Use your gut biome to improve health

We now know that good health depends, in part, on cultivating bacteriophage. According to researchers from San Diego State University, you can do that by changing your diet.

Their research, published in Gut Microbes, shows that some foods help maintain a healthy balance of bacteria in your digestive system by encouraging phage to infiltrate and replicate inside disease-promoting gut bacteria. When the replicating phage KO harmful bacteria, it can help protect cognition, make it easier to regulate blood sugar and reduce the risk for depression and bodywide inflammation.

But, say the researchers, you don’t want to overdo it. Eating too many antimicrobial foods could contribute to low microbiome diversity.

So what plant products — in moderation — may help maintain or restore balance in your gut biome? The researchers tested foods with known antimicrobial effects: honey, licorice, stevia, hot sauce, oregano, cinnamon, clove and rhubarb.

How to avoid low-fat and low-carb diet traps

In 1980, the U.S. Department of Agriculture issued America’s first national dietary guidelines. Recommendations have changed significantly in the years since.

What’s a hungry person to do? Well, a study published in JAMA Internal Medicine looked at the health effects of food quality in 40,000 adults and gives a clear answer. Poor quality, poor results

Eating a low-carb diet that’s missing high-quality, unprocessed carbohydrates and is loaded with animal protein and saturated fats raised the risk of death from any cause by 7 percent over the 15 years of the study.

Eating a low-fat diet that slashed good-for-you fats like olive oil, so you’re not getting the healthy odd omegas (odd numbers, not peculiar!) such as omega-9 and omega-3, along with sat-fat dairy, and relied on low-quality, processed carbs led to a 6 percent increased risk for early death during the study.

High quality, good results

A healthful low-carb diet that dodges low-quality processed carbs and added sugars and contains unsaturated fats and high-quality protein from minimally or unprocessed plants triggered a 9 percent lower mortality risk over 15 years.

The winner, however, was a low-sat-fat diet loaded with high-quality carbs and plant-based proteins with plenty of odd omegas. It was associated with an 11 percent decreased risk for all-cause mortality over the same 15 years!

Email questions for Mehmet Oz and Mike Roizen to youdocsdaily@sharecare. com.