Introduction

And we now know that food is made up of say 30  000 chemicals. It’s too much for anyone to you

know work out themselves. It means a whole  new mindset on how we think about food and

how we think of our guts. It’s much bigger than  we’ve ever realized and it’s much more complex.

Welcome everybody back to the ZOE podcast. I’m  your host Jonathan Wolf, co-founder and CEO

of ZOE. Our mission is for you to understand how  your body responds to food because we each respond

differently. As many of you know for the past four  years we’ve been carrying out the world’s largest   study of the microbiome and metabolic health so  we have an amazing podcast for you. First off I

want to remind you that you can get 10% off of the  ZOE membership if you go to joinzoe.com/podcast.

Just go to joinzoe.com/podcast to check out how  you can take back control of your health and   weight today. That’s joinzoe.com/podcast. Our  topic for today’s podcast is the microbiome.

In the last few years, scientists have been  discovering that our gut microbiome plays a   key role in our health, our energy levels,  and even our mental health. This has led to

a transformation in how we think about what we  should eat to keep ourselves healthy and manage   our weight. My own diet has been transformed since  we started ZOE four years ago and the same is true

for my family. In fact my children all know  that what they eat is not just for themselves   but it also feeds those little microbes in  their guts that helps keep them healthy.

I’m therefore incredibly excited to be joined  by two of the world’s experts on the microbiome:   Professor Tim and Dr Will to help explain  what the microbiome is and also discuss some

of the changes that you can make to improve  your health your energy and your weight.

I actually first learned about the microbiome when  I was lucky enough to hear Professor Tim Spector   give a public lecture about his amazing research.  I was so fascinated I hunted Tim down and after a

bit of work I eventually convinced him to create  ZOE with myself and my long-term friend George   so we could bring this science to the world. Tim  is one of the top 100 most cited scientists in the

world he’s a Professor in genetic epidemiology  at King’s College London and a world expert in   the microbiome and nutrition. My second guest is  Dr Will. Dr Will is a member of ZOE’s scientific

advisory board a practicing gastroenterologist  an internationally recognized gut health expert

and the New York Times best-selling author of  the book Fiber Fueled so I think we’re gonna   have a fun time together. Let’s just start at  the very beginning with really an overview of

What is the microbiome and why does it matter?

the microbiome. What is this microbiome thing and  indeed what is the difference between microbes

and the microbiome? Maybe we can start with you  Tim. Well microbes are any small bug you need

a microscope to see and there is a whole range of  them from bacteria to viruses to phages fungi and

other parasites that are larger. So that’s the  general term but more and often we’re generally

talking about bacteria when most of things we  talk about and when you put them all together

in a community, it’s that community of trillions  of these microbes that we call the microbiome

a bit like an environment like a sort of  ecosystem. So that’s that’s what they are that’s

what the terminology means when we talk about  microbiome it’s the whole group of these guys.

Say most of us have a thousand species roughly  and there’s lots of different types of them

and there are literally you know trillions  of them. The same number as there are

cells in our body actually. So we we’re  part uh we’re part 50 microbe 50 human.

And why does it matter? Well because  these guys essentially are crucial for

our health we really can’t live without  them and they’re like chemical factories

so all of them produce thousands of chemicals that  get into our bloodstream and absolutely vital for

all sorts of processes from digesting our food  to controlling our immune system and preventing

us getting covid to sending brain signals to our  brain to change our mood to switch us from being

hungry to being full and all kinds of other  effects we’re only beginning to understand.

Effects on cancer, effects on all kinds of  diseases, dampening inflammation etc. So it’s

like we’ve discovered a whole new exciting organ  in our bodies we didn’t know existed 10 years ago.

Will does that all make sense to you?  Yeah it does. I think it’s it’s quite   fascinating to consider that we could be  discovering a new organ in the 21st century

you know in the United States literally millions  of cat scans are done per year and all of a sudden

you know the cat scans we’re looking at the  actual body we’re seeing everything that’s   there and now here we go and we find something  that ways we believe as much as the brain does

and one could make an argument that the  gut microbiome is the most important part

of human health. In fact I think that’s a  lot of what we’re going to talk about today   the connections that exist between these gut  microbes and really you know if you kind of

take a step back and think about this the really  critical important parts of human health digestion

which basically means access to nutrients like  what is more life-giving than that we need that

our immune system our metabolism which  we’re going to talk about in more detail   the balance of our hormones our moo, our  brain health, even the expression of our

genetics every single one of these things is  connected back to these gut microbes and so it’s

almost like the centerpiece of human health is  the gut microbiome and yet they’re not human

and so that’s it’s quite overwhelming in some  ways to think about but it’s also very exciting   in so many different ways. So Will and Tim, I’ve  had this conversation with you a few times but

I never learned anything about this microbiome  when I was at school and okay that was 30 years   ago, but what I learned about microbes was quite  the reverse right? I learned that microbes are

How and when did we discover the microbiome?

dangerous that we need to use disinfectants to  kill them and that’s actually one of the great   advances of the last 100 you know 150 years ago  when we discovered public health and antibiotics

is like the greatest medical discovery of the  20th century and that’s about killing microbes. So

you know help me out to understand how and when  did we discover about this microbiome? Like was   it with one of these CAT scans you’re talking  about Will and sort of more broadly why has

got health suddenly become so trend. You know  20 years ago I never heard anything about it?

Tim if it’s okay I’d like to go first  then you can jump in and fill in.   So it’s it’s quite fascinating to think about  because Jonathan antibiotics were the greatest

breakthrough in human health history there is no  intervention that has added more years to our life

than that and i think that really what this  is is we have to go back in time in a way

and look at the really short term history of our  understanding of microbes specifically bacteria

which is that going back just 160 170 years  ago you get to a period of time where we

really didn’t know what was causing disease you  know the plague was ripping through Europe and

people didn’t know what that was they didn’t know  that it was a bacteria they actually thought it   was something called miasma m-i-a-s-m-a miasma  and if you look at pictures on the internet of

miasma they’re quite terrifying, terrifying! It  looks like something from Halloween, like this   is like toxic fumes right Will? That somehow like  we had to cover our you know mouth with it you see

all this thing like the pictures of the Middle  Ages with people covering their mouths right   it’s like it’s like you walk by a swamp at night  and it looks really creepy and it smells kind of

funny and you go oh my gosh that must be where  the plague is coming from right there. It’s just   that has to be it, so it shows you how poor our  understanding of the way that the world worked and

these things that were affecting us was just going  back to the time of the civil war. We eventually

have the discovery that it’s these microbes  that are behind these diseases and by the way,

at the turn of the 20th century the top causes of  death were not heart disease and cancer. They were

all infections and so this is what was costing  people’s lives this was shortening life expectancy

dramatically. Suddenly we have this discovery  oh my gosh this is the problem right so let’s

line them up and let’s say this is the problem and  this is going to be ultimately the solution that’s

going to allow us to live in perpetuity like you  know to 300 years old and so sort of classic human

being response this is the problem and the answer  is we should kill them all that that’s sort of.

