Rochelle Waite - the No Nonsense Naturopath is Australia’ s only Naturopath with Masters Degrees in Immunology (Autoimmunity), Women’s Health Medicine & Reproductive Medicine.
Her special interest lies in chronic autoimmune disorders and hormonal imbalances which lead to a variety of difficult to treat conditions. She advocates and supports clients with chronic and difficult to manage conditions offering long term care plans in an affordable manner.
She is also an active advocate of educating women and promotes better education for teens and young adult.
Table of Contents
- Importance of Gut Health
- Food to Eat or Avoid for a Healthy Gut
- Impact of Sleep in Gut Health
- Impact of Stress in Gut Health
- Link Between a Healthy Gut and Important Hormones
- Symptoms of Bad Gut Health
- Tips for Good Gut Health
Importance of Gut Health
Photographer: fufupix
Rochelle and Emma speak on how gut health impacts fat loss and storage, move over to hormones and how cholesterol is important particularly in hormone production. She talks about joyful moments and their impact on health and longevity.
Her tips are no nonsense and straight forward! She shares her top tips in this episode.
[00:00] Emma: My name is Emma Martin and this.
[00:03] Rochelle: Is the Lazy Keto Mum podcast. If you are looking for help with.
[00:07] Emma: Keto and low carb, you have come to the right place.
[00:16] Rochelle: Guys, I have a really awesome lady with me today. Her name is Rochelle and she is the nononsense Naturopath. And actually Rochelle has been quite transformational in my journey and quite inspirational. And I keep going, can we do it, can we do it, can we do it? She's like, oh, all right. I don't think she actually rolls her eyes. I think we have a lot of fun. Hi, Rochelle.
[00:37] Emma: How are you? Hi.
[00:38] Rochelle: Good.
[00:38] Emma: And I don't roll my eyes.
[00:40] Rochelle: Sometimes you feel like that when you're pestering because you have so much information on gut health and all that sort of stuff. And I'd love to pick your brains about that today, gut health, hormones, etc. Because I'm trying to understand that myself as well. So you'll help not only people listening or watching, but you'll help me too. So I know you've been running some twelve week courses and we'll talk about that in a SEC, but I just wanted to kind of give everybody a snapshot of when we met.
It must be three or four years ago now and I think I'd only just started keto. Yeah, and I walked into the health food shop where you were either consulting or working and I remember you showing me the Donata ice cream. Well, there was an orbs because I went out I think it was peanut butter, actually sugar free. Yay. Now, I think I was only maybe six months in not even that to my keto journey. And I went out to the car and I ate the whole lot.
[01:39] Emma: You still only got a few carbs out of that?
[01:44] Rochelle: Oh my goodness, me. Yeah, the carbs, it was seriously, I think I had to leave the loo for like 2 hours. So now I don't hold you personally responsible because I hate the whole thing. But yeah, we got chatting and the rest is history. So what I wanted to chat to you about, what have you been working on at the moment?
[02:03] Emma: Look, there's just so much information and everything turns over so quickly in the field of gut health and we're learning so much. My focus for the last year has been on my Fatigue to Fabulous program, which is basically essentially for anyone but particularly women and busy mothers. And we're all dealing with too much to do. We're stressed, we've got brain fog.
And I have the Fatigue Fabulous program which teaches a lot about the impact of good nutrition, obviously, but also sugar and how that can be detrimental to your brain's processing for energy, for instance, and hormonal health and twelve weeks of lots of different stuff that you can do to look, I'll call it what it is. Revolutionize your life. Because very few people come through the other end not going, oh, my God. That's kind of where I spent my last year, producing lots of information around that.
[03:09] Rochelle: Yeah, you really have got the knowledge. And I think one of your superpowers is to translate that knowledge into something that's tangible. And I will come and do your course at some point because I need to understand some of the stuff that you're talking about. There's a lot to unpack in what.
[03:24] Emma: You just said, which is why it takes twelve weeks.
[03:29] Rochelle: But anyway, well, there's a quick sugar summit coming up, so let's unpack what you said about sugar and the gut. I think there was a link there that I heard, or at least good nutrition and the gut. So I guess the first question, I've got two questions in one. What is good nutrition for the gut? And what does sugar do to the gut?
