Welcome to the Blain by podcast, You Gammie Panhandlers. This is the first step where nearly 200 episodes. I've been making this podcast since late 2017, and I have never missed an episode. Every Wednesday lights. I even did one on Christmas Day. Every Wednesday I've come through with the episode and I've never I've never let anything get in the way of recording a podcast episode. And this week is the first time that I almost didn't upload a Wednesday podcast because of technology.

And if you have particularly sensitive ears, this is why this week's podcast might sound slightly different. So if you've been listening in for the past 10 weeks, you will know that the computer that I record this podcast on is on its last legs. While I was waiting for a brand new computer to arrive, which was taken ages because of Brexit and UK Customs. So my computer finally packed in. It gave up this week. It got completely full and it got hot and the fan got overheated and it simply wouldn't let me record anymore.

But then the brand new computer finally arrived, so I was like, fuck it, it doesn't matter, who cares? The old computer pectin, but thank God the new computer arrived. So I set it up today, rubbing my hands together, going brilliant. Can't wait to record the podcast on the brand new computer, but alas. The company who sent me the computer with the software, I got a bunch of audio software on it in order for me to make music and record this podcast.

They sent me all the software, which I purchased, but they didn't send me any of the activation codes which validate validate the products, including the activation code for my windows. So I'm recording this on a computer right now. And every piece of software on the computer is the trial version. And I'll be waiting until tomorrow before I get my activation codes, so I almost didn't put out a podcast because here's the thing. Using trailblazing software, and it's not just one piece of software, it's several.

It means that I can only record audio in possibly five minute bursts or possibly even three minute bursts, depending on which piece of software decides to arbitrarily stop working and remind me that I need to activate it and purchase the full version. So I nearly didn't put out a podcast. And then I said to myself, I can't do that. I must put out the podcast. No matter what happens, I can just tell you what the problem is and we try our best.

So what I'm doing is recording this. You can stop at any minute and then when it does stop, I have to go back and edit it so you don't notice. But it's like trying to record the podcast and there's a dog pulling my leg. There's a dog biting my sock and trying to pull my leg while someone else is throwing ping pong balls at my head. So it's it's difficult. But luckily, I do have a backup plan. I do have a backup plan.

So this week's podcast is actually it's going to be really, really good because I have an interview that I did with some people which I've been keeping in my back pocket. Really, really good interest in an interview and a topic which I think you're going to enjoy. And I'm going to play that before I do that. Actually, I know I. I tell you what it is. I'll tell you what it is, because I don't like that suspense shit.

And I spoke to two professors who are world leading experts in the relationship between mental health and got bacteria and the food that you eat and mental health. And it's incredibly exciting emerging research. So I have a fantastic chat lined up this podcast for you. But first, I have some things I want to speak about. Firstly, thank you very much for the feedback for last week's podcast, it was a mental health podcast and I got a lot of lovely messages.

I couldn't respond to all of them, but. I like doing last week's podcast because when I do a mental health podcast, it's not just for you, it's it's an act of therapy for myself. There's a bit of self talk going on, and I'm really glad that so many of you found it helpful. Also, something that I've been requested that I received several requests this week to speak about is the there was a woman murdered in England called Sarah Everett.

And it's very sad and very tragic. And there was a lot of grief and anger online, particularly from women, because of how the murder highlighted the. The lack of safety that women feel when they just simply live their lives in society. So I had a lot of people asking me to speak about this specifically, which makes me feel sad because the reason I've mentioned this many times, the reason I'm getting asked to speak about this is women saying to me, will you speak about this?

Because the Sartin lads will only listen if another man says this. Which is very frustrating because if you're one of these lads who all of a sudden it's it's like something something something which women are speaking about only makes sense to you when you hear a man say is. Please work on that and focus instead on listening to women rather than needing something translated to a male voice, because when you when you operate like that, it contributes to the problem rather than solving it.

Even if the thing that the man is saying makes you have like an awakening, the fact that you needed to hear a man says rather than listen to a woman, that that contributes to the problem. So I was asked to speak about. Just the the everyday violence that women face, but men men don't essentially. And the thing is, this is something I've actually spoken about before, this is something I've spoken about before, I did almost an entire episode on.

One of my first ever podcasts back in 2017, the podcast episode is called Yardie Ahan, where I speak about. An area where I go jogging. Where I see an otter called Latihan, who I still see he's got a family, no. And I speak about acknowledging the privilege that I have. To go running in the dark at night time whenever I want and I don't have to think about my safety, sometimes I have to worry when my phone get robbed in the back of my mind.

But I don't really have to worry about my my physical safety. This isn't something this isn't how I navigate my life as such. One thing, one small thing I do want to point out, I brought this up once at a festival, at a chat, at a festival I was doing, and one lad put his hand up and he said that some men do have to worry about their physical safety when they're going about their daily lives or walking.

And they slide in particular said that he as a gay man, because he happens to walk in a way that's camp, he is at risk of violence and harassment. So that's worth pointing out. And just to relay that that lad's experience when I was at a festival. But if you've been looking at the laws are weak or you've been on social media, you'll be aware that lots and lots of women have been sharing their experiences of needing to be very cautious and aware and afraid of their physical safety when they simply try to live their lives in public, especially when they're on their own.

So what can we do as men to adjust our behaviour and bring this situation into our awareness? So. I mean, the obvious one is. If you're out walking at night time and you see a woman be aware that she doesn't know who you are and she has good reason to be frightened of you, you could be minding your own business. So keep physical distance, cross the road, be very cautious if you're walking behind a woman or a group of women, that's.

If you disappear from nowhere, your appearance to just suddenly appear can be very frightening, very, very frightening and traumatic. So if you are at a distance and you're walking on the road and as a woman a few yards in front of you, maybe make some noise. Like, jingle your fucking keys are scratch your feet on the ground so that she then becomes aware that there's a lad behind me before you then cross the street. I mean, offer to walk a woman, if it's your friend, offer to walk her home, if it's someone that you know, if she is walking home and she's on her own and she gives you a text, you go, how are you getting on there, Dramamine to come and meet you at a certain spot?

Is that ask and don't say not all men. That's fucking ridiculous. Listen, when you hear women talking about this stuff and and if you are one of these lads who heard all this stuff during the week on social media and decided to start to think not all men, I'm I'm a man and I don't attack women on the way home. Well, fair play at the fair play at the that's the that's the bare minimum fair play. But instead of saying not all men just go, well, if you're not someone who attacks women on the way home, then how about improving the situation even more by becoming a man who is incredibly aware of your own physical presence and what that might mean to women and what compassionate, empathic things can you do to make the streets feel a little bit safer?

All right. That's authorities make the streets feel a little bit safer through some self awareness and some mindfulness. That's it. And chat to other lads about it. Chat to your friends about it, normalise it in conversation. I did a full podcast on this. The podcast is called Guardian, and you'll find it in my podcast episodes. And it's one of the earliest episodes that I made. I can't speak at length about it this week, obviously, because I have this technological issue, which means I have to record everything here in short bursts.

And what I also want to talk about is it's St. Patty's Day. It's St. Patrick's Day. It doesn't it doesn't mean much now because we're in quarantine. I'm not even going to be drinking because I'm off the drink. I'm off cans. What am I doing for Patty's Day? I'm taking a lot of cardboard to the dump and I'm excited about it. Because it means getting outside of the house, so I'm taking cardboard to the dump for Patty's Day and being excited about going to the dump to put the cardboard there and then being excited about the lack of cardboard in my house once it's gone, because that's what quarantine has done to my brain and that's where my level of excitement and expectations are.