It really is Jonathan. You know it’s kind of an  interesting point we always tend to have this idea   that killing them all is the best idea so and we  swing the pendulum too far and we start creating

all these different systems some of which are  very very good to try to get rid of these microbes

right? So like we’re sterilizing our water well  that’s a great thing in terms of preventing   dysentery um but when you start sterilizing  everything you start sterilizing all of our food,

when you over sterilize the home, when you  over sterilize your own body, we end up in a   scenario where we’ve taken it too far. And when  we have liberal use of antibiotics to the point

of giving antibiotics without even knowing that  the person actually needs to take an antibiotic

we’re taking it too far and now here we are  and we’re seeing the downstream effect of these

choices where we’ve taken this you know sort of  um confrontation with bacteria or with microbes.

We’ve taken this confrontation to an extreme in  trying to destroy them and we’ve been successful.

We have destroyed them and now we’re suffering the  consequences of an inadequate microbiome because

we need them we need them for human health. And  so, Will, how did maybe Tim you can jump in here.

So this is a story about it was great to discover  antibiotics you know we’re not saying any of that   is a bad thing in this journey when did we first  discover that there was this thing called the

microbiome and that not all microbes were these  sort of harmful pathogens that we needed to

When did we come to realize that microbes can be beneficial to our health?

kill well i guess you know when i was a junior  doctor that you know we always knew that

when you did blood cultures or urine  cultures you had these other guys there which   the microbiome doctor microbiology doctors were  not interested in how they’re just commencing

commensal means these are normal inhabitants  you know they’re like the indigenous population

uh that we’re just an annoyance in medicine  and uh got in the way of a good test

and so that’s basically all we learned  I would guess about two lines in my

textbooks well as well as all these bugs and you  look you learned all the deadly ones there you

know there are also these things called commensals  which you can ignore and that was basically uh

you know in every every Medical School in the  world that was about it and I think it was any

really. I guess there was a guy called Jeff  Gordon who started this whole thing off   uh most people never heard of him you know 20  years ago when he started doing a few experiments

to say well actually keeping some of these guys  they might have a role actually in health. But

only really about 10 years ago did that  become a tour mainstream and people started

looking at this and then comparing say  populations of the average American against Middle

East African tribe and worked out these African  Tribes who hadn’t taken ant hadn’t taken the

20 doses of antibiotics before they were  21, you know, the average American has   um they had doubled the number of species that  the average American has. And suddenly you realize

well maybe that’s why or one of the main reasons  they don’t get heart disease cancer diabetes

obesity because they’ve got all this extra  protection onboard that is helping them because

they haven’t been wiped out by processed  food diets and antibiotics. And

Tim tell me a bit about, because you mentioned  Jeff Gordon I remember one of my first,   I think Will doesn’t know this but in in the  first sort of six months of ZOE’s existence

Tim took me out to St Louis, Missouri, which was  my first time there. And we got to meet Jeff,

which was you know for me really sort of amazing.  And he showed us all the mice and everything. Tim

do you want to just explain briefly what  jeff did and why that was so important for

the story of the microbiome has been? Yeah he’s  the sort of father of microbiome research really

and he retrained all the current experts  around the globe particularly in the US. He

basically set up a facility where you had sterile  mice, so they were they were brought up in a very

artificial scenario like in spaceships where  there were no microbes and vacuums and things

and then they were used as experimental tools  to see how when you added in normal microbes

from another mouse into them how you could make  them big differences in their physiology. That

really made us understand the function of these  things. In one of my experiments took microbes

from overweight or obese people and put them into  these sterile mice and you can make them fatter

or the opposite and skinny person or give them  probiotics and make them skinnier so it really

that made it really obvious that these weren’t  just random associations who could actually

manipulate them and get an effect. Can I just stop  you there for a second because you know for you

that’s very matter of fact but I think again this  was part of what for me was amazing when I first   experienced and maybe you know work and  what you’re saying is you take these mice,

you put these microbes inside them right? It’s not  part of it’s not food it’s actually these living

microbes and actually the microbes that came from  people who were really overweight actually made

these mice overweight so somehow you transferred  over this thing that wasn’t a decision about you

know I’m eating too many calories you know, I have  no self-control. It was actually like something   physical and living and you actually transferred  this weight is that is that correct that’s exactly

right and so what this is the key point actually  you can now say that you know obesity is an

infectious disease because it actually follows if  you can you know take it from some person’s gut

and put in someone else’s gut and have that  result it suddenly changes your whole idea

about overweight and obesity and just gives you  a different mindse. Thanks Will, you know if it’s

infectious also you must be able to prevent it  and so they also did the same from skinny people

and put skinny people’s microbes into these mice  and then over fed them and that protected them and

they also we did this as well with with a group at  Cornell with our twins. Ee we just found a group

of microbes with funny names like Christensenella  etc and that we found only in skinny people put

them into the mice over fed them and they didn’t  get fat. So suddenly this really is you know a bit

of an aha moment! It ways well, if we can really  understand what’s going on in those gut microbes

this is a really neat way to help us all  get slimmer and healthier and Jeff Gordon

basically invented this system and got it on an  industrial scale which is what you needed to do

and he’s still going. Yeah and he’s doing amazing  stuff now looking at the opposite in young in kids

in famine countries and working out what  microbes there you know lacking because of   poor nutrition. Brilliant and they’ve they’ve  reproduced these studies you know so many times

that it’s very clear that this is the way that  it works that you know when you transfer these

microbes into the mice you can actually control  the weight balance of the mouse based upon the   microbes. And they’ve done studies you know Tim  was alluding to this a little bit where they take

identical humans, identical human twins but  one is obese and one is skinny and take the

microbes from these identical human twins  and put them into the mice and give them the

same number of calories which I think is very  important to point out is that in these mice   it’s not a calories in issue. They’re getting the  exact same number of calories but the mouse that

gets the obese microbiome becomes obese the mouse  that gets the skinny microbiome becomes skinny and   you know just to pick up where Tim was in the  conversation of understanding the microbiome so

you know we became intrigued with this idea but  we did have some limitations about 15 years ago   or up until about 15 years ago that we’re really  restricting our ability. And I think Tim could

speak to this even more than I can because he’s  been a part of these research studies but you   know to me there were really two major limitations  one is we really didn’t have the computing power