[03:56] Emma: Oh my. You don't ask quick questions. Okay. Good nutrition is providing your body with ample amounts, like, we're talking abundance here. We're not talking about restricting things, ample amounts of the nutrients that we require to function perfectly and not giving yourself and feeding yourself things that are contrary to that. Oh, dear.
Okay, to start this sort of thing off, I've got to put it into perspective. We hear a lot about the importance of gut health and the gut brain axis and all of this sort of thing. To put it in perspective, we have about 30 trillion cells in our body. We have over 100 trillion microorganisms in our body, in our gut, in fact. So be under no illusion that the signaling that those microorganisms shoot out all over the place, far outweigh what our own cells are telling us. These microorganisms run our body in our gut. They do. From our gut. It's astounding.
So how we need to look at gut health is that we have 100 trillion new best friends, and we need to look after our best friends so that they look after us, for instance. So we'll quickly touch on hormones. 90% of serotonin. Now, serotonin is our happy hormones. 90% of that is produced by the gut bacteria. 80% of melatonin is produced, which is our sleep hormone produced by the gut bacteria. Now, we have our gut brain axis, which primarily responds through the vagus nerve up to our brain.
We all think that these hormones are produced in the brain, but what really happens is the majority of our hormones, and may I say also vitamins and things like that, are produced by the gut bacteria, and they travel through this gut brain axis instantaneously, and then the brain tells the body what to do with the information. So our microbiome, particularly in our gut, but we do have other microbiomes, and in fact, the gut's not the biggest microbiome, but it's a very important microbiome. It runs our body.
[06:28] Rochelle: So how do we look after that? Like, if it's so instrumental in what's happening in our brain, what do we do to look after it?
[06:41] Emma: Lots of different things. Okay? The biggest impact that we can have, a huge impact we can have, I won't call it the biggest impact we can have on our gut health is we want to look after. Let's just talk about bacteria. We have yeasts, we have parasites, we have worms, we have lots of different things.
And we look at yeast, for instance, and think it's bad. We have yeasts that do have major functions in the body, but let's talk about the bacteria. What we need to do is we need to feed up and provide ample nutrition. The same thing goes for anything living. Give it what it needs to survive and don't give it what it doesn't need. We need to feed our good guys so that they have a bit of defense against the gang members, the dodgy bacteria, the bacteria or the yeast or the fungi or whatever that are detrimental to our health. If we can strengthen up the good guys, they'll just knock the gang members out of it, cut it up turf.
[07:46] Rochelle: So then what do we feed? What feeds the good guys and not the bad guys?
[07:54] Emma: The biggest impact that we can have on that sort of thing is having a diversity of fibers. So we're talking, let's say, particularly in the realm of keto, we won't talk about fruits so much as vegetables. We need diversity. So not huge amounts of anything, but little amounts of everything in Australia at any point in time. And it's about the same everywhere else in the world. But in Australia we have between 305 hundred different plant species that we can eat that are available to us in any season.
[08:28] Rochelle: Well.
[08:31] Emma: There was a study from the University of Sydney that looked at all of this and 95% of people routinely ate twelve. Yeah, because we get used to what we and when you think about it, peas, corn, capsicum, cucumber, lettuce, potato, carrots, that would be about right. And then the next 2% managed to claw the weight of 20. Realistically, we need between 20 and 30 different plant species every week to feed the diversity of fiber lengths for our gut to survive.
[09:16] Rochelle: So stirrize.
[09:19] Emma: Absolutely. What I challenge in the Fatigue to Fabulous program during one of the weeks, I challenge everyone to actually go to the do you get your fruits and vegetables and pick something that you haven't used before. Come back, use it, tell me if you like it, show me what sort of recipe so that the group members get an idea of the breadth of what we can actually do.
Food to Eat or Avoid for a Healthy Gut
Photographer: ikon from pixebay
[09:42] Rochelle: Yeah, that's really cool. I should routinely do that, I think, just because I've got a curiosity. I'll try new herbs and try new things and new ways of cooking and I think that food can be exciting and it can still be simple and not think about it. Okay, let's car park that fruit. We know that vegetables and fairly low carb fruits, if you're on a ketogenic diet, are going to be good for you've. Got microbiome. Let's flip that coin over. What are some of the foods that bring out the bad guys and hurt the good guys, then? What should we be? Oh, my goodness. What should we be avoiding?
