Heal Your Gut & Optimise Your Metabolism Part 2 with Dr Will Bulsiewicz

8:57AM Aug 9, 2022

Speakers:

Angela Foster

Intro

Dr Will Bulsiewicz

Keywords:

people

microbiome

insulin resistance

fibre

fat

blood sugar

angela

omega threes

oysters

zoe

part

insulin

consume

omega

free fatty acids

carbohydrates

eat

meal

sources

terms

Single avocado has as much fibre as most people are getting in half of their day.

Welcome to the high performance health podcast with your host, Angela Foster, the show where we talk about everything you need to break through limits and achieve a high performance, mind, body and lifestyle.

Hi, friends, we are back with Dr. Will Bulsiewicz reps today for a part two on gut health. I'm so excited to bring this to you. Because I know that so many people at the moment are tracking their blood glucose levels. I've done it I think it gives you incredible insights. But I think we've almost become a little too preoccupied just with that metric. And whether that might be the cause of insulin resistance, when in fact there was a whole other theory around insulin resistance. And this is around lipotoxicity and also the health of your gut microbiome. And Dr. Will B is doing some amazing work with ZOE where they're looking at your gut microbiome in conjunction with your blood lipids and your blood sugar to put that information together. It's a really, really exciting project that you're gonna hear more about on today's episode, but also we're going to be diving into the health of your microbiome, what labour toxicity is, how that causes insulin resistance and what free fat is, and why you need to be thinking about that. If you really want to protect against things like insulin resistance and inflammation in the body. So it's another JAM PACKED episode with Dr. Will B. If you haven't listened to the first one that was episode 153, I definitely recommend you go and listen to that first, Episode 153. And then listen to this one, which is part two, where we dive deeper into the science with actionable steps, tips that you can start taking away and using straight away. And if you're interested in metabolism, we did a whole month on metabolic flexibility in my membership, the female bio hacker collective we're coming back again in the fall to do that one more time, really in response to members, they wanted to dive deeper into the science and really enhance their results even further. So if you want to be a part of that, we would love to see you over there. You just need to head over to www.angelafoster.me/biohackers. That's www.angelafoster.me/biohackers bio hacker to join myself, my health coaches and a wonderful community of like minded women who are all looking to optimise their health for longevity and higher performance. But now without further delay. Let's join Dr. Will B. So it is awesome to have you back on the show. Dr. B. I'm so excited. We're back here for part two people absolutely love part one. And I felt we left it a little bit unfinished because we didn't dive into kind of the way that fats affect our microbiome affect our cholesterol levels affect the way we metabolise glucose and things. And so I'm really delighted to have you back. So firstly, a warm welcome back to the show.

Oh, thank you for having me back. Angela. I'm excited. I'm excited to talk about all of these things. It's fun.

Yeah, I'm really excited to. So let's kick off straightaway. We were talking just before then, about this concept of lipotoxicity, which I think a lot of people haven't heard about. And it's something they should be aware of. Could you kind of briefly explain what that is?

I think, Angela, that one of the things that's very important, because there there is an explosion of insulin resistance where insulin resistance related conditions. Taking place right now we see this not only in adults, but also in children. And there are estimates that the majority of people are going to either have type two diabetes, or pre diabetes in the coming years, at least in the United States that this this is how prevalent this is becoming. And so you're going to hear a lot of talk about blood sugar, a lot of talk about diabetes and insulin. And I think it actually is very important for people given how common this is becoming, to actually understand what's going on under the hood, and to understand what these things are that we're talking about. So that's where this concept of lipotoxicity comes in, which is that when people talk about insulin resistance, alright, let me start with this insulin resistance. What what does that mean? Well, insulin resistance when you consume a meal, it's the expectation that your blood sugar is going to go up. And the blood sugar going up, it could go up to varying degrees, depending on what exactly is in your meal. Right, like when you eat a sweet like we, you know, peppermint or something like that. That is going to spike your blood sugar a lot more than if you were to eat something that is high in fibre or is low in carbohydrates. So when our blood sugar goes up after a meal, the body detects this. The body has mechanisms in place to help to keep things in balance. and bring the blood sugar down. And the response is basically that the pancreas will release insulin. Insulin is a hormone, it's actually a growth hormone. And it is designed to take the blood sugar that's in your bloodstream and force it into other places. Specifically, where it's trying to put the blood sugar is into your muscle and into your liver. So it's not that the blood sugar like disappears from your body still is a part of your body, it's more so that the blood sugar is being pushed into a different place and get in it's removed from the bloodstream so that your blood sugar doesn't go too high. And so when the body is in balance, this is working efficiently. A minimal amount of insulin is able to drive the blood sugar out in the bloodstream, and you keep things the way that they're supposed to be. When insulin resistance develops, what's happening is that your body is producing this insulin. But it's actually struggling to achieve the effect that it's trying to achieve. The blood sugar is not leaving the bloodstream so easily. So more and more and more insulin is being basically created by your pancreas. In order to get the blood sugar out of the bloodstream. That's insulin resistance. And insulin resistance is pre diabetes. When you reach a point where your pancreas is producing insulin as much as possible, and it still can't get your blood sugar under control, you now have diabetes. That that is what diabetes is, is where you and by the way, this is type two diabetes. So to be clear, not to make it confusing, but type one diabetes is a different condition where the body does not produce insulin. And so they don't have this intrinsic protection. So they have to, they have to actually use insulin replacement in order to achieve the same effect. So but when we talk about type two diabetes, the root cause of type two diabetes is insulin resistance. When you have insulin resistance, you have pre diabetes. And when your blood sugar gets too high, and your body can't control it, because basically, it's maxed out the amount of insulin that it can produce. Now, you've crossed the mind now you have type two diabetes. Okay. With that framework in mind, what is going on that actually causes this what causes insulin resistance? And the answer the prevailing theory right now is lipotoxicity.