Limitations of early microbiome research

to be able to handle the data the  amount of information that exists

within like literally a sample of poop  is completely absurd and it overwhelms

you know even modern computers so we didn’t have  the computing power until very recently to be able

to handle the amount of data that was coming from  these gut microbes and the second part of this

is that Tim was alluding to the culture  plate. The culture plate is the traditional   way of growing microbes that’s what we all  were raised on. Well what do you do if the

microbes don’t grow on a culture plate most of  the microbes that exist within the gut microbiome

do not exist well in an environment where there is  oxygen. And as a result, they will not grow on a

culture plate and so we needed a different way to  get access to the information about these specific

microbes and understand who they are what they’re  about. So we needed a different way to do it

because the culture plate was never going to work  and so we invented new technologies initially 16s

RNA testing and more recently shotgun  metagenomics. These are nerdy terms that

guys like Tim and I like to talk about but really  what you just need to know is we had a laboratory   breakthrough and that made this possible. And I  think maybe if I listen as a way to understand

is these are different ways of reading the DNA  of our microbes right? So just as we’re used to   the idea of reading our own DNA or you know in  these days of COVID right we’re used to reading

the DNA of a virus this means we now have this  technology that allows us to read all the DNA

and all the different microbes inside our gut  and I think in a follow-on podcast iId love to   go really deep in that but for now maybe you know  we can move on to this question around like how

deep is this relationship between microbes and  humans? So we’ve just said wow these microbes   really have this extraordinary effect right? It  is every time I hear this I’m still amazed I’m

hearing it again and it’s extraordinary right?  This idea the microbes that go inside us can   actually change our metabolism outcome but like  how recent is this is this something that has

just happened between human beings and microbes  over the last few hundred years as we’re now in   this you know strange new world where you know  i get my food you know delivered pre-made and

How far back does the relationship between microbes and humans go?

uh you know i get my grocery uh delivered or is  this something that’s been around for a long time

how sort of how far back do we guess or do we  know this goes? Millions, billions of years ago

because we actually evolved from  microbes and so they’re our ancestors. So

basically a couple of these microbes fused  together and that in a way became the sort of

cel, the multi-cell that is human life and so  we’ve basically spent all of our existence in

a way surrounded by microbes and they  became part of us as they are part of   every animal and every plant and so in a way  our evolution was formed around these guys.

An integral part of us so in a way what we were  saying about you know how they are core to us

and we’ve been trying to wipe them out that our  evolution has been totally dependent on them being

around to perform the functions that we couldn’t  do to produce the vitamins that we can’t produce

ourselves for example to break down the foods  that we can’t break down. And every animal has

their own tricks and that’s why we’ve got our  own set of microbes really to do this for us. So

you can’t separate us from our microbes. We  are exact exactly you know symbiotic with you

know every single person through human history  going all the way back to the very first human   this relationship was a part of the story  these microbes have predated humans by a mile.

We humans have been around we believe for about  3 million years which sounds like a lot however

if you look at archaea they’ve discovered archaea  in an archaeologic dig in Greenland that they

believe are 4 billion years old archaea are a part  of the human microbiome archaea are also found

inside of volcanoes and at the bottom of rift  vents inside the ocean these microbes are hardy

they are resilient they will continue to be around  in perpetuity and really they’re just sort of they

are what this planet is made up of microbes  it’s brilliant. It’s a brilliant you know new

way to think about the world and the world  um around you I think for today you know.

Let’s narrow down now and talk really  about the gut microbiome because I think   scientists have now discovered, I know that there  are microbiomes for our skin and for our mouth and

obviously there are all of these microbes that  are out there in the environment around us and   I think we can come and talk about those also in  a future day. But today let’s talk about the gut

microbiome I think that’s because the general  view is that this is the the biggest and most   important. Can you talk a bit maybe let’s start  with like what’s the gut is. So again going back

to like when I was at school, I was told like  you know you get to the gut and it’s sort of   like this big sack at the end you’ve sort of  absorbed everything important by then and then

it basically food sits around for a day  or something you suck water out of it   and then that’s done and fiber was like this  thing that just helped you to like pass a

bowel movement like that was a story that I was  told when I was at school and to be honest. I   think it was still the story that I was being  told um you know 15 years ago what of that you

know what of that story you know is wrong or  what’s missing based upon what we now know.

Well you know, I guess I’ll go first. There’s  like you can say it’s all wrong right.   Go tell us what’s right. Yeah you know I think we  have dismissed human digestion as being you know

less appealing or sexy you know. I guess because  it involves the passage of excrement or stool.

And so as a result of that it’s easy to make jokes  about it and pretend like it’s not very important   when in fact I would make an argument that  this is key to life, this is really where

human health begins is with digestion and access  to nutrients so you know. Just to kind of speak to

How our understanding of human digestion and the role of gut microbes has evolved over time

this Jonathan you mentioned that there’s microbes  in our mouth there’s microbes on our skin, there’s   microbes inside a woman’s vagina, basically  all external surfaces have microbes our inside

meaning our intestine is actually believe it or  not this is kind of weird but I’m going to say it.

It’s outside our body because it’s a tube that  starts at the top and ends at the bottom and that

tube is completely intact all the way through. And  so these microbes that are in the depths of our

bowels inside our colon are actually outside our  body. Food that we put into our mouth and swallow

down is outside of our body we are interacting  with the outside world in this location

and digestion the gu. When we speak of the gut  by the way sometimes we’re casual and we’re

talking about the gut microbiome when we should  really say the gut microbiome but the gut itself

is our digestive apparatus and it takes these  things from the outside world and it breaks them

down into their constituent parts and it prepares  them to be absorbed and integrated into the human

body and the parts that are unnecessary are passed  on and they are eliminated. And that is not just

the human process, in fact these gut microbes  are incredibly important to this entire process.

And the reason why these gut microbes have become  so critically important to human digestion going

back to evolution. Just for a quick moment is that  humans started in Africa and then we radiated out

across this planet into different ecosystems with  different food supplies and we needed a digest a

digestive capacity that was adaptable to all of  these different ecosystems and food supplies.

