Food58: analysing the microbiome would only really make sense alongside a general medical ‘work-up’.So also consider lists of symptoms (even mild), signs (other health tests), risk factors for or diagnoses of medical conditions.

The average young person is more interested in how they feel now and look now than in twenty or forty years time. Heck many of us supposedly ‘mature’ adults are just the same!

Skin conditions (and hair/ nails), menstrual cycle/ fertility/ sexual activity, body fat and muscle distribution (ie. body shape), mental wellbeing (depression/ anxiety/ social), energy, asthma, sports performance ….

Link these sort of issues to diet and lifestyle and they often want to make healthier choices. That is based on working in healthcare not parenting teenagers BTW!

Thank you ‘Recoveringfatty’ (though I feel a bit uncomfortable calling you that). That’s really helpful – knowing that fast exercise has HIIT exercises in it. Thank you. Congratulations on your progress so far! And good luck with the rest of your journey!

Thanks Efaitch – I will try to check out Scientific7 at some stage!

Food58: the most valuable guides you have at this stage are your detailed food and symptom diaries. For accuracy log weighed and measured quantities as you eat and drink, not later in the day.

Your diaries will clearly reveal the amount of refined/ processed/ sugary stuff in your diet, the balance of the different food groups, the variety within each group/ type.

The average westerner doesn’t need to tweak their diet to rebalance their gut flora and maintain health, we need a MAJOR overhaul.

We have a fairly simple ‘action list’ in officially recommended serving sizes, food types to increase (oily fish, bright coloured veg, lower sugar fruits) and reduce (added sugar, refined grains, added fats) whivh we largely ignore!

Pleased to read you and baby are bonding so well!

Unfortunately there is no single pill, potion or foodstuff that will restore the diversity of your microbiomes. Research suggests a really wide variety of prebiotic rich wholefoods, plus the widest possible variety of probiotic rich fermented foods is important.

It would be safest to discuss including fermented dairy products (kefir, soft unpasteurised cheeses etc) in your diet with your dietician/ obstetrician or suchlike.

Prof. Tim Spector (British Gut Project) has a particular Interest in ‘vaginal seeding’ at birth, in part because his wife needed a cesaerian section. You might read up on his recommendations? Your medical team will hopefully be open to discussing the research to date.

Because coconut products are primarily used as a substitute for cow’s dairy in the recipes, there is not an easy answer to that!

Depending on the detailed food and symptom diary, your confidence in tolerance to milk sugar (lactose) and/ or cow’s milk proteins and/ or soy products, AND after consulting a registered dietician or similar about cross reactivity …

Options include goat’s or ewe’s dairy products, ghee (from pastured/ grass fed cows), soaked cashew nut ‘cream’, silken tofu (but soy), palm kernel oil (NOT palm fruit/ red palm oil, has a very different fatty acid profile).

Depends on your detailed food and symptom diary, form of oats purchased, how you prepare them, how often you include them, portion size.

IF your food diary suggests a potential problem with related grains (wheat/ barley/ rye), OR you currently over-emphasise oats instead of a *really wide variety* of plants, OR you have processed oats (inc. porridge/ instant/ quick cook), you should limit or avoid oats in phase one.

There is the option of including a small amount of rolled oats in the CG nutty cinnamon granola (p.198). But note the granola only features once in the example meal planner (p.261).

HTH!

Thanks, recoveringfatty (great name!)

It tasted slightly less bad the second day – perhaps because I knew what to expect. I think I migt like kombucha better. I’ll see how it goes.

Hi Squidge

My wife and I struggled with Keffir to start with but now we enjoy it, it really is an acquired taste! If you make your own you can tailor the taste by fermenting it for a shorter time if that suits your tastes more, increasing the time and pungency as you get used to the flavour. The same applies to Kombucha. You can also add things to both during the secondary ferment change the flavour.
Try mixing Keffir with other things to make a smoothie-that really masks the taste. I use mixed berries, chia seeds, spinach and avocado in mine (making a pre biotic and probiotic cocktail!) but I also add other things from time to time.
Making Kombucha and Keffir really is quite easy, you will save a fortune making your own and arguably end up with a more diverse mix of microbes . I purchased both my grains and Scoby off Ebay and haven’t looked back.
Good luck!

Thanks, efaitch.

I bought a bottle of keffir. I won’t be buying another! I’m going to try to get through this one though. Am I right in thinking that if we get the bacteria into our gut it can stay there without top ups, as long as we eat well, don’t get ill, take antiobiotics etc? (I have the blood sugar diet book and am following it, and saw the clever guts TV programme but don’t habe that book.)

I’ll try buying komboucha and see if I like it before thinking about making any. I looked up making it and found directions for making the SCOBY too. I could probably do it, but it seems a lot of effort unless I’m sure we’ll drink it regularly.

