[00:00:00] Welcome to the Pick Revival podcast. My name is Vesna. I'm gonna talk about the 4 PILLARS of high performing gut and microbiome and why it matters.
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[00:00:10] Now there's lots of, um, advice for gut health, and I've definitely done podcasts on this. And today I really wanna talk about, well, What is a high performing gut? Why does it matter in everything that you do? Because it has such an impact on our emotional wellbeing and our energy levels. And I'm gonna talk about four pillars that will help to give you the really good baseline of gut health.
[00:00:30] So. There are specifics that we can do when it comes down to microbiome testing. So testing, you know, the beneficial bacteria that we have in our gut, and also the, you know, the non-beneficial or the bacterial overgrowth that we have. When we do those microbiome testing, we can have a look in a lot more detail and get more specific in treatment of herbal medicines, supplementation, probiotics, and et cetera.
[00:00:54] But even without that. What are the four pillars that lead to a healthy gut, which we should [00:01:00] have in practice now and maintain, and I'm really gonna show the gaps and they're significant, right? So quite often what I see is that women are like a pretty well, and you'll see as I go through this episode that actually a.
[00:01:12] You could do a lot better to maintain the microbiome that's kind of hands down in in the western world, in the western diet. So why having a healthy gut to high performing gut in a microbiome really matters is because if you are a high performer and you are busy and you've got a lot on your plate, then what you're gonna notice.
[00:01:30] That is at a high performing gut means you're gonna have a lot more mental clarity. So you'll have less brain fog, you'll have a better hormone or neurotransmitter levels in the brain. So just mental clarity, mental focus, a lot more bandwidth, a lot more capacity to take more work on work, deep focus.
[00:01:47] Because the gut is connected to the brain by the vagus nerve. We know that there's this massive connection between gut health and what's going on up here. So mental focus. Clarity bandwidth, but emotional resilience or [00:02:00] emotional balance. Right. So I notice that my clients will often say when we do gut work, they'll be like, oh my gosh, I just don't feel like a roller coaster anymore.
[00:02:08] Right? I feel much more emotionally regulated, and that's one of the things that's really noticeable with doing gut work. Your energy goes up. It also helps with, um, hormone balancing and stress recovery. So those are. All the reasons why it matters, and it also helps to drive down inflammation, like there's such a huge part of our gut health that impacts every aspect of our life from how we feel to how we perform.
[00:02:32] So let's get into it. Pillar number one is diversity. This is the one thing that our western diet does not have. Okay? So it's, shown that on average women have between 10 to 12 foods that we recycle each week, okay? So very, very low diversity, and that means our gut microbes aren't getting the diversity that they need for the fuel.
[00:02:53] you are eating the same things all the time. For a long time. Then it's linked to inflammation. [00:03:00] It's linked to irritable bowel syndrome. It's linked to weight gain, anxiety, and mood disorders, right? Because the population of the microbiome is not diverse. Okay? Low diversity in food, low diversity.
[00:03:12] In microbiome. And so therefore, we wanna make sure that we have a good range and variety of different foods. And I'm gonna go through which ones, because it supports serotonin production, that's a happy mood. Um, neurotransmitter helps to regulate our immune system, gives us clearer thinking and stabilizes our mood.
[00:03:29] So what are the things that you want to increase? I mean, the first thing pretty basic is having a lot more vegetables and even fruits, right? Really rotating, getting as like up to 20 or more than 20 a day, right? Different fruits, vegetables, legumes. That will help to increase the diversity of the microbiome.
[00:03:48] So like I said, we tend to focus on the same 10 to 12. All through the week, and we don't get much variety. And so things like polyphenols are really important to add, found in berries and herbs and spices and green [00:04:00] teas. The colored, like the purple grape. Um, they help to add these polyphenols which help to fuel the microbiome.
[00:04:08] You can also add in there, um. Dark chocolate and pomegranate, and like I said, red grape. So all of those help to give fuel for the microbiome. But overall, we need to increase the diversity of the vegetables and also our fruits as well. I'll always say we are possible and if you can for everything, do organic because the pesticides are basically antibiotics for the gut, and so they're going to kill off the good bacteria.
[00:04:34] So wherever you can and really aim to do that as much as you can is bioorganic in your fruits and veg.
[00:04:40] So, number one, like I said, was diversity. Number two is prebiotics. There's a lot of talk about probiotics. We know about different, you know, probiotics in a capsule that's worth 30 tubs or however much they say of yogurt, which is actually rubbish. Um, that's not true. 'cause even though the sta like the quantity of, beneficial [00:05:00] bacteria in the, in the capsule is higher, the utilization.
[00:05:04] And how much it has. An effect is much lower right than actually yogurt. So, or some of them. So bit of a marketing ploy. prebiotics are fuel for the microbiome. So probiotics, supplements good bacteria, but prebiotics feed what you currently have, right? And so nourish and fuel and give it energy for the current,
[00:05:25] microbiome that you have in your gut already.