Actually, maybe what I'll do is I like I'll go. I'll I'll pretend I'm St. Patrick and the cardboard that's currently all over my living room floor. I'll pretend that that cardboard is snakes. And me removing the cardboard and taking it to the dump is me at St. Patrick removing the snakes from Ireland. And then I'll go back to my living room and. Teach Christianity to the floor. That's what I'll do. But I've I've I've strong opinions about St.

Patrick's Day, St. Patrick's Day is it's an Irish holiday that celebrated the world over, which I think is is remarkable for such a small country. And actually, as well, I'm I'm involved in there's no St. Patrick's Day festival this year as such. There's no parade because of coronavirus. So instead, what raises the St. Patrick's Festival? It's all moved online. So the official Irish Saint Patrick's Festival, I'm involved in that online. What they asked me to do this week was to give a daily message to the artists of Ireland.

I did five video messages, which you can see on St. Patrick's Festival, Dahieh, and you can see it the world over. I did five five minute messages for the artists of Ireland, which I was asked to do to help artists with their creativity and mental health. Five separate episodes where I speak about what is success, incorporating failure into a process, how to deal with criticism, how I basically use emotional awareness and good mental health practice, specifically as an artist to protect my creativity and to avoid creative block and procrastination.

So you can check that out if you want to see them. Also, they got me to read out one of my short stories, which I think is going out tonight. I read out a short story called Joli, which is from my last book. It's. It's it's either set during the Irish famine or it's set in the future post climate collapse, it's about two women who find a dead priest and eat him. So I'm really looking forward to the reaction to that because they're Bianco's watching that.

But anyway, I digress. I've been kind of rabbiting on now for a few years that I would like to see St. Patrick's Day because it's already green in in its Thame St. Patrick's Day is associated with the color green. And I think in light of the climate emergency and the biodiversity emergency that we should start reburn rebranding St. Patrick's Day as being about the environment. Because the thing is. Every country in the world is going to have to reduce its carbon footprint if we are to fight the climate emergency, OK, and to improve biodiversity, every country is going to have to reduce our carbon footprint.

But Ireland's a very small country with quite a small carbon footprint. So some people say, what's the fucking point in Ireland becoming green? Because we're so tiny that even if we, you know, get rid of all carbon from Ireland and the larger scale of things in the world, how can it make a difference? Surely it's countries like the US and China and India that need to start their shadows. And to a certain extent, there's an argument.

But we've got a tiny carbon footprint, but we've got a huge cultural footprint. Like I said, we're a country of four million fucking people and we've with two holidays that are celebrated the world over Patrick's Day and Halloween for a tiny country that's mad. So our cultural footprint is huge. So if we start to incorporate green, ecologically, environmentally friendly, biodiversity friendly themes into St. Patrick's Day, we can use our massive cultural footprint to have a large influence on the world, which then reduces the carbon footprint.

To me, that seems like a really positive thing to do. And it also shifts Patty's Day away from negative connotations of excessive drinking and smash and pint glasses into people's faces. So I want to propose something that this is this is a little advert, but it's the type of advert that I'm really happy to do this. And this is something I really believe in. And I think it's it's an incredibly positive thing. So currently it's national. TREWEEK Ah, no, it's not national.

TREWEEK No. From the 21st of March to the 20th of March is National Treweek, OK, and there's a company called Wolfgang Reforest and Wolf kind of put ads out on my podcast before. But basically what Wolfgang referenced are doing is. They're really interested in Irish biodiversity and improving Irish biodiversity, biodiversity is simply the diversity of insects and animals in Ireland and how this is rapidly disappearing because of climate change and because of eradication of natural habitats. Right. Ireland used to be a rainforest many, many years ago.

Ireland was, I believe, a temperate rainforest. The whole country was covered with fucking dense forest. And you can imagine the animals and insects and birds that went along with that that disappeared. We were deforested as a result of colonialism when the British colonized Ireland, in particular Oliver Cromwell. And afterwards they cut out our forests down and replaced it with pasture land for cows and dairy to be exported. So Wolfgang Reforest. Our basically. They are trying to grow a giant forest in Wicklow of native broadleaf trees.

Now, that's the important thing, because the Irish government said a couple of years ago that they were going to plant a million trees. And if you look into it and you find out that the trees are actually Sitka spruce, which are not native trees, they're not broadleaf, and they're being made not for the climate, but they're being made for the logging industry. But the government, Finegan specifically were pretending that this was some type of normal climate thing that they were doing.

It wasn't. But Wolfgang Reforest is a social enterprise that's literally trying to plant native broadleaf trees for the sole purpose of improving biodiversity and having more forestry of native broadleaf trees in Ireland, which is a fantastic good thing. So if you want to contribute to this race, firstly go to Wolfgang Reforest Dorahy. Because they're reforesting the great all codes of Shillelagh up in Wicklow and for 20 euros a month, right. If you subscribe to this for 20 euros a month, they are going to plant on your behalf 12 native Irish trees a year.

Right. You're invited if you want to actually come and help to plant your own trees up in Wicklow, and when you do this, when you essentially sponsor a forest, you'll get updates on your trees for the rest of your life. So if you're interested in that, if you're interested in if you're getting down about the climate emergency or getting down about biodiversity, what can I do? This is a fantastic initiative, Wolfgang Referer study, 20 euros a month and 12 broadleaf trees are planted on your behalf that you can look at.

I think that's. I think that's pretty good stuff, let's for National Tree Week, so if you're interested in that Wolfgang reference today. So before I go into my interview with the professors about the relationship between food and the God and mental health, let's have a little anchorena pause. Because of my technological limitations this week, I don't think I can drop the ocarina pause in the middle of the interview, so I'm just going to do it now. A traditional medicinals, we believe that nature knows best.

That's why we use medicinal great herbs like aconitia to support your immune system, eucalyptus to help give you a breath of fresh air and ginger to promote healthy digestion every which way we turn. Mother Nature is there to greet us with her amazing healing plants. Visit traditional medicinals dotcom and use Caudwell 20 to see what makes our teas so incredible. I like a bed that's really firm. I need something a little softer than that, rest easy to sleep, no 360 smart bed.

You can both adjust your comfort with your sleep. No static. Can it really help me fall asleep faster? Yes. By gently warming your feet.

OK, but can it help keep us asleep? It senses your movements and automatically adjust to keep you effortlessly comfortable. Sleep. No improving quality sleep is life changing sleep now during the ultimate sleep number of say 50 percent on the sleep number three. Sixty limited edition support that plus special financing on all smart beds only for a limited time. Special financing subject to credit approval, minimum monthly payments, quietist more details.

That was the ocarina pause, you would have heard an advert there in the middle for something I don't know, support for this podcast comes from the Patreon page. All right. Patreon dot com forward slash the blind by podcast. If you're enjoying this podcast, if you listen to it regularly, please consider becoming a patron, which essentially just means paying me for the work that I'm doing. If you're consuming this podcast at this podcast is my full time job.

This podcast is how I earn a living and it takes up all of my time to create this podcast. I love doing this. Being a patron also means that I have editorial control over what I do, i.e. advertisers don't get to tell me what to talk about or how to talk about. This is an independent podcast with full creative control. So all I'm looking for really is the price of a pint or a cup of coffee once a month. That is a new get for podcast, a month for that.