Microbes are very adaptable, humans are not and so  we basically allowed these microbes to take over

a critical part of our digestion breaking down  our food giving us access to nutrients because

no matter what ecosystem you go into you can  get the microbes that you need to be able to   digest and process the food that exists within  that ecosystem. I’ll let Tim any thoughts that

you have. Well that’s right and a great example  is people who like sushi. The Japanese didn’t

have the microbes to break down seaweed but if  you eat enough fish, the fish eat algae that

have these microbes and you can actually  gain these microbes that allow you then to

digest and get all the nutrients from the seaweed  and sushi. So we can go around picking up these

little microbes and add to our menu if you like of  all the things that we can get nutrition from so

that’s just a great example of why we want a  diverse healthy microbiome. And the more microbes

we’ve got as a toolkit the better we can survive  in any environment and the more we can maximize

in a way that the nutrition that’s available to us  and so that that’s going to be a general problem.

And Tim one of the things i think I remember  Jeff Gordon saying you know to me was you could   sort of think of you the way he thinks about your  gut actually is basically it’s this big storage

space where you can store all of these different  bacteria and it’s like this amazing tool kit with   thousands of different microbes each of one  is like a specialist tool for breaking down

something. Therefore instead of needing to have  all that capability built into your DNA you have

all of these microbes which he said how many  more times DNA do the microbes have than us well   the number keeps changing. It’s at least 300 times  more genes than we have. But you only have to look

The changeable nature of your gut microbiome

in the gut you know there’s 20 odd sort of human  gut hormones and thousands of microbial ones so it

orders a magnitude bigger much more subtlety. So  we rely on this whole system really to now enable

us to eat properly maximally wherever we are and  we can pick up new tools on the way. So unlike

our genes we can pick up these new guys and uh you  pick them up for the environment then as long as

you keep feeding them like you know like a plant  you can nurture them and have them ready when you

need them. I think there’s something quite magical  about this right because I think I certainly grew   up with this idea that you know your genes are  completely deterministic. Like you got given your

genes by your parents there’s nothing you can do  about it the only other thing that might shape you   is like your upbringing and if you grew up  with your parents well they shake that as

well so like you’re done you have no control it’s  like it’s very uh disempowering I think there’s

something really magical for me. So this idea  that actually you’ve got all of these microbes   they offer you all of this capability so it’s not  like you’re totally locked into this restriction

of what you feel but also and I think maybe  we could talk about that um now these microbes

aren’t completely fixed either right? So there’s  not like you’ve got the microbes today and there’s   nothing you can do to change the microbes could  we talk about that for for a minute and that’s

very important for us to think about like to what  extent can we you’ve told us how important this is   we’re sold like is there anything we can do to  change our microbiome if maybe you know we are

like some of the examples we’ve talked about that  maybe we suspect our microbiome is not you know   as good, as diverse as we would have liked it to  be. Yeah I’ll just start and then maybe Will can

add some more detail but our microbiome is made up  of a fixed portion that is like our fingerprint.

Okay, so there’s perhaps a third of it that  wherever we go in the world people know where

we’ve been right? So in the future have these  devices that can just pick it off you know

our clothing or whatever they’ll know it’s  you know what where Will or Tim is or Jonathan

because we all have a unique set of  gut microbes that no one else has.

So that stays relatively fixed then you put some  day-to-day ones that will vary you know very much

all the time then you’ve got perhaps another  third that vary with what you’re eating and

we’re still understanding which ones  are which and how you change it but   lots of these studies now show within a few days  you can change very rapidly the microbes. If you

change your diet and just as an example  when i was visiting the Hadza tribe in

Tanzania within four days I’d increased my  diversity of my microbes by 40 percent. And Tim

what is diversity what is that? What is diversity?  It means the number of different species. It’s the

richness but yeah basically the quantity of  different types of microbes I had. So suddenly

you’ve picked up a huge number of new microbes in  just a few days by the time i got on the plane on

How quickly can your gut microbiome change?

airplane food back to London you know I started to  lose them all. But it just shows you how quickly

you can change it because you know they live  fast and die young, microbes. They, you know,

they can reproduce and die in half an hour and  I think that’s where they realize that it’s

you know much faster life  than even Will has I think.

First of all Tim I think that you need  to publish that as a case report. That   would be a good publication  for people to check out.

You know just picking up where Tim left off, these  microbes turning over every 20 to 30 minutes it’s

quite fascinating to imagine that like literally  within an hour it could be as many generations as

you have living in your family right now right and  if you were to take this and look at this each one

as a generation and like make it similar to human  years one day 24 hours would be the equivalent

in human evolution of us going all the way back  to the pyramids. That’s how far these microbes

can go in 24 hours in terms of their ability  to procreate and so basically every single one

of our choices starts to be amplified through  their ability to rapidly procreate immediately.

And they’ve actually shown and this is coming from  one of my favorite studies from a few years ago

one of the first microbiome studies that  got me really excited was Lawrence David   published in Nature in 2014 where they tested the  microbiome every single day and they made radical

dietary changes and they saw in just 24 hours  there were already appreciable differences that

existed within these microbes now i do think it’s  important for people to understand that that’s not

to say that in 24 hours you can heal your gut  and transform it from something that’s unwell

to something that’s perfectly well in just 24  hours. What really I’m saying is that in 24 hours

you can change your gut and get things moving in  the right direction and ultimately what we want

is we want the functional capacity of the  gut, so these enzymes and the things that

these gut microbes are capable of producing,  we want to maximize that functional capacity

that type of change takes longer than 24 hours but  you can get the ball in motion in just 24 hours.

And so it’s a beautiful thing your gut microbes  forgive you whatever you’ve done they forgive you   you can have them back that’s very exciting. So  let’s I think we’ve touched on a little bit and

let’s sort of go fully into it this question about  how these microbes are actually connected to our

health. So we talked now about this background  we’ve been living with them for forever. In fact

I think we evolved from them apparently um how  do they affect our um our health and what are

How do gut microbes impact your health?

all the different aspects of health that they  um that they do affect? Let me start with Tim.

