the end of the spanish empire the end of the british. empire and. the. talk about the rise of one nation in this case and the fall of the ruling at the time. we've got all those kinds of things happening right now the people who are least informed about this. because the. news it's not a mere interest to actually prepare people for the us they're just considered to be expendable.

visionaries. but not always the same and figure out the rights and wrongs of the. best selling author. tim specter 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 math on the inside out that microbes bacteria and all that the micro biome has a direct influence on our hats so in the times of the pandemic the question arises obvious question what role does. play in protecting us against code that.

well it'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 is 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. being who ate having diabetes. generate socially deprived. are

also risk factors and our latest study which we haven't published yet is suggesting that who are 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 coated and having severe disease so you mentioned poor adak is there a direct link between the things that we eat and that microbe a only here health would it be fair to say that certain types of food can actually push our defenses against coffee and if if the yes there were any. at the moment the studies were done and 2000000 people through the very curvy symptom study up. based look at general patterns of association so we can't prove one leads to the other to do that you need to do

a proper randomized control trial so when you look at epidemiological associations . it's very we're building this picture up but we don't have 100 percent proof at the moment that we can say this particular food is backfill microbes and going to it is going to lead to. cohabit we know from other studies maybe we published a paper in nature medicine and in january showing that in a 1000 people we could link 15 bad bugs which are assessed with poor health with certain foods and overeating those foods side with for the 1st time just manage them in this area of science to link the foods you eat the microbes and health outcomes but it is too early to say in kobe exactly what they are ok

but what about those students that you sat there were better asked that they have all but skinny is an example. yet that they have that the ones that you it. pretty guests anyway says they are highly processed while you know there is offical 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 hoar quality foods where is the opposite is true of vegetables fruits olive oil. the all the foods that we know of generally good for your gut microbes what supplements vital means per day out igs i take probiotics if i add more probiotics

to manage wishing will it make me more resilient to the virus. wait. we looked at this. in 2000000 people who recorded when they had the kind of it or not and the studies are not clear cut about probiotics they do say it shows small effect in females but not in males so we suspect that could be selection bias and the problem in 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 part of growing 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 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 to all the future mums we start building our own unique my from a on that birth while travelling out of mother's womb great. kids born by c. section deprived of this are essential 1st those are my preferred that my my cripps this mean that my potential health risks could arise for them and if you choose there's increasing evidence that's true and that we know you know across most of

our 30 or 40 percent of women houses and 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 stare on will pick up the microbes from the nurse or the. skin of whoever it is so there will be difference in the 1st 3 years and. studies have shown that sincerity section babies are more likely to have allergies and more likely to have increased weight later in life so i think it is really important we don't we realize there's a downside to says erin sections is not a perfect operation the 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 definitely the danger so far is it is is cautioning against doing too many says erin sections because we could lead to epidemics of immune problems or. increase in weight in p.g. generations. can we understand the matter they aren't any standpoint we should be treating diseases like but they tinker in with. at the moment our knowledge is only really just starting in terms the micro biome so and the problem is that. 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 thought genetics was was like and that's

probably because as i said all of us are unique in our gut 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 gut microbes because they work as communities 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 brown's. transplant it they feces or someone is very healthy into someone who's very sick and basic transplant the microbes one person other that that 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 is there a link between our my for they own their own mental well being i mean this as healthy ghar with the stress make us feel better about life ourselves there is a definite link between our garden our brains and our gut microbes bridges chemicals that affect our brain our mood. they can change our diet coming levels in our brain and studies can regularly show that people are depressed or anxious have poor or 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

same extent as you can with traditional antidepressant drugs. so i think there's huge potential for improving mental health via either dot or for about 6 secure connection between work or biomedical and t.v. or are there bacteria inside it is that help us aid slower or help prop up some kind of ingenuity jihad. there probably are but we don't know what they are yet but we do know that there is a gradual decline in our micro biome probably from my the age around 50 and it at its sound 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 would say testing someone's 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 reject really reduce your risk of aging or having other immune problems. but you've done a larger research on a genetics as well as the mapper beyond 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 a healthy michael also change eames say 85 or see what number so my guy is a pumping happy new year and my brain and then does that give me new happy genes have a pass on to my children that's a nice thought. certainly in laughter dark tree hummels there is evidence you can do that. so in lat mice you can. you can change both the got microbes and the genes by giving them to changing that dot and the microbes of the mother will be a cost to the next generation as well as they chains so we think both are important

