Well, hello there. Thank you for joining us today on Healthy Ish. I hope you're having a really great day. This is, of course the daily podcast and Body and Soul. I am Felicity Harley. Renowned cardiologist doctor Ross Walker knows his stuff. He's written seven books, is a keynote speaker. In fact, you've probably seen him across the media over the years, and today he joins us in the studio to discuss the most important things you should do to maintain good at gut health and also what to keep
in mind next time you search hashtag gut talk. If you do want to hear more from Ross, I know you will after this episode listening to extra Healthy Ish, where he helps us make sense of pre post and probiotics. You can search for that where we get your podcasts. Ross welcome to Healthy Ish.
Thank you very much for listen to be here.
I'm honored to interview. You've had amazing experience in the field yield of well cardiology particularly and now you know you're on a bit of a mission to share information around the gut. Yep, why there should I say change or movement or you know.
It's just natural progression.
I mean, the gut is so important in all aspects of health, including cardiology as well.
But to me, it's not.
About having a healthy heart or a healthy gut or a healthy brain. It's about having a healthy body. And it's all mixed in together.
So I came across something that you said which I really liked, and I kind of want you to unpack.
It for us.
It's your body is its only pharmacy. Can you talk to us about this?
Yeah, because the best healer is yourself, not going to a doctor and swallowing a pill or a potion or whatever. It's how you look after yourself. And I talk all the time about what I call the five keys of good health, and the five keys of good health from the least important to the most important. And this is not heart health, it's all health. Number one, having no addictions. You cannot be healthy and smoke, drink too much grog, or snort cocaine.
So anyone who's.
Addicted to anything is ill. Number one. Number two, and we're getting more and more emphasis on this. Seven to eight hours every night of good quality sleep.
Number three.
Nutrition and nutrition's easy to talk about, harder to do. It's called eat less food, eat more natural food. And the real tragedy felicity is that only less than ten percent of people living in the modern world have two or three pieces of fruit per day. Three to five serving serving is about half a carrot, so it's not a huge amount.
Three to five.
Servings of vegetables per day, and those people who do that have the healthiest hearts, less cancer, better gut, health less alzheimers, you name it. Just the fruit and vegetables every day is so good for you. And then on top of that, if you want to little bits of meat, eggs, dairy, chicken, fish, nuts, and olive oil and avoid process package crap masquerade as food and avoiding what I call white death, which is sugar, white bread, pasta, potatoes, and rice goes straight to the
gut and causes abdominal obesity. That's nutrition, very simple, eat less, eat more natural. Number four, second best drug in the planet three to five hours every week of moderate exertion, and tragically only twenty five percent of the population do that. And easily the best drug in the planet is a thing my second that called happiness.
Oh yes, I'm going to say exercise.
I said exercise is the second best, but happiness is easily the best.
Drug in the planet.
Just to give you one example, there's this little known university in America called Harvard.
On Harvard, what's that one again? Harvard and Harvard one of the great learning institutions of the world.
And I'm carry on about, but Harvard have done for the last eighty years a thing called the Grant Study. The Grand Study showed the one key to health and happiness is to have someone else in your life who loves and cares for you, who you love and care for. It's much more important than your damn cholesterol or your blood pressure or anything else. Nurture your relationships. So those
five keys. Doing those on a regular basis, and tragically less than ten percent of people do, that reduces your risk for all diseases somewhere between seventy to eighty percent, four times more powerful anything a doctor can.
Say for you.
So the key to gut health is just the fruit and vegetables, and hardly anyone does it.
I mean, we all struggle with this, don't we. We all struggle with eating. I mean, we know it, but I mean it's quite extraordinary when you say ninety percent of us don't eat two or.
Three pieces of fruit, three to five.
Servings and that is just an easy way here your.
Gut absolutely how to do that. That's exactly what I do.
I do that every day because it keeps my gut healthy. I also take a high quality probidic or actually take a thing or to trybiotic which has got probiotics, probiotics and post biotics in it. So I take that every day, which helps, but that is not a replacement for the fruits vegetables. A lot of people take vitamin supplements or probiotics and they think that's going to keep them healthy. They're called supplements. Supplements to what supplements to the healthy lifestyle.
That's the key is the healthy lifestyle.
I mean, you know what you're talking about. You've had years of decades experience, You've seen plenty of patients, and how do you make sure you include those fruit and veggies in your day?
Well, just breakfast every morning.
I have probably had what would be the equivalent of two or three pieces of fruit every day for breakfast.
That's just what my typical breakfast. I make it myself.
I don't have commercial breakfast cereal, so ten to fifteen natural nuts a day, and people who do that have up to a fifty percent reduction in cardiovascular disease just by the nuts, So ten to fifteen natural nuts a day. I have blueberries, bananas, strawberry prunes every day with a bit of lesser than and LSA in a mix. And I have oat milk because my wife says I snore more if I have normal dairy products and a bit of yogurt and it tastes beautiful. And that's how I
start the day. And then for dinner, we'll my wife makes these magnificent salads. And again I mentioned about the best key to health is to have someone else in your life who loves and cares for you. We're celebrating our forty seventh year of marriage.
This year, congratulations. Or we could do a whole separate podcast about the secrets to have you married.
I'm absolutely happy to do that as well. It's at another stage then, So we'll have these beautiful salads for dinner where we get at least i'd say five servings of different vegetables and they're absolutely delicious. So people should be really gearing their diet around fruits and vegetables. I'm not not saying we need to be vegetarian. I quite enjoying meat, but I'm saying the fruits and vegetables are the key to good health. So it's not avoiding things, it's what you're not getting.
In your diet.
Now, a lot of our listeners are avid social media users, myself included. We're always on there looking at the latest trends. Dare I say, in all sorts of you know, in all areas of health, but particularly there is a hashtag on social media, hashtag gut top. Now this has had over four hundred million views, so basically it's a few yeah, and it basically sprooks things, lots of things and ideas and tips on how you can improve your gut health.
I mean, there's the one going around at the moment that having a daily shot of olive oil will improve your gut health. Now, what do you think about all this and what's your general rule of thumb when we see all this content around around health.
Yeah, I think you should always look at the where it's coming from. So if you have really reputable websites, and there's quite a few reputable ones that I would look at, so Body and Soul, like Body and Body and Soul, that's probably the most reputable one I've ever read, but things like if you want to get good medical advice, look at the New England Journal of Medicine, all the National Institutes of Health in the US, or different websites in the UK, but don't go to these crappy websites.
So just and look at the person who's giving the advice.
So for example, I'd prefer an expert in the area to be giving advice and some celebrity or sports star who only knows anything about the product they're spreaking by how quickly the ink dries and the contract. But the
olive oil story. Olive oil is I think one of the key benefits of the Mediterranean diet, which is the only diet that has any long term evidence based by the way, so if you follow a good Mediterranean diet, which is just what I said before, you reduce your risk for all chronic diseases somewhere between thirty to fifty percent, with about a thirty percent reduction in death over the studies that are being done. So huge evidence for the Mediterranean diet, of which olive oil is a vital component.
So yes, that's one aspect.
Of improving gut health, but not the only one more the fruits and vegetables.
Yeah, Rols, thank you for coming on Healthy.
In my pleasure.
There we go. He makes it sound so simple, the things that you can do today for better gut health. If you did get something out of this, jump on let us know, rate and review this podcast, and of course you can subscribe, Share this at with a friend, Share the gut health, love anything else. Head to Body and soul dot com. Do you follows on socials? Grab our print edition which is out in your local Sunday paper and until tomorrow it's still help you