In this episode, we talk with Dr. Kelly Kennedy about the importance of the gut microbiome and the role it plays in our health and well-being. We also talk about the impact of stress and aging on the gut and how it affects the brain.
00:00:56.900When you put food in your gut, it is forcing the gut to work.
00:01:01.580And so, you do cause some amount of inflammation in the gut no matter what.
00:01:06.300If you're eating an unhealthy diet and you're overweight or obese, that inflammation gets worse.
00:01:11.160And what I mean by inflammation is your gut epithelial cells open up and they release something that's in the gut because you have trillions of bacteria in there.
00:01:51.980There are studies showing that if you inject LPS into a normal healthy person or a placebo saline control, they get inflammation in their brain.
00:02:06.640So it does affect, you know, inflammation in the brain, which then leads to Alzheimer's disease.
00:02:11.360And then the gut microbiome itself, which is specifically what you're asking about, is also there's a direct line, you know, there's like neurons actually in the gut.
00:02:21.200And so there's like this vagal nerve that's connected, you know, from the brain all the way to the gut.
00:02:26.260And the bacteria in your gut communicate with that, with the brain through this vagus nerve.
00:02:30.860And so the different types of bacteria also seem to play a role.
00:02:33.560Like certain types of bacteria in the gut can cause more anxiety.
00:02:36.680And there's all these studies that have been done in animals where you can take a mouse that's more of an anxious phenotype mouse and take their gut bacteria and transplant it into a mouse that doesn't have anxiety.
00:02:47.200And you can cause them to have anxiety, right?
00:02:50.780You can take bacteria from a really robust stealth.
00:02:54.220Like they're, you know, they don't have that anxiety and put it into a mouse with anxiety and lower their anxiety.
00:02:59.640And that all comes down to, you know, there's neurotransmitters that are being stimulated with respect to the types of bacteria in your gut.
00:03:07.220It's the family and friends event at Shoppers Drug Mart.
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00:03:51.480So there are a variety of tests that are consumer available out there.
00:03:54.900I would say that those tests are, it's hard to know what to do with that data.
00:03:59.500So you can get a test done and get some data back and then some, you know, you might think you need to eat a certain diet or whatever.
00:04:07.500I would say we're in our infancy of really, truly, accurately being able to do a test at home on the individual level and figure out like what to do with that data.
00:04:17.080What I will say is that what we do know is that there are certain foods that you can eat that are known to be beneficial to promote the growth of healthy probiotic types of bacteria and decrease the growth of more of the pathogenic type of bacteria.
00:04:32.160I know you're a broccoli person, if I'm not mistaken.
00:04:52.680Yeah, so like you eat like a blueberry and it's like the fiber, the fermentable fiber is in the skin of the fruit.
00:04:57.420Believe it or not, vegetables are mostly the insoluble type of fiber.
00:05:01.640That's the kind of fiber that's important for moving stuff through the system.
00:05:04.780You want to get stuff, you know, out, which is also important.
00:05:07.680But the fermentable type of fiber is the stuff that's actually viscous and it's fermented by bacteria.
00:05:13.420And this actually allows the beneficial type of bacteria, the probiotic type of bacteria, to outcompete some of the pathogenic type of bacteria.
00:05:21.480So you're having, you know, a better gut microbiome, which is going to basically help you lower inflammation when you eat food because it helps lower that, you know, the gut from opening up and releasing lipopolysaccharide into your blood system.
00:05:33.660It's called the postprandial inflammatory response.
00:05:36.460It's after you eat a meal, inflammation.
00:05:38.700That's why people feel sleepy after a meal.
00:05:42.540Inflammation makes you feel sleepy because it's taking energy away from your brain and it's also increasing these cytokines that make you sleepy.
00:05:51.020So you want to lower that post-inflammatory response after a meal.
00:05:53.740So that would be, again, you want to basically have the right types of foods.
00:05:59.780Exercise also, by the way, helps strengthen the gut so that it's less likely to be what's called leaky gut, right, that permeability of the gut is another thing to do.
00:06:08.820Some people can supplement with probiotics.
00:06:10.680I would say that it's kind of flow-through.
00:06:12.940If you supplement with healthy probiotics, the minute you stop supplementing with them, you're going to be back.