylight out? Should we only, you know, have breakfast, very large amounts of food? And then small dinner, should we, you know?

• 40:43Speaker 01

  There's all these different theories. And I don't think there's a common thing that is a solution for everyone. One fits all. I think that's not something like that. But it is good to experiment with it and really find out for yourself. And for example, when you look at visceral fat, like this sudden belly coming in in your forties or something or afterwards, then oftentimes you see some improvement when you actually watch the times where you eat. And if you have some time in between where you really don't eat, or if you say after seven in the evening, I won't have food until ten in the morning, people will actually realize that there are some differences then. But as always, it's not a one fits all. And I would just have people know about this and then experiment rather than tell them what to do.

• 41:28Shane Parrish?

  I was talking to a friend of mine uh before coming to see you today, and she mentioned a gut cleanse.

• 41:34Speaker 01

  Um.

• 41:35Shane Parrish?

  Is that useful? Is it not useful? What is it?

• 41:39Speaker 01

  In the beginning, I have to be honest, I didn't like it at all because I thought it's so invasive. It's people thinking their gut cannot clean itself. Because usually after two weeks, a gut really replenishes all its cells. So if you just eat healthy for that time, you're good, you know? But I have to say, um I've heard so many patients um saying that it helped with like pain in the joints or with other things that I'm. Still not thinking it's this perfect solution for everything. It does have risks. We've seen patients with trouble after or complications, not many, but it's not without risk. But for some, they feel that it's good for their health. And I'm a person that says that is the main thing.

• 42:21Speaker 01

  That is what health is about. So if someone reports that, then I say, okay, good. But still, it shouldn't be done too much. It is, I think, something to resort to when things have gone really wrong and you sort of feel like you need reset. We've experienced patients, for example, with irritable bowel syndrome after a colonoscopy being suddenly way better. And it's not because of the colonoscopy, I think, because we just checked with the camera for a few minutes. But it's maybe because they really cleaned cleaned everything out and could restock their microbiome a bit easier than they could have. If everything's just stuck in place and you just throw some different food on it. So now I'm more open to it and I think it does have interesting effects that I don't disregard anymore. Yeah.

• 43:07Shane Parrish?

  Talk to me about supplements.

• 43:08Speaker 01

  So I think supplements and this whole fascination about them tickle me in a specific way. Once, again, as I said, if someone takes something, notices a immediate shift, says, oh, I really immediately feel like this because of it. Then go for it, check if all the dosages are right and if the quality is good, because there can be some troubles with that. But then I'm not against it. But that being said, we see that normal, healthy grownups usually don't necessarily benefit from it. Some supplements even have disadvantageous effects in big studies. Really, I'm talking big studies, like vitamin E had a higher risk of people who smoke having lung cancer. So what was that all about?

• 43:52Speaker 01

  It's because you don't know all the effects one substances will have on you. And there might be things that just occur naturally. And if you have them powdered up or concentrated or well, whatever, if it's still an amount that's reasonable. But what I find people will miss while they're being on this whole supplement journey is they really go for all these nice slogans, but they miss the bigger picture. And the bigger picture is the picture that we have so much solid research on. And it's the things your mama told you. It's sleeping well, it's eating well, it's dealing with your stress well. You know, um, having some joy in life also accounts to that movement. And those are the things. And this is the big bug. This is the eighty percent of your health.

• 44:34Speaker 01

  And then some supplements might do one or two percent that are good to you. But usually they don't do so much more than this. And so weigh it, you know, all this money, all this time researching, you know. And then these other things that have shown effects that are so important, really maybe put some of that time and energy and money in these departments as well. That's all I'm saying.

• 44:59Shane Parrish?

  Why?

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• 45:30Shane Parrish?

  Is a walk after a meal a good idea?

• 45:32Speaker 01

  People will say that this helps you with your blood sugar because activating your muscles can really take um blood, sugar and nutrients into your muscles and get them to work right away instead of just putting them in storage, so to say. So it's a hormonal metabolic reason. If people stress too much, like if they walk and their heart rises and they breathe really fast, so it's a stressful walk, then it's not necessarily good because stress will then do opposite effects. But if you really have a comfortable walk, that's what you want after a meal.