I had Hair and blood samples analysed through my GP and Natropath. It was quite costly but it has made a massive difference to my life and feeling of well being. I have had chronic problems with my stomach all my life until now.
Sigrid

To be honest, if you can’t interpret and action the results, then no… I don’t think it’s worth it.

I will be interpreting my own results as I understand the science and have access to journals via my institution, but even then, the science is still new, so I have to be careful in what I take from the results…

Honestly? The best thing to do is eat a diverse diet that keeps the gut microbiome diverse (easier said than done, my kids love junk food too :/ )

Hi Erick thank you for this. Yes the book got my hopes up that I could get tested, get data and an action list. Seems it is not quite so easy…..

Hi Fiona, many thanks for this. It appeals to me to contribute to research whilst benefiting myself. The thing is though, I am not scientific so I need to have data and simple interpretation and action points ideally, like eat more broccoli! Would I get this from The British Gut Project? Someone else in another thread here mentioned Map my Gut which is available in the U.K. via Manor Pharmacy Group, just wondered if you had heard of them? I really want to get my 17 yr old daughter tested who although slim and healthy now, eats a lot of sugar (was caesarean) and who I suspect is heading for trouble in the longer term but we need plain English interpretations or else we will be wasting our money. What do you think?

I downloaded the audio book from Audible as well. To obtain the PDF, I signed into my Audible account, navigated to My Library, and scrolled down the table until I came to The Clever Gut Diet. In the “Title” column there is a hyperlink to the PDF, no password required.

There’s an app called Scientific 7 that you might be interested in. You can repeat the 7 minutes if you have more time 🙂

Kombucha is also another drink that you may be interested in. It’s a fermented tea drink (it’s in the book), but the basics are you need a SCOBY (symbiotic colony of bacteria and yeast) that is responsible for the fermentation. SCOBYs can be bought or “acquired” (I can’t link to sites, but there are some groups that will forward a SCOBY to you for free – I haven’t fermented for a while, so don’t have a SCOBY at the moment! Don’t worry about the sugar because that’s what the SCOBY lives on and makes other metabolites in place of the sugar.

Once you have a SCOBY, you add the SCOBY to cooled, sweet tea (there are different types of SCOBY that will feed on different teas) and leave it to ferment. You can then bottle the ferment and put it in the fridge to do a secondary ferment – this will make the kombucha fizzy (you have to be really careful that the bottle it is in is “burped” to stop pressure build up and an explosion). You can flavour with fruits etc. I have had success with grape juice added to a second ferment and the kids drank it 😀

Kefir can be bought, but you can also make it yourself – it’s erm… an acquired taste when it’s homemade and I prefer it made with goat milk. It’s kind of like a fizzy drinking yoghurt. Again, you can acquire the kefir grains (they look like mini cauliflower florets and are the colony that does the fermenting, like a SCOBY) from fermenting groups.

Hi, how did you find out you were allergic to all of these foods?

Fiona

Hi,

You can get your microbiome tested in the UK via The British Gut Project, which is run by Tim Spector at King’s College. Basically, you give a donation (what you pay to have your gut microbiome sequenced) and the project receives the money towards their academic research and you receive your “perk”. I have my testing tubes waiting for me to complete!

The massive problem with microbiome sequencing is that we don’t fully understand what each species does and the interactions between species, for instance, some microbiota produce certain metabolites, whilst others are consumers of said metabolites. There is some systems biology (computer modelling) research that I’m aware of, but that is in its infancy.

This is the reason that sequencing can be offered, but analysis and interpretation is lacking… if you use the British Gut Project (associated with The American Gut Project) you are donating to a research project that will enable academics to understand the interactions of the gut microbiome 🙂

I hope that this helps, there are other services available, but they offer sequencing only, but this is a research project with the aim of cataloguing lots of microbiome sequences to understand the microbiome 🙂

Fiona

Hi KylieM7

Fast exercise is a book: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Fast-Exercise-Michael-Mosley/dp/1780721986 (also Michael did a documentary)
There’s quite a bit in the book about how and why it works but also suggested exercises. It got me started doing HIIT about 14 months ago and I’ve built up my regime best few quid I ever spent!. I won’t pretend it’s been easy but its fast and tolerable and for me I have no doubt its worked. I use a programmable cross trainer to do HIIT every other day, but you can do it many other ways. You don’t really need a piece of equipment but i find having a programmed automatic regime suits me.
Good luck.

Sorry if this has been asked before but can anyone say if during the first phase of ‘rebooting your biome’ you are allowed oats?
Thank you

Hello – My partner has an allergy to coconut, what could I use instead of coconut oil/ coconut milk in the recipes?

Hi Im allergic to all wheat, dairy, eggs, bananas, strawberries, pork, tomatoes, capsicum, chilli, eggplant, potatoes, beans, peas, soy, legumes, mustard and a few more to boot.
Does anyone have any ideas of what I could eat for breakfast? Im a bit sick of rice!!!!
Thank you.