So if you're if you're listening to it and enjoying it, ask yourself if I'm a blind boy in real life, what, I buy him a pint or a cup of coffee. Well, you can and if you can't afford it, if you're not working or you don't have the money and you can't afford it, don't worry, you can listen to the podcast for free. Or if you can afford it to become a patron, then you're paying for the person who can't afford it.

So everybody gets a podcast. I get to earn a living. And it's a lovely model based on soundness and kindness. Patriot and dot com forward slash the blind by podcast. Follow me on Twitter. I'm on Twitter on Thursday nights, all right, making music to the events of a video game and chatting with people. Twitch that TV forward stars to blame by podcast Thursday nights at eight thirty and subscribe to the podcast suggested to a friend, you know, the crack.

All right. So onto the topic of this week's podcast. I'm about about a month ago or a bit longer than two months ago, I had the opportunity to speak with two professors in the emerging field of psycho biotics. Right. Professor John Cryan and Professor Ted Denine of University College Cork.

And it was part of an initiative that was put on by an organization called Cark Discovers Dog, which was a Europe wide series of a series of talks and public events that were showcasing the work of researchers. And Cark discovers specifically about drawing attention to important research work that's been done in the city of Cork and Professor John Cryan and Ted Denine, our world leaders in psycho biotics. And they wrote a book called The Psycho Biotic Revolution. And what they say is essentially it's how our mental health, how our brains, our emotions, our mental health is affected by bacteria in our guts, in our stomachs and the food that we eat.

So basically, it's how how the food we consume and the health of our stomachs impacts our mental health. And it's an emerging field and it's incredibly exciting. And I had a chat with these two professors, and it's one I had in my back pocket, like I said, because I was worried about this Parkening. I had this little interview on my back pocket going, right. If something goes terribly wrong, at least I have this interview to put out so I can get things started.

So thankfully, I have this interview to put it out this week, and it's really enjoyable and I hope you like it. So here's the crack before I get into it, actually, before I get into it.

So the professors speak about the importance of fermented food in that that we should bring fermented food into our diets to have a healthy God. And since I recorded this podcast two months ago, I started to get into fermented food in particularly making my own fermented food. I'm talking about things like sauerkraut and kimchi, OK? And once you hear this interview, you're probably going to want to make your own fermented food. And I just want to give you just little pointers that I've learned so you don't make the mistakes that I make.

I've been making my own kimchi. Kimchi is a type of Korean fermented cabbage. It's very spicy. It's fizzy. It's a little bit of an acquired taste, but it is incredibly tasty.

And I love kimchi and I make kimchi stew.

And what I've learned with kimchi and sauerkraut and a lot of fermented foods, sometimes when you buy them in shops. They don't contain the beneficial fermented bacteria because a lot of the stuff you buy in shops is actually pasteurized and the stuff that's like would you call it raw kimchi, the stuff that contains the beneficial bacteria is very, very expensive to purchase, I found. So I've been making my own kimchi. You can get tons of recipes online. So here's two little tips that I would say today.

It's it's cabbage. It's cabbage that you ferment in jars. And when you make it yourself, it's really inexpensive. There's two important ingredients. There's the right type of cabbage and there's a Korean chili paste called goat gochujang, which is very easy to get in any Asian store, or you can order it online as well. So here's what I've learned from making kimchi. Firstly, don't use tap water because the chlorine in the tap will not allow fermentation to occur.

So use water that you filter yourself with a water filter are just simple bottled water. OK. Secondly, when you're looking up recipes for kimchi, they always suggest using Napa cabbage in Ireland. Napa cabbage is called Chinese leaves and you can get it in most supermarkets when you see a product called Chinese leaves, it looks a bit like lettuce. That's what Napa Cabbages. So if you fancy making kimchi, don't use tap water. And Napa cabbage is called Chinese leaves.

So here we go. Here is the interview with.

Professors John Cryan and Ted Denine from UCC about psycho biotics, so yields are both in UCC and you're working in the area of psycho biotics, is it fair to say you're in the area of psycho biotics? And what is that? Well, cycle politics is a term that John and I introduced into the literature about a decade ago, and it really refers to bacteria, which when we take them in, when we ingest them, can positively benefit our mental health.

So we do so we describe any bacteria that will positively impact our mental health as a psychobiology.

And so I'm familiar with terms like probiotic. Yeah. Is it is it in the same territory? It's like what. What like yeah. Here's the here's from what I've been reading. Now tell me if I'm wrong. Aguy LED's trying to find basically a version of Yakult that improves your mental health. That would be that would be a great goal in one way. What we're really trying to understand is basically over the last decade or so, there's been a real interest in medicine in general about what are the bacteria in your gut, how they're influencing all aspects of your health, whether whether it's your immune health, your health, your cardiovascular health, etc.

, where Ted and I have been working on is really trying to see how these bacteria that we have in our cost, that we guess on the day we're born and that travel with us the entire of our life, how they could also be relevant to our mental health and protecting protecting us during times of stress, etc.. And then can we generate or can we look at specific ways of manipulating them bacteria either through these kind of probiotic drinks are by other means to diet.

In particular, we're really interested in the relationship between food and mood and how diet could be playing a role in that, in shaping our behavior and in in being a positive influence on our overall stress resilience. And that's an enormous quantity of bacteria in the intestine. In your average adult, there's over a kilogram of bacteria, which is really almost the weight of the human brain. It's a it's a virtual organ in its own right, that collection of microbes in our intestine and really those bacteria that produce a lot of substances that are our brains and our other organs in the body actually need.

So we really are very dependent upon those bacteria. And of course, they're very dependent on us as well because we feed them. Yeah. So it's a two way process. What's the most basic description so of. So if I. If I eat at dinner, right, that these bacteria are these bacteria responsible in helping break down the necessary nutrients for that to go into my body and then my brain, is that how that works?

Yeah, it is, yeah. At one level for sure. I mean, there are there are many, many processes involved. But for example, if you have a lot of fiber, let's say from green vegetables, fiber, fiber is resistant to the normal digestive processes that the acids in the various things, the enzymes that are normally breaking down other things with fiber is a lot of them are resistant to that. And so they're broken down by the acted on by the bacteria in a process like it's kind of like a fermentation process in the gut.

And then these flavors are turned into chemicals that our bodies wouldn't have without the bacteria acting on them. And some of these chemicals are really good in providing energy to the goss'. But also we're learning more and more about how some of these chemicals can then get to the brain and also influence the brain. And so we're beginning to see that you can either give a number of options, then you can change your diet and change what comes in as an actor.

So increasing fiber would be, we would think would be a good thing to try and do that. If you can tolerate or you can change the bacteria itself and try and create an environment where there is good bacteria that are able to work on these fibers, because if you take all the fiber you want, if you don't have the right bacteria, it won't make any difference. So it's kind of a it's a real process. Overall, what we've learned over the years is like, you know, we've done some studies where we've allowed animals grow up without bacteria.

And this is probably some of the best evidence that we we've had. And when when that happens, the brain doesn't develop normally. So this is a really extreme situation these animals grow up in. How do you do that to an animal? How does an animal grow up but not bacteria? So you basically it's delivered very in this case, we work with mice. So some mice that they can grow up without bacteria because we keep them in a complete sterile environment.

They're borne by them because we get we get the bacteria at Berts. It's kind of like a birthday present from your mom as you're being born. So these are born by C-section and they're kept in a completely sterile environment. And then they allow us to do it. And the studies that Ted and I've been working on, we've shown that in these animals, the brains just don't develop the same way. And so that's a really extreme situation. But it's confirming to us that you need signals from these bacteria to have your brain working in an appropriate way.

