We talk a lot about immunity, especially as the weather turns.
But most of the conversation focuses on one question.
How do I boost it?
In this episode of Stay at the Top, I’m joined by Dr Cecilia Kitic, PhD researcher, exercise physiologist and founder of Fertile Gut, to unpack why the immune system is not designed to be boosted, but balanced.
We explore the powerful connection between your gut microbiome, sleep, stress, fibre intake and immune resilience, and what actually helps you get sick less often, recover better and perform at your best.
If you are run down, getting sick often, or want to better understand how to protect your health in busy seasons, this episode is packed with practical takeaways.
In this episode Dr Cecilia shares:
- Why immunity is about balance, not boosting
- How the gut microbiome trains and supports the immune system
- Why sleep deprivation increases your risk of getting sick
- The role fibre plays in immune resilience and longevity
- How chronic stress impacts the microbiome and immune function
- HRV and early warning signs your body may be under strain
- Signs your microbiome may be disrupted
- How quickly your microbiome can improve when habits change
- Why under eating can weaken immunity
- The one thing Dr Cecilia wants everyone to do more of
Key Quotes
“If you want stronger immunity, focus on what you are doing when you are not sick.”
“Sleep is one of the most powerful protectors of immune resilience.”
“Fibre is one of the most overlooked tools for long term health.”
“Your gut microbiome is not separate from performance. It is central to it.”
Episode Resources
📖 PRE-ORDER For the Long Run by Jess Spendlove 👉 https://amzn.to/4t33BPh
Fertile Gut: www.fertile-gut.com
Instagram: www.instagram.com/fertilegut
Gut & Hormone Health Clinic: gutandhormonehealthclinic.com.au/
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/?hl=en
Jess Spendlove LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessica-spendlove-64173bb8/
About Dr Cecilia
Dr Cecilia Kitic is an academic and scientist, and founder of Fertile Gut, a microbiome-focused formulation company translating cutting-edge research into practical, daily health rituals. With a PhD in physiology and a background in immunology and exercise science, her work focuses on the intersection of the gut microbiome, immune function, and health across the lifespan.
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 Spendlove (00:15.128)
We talk a lot about immunity, especially as the weather turns. But most of that conversation centers on the same thing, which generally sounds something like, how do I boost my immunity? We then tend to supplement ourselves with vitamin C or whatever else is trending. There’s just one problem with this approach. The immune system isn’t meant to be boosted.
it’s meant to be balanced. And when it’s chronically overloaded, underslept, stress saturated and starved of the right inputs, no supplement is going to fix that. The real story is happening somewhere most people aren’t looking. And that is in your gut.
My guest today has built her life’s work around the connection of the microbiome, the immune system and the everyday habits that shape both. With a PhD in exercise physiology and immunonutrition, more than 80 published research papers and a clinical practice helping people understand their body’s signals, Dr. Cecilia Kittick understands immune resilience from the inside out. She’s also the founder of Fertile Gut, a microbiome focused formulation company that exists because she got tired of the gap between what the science says and what people are actually doing. Dr Cecilia Kitti, welcome to Stay at the Top.
Cecilia (01:45.165)
Thank you very much Jess. It’s such an exciting area. So I’m really looking forward to our conversation today and maybe just getting people to think a little bit differently about some of the habits that they are implementing that will support them.
Jess Spendlove (02:01.696)
Music to my ears, that’s what we’re all about here, the practical what do people actually need to do while understanding the science and what’s important.
The place I wanted to start, is actually a continuation of a solo episode that I recorded last week, which was around high protein foods, gut health, intestinal permeability, ultra processed foods, and how the messaging around, we must eat protein, might actually be causing a lot of damage, in particular with the gut.
And so I just would love to know before we get into the immune conversation, which I can’t wait to have, would there be one food or one ingredient that you would recommend people really avoid or really pay attention to when it comes to this area of gut health?
Cecilia (02:53.427)
a massive question and again as we know it’s really one thing it’s nice to distill to that.
If there was one thing and our conversation around this will evolve during our discussion I’m sure it would be getting enough fiber in the diet and we can discuss why that’s important but Protein is an interesting one because it is just so prevalent in the marketplace at the moment you pick up stuff where the formulation hasn’t changed It’s already got protein in it But now it’s got that high protein sticker slapped onto it because that’s what’s resonating with people I think when we’re talking about protein and the gut microbiome in particular
conversation to be had around where are you sourcing that protein? Is it from primarily animal-based sources which we know can be potentially a little bit more disruptive to the gut microbiome and actually lead to the growth of some more pathogenic inflammatory species or are you primarily getting that protein from plants? And again we know
With that again looking there’s pros and cons but a diet high in plant protein tends to be a little bit more supportive of the gut microbiome and again it’s rarely one or the other. You can very much have a plant-based diet that does contain a little bit of animal protein in there as additional support because animal proteins are definitely delivering some compounds that we won’t get primarily from plant protein but
thinking about the sources and lots of fiber in there complementing it. We know that if you tend to combine animal proteins with a lot of fiber, it might actually counteract some of that pro-inflammatory nature that can come from primarily diets high in animal proteins.
