This week I wanted to tackle the topic of gut health.
We are almost at the end of Season 2 and I have yet to do an episode about gut health, so I decided the best way to start was with a high level overview of gut health.
This one is for everyone, whether you’ve been working on your gut health for years, or if the concept is completely new to you and you’re just wanting to get started.
Regardless of who you are, your gut health is absolutely essential for your well being and your ability to perform and your absolute best.
In this episode I share:
- What gut health actually is
- What influences our gut health
- The gut-brain connection and how powerful it is
- Ways you can measure your microbiome
- 5 non dietary strategies you can try to maximise your gut health
- The 6 dietary strategies to maximise our gut health
- How the 6 categories of plants help our gut health
- The importance of your fibre intake
- Why resistance starch is gold star fuel for our colonic bacteria
- How probiotics and fermented foods help
- Plant compounds that are really good for your gut
- Why our gut needs hydration
Key Quotes
“We don’t want our food and waste sitting in our body for longer than it should”
“What we consume plays a huge impact on our gut health.”
Episode Resources
Jessica Spendlove Website – www.jessicaspendlove.com
Jessica Spendlove Keynotes – JessicaspendloveKeynotes – Jessica Spendlove
The High-Performance Profile Quiz https://jessicaspendlove.com/quiz/
Jess Spendlove Instagram https://www.instagram.com/jess_spendlove_dietitian/
Jess Spendlove LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessica-spendlove-64173bb8/
About Your Host
Jessica Spendlove | Wellbeing Speaker & High Performance Strategist
Jess Spendlove is an international wellbeing and high performance speaker, coach, and advisor. With over 15 years of experience across corporate leadership, elite sport and the military she is known for helping ambitious leaders and teams optimise energy, build resilience, and sustain peak performance.
As one of Australia’s leading performance dietitians and a trusted voice in executive wellbeing, Jess delivers science-backed strategies that empower individuals, teams and organisations to thrive under pressure and achieve long-term success.
Episode Transcript
The following transcript has been automatically generated and not checked for accuracy
Jess (00:14.191)
Team, today I wanted to do an episode all about gut health, or at least what I would call Gut Health 101. It’s something which is coming up a lot with my clients in my group coaching program. It’s something which is really, it’s something a lot of people are paying attention to. So it’s something a lot of people are paying, it’s something a lot of people are paying attention to and rightfully so.
The more we find out about it, the more it really seems to be.
The more you can live a life which is centered around optimizing your gut health, the healthier and higher performing you will be.
Jess (01:07.663)
So to get into it, I thought a good place to start would be to define what gut health is and what the gastrointestinal tract is because I think they get used a little bit interchangeably. So your gastrointestinal tract or your GI tract is essentially everything from the entry to your body, so your mouth, which goes to your esophagus, your stomach, your small intestines, your colon, and then exit.
So all of that is your gastrointestinal tract and then your gut health what we’re really talking about there is the motility and the movement and the absorption and the optimization of your gut microbiome. So your microbiome is the environment of all of the different bacteria that live in our body that are particularly within our colon. So we’re really talking about bacteria, archaea,
We’re talking about trillions of different organisms and bacteria.
Now, the function of the GI tract is really about the digestion and the absorption of nutrients. It’s about getting the food that we eat, extracting those nutrients and getting them around our body. It’s also about our immune function. So 70 % of our immune system is within our gut. So we can start to see how if our gut health and our gut microbiome
is optimized, we’re going to be healthier. So we can start to see why gut health is so incredibly important. The other function of the gut is the clearing of waste from our body. So when everything’s operating and functioning well, we’re clearing the buildup of waste from our body regularly, comfortably, and with ease.
Jess (03:09.582)
So that’s just to give you a little bit of an idea of the gastrointestinal tract and gut health. And while they are similar, they’re not exactly one. So that’s just to give you a bit of an idea when talking, when using the terms GI tract and gut health, what people are actually referring to there.
Jess (03:36.174)
Now, when we start to understand what the gut influences, we really start to get a picture on why this really, why we should really be living this gut health focused approach to our health and our wellbeing. In the short term, it can impact things like our mood, it can impact our weight, it can impact our digestion, our absorption of nutrients.
But longer term, it can also impact our immune function, our risk of autoimmune diseases, cognitive decline, allergies, risks of certain types of cancers, arthritis. It can definitely impact our mental health and we’ll touch on the relationship between the gut brain connection shortly. But when I call out these things, you can really start to understand why that at the core of living, at the core of healthy living is optimal gut health.