And that's kind of underpins a lot of the work we've been doing on probiotics, because by psychobiology extent, we're targeting the microbiome where we're looking at this as kind of the place where we could actually look at it and to try and shift what's going on in the brain towards, you know, in a more medicinal type of approach. And as John says, the brains of these animals who are germ free, who have no bacteria, the brains don't develop normally.

And of course, as a result of that, their behavior isn't normal. You know, mice are sociable creatures just like we are. And if you give a mouse the opportunity to interact with another most, of course it will do that. But when you look at germ free mice who have no bacteria, if you give them the opportunity to interact with another mouse or let's say within an inanimate object like a pen, there is likely to spend the time.

But the pen as they are with another mouse. So their social behavior is radically altered and they have other alterations. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. And their strategy is to say that I like creatures that are social, such as mice and humans, that our social interactions with other people also benefit our bacteria, that that exchange of meeting with people.

Is that something that's that's such a brilliant point. But it's something we're really interested in, because you start to you know, when we found these really amazing discoveries about the brain and the behavior of these animals, we started thinking about, you know, you know, you know, if we are in a social environment, bacteria do get spread from one to the other. And so that perhaps there is a relationship there. And so we've been collaborating with some of our colleagues in them in the school of in the zoology department in York as well looking.

So that's mice and that's mammals. What if you went back to look at other parts of the animal kingdom, like, you know, even as far back as insects, like bees and and locusts and ants and all of their social interactions are also driven by their bacteria. And so people are beginning to really start to see that as something really critical about bacteria in the guts and the social brain across the animal kingdom and where that might come. With extreme situation is then in humans, where we have altered sociability and altered social systems and, you know, we've been working on this in the context perhaps of the social deficits in autism, but also in social anxiety disorder, where we're beginning to see changes in the bacteria that could also be relevant to us.

And so, you know, now in this locked down world where we're changing our social dynamics and changing everything, the question is, are we also changing or our bacteria and whether there's going to be any long term consequences of that and how that bacteria signals to the brain. We don't know right now, but it's something that we are quite, quite aware of. And what we live in, in close proximity to people. I mean, we do share bacteria with them and not just with people, with animals as well.

I mean, if you've got a pet dog, you know, you're going to exchange bacteria with the dog and the dog will have some bacteria that would have, if it come from humans in that and vice versa. And people you know, and this is something that you might be interested in because people start to to think about bacteria, something different to us. But if you look at it from an evolutionary perspective, just look at the bacteria were here long before humans.

And so what's happened is we've coevolved they're like I often refer to our friends with benefits. So they've taken on some of the roles to help humans physiology be better. One of the clear one of the best examples of this that the people may not be aware of is that if you look at human breast milk, it's very, very complex. It was really surprising to me when I realized that the complexity of sugars we have in breast milk is way more in humans than in any other mammal.

And what's really surprising is these sugars cannot be broken down by the infant. And so why would that be like why would evolution engender us with these these very complex sugars? But they're actually broken down by the microbes. And so you have this really cooperation between the microbes and the actual breast milk and the broken down to key chemicals that are very important in brain development, like sialic assets. So some of the beneficial effects that we see of breast feeding could perhaps be due to what's happening at the level of the microbes.

So there's one thing led and the research that you're doing, it feels like the type of stuff that we've kind of known already, that humanity has known what we're waiting for science to kind of to prove it as such. And from my own point of view, like I definitely noticed the relationship between my stomach and my own mental health, especially when I was suffering from mental health issues. But I never thought. Food sources put it this way, When I had bad anxiety, I would notice every single day I'd have a pain in my tummy, anxiety would manifest itself in my stomach.

And then after a couple of weeks, I'd actually start to turn off food because I'd have such a problem with acid in my stomach that I didn't want to eat. Now, then, on top of my anxiety, I'd start to experience depression. And when I had depression, I don't even want to engage in the act of making decent food for myself. I'm not thinking about food. I'm not thinking about the aesthetic enjoyment of food. I'm just eating small things for the sake of it because I'm sad.

But then when I started to use cognitive behavioral therapy, that that's what I used personally that helped me with depression and anxiety as part of my process of improving my mental health and being mindful of my thoughts and behavior. Coke and food, cooking, wholesome, decent food became part of it. As in I know that's simply gone to the takeaway. Would not is is as an act isn't as rewarding as the practice of going to the shop, selecting my vegetables, thinking about what I'm eating, then engaging in the narrative aesthetic journey of cooking, then completing that cycle and then enjoying the dinner that I've made.

And I was doing things like that as part of a behavior thing. I knew that for someone with depression and anxiety and very low self-esteem, to simply make a dinner to engage in that process would help my sense of self-esteem. But now, looking back, I'm probably going. That was probably also a benefit in the fact that I was by doing that, I'm getting better nutrition. And surely that's helping me to in in overcoming my anxiety and depression, which I did.

Yeah, absolutely, I think, you know, all of these things are connected, and one of the things you said that we've known all this for a long time, but in you know, we tend to in medicine, we compartmentalize the body. And so we look people specialize in different areas. And so, you know, but if you go back to the ancient times, people, you know, hypocrisy thought all diseases begin in the. And so, you know, there's a real sense now that if we look more holistically, as you know, all the signals that are coming into our brain from our from our got them from everywhere else, from our immune system, et cetera, we're beginning to really appreciate how important that is in modifying our behavior.

And so now over the last, say, five years, there's a real push towards the whole area of nutritional psychiatry, which is basically targeting mental health processes through diet and really appreciating the impact of diet can have. And with that, Ted, and I really believe that one of the ways that what you eat is impacting your brain is through how it's interacting with the microbes. So when you were going through your process and and cooking these meals and you are now not just getting the processed, very pro inflammatory fast food meals, but you are now probably thinking more about the vegetables and the fibers and the foods that are really good for your microbiome.

And by taking them in, you're getting your microbes to really make all of these wonderful chemicals that are helping to support your brain and to modify these circuits in the brain. And as a neuroscientist, that's what I'm really interested in trying to understand and changing your behavior in that way. So so the whole everything is connected in that way, wouldn't you say? Absolutely. But I think that at mental health clinics, whether one is a psychiatrist or psychologist or whatever, I don't think that we put enough emphasis on on diet.

I mean, there is a really strong relationship between a poor diet and poor mental health. And we've known that for a long, a long, long time. We know that people who live in the Mediterranean region who are on a classical Mediterranean diet have less depression and anxiety. And it isn't just simply that they have more sunshine, because if you take somebody in northern Europe who's on a Mediterranean type diet, they are less likely to suffer from depression and anxiety.

So I'm always suggesting to students when I teach them or to colleagues in psychiatry that we should be paying a far greater emphasis on nutrition. And, of course, also relationship, that is exercise. Aerobic exercise is the most potent antidepressant out there. If you could put it into a capsule, one would be a multibillionaire. It has potent anti depressant properties. So I think whatever psychological interventions we use, whatever anti depressants we use, I think we are treating someone who's suffering from depression or anxiety that we should be recommending changes to diet and also that they get vigorous aerobic exercise on a regular basis.

And there's a study from Australia from a really good friend and colleague of ours, which she took. People who are on normal anti-depressants are on normal CBT and she added in a Mediterranean diet to us. And it's called and had a huge impact. It's a small study. It needs to be replicated. We need to understand how that's happening. But we're collaborating with them to really see how the microbes are playing the role and basically our shaping how this diet is having a positive effect on mental health.