[10:22] Emma: Yeah. Okay. Well, look, people following you maybe are attuned to being keto. Sugar is huge. Okay, that's a no brainer. That feeds particularly feeds a lot of the yeasts. They go mad. But the less friendly bacteria do seem to thrive on sugar. But also we know that sugar drives inflammation and that sort of thing, so it kind of feeds back a bit. Now, it's not just as simple as feeding the gut bacteria. I guess we need to have a healthy gut wall as well. And we know things like gluten increase gastrointestinal permeability and lectins. Gluten is a lectin, but lectin does that as well. Now, there's a bit of controversy around lectins. I'm trying to be moderate in my view of lectins, but lectins do play a huge role in increasing gastrointestinal permeability, and they are found including gluten, in your grains and in legumes and in nightshade vegetables.
Now, I don't like nightshade vegetables are things like tomatoes, capsicums, eggplants, potatoes. I don't like to tell people to remove food groups and really cut things out because it makes life difficult. There are certainly things that you can do to these vegetables to decrease the lectin content. I think maybe particular attention might want to be paid to that as we go along as well.
[12:03] Rochelle: Interesting. So there's two things we need to talk about there. Firstly, can you explain lectins for people who don't kind of know what that is? Secondly, gastro is it gastro impermeability, gastrointestinal.
[12:20] Emma: Permeability, leaky gut leaky gut syndrome, whichever.
[12:24] Rochelle: You guys listening would probably be familiar with. So can you explain those two things? Like, what are they?
[12:29] Emma: I can firstly, lectins, of which gluten is a lectin. Gluten is a pretty low powered lectin. Gluten gets a bad rap, but they both do the same thing. Lectins are a chemical which essentially in fruits and vegetables, in certain fruits and vegetables is the plant's defense system. And in fact, certain lectins and amounts of lectins can kill us, for instance. Very interestingly. Five uncooked kidney beans will kill a person in about five minutes. But this is why we need to soak and cook.
[13:10] Rochelle: Great way to knock off anyone you don't like.
[13:12] Emma: Yeah. And in fact, that happened in America, and I have a paper on it somewhere in the depths of my computer. They ran a healthy eating program for children in the community, and they bought them all to the community center and they fed them beans, you know, amongst other things. And they had 40 hospital admissions with diarrhea and vomiting because they hadn't cooked beans properly.
[13:35] Rochelle: My goodness.
[13:36] Emma: Yeah.
[13:37] Rochelle: Well so just anyone listening if you're going to try that with your husband or you somebody don't like, make sure.
[13:45] Emma: You can get approved.
[13:48] Rochelle: I'm just kidding. Nobody would actually do that, right? But it would. Okay, so what then does leptin do? So it can be toxic? What the lecterns do inside that? What does it do in the gut?
[14:03] Emma: Okay, so what lectins and will include gluten in Mrs. Weld, because gluten does the same thing. I mean, it has a myriad of chemical roles, but one of the most obvious ones in this context is that when we ingest gluten or lectins, it causes the body to produce a hormone called zonulin, and zone actually increases the size of the holes in our gut.
Now, when we're talking about that, we should actually go back and talk about what causes the holes in the gut in the first place, and that is generally yeast. Now, another thing that we need, another big thing that we need to think about with respect to gut health is sleep.
Everyone requires six to 8 hours of sleep a night. I know people say that they can survive on four and all of this sort of thing, but apart from it's the time when our body does housekeeping and when our gut bacteria flourish and make hormones and vitamins and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah overnight when it's dark. Which is why shift workers have a lot of problems with obesity and things like that. But when we sleep and it's dark, so it suits our circadian rhythms, our good gut bacteria consumes a kilogram of yeast from our gut.
[15:31] Rochelle: Wow.
[15:32] Emma: Yeah, that was my response, too. Wow.
[15:35] Rochelle: Is that nutritional yeast is beneficial?
Impact of Sleep in Gut Health
Photographer: Susannah Townsend
[15:40] Emma: No. Well, no, not so. We have a lot of yeast in our system, and it is the food source for our good bacteria. Now, I know this to be true too, because as someone that sees a lot of clients, I do have those that are in inverted commas serial weighers, the people that weigh themselves at the same time every morning. And some of them would come to me and say, I don't understand. I will go to bed and then get up the next morning and be heavier.