Well it’s pretty hard it really is hard to find  anything they don’t affect. I mean I think in a   way because all this all the sort of clinical  epidemiological studies that have looked at

all the common chronic diseases uh or  disorders so everything from you know

alzheimer’s, dementia strokes heart  disease, overweight, obesity, diabetes,

depression, anxiety, inflammatory disease,  autoimmune diseases, generalized aging

and you know obviously gut infections and  even things like skin infections. When they

test the gut microbes of people who affect it  they are unanimously lower in diversity and

sicker than healthy control. So you feel that they  are playing a role in virtually all the conditions

and diseases that we know about or all we’ve  tested. Now some of that might be a consequence

of the condition but it’s also likely to also be  a cause. So it’s a two-way process but microbes

are involved and so. Tim can you talk for  a minute just to help us understand how so

we’ve got these microbes they’re sitting in our  gut foods coming in but I think you know I think   we’re missing the logical linkage can you help  us understand how these can affect our health.

We don’t entirely know how. Let’s be honest about  this and a lot of the ideas we have are theories

and Will may have a lot of his own theories  but in general a lot of these microbes

involved in sickness might be ones that are  that like living in an inflammatory scenario so

they love feeding off stress and changes in say  the acidity of the gut or these kind of things

when people are unwell. And so they sort of sense  someone’s weak and that there’s a victim there and

they come in and they take over and they they kick  out the beneficial guys and so that means that you

have more of these microbes that are producing  some stress stress-like substances for the body,

speeding up you know all kinds of these stress  molecules inflammation molecules making everything

a bit on edge and because they’re there, they’re  stopping the beneficial guys producing their nice

relaxing yoga type chemicals on the rest of  the system. So it’s changing the balance of

the community is the way I see this for most.  It’s not about one microbe causing the disease

it’s very much about how the community  is shifting just like you would see a   shift in a healthy rainforest or in soil suddenly  that balance has shifted. And we can we see this

with medications for example you just  have to take you know a tablet for

gastric reflux like a proton pump inhibitor  and you see a tiny change in the acidity

of the gut and then suddenly other microbes  come in and they will lead you more likely

to have infections. So if they’re very  subtle changes that end up having sort of

bigger and bigger effects is how I see it but i’d  love to hear what will’s idea is because i think

you know we don’t was just starting to understand  this and realizing that it’s how these guys

work together and suddenly for some reason  they start to produce chemicals that are like

more likely to be harmful to the body than  to be beneficial. And it’s that is that I,   Will maybe talk because I think Tim it was a good  explanation maybe about how this can all go wrong.

Let’s maybe go on to the positive side here  and talk about like what’s the positive   thing. So I didn’t have any microbes  now I have some microbes. Like

how can they do anything good? How does it work at  all? I think maybe just again not to jump over but   like you just said that actually, my insides are  on the outside right? So my microbes are inside me

but actually, they’re not yet inside me they’re  still inside the tube. So how does these things   that are still inside the tube affect the rest  of my body. Yeah so I think to play off of what

Why dietary diversity and balance are key to a healthy gut microbiome.

Tim was saying first of all Tim is alluding to  the fact that this is an ecosystem. This is an

ecosystem in the same way that Tim was describing  the Amazon rainforest, the Great Barrier Reef,   the soil, all right? Ecosystems thrive on  harmony and balance, your body thrives on harmony

and balance. Harmony and balance within the  community of microbes, harmony and balance in the

interactions between you your microbes and your  environment, which includes your dietary choice.

And you know with regard to some of what Tim’s  alluding to just to unpack a little bit more,   Tim’s alluding to a loss of balance, a loss of  harmony, less good guys, more bad guys disruption

of the gut barrier the release of things into the  bloodstream this is what we call dysbiosis. This

is the opposite of what we’re trying to achieve.  Now a quick point this is a side note that I think

is kind of interesting. Tim was describing how  stress has these effects on the gut right? Some

of this has evolved because it was good for us at  a different time when we are in times of stress.

For example deprivation of a food source it  would be advantageous for us to trap calories

that would extend our life expectancy, it would  be advantageous for us to raise our blood sugar

because we need that to support our big brain. So  many of these things we evolved but the problem is

you put them into the context of the 21st century  and now the things that we evolved to protect us

when we were cavemen are actually harming us in  the 21st century world that we live in. And so

now how do we restore balance? How do we restore  harmony we’re looking at? This is an ecosystem

we want that balance in harmony, and balance  and harmony what we find in all ecosystems

comes from biodiversity. Biodiversity means  that all the different parties are represented

and they work together as a team the good guys  and the bad guys they all bring different skills

into the equation and those skills contribute  to the greater good of the ecosystem. So how

do we achieve biodiversity? There’s a number of  different ways it’s not just exclusively food but

we’re going to tend to focus on food because we  believe that is the most powerful way that you can   affect and alter the gut microbiome. Biodiversity  comes from recognizing that these microbes

they are unique individuals they have  their own personalities they have their

own skill sets and they have their own dietary  preferences, they are picky eaters, they all

don’t love the same food they all don’t want kale  but many of them the best microbes in many cases

they love fiber. Fiber is the preferred fuel  source of these microbes. Not all fiber is

created the same that’s a bit of a fallacy  that we’ve been taught each plant has fiber.

Each fiber each plant has its own unique types  of fiber. When we eat a wide variety of plants

we are consuming a wide variety of different types  of fiber those different types of fiber will feed

a wide variety different types of microbes the  end result is that biodiversity on the plate

translates into biodiversity within the gut  microbiome and this is a principle that many

of us believe to be one of the critical pieces in  terms of enhancing the health of these microbes

and I think the follow-on piece. As I understand  it from some of the other scientists we talk about   is that this diversity of microbes also lead to  the output of this really you know huge diversity

of chemicals that come out of these microbes  and cross the gut wall and go through the rest   of our body is that the sort of the final sort  of missing piece? That sort of helps to explain

like how they you know we don’t understand  exactly what all of these do but could you just,   you know I don’t want to skip over that. Yeah  I think coming back to my description of the

microbes as chemical factories I think it brings  this broad full circle back to that idea that

that’s the best way I think of thinking of them  because in the future we’re probably going to   be measuring all the chemicals to work out  what the functions are doing because often

you have you know maybe 20 microbes all working  together to produce one key chemical that you

know lights up your brain and stops you getting  depression and that we don’t you understand. And

we now know that food is made up of say 30  000 chemicals, not just fats, proteins, sugars

and so knowing that we’ve got all these  circulating chemicals from the microbes,

thousands and thousands of them combining with the  thousands of chemicals in food to produce these

new ones that interact with our genes, interact  with our bodies, integrate our immune system,   suddenly we’ve got this amazing ecosystem that’s  incredibly complicated. And that comes back to

this whole idea why you know we can only do this  now because we’ve got this amazing technology   to put it all together but it’s too much  for anyone to you know work out themselves

we need to be using this big data approach to  understand, it means a whole new mindset on how we

think about food and how we think of our guts.  It’s much bigger than we’ve ever realized and it’s   much more complex opportunity. This is great, this  is the way that we need to move with our science

which is to accept and acknowledge that every  single person there are eight billion people   on this planet, no two of them are the  same in terms of their gut microbiome.