lipotoxicity, it's something that people can read about, it's not hard to find information on this. And I think it's very important because a lot of the concepts or ideas that you hear in the wellness space, they actually don't make sense when you when you put them into this framework of lipotoxicity. So what lipotoxicity means is that when you have fat in the bloodstream, we call it free fatty acids, these free fatty acids, will actually block the movement of blood sugar into these muscle cells or into the fat, or I'm sorry, into the liver. And the way that that works is that basically the fat is going into these spaces freely, like the fat is drifting and going into these places freely, where we want the blood sugar to go. So like for example, the fat could be sneaking into the muscle tissue. We call this intramyocellular fat, or it could be sneaking into the liver tissue. So many people who have for example, type two diabetes, or prediabetes. They have fat in their liver, you can actually see it on an ultrasound. Right? So this fat is going into these places, and it's taking up residence in a location where we're trying to put the blood sugar.

Yeah, because the liver and the muscles are the primary fat stores right for this glycogen.

Yeah, exactly. So these are the liver in the in the muscles or the tissue or the tissues where we're trying to store our blood sugar. And they become a part of the endocrine organ, the fat is there. It's basically blocking the movement of blood sugar out of the bloodstream and into these tissues. And therefore, we need more and more and more insulin in order to achieve this effect.

Can I ask you quickly on that when when that's happening? Where is the blood sugar at this point, like is it so it's if you've had a meal with fat and sugar contained within it and the fat is kind of coming through into the liver and the muscles is this now holding or is it now circulating in the bloodstream? Wait to go in, and the pancreas is just producing more and more insulin to try and shuttle it in, into the cells.

So when you when you consume a meal, what is going to happen? All right? There, we have to separate out the carbohydrates in our diet, from the fat in our diet, and understand that the response of your body is going to depend on whether or not you have this insulin resistance. So the things that feed into this insulin resistance, which we can talk about more in a moment, they are creating a framework where whatever happens with your blood sugar, your body is going to struggle to control it. Now, the second part of this equation, is the carbohydrates. And I, I just want to warn everyone, like I feel compelled for us to unpack this more than what I'm about to say right now because it's going to make it feel like the carbohydrates are the problem. And what I'm saying is the the problem is not the carbohydrates. The problem is the insulin resistance, and he's addressed. But when you have the carbohydrates, let's pretend you could have 40 grammes of carbs, I'm just using simple numbers. 40 grammes of carbohydrates, 80 grammes of carbohydrates, 120 grammes of carbohydrates, right, this is a different amount of carbohydrate that your body is basically having to deal with. So when you have a meal that's mixed, that includes fat and protein, that by definition is going to include West carbohydrates. So you're asking the body to do less work in terms of controlling the blood sugar and controlling what's happening with these carbohydrates. Right. But in the process of doing this, you may actually be making the insulin resistance worse, if that makes sense. So these two things, they're not separate. They're interconnected. All right. And what you do with each of them, ultimately is going to parlay or translate into what your blood sugar shows. And so this is the reason why, you know, a person who has insulin resistance if they consume a like high carbohydrate meal, and specifically, when I say high carbohydrate, I'm referring to, like, sugar, you know, or white flour. Alright, when you do these simple carbohydrates like this, you're going to spike your blood sugar, because you have this insulin resistance. But what if we could control the insulin resistance? This is this is sort of the main point, I think, from my perspective, what if you could control the insulin resistance? What if you could take that out of the equation? What if you could get back to being in balance? Well, when the body is imbalanced, then you can consume those carbohydrates without restriction.

