Speaker 1: Oh hey there, thanks for joining us on the body
Speaker 1: and soul podcast called Healthy Ish. I hope you are
Speaker 1: feeling healthy today, or perhaps you're feeling the ish bit
Speaker 1: or both together. Anyway, thank you for tuning in to
Speaker 1: our chat with doctor will Bolschwitz. I am Felicity Harley.
Speaker 1: Let me tell you more about doctor b as he
Speaker 1: is better known. He is a gastro entologist New York
Speaker 1: Times best selling author. He is founder of a supplement company,
Speaker 1: thirty eight Terror, and he's going to well give his
Speaker 1: verdict on the claims on social media about cold therapy
Speaker 1: for better gut health. Plus, he will remind you of
Speaker 1: the importance of a diverse plant based diet. Now make
Speaker 1: sure you listen in to our sister pod, Extra Healthy Ish,
Speaker 1: where well he talks more about supplements. Of course he
Speaker 1: does own a company full disclosure, but we do have
Speaker 1: an interesting chat around whether they do help gut health,
Speaker 1: and he also talks about the impact of the gut
Speaker 1: on women's hormone health. You can search for Extra Healthy
Speaker 1: Ish where you get your podcasts. Doctor b Welcome to
Speaker 1: Healthy Ish. How are you.
Speaker 2: Oh, I'm grateful city. Thank you for having me. It's
Speaker 2: great to see you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's actually nice to have you on the pod.
Speaker 1: I've had your book on my bookshelf for many years,
Speaker 1: so I'm looking forward to chatting all things gut health.
Speaker 2: Got to dust it off, No, well, maybe.
Speaker 1: Anyway, I want to talk about something that you put
Speaker 1: on your social media that caught my eye. Influencers claiming
Speaker 1: cold plunges. Well, it's kind of like a godsend for
Speaker 1: all aspects of health. But what about specifically for the microbiome?
Speaker 1: Can they help gut health?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so, actually we don't have complete clarity on this, okay,
Speaker 2: but I think that the answer is probably yes. And
Speaker 2: before I dive into that, let me just start by
Speaker 2: saying that I think that there's more powerful tools that exist. Right,
Speaker 2: this is just a tool. It's one of the things
Speaker 2: that you can do. But certainly, if you want to
Speaker 2: be healthy, there's much more that we should talk about,
Speaker 2: and that includes eating a healthy diet with a wide
Speaker 2: variety of different plants. Okay, when it comes to the
Speaker 2: cold plunge, the key with the cold plunge is that
Speaker 2: when you first get in, actually your heart rate will
Speaker 2: go up, all right, and it'll be a shock to
Speaker 2: the system. It activates the sympathetic nervous system. But then
Speaker 2: there's this response when we submerge ourselves in cold water.
Speaker 2: And by the way, it doesn't have to be like
Speaker 2: a total body submersion. It could actually just be your hands.
Speaker 2: Believe it or not. Oh no way, yeah, So you
Speaker 2: can get a similar effect, Like it's going to be
Speaker 2: a more pronounced effect if you submerge your body, but
Speaker 2: you can get a similar effect just by submerging your
Speaker 2: hands or even by using a cold wet towel on
Speaker 2: your face. And what ends up happening as a result
Speaker 2: of this, they call it the diver's response. And what
Speaker 2: you get is actually activation of the parasympathetic nervous system
Speaker 2: through the vegus nerve. So the vagus nerve is what
Speaker 2: connects our brain. It's one of our cranial nerves. There's
Speaker 2: these twelve cranial nerves. This is the only cranial nerve
Speaker 2: that connects directly from our brain, Like it literally is
Speaker 2: connected straight to the brain, and it weaves the skull
Speaker 2: and passes down into the body and it connects to
Speaker 2: all of these other parts of our body, including our lungs,
Speaker 2: our heart, and our gut, and it's collecting information sensing
Speaker 2: and it's speaking between the gut and the brain. So
Speaker 2: when we talk about the gut brain connection, the most
Speaker 2: clear representation of this is the vegus nerve, And in
Speaker 2: this case, by doing cold plunge, we are activating the
Speaker 2: vegus nerve, and activation of the vegus nerve gets the
Speaker 2: body into a relaxed state. It's good for digestion, and
Speaker 2: the evidence would suggest that it's beneficial to our gut
Speaker 2: microbile and so it would seem to me that that
Speaker 2: cold plunch can in fact be good for the gut microbes.
Speaker 2: There we go.
Speaker 1: We look forward to seeing more research about that. But
Speaker 1: you did say there that there are obviously otherwise that
Speaker 1: you can improve the health of your microbime. And actually
Speaker 1: I pulled out a quote from your book and in
Speaker 1: it you're write, the single greatest predictor of a healthy
Speaker 1: gut microvime is the diversity of plants in one's diet. Okay,
Speaker 1: talk to us about this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, okay, so you know we're we're taught to
Speaker 2: identify like singular foods, super foods. Hey, or here's this
Speaker 2: weird thing that we found in the Amazon rainforest, and
Speaker 2: like this is the thing that's going to fix all
Speaker 2: your problems, when in fact, actually the way that our
Speaker 2: body works is you know, in some ways it's simple,
Speaker 2: but in other ways, I'm like, wow, this is just
Speaker 2: it makes so much sense. There was a study that
Speaker 2: was done. It was called the American Gut Project. And
Speaker 2: by the way, it was done by Rob Knight, who's
Speaker 2: from New Zealand, and it was and it wasn't just Americans. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and it wasn't just Americans either, Like they literally had
Speaker 2: people from across the world. But they called it the
Speaker 2: American Gut Project because it's based out of the United States.
