550: Flourish from Within: Natural Ways to Restore Health

What if the key to lifelong health isn't hidden in a prescription bottle, but in your gut? In this eye-opening episode, Ashley sits down with integrative nutritionist Anu Simh to uncover the powerful truth behind the foods we eat, the fibers we ignore, and the gut-heart connection most doctors overlook. Anu shares the life-changing wisdom behind her book Flourish From Within, revealing how spices, plant diversity, and even our mindset around food can radically shift our health trajectory. Whether you’re aiming to reverse chronic conditions or raise a healthier next generation, this episode will inspire you to reclaim your plate—and your power.

Highlights:

• Food is either building you up or breaking you down. Ashley James emphasizes that every bite either contributes to health or disease and urges listeners to take ownership of their food choices.
• Fiber is the foundational key to gut and heart health. Anu Simh strongly advocates for fiber-rich diets, particularly from whole plant foods, as the core message of her book and overall health strategy.
• Healthy fats must be chosen intentionally. The conversation distinguishes between saturated fats, which can negatively affect cholesterol and the microbiome, and healthy fats, which support overall health.
  
• Turmeric and black pepper make a powerful anti-inflammatory combo. Anu Simh discusses how turmeric's bioavailability increases significantly with the addition of black pepper, and she personally includes it in her daily spice blend.
• Children’s relationship with food starts at home. Anu Simh shares her passion for teaching children about nutrition early, explaining that parents must model good eating habits and foster positive associations with vegetables.
  
• Soluble fiber can significantly reduce cholesterol. Anu Simh explains how oats, flax, and psyllium husk can lower cholesterol markers, encouraging intentional dietary shifts before resorting to statins.
• The gut-heart connection is real and supported by research. TMAO and other gut-derived compounds are linked to cardiovascular risk, reinforcing the role of gut health in preventing heart disease.
• Statins may offer false security and come with risks. Ashley James warns about the long-term dangers of statins, including cognitive decline and balance issues, advocating for lifestyle interventions instead.
• Doctors often lack training in nutrition. Both speakers highlight that conventional medicine focuses on disease management rather than prevention, and most doctors are not educated in dietary healing.
• Ordering your own labs can empower health decisions. The conversation points to resources like www.walkinlab.com and emphasizes accessible ways to check critical markers like ApoB and Lp(a).

Intro: 

Hello, True Health Seeker, and welcome to another exciting episode of the Learn True Health podcast.

If you are ready to take your health to the next level, go to learntruehealth.com/free. That's learntruehealth.com/free, and I'm going to give you the resources you need for free—things you are going to start to do today, this week, this month—that by the time the holidays roll around, you are going to feel like a million bucks compared to how you feel now.

No matter where you are in your health, this is going to supercharge whatever you're doing and take you to the next level. Whether you're just at the beginning of your health journey or you've been working on yourself for years, this is going to help you fine-tune, get a leg up, and start feeling amazing.

Go to learntruehealth.com/free. I'm so excited to give you these resources.

Enjoy today’s episode.

Welcome to the Learn True Health podcast. I'm your host, Ashley James. This is episode 550.

Ashley James (0:01:05.072)

I am so excited for today's guest. We have with us Anu Simh, who's a board-certified functional health coach and the founder of Nine Arms of Wellness, specializing for busy women who are looking to regain their gut health and drop that weight that's been super stubborn and gain balance in their life—mentally, emotionally, spiritually, physically.

So you're just up our alley, Anu. Learning true health is not just about food and exercise. There's so much more.

Anu Simh (0:01:37.996)

Definitely. First of all, thank you so much for having me. I was excited when I saw holistic and really a deep dive. Sometimes we're not able to say everything that we want to on a podcast because of time.

I'm so excited that I get to go deeper, have a deeper conversation. 

Ashley James (0:01:58.472)

Yes, let's do this. I'm all about the 90-minute to two-hour-long episodes because I feel after the first 45 minutes, we kind of get the regular stuff out of the way and then we start going deep. It's really in hour two that we get to stuff that guests don't normally get to talk about. That's why I think there's value in those long-format conversations.

Your website is 9armsofwellness.com, and your book is just coming out, which is so exciting that listeners can go grab your new book, Flourish From Within: Feed Your Gut for Lifelong Health.

Tell us about your book. Is this your first book? What inspired you to write this book?

Anu Simh (0:02:42.608)

Yes, it's my first book, and honestly, it's been a journey. Writing the book really came from my clients. I use microbiome health and really guide my clients to focus on gut health so much as part of whatever it is that they're going through—from taking them from where they are to where they want to go, be it weight loss or metabolic health.

Maybe they are on medications and they want to get off medications, and they want to really feel good in their body. The starting point for me has always been the microbiome. One of the reasons actually is I felt the microbiome and learning about it was a big part of my own healing, my own journey.

I talk about it a lot—on my podcast, with my clients—and it's almost the starting point of a journey with me. My clients kept saying, “Gosh, when are you going to write a book? When are you going to write a book?” I said, “Okay, I'll write a book.”

One of the things they said is, “Well, you send us to a lot of different books that have information about the microbiome, and then we go looking for recipes. It would be really nice if we had everything in one place.” I really took that to heart.

The past three to four years, I've been researching and writing and rewriting. The book is really meant for the layperson. I think one of my biggest strengths is taking the science and simplifying it in everyday language.

Then I propose a diet—feeding the microbiome, not specifically to feed you—because this diet can work with any kind of cultural affinity you might have to your way of eating. Finally, some recipes from different cultures to support it.

Ashley James (0:04:55.084)

I love that. There are so many ways of eating, and you brought up the diversity of diets—everywhere from raw vegan to paleo. Some people are going into carnivore, and then there's just the standard Western sort of way of eating, with different cultural influences if their background is Italian or Mexican or Asian and Ayurvedic.

Then people who are just trying to eat as whole foods as possible, as clean as possible. There are so many vastly different ways of eating.

What have you found universally true about healing the gut when it comes to food? You said this can be done no matter what kind of diet you're eating. I mean, you're going to have to make adjustments, but no matter what culture you come from, there are things you can add.

So what's universally true about gut healing?

Anu Simh (0:05:58.490)

So that's a great question, and it's pretty nuanced, my answer. I think I would start with saying that a whole food, unprocessed kind of approach to diet would probably be the first thing one ought to do. In a standard American diet or Western diet, we're eating a lot of ultra-processed foods and things with additives and preservatives—things that the microbiome does not quite recognize.

It would be like if you and I went into Home Depot and said, “Okay, am I going to get something to eat here?” They're really confused. No, really, it's so darn confusing.

Ashley James (0:06:43.566)

No, that's such a good—my gosh. I'm stealing that. That is such a good metaphor for how the gut microbiome cannot recognize processed food.

Anu Simh (0:06:55.042)

Yes, I always imagine them scratching their heads—what the heck am I supposed to do with this? So start there. Keep it simple, keep it basic. Most of us here in the Western world are eating a lot of ultra-processed foods. By ultra-processed, I mean really hyper-palatable foods with a lot of refined carbohydrates and sugar and things like that. Oils and additives, colors, artificial sugars.

So if anyone wants to start and say, “Today I want to start taking care of my gut, I want to feed my forever guests who are in my colon doing such an incredible job and doing so much for me,” the first thing would be: can we just kind of cut down on the processed foods?

That would mean a simple fix. Let's say in the morning, you're rushing off to work, you're picking up a donut. Maybe we just stop there and say, why don't I just start with just my morning breakfast? If my morning breakfast is healthy, it's got enough micronutrients and fiber and things like that, we'll see how the rest of the day pans out.

Let's just take care of one meal a day. I think that's something that any of us can do. We start simple, we start small. Small shifts lead to big changes. That's one of the first things I tell my clients. If you have a system in place and you start really slow, then you're more apt to continue.

If you do too many changes too soon, your brain is going to be exhausted because these are not procedural habits. By the end of the day, when your bosses are calling you for a meeting, you have other zillion things demanding of the brain at the same part of your brain, then what is going to take precedence? All of those decisions that are waiting for you—the food is forgotten.

So if we go really simple and slow, I think there's a better chance of us sticking to it.

Ashley James (0:09:17.518)

I love it.

For those who don't know the complexity of why the microbiome is so important, I feel every listener would know probiotics are good for me and not having dysbiosis is good. I think everyone knows that we have healthy bacteria in our gut and we want to support it. I feel that's very common knowledge.

Beyond that, people don't really know the complexity and the vastness of why the microbiome is one of the most important things that we need to protect and cultivate in order to have true health.

Anu Simh (0:09:59.524)

Yes, and very interesting actually—as I was writing the book, the one thing I came across was that two out of three Americans have never heard the word microbiome.

Yes, we live in this bubble. We think because we're practitioners or we're podcasters, we interview people, we think that everybody has heard it, but it's not true.

That's something I always keep in mind when I'm on a podcast, because maybe this is the first time someone's heard the word microbiome. Maybe we start there.

Ashley James (0:10:33.382)

Yes, OK. Let's go back to the beginning. What is the microbiome? What does it do for us?

Anu Simh (0:10:39.188)

So we have trillions of bacteria inside of us. For the sake of this conversation, we're going to focus on the bacteria in our gut—specifically the colon. We have trillions of bacteria in our colon that do behind-the-scenes work for us. We've had this symbiotic partnership forever. They've always been.

There's never been a time when they've not been in us. It comes through our moms' microbiome, and how we take care of it really is what is so important.

So, evolutionarily speaking, we've evolved to hand over certain jobs to them to do. One of the jobs that we've handed over to our microbes or our bacteria is digesting fiber.

When I say fiber, fiber comes only from the plant kingdom and all the fruits and veggies and lentils and all of the things that you eat. Most of the other things—protein and some micronutrients—all of that is digested in the upper parts of your digestion. Then the fiber goes undigested to the colon, and there they are—these trillions of bacteria waiting for their food—because that's how we've evolved with them.

So they take the fiber, they digest it, and then they produce some very important healthy compounds for us called short-chain fatty acids, and specifically butyrate.

Why is this important? Because when they digest the fibrous foods and they produce these compounds, they really help our bodies to be less inflamed, really kind of take care of our blood sugar levels, our gut health, strengthen our colon cells—it acts as a nutrient for the colon. There are many things that it does.

It also produces many neurotransmitters. For example, 90% of serotonin, or the happy hormone, is produced in our gut. If we start eating nutritious food, we really kind of produce more and more of these bacteria.

For a resilient microbiome, or for these guys to be happy and bloom, we need to eat foods that are rich in fiber. I mean, if you asked me, “Ashley, well, you said that you did research for three years, what was a big takeaway?”—I would say just that one word: fiber.

If we eat enough fibrous foods, then we are nourishing our bacteria. So I think having a definition for a healthy microbiome is important. No one really knows what a healthy microbiome is, because my microbiome could be very different from yours.