Now, when it comes to what actually influences our gut health, there are a lot of things. It’s basically anything that we ingest, which is both good for our gut and not so good. So some of the things, and we’ll be exploring these in more detail later in the episode, but fermented foods, prebiotics, probiotics, plants, toxins, medications, infections, smoking, alcohol, hydration, pathogens, polyphenols, stress, sleep, fibre.
exercise, genetics, how we were fed, how we were born, our consumption of colours and artificial sweeteners. So you can see there’s a lot of things there I’ve just rattled off, many of which are within our control, some of them are not, but what we wanna be focusing on is those within our control. Now, when I talk about what influences our gut, that was a list of what influences it both positively,
and negatively. And the focus of today’s conversation is definitely going to be on the behaviors and the foods that you should be eating to optimize your gut health, as opposed to focusing on what we shouldn’t. But if there’s interest and this episode goes well, I’m very happy to record a few episodes on gut health where we will dive deeper on a lot of these topics in more detail. But I thought a really great place to start was an over level, high level.
Jess (05:53.841)
I thought a really great place to start was an overview of gut health and what I like to call Gut Health 101 and what I like to call an introduction to gut health.
Jess (06:16.593)
Now, some of you might have heard about the gut -brain connection, which is a bi -directional communication between the gut and the brain via neurotransmitters, immune cells, and gut microbes. The gut -brain connection influences our mood, stress, anxiety, and the risk of mental illness. Our gut microbiome is a key factor in this picture, and basically our brain and our gut have the same cells.
They also are constantly talking to us. The gut produces neurotransmitters like serotonin and dopamine as well as 30 other neurotransmitters. So we can start to see why what is going on in our gut impacts what is going on in our mind. And similarly, what is going on in our mind in terms of our stress levels, our anxiety, our mental wellbeing can impact what is going on in our gut. Now, interestingly,
some of you may or may not be aware that when you are more stressed, you may find that you have more gut issues. So some of you might be blessed and might never have gut issues. Some of you may regularly have them. And if that’s the case, we’re gonna be talking about not just dietary, but non dietary factors because stress management is a really big piece of optimizing your gut health. But if you’re someone that sits in the middle, which is a lot of people, myself included admittedly, that
If you find that you have gut symptoms from time to time, but you’re not exactly sure and you’re addressing it from a dietary lens, but you’re not addressing it from a stress lens, well, I think you really need to think about that because like we’ve just said, the gut and the brain are constantly talking to each other. They both have the capacity to influence each other, both positively and negatively.
They both influence each other both positively and negatively. So what is going on in our minds if we’re feeling stressed, even if it’s a lot of little micro stresses can show up in other parts of our body. And one of those areas which is very common is the gut and gut and unfavorable gut issues. So stress management is a huge piece when it comes to optimizing your gut health and managing your overall mental wellbeing.
Jess (08:43.826)
Now, before we move on to strategy, before we move on to the strategies that you can put into place, because I know that’s what you’ve all come here for. You’ve all come here for the tactical and the practical advice on just what can I actually do to optimize my gut health? I’ve heard it from other people. I’m hearing it from you. It’s really important. What do we do? But before we move on there, I know I mentioned the gut microbiome before, but I just really wanna make it crystal clear on what it is.
your gut microbiome is the environment of your gut health. It’s the environment of the trillions of bacteria that are living there. So if we just imagine something like the Daintree rainforest where there’s all of these beautiful different species of plants and animals all living there harmoniously looking absolutely stunning. Well, that is what we want to envisage what our microbiome is or an optimal microbiome where we’ve got hundreds and where we’ve
Jess (09:46.931)
Sorry Sam, the internet was just playing up. So that is what you can envisage your microbiome as. It’s this environment of all of the trillions of bacteria that live down there. And what we want it to look like is the Daintree rainforest, not the Sahara desert. So we want lots of different types of bacteria flourishing. Now, for those of you that are interested, because I know that there’ll be some people listening thinking,
Is there a way I can actually test or measure my microbiome? And I feel like we’re kind of jumping to the end before we actually get to the tactics. But for the people that are that way inclined, yes, there are ways you can measure your microbiome. The first thing I would say is you just wanna pay attention to how regularly you actually go into the bathroom. Is it regular, is it consistent, or is it sporadic and all over the place? That’s really the first place to pay attention to.
