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Speaker 1: Well, hello there. Thank you for joining us today on

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Speaker 1: Healthy Ish. I hope you're having a really great day.

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Speaker 1: This is, of course the daily podcast and Body and Soul.

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Speaker 1: I am Felicity Harley. Renowned cardiologist doctor Ross Walker knows

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Speaker 1: his stuff. He's written seven books, is a keynote speaker.

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Speaker 1: In fact, you've probably seen him across the media over

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Speaker 1: the years, and today he joins us in the studio

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Speaker 1: to discuss the most important things you should do to

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Speaker 1: maintain good at gut health and also what to keep

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Speaker 1: in mind next time you search hashtag gut talk. If

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Speaker 1: you do want to hear more from Ross, I know

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Speaker 1: you will after this episode listening to extra Healthy Ish,

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Speaker 1: where he helps us make sense of pre post and probiotics.

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Speaker 1: You can search for that where we get your podcasts.

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Speaker 1: Ross welcome to Healthy Ish.

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Speaker 2: Thank you very much for listen to be here.

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Speaker 1: I'm honored to interview. You've had amazing experience in the

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Speaker 1: field yield of well cardiology particularly and now you know

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Speaker 1: you're on a bit of a mission to share information

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Speaker 1: around the gut. Yep, why there should I say change

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Speaker 1: or movement or you know.

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Speaker 2: It's just natural progression.

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Speaker 3: I mean, the gut is so important in all aspects

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Speaker 3: of health, including cardiology as well.

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Speaker 2: But to me, it's not.

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Speaker 3: About having a healthy heart or a healthy gut or

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Speaker 3: a healthy brain. It's about having a healthy body. And

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Speaker 3: it's all mixed in together.

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Speaker 1: So I came across something that you said which I

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Speaker 1: really liked, and I kind of want you to unpack.

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Speaker 2: It for us.

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Speaker 1: It's your body is its only pharmacy. Can you talk

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Speaker 1: to us about this?

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Speaker 3: Yeah, because the best healer is yourself, not going to

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Speaker 3: a doctor and swallowing a pill or a potion or whatever.

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Speaker 3: It's how you look after yourself. And I talk all

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Speaker 3: the time about what I call the five keys of

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Speaker 3: good health, and the five keys of good health from

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Speaker 3: the least important to the most important. And this is

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Speaker 3: not heart health, it's all health. Number one, having no addictions.

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Speaker 3: You cannot be healthy and smoke, drink too much grog,

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Speaker 3: or snort cocaine.

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Speaker 2: So anyone who's.

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Speaker 3: Addicted to anything is ill. Number one. Number two, and

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Speaker 3: we're getting more and more emphasis on this. Seven to

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Speaker 3: eight hours every night of good quality sleep.

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Speaker 2: Number three.

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Speaker 3: Nutrition and nutrition's easy to talk about, harder to do.

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Speaker 3: It's called eat less food, eat more natural food. And

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Speaker 3: the real tragedy felicity is that only less than ten

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Speaker 3: percent of people living in the modern world have two

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Speaker 3: or three pieces of fruit per day. Three to five

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Speaker 3: serving serving is about half a carrot, so it's not

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Speaker 3: a huge amount.

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Speaker 2: Three to five.

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Speaker 3: Servings of vegetables per day, and those people who do

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Speaker 3: that have the healthiest hearts, less cancer, better gut, health

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Speaker 3: less alzheimers, you name it. Just the fruit and vegetables

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Speaker 3: every day is so good for you. And then on

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Speaker 3: top of that, if you want to little bits of meat, eggs, dairy, chicken, fish, nuts,

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Speaker 3: and olive oil and avoid process package crap masquerade as

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Speaker 3: food and avoiding what I call white death, which is sugar,

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Speaker 3: white bread, pasta, potatoes, and rice goes straight to the

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Speaker 3: gut and causes abdominal obesity. That's nutrition, very simple, eat less,

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Speaker 3: eat more natural. Number four, second best drug in the

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Speaker 3: planet three to five hours every week of moderate exertion,

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Speaker 3: and tragically only twenty five percent of the population do that.

