Speaker 1: Well, hello there. Thank you for joining us today on
Speaker 1: Healthy Ish. I hope you're having a really great day.
Speaker 1: This is, of course the daily podcast and Body and Soul.
Speaker 1: I am Felicity Harley. Renowned cardiologist doctor Ross Walker knows
Speaker 1: his stuff. He's written seven books, is a keynote speaker.
Speaker 1: In fact, you've probably seen him across the media over
Speaker 1: the years, and today he joins us in the studio
Speaker 1: to discuss the most important things you should do to
Speaker 1: maintain good at gut health and also what to keep
Speaker 1: in mind next time you search hashtag gut talk. If
Speaker 1: you do want to hear more from Ross, I know
Speaker 1: you will after this episode listening to extra Healthy Ish,
Speaker 1: where he helps us make sense of pre post and probiotics.
Speaker 1: You can search for that where we get your podcasts.
Speaker 1: Ross welcome to Healthy Ish.
Speaker 2: Thank you very much for listen to be here.
Speaker 1: I'm honored to interview. You've had amazing experience in the
Speaker 1: field yield of well cardiology particularly and now you know
Speaker 1: you're on a bit of a mission to share information
Speaker 1: around the gut. Yep, why there should I say change
Speaker 1: or movement or you know.
Speaker 2: It's just natural progression.
Speaker 3: I mean, the gut is so important in all aspects
Speaker 3: of health, including cardiology as well.
Speaker 2: But to me, it's not.
Speaker 3: About having a healthy heart or a healthy gut or
Speaker 3: a healthy brain. It's about having a healthy body. And
Speaker 3: it's all mixed in together.
Speaker 1: So I came across something that you said which I
Speaker 1: really liked, and I kind of want you to unpack.
Speaker 2: It for us.
Speaker 1: It's your body is its only pharmacy. Can you talk
Speaker 1: to us about this?
Speaker 3: Yeah, because the best healer is yourself, not going to
Speaker 3: a doctor and swallowing a pill or a potion or whatever.
Speaker 3: It's how you look after yourself. And I talk all
Speaker 3: the time about what I call the five keys of
Speaker 3: good health, and the five keys of good health from
Speaker 3: the least important to the most important. And this is
Speaker 3: not heart health, it's all health. Number one, having no addictions.
Speaker 3: You cannot be healthy and smoke, drink too much grog,
Speaker 3: or snort cocaine.
Speaker 2: So anyone who's.
Speaker 3: Addicted to anything is ill. Number one. Number two, and
Speaker 3: we're getting more and more emphasis on this. Seven to
Speaker 3: eight hours every night of good quality sleep.
Speaker 2: Number three.
Speaker 3: Nutrition and nutrition's easy to talk about, harder to do.
Speaker 3: It's called eat less food, eat more natural food. And
Speaker 3: the real tragedy felicity is that only less than ten
Speaker 3: percent of people living in the modern world have two
Speaker 3: or three pieces of fruit per day. Three to five
Speaker 3: serving serving is about half a carrot, so it's not
Speaker 3: a huge amount.
Speaker 2: Three to five.
Speaker 3: Servings of vegetables per day, and those people who do
Speaker 3: that have the healthiest hearts, less cancer, better gut, health
Speaker 3: less alzheimers, you name it. Just the fruit and vegetables
Speaker 3: every day is so good for you. And then on
Speaker 3: top of that, if you want to little bits of meat, eggs, dairy, chicken, fish, nuts,
Speaker 3: and olive oil and avoid process package crap masquerade as
Speaker 3: food and avoiding what I call white death, which is sugar,
Speaker 3: white bread, pasta, potatoes, and rice goes straight to the
Speaker 3: gut and causes abdominal obesity. That's nutrition, very simple, eat less,
Speaker 3: eat more natural. Number four, second best drug in the
Speaker 3: planet three to five hours every week of moderate exertion,
Speaker 3: and tragically only twenty five percent of the population do that.
Speaker 3: And easily the best drug in the planet is a
Speaker 3: thing my second that called happiness.
Speaker 1: Oh yes, I'm going to say exercise.
Speaker 3: I said exercise is the second best, but happiness is
Speaker 3: easily the best.
Speaker 2: Drug in the planet.
Speaker 3: Just to give you one example, there's this little known
Speaker 3: university in America called Harvard.
Speaker 2: On Harvard, what's that one again? Harvard and Harvard one
Speaker 2: of the great learning institutions of the world.
Speaker 3: And I'm carry on about, but Harvard have done for
Speaker 3: the last eighty years a thing called the Grant Study.
Speaker 3: The Grand Study showed the one key to health and
Speaker 3: happiness is to have someone else in your life who
Speaker 3: loves and cares for you, who you love and care for.
Speaker 3: It's much more important than your damn cholesterol or your
Speaker 3: blood pressure or anything else. Nurture your relationships. So those
Speaker 3: five keys. Doing those on a regular basis, and tragically
Speaker 3: less than ten percent of people do, that reduces your
Speaker 3: risk for all diseases somewhere between seventy to eighty percent,
Speaker 3: four times more powerful anything a doctor can.
Speaker 2: Say for you.
Speaker 3: So the key to gut health is just the fruit
Speaker 3: and vegetables, and hardly anyone does it.
Speaker 1: I mean, we all struggle with this, don't we. We
Speaker 1: all struggle with eating. I mean, we know it, but
Speaker 1: I mean it's quite extraordinary when you say ninety percent
Speaker 1: of us don't eat two or.
