Healthy lifestyle goals once again have dominated the list of most common New Year's resolutions this year. But did you know, improving your health in one part of your body can do wonders to improve multiple areas of your life like your sleep, stress levels, your mood and even your weight. To tell us more, here's Doctor Megan Rossi.
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00:00 Actually, what the science is highlighting is that targeting our gut can have these far-reaching
00:06 benefits on things like our mental health, our hormonal health, our weight management,
00:11 heart health and all the rest of it. So that's why, you know, it's all about thinking how
00:15 we can make these small tweaks to our gut health to have these far-reaching benefits.
00:19 A new poll by Forbes found the top most popular New Year's resolutions for 2024 included improved
00:26 mental health, improved diet and to lose weight. Megan Rossi is also known as the gut health
00:31 doctor and explains how looking after your gut microbiome proactively can have a positive
00:36 impact on other areas of your health and wellbeing.
00:39 Gut health relates is nine meter long digestive tract that essentially delivers food from
00:43 entry all the way to exit. That nine meters is incredibly important for various things,
00:49 but two key ones is that 70% of our immune system lives in our gut. That's certainly
00:54 why we see people with better gut health have more resilient immune systems, but it's really
00:59 the other element of the trillions of bacteria that live along that nine meter digestive
01:04 tract that's brought this, I guess, excitement and fame to this area. And the scientific
01:09 word for that is our gut microbiome. So people may start to hear that a little bit more.
01:13 New research from Holland and Barrett shows the lack of understanding we have surrounding
01:17 the benefits of good gut health. 60% did not know gut health could affect immunity and
01:23 mental health, and more than a third reported they do not know what measures they can take
01:27 to look after their gut microbiome. So here's some of the advice to keep in mind.
01:32 So when we think about our gut bacteria, their favourite food is plants, right? So when we
01:36 think about the different plants, it's not just your fruit and veg, it's things like
01:40 your whole grains, the things like your oats and your quinoa, your legumes like your chickpeas
01:44 and butter beans, your nuts and seeds and your herbs and spices. So all of them actually
01:49 count towards your plant points. So try to get as many different types as you can. So
01:53 instead of just getting your linseed pack, get the three seed mix and you get an extra
01:57 two or three plants. We've introduced a new thing for all of our
02:00 food products on our labels to display the number of different types of plant species
02:04 that are in that product. So for example, we've got an eight plant pasta sauce, which
02:08 has got eight different types of plants in there to really help boost that daily kind
02:11 of plant point target, you know. And it's not just what we should be doing
02:15 that the experts are suggesting we swat up on. Alex Glover is a registered nutritionist
02:20 and says a whopping number of us suffer from gut problems caused by our lifestyles.
02:24 Over 90% of us in the UK aren't hitting the daily fibre recommendation of 30 grams. And
02:29 actually the research suggested that 16 to 24 year olds are only having two and a half
02:33 servings of fruit and veg a day as well. So you know, that's a really high percentage
02:37 of people with some kind of pretty daily symptoms that are going to be affecting your daily
02:41 life. And some of these things can really actually affect your quality of life.
02:44 Because of the research around things like the gut brain axis, then relaxing this up
02:48 here, our brain actually can have these far reaching benefits on our gut health as well.
02:52 So you know, looking at your stress levels, if it's something like five minutes of belly
02:56 breathing, even just going for a walk, you know, down the road for 10 minutes. So those
03:00 sorts of things actually can really help our gut health and our gut bacteria as well.