If we call it a resilient microbiome, I think that's a better definition. So a resilient microbiome is one that bounces back after an illness, after taking some antibiotics, or you're on a holiday and you eat a lot of crappy food. It's saying, “Look, I got you. I know how to get back. I know how to recover from it.” That's important.

How does that happen? If you have enough species diversity—you have lots of players going to bat for you behind the scenes. Then you have species evenness. You don't want one thing to grow so much that it just kills all of the other kinds of bacteria.

It's like—imagine a garden with a hundred tomato plants and one zucchini plant. I mean, can you imagine the poor zucchini? So that's pretty much what happens in our gut as well.

We want it to have both species richness and evenness. When these two things are present, there's a much higher chance of your gut microbiome being resilient. If your gut microbiome is really resilient, you are up to be more healthy from it. In simple words.

Ashley James (0:15:05.594)

I love it. I love it. Understanding it's about six pounds—on average—don't think of it as a bunch of bacteria, because that kind of creeps people out.

If you think of it as a little fuzzy chihuahua or a little panda bear—a six-pound cute thing that lives inside you and helps you—and you feed it, and it helps you, and it's so wild that it actually converts our food to all these chemicals, all these nutrients that our body needs.

It's a pharmacy inside of us. We have a pharmacy inside of us.

I once had a problem where I was getting these heart palpitations, and I saw a cardiologist. After a test, he goes, “You're kind of not sick enough for me to do anything.” He's like, “Come back to me when you get worse so I can put you on drugs.” And I'm like, well, I want to be healthy—what's going on?

He goes, “Well, it's less than 1% of the time you're having these sort of heart hiccups.” I said, “What is this? What's causing it?”

He sat and thought, because of the way I asked my question. He said, “You think your heart is weak and that's why it's doing this, but your heart is actually very strong. It is trying to reset. Something is inflaming it. The inflammation—something is causing inflammation that is affecting your heart, and your heart is doing this hiccup once in a while as a way of trying to reset. So it's actually strong and intelligent.”

And I'm like, oh, okay. So he gave me this clue—something I'm eating. I'm imagining it's eating, because inflammation—most of the time it's what you're eating.

Anu Simh (0:16:49.600)

Yes, you're right on that. Digestion is the most inflammatory thing that we can do to our bodies.

Ashley James (0:16:54.547)

Yes. At the time I just happened to have a Viome test. Looking through the Viome test, I was actually interviewing one of their scientists. I didn’t tell them about my heart issue, which had just started. I was trying to figure out what’s going on in my diet. At the time I was eating eggs. I switched to a whole food plant-based diet. Eggs were hard to give up. I love eggs. They’re so delicious. Every time I had breakfast, these heart palpitations would come up.

I didn’t tell them any of this, but they were looking through my Viome test. It’s a test that, for those who don’t know, tests the hundred thousand gene expressions of the bacteria in your gut and what that means, and what they are creating out of your food. Good or bad? For example, when we eat meat, create inflammation in the body as a result. When we eat lots of healthy leafy greens, it can create great things like short-chain fatty acids and be very healing and anti-inflammatory to the brain as well.

They looked through my results and said, now you’re really sensitive to eggs. Your gut, this specific strain of bacteria you have, is converting eggs into this inflammatory compound that inflames the heart. I’m like, you’ve got to be kidding me. I don’t remember the name of it. They said it on the interview—it was years ago. But I stopped eating eggs and it immediately went away. Then I did a test a week later—had eggs with my breakfast. I actually put eggs on top of a big salad. A salad breakfast. It was delicious. By the time—hadn’t even finished the meal—I started to get heart palpitations again.

I thought, okay, that’s it. I could turn them on and off based on whether I had eggs or not. Some people are really sensitive to certain leafy greens like spinach and kale, and they can develop kidney stones, whereas others don’t. They can eat spinach all day long and none. It’s actually the diversity in the microbiome, which I thought was fascinating, because I have that—whatever strain it is—I have cultivated the strain that helps prevent kidney stones from eating too much kale and spinach.

So it can protect you from things and help you metabolize your food. It’s just fascinating.

When you said eat fiber though, what about taking Metamucil? There’s a listener that went, more fiber, okay, I’ll start taking Mucilax or whatever. I’ll start taking some name brand, processed supplement, thinking that’s more fiber.

Anu Simh (0:19:56.089)

Yes, well, everything that you said is incredibly important, I think, because your microbiome is very different from the next person's. If you had some kind of a connection to, let's say, what do eggs have? They have things like L-carnitine, things like that. Our gut microbiome, if you have the wrong kind of pathogenic bacteria or just bacteria that are really adept at converting it, they convert it into some compound called TMA, and the liver makes TMAO. So that can be cardiovascularly an issue.

Yes, so someone who eats a lot of kale or spinach, if they don't have the right bacteria going to bat for them—oxalobacter formigenes is the name of the gut bacteria—not to geek out, but they are. So it really boils down to: it's not about, I have a lot of spinach, I'm going to end up with kidney stones. The bigger question is, what can I grow in my gut that can take care of this digestion for me?

That is where I bring the conversation back to every single time, because you can chase symptoms all day long. How many symptoms are you going to change? Instead, you look at your gut. You have a starting point. You're really curious. I'm talking about the listener who's interested in saying, wow, this microbiome stuff seems so interesting—where do I begin?

You could begin with a simple microbiome test if you wanted to. It's not necessary, but if you are a tester and if you're a curious person, look for a shotgun sequencing test that really looks at your entire microbiome. It's a good test because it's not diagnostic in nature by any means, but it will tell you—because of the whole genome sequencing—it'll be a good representation of what's happening in your distal colon. So the live and dead bacteria, the microbes that you see in your feces, are what's in your colon.

From there, you can say, I have this diversity and I don't have these bacteria that are so good at digesting spinach, or I have these TMA-converting bacteria, so maybe eggs are not such a great thing for me right now. So you start becoming a little bit more invested in how you eat for your unique body, because we all have—we're very bio-individual—and how we respond to diet is so unique to us.

I think that's very important as a starting point. If someone is, gosh, I can't really afford a fancy test right now, I'm not there—you don't have to do that. The big premise here is these guys really do well on fiber.

So what is fiber? Fiber is the food that is the non-digestible part of any plant food. Almost all vegetables and fruits have it. They have different kinds. We look for prebiotic fibers, and prebiotic fibers are fibers that can help grow these bacteria for you. They're in all the everyday foods that you eat—lots of red onion, leeks, artichokes—all of them have prebiotic fibers.

So you don't have to go and shop around for a commercially available fiber. You could just incorporate that into your eating. I think that is the best way to do this, actually, because then it's long term and it changes how you eat as well.

Ashley James (0:23:54.831)

The negative thing about going out and getting a Metamucil—I know it's a name brand, but just, any of those—is that because it doesn't ferment, it actually doesn't feed the gut bacteria. It just creates bulk. So if you're someone who's like, man, I'm just really hungry, I know I'm eating enough, and I really want to lose some weight, and you want to sort of stave off hunger, an easy way to do that is mix some Metamucil into—could do flax or chia seed—and a teaspoon of that into a glass of water. 

Flax as well. There are plenty of studies actually showing just by adding one to two teaspoons of flax a day—you've got to add enough water with it—helps with weight loss because it helps create that bulk. Those seeds though will help feed the gut bacteria, whereas the Metamucil-type supplements don't ferment. So they don't feed the gut bacteria. They just create bulk, which is great for if, let's say, you have constipation or you just want to feel fuller without the calories.

It's so much better to switch to some chia seeds and flax seeds, for example, and nuts and seeds. Add them to some salads. Even eating a quarter cup a day of some kind of bean or lentil—such a small amount—could help. I recommend cooking in the Instant Pot because it denatures the phytonutrients.

It helps break that down so you don't fart as much, which is great. 

Anu Simh (0:25:42.803)

Yes farting is a good thing actually you know that the system's working you just don't want to fart too much.

Ashley James (0:25:50.121)

Yes, not too much, exactly. You want a little bit. My naturopath I used to see said we should have about a liter of gas a day. Anything more than a liter of gas—I don't know how you'd measure that—but just imagine.

Anu Simh (0:26:02.316)

I would say about 14 to 20 times a day is still okay.

Ashley James (0:26:05.442)

If you're passing gas too much, you're uncomfortable, if you're gassy and uncomfortable—that's something to work on.

Anu Simh (0:26:12.203)

Yes, if it's smelly—for example, mean smelliness is if it smells like rotten eggs—then you know that there's something putrefying in the gut. So there's something off. Maybe you're not digesting your protein, or maybe you're eating too much protein.

And it's ending up in your colon because protein needs to be digested in the upper parts of your digestion. If it goes into your colon, your bacteria is again going to be, oh, I'm supposed to be eating fiber. What am I eating instead? It's not that they're going to go hungry. They will digest the protein for you. The big problem is a lot of times, along with digesting the protein, they produce a lot of harmful metabolites.

Toxins—hydrogen sulfide, ammonia, polyamines—that are not good for our bodies. That's why when we speak about diet and you ask me, is there one diet that works for everyone, I would say pick the protein of your choice. We make certain decisions based on ethics or health.

You could pick the protein that you want, but always, always support your microbiome by having plenty of fibrous foods. That's one of the reasons I actually created the system. I feel we all make goals, but then we don't stick to it. If you have a system and you say, okay, every day, I'm going to start with some foundational layers, and foundational layers are your veggies and fruits.

That could be anything—greens and some starchy veggies and some cruciferous vegetables, things like that. Then to this, you add some enhancers. Enhancers could be your good fats coming from nuts and seeds and avocado. Chia and flax are all great omega-3-ALA kinds of producing foods—walnuts, things like that. 

Then we add herbs and spices. Spices are so high in polyphenols. Think about turmeric. Think about cloves. It's one of the highest on the ORAC scale for polyphenols. So they are incredibly helpful to us in repairing the gut lining, having a stronger gut barrier, and then adding some functional foods. Functional foods are things like oat bran, flavonoids, that really act as fuel and food for the microbiome.

Ashley James (0:28:52.079)

So give us some examples of what they would eat. You mentioned some really great foods and why we'd want to eat them, but give us a real-world example of a day in the life of adding these foods in to support gut health.

Anu Simh (0:29:09.815)

Yes. One of the reasons I very much prefer systems over just recipes is this. If you have a formatted way of approaching a meal, you're less apt to forget. If I say, well, you need to eat some blueberries, some days you may remember, some days you may not. My format is very simple.

I have something called a new lunch. It's just a play on my name that my clients came up with. So all we do is just figure out a format. We start with a green base. You can change that every single day because the gut microbiome wants diversity. It doesn't care how much of it you eat, but it wants diverse sources of plant sources. So you can start with a good green base.