And we've done a study now that we're still ongoing where we've taken people who are stress sensitive and have bad diets, a lot of our student population, for example, and we put them on what we've coined as a psychobiology diet. So it's a diet that's really rich in fermented foods like kafia and kombucha and sauerkraut and yogurt and high in fiber. We've really ramped up the fiber intake and we just put them on this for a month, like one month or so.

And we're already seeing really good changes in terms of how they manage stress and on their overall moods. So these are not depressed individuals. These are just normal people. But because of the way they're and they all report feeling better after a month. And I think, you know, our I work in the medical school. Our medical students get get so little nutrition advice overall. Our dentists get more. And so we really need to beds nutritional health into our overall education and so that people can can do it.

Absolutely. And the flip side of what John saying is that if if somebody goes on a diet of just fast food for several weeks, you see a radical change in their gut microbiota, the microbes in the gut. Alter, they become less diverse, they become less, which in terms of variety. And so, you know, so, you know, basically the relationship between bad mental health and and bad diet, I think is unquestionable at this stage.

And yet I don't think that we place enough emphasis on it. You know, as you say, sometimes patients pick up the relationship themselves, but I'm not sure that clinicians actually give people advice in relation to nutrition. What I would have found so. I studied psychotherapy for a couple of years myself, and this would have been nearly 10 years ago at this point, and I knew myself, so I knew by listening to my own body that, yes, I'm definitely getting benefits from attending therapy.

I was using a transaction that cognitive behavioral therapy, a bit of Gestalt therapy, and this was helping me. But I also knew the running that I'm doing every day, running every day, and then how the running when I would do a big, long run and I knew I was running because I felt good after the run. And then the run would then make me want to eat wholesome foods after a decent run. Your body doesn't crave fast food.

Your body craves natural whole foods that you prepare yourself. And I found this stuff happening anyway because I did find that this holistic thinking was kind of stigmatized, that, you know what I mean? Is, is there a sense what the stuff that you are researching now? Is there a struggle to be for it to be seen as legitimate because the diet and exercise was seen as Mumbo-Jumbo? You know what I mean? It wasn't seen that you're putting your finger on a very important point there.

I think that, you know, treatments in in relation to mental illness are very narrowly focused. I mean, psychologists will use cognitive behavioural therapy frequently. You know, psychiatrists obviously learn how to use medication. But I really do think that to get the best outcome for patients with depression or anxiety, we've got to use more holistic approaches. Now, the philosophy that guides what John and I do is that we want to do good science and we try to publish in the best journals out there.

So I think whilst some people may pooh pooh what we're saying, no, I think because we do publishing in first class journals, you know, that increases the audience. And I think people are more likely to accept it. But the flip side are following on from that. There is still a lot of also a lot of snake oil out there. So you have to be very careful and and you really need to be aware where is the evidence.

And that's what we're trying to do, is build evidence, firm evidence that this is that this is not just a marketing ploy overall. And so it's you know, and also, I guess one of the other things is in relation to Diyas is what we want to come up with. These are solutions that are easy to democratize, that are not because often the people that are going to benefit most from these types of of of interventions are not going to be the ones to go into the fancy foods, Whole Foods type places, you know.

So we need to make it available to people that are that they can doesn't cost a huge amount overall.

And so the question now, John, right. There's a question. So when you say things to me, like compulsion, sauerkraut, kimchi, these in Ireland, anyway, these foods are quite prohibitive. Like Kombucha is currently quite expensive. So sauerkraut is not that expensive. If you go to an Eastern European shop, it's affordable there. Kimchi is expensive. Yeah. Yeah.

Like but you can what I like what here's what I'm cautious of. Right. And this is not I speak to a lot of people about mental health and I try and listen. So an issue that I find, especially with young people in this country, is when terms such as when exercise and diet are brought up, some people feel insulted because the vibe that they get is that people are sick of going to the doctor and the doctor saying to them, you've got depression, go for a run.

And then I know it's like, no, no, no, no. It's healthy running most. It has to be part of a systematic approach to your mental health. You're trying to look at behavior and how you're thinking about yourself, your diet, you're running. And another thing is class comes into this. If we are to have a diet that is psychobiology, it then must be affordable to everybody. Not everybody can walk into a shop and spend four quid on a bottle of Caboolture, you know what I mean?

Indeed.

So absolutely. And that's why I actually feel very passionate about this, because you can like I make coffee at home, milk, coffee, nothing except the price of the milk. And caffeine is like a kind of and you can do the same looking over it. Basically, it's like a yogurt. It's a great greens, doesn't keep propagating and they contain the yeast and bacteria and you just make it every day and it costs nothing except the milk kombucha you can make yourself.

But we don't have a culture in Ireland of this fermentation. So all of these are coming from ancient practices, from from from their home countries, kimche from Korea, cafè from from Eastern Europe, and, you know, it's really something that I think that we should be educating people more. No one is making money out of fear and the fear grows. You can you give it to your it keeps growing and growing. And and so if we launched and that's why we're doing this like about a diet, because everything in it should be doable at home.

Increasing fiber should be relatively easy for everyone.

And it seems like the easiest one day you're talking about increasing your greens, broccoli, cabbage, all the stuff that is already. Yeah, yeah. And so sauerkraut is just cabbage that's gone off really isn't it? If you make it with vinegar kimchi, you can make it home as well. With all of these are these are ancient foods and fermented foods are among the most ancient foods that we have. And I think exactly what we don't want to create solutions overall where this is also really a live topic right now is in Africa, where some of the effects of malnutrition in early life on the brain in particular are due to the the problems with the microbes because the microbes aren't there and they're not able to harvest the benefits out of breast milk, et cetera.

And so people are really focused now on creating solutions, but not solutions that big food can come in and and put in, but solutions that are based on locally sourced fibers and locally sourced materials that will be different. And in parts of Africa, then there will be in parts of Bangladesh where some of this work is also going on. So I don't think why we shouldn't have solutions in Ireland that are suitable for, you know, culturally and sociologically what we're trying to do.

We don't want to just have a solution for the middle classes because we're really are focused on a whole diet approach that might be actually beneficial if you take education and it'll take these destigmatizing, you know, and also it'll take within the medical profession people to think more holistically and to understand what we're trying to do really is understand that there's a science behind why these foods are beneficial to your mental health. And I think with that comes education. I'm one of the one of the great foods from a mental health perspective is fish now fish as essential oils that are great for microbes in the gut, but they're also essential for the structure of our brain because the brain is just a fatty organ and a lot of fats are bad for your brain.

But the facts that are in fish are essential for brains. And I suppose it never ceases to amaze me that here we are living in an island where, you know, fish is readily available. Some of it is very expensive, but some of it is inexpensive. I mean, mackerel is not an expensive fish in the middle of summer here. And it is it is full of fats to an extent where in excess of what other fish are and it's cheap and readily available, but so many people are not.

And despite the fact that we live in an island, don't like eating fish, I mean, I would mention it to my patients and they would say, oh, God, I hate the smell of fish. I wouldn't eat fish at all. And of course, some people that are ending up going into health food stores and buying supplements with fish oils, EPA and DHEA and taking the fish oil is in a capsule when in fact, the best way to take any food ingredient is in good, good food, which in this case, we're talking about fish.