Jess Spendlove (04:40.567)
Yeah, fantastic. I mean, this is a great.
like you said, entry point into our conversation, which really is around the microbiome and the fact that we’re coming into the cooler months, which means the germs and the bugs and the sickness and, you know, that’s starting to hit. I know a few people who have already kind of got their first cold of the year. And, you know, there is also this fact that 70 % of the immune system lives in the gut. I don’t think a lot of people understand what that means.
So I was hoping you could actually explain that and then explain this interconnected relationship between the microbiome and the immune connection.
Cecilia (05:25.879)
Yeah, definitely. our immune system is absolutely incredible and some of the things it does are really quite sci-fi and how it operates. Now it’s essential to afford us protection against that infection from certain bacteria and viruses and it is that winter time of year for various reasons that we will have an increase in the incidence of things like colds and flus and the average
adult might have about two to four colds a year some more frequently and again our microbiome is part of that protective mechanism because with our immune system you’re right about sort of 70 to 80 percent of immune tissue is really co-located quite close to the gut so
Anatomically, they’re very much related. And when we start to look at the role of our microbiome in that, they’re actually educating, training and activating our immune cells and influencing how effective our immune system works. So on a basic level.
microbiome is essential to a well functioning working immune system and we know this because in a lot of preclinical work where you can look at the development of animals that are sterile so without a microbiome in essence and their immune system is impacted they don’t have as many T cells that are supportive their thymus gland even where our T cells mature is smaller
And when those animals then receive a microbiome transplant, that can actually help rescue some of that immune function. So this is absolutely essential. And we can see these close connections to in many cellular models, human models, it’s absolutely not up for debate anymore. We know our microbes are training our immune system. But interestingly, there’s a process of a fecal microbiome transplant.
Cecilia (07:38.383)
You might have heard of that before and essentially it’s where you can take microbes from a donor whether that be a human or an animal in a research case and you can then transplant that microbiome into a recipient and again you know a human if it’s a human microbiome transplant or an animal model.
And very interestingly, we start to see in that research with fecal microbiome transplants, alterations to immune function. And one case study, and again, a case study is not a gold standard for scientific evidence, but they’re quite helpful in letting us have a bit of insight into what might be going on or exploring other mechanisms. Now, fecal microbiome transplants in humans are quite commonly used to treat
Clostridium difficile infections it can be quite pervasive cause a lot of gastrointestinal symptoms and that bacteria can start to wipe out some of the beneficial species living in the gut and so a fecal microbiome transplant can lead to resolution in more than 80 % of cases. It’s quite effective. Now one lady who had multiple sclerosis which is an autoimmune condition where our immune system is a bit hyper reactive and actually targeting our own tissues which it normally wouldn’t do
she was experiencing Clostridium difficile infection as well. Now she happened to have a fecal microbiome transplant from her partner and her MA symptoms were dampened and stagnated at the level they were at if not improved even for 10 years following the fecal microbiome transplant.
So yes our microbes are essential they are actually going to send out lots of chemicals and display different receptors on them and these are recognized by our immune cells so that’s where we can get that connection between how our microbes are essentially maturing our immune cells and helping them respond appropriately when we do encounter infectious materials and other antigens.
Jess Spendlove (09:52.854)
And you said at the start of that answer, know, two to four colds a year is kind of the average. So is that if we get that, we should assume all the microbiome is pretty good and our immune system is pretty good or is it possible to say, well, no, I actually don’t want to get sick. I only get want to get sick once. How can I go about improving that? And then I guess if you’re getting sick a lot more than that, which is definitely
in the people that I see and work with, you know, for me, that’s a hallmark of being like, what does your life look like? How stressed are you? What are you taking on? How overloaded are you? Whether that’s from an athlete perspective or a high performer perspective or a parent who’s just working and has a lot of things going on perspective, that for me is that that kind of flag of what’s going on. you know, kind of summarized a few things there. But yet, can we can we aim to be sick? Not at all.
once and if we’re getting sick more often how can we be improving that? Where do we start?
Cecilia (10:53.985)
Yeah and getting sick frequently isn’t necessarily normal and
potentially anything we can do to enhance our health and optimize the functioning of our immune system is hopefully going to afford us greater protection and reduce that risk of getting sick. And indeed, even anecdotally, you know, we see once clients are starting to work on their microbiome and improve the abundance of beneficial species in there, that that incidence of colds and flu start to decrease. And it might be a few, you know, a few months or
or a year or two down the track and all of a sudden you realize, I haven’t been sick for, you know, six months or seven months. but everything that you have just mentioned, Jess, is incredibly important in understanding what are those stresses that can essentially dampen the way our immune system’s functioning and impact some of that immune resilience. And you mentioned stress, you mentioned sleep, you mentioned probably nutrition, like all of these are factors that fundamentally play a role.
and there’s even a really great study where they looked at people’s sleep habits and monitored that for two weeks and these were in healthy men and women and the age bracket of the cohort was around 20 to 55 okay so that demographic where a lot of people have a lot of stuff going on in their life and particularly at the tail end in terms of high performance in the work environment.