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Speaker 3: And easily the best drug in the planet is a

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Speaker 3: thing my second that called happiness.

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Speaker 1: Oh yes, I'm going to say exercise.

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Speaker 3: I said exercise is the second best, but happiness is

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Speaker 3: easily the best.

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Speaker 2: Drug in the planet.

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Speaker 3: Just to give you one example, there's this little known

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Speaker 3: university in America called Harvard.

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Speaker 2: On Harvard, what's that one again? Harvard and Harvard one

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Speaker 2: of the great learning institutions of the world.

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Speaker 3: And I'm carry on about, but Harvard have done for

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Speaker 3: the last eighty years a thing called the Grant Study.

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Speaker 3: The Grand Study showed the one key to health and

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Speaker 3: happiness is to have someone else in your life who

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Speaker 3: loves and cares for you, who you love and care for.

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Speaker 3: It's much more important than your damn cholesterol or your

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Speaker 3: blood pressure or anything else. Nurture your relationships. So those

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Speaker 3: five keys. Doing those on a regular basis, and tragically

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Speaker 3: less than ten percent of people do, that reduces your

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Speaker 3: risk for all diseases somewhere between seventy to eighty percent,

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Speaker 3: four times more powerful anything a doctor can.

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Speaker 2: Say for you.

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Speaker 3: So the key to gut health is just the fruit

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Speaker 3: and vegetables, and hardly anyone does it.

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Speaker 1: I mean, we all struggle with this, don't we. We

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Speaker 1: all struggle with eating. I mean, we know it, but

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Speaker 1: I mean it's quite extraordinary when you say ninety percent

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Speaker 1: of us don't eat two or.

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Speaker 2: Three pieces of fruit, three to five.

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Speaker 1: Servings and that is just an easy way here your.

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Speaker 2: Gut absolutely how to do that. That's exactly what I do.

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Speaker 3: I do that every day because it keeps my gut healthy.

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Speaker 3: I also take a high quality probidic or actually take

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Speaker 3: a thing or to trybiotic which has got probiotics, probiotics

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Speaker 3: and post biotics in it. So I take that every day,

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Speaker 3: which helps, but that is not a replacement for the

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Speaker 3: fruits vegetables. A lot of people take vitamin supplements or

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Speaker 3: probiotics and they think that's going to keep them healthy.

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Speaker 3: They're called supplements. Supplements to what supplements to the healthy lifestyle.

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Speaker 3: That's the key is the healthy lifestyle.

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Speaker 1: I mean, you know what you're talking about. You've had

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Speaker 1: years of decades experience, You've seen plenty of patients, and

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Speaker 1: how do you make sure you include those fruit and

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Speaker 1: veggies in your day?

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Speaker 2: Well, just breakfast every morning.

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Speaker 3: I have probably had what would be the equivalent of

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Speaker 3: two or three pieces of fruit every day for breakfast.

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Speaker 2: That's just what my typical breakfast. I make it myself.

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Speaker 3: I don't have commercial breakfast cereal, so ten to fifteen

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Speaker 3: natural nuts a day, and people who do that have

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Speaker 3: up to a fifty percent reduction in cardiovascular disease just

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Speaker 3: by the nuts, So ten to fifteen natural nuts a day.

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Speaker 3: I have blueberries, bananas, strawberry prunes every day with a

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Speaker 3: bit of lesser than and LSA in a mix. And

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Speaker 3: I have oat milk because my wife says I snore

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Speaker 3: more if I have normal dairy products and a bit

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Speaker 3: of yogurt and it tastes beautiful. And that's how I

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Speaker 3: start the day. And then for dinner, we'll my wife

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Speaker 3: makes these magnificent salads. And again I mentioned about the

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Speaker 3: best key to health is to have someone else in

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Speaker 3: your life who loves and cares for you. We're celebrating

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Speaker 3: our forty seventh year of marriage.

