Dr. Sarah Berry
speaker
566 appearances
3 recordings
3 series
first heard Nov 2024
last heard 18 Dec
Dr. Sarah Berry’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Dec 2025 with 1.
Appearances
We found those following the personalized program that's very much focused around changing the microbiome that that resulted a change in microbiome composition and it did result also in a change in many health outcomes as well. Now, how it relates to menopause and aging, again, is something that not many people are looking at.
There has been some research that's shown that postmenopausal women have a microbiome composition that's quite similar to an average male and that premenopausal women have a microbiome composition that's different to the average male and different to a postmenopausal woman. We also looked at this in our ZOE predictor research and we found something similar.
We found that peri- and postmenopausal women have a different microbiome composition to premenopausal women. And what we saw was that there were some specific species that were increased in postmenopausal women.
And these species were the ones that we'd identified with our previous research as part of this kind of microbiome signature that we developed to be the ones associated with higher inflammation, higher blood pressure, higher cholesterol, etc., So they seem to have these species that I'm very loosely going to call bad bugs. Any microbiologist would probably hate me using that term.
But the postmenopausal women seem to have more of these kind of bad bugs and premenopausal more of these good bugs. And then some real exciting research that we've only got the data from on last week, it's not published yet, is in our huge cohort, so these 70,000 women, we've also tried to look at how the menopause is related to symptoms.
sorry, the microbiome is related to symptoms in the peri- and postmenopausal women. And so again, in this group, we see that there's a difference in the microbiome composition depending on whether you're pre- or postmenopausal. But what we also see is that you can partially predict how many and the burden of symptoms that women have based on the microbiome composition.
So what that says in simple terms that there seems to be something interesting going on where the microbiome is associated with these symptoms. Now, what we don't know is, is it actually just a byproduct that we know that diet changes the microbiome? We know that diet is related to symptoms, or is there actually a direct effect of the microbiome on reducing our symptoms?
That's what we're going to be analyzing over the next few months.
So I'm going to give you five tips that I cannot claim to be my tips. These are the tips that as a team we've built at ZOE together with my close colleague, Professor Tim Spector, and also Dr. Federica Amati. And these five tips are firstly, 30 plants per week. So it's the diversity of different plants. Try and have 30 different types of of plants per week.
And the reason is, is because we know that nearly every food has about 72,000 different chemicals that all interact with each other or have different roles. We want to get a diversity of these different chemicals. So that's the first thing, 30 plants, diversity. Second thing is fermented food. So there's good evidence to show that fermented food can modulate our microbiome.
Fermented food tends to be high in microbes. So by fermented food, it's most cheeses, kefir, yogurt, kimchi, kombucha, sauerkraut as well. So trying to get some fermented food, if you can, each day. Great way is a bit of kefir yogurt, if you like that, or having some fermented cheese. Third thing is eat the rainbow. This kind of feeds a little bit into that 30 and diversity.
But try and make sure when you're getting a diversity, you're getting lots of different colors. And the reason is, is because the pigmentation in plant-based foods... carries lots of wonderful attributes. So many of the bioactives as we call them, so the chemicals in foods that we know have wonderful biological properties in improving our health are colored.
And so if you can eat a variety of these, then you're going to get a variety of these bioactives. And these typically are polyphenols, although it's not only polyphenols. So polyphenols have different colors. Some are red, some are yellow, et cetera. But if you're eating a diversity of the rainbow, then you're going to get a diversity of these plant-based bioactives.
The other thing is rest your gut. And there's really good evidence now, I think, to support having a period of time when you're not eating. Now, I don't mean fasting for three days and starving yourself. What I mean is not constantly eating food for like 16, 17 hours a day.
What we know is that from, again, our own research and also published research, people eating late into the night and not allowing their body and their gut to rest, we know that they're at higher risk of many cardiometabolic diseases like type 2 diabetes. They tend to be overweight. They tend to have higher inflammation, blood pressure, etc.,
So resting your gut by giving it maybe a 12 or if you're happy to a 14 hour period where you're not eating each day. So if you're giving a 12 hour period, that just means having your last meal at eight o'clock and your first meal at eight o'clock the next morning. If you're comfortable going to 14 hours, maybe just have your last meal at seven and don't have your breakfast till nine.
It's got to work for you. And we've done this wonderful study called the Big If Study, the Big Intermittent Fasting Study, where we ask people, to change to eating in a 10-hour window, so fasting for 14 hours. Most people found it quite easy to do. You don't need to go to extreme. Then the fifth one is reduce your intake of unhealthy, heavily processed foods.
We're eating too much of these kinds of foods. You can also call them ultra-processed foods. 50 to 60% of our diet on average in the UK and the US is coming from these unhealthy, heavily processed foods. We are eating an enormous amount. I mean, if I could give you one single thing, if I had to take a kind of punt on one, it would be reduce your ultra processed foods and the rest would follow.
Just one thing I want to pick up on that. It is really hard to change our diet. And I don't think we should underestimate how hard it is. It's hard because our food landscape is pitted against us. You know, if I'm out and about and I want to get a healthy snack or I want to get, you know, a healthy lunch, it's actually very difficult. And it's difficult also to change diet.
You know, the diets that we were brought up with, the kind of foods that we're used to cooking with, it takes a lot of effort, it takes a lot of brain space, and I don't think we should underestimate that.
Showing 501–520 of 566 · page 26 of 29
← Previous
Next →