Over two thousand years ago, Hippocrates, the Greek physician known as the father of medicine, declared ‘all disease begins in the gut’. A sentiment that has seemed to fall on deaf ears in recent times as modern medicine preferred to pursue pharmacological answers to our most common health ailments. Consequently, many generations of doctors graduated with only a relatively basic knowledge of how to use nutritional care in the prevention and management of chronic diseases.
Fast forward to today and much is changing. Modern research evidence has now illuminated the central role that the gut microbiome (the complex array of microbes that inhabit our digestive system) plays in our health, influencing our metabolism, nutrition, physiology, and immune function. This evidence has once again placed the gut as a central player in underpinning our wellbeing.
The breadth of recent discoveries of the importance of the gut microbiome is staggering, showing our gut impacting almost every aspect of health. However, there is always a time lag between research breakthroughs and clinical applications in medicine. So, health professionals of all stripes are on a steep learning curve in figuring out how best to apply these new insights.
Some gut health experts advocate a ‘weed and seed’ approach. Using antibiotics to wipe out the existing gut flora (both good and bad) followed by a regime of probiotics to repopulate the gut with favourable bacteria.
Other clinicians are more cautious, using emerging knowledge of the interactions between different gut flora to introduce select microbes to coax the whole system back to equilibrium. However, the sheer complexity of the microbiome makes this challenging.
A general approach that is a good fit for people just looking to maximise their wellbeing is to build diversity in your gut flora through eating a varied range of foods. You are, or at least your gut flora is, what you eat. Experts tell us diversity in gut flora is what we’re aiming for and the most reliable way to develop and maintain diversity of gut flora is through eating the widest range of plant foods possible.
Many gut experts advocate the 30 foods challenge, where the aim is to eat 30 or more different plants each week. If eating 30 different plants sounds daunting, remember that herbs count, as do different salad greens, seeds and nuts. Simply by mixing up your greens and throwing on a seed mix you’re around a third of the way there already. If you’re roasting veggies, try adding cauliflower, carrot, parsnip or beetroot to go with the potatoes, pumpkin and sweet potatoes. Rub in some spices and olive oil and again you have an easy way to build diversity and reach the 30 foods goal. Extra points if you add in some fermented foods like miso, kimchi or sauerkraut, thereby supplying your gut flora with food-based probiotics.
Editor’s note: This wellbeing column provides information that is general in nature. Please always refer to your preferred health professional for advice suited to your personal healthcare requirements.
