well welcome to sophie good visionaries me so if you shop around say food is our primary source of energy growth but not always well jamie figure out the rights or wrongs about inspector professor of genetic epidemiology and bestselling author. tim spector professor of genetic epidemiology bestselling author it's great to have you with us today so tim you've done a lot of research on the micro biome which is essentially the microphonic inside our gut microbes but here and i know that the micro biome has a direct influence on our house so in the times of the pandemic the question arises obvious question growth what role does her brain play in protecting us against covert. well that's

a great question and we know that the micro biome community basically keeps our immune system in good health it keeps it in check from overreacting but also it it makes sure it's properly primed to defend against viruses and other bacteria so we know that people who have become very sick with coated end up in hospital have very poor looking got communities so that there's a definite relationship between being ill and your microbes being disturbed and we also know that many of the risk factors for having a poor got micro biome like. bigger who ate having diabetes. they generate socially deprived that are also risk factors and our latest study which we haven't published yet is suggesting

that want diet is a very major risk factor as well so all those 4 things together point to your gut microbes health being very important factor in protecting you against getting infected kind of it and having severe disease since you mentioned poor jack it's very direct link between the things that we eat and that matter may only have our health would it be fair to say that certain types of food can actually boost our defenses against coffee and if the fiesta where any. at the moment the studies were done and 2000000 people through the very curvy symptom study up. based look in general have patterns of associations so we can't prove one leads to the other to do that you need to do

a proper randomized control trial so we'd look at epidemiological associations. it's very we're building this picture up but we don't have 100 percent proof at the moment but we can say this particular fish is backfill microbes and skin is going to lead to. cohabit but we measure other studies make we published a paper in nature medicine and in january showing that in a 1000 people we could link 15 bad bugs which are especially poor health with certain foods and overeating those foods served with for the 1st time just managed in it in this area of science to link the foods you eat the microbes and health outcomes as but it is too early to say in kind of exactly what they are i think that one of those things that you sat there were better as that than about

but skinny here's an example. you had that there that the ones that you it. pretty guests anyway says they are highly processed what you know is often called junk foods they are the ones with 20 chemicals in it the ones who artificial sweeteners extracted sugar extracted salt with. most of the contents that don't come from whole foods that they are generally low in fiber and they may contain things like highly processed meats and general whole quality foods where is the opposite is true of best of all those fruits olive oil. the all the fish that we know a generally good feel got microbes what about supplements vida means per day are exciting if i have more per day ideas to manage mission will it make me more

resilient to the virus. we. we don't have this app in 2000000 people who recorded well they had of kind of it or not and the studies are not clear cut about probiotics they do see it show small effect in in females but not in males so we suspect that could be selection bias and the problem of probiotics generally is that everyone has a very different. got my crypt community so you and i will only share maybe 20 percent of our god microbes so it's very hard to know why we should take the same probiotic if our community is very different it's a light planting seeds in you know one in africa and one in. siberia that the environments can be different so they won't grow the same so

that's possibly probiotics we haven't yet managed to personalize them but i think that that's definitely the future so it at the moment is a bit of a lottery whether probiotics will work for you or not depending on which ones you pick and whether you pick multiple species and how they together work in your in your gut so here's a question that is very relevant he of the future mums we start building our own unique microbe a on that birth while travelling out of mother's womb great. kids born by c. section deprived of this their essential 1st as a microbus like my cripps is this mean that my potential health risks could arise for them any future there's increasing evidence that's true and that we know you know across most about 30 or 40 percent of women that have susteren

sections now it's become nearly a routine procedure in some countries and the basically we all get our microbes from our mother. when we're born naturally and suzanne section means that the baby is born sterile and will pick up the microbes from the nurse or the. skin of whoever it is so they'll be different in the 1st 3 years and. studies have shown that says very section babies are more likely to have allergies and more likely to have increased weight later in life so i think it is very important we don't we realize there's a downside to this as erin's actions it's not a perfect operation that saves lives for most for many women and all says another reason to emphasize the importance of breastfeeding which is another way that

microbes can get into babies as well so the mother can transfer her microbes through breast milk as well and that's another way of keeping the baby healthy but i definitely think the danger so far is it is is cautioning against a too many says aaron sections because we could lead to epidemics of immune problems or increase in weight in future generations. can we understand the lack of a antone standpoint when to be treating diseases like but they tinker in with. at the moment our knowledge is only really just starting in terms of the micro biome so and the problem is that there are there are a few bugs that we know tend to go with many diseases but there isn't generally one bug that causes one disease like we saw genetics was was like and that's probably because as i said all of us are unique you know i got microchips which means that

all our microbes which are basically chemical factories or produce different. chemicals in our blood and so. i think we'll be looking to change the whole function of the guard microbes because they work as community is not as single single i i don't suppose pieces so it's groups of them we need to change so i think we're way off doing that apart from possibly with some microbial transplants what we call who shots drowns. trance pop it they feces or someone is very healthy into someone who's very sick and basic transplant the microbes one person other that that's has been shown to work in a number of diseases but in a way it's a very crude jokes we don't know. what the key microbes are that are are doing