Speaker 2: And in the study, they they basically were making connections
Speaker 2: between the health of the gut microbiome and diet and
Speaker 2: lifestyle choices. And what they discovered was a surprise. The
Speaker 2: number one factor out of everything that they looked at,
Speaker 2: the number one factor that was predictive of having a
Speaker 2: healthy gut microbiome was the diversity of plants in a
Speaker 2: person's diet. Specifically, the people who were consuming more than
Speaker 2: thirty different varieties of plants per week were the people
Speaker 2: with the healthiest guts. Now, plants is many different things.
Speaker 2: It's not just fresh produce it's not just salads, it's fruits,
Speaker 2: it's vegetables, it's whole grains, seeds, nuts, legomes, spices, herbs.
Speaker 2: They count two. Frozen food counts two. So we have
Speaker 2: a lot of different choices. But my message to the
Speaker 2: listeners is, don't count grams of fiber, don't count calories,
Speaker 2: don't count macros. Have fun and count the varieties of
Speaker 2: plants in your diet. You can gamify this. I like it,
Speaker 2: you know, and real quick flicity on the topic. The
Speaker 2: reason that this works the way that it does is
Speaker 2: that every single plant is unique. Every single plant has
Speaker 2: a different mix of different fiber and polyphenols and vitamins
Speaker 2: and minerals and also these things that we call phytochemicals,
Speaker 2: and all of them make an impact and help to
Speaker 2: shape the microbiome and make it healthier. So when you
Speaker 2: eat a wide variety of different plants, in essence, what's
Speaker 2: happening on the inside is that you're feeding a wide
Speaker 2: variety of different microbes. And when you feed a wide
Speaker 2: variety of different microbes, basically you're lifting up the whole system.
Speaker 2: You're rising the tide.
Speaker 1: How do you you know? I mean, you're known as
Speaker 1: the Gut Health MD on socials. Do you keepe a
Speaker 1: account of you know, like a mental tally of how
Speaker 1: many plants you ate every week, or there are specific
Speaker 1: ones you make sure you include in your diet.
Speaker 2: Well, so when you put this way, I want to
Speaker 2: I want to like keep itally and then when I
Speaker 2: hit thirty, I take my foot off the gap. From
Speaker 2: my perspective, I'm going to live my life. I'm going
Speaker 2: to enjoy the food that I eat, but I am
Speaker 2: going to incorporate this concept. So when I'm in the supermarket,
Speaker 2: when I'm in the kitchen, and when I'm at the
Speaker 2: at the dinner table, these are all opportunities for me
Speaker 2: to just quite simply look for opportunities to add more.
Speaker 2: So a quick example of this felicity is like, look,
Speaker 2: as a family, we regardless of what recipes I may
Speaker 2: have in my book and my cookbook, right, we don't
Speaker 2: make a different recipe every night. We have like the
Speaker 2: same rotation of recipes every week. Because that's the way
Speaker 2: the families are. We have like we we like what
Speaker 2: we like, and we just keep going back to the
Speaker 2: well am making.
Speaker 1: Us all feel sane.
Speaker 2: That's the way we all are, right and it's okay
Speaker 2: to like it's it's cool to explore and try something
Speaker 2: new once in a while, and if you really love it,
Speaker 2: then keep it. Right. So when we make uh, we
Speaker 2: make pasta, right, most people they just put do pasta
Speaker 2: pasta sauce and maybe they add meatballs or whatever it is,
Speaker 2: or sausage or whatever they want to add to that. Right,
Speaker 2: But to me, the pasta sauce is a vehicle for plants.
Speaker 2: At a minimum, we are dropping bagomes, oftentimes lentils, sometimes chickpeas. Like,
Speaker 2: at a minimum, we are dropping some lagoons in there,
Speaker 2: and then I'm gonna definitely get some onions and some garlic,
Speaker 2: some fresh basil. Right, And to the listeners at home, like,
Speaker 2: what would you if you opened up your fridge, what
Speaker 2: would you find in there that you could throw into
Speaker 2: this pasta sauce? Because the thing about pasta sauce is
Speaker 2: if you wet it, if you wet it stew, everything
Speaker 2: sauce softens up and it tastes delicious. Right, I mean
Speaker 2: you could throw carrots in there, They're gonna taste amazing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Doctor Bay delicious recipe. Thank you for coming on, healthies, Oh,
Speaker 1: thank you well, friends, another reminder that we should all
Speaker 1: be consuming thirty plants or forty plants or somewhere in between.
Speaker 1: Eight week anyway, thank you for tuning in to this
Speaker 1: episode with doctor Will. We'll make sure listening to him
Speaker 1: on extra healthy issue where we have well. I found
Speaker 1: it a very intriguing chat about gun health. If you
Speaker 1: did enjoy this one, tell us you can rate this podcast,
Speaker 1: also review it anything else hed to Body and Soul
Speaker 1: dot com dot you follows on socials. Grab ourprint edition
Speaker 1: which is out in your local Sunday paper, and until
Speaker 1: tomorrow stay healthy ish