Speaker 2: Three pieces of fruit, three to five.
Speaker 1: Servings and that is just an easy way here your.
Speaker 2: Gut absolutely how to do that. That's exactly what I do.
Speaker 3: I do that every day because it keeps my gut healthy.
Speaker 3: I also take a high quality probidic or actually take
Speaker 3: a thing or to trybiotic which has got probiotics, probiotics
Speaker 3: and post biotics in it. So I take that every day,
Speaker 3: which helps, but that is not a replacement for the
Speaker 3: fruits vegetables. A lot of people take vitamin supplements or
Speaker 3: probiotics and they think that's going to keep them healthy.
Speaker 3: They're called supplements. Supplements to what supplements to the healthy lifestyle.
Speaker 3: That's the key is the healthy lifestyle.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know what you're talking about. You've had
Speaker 1: years of decades experience, You've seen plenty of patients, and
Speaker 1: how do you make sure you include those fruit and
Speaker 1: veggies in your day?
Speaker 2: Well, just breakfast every morning.
Speaker 3: I have probably had what would be the equivalent of
Speaker 3: two or three pieces of fruit every day for breakfast.
Speaker 2: That's just what my typical breakfast. I make it myself.
Speaker 3: I don't have commercial breakfast cereal, so ten to fifteen
Speaker 3: natural nuts a day, and people who do that have
Speaker 3: up to a fifty percent reduction in cardiovascular disease just
Speaker 3: by the nuts, So ten to fifteen natural nuts a day.
Speaker 3: I have blueberries, bananas, strawberry prunes every day with a
Speaker 3: bit of lesser than and LSA in a mix. And
Speaker 3: I have oat milk because my wife says I snore
Speaker 3: more if I have normal dairy products and a bit
Speaker 3: of yogurt and it tastes beautiful. And that's how I
Speaker 3: start the day. And then for dinner, we'll my wife
Speaker 3: makes these magnificent salads. And again I mentioned about the
Speaker 3: best key to health is to have someone else in
Speaker 3: your life who loves and cares for you. We're celebrating
Speaker 3: our forty seventh year of marriage.
Speaker 1: This year, congratulations. Or we could do a whole separate
Speaker 1: podcast about the secrets to have you married.
Speaker 3: I'm absolutely happy to do that as well. It's at
Speaker 3: another stage then, So we'll have these beautiful salads for
Speaker 3: dinner where we get at least i'd say five servings
Speaker 3: of different vegetables and they're absolutely delicious. So people should
Speaker 3: be really gearing their diet around fruits and vegetables. I'm
Speaker 3: not not saying we need to be vegetarian. I quite
Speaker 3: enjoying meat, but I'm saying the fruits and vegetables are
Speaker 3: the key to good health. So it's not avoiding things,
Speaker 3: it's what you're not getting.
Speaker 2: In your diet.
Speaker 1: Now, a lot of our listeners are avid social media users,
Speaker 1: myself included. We're always on there looking at the latest trends.
Speaker 1: Dare I say, in all sorts of you know, in
Speaker 1: all areas of health, but particularly there is a hashtag
Speaker 1: on social media, hashtag gut top. Now this has had
Speaker 1: over four hundred million views, so basically it's a few yeah,
Speaker 1: and it basically sprooks things, lots of things and ideas
Speaker 1: and tips on how you can improve your gut health.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's the one going around at the moment
Speaker 1: that having a daily shot of olive oil will improve
Speaker 1: your gut health. Now, what do you think about all
Speaker 1: this and what's your general rule of thumb when we
Speaker 1: see all this content around around health.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think you should always look at the where
Speaker 3: it's coming from. So if you have really reputable websites,
Speaker 3: and there's quite a few reputable ones that I would
Speaker 3: look at, so Body and Soul, like Body and Body
Speaker 3: and Soul, that's probably the most reputable one I've ever read,
Speaker 3: but things like if you want to get good medical advice,
Speaker 3: look at the New England Journal of Medicine, all the
Speaker 3: National Institutes of Health in the US, or different websites
Speaker 3: in the UK, but don't go to these crappy websites.
Speaker 2: So just and look at the person who's giving the advice.
Speaker 3: So for example, I'd prefer an expert in the area
Speaker 3: to be giving advice and some celebrity or sports star
Speaker 3: who only knows anything about the product they're spreaking by
Speaker 3: how quickly the ink dries and the contract. But the
Speaker 3: olive oil story. Olive oil is I think one of
Speaker 3: the key benefits of the Mediterranean diet, which is the
Speaker 3: only diet that has any long term evidence based by
Speaker 3: the way, so if you follow a good Mediterranean diet,
Speaker 3: which is just what I said before, you reduce your
Speaker 3: risk for all chronic diseases somewhere between thirty to fifty percent,
Speaker 3: with about a thirty percent reduction in death over the
Speaker 3: studies that are being done. So huge evidence for the
Speaker 3: Mediterranean diet, of which olive oil is a vital component.
Speaker 2: So yes, that's one aspect.
Speaker 3: Of improving gut health, but not the only one more
Speaker 3: the fruits and vegetables.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Rols, thank you for coming on Healthy.
Speaker 2: In my pleasure.
Speaker 1: There we go. He makes it sound so simple, the
Speaker 1: things that you can do today for better gut health.
Speaker 1: If you did get something out of this, jump on
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