I suppose there's there's a few questions here that I want to come into. I guess the first one will be is insulin resistance, then how do we control insulin resistance? And how can we get back on track?

Thank you. So okay, so let's go into this framework of lipotoxicity. And what I am saying, Okay, now, I realise like this is super nerdy, so I apologise to the listeners. I can't help but be a little bit nerdy on this topic. Okay, cool. All right. So when it comes to lipotoxicity, right lipotoxicity, when I say this, when I express this term, I'm basically saying insulin resistance. And the key here is the level of the free fat. Now, when I say free fat stop for a moment, I am not saying fat in the diet, this is not a one to one translation. This is a separate thing. So separate these out. I'm not saying fat in the diet, I'm saying free fat in the blood. Okay, what increases free fat in the blood because it's the free fat in the blood, that ultimately is going to translate into insulin resistance. So let's look at that. Like what is driving that up? Because that ultimately is going to give us the answer that you're asking me like what causes insulin resistance? Okay, a couple of things. First, when a person is obese, and they're carrying excess body fat, you know, our fat cells, I don't know if people will realise this. We're born with a certain number of fat cells. It's basically a place for us to store energy. And it's not that we create new fat. What we do is we fill up the fat cells. And those fat cells Believe it or not have a point at which they can't take anymore. And this occurs and people who are obese and when this happens, basically what happens is the excess fat that the fat cells can no longer handle anymore. As it starts pouring into the bloodstream, so you are adding free fat into the bloodstream. And again, as I mentioned a moment ago, free fat in the bloodstream, this translates into insulin resistance through this hypo toxicity mechanism. Okay? This is the reason why just to kind of like show people like, how this makes sense. This is the reason why people who are obese are more prone to type two diabetes.

And what about people who are not obese and you see insulin resistance. We were talking ourselves previously. You know, I was diagnosed in my 20s with PCOS that seemed to occur, looking back because I was just prescribed birth control by my doctor, right from the teeth from my teenage years, right, and these cysts were accruing. And then they diagnosed insulin resistance as part of that in my 20s. I've never been obese, I was always kind of Slim, quite lean, actually. How does that occur in an individual,

this actually happens in my wife's family, my, hopefully, she might hear this podcast, she might not be a mother in law is irrelevant. I mean, she's real thin, she is tall, and she is skinny. And yet she has insulin resistance. And it runs in the family. And it brings us into talking more about this free fat. Because the mechanism of getting free fat, one of the mechanisms is obesity is not the only mechanism. The other mechanism is through our diet. And our diet, I'm going to talk in a moment about the different components that can drive up free fat, you know, that like sort of the choices you can make from a dietary perspective. But let's pause on that. And let's talk instead about the microbiome for a moment. Because the microbiome, ultimately, is related to the way that we process our food. And actually is a part of establishing what our blood sugar is after a meal. And also what our what our blood fat is, after a meal. So the microbiome is like centrally involved in this entire equation that you and I are talking about right now, which is our metabolism. And so what that means is that a, just using my mother in law's an example, not necessarily you, Angela, but you know, a tall, thin woman, or man or whoever it might be someone that you don't view is having a metabolic issue. There may be something within their microbiome that could be inherited from a genetic perspective, but could also be just translated and passed down through families. There could be something within their microbiome, that basically they have a disproportionate release of free fat after a meal.

Can you fix that then, like could eating more fibre fix that issue and rebalance? Or would it be a case of taking specific Mac probiotics? How would you and I know you've been working? Because there's some really like ZOE here, I think is waitlisted, isn't it in the UK. But there's really, really interesting test from what we were saying last time where you can use the CGM combined the testing of fat in your blood combined with a microbiome test to see what's going on. Right. I'm super interested in that.

I mean, I would have been talking about that more, because a lot of what I'm referring to right now, many of the things and many of the studies to back up, the words that are coming out of my mouth actually are coming from research that we have done as a part of Zoe. And, and we can talk more about what Zoe is and how and how it's involved in sort of optimising this. But it actually what you just asked me leads us into actually a perfect conversation about this, which is that so you, Angela, are a unique person. It's not just your genetics. In fact, believe it or not, you and I share most of the same genes, like more than 99% of the same genes you and I share, but it's more so your microbiome that makes you very unique. If you had a literally identical twin. That person has the same genetic code as you the same mother in most cases, grows up in the same household. And you would only share about 35% of the same microbes.

Wow, really even in the same household before you've left home only about 35% Isn't that interesting?