To that, you add some cruciferous veggies. Cruciferous veggies are your cabbage, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, things like that. Change that up as often as you want to. One day you're eating something, a vegetable that you get in your local market or Whole Foods. The next week you could go find some veggies in the Chinese market or international market or an Indian market. So there's your diversity coming from different sources.

You add some herbs. The herbs could be parsley. They're so incredible for digestion and really are a fat-burning tool. You could add things like that and cilantro, mint. Change that up a bit. Add some lentils and beans for your fiber and bulking in soluble and insoluble fiber. Then you can add the source of protein that you prefer.

For some people it's a plant protein, for others it could be an animal protein. Then have some good fats in it like an avocado dressing, some nuts and seeds. Mix it all up. It's going to be a huge volumetric lunch that's going to serve you well. It's going to keep you satiated. Because there's so much fiber in it, it's going to send a message to your brain saying, I feel full. That's when we stop looking for other foods or things that are around three o'clock when we have that energy crash, what are we looking for usually? We're looking for protein, evolutionarily speaking. If you have a good lunch with all of these nutrients and enough protein and fiber, then all of that kind of stops. You stop eating a lot of these ultra-processed foods.

Everything starts with having a good breakfast, having some adequate protein in the breakfast, and then having a good lunch.

Ashley James (0:32:04.151)

What I found interesting in reading the book, How Not to Diet by Dr. Michael Greger, is he talks about the whole foods fiber—fiber from real food, not supplement fiber—that it slows down the gastric emptying from the small intestines. So the small intestines are where we're absorbing most of our nutrition.

Then it empties—the ileocecal valve empties out into the colon where we're absorbing most of our water and where most of the healthy bacteria are. What's interesting is that valve will stay shut and not let the food continue if there's sensors lower down that detect nutrients. 

As the body's digesting, it's also slowing down the ability to absorb those nutrients. So it takes its time. The body is taking its time basically absorbing it all. If there's nutrients detected, let's say digested fat—near the ileocecal valve, it will stay shut for a while to give the body more time to absorb.

Which in turn tells the brain, “Hey, I'm not hungry.” So you stay fuller longer. You don't feel ill from it. You just feel satiated four or five hours after that meal, as opposed to if you have waffles with whipped cream and maple syrup—45 minutes later, you're hungry.

If you've ever gone out for Chinese food and you stuffed yourself, then 45 minutes later, you were starving again, you're like, “What just happened?” Well, you probably ate a bunch of fried rice and a breaded shrimp or something like that—which has very little fiber, basically.

When I go out for Asian food, I'm ordering all the vegetable dishes. I'm trying to, because man, the vegetables they make are so delicious. That actually fills you up. The fiber is what satiates if you eat enough of it.

Anu Simh (0:34:30.227)

Yes, I think it's fiber and protein, and especially women in perimenopause and postmenopause, I think they have to really get adequate protein and plenty of fiber. That adequate protein is something that everyone's arguing about right now, and also the source of protein.

I think there's something for all of us. If you're plant-based, there's nothing that says a plant protein is not good enough for you. I will argue about that until I'm blue in the face because there's enough research that shows that you may have to eat a little bit more, but plant protein works fabulously. If someone is more interested in an animal source, that's fine too, as long as you're taking in enough fiber—fibrous foods for your microbiome—so it can do the work it's supposed to do for you.

You said one of the things is producing that GLP in through food and fiber. It has been researched a lot and how it keeps us satiated and sends that signal to the brain: I'm full, I don't need any more. That's coming from that GLP hormone. It's also coming from really shutting down that agri-lion, the “I'm hungry” hormone, and increasing leptin, which is an “I'm full” hormone. So it's coming from the foods that you take in.

I think it was Barbara Rohl who did the study on volumetric eating, and she built all these casserole studies, and I found that so interesting. One thing that she said is, if you have enough fibrous foods and water-rich foods, you're going to feel satiated for a longer time. I use this in my practice, and I see this working every time. People who eat volumetrically—it's something that tells the brain all is good.

One of the biggest mistakes that I think we make today is eating very restrictively. We don't eat enough colors. We don't eat enough different sources. We tend to mono eat. Mono eating is not something your microbiome likes.

Ashley James (0:37:02.633)

We get in our comfort zone. You've got sort of your grocery list of the meals you cycle through, and people get stuck, stuck in their routine. One guest said, how many in the last, let's say month—last 30 days—can you name how many plants you ate? Did you eat 10? Did you eat 20? Different, different variety? Can you even name 30?

Plants that you ate—fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, legumes, beans, and whole grains. Can you name 30? I was sitting there, and I ate a lot of plants, and I'm sitting there going, man, I think I'm just cycling through maybe 15. He's like, yes, try to get diversity, try to get to 30. I love playing this game, especially when my son was younger and introducing him to new foods. We would pick something foreign in the produce section and go to a farmer's market, go to more of a health food store that has a larger selection. If all you have is Walmart in your town, I get it. See if you can find those places where the produce section is huge and there's a lot of things you don't recognize. Once a week, challenge yourself to pick something that you've never cooked before, look up some recipes, and just try a different plant every week.

Anu Simh (0:38:32.369)

And yes, absolutely true. mean, if you, let's say you're eating broccoli today from Whole Foods or Target, next week, just go to Ranch 99 or your Chinese market and pick up Chinese broccoli. And that, those are the little shifts that our microbiome wants. I mean, I was at a conference, a microbiome conference, and I had taken, I brought in a bunch of different veggies and I wanted to see as a game how many of the practitioners could recognize these plants and these? 

It was so interesting, actually. I mean, most of them could not. I had this little game on my phone, and they were guessing, and I said, I'll give you this gift at the end of it. Guess who won? It was the waiter at the conference. He was from Thailand, and he recognized every single veggie in there because I had brought in diversity from a Thai market, from an Indian market, from the Chinese market, from the Middle Eastern market, and none of the practitioners could recognize it.

That tells you that we have kind of outsourced our diet to supplements. We out-supplement everything today. I feel very strongly about that because food needs to be your first supplement. How many supplements are you going to take? So it's much better that you're getting all your fibers from food, all your micronutrients, because your body's not making all these nutrients. You have to get it from your diet.

So if you're eating a diverse diet with lots of different fibers, fermented foods, then you don't have to take as many supplements.

Ashley James (0:40:24.317)

Because your microbiome is making these compounds. Also, the more diversity you get, the more likely you are to accidentally get the vitamins you need and get the minerals you need. I love talking about how our soil is anemic. We've been farming this land over and over for over 100 years, and we stopped remineralizing our soil when electricity was invented. Dr. Joel Wallach, my mentor, talks a lot about this because his background is in farming, and he just sees that the food we eat does not have the minerals it should.

People think, well, I'm getting my iron, I'm eating spinach. I'm like, honey, that spinach is grown hydroponically. It has zero iron in it. People go, well, I'm getting my selenium from Brazil nuts. I'm like, how do you know that soil still has selenium in it?

Plants don't make minerals. Plants digest minerals so that we can absorb them. Animals don't make minerals, and plants don't make minerals. The plant has to be grown in mineral-rich soil. So if you're eating diversity, then you're not only capturing the healthy bacteria from diverse soils, but you're also capturing the nutrients from diverse soils.

Anu Simh (0:41:52.093)

I mean, you have a better chance of getting these nutrients because I 100% agree with what you're saying. Our soil is depleted. I don't think I've ever come across anyone who has not, let's say, magnesium depleted. For example, they are, or that seems to be the biggest thing. They're not getting enough nutrients.

The other thing is not just getting the nutrients—are you able to absorb it? That's your small intestine. How are you digesting it? What kind of enzymes do you have? Do you have good HCL, hydrochloric acid, in your stomach, which is a frontline defense against pathogens? Every aspect of your digestive tract has a special thing that it does for you. We can't really look at one thing when we look at digestion.

You start with the mouth. The mouth is where it has over 800 bacterial species, and keeping your mouth healthy, producing enough saliva, and chewing your food is very important. I tell my clients: chew like your life depends on it. Because when you chew your food, you produce more saliva, you produce more of the secretory IgA that really helps you decrease that food intolerance.

Today we have so many allergies to food, and one of the big reasons is our lifestyle. We are in a rush to eat, we don't chew our food properly, we don't give food time to be digested in the upper parts of the digestive tract as much as we should. So all of that is super important.

Also remember that our microbiome is a training ground for the immune system. 70% of the immune system is in the gut, and the microbes train the immune system, saying: hey, this is a friend, this is a foe, be neutral to this food. When we don't have that training ground, is it any wonder that we have so many autoimmune conditions today? We are reacting to everything because we don't have enough of these players going to bat for us.

So every step of the way I feel like I come back to that: nourish your microbiome. Make sure that you eat enough different varieties of food, and then just watch the magic unfold.

Ashley James (0:44:32.117)

I feel like you dropped a bomb when you linked how we sit at the table—or lack of sitting at the table—and chewing our food, or lack of trigger food. The activities you do around eating, that you link to creating food intolerance. Can you go deeper into that?

Food intolerance is just kind of growing through the roof. I know so many people that they have to restrict their diet so much. I know two people I can think of personally that can eat almost nothing because they're having major reactions, histamine-level reactions to 99% of the foods that are out there, and they don't know what's going on.

I've talked to them about gut stuff, and they're working on it, but what is going on that people are being so reactive these days to food?

Anu Simh (0:45:31.005)

Again, so many different layers to it. One thing is, when you think about it—peanuts, for example—I mean, I don't think our parents really went through peanut allergies as much as we do today. Our children, our grandchildren really struggle with things like peanut allergies, having an EpiPen. Why is that? I think most of it is going back to what you said.

How agriculture has changed. We monocrop a lot. So our immune system is taking a beating; it's not getting diversity again. Gluten has all of a sudden become a huge problem for so many people. When you think about gluten, you think about wheat. Again, there are not that many varieties of wheat. Of course, now we're trying to get all of these ancient wheats in, but most people are struggling with gluten allergies. It's becoming so common. I think all of this starts in the mouth.

If you start chewing your food—and if you're not able to—let's say this is this person that you know who is allergic to most things, that person can start retraining the immune system as if they were a little baby. What do we do to babies when they're done either doing bottle feeding or breastfeeding? They move on to human food. What do we do with that food? We mash it, we put it in a blender, make baby food, food sauces. That's pretty much where we need to start with someone with that many allergies.

We develop oral tolerance by mixing up all of these different plant sources and either cooking it or blending it really well. This is where I think a smoothie comes in very handy because the blender does the work for you. For some reason, your digestive system is not able to do that kind of breaking down of nutrients, but the blender does that for you. That's the first step of adding more nutrients in.

