Gut Health Hacks with Fermented Food

Thanks to Viome for providing me with the testing kits for this experiment. As of April 2024, I've decided to no longer be part of the Viome affiliate program.

00:00 Intro
00:53 Fermented Food Definition
01:38 Experimental Design
03:04 Baseline Testing
03:33 Fermented Food Shopping
03:51 Day 1 Fermented Food Experiment
05:05 Fermented Food Meals
06:05 Post-Diet Testing
06:13 Gut Health Results
07:12 Inflammation Results
07:54 Biological Age Results
09:35 Results Interpretation
11:16 Do fermented food microbes take up residence in the gut?
11:54 Should you eat more fermented food?
14:23 Experiment Conclusions

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Hosting, Research, Writing & Post-Production by Lara Hyde, PhD

Music & Video Production by Robbie Hyde

The information in this video is not intended or implied to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. All content, including text, graphics, images and information, contained on or available through this video is for general information purposes only.

References

I designed my n-of-1 experiment to replicate this study by a team of researchers from Stanford in the Sonnenburg lab. They recruited eighteen healthy volunteers and tested inflammation levels in their blood and profiled their gut microbiome, which is a nice way of saying that sequenced the microbes in their poop. Then they guided their participants to ramp up their fermented food intake to six servings a day over a month, and then maintain that intake for six weeks. Then they tested their gut microbiome and blood again at the end of the study. After eating fermented foods, they found that lower levels of inflammation and higher diversity in the gut microbiome - together supporting that yes, eating fermented foods is linked with beneficial health markers. I’m getting a diversity of products with live, active cultures - kefir, yogurt, cultured cottage cheese, kombucha, though I’m avoiding ones with more than 5% juice, and a whole bunch of fermented veggies like kimchi, sauerkraut, fermented beets, and fermented carrots. Putting it all together, if we cherry pick which data to look at, we can conclude that my n-of-1 study also supports that fermented foods increase gut microbiome diversity and reduce inflammation, just like the Stanford study. But it’s important to point out that not all of my Viome metrics improved, and some actually got worse, like my gut lining health and butyrate production, and others were categorized as not optimal, like my cellular and energy efficiency and gas production. So this suggests that fermented foods are associated with some improved health markers, but they’re not a panacea. Lots of health claims focus on the live, active probiotics - so are the fermented food microbes moving into my gut to increase diversity? I didn’t measure the microbes in my fermented foods, but the Stanford study did, and they did not find the fermented food microbes taking up residence in participant’s microbiomes. Should you incorporate more fermented foods into your diet? There are other factors to consider when contemplating dietary change in addition to the potential health benefits: habit sustainability, cost, and whether you can overdo it. My takeaway from the longest diet study I’ve ever done is that there seem to be some health benefits of fermented foods on my gut microbiome, inflammation, and even biological age. I really enjoyed all types of fermented foods, well except for that water kefir that tasted like vomit, so it’s a dietary shift that I can see myself maintaining for many years to come.

Additional Footage
Ka23 13, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
Pexels Video by Monserrat Soldú

[timsoren]

I Love & Appreciate your hard work on these videos ❤ Thank You 🙏 Dr. 🎉

[miafamiglietti]

Thank you for such an informative video & transparency with your results. SO very helpful!

[ghw]

I LOVE fermented fruits and veggies and make my own kimchi using techniques from a noted Korean cook and sauerkraut using a vegan German friend's recipe . My utility room is a bit (Ha!) oderifous, but I love it. A much needed video! Thank you!

[ShhheilaASMR]

A lot of store bought fermented foods are PASTEURIZED after, defeating the purpose somewhat. That might explain the lack of spiking up, also a lot of plants just naturally will bring up the biome without fermentation needed and you already ate pretty well. The salt levels might have imparted the negatives? Interesting experiment N of 1!

[gdavho]

I've been eating fermented foods for a while and recently started using fermented L Glutamene powder and I haven't used a PPI for over 3 months and can drink coffee with no problem now. I used to suffer everytime I bent over to do something, the heartburn was bad but now I notice it doesn't happen anymore. Great video!

[lindachandler]

Wow! Your store has bunches of live stuff. I have to make my own.

[sabuvarghese]

Thank you for this experiment! As @ShhheilaASMR suggested, pasteurization may have had an effect. Also, should you have tested the fermented foods to ensure "live and active cultures" were present? It would be interesting to test the homemade fermented foods to see if that would make a difference!

[Kitiwake]

Does store bought fermented food contain live cultures?
I ferment kefir and tried to ferment the store bought variety using the same conditions.

It didn't ferment, meaning that it contained no cultures.

[JonathanSoltero]

I need to try those meals, I like the zing of fermented foods.

[irreverentjules-]

I love, love fermented veggies, however, now the inflammation piece concerns me. I have saved the brine wondering if I could just drink it. Insofar as cost, I often find a great sale on organic fermented veggies and stock up. Sometimes even buy one get one free.

[StarLight-rqeh]

Between Viome and Zoe, what gut test/experiment do you prefer? Which one made the biggest impact in helping you to improve your gut health?

[swaranKumar-ry]

❤❤❤❤ Am a non speaking English guy . I request if you can show us what to buy in Walmart will be more friendly persons like me.
Thank you.

[daveoily]

making water kefir is a piece of piss, if you don't like the flavour of what's in the shops, choose a fruit juice you do like and make water kefir using that.

[tomtom-meuo]

Doctor, your topic is the topic of feces, and you make this stool disgusting. You torture me to examine the stool, to the laboratory, the video: feces, this is a topic that the viewer does not accept.