35% of the same microbes. That's so you are more different than you are the same. Oh, interesting. And there are a billion people on the planet now. And we believe, like, sincerely from a scientific perspective that there are no two people that are the same in terms of their microbiome, that we are that unique and individual, among a billion people, like not even two people that are the same. So that unique individuality is a very relevant part of explaining our unique responses to food. Everyone knows there is no one size fits all. When it comes to nutrition. You know, it's not to say that there aren't rules, you know, the world doesn't get turned upside down. There is no person out there that eating cupcakes is actually like making them live longer. Right? I mean, let's not be ridiculous. But but the impact of cupcakes could be different for different people, some people, it's not going to cause as much of an issue as others. Right, the impact of certain foods could be different for different people. And so what you're doing is you're you're basically identifying how specific foods interact with a person's unique biology. Well, this is the question that we sought out to understand with ZOE. Which is that, can we explain this? Can we look at a person's microbiome and simultaneously understand what they're eating? What their blood sugar is doing, and what their blood fat is doing? Because as you can tell, from our conversation, going back to the beginning, where I'm trying to unpack lipotoxicity, what I'm talking about is there's blood sugar, there's blood fat. And they're actually interconnected. They're not completely separate. Right? So this is all one part of our big picture, metabolism.

And is actually, interestingly, it's quite Pharaoh saying, like, you know, Bones of agility is key, because a lot of people would automatically jump to the conclusion, well, what I must do is go on a higher fat diet. But what's interesting is that the way you metabolise those fats, right plays a part. And when I looked, for example, we know I'm sensitive to sugars. And that may be my microbiome as well. But I've also tested my genetics, and I am highly sensitive to carbs. But I'm also highly sensitive to fats. So in this situation, and somebody who then also has a degree, I don't know if I have insulin resistance now. But you know, I was diagnosed originally, I already kind of looked after my diet, but at that point, going high fat could actually have been more of a disaster, with our background.

So if we think about it, in terms of going back to the free fatty acids, and we think about this in terms of insulin resistance, specifically, not necessarily what your blood sugar is doing, but specifically talking about insulin resistance and your ability to process and metabolise sugar. The free fatty acids, they can come from obesity, we talked about that before. But then the diet here comes to diet as being this driver that determines what's going on with these free fatty acids. And the main thing in the diet that's going to drive up free fatty acids that people need to know about, is saturated fat. Even worse, actually, the worst is trans fat, trans fats are the worst. But thankfully, we all like this is like one of the few things in the nutrition world that every single person will agree on as trans fats are unhealthy. Okay, cool. So we're on the same page there. But in addition to trans fats, saturated fat, saturated fat really appears to drive up free fatty acids, and therefore, predispose us to this insulin resistance. And so where does saturated fat come from? The principal source in most diets in the US in the UK, is actually animal products, like saturated fat is the dominant type of fat that you will find in animal products. You'll also find it though, in coconut oil, coconut oil, and palm or palm oil. And what I'm saying is that so like, olive oil, or avocados or nuts, they have fat, but the fat is not mostly saturated fat. And it's really to me it's the saturated fat that is the principal driver of the free fatty acids after a meal. So what I'm saying is that people who for example, go keto. Could you go keto and emphasise olives, olive oil, nuts, avocados, can you do that? You could. That's not what most people are doing. Most people who are doing keto they're going very, very high on the saturated fat. And that's because their diet becomes you know, again 70 It's most people would do 70% At 70% of their of their macros are fat. And usually that's made up of mostly animal products. Plus some like processed foods that are keto friendly. And if you check the label on those processed foods, I would imagine that in many cases, you're going to find coconut oil or palm oil.

And what about like, Omega six fats? So because you could you could if you're going very high fat, you could also go quite high omega six inadvertently, right? through different kind of seed, seed oils, nuts, things like that. Where do you come out on that? And how much would that contribute to it?

Well, so it contributes, it doesn't contribute in the same way that separated contributes lipotoxicity. Okay? We'll make it sixes are a different topic. Because I, so let's step away from the insulin resistance for a moment. And let's, let's take on the Omega six question that exists. Okay. So omega six, and omega three fats are called Essential essential fats. And what that means is that we as humans are not capable of producing them, but we actually need them. So we need Omega sixes, we need omega threes. But what we also need is we need balance between the two of them. Because when you have a disproportionate amount of omega sixes, and very few omega threes, well, that's not balanced. And when they're out of balance, that's actually when they become inflammatory. And we don't have the problem of having a boss of balance with excess omega threes, and not enough Omega sixes that doesn't exist. Right. And the reason why that doesn't exist is because people are consuming a lot of processed foods. And the processed foods will many times contain seed oils that are very, very disproportionately high in Omega sixes, but have no in most cases, little to no omega threes. And so so this is, I view this as a bit of a separate issue, can it contribute to free fatty acids? Can it contribute to insulin resistance? Yes, it can, but not in the same degree that saturated fat is going to be contributing. But I still think that we need to rebalance these things. And quite simply, the way that you rebalance them is that's super complicated. You need to reduce your intake of these seed oils. Specifically, I think that it's by reducing Ultra processed foods. Like that, to me needs to be the goal, reduce the ultra processed food intake, and then we need to turn our attention towards the Omega threes to make sure that we're getting those. How do we get those? Well, we can get those through. Omega threes are kind of interesting, Angela. So quick comments on omega threes. Most people when they think of Omega three, they think immediately like knee jerk fish, right? It's true. cold water fish like salmon are high in omega threes, specifically, DHA and EPA, which are very good for us. But it's not actually because the fish is producing the Omega threes. The fish are kind of like us, they don't have the ability to create omega threes out of nothing. They are eating plants. So all omega threes originate from plant sources. In the case of the fish, they're consuming plant sources in the ocean like algae. And there's also lands based plant sources of Omega threes like some of the classics are seeds, like chia, and flax, and hemp. And walnuts.