Then with time and adding some enzymes for digestion—let's say you don't have cellulase, the enzyme to digest cellulose in your plant food—then you add certain enzymes or lipase to digest your fat, things like that. You eventually will get there.

In the meantime, paying attention to things like your vagal tone, because your gut-brain axis is very important. Your gut produces 90% of all of the neurotransmitters, and your gut sends more messages to your brain than the other way around. It's all happening through the 10th cranial nerve, your vagus nerve. So having a strong vagal tone is really important.

I wake up in the morning. I built it into my ritual. I brush my teeth. I gargle. I gargle so loud my husband says the neighbors can hear you. I don't care because that is built into my routine. Then I splash cold water on my face. All of this to start my day with a really strong vagal tone. Then I do some humming. Humming really helps the vagal tone.

Having that bi-directional access between your gut and brain really nice and strong is so important because if you're having that connection, then even when you have digestive issues—one of the things that I notice a lot actually is people with digestive issues also have mood issues. They're completely off. They're feeling really down. We don't know from research which one starts first. We don't know if it's the gut that's causing the mood things or the other way around. I suspect the gut has something to do with it because of how many messages it's sending to the brain.

I almost always see that most of my clients with gut issues also have mood issues. One of the first steps to do that is to increase that vagal tone so there's actual connection between the gut and the brain.

Ashley James (0:49:59.141)

I think you should start telling people to gargle so loudly the neighbors can hear you.

Anu Simh (0:50:04.617)

My husband's not too happy about it, but when I believe something very strongly, I stick to it. I do tell my clients to do that.

Ashley James (0:50:18.499)

So you brush your teeth and you scrape your tongue. I know you scrape your tongue.

Anu Simh (0:50:22.305)

I do the whole Ayurvedic regimen in the morning. 

Ashley James (0:50:27.241)

Walk us through it because most listeners don't know about how amazing tongue scraping is. You don't have a clean mouth if you don't scrape your tongue. Even people will say, “Well, I brush my tongue.” No, no, no, it doesn't count. I have a tongue scraper and I love it. I'll link it in the notes. It's less than 10 bucks. Yes, it's super cheap. I scrape my tongue three, four times, and the stuff that comes off your tongue.

You're like, “Ew,” but it's actually biofilm—unhealthy bacteria, and there's some healthy bacteria in there too. We're constantly combating the bacteria. I'll just tell you what my holistic dentist said: you have good and bad bacteria, and there's a war going on in your mouth every single day. The bad bacteria cause the bone in your jaw to be eaten away. So we lose the bone, and that causes the gums to recede, nerves to be exposed, and also a lot of dental issues—cavities and stuff—and inflammation. This all leads to heart disease and can lead to other nasty things. You don't want that.

The thing is, the good bacteria is there too, and good bacteria and bad bacteria are fighting all the time. Every 18 hours, they have rebuilt their city that they live in inside your mouth. There's a completely new biofilm built up on your tongue, in between your teeth, on your gums, in your mouth. It's a whole city they've erected, and they live inside that biofilm to protect themselves.

Mouthwash is not doing you any good. There's a study that's shown (I have an interview about this) kills the healthy bacteria that helps the body make nitric oxide. The study shows that people who use mouthwash have higher rates of heart disease and die earlier from heart attacks.

You don't want to use mouthwash. We don't want to sanitize your mouth. What we want to do is tear down the city. That's why we do it every 12 hours, because by the 18-hour mark, if you only brush your teeth once a day, they've erected their full city and then they've been producing all the bad stuff for several hours.

Anu Simh (0:52:51.135)

Also think about it. I mean, if you don't do all of this and your oral microbiome—is dysbiotic, it's imbalanced, and you have more unhealthy bacteria growing in your mouth, where's it going? You're not spitting it out all the time. Where is the bacteria going? It's going into the digestive tract.

Sometimes when you see at a colon level, if it's gone and if it's bypassed that strong HCl in your stomach and it finds its way into the colon, you have to wonder—how did some of these aerobic bacteria just end up in your gut? That could be a good clue that there's no balance in the mouth. I mean, it shouldn't. We have so many systems in place to prevent that.

So one of the best things to do is to really grow some bacteria that are really healthy for you. For example, Lactobacillus reuteri is fantastic for your gums and your teeth, for really good mouth health. So chewing on a probiotic—an oral probiotic—is something that I do every single day and at night.

Do it as an experiment. Don't just take my word for it. Buy a probiotic that has Lactobacillus reuteri. You can buy it on Amazon or you can go through your practitioner, and then chew it at night and just say, “Honey, do I smell good?” Your breath is going to smell so much better in the morning because that bad breath is from the pathogenic bacteria.

Ashley James (0:54:27.677)

So I actually interviewed Dr. William Davis twice about Lactobacillus reuteri, and he challenged us to make a yogurt. So because I can't do dairy, I played around and figured out how to make Lactobacillus reuteri yogurt out of cashews. You can also do coconut. It just doesn't taste as good, but cashew tastes like heaven. It's amazing.

So I put it up on my website. You can go to LearnTrueHealth.com and type in yogurt, and you're going to find the Lactobacillus recipe. It is fascinating. It helps deepen sleep. It improves mood. People are lifted out of depression.

When I interviewed him, I was in grief after we lost our daughter. I was in depression, but it was—I'd say—healthy depression because that's normal. You're supposed to grieve. I was very depressed and I was also having PTSD. I was just stuck in a really unhealthy place, and I was looking to get out of it. I was looking for what I could do and all the things I could do to healthfully grieve. It was divine timing to interview him.

He told us about this, and I immediately went out and made it. My first iteration was with soy milk because that was the only thing I had that I could try. It's a 36-hour ferment. You can imagine soy milk. Yes, the temperature was precise. I did everything by the book. It turned out the way it's supposed to. It just doesn't taste good.

Anyways, I drank it for three days, and I told my friend, I've never been on antidepressants, but I said it felt as if I was on antidepressants. I imagine how they'd be if they worked. I felt elated. I felt happy for the first time in months. It lifted me within three days. It lifted me out of this really dark place.

I'm thinking, that's just one strain. It's phenomenal. So I love that. I love that advice that you gave to chew that Lactobacillus reuteri. I'm going to link the one from Amazon that I use in the show notes, because it is a chewable tablet that we actually use to make the yogurt.

Anu Simh (0:56:48.553)

You could even make cashew cheese with it. I mean, I use Lactobacillus reuteri in different kinds of things. I don't do dairy, so I've tried different things—coconut, and even for my clients with little kids, I try not to do sugar. So we add fruit, or we'll do a mango yogurt or a strawberry yogurt or something like that. And the kids love it.

They see, especially with things like ADHD, the first step is, “Let's give them medication.” Try these natural ways first. I mean, food can be a poison, but food can also heal. So we have to take our pick. We have to be ready. That is a responsibility we have.

So if we look at food like, “This is medicine for me,” I'm going to treat it as medicine, and I'm going to nourish my microbiome because I have a responsibility for the next generation. It's an heirloom that I pass on to my children.

I think the dynamic shifts somehow, and you connect with them—you connect with these symbiotic partners.

I have a ritual at night and I have a ritual in the morning. My nighttime ritual is I usually go into the kitchen after supper and say, “Okay guys, what would you like to eat tomorrow?” And I have a conversation with them. I soak my beans or soak my lentils, figure out which greens I'm going to use, and really plan the day the night before.

I've even trained my husband to do that for me when I get busy. So we always, always have these different components of the salad that I mentioned or the lunch that I mentioned.

When you're prepared for it, the next day doesn't become hazy and you just eat anything. You have a plan and you stick to the plan.

I think Ashley when we do that day in and day out, and we just say, “Okay, I'm just going to change these greens up, but the formatting remains the same,” there's something about it—it just works. You just end up seeing differences.

Within a month, you'll start feeling like a different person. Within three months, it's, “Wow, I don't have any of those problems.”

It can happen if we are committed to it. And that happens if you have a system in place.

Ashley James (0:59:21.165)

I love it. Let's get back to your morning routine. I want to hear more about exactly what you do because part of it is disrupting that biofilm that is housing the bad bacteria so that we can help the good bacteria in the mouth to come back into balance. I love that you gargle so loud the neighbors can hear to stimulate your vagal tone, which is that connection between the brain and the gut, that you're splashing the cold water in your face and you're humming.

Those are all very mood-uplifting things as well as supporting getting out of that stress response, which turns on that part of our nervous system that goes into healing mode, that goes into rebuilding mode, that gives us vitality, but also helps us with mental focus. So there's so many things that you're getting from these simple, free, daily, just super easy, husband-annoying habits that you can do in the morning. So walk us through your entire morning routine that supports your emotional mental health and also your gut health.

Anu Simh (1:00:32.733)

I'll tell you, I mean, this works for me. This may not work for someone else. I protect my mornings fiercely. I don't let anything come between me and my mornings. That means I wake up, I have time to go get my vitamin D. I'm outside getting some sun. That's very important for my nighttime sleep. So I built it into my day. I do all of these other things that we could talk about. I don't open up my day for other people to enter it until about 9:30, 10.

That is the gift I give myself every morning. It may work for some people. Some people start work very early and some may not. You may be more of a person who needs to do that at night, but at some point in the day or night, I think giving yourself that gift of a routine or a time, I think that's true self-care.

Because everything else that we do—painting our nails or getting our hair done—is full care. That’s fine too. I'm not saying anything that shouldn't. I feel self-care is really saying, I matter. My health is really important. Let me spend some time with me, for me. Let me put myself front and forward. Our culture really doesn't allow that as much because as women especially, we're always giving so much.

So that is something that I've built into my days. I start my day waking up and I meditate for about 20 to 25 minutes. It's only the weekend that I meditate longer. Then I do some breath work. Then the whole routine in the bathroom.

I also massage my gums and my cheeks because the day gets stressful and we speak and we use our whole mouth area so much. So really massage it well. So it feels really nice. I've learned this way of doing it so it feels nice and loose and it feels it can handle the stress. I don't know how to explain that, but I love it.

Then I brush my teeth and sometimes I use a regular toothbrush, a charcoal-based toothbrush, and sometimes I use my Sonicare. Then I scrape my tongue really, really well. Then I use a neem powder sometimes. Neem is an antibacterial. So depending on—let's say the night before I've eaten something that I shouldn't have—I'm very cognizant of that.

Then of course the lactobacillus reuteri. Sometimes I pop one in the morning as well.

Then I work out. I do yoga, do strength training, and then I have a cup of tea. I try to build in some amla, which is one of the best antioxidants.

All of this may seem, oh my gosh, she must have a really luxurious life that allows her to do everything. No, I work really hard. But once you build it and you say this is going to become procedural one day—just like brushing my teeth—that's how you build habits.

