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Understanding the Gut Brain Axis - a conversation with Dr Emily Prpa from Yakult
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Dr. Emily Prpa, is a Registered Nutritionist, the Science Manager for the UK and Ireland at Yakult and a visiting lecturer at Kings College London.
In this episode of the Abeceder podcast Fit For My Age Emily explains the relationship between the gut and the brain to host Michael Millward.
Their conversation covers a wide range of gut management issues, including what the gut is and where it sits in the body. How the gut works and why and how the gut communicates with the brain.
Emily explains how you can assess how effectively your gut is working and the steps you can take to improve the effectiveness of your gut.
This episode of Fit For My Age includes some graphic descriptions of bodily functions, but with aim of increasing understanding and helping you achieve better gut health.
It is advisable to consult your doctor before undertaking health related treatment.
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Fit For My Age' and Guest Dr. Emily Prabha
00:00:05
Speaker
on zencastr Hello and welcome to Fit For My Age, the health and well-being podcast from Abbasida. I'm your host, Michael Millward.
00:00:17
Speaker
Today, Dr. Emily Prabha, visiting lecturer at King's College University, London, and the science manager at Yakult will be explaining how the brain-gut access works and what we can do to make it work better.
00:00:34
Speaker
As the jingle at the start of this podcast says, Fit for my age is made on Zencastr. Zencastr is the all-in-one podcasting platform that really does make making podcasts so easy.
00:00:47
Speaker
If you would like to try podcasting using Zencastr, use the links in the description, which have a built-in discount.
Podcast Goals and Emily's Background
00:00:56
Speaker
Now that I have told you how wonderful Zencastr is for making podcasts, we should make one.
00:01:01
Speaker
One that will be well worth listening to, liking, downloading and subscribing to. Very importantly on Fit for My Age, we don't tell you what to think, but we do hope to make you think.
00:01:13
Speaker
Today, my guest is Dr. Emily Prepa, a registered nutritionist. Emily, who has PhD in nutritional sciences from King's College, London, is the science manager at Yakult UK and Ireland, who regularly appears as a keynote speaker at conferences on gut health.
00:01:33
Speaker
Emily's research has been presented internationally and helped inform UK food policy. Emily is based in London, the capital of the United Kingdom. When I visit London, I make my travel arrangements with the Ultimate Travel Club because that is where I can access trade prices on flights, hotels, trains, holidays and so many other travel related purchases.
00:01:55
Speaker
You'll find a link with a discounted membership code in the description. Now that I've paid the rent, it is time to make this episode of Fit For My Age.
Emily's Journey in Nutritional Sciences
00:02:05
Speaker
Hello, Emily. Hi, Michael. Thanks so much for having me.
00:02:09
Speaker
I'm really looking forward to this because I have this feeling that I should know more about my gut health. And in all honesty, I probably know next to nothing about it.
00:02:21
Speaker
Music to my ears.
00:02:26
Speaker
I suspect most people are exactly the same boat as me. We think, you know if I eat that, i always have a nasty reaction to that. But I don't understand why. And we need to understand much more about why, because the basic thing is that it's like if you put rubbish into a computer, you're going to get rubbish out. And I think the same must be true of the human body as well.
00:02:46
Speaker
Absolutely. When we're consuming food, we are quite literally ingesting the world around us. So that is one of the main reasons why I love gut health so much. And I'm so excited to be talking to you about my favourite topic this morning.
00:03:01
Speaker
Well, not just your favorite subject, but you know you're one of those lucky people who've taken your favorite subject and created a living out of it as well, which is fantastic.
Basics of Gut Health and Microbiome
00:03:08
Speaker
But how do you become a gut scientist?
00:03:13
Speaker
Great question. And I think if you would have told like 14 or 15 year old me, I would have gone off and done a PhD. I would have been like, ah absolutely not. The minute I finished school, that's it sort of thing. But one way or another, I did end up doing one. So food really has always been a huge part of my life from growing up in a family where it really was The hub of the activities, you know, the kitchen was always kind of like the social hub.