So here's a question then. This is what I'd be interested in. So this research that you're doing and the the I won't say the fear. I won't say I fear. What I'd say is because of capitalism, we have a tendency to to medicalize. So you saying. Right. The best thing for you to be doing is actually eat fish. That doesn't help the pharmaceutical industry who want to go. Hang on a second. I want to put fish into a pill.

Like what's the what's the story here? Is are you are you fearful of that with the pharmaceutical industry trying to put this stuff in pill form? Are is whole natural foods actually the best approach? Where's your feeding on this? Well, I think that the supplements industry globally is not very well controlled. And what you have is a lot of supplements, companies making outlandish claims. You know, I sent off a tweet there last night and this morning it was about vitamin D.

Now, if one looks at the literature on vitamin D, it seems to be the cure for everything from cancer to Alzheimer's disease to baldness, you name it now. It can't be. I'm not saying that vitamin D isn't an important vitamin. It clearly is. But it is clearly not the cure for all these things, and yet there were clearly supplements companies out there selling vitamin D who are making a lot of money out of vitamin D. I just take that as an example, because there are so many other supplements as well.

Many of these components are found in food. Now, the best matrix or the best way to get any ingredient, in my opinion, is not in the cap. So it's in good food. There are occasions where for whatever reason, maybe somebody has an abnormal digestive system and they're not able to absorb a substance. Then of course, you recommend to capsule. But really, I'm firmly of the belief that good food is the way to deliver good ingredients and not capsules.

If someone said to write what is what, what, what to say probiotic diet, what, what should I begin eating immediately to improve my gut bacteria? What would you say to them? Right. So there's a few things, the few things you should add and things you should try and lower. So it's a two way it's a two way scenario in terms of adding we know fiber is king in terms of, you know, good fibers are really fiber looked like to to the person in the shop.

So lots of grains, green vegetables. They will be the two biggest sources of fiber for sure. I mentioned the fermented foods. If you can make your own at home, don't be spending a fortune on them. But they are there and they really are rich. Source these good bacteria themselves does the thing what we call would fit into the fiber. We call them prebiotics. So these are to be distinguished from probiotics. So probiotics are basically dietary substances on which the bacteria can can act on one of them.

We've worked on a lot of insulin. Now insulin is present in things like leeks and artichokes and many vegetables and chicory and many vegetables. So increasing dance is also really good. So so they're the kind of dietary things that are that we can add. We know Ted mentioned the omega three fatty acids. They almost act like like a prebiotic in our goals in some ways. Then there's a class of foods, what we call polyphenol. You know, it might sound like, you know, like I always think it's like a 1970s disco queen, polyphenol.

Those are really enriched in things like not in the grape juice and in onions and many vegetables. And they many of the polyphenols, when we take them in, they're also in dark chocolate and red wine. You know, we don't want to, but but many of the polyphenols, they don't get digested at all. They go all the way down to your lower, back to your colon. And there they they change the composition of the microbes and the microbes change the composition of them to produce positive things.

And they've been implicated in healthy aging as well. And then there are things we should try and avoid because we know now no science tells us that things like emulsifiers and foods, sweet, artificial sweeteners and foods, these are all true.

But even like the stuff that I like Diet Coke, really, it's not clear now which is worse for your microbes, the Coke or the Diet Coke, because the Diet Coke, the sweeteners have been shown to be pretty bad on the microbes. So these are things that we should try to to try and avoid from a diet point of view. Then we should be looking at things like trying to minimize antibiotic usage because this widespread antibiotic overeating, we're getting it through your mace.

Not so much in Ireland, but in the US for sure. Yeah, OK. You know, in the US and we know that too much red meat, it's probably a bad thing because there's chemicals made from red meats that are aren't that good, but everything in moderation, you know, and and we put together in our book like a pyramid psychobiology pyramid. You know, the people are very familiar with this kind of food pyramid and trying to trying to give people some advice as to, you know, these are the things we know which are good for your microbes and you should try and enrich your diet with them.

And that's easier said than done. And it doesn't mean what we want is a diet that's pretty people can be compliant with and that they can take and they can enjoy. Because it goes back to your point view. There's an enjoyable aspect of the art of making foods as well in the US. And I'm sure that's all related.

I mean, it's it's it's if we evolve this way, of course, we should enjoy this. The aestheticism of preparing and eating food as a reason for us.

Yeah, for sure. For sure. And add the contrast. There, of course, is highly processed foods because I mean, John is talking about good foods there that have a really positive impact on our gut microbiota and on our brain. But of course, highly processed foods have various fats that keep the food these. To be fresh for extended periods of time, we know that some of these fats are bad for your heart, and in recent years we've learned that they're bad for your brain and for your microbiota as well.

So, you know, there's no doubt about it that intermittently eating fast food, we all do when there's nothing wrong with that. But a diet that's exclusively based on fast food has a terribly deleterious impact on one's physical health and definitely on one's mental health. That leads to this inflammation. The microbes in the gut are also really important in tuning our immune system. And so, yes, they're the first things that keep our immune system at bay. And so if you have a diet that changes these microbes, it can lead to a kind of inflammatory way.

And this this inflammatory aspect then talks to our brain and puts the brain into an inflammatory phase.

And here's a question, actually, if someone's God is not in a good state, what if someone's listening to their body? What should we be listening to if our gut plasma is in a bad way?

Well, that's an interesting question. I think that, you know, if one suspects that one's microbiome, one's collection of microbes is in is in a bad place, I think the two things that one can do that will have a very good impact on that will be the sort of diet and the components that John has just described, the plenty of food, plenty of vegetables, maybe fish, if one likes fish and, you know, so good foods like that and exercise, we know that exercise.

Obviously, it impacts on our muscles, but we know that it directly impacts on our gut microbes as well. So I think about how to do that. How does exercise impact the million dollar question? There's a lot of research going on to look at that at the moment. How exactly? Because we do know that somebody who engages, who's been relatively sedentary, who doesn't really like exercise, who begins to exercise on a regular basis, will show a dramatic change in their gut microbiota.

And it may be due to molecules that are produced by muscle that then impacts the microbiota. And an interesting aside, there's an American company that are producing are trying to produce a probiotic with bacteria that they got from Olympic athletes. So these particular bacteria were only found in Olympic athletes. And, you know, the rest of us don't possess these these microbes of this particular company are producing a probiotic with these particular microbes. So I don't know, maybe we'll all learn a bit faster if we take these these particular probiotics.

But also, like just again, me listening to my own body, like I said, when I when I run when I exercise every day of the week, my appetite changes. I actually don't want pizza in the cost of fatty, oily, processed food. The thought of it doesn't satiate me. I crave homemade Whole Foods when I'm actually exercising. Yeah. And you feel chilled out. I mean, I look, I'm sixty five and I find that when I go over it mostly on a Saturday, I usually 10 or 15 miles on a Saturday and I feel so utterly chilled out after that.

So it has a positive mental health benefit directly, but it certainly is impacting one's got microbes in a positive way too. And one of the big things we're trying to do here in the U.S. is trying to figure out these mechanisms. How could why would microbes in the guts be able to signal to your brain to change your behavior and make you chilled out? And and that's one of our big science questions and really one of the ways we have this nerve called the vagus nerve.

You know, Vegas comes from the Latin for like like for wandering like vagrants is the same comes from the same word. And this this vagus nerve send signals from your body, from your gut, but also from your lungs in your heart to your brain to basically tell you how you feel and to feel how you feel. And so when you do your mindfulness training, it's your vagus nerve that's becoming activated and it activates these emotional circuits in the brain to be able to stay, chill out and, you know, stay in the moment and whatever else.