You may not start with 10 habits to start your day. You may start with one. Just attach it to the habit that's already in place. Almost every listener is going to say, brushed my teeth in the morning. What is the one thing that you can do along with brushing your teeth that's going to become procedural in a few months?

That's how you build habits. For me, it was gargling. I thought this is a non-negotiable. I need to gargle. So I built that into an already present habit of brushing my teeth. Then slowly when that became procedural, I added another one. I think that's a smart way of doing it because then in three months you have quite a nice habit going. You have a routine that's in place.

Ashley James (1:04:52.069)

I love it. I love it.

The amla powder is so good for the blood sugar and anyone who has blood sugar dysregulation. It's so good too.

Anu Simh (1:05:05.632)

It's fantastic. Have you tried the Amla Green on Amazon?

Ashley James (1:05:07.768)

Yes, I've actually interviewed the creators of that, the Mastering Diabetes guys, and they're wonderful. Yes, I have tried it.

Anu Simh (01:04:15.623)

Yes, that and Banyan Botanicals has a good one.

Banyan Botanicals is probably the one Ayurvedic brand that I feel very comfortable suggesting, yes, because of all the testing that they do.

Ashley James (1:05:32.910)

So what happened in your life when you added these routines? What shifted? Give us a before and after. Were you feeling more chaotic and kind of the day would sweep you up and you'd feel the stress of the day versus now you don't?

How is that? Has this built resilience for you? Do you really feel a difference?

Anu Simh (1:05:54.386)

Yes, I definitely feel like I matter.

I think that is the most important thing. You matter, and work will come and get you in different ways. I have back-to-back clients or have back-to-back podcasts. I build a buffer in between. That’s when I do exercise snacks or breathing snacks—things like that.

Ashley James (1:06:20.553)

Breathing snacks and exercise snacks. I love it. There’s hydration snacks—little, little breaks.

I love they call it snacks because I’ve got a 10-year-old. So it’s all about snacks. If kids can eat snacks all day long, that’s what they want. They don’t want meals. They want snacks. So snacks are fun.

If you think about it, this is your little fun break. 

Anu Simh (1:06:43.072)

Yes, it's doable.

I said before this podcast, I had a client, then, I built in 15 minutes for me. So in those 15 minutes, I went out, picked up some weights, and did some farmer's walks.

Because I was going to be sitting today since it was going to be a long day. So I wanted to walk and just get my blood flowing. Then after this podcast, I have 15 minutes before I talk to my publishers. So I'm going to spend 15 minutes on breath and meditation.

That's how I am able to do everything. It's not like I spend one hour breathing or one hour meditating. Just take small little breaks and build it in so it becomes a habit.

Ashley James (1:07:31.468)

Someone else's version of meditation could be sitting with scripture or reading scripture and sitting with it, or sitting in prayer. It is a time to quiet and focus on building your spiritual muscles, your connection. We just don't do that.

I remember Clint Ober, I think, said—I interviewed him years ago—”When was the last time you were barefoot outside? Think, when was the last time you touched the earth or touched the ground?” Sometimes people who live in, for example, New York City, it might've been years. Having the body be outside with actual sunlight on its skin and having your body actually touch the earth—it's how we release excess electrons. It's how we get back to earth's potential.

Think about when was the last time you sat quietly for five minutes? When was the last time? So many moms will say, “Never. No, I've got kids crawling all over me.”

I have one client—it was life-changing. All I had her do was go to bed when her kids went to bed. At seven. Go to bed when your kids go to bed. Then you're going to wake up at four in the morning, fully well-rested, and you're going to have a few hours to yourself where you're going to be productive and you can do all of your self-care.

At night, if we stay up because we get the kids to bed and now it's our time, we end up doing unhealthy things that feel like self-care at the moment. It's really—come on. You're just doom-scrolling. You're just Netflixing. You're just maybe eating unhealthfully because really, after dinner is when we start craving unhealthy things because we're dopamine-seeking. These are dopamine-seeking behaviors. They're not building you up. They're tearing you down.

In the morning, you're fully rested, and now you can do all these wonderful routines that build you up and then give you resilience through the day. So then you don't feel like yelling at your kids. It really takes just a little bit of discipline. Just a little bit of choosing you.

Anu Simh (1:09:44.944)

Yes. I think really respecting that circadian rhythm is important. I mean, we have a circadian rhythm.

I was on a podcast where the mom asked me, “But I barely get to sleep. I sleep when my baby sleeps.” I said, that’s just a short time in your life. Enjoy it. There will be a time when you can actually follow the circadian rhythm. For now, this is where life is. Life is handing you this, but that’s going to change too.

The big thing is, when you talk about the microbiome—microbiome has its own circadian rhythm. So what you said earlier about not eating late into the night, all of those are routine habits that anyone can do. Just say, let me stop eating at a certain time. That is a habit I built into my day.

So I’m going to stop eating by 6:30 or 7 p.m. and just follow that for a week and see how I feel. I mean, that’s an easy thing to try.

They’ve done testing. There’s been a lot of studies done on shift workers—people who have erratic times—and seen what a difference that makes. Their blood sugar is all over the place. Their microbial profile is different.

So definitely that circadian rhythm piece is very important. Waking up with the sun and getting that morning vitamin D is also very crucial.

Ashley James (1:11:16.820)

You've told us about your morning routine. What is your evening routine and why do you do it?

Anu Simh (1:11:24.356)

My evening routine is I try to finish up work by seven, although the past few weeks have been just a whirlwind of things to do for the book. Generally speaking, I try to be done early so I can go out, get some sun. I heard someone say this the other day, saying, we probably all have about 80 summers to live. I love the way that person said it, because I thought if you start thinking about it—I have about 80 summers, maybe, to live—you start taking your summers very seriously.

For me, it's summer in San Diego, and there's a part of my brain that says, work on, get this done. Then I miss out on this beautiful place that I live—so close to the ocean—enjoying the beach, enjoying the waves, enjoying the ocean, the waves, all of that. So always reminding ourselves to be present to that moment is just, I think, a lifelong thing which we do.

At night, that's what I remind myself. I go out, sit in the garden. I love my green. I spend a lot of time in my garden—my vegetables, my fruit trees. I have some downtime and playtime to be outside, catching the sunset, things like that. So that's also me time.

I do eat at very specific hours. I try to finish before 6 p.m. I don't snack a lot. That's another habit that I built into my system. I just eat volumetrically. That works for me. If anyone has got issues, that's a good one to try. That way your migratory motor complex is nice, and it's brushing out all the debris, helping you clean out. You have some break in between eating.

I always tell my clients that one thing that they can try is really having a good break between eating because, like you said, that's one of the things that can be very inflammatory. When we eat, there's so much digestion going on behind the scenes when we digest our food.

Ashley James (1:13:46.305)

I love it. Is there anything else you do in the evenings to support your overall health?

Anu Simh (1:13:53.641)

I do my spiritual reading at night. It puts me in a good place before I go to bed.

I practice non-duality, so I read something or I listen to something that really helps me kind of relax in my body.

Ashley James (1:14:09.917)

Very beautiful. I loved your suggestion about after dinner, so you're not hungry, walking into the kitchen and going, okay, guys, okay, microbiome, what do you want me to feed you tomorrow? Then taking the time to prep. Prep your food. I mean, if you have a busy day tomorrow, you could prep your fruits and vegetables. You could chop it up and put it back in containers or mason jars to keep it fresh. So it's easy just to grab things that are already cut up.

I love your idea of soaking. You can even soak certain whole grains as well. You can soak brown rice. I love soaking lentils and beans. If you cook them in the instant pot, there's no extra gas. There's zero extra gas.

Anu Simh (1:15:08.469)

Well, if gas is a problem then I would say this is something I discovered on one of my trips to Central America. Epazote is an herb that I use to decrease flatulence, and I may use four or five leaves along with my black bean soup or my pinto bean soup, and it's amazing how it really cuts down on gas.

Ashley James (1:15:34.141)

I've heard of it. I've never needed to use it, but I'm glad you brought it up.

Isn't it cool that in nature we can find these solutions? I'd love to know the mechanism of action as to why that works, but it's so interesting that it does.

Anu Simh (1:15:51.677)

Yes, and I want to believe that it's all the polyphenolic compounds. If you're taking something, like an Entrol, to cut down on flatulence, it's a polyphenolic compound. For example, going to an Indian restaurant, they usually give you fennel after a meal, and that's because fennel produces that nitric oxide. So you chew and that L-Arginine is produced. So fennel has that effect.

Herbs and spices are incredible. I mean, I do an entire chapter on just that because I think they have such important compounds in them that we can really benefit from. Dill, for example, is great for lactating mothers.

I think in this country a lot of us use herbs as just a garnish. So if we can start using it as a green and start eating more of it, you'll see the power that it has.

Ashley James (1:16:56.487)

I love it. I love adding herbs to my salads. I make this multi-herb salad where I take fresh basil, cilantro, parsley, and dill — a good half cup of each, chopped up finely — a good half cup to a cup, and then throw in some arugula and leafy greens. You can finely chop asparagus and then squeeze orange over it. Then I chop up some dates — I mean it's hard to finely chop it, but as small as you can — and throw that in and mix it together. It is so refreshing.

You could throw in tomatoes if you wanted. You could throw in other vegetables like cucumber. It’s sweet, and it has so many layers of flavor. It's really fun, especially for those who are like, “Salad, it just sounds so boring.”

I don't do any oil or store-bought salad dressings, which are very inflammatory. I hate it when people go, “Yes, I'm eating healthier now, I'm eating salad,” and then you see they're eating the Trader Joe's salad with canola oil all over it. I'm like, no, it's not actually healthy for you anymore. Just some romaine and chicken and croutons and cheese — this is not a salad.

A salad should have so many varieties and flavors. After eating this a few times, you should start craving it because it gives you so much energy and vitality. That’s a healing salad.

Anu Simh (1:18:41.581)

You hit it on the nail. I mean, I think this is what I hear my clients say: “Gosh, I knew I crave my salad.” Usually, when I have them try in maintenance, I have them try—I say, let's figure out what it is that you crave? What do you want to eat? What were foods from your past life that you want to bring back into this journey?

They are not able to because your palate is cleansed completely. Just out of habit or to make your partner happy, they go out and eat something that they used to in their previous life. They come back and what I hear is, “I didn't enjoy it. It was too sweet. It was too oily.”

So that's the thing about habits and just sticking to it long enough that you can change your palate. The palate takes some time for it to happen.

Ashley James (1:19:36.917)

Exactly.

Yes, you've got to be willing to stick through it for a few months, and then your palate changes, and you literally will salivate with excitement over kale. Whereas now you might be salivating over the thought of KFC or Taco Bell or McDonald's or, whatever—Frappuccino or some food that you're feeling a little bit addicted to now. Give it a few months on a whole foods, nourishing way of eating.