00:03:40
Speaker
I have a Serbian dad and an Irish mum. I experienced from a young age how food is so much more than the sum of its part. It's cultural, it's spiritual. There's so many other aspects to it than just simply the nutrients.
00:03:54
Speaker
But at the same time growing up, I played competitive sports. So I was playing National League hockey by the time I was 14. And from that, I really quickly learned the importance of exactly what you were saying earlier.
00:04:06
Speaker
What you are fueling your body with absolutely has an impact on its performance. I guess it was kind of coming at me from all angles, but I was by no means the most studious of students. I much pro preferred the practical subjects at school, whether that was more like PE e or food tech or drama and these kind of things. Science wasn't necessarily on there for me, but slowly and slowly it kept creeping in um and I ended up doing sports science at university because it just kind of fit the brand that was me at 18. But it was during that time that I then moved to Australia. I got a placement at the Institute of Sport out there.
00:04:43
Speaker
I just gravitated towards the dietitian and nutrition department. I came back, finished my degree at the University of Bath. And I was like, you know, I really do think nutrition is was really my passion. So I went to King's, did my master's there, and then i was in it. I was in the research. I wanted to know more. I'm one of those annoying people that if you sit next to me at a dinner party, I kind of want to know everything. So I guess it was one of the the big pushes that kind of kept me pushing towards wanting to know more about nutrition science.
00:05:12
Speaker
Did a PhD at King's and i and I also quickly learned that it's not necessarily just the science. but it's the communicating of the science. So that's been a big part of my career really in the last sort of five years is how do we communicate all of this fascinating, but sometimes very complicated research to the everyday person so that they can put that into practice and hopefully lead a healthier and happier life.
Diet's Impact on Gut Microbiome
00:05:34
Speaker
And that's what Fit for My Age is all about. Perfect. We're in good company then. We are definitely in good company. And I really like how you have said that you went really into like the theoretical parts of science. It was very much about the practical side.
00:05:49
Speaker
Diet and nutrition is a very practical side of science. we all It impacts us all because we're all eating all day long. Well, not all day long, but you know what I mean.
00:06:00
Speaker
We eat all the time. Yeah, you know. And very often we don't eat the right sort of thing. most of us, at least three occasions in the day where we can make small little tweaks in terms of what we're eating that could actually have a big impact on them and how we're feeling and how we're living our life.
00:06:16
Speaker
Very much so. It's how our bodies deal with the food that we put in. That's all part of this gut microbiome. Yeah, the gut microbiome. But if we take it one step back, first of all, and like, you know, when we talk about gut health, we're talking about the health of the gut. So first off, what is the gut?
00:06:36
Speaker
When I when I say the gut to you, Michael, like, what do you think most people kind of like point at their stomach area and that kind of thing? think it is probably that bit below the the the rib cage and above the pelvis well our gut absolutely is digesting the food that we put in and allows us to absorb the nutrients and vitamins that we need in order to live our life and function as humans however it is not just this kind of stomach area this area kind of sitting below our ribs It's actually everything from your mouth all the way through to the exit at the other end. It's actually this nine meters long tube. So we put that into context, nine meters, it's absolutely huge.
00:07:18
Speaker
That is the same length as two giraffes are tall. So imagine that tube live all inside of you. But in the last 10 to 20 years really is where gut health has exploded.
00:07:29
Speaker
That's because we, yes, we know that the gut is involved in digestion. But we now know that actually it could be the kind of key to unlock so many of the health concerns that we experience today.
00:07:42
Speaker
And that's because over the last 10 to 20 years, we've been able to start measuring what we call the gut microbiome. Not only is your gut this nine meters long tube, but it's actually home to trillions and trillions of microbes.
00:07:57
Speaker
So things like bacteria, but also fungi and viruses, they all live in your gut. And it's these bacteria, although they're teeny tiny, and we can't see them with our naked eye, that we're realizing actually have a profound impact on our overall health and well being.