There is a unique bio-individuality that every  single person has and we need to accept and

acknowledge that creating broad strokes in terms  of our recommendations is never going to be as

good as the granular detail that we have the  ability to potentially provide by examining the

gut microbiome in the context of everything else  that’s happening throughout the body and that’s   by the way a big part of what we’re looking to  do with ZOE, is to introduce this using science

introduce this new generation of being able to  not just understand how to eat but to understand

how to eat for your unique biology. And I think  that’s obviously incredibly important and exciting

I think one of the things, just sort of following  on from Tim’s description of like did you say 30

000 different chemicals in our food is, you know,  Isuddenly came from this little while ago thinking

about oh there’s a small number of vitamins  right that you need to make sure that you eat   and there’s some specific things like example you  need to eat a banana because it’s got potassium in

it okay so like there’s like 10 things you need  to worry about and then there’s 15. I think what

you know I’ve taken away from these conversations  with you and others is that there’s this immense

number of chemicals out there in the foods that we  naturally would eat but more importantly they’re   just like the input into your factories right?  Which then output all these other chemicals that

we can’t get naturally and which we at this point  still are just starting to scratch the surface on

but it seems as though like a big part of why the  microbiome seems to have this impact and I think   there are specific papers right Tim? And we’re  looking at particular outputs from these microbes

which we can see across the gut barrier go into  our bloodstream, get distributed everywhere

and suddenly you start to see much better why  you know the food we eat really does have this

impact on our health, which I think is very hard  to understand if it’s just calories but starts to   make a lot more sense if you think about this huge  breadth. It’s almost like we are taking medicine

in some sense right these microbes are creating  specific chemicals which are then acting on us

yeah and it’s realizing that food is you know is  medicine because it’s all chemistry you know and

it’s just a question of definition and so you  know we all need to become our own pharmacists and

understand much more about food we put into  our mouth because it has a key effect on our

gut microbes and I guess that’s part of this  educational mission is if you understand your

gut microbes you have to understand more about  the food that you’re eating in order to look

after just like any park keeper or zoo keeper  or you know anyone is in charge of tropical fish

you’ve got to know exactly uh what the species  are and what you know what you’re trying to do to

to maximize their health and so that’s what we  all need to become really we can’t be reliant on

one-size-fits-all guidelines or supermarket labels  or this kind of stuff we need to really get in in

deep educate people about personalization  and so one say for this audience let’s say

for this audience we they said like this is all  great. I’d like to take away something practical   today like that’s super interesting but like what  can I actually do if I want to improve my health?

Practical tips for improving your gut health

I want to improve my energy you know I want to  improve my weight, let’s say they want to start   that journey today, what are the practical things  that they can do based upon all this stuff? Four

rules people can follow, one: trying to eat 30  different plants a week and that includes nuts,

seeds and herbs. Second is to pick foods  that are high in these chemicals that are

defense chemicals called polyphenols that give  them their bright colors and this includes

nuts, seeds, berries, dark chocolate, coffee,  even red wine. A third is try some fermented foods

every day. A small amount of one of the fermented  foods really important just to boost your gut

microbes. And fourth avoid ultra processed foods.  And if you do that you are halfway there to having

a really good gut microbiome. And I guess Will  can talk about other things and personalization.

Yeah I feel so a couple  things to play off of there   one thing the polyphenols that you just  mentioned polyphenols increasingly there is

a body of evidence that polyphenols are not active  without coming into contact with our gut microbes

and having the gut microbes to activate them is  actually a part of what makes the polyphenols   beneficial to our health. So that’s just a  tangible example of why they’re so important

so you mentioned many of the dietary approaches  that can be taken and you know at the end of the

day no matter who you are no matter what dietary  pattern you follow what Tim just said, those

are simple rules that anyone can apply. There  are many different versions of a healthy diet

but those rules can be applied to virtually  all of them to enhance your health   and to enhance the health of your microbiome.  From my perspective what I would add

you don’t need to only change your diet to  enhance the health of your gut microbiome,

there are ways to improve the health of  your microbiome without even lifting a fork.

You can get a good night’s rest, you can go to bed  earlier, you can time with your circadian biology

which means not eating dinner at 10 o’clock at  night, eating an earlier dinner, earlier bedtime,

fasting before dinner and extending the fast  into the next day. So fasting is an example

of something you can do without eating food  that can be beneficial to the gut microbes.

Exercise is important, the people that you  surround yourself with, there’s evidence that

the people that live in your home you share  microbes together, there’s evidence that when   you’re in a loving relationship it’s good for  your gut microbiome, there’s evidence that when

you have a pet it’s good for your gut microbiome,  so spend time outdoors, exercise, tell the people

that you love that you love them, have a strategy  for maintaining your stress, get some sleep,

have an early dinner and an early bedtime and I  guess something that’s been hard in these covered

times which is don’t wash your hands as carefully  as you might have done before when you’re in the   outside is that what you’re both saying with  your pet story yeah you may wash your hands in

the supermarket but make sure that when you’re out  in the woods playing you know or playing with the

pets you perhaps don’t wash as much as you would  have been expected to so it’s a story that the the

bugs that other people are carrying may be quite  dangerous for you and the bugs in the environment   in general are quite safe this is sort of  one of the the takeaways from this isn’t it?

I think I think it’s about balance I think  it’s about balance that at the end of the day   we don’t need to swing the pendulum back  and forth and drive ourselves crazy out

this is too much sterilization. This is not enough  sterilization I think it’s it’s more so that um

you know there are common sense moments  in time where you should be washing your   hands you probably don’t need me to define what  those are and then there are moments where we’re

taking it too far, where we’re using the um the  antiseptic hand you know hand rubs and whatnot

and using that repeatedly and it’s too much  sterilization. It’s not necessarily a good thing   that makes it a discussion i have a lot with my  wife with um particularly our youngest one about

clearly we’re in coverage you want to be  very conscious of that but actually we’re   brought up now with this idea  you want to sterilize everything

that you know a small you know baby is  in contact with and actually I think   um clearly that’s this is part of this natural  process where they’re exposed to the environment.