Greetings,

I am wondering if anyone has a link to a cool infographic or a simple list of good bacteria and their respective good foods to consume to increase their population? And maybe their associated symptoms and benefits.

Thanks,

Erick
Chicago, IL

Food58,

How are you? Hope all is well. I tried Ubiome this summer, it took them about 2 months to get me the results, which was frustrating and by the time I received them, I was busy travelling for work and filed the email away until this week.

It provides very good insight, but without a practical way to apply this new found knowledge, you feel helpless again. So, I began to search for probiotics that contain the good bacteria the test show that I am low on. There has got to be a better way for these testing labs to provide a complete service with post-testing recommendations on what to do next with this new information.

I hope this helps and I honestly don’t remember how much I paid, maybe $99-$149 USD.

To our gut health,

Erick Cerda
Chicago, IL

The clever guts book says you can get your biome texted for as little as £100. Has anyone done this and was it useful? I live in the U.K, in case that is important. Many thanks.

Hello Mendosa, yes I had reflux and yes following Clever guts has almost cured me! I did not have to do much but coupled with some things I know I must avoid – see later- I no longer take up to 4 Rennie a day!! So what did I do? I started having raw oats and grated apple every morning. That’s pretty much it but it has worked. I used to eat porridge every day but now i do not cook the oats. The apple is the new bit. The oats are Tescos organic and the apples are organic or not. I have oat milk but have had that for years and I have cows milk in tea and loads of dairy generally. The apple and uncooked oats alone have eliminated most of my reflux. Otherwise like you I have foods I’ve learned to avoid. My list is : milk chocolate, anything peppermint, even tea, Marmite, chilli, lemon zest or juice – I substitute with lime or orange juice. I love tasty food so in place of chilli I use a lot of spices and smoked paprika for heat and that seems ok. Also Thai red curry paste is good and does not affect me. White wine is not good, red seems fine. I’ve just started having live yoghurt and now eat home made sauerkraut too and although I don’t actually like it at all, when mixed with grated apple it is ok and it seems v good for my other issue, constipation. So good luck. I’ve not got the clever guts recipe book but I’ve tried some in the general book (turkey burgers, veggie burgers and salmon and tomato burgers which were all good. I’ve also given up bread and mostly have gluten free. That has also helped.

I’ve made a batch of red cabbage-based sauerkraut and I’m working my way through it but I eat it like medicine, I don’t enjoy it but it is very beneficial for me and eases my main problem which is constipation.How do the rest of you eat it? To make it more palatable I have started to mix my daily dose up with grated apple and that is better. I’ve just made a second batch with red cabbage, carrot, beetroot and apple in the hope that this second lot will appeal more to my pallet. Any ideas and comments?

She uses a powder from her naturopath. There are cheap options but you get what you pay for 🙂

Hi, is there a shopping list for the meal planners either in the original book, or in the new companion recipe book? It takes so long to flick back and forth between the planners and the recipes, writing down all the ingredients! A full shopping list would make life so much easier!

Thanks

Hello Fellow gut dieters.
I’m starting the phase one diet in 10 days and really looking forward to it as well as feeling a little worried. I have really bad acid reflux. It had become more noticeable in the last 15 months. As a singer, this is a problem but I am managing it. Sometimes its worse than other times. I’m so sick of reflux diets and food (that don’t really work all the time and taste boring) I thought I would give this a shot. Is there anyone else that has the same problem with reflux? Has this diet worked for you? I know it’s incurable and you have to manage it. None of the anti-acid medication works for me. I have had an endoscopy and there are no major issues and they said they found no acid reflux damage, so I am keen to act now. In the some of the recipes there are big no no foods like garlic, tomatoes and strong flavours but I am willing to give it a go. Any other reflux people out there tell me your experiences with this diet please.

That’s interesting. Do you know if she uses powder or fresh turmeric?

I was recently administered infusions of antibiotics during labour as it was 24 hrs after my waters broke without labour starting.
The baby latched on right away and breastfeeding is going well and he is gaining weight. I am concerned that both our gut bacteria have been compromised. Should I now take probiotics and if so which ones or would it be better to drink kefir daily?

I recently found an article in the Nutrients journal online (google “An Examination of Diet for the Maintenance of Remission in Inflammatory Bowel Disease”) which eventually led me here and to buying the book. There seems to be a lot of crossover between the various studies cited in that article and the foods that are recommended by the Clever Guts diet. I have CD and I’ve just started changing my diet over, but don’t want to push it and risk being hospitalised again. So I’m just introducing one or two new items every couple of weeks. It’s too early to tell yet if there’s any difference, but fingers crossed.