What they did was they monitored them for two weeks and then after two weeks they had ethics approval to actually expose them to a bit of rhinovirus. And so they gave some droplets near the nasal passage to see how they would respond. Those people that were getting less than seven hours sleep a night.
Cecilia (12:48.663)
had almost a three times greater risk then of developing a cold and those associated symptoms from the rhinovirus exposure. Whereas those people that were sleeping eight hours or more, again, that was afforded a bit of protection. And when we start to go and look at particular immune cells circulating around, we actually see that when we miss out on sleep, they tend to produce some more pro-inflammatory factors.
and the proteins that we can measure to determine their function and how efficiently they’re working. So there’s a clear connection again in that association between sleep and how well our immune function works. And also because if we miss out on sleep, our microbiome then starts to change a little bit and we know that there are certain bacterial species associated with sleep disruption.
Jess Spendlove (13:45.494)
interesting. so really like two weeks is a pretty short timeframe to get that data and say with it, you’re more protected without it, you’re more at risk. And obviously there are other confounding factors, which I’d love to, you know, maybe even we move through them now we can call them out and we can reverse engineer the conversation a little bit. But if you had all your buckets, and you know, like what you’ve just said sleep,
and less than seven hours puts you more at risk from a rhinovirus or a cold perspective. Can you go through the other buckets and call out what the research says on the, where the data sits and anything that is as clear as what that piece of research has showed?
Cecilia (14:34.861)
Yeah, definitely. There are so many other…
beacons to sort of you know work towards in terms of optimizing our immune system and one of them I’m going to come back to again even from large population studies is fiber intake. So in the big national health studies that they do in the states for example even over 14,000 people in the data set just to look at those associations we know that’s not causation but it’s a starting point and we see that
Fibre intake is associated with a number of different immune variables and affording protection. So as Australians, about 83 % of us are not even meeting the minimum daily fibre targets. But I should digress a little bit and talk about…
what the hell fiber has to do with our immune function because we’ve left out a bit of that pathway. So fiber won’t directly talk to your immune cells but what happens is when we’re eating fiber and particularly prebiotic fibers that are quite fermentable, our microbes living in our colon will actually take those fibers, we’re feeding our microbes, they break them down and they then
formulate very beneficial compounds that essentially we can use systemically in our body. So they won’t just stay at the level of the gut, they will also influence everything in other organs and we know that because there’s a gut brain connection, there’s a gut lung connection, there’s a know gut liver connection and our microbes are influencing all of those systems. So when we actually have adequate fiber intake it’s actually
Cecilia (16:30.011)
changing then how well that how great that microbiome community looks, how well they’re able to train our immune cells and support that adaptation and immune resilience and even feeding particular prebiotic fibers have been shown in human models to reduce influenza you know risk. So again a clear sort of connection there.
Fiber is so important and the intake is absolutely related to how healthy that gut microbiome community is and also how thick and beautiful the nice mucus layer is in the gut. That’s also another sort of protective barrier for us and even work that is in the process of being published at the moment.
we are seeing that that mucus layer that affords protection again for our body is even more resilient in people getting 40 plus grams of fiber. So again, 83 % of us aren’t even meeting, you know, 25 to 30 grams of fiber a day. So something so simple in not necessarily the practical application of it, but there are ways to make it a little bit easier.
is just that dietary fibre is such a key component there for supporting immune resilience.
Jess Spendlove (17:56.598)
And that was gonna be my question. What’s kind of the minimum we wanna aim for, which is the guidelines. again, where is this ideal? So thinking about that, sleep seven or more hours really adds a protective component. Fiber, and I know there’s so much more to say about that really at a minimum, being…
not better than 80 % of the population, trying to elevate those, elevate those overall numbers. And I mean, the benefits of eating more fiber are profound. Obviously, we’re talking microbiome and immune system, but any kind of metabolic, chronic disease, cardio, any condition, any organ will benefit from that.
If someone was looking to, to at a minimum get to the 25 grams or ideally get to the 40 and above, how can someone go about that?