And uh you know coming back to that early  point uh there are a lot of these uh these bugs

that that we need to have so there’s something  about finding that middle ground that’s that’s   fascinating and one final question on this before  we move on you know what about probiotics so this

all sounds like a lot of hard work right you’re  saying that people should go to sleep early that’s   boring you know at least tim allows us to have a  glass of wine that’s nice um we’ve got to really

What about probiotics?

worry about our food what about if we just skip  all of that and we go to the grocery store and   we buy one of these bottle of probiotic pills  that say they have microbes inside them couldn’t

we just do that and skip the rest of this and head  over to mcdonald’s afterwards um you could do that

but i think will and i are both big believers in  real real food first and there are plenty of foods

that have probiotics in them so and if you do that  you’re going to get a wider range of microbes that

is going to be more likely to suit you and so  that’s what i would always try first uh you’ve

got yogurt which has usually two or three microbes  then you can move to things like some blue cheeses

which are four or five or six then you’ve got  uh kefirs which are fermented milks which have

um at least 10 to 15 different types of microbe  and then you’ve got kombucha’s and kimchi and

kraut which have even more so i think it’s trying  those first and then uh only really going for

probiotics if you are sick or have a particular  problem that’s where the evidence is strongest

there’s not much evidence that probiotics bought  at a store will prevent uh illnesses at the moment

but there is increasing evidence that they do  work for a number of uh mild complaints and so

there’s definitely evidence they work what we  don’t know is which ones work in which people

because as will said we’re totally unique in our  gut microbes so matching the particular microbe to

our own thousand species is going to be a bit of  luck and that’s why this is an area for a lot of

interest for us obviously because you know yeah  so if we know so in the future we’re probably   going to end up once you’ve had your microbiome  sequence with individualized advice about which

probiotics are likely to work for you and  that’s definitely the future of this area

yeah i think speaking as a  gastroenterologist i i would say that   there there is a role for probiotics um i use  them routinely routinely in my clinic with benefit

but the fallacy or the mistake that people will  make is when they lean into the probiotic without

thinking that anything else needs to change diet  and lifestyle is the great opportunity you know

tim said that when he changed his diet when he  was in east africa he saw his microbiome diversity

radically change in just four days and you’re not  going to get that kind of results from a probiotic

by itself but a probiotic is a supplement that can  be used in addition to diet and lifestyle changes

particularly for people that have digestive issues  and and certainly provide benefit for many people

and you know the one thing i just want to  add on real quick to what tim said that i i   find to be fascinating is the idea of living food  we have sterilized our food supply and there is

increasing concern that this sterile food supply  is problematic for our gut microbiome and there’s

now a call among some scientists to focus on  getting more living food into our diet now tim

speaks to the different types of fermented foods  when you ferment you are creating an ecosystem

and then you consume from that ecosystem and  transfer it into yours and they come into contact   and we have actually multiple studies showing that  the microbes that are in your ferment will show up

in your stool and so that means that  they are surviving and getting through   but in addition to that it’s not just  fermented food it’s also real food whole food

food that is still alive tim mentioned very early  in the episode that these microbes are everywhere

that a plant has its own microbiome they’ve  studied this in some plants if you take an

apple an apple has a hundred million microbes in  its microbiome more than a thousand species you

don’t need to ferment the apple the apple already  has microbes and so eating real food in some

cases some raw food can also potentially bring  some of those microbes into our into our diet

and don’t smash it up too much before  you eat it if you want to get the full   benefit for your microbes so so we’ve had  a wonderful tour of the microbiome here and

i think so much opportunity to  dig in more in future episodes   now let’s talk about the role of zoe in all of  this maybe just to sort of wrap up so for the last

four years uh we’ve been carrying out the world’s  largest study of microbiome and metabolic health

maybe will you joined our scientific advisory  board earlier this year do you want to explain   you know why sure so uh i started as a  fan i was a fan of zoe uh in june of 2020

Why Will joined ZOE’s scientific advisory board

i saw at a meeting a international nutrition  conference new research being published by

zoe by the scientists who were affiliated with zoe  and then shortly thereafter there was a paper that

was published in literally the most prestigious  medical journal on the planet nature medicine

and i saw this and i was like okay whoa this is  how it was this is how it is supposed to be done

we are introducing the era of personalized  nutrition but we’re not winging it we’re not just

making stuff up this is this is about doubling  down on research and using those tools the science

to guide us in the choices and our ability to  understand how we are unique as an individual

and how those unique elements connect to our  food choices and how our body interprets those

food choices so what i love about zoe uh what  got me really excited is that not to um uh

be too glowing with you guys right here in front  of us but uh i’m loving it you can keep going well

i well i just i just i just really loved i have  to be totally honest we live in a society okay so

if i am if i am jonathan wolfe  and i am the ceo of a new company

it is a sure thing if i spend my money on a  marketing budget and it is a massive risk to

spend my money on a research budget because the  research slows me down i don’t get my product

to market i don’t have money coming in and what  if the research says that my product is trash

that would all be problematic and so what i love  is the audacity of zoe to go out there and you

started in what jonathan 2017 yep conducting  research doing the studies and actually showing

that what you have is real before you ever  opened it up and made it publicly available

and that to me shows a level of integrity that’s  missing in today’s world and i i think we all like

should appreciate the fact that a company would  be willing to do something like that to make sure

that the product actually works instead of just  rolling out a product marketing it to you hyping

it up making you believe that it’s real but not  actually having the data to back it up and so

that’s what i love about what we’re doing with zoe  we are building something that i think is really   special i think that it is going to introduce  the era of personalized nutrition in a way that’s

grounded in actual science and i also love that  each individual person you can participate in zoe

and you yourself will receive the benefit i myself  have received the benefit of participating in zoe

i i wrote the new york times bestselling book  i’ve changed my diet since i took the zoe kit

all right but you yourself can receive  the benefit and on the flip side   there’s this concept that is so cool called  citizen science where by participating in the

zoe project you are contributing to something  that’s going to help other people and when

thousands and tens of thousands and potentially  100 000 different people all contribute to the   science the science gets better and better and  better and we advance it and then we can help

even more people and that’s a beautiful thing i  love that well tim was very active tim was very

