Traditional medicine hasn’t paid much attention to diet—and it still doesn’t. But research has exploded in the last five years, highlighting the importance of the gut microbiome to overall health and the ways in which food can influence it.

Low-calorie, low-fat approaches and eat-this-not-that don’t work. When it comes to diet, “we’ve been given a lot of incredible advice that hasn’t gotten us anywhere.”

Gut health depends on a complex interaction between the food we eat and the microbes that live in our gut. There are 26,000 chemicals in our food that combine with more than 1,000 different types of microbes in our gut, and then mix in the blood with our body’s own chemistry to influence 20,000 genes and other metabolic pathways. A small change and the entire system can shift, which can cause long-term problems, but it can also be the solution to the problem.

In general, the healthiest diet isn’t restrictive, but rather diverse and includes lots of brightly colored plants high in polyphenols. Red-tipped broccoli is better than green, he says; purple carrots are better than orange. It’s best to avoid eating routines like eating the same salad or sandwich every day, eat a balanced diet, and be aware that there is no such thing as a universally healthy diet.

References:

[1] Kviatcovsky, Denise, Danping Zheng, and Eran Elinav. “Gut microbiome and its potential link to personalized nutrition.” Current Opinion in Physiology 22 (2021): 100439.

[2] Klimenko, Natalia S., Alexander V. Tyakht, Anna S. Popenko, Anatoly S. Vasiliev, Ilya A. Altukhov, Dmitry S. Ischenko, Tatiana I. Shashkova et al. “Microbiome responses to an uncontrolled short-term diet intervention in the frame of the citizen science project.” Nutrients 10, no. 5 (2018): 576.

[3] Yeşilyurt, Neslihan, Birsen Yılmaz, Duygu Ağagündüz, and Raffaele Capasso. “Microbiome-based personalized nutrition as a result of the 4.0 technological revolution: A mini literature review.” Process Biochemistry (2022).

Stool analysis and a personalized diet plan takes place remotely in 5 steps: from sending the analysis package to your home address, taking a stool sample and sending it to the laboratory to the analysis result arriving at your email address in the form of a detailed report on the state of the intestines and personalized recommendations for nutrition and conversations with a nutritionist who conducts them through the results and answers to all questions.