Cecilia (18:55.767)
Yes and that’s an interesting conversation where you know dieticians are at should be at the forefront of in terms of really looking for those easy ways to build that into routine and you know just I will talk from a non-dietic standpoint in terms of diversity in the plant-based foods that you are eating and there’s a strong association there in you know 30 plus plant-based foods a week
will not only deliver fiber but that’s going to support a healthy microbiome with an abundance of beneficial species and naturally if you’re starting to favor plant-based foods they tend to contain more fiber so particularly in our whole grains and legumes and those types of food groups that are plant-based in delivering that fiber. We at FertileGut have
plant-based formulations that are designed to potentially add to those great dietary habits you might already be employing in your day and making that addition of key prebiotic fibers that we know promote the growth of beneficial bacterial species in the gut and have those associated health benefits of making that really easy. So something as simple as maybe even adding to your coffee, not even swapping it out, but if you’re having a coffee,
in some cocoa latte for an extra six grams of fiber or in your morning smoothie already having beautiful lots of fruits and berries and even adding some spinach for extra fiber and things like that some dates and then you can add in some key prebiotic fibers in a powder form as well so some of those can make it a little bit more accessible but
Yes, we cannot talk enough about the benefits of fibar and yet we’re still pretty poor as a population in reaching those targets.
Jess Spendlove (20:58.325)
And I should say I did dive quite deep last week on that solo episode around the 30 different plant foods and the research there and your six categories of plant foods, like your whole grains, lentils, legumes, fruits and vegetables, nuts and seeds, herbs and spices. So feel free to go back and reference that if you haven’t already. Before we move on and talk more about
know, immune boosting and is this the right language and what does that actually mean and how we can reframe that and really get crystal clear on the immune system that we’re talking about.
Can we just move so stress, we’ve kind of touched on it. I’d love to hear in your like the beak. I love that language when you said beacons, was like, yes, like that’s a great terminology to summarize, you what are these great signals or targets that we can kind of aim for. we look at the stress bucket.
Cecilia (21:58.137)
Definitely. We know stress, if we’re stressed, we would have probably most of us experienced this ourselves if we’re stressed and run down, you know.
even from psychosocial stresses that has a big impact on our susceptibility to illness. So it is important, I think, in recognizing that it’s not just physical stresses and training loads. And a lot of my early work was using that as a model to stress the immune system because we can get athletes that are already doing heavy loads and we can say, hey, we’re going to double that for next week. And let’s take a look and see what’s going on with your immune function. So in
you know, akin to that is the psychosocial stresses that might be experienced in, you know, job demands, family life, you know, day to day living. Those manifest physiologically. They actually, we can quantify those stresses and look at the impacts of those. So,
Again, when we are facing these stresses, it will change our microbiome. We’ve got the direct link between our brain and our gut in the vagus nerve and constant activation of our sympathetic nervous system. And you might have some of your, you know, the people that you’re working with and in the audience that monitor their heart rate variability, okay, as a tool for autonomic function. This is something we were doing 30 years ago.
in understanding what’s a particular marker that might give us insight into the cumulative loads and stresses and something sort of quantifiable that we can look at to see how that’s adapting over time. And again you know we might start to see a bit of a suppression in those markers a day or two before getting sick. Often people might in hindsight go back and look at their heart rate variability data and start to see a bit of a drop-off in that. So
Cecilia (23:59.861)
again having very real impacts on our microbiome influencing then how our immune system’s working and you know reducing some of the effectiveness of our cells. we were in early research we were particularly interested in looking at secretory IgA essentially you know that can sit in our mucosal surfaces in the nasal cavities in our gut and almost be like a first line of defense against any invading organisms
And again, we know that with particular stresses, then we start to see a reduction in that first line of defense in those mucosal surfaces, which again, even in the gut, we’re ingesting things and antigens all the time and pathogens. And we start to see that we’re not as resilient when we’ve got those other stresses going on in the background.
Jess Spendlove (24:53.837)
I’m so glad you brought up the HRV because that was where my brain actually went when you started talking about that and you know.
I use, I definitely advocate, I know a lot of people listening, know, would use an Auraring or a Wootband or, you know, there’s quite a lot of ways, there’s quite a lot of devices that measure HRV and I think regardless of what you’re using, if you’re using it on a daily basis, regardless of the device and which is the most accurate, if you’re using one consistently, that is standardized to yourself, so it does give you that.
insight and I think you raised a great point. It is the trend over time which then often leaves the clue so you can kind of think to yourself and what your know what your your triggers or your signals are that that
cold or a flu or something might be brewing. And then off the back of that there are some additional strategies you can put in place but you know a lot of what we’re kind of talking about here is what are those behaviors on a long-term approach which will kind of minimize that, minimize you getting sick or also to my understanding reducing maybe the severity of the onset once you do get sick.
Cecilia (26:11.107)
Just go back a second there, Jess. What was the first part that you said?
Jess Spendlove (26:16.157)
I was just saying I’m glad that you brought up about the HRV because yeah, yeah.
Cecilia (26:21.115)
yeah, HIV. And then the first part of the question. I just missed that.
Jess Spendlove (26:26.001)
I was just, I don’t even know to be. Yeah. That’s right. Let’s just, Shire, you can get rid of, my response there. I’ll just.
Cecilia (26:30.783)
Sorry. So,
Cecilia (26:39.565)
Or just the last bit of the question. So first bit of your response, I think is super relevant to your audience. Yeah.