The next thing though, if you do wanna do a test, the company that I recommend to my clients is called Microba for those people in Australia. That would be my go -to company in Australia to do a microbiome testing. So that’s Microba, -I -C -R -O -B -A. You can go to their website, you can order a kit, they will send it to you. Yes, it involves doing a stool sample if that is what you wanna do.
but you will send that off and they will send you back a really big report which will give you an overview of where your microbiome is sitting compared to the general public. It will also give you a breakdown of all of the different strains of bacteria so you can see if you are good levels in some, inadequate in others. And the best thing about that, it will actually recommend what foods you should eat more of.
to increase those levels of the good bacteria that you may need to increase. So if that’s of interest to you, that is available. The company is called Microba. You can head along and do that. But what I will say for most people is before you go and do that, just apply some of the strategies that I’m gonna cover off here today and see how you feel. Know that that is making a difference.
Jess (12:18.324)
Alrighty, so when it comes to the strategies, I wanna break them into two categories. So the first one I just wanna quickly touch on are the non dietary strategies to maximize gut health. As I talked about, the gut brain connection is something which we need to be aware of and we need to understand. And it’s also why what is going on with our stress levels has such a big impact on what is going on in our gut.
and our gut health. So some of the ways that you can optimize, that you can maximize your gut health, not including, not even factoring in the nutritional strategies we’re going to talk about include exercising, include sleep optimization, include relaxation practices. So maybe breath work or yoga where you can really down -regulate your central nervous system. Also spending some time in nature.
and journaling. Now, you don’t have to go and do all of those things, but each of those strategies has been shown to have a positive impact on our gut health. So pick one, start there, maybe it’s sleep. If you haven’t optimized your sleep and you listen to this podcast, you’ve heard me talk about it so much, it’s a third of your life. It’s a non -negotiable behavior you have to do every day.
When we learn to sleep better or we optimize our sleep, every other area of our life improves. So if this isn’t optimized, start there. Start with a wind down routine. Start with a consistent bedtime or as consistent as possible. Exercise. If you’re not moving your body every day, what can you do to change that? While I have some people that listen to this and they’re training like athletes, they’re going to the gym a few times a week and lifting heavy weights.
They’re doing high intensity cardio. They’re training for endurance events. That’s great for them. But I also know there’s probably some people here that think I really should be moving more. I’m not even going for a walk each day. And for those people, I would challenge you to think about what is going to work for you. Can we introduce a lunchtime walk? Can we introduce a morning or an afternoon walk or a wind down walk? Is there something we can do to just get some movement happening while we can kind of build that?
Jess (14:44.885)
repetition of that becoming something that you just do. Time in nature, breath work, we’ve covered breath work extensively in other episodes, so I’m not gonna talk about that. If you wanna know more, I’d suggest you listen to the Sophie Scott episode where we spoke quite a bit about that, and journaling at the end of the night where you can switch off your thoughts, get to bed, and also just get some of the subconscious, maybe micro -stresses that you’ve got going on in your life out onto paper.
so you can down -regulate yourself and you can get a better night’s sleep. So there’s five non -dietary strategies that you might like to try to maximize your gut health. Like I said, we’re not doing all of them. Maybe pick one of them or two of them. One might be a daily thing, one might be a weekly thing, and just think about what you can layer into your routine.
Jess (15:42.549)
Now, as I mentioned at the start, what we consume plays a huge impact on our gut health. So the rest of the episode, I wanna spend talking about the dietary strategies to maximize gut health. When it comes to nutrition, there’s six I really wanna focus in on here today. So I’ll rattle them off. So I’ll list those off and then I’ll dive into each one. So the first one are our…
The first one are our plants, and this is something I’m gonna take you through called the Super 6. Then we’ve also got fibre. We wanna look at both soluble and insoluble fibre. Then we’ve got our resistant starch and our prebiotic fibres. We’ve got our probiotics and fermented foods. We’ve got our phytochemicals and our polyphenols, and then we’ve also got hydration. So they’re the six categories that I’m gonna take you through.
We’ll go through each one individually. The first one I wanna talk about are our plants. So these are anything that are grown from the ground. There’s six categories here.
Jess (16:56.885)
There’s six categories. They are fruits, so apples, bananas, pears, et cetera. Vegetables, so carrots, pumpkin, zucchini, capsicum, that type of thing. Nuts and seeds, so almonds, cashews, chia seeds, flax seeds, sesame seeds, those kinds of things. Whole grains, this includes barley,
oats, rye, wheat, so all of our grains, rice, quinoa. Then we’ve got our lentils and our legumes. So these are things like our chickpeas, our kidney beans, our fava beans, our red lentils, our brown lentils, that kind of thing. And then we’ve got our herbs and spices. So these are things like parsley, thyme.
