Dr Michael Mosley unveils life-changing new gut diet

When I was at medical school many of my fellow students wanted to train to be neurosurgeons so they could study the intricacies of the human brain, or they set their sights on cardiology and saving lives by specialising in the heart.

I never heard anyone say they wanted to dedicate their life to studying the guts.

And yet I have become absolutely fascinated by this unglamorous and relatively unexplored part of the human body.

There’s been an explosion of new and exciting research into the goings-on in our gut that particularly focuses on the ‘microbiome’ — the trillions of microbes which live in our intestines.

There’s been an explosion of new research into the gut that particularly focuses on the ‘microbiome’ — the microbes which live in our intestines. Dr Michael Mosley has written a new book — The Clever Guts Diet — which explains what our gut bacteria is up to, and how it can be nourished

Only recently have scientists begun to fully appreciate the hidden influence these microbes have on our lives, and it looks like this is something we have sorely underestimated.

Now I’ve written a new book — The Clever Guts Diet — which is based on the latest science, and which explains just what our gut bacteria is up to, and how it can best be nourished and cherished.

I am convinced this is absolutely vital and I have no doubt that looking after your gut and its tiny inhabitants can have a massive long-term impact on your health and happiness.

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When I wrote the 5:2 Fast Diet, based on cutting-edge research, it became a weight-loss sensation and introduced the world to the many surprising benefits of intermittent fasting.

More recently my 8 Week Blood Sugar Diet, which I wrote with the help of Professor Roy Taylor of Newcastle University, has helped a growing number of people with raised blood sugar levels (those with pre-diabetes and type 2 diabetes) restore their blood sugar levels to normal and come off medication.

But whether you are fit or unwell, overweight or slim, happy or depressed, I believe we can all benefit from taking the best care of the armies of microbes in our gut.

If you follow my plan — which will be featured all next week in the Mail — you should experience fewer cravings, lose excess weight, and hopefully reduce bloating, wind and gut pain.

There is good evidence a healthy microbiome — our personal mix of gut bacteria — improves mood and energy levels and dampens down inflammation throughout the body, too.

Your skin should be clearer, your hormones and moods more balanced and your immunity levels will improve.

It’s not difficult — eating gut-friendly foods is both simple and tasty, as you will find out.

Until things go wrong, few of us give our guts a second thought. My own obsession was sparked when, a few years ago, I got the chance to take a very close look at the inside workings of my digestive system.

During my medical training and more recently as a television presenter, I have taken part in some pretty bizarre and painful experiments, but nothing quite like this.

In front of a large and enthusiastic audience at the Science Museum in London, I swallowed a pill-shaped camera which was linked via sensors on my body to a giant screen.

Over the next few hours, that camera projected my own personal gut movie — live!

Seeing your stomach from the inside, via a fish-eye lens, is an unusual experience. Down there is a cavernous, exotic landscape — pulsing and throbbing with movement. When your gut is empty (as mine was) the lining of the stomach is thrown up in folds like a boggy marsh. It reminded me of the surface of Mars. Except slimier. But much more active.

I ate a small meal and along with the enraptured audience, watched as my stomach began the complicated process of turning steak and vegetables into mush.

If the camera had been digestible it would also have been pounded and mashed into fragments, then dunked in gastric juices as acidic as a car battery — designed to destroy any harmful bacteria or parasites that you swallow along with your food.

Over the next few hours we watched as the camera journeyed through my small intestine to arrive at my colon — home of the legendary microbiome.

If you follow the plan in next week’s Mail you should get fewer cravings, lose excess weight, and reduce bloating, wind and gut pain, says Dr Mosley 

The microbes that live in the colon are mainly bacteria, but there are also some fungi, viruses and simple, primitive animals called protozoa. Together they form a wonderfully complicated eco system.

The interior of the colon is a dark, dank and private world where more than 50 trillion creatures made up of at least 1,000 competing species co-exist. And yet most of the time we have no idea what they are up to.

We used to think the job of our gut bacteria was pretty basic: to protect our gut from invaders; to synthesise a few vitamins such as vitamin K, which the body doesn’t produce itself; and to produce nasty smells while gobbling up the fibre that our bodies can’t digest. Now we know they do far, far more than that.

One reason the greatest minds in science have somehow missed the importance of the microbiome is because, until quite recently, most of its inhabitants were impossible to grow, let alone study. But science has moved on. We now understand that the microbiome plays a part not only in protecting our guts from dangerous invaders, but also in teaching our immune system how to tell friend from foe.

Over the past century we have seen a massive rise in allergic diseases, such as asthma and eczema, very often the product of an over-enthusiastic immune system.