00:08:17
Speaker
And it's really important that the food that we eat feeds our gut microbiome. It sounds like there's a bit of a party going on down there. Yeah.
00:08:28
Speaker
And I'm the one who's got to bring the, site the i've it's like a barbecue and I've got to bring all the meat to the barbecue. Yeah, essentially. So your gut microbiome is completely unique to you.
00:08:39
Speaker
The types of bacteria living in your gut, Michael, are always like, it's as unique as your fingerprint. So even, you know, lu you living in the same house as someone or even your family and things like that,
00:08:52
Speaker
Even for identical twins, their gut microbiome is only ever 40% the same as anybody else's. What that means, as cool as that statement is, and how unique our gut microbiome is to us, it can cause a little bit of problems in research because we don't have this kind of like perfect gut microbiome composition that we could all be aiming for.
00:09:16
Speaker
Because if we lined up all the healthy people in the world and we tested their gut microbiomes, they'd all be completely different. So in instead, in the research, what we talk about when we say, you know, you have a healthy gut microbiome is that there's this really key characteristic.
00:09:32
Speaker
And I love to describe this using sort of like a rainforest analogy, similar to what you were saying, like, it sounds like there's a party down there. Absolutely. And it's actually this like thriving ecosystem. And if you imagine a rainforest, you know, that is filled with diversity.
00:09:47
Speaker
And diversity is one of the key characteristics of what we call, quote unquote, a healthy gut microbiome. If you imagine a rainforest, you know, it's filled with loads of different plants, bird species, flowers, and they're all kind of flourishing together in this balanced ecosystem.
00:10:05
Speaker
And that's really what we want to try and create, not only from the food that we eat, but also certain lifestyle factors like exercise and managing our stress, By doing that, we can help create this diverse rainforest living inside of us.
Bowel Habits and Brain-Gut Communication Axis
00:10:21
Speaker
Well, there's if there's an element of me that is slightly uncomfortable that there is this party going on inside me. ah I've got this feeling that I haven't quite been invited to it yet. What we need to realise is actually, you know, you feel like you haven't been invited, but let me tell you something. So as humans, we have roughly...
00:10:41
Speaker
equal number of human cells to bacterial cells you know in the human body. But we actually have far more bacterial genes than we do human genes. So you could argue actually that we are far more bacterial than we are human.
00:10:56
Speaker
And these this kind of um uncomfortableness that you have in the, hold on a minute, I didn't invite these guys. Well, actually, chi if we look at how we evolved as humans, we actually evolved on a microbial planet.
00:11:09
Speaker
So these microbes were here long before we were. We are actually the invaders here, not them. The big kind of importance of why our gut microbiome and our gut health overall is so important for our overall health and well-being is it goes back to really the beginning of time when we were evolving and we evolved alongside these microbes.
00:11:32
Speaker
So even our immune system evolved alongside them. So it's kind of funny to me that we're going, well, hold on a minute. Could these gut microbes actually be doing anything for our health?
00:11:43
Speaker
Absolutely, they are. They are communicating with almost every organ and system in the body, from our immune system to our brain health, to our skin function, that list goes on and on. It is so much more than just digestion these days.
00:12:00
Speaker
And if we're going to be a good host, we have to make sure that they receive the right type of food. Absolutely. Right. So how does a product like Yakult provide them with the right type of food? When it comes to kind of nutrition for gut health, what we're looking for is feeding our gut microbiome with the food that we love.
00:12:21
Speaker
So I'll first start with the really diet side of things, you know, that the everyday And then we can talk about more of the the products and what we call sort of fermented foods.
00:12:32
Speaker
But really, one of our big pushes for supporting your gut microbiome and making sure they're all the bacteria are fed nicely is actually feeding them with really fiber rich foods.