• 46:01Shane Parrish?

  One of my close friends is doing this experiment that I think you'll find fascinating. So. He believes that food is the key to healing, as I think you do, based on this conversation. But he's going into hospitals because hospitals are this place where they're supposed to make us better. And they feed us crap, at least in in North America. They don't always have the best food. And he's a famous restaurateur. And so he's gone in and he's gotten rid of most processed foods. He's reduced the level of processing. And the theory, which I think is starting to prove itself correctly, is we can actually increase the number of hospital beds by effectively getting people out one day or two days earlier.

• 46:43Shane Parrish?

  And we can do that through food because a lot of what happens in hospitals is people aren't eating. They're malnourished. That slows recovery and slows healing. I'd love your your take on that.

• 46:54Speaker 01

  I think that's a perfectly right approach. And it just goes to show that oftentimes when we try to make humans adjust to the system, instead of the system adjusting to humans, we do a stupid thing. We waste money, we waste resources, and we make it less pleasant and less nice for people. And that goes for hospitals, that goes for workplace, that goes for education. I think there's so many areas in life where we could just use the knowledge we already have on the body and make smarter choices that just benefit everyone. I'm not saying, you know, be all hippie, have all the flowers while you can, it's nice. But I'm saying it also makes sense in all these other aspects, economically, emotionally, societal.

• 47:39Speaker 01

  And I would love to see that more often. And especially like when you talk about foods in hospitals now, it's absolutely true. And the crazy thing is, we have all the research showing it. We have the research on wound healing after surgery, for example, and the quality of foods, of psychiatric diseases even. We have all the research. But you know what? We do in many other areas also, when it comes to really how you put together a workplace, how you educate children, how the brain learns the best. We have all the research. We just don't do it. So that's, I think, a shared goal here, where I try to like make this knowledge in a way palpable, that you can then use it rather than just. Have it somewhere in the books.

• 48:20Shane Parrish?

  Your work is about listening to the body. What does it mean to listen to an organ?

• 48:24Speaker 01

  It, I think, means in the first place, and that's an easy place to start, to not cut it out of the picture, to not ignore it. We will now have people, for example, breathing dysfunctionally. So people at workplace might have this phenomena where it's called email apnea, where they hold their breath when they hear the sound or they see a new email coming in repeatedly over the course of a day, or breathe really fast and too, too deep or something, which really heightens their level of stress hormones, makes their muscles in the back clench up, sometimes give them cold hands and feet, feeling really stressed. Their workplace really can also stress them, of course, but there's an aspect of the body that we overlook and we don't use to our advantage just because we don't know of it.

• 49:09Speaker 01

  Or other things like the gut influencing depressive symptoms, like all these physical influences on our life, on our feelings, on our performance. If we just would know them to a degree that we don't ignore them anymore, then we can use them. Then we can have breath techniques like for one minute at 12 and four o'clock during the workday. And it really takes off some of these symptoms. You'd be surprised for some people. We will have people realizing they're noise sensitive. When they travel, this is part of where their stress comes from. We will have students realizing the type of learners they are and be able to like learn. But so really, I think what I want is people to just have this smart body feeling

• 49:48Speaker 01

  that they can actually use it to their advantage and not be victim to like mysterious processes that they find overwhelming. It's oftentimes not so much knowledge that does that.

• 49:59Shane Parrish?

  If someone changed only one thing about their diet after listening to this conversation, what would you want them to change?

• 50:05Speaker 01

  Something easy that the person likes and maybe cooling down your starch just before you reheat them or just before you eat them. And then pick one vegetable that you like and just have it a bit more often. And then I think, you know, we haven't talked about these things so much, but I like to have people know that hygiene isn't about disinfecting your hands all the time. One of maybe most important hygienes you can have is stress hygiene. And understanding your way of going about stress in terms of hygiene, I think is actually very beneficial for the gut.

