How to Enhance Your Gut Microbiome for Brain & Overall Health

Animals that consume large amounts of artificial sweeteners—in particular, things like saccharin or sucralose—show disruptions in their gut microbiome. I'm not aware of any studies in humans that show the equivalent effect, and I'm not aware of any studies in humans that show the equivalent effect for things like plant-based low-calorie sweeteners—things like stevia, monk fruit, and things of that sort.

Creating the correct environment for these gut microbiota to thrive really does enhance mood and well-being ... When our gut microbiome is not healthy, it really can deplete our mood and sense of well-being.

There are some decent studies showing that, if children are exposed to a lot of antibiotic treatment early in life, that can be very detrimental to establishment of a healthy gut microbiome.

Excessive microbiota brought about by excessive intake of probiotics can lead to things like brain fog. There's actually some good studies that point to the fact that certain metabolites of the microbiome, certain chemicals produced in the gut and in the body, can actually lead to brain fog states.

When there are a number of different converging events that are stressing or depleting microbial diversity, that's when—at least, I believe—it can be useful to support the gut microbiome through the ingestion of quality probiotics or prebiotics.

The basic takeaway of this paper was that, contrary to what they predicted, the high-fiber diet did not lead to increased microbiota diversity, at least not in all cases—and that was somewhat surprising.

The more diversity of microbiota that one can create early in life is really helpful for long-term outcomes in terms of brain to gut signaling, gut to brain signaling, and for sake of the immune system.

Actually from the moment that you came into the world, that microbiome was being established. It was actually strongly impacted depending on whether or not you were born by C-section or by vaginal birth. And it was strongly impacted by who handled you when you came into the world, literally the hands that were on you, how much skin contact you had, whether or not you were a preemie baby or not, whether or not you had pets at home, whether or not you were allowed to play in the dirt, whether or not you were allowed to eat snails, or whether or not you were kept in a very antiseptic environment.

We always think that we like sweet foods because of the way they taste, and indeed that's still true, but much of what we consider the great taste of a sweet food also has to do with a gut sensation that is below our conscious detection.

There are certain foods and substances that increase GLP-1 ... Yerba mate tea can stimulate the release of GLP-1. In South America, it's often used as an appetite suppressant, probably, in large part, because of its effects on GLP-1 release.

The best resource that I know of in order to follow a great recipe to make homemade sauerkraut would be the recipe for homemade sauerkraut that's contained in Tim Ferriss' book, 'The 4-Hour Chef.' There's an excellent protocol there.

The way I'd like you to think about the digestive tract, this gut component of the gut-brain axis, is that it's not just one component; it's not just your stomach with a particular acidity and a bunch of microorganisms that work particularly well to make you feel good... It's a series of chambers, little microenvironments, in which particular microbiota thrive and other microbiota do not.

In fact, right now, you are carrying with you about 2-3 kg, that's more than 6 lbs, of these microbiota, these bacteria.

About 60% of your stool, as unpleasant as that might be to think about, is made up of live and dead microbacteria.

The microbiota are the actual bacteria. The microbiome is used to refer to the bacteria but also all the genes that those bacteria make, because it turns out that they make some important genes that actually impact all of us.