And some people that are the fish are better at converting, aren't they to DHA and EPA, like what we see is some people genetically are less good at making that conversion.

So this is this, this gets us into even more of an interesting conversation. Yes. So there's there's three there's three omega threes, ALA, eh, ALA, EPA and DHA. And there's a conversion process that goes between them and we need the the EPA and the DHA in order to get what our body needs. And if you were to just eat chia, flax and hemp, they would be produced, those are ALA. And then your body needs to make the conversion into these other three. Let's see, so to Okay. Your body in terms of making that conversion is affected by levels of omega sixes. This is the issue. So it's not just an own, it's not just a genetic challenge. What it is, is that your omega six intake is actually competing with the ALA in order to make that conversion So if you have a, we're supposed to be like close to one to one, or maybe two, three or four to one in terms of omega sixes relative to omega threes, that's where we're supposed to be. Most of us are like 12, to 115 to one with a really poor diet 20 to one. Think about that, like, yeah,

I even saw some research in America, like, there's some people that are eating, don't get me wrong, we're we're like, on that same path here. 100% in the UK, but like almost as high as 30. So on, right, which is very, very processed, I think about

3030 parts. One, I mean, that is that is completely absurd, right? When it's supposed to be like somewhere in the range of four to one or less. So the problem is that all those Omega sixes, they're actually saturating the receptors, that are the enzymes allowing us to make the conversion away from ALA into these other two forms of omega threes. So one of the tricks, one of the tricks Angela is that you reduce your omega six. Because if you bring this back into balance, and you reduce your omega six, you will actually increase your EPA and DHA by simply doing that without even changing your Omega three intake, and then improve your conversion rate. And you improve your conversion rate

on your resources, right

now about plant based sources. So I think omega threes are very important. I don't believe that the only healthy way to get omega threes is from plant based sources. So don't get me wrong here. Okay. They did originate as plants, all omega threes originated from plants. So but like, it's easier for people to get it, for example, from fish than it is to get it from Clampitt sources. The problem that we have is that we're overfishing the ocean. And it's a it's a population growth issue. We can't sustain the number of people that we have on this planet. If we all go pescatarian. It's not like that's not an option.

And also, there's restrictions here actually, it's quite hard, like Scottish salmon, actual open to go and get it from the open water is quite difficult now in the UK, because of those fishing regulations, because we've over fished. So now they're kind of farming them in big in big locks. So some of them are based in the ocean, but they're in this big Luxor. But then you're thinking about what are the fish fed. And that comes down to the farming process. And it's quite scary because I was speaking to our fishmonger recently. And he was saying that the price of it is just being driven up so high, even on the good quality farms. Because now all the grocery stores in the UK, the supermarkets are buying really, really cheap farmed salmon. And these farmers are going out of business. And yeah, and then you've got the plastics, right? It's actually quite scary when you start to really dig deep into

it. It's very scary. And so So how can we how can we do this, you know, in a sustainability has to be a part of the conversation. It has to be the ocean, Angela, you and I, we're not that old, you're younger than me. But we're not that old. And yet the ocean is different today relative to where it was when we were kids. And so sustainability has to be a part of this is not me being a hippie, I'm really not a hippie. This is just me being real, we have to include this in the equation. So like, what can we do? From the ocean that will that will fulfil this for us, I would actually make a very compelling argument for oysters. Oysters, I find oysters to be super interesting, okay? Because you can actually like have oyster farms where you plant them so that you can meet the demands that exists. When you plant them. They're not creating waste or harm within the ocean, they're actually cleaning the ocean, believe it or not. And if you look at many of the nutrients that we're trying to acquire from a source, right, this is what you get. You get the Omega threes, DHA and EPA. You actually get zinc. You get vitamin B 12. Right, so you get all of these wonderful things. And if you go and you start to investigate what is the single most sustainable source of seafood on the planet? It's oysters.