And so so what we showed almost a decade ago now. Yeah, we showed that the microbes in the gut are able to more or less hijack this vagus nerve and through the signals, not directly. It's not that they're there. They're infecting us, but it's just a. They're sending signals there are activating this vagus nerve and that that's how they're getting to the brain and and so we're trying to disentangle this this now because, you know, we can measure these are things we can measure.

And so you really see that everything is connected. And that's kind of the microbiome. Science is really about understanding how everything is connected and that how you're feeling. If your microbes change, then it'll change how you feel and and there'll be feedback loops in us. And these feedback loops have evolved and we have evolved to be able to do that. And of that, one of the transmitter systems in the brain, the chemicals in the brain that regulates our mood and our sleep and appetite is serotonin.

Now, most people refer to serotonin because like iconic drugs, like Prozac obviously work on serotonin. But in fact, serotonin is made from the amino acid tryptophan, which comes partly from our diet, but it's partly synthesized by microbes in our intestine. Now, as humans, we actually have very limited storage capacity for tryptophan in our brains. So we need tryptophan to make serotonin, but we actually can store it in high quantities in our brain. So we need a constant supply from our microbes and from our diet going into the bloodstream and crossing the blood brain barrier into the brain to manufacture serotonin.

Now you can envisage a situation where if somebody's diet is really poor and if their microbiota isn't functioning properly, you ain't got enough tryptophan entering the bloodstream to cross the blood brain barrier, to provide normal serotonin transmission in the brain. And in those situations, you obviously have a dysregulated or poor mood.

And a question let's so I mentioned earlier that when I was experiencing long term anxiety, I would I would feel it in my stomach. I would have an excess of acid. Now, I know that my body was releasing stress hormones. So stress hormones like cortisol are adrenaline rush. When someone is in a state of mental health and their body is releasing these chemicals due to those chemicals have a negative impact on the Gulf. They certainly do. I mean, there isn't an area of the body that cortisol doesn't act upon.

I mean, it acts directly upon the brain, which is something that's only been recognized within the last 20 years, really, that cortisol directly influences the brain. When I was a medical student, we were told that ECT acted outside the brain to regulate your metabolism. But there's no doubt it does impact the microbiota. And, you know, for instance, if you give somebody cortisol is a steroid and if you gave somebody high doses of steroids, that would have a really negative impact on the microbiota.

And of course, as you say, when we are stressed from our pumping out adrenaline and cortisol, we pump out acid in our stomach as well. And of course, this can lead to gastro irritation of the gastric lining. But in a worse state, it can obviously to peptic ulceration where you actually get a pentacles or as a result of stress. So there's no doubt about it. These stress hormones, they're very we can't live without them. You know, they're absolutely essential.

You couldn't function in your job today or I couldn't if we if you didn't have some level of stress hormone pumping through your system. We've just done a study where we've looked at how that was done for a long time. But last year, where we looked at students going through exams, the stress that they have during that period. Now, this is a natural stress, but it is a stress. And so we looked at the microbe before and after, and we're able to show the big changes in the those and especially it's also into individual.

The interesting thing about all of this microbe work is that everyone is going to respond differently. And so it may underpin why we respond differently to different things. But the students that were more stressed, their microbiome changed more, and this correlated with their cortisol responses to the stress as well. So we're beginning to slowly begin to disentangle this relationship between stress hormones, stress and the microbiome. And the flip side then is can we look at whether our true diet or other ways?

Can we by fixing the microbiome part, can we attenuate or block how the stress hormones are having effect in other parts of the body as well?

Are you seeing an increase in certain mental health issues, depending on how society's diet changes also as well? And things like Celiac Disease, IBS, these are being spoken about. More people are presenting with these things more today. Is this interconnected?

So so everything is interconnected. And so some of the best studies now in the microbiome are cross-cultural studies. So if you go and people have done this really cool studies where they've looked at people in Tanzania who still maintain a Hunter-Gatherer diets, which is very rich in fiber, they have a very diverse microbiome, really, really diverse, then you can start to see them together.

And so they're mainly in the gatherer side of things rather than one side of things in the in the hands of communities. We often focus on on the meat, but the fiber intake is huge. And and then you can start to see what did agricultural practices do. So if you go to places like Malawi and Venezuela today, they're still an agrarian type of of societies where you start to see a diminution of the microbiome composition in terms of diversity and an important diversity, like in all aspects of life is really good.

And you want to have as diverse as possible. Then if you look at our Western society, either in US or Ireland, you see there's been an extinction of these microbes. So our ancestors would have microbes that we no longer have. And that's largely thought to be driven by the introduction of processed foods, by the use of antibiotics in the food chain, by the stressful lives we live in. But the flip side of that is if you look at these other societies, there is no inflammatory bowel disease, there's no multiple sclerosis.

There's many of the Western diseases that we have are just completely a product of this change in the microbiome in relation to mental health. We know less overall. And so one of the things we're trying to really understand is but like MSG and inflammatory bowel disease is really it's really striking when people look at these disorders. And and so so people are beginning to really look at studies now on the impact of these inflammatory diets on on all sorts of of of negative outcomes.

And we know in mental health. The large epidemiologic studies are showing that the people who have really bad diets have much more higher propensity to depression, anxiety, etc., and what do you say to people? So some people are looking at with the ketogenic diet are intermittent fasting when it comes to things like most inflammatory diseases. Have you looked at that?

We're very so the ketogenic diet is also it's hard to mediate some of its effects through the microbiome as well as well. What we think it is like all meat, but it wouldn't be long term. Really good for your microbiome, you know, like anything that's that's so, so severe. Intermittent fasting is a different thing because it's really interesting because the one thing we're studying right now is the influence of circadian rhythms on your microbiome and on your moods, because they're very, very closely connected.

And studies have come out in the last few years showing that not only does your microbiome change across your life, but it changes even across your day. So maybe the time of when you eat, you're providing the basically the raw materials to this microbiome could be really important and could be optimized. And so that's something that we're beginning to really look at. And, of course, sleep and jetlag and all of these things are being shown to affect the microbiome and also in relation to depression.

What about on screen? What about phone screens? What about them? So I. I haven't gotten eight hours sleep since I started using an iPhone in 2011. Right. And that's a fact. I used to get eight hours of sleep when I went to bed and I used to read books, but as soon as a phone became part of my life, I'm six hours of sleep indeed. And I know other studies into blue light and things like this is sleep quality.

And the biome. What's the crack there?

Well, I think to get back to your point about the screen time, I think there's no doubt about it that overstimulating yourself with with a phone just when you when you're lying in bed is has a terribly, terribly bad effect on one's sleep pattern. And, of course, you know, it's often said that we live in a more stressful society and we experience more stress than, let's say our grandparents did. And of course, you know, I'm not really sure that that's true.

I mean, if you look back at Ireland in the 19th century where people didn't know where the next meal was coming from, heck, that was that was far more stressful than what most of us are experiencing nowadays. But I think what has changed is I think our capacity to deal with stress is altered. I think we've seen from one century to another a decreased ability to deal with stress, and that's partly related to diet and partly related to alterations and the microbiota.

So it isn't I mean, clearly, you know, no one is suggesting that that Ireland isn't is a stress free zone. It is far from us. And for many people, life is very stressful. But it's still not as stressful as it was for their great grandparents. But I think that what their great grandparents often had, if they did have an inadequate diet, it was probably a healthier diet than what many people now have. And I think that, you know, that is one it's not the only reason, but I think it is one of the reasons our capacity to deal with stress has has altered.