That’s a big question and the short answer is “no one knows”. There is a characteristic dysbiosis associated with Crohn’s so “in theory” should be helpful. Word of caution: don’t risk provoking flare- so make small and evolutionary changes one-by-one. I would say well worth having your microbiome analysed before making changes

Thanks, Tofu.

I’ve not tried Kefir. I’ll give it a go.

Hi, I’m new to this forum, looking for answers too (outside of your challenge). But your post caught my eye. My friend has crohns and abut six months ago she discovered turmeric powder which she now takes regularly and this has been extremely effective with managing her crohns. Just thought I’d mention it a shame it might be useful for you. She has been blown away by her improvements.

Kefir is a sugar free fermented milk drink. You can buy it from the supermarket or make your own which apparently has a wider collection of bacteria, it certainly tastes more intense. I got my grains from Amazon, it’s really easy to do. I also make kimchi and I’m absolutely addicted to it, it’s also super easy, I got the special chilli flakes from Amazon as well and the fermenting jars from Lakeland.
Good luck!

Hi Firefox. Thanks for replying.

You’re right, the answer isn’t what I expected, but that’s entirely my own fault – I posted my question in the wrong place! I meant to ask in the blood sugar diet forum. I’ll copy it over there.

I haven’t read the healthy guts book, but did see the TV programme a while ago and will be adding live yoghurt to our diet, trying kimboucha and including whole foods in our diet, so hopefully that’ll help our guts.

How useful is the clever guts diet for those suffering from Crohn’s disease?

Both read or reread ‘How to Reboot Your Biome’ (pages 186-196). Especially note comments on working in stages (p.190).

Have you both completed your detailed food and symptom diary in a ‘normal’ week/ fortnight (not Xmas/ New Year)?

If not next week is easy-ish (properly weigh or measure and record everything, so may need two sets of scales/ measuring cups/ measuring spoons). On paper, phone camera, tablet …

Depending on the phase, ‘Clever Guts’ is moderate carbohydrate, not classic restrictive low carb. A *balance* of energy from healthy fats, healthy proteins and healthy carbs.

The focus is on identifying and eliminating refined, heavily processed foods, plus your personal problem foods.

And the focus is on substantially
*increasing the variety* of nutrient dense wholefoods we have each day and week. As many food groups and types as possible.

Buy and eat whatever wholefoods work for you based on your food diaries, local stores and markets, household budget, season, kitchen facilities, tastes, lifestyle … And the guidance in pages 186-196.

Sorry, probably not really what you expected ….

Hi. Just wanting to know where to buy the sour cream and chive dip, or how to make it (is it just sour cream with chives added)? It is mentioned in the clever guts recipe book. Page 83, sour cream and seaweed muffins. Thanks.

I can see the possible benefits of fermented food, but I know we wouldn’t eat fermented vegetables often enough to be worthwhile. We might do better with some kind of drink. All the recipes I’ve seen use sugar – are there any simple sugar free versions?

Hi. My husband and I are both starting the diet on Monday. I’ve read the book. He hasn’t, but is willing to go along with it for a few weeks, partly to support me but also to see if it works for him.

I’ve not restocked on bread, biscuits etc since deciding to start, to avoid having temptation in the house. Does anyone have any other tips to make it easier to stick to?

Can you recommend a reliable list of low carb foods, so I can create some recipes for myself?

Have you tried PubMed and/ or the broader topic of ‘gut’ not just the microbiome? Not a solid body of evidence as you have found, but you may find some of the abstracts interesting/ useful.

You have just added to my reading list! My younger sibling and I took fluoride supplements in childhood (local tap water not fluoridated). We both have fluorosis; I had eight porcelain veneers fitted around the age of 20. Neither of us needed a cavity filled until our mid thirties.

Despite my work background neing healthcare, I had all but forgotten about the impact – positive or negative – of fluoride on my general wellbeing/ health.

So thanks for the reminder!

Perhaps but it inconceivable that water fluoridation would be introduced at scale with out monitoring the benefits and risks. The results of any significant dysbiosis would have been picked up decades ago.

Thanks Graham.
Unfortunately it seems there’s no credible suggestion that it adversely affects the biome because there’s an absence of investigation or evidence either way.

As suggested above the 5:2 diet is profoundly anti-inflammatory

Yes: fluoridation is healthy and evidence based; there’s no credible suggestion that it adversely affects the biome

Yes: Fast Exercise by Michael Mosley!

Thanks Graham but this appears to be a documentary. I’m not looking for something that explains why HIIT is good or the evidence for it. I’m convinced of that. What I’m looking for is HIIT exercise programs I can do at home. e.g. do star jumps for 2 mins then rest for one minute.

I’ve done a google search and a search on amazon for books, but of course, this turns up heaps of results. So was wondering if anyone here can recommend a couple that are particularly good or they have found effective.

Thanks.