that and it is that he doesn't work for every disease only so far whereas for about 2 diseases we know very well the rest are still in trials. is there or is there a link between our my per day omero mental well being i mean this as healthy guy with the stress there make us feel better about life ourselves. there is a definite link between our gotten our brains and our gut microbes bridges chemicals that affect our brain our mood. that they can change our diet coming levels in our brain and studies can regularly show that people are depressed or anxious have pore got microbes and when you give people with depression probiotics or you give them a healthy mediterranean style diet you can improve their mental state to the

semi stance as you can with traditional antidepressant drugs. so i think there's huge potential for improving mental health via either diet or for about 6 secure connection between marker biomedical and t.v. . are there bacteria inside is that help as a slower or help prop up some kind of when she did 18. that probably are we don't know what they are yet but we do know that there is a a gradual decline in our in our micro biome probably from not the age around 50 and it's so rates as you get over 75 and so many people who are very elderly do have a deficiency of many microbes and if you test people 75 you can

pretty much predict how long they will live depending on what their microbes are like so that's why i always say testing so much microbes is a much better idea of the health and testing that d.n.a. . because the d.n.a. doesn't change all your life and it's not as predictive as we thought whereas your gut microbes will give you a very good prediction of what's going to happen in the next 5 years and i think this is going to be a really exciting area of science moving forward because the nice thing about it is on my genes we can intervene with specific diets or with specific probiotics or other medicines to improve those micro and you know really reduce your risk of aging or having other immune problems. but you've done a larger research genetics as well as the map or they are now we know that scientists are looking into this and finding out late that stressful events for example i don't know can actually influence the genes you have change them and then

you pass those on to your offspring but can keeping ringback a healthy microbe also change eames say 85 or see what number so my gut is a pumping happy new year and my brain and then does that give me at new happy genes having passed on to my children that's a nice thought. certainly in latin largely animals there is evidence you can do that. so in lat mice you can. you can change both the god microbes and the genes by giving them to change in a dot and that is the microchips of the mother will be a cost of next generation as well as they genes so we think both are important going forth and i personally think the micro biome is even more important than base

epigenetic changes in our lives i studied both and i'm 70 now moving more towards the exciting but the micro biome genes rather not creating our own ones because in humans is be very hard to study that because the changes are very small and subtle whereas the changes you get with your microbes are very big and increasingly visible but i think the idea we can pass good health on to the next generation is definitely you know an important concept there's also because there's a lot of stress to mothers as well because there's so much pressure on. modern mothers now in terms of that health that i would want to put too much strain on them but clearly they need to look after their own got microbes as well as their own genes now more than ever and so the dots of pregnant women really is it is

really important to me getting to share preparation all webber back we'll continue talking to teams that are vicious or japhet to do we are gene best selling author talking about what a fast food was an hour away. with this. you'll be a reflection of reality. in a world transformed. what will make you feel safe from. tyson nation community. are you going the right way or are you being led. directly. was his fate.

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3rd team not your latest book title is why not almost everything we've been told about food is wrong and you tackle a lot of myths about that including those about the role of breakfast and calories and sat around let me ask you this are there any commonly held he is about food there are actually true yes there are a few. that in general eating. amounts of plums is good for your. ok so. i think that's the that's the main one and most experts even though they are disagree on most things will agree that fruits and most fruits and vegetables eaten you know in resume ounce are generally healthy for you and. most people also agree that he having too much to be sugary drinks.

all. candies except are all bad for you and bad for your teeth apart from that. then you get the rest of it gets into gray areas and you start getting many people disagreeing on the fats a good or bad or whether carbs are good or bad or whether he should use diet drinks or not with the meat is good or bad except for say that but it's important to realize there is some part of musician everybody agrees on and that's we should be eating more fruits and vegetables whether good french why is it considered sugary drink or is it a good thing for you think did not ration well i'm biased because i like i like my renoir i'm so i have to claim that it's my disclaimer but we did find that red wine has the highest number of police you know chemicals of any drink

and probably feels all of the defense chemical implants that microbes love basically like rocket fuel for your gut microbes so we did a study showing on several 1000 people in the u.s. and the u.k. saying that wine drinkers red wine drinkers had a healthier micro biome the nonwhite drinkers so i'm a big fan of red wine in moderation but not all my colleagues agree he was a hero a lot that fat and fried foods increase the risk of couriered cardiac disease and therefore shorten your life span i was actually so of this you know preconceptions about food they are wrong or is there any truth to them. i think we had too simplistic of you a fact and you know that the american scientists started this about 30 years ago saying fact was bad for us and gradually that evidence has gotten less and less

clear as we've moved on and what is important is to realize that there are good fats and there are bad fats but also you can have good and bad fats in the same food so you take a really healthy food like extra virgin olive oil for example that everyone agrees is healthy but this 13 percent of that is saturated fat because it knows and has lots of other good fats in it it's healthy so. the evidence that if you just had lots of artificial trans fats then you might find in really cheap. cookies all fried food is bad for you that's probably true but in general there's nothing wrong with fat and that's. great angus state where we have fat that comes as a crust when we friday or grill it is

