Dr. Alan Desmond on Gut Health and Microbiome

For any of you who haven't had the pleasure of listening to Doctor Alan Desmond, this is a real treat.

In many ways, we feel he is our 'Father of Gut Health'! A great friend of ours that we have had the pleasure to work with on a number of occasions, including on our own Healthy Gut Course.

For over 17 years Dr Al has been studying the gut. Not the easiest undertaking as you'll hear from this episode. He voices the connection between your gut, your immune system, your mental health and how the food you eat is the backbone behind your overall health.

"What should I eat could be one of the most important questions of the 21st Century... When you look at any gut health issue the evidence all points to the same thing, the emulsifiers, the junk food, the food-like substances that make up 60% of the food consumed in the western world, these have massive effects on our gut health and gut microbiome..."

He has an amazing way of distilling information in a tangible and relatable way. We talk in length about the importance of gut health, nature, food, and questioning our western approach to health and our current state of affairs in this pandemic.

"The UN report published last August says the number one thing we can each do to reduce the risk of a future pandemic is by removing or reducing the animal protein that we eat every day. Our current western diets with high consumption of animal protein mean that we keep hundreds of millions of animals in badly sanitized closed confined spaces, which is a breeding ground for future pandemic virus"

In 2019 we had the pleasure of going over to Devon where we assisted in the South By South West Plant-Based Challenge, a phenomenal challenge where Dr Al invited more than 70 medical professionals from the NHS to adopt a healthy plant-based diet to prove to them it would improve their energy levels, reduce their cholesterol, and overall make them feel good. It really was an amazingly rewarding experience that has done a lot of good for spreading awareness of our broken western health system. However, we have still so much work to do.

This is an episode that packs a punch! We hope you enjoyed it as much as we did.

Further Information:

For those interested in learning more about Doctor Alan Desmond, he has a brilliant book called The Plant-Based Diet Revolution

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