[00:05:27] Now prebiotics also help to produce short chain fatty acids. And this is all important in the gut to reduce inflammation, to improve insulin sensitivity. So your glucose levels, it regulates your appetite, regulates your weight. It's important for gut lining and leaky gut and strengthening your immunity.
[00:05:44] so here are some examples and you can get this through your diet like sauerkraut and kefi and things like that help to provide a prebiotic. You can also take it in a supplement. So there are different supplements like goss, which is Galacto oligosaccharides or Foss, FOS, which is [00:06:00] fructooligosaccharides long names.
[00:06:00] But what they help to do is feed the good bacteria that's already there. So this is a really good baseline, like you don't have to start adding probiotics yet. You could literally do this, and it starts to nourish your gut microbiome, and you already start having the effects of improved immunity, less inflammation, better moods, because your current bacteria is getting the fuel that it needs.
[00:06:22] The other things included in there are resistant starch, you know, like cooled potatoes and rice, green bananas, beta glucans, like oats and mushrooms. So there's a lot of different foods that you can include, but also supplementation for the prebiotics really, really key.
[00:06:36] Pillar three is combining prebiotics with probiotics. So we've got the prebiotics, which is the fuel for the microbiome that you currently have, and then the probiotics, which is adding the microbiome into it. So the important thing to notice is most probiotics will give you the bacteria while you're taking it, and then when you stop.
[00:06:55] That stops too, right? And so that's why we need the prebiotics 'cause it'll keep feeding [00:07:00] what's there. ‘ cause otherwise we have to stay on probiotics for a very, very long time. So the prebiotics already talked about a really good baseline probiotic. I mean, you can get it through yogurt. Surprisingly.
[00:07:11] There's a lot of studies with your cult. different strains do different things. And you know, just like you have a herbal medicine dispensary with all these different herbs for different conditions, the same applies for probiotics. Every different strain is targeting something different, but you can get a really good baseline probiotic that is kind of like the core architecture of the microbiome.
[00:07:35] Or the microbiota and you're looking at a combination of, you know, your lactobacillus and your bifido together will help to provide that core architecture with the probiotics to really nourish the gut environment.
[00:07:46] And pillar number four is microbiome stability. So it's one thing to supplement your way through this. It's another thing to really pay attention to, well, what is breaking down the microbiome. So we need to encourage that environment in the gut. We need to feed [00:08:00] it, we need to nourish it, but then we also need to make sure we don't have those habits that destroy the microbiome.
[00:08:06] So medications like antibiotics will literally wipe out. Your gut flora. I mean, you've heard of this, but you probably don't know that one round of antibiotics can completely make some. Microbiome extinct, never to be returned, which is pretty scary. If you've had, uh, multiple courses of antibiotics or combination of antibiotics at one time, uh, for resistant bacteria, then that can even have, uh, you know, a more impact on the gut, right?
[00:08:34] Really wiping out the microbiome. Um, aspirin. And, um, painkillers will also have an effect on the gut microbiome, but the things that we have every day is processed foods, has huge impact on the microbiome, okay? Wiping out some of that microbiome, not extinct, but wiping it out, right? Um, sugary foods and processed foods, all of that have a negative impact on the gut, and we wanna [00:09:00] make sure that we keep that an absolute minimum or completely remove processed foods altogether from the diet.
[00:09:05] So that's one part. So we look at medication, we're looking at diet, but then we're also looking at stress because stress has a huge impact on the gut microbiome. It creates leaky gut, disrupts the internal environment and disrupts that natural balance, right? Sleep is also key. They found that, um, after 48 hours of poor sleep.
[00:09:22] Um, the gut microbiome is already altered, right? And so sleep is important and nervous system regulation. So making sure that your nervous system is not stuck in that high alert mode, which is something that I see all the time. Women become accustomed to that level because, you know, we get used to operating at that, that, you know, high alert zone, and we don't realize that it's, it's draining our system and also draining the microbiome.
[00:09:45] So just to rehash, number one, we want the diversity. We want more vegetables, more fruits, different ingredients, rotating foods, not having the same foods every week. You want to include prebiotics that. The things that fuel the microbiome that you currently, currently have, um, provided [00:10:00] nutrition help to grow, then prebiotics or symbiotics or adding the prebiotics and the probiotics together.
[00:10:06] Okay. So a really good baseline, probiotic I mentioned, and they work together to. Feed what you've got, create more. Okay. And then looking at pillar number four was looking at stability, looking at the other things that will wipe out your microbiome or even make it extinct, which is scary. So wherever you are at, if you've got gut symptoms or you feel like you've got brain fog and your moods are up and down, then I'd definitely be looking at your gut health.
[00:10:30] And these are the very simple things that you can do without starting any testing. Testing's always recommended. But if you're at a place where like, I'm not sure, but I wanna start on something, this is what I would recommend. I'd love to hear your comments below.