Jess (17:55.705)
Yeah, these are things like parsley, thyme, herbs and spices. These are things like parsley, thyme, curcumin, things that we would flavor our food or put on top of our food.
Now, when it comes to plants, the significance of these is that they contain fibers, they contain phytochemicals, they contain all of these nutrients which are amazing for our body. But the most important thing is these are the types of foods that our good gut bugs like to feast on. Now, there was a landmark study done about five years ago now called the American Gut Project, which found, which looked, which
looked at millions of people’s microbiome and what they were able to define was that people who consume 30 or more plants a week have more diverse microbiomes than those who ate 10 or less. So this is where we started to get an idea that eating more diverse plant foods was really important for our gut microbiome.
Jess (19:02.23)
Now you might hear that number 30 and think, my goodness, that sounds like so much. So what I would encourage you to do is to write down a few days or a week’s worth of food. You would think about those categories that I’ve just mentioned. So once again, fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds, whole grains, lentils and legumes, herbs and spices, and you would count how many different types you have. Now, when it comes to getting to the 30,
It is important to say that each type of fruit, vegetable, nut, seed, whole grain, lentil and legume is one plant point. So for example, if I had a banana on my breakfast every morning, that’s one plant point. But if I change that each morning and said banana Monday, apple Tuesday, strawberries Wednesday, blueberries Thursday, blackberries Friday, passion fruits on Saturday,
pears, I don’t think I said them on Sunday, if I did swap it for another fruit, then it would be seven different plant points across the week. So the type, this is where we’re not just talking about quantity and how much you’re eating each day, this is where we’re talking about quality and diversity. So switching up what you’re having or looking for ways to boost up those plant points is really important.
When it comes to our herbs and spices, they’re only worth a quarter of a point each. So they’re not worth a full point. So if you’re doing, you know, making a curry and you’ve got four different spices in there, then that’s one plant point. But all of those other categories are one plant point per individual item that you’ve consumed. So I’d really encourage you to do that. Maybe write down what you’re having, figure out how many plants, and then think about ways that you can boost them up.
Some of my favorite ways that I recommend to people are to swap single items for mixed and multi. So rather than having almonds with an afternoon snack, go for mixed nuts. Rather than just putting blueberries on your breakfast, go for mixed berries. Rather than doing brown rice, get mixed multigrain rice. So you can start to see by just doing these little tweaks and swaps, you can really boost up those plant points.
Jess (21:21.046)
One of the other great ways is to make like a diversity mix where you’ve got your nuts and your seeds. So you might put five different nuts, five different seeds in a jar, and then you might sprinkle them on your breakfast or on your salads or smoothies or soups or anything. And that can really boost up the plant diversity of those meals without really needing to do too much more. Also adds a delicious crunch as well.
Jess (21:52.472)
Alrighty, the next dietary strategies to maximize your gut health I wanna take you through is looking at your fiber intake. And here we’re going to look at our soluble, our insoluble and our resistant starch. So our soluble fibers are things like fruits, vegetables, oats, lentils and legumes. These are really important, they help reduce cholesterol, but the soluble fibers help foods ferment in the colon.
So they help them sit there, they help them ferment. And when they’re sitting there fermenting, it means the good bacteria have the opportunity to feast on them, which is really, really great. So that’s really important for our gut health.
Then we’ve got our insoluble fiber. So our insoluble fibers are when we think about our dark brown grainy breads, our sourdoughs, our brown rice, our bran, our oats, sorry, our bran, sorry, don’t say oats in there, Sam. When it comes to insoluble fibers, these are when we’re thinking about the really dark brown and like
brandy type food. So things like our All Brand, Brand, Rice, our really dark kind of rye grainy breads. So these are really important. Our insoluble fibers are really important because they’re a bulking agent and they also help move the food and the waste through our body. A small part of these are fermentable, but their large role is in motility and bowel frequency, which is also really important. We don’t want our
food and waste sitting in our body for longer than it should, because that’s building up toxins, which is not supportive of our gut health. So there’s a balance between the food sitting in our colon and fermenting and the bacteria getting what they need from it to it then sitting there too long and it becoming problematic. So that’s why the soluble and the insoluble fiber are both really important. They both play a really, really important role. And then we’ve got something called our resistant starch.