Jess Spendlove (26:45.173)
Yeah, yeah. Okay, I’m sure I leave in the the HIV response. And I’m just gonna, is there anything else in this section you want to add or I’m just gonna kind of bring it back to the immune boosting and why that’s not correct. It was like we kind of said sleep, fiber, stress.
Cecilia (27:09.898)
I think that’s pretty much it. If you want to mention just anything around like longevity, just if that’s your sort of focus, I can maybe weave something in there but otherwise no, all good.
Jess Spendlove (27:20.3)
Yeah.
Jess Spendlove (27:24.907)
Yeah, I did have a kind of question around immune, you know, the immune resilience and how much that is linked to your longevity, like if there’s anything there, like if you’re getting sick more often or if you don’t get sick, like how does that link in with your longevity? that, yeah, yeah. Okay, all right.
Cecilia (27:40.865)
Yeah, we can touch on that for sure.
Jess Spendlove (27:46.838)
I am curious if in your practice or in the research there is anything linking or indicating someone’s immune resilience, so how often they get sick, whether they get sick frequently or not at all, and how that then shows up with their health span or their longevity.
Cecilia (28:08.437)
Yes definitely and it’s a really interesting area that a lot of immunologists are still trying to understand in the context of why do we have this immune senescence as we age so essentially our immune system doesn’t seem to work as well we seem to be more susceptible to colds and flus and we know that some of those triggers in changing our immune system are things like inflammation so again if there’s sort of chronic inflammation low grade
going on for long periods of time extended periods of time people with different morbidities that actually then can sort of erode and wear away at the function of our cells they become sort of less responsive and also too though when in the bone marrow we’re not actually just producing as many you know immune cells so coming back to that and again inflammation is often a driver of regulating those pathways and which
change the function of almost every cell in the body with long-term exposures. So the longevity part’s interesting in terms of looking at a particular marker of biological aging.
Scientists can look at something called our telomere length. So essentially these are the end caps on our chromosomes and as we age They will shorten so you can measure someone’s telomere length and get an indication of their biological age again, you know potentially associated with that longevity aspect and
we know again in people where their immune system isn’t working as well there tends to be shorter telomeres in people that have more immune resilience their telomeres might be a bit longer in people that get enough fiber in their diet their telomeres are longer even essentially every 10 grams of fiber adding in an extra you know three or four years in terms of that telomere length it’s quite dramatic yes so there’s this interconnectedness and i love that sign
Jess Spendlove (30:10.497)
Wow.
Cecilia (30:18.203)
is now far less siloed than it was you know sort of 30 years ago when we were researching to start to see now that the walls are slowly coming down and people are realizing well if you’re a gastroenterologist you don’t just talk to gastroenterologists you are talking to immunologists you’re talking to endocrinologists you’re talking to neurologists nephrologists like it’s all starting to
we’re appreciating the impacts of it’s a systems approach it’s not a siloed organ only approach and the organ that is probably the most pervasive across all of these aspects of health is our microbiome.
Jess Spendlove (31:07.327)
Yeah, wow, that’s powerful. I did have one question that I thought would be great to kind of just clarify before we move on. know, systemic inflammation, low-grade systemic inflammation. If someone’s healthy, so if there’s no chronic condition, metabolic, like there’s nothing that’s progressed yet, how can someone identify?
maybe from signals from their body, I don’t know if there is or is it blood markers, how can someone or is it just an assessment of their lifestyle identify that this is them, that they are operating and this is how their body is operating?
Cecilia (31:51.095)
Yeah, and it’s a question we get asked a lot because a lot of the particular markers that we would look at in the research laboratory are just not accessible to in routine pathology and it can be quite expensive testing. So I don’t think though that precludes anyone, know, having a bit of that aha moment as to what’s going on because ultimately in simplifying that.
when it comes back to, you know, how are your energy levels? Are you fatigued all the time? You know, are you experiencing brain fog? Are you not adapting to your training very well? Are you presenting with potentially gastrointestinal symptoms? But to have microbiome disruption and dysbiosis, it’s often not going to present as gastrointestinal symptoms. That can be, you know,
associated with many many conditions and microbiome disruption might show up in getting sick frequently, experiencing you know different skin rashes or changes in your hair and nails and skin, how your brain’s functioning, how well you’re able to get up and go and exercise again and recover from that, how well you’re able to handle a night of disrupted sleep you know and changes in routine.
you’re adapting well and coping well with all of that and again you’re getting enough fiber in your diet, you’re sleeping, you’re reducing stresses, that’s fantastic. Ultimately it’s all about our signs and symptoms and how we’re feeling. So if you’re feeling good and you’re ticking all those boxes that’s a great foundation.
Jess Spendlove (33:36.462)
Yeah, fantastic. And I mean, I imagine this is a lot of the work that you do in your clinic. So did you want to maybe expand on that? you know, someone might be sitting there thinking, okay, microbiome, I’ve heard it, I’m really getting the picture here. Like, it’s incredibly important. I want to start optimizing wherever I’m at. How quickly can they expect that to change and shift? Yeah.