And one of the things we just we just published a paper we looked at again in our student population when they're stressed during exams, we looked at their sleep and their sleep becomes disturbed. And we in this study, we give them a specific bacteria. So let's talk about the bacteria. And we found that those that are taking the bacteria compared to those taking placebo had a better sleep quality. And so that was kind of really surprising to us. It's quite a crude measure.

It's a small study. It means replication, but it really reinforces how sleep and circadian patterns are also intricately linked to what's going on in our girls. And I think, you know, circadian rhythms are very important in relation to our body and our health. But, you know, as we age, we all want to age in a healthy way. No one wants to undocumented are very, very frail. And these are obviously problems with an aging society.

But what is clear is that if one loses diversity and the microbiota as one ages, frailty and ill health follows rapidly. If you look at elderly people in their mid 80s who are healthy and who are reasonably fit, their microbiota is the same as a 30 year old. If you look at somebody in their 60s who's unhealthy and approaching frailty, they are losing diversity in the gut microbiota. So really, you know. The key to healthy aging, there are obviously many, many variables, and clearly one needs to exercise to to maintain good health, but it is imperative that one retains diversity in the microbiota.

If one loses it, frailty follows rapidly from that.

What about em? So earlier when we were mentioning Ireland not having a culture of fermented foods, we have a culture of fermented drinks, alcohol. What's the role of alcohol? Is there beneficial or negative or what's the crack? So this is something we've studied quite a fair bit. One of the things we found on the microbiome, again, this was started off in animal studies. We show that there is a almost an inflammatory like effect of alcohol on the course.

It's not it's not really positive. But, yes, we know that certain beers, especially the Belgian beers, are quite highly fermented and that they can have some they've been shown to have some positive effects. And I think it's all always in moderation. So, you know, I mean, red wine is full of these polyphenols. So polyphenols are good on the microbiome. But the question is grape juice is equally full of these polyphenols. So there are different components of there that we need to be to to be looking at.

One of the things we're looking at right now is a study on binge alcohol intake and the microbiome. And there seems to be something about this bingeing continuously that's quite negative on the microbiome and also on some of the cognitive processes that are underpinning the spending.

And so what I can tell it when I binge like listening to my own body the next day, my behavior is as if I had a very bad mental health. I'm depressed at the food that I crave is qualified aissata processed food. I don't want to exercise. And for one day I'm back where I was 10 years ago, including my cravings and my desires.

And the question is, is it your microbes that have been so disturbed? They're saying we want these types of foods now because we're craving these types of foods? And is that the signals they're sending to your brain to to really get you to get these foods for them? And that's one of the provocative aspects that we're really interested in. And a big question I got asked was about poll transplants. All right, well, what are transplants and why is everyone talking about it?

Right. Well, right now, there's only one indicator indication clinically for that. There's an infection in elderly people called C. difficile. It can be a fatal infection. It causes terrible diarrhea and it can be very difficult to treat with antibiotics. So if an elderly person has it, it really can have awful consequences. If antibiotics aren't working, the the effective treatment in 90 percent of cases is to do a microbiota transplant, a poo transplant. And as I say, it works and about 90 percent of cases.

That is the only current clinical indication. There is not a week goes by that I don't get several emails usually from the U.S. asking me if we could do a poo transplant for people who are suffering, someone who's suffering from depression. Now, right now, one would have to say no is the answer. There isn't sufficient data out there, but there are other emerging illnesses where maybe a microbiota transplant might be beneficial. There's a study out recently, within recent months in Parkinson's disease, which is a terrible disease in elderly people.

It's a motor disorder where people have it can can have a terrible tremor and and have an inability to, you know, to to to basically get around. It has a big impact on motor performance. And this preliminary study did suggest that a fecal transplant actually benefitted the symptoms, both the motor symptoms and even the psychological symptoms of patients who have Parkinson's disease. So there's a lot spoken about transplants, but there's a lot of clinical trials ongoing right now.

And so so it sounds it sounds really terrible. But again, it goes back to ancient China. There's a guy called GI Hong who is using fecal transplants. He called it a yellow soup to treat his patients. You know, something like a lot of this goes back to ancient wisdom. We're again with our colleagues in Australia. They're starting to do trials of what we call crack stools. So basically putting poo into into tablets and and to see if it could have a beneficial effect to be more palatable way of delivering this type of medicine.

All right. Let's a lot of it this is a hard fact. But but the analogy I like to use is that if you think about your microbiome almost like a lawn and sometimes you can add grass to it, if your lawn is starting to have problems, sometimes just out of new grass seeds is good. And that's what probiotics do. Or you add fertilizer, which is what the probiotics in the diet do. But sometimes it just you kind of have to take up the lawn and start again.

And that's what the that's what the difficult ones are about. It's about repotting back in. And, you know, we'll see where there's been one study now just out. Also an alcohol intake to show that some of the cravings associated alcohol. These are small studies all come with health warnings, but they offer some hope overall. Again, in autism, there's one small study, open pilot study. But again, you know, we need to get a lot more data and science and evidence.

And so that's where we will see a lot more coming it. And it may very well be that as we move forward, when we find out what are the bacteria in the poo that are really fundamental, then we might be able to put together a consortium of bacteria. It might be eight or nine bacteria that you could put into a capsule or into a drink or whatever, and that it wouldn't involve using poo, that you could just simply have eight or nine bacteria, that you could give someone with a specific illness and that that's eight or nine bacteria would help to treat that particular specific illness.

So that podcast interview actually ended quite abruptly on the subject of poo transplants. And I think the recording went wrong at the end. But that was fascinating. That was absolutely fascinating. And it was a pleasure to talk to Professor John Cryan and Ted Danson in their area, which is it's it's just a really interesting area. And I hope you enjoyed that. Thank you as well at the Discoveries for giving me the opportunity to chat to the two lads. Also, I am conscious of the fact that I opened this episode by charging men to listen to more women, and then I followed that up with an interview with two men.

The irony of that is not lost on me. It's just the situation I found myself in this week because of technology. At that interview with two lads, which was fantastic that I was very grateful to have, is the only interview I had at hand because technology has not been kind to me the past year. I also have a hard drive full of live interviews that is corrupted. I'm trying to retrieve the files with a lot of live interviews on it.

But gender balance is something I'm conscious of in the live gig. Setting back in the dark old days when I was allowed to do gigs, I used to keep gender balance to about 50/50. But I'm conscious that over the past, while it's just been lads that I've been talking to and it's something I've been aware of recently. So I will have some speakers who are women soon in two weeks time. Actually, I've got a fantastic woman who I'm going to be chatting to about some interesting stuff.

So just to let you know, that's in my awareness. God bless, have a magnificent week. I'm going to be back next week, hopefully with a fully working computer and I won't have any technological headaches. So please cross your fingers for me. Your. I like a bed that's really firm. I need something a little softer than that, rest easy to sleep, no 360 smart bed. You can both adjust your comfort with your sleep. No static.

Can it really help me fall asleep faster? Yes. By gently warming your feet.

OK, but can it help keep us asleep? It senses your movements and automatically adjust to keep you effortlessly comfortable. Sleep number. Improving quality sleep is life changing sleep. Don't miss our weekend special. Say 50 percent on the sleep number three limited edition smart bed plus special financing on all smartphones and Monday. To learn more, go to sleep. No dotcom special financing subject to credit approval. Minimum monthly payments.

Quietist for details.