Jess (24:02.04)
This is our gold star fuel for our colonic bacteria. These are our prebiotic fibers. These are the favorite foods of our good gut bacteria. When they eat these foods, they produce something called short chain fatty acids, which are very protective of our gut health and something that we really wanna be focusing on. So our foods that are high in resistance starch are things like our lentils and our legumes again.
They’re just such great foods. They have so many good properties in them. We’ve got our cooked and cooled rice, pasta and potatoes. So these are our starchy vegetables or starchy foods which we have cooked and cooled. You can then either eat them cool in a salad or reheat them, but by cooking and cooling them, it increases the resistance starch, which is something that we wanna do. And then it also includes green bananas. So they don’t sound particularly tasty to eat.
but you can get green banana flour, which you can then add to smoothies or in pancakes or in recipes, that kind of thing. So we’ve got our three types of fiber, our soluble, our insoluble and our resistant starch, and they’re all really important for our gut health. So we wanna be looking at ways to increase all three of those.
Jess (25:23.927)
Stop Nick.
Jess (25:30.295)
Up next we’ve got our probiotics and our fermented foods. So these are foods or supplements that already have a bacteria in them or a bacteria that has been created from the fermentation process. These foods are incredibly important for our gut health and are really a research and some research done out of Stanford University also compared a high -fiber diet with fermented foods and it found that people who had sensitive stomachs
actually better tolerated the fermented foods than increasing the fiber. So if you’ve got some gut issues and you’re listening to this episode and you’re kind of thinking, I don’t know how I’m going to start increasing all of these fibrous foods because my stomach’s a bit sensitive, well maybe this is a better place for you to start by just adding a small amount of fermented foods every few days or every day. So these are foods like kefir, yogurt, sourdough, kimchi.
Sauerkraut and then we can also get our probiotic supplements as well. But the thing I would really encourage you to do is go for a food first approach. Go for the foods that have the prebiotic fibers. Go for the foods that have the probiotics and that have been ferment. Go for the fermented foods and then choose your probiotic on top of that. The thing with the probiotics, they do have different strains so you don’t want to just be buying any one. You want to be being intentional.
and thinking about why you’re wanting a probiotic and making sure that the one that you’re selecting is matching up to your reason for doing that.
Jess (27:05.209)
Next on the list are our phytochemicals and our polyphenols. So these are basically just plant compounds which are really really good for us. Now if you just focus on eating all your fruits, all your veggies, all the colours at each meal and snack, you’re doing a really great job there. But some foods that are particularly high in these phytochemicals are our red and our purple fruits and vegetables. So like our apples and our grapes, our berries and our cherries, our red cabbage, that kind of thing. Pears are also really good as well.
And then we’ve got things like our green tea and our coffee beans as well as our cacao and our extra virgin olive oil and our friends lentils and legumes again. So all of those foods are really rich in our phytochemicals and our polyphenols which are also amazing for our good gut bacteria. These are also really gentle on the stomach so again if you’ve got more of a sensitive stomach and you’re thinking how am I going to start to do some of these things
Starting with your fermented foods and your phytochemicals can be a really nice way to introduce more of these foods that are optimal for our gut health without stirring up some of your stomach symptoms.
The last category I wanted to touch on is our hydration. So the digestive system requires quite a lot of fluid. It’s more than 60 % water. So if we are dehydrated, it is going to wreak havoc with our digestive system. So making sure we’re having our two to three liters each day, we’re focusing on our water. It can also be comprised of other fluid options like electrolytes, green tea, coffee, kombucha, smoothies.
fresh fruit and veggie juices, however you need to get that in, but at least two thirds of that should be water. So really focusing in on that. And if you’re having any issues going to the bathroom, it could be a combination of your fiber intake and also your hydration. Alrighty team, so just to quickly recap, when it comes to strategies to optimize our gut health, there’s our non dietary strategies, which we spoke about. So these were things like,
Jess (29:13.082)
exercise, sleep optimization, relaxation, time in nature and journaling. And then when it came to our dietary strategies, it included our 30 plants a week. It included looking at our types of fiber, our soluble and our insoluble, our prebiotics, our probiotics, our phytochemicals and polyphenols and our hydration. I hope you’ve enjoyed today’s Gut Health 101 episode.
If you’ve liked this episode, I’d love for you to share it with a friend or share it on social media. If you haven’t already subscribed to the podcast, please make sure you do that so you don’t miss every new episode that lands. And on that note, I just wanted to thank you all for tuning in and I will see you all again next week for the final episode of season two stay at the top. I look forward to seeing you all then.