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Speaker 1: This year, congratulations. Or we could do a whole separate

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Speaker 1: podcast about the secrets to have you married.

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Speaker 3: I'm absolutely happy to do that as well. It's at

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Speaker 3: another stage then, So we'll have these beautiful salads for

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Speaker 3: dinner where we get at least i'd say five servings

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Speaker 3: of different vegetables and they're absolutely delicious. So people should

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Speaker 3: be really gearing their diet around fruits and vegetables. I'm

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Speaker 3: not not saying we need to be vegetarian. I quite

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Speaker 3: enjoying meat, but I'm saying the fruits and vegetables are

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Speaker 3: the key to good health. So it's not avoiding things,

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Speaker 3: it's what you're not getting.

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Speaker 2: In your diet.

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Speaker 1: Now, a lot of our listeners are avid social media users,

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Speaker 1: myself included. We're always on there looking at the latest trends.

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Speaker 1: Dare I say, in all sorts of you know, in

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Speaker 1: all areas of health, but particularly there is a hashtag

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Speaker 1: on social media, hashtag gut top. Now this has had

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Speaker 1: over four hundred million views, so basically it's a few yeah,

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Speaker 1: and it basically sprooks things, lots of things and ideas

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Speaker 1: and tips on how you can improve your gut health.

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Speaker 1: I mean, there's the one going around at the moment

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Speaker 1: that having a daily shot of olive oil will improve

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Speaker 1: your gut health. Now, what do you think about all

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Speaker 1: this and what's your general rule of thumb when we

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Speaker 1: see all this content around around health.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, I think you should always look at the where

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Speaker 3: it's coming from. So if you have really reputable websites,

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Speaker 3: and there's quite a few reputable ones that I would

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Speaker 3: look at, so Body and Soul, like Body and Body

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Speaker 3: and Soul, that's probably the most reputable one I've ever read,

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Speaker 3: but things like if you want to get good medical advice,

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Speaker 3: look at the New England Journal of Medicine, all the

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Speaker 3: National Institutes of Health in the US, or different websites

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Speaker 3: in the UK, but don't go to these crappy websites.

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Speaker 2: So just and look at the person who's giving the advice.

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Speaker 3: So for example, I'd prefer an expert in the area

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Speaker 3: to be giving advice and some celebrity or sports star

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Speaker 3: who only knows anything about the product they're spreaking by

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Speaker 3: how quickly the ink dries and the contract. But the

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Speaker 3: olive oil story. Olive oil is I think one of

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Speaker 3: the key benefits of the Mediterranean diet, which is the

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Speaker 3: only diet that has any long term evidence based by

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Speaker 3: the way, so if you follow a good Mediterranean diet,

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Speaker 3: which is just what I said before, you reduce your

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Speaker 3: risk for all chronic diseases somewhere between thirty to fifty percent,

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Speaker 3: with about a thirty percent reduction in death over the

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Speaker 3: studies that are being done. So huge evidence for the

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Speaker 3: Mediterranean diet, of which olive oil is a vital component.

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Speaker 2: So yes, that's one aspect.

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Speaker 3: Of improving gut health, but not the only one more

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Speaker 3: the fruits and vegetables.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, Rols, thank you for coming on Healthy.

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Speaker 2: In my pleasure.

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Speaker 1: There we go. He makes it sound so simple, the

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Speaker 1: things that you can do today for better gut health.

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Speaker 1: If you did get something out of this, jump on

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Speaker 1: let us know, rate and review this podcast, and of

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Speaker 1: course you can subscribe, Share this at with a friend,

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Speaker 1: Share the gut health, love anything else. Head to Body

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Speaker 1: and soul dot com. Do you follows on socials? Grab

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Speaker 1: our print edition which is out in your local Sunday

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