00:12:43
Speaker
So things like fruits, vegetables, whole grains. So vegetables. You know, swapping your your white bread for whole grain bread can go a long way and make sure everyone's being fed down there. And even nuts and seeds. These are great fiber rich foods.
00:12:57
Speaker
Your gut bacteria absolutely love to feed on these. When they do, they do that by breaking down the fiber in a process called fermentation. During that fermentation, they give off these other compounds that can have really powerful anti-inflammatory effects in the body.
00:13:14
Speaker
Then there are things called fermented foods. So whilst fibre is
Stress, Diet Diversity, and Gut-Brain Communication
00:13:19
Speaker
like feeding your already existing bacteria down there and making sure if we eat lots of different types of fibre, we can then make sure we're kind of feeding all our fussy eaters and it's more creating more of that rainforest that we want.
00:13:32
Speaker
Then rather than just feeding your already existing bacteria, you can also consume the live bacteria itself. And that's where fermented foods come in.
00:13:43
Speaker
So yes, ferment little fermented milk drinks like Yakult, you'll see lots of fermented foods these days in the supermarket. It's things like kombucha and kimchi and things like that that are fermented foods. So it's kind of like a bit of a cheat sheet.
00:13:59
Speaker
So rather than just simply feeding your gut bacteria, you're also helping to actually eat provide new bacteria down there as well. A fermented food, something like Yakult, is adding in new bacteria into your gut, new good bacteria, which is adding to the strength of your gut so it it will perform better. So we know from the research that fermented foods can help increase the diversity of your gut microbiome.
00:14:26
Speaker
But you can need to think about how bacteria, just like us, they can be fussy eaters. So just like when I say, you know, we want fiber rich foods, we want a lot of different types of fiber rich foods and different colors of fruits and vegetables.
00:14:39
Speaker
The same is true for fermented foods. So sometimes kind of encouraging diversity and different fermented foods. We know that that can also then increase. encourage diversity of our gut microbiome. So there really is this notion of diversity breeds diversity. And the more diverse your diet, therefore, then the more diverse your gut microbiome. right Brilliant. So the adding of a product, a fermented food like yakult, is feeding our our gut bacteria, but also adding in new bacteria as well. And the diversity of that then improves our gut health.
00:15:10
Speaker
Yes and no. So the fermented foods, they are the bacteria themselves. They're not feeding your already existing bacteria. right Fiber foods where you think plant foods, fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nuts and seeds, they are feeding your bacteria.
00:15:26
Speaker
The fermented foods are the cheat sheet of adding like the live bacteria already themselves. Right. So fiber foods are the food essentially and fermented foods are the the bacteria themselves that you'd be consuming.
00:15:41
Speaker
Okay so I'm convinced it is a voyage of discovery all the time doing this fit for my age and that I learned so much about things that very often I think no one ever tells you these things until you ask the question.
00:15:56
Speaker
Well how does our gut tell us that we need more vegetables or we need more bacteria or there's some space at this dinner table. We need to have more of these fermented foods that, how do we how do we get there that news from our gut that it needs something from us?
00:16:12
Speaker
If you're not really eating enough fiber, that might be that you have slower bowel habits and things like this. And also looking in the toilet bowl can often tell you how healthy your gut microbiome is. So i know it's early, Michael, but it is a gut health episode. So, you know, you really do want to kind of look in the tot toilet bowl after you have been to the loo and check, is this a smooth, maybe cracked like sausage that's come out? Is it brown in color and passes easily kind of with no pain for most people they're often shocked to hear this but in terms of how often you should go essentially it can it's really like essentially it's habitual you know it's really individual two to to people so it can as long as it's sort of what we think is the normal range is anywhere between three times a day
00:17:02
Speaker
and three times a week. Anything within that range that is normal for you is kind of then your normal. Wow, that's interesting. What about when my tummy rumbles? So that is you being hungry, um which is very different also to, I know we want to talk about today, which is the gut brain axis, which is how our gut microbiome and our gut bacteria is essentially talking to our brain health. So if your tummy is rumbling, you're kind of past the point of really being where where you would kind of want to start eating. When we're getting down to like really ass tummy rumbling, like it's almost empty and you want to kind of be preempting that side. So actually eating a little bit more, a little bit sooner before that point.