Your gut microbiome, as it heals, sends signals to your brain to eat healthier and crave those healthier foods. I used to love Cracker Barrel. There wasn't one near me, but we lived in Vegas, and we would drive all the way up to Utah—it was fun to go to Cracker Barrel. I thought the most delicious food in the world was their deep-fried okra. I just loved it so much. It was like crack cocaine to me. It was so good. This was many years ago. This was 18 years ago.

I was going to Montana recently. We went and saw Yellowstone for the first time. It was amazing. We passed by a Cracker Barrel, so we stopped in, and I ordered a side. We used the bathroom, and I ordered a side to go. I was like, wow, this is going to be like old times. I can't wait. It used to be so good.

It was disgusting. It was an end.

It was the same. They didn't change the recipe. It was just oily. It totally fell flat. It didn't bring me any pleasure. I was like, wow, my palate has changed so much. I want to eat healthy. My body wants to eat healthy. When I go back to eating the old way, I don't even like it. It doesn't bring pleasure.

I'm so grateful for that because it takes time. When you put the time in.

Anu Simh (1:21:27.083)

Yes and it takes time, actually. The thing is, that's why I feel very strongly about people who chase single nutrients. If someone is starting this journey and they're listening to people saying, you shouldn't eat, you shouldn't incorporate seed oils, or you should do more tallow, or you shouldn't eat this or that—it really confuses the heck out of people.

Food rules are the best when you start out. Then, as you empower yourself with more knowledge about your own body and figure out what it is that your body is asking for, the answers to these questions come more readily. When you're starting out, your body doesn't know.

I fight this with many, many practitioners who believe in intuitive eating. Your intuition is completely off. How are you going to intuitively know what to eat when you've been eating poorly for so long? It's better to build intuition first by eating the right kinds of food and then slowly tapping into that inner wisdom that is now adapted to a pretty healthy way of eating. Then you can say, okay, now I can trust my intuition.

I have gone on many podcasts, and we've had many conversations about oil—seed oils, canola oil. I feel we're going after the wrong things. Look at it from the big picture. What is helping us?

If someone were listening today and said, how do I create a healthy meal? You look at your plate and say, do I have adequate protein? That can be a plant or animal—it's up to you. Do I have several different colors? You don't even have to know the names of all of these different fibers. Just go by a paint-by-numbers sort of thing.

Do I have purple? Do I have red? Do I have green? How about all of these greens? Do I have good fats? That's plenty to begin with. As you progress, then you can start saying, hmm, maybe I don't want to have too much oil in my diet because my LDL is high. Maybe I don't want saturated fat because my ApoB is high or my Lp(a), which is a genetic marker for cardiovascular disease, is high. So I don't want to do that.

If we start with too many rules, then the layperson gets confused and says, I don't know. I think everyone's saying something different. I don't even want to follow it. I've seen this happen so often, and it bothers me. It bothers me to the core that we can't simplify this for people.

Ashley James (1:24:15.489)

There's so much distraction. Every week we're seeing all the listeners within the next week, they're going to hear or see something on Facebook or Instagram or whatever, or a friend is going to say it, or they're going to get an email, or they're going to see a podcast or a TV show about a totally opposite thing you just said.

Carnivores are the way to heal, and all plants are actually bad for you, and they're all poison, and we should all just eat meat all the time and organs.

The next week they're going to get it in some influencer talking about how raw vegan is the only way to go. If you're eating any meat at all, you're killing yourself.

We're given completely opposite information on a weekly basis. So we're zigzagging. Then we kind of, like you said, get exhausted and just go back to our comfort foods.

Anu Simh (1:25:01.825)

Yes, it's very confusing.

I think every person who is listening should first of all ask themselves, what kind of cultural affinity do I have to food? Within those parameters, what are some foods that I would consider healthy? It starts with a simple question. Within that, can I think of a life without animal protein? If the answer is no, then you have your answer.

You pick the protein that's healthy, and with animal protein you can look for lean chicken or lean turkey or fish. There's so many different ways to do this. If you are plant-based, then you could still get the protein.

Find things that work for you and for your cultural affinity to a certain cuisine. That's important too, because we're talking about sustainability of food choices. That doesn't happen.

I had a client who said, well, everyone keeps saying Mediterranean food is the best way to eat, but I'm Indian. I love my roti and dal. What am I supposed to do? It really hit me. I said, this is a problem. We are a melting pot.

We have different cultures here, and you tell a Chinese person or an Indian person, eat only these foods from this culture, they're going to laugh at you. They may do it for a week or two, but it's not going to be sustainable. Every culture has something amazing and exciting to offer. You just become that detective to go seek the foods that are good for your body, I think.

Ashley James (1:26:50.961)

And like you said, start small, get color on your plate, give variety.

Anu Simh (01:25:55.642)

Sorry, but do you agree? Do you feel like that's where we are?

Ashley James (1:26:59.043)

I think that people are getting inundated with too many directions, and it's confusing. You hear olive oil is really good for you. All oil is bad for you. Tallow is really good for you. Tallow is really bad for you. Just on and on and on. Then we're inundated with supplements and superfoods.

I think that our picker's off—our intuition, our eating intuition is off—because we're dopamine seeking. We're used to eating hyper-palatable foods.

Coming back to: what does my body need to be in optimal health? Not just physical optimal health, but also emotional, mental optimal health. Just coming back to, like you said, you can eat a healthy way in any culture. Shift the herbs, shift the vegetables. Now you've got a different culture.

So play around with it, but you've got to make it so it's sustainable. You have to do that.

I've figured out ways to make cooking. I make 15-minute meals for my family, and they're healthy, but I've got a system. That's something that I played with and worked on.

Anu Simh (1:28:18.751)

Yes. So I think we agree on that. Systems are important. Working with that system until it becomes a habit is important, and keeping your food rules very simple is important when you start. If not, if you listen to every influencer out there and everyone's singing a different song, it's going to confuse the heck out of you.

Food is so personal. Food is such a personal thing that you don't know if it's coming from an evidence-based perspective or if it's coming from their own likes or dislikes.

That's one of the reasons I never share with my clients what my personal belief in food is. Because what does it matter? How is this going to help a client? Their bodies are very different from mine. I come from a different genetic pattern. I struggled with insulin resistance because my entire family is insulin resistant.

So will that help someone who is completely okay and who's insulin sensitive? No. They may need a completely different diet. So it really doesn't matter what I eat or what kind of supplements I take because that's not going to help the next person.

They are so unique. Their bodies are unique. It's very bio-individual. So we just need to kind of speak to that person and what their needs are.

Ashley James (1:29:58.331)

I agree with you on so many levels that we are individuals, and there are certain universal truths about what helps the gut. There's something for everyone. What can help feed the gut can help build it back.

For those who are really struggling, that have a very bad dysbiosis, what are the first steps that they can take? People who are very intolerant to sudden changes—adding even half a cup of beans would be a problem because they have so much dysbiosis. They've got GERD, or they have fungal overgrowth or small intestinal bacterial overgrowth.

They feel kind of stuck because it's like, what do they do? Just get on drugs? How do they build themselves back from that?

Anu Simh (1:30:55.813)

So that's a great question, and I work with a lot of clients with SIBO, and most of them are on very restrictive diets. They're on low FODMAP diets, they're not able to digest a lot of things. That's very common. So you start very simple with what they can digest. A lot of them are able to do white rice, pasta, things like that. So just making the pasta a little bit healthier by adding some veggies that they can cook.

They are not able to handle salads because that requires an incredible digestive power to be able to do raw salads. Starting with some cooked food or a smoothie that's completely mashed up is a good starting point. Including adding some enzymes to digest that food until your body is able to make its own enzymes is a good starting point.

Cutting out all the other junk—just crappy processed foods and things like that. When you're not able to eat and when you feel, gosh, I don't know how food is going to affect me, it's just a very stressful thing. Starting small and starting with one thing at a time and really testing it out in different scenarios may be better than adding a whole bunch of different foods.

I have taken my clients from low FODMAP to medium to high FODMAP, and it takes discipline, it takes time, but it can be done. There’s a time when you can actually enjoy this bounty that Mother Earth gives us, but it doesn't happen overnight. With the help of some enzymes and with your habits—chewing your food and being mindful and really understanding there's a gut-brain aspect in this and respecting that and slowing down—I think digestion becomes easier because you are resting and digesting rather than being in fight or flight all the time.

So it cannot be a one-pronged approach to digestion. You need to look at all of the different things. Are you hydrating well? Are you sleeping well? Are you exercising? Because that can affect your gut motility. It can affect the amount of gut diversity that you have. Do you have some biohacks for stress? Do you know how to handle the stress that comes into your life? We all have different ways that we handle stress.

Do you have a community that supports you when you take on a new way of eating? If you and your partner are eating very differently, I promise you it's not going to last. It just becomes very challenging. Having that support system is really important. Are you invested in your own self-care?

These are questions that everyone should ask of themselves. That kind of sets a system to base your life and make it sustainable.

Ashley James (1:34:03.685)

I love it. If you could redesign the way children are taught about food and the body from day one, what are some gut-healing lessons and gut-health-sustaining lessons that you would build into their curriculum or something that parents would benefit to teach their children?

Anu Simh (1:34:23.491)

Gosh, Ashley, this is something I'm so passionate about because I'm going to be a grandmother soon. I think it was about maybe one year ago or two years ago I saw this commercial, and you may remember this. It was this guy who's convincing his son. He wants to take off with his wife to Las Vegas, and he doesn't want the son to come along as a little boy. He's convincing the boy not to come along, and he's doing this by saying, no kid, you don't want to come with us. The place that we're going to, everything is made out of veggies. There's broccoli ice cream, broccoli this, broccoli that, and he just creates a scenario of a really distasteful kind of experience based on veggies. 

The kid kind of wrinkles his nose and says, I don't want to take part in it. It was supposed to be a funny commercial, but I really took offense to that because what are we telling everyone who's listening? That it's okay for you to make fun of a food group that is so important for our children. Because everything starts with how we treat, how we help our children learn about foods.

If we say, eat your broccoli, I will give you something sweet to eat, we're teaching them something. We're teaching them broccoli by itself is not the reward. A commercial that tells us that veggies are a punishment.

So we need to change that first by making kids excited about cooking, getting them into the kitchen, showing them the wonders—the things that we can do with vegetables and fruits and things like that. I think that's a starting point. It's a parental thing. We have a responsibility to raise them to understand that this is important. Food is medicine.

Once we get them excited about it, kids are sharp. They'll pick up. So when I hear a parent saying, my son doesn't eat these vegetables, or my son doesn't like all of this, or my daughter doesn't like it, I just look at how the parents are eating. Then you have an answer. So it really comes from us.