And I said, well, did you sleep well? And I said, well, no. Well, that's because your body didn't actually consume that kilogram of yeast. Apart from anything else. We need to talk about fluid intake and influx into cells and stuff like that. It's not just the yeast, but a kilogram per kilogram.
[16:26] Rochelle: That's a lot, especially if you are weighing and you're relying on the scales rather than how your pants fit. So there you go.
[16:34] Emma: There's another reason that we shouldn't scales up.
[16:38] Rochelle: Scales are absolutely like this. It's not the guilt cycle and all of that stress stuff that goes along with it. Could we just take a step back? I know you were going to say something. Okay, what you're saying is if we look after our gut health by feeding it healthy food rather than sugar and processed food. I'm just speculating that like food.
[17:01] Emma: Absolutely.
[17:02] Rochelle: Then we can actually not only repair our sleep because we're starting to fix our hormones, we're repairing inflammation. And so we're also losing weight, fat at the same time.
[17:19] Emma: Well, we're increasing the right hormones. Absolutely. So the brain is telling the body it's in a better position to lose weight. Because when our body, regardless of whether we're talking about gut health or liver health or brain health or anything, whenever we have a stress on our body, it puts our body into a protective mode. And it says that particularly with fat, we need to store fat for winter, we need to protect ourselves because we may not survive. Now, the body doesn't discriminate on feast and famine with respect to food. We don't have famine in Australia, but we do have stress.
And so if we don't have enough sleep, if we have too much stress, if we're not feeding ourselves properly, we will go into that protective mode and our body will hold on to everything and it slows everything down, which means hormone production doesn't work as well. Your nutrients don't go into your cells. And if your nutrients aren't going into your cells, they're probably not going into the bacteria either. And so it's just this snowball in the wrong direction. Whereas when we start to reverse that, everything starts to come good. Now, if you're increasing your hormonal health and increasing your cellular health, your gut bacteria will be better as well. So therefore that gets even better again. So we snowball forward in the right direction.
[18:44] Rochelle: It's transformational, without a doubt, how you feel. And if you slip off and you go, wow, is that how I used to feel? And it's like I just thought that was normal. So you're right, it is transformational.
[18:57] Emma: It's really interesting. This week I've been having check ins, post Christmas check ins with all my fatigue to fabulous people. And look, I said to them all, don't stress over Christmas, do what you feel is right. Have fun. And they all said, well, yeah, I did overindulge a bit for a couple of days, but I felt like and that is because they are used to a new normal.
And I said to most of them, you do realize that this was how you were feeling all the time and that was your normal. So everyone's got this new normal of energy and hormonal control and good skin and aging well and energy. And it all comes down to proper nutrition, it comes down to abundance and not restricting things because we don't want to be into that protection mode and treating our new 100 trillion best friends the right way.
[19:51] Rochelle: So let's touch on 100 trillion best friends in a minute. But what you're saying is so right. Like last night, I was teaching the end of my get through Christmas and New Year course. And I'm saying, okay, how did you feel when you started eating the pavlova or the sugar or the chocolate or whatever? And they're like, oh my God, I feel tired. I feel bloated. That's how you used to feel. And you're right. It's the absolute new normal.
So I think part of the thing going into the new Year and people are like, oh, I'm just going to go to the gym and blah, blah, blah. It's more about actually the food and feeding yourself the right things. So what do you do to get on that path? You're talking about snowballs. Where do you find them? What do you do with the first snowball?
Impact of Stress in Gut Health
Photographer: Karolina Grabowska
[20:42] Emma: Okay, the very first thing we need to think about is abundance. We know from our good old caveman back in those days that we are built for feast and famine when we are in famine. And that can be famine of love, that can be famine of water, that can be famine of excitement, food, anything. Whenever we put ourselves into that stress state, we will hold on to things and struggle to survive. And the body is really good at protecting us from that. We need to move out of that protective mode. Okay?
So the very first thing I say to people is we need to lose this mindset of cutting things out. Now, obviously that doesn't mean that we can eat anything that we want. If we're talking about nutrition, it doesn't mean that what I like people to do is think about here's, this food, is it providing me with the nutrition that I need? Now, it can be general. Is it protein, is it good fats, is it minerals, is it polyphenols, is it antioxidants? It can be anything. But is it going to serve us by putting it in our mouth?