00:17:47
Speaker
And a big mistake that a lot of us make is we eat past fullness. So you wanna be eating around until you're about 80% full. So on a scale of around sort of seven out of 10.
00:17:58
Speaker
And that's because it takes about 20 minutes for your gut to send the signal to your brain that you are actually full. So oftentimes you can sort of overeat and consume more calories if you are kind of eating past fullness, which is fine, you know, occasionally.
00:18:12
Speaker
But I always say 80% of the time, could you be eating to about 80% fullness? And you your gut is really communicating with your brain. yeah You mentioned that the bacteria in our body, ah which we are, there are lots of bacteria, are almost like part of that communication network.
00:18:32
Speaker
Absolutely. So your you know your brain talks to all the organs and systems in your body, but your gut talks back to your brain. And I've mentioned it a couple of times about this this theory of the gut-brain axis or the gut-brain connection.
00:18:46
Speaker
And what that is referring to is this scientifically proven two-way communication between your gut and your brain. And actually 90% of that communication is going from your gut to your brain.
00:19:00
Speaker
those messages, it's not just simply, you know, I'm hungry, I'm full, that the gut is passing on to the brain. But actually now, because we are measuring the gut microbiome and these bacteria and the signals that they send off, we now know that there is so much more than that.
Managing Stress and Improving Gut Health
00:19:17
Speaker
And we refer to the gut and specifically the nervous system in the gut as your second brain. And I think this idea of our gut thinking, you know, actually isn't so much of a stretch for us to think about.
00:19:30
Speaker
How many of these sayings do we have in the English language? You know, like I was just thinking about that, that you there's the scientific evidence. And then there are sayings that go back centuries, which indicate that even without the science, people were thinking that our gut is talking to our brain and the hearing messages from our brain. Absolutely. You know, we've got, oh, listen to your gut. Oh, I feel sick to my stomach. Oh, I've got butterflies in my stomach.
00:19:56
Speaker
Well, all of these moments, if you can remember any of the times in your life where you felt like this, that is actually examples of your gut-brain axis, like firing off your gut, communicating to your brain in real time.
00:20:08
Speaker
In terms of how your gut is sending these signals, it's ah we have the vagus nerve. And the vagus nerve is what connects your gut to your brain. And it's like the direct telephone line that your gut is sending these signals to your brain.
00:20:23
Speaker
But there are also other mechanisms involved, like our enteric nervous system. And that really is what we call our second brain. And that's because it's these web of nerves that line our digestive tracts. That nine meters long tube has...
00:20:37
Speaker
thousands of nerves on are the same as and very similar to the ones in our brain. Now, obviously the ones in our gut aren't solving complex maths equations, but they are allowing the gut to function completely independently of the brain.
00:20:51
Speaker
And we also know that there are other mechanisms through which our gut bacteria can communicate with our brain. It comes back to that explanation that I was telling you about, about how when our gut bacteria are fed with fiber rich foods, they give off these compounds and those compounds are called short chain fatty acids and they can be absorbed into the bloodstream and go off even up to the brain and can have powerful anti-inflammatory effects in the brain. So even reducing kind of inflammation in the brain at times is sometimes also what we see. So we absolutely know that there's very complicated science going on but we know that these mechanisms are in play and that our gut is constantly talking to our brain and a lot of what we rely on is animal research but one of the best sort of inhuman data points that we have of the gut brain connection is actually in individuals with irritable bowel syndrome so ibs and
00:21:44
Speaker
IBS, Michael, is it affects about 10 to 20% of the population and typically more women. And it can really impact a person's quality of life by causing constipation, diarrhea, cramping, bloating, kind of.