I remember when my daughter went to college. She called me and she said, Mom, thank you so much for teaching me how to eat. Because she was looking around, and she was seeing how people—other kids—were gaining weight. They were throwing up every day, just binging on alcohol and things like that. She kind of sailed through her college days because she had a system in place.

That's, I think, a parental responsibility. They may not love you for it when the neighbors are eating Twinkies. That's not going to fly well for the children saying, but why can't I eat that? I know because my kids used to ask me that. I would go deep into the science and explain it to them in kid language, talk about the responsibility towards these partners that they have within them.

Children are so smart, and they are so caring. Once you explain to them that there are creatures living within us who really are looking to us for food, it's incredible how they respond to it.

Ashley James (1:38:05.167)

Absolutely. I've always had a rule in the house that my son has to eat at least one vegetable a day, if not more. He gets to choose if it's raw or if it's cooked. He actually prefers raw, so I will serve him up a bowl full of something and he will munch on it. Because again, snacks.

We've had these discussions about choosing processed food versus choosing whole foods. I like to do positive reinforcement with broccoli, for example. So anytime I see a kid who's grown, I'm like, oh, you must have been eating your broccoli. Or, if you want to be taller than your sister or taller than your brother, you need to eat more broccoli.

There'll be one kid who's taller and he'll be smiling ear to ear and he's like, I love broccoli. I eat it all the time. Then the shorter siblings are like, I don't eat vegetables. I'm like, see, well, your sibling is taller than you for a reason. You need to eat more broccoli.

So we have these fun conversations. Broccoli, for example, is one of the most powerful anti-cancer vegetables that you can eat. It has compounds in it that help prevent cancer. If you have cancer, there are studies that show that it results in an increase of survivability.

There was one study that showed that, I think it was lung cancer.

Anu Simh (1:39:29.073)

Yes, breast cancer especially. That's hormonal, broccoli is fantastic because especially broccoli sprouts, have something called sulforaphane.

And all the cruciferous veggies have it. They have a compound called glucoraphanin. And when you mix something  radish with it, it has an enzyme called myrosinase. You can even simulate that by chewing the cabbage or the broccoli and the myrosinase is released. And the two combined, you can actually make the compound sulforaphane, which is an anti-cancer compound. And it's amazing, Ashley, my grandmother for some reason she probably knew this because she always made  a steamed cabbage dish with mustard on it and mustard has that myrosinase and obviously she didn't know that but she knew that somehow the two was a very healthy mix.

Ashley James (1:40:24.949)

That sounds delicious. There was one study with lung cancer, but I'm sure there are others. I just recently read this—that those who ate a serving a day of broccoli were 50% more likely to be living a year later. That is huge.

If you're fighting cancer and you want to live longer, you need to be eating your vegetables, and there's a good reason for it—raw and cooked.

Maybe could you talk about the difference between raw and cooked in terms of feeding the gut microbiome and our overall health? Why is it important to get a percentage of raw and a percentage of cooked food?

Anu Simh (1:41:08.367)

Again, it depends on who's doing the eating. I mean, if someone has SIBO or is very dysbiotic in the gut, starting with steamed vegetables is a better mix for them. I mean, raw vegetables take up a lot of activity and enzymes and things like that, and if they're missing and lacking it or they don't have the bacteria, then it's going to be a little bit more challenging. Cooking sometimes just kills a lot of the good micronutrients in the food.

So I would say doing a mix of both is a good way to do it. There are people who swear by raw vegan or do rotations of, okay, I do one week of raw and then one week of cooked.

It really is—I just don't have an answer for you for that because it is so individual. I personally, in the summer, tend to be more raw because there's such an abundance of things, and I do it in a very experimental fashion. I say, okay, what's in my farmer's market? What's in my neighborhood market? Let me just bring all of that and let's eat seasonally. I do believe eating seasonally does make a difference for the microbiome because we have many studies from the Hadza tribe, and we've seen that the dry and the wet season changes the microbial profile. I suspect that happens for us as well.

In the summertime, we have so many wonderful fruits and things like that, and that's when you need to eat it—not mango in dead winter. That doesn't help. So I do believe that, and eating a mix of all of this—that's why starting with a green base, a salad, adding some.

If you are not able to do sulfur compounds from cruciferous veggies, you get gassy, then steam it. It's not a big deal. Add some mustard to it so you're digesting it better. Add some fennel seeds so you can digest the cruciferous veggies better. All of these compounds help each other thrive. So yes, it's a good way to do it.

Ashley James (1:43:32.043)

You could add ginger and cumin. These things also help with digestion. So good.

Anu Simh (1:43:36.849)

Ginger is a great carminative. It's great for flatulence.

You can do turmeric, especially turmeric that stays in the gut. That's really important for as an antibacterial.

Ashley James (1:43:52.861)

Okay, tell us a bit more about turmeric. I bet you know more about turmeric than that.

Anu Simh (1:43:56.467)

Yes, I mean, well, I grew up. I remember when I was a kid, every time I'd fall, my mom would make a paste of turmeric. I don't know what else she'd add to it. That was what she would put for me to heal, and I would heal right away—on my skin.

That's a very Indian thing because we grew up with a lot of turmeric. If you really look at research, Indians are not as prone to amyloid plaques and Alzheimer's. A big part that they attributed to is our consumption of turmeric.

The curcumin compounds in turmeric really, really help. So I put it in everything. I put it in my curries, I put it in just about everything. I also take curcumin as a supplement. For me, that really helps just taking it as a supplement because I believe that it really keeps inflammation down.

Ashley James (1:44:55.403)

I've heard it's really good to have a 16 to 1 ratio with pepper—so 16 parts turmeric to 1 part pepper. Just sprinkle a little bit of black pepper in there for the piperine that activates it.

Anu Simh (1:45:08.338)

Yes, very little. You just need that peppery to activate it. 

Most of our foods—the curries—have a little bit of black pepper, or you do a spice compound. You add a little bit of pepper to turmeric. I actually blend all of my spices together. Since I don't have the time to do this every day, I might just take fennel. I might take fenugreek, which is fantastic for blood sugar management. I might add a little bit of turmeric, black pepper, and cumin, and sometimes coriander.

Blend it all together and drop it into my salad or something. It smells amazing, and I know it's got all these healthy compounds that really help.

You did ask me about my routine. One thing that I forgot to say is I do tend to chew on a clove every day.

It's so high in antioxidants. It's the highest on the ORAC scale to measure antioxidants, and your breath feels really fresh. You just chew on one thing, and it releases all of these compounds that are very high in antioxidants.

If you're a sweet person, I would say mix up cinnamon, saffron, cardamom, nutmeg.

Fantastic at night because saffron keeps you very calm. Nutmeg does too, and it's perfect to add into your—make a little golden milk with saffron at night—and lulls you into this blissful sleep.

Ashley James (1:46:50.665)

Yes, I add ashwagandha to that and turmeric. I do a little bit of coconut milk.

Anu Simh (1:46:57.741)

Yes. Now Ashwagandha is different for different people, and Ashwagandha is the strength of the horse in Sanskrit. If you are a guy, it's supposed to really help you with your strength, but it helps women very differently. So it depends on who's taking it.

It's not across the board great for everyone, and you have to be very careful about where you buy your Ashwagandha because there's a lot of heavy metal exposure to Ayurvedic spices and herbs.

That's the reason I mentioned I have no affinity to Banyan Botanical, but it seems to be the one company that seems to really take it seriously. There may be others around, but this is the one that I've put some research into because I love my Ayurvedic herbs.

Ashley James (1:47:51.144)

Can you spell that for us? The botanical company?

Anu Simh (1:47:57.280)

Banyan Botanical? A Banyan tree?

B-A-N-Y-A-N, Banyan Botanical.

Ashley James (1:48:09.098)

Okay. That's interesting. Yes, the name sounds familiar, but I just wanted to make sure that everyone caught that.

Anu Simh (1:48:14.142)

Yes, it's the one I think even Basant Lad, all the people who are in the RP, they know how they all kind of recommended, I think.

I looked into it and I felt, gosh, these people are doing a lot of third-party testing to check for heavy metals. Heavy metals is a huge problem today with a lot of things. If you buy turmeric, for example, they need to be testing that turmeric. That was interesting for me.

I was buying this very fancy organic turmeric thinking I'm spending a lot of money on this, it's probably good. But then I came across a research where they were actually testing McCormick and it didn't have any heavy metals. So I switched and I said, okay, I'm just paying three bucks for this. So much better.

Sometimes it's not the money, it's the intent in the company. For example, canned foods—Eden is one that I really love, and Jovial. They really have taken the time to think about BPS, BPA, put the dollars into that rather than just the marketing.

So I love that. I support brands that are really cognizant about all of these things—microplastics and the junk behind the foods that we eat today.

Ashley James (1:49:42.548)

I love it. If the microbiome had a voice, what do you think it would be telling us today?

Anu Simh (1:49:51.554)

It would first say, please do not go to Home Depot to buy food for me.

Eat some fiber.

I think if I were to just sum up my book in one word, I would say fiber.

Ashley James (1:50:09.630)

Plants? Because the second someone says fiber, I always think of a canister of some supplement, some fiber supplement.

Anu Simh (1:50:18.166)

No, no, no. What I mean is, first of all, no animal protein has fiber. No animal foods have fiber. It's all coming from plant sources.

Varying up your plant sources is what I mean when I say get different kinds of fibers. Start with foundational layers. That's your veggies and fruits and lentils and beans and things like that.

Then add some enhancers—nuts and seeds and fermented foods and good fats. Those all enhance your microbial picture.

Finally, bring in very judiciously, with intent, some functional foods. Oat bran that's high in beta-glucan, polyphenolic compounds, flavonoids.

Ashley James (1:51:09.902)

You've mentioned healthy fats a few times. Do healthy fats positively affect the microbiome?

Anu Simh (1:51:14.238)

Yes, yes. They've done many studies with ketogenic diets and the microbiome. It does take a beating and we end up, seeing the microbial profile change when people are on it for a very long time. And saturated fats also affect the microbiome. So negatively, yes, negative. Yes.

Ashley James (1:51:34.844)

In a negative way.

You've mentioned making sure you're eating healthy fats when it pertains to supporting the microbiome. So, because we understand that fiber-rich foods, the microbiome eats our food and then gives us nutrients.

But healthy fat, or foods high in healthy fats, how does that positively impact the microbiome specifically?

Anu Simh (1:52:05.392)

I want to just make the comparison?

If you're eating a lot of things that have saturated fat or things that are high in dietary fat, it can negatively impact the microbial profile. You may end up with more certain kinds of bacteria that thrive on it, and that can be pathogenic.

So, in order for you to have more balance and have more eubiosis in the gut, choosing fats that they seem to like seem to be the way to do it. It's not just for the microbiome, it's for our health as well.