We have also seen a huge surge in autoimmune diseases, from inflammatory bowel disease to type 1 diabetes, which again are primarily caused by an immune system that has got out of control.

There is good evidence that the dramatic increases we’ve seen in these diseases are driven by reduced exposure, particularly in childhood, to the right sort of bugs — kids just don’t get as many as they used to. There is also evidence that changing the mix of bacteria in your gut — by changing your diet — can reduce the impact of these diseases.

One of the ways your gut microbes influence you is by the cocktail of chemicals they are able to conjure up. They may not have arms and legs or even opposable thumbs, but these guys are incredible chemists. They can take bits of food your body can’t digest and convert them into a wide range of hormones and chemicals.

These can affect your mood, as well as your appetite and general health. It seems improving your biome could also help reduce anxiety and even lessen depression.

The microbes can also hack into the nerves that connect your gut to your brain. I love the fact that buried in our intestines, deep inside its tissue, is a very thin layer of brain, made up of exactly the same cells (neurons) which are found in the brain. In fact, there are more than 100 million neurons in the gut — the same number you’d find in the brain of a cat.

But instead of being clumped together, these cells are spread out in a thin mesh that extends the entire length of your digestive tract. This ‘second brain’ can’t help you with geometry or your tax returns, but it does orchestrate the whole digestive process and it moderates gut pain.

It is connected to your main brain via the vagus nerve, a superfast broadband connection along which messages travel in both directions.

When we talk about having ‘gut feelings’ or ‘gut instincts’, we are actually reflecting how closely our guts and are brains are entwined. As well as communicating directly with your brain, the microbes in your gut play a part in helping to regulate body weight, deciding how much energy our body extracts from food; controlling hunger signals; and how much our blood sugar spikes in response to a meal.

Can your microbiome help make you fat? It certainly can. Can you change your microbiome so it works with you rather than against you? Yes, you certainly can — and I will show you how.

One of the big health mistakes we have made over the past few decades is that, in our ignorance, we have laid waste to our microbiome. Just as we have ravaged the rainforests and consigned numerous animal species to oblivion, so we are inadvertently decimating the populations living inside us.

A healthy microbiome should be very diverse. The modern Western microbiome is not and the implications are huge. For one thing, studies have shown that slim people tend to have a much broader population of gut bacteria than overweight people.

Many of us eat such a narrow range of foods that our gut bacteria are forced to exist on a restricted diet. And it doesn’t make them happy. We need to expand our diet to allow a diverse colony of bacteria to thrive.

That’s why I am going to encourage you to branch out a bit and try new foods. Broaden your dietary repertoire and experiment with fermented foods, such as sauerkraut, that are full of good bacteria and which you may never have considered before.

 

Another reason for the poor state of the modern human biome is the widespread use of antibiotics, not only those routinely used to treat us, but also the drugs given to the animals we eat to encourage them to gain weight.

The emulsifiers added to processed foods in order to extend their shelf life are a problem, too. These detergent derivatives have been shown to reduce microbial richness and scientists believe they may directly contribute to colitis and type 2 diabetes.

Fortunately, we can help our old friends bounce back again — and I will reveal how in this series.

As you can probably tell, I have become a little bit obsessed by guts in general and the microbiome in particular. Talking to researchers and reading about the latest developments has been an incredibly exciting experience.

It feels is if we have stumbled across this brand new land, populated by strange and exotic creatures, which is only now beginning to reveal its secrets.

These days, when I put something in my mouth, I think about what it will do not just to my body, but also to my biome. Every food decision we make (‘Shall I have that slice of cake or that handful of almonds?’) decides the fate of countless billions of bacteria living in our colon.

It is quite a responsibility.

Although the science is new, and fresh discoveries are being made all the time, the Clever Guts Diet is based on some clear principles. At its heart is a simple message: eat the real unprocessed foods that have been shown to encourage the growth of the ‘good’ bacteria in your gut, and try to avoid or minimise the foods that feed the ‘bad’ ones.

Use the recipes in today’s magazine and all next week in the Mail to expand your repertoire and give your biome something to chew on. Good food should be a pleasure and it should be shared. Not just with friends, but with the health-promoting friendly bacteria inhabiting your digestive system.

If you look after those friendly microbes, they will look after you.

We are at the start of a whole new way of approaching and understanding nutrition, one that could change the way we manage a wide range of diseases, from obesity to depression.

This is just the beginning — there is so much more to come.

The Clever Guts Diet by Dr Michael Mosley is published by Short Books on May 18 at £8.99. To order a copy for £6.29 (valid until May 27, 2017), visit mailbook shop.co.uk or call 0844 571 0640. PP free on orders over £15.

See cleverguts.com