My health has been improving steadily since my attention was caught by a food scientist being interviewed on one of the Zoe gut microbiome podcasts towards the end of February last year.
I happened to be crippled by a rheumatoid arthritis flare up at the time, so when I heard them say that they'd experimented with feeding test subjects small portions of fermented foods 6 times a day, and the inflammation markers in their blood were reduced by 20%, it grabbed my attention. With every joint in my body feeling as if it had been filled with sand I was highly motivated to try anything, and adding some fermented stuff to the shopping list seemed easy enough.
I started drinking kombucha at breakfast, having sauerkraut or kimchi with most meals, and drinking kefir before bedtime. (Be sure to check that the sauerkraut and kimchi you buy contains live organisms, all the ambient storage ones have been pasteurised, IF they were ever fermented in the first place - most will have been "soured" with vinegar or wine.)
I'm a cheapskate, so over time I have learnt to make my own kombucha (surprisingly easy and tastier than shop bought), and convert a couple of tablespoons of expensive shop bought kefir into a litre of much cheaper homemade kefir.
I don't have the temperature controlled storage space to make my own fermented vegetables, so I get the nice people at https://www.lovingfoods.co.uk/ to send me 8 jars every 5 weeks. Their sauerkraut is much crisper than the stuff I used to make anyway.
After hearing that soluble fibre is the preferred food of some of the most beneficial bacteria strains I started taking a tiny bit of inulin every day, and have increased it to the point where I can now eat a couple of tablespoons without any ill effects. I normally aim for 1 tablespoon, but being absent minded I sometimes find myself stirring another spoonful into my mid morning coffee after already having had one spoonful in my breakfast porridge.
I had been avoiding fat since the 1970s, but have now started to eat plenty of healthy fats, nuts, oils, avocados etc, and my BMI has dropped from 59.4 to 37.9 over the past 20 months.
I also started playing around with adding different plant foods to my weekly diet. The recommendation is to eat at least 30 different plants each week, but last time I kept count the total was 69.
Towards the end of last year I started eating seafood again, after vacillating between being vegan and vegetarian for 4 decades. This allows me to increase my protein intake without too many extra calories and to consume oily fish regularly so I don't need to buy omega oil supplements.
I stopped taking ibuprofen, after reading that it is as lethal for the gut microbiome as a course of antibiotics. I use paracetamol instead.
I heard that some of the beneficial bacteria (the ones that mend the lining of the gut and that produce butyrates, mostly start to reproduce and do their thing after the food has passed through their part of the bowel. Also that it takes between 10 and 12 hours from the last time you eat anything until your metabolism switches from fat storage to fat burning mode, which is when free radicals that cause inflammation get mopped up. So fasting for at least 14 hours is one of the best things you can do for your gut.
I had been in the habit of eating before bed, eating if I woke up during the night, and eating breakfast as soon as I got up, so that was a challenge, but I got used to it and now I appreciate not having to think about food between 4pm and 10am. I'm still a bit peeved that nobody mentioned this to me, because never having a rest from eating for more than 6 - 8 hours lead to a massive build up of metabolites that cause inflammation, chronic inflammation will have been a major factor in my developing 5 different auto-immune conditions.
I did take a course of high dose probiotic capsules, the kind that are recommended for when you are being treated with antibiotics or travelling abroad. I hoped they'd be a quick way of resetting my gut microbiome. Weirdly they made me super constipated. I read the ingredients list wondering if they contained a low dose of immodium, but they didn't. I stubbornly finished the packet, (cheapskate, remember?) but only by drinking a couple of tablespoons of psyllium husk in a glass of water every day for the last fortnight. That experience put me off trying more of those expensive capsules.
I haven't had a serious flare of any of my multitudinous auto-immune ailments for over a year, my blood pressure has gone from being high to being better than normal for my age, and my type 2 diabetes has improved so much that my last battery of diabetes related tests were all well with the normal range and the consultant was so impressed that after asking loads of questions about the changes I've made he decided to start fasting for 14 hours, adding fermented foods to his shopping list, and eating a wider variety of plants.
Oh, and I sleep better now too. When I first started fasting it was difficult to get to sleep because it felt as if my stomach was gnawing at me, but now I rarely feel hungry until after I start making breakfast. It feels restful now, I doze off thinking that the night shift in my gut microbiome are clocking in, getting busy cleaning, mending and producing chemicals that improve my physical and mental health.
I do try to avoid ultra processed foods, and empty calories, and to not eat more than 2000kcals/day, with varying degrees of success. The things have become permanent habits are
- Fermented foods (kombucha, saurkraut, kimchi, kefir, live miso, cheese, coffee, tea, Lindt 90% dark chocolate)
- Inulin
- Healthy fats
- More than 30 different plants each week.
- 14 - 18 hour overnight fast.