00:21:56
Speaker
comes and goes in waves, and sometimes it can be quite chronic for people. And what we see in these individuals is that their gut symptoms worsen during periods of stress and anxiety, and they're more likely, three times more likely, to experience poor mental health.
00:22:12
Speaker
So this is really where we see kind of co-occurrences of gut problems sort of with mental health problems as well. For you, Michael, you might not have IBS, but I'm sure there may be a time where you've eaten something one day and you felt fine. You've been able to digest it, had smooth, you know, symptomless digestion.
00:22:30
Speaker
But then maybe you've eaten the same, the exact same meal the next day, but it's been a really stressful day. You know, you've woken up and it's just been stress from the minute you woke up to the minute you went to bed.
00:22:41
Speaker
And actually you'll eat that same meal and you might actually have gut problems. Like you feel really bloated, you're cramping, you're just very uncomfortable in your gut. And that actually has nothing to do with the food that you ate, but everything to do with your mindset when you were eating. And that is your gut brain connection at play.
00:23:00
Speaker
This is fascinating. This is fascinating. But if you're, for example, having chicken salad at a wedding, and then you have a chicken salad at a funeral, because the emotions of the environment, the event at which you're eating though that same meal are different, you will have a different dietary digestion reaction impact because of the emotion of the, of as you were eating the food. Possibly. It's far more to do with stress and as ah as an emotion. Right. Eating then sort of thing. I'll grab a sandwich as I rush for the train or whatever.
00:23:37
Speaker
is You've got the stress. I can't miss the train. I can't miss the train. And then you're trying to eat at the same time. You may actually, in a day where you've got lots of stress, if you if you then eat in a stressful way, you're going to add to the stress of the day.
00:23:53
Speaker
because of you're not sort of taking let's just sit down relax and eat in that sort of situation that creates your brain is stressed so it sends a message to your gut that it's stressed and your gut reacts differently because of the message that it's received from you yeah particularly with stress because when we're stressed we increase the stress hormones in our body One of them is cortisol and cortisol can really wreak havoc in our body and not only just our gut health.
00:24:23
Speaker
So cortisol increases inflammation in the body. It impacts our heart health by increasing our blood pressure. It weakens our immune system and it impacts that balance of our gut microbiome. So it tips the scales towards more of the bad bacteria rather than the good.
00:24:42
Speaker
And really what stress does is it puts us in this fight or flight mechanism. As we were evolving, this nervous system was key to our survival.
00:24:53
Speaker
It's what allowed us to run from a tiger. But nowadays we're not running from a tiger. We're running from our emails a lot of the time. First thing on a Monday morning. yes And that's a really dangerous when we're constantly in fight or flight.
00:25:05
Speaker
That's when cortisol can really start doing damage. We just need to be able to manage stress. Stress is obviously something that we all get very concerned about, but actually it's really important for us as humans. it's It's really what gets us out of bed in the morning and, you know, gives us the motivation to to do the things we love, like you creating this podcast and getting it out there for people. It's it's really important that we do have bits of cortisol.
00:25:25
Speaker
But we don't want the consistent, low-grade, kind of chronic cortisol and stress running through our body.
Practical Steps for Better Gut Health
00:25:32
Speaker
And the only way you can really kind of reduce your stress and and a tool that you constantly have on you that can really help your gut microbiome and your gut health overall is by utilizing your breath.
00:25:44
Speaker
Because when you utilize your breath and take slow, deep breaths into your belly, into your gut, you are stimulating your vagus nerve. And your vagus nerve is what can override your cortisol and take you out of fight and flight and put you into rest and digest.
00:26:02
Speaker
And we see this, you know, when we start utilizing sort of breath work or um activities that utilize the breath like that, like yoga or and meditation, we see improvements in gut symptoms. So that example that gave you of IBS, where we see that they that stress can impact their gut symptoms.