I get slightly freaked out by the propensity for norovirus with oysters. That's the only thing because you can't tell candy.

Well, wasters are served in different ways in different places. So I'll give you a quick example. Angela. I grew up in the northeast, like close to New York City. And up there, oysters are always served on the half shell so they're raw. Okay, so if you serve anything raw, you're going to be more prone to some sort of transmission of infection but I I moved to the south. And I live in Charleston, South Carolina, which is in the southeast. And by the way, we have a lot of oysters here. We're kind of known for this here in Charleston. And because we have a lot of oysters here, it's become a cultural tradition within this area that I live, where people do something called having an oyster roast. And they will steal money wasters. It tastes good. Yeah,

it is really how interesting I've never ever had, I've never had a Royster really intrigued because they are so dense in terms of their nutritional quality on many levels, I might be saying things like zinc, but I didn't know you hadn't even occurred to me to cook an oyster.

Right? And you could fry them, right, you could fry them, you don't have to. But like, there's many different ways that you can basically prepare oysters I think is kind of the point. And the second point is that they are completely sustainable. If we increase our oyster production, we actually would be cleaning the ocean. If you increase your consumption of oysters, you actually would be consuming less fish most likely, which would allow the fish populations to come back. And then when we leave the fish alone, the ocean would rebalance itself. So it's not that's the issue is like if we could just give them a little bit of breathing room.

Right? And what about with the I got a couple of questions here with the plants and then I want to come on to something around blood sugar spiking and whether they actually there's a reason to do it sometimes. But with the plant based diet, okay, and fibre fueled, do you think that someone who is let's say someone who has a degree of insulin resistance as they start to eat more fibre, even slim people, right, like we were talking about your mother in law, myself? By eating more fibre and more plant based foods, including starchy carbs, can we reset our microbiome, do you think and retrain our metabolism that we can actually be? We'd be better at processing these carbs 100% Okay, is there a protocol for doing

that? Zoe,

I need to get my hands on as well,

Zoe, and also the things that I teach. Right? So the things that teach so, but let's think for a moment about sort of this picture that I've painted, where part of the story even though we're talking about blood sugar, part of the story is the fat. And part of the star story is the sugar. Right? And these things are interconnected. So I mentioned a moment ago, before we diverted into omega sixes and omega threes, I mentioned that blood, the blood fat it comes part of it is coming from our diet. And part of it is coming from how our microbiome interacts with our diet. What does fibre do? Fibre helps to slow the release of fat? Fibre helps to slow the release of sugar. Fibre helps to support a healthy gut microbiome. We are firing on all three cylinders. This is why dietary fibre is so good for people with metabolic disease. And if you think about it through the lens of Zoe, so with Zoe, we are taking a person's microbiome, their blood sugar, their blood fat, and looking at what they eat. And we're making personalised recommendations. Now, what's interesting is our recommendations are not like hey, what does Dr B believe? Right? They didn't take my idea or Tim Spectres idea and translate it into this product. Instead, what they did is they took a population of like we have over 20,000 people now that are a part of ZOE and climbing very quickly because in the UK, y'all really like us. And there's a lot of people signing up in the UK like It's like sad people are signing up like crazy people are going on the waitlist like crazy. And so what's happening is we are growing this database, Angela, were in the database are our you know, again, like 20,000 seem to be 30,000 people have given us all of these variables, all of these factors. And we let the supercomputers we let the machine learning algorithms ultimately spit out the solution and it will spit out the solution on an individual basis. So Angela, when we get you hooked up with ZOE and you do this, it's going to tell you Hey Angela, this is where you're at. And these are the foods that are preferred for you but I'm going to make A prediction, you're going to find that when you look at this list, the top scoring foods are going to be the high fibre foods. And it's not a coincidence. And that's not me, I didn't choose that. That's the computer choosing that for you. That's because fibre fibre is good for blood sugar. fibre is good for blood fat and fibre is good for your microbiome. So we can fire on all three cylinders, when it comes to improving your metabolism when you consume fibre, yeah,

so interesting. And does it make probiotic recommendations? Or is it all like dietary based?