Now, if you're eating good nutritious food, you can really eat as much of it as you want. Now, from a keto perspective, we all know there's essential amino acids. So essential, we need to eat protein because we can't provide it essential fatty acids. We need to have good fats because our bodies can't make those things themselves. And that's what our gut bacteria helps us to do. And there's vitamins and minerals and things like that. There's no such thing as an essential carbohydrate. So when we're talking about nutrition and keto, for instance, we don't actually have to have carbohydrates.
There are a few cell types in the body that require carbohydrates. Like there's a couple in the eyes, a couple in the brain. But our liver does that for us. It makes glycogen out of the protein we eat, so we don't have to worry. Now, that's not to say I personally am saying cut out all carbohydrates. I'm not because they do offer sources of other nutrients. And that's where looking at net carbs versus total carbs comes into it.
One of the major factors and failures in a lot of keto. People I see is what I like to term internet keto. They get online and they get onto various high profile influences that talk about all calves being bad. Now we do need those fibers for survival, for our gut health, because it can be quite difficult to get that 30 different vegetables a week, for instance, especially when you are new to say, ketogenic eating and you're wanting to keep your carb content low.
I find that it's easier and it's possible to supplement with a specific prebiotic fiber that it needs to be a blend. And that's where a lot of these supplements come undone in my mind is they have one or two fibers in them which do work, they all work really well, but they expand one or two populations of bacteria. Whereas we've got a big long gut. We need to feed all of it because if you feed one lot, the others are still starving and that causes disruptions in itself. So there are well, there's one in particular that I use a lot, but is a blend of eight or nine different fibers, which is perfectly blended so that it's almost like a time release capsule, except that it's actually a powder that feeds all the gut bacteria all the way down.
[24:47] Rochelle: Always a cat in my life, sorry, if you're listening, my cat has decided to come and press the s on the keyboard, I guess a lot of the time, I mean, because it's gut. How long is the gut long, right.
[25:02] Emma: Yes, meters and meters and meters.
[25:04] Rochelle: Does that mean the bottom bits in the gut miss out on stuff?
[25:08] Emma: Funnily enough, the little amounts of fiber, the short fibers seem to feed the top and the longer fibers feed the bottom, we tend to eat more, longer fibers. So it's actually the top of the lower bowel that misses out more than the bottom. But regardless, so diversity, as I said. But the one thing with respect to keto, number one, stressing about it.
Stress is the major, a major killer of gut bacteria. We need to look at other factors as well. Stress is one of them. Medications are a killer. I'm not suggesting that you come off your medication, of course, but you need to be aware that medications we're talking well, obviously we know about antibiotics and even a five day course of antibiotics can disrupt your microbiome for two years.
[25:59] Rochelle: Wow, two years.
[26:01] Emma: Two years. It can be really hard to repopulate. And some species, if they die out short of a fecal transplant, which is a whole other podcast, it takes a long time to regenerate, certainly worth doing because this really has a bearing on aging as well. And I will release lots of different facts and trivia. I think there's so much facts and trivia on gut health. It's really interesting too. But medications the biggest one, and it's one that a lot of people just kind of turn to because they think it's innocuous are the reflux drugs, the gaviscons and the proton pump inhibitors. They are a major killer of gut health. And of course, if your gut health is bad, your reflux gets worse. So whilst you get symptomatic relief, you're actually making the problem worse.
[26:55] Rochelle: So what you're saying is, if you look after your gut, you don't need that stuff?
[27:01] Emma: No, if you look after your gut, your actual physical gut, forget the microbiome, your gut will heal. And I mean gastrointestinal permeability leaky gut is responsible for things like IBS and Crohn's and things like that. Major driver of autoimmune disease. Now, I'm seeing as an expert in immunology and autoimmunity, I obviously see a lot of people, but the snowballing of auto, the presentation of people with autoimmune disease is out of control at the minute.
[27:34] Rochelle: Wow.
[27:35] Emma: So we really need looking at gut health initially is absolutely key to trying to get some of that under control.
[27:42] Rochelle: And do you think that we've gone that way because of what happened? Our food pyramids just escalating on us like sugar and processed food.
