Professor Tim Spector

And when I drink coffee, what happens?

It has a party, has sex, has babies, multiplies, and then produces certain chemicals in response by breaking down that coffee into other ingredients, which might then help your immune system and in some way explain why coffee is good for your heart.

So you've got to imagine that you've got lots of bugs like that that are highly specific waiting for you to have not only coffee, but maybe it's seaweed or maybe it's baobab or maybe it's things you don't often have so that we can expand our list of good bugs.

It...

Probably goes down to very low levels.

Because actually, what's interesting is even if you stop drinking coffee, you're surrounded by coffee drinkers.

And their droplets of saliva and kisses and greetings mean that you'll be getting some of that.

Either those bugs themselves, or you'll be getting some bits of coffee in the air, a coffee aroma.

Yeah.

Yes.

So even in non-coffee drinkers, we do see tiny amounts of this lawsonobacter.

But in countries that don't drink coffee at all.

There are a few African countries, for example, where it doesn't exist.

In tribes, you don't see it at all.

But I think it's important to imagine it's a bit like having a rare animal.

You've got to feed in your zoo.

You don't want to give them all the same food.

You've got to give them this diversity so that all the rare animals can get out there.

And we know that the more good bugs you've got,

the better your immune system, the more you dampen inflammation, the more you can prevent all these problems that we're seeing.