It's dietary based, specific, robotic recommendations. But the other thing that we're starting to dig into is the lifestyle. So we're starting to you know, we are, here's what's exciting. We are a company that looks to continue to learn constantly. So we have never stopped in terms of growing in terms of education, and how we can help people improve their health. So some of what we're starting to get into now is like timing, like meal timing, like, What time should you eat? Or like snacking? What's the scoop of snacking? Is it good for us? Is it bad for us? Well, guess what? When you have more than 20,000 people who are giving you data, we actually have the ability to answer questions like this, using science using numbers, not just us, like making stuff up. And so it's exciting, because part of what we offer is I would describe it, Angela, as citizen science. And basically what that means is not just you, but any person who participates in the Zowie, you are a part of this team that allows us to accomplish these studies. No, the scientists like myself, or like, our chief scientist is Sarah Berry. She's at King's College London, she's brilliant, or Tim Spector, we're all working on this behind the scenes. But if there were only 100 of you who were doing, Zowie, it would be worthless. But because you are a part of our team, we do it together. And then we can do things like publish papers that anyone can benefit from. And we can do things like we can say, hey, Angela, based upon our data using over the 20,000 people, here is what we see in your personal, unique gut microbiome. We're not giving you recommendations based on what is good for the average person, we're giving you recommendations based upon you, this is what's best for you.

Super powerful, super powerful. Isaiah was interesting, actually, I have a kind of free questionnaire people can do your total health check and and of the people that I've surveyed. So on that around 18,000 People have taken it. And I think it was 88% of people said that they were storing a degree of abdominal fat 80% of people out of 18,000 There's still a lot of people that are not managing their metabolism, their blood glucose desperate, like stress, cortisol plays a part of their lifestyle. And I just think I think how much this is going to help people because it's now truly by individuals, right? You're looking at their blood fat, you're looking at their their blood glucose, you're looking at their microbiome. And if you then factor in that with lifestyle recommendations in terms of managing stress, we can solve a lot

of people's problems. I think that the potential is tremendous. And this is a big part of the reason to be completely frank with you why I wanted to be a part of this. So I the story for me is that I published fibre fuels my first book in May of 2020. And it blew up and became a New York Times bestseller, and it has since sold over 200,000 copies. And when that happens, doors start opening. And I had choices. And it's like is the choice about money? Or is the choice about doing something really special and transformative? And I chose that choice. Because by working with ZOE, I feel that we are moving us like we are the premier company in personalised nutrition on the whole planet. And we're running the largest nutritional study in the entire world, the largest microbiome study. And I believe that we are in the process of moving out of the era that has been the entirety of human history, which is one size fits all nutrition recommendations into a new era where we can actually like you mentioned a moment ago, Angela, give recommendations that are personalised to you and not someone else.

Yeah, it's amazing and we really, really changed the landscape for now. It's amazing. I love it. I love what you're doing. A couple of questions. One question I have, because this I think is really interesting to think about is what about are there times when actually spiking our blood glucose would not be a bad thing and having a fast burning carbs. So what I'm thinking of particularly here is when you have deliberately depleted muscle glycogen, so you've been to the gym, for example, you've either done in high intensity workout, or you've done a heavy strength training session. And refuelling with some fast burning carbs actually can help with things like hypertrophy, and increasing muscle mass. And that obviously has a different mechanism as well, it kind of activates glute four in terms of moving the glucose into the cells. In that situation, are there situations where if people are wearing a CGM, actually, maybe it isn't as much of a concern if you're seeing a spike, but it's coming back down very quickly, because at the moment, everyone seems the trend seems to be I must not spike at a massive spike in typing.

Yeah, well, I think first of all, when we talk about spikes, we have to first ask like, what is what is normal, right? Because your blood sugar is going to go up after a meal. And the fact that it goes up does not make it inherently bad, right? It's just if it's a disproportionate spike, where it goes to an abnormal level, that's when it becomes problematic. And that's what I would caution people against is, you know, when you're interpreting your CGM don't automatically interpret every rise in blood sugar is being implicitly bad. It's only if it's rising to a level that is outside of the range of what we would consider to be healthy. So with that in mind, you know, a couple things. First of all, like when would for example, simple carbohydrates be good? So you mentioned you burn your glycogen reserves, right? That's actually where it's simple. Carbohydrates are good, because your body is looking for a source of energy. You know, this is the reason why when you think about, like, what are those pouches that runners consume when they're running a marathon. And it's like mid race, and they need something, well, those are simple carbohydrates. And in that situation, that's exactly what their body needs. Right. But when we're talking about immediately post exercise, you just finished smashing a great workout. Well, I would make the argument that you don't just want simple carbohydrates there. You want protein. And but there's a place for balance between those things don't necessarily have to have protein in isolation. This is where like, a nice, healthy plant rich meal can be perfectly situated, where you just had a great workout. And now you're going to eat a plant rich meal that may include temp A, or lentils, or things that are higher protein based plant foods, but it also is going to have the fibre that your body is craving. And your your muscles are in a position to basically absorb all of this in ticket. And

I'm going to keep that deliberately low fat then to avoid kind of fat kind of shuffling in through fast, or will the fire moderator.

