Gut microbiome testing: The secrets of your gut | Profs Tim Spector and Nicola Segata

Get 10% off ZOE: https://zoe.com/podcast Your gut microbiome, a bustling community of microorganisms, is a vital player in your overall health. It doesn’t just impact your digestive system — it has a profound influence on your brain health and well-being. However, the gut microbiome is a complex, long misunderstood realm, and figuring out how it affects daily life can leave even the most dedicated health enthusiasts scratching their heads. Here at ZOE, we’ve transformed our understanding of this bustling microbial world, where both “good” and “bad” gut bacteria reside. In today’s episode, Jonathan speaks with Prof. Nicola Segata and Prof. Tim Spector to explore how ZOE's microbiome testing and unique microbiome health scores provide personalized insights into your gut health. Nicola Segata is a Professor and Principal Investigator at the Laboratory of Computational Metagenomics at the Department CIBIO at the University of Trento, Italy. His background is in metagenomics, machine learning, microbiome research, and microbial genomics. Tim Spector is a co-founder at ZOE and one of the world's top 100 most cited scientists. If you want to uncover the right foods for your body, head to joinzoe.com/podcast, and get 10% off your personalized nutrition program. Timecodes: 00:00 Introduction 01:17 Quick fire questions 03:25 Why should we care about gut microbes? 06:48 How many different microbes do we have in our gut? 11:34 Why would we want to measure our microbiome? 13:15 Can we change our microbiome? 18:24 Is it possible to make a dramatic change in your microbiome over time? 21:20 What does the latest data tell us about improving our diet? 24:14 How does the ZOE microbiome gut test work? 28:26 What goes on in the lab to get these results? 32:34 Is there enough information in the gut microbiome to make a full health assessment? 35:54 What can our microbes tell us about diseases? 37:35 What useful information does the microbiome test show us? 38:38 Are we still making new discoveries in the microbiome? 42:56 Do different microbes prefer specific foods? 45:10 How do different lifestyles around the world change your microbiome? 49:47 5 simple tips to improve gut health 52:53 How rapidly can you damage your microbiome? 56:36 Can taking painkillers regularly negatively impact the microbiome? 59:14 Summary 63:20 Goodbyes/Outro Mentioned in today’s episode: The person-to-person transmission landscape of the gut and oral microbiomes, published in Nature Link: https://www.nature.com/articles/s4158...\ Sharing of gut microbial strains between selected individual sets of twins cohabitating for decades, by PLoS One Link: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti... A genetic gift for sushi eaters, published in Nature Link: https://www.nature.com/articles/news.... Find Nicola on ResearchGate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/... Follow Nicola on X:   / nsegata   Follow ZOE on Instagram:   / zoe   Episode transcripts are available here: https://zoe.com/learn/category/podcasts Is there a nutrition topic you’d like us to cover? Email us at [email protected] and we’ll do our best to cover it.