going forth and i personally think the micro biome is even more important than base every genetic changes now i've studied both and i've sent me now moving more towards the exciting that the micro biome genes rather not tweaking our own wants because in humans it's 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 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 but it's also causes a lot of stress to mothers as well because there's so much pressure on all not long 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 dot of pregnant women really is is really

important to me getting the sure break now whatever back we'll continue talking to inspector professor jaffe academia allergy and best selling author talking about what a fast food was on her way. to this. no one has ever cruised around the globe in an inflatable catamaran before. you usually stop. but just gives you. such a cruise you need a solid crew people you can share a foxhole with so to speak. to do with the political will to the bottom of the truck.

who is now the mother you will need the money. i just love them enough my food. but. when you. get the money for.

and we're back with tim specter professor of genetic epidemiologist bestselling author team now it's your latest book subtitle is why at almost everything we've been told about food it's wrong and you tackle a lot of this about 3rd including those about the role of breakfast and calories of sarah let me ask you this are do you have any commonly held lady is about fear there actually true yes there are a few. that in general eating large amounts of plums is good for your. ok so.

i think that's 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 reason i'm 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 that beauty apart from that. then you get the rest of it gets into gray areas and you start getting many people disagreeing on whether fats are good or bad or whether carbs are good or bad or whether he should use diet drinks or not with a meat is good or bad except to 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 if you didn't moderation well i'm biased because i like i like my renoir i'm so i have to claim that that's my disclaimer but that we did find that red wine has the highest number of police you know chemicals of any drug 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. several 1000 people in the u.s. in 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 ok in the earth is here a lot that fat and fried foods increase the risk of couriered cardiac disease and

therefore shorten your life span i was actually of this you know preconceptions about food there rock or is there any truth to them. i think we had too simplistic a view of fact and. you know 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 that's healthy but this 13 percent of that is saturated fat because it also has lots of other good fact in it it's healthy so. the evidence that if you just

had lots of artificial trans fats then you might find and 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 and this state where they have fat that comes as a crust when we fry or grill it is a good thing for you. in moderation it's a good thing i think if you had every day it would not be a good thing said it also depends on what else you put on your plate but i couldn't find anything to say to people who have small amounts of meat regulate have any health problems or talk. 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 fat but if you replaced it with bain's and lentils and salads and other healthy mediterranean 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 everyone 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 so actually 1000 chemicals it's not prefect 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. but apart from the food and what to eat there's also a question of when right sensage best to it a little bit off then others say tonight after 6 pm these are for us it is really a popular thing of it intermittent fasting when he chooses not to eat between 16 and 12 here next day i remember talking to his famous and cautious davis maybe you know he many 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 is 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 but we now know that having long fasting intervals is better for your metabolism so we should have less snacks and more serious meals move away from the us more love 6 meals a day go back to. 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. and it's 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 mend 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 russia but most mothers tell 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 pennies are shown. with this companies out he in the critic studies that most you know 2 thirds of people do metabolize better in the morning but a 3rd of people metabolize better in evening so actually it's personalized and i for one and i mentioned lost my food better kneading 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 being told that there's one size fits all so you're saying kimmy meals a day one light meal whether it's breakfast or dinner aligns 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 earlier than 6 pm or is it also very personal yes advice is ignoring the fact that everything is not personal and that we all have different cicada rhythms there are more people or even people who say you change with age. you know i'm sure we're seeing that people as they can hold 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 i think people need to experiment with 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 the good luck with the new research and i hope this program science. becomes huge. sooner than we expect because i believe. that's great news going very fast and i think the key is that if change the way people eat and they think about.

microbes you know we can make a big difference. they. have a great day. but back. to new gold rush is underway and gonna. quit workers are flocking to the gold fields hoping to strike it rich. as. children are torn between gold. was very poor i thought i was doing my best

to get back to school which side will have the strongest appeal. the headlines in our to you for palestinian children are killed in an airstrike after israel ramps up military pressure on garza the ground forces joining the air was sold at the border. there was bombing everywhere the planes were above us and the tanks in maybe were shelling so we could move children along would remain unmanned were screaming i have never seen anything worse than this in my life tel aviv is a busy city and only the roads are busy at this time is absolutely no one or nothing on the streets anymore air raid sirens are heard across television bringing life there to a standstill gaza militants nearly 1800 rockets have been fired into israel since tensions flared on monday.