00:26:22
Speaker
When we get patients to engage in breathwork exercises, meditation and yoga, these exercises can help alleviate their gut symptoms, which I just think is amazing that now in sort of Western medicine, we are sort of utilizing some of these what would have been considered more woo woo practices, you know, even just 10 years ago that we're starting to see them being spoken about here in the Western world. i totally agree with you.
00:26:50
Speaker
But I think there's more understanding now ah that simply taking a pill is just part of the solution rather than the whole solution, and that we need to be more proactive as individuals, as society, in the management of our health.
00:27:08
Speaker
And we can't be proactive in the management of our health unless we understand more about our health and the impact that our own actions have on our health So the things that we can do positively and the things that we can do that will have a negative impact on our health, unless we understand those in more detail, then we're drifting.
00:27:30
Speaker
we We're adrift, really. You've made me think an awful lot about what I put in. if want to then be healthier, but also what I need to put in in terms of the activities that I want to undertake after I've had that food as well.
00:27:48
Speaker
And this listening to your brain, because your brain is listening to your gut, we need to make that ah almost like a three-way conversation rather than a two-way conversation so that we actually understand more about how our body operates fascinating it's absolutely fascinating and you explain it you take something you take set in fact emily you take something that is obviously very very complicated and make it easy for someone like me with no scientific knowledge to actually understand i'm very grateful for you for doing that i really have learned a lot today thank you very much oh thank you michael that really means a lot it's um
00:28:25
Speaker
something that I absolutely love to do, because I'm like, what's the point in having all of this research in fancy institutions, if no one can hear about it. And I just want to just tap into the kind of last bit that you were kind of saying there about how the science of the gut microbiome. And if you've listened this far, thank you for for staying with me as I, you know, get into all the nitty gritty of the mechanisms and things like that. And I think my key take home for anyone listening is, yes, the science of the gut microbiome is complicated.
Conclusion and Listener Encouragement
00:28:53
Speaker
But actually, when it comes to looking after those bacteria living inside of you and looking after your gut health, it doesn't have to be. It can actually be incredibly simple. The pillars of gut health, things that you can start doing today and little things that could then go a long way to impacting your gut microbiome. your gut health and hopefully then your overall health and wellbeing and how you feel.
00:29:14
Speaker
So diet is absolutely one of them. You know, diet ah diversity breeds the diversity inside me. So lots of those fiber rich foods and really colorful fruits and vegetables and also exercise. And when I say exercise, the your gut microbiome, a walk can go a really long way. Your gut absolutely loves movement.
00:29:35
Speaker
And I also want to mention sleep and stress management. So sleep is so important for our gut to kind of rest and repair. Managing our stress also goes in that bucket as well as allowing our gut to be in this kind of rest and digest nervous system. So diet, exercise, sleep and stress management can go a really long way. And any way that you can make little tweaks to up some of those will be one of the best ways that you can move forward today to improve your gut health.
00:30:05
Speaker
So managing our mental health has an impact, a direct impact on our gut health. Absolutely. Yes. But today, Emily, really, thank you very much. It's been very enjoyable and I've learned a lot. Thank you very much.
00:30:21
Speaker
Oh, that's made my day, that Michael. well Thank you so much. I've loved talking to you. I am Michael Millward, the Managing Director of Abucida, and in this episode of Fit for My Age, I have been having a conversation with Dr. Emily Pripa, the Science Manager at Yakult UK and Ireland.
00:30:39
Speaker
like to thank Yakult for organising this conversation, and I hope it's not the last one that we're able to have. You'll find out more information about both of us at abucida.co.uk. I'm sure that you will have enjoyed listening to this episode of Fit For My Age as much as Emily and I have enjoyed making it.
00:30:57
Speaker
Please give it a like and download it so that you can listen anytime, anywhere. To make sure you don't miss out on future episodes, please subscribe. Remember, the aim of all the podcasts produced by Abusida is not to tell you what to think, but we do hope to have made you think.
00:31:14
Speaker
Until the next episode of Fit For My Age, thank you for listening and goodbye.