Cecilia (34:02.899)
And again, that’s another really frequent question is how long does it take? Okay. I’m thinking my microbiome might be a bit disrupted or I’ve got really clear signs and symptoms that something’s going on. When will it be fixed? And it’s a bit like a, a continuum and a bit of a journey. If you start to increase your fiber intake, and again, please don’t do that dramatically. Don’t go from 10 grams of fiber a day to 30 grams of fiber. There is a good, we’ve got a good article on our
website about fiber maxing which is a concept again you know a lot of in social media that might be quite helpful as a resource but when you actually come back to thinking about I’ve just lost a bit of train of thought there we’re talking about
Jess Spendlove (34:49.453)
just how the microbiome and how quickly it can change and integrating the increase in fiber strategically.
Cecilia (34:53.524)
yes, yes.
Cecilia (34:57.913)
Definitely. If you actually even get a dose of prebiotic fiba you will start to see changes in that microbiome in as short as 6 to 12 hours.
And these changes are going on and you can again see further changes at the three day mark and then further changes at the one week mark and they will build over time and it all depends on what your microbiome is looking like when you start. How disrupted is it? Have you had prolonged exposures to antibiotics over multiple years? What are the types of signs and symptoms you’re experiencing? And then rebuilding that community. But the most exciting part
is even in healthy people if you start to add in key prebiotic fibers you even improve health parameters further. So everyone can benefit from more fiber in their day to be getting up close to those targets and the changes we even see I myself even in terms of experience changes when I was started to be very consistent and strategic with prebiotic fiber.
diet would see changes even two three years of being consistent because again you’re slowly starting to change that community you’re getting the beneficial bacteria to start to crowd out some of the more pathogenic bacteria and that takes place over time and you’ve got to be consistent because even if you miss out on fiber for short periods of time
your bacterial species are looking for something to eat and some of them replicate every 20 minutes. This is incredible. So if they do not have a food source they are going to start eating away at the mucus layer in the gut and that’s one of the reasons why if you’re getting adequate fiber your microbes are not going to be looking for other food sources.
Jess Spendlove (36:57.837)
Mm.
Jess Spendlove (37:04.917)
Yeah, it’s incredible. mean, even sitting here as a dietician with a, you know, above average, I guess, knowledge of this, it’s, I think there’s still things for me to learn. I’m learning from you right now. So I have no doubt that there is, like I said before, probably a lot of aha moments. I am really keen to cover in more depth the immune system, some of the language around.
getting sick and so you know the way I see people like talking about I’m going to boost my immune system you know that’s how I’m going to prevent I’m going to take some immune boosting supplements. Have you got any thoughts on that language and approach and you know if there’s a better question that people should be asking?
Cecilia (37:56.131)
That word boost, again, it’s great because it conveys a concept of us building immune resilience, but it also gives us maybe a false impression that it’s a really quick process and you take one thing and all of a sudden you’ve got this extra shield around you that’s affording protection. And it’s important to really…
That take home message being immunity is not built in a one off, know what you’re doing at that moment in time, particularly if you are sick, your immunity and the resilience of that is built with consistent patterns over time and what you’re doing when you’re not sick. So that’s what I want people to think about. Often we only think about our immunity when we are sick and we’ve got a cold or we’ve got the flu again and we’re like,
gosh I should do something for my immune system people might take some vitamin C for a week and then they forget about it and it really is coming back to well if you want to reduce that incidence of getting sick reducing inflammation and then all of the other benefits let alone for metabolic health and you know brain resilience it’s about that consistency over time in nurturing that microbiome which is going to start to essentially upregulate
some of your like T regulatory cells and so T regulatory cells are essentially they can put the brakes on our immune system so that we are not responding to things we shouldn’t be responding to so change some of that immune reactivity and on the flip side again we can have our microbiome making some of our other innate immune cells more effective so they’re better at you know phagocytosis and killing off some of
the invading pathogens but it’s not a one-off moment of I’ll boost my immune system this week so I’ve got the flu it’s very much needs to be that consistent foundation that’s built over time and you will start to see your incidence of colds and flu and getting sick and run down start to change.
Jess Spendlove (40:08.171)
And I mean, everything you’re kind of talking about here, there’s so much upside in other areas, know, getting more sleep. So if someone’s very performance driven, well, that will help with that. But you’re also going to be helping your microbiome and your immune system. So nothing here, as you said before, like on a…
body level, like all the organs and all of the specialists, everyone’s interconnected because your body and brain and your gut microbiome and your gut, you know, really has a relationship with everything. I am curious to know though, if there is a particular behaviour or if you need to have a few because you don’t want to just call out one, but is there a particular behaviour on the flip side that is particularly undermining someone’s immunity?