[27:50] Emma: Absolutely. There's no doubt. And if anyone hasn't watched the film Fat Fiction, I suggest you do. That can be found at Fatfiction movie. So it's actually easy. I can remember that one. But it's also our desire for a quick fix and medication and largely apart from antibiotics, which actually do treat a problem. And sometimes we need antibiotics. I'm not disputing that. Apart from antibiotics, the majority of drugs that we get from our doctors are only for symptomatic relief. They don't address what's actually going on.
[28:36] Rochelle: Yes, and I think that is definitely the issue, isn't it? Like our medical system addresses the symptoms, not the cause. We know that our food pyramid like we've just been getting sicker and fatter and now we've got all this medication. And I heard somewhere, I think it was low carb, down under statins. So given to reduce cholesterol.
[28:59] Emma: Don't get me started.
[29:02] Rochelle: Let's do that on another podcast, please. I think life expectancy extra four days from a lifetime of taking these statins. They're treating something that shouldn't really even be treated, but that's the leftovers from the food pyramid floor research.
[29:22] Emma: If I can give you a quick little snippet with respect to that statins kill me.
[29:28] Rochelle: The major literally, pardon the pun.
Link Between a Healthy Gut and Important Hormones
[29:34] Emma: I don't understand. In fact, we should probably leave that for another podcast. But I don't understand. Low density lipoproteins, our bad cholesterol, is the primary ingredient for our ability to make steroidal hormones. We can't make estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, cortisol, alosterone, all these really important hormones unless we have cholesterol.
[29:59] Rochelle: And what do statins do?
[30:01] Emma: Trying to reduce it. Now, with respect to heart disease, which is why statins came into favor with respect to clogged arteries after taking years and years of statins, if you reduce your clogged artery load by 1%, the doctors think that's miraculous and that you know what a wonder drug.
Another study revealed that if you cut out lectins from your diet over like a two year period, you can reduce that sort of thing, the clogging of your arteries, by 50%. Now, that was a small study. It may not happen with everyone because we all have different genetic susceptibilities and things like that, but 1% 50% anyway, that is a much larger conversation.
[30:54] Rochelle: Yeah, that's definitely a whole other episode of this podcast. If you guys want a bit more information on the research of the statins and cholesterol. Paul Mason is a young Australian doctor who explains this stuff extremely well. You'll find him on Low Carb down under on their website. He's got as well. He's fantastic. So you touched on a couple of really interesting things. And before we go, I just wanted to I mean that and stuff and cholesterol.
That is a whole can of worms right there. Suffice to know that when we muck around with our gut health and we muck around with lowering cholesterol that's supposed to be there, that wasn't caused by fat, we muck around with our hormones. You mentioned that a ton of hormones are made in the gut. So serotonin, the happy staff or the melatonin. What else happens in the gut to do with hormones?
[31:56] Emma: Ever so much for hormone production. We need amino acids. And there are specific amino acids that then convert to make the hormones that we need. There are basic ones. Tyrosine makes tryptophan, tryptophan makes melatonin. It makes lots of different things. So we need to make sure that we can digest the proteins to get the basic ingredients. So the gut bacteria can make the hormones. So digestion itself requires a healthy gut, but a healthy gut requires good digestion.
[32:36] Rochelle: Sorry.
[32:37] Emma: No, go ahead.
Symptoms of Bad Gut Health
Photographer: Andrea Piacquadio
[32:39] Rochelle: I was going to say so then, if people are listening, going all out to all very well, but I don't know if I have a healthy gut or not. What are some of the things that people could look for that might give them an indication that their gut is struggling?
[32:55] Emma: Absolutely. Okay. So I have a bit of a quiz that I give a form that I fill out. I get clients to fill out. So there are quite a few. You need to think about your it's a naturopaths love bowel movements. Do you empty properly? Do you experience lower abdominal pain that's relieved by going to the toilet or passing gas? Are you constipated or do you have diarrhea? Do you have bad breath? Do you need to use laxatives? Do you have reflux? Now then we can get a little bit more diverse, I guess. Do you have pain in your joints? Nutritional deficiencies? Do you have a deficiency in B? Twelve. Zinc, iron, vitamin D. Things like have you been diagnosed with autoimmune diseases or Crohn's disease? Psoriasis, rosacea, skin conditions? A big one.