I mean, if you think about it, 80% of the cholesterol is made in the liver. The 20% or so is coming from food sources, and it's largely coming from animal sources?

Plant food does not have cholesterol. If you take it one step further and you look at dietary fats, saturated fats also can raise your cholesterol. So from that perspective, maybe keeping an eye on your intake of coconut oil—a saturated fat—is a good thing if you are prone to higher cholesterol numbers, especially ApoB and LpA.

So I'm thinking more about the overall lifelong health. 

Ashley James (1:53:47.198)

Got it. Healthy fats specifically don't positively impact the gut microbiome.

Anu Simh (1:53:54.274)

I want to say that there are a couple of studies that seem to say that it does, but it's not as rampant as the studies done on fiber.

Ashley James (1:54:03.880)

Got it. I mean, you touched on a subject we could do a whole interview about with cholesterol.

Just to clarify, cholesterol itself is so important for the structure and function of our body that we make it. The liver makes it. Not only the liver—actually, every single cell in the body with a nucleus makes cholesterol. It's used for 70% of the white matter of the brain. The myelin sheath protecting our nerves is cholesterol. Every cell wall is made up of these phytolipids and cholesterol. Our sex hormones, the stress hormones, our bile. It's very important. It's exactly—it’s a necessary nutrient.

But vegans who don't eat any meats or any kind of animal at all—our bodies make it. So it's a nutrient the body makes.

The problem is looking at the markers, where we go, okay, this might be a red flag that we're moving towards heart disease. The misnomer is that cholesterol causes heart disease. It's the red flag. Certain cholesterol markers are a red flag. The way our lifestyle and eating is moving towards heart disease.

I know we're wrapping it up, but I'm curious about the studies that you came across that link gut health and heart disease—or healing the gut helps heal the heart.

Anu Simh (1:55:28.157)

Yes, definitely. I mean, you just opened the show by talking about your own heart health. That's an area, especially with TMA, TMAO conversion, that's been studied pretty well. I think we have some evidence there that it's linked to cardiovascular issues—just the gut microbiome and how it's actually taking in foods that are high in carnitine and things like that, and creating or producing metabolites that are detrimental to us.

So there seems to be a cardiovascular component with microbial health. We could definitely talk about it the next time. I think cholesterol and heart health is so confusing for people because there are so many people who are saying that it doesn't matter. You could have a high LDL and you'll be fine. There's absolutely no research to corroborate that.

I think people should be looking to research—look into good RCTs that are giving us information today. Epidemiological studies that are telling us what kinds of food are really good for us when we have high cholesterol. Someone with an LDL of 500 cannot be healthy. I don't believe that.

This is something we need to discuss and really look deeper into. What is your genetic marker? You could come from a family where you don't have a genetic marker for Lp(a), and you have a better flexibility when it comes to the fats that you're choosing, compared to someone like me, who comes from a South Asian family where a lot of us have high markers of Lp(a).

Then it becomes our responsibility to check it, because today a lot of doctors are not checking these kinds of things—ApoB and Lp(a). So if someone is listening, please go get a test done. It's simple. It's 30 bucks to get an ApoB done, so you have some answers then.

If your ApoB or your Lp(a) is high, then how you approach diet can completely change.

Ashley James (1:58:00.233)

The problem is, depending on the doctor you see, they're going to just go, here's a drug. Everything you're putting into your mouth is building you up or breaking you down.

If your labs are showing that you're not in great health, it's your responsibility to shift what you're putting in your mouth. You can't out-supplement a bad diet, you can't exercise a bad diet, you can't out-drug a bad diet.

A lot of people think, well, I eat healthy. If your labs are showing differently, then there need to be changes. It's a sign of oxidative stress. That's the important thing to understand about the “bad cholesterol”—it's a sign that we have too much oxidative stress in the body.

You're probably not eating enough vegetables. Eat more fruits and vegetables. Cut out those seed oils. You said, trade the unhealthy fats for healthy fats.

Anu Simh (1:58:58.309)

And a lot of it is like that's where the soluble and insoluble fiber comes in. It's so useful. I've had clients who have reversed their cholesterol numbers just from increasing their soluble fiber.

That's coming from your oats, that's coming from your nuts and seeds, that's coming from your flax, psyllium husk. If you want to really have a targeted approach toward bringing your cholesterol down, it can be done. It just needs to be intentional.

There are people who say, I don't care, I'll take a statin. That's a personal choice. Not everyone wants to go the food and diet and lifestyle route.

If that is your first step. Your doctor is not going to tell you anything about it. They don't have time in an eight-minute visit to tell you.

Ashley James (1:59:48.661)

They don't have any training. Doctors are not trained in nutrition. This is the most ludicrous. We live in an upside-down society where we think the doctor is the authority of our health, but they have zero training when it comes to supporting our body's ability to heal itself.

Anu Simh (2:00:03.937)

It's not fair because the system is built for disease management. It's not built to look into patterns. It's not built to look into why are you struggling with this gut bloating. Why do you have these afternoon crashes? It's not built to ask you how much diversity you have in your gut microbiome. There's no time for all of that.

It is a system that works if you have a heart attack or you break a bone—you go fix it. That's what our system's meant for. The rest of it is our responsibility to empower ourselves with education and take the next step.

It's getting so easy today actually to order your own tests. We live in a world that's fairly simple. You don't have to even go through the insurance model. You can get an ApoB test for 20 bucks or 30 bucks. Anyone can afford that. Yes, you go to your Quest Diagnostics and order a test and then you know enough about it. 

Listen to people. Experts in the field, not influencers, but people who actually do lipid studies, and get your information from them because they are the researchers who are doing behind-the-scenes work. They spend so much time and energy learning about this, and that's how I learn too. I don't ever listen to someone who's not a lipidologist because it's not helping me. Everyone is saying something that works for their diet, but that's not what we want. We want something that works at a systems level.

Ashley James (2:01:36.943)

I recommend nutritionfacts.org. It's a nonprofit and it's so good at summarizing studies, and they have a lot of information about the lipid studies and stuff. I really recommend that.

If anyone is, well, I can't make all these changes. I'm just going to get on these cholesterol meds. I got to tell you the cholesterol meds are a lie. They create a sense of false security. They are not protecting you in the long term. In fact, they are going to speed up your death. They cause dementia, cause you to have—later in life—have more falls. People who break their hip from these falls lose their sense of balance. They lose their ability to feel their hands and feet. These drugs break you down, and they also prevent your liver from producing healthy cholesterol.

There's so many things I could say about how dangerous statins are in the long term. Whereas these simple changes—add some spices to your life and eat the rainbow—and see what happens. Something very simple is going to build you up and build you up in the long term as well.

Then, walkinlab.com is my favorite place to go buy my own labs. They can go through Quest or LabCorp, which is great.

It has been such a pleasure having you on the show. You're welcome back anytime you want to come share and do a deep dive into any of these topics. We didn't even get to talk about your nine arms of wellness. Your website is 9armsofwellness.com and there's nine arms of wellness that you discuss, and you've got your book, Flourish From Within, Feed Your Gut for Lifelong Health. Be sure to check out Anu's book that is coming out now. So exciting. Congratulations.

Anu Simh (2:03:31.755)

Yes, I don't know when this episode drops, but is it in a couple of weeks?

Ashley James (2:03:38.431)

By the time this drops, your book will be coming out. Awesome. It's been such a pleasure having you on the show. Please come back when you have more to share.

Anu Simh (2:03:52.107)

I will. Thank you, Ashley. It was a pleasure.

Outro:

Hi, my name is Jennifer Saltzman, and I am the head coach at TakeYourSupplements.com. I wanted to share with you a testimonial that I received from a client of mine—one of the many success stories that I have—but this one was very close to my heart because she's young, has struggled so much to regain her health, and has had such a phenomenal, overcoming testimonial that I really wanted to share it today.

She writes:

My name is Angela. I am 25 years old. I have been on a health journey that consists of an autoimmune disease, fibromyalgia, and other issues that left me feeling defeated and debilitated every day. For 15 years, I have seen eight different specialists and many doctors, and have been in and out of physical therapy, dealing with symptoms I thought would leave me wheelchair-bound and in diapers by the time I was 30.

Well, I am now 25, and after everything I've learned through Jennifer at TakeYourSupplements.com, that definitely won't happen.

Some things doctors have said to me have crushed my hopes. I was told to lose weight and that my pain would go away. So I lost 90 pounds—and the pain was still there. My days were short, and after a five-hour work shift or even a day of running an errand or two, I was left debilitated. So the doctors told me the pain was all in my head because I was previously diagnosed with fibromyalgia—the only diagnosis so many doctors agreed upon because they couldn't think of anything else. Despite me having some form of an immune disease, I felt hopeless and as if life was going to pass me by.

There were times when I tried hiking one or two miles and I was unable to walk or function for days after. I was missing out on trips and adventures, and as embarrassing as it sounds, I was having BM bathroom emergencies so frequently it was ruining my daily function. I could go on about the ways I was ill and what it kept me from, but honestly, after the progress I've made, a long list of symptoms I used to have has become a blur of the past.

When I finally decided to check out TakeYourSupplements.com, recommended through the Learn True Health podcast, I was immediately connected with Jennifer, who kept track of my overwhelmingly long list of complex symptoms and thoroughly created a personalized, step-by-step plan.

Her recommendations have changed my life, and the changes were practically instant. She put me on a complete digestive activation complex that has taken away all of my stomach pain, unnecessary bloating, and gas. She explained to me that the formula supports every stage of digestion—from breakdown to absorption—designed to optimize stomach acid, bile flow, and nutrient assimilation.

She recommended a cellular repair-focused diet, which not only has helped my stomach, but the food gives me energy and makes me feel really good. It reduces inflammation in my body—something no doctor ever told me about.

When I first started with Jennifer, I took the TakeYourSupplements.com health evaluation and scored a negative 32. I just retook it and scored a 69. That's 100 points better in five months.

Still room for progress, but my life nevertheless has been changed, and I am so happy. My days have been much longer and full of adventure. I have hiked the 4,000-footer mountains of New Hampshire—something I never thought I would be able to do. I have had successful days of workouts, errands, and work.

The Learn True Health podcast and Jennifer at TakeYourSupplements.com have done more for me than any doctor ever has, and it all started with validation.

I am now 25 and feel my life is just now starting. It's really hard to put into words just how much has changed for me, so I'll keep on living as actively as possible and learning as much as I can so I can finally take part in the beautiful things of life.

I can't wait for the adventures to come with the hope I've been given through this program. If anyone out there hears this and feels their doctors are taking more than they're giving, give this a try.

Thank you, Ashley and Jennifer. Your knowledge and expertise is a gift I cherish every day.

Learn more and book your free health consultation today by visiting TakeYourSupplements.com.

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Flourish from Within: Feed Your Gut for Lifelong Health

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