Cecilia (40:54.007)
All of the sort of antithesis of what we’ve sort of talked about, if you are stressed, if you are missing out on sleep, if you are lacking key micronutrients and fiber from your diet, these are all things that we know can increase that susceptibility to colds and flus. Of course, you know, that’s the internal terrain. There are external factors like, you know, how often you’re in a close social community, you know, environment where that
disease transmission can happen and be more likely in terms of exposure but the internal terrain is incredibly important and adaptable and that’s the important thing so another
like you know so under nutrition under nutrition is just such a big one okay people might be eating well and but they’re not getting enough of the good stuff that they need and there are other micronutrients that are important for our immune function as well you know aside from fiber so if someone’s not eating enough then they might not be getting enough of those particular elements that they need looking at stresses and you know chronic stress exposure and that having an impact on our immune system and
starting to erode away some of that resilience. Things that ultimately exacerbate those processes of inflammation if it is you know lots of ultra processed food in the diet we know that that does start to change the landscape. Alcohol intake is a big one and even 10 grams of alcohol can be potentially disruptive at the level of the gut microbiome.
Depending on what’s going on in there already. So those are some of the key Lifestyle components and I hope your audience is starting to hear this on repeat that
Cecilia (42:49.877)
It’s nothing incredibly, you know, sexy or innovative. It’s the foundation. It’s the nutrition. It’s your sleep. You know, it’s finding time to reduce that sympathetic nervous system activation. Those are the components that help us build a healthy immune system.
Jess Spendlove (43:12.385)
Yeah, fantastic. And the chronic stress one, like for me, that was mine and still is mine. And I feel like we’ve always got our areas, even when you live and breathe this work doesn’t necessarily mean you stand on some hill superior, the knowledge is there, but we still have our own.
lives and factors and it probably is a little bit different now before I was a complete workaholic and you were talking about sport and I had so much I even wanted to say there around like the institutionalized nature and you know the way that I was even working at that point in my career it got to the point because I was in at some of the clubs for so long and we tracked the data.
And we knew when we had three weeks on the road or we knew at different time points of the year or a week or two after those key weeks in preseason, we knew there was more chance of people getting sick. so at that level, with everything else that you spoke about, we could put some kind of more prophylactic strategies or supplements in place off the back of everything else. But you know, where I was going with this was in that phase of my life. I was a complete workaholic. So my allostatic
load, my chronic stress was just so high I wish I wore a wearable then. I would be really interested in that data. And then in this phase of life, which might speak to a lot of people listening, is
I’m a new mom and I’m running a business. just like, there’s a lot of balls in the air and I know we were having a chat before we came on. know, the microbiome here, it’s so critical. And I guess where I wanted to go with this question is anyone listening that fits any of those descriptions, life is busy. What is one or two quick tips that they can use to prioritize their microbiome and take care of their microbiome, but that fits.
Jess Spendlove (45:09.077)
a really busy life.
Cecilia (45:10.803)
and it would be the incorporation of extra probiotic fiber. So the fibers that actually will be changing the landscape of that microbiome. So that’s exactly why we developed our formulations for fertile gut. So purely from a perspective to go, how do we translate this clinical science into something so practical? Because we are all at times time poor and have a lot on and, but if you know, okay,
I’ve been able to hit my fibre target today or I’m adding in an extra 5 or 10 grams of fibre to this particular meal, that’s a good stop gap at the moment for where I am at this point in life.
Jess Spendlove (45:54.04)
Great, and have to say, I’ve used your products, some of your products, haven’t, the range has expanded, I don’t know how recently, but semi-recently, I’ve used the cacao latte for quite a while, it’s actually one of my current afternoon snacks with something, I’ll have it with the fit milk, I’ll add some creatine, and then I have that. Sometimes I put the microbiome essentials in there, sometimes I try and add that to a smoothie. But I also, I refer and recommend,
many people to this product. I think that’s maybe something to quickly touch on. Like while the name is Fertile Gut, I have some women at different life phases who say, oh no, that’s not relevant for me. And I’m like, no, but it’s not only from a fertility.
Cecilia (46:41.273)
It’s not fertility, no, we are.
Fertilizing the microbiome. essentially providing the food it needs to thrive just like in a garden setting You can put plants in there, but if the soil isn’t great and full of rich nutrients those plants aren’t going to survive so we are fertilizing the microbiome and it’s in the particular pre-body one of the compounds in cocoa latte, which again is We just love that product and are so proud of how delicious it is for giving six grams of fiber, but that actually
is the pre-biotic that was shown to reduce influenza risk. So again starting to see those clear connections and because we are scientists and we love science and very much everything that we formulate has to tick the boxes of having clinical evidence to support its efficacy in changing the microbiome and supporting you know the other systemic components. So I really appreciate you loving the products and just sharing that.
because in this world where lots of things come to market and there’s starting to be bit of an explosion I would really encourage people to even check in and understand what you know clinically studied means and we are really proud of our background and academic rigor and clinical
you know sort of knowledge that we can truly stand by that you know clinical efficacy of what our products are formulated for so thank you.