And this has a bearing on a couple of things. Not only gut health, but chronic inflammation, obviously, but also how we use the fats that we eat. And that's another conversation we should have. Not all fats are made equal. And when you're concentrating on fats with ketogenic diet, you need to get a balance right, as well. And that's really huge. But if you don't have that balance right, brain fog, depression, anxiety. So whilst you might think that you're doing a good job at controlling even your gut health, if you've still got symptoms, there's still something going on.
It may be a bacterial overgrowth in your gut, but it may also be that you don't have your essential fatty acids balanced, which also contributes to inflammation, but also contributes to how the cells communicate and how they can make the energy that they need or express the genes they need to and all of that sort of thing. So that's another conversation. We could spend a year together, Emma.
Tips for Good Gut Health
Photographer: Polatdover
[34:53] Rochelle: We absolutely could. You are just such a wealth of information. So let me summarize like, before we go, let me summarize what I think you've said. Looking after the gut means that you have better sleep, you have better hormones, you have better mood, you have less brain fog. And to do that, we need balances of protein, fat, and good quality fiber filled carbohydrates.
[35:18] Emma: Tons of veggies, great, good.
[35:21] Rochelle: So not the starchy type. We want the fiber filled things like broccoli, cauliflower, corn, peas, beans, that sort of stuff.
[35:30] Emma: When we're talking about gut health and feeding our gut bacteria, it is actually the starchy ones that are good, but what we need to do is turn it into resistant starch.
[35:41] Rochelle: Okay?
[35:42] Emma: Now, for instance now, I'm not suggesting if you're keto, because it may well knock you out of keto, especially if you knew it as you eat low carb or very low carb for years and years and years, your tolerance to these things builds up. But for instance, cooking a potato, if you eat a potato, we know, spikes your blood sugar like no Man's Land gee, glycemic load of 100. If you call that potato, some of it becomes resistant starch, and that potato starch, as is green banana starch and things like that are amazingly good for gut bacteria. But that's why I suggest especially if people are new to Keto and they want to keep on top of their carbohydrates. Yes, eat all your lovely cucumbers and your rockets and all the things that are easy to eat and eat lots of different varieties, whatever you can. But it's often good to supplement with these prebiotic fibers that are blended so that you have a little bit of potato starch, but you don't have to have the non resistant potato with it.
[36:51] Rochelle: Yeah, okay. That makes a lot of sense. So interesting that cooled starchy carbs, they would be digested differently, I suppose, because if they're resistant starch, then that takes a lot longer to digest. So you don't get that spike.
[37:05] Emma: And it's very interesting that when you cook a potato, it's not resistant. When you cool it, it becomes resistant. If then you heat it again, it stays resistant.
[37:15] Rochelle: OOH, so we're eating cool potatoes.
[37:18] Emma: So reheat your potatoes ego. Now, realistically, if you're new to keto and you're trying to keep under 20 grams of net carbs a day, even doing that is probably going to put you over.
[37:29] Rochelle: What I say to people in my course, like, when I'm teaching, is that if you have something, you can always test your blood sugar or your ketones with the blood testing strips.
[37:39] Emma: Yeah, absolutely.
[37:40] Rochelle: Everyone's so different. Sometimes rice spikes me, whereas, say, maybe like a quarter of potato might not. Especially if I'm hitting it with butter or soul cream or something like that, because the facts slowing it down. So, yeah, people could test that. That's really interesting. Thank you for sharing that. The other thing I just wanted to reiterate, or actually feedback to see if I'm understanding it correctly, other things that hurt the microbiome and the gut health.
[38:12] Emma: Would be stress killer.
[38:14] Rochelle: Lack of literally lack of abundance. So lack of a rainbow of food, lack of fiber and a lack of diversity. I suppose that's abundance. Did I miss anything?
[38:27] Emma: Look, essential fatty acids. We need to get our fats in, our good fats in, of which avocado is brilliant. They're the polyphenols, they're the antioxidants. They'll stop you aging because they're really good in fiber as well. But we need to get our essential fatty acids primarily our omega threes, which are actually quite difficult to get in our diet these days due to farming measures. But we need to really look at good fats and particularly polyphenols. So olive oil, olive oil. Olive oil, olive oil. There's been some studies that have been done that suggest that we should actually have about a kilogram of extra virgin olive oil a week.