persuasive that the science was going to work  so uh it seemed like a good a good bet and i   think we were convinced we could then do the data  science on top of this to sort of decouple this

and give people the personalized results if the  underlying science was real and i think uh i was   a little nervous before we got the first results  and it was fantastic that it worked out as well as

as well as it did well thank you for your kind  words well maybe because you did do the um did

the program yourself maybe you just talked from it  about like what you get with the zoe program so we   talked a lot about the microbiome um in abstract  like could you just help people understand sort of

for real where that is today um yeah the the the  thing about personalized nutrition is that and

this is true of so many things in the body tim and  i have been talking about this for the last hour   it’s not just one thing in isolation it’s not  just one microbe it’s not just one metabolite

it’s this entire system that’s complicated  and there’s different layers and facets to it   so the beauty of the of the zoe kit is that it  has the state-of-the-art microbiome testing there

is no one with better microbiome testing than  what we have okay state-of-the-art there but

it’s not just the microbiome it’s also your blood  glucose it’s also your blood lipids it’s being

able to accurately record your dietary choices  it’s being able to administer a standardized

test so that you can compare my results to  jonathan’s results or to your results at home

all right so when you bring all of these things  together the microbiome the blood glucose monitor

which by the way is like continuously measuring  when you do it the blood lipids the standardized   food testing the food app you are creating the  complete experience having the complete data

so that you can look at all of these things  and the interactions that exist between them   which by the way we know very clearly there are  powerful interactions that exist there and so

so to be a little more tangible with this  jonathan i did my zoe kit i paid for it myself

back in october of 2020 when i became interested  in zoe and what was going on this is shortly after

it was made available in the united states for  the very first time and what you do is basically

you spend about one week the instructions are  pretty straightforward and clear it’s not that   it’s not that complicated you eat a couple muffins  on certain days you wear this glucose monitor that

it’s like shockingly easy to apply and you enter  in your information into the food data and then

you send in this a stool specimen which by the  way is like the easiest thing in the world to do

and by doing that it integrates all this data it  has machine learning which are these complicated

computer algorithms to basically dissect  this and look at the connections that exist   that are personalized to you so like it did it for  me and then you receive basically this information

back and when i open up the app it gives me my  personalized data and so as an example there are

gut boosters and there are the gut detractors  or like the ones that they got suppressors

all right so gut boosters are the foods that  i should preferentially be gravitating towards

and i can tell that it’s personalized to me  because they each one of these gut boosters

has a certain score but then when i open the  app the score rapidly recalibrates itself

to me and i can see how that score changes  real quick so anyway what happened with me

is that look i eat a plant-based diet i  eat plants in variety that’s my big thing

all right but at the end of the day like you’re  not gonna eat equal portions of every single plant   on the planet that doesn’t that’s not feasible  at the end of the day you’re going to gravitate

towards certain dietary choices what i discovered  specific to me is that tofu wasn’t as healthy for

me personally as perhaps i thought it was it’s  not that i avoid tofu i eat it all the time

but what i did find is that there were specific  foods asparagus lentils and avocado that were my

sort of supercharged gut boosters okay specific to  me so what do i do now i’m eating tons of avocados

tons of asparagus tons of lentils and times in  the past well this is because you’re a competitive   man right and you know you’re gonna retest and  you want to have made progress and you need to

beat tim’s um health score this is this is really  the driving factor isn’t it let’s let’s be honest

i mean i am a type a personality i  can’t change that that’s that’s who i am   i can’t help that that’s brilliant and tim where  do we um you know where does the science go

because you know this is ongoing so we’re talking  about the gut boosters and things we’re going like   because there’s actually a lot of work going  on right at the moment where is that going

and stuff that we hope to release this year  well the zoe predicts today’s really the first

of of the series you know and they were the  largest studies of their kind in the world but

we now have five times as much data than we when  we we first did and so we’re consistently updating

the algorithms as we get more data in from people  and so that’s why our precision and our ability to

pick um complex foods and and and different  people’s diets apart is going to get better

and better and better and so our advice we give  back to people is just going to keep growing so

when people go back to this in six months or 12  months time they’ll see that you know okay their   microbiome will change but also the the advice  will have altered slightly because this isn’t

static you know um science doesn’t stop it  just keeps evolving and we’re gonna make

some changes to what we said uh just six months  ago so i think that’s for the exciting area we’re

here and the more people that participate  just the better more accurate information

everybody gets and that’s what’s really  cool and i and the more people do this the   better everyone’s getting educated about the  power of food and the power of the microbiome

don’t take avocados away from me though i i don’t  care how far the science goes don’t be taking   avocados away from me well we’ll we’ll definitely  bear that in mind and you know i think one of the

most exciting things for me is you know we have  these ongoing clinical um trials looking at   the results coming out of people following the  device and and the results that we’ve seen are

are really exciting in terms of impact on energy  sort of reducing dietary inflammation no weight

for a lot of people as well so i think we are  we’re very excited about what it’s doing so i   think we’re at time so let’s wrap it up and i and  maybe we can wrap it up with just one final thing

from each of you so if there was just one single  thing that the listeners can do to improve their

gut microbiome beyond doing the zoe program what  would you have them do let’s start with you tim

i stick to my thir go for 30 plants  a week and uh have that as your your

goal even if you don’t reach it just keep  a little notepad on the fridge uh and uh

you know see how you get on and you  know and mix it up and try new things

well oh man tim you took it from me that’s my  favorite one i literally wrote a book about that.

So all right Will, I think that tim’s absolutely  right in the sense that no matter who you are

no matter what your dietary pattern is this is a  simple thing that you can start to do today which   is to incorporate more varieties of different  plants and so if it’s okay Jonathan I’m happy to

say other things but i would just double down on  that no matter who you are no matter what dietary   pattern you follow it does not matter what it  is the optimal diet for your gut microbiome is a

diverse abundant diet it is not about restriction  it is about abundance and variety in your diet

enjoy all the flavors all the colors you will  be very happy and still your gut microbes

fantastic well look on that note i just like to  remind everybody if they’d like to learn more   about the microbiome or ZOE then do come to the  website which is joinzoe.com that’s joinzoe.com.

And if you would like to get 10% off your zoe  membership then just go to joinzoe.com/podcast.

I would like to thank our  fantastic guests Tim, Will,   I hope you’ve enjoyed that as much as me  and we look forward in future episodes of

digging deeper into different areas we’ve  covered today. Thank you very much bye-bye.