a good thing for you. in moderation it's a good thing i think if you have that every day it would not be a good thing said it also depends on what else you put on your plate. i couldn't find anything to say to people who have small amounts of meat regulate have any health problems at all. if they have plenty of plants on their plate as well plenty of diversity so really all the new evidence is pointing that you know we should just isolate one thing is good or bad because it depends what else you replace it with. if you replace fat with refined carbs like potatoes or rice then actually the replacement is worse than the fact that if you replaced it with bain's and lentils and salads and other

healthy marriage rayon type products it would be a good change so it's pretty outdated this idea that you know low fat foods are good high fat foods are bad actually the food companies have made sure that they have they make cheaper and even more low fat products that are probably worse for us than the originals. and so this is why we have to change our concepts you know it's not all about fat good fat bad carbs good carbs bad it's much more complex than not and it does depend on iran getting back to understand not really what is good quality food what's a balanced diet and it's not about these 3 macronutrients because food is actually 30000 chemicals it's not 3 things and this is what the complexity of the science is now showing us and it's a very exciting time but we have to really rethink how area. well apart

from the food and what to eat there's also the question of why right sensage best to it a little bit off there say tonight after 6 pm these are for also this really popular thing of it intermittent fasting where you choose not to eat between 6 pm and 12 here next day i remember talking to his famous and causes degas maybe you know him and he told me that it's much more important to have meals the same time every day and nothing in between meals what do you think makes more sense. which theory. well i think we have to the old theory that we should eat little and often is rubbish you know ok that was a based on american study about 30 years ago of 10 people and that was the idea that you just wanted less stress on your body so you kept it national in time we now know that having long fasting intervals is better for your metabolism so we

should have less next and more serious meals move away from the us more love 6 meals a day go back to you know apps to 2 main meals a day. plus or minus breakfast and that's because they got microbes do better when they have a rest of it least 12 hours. is easier to do that overnight but it could be any other time because your health of your microbes improve if they have a rest they can then clean your got wall and that metabolic rate much much healthier the other reason is that we're always told certainly in the u.k. the breakfast is the most important meal of the day i don't know about russian but most mothers tell bet children you must eat breakfast before you go to school it's really important you know for everything and some people are not hungry in the

morning when they wake up they just don't feel like eating and yet we force people to eat and us studies have shown. with this companies out he ended predicts studies that most. you know 2 thirds of people do metabolize better in the morning but a 3rd of people metabolize better in the evening so actually it's personalized and i for one i'm not i'm a tad lost my food better needing in the morning so that really means i should have a bigger evening meal and skip breakfast or have a lighter lighter breakfast most days so i think people need to experiment themselves about what works for them rather than being told that this one size fits all so you're saying kill me meals a day one light meal whether it's breakfast or dinner aline's and no snacks in between that's what the scientist is telling people yes the does it matter what

time you practice because i also heard like oh you shouldn't really early in the morning or he should meet your dinner later than 6 pm or is it also a very personal yes or advice is ignoring the fact that everything's not personal and that we all have different cicada rhythms there are more people eating people and also you change with age. you know i'm sure we're seeing that people as they can older metabolize less well in the mornings and better in the evenings and all the studies were based on young. 20 year olds and so can be applied to the most of the population so i think even each experiment of what makes them feel better you know listen to their own bodies and increasingly there are. commercial tests out there that people can do it how to weapons out things like live continuous glucose monitors and other personalized kits that you can get to

see how your personal metabolism is the different times of the day and this will be mainstream within 5 years. all right tim it's been such a pleasure talking to you very very interesting it's a topic that always fascinates me i will show good luck with the new research and i hope this program science becomes huge much sooner than we expect because i believe. that's great news going very fast and i think the key is that if the thing change the way people eat and they think about . themselves they're eating for microbes and you know we can make a big difference. thank you a lot to have a great day. right back. but

if you work for the cue for the work of chairs. you don't got the idea for a major overhaul of the ocean floors and executed into it so all who. fortunately through you that are saying no was listening because i've been wanting to feed you. fish old afficionado for a bill i'm wondering should i get these the kids at the center of that issue or a small girl who was just from the us wasn't the she. would scold once this issue of. the office really. is not out of the store to get to the beach and if we did those meals are by as of much of what you mean yes the. door was

a shed but they say you could be when you get out of the scott. peterson you're sure couldn't just read some reason on what she has a mistress. is your media a reflection of reality. in a world transformed. what will make you feel safe from. isolation or community. are you going the right way or are you being lead somewhere. direct. what is true what is faith. in the world corrupted you need to descend. to join us

in the death. or a mate in the shallows. israel ramps up military pressure against the gaza strip with ground forces joining the air assault on the border with children caught in the crossfire. legend of peace activists for water. when we're talking about gaza which will barrel full of fish and israelis shooting into. it disappears the city and only the roads up busy at this time is absolutely no one or nothing on the streets while their sirens are heard across television bringing life there to a standstill because of militants say nearly 1800 rockets have been fired into israel since tensions flared on monday.