[39:05] Rochelle: A week?
[39:06] Emma: A week.
[39:07] Rochelle: Oh, my goodness. And knowing that fat doesn't make us.
[39:10] Emma: Fat, well, that's doable it is well, yeah. Bleed it. Sorry. Is quite a lot.
[39:17] Rochelle: That is actually a lot. I'm thinking, my gosh, I literally have to ingest it every morning, like, by the cupful. So, okay, you mentioned fats. And before we wrap up places to get the omega three. So wild caught fish, avocados, olive oil.
[39:35] Emma: Yeah, look, I think it's something that I certainly am very passionate about. I'm a bit of an oil freak, so I can give you a lot more information on that. That's not a problem. But the problem with getting Amigas these days, for instance, wild caught fish, is that if we can afford organic wild caught fish from Norway, cold water, not around farmed fish. Which is why we have a problem in Australia, because we have a lot of farmed fish. And we can ship it into Australia in under the 30 hours that it stops the Amigas from degrading, then we're all right, but we can't do that in Australia.
The problem with our fish here is that because of the farming methods and farm fish, and that's the majority of what we get, they're actually fed corn. And corn is full of omega sixes, which are pro inflammatory. So our fish don't have omega threes in them either, because they're being fed omega sixes. So it is essentially, and I'll call it and there's a long back story to this as well, it is virtually impossible to get omega threes in our diet. The best way of absorbing omega threes from our diet is having a lot of polyphenols with it. So getting as much olive oil as you can into avocado. Yeah, because it is the polyphenols which chaperone the Amiga threes into the body.
[40:58] Rochelle: Interesting.
[41:01] Emma: Sorry, you go that's why fish oil supplements are useless. They're not worth the money that it's a huge billion dollar market, but they don't actually do anything. And they're a test to prove my statement. There's no worries about that. But it's life changing to get that balance right as well.
[41:20] Rochelle: Yeah.
[41:20] Emma: Interesting.
[41:22] Rochelle: I've got a list of things you and I talk about. We always say we're going to do this, so we never quite get around to it. Maybe 2023 is the year where we eat regularly.
[41:34] Emma: Norway in Norway. So we can get our cold water fish.
[41:39] Rochelle: Well, let's duck over to Alaska as well, because that would be nice. Like to do that. Okay. Well, there's so much to talk about here, but we'll round it off here. So if people want to find you and they want to follow you, where's the best place for them to go?
[41:58] Emma: The best place is probably Facebook or Instagram. I'm the no nonsense naturopath. You should be able to find me there. Shoot me a message. Shoot me questions. I am very happy to answer your questions and point you in the directions of studies or gems of wisdom.
[42:15] Rochelle: You have plenty of gems of wisdom.
[42:17] Emma: Yeah. I also have a practice in Almond on the Gold Coast, but I do practice Australia and New Zealand wide, so you can get in touch with me that way, too.
[42:24] Rochelle: Fantastic. And, yeah, I think if you guys so, Rochelle Wait is a naturopath, which you already know is a no nonsense naturopath. You can absolutely reach out to her if you've got anything you want to clarify around this. Or you can reach out to me and I'll put you in touch with her. And was there anything you wanted to add that we missed?
[42:49] Emma: Hippocrates, who's the father of medicine, believed that everyone can have perfect health. He also said that all disease begins in the gut. His belief was it was a physician's role to look at their patient and get them to include everything that they need for perfect health and to identify and get the patient to remove everything that was detrimental. That's what I try to do have a think about how our health is in general and how as a society, we function and how far we've actually gone away from that. It's as simple as providing your body with everything that it needs to function amazingly to get back to perfect health. Yeah.
[43:42] Rochelle: Well, on that note that's such good advice. And on that note, we will tie a ribbon on this and pull the bow next time. So next time we need to chat about statins and cholesterol. We need to talk about fats, oils and Amigas because I know you're super passionate and have a lot of knowledge around those Amigas, the brain stuff and how that all links up as well. So we'll pass those. Thank you so much.
[44:08] Emma: Thank you for having me.
[44:09] Rochelle: You're welcome. Thank you. Rochelle and I'll talk to you soon.
[44:13] Emma: See you later. Bye.