Jess Spendlove (48:20.021)
No, it’s well, thank you for making something which could be quite complex and difficult to achieve more accessible, which is the point of this podcast as well. It isn’t about being a three hour episode, which you walk away with more knowledge, but no action. It’s definitely about the science. I mean, there’s even so much more here I was hoping to cover, but I do like to keep the episodes, you know, to that kind of 45 minute mark, just so someone can digest it. And so
they walk away with something and I mean there was so much in this episode but if someone was to remember one thing from this episode what should that be?
Cecilia (48:59.661)
get more fibre in your diet.
Jess Spendlove (49:02.743)
fibre. There we go. All right. So get the plant foods up fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds, lentils, legumes, whole grains, herbs and spices. Look into fertile gut. It’s an incredible range. Like I said, it’s something I personally use. I professionally recommend it. We’ll have the links in the show notes. But if other people would like to learn more about you and the work that you do, where’s the best place for them to follow along?
Cecilia (49:29.973)
Yeah, they can follow us over at FertileGut and also I’ll give you the link for the Gut and Hormone Health Clinic which we have in Brisbane but we service people all over the world with that particular interest in microbiome applications for dietetics and exercise physiology and psychology.
Jess Spendlove (49:52.408)
Yeah, fantastic. I do have one more question I ask all of my guests because they are busy, know, they have a lot on and, you know, I know that they like yourself, live and breathe your work. So I would love to know what three things, habits, behaviors help you balance everything as best as possible and stay at the top.
Cecilia (50:18.009)
three habits. and again you know like yourself probably 10 years ago I was a bit of a workaholic as well because I love what I do and I think over the past few years one I’ve become really intentional about switching off so it’s not like making sure that I have time in the afternoon where I you know make a call and say that’s it for today and as much as I love doing other stuff or you know a
would be reading scientific articles I sort of put that on the back burner and make sure that I you know challenge my brain with other activities or have that opportunity just for some breathing space to sit and relax and that’s not easy like you have to be quite intentional about that process so I must say I’m very proud that I’ve been able to do that the last few years. The other thing is each morning starting my day with a beautiful breakfast and incorporating microbiome essentials.
because that is again acuprobotic and we’ve got the data showing just its ability to enhance the microbiome, be super important for intestinal repair and know restoration. So making sure I get that as part of my day and that has again been a game changer for me. As you mentioned too we’re all humans you know I have you know some autoimmune conditions and you know other things going on and so
Being quite intentional about how I support my microbiome has made a really big difference to my health and well-being.
And a third one is sleep. And again we’ve done some sleep research and so just knowing how fundamental that is for everything else because you can’t make good decisions if you’re not sleeping. You can’t really fuel yourself and have great nutrition if you’re sleeping because you’re going to be craving some you know quick sugar hits. So sleep again. Yep I love an early night and an early morning and we’ll be in bed by 8.39.
Jess Spendlove (52:25.837)
And you know, for me, it’s quite hard to get the sleep that I need right now with a 15 and a half month old. But some people might view this as a luxury and actually have a guest episode coming up in a few weeks with a sleep expert. But because it is so important to me and my physical and my mental health.
it stands above everything else. Like I have to spend more time in bed to actually get enough sleep because I’m waking up and all of that. But I’ve just figured out, because I know myself and I use a wearable which helps, what I actually need to do. And if it means missing an episode, if it means saying no to a dinner because they want to go too late. Like I’m like a 6pm, I actually went out to dinner the other week, I’m tangenting here but it’s 7.30 and I thought, my goodness, this is like, I’m like.
winding down at 8, 8.30 at the latest. But in this season of life, and because I you know, tend to get, I know when I’m stressed because I get sick more often, I just have to really protect that. And sometimes the decisions that you need to make, and maybe this is the thing I wanted to leave the audience with, to protect your immunity and to improve your microbiome, like we want this to fit your life as much as possible, but you need to put yourself first. And you probably really need to think
about what is required to put yourself first and you know over the years and time you will figure that out. For me it’s sleep, I’m the same. I have to at all costs protect that.
But I love asking that question and thank you for joining us. Thank you for sharing your expertise, your personal insights and story and a lot of really practical examples. So I’ll leave our conversation there. I’ll make sure all the links are in the show notes. And if you haven’t listened to last week’s solo episode, it does really link in well with this to kind of build on some of that knowledge. But thank you for joining me today, Cecilia. I really appreciate
Jess Spendlove (54:30.479)
it and I know the listeners will have taken so much away from this.
Cecilia (54:34.797)
Thank you for having me on the podcast Jess.
Jess Spendlove (54:38.135)
Thank you. Otherwise, if you haven’t already subscribed, make sure you do so so you don’t miss a new episode. I have no doubt you have someone in your life who would value today’s episode, Dr. Cecilia’s insights. So make sure you share that with a friend or a family member. And otherwise, I’ll be back again next week with another guest episode actually, helping you all not only reach the top, but sustainably stay there. I’ll see you all then.