I think when you have the fibre in that particular so staying low fat, I don't generally advocate for a low fat diet. All right, I also don't advocate for a high fat diet. I advocate for fibre. And fibre is a carbohydrate. So in a way, I'm advocating for healthy versions of carbs, I fully agree that like cookies, and sweets, they're not good for us. Like I'm not advocating for those kinds of carbs. But I am advocating for for fibre. And when we consume fibre, it can include healthy fats, nuts, and avocados. They have healthy fats because what like an avocado is super high in fibre. Single avocado has as much fibre as most people are getting in half of their day.

Yeah, and what about things like when you see and you see this in processed foods, but they sort of sweetened it these sort of polyols and things like Maltitol? What kind of, I'm not sure I'm even pronouncing it correctly. What about these? They cause a lot of people to be Yeah, the sugar alcohols, a lot of people get gassy on them. What have you found in terms of how they're affecting their microbiome and those versus things like artificial sweeteners?

Well, there's many of them and some of them are artificial sweeteners. Some of them are sugar alcohols that have been extracted from natural sources, but the the extraction from that natural source is inherently unnatural to what I'm saying. Even though it started in an original source, the end product is not natural. If you can't do this, if you can't do this without being a biochemist or a food chemist, then that is not natural. I'm sorry. And what you doing then is you're basically concentrating these things in an unnatural way. And so whether it's artificial sweeteners, or it's sugar alcohols from natural sources when you concentrate them, there are a lot of people get gas and bloating, or a lot of people get diarrhoea. And if you come into my clinic, and you say, I'm having gas and bloating and diarrhoea, the first question I'm probably going to ask is, do you use sugar alcohols? And do you consume dairy? Because if the answer is yes to either of those two, the first step from my perspective is let's get rid of those. And then, like, you'd be shocked at what percentage of people are better. I mean, it's actually a very high percentage. Interesting,

interesting. And do you think that they disrupt the balance of the gut bacteria?

Yeah, they've actually shown this that, again, like this is a big category. So you will find exceptions to this. But they have done studies where they will like, for example, give artificial sweeteners to people and see that it actually impairs insulin resistance,

which is scary, actually, because I don't know in America, but here in the UK, there is a big drive to basically take sugar out of the drinks and encourage people to drink soft drinks with artificial sweeteners.

I personally believe in trying to recalibrate, you know, I don't want to sound like a prude over here. But I personally believe in recalibrating our taste buds to not focus so much on sweets. And when we do get sources of sweets to get it when it's coming packaged with fibre at the same time. So like, when I drink my coffee, I don't add sweeteners to my coffee anymore. I did 10 years ago. And I've gotten very used to it and I love it. I don't miss it at all. Yeah, and when it

can recalibrate your taste, I actually like a last black coffee. I wouldn't add anything to actually enjoy. I think you'd have

100% And like, you know, breakfast but you have pancakes, right? Okay, if you have pancakes, you could put maple syrup on top. Right? But alternatively instead of maple syrup, you could take raspberries or blueberries or whatever you like. And you quite simply like mash them up and put them over a little bit of heat. And they turn into a compote

when they taste blueberries when you do that taste actually incredible. Incredible. Really nice to

have the fibre you up the fibre it's like it's not it's not an unhealthy food. It's a healthy food.

Yeah, it's like when you take oats. And instead of adding maple syrup, or honey, you put an almond butter and it melts and just creates this rich creaminess is actually really nice. And we go. Yeah, amazing. I love it. All those recommendations. Thank you so much for coming on the show again. And doing part two is super grateful for your time. I know you're very very busy. I personally love fibre fueled I've been cooking from the cookbook, I can't recommend it highly enough. But please share where can people find you more about ZOE more about the book and everything else. So you

can find me at the https://theplantfedgut.com/ That is my website. And from that location, you'll find like for example information about my books, you'll get the bonus materials for my books, you can register for my email list, people seem to really love it, I want a new study comes out, I will share it to my email list because then I can have a more detailed conversation about it. You'll learn more about Zoe there too. So like if you're interested in Zoe, you should go to my website because you can get a discount code or you can just go to Zoe and enter in this discount code. I believe it is will be 10 will be. Yep. And that'll save. That'll save 10% You can find me on social media at theguthealthMD on Instagram and Facebook. Angela. Since the last time we recorded I started a Tiktok account. Have you? Yeah. I posted like four times. And I have like, I have like six followers, but it's theguthealthmd_. So the gut health score. That's me.

Okay, well into that as well. Amazing. Thank you so much. It's been really amazing chatting to you again.

Awesome. Thank you. I'll see you.

Thanks for listening. Remember to review and subscribe. You can grab the show notes, the resources and highlights of everything Angela mentioned over at Angela Foster performance.com You can also snatch up plenty of other goodies, including the highly helpful Angela recommends page which is a list of everything she personally recommend to optimise your mind, body and lifestyle.