• 50:39Shane Parrish?

  Go deeper on that.

• 50:41Speaker 01

  What we see is that there's an effect of stress um that differs depending on how long the stress goes on for. Short stress is not necessarily bad because it's like challenging your body, it's like doing a spout of exercise where you're just like doing something very difficult and then ah you're going back to calm mode again. But stress that lasts longer than this has more unhygienic effects because it's not only a little challenge and then going back. When you look at the gut with a camera and then you've really stressed out the person, the walls of the gut go pale. So they would usually be pinkish because there's all this blood going on, blood flow is going great, you know. But when stress happens, the vessels really go small and the gut doesn't get so much

• 51:25Speaker 01

  energy anymore because your system is giving all this energy to your brain and muscles to solve the problem or run away, you know. And then when you're in stress, your gut will really give up all of its energy. It's a very good-willing, good-natured organ that says, oh, there's this big problem, can't digest in all, you know, carefulness now. If you're really stressed, some people even throw up or have nervous diarrhea and that is just to get all these tasks out of the system so you don't have to deal with digestion now. And so you can use the energy for problem solving. The bad part is if this goes on for too long, you're really abusing this good-willed organ and it doesn't have enough blood flow and energy to build enough protective mucus.

• 52:06Speaker 01

  So your stomach might be sensitive or your like food particles get too close to the gut and you're not having enough blood flow to get all the immune cells in the right direction. Your immune cells might even get more aggressive. This can have to do with a lack of sleep, this can have to do with the mucus layer being too thin, so suddenly they're exposed to all these things, so they're like, watch this, I don't like it, so they get aggressive. And so your gut can get sensitive to food suddenly or have problems that it wouldn't have otherwise because it just doesn't have the resources to deal or do its job in the way it would usually do. And over a few weeks, that can have very detrimental effects. And also some microbes, and that is maybe the most hygienic part of it all. They thrive on stress hormones.

• 52:50Shane Parrish?

  Hmm.

• 52:51Speaker 01

  They are really able to deal with them very well and others are not. You're kind of making an atmosphere for your gut. We're selecting gut microbes that thrive in an environment of distress. And those are not necessarily the good ones we see, at least in studies now. So seeing stress as something unhygienic, I think, is very accurate in that um framework. And if you disinfect your hands, you're just making a lot of room. Suddenly, everything here is dead. And whatever comes next, if you touch a funny red or, you know, something from the air flies there, now suddenly has room. So if someone's sick and you're touching it, or, you know, I'm pretty sure you touch something dirty or so, you know, go ahead.

• 53:30Speaker 01

  But the most important stress, I think, is not disinfecting your hands, but really looking out for your inner stress hygiene.

• 53:37Shane Parrish?

  So we shouldn't be putting hand sanitizer on our hands like ten times a day?

• 53:40Speaker 01

  Maybe not ten times a day. I have to say, I really like my my skin microbes. You have should really wash your hands when you go home and you touch your face and your mouth and so on before that. But other than that, I don't think it's so beneficial. You just select some creepy ones that don't care for the sanitizer.

• 53:57Shane Parrish?

  What's one sentence you want people to take away from this episode?

• 54:01Speaker 01

  I think really just the vitality and the wonderfulness of being alive. And it sounds so simple, but feeling this a little bit maybe makes it easier for you to, you know, do something for your body, just have your body. And I've seen so many patients when they were at the end of their lives, suddenly realizing their body is so genius, was so valuable, they had it all these years. And it's good to see that, but it's also a little bit late. I want people to feel that earlier in life, so that's not one sentence. But it's really what I would want people to take away.

• 54:38Shane Parrish?

  We always end interviews with the same question, which is, what is success for you?

• 54:43Speaker 01

  Success is.

• 54:46Speaker 01

  Purpose rewarded by myself. It is that I know I did something purposeful, helpful, and I myself create the rewarding feelings, not people around them, around me, saying